Free FIENDISH KILLERS (True Crime) by Anne Williams, Vivian Head, Amy Williams Page A
responded by telling Hedgepath about the murder of Pitezel so as to claim the insurance money, and then went on to claim that he had committed many such murders for financial gain. Hedgepath promptly informed the police of Holmes’s story, and Holmes was duly charged with the murder of Benjamin Pitezel. The story that came out deeply shocked the police and, later, the public. Holmes told his captors how he had burned Pitezel alive, despite the man’s cries for mercy and his pitiful attempts to pray for salvation when his final end came.
Meanwhile, the police at the Castle in Chicago were tallying up the body count, and found that at least 100 young women, most of them typists and secretaries, had been murdered in the building. The killings had evidently followed a pattern: these young women had caught Holmes’s eye, become his lovers and ended up being murdered. Not only did the police find the bodies of the women; there were also children, including Alice, Nellie and Howard Pitezel, whose remains were found in the building. Alice and Nellie had been thrown into a trunk and gassed to death, while their brother had been poisoned and burned before being dismembered.
Despite the mounting evidence against him, Holmes was adamant that he was innocent and continued to plead not guilty to murdering Pitezel. However, when he was brought to trial, the jury did not believe his story and he was convicted of first-degree murder. On November 4, 1895, he was sentenced to death. Before his hanging, he confessed to twenty-seven murders and six attempted murders.
On May 7, 1896, Herman Mudgett, alias Dr H. H. Holmes, was hanged in Philadelphia. According to the New York Times, Mudgett told the executioner: ‘Take your time; don’t bungle it.’ However, the executioner did not make a very good job of the hanging. Holmes’s neck did not immediately snap and he died slowly, twitching for a good fifteen minutes before he was finally pronounced dead.
Pedro Alonso Lopez
Pedro Lopez, known as the ‘Monster of the Andes’, is thought to have murdered more people than any other serial killer in the twentieth century. He himself put the score of people he had murdered at 300, although this has never been clearly established. The only other serial killer to have come anywhere near this number of victims is the British doctor, Harold Shipman, who is thought to have murdered over 200 of his patients.
F ERAL CHILD
Pedro Alonso Lopez was born in Tolina, Colombia, in 1949, the seventh of thirteen children born to a prostitute mother. At this time, Colombia was undergoing a time of considerable social unrest, which made his already precarious situation more difficult. By all accounts, Pedro’s mother was a harridan who had little love for her children, and in 1957, when she caught Pedro fondling his younger sister, she evicted him from the family home. He was just eight years old.
Lopez did his best to survive on the streets, but was soon picked up by a paedophile who took him to a deserted house and raped him repeatedly. Afterwards, the child was taken back to the streets, where he became so frightened that he hid in abandoned buildings by day, and only came out at night to look for food. Little is known of his subsequent life until an American family saw him begging on the streets of Bogota and took him in. They enrolled him in a school for orphans, but he ran away. The reasons for this are not clear, but it is thought that he may have been molested by one of the teachers. However, the school claimed that he had broken into the office there and stolen money.
K ILLING SPREE
Whatever the truth of the matter, Lopez returned to the streets and became a beggar and petty thief. At the age of eighteen, he was caught stealing cars and arrested. He was brought to justice and received a seven-year prison sentence. In jail, he was reported to have been gang-raped by four other prisoners, and responded by killing three of
Meanwhile, the police at the Castle in Chicago were tallying up the body count, and found that at least 100 young women, most of them typists and secretaries, had been murdered in the building. The killings had evidently followed a pattern: these young women had caught Holmes’s eye, become his lovers and ended up being murdered. Not only did the police find the bodies of the women; there were also children, including Alice, Nellie and Howard Pitezel, whose remains were found in the building. Alice and Nellie had been thrown into a trunk and gassed to death, while their brother had been poisoned and burned before being dismembered.
Despite the mounting evidence against him, Holmes was adamant that he was innocent and continued to plead not guilty to murdering Pitezel. However, when he was brought to trial, the jury did not believe his story and he was convicted of first-degree murder. On November 4, 1895, he was sentenced to death. Before his hanging, he confessed to twenty-seven murders and six attempted murders.
On May 7, 1896, Herman Mudgett, alias Dr H. H. Holmes, was hanged in Philadelphia. According to the New York Times, Mudgett told the executioner: ‘Take your time; don’t bungle it.’ However, the executioner did not make a very good job of the hanging. Holmes’s neck did not immediately snap and he died slowly, twitching for a good fifteen minutes before he was finally pronounced dead.
Pedro Alonso Lopez
Pedro Lopez, known as the ‘Monster of the Andes’, is thought to have murdered more people than any other serial killer in the twentieth century. He himself put the score of people he had murdered at 300, although this has never been clearly established. The only other serial killer to have come anywhere near this number of victims is the British doctor, Harold Shipman, who is thought to have murdered over 200 of his patients.
F ERAL CHILD
Pedro Alonso Lopez was born in Tolina, Colombia, in 1949, the seventh of thirteen children born to a prostitute mother. At this time, Colombia was undergoing a time of considerable social unrest, which made his already precarious situation more difficult. By all accounts, Pedro’s mother was a harridan who had little love for her children, and in 1957, when she caught Pedro fondling his younger sister, she evicted him from the family home. He was just eight years old.
Lopez did his best to survive on the streets, but was soon picked up by a paedophile who took him to a deserted house and raped him repeatedly. Afterwards, the child was taken back to the streets, where he became so frightened that he hid in abandoned buildings by day, and only came out at night to look for food. Little is known of his subsequent life until an American family saw him begging on the streets of Bogota and took him in. They enrolled him in a school for orphans, but he ran away. The reasons for this are not clear, but it is thought that he may have been molested by one of the teachers. However, the school claimed that he had broken into the office there and stolen money.
K ILLING SPREE
Whatever the truth of the matter, Lopez returned to the streets and became a beggar and petty thief. At the age of eighteen, he was caught stealing cars and arrested. He was brought to justice and received a seven-year prison sentence. In jail, he was reported to have been gang-raped by four other prisoners, and responded by killing three of
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