0:02 [SPEAKER_00]: It's every parent's worst nightmare. 0:05 [SPEAKER_00]: You are daughter-meets a guy in a distance city, and suddenly winds up dead. 0:10 [SPEAKER_00]: He's nice at first and more understanding than you. 0:14 [SPEAKER_00]: He listens and he's funny and she's happy, even giddy with this new love in her life. 0:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And in something changes, her mood darkens, she talks about him less, and you don't know why. 0:27 [SPEAKER_00]: She's less happy each time you see her, and soon you're not seeing her at all. 0:34 [SPEAKER_00]: On a cold November morning, they find her body in a lake, with her throat, slit. 0:41 [SPEAKER_00]: This is the story of Alameda Alun or Huet, and if that name sounds old-fashioned to you, that's because she died in 1888 in Chicago, five years before the 1893 World's Fair. 0:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And if Chicago, circa 1888, or the 1893 World's Fair, ring a bell for you. 1:02 [SPEAKER_00]: You were probably thinking of one of America's most notorious serial killers, rumor to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of women, H. H. Holmes, and his so-called murder castle. 1:16 [SPEAKER_00]: The murder castle was an apartment complex on the south side of Chicago, designed for the disposal of its inhabitants. 1:25 [SPEAKER_00]: There were secret passages into private rooms and wide shoots hidden in the walls that allowed homes to drop bodies into the basement for dissection or incineration. 1:37 [SPEAKER_00]: When police later opened the door, to the large basement furnace, they found claw marks from desperate victims homes had buried alive. 1:47 [SPEAKER_00]: This building was so well-designed, around the agenda of quietly disappearing its guests that it was basically a wall to wall instrument of violence. 1:59 [SPEAKER_00]: By an 1888, the world's largest murder weapon was still under construction, homes with higher and fire in new construction crew every few weeks, so they never caught on to his evil designs. 2:14 [SPEAKER_00]: But the man known as the Beast of Chicago was already prowling the city for victims. 2:19 [SPEAKER_00]: His business partners had mysteriously vanished years before, leaving all of their fortune to him, and the same charm that Bambuzled his sophisticated friends was irresistible to the attractive young women, onboarding trains every hour, in America's booming second city. 2:38 [SPEAKER_00]: they came from all over America to realize their dreams in this emerging cultural hotspot in the heart of the Midwest. 2:48 [SPEAKER_00]: They came to find happiness and freedom from the constraints of small town living. 2:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Too many of them found H.A. 2:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Homes. 2:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Alameda Hewitt, a pretty interviews teenager from Wabash County, Indiana. 3:03 [SPEAKER_00]: May have been the first to do I set down with the local Wabash historian, Dr. Ron Woodward, a friend of mine for the full story. 3:13 [SPEAKER_02]: The young lady's name was Mata Hewitt, H.U.I.E.T. 3:23 [SPEAKER_02]: in 1870 when she was about seven years old her parents separated her father was a mean character, life, he beat her, he beat her mother, anyway they separated and she stayed with her mother for only about six months and then her father kidnapped her, took her to a 3:52 [SPEAKER_02]: Indiana here in Wal-Bash County. 3:56 [SPEAKER_02]: At summer set, he had relatives and made a lived with her grandmother for while she was there for her dad frequently beat her just out of spite or just as he felt like doing so. 4:09 [SPEAKER_02]: He often was reported as having struck her on the back with a stick of wood, which later on in life affected her both mentally and physically. 4:22 [SPEAKER_02]: He told everybody that he's first wife that died, so he went ahead and remarried. 4:27 [SPEAKER_02]: And he threatened me to that if she ever told that story that she was alive, he killed her. 4:33 [SPEAKER_02]: She lived in fear. 4:35 [SPEAKER_02]: Lady by the name of Mrs. Turro, who lived in Chicago, was visiting friends in Somerset. 4:43 [SPEAKER_02]: And she became interested in Meida. 4:46 [SPEAKER_02]: And she offered to take Meida back to Chicago with her once she went back home. 4:52 [SPEAKER_02]: and she did and made a live there in Chicago for about a year and she was very happy in the situation. 5:01 [SPEAKER_02]: She was about 14 years old at the time and leaving summer set at town of maybe 500 people and going to Chicago with its vast multitude of people was a big experience in her life. 5:15 [SPEAKER_02]: While she was there, 5:17 [SPEAKER_02]: He met a fellow by the name of HN Edwards. 5:21 [SPEAKER_02]: Now, there is such a person who existed his HN Edwards. 5:26 [SPEAKER_02]: He happened to be a pharmacist. 5:31 [SPEAKER_02]: And he also happened to be a good friend of a fellow by the name. 5:37 [SPEAKER_02]: His actual name was Herman Muggitt, but he went by the name of Holmes, while he was in Chicago. 5:45 [SPEAKER_02]: And the two actually knew each other. 5:47 [SPEAKER_02]: They were in the same business. 5:49 [SPEAKER_02]: And so forth. 5:50 [SPEAKER_02]: This HN Edwards was able to seduce her. 5:55 [SPEAKER_02]: That's probably the only way to say it. 5:58 [SPEAKER_02]: She would later tell friends that Edwards was his assumed name, made up that he was wealthy, made him own two drug stores in both Chicago and St. Louis. 6:12 [SPEAKER_02]: and that he had promised to marry her, and he requested that if she ever wrote to him that she right to this Mr. H. N. Edwards' care of E. L. Denning with the Chicago interior in Chicago, Illinois, and he picked up the letters. 6:30 [SPEAKER_02]: He wanted her to do that because he was supposedly married, and he didn't want his wife to know that. 6:36 [SPEAKER_02]: And she did, when she later leaves Chicago and goes to 6:41 [SPEAKER_02]: She writes to him constantly, and he writes back to her as this HN Edwards. 6:48 [SPEAKER_02]: And while she was going with him, and she described him not only as being wealthy and owning these drug stores, but that he was a fine scholar that he could speak at least three languages if not more, she always wondered and expressed to her friends and Roland, how could anyone 7:10 [SPEAKER_02]: with all this knowledge. 7:13 [SPEAKER_00]: H. N. Edwards was an alias for our meet-as-suter, and there really was someone using the name H. N. Edwards in Chicago at the time, and he did on a drugstore, but this was not his real name. 7:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Mida's mystery man had borrowed the name of an associate, as an alias for his relationship with an out-of-town girl. 7:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Anyone of our Mida's Indiana friends would have called her Mida that tried to look up her big city boyfriend, would find him immediately, pretty much exactly as she described him, without coming any closer to his true identity. 7:52 [SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty brilliant when you think about it. 7:55 [SPEAKER_00]: As Dr. Woodward has mentioned, H.H. 7:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Holmes, the faint serial killer, had a drugstoring Chicago at this time, and he knew a man named Edwards through their common vocation. 8:08 [SPEAKER_00]: He spoke multiple languages and was known for his ability to charm young women. 8:13 [SPEAKER_00]: He was continually using aliases, like Alexander Bond, and even the name, in rehowered homes, was fake. 8:21 [SPEAKER_00]: As Woodward reminded us, his real name was Herman Muggett. 8:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Homes was actually younger than Mita described, but he was balding prematurely and looked much older than his years. 8:34 [SPEAKER_00]: His heavy mustache and bowler hat, dues give him the appearance of a middle-aged man. 8:41 [SPEAKER_00]: He might take a moment and look up his marchoff to see what you think. 8:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Back to Woodward and the sad story of Mita Huitt. 8:51 [SPEAKER_02]: The father got upset and went to Chicago and took his daughter made up back to Somerset with him. 9:01 [SPEAKER_02]: He didn't like her living there, he wanted more control, and he wanted her money. 9:11 [SPEAKER_02]: And while she was a housekeeper in making money, he would visit her pay days and take her money from her. 9:21 [SPEAKER_02]: And all she ever received in return were physical abuse and verbal abuse from the whole time. 9:29 [SPEAKER_02]: So while she was living in Roan, she decided she was going to return to Chicago. 9:39 [SPEAKER_02]: and eventually married this Mr. Edwards hatched an idea and a plan and saved a little bit of money and set it back and caught the train out of Roland and it took Ron in Chicago. 9:54 [SPEAKER_02]: She was there for about six months. 9:57 [SPEAKER_02]: She did reconnect with Mr. Edwards. 10:00 [SPEAKER_02]: He did pay a lot of attention to her and but they never got married 10:09 [SPEAKER_02]: she was tired of the life she was living or the promise she had been made not being fulfilled by Edwards. 10:16 [SPEAKER_02]: She committed suicide by cutting her throat. 10:20 [SPEAKER_02]: So many women would go to Chicago in those early days for jobs that if a girl went missing or died, the police didn't 10:36 [SPEAKER_02]: for a lost child or a relative they couldn't hardly find them. 10:41 [SPEAKER_02]: It was so crowded and people just disappeared. 10:45 [SPEAKER_02]: Women in particular, they went to Chicago to realize dreams of starting a new fresh life and a new different place and when they got there it oftentimes was different from what they expected. 11:02 [SPEAKER_02]: The brothels were full in Chicago. 11:05 [SPEAKER_02]: and young girls disappeared into them. 11:08 [SPEAKER_02]: Crime was rampant, a new young lady called the train, who was just such a common sight that nobody fought much about it. 11:18 [SPEAKER_02]: And she just disappears from the history of the area, the police didn't investigate. 11:26 [SPEAKER_02]: They just knew she was a suicide and had cut her throat. 11:35 [SPEAKER_02]: person committing suicide does an often cut their throat, they'll cut their wrists or other parts, it's hard to cut your own net suspicious what was happening. 11:45 [SPEAKER_02]: This was all in 1886. 11:48 [SPEAKER_02]: Her remains were identified, family was connected, and she lies buried in the Rowan community cemetery near Rowan to this very day. 12:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Mita came to the city of Chicago, for the man she called HN Edwards, but that's not what the papers call him. 12:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Edwards comes forward at the time of her death to identify her, introducing himself to the Chicago police, as worn OW Arts. 12:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Following his time with the police, where he casually directs them to the likelihood of her suicide. 12:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Arts does multiple interviews with newspapers. 12:28 [SPEAKER_00]: where he continues a narrative of MEDA's suicidal unhappiness. 12:33 [SPEAKER_00]: It's worth pausing here for a moment to note that there is no official record in Chicago in the 1880s of any man named OW Arts. 12:45 [SPEAKER_00]: In an interview with the inter-Ocean newspaper on December 2, 1888, Arts tells reporters that he treated MEDA 12:53 [SPEAKER_00]: as a brother treats a sister, and that she was romantically entangled with another man who was ultimately responsible for this tragedy. 13:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Arts points the finger at George W. Johnson, owner of the Claring On Newspaper, in MEDA's hometown of Roeway and Indiana, suggesting George's refusal to leave his wife, for MEDA, led her to despair. 13:18 [SPEAKER_00]: He says Mieta's brain was turned, and that she was temporarily insane at the time of her death, in his own words. 13:26 [SPEAKER_04]: I am under the impression that Mieta was in love with the man Johnson, and as he is a married man, her case was hopeless. 13:36 [SPEAKER_04]: The trouble arising in her family was enough to turn any girl's brain, and I believe that 13:43 [SPEAKER_04]: While libering under a fit of temporary insanity, she made a way with herself. 13:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever his intentions, O-W-R succeeds in convincing the CPD of MEDA suicide. 13:58 [SPEAKER_00]: When I reached out to the department for official documents regarding her death, I learned that there aren't any. 14:04 [SPEAKER_00]: The department was as helpful as they could have been. 14:07 [SPEAKER_00]: They searched every variation of the name MEDA, where I'll meet a, and even checked every record from the week of her death. 14:16 [SPEAKER_00]: The judgment of suicide preempted the need for any investigation, and meet his case, with quietly discarded. 14:23 [SPEAKER_02]: A her life is a sad story. 14:26 [SPEAKER_02]: She was on a great stone and says she was 18 years, one month and 13 days old, who is a short life, but not an unusual story unfortunately in those days. 14:40 [SPEAKER_00]: I asked Ron what he thinks of the potential connection with AJ Jones. 14:44 [SPEAKER_02]: He's also known by a nickname if you will have. 14:49 [SPEAKER_02]: He's known as the Beast of Chicago. 14:51 [SPEAKER_02]: He arrived in Chicago in 1886. 14:56 [SPEAKER_02]: So he was there at the same time as Mita was there. 15:03 [SPEAKER_02]: Same time span completely. 15:06 [SPEAKER_02]: When I'm going to call him Herman, when Herman Muchita arrived in Chicago, 15:12 [SPEAKER_02]: He had some medical experience, very little, but he had some, but he went into the drugstore business. 15:20 [SPEAKER_02]: Now he was a very likable person, especially with young ladies. 15:25 [SPEAKER_02]: They found him very engaging and extremely attentive to their needs, and he went to work for a drugstore in Chicago. 15:34 [SPEAKER_02]: Within a very short time, he was running the business, and the owners disappeared. 15:42 [SPEAKER_02]: and he began to do such a great business and attracting a large clientele of young ladies that he would pay attention to and satisfy their needs as far as various drugs that they could use from the drugstore that his business continued to grow and he was able to expand and he 16:11 [SPEAKER_02]: So he had two stores and he was known as a ladies man and a lot of young ladies did sing to disappear from his establishment. 16:21 [SPEAKER_02]: They would go in there and become very friendly with him and he would be seen around town with them going to dinner into the theater and that kind of thing. 16:31 [SPEAKER_02]: And then they would just hear if he wouldn't see them any longer. 16:34 [SPEAKER_02]: Could me to have been one of those people. 16:38 [SPEAKER_02]: he would just seduce particularly wealthy women so that he could get a life insurance policy on them and then kill them. 16:49 [SPEAKER_02]: He began to raise enough money that he could expand his business in Chicago and he bought a block across the street from him and there he began to build a 17:02 [SPEAKER_02]: which he would have on the first floor is drugstore and ran out space to other small businesses. 17:09 [SPEAKER_02]: And then on the second floor, he would have kind of office space for lawyers and that kind of thing. 17:17 [SPEAKER_02]: And then on the third floor would be a hotel because at this time, the Chicago World's Fair was beginning to take over the interest of the Chicago 17:31 [SPEAKER_02]: and he knew about it and wanted to get in on the ground floor and with a hotel he could provide rooms for some of his victims also make money off of other people but mainly victims. 17:46 [SPEAKER_02]: The hotel became known as the murder castle because of what went on there. 18:01 [SPEAKER_02]: in town, money, for everything from furniture to supplies, he would rob Peter to pay Paul, and that was his life in his existence. 18:13 [SPEAKER_02]: In the hotel, when he began construction of it, he would use various different groups of architects and other people who construct the building. 18:24 [SPEAKER_02]: The contractors were given one design, and then they would be given another. 18:29 [SPEAKER_02]: And it became a puzzle in the hotel. 18:31 [SPEAKER_02]: Some of the rooms had doors that led to nothing. 18:36 [SPEAKER_02]: Then others, there were secret shoots where he could dispose of bodies down in the basement. 18:42 [SPEAKER_02]: In the basement, he had a vault where he could torture his victims and no one could hear. 18:47 [SPEAKER_02]: He had an extremely large furnace where he could dispose of bodies. 18:53 [SPEAKER_02]: He kept the bags of acid where the bodies could be reduced to bones. 18:59 [SPEAKER_02]: He even took the bones, had them articulated, and then sold them to doctors for anyone who wanted to have a skeleton in their house. 19:09 [SPEAKER_02]: The kind of manning was. 19:12 [SPEAKER_02]: I think that made a huge stumble into his path and became one of his numberless victims. 19:23 [SPEAKER_02]: about 27 people. 19:24 [SPEAKER_02]: He even admitted to that when he was finally caught. 19:28 [SPEAKER_02]: But there are estimates that range is high as 200 people died at his hands. 19:34 [SPEAKER_02]: And hers is just one of those tragic stories that appeared in that community. 19:41 [SPEAKER_02]: We don't have any physical proof 19:52 [SPEAKER_02]: is the law-ified name. 19:54 [SPEAKER_02]: He was a friend of Parman's, did he use his name very possibly? 20:01 [SPEAKER_02]: We know that he used a lot of other monitors as well, so that's possible. 20:06 [SPEAKER_02]: The description, the assume name, the description being wealthy, owning two drug stores, 20:18 [SPEAKER_02]: is the meaner being able to entrance young ladies fits the bill. 20:25 [SPEAKER_02]: The only difference there is that she said he was 55 years old. 20:30 [SPEAKER_02]: He wasn't baffled when he was in Chicago, maybe in these 30s, but he did wear a beard. 20:38 [SPEAKER_02]: And as we even today, a lot of young men will wear a beard so that they appear to be much older than what they are. 20:46 [SPEAKER_02]: but we know that he was fluent in various languages that fits the bill as well. 20:53 [SPEAKER_02]: So yes, he is just a position. 20:57 [SPEAKER_02]: And it's an interesting story. 21:00 [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, one other thing, we do know that he Herman Mugget was involved with young ladies in Indiana, particularly in Lafayette. 21:11 [SPEAKER_02]: There was a young lady murdered there 21:14 [SPEAKER_02]: He did live in Indenapolis for a while, and there was a murder there, not of a girl, but one of the children of one of the women that he did marry was killed there as well. 21:28 [SPEAKER_02]: So, it wasn't just Chicago, he did, that he acted in, he did get the St. Louis, and he did go back out east, and thought he's appeared along his trail all the way. 21:44 [SPEAKER_02]: So, if there's still work to be done, but maybe we do have a connection here in World Busch County to this beast of Chicago. 21:54 [SPEAKER_00]: You had mentioned that H.N. 21:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Edwards was a real person. 21:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you know any details about him like what year he was born or anything? 22:01 [SPEAKER_02]: I don't have any details about Mr. Edwards. 22:05 [SPEAKER_02]: I do know that there was an H.N. 22:07 [SPEAKER_02]: Edwards in Chicago. 22:15 [SPEAKER_02]: Homes always would do is use an assume name when he met these women so that they really never knew him as much as they knew him as the Homes or some other name. 22:29 [SPEAKER_02]: So to me or be quite likely that he would have used someone else's name that he knew if he had become up with the name right off the bat. 22:44 [SPEAKER_02]: He told her that it was an assumed name and that he was using that name because he was wealthy and did not want to embarrass his family. 22:54 [SPEAKER_02]: And that also that he was married and did not want his wife to find out about this. 23:00 [SPEAKER_02]: And the interesting thing about that to me anyway is that much it was married. 23:05 [SPEAKER_02]: He did have a family before he moved to Chicago. 23:09 [SPEAKER_02]: He was married and he never divorced her. 23:12 [SPEAKER_02]: And although he might have married three, four other women, he never divorced them. 23:18 [SPEAKER_02]: They always died except that first wife. 23:21 [SPEAKER_02]: So this HN Edwards fits the bill of what much it was doing in using a fake name. 23:32 [SPEAKER_00]: For you aware of off atop of your head, any known victims of homes whose throats were cut? 23:39 [SPEAKER_02]: No. 23:41 [SPEAKER_02]: that much about his methodology other than that he used the basement as a place to dispose of the bodies either by submerging in the of that of acid or in the fires and of course the articulation of the skeleton I'm thinking in my own mind that when made a died in 1888 24:11 [SPEAKER_02]: that he was just getting started in what he was going to do later in the murder castle. 24:22 [SPEAKER_02]: That this was an easy method for him. 24:25 [SPEAKER_02]: I know that prior to going to Chicago, he had stolen bodies to sell or maybe killed people to sell to medical institutions. 24:39 [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm just thinking these were some of his early attempts to begin to feel his way through his criminal behavior. 24:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Did they have access to Meta's body? 24:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Is she actually buried in the cemetery? 24:54 [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, she's actually buried at the cemetery. 24:58 [SPEAKER_02]: Her body was shipped from Chicago down to Rowan and buried in what is now called the Rowan community cemetery. 25:07 [SPEAKER_02]: It used to be called the Rowan Art Fellows Cemetery. 25:11 [SPEAKER_02]: Yep, but her body is there, grave is there. 25:14 [SPEAKER_02]: And it's beginning to get a little illegible right now because of climate conditions and all that, but it's still there. 25:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Did she write a suicide letter as I how her family found out? 25:27 [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know how her family found out. 25:29 [SPEAKER_02]: I maybe she had something on her. 25:32 [SPEAKER_02]: I know she was. 25:34 [SPEAKER_02]: sent a lot of letters to Edward's slash budget in Chicago, they wrote letters back and forth constantly while she was living in Rowan. 25:46 [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe she had some of those in her possession, I don't know, how they were able to connect her that I do not know. 25:52 [SPEAKER_02]: I do know this, that the story didn't appear just locally. 25:58 [SPEAKER_02]: It was, in fact, it was picked up from the Indianapolis newspapers that reported it. 26:04 [SPEAKER_02]: So it got some notoriety throughout this area before it even made the wall-by-she-news papers. 26:13 [SPEAKER_02]: And how all that connected together I do not know. 26:16 [SPEAKER_00]: How did you learn about Mita? 26:20 [SPEAKER_02]: Simply by reading newspapers, I enjoy reading the early newspapers, 26:30 [SPEAKER_02]: in December, issue of the Wolbaish Plain dealer, and it was told from the viewpoint of one of her friends who lived in Rowan that stayed in touch with her and had confided in her that she was going to marry Edwards and get away from Rowan and Wolbaish County and lived this fantastic life in Chicago with a rich man. 27:00 [SPEAKER_02]: by the local paper and told her story or her version of Made Up. 27:07 [SPEAKER_02]: And that's how I found out about it. 27:09 [SPEAKER_02]: Just by going back to those early papers, they're just full of all kinds of tidbits, stories, accounts, legends of the community that these were newspapers were printed in. 27:24 [SPEAKER_02]: This fantastic source of information for people to go through. 27:29 [SPEAKER_00]: you mentioned that they had interviewed, made his friend, what did her friend feel happened to her? 27:36 [SPEAKER_02]: She didn't express that opinion. 27:38 [SPEAKER_02]: She just went along with what the police said that it was a suicide. 27:42 [SPEAKER_02]: But again, it's awfully hard to commit suicide by cutting your throat. 27:48 [SPEAKER_02]: Got to be steady, you got to hold that knife just right, and you got to slice and deep enough to get the veins. 27:58 [SPEAKER_02]: method for young ladies in particular. 28:03 [SPEAKER_02]: So that's what leads me to wonder, did she meet Harman? 28:08 [SPEAKER_02]: Why she one of these first victims? 28:11 [SPEAKER_02]: Was he learning his craft at her expense? 28:14 [SPEAKER_02]: That's what I have to have. 28:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's a good point. 28:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Not very often, would you find somewhere commit suicide by slicing their throat? 28:23 [SPEAKER_00]: There's more trees in your ways to get that done. 28:25 [SPEAKER_02]: If you ask a police detective today who handles murders, it will tell you that's not the normal one. 28:33 [SPEAKER_02]: So I think he was beginning to learn these craft. 28:37 [SPEAKER_02]: I think he was just experiencing what it felt like 28:44 [SPEAKER_02]: blood pouring out over his hands and the power of being able to take a life. 28:51 [SPEAKER_02]: Plus, it was ridding him of a problem. 28:54 [SPEAKER_02]: If it was courting hundreds of ladies at one time, and some of them could become difficult, no autopsy was performed. 29:04 [SPEAKER_02]: So we don't know if she was pregnant or not, but that's a definite possibility. 29:13 [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, I wanted child, and that was it, he'd had enough. 29:20 [SPEAKER_00]: When I said at the beginning of this episode, that media story was every parent's worst nightmare, I was referring to normal parents. 29:28 [SPEAKER_00]: That's not what media had. 29:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Her mom had turned to what she called, a disreputable life. 29:35 [SPEAKER_00]: In her dad wouldn't even pick her body up at the train station when it was shipped back 29:42 [SPEAKER_00]: The Indianapolis News covered meet his funeral and referred to her father in the headline, as an unnatural father. 29:50 [SPEAKER_03]: In the body of the article, it noted, 30:07 [SPEAKER_03]: At an early hour today, he disappeared, a company by his second wife to avoid prosecution for bigamy. 30:14 [SPEAKER_03]: The tragedy has created a sensation of rowing where the dead girl had many friends. 30:20 [SPEAKER_03]: She was a general favorite. 30:22 [SPEAKER_03]: There's yet much mystery surrounding the case which will be cleared up soon. 30:27 [SPEAKER_00]: The last part of our comment is especially stinging. 30:30 [SPEAKER_00]: any thought that the mystery of me to death will be cleared up soon, is about 135 years out of date. 30:39 [SPEAKER_00]: We still know so little, but due to some investigative work, I have a working theory. 30:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Here is what I think happened. 30:48 [SPEAKER_00]: I think H. H. Holmes arrived in Chicago, an August of 1886, and met Mita at that time while using the name H. N. Edwards. 30:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Wanting to keep his identity secret and obsessed with aliases, he gave her the name of a fellow acquaintance. 31:05 [SPEAKER_00]: When Mita's dad takes her back to Indiana, she continues writing to Holmes. 31:11 [SPEAKER_00]: We know that she was exchanging ladders with H and Edwards at a pace of about four ladders a week. 31:18 [SPEAKER_00]: The year after Mita and Edwards met, 1887, Holmes begins the construction of his murder castle. 31:26 [SPEAKER_00]: By the time she dies in 1888, this building is not yet completed, which explains why she wouldn't have disappeared into its basement. 31:36 [SPEAKER_00]: When meter returns to Chicago in 1888, homes operating now under the assumed name of OW Arts, reconnects with her and finds her a job. 31:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Six months later, her body is found in the lake. 31:52 [SPEAKER_00]: If he had dumped it anywhere else in a street, for example, please would have investigated as a matter of course. 31:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Drownings are accidents. 32:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Apparently, even when your throat is cut, 32:05 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it was telling that Arch was the only person, suggesting anything about an affair with another man. 32:13 [SPEAKER_00]: By directing the cops to suicide, Arch headed off an investigation, by pointing the finger at another man, he may have been directing suspicion away from himself, had police investigated the death as a murder. 32:27 [SPEAKER_00]: If she had been pregnant, as Ron suggested, an autopsy would have uncovered that. 32:34 [SPEAKER_00]: And the first place cops would lurk for her killer would be her married lover, by inventing and affair with George Johnson, art would have been covering his bases. 32:47 [SPEAKER_00]: After speaking with Ron, I went looking for me described stone, it's within an hour for me, in her hometown of Rowan. 32:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Visiting Mita were her tragic story home, in a way I hadn't anticipated. 33:01 [SPEAKER_00]: I spent the afternoon clearing her stone for more than a century of neglect in order to bring her name back into the light of day. 33:10 [SPEAKER_00]: I spent much of that time trying to decipher the bottom inscription because it was closest to the ground, it was the dirtiest and most corroded. 33:20 [SPEAKER_00]: After about an hour of running my hands over the luttering and resorting to some purple 33:31 [SPEAKER_01]: The cure lies a rose, a budding rose, blasted before her bloom, whose innocence did sweet disclose beyond that flower's perfume. 33:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Join me in part two to learn more about Almida and how her death possibly
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