ntioned by name, but some of these were proved afterwards to
be alive. Holmes had actually perpetrated, in all probability, about ten
murders. But, given further time and opportunity, there is no reason why
this peripatetic assassin should not have attained to the considerable
figure with which he credited himself in his bogus confession.

Holmes was executed in Philadelphia on May 7, 1896. He seemed to meet
his fate with indifference.

The motive of Holmes in murdering Pitezel and three of his children and
in planning to murder his wife and remaining children, originated in all
probability in a quarrel that occurred between Pitezel and himself in
the July of 1894. Pitezel had tired apparently of Holmes and his doings,
and wanted to break off the connection. But he must have known enough
of Holmes' past to make him a dangerous enemy. It was Pitezel who had
introduced to Holmes, Emily Cigrand, the typist, who had disappeared
so mysteriously in the castle; Pitezel had been his partner in the
fraudulent appropriation of Miss Minnie Williams' property in Texas; it
is more than likely, therefore, that Pitezel knew something of the fate
of Miss Williams and her sister. By reviving, with Pitezel's help, his
old plan for defrauding insurance companies, Holmes saw the opportunity
of making 10,000 dollars, which he needed sorely, and at the same time
removing his inconvenient and now lukewarm associate. Having killed
Pitezel and received the insurance money, Holmes appropriated to his
own use the greater part of the 10,000 dollars, giving Mrs. Pitezel
in return for her share of the plunder a bogus bill for 5,000 dollars.
Having robbed Mrs. Pitezel of both her husband and her money, to
this thoroughgoing criminal there seemed only one satisfactory way of
escaping detection, and that was to exterminate her and the whole of her
family.

Had Holmes not confided his scheme of the insurance fraud to Hedgspeth
in St. Louis prison and then broken faith with him, there is no reason
why the fraud should ever have been discovered. The subsequent murders
had been so cunningly contrived that, had the Insurance Company not put
the Pinkerton detectives on his track, Holmes would in all probability
have ended by successfully disposing of Mrs. Pitezel, Dessie, and the
baby at the house in Burlington, Vermont, and the entire Pitezel family
would have disappeared as completely as his other victims.

Holmes admitted afterwards that his one mistak