But that same exciting fleetingness was what gave H.H. Holmes, dubbed America’s first serial killer, his opportunity to kill women looking for that same kind of escape. Holmes killed somewhere around 200 women—but only admitted to killing 27—in his “World’s Fair” hotel.
Holmes was born Herman Webster Mudgett in New Hampshire and moved to the Midwest to attend medical school at the University of Michigan. There, he learned the crime ropes, stealing bodies and disfiguring them to make false insurance claims and in medical experiments. He was expelled from the school when his crimes against the deceased were discovered.
Holmes moved to Chicago in 1886 where he found respectability in his chosen pharmaceutical profession and in his alias, Dr. Henry H. Holmes.
In Chicago, Holmes created his “Murder Castle” that included three-stories—the top for living and the bottom, a series of small rooms, for Holmes to torture his victims. The castle contained a maze of over one hundred rooms, with stairways to nowhere and doors only able to be opened from the outside. He used several different contractors during the building’s construction so that no one but Holmes knew the entire layout of the house. Some of the rooms included gas jets for Holmes to use to asphyxiate his victims, as well as a giant bank vault in which he would suffocate victims. The house also included chutes and trapdoors for Holmes to dispose of his victims in a kiln. He would strip other bodies of their skin and organs and sell the skeletons to medical schools.
During the Exposition, Holmes started calling his home a hotel and inviting visitors to stay. This is where he drew in many of his victims. He killed women that were part of his staff, as well as his lovers. Often, he forced his victims to take out life insurance policies with himself as the beneficiary.
Holmes continued to commit insurance fraud during the time that he was killing women. He tried to collect $10,000 from a life insurance in a plan with Benjamin Pitezel, and when in jail in Texas, he brought in another inmate into their life insurance plan. Holmes couldn’t deliver on it, however, so the inmate told the authorities of Holmes’ whereabouts.
Before the police caught onto him for insurance fraud, Holmes murdered Pitezel and kidnapped and killed three of Pitezel’s children. Holmes tried to set up Pitezel’s death as a suicide, but coroners could tell that chloroform had been administered after Pitezel was already dead. A Philadelphia detective found Holmes in Indianapolis where he had recently killed the third Pitezel boy with drugs and chopped up the boy’s body and put it in the chimney.
Holmes was first charged with insurance fraud and stood trial for the murder of Benjamin Pitezel. Holmes told the police many stories and admitted that he had killed 27 people. He was hanged in 1896 in Philadelphia for Pitezel’s murder.
Estimates say that Holmes killed anywhere from 20 to 200 victims.
Sources and further reading: