The Devil in the White City pg. 162-192

With the absence of Julia Conner, Holmes is in desperate need of a new, attractive, young woman to consume his time and ice-cold, blue gazes. This is where Emeline Cigrand comes into play.

Holmes's assistant Benjamin Pitezel was sent to Dwight, Illinois to take the Keely cure for alcoholism. Upon his return, Pitezel describes Emeline as a young woman of great beauty. This was all Holmes needed to hear before he called her up to offer her a job as a secretary in which she would make twice her earnings at Keely's. It was an offer she could not refuse.

Of course it did not take long for the relationship between her and Holmes to surpass that of an employee and an employer. The spent many hours with each other riding bicycles through the park and observing the World Fair as it was being built. Dr. and Mrs. Lawrence, residents of Holmes apartment complex, soon noticed the loving relationship between him and Emeline and could not deny that they were meant for each other.

However, Mrs. Lawrence, who became good friends with Emeline, soon became suspicious when the young girl brought a Christmas gift to her three weeks in advance. Emeline had claimed that she was going to spend the holidays with her family in Lafayette, Indiana and didn't want to wait to give them the gift. A plausible explanation thought Mrs. Lawrence.

It was not long before the Lawrences had noticed the disappearance of Emeline. Holmes used his wit yet again to cover up another one of his murders by telling the couple that Emeline had run off and gotten married to a man with the name of Robert E. Phelps. In actuality, Holmes had sealed her in the air-tight, soundproof vault. To speed up her suffocation process, Holmes had added a layer of acid to the vault floor which further converted the available oxygen into carbon dioxide. Three years later, police would have discovered the footprint of Emeline engraved on the door as she furiously attempted to open it. They obviously were too late. After her death, Holmes had shipped Emeline to Chappell for her to be converted into an articulate skeleton in which he routinely sold to the college.