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| Herman Webster Mudgett (May 16, 1861 – May 7, 1896), better known under the alias of “Dr. H. H. Holmes,” was an American serial killer.Holmes trapped, tortured, and murdered possibly hundreds of guests at his Chicago hotel, which he opened for the 1893 World’s Fair.The case was notorious in its time, and received wide publicity via a series of articles in William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers. Interest in Holmes’ crimes was revived in 2003 by the publication of a best-selling book about him, The Devil in the White City.Although Holmes is sometimes referred to as America’s first serial killer, his crimes occurred after those of others such as Thomas Neill Cream, the Austin Axe Murderer and the Bloody Benders Biography
He was born in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, son of Levi Horton Mudgett and his wife, formerly Theodate Page Price. His early criminal career was based on fraud and forgery, including a cure for alcoholism, real estate scams, and a machine that purported to make natural gas from water. Holmes earned a doctor’s degree from the University of Michigan. On 8 July 1878, he married Clara A. Lovering of Alton, New Hampshire. On 28 January 1887, he (bigamously) married Myrta Z. Belknap in Minneapolis, Minnesota; they had a daughter named Lucy. He filed a petition for divorce from his first wife after marrying his second, but it never became final. He married his third wife, Georgiana Yoke, on 9 January 1894. He was also the lover of Julia Smythe, the wife of Ned Connor, one of his trusted associates. She later become one of his victims. He managed to secure a Chicago pharmacy by defrauding the pharmacist, and built a block-long, three-story building on the lot across the street. He called this building “The Castle,” and opened it as a hotel for the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893.
The bottom floor of the Castle contained shops, the top his personal office, and the middle floor a maze of over one hundred windowless rooms. Over a period of three years, Holmes selected female victims from among his hotel’s guests, and tortured them in soundproof and escapeproof chambers fitted with gas lines that permitted Mudgett to asphyxiate the women at any time. Holmes had repeatedly changed builders, to ensure that no one truly understood the design of the house he had created who might report it to the police. Once dead, the victims’ bodies went by chute to the basement, where they were either sold to medical schools or cremated and placed in lime pits for destruction. Following the World’s Fair, Holmes left Chicago and apparently murdered people as he traveled around the country. He was arrested in 1895 when he was discovered with the body of a former business associate, Benjamin Pitezel, and three of his children.
(Rick Geary) The same year, Holmes’s “castle” in Chicago burnt down on August 19, revealing the carnage therein to the police and firemen. His habit of taking out insurance policies on some of his victims before killing them may have eventually exposed him regardless. The number of Holmes’ victims has typically been estimated between 20 to 100, and even as high as 200. These victims were primarily women, but included some men and children. Holmes was put on trial for murder, and confessed to 27 murders (in Chicago, Indianapolis and Toronto) and six attempted murders. He was hanged on May 7, 1896, in Philadelphia. It was reported that when the executioner had finished all the preliminaries of the hanging, he asked, “Ready, Dr. Holmes?”, to which Holmes said, “Yes. Don’t bungle.” The executioner did “bungle,” however, because Holmes’ neck did not snap immediately; he instead died slowly and painfully of strangulation over the course of about 15 minutes.
References Borowski, John (Director), H.H. Holmes, America’s First Serial Killer (Motion picture documentary), Waterfront Productions, 2004. Borowski, John (2005). Dimas Estrada (editor) <style=”font-size: 8pt”=””> The Strange Case of Dr. H. H. Holmes ISBN 0975918516. See also the list of many references on the Memorabilia page. Geary, Rick (2004). The Beast of Chicago: The Murderous Career of H. H. Holmes. Nantier, Beall & Minoustchine. Larson, Erik (2003). The Devil in the White City. New York: Vintage Books. Schecter, Harold (1994). Depraved. New York: Pocket Books. Michod, Alec (2004). The White City. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Adams, Cecil, “Did Dr. Henry Holmes kill 200 people at a bizarre “castle” in 1890s Chicago?”, The Straight Dope, 1979-07-06. |
