Holmes’ Own Story
MULTI-MURDERER AND ARCH CONSPIRATOR
TELLS OF THE
Twenty-two Tragic Deaths and Disappearances
IN WHICH HE IS SAID TO BE IMPLICATED
WITH
Moyamensing Prison Diary Appendix
Burk & McFetridge Co.
1895.
PREFACE.
The following pages are written under peculiar circumstances, perhaps the most peculiar that ever attended the birth of a literary work. Incarcerated in prison and awaiting trial for the most serious offense known to the law, it has been written only after mature deliberation, against the advice of my friends, and in direct opposition to the positive instructions of my counsel, who have attempted in every way to dissuade me from its publication; but the circumstances under which I am placed, in my judgment, make it imperative that I should disregard all of these considerations.
For months I have been vilified by the public press, held up to the world as the most atrocious criminal of the age, directly and indirectly accused of the murder of at least a score of victims, many of whom have been my closest personal friends.
The object of this extended and continuous enumeration of alleged crimes has been apparently to create a public sentiment so prejudiced against me as to make a fair and impartial trial impossible. My friends have been alienated, my nearest kindred plunged in grief, and the world horrified by the bloody recital of imaginary crimes.
I feel therefore justified in the course I am now pursuing, and am impelled by an imperative sense of duty to publicly deny these atrocious calumnies. The following pages will therefore be found to contain a simple and complete narrative of my entire life, and a full history of my associations and dealings with Mr. and Mrs. B. F. Pitezel and their children, the alleged disappearance of Minnie Williams and the tragic death of her sister Nannie.
My sole object in this publication is to vindicate my name from the horrible aspersions cast upon it, and to appeal to a fair-minded American public for a suspension of judgment, and for that free and fair trial which is the birthright of every American citizen, and the pride and bulwark of our American Constitution.
5
OME with me, if you will, to a tiny, quiet New England village, nestling among the picturesquely rugged hills of New Hampshire. This little hamlet has for over a century been known as