DETROIT – The rap sheet for H. H. Holmes is diverse.
Before he was executed at the age of 34, he had engaged in insurance fraud, forgery, scamming people, arson, kidnapping, horse theft, several bigamous marriages and -- most famously -- was one of America’s first serial killers who reportedly built a murder castle.
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Dibs on that for a band name if it’s not already taken.
I’m sure it’s taken. Anyway, who was this guy?
Holmes was convicted and sentenced to death in 1895 for the murder of Benjamin Pitezel, but Holmes confessed to more than two dozen murders. It’s unknown how many people he killed, but some of the more outlandish estimates believe it could be as high as 200.
H. H. Holmes was born as Herman Webster Mudgett on May 16, 1861 in New Hampshire. He would end up going to the University of Vermont for one year before deciding to become a Wolverine.
He transferred to the University of Michigan Medical School in 1882.
Wolverines, the animal, are a predatory creature known for their intense ferocity which seems strange coming from something the size of a beagle. However, when food is scarce, they are known to scavenge and take the carcasses of large animals.
Mudgett/Holmes, perhaps, took being a Wolverine far too literally. His life of crime began with stealing corpses for the school to use as medical cadavers.
At the time, it was the country’s largest medical school and required students to learn anatomy through dissection. Schools worldwide needed bodies and -- to put it nicely -- scavenging bodies was one of the more respectful ways criminals used to supply cadavers.
He would later admit to stealing bodies to defraud life insurance companies while in Ann Arbor.
Wait, hold on, you said “murder castle?”
He moved to Chicago in 1886 and started going by H. H. Holmes to avoid association with past crimes.
He purchased an empty lot and got investors to help him build a mixed-use building that he said would be used as a hotel during the Chicago World’s Fair.
The fair would bring 27 million people to Chicago. An entire modern-day Florida’s worth of people showed up in Chicago almost two decades before the Model T was released. At the time, the population of the United States was roughly 65 million people.
It brought a lot of people to Chicago is what I’m saying.
Reports at the time said the structure had secret torture rooms, trapdoors, a crematorium, gas chambers and more.
Holmes fled Chicago after the fair and was arrested shortly after for the murder of his scamming partner Benjamin Pitezel for the insurance money. He admitted to killing Pitezel and his daughters and claimed he killed hundreds of people at his murder castle in Chicago during the World’s Fair.
Newspapers went off on this and tried to outdo each other with more scandalous stories and said he had an elaborate torture dungeon with gas chambers and soundproof walls.
That’s messed up
You‘re telling me. Now here’s the kicker: it was a normal building. The first floor contained retail, the second floor contained apartments and the third floor was a hotel that was never finished or open to the public.
One of the people he allegedly killed at the murder castle outlived him. After he was convicted for Pitezel’s death, he was paid $7,500 (roughly $220K today) by a newspaper to confess to 27 murders. Multiple people he confessed to killing also outlived him.
It may come as a shocker, but Holmes was not an honest man.
He was hanged on May 7, 1896. His last request was to be buried 10 feet deep and in concrete because he didn’t want his body stolen for medical schools.
It‘s believed he killed nine people, who he already knew, but he‘s potentially linked to 20. All were done for financial reasons, not out of compulsion. He wasn‘t driven to murder people, he just didn‘t have a problem with murder and there was money in it. He was a scam artist who swindled and killed people, but he didn’t build an elaborate deathtrap murder castle.
Deathtrap Murder Castle might also work as a band name.
Oh, heck yeah. You right.
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