Herman Webster Mudgett, better known under the name of Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, was one
of the first documented American serial killers in the modern sense of the term. In Chicago
at the time of the 1893 World's Fair, Holmes opened a hotel which he had designed and built
for himself specifically with murder in mind, and which was the location of many of his
murders. While he confessed to 27 murders, of which nine were confirmed, his actual body
count could be as high as 200. He took an unknown number of his victims from the 1893
Chicago World's Fair, which was less than two miles away, to his "World's Fair" hotel.
The case was notorious in its time and received wide publicity through a series of articles
in William Randolph Hearst's newspapers. Interest in Holmes's crimes was revived in 2003 by
Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That
Changed America, a best-selling non-fiction book that juxtaposed an account of the planning
and staging of the World's Fair with Holmes's story. His story had been previously chronicled
in The Torture Doctor by David Franke, Depraved: The Shocking True Story of America's First
Serial Killer by Harold Schechter, and chapter VI "The Monster of Sixty-Third Street" of
Gem of the Prairie: An Informal History of the Chicago Underworld by Herbert Asbury.
Early life Mudgett was born in Gilmanton, New Hampshire,
on May 16, 1861, to Levi Horton Mudgett and Theodate Page Price, both of whom were descended
from the first European settlers in the area. His father was a farmer from a farming family,
and his parents were devout Methodists. According to the 2007 Most Evil profile on Holmes, his
father was a violent alcoholic. Mudgett claimed that, as a child, classmates forced him to
view and touch a human skeleton after discovering his fear of the local doctor. The bullies
initially brought him there to scare him, but Erik Larson speculates that instead he
was utterly fascinated, and he soon became obsessed with death. On July 4, 1878, Mudgett
married Clara Lovering in Alton, New Hampshire; their son, Robert Lovering Mudgett, was born
on February 3, 1880 in Loudon, New Hampshire. Mudgett graduated from the University of Michigan
Medical School in June 1884 after passing his examinations. While enrolled, he stole
bodies from the laboratory, disfigured the bodies, and claimed that the people were killed
accidentally in order to collect insurance money from policies he took out on each deceased
person. He moved to Chicago to pursue a career in pharmaceuticals. It was also at this time
that Mudgett began engaging in many shady businesses, real estate, and promotional deals
under the name "H. H. Holmes". On January 28, 1887, while he was still married
to Clara, Holmes married Myrta Belknap in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He filed for divorce
from Clara a few weeks after marrying Myrta, but the divorce was never finalized. Holmes
had a daughter with Myrta, Lucy Theodate Holmes, who was born on July 4, 1889 in Englewood,
Illinois. Holmes lived with Myrta and Lucy in Wilmette, Illinois, and spent most of his
time in Bakersfield tending to business. Holmes married Georgiana Yoke on January 9,
1894 in Denver, Colorado while still married to Clara and Myrta. He also had a relationship
with Julia Smythe, the wife of one of his former employees. Julia would later become
one of Holmes's victims. Chicago and the "Murder Castle"
Holmes arrived in Chicago in August 1886 and came across Dr. Elizabeth S. Holton's drugstore
at the corner of S. Wallace and W. 63rd Street in the Englewood neighborhood. Holton gave
Holmes a job, and he proved himself to be a hardworking employee. After the death of
Holton's husband, Holmes offered to buy the drugstore from Holton, and she agreed. Holmes
purchased the store mainly with funds obtained by mortgaging the store's fixtures and stock,
the loan to be repaid in substantial monthly installments of one hundred dollars.
Holmes purchased a lot across from the drugstore where he built his three-story, block-long
"castle" as it was dubbed by those in the neighborhood. It was opened as a hotel for
the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, with part of the structure used as commercial
space. The ground floor of the Castle contained Holmes's own relocated drugstore and various
shops, while the upper two floors contained his personal office and a maze of over 100
windowless rooms with doorways opening to brick walls, oddly-angled hallways, stairways
to nowhere, doors openable only from the outside, and a host of other strange and labyrinthine
constructions. Holmes repeatedly changed builders during the construction of the Castle, so
only he fully understood the design of the house.
During the period of building construction in 1889, Holmes met Benjamin Pitezel, a carpenter
with a past of lawbreaking, whom Holmes exploited as a stooge for his criminal schemes. A district
attorney later described Pitezel as Holmes's "tool… his creature."
After the completion of the hotel, Holmes selected mostly female victims from among
his employees, as well as his lovers and hotel guests, whom he would later kill. Some were
locked in soundproof bedrooms fitted with gas lines that let him asphyxiate them at
any time. Other victims were locked in a huge soundproof bank vault near his office, where
they were left to suffocate. The victims' bodies were dropped by secret chute to the
basement, where some were meticulously dissected, stripped of flesh, crafted into skeleton models,
and then sold to medical schools. Holmes also cremated some of the bodies or placed them
in lime pits for destruction. Holmes had two giant furnaces as well as pits of acid, bottles
of various poisons, and even a stretching rack. Through the connections he had gained
in medical school, he sold skeletons and organs with little difficulty.
Capture and arrest Following the World's Fair with creditors
closing in and the economy in a general slump, Holmes left Chicago. He reappeared in Fort
Worth, Texas, where he had inherited property from two railroad heiress sisters, to one
of whom he had promised marriage and both of whom he murdered. There, he sought to construct
another castle along the lines of his Chicago operation. However, he soon abandoned this
project. He continued to move throughout the United States and Canada. The only murders
verified during this period were those of his longtime associate Benjamin Pitezel and
three of Pitezel's children. In July 1894, Holmes was arrested and briefly
incarcerated for the first time, for a horse swindle that ended in St. Louis. He was promptly
bailed out, but while in jail, he struck up a conversation with a convicted train robber
named Marion Hedgepeth, who was serving a 25-year sentence. Holmes had concocted a plan
to swindle an insurance company out of $10,000 by taking out a policy on himself and then
faking his death. Holmes promised Hedgepeth a $500 commission in exchange for the name
of a lawyer who could be trusted. He was directed to Colonel Jeptha Howe, the brother of a public
defender, who found Holmes' plan brilliant. Holmes' plan to fake his own death failed
when the insurance company became suspicious and refused to pay. Holmes did not press his
claim; instead he concocted a similar plan with his associate, Benjamin Pitezel.
Pitezel had agreed to fake his own death so that his wife could collect on the $10,000
policy which she was to split with Holmes and the shady attorney, Howe. The scheme,
which was to take place in Philadelphia, was that Pitezel should set himself up as an inventor,
under the name B.F. Perry, and then be killed and disfigured in a lab explosion. Holmes
was to find an appropriate cadaver to play the role of Pitezel. Holmes instead killed
Pitezel. Forensic evidence presented at Holmes' later trial showed that chloroform was administered
after Pitezel's death, presumably to fake suicide. Holmes proceeded to collect on the
policy on the basis of the genuine Pitezel corpse. He then went on to manipulate Pitezel's
wife into allowing three of her five children to stay in his custody. The eldest daughter
and the baby remained with Mrs. Pitezel. Holmes and the three Pitezel children traveled
throughout the Northern United States and into Canada. Simultaneously, he escorted Mrs.
Pitezel along a parallel route, all the while using various aliases and lying to Mrs. Pitezel
concerning her husband's death as well as lying to her about the true whereabouts of
her other children. In Detroit, just prior to entering Canada, they were only separated
by a few blocks. In an even more audacious move, Holmes was staying at another location
with his wife - who was ignorant of the whole affair. A Philadelphia detective, Frank P.
Geyer, had tracked Holmes, finding the decomposed bodies of the two Pitezel girls in Toronto
buried in the cellar of 16 St. Vincent Street. He then followed Holmes to Indianapolis, where
Holmes had rented a cottage. Holmes was reported to have visited a local pharmacy to purchase
the drugs which he used to kill Howard Pitezel, and a repair shop to sharpen the knives he
used to chop up the body before he burned it. The boy's teeth and bits of bone were
discovered in the home's chimney. In 1894, the police were tipped off by his
former cellmate, Marion Hedgepeth, whom Holmes had neglected to pay off as promised for his
help in providing Howe. Holmes' murder spree finally ended when he was arrested in Boston
on November 17, 1894, after being tracked there from Philadelphia by the Pinkertons.
He was held on an outstanding warrant for horse theft in Texas, as the authorities had
little more than suspicions at this point and Holmes appeared poised to flee the country,
in the company of his unsuspecting third wife. After the custodian for "the Castle" informed
police that he was never allowed to clean the upper floors, police began a thorough
investigation over the course of the next month, uncovering Holmes' efficient methods
of committing murders and then disposing of the corpses.
The number of his victims has typically been estimated between 20 and 100, and even as
high as 200, based upon missing persons reports of the time as well as the testimony of Holmes'
neighbors who reported seeing him accompany unidentified young women into his hotel—young
women whom they never saw exit. The discrepancy in numbers can perhaps best be attributed
to the fact that a great many people came to Chicago to see the World's Fair but, for
one reason or another, never returned home. The only verified number is 27, although police
had commented that some of the bodies in the basement were so badly dismembered and decomposed
that it was difficult to tell how many bodies there actually were. Holmes' victims were
mainly women, but included some men and children. Trial and execution
While Holmes sat in prison in Philadelphia, the Chicago police started to investigate
his operations in that city, as the Philadelphia police sought to unravel the Pitezel situation—in
particular, the fate of the three missing children. Philadelphia detective Frank Geyer
was tasked with finding answers. His quest for the children, like the search of Holmes's
Castle, received wide publicity. His eventual discovery of their remains essentially sealed
Holmes's fate, at least in the public mind. Holmes was put on trial for the murder of
the Pitezel children and confessed, following his conviction, to 30 murders in Chicago,
Indianapolis and Toronto, and six attempted murders. Holmes was paid US$7,500 by the Hearst
Newspapers in exchange for this confession. He gave various contradictory accounts of
his life, claiming initially innocence and later that he was possessed by Satan. His
faculty for lying has made it difficult for researchers to ascertain any truth on the
basis of his statements. On May 7, 1896, Holmes was hanged at Moyamensing
Prison, also known as the Philadelphia County Prison. Until the moment of his death, Holmes
remained calm and amiable, showing very few signs of fear, anxiety or depression. Holmes's
neck did not snap; he instead was strangled to death slowly, twitching for over 15 minutes
before being pronounced dead 20 minutes after the trap had been sprung.
On New Year's Eve, 1909, Marion Hedgepeth, who had been pardoned for informing on Holmes,
was shot and killed by Edward Jaburek, a police officer, during a holdup at a Chicago saloon.
Then, on March 7, 1914, the Chicago Tribune reported that, with the death of the former
caretaker of the Murder Castle, Pat Quinlan, "the mysteries of Holmes's Castle" would remain
unexplained. Quinlan had committed suicide by taking strychnine. Quinlan's surviving
relatives claimed that he had been "haunted" for several months before his death and could
not sleep. Documentary
A documentary film on Holmes, H. H. Holmes: America's First Serial Killer, was released
in 2003. The producer and director of the film, John Borowski, also wrote a book on
Holmes titled The Strange Case of Dr. H. H. Holmes.
See also Insurable interest, Insurance fraud
List of serial killers in the United States List of serial killers by country
References
Further reading
External links "Modern Bluebeard: H. H. Holmes' Castles Reveals
His True Character." Chicago Tribune. 18 August 1895: 40.
Pennsylvania State Reports Volume 174 on Mughett's trial in death of Benjamin Pitzel 1896
"The Master of Murder Castle: A Classic of Chicago Crime." John Barlow Martin. Harper's
Weekly. December 1943: 76-85.