Fire! Murder! Was Grim Tale of Earlier Times [1893]: No solution but one suspect left town, another hanged for eastern crime

Publication: Wilmette Life, 18 Sep 1947, 75th anniversary supplement, p. 70

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Wilmette Life, 18 Sep 1947, 75th anniversary supplement, p. 70

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Extract from the reminiscences of Mrs. L. A. (nee Esther Dunshee) Bower [Mrs. Lorin A. Bower], 1216 Ashland Avenue, regarding a suspicious fire east of the alley between Ninth and Tenth Streets [in 1893]. The house was occupied by a family named Wheeler. Mr. Wheeler's mother-in-law had been murdered and the house set on fire. Wheeler was not convicted, but was ostracized, and he left Wilmette for Colorado.

Mrs. Bower suspected that a man known as Henry H. Holmes, aka Dr. H. H. Holmes [born Herman W. Mudgett], was behind the murder/arson. Holmes had been accused of killing his wife's uncle on the south side to collect insurance on his life. Evidence had been insufficient at the time to hold him. Holmes had married a Wilmette woman [nee Myrta Z. Belknap] and built a house known as the Wilmette Inn, also known as the Holmes House. Mrs. Bower believes that much of the lumber used in the construction of the house was stolen from across the street where Mrs. Mary E. Gates (mother of the late Henry B. Gates) was building a house just south of the present Congregational Church. Holmes was indicted for murder later in Philadelphia. He was convicted and hanged. He left a wife [Myrta Holmes]and a daughter [Lucy Holmes] about seven years old in Wilmette. Library owns a complete transcript of the original reminiscence written in June 1941

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18 Sep 1947

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