The Devil in the White City: Part 4, Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

It is July 16, 1895, and the deaths of the Pitezal children have been reported on the front pages of various newspapers. The Assistant District Attorney, Thomas W. Barlow, orders that Holmes not be shown the papers, so that Barlow can surprise him with the news and possibly get him to confess. But Barlow’s order comes too late, and Holmes reads the papers.

In his memoirs, Holmes claims that he was shocked by the news of the children’s deaths. He realized that they must have been murdered by Minnie Williams, probably working with a dangerous friend of hers, named “Hatch.” Holmes tells Barlow that Minnie and Hatch have killed Howard, too.

Holmes sends his memoirs to a journalist, John King, and gives him instructions to publish them as a book, with his photograph on the cover, as well as directions on how to sell the book by canvassing in Philadelphia.

Holmes, who knows that he’s suspected of murdering Minnie Williams, writes a letter in which he tells King to go to a hotel in Chicago, where he’ll find records of Minnie’s presence long after she was supposedly murdered. Holmes adds that if Minnie “was a corpse then, she was a very lively corpse.”