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At the end of #12 and the start of #13, we saw Alberto Falcone caught in the act of killing Sal Maroni on Labor Day. Toward the end of #13, we saw Harvey Dent/Two-Face use the same sort of gun to kill Vernon Field and then Carmine Falcone ("The Roman"). So there's no mystery about who committed the "Holiday murders" on Labor Day and on the second Halloween.
Therefore, this poll is focusing on collecting the opinions of Batman fans regarding who were the actual shooters in all the other Holiday murders, before Alberto was captured on Labor Day and started confessing that he was the mysterious "Holiday."
The final and official verdict (of the GCPD, the court system, etc.) appears to have been that Alberto's confession should be taken entirely at face value. From the first Halloween to Labor Day, he and he alone was running around killing people with .22-caliber bullets on holidays.
However, we readers are privy to some information that Batman, Jim Gordon, and millions of other denizens of Gotham never knew. Most importantly, Gilda Dent's Weird Monologue in the final pages of the story. To hear her tell it, she was "Holiday" on the first three occasions (Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Eve) and then she quit -- and she also seems to believe that her husband Harvey picked up where she left off by perpetrating at least one or two of the other Holiday crimes which occurred before Alberto was captured on Labor Day.
Ever since the miniseries wrapped up on that odd note, there have been periodic arguments among fans regarding just how seriously we should take Gilda's Weird Monologue, and just who should take the rap for each of the Holiday killings! (Although, as I said, I think it's obvious that Alberto did the Labor Day killing, at the very least, and that Harvey was the one running wild with a .22 on the second Halloween.)
Some people believe Gilda started the ball rolling as the original Holiday killer, and Alberto later became a "copycat killer" after she quit.
Some believe Gilda is also correct in thinking Harvey did some of the Holiday killings himself (long before the ones we saw him do in the final issue.)
Other people believe Gilda never shot at anybody in her entire life; she is just getting delusional after the shock of seeing her beloved husband turn into the scarred and murderous villain known as Two-Face.
And occasionally someone argues that one or more of the Holiday killings were committed by someone else entirely, whose name was neither "Alberto," "Harvey," nor "Gilda."
With all that in mind, I just want to take a poll and see how popular each interpretation is at this time -- 14 years after the final issue of the miniseries was originally published.
Don't forget to vote!
Appendix: Quick Refresher on Who Died and Who Confessed
If you want your memory jogged before you vote, here's who died (or at least was "the apparent target," even if he survived) in each of the "Holiday shootings"):
#01. Johnny Viti (Carmine Falcone's nephew) was killed on Halloween.
#02. "The Irish," a gang of five men currently working for Carmine Falcone, was wiped out on Thanksgiving.
#03. Milos (Carmine's bodyguard) was killed on Christmas Eve.
#04. Alberto Falcone (Carmine's son) was believed to have been murdered on New Year's Eve, but it turned out to be a fake. (Whether or not Carmine himself knew this all along is far from clear. Batman thinks Carmine must have known, but he offers no concrete evidence of that. We don't know who officially "identified the body," and we don't know who bribed the City Coroner to fill out a fraudulent death certificate. And even if we knew for a fact that Carmine helped fake his son's death, that wouldn't prove he knew his son was planning to run around killing people on holidays afterwards. Carmine could have done this just to "protect" his son from being killed for real by the mysterious Holiday!)
#05. Several of Sal Maroni's hoodlums were killed on Valentine's Day.
#06. A bunch more of Maroni's hoodlums were killed on St. Patrick's Day.
#07. Someone shot a great many bullets in the general direction of The Riddler on April Fool's Day, but not really shooting "at" him, since the shooter deliberately missed Edward Nigma with every shot.
#08. A Chinese gunsmith, known simply as "Gunsmith" as far as we can tell (he never got a single line of dialogue), was murdered on Mother's Day. (Apparently because he'd been selling custom-made .22 pistols each month or so to a special client -- but we don't know who!)
#09. Luigi Maroni, the retired father of crime boss Sal Maroni, was killed on Father's Day.
#10. Jasper Dolan, the Gotham City Coroner, was killed on July Fourth.
#11. Carla Viti (Johnny's mom and Carmine's sister) was killed in the City Coroner's office, apparently on her brother's birthday, August 2nd. (This is why that issue has the story title of "Roman Holiday" -- but you won't find that "holiday" marked on your calendar.)
#12. Sal Maroni was killed on Labor Day. (Alberto was caught in the act and promptly started confessing, so there's nothing ambiguous about who the shooter was in this one!)
#13. Harvey Dent used a .22 automatic ("Holiday's" trademark) to kill Vernon Field and Carmine Falcone on Halloween. (Again, there's no room for any reasonable doubt about who committed that -- pardon the expression -- "double-header" to wrap up the series of deaths on holidays.)
As to "confessions":
Gilda has "confessed" (in a monologue that only we readers "heard") to committing the first three of those crimes.
Alberto confessed to being Holiday -- in other words, he was implicitly confessing to having committed all of those murders, up through Labor Day (when he was caught). We were never given any reason to believe that he was disclaiming responsibility for any of the earlier murders (such as the ones Gilda claims she committed).
Harvey Dent made an enigmatic remark when he was being arrested right after killing The Roman. He said, "There were two Holiday killers." He didn't clarify his point. If he meant "even before I killed a couple of guys tonight," then he didn't offer any guidance on who the other killer was (besides Alberto), nor on how he (Harvey) knew about a "second Holiday killer" in the first place! (Granted: If he meant himself, his knowledge would be very easy to explain!)
