Transcription
In the spirit of October and for a leadup to Halloween, we're kicking off a series of creepy, unsettling, and horrifying new topics each week. And to kick it off, we're talking about America's first serial killer, HH Holmes, the man who built a three-story structure during the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, which contained numerous secret rooms, hidden passages, and trap doors. We're going to talk about how he built his murder castle and by some estimates got away with the murder of hundreds. We are going to go ahead and get into it, but as always, thank you for watching.
In 1894, Marian Hedgepath, aka the handsome bandit, aka the Debonire Bandit, was serving his 25-year sentence in a St. Louis penitentiary for his part in his gang's train robbery. One year in, he was paired with a new cellmate named Henry M. Howard. Howard was doing time for a botched attempt to swindle a pharmacy, and he quickly made it known to his ridiculously good-looking cellmate that his brief stent in this correctional facility would not be correcting his con man ways. After the two men got to talking, Howard offered Hedgepath $500 to help him find a lawyer that would go along with his next scheme. The scheme was using a body from the morg to fake his business partner's death for a $10,000 life insurance payout. How HedgePath would receive that money or what he would do with $500 in jail, I'm not sure, but the handsome bandit agreed.
Howard was eventually released from jail and enacted his plan to commit life insurance fraud. On September 30th, 1894, the Philadelphia Police Department found a dead body in a Call Hill Street office. The man had been the victim of an explosion with his face and arm showing signs of burning. A pipe, matches, and some flammable fluid have been found around the office. In the late 1800s, police investigation was obviously not at the level of CSI and forensic analysis that exists today. So, they labeled the explosion an accident and called it a day. Which is hilarious to imagine that they saw a dead body with some burns on it next to like the Looney Tunes ingredients you would need to make an explosion and the police said, "Well, clearly this man exploded."
A few days later, some men came to collect life insurance payment of the deceased Mr. Benjamin Pitzell. One of these men was the lawyer that Hedgeworth had recommended to Howard in that St. Louis jail. They also brought along Benjamin Pitzell's oldest daughter, who was 14 at the time, just to cement the optics. The Fidelity Mutual Life Association of Philadelphia, paid out somewhere between $7,200 and $10,000, which by today's equivalent is like $388,000.
Henry Howard, the plan's mastermind, was a con man through and through. He made a career of making promises and ever delivering. But, you know, screwing over the greedy man in prison who has nothing but time on his hands wasn't Howard's best idea. You know, it's just like Scooby-Doo says, I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for the convicted criminal I met in prison that I stiffed. That's because two months went by and after collecting $5,000 of the payout, Howard thought he was in the clear. But remember the money that he promised to his cellmate? Well, that cellmate Hedgepath certainly didn't forget. And when his cut never came, he sent a note to the Philadelphia Chief of Police promising some interesting information about a recent life insurance scheme.
In his meeting with police, Hedgepath spilled everything. That he was offered the money to procure a lawyer to help Howard carry out a foolproof scheme, that Howard and Pitell were going to fake an accident, and that they were going to use a body from the morg to trick the corner and the police into believing Pitell was dead. With this tip, the Philadelphia police reopened the investigation. They ordered an autopsy which almost validated everything Hedgepath said. The only difference between what really happened and what HedgePath said happened is that Howard didn't use a fresh corpse to pretend to be Benjamin Pitzell. Instead, he had actually murdered his business partner, Benjamin Pitell. So, Howard tells his cellmate he wants to pretend to kill his business partner to get the life insurance money. After his cellmate sets it up, he instead just murders his business partner for real and takes the life insurance money. While Howard's motive for killing Benjamin wasn't really clear, some speculate that maybe Pitell knew too many of Howard's secrets, what did become clear is what went down. First, Howard used chloroform to knock Pitell out. The coroner found enough of the chemical in Pitell's stomach to kill him. Then, Howard burned the dead man's skin and hair with fire to make it look like he'd been singed and staged the room to make it look like there had been an accidental explosion.
After a much more thorough investigation this time around, the police called the life insurance company Fidelity, who then called the Pinkertons. The Pinkertons being the private investigation agency that have a ton of historic cases under their belt, like preventing the first assassination attempt on Abraham Lincoln and chasing down Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. You've played Red Dead Redemption. You get it.
On first glance, the murder probably appeared like any other life insurance scheme. But it wasn't because here's the twist. Of the two men that came to collect Pitzell's payout, one was the lawyer recommended by the handsome bandit, and the other was a serial fraudster and now murderer named Henry Howard, or as he introduced himself to life insurance officials, HH Holmes.
HH Holmes was a suave, handsome career con man. He went by many names including Henry Howard, Howard Gordon, and Alexander Bond, or as he would be referred to later, the devil in the White City. When the Pinkertons arrested Howard or Holmes for the murder of his business partner, it gave investigators permission to search his residence, which was located within a massive three-story structure he had built in Chicago, Illinois. Upon entering, the police expected to find evidence of previous schemes and swindles. But what they found instead was an elaborate, confusing series of false doors, secret rooms, and staircases that led to nowhere along with evidence of several murders.
There is a lot of information about HH Holmes. Some of it speculation due to the lack of forensics. Much of it sensationalized given the rise of yellow journalism around this time, which for those of you that don't know, yellow journalism originated during Joseph Pulitzer and William Randph Hart's journalism wars in the 1890s, which is a whole other topic in itself. And the term yellow journalism was used to describe reporting that values emotions over accuracy or making you feel something or remember a headline versus actually getting the facts across or you know as we call it today just journalism. Making the real account of homes even more difficult to pin down is that some of what we know has been exaggerated in historical non-fiction that borders on fiction such as the details in Eric Larson's book The Devil in the White City. There's the idea that Holmes claimed more than 200 victims, or that Holmes built a hotel so he could stalk and lure his prey from Chicago's World Fair, which attracted visitors from all over the world, or that HH Holmes was actually the infamous London serial killer, Jack the Ripper. And his murder castle, as it came to be known, had its rooms and hallways given equally horrifying names like the hanging secret chamber, the room of three corpses, and the death shaft, which all of those are incredibly uncreative names. Like, oh, what are we going to call the room with three corpses in it? Oh, I know. So, when it comes to Holmes, it's hard to distinguish truth from embellishment. But what we definitely know to be true is that HH Holmes was guilty of at the very least nine murders, almost exclusively women and young children, and that the details behind these murders are still very gruesome and horrific. As evidenced by his own chilling confession, quote, "Yes, I was born with the devil in me. I cannot help the fact that I was a murderer. No more than the poet can help the inspiration to a song, nor the ambition of an intellectual man to be great. I was born with the evil one, standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered into the world and he has been with me ever since."
When someone does something as horrible as killing innocent women and children for no reason, people want to figure I like the phrasing of that no reason. As if there could be a reason. Maybe we'll hear him out. People want to figure out how and why things went wrong. Armchair experts like to speculate that murderers are made, not born. and they'll often point to something in childhood as the root cause. Serial killers like Ed Gene, John Wayne Gayy, and Eileen Warnos are classic examples of people with abusive upbringings that led to sickening crimes. And some recent accounts of Hol's childhood theorize that he did in fact have an abusive childhood with a cold and distant mother who expected extreme religious obedience as well as an alcoholic father who would cover his kids' mouths with kerosene soaked rags if they cried. However, as with most things with Holmes, these stories are unverified and came years, even decades after Holmes was executed for murder. So, many historians believe these stories have been tainted by people trying to answer the question of how and why.
By accounts taken at the time, Hol's childhood was actually rather unremarkable. While we don't know what happened behind closed doors, we do know that HH Holmes, the murderer who terrorized Chicago, was born as Herman Mudget, a young boy from a wealthy New Hampshire family. which Herman Mudget is objectively a rough name. I don't blame him for picking like seven fake ones. All in all, the Mudgets were said to be a rather unnoteworthy family, normal, salt of the earth family who kept their heads down and frequently went to church. Herman got good grades, and aside from possibly being mocked for his odd or shy demeanor and being somewhat crosseyed, there doesn't appear to be any early motivations behind the monster he would later become. Again, we don't know everything that happens behind closed doors, but it's also worth noting that there are a lot of people who did have abusive childhoods and didn't murder nine women and children. So, you know, not really a surefire explanation.
Anyway, according to Adam Selzer, who wrote the definitive biography on the killer, HH Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil, quote, "When newspapers first started sending reporters to interview members of Hol's family and neighbors in 1894, none of them had a single unkind word to say about his father or mother, and hardly anyone had a cruel word for Herman himself, for that matter." Mudget's mom would add, quote, "Some boys like to torment kittens, and sometimes they are very cruel to them. But Herman was too tender-hearted for anything like that. At least that's what his mother said." And sure, a lot of the people in town didn't have unkind things to say about Herman. There were some stories about the young mudget from his peers that would seem to conflict with his mother's testimony, including numerous accounts that Herman would trap animals to perform surgery on them, starting with reptiles and moving up to small mammals like rabbits and eventually dogs. There was also the rumor from the locals in Hol's hometown that at just 11 years old, he had killed his childhood friend by pushing him to his death in an abandoned home, but got away with it by staging it to look like an accident. Again, these are just rumors, but hurting small animals tends to be the first step in hurting larger animals like 11-year-olds.
Mudget got married at the age of 17 to a woman named Clara Lovering, and they had a child before he went off to the University of Vermont a couple of years later. According to Selzer, Mudget became very interested in dissections. Quote, "Holmes, by the accounts of nearly everyone who knew him there, certainly seems to have enjoyed dissecting bodies to a degree that left even other medical students unnerved." Mudget's land lady would verify this when on one occasion she noticed a stench coming from his room. She went up and found the source, quote, emanating from a dark object under the bed. Using a broom, she reached under and swept out something that gave her nightmares for the rest of her life. A dead baby. When questioned on it, he said that it was for homework and the landl gave him a stern warning not to do it again. Now look, I understand 1800s things were a lot more lax when it came to cadaavvers and dissections and what constituted homework. But where on God's earth did you get a baby? And why on earth did the land lady not say anything to anyone? just like, "Oh, well, I guess you know, under the bed, that is where students famously keep baby bodies that are again for homework." Also, he shoved it under the mattress like it was a porn magazine. You would think that someone who had stolen a baby body would be a bit more dedicated to hiding it.
A few years later, Mudget attended medical school at the University of Michigan, where he specialized in anatomy and pathology. Still fascinated with dissecting human bodies, cutting into flesh, and pulling out organs, he continued taking home corpses of infants to work on. So, you know, there's multiple dead babies. Now, his marriage to Claraara was on shaky ground. You may not believe that right after the mention that he brought multiple dead babies back home with him. Tragically, fellow students would often see Claraara with black eyes and reports of the couple fighting loudly. Mudget had already had an affair with the daughter of his landlord in Vermont. And at Michigan, he was embroiled in a scandal in which he'd promised another woman he would marry her in order to sleep with her. When the woman found a note in his room signed from your wife, Claraara, the woman complained to the medical school's board over a breach of promise. This was a serious offense at the time and nearly prevented Herman from graduating. But with the help of a professor who attested to Mudget's character, the faculty board acquitted him and he was allowed to graduate.
After graduating, Mudget moved to New York where he earned a reputation as a womanizer, swindler, and debt falter. Racking up a mountain of debt, he left suddenly in the middle of the night, abandoning his wife and kids, and moved to Chicago to start over. He allegedly even swindled his train ticket. Instead of simply walking away from his family, however, Mudget made sure word got back to his wife that he had supposedly suffered an accident in a train crash, which permanently altered his memory. Harper's Magazine wrote in the December 1943 issue, quote, "This was characteristic of the man. He cannot simply desert his family. He must erect a complicated structure of improbable lies to explain matters," which I see what Harper's magazine was doing with that word play. That was clever. But also, he straight up abandoned his family and then hit him with the I have amnesia argument.
In Chicago, Mudget intended to work at a pharmacy, but would need a license. After taking a three-day long examination, he passed the bar and it was announced in the press that Mudget, now under the name Harry H. Holmes, was a licensed pharmacist. With his new and most infamous alias, HH Holmes, the man, formerly known as Herman, met his second wife. Merch Bellnap has unfortunately been described as a plain looking woman, but her family had money, which is what attracted Holmes. The couple lived together in Wilmet, a suburb outside of Chicago. But after she gave birth to their daughter, Lucy, Holmes started to lose interest in murder and grew distant. If there's one thing this guy can do other than murder people, it's abandon children. However, he did still love her money and he used it to buy a plot of land in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago. He soon broke ground on a structure that the Smithsonian says, quote, would later factor so prominently in tales of his atrocities. This is the building that would become known as the murder castle.
Maybe it was his new sophisticated name, but Holmes was now entirely past the odd demeanor that had previously gotten him ridiculed. Having shed the reputation of his past, he was now an attractive businessman who would find his knack in real estate fraud, starting with this property in Englewood. During construction of the murder castle, numerous builders were brought in and let go, which prevented any one team or person from knowing the full layout and all of the secrets it would contain. And while it's true that he did this partially so no one would know the layout of the home, there was another reason why Holmes did this as a means to commit more fraud. Again, according to Harper's book, quote, "He would borrow enough money to buy a lot of land. To repay the original loan, he would borrow on the lot. He would build a house in high frenetic fashion, discharging workmen wrathfully, threatening suit against subcontractors, always stalling the payroll. As soon as the roof was on, he would order huge quantities of furniture on credit. He would sell the furniture to pay off the clamoring workmen and the loan on the lot. By the time the furniture company got to repossessing its property, the furniture was gone and so was Holmes."
Obviously, the building at the corner of 63rd and Wallace in Chicago didn't start off with the name Murder Castle, but it served as the foundation Holmes would use to transition his cons into something more sinister. When it was finally finished, the building was more than 150 ft long and 50 ft wide with three stories, a basement, and more than a 100 rooms. The first floor was mostly storefronts, some of which homes ran various businesses out of like selling coffee machines, a glass bending studio for Chicago skyscraper boom, and obviously, you know, shilling lots and lots of snake oil. And the third story contained apartments that he rented out. But the second floor and basement is where Holmes put his chambers of terror. There were rooms with no doors, rooms with many doors, blind passageways, and hinged walls. Harper's magazine described, quote, "A trap door that was cut in his bathroom, and from it, a short hidden stairway led to a windowless cubicle between floors in the heart of the house. From this, a shoot dropped straight into the cellar."
In the spring of 1893, before Holmes was accused of any kind of homicide, the Chicago Tribune published an article about the building titled Hid in Secret Rooms, where dealers discovered their missing furniture. To prevent the furniture from being repossessed after defaulting on his loans, Holmes would stack the pieces and hide them in a secret room that he would have walked shut. While some creditors actually got a glimpse inside the building and eventually found some of their goods, what they did not find were any of the three decomposing bodies that were likely already there at the time. A quote from the Tribune talking about this furniture scheme says, "Mr. Holmes purchases it, takes it to his World's Fair Hotel on 63rd Street, and neglects to settle. A search for the property leads to the discovery of apartments between floors and ceilings in which some of the goods are stowed."
Although is Herman Mudget, he had possibly taken the life of his friend as well as several small animals. Julia Connor and her six-year-old daughter Pearl were two of his earliest confirmed victims. Julia was married to a man named Ned Connor. Ned worked for Holmes in the pharmacy on the first floor of the building, which the family also moved into in 1889. Hol's visits to Will Met to see his wife and daughter had become less and less frequent, and within a month, he had seduced Julia. The two were quote engaged in a torid affair. While Murda never publicly said anything about the affair and almost certainly never knew Ned Connor did find out. He soon quit his job and filed for divorce, leaving Julia and Pearl in Chicago with Holmes. The affair eventually led to an unwanted pregnancy. Holmes knew that having a child with a woman here in Chicago and in his building, no less, could seriously interfere with his schemes. He wanted the pregnancy taken care of. And on Christmas Eve of 1891, Julia and Pearl visited some friendly neighbors on the third floor. These neighbors were the last people to ever see the mother and daughter alive.
When questions were raised about the whereabouts of the Connors, Holmes gave vague details, but admitted he had attempted an abortion on Julia that resulted in her death. A crazy thing that you only tell someone after they repeatedly ask where she is. And also just, you know, a crazy thing in general. This naturally led others to have questions about Pearl, the young daughter, and Holmes changed his story, saying that they had actually moved back home to Iowa, which is very different from his previous story of killing her. You know, an accident, so it's okay. Years later, after Holmes was eventually arrested for murder and investigators descended on the castle, they would discover the shoot that dropped from the second floor into the basement. And in the basement itself, they found a den of horrors, operating tables, surgical instruments, crematory, chloroform, and acids, and several scary looking apparatuses that appeared medieval in origin. Among the devices, they would find the partial skeleton of a child, likely Pearl. Julia's remains were never found.
In his written confession, Holmes admitted to killing Julia, but described it as an accident during the abortion. He says that he had consent from Julia to do the procedure, but many have theorized that he drugged Julia first and performed the abortion against her will. Holmes never mentioned Pearl's fate in his confession.
Several months after Julia and Pearl Connors went missing, the entire population of Chicago was ramping up for the 1893 World's Fair. The city was buzzing. Many grand halls, structures, and plazas were being built for the 30 million people who would eventually filter in and out over the course of the summer. Men and women came to the city looking for work and an exciting new life including Emiline Sigrand. Emiline was described as attractive, sociable, and ambitious. And she eventually found her way from a small town in Indiana to homes building where she accepted a job as home's personal secretary and took residence there. Again, almost immediately, Holmes began a romantic relationship with Emiline. And again, a few months later, she disappeared. Devil in the White City describes the moment of her murder in very chilling fashion. Emiline was convinced that she and Holmes were going to be married. Like with Julia Connor, Holmes could not carry on with his mistress anymore. So, he lured her into a room he had built, an airtight vault, in which he told Emiline would be a safe place for storing papers. Then, Holmes slipped out of the room, locked the door, and listened to Emiline's cries for help till she suffocated to death. Holmes allegedly skinned her from the waist up, put her body in a trunk, and with the help of some unsuspecting murder castle residents, carried the trunk out of the building. Holmes then sold her skeleton to medical science. While some of those details are unverified, according to witnesses interviewed by investigators, a janitor did help Holmes move a heavy truck from the building around this exact time. Questions of Emiline's disappearance started to emerge, but Holmes told people that she had left the city to marry another man. In his confession, he would admit to suffocating her in an airtight vault that he had built and said that he disposed of her body in the furnace. This room would be labeled the esphyxiation chamber.
Just a few months before the World's Fair kicked off, Holmes began another illicit relationship with a woman named Minnie Williams. Minnie had recently moved to Chicago from Texas, where she had inherited some property in Fort Worth. Minnie, who was also described as plain, was easily flattered, home specialty. Though the two never married, they presented themselves as a married couple. At this point, it seems like everyone had forgotten about Murda, his wife, the other plain woman. Many invited her sister Nanny to join her in Chicago during the height of the fair. And in July of 1893, neither woman would ever be seen again. Many invited her sister Nanny to join her in Chicago during the height of the fair. And in July of 1893, neither woman would ever be seen again. This time, Holmes claimed that both Minnie and Nanny were so enamored by him that they fought each other to the death, resulting in Minnie beating her sister to death with a stool. His cover stories, not the actual thing that happened, his stories to make him look better, is that with one he tried to perform an abortion on her and it didn't go well and he killed her. But no, you can't see the body and he doesn't know what happened to her daughter. And then his other story is that he watched a woman beat another woman to death on his behalf. And again, those are his stories to make him look like the good guy.
In his later confessions, Holmes would give contradictory explanations for their disappearances. In one, he claimed that after many killed her sister, he put Nanny's body in a trunk, weighed it down with lead, and then dumped it into Lake Michigan, and then killed many afterwards. In another explanation written in his confession, he says he killed both women himself, which I think is much, much more likely. Though neither of the sisters bodies were ever found, when investigators searched the murder castle and found bundles of women's clothes and shoes, they also found a watch chain that witnesses said was Minnie's. Not too long after their deaths, Minn's Fort Worth property was signed over to BF Perry, one of Hol's aliases. Most of Home's victims would follow this pattern. wealthy women or women who had come into wealth, seduced by homes, their property given to him, never to be seen again.
The World's Fair wrapped up in October of 1893, and during that time, dozens of young women were reported missing. After his arrest, newspapers love to speculate that Holmes was responsible for all of them. Now, again, it's important to keep in mind that the articles about Holmes at the time were sensationalized. They along with Larson's popular book say that Holmes turned the third story of his building into a hotel so he could use his wit, charm, and dashing looks to lure women back there. The thought was with a maze-like building that contained rooms like the esphyxiation chamber and the black closet, how could he not be doing this on a daily basis? True crime magazines and pulp writers threw out the number of at least 200 victims to correlate with the number of people missing in Chicago over the course of the World's Fair. And maybe it's partially true. There are a ton of missing person's cases from the late 1800s and early 1900s that were never solved. It seems like all a murderer had to do back then was say, "Oh yeah, she went back home." Or, "Oh, she took a trip to Europe and they'd be in the clear." So Holmes, being such a prolific murderer, is perhaps equal parts lore and history.
But we do know that Hol's killing spree did not end after the fair packed up. Holmes did in fact turn the third floor of his building into a hotel, but not necessarily to use it as a killing factory. Much of his reasoning was that it provided an opportunity for him to make more money. Now, I know what you may be thinking. The way that you make money at a hotel is by, you know, having people rent out rooms and operate it as a hotel. But the money making that Holmes was thinking was, of course, fraud. Holmes borrowed large sums of money from investors and bought lots of goods and furniture on credit. and then thinking that he'd be able to collect on insurance set the third story on fire. He really is trying to collect every fraud in the book. Life insurance fraud, credit fraud, and now fire insurance fraud. If cars were a thing back then, he would have made his money breaking people on the interstate.
Unfortunately for Holmes, he was flying too close to the sun, and by now, everyone knew his angle. The insurance company, as well as many of the investors, quickly suspected fraud. They came for him and as warrants were being prepared, Holmes fled Chicago in 1894. It was soon after that that he found himself in a prison cell in St. Louis, back where this story began.
Selzer writes this about the murder of Hol's business partner, Benjamin Pitzell. Quote, "Here, for the first time, Holmes committed a murder where he left behind enough evidence that the details of the killing could be pieced together reasonably well." When the Pinkertons were searching for Holmes, Holmes wasn't exactly laying low. He was actually very busy trying to keep Benjamin Pitzell's death a secret from the man's wife, Carrie, and her children, who were still not aware of what really happened. Holmes admitted to Carrie that Benjamin was involved in the life insurance scheme, but he convinced her that Benjamin was hiding out and moving around so he wouldn't get caught. She needed to play along if she wanted to keep her husband and herself out of jail. In reality, however, Holmes was nervous that if the family stayed together, the oldest daughter would help piece together the story. So, he convinced the family to split into two separate groups. One group would be Mrs. Pitzell and her baby, and the other would consist of the three older children, whose ages ranged from 8 to 15. Holmes, again claiming to be doing all this on Benjamin's behalf, separately moved the groups around from Ohio to Indiana to Michigan to Canada to New York. Each time telling the family that Benjamin had left town just as they arrived and had left instructions for them to meet him in the next place. At multiple points, Holmes stashed the two groups just a few streets from one another without them even knowing.
Which you hear people talk about Holmes a lot and they'll say, "Oh, he was so suave and convincing and charismatic." And a lot of the time you're like, "Yeah, yeah, I'm sure he was just a shyer or whatever, right?" Uh, but then like you hear this story where he has convinced the family of his former business partner that their dad wants them to city hop for like six cities, six or seven cities in a row. And every time they get somewhere, he's like, "Oh, you just missed him. We'll wait here a week and we're going to go to the next city." And they're just like, "Okay." either they're really stupid or he was just that good. And also like he has them moving around the country and sometimes they're just a few streets from each other and don't realize like I guess I guess with everything it was just a game to him to see what he could get away with. But you know he was like twirling his mustache at putting them in the same city a couple blocks away.
The Pinkertons eventually caught up to Holmes in Boston at a West End boarding house and arrested him for fraud and murder. in custody and on the train ride back to Philadelphia. Holmes admitted to the fraud but didn't admit to the murder of his business partner. He said Pitzell was in South America along with the children, though his story changed multiple times, confusing the detectives. Side note, Holmes also offered one of the guards $500 to let Holmes hypnotize him before they arrived in Philly, but the guard refused. Probably a good idea. I'm just guessing if you arrest someone and they offer you money to hypnotize you, probably a trap.
While they had their man, investigators still needed to find Pitell's wife and children. The search would span multiple states, and they eventually found Mrs. Pitell and her baby alive and well, also in Boston. But detective Frank Guyire, who wrote a book about his extensive search for the Pitzell children, eventually did find the three older kids. Tragically, it was too late. First, he found the bodies of the two girls, Alice, 15, and Ellie, 11, quote, buried beneath a cellar in Toronto. There were no visible injuries on them, but corer report says that Holmes had locked them in a large trunk and filled it with gas from a lamp valve. Oh my gosh, talk about a horrific way to go. Authorities would later find the charred remains of Howard, who at the time was only 8 years old. His body was found in a cottage in Indianapolis that Holmes had once rented. By the time investigators found him, his body was charred from having been burnt.
After the gruesome discoveries were made public, the nation became fascinated with the reporting on the investigation. Newspapers would print daily articles with as many new details as they could find, and the story would draw thousands of people to visit Chicago to try and get a peak of the crime scene. What started in newspapers as the home's building quickly evolved, as the Chicago Daily News referred to it as a castle. While it wasn't until the 1930s that the term murder castle became popularized, the New York World would publish an article in 1895 that quote would become perhaps the most influential article of all time, one of two or three from which all future home stories would descend. According to Seltzer, in this article was a diagram with labels added to it, giving the rooms names like the hanging secret chamber, the room of the three corpses, the death shaft, the maze, and the black closet. It was also reported that Holmes had devices for torture where he would ring his victims until they disclosed the whereabouts of their wealth, performing experiments on them to feed his obsession with the human body. Some said Holmes believed the human body could be stretched indefinitely, that he was very eager to prove it. The sensationalism grew to the point that it became hard to separate fact from fiction. Because there was rope in the building, Holmes must have been hanging his victim, some would say. Because there was a knife next to a worn down table, Holmes had to be chopping the bodies up. Others would say anyone who went missing in Chicago around that time was thought to have been a victim. Their remains somewhere in the Holmes castle.
Despite what everyone in the news said to be true, after weeks of investigating the murder castle, police didn't have enough evidence to pin any of the Chicago murders on Holmes. Yes, skeletons were found, but they couldn't be identified. However, they did have homes on the murder of Pitzel, which you know, back then doesn't matter if you're convicted of one murder or 1,000. They're going to kill you.
Knowing that he did not have one last escape up his sleeve, perhaps the unremarkable boy felt compelled to become a man we'd never forget. As he was awaiting trial, Holmes wrote an autobiography. He didn't confess to killing 200 people, but he did confess to 27, including some of the ones mentioned earlier. And you may hear that and think, "Oh, well, he said he killed 27. That's probably pretty accurate, right?" Well, the problem with that is that some of those 27 people were still alive when when he wrote the book while he was on trial. And even within his own statements, there were contradictions. Like, for example, the claim that Minnie killed her sister followed by the claim that he killed both of them himself. So, even though he wrote a book, you can't really trust what the serial manipulator, fraudster, and killer says. Shocking, I know.
During the trial, as well as in his autobiography and confession, Holmes maintained his innocence in killing his business partner, which is interesting because it's the one clear-cut case of homicide in his whole story, the one that he couldn't write off as just a body he found, and it was one of the very few involving a man. Holmes and his lawyers tried convincing the jury that Pitzell committed suicide, that Holmes was merely being opportunistic and making it look like an accident for the insurance payout. In the end, if you couldn't tell from the media storm that was happening at the time and the fact that the dude on trial wrote a book describing 27 murders, which is something you really probably shouldn't do while you're on trial for murder, the jurors rendered a very quick verdict guilty. Just think about the concept for that. you are on trial for murder and you write a book where you say that you killed 27 people and then after it's published you have the audacity to sit there on the stand and be like no I don't I don't think I did I don't no that wasn't me I don't think that one was me.
On May 7th, 1896, Holmes was marched to his execution by hanging. His final words were quote, "Gentlemen, I have very few words to say. In fact, I would make no remarks at this time were it not for the feeling that if I did not speak, it would imply that I acquiesced in my execution. I only wish to say that the extent of the wrongdoing I am guilty of in taking human life is the killing of two women. They died by my hands as the results of criminal operations. I have never committed murder. That is all I have to say." Which there's nothing funny about a serial killer, especially someone that took so many innocent lives. But it is to say, "I have killed two women and I am innocent." In the same statement, after he said this, the lever was pulled and HH Holmes, Herman Mudget, BF Perry, Alex Gordon, and whatever else you want to call him swung to his death.
Holmes was buried 10 ft deep rather than the standard 6 ft. So, grave robbers wouldn't be able to dig up his body. Holmes probably knew from his own experience the difference those four extra feet would make. Only someone that robbed and dug up graves would know to be buried four feet deeper as to not be dug up.
In 2017, over 120 years later, Hol's body was exumed to investigate the belief that Holmes had actually evaded his execution, fled the country, and continued his murderous spree as notorious London serial killer Jack the Ripper. In fact, there's an entire History Channel show dedicated to making this comparison called American Ripper, in which Hol's own great great grandson was nearly convinced that the story was true. After 3 days of excavating the coffin, archaeologists were stunned to discover the coffin was in fact empty, which that moment had to be insane. You do an entire show about how people think Holmes became Jack the Ripper, so you dig up his body to disprove it, and then you throw open that coffin door, and there's nothing in there. Now, it turns out that this was merely a decoy, and they found the real coffin a short time later. But man, the moment they opened that first casket, there had to be something.
Hol's actual coffin was in a bizarre state as well. His coffin was sealed inside of a larger cement structure that was full of water. He was apparently buried this way to ensure his preservation, and it turned out it worked. When archaeologist opened it, Hol's clothes were perfectly preserved, and his mustache was still attached to its skull. One discovery was at odds with the records, though. Holmes was said to be average height for the time, about 5'8. However, this body was much shorter, around 5'3, and that's when scientists realized that he had been using lifts in his shoes to make himself appear taller. A true con man through and through. Though there were no other DNA samples to compare Hol's body to, scientists used his skull and dental records to determine that the body was in fact part of the Mudget family tree, meaning an escape to Britain to continue living as Jack the Ripper was unlikely. and no word on whether or not they sold his body to science. That would have been fitting, though, and if some students stole it and shoved it under their bed.
After his conviction, Holmes's murder castle stood tall for another 40 years. It's strange to think anyone would want to open up shop there, let alone live in a place filled with nightmare fuel. But they did until the entire structure was torn down in 1938 and a post office was built in its place. Holm's legacy continues thanks in large part due to the sensationalistic practices of news, journalism, and media even back in the late 1800s, a tradition that proudly continues today. As Elzer puts it, quote, "No one did more to turn the gossip into legend than Holmes himself. The man was beyond doubt a pathological liar. He lied to his various wives, to his friends, to his lawyers, to his employees, to detectives, to reporters, and to everyone else, right down to the census man. He lied in his diary." I'd love to say we learned our lessons from the past and that we no longer make horrible people famous, but um well, you know, it was during the investigation of HHolmes that the media realized they could turn a huge profit by telling their own version of a dark truth. America ate up what could have been. Some simple but sad story of a deranged man turned into some sort of mythological devil, which seems to be exactly what Holmes wanted.
Frank Bergos wrote, quote, "Like a dark fairy tale, each generation seemed to remake homes to fit their needs. In the 1940s, he was the object of cheap pulp thrillers. In 1974, he was the villain in a novel by the author of Psycho. In 2003, he was the dark heart at the center of the bestseller, The Devil in the White City, and is set to be played by Leonardo DiCaprio, directed by Martin Scorsesei in an adaptation of that book, which DiCaprio obtained the rights to in 2010." Despite the sensationalism around the story, it's not hard to see why this story became as popular as it did. And the one bright side in it is as opposed to a lot of serial killers or a lot of missing person's cases, he didn't get away with it. So hopefully you can take some comfort in that even though you probably won't because it's still terrifying that all of that did happen and potentially could happen again. But hey, whatever. Thanks for watching.
I hear HH Holmes talked about a lot, but I haven't seen people really talk in depth about him. And I think it's honestly because the story got so muddled when it first came out. Like I always hear mention of the guy that had a murder castle and America's first serial killer, but it seems like no one's ever gone into depth on him as they do figures like Jeffrey Dom or John Wayne Gasey. And I think it's just because it's so hard to parse out what actually happened with what might have happened. But regardless, I think it's a case that's interesting to learn about and hopefully you did as well. Stay tuned for more content that is certain to make your life worse over the rest of October. Thank you all for the support you've been showing the channel. It really does mean the world. Thank you so much to everyone who made this video possible. They'll be linked in the description below, so be sure to show them some love. I believe that should do it for now, but before I go, we just want to say thank you for watching. We hope that you enjoyed, and we'll see you in the next one. Bye.