The Devil's Dozen Read Online Free PDF

body was hidden.
    When Geyer heard that a child’s skeleton had been discovered in Chicago, he took a train there to learn what he could, but he found that these remains were not Howard’s. It was another dead end. He traveled to several more places, but instinct urged him to settle in Indianapolis and keep searching there. Despite his persistent lack of success, Geyer continued to believe he would have a breakthrough. “No less than nine hundred supposed clues were run out,” he later wrote. He needed a new strategy.
    He and assisting officers went to smaller towns in the area, going through them as systematically as he had done in Indianapolis. In Irvington, Geyer finally struck pay dirt. A man who had rented out a cottage in October—around the time of the two days in which Geyer had lost track of Holmes—remembered Holmes from his rude and abrupt manner. Another person recalled a boy with this irascible short-term tenant. Relieved and certain that he was at the end of the trail, Geyer proceeded to the rental property in question. With the owner’s permission, he conducted a thorough search.
    He found no disturbance in the floor of the cellar, which initially discouraged him, since that seemed to be Holmes’s modus operandi, but he collected pieces of a trunk from a small alcove, and near it he saw disturbed dirt. Geyer dug into the area but found nothing. In a barn, he spotted a coal stove, and remembering Holmes’s earlier purchase of a large stove which he’d then abandoned, Geyer suspected this was a clue. On top were stains that resembled dried blood. However, there was nothing else in the barn that indicated the boy was here. Digging in soft spots in the yard outside also failed to produce anything of interest. By nightfall, he and the owner were forced to wrap up their search, determined to renew it the following day.
    Geyer went to town to send a telegram to Carrie Pitezel, asking if the missing trunk had a strip of blue calico over a seam. She wired back, identifying the trunk as belonging to her. While he was there, a newspaper editor came looking for him. Something had been found back at the property.
    Geyer rushed back and learned that the owner of the cottage, along with his partner, had poked around. In a pipe hole in the chimney that led from the cellar, they discovered pieces of a charred bone—part of a skull and a femur—that had belonged to a male child. Reaching inside, they had pulled out ashes and more pieces of bone. In front of a crowd of curious people, Geyer dismantled the lower part of the chimney and found a complete set of teeth and a piece of jaw, identified by a dentist as being from a boy seven to ten years old. “At the bottom of the chimney,” Geyer recorded, “was found quite a large charred mass, which upon being cut, disclosed a portion of the stomach, liver and spleen, baked quite hard. The pelvis of the body was also found.”
    Plenty of witnesses had seen Holmes back in October and identified him from the photograph that Geyer carried. He’d even left Howard’s coat with a grocer, which was now retrieved. One young man recalled helping Holmes to install the stove, though little did he realize it had been used to incinerate a murder victim. Carrie Pitezel arrived as well, and identified various items as belonging to Howard.
    Convinced he had finally, albeit tragically, found Howard Pitezel, and having his discovery confirmed by other clues, Geyer “enjoyed the best night’s sleep” that he’d had in two months. The search for truth had finally reached fruition. It was now August 27, fully two months after he’d left on this journey, and five weeks since he’d found Howard’s unfortunate sisters.
    On September 12 in Philadelphia, Holmes was indicted by a grand jury for the murder of Benjamin Pitezel. He entered a plea of not guilty and his trial date was scheduled for October 28. Even as he donned a role for the court, people were learning much more about him