Benjamin Pitezel

Holmes murders Pitezel using chloroform and fire, then presents his actual remains to claim a $10,000 life insurance policy. The scheme was originally pitched to Pitezel as a staged death — he would fake his own death, the policy would pay out, and his family would escape poverty. Holmes never intended to let him survive. Pitezel's badly burned, partially decomposed body was discovered in Philadelphia in September 1894.

Pitezel trusts Holmes because Holmes spends years cultivating that trust through shared fraud schemes, financial incentives, and self-assured confidence. Pitezel is chronically underemployed, prone to heavy drinking, and desperate for stability for his wife Carrie and their children — the vulnerabilities Holmes exploits. The relationship is less a friendship than a lengthy grooming process that leaves Pitezel unable to see Holmes's intentions clearly.

Holmes takes custody of three of Pitezel's children — Alice, Nellie, and Howard — under the false pretense of reuniting them with their mother, Carrie, who still believed her husband was alive and hiding. Holmes ultimately murders all three children. Detective Frank Geyer's relentless, state-by-state investigation into the children's disappearance exposes Holmes's full scope of crimes.

Geyer and Pitezel never meet, yet their connection is essential to the book. Pitezel's suspicious death triggers Geyer's obsessive investigation into the missing children, and Geyer effectively becomes the advocate Pitezel never had in life. His relentless detective work across multiple states ultimately vindicates Pitezel posthumously and secures Holmes's conviction, with Pitezel's murder serving as the legal foundation of the case.

Pitezel is a willing accomplice in Holmes's lower-stakes fraud and property schemes, but he is never a knowing participant in Holmes's murders. Larson portrays his motivation as heartbreakingly mundane — he wants financial stability for his family, not criminal fame. His arc moves from complicity to victimhood with little moment of clarity, making him a morally complex figure who invites both sympathy and difficult questions about culpability.

Pitezel's murder becomes the legal cornerstone of the case against Holmes. The suspicious circumstances of his death prompted investigation, and Geyer's search for the missing Pitezel children exposed the full pattern of Holmes's crimes, providing prosecutors with the evidence needed to prosecute. Holmes is ultimately executed as a direct result of the trail that begins with Pitezel's death in Philadelphia in 1894.

All three represent Holmes's pattern of exploiting trusting individuals who enter his sphere through seemingly legitimate means — work or business — before destroying them once they are no longer useful. Like Pitezel, Minnie Williams is drawn in by Holmes's charm and manipulated until she outlives her usefulness. Emeline Cigrand similarly enters Holmes's world through legitimate employment. What distinguishes Pitezel is that his murder also enables Holmes to prey on his own children.

Carrie is at the emotional core of Pitezel's tragedy. After her husband's murder, she remains loyal to Holmes — the same man who killed him — because Holmes deceives her into believing Pitezel is alive and hiding. Her trust in Holmes, inherited in part from her husband's own blind faith, leads her to hand over three of her children to their killer. Her grief and manipulation compound Pitezel's victimhood into something, as Larson frames it, almost unbearable.