Original subtitles

previously on american ripper

he was active all over the country

he had some scams going in st louis

he went to new york several times

i found at least sixty lawsuits

in chicago alone that this guy ended up in

we have evidence of ripper style killings in chicago

we're discovering that there were many different ways

holmes could have murdered and disposed of the bodies

i have a theory that holmes was encasing bodies in cement

and dumping them in the chicago river

there may actually be viable

physical evidence inside those blocks of cement

this is a really large degree field

right next to the physical property owned by holmes

we're approaching your area of interest

let's see if we can find some concrete

security

security security uh toledo us two five seven four three

i'm gonna be doing some bottom

sounding this evening we'll take the ship

in a kind of grid pattern

correct we'll run it along parallel to the shore

make several passes i see

jeff mudgett and xcia operative emeritus

fox are scanning the bottom of the chicago

river for gruesome

evidence in a 130 year old mystery

body parts encased in concrete by the infamous serial killer

h h holmes

interesting part for me is gonna be if he did

use that technique to get rid of the bodies

is what kind of size blocks we're looking at exactly

these could be human size cement coffins

or they could be

smaller chunks of concrete that contain body parts

we analyzed the jack the ripper autopsy

reports earlier in our investigation

and they led us to some new insights

about the ripper's murder weapon and method of killing

but because holmes

was so consistent

in getting rid of the bodies of his victims there are no

autopsy reports from any of his murders

so in order to have physical evidence to compare

holmes's kills with jack the ripper we need to find a body

by eighteen ninety three

holmes's murder castle is fully operational

engineered with three stories of rooms designed to kill

but conman holmes

owns other chicago properties

including a suspicious

cement warehouse on the banks of the river

that buys in raw materials

but never sells any finished concrete

evidence revealed in the investigation

suggests that holmes

may have used the cement

warehouse as a front for disposing of bodies

in order to pull off a large-scale

killing operation

now what does this machine give us a look at

basically what it is it's picture

you're shining a flashlight over the bottom here where

we're seeing real bright spots

it's hitting a nice solid object

bouncing back and then there's a shadow behind it

and that's how we can

kind of see that an object is sticking up above the bottom

and that would let us know if there's

something that we could actually pull up and crack open

and take a look at yes

an initial scan of the riverbed

revealed a cluster of heavy objects

were dumped just feet from the footprint of

holmes's old warehouse some time ago

but before divers can investigate and retrieve evidence

city officials

require a record of exact coordinates and dimensions

speed is good a little tighter a little tight if you can

are we in the area where we saw the debris field with the

submersible robot

yes this is the area

hey chuck what's the hard black object there

that's an interesting target

that is a big

shadow in the little target that's sticking out wow

that's a big divot yes

yeah how big was that

probably a couple of meters and it is fairly square

that sounds like something i want to get out of the river

we got quite a few targets along here oh yeah yeah

these ones are about a meter

wow we have multiple targets

ten to almost even possibly twenty feet off that wall that's

exactly where we saw with the

submersible robot so this is the

sonar confirmation that of the that seam debris field

correct oh boy whoa

i think we know where we need to look

coming up with that image

in relationship to the home storage facilities

i think we've made a major discovery

i mean it's pretty striking to have a big debris field

right on the river bed

outside of our primary suspect's cement factory

when he's a doctor

and has no reason to have a cement factory

yeah we've had some interesting targets

had some scattered debris

and then we do have what looks like a rectangular shape

how big is that that is

a little over like a meter and a half

five six feet yeah about five or six feet

the dimensions and the shape what else does that look like

like a big giant concrete coffin under the ceiling

yeah absolutely

and now we know exactly where it is gritted out

and fairly close to the wall

given the image here right so we'd be looking

somewhere in there yeah

can we get a diver in the water and get it out

that unfortunately will take some time

it's not as easy as

getting the diver

it's all kind of regulations and paperwork

to go into this area and actually extract something

it's very industrialized site

and there's lots of contamination

and lots of potential hazards in the water there and so

for everyone's safety the

epa would like to more understanding of what you want to do

damn i can't walk away from that image now i can't

we should get that permission on file

and then we'll circle back

after so much work that's gone into this investigation

it's tough to just wait

yeah we've got a crime scene

full of evidence and we can't get to it

yeah it's frustrating but

i've got to say it's really encouraging to see these modern

forensic techniques and the technology that we're using

open up new leads

that just weren't available to investigators at the time

so what's next

i mean i think we should pick up

holmes's footsteps

after the world's fair and see what he did next

there have got to be more crime scenes out there

and physical evidence that could connect the two killers

we should meet up with adam

so the tail end of eighteen ninety three

was not so good for holmes

there were at least sixty lawsuits against him

and a collection agency

to organize them all together

and they were planning to arrest him

chicago's big event of eighteen ninety three

the world's fair

closes at the end of october

by november the city returns to normal

for homes that means swindling

over the eight years he spends in the city he pulls off

countless financial scams and takes on a fraudulent

marriage as well as a slew of mistresses

and it gets worse so he

had taken out several insurance policies on the castle

and then he set fire to the third floor

wait he set fire to his murder castle yep

and he immediately

tried to claim all the insurance policies

the police they saw right through it and for the first time

he knows they're going to hunt him down

it sounds like he's

got all these creditors

about to stage an intervention and arrest him essentially

and four insurance companies

all of whom want to

arrest him on insurance fraud uh huh

wow so holmes is feeling the pressure hard

so he thought by getting out of town

he could let a lot of the heat off

we've seen holmes flea town before

in the summer of eighteen

eighty eight when he was named in a string of lawsuits

related to the construction of the murder castle

it's in this period that we lost

holmes's paper trail and couldn't definitively place

him back in chicago

until the spring of eighteen eighty nine

shortly after the end of the whitechapel killings in london

so by leaving town after the world's fair home

seems to be repeating a pattern

of scamming until things get hot

and then leaving town to avoid his creditors

so once his scam

start to unravel that's when he hits the road uh huh

but naturally he had an escape plan

of course he did

so now he's hired a new young woman named

minnie williams who has come up from texas

and immediately fell into the clutches of h h homes

the daughter of an affluent family

minnie williams is the perfect mark

together she and her sister

own a large plot of land in fort worth texas

which homes will later use as a centerpiece of his plan

to skip town and escape his creditors

homes drew up a fake

deed transferring her property in fort worth over to him

but in order to make it work

he had to get rid of both her and her sister

so this is

holmes's escape plan from chicago right and

and when he eventually did show up in foreword

he had a deed

saying i'm now the owner of this property

purchased from minnie williams

so what did he do once he got to texas

about a week before

they had sent a benjamin

peitzel ahead peitzel

had been working with homes in various swindles

for at least a year by then in chicago

given what we know about holmes's gruesome axe

it's hard to believe

anyone would have been willing to help him

but he actually had several known accomplices

during his time in chicago

his closest known associate

was benjamin peitzel a husband and father from chicago

who clearly had little trouble cleaning up after a madman

for the right price

so peitzel was sent ahead as the advance man to fort

worth to take care of all the paperwork

so by the time that the

homes got there they were ready to start building

start building what

his second castle

home skip town

he's like okay that's it

you know the heat is on here i have to get out of here

he was done with chicago

in the final months of eighteen ninety three h h

holmes successfully dodges his creditors in chicago

and sets the wheels in motion for his next con

in fort worth

texas with the help of his accomplice benjamin peitzel

he draws up plans to franchise the murder castle

so this is the exterior of the building

oh it's literally identical

that could be a drawing

of the building at 63rd and wallace in chicago

hunting for physical evidence that could tie

h h holmes to jack the ripper

jeff and amirilis

meet with documentary and john barowski

to learn more about holmes' second murder castle

you can see the man designing and building this knowing that

what he had in chicago was perfect

definitely if you look at the inside of this building

you know what's

so interesting is it looks like the

layout of his castle as well look at all these rooms

and if you look here that's where the shoot would be

just like the other building

but the interesting thing about the one in texas was

he had designed it so that

the bodies would be thrown directly down into the sewer

easier body disposal that's fascinating

what's interesting to me given what we saw in white chapel

is if this is the same person you have an adolescence

killing in open air

with interruptions from the police

if that sparks the idea

okay well a hotel or a boarding house is a good place

to be able to

lure young women work uninterrupted and dispose of the body

the chicago

hotel really represents the first attempt at that but home

sees room for improvement still

so he adds one additional tweak and reproduces it in texas

it's really pretty extreme and then making it so

there's no evidence like

mary kelly's body left behind a photograph

straight into the store

so what happened in texas john

so here's holmes in texas with his new wife and

benjamin peitzel wait a third wife yes amazing

holmes met georgiana yoke at a department store in chicago

she was this young woman in her early twenties

you know eventually they got married little did she know

of course that he was married to two other women

at the same time

did he and georgiana

actually live in the second murder castle

no he foolishly and strangely stole

horses in texas and they put them on a train to chicago

and maybe they were going to sell them

but people in texas and law enforcement they got wind of

this and they run him out of town

shows you how the heat was on because

homes would not have been able to leave

that property that easily he

knew he had to go yeah

so did he take peitzel and georgiana with him when he

yes yeah they got out of dodge

yeah they're they're traveling with him you know and

homes along the way

he's planning his schemes and cons and saint louis

and he's using a different name in each of these towns

everywhere he goes

everywhere sometimes numerous names in one city or state

it's really helpful to me in putting the holmes

pieces together

in this investigation

to understand how comfortable he was traveling

and not just traveling but using aliases

committing crimes committing murder

far away from home

and of course if holmes is going to be jack the ripper

he needs to be the kind of killer who is comfortable

going on the road to kill

and it's pretty clear that he is

h h holmes is closely associated with chicago

but we're learning that he was someone smart enough

to move frequently from city to city to evade the law

much like jack the ripper whom scotland

yard believes may have left london in eighteen eighty eight

and possibly continued killing in the united states

so john where does holmes go next

he goes to philadelphia pennsylvania holmes had

planned this life insurance policy scam

to take out a life insurance policy and payout

do you recall what the value of the policy was

ten thousand dollars

so holmes said you know what

we split the money five grand for you five grand for me

everyone's happy

but strangely enough

that's the actual beginning of the end for h h homes

what this investigation needs more than anything else

is physical evidence

and with holmes taking his murder spree all over the country

he's creating more sites that we can potentially

mine for exactly that

since the murder castle isn't open

to us right now i want to look into some of holmes's later

crimes to see if there's anything we can

unearth in other cities holmes visited

because we can be sure he was killing all over the map

it's a lot for us to take in

we need to follow holmes lead and get to philadelphia

i agree

after leaving fort worth

holmes spends four months on the road to escape capture

pulling off scams in denver and saint louis along the way

and arrives in philadelphia in august eighteen ninety four

so we left off

holmes's trail last when he was on his way

here to philadelphia

could you tell us what happened once he got here jeff and

amaryllis pick up the trail at the philadelphia city

archives

where they've gained rare access to records from the plot

that leads to holmes's final downfall

so on or about september 1st of 1894 holmes and peitzel

set up a phony patent office which was really a minor scam

in scope compared to the real reason

why they were here which was the life

insurance scheme

they were essentially partners in crime

holmes is no stranger to insurance fraud the plan

is to take a life

insurance policy out in benjamin peitzel's name

and submit a stolen cadaver in his place

holmes will identify the body

as peitzel to the insurance company

collect on the policy

and share the money with his right hand man

although he has seen holmes's true character

peitzel trusts him nonetheless

and if you look

this is the original document that formed the basis for

the life insurance scam oh it's incredible

if you look here you can see that here is benjamin f

peitzel's name

insuring his life for the amount of ten thousand dollars

but within a week holmes had murdered hazel

amazing he had seen

holmes turn on people before

and he obviously believed that

holmes would never betray him in that way yes it's really

meaningful to see his signature

there because he didn't realize he was

signing away his life

holmes renders benjamin peitzel

unconscious with a blow to the head

then pumps his stomach full of flammable chloroform

and burns the body

to make the murder look like an accident

he then cashes in the ten thousand dollar life

insurance policy

which he promises to split with the peitzel family

who believe that holmes uses a stranger's corpse in place

of benjamin peitzel

in order to secure the payout

and it's your opinion

that the wife took part in the scheme

i don't believe she knew that holmes

planned to kill her husband

from what we know from our our documents

she always believed like her husband did

that this was essentially one of their

scams not unlike many others that they had pulled

and that they really were just all going to make off

with the money

and if you look closely

here you can see that the beneficiary

of the policy was

peitzel's wife carrie a peitzel

who was to receive the proceeds

in the event of her husband's death

but what we know is that holmes had an entirely different

idea in mind

so holmes

killed the only man he trusted

the one who helped him build the murder

castle and cover his tracks

well yeah i mean

it's in line with what we've seen from holmes so far

he kills people

who are close to him and he can profit from financially

i mean look at minnie williams

but after going to all that trouble

do you think he

really intended to split the money with the piezel family

yeah that doesn't seem likely to me

you've got five kids

and one grown up

standing between him and ten thousand dollars

doesn't seem like something that would stop holmes

i want to know what happened to the rest of the piezel

family there's an author here in philadelphia

who might be able to help us with that great

jeff and amirilis meet with roger lane

a leading authority on violent criminals to find out where

holmes runs to next

one of the things that enabled holmes to get away

with everything that he did was that there was no national

fbi what does holmes

do after he collects the insurance policy on benjamin

peitzel after he picked up the money

he told carrie peitzel benjamin's wife

detectives are going to be following you

they'll be looking for a woman with five kids

he's playing on her paranoid and so

she put alice nelly and howard on a train

to join homes and how old were they at the time

alice was fifteen nelly was eleven

howard was ten

i've never understood

why did holmes want possession of the children exactly why

i think he from the beginning had in mind

that he would have to get rid of the pitzel family cause

carrie pitzel of course knew about this insurance scheme

the only safe thing for him to do

was to get rid of the whole family

and he could start

with these three kids

holmes would have to get rid of the pitzel family

and he could start

with these three kids

in september of eighteen ninety four

holmes embarks on the next phase of his master plan

to systematically silence

any witness who can expose him as a fraud and a killer

most urgently the members of benjamin peitzel's family

so howard went first

howard pitzel was killed on

october 10th in irvington which is a suburb of indianapolis

do we know what the cause of death was

later on in a confession

home said that he had poisoned and strangled him

and then burnt his body

in a stove in the cellar of that rented house

they never discovered the whole of his body

really i mean he'd left enough evidence

to make it clear that this was how it bit his body

the sisters

were murdered in toronto october twenty fifth

holmes gassed the girls

by putting their bodies in a big trunk

drilling a hole in the trunk and running

illuminating gas until they suffocated

so this would be similar to

carbon monoxide poisoning or

yeah what's it yeah or to what happened back in the castle

in chicago

it's your opinion they knew something he was afraid

of being released to the authorities yes

but why would he have taken them across the country

into canada what was that

well part of it may have been to

foil pursuit by fidelity investigators

and maybe it was for the sheer fun

of manipulating other people

there's a great psychic income for him i think

in this sense of superiority that comes

with the cat and mouse game

who knows with a mind like this like his

who knows

this is the first time in our investigation

where we might find evidence of a home's murder

that we can actually examine

when we're trying to take

two sets of crimes and attribute them to the same killer

really the only way to do that

is to actually find physical evidence that link

the two crime scenes

or to say that the method of killing

is so similar

that they're either the same killer or a copycat killer

we can't do either of those things

if we can't find some physical evidence

some remains of at least one victim from h h holmes

and the man's sheer genius

and premeditation as a killer has thwarted us up until now

these later killings in his career

seem to be less premeditated

than what he was

undertaking in the murder castle

ben peitzel the crime scene was cleaned up

we've learned what we have to learn

the girls in toronto were found

howard is different

i'd like to learn more about the howard pfister murder

it seems to me

the least investigated at the time

no one ever looked into it

we know that the murder was conducted at this scene

right part of the body was discovered there

howard's murder is the first

killing ground where we could actually find remains to link

him to jack the river

based on all the crime scenes that we've looked at irvington

indiana is the most likely to give us something

that we can actually put through

forensic analysis and come up with an answer let's do it

one of the thoughts of why

holmes picked irvington is that strangers were accepted

and also it was a remote location

in irvington indiana

mere miles from the location of howard peitzel's murder

jeff and amarellis

meet with local historian steve barnett to dig deep per

into the details of the horrific crime

in the late summer of eighteen ninety four

holmes came to indiana with howard and

found a house to rent

that was on the edge really of the developed area

what's your understanding of how many days

holmes was in irvington to commit the crime

he rented the house on october the fifth which was a friday

and stayed until

october tenth when he left

also there are some other members the

historical society that have materials that were left

here in irvington materials that holmes left behind yes

if holmes did leave

possessions or personal items behind during his stay

in irvington they could be crucial to our investigation

we definitely need to track them down

after we investigate the scene of howard's murder

what reason did he give for coming to irvington

he rented the house saying he was

setting the house up for his sister who was coming to town

then he ordered this huge stove to be installed

it was a wood burning stove and there was one report

that someone commented

what are you getting that big stove

for we have gas out here now

and he said well gas is not good for kids

he meant

gas is not good for cremating the remains of kids yes

when was howard found

after he completed the

deed in october of eighteen ninety four

it wasn't till almost a year later

the detectives found

essentially howard's mummified entrails

his organs his organs yes

so he'd been disemboweled yeah yes this isn't the holmes

we thought we knew in chicago

this is much more of a ripper type murder

this is much more of a ripper type murder

and and the haphazard way he left the body

behind and simply left the scene of the crime

investigating the murder of howard

peitzel jeff and amaryllis

uncover a big break in the case a possible link

between a holmes victim and the jack the ripper killings

reports from the time

indicate that the ten year old victim

is first rendered unconscious

and then disemboweled

a method that closely mirrors the ripper's deadly technique

we know that detectives

at the time never found the entirety of howard's remains

do you know which parts were missing

the detectives

found other bone fragments in the yard and elsewhere

just scattered yes you might want to look at this account

newspapers at the time report

that the only parts of howard's body that were recovered

were his skull

femur and cheekbone along with his stomach liver and spleen

that's a lot of howard's body that's still unaccounted for

i don't know what

more horrifying image you could possibly have

there's a report that on howard's last day

holmes went with howard

actually down to a knife sharpener in downtown indianapolis

to have instruments sharpened

and even talked about preparing another

surgical instrument

were these surgical knives that he was sharpening

uh that's my impression yes

in fact there was one newspaper account

where the proprietor of the knife sharpening business

remarked

that they would be desirable weapons for a jack the ripper

i think we need to check out the site where

howard was murdered

it's so amazing to be standing here

on this ground and realize that this is the same

ground where all those bone fragments

of howard peitzel were discovered

right but this was a totally open space except for

the house that homes had rented

the house itself

was a very simple cottage

it had been built in eighteen ninety one

so it was only about three or four years old at the time

homes rented

but we know that he scattered the bones around the yard

and i have a homeowner that might

be of interest to you so let's walk around the corner

sounds like a good idea

the cottage

home's rents for five fateful days in eighteen ninety four

sits on a large plot of land that has since been

subdivided into multiple properties

the original house no longer exists

but a new home occupies the majority of the lot

this was part of a larger estate kind of accompanying the

the neighboring houses

going back in this direction

which made up the the homes property

and as far as you know

has the ground here ever been excavated

no not to my knowledge not at all

i think it certainly warrants further investigation

federal investigations

sometimes rely on forensic canine

units that are trained to identify the area of old human

remains i'm thinking this might be a good resource to tap

into here because we'll need to identify

an excavation area before we can bring in a team

do you think it's possible

for us to come back another day

with more resources and do it properly

absolutely that'd be fine

my ideas about

holmes being jack the ripper are discredited

because people say

holmes didn't kill like the ripper

if we can find

direct evidence we have a chance to connect those mos

jeff and amirilis consult with dr page

selinsky a leading biological anthropologist

to learn whether one hundred and thirty year old skeletal

remains could contain the evidence

they need to forensically evaluate

holmes's killing method

these bones you have laid out on the table here

mainly the spine and rib cage

these bones for howard peitzel have not yet been found

we know in several of the jack the ripper

cases that there were actually

knife marks on the vertebrae

so i'm encouraged

that this is the part of howard that has not yet been

uncovered we know from newspaper

reports that most of howard's bones were never recovered

this could be very important because the jack the ripper

autopsy reports specifically mention marks made on bones

if we could recover the bones from a holmes

victim it would be a major breakthrough for this case

when comparing two killers the method of killing is

really important piece of information

we know from the experts that we've spoken to in london

that the murder weapon used by jack was

a surgical knife

such as this you know which are not serrated at all

and we know that when holmes was here

he had such a set

and actually took them to be sharpened while he was in town

could you walk us through what we'd be looking for

in identifying

the murder weapon based on the marks on the bone

in this case here i can show you what a knife wound

would look like on the rib

of a young adult female

and you can see that there is a very clean

cut edge and it will match up perfectly with the other side

of that rib

now if we were only to recover one of these pieces

would you be able to tell what the weapon was that was used

to make the cut

well you can see here we have some

comparative samples for a saw versus a knife

you can see what a

saw mark looks like on the end of the bone

you can see a little bit of the

saw marks on the bone itself

if a knife is going to leave a very thin clean cut there

finding a bone that's been cut with a serrated blade

would conflict

with what we know about the ripper's killings

if we find a bone

where we're able to identify a surgical knife has been used

in a way that's more consistent with disemboweling

then the manner of killing begins to look a lot more

like jack the ripper's investigation

what about if while the cut was being made page

the victim was struggling

because jack the ripper dissected his victims

after they were unconscious

i mean that's gonna

affect many things about the cut

including the the cut

itself and whether you're gonna have sort of false cuts okay

instead of a clean cut so yes so if you have very clean

single incident sorts of cuts it's more likely that the

the victim is not struggling during the process

i'm hopeful

based on what you've told us that if we are able to find

any of howard's remains

they may be able to shed light

on the manner in which he was killed

which may help us connect

that holmes murder of howard peitzel

with the ripper white chapel murders

zuma is her name

she's a historical human remains detection dog

jeff and amarilis enlist a canine recovery team

to survey the site for any sign of human remains

what she'll do is she'll grid the area really tight

try to find the source

this is the coldest case i've worked can

zuma smell remains that are a hundred twenty five years old

yes we do a lot of that kind of work

we assist archaeologists

we train them to find

the older remains

so what are we looking

for as an indicator from zuma that she's found something

she'll definitely slow her pace

and she'll begin to sniff the area a little more detailed

and then she'll lay down she'll lay down

alright zuma you wanna find something for us

are you ready come on let's get to work

knowing that even the smallest

fragment of bone

could help shed light on holmes's killing style

we need to explore the entire plot of land

where howard's body was found in 1895

very nice good job easy turn

good

easy

two

here

is she showing any interest there

two turn

whoa is that a hit

no

so what does that mean

she thought about it and then backed off yeah

if she would have stayed or if she goes back on her own

then we know that we have something there

should we take a look on the other side of the house yes

a highly specialized historical human remains canine team

is on the scent of revealing a break in the case

the recovery dog is trained to identify centuries old

corpses let's get back to work

a skill that jeff and amarillo's hope

will locate where homes

disposed of ten year old howard peitzel

there's no doubt she's at work

well and for us the stakes couldn't be higher

so i'm hoping she finds something good check

good

get to work

whoa she's sitting down

is that it is that it

i believe that there is possibly something in this area

so zuma pinged on old human remains in this area yes

this seems to be a good place to look

this could possibly be

the spot that holmes buried part of howard peterson yes

that's an enormous breakthrough

for the entire holmes trail that we've been on

we have never before had access to physical evidence

let alone the remains of a victim of h h holmes

anywhere in this investigation

we have to handle this incredibly incredibly carefully

i mean this is a crime scene

the likelihood given that we know that

howard's remains were found on that property

is that somewhere under that ground

is at least some other part

of ten year old howard peitzel a real human boy

who was killed

by h h holmes

looking at howard's picture here now

it's emotional

i'm really sorry that this child

lay in the ground for a hundred years

but it may not have been in vain

because he may end up being the bread

crumbs back through history

that actually allow us

to put this case to rest

think about the number of times

as we've gone through this investigation

that we've been frustrated at how

the forensic scene was bungled by investigators at the time

and it's really our responsibility to howard

to make sure that we don't do the same thing here

well i've got to tell you after today

i'm ready to take the next step

what's the proper move i'd like to

make a few phone calls and see what components we need from

archaeology and academia to make sure that

we do this right cause we really only have one shot at it

four months into their investigation of the historic

unsolved mystery jeff and

amaryllis are closer than ever to unearthing the evidence

they need to prove that jeff's ancestor h

h holmes is jack the ripper

we're going to place a one by one test unit

and very carefully dig down

centimeter by centimeter looking for human remains

see if we can find what's left of howard

they've secured the assistance of an archaeological team

to properly recover any skeletal remains of holmes's victim

howard pencil

really feels like we're giving this the first

thorough investigation

it's received

a hundred years after the fact better late than never

let's get to it

yeah so you're being careful to just grab the sawd right

we just did the first shift

now how deep are we now amy

roughly four or five centimeters

we're gonna keep going

until we hit that

sterile subsoil you can see we're still in the really dark

yeah dirt there is a color change

that we'll be able to see when we hit that subsoil

we won't be

digging into the subsoil because we know he wasn't burying

remains on the side he was scattering them on the surface

and materials don't typically move down into the

subsoil so if there are materials here or remains

they're going to be

up in the upper layers of the soil

we learned that if

holmes did use surgical knives to disembowel howard peitzel

then he would have left recognizable marks on the bones

and london autopsy reports on the ripper victims

cite a specific pattern on the bone

so finding even a small part

of howard's skeleton would be a big discovery for the case

what's that right there

hang on a second

it's coal coal

that's interesting

since part of his body was found in a furnace

does this show any signs of having been burned

yes the shiny outer coating indicates that has been burned

are there uses for this kind of coal

current day or would you think this dates to the time

i would think that likely dates to the time

um people these days aren't aren't using coal like that to

heat homes i mean that's really interesting

given that we know howard's body

was burned before it was scattered

oh here's more coal

it's like all over in here yeah

it's all through

there's a lot

in here that's why i'm poking around there's a lot of coal

in here there's some here

you're also finding coal

so now we're talking about a deposit of coal

not just a piece of

coal yeah the guys are finding it at the sibs as well

and we found it

near where zuma pinged on

historical human remains

whoa whoa whoa whoa wait

check that out

is that a coin

whatever that is it looks

period right it looks like an archaeology artifact

it's made out of metal it is metal

it's a button

for this to have been a wooded

quiet area at the time not a residential area and to find

cold next to a button

clearly something was disposed of here

whether it's part of howard i think we have to keep digging

we got another button

oh yeah where was that one found came out of the screen

same button almost exact

oh wow exact so now we're talking about finding clothing

i mean this is a matching set

wow my

that's my heart's actually beating it's really a finding

what's the white that i'm seeing

right there

that's bone that's bone yeah so we found bone now yeah

holy

next time on american river

oh amy we have something

whoa wait a minute whoa they appear

most likely to be rib bone are you sure

this entire box is nothing but photos

without even looking at the back

i i recognize this man

have you ever heard of the holmes curse

what are we talking about like holmes's ghost

exacting revenge on people

i think the holmes curse

is compelling

evidence that holmes escaped his execution wait what

he made a confession that was recorded of his voice

the only way i'm going to find out if

h h holmes may actually be jack the ripper

is to see what if anything is buried here

are you talking about actually

digging up your great great grandfather