Image: 705 N Marsalis Street, the (Charles) Betterton house, has been standing since 1888. It is in this area of the DFW metroplex that Minnie Williams owned valuable property. Oak Cliff was a community that required a sizable set back, lot size, square footage, and large number of expensive windows for each newly built home – effectively barring anyone who was not extremely wealthy from living there.
During the summer of 1893, H.H. Holmes had gotten sister Nannie out of the way of any Williams family money and property inheritance. Hence, he no longer needed Minnie, his faux-wife and chief property owner, either. Minnie had signed over wildly lucrative property in Oak Cliff and Fort Worth to Holmes, trusting him entirely. No one knows what happened to Minnie, but Holmes claims that he got her on a train for a “vacation”* in Indiana and quickly cornered her in an abandoned house, killed her and buried her body in the basement. Holmes, however, was an unabashed liar – claiming to have murdered people who were later found quite alive. Minnie was not one of these people. Neither Minnie nor Nannie were seen after early July, 1893.
*Vacation is in quotes as he promised her a year abroad in England after they were married. Her reality became Chicago and, possibly, Indiana.
Image Credit: Advocate magazine.
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