The first taking of human life that is attributed to me is in the case of Dr. Robert Leacock, of New Baltimore, Mich., a friend and former schoolmate. I knew that his life was insured for a large sum and after enticing him to Chicago I killed him by giving him an overwhelming dose of laudanum. My subsequently taking his dead body from place to place in and about Grand Rapids, Mich., as has been so often printed heretofore, and the risk and excitement attendant upon the collection of the forty thousand dollars of insurance, were very insignificant matters compared with the torturing thought that I had taken human life. This, it will be understood, was before; by constant wrongdoing, I had become wholly deaf to the promptings of conscience, for prior to this death, which occurred in 1886, I beg to be believed in stating that I had never sinned so heavily either by thought or deed. Later, like the man-eating tiger of the tropical jungle, whose appetite for blood has once been aroused, I roamed about the world seeking whom I could destroy. Think of the awful list that follows. Twenty-seven lives, men and women, young girls and innocent children, blotted out by one monster’s hand, and you, my reader of a tender and delicate nature, will do well to read no further, for I will in no way spare myself, and he who reads to the end, if he be charitable, will, in the words of the District Attorney at my trial, when the evidence of all these many crimes had been collected and placed before him by his trusty assistants, exclaim: “God help such a man!” If uncharitable or only just will he not rather say: “May he be utterly damned,” and that it is almost sufficient to cause one to doubt the wisdom of Providence that such a man should have so long been allowed to live. If so I earnestly pray that this condemnation and censure may not extend to those whose only crime has been that they knew and trusted, aye in some instances, loved me, and who to-day are more deserving of the world’s compassion than censure.

My second victim was Dr. Russell, a tenant in the Chicago building, recently renamed “The Castle.” ...