America 's First Serial Killer

Holmes had been born into a wealthy New Hampshire family and was given the name Herman Webster Mudgett (America’s Serial Killers). “If Mudgett or his brother or sister were bad, their strict Methodist parents sent them to the attic for a full day without speaking or eating,. Mudgett’s father was especially abusive after he’d been drinking - which was often” (Spikol). However, his father was a wealthy and respected citizen and had been the local postmaster for nearly twenty five years (Taylor). It is surprising an important member of the community was a child abuser. The abuse of his father may be one of the

    During the 1893 Columbian Exposition, H.H. Holmes was one of the first serial killers of America. Holmes would lure his victims into his building which he transformed into his “murder castle.” First he would manipulate his victims by coming off as a

Throughout American history, numerous acts of crime have been committed by serial killers that ultimately shocked the nation. A serial killer is defined as “someone who murders more than three victims one at a time in a relatively short interval (Serial).” One particular person who is considered one of the most infamous serial killers on earth is Jeffrey Dahmer. The Jeffrey Dahmer case had a significant impact on not only society but on the criminal justice system as well.

His Victims were lead by the promise for cheap lodging in his hotel.2With the World Fair happening Holmes saw the event as the perfect opportunity to commit the murders he has been. He knew that with such a big event and how many foreigners would even come that his murders would go unnoticed until it was too late, and they did. His main targets were foreign or just gullible women3; those that wouldn’t be missed or have people come looking for them, especially when millions of people are in town, they won’t be noticed

In the fall of 1889, Holmes meets Benjamin Frelon Pitezel; He had a wife, Carrie and 5 children, Dessie, Alice, Nellie, Howard and infant son Wharton. He came to Chicago after traveling the Midwest for 10 years because he continually failed at keeping a job and he also had been arrested several times for crimes ranging from petty larceny to forgery, he also drank heavily. He was looking for a job and answers an ad for a carpenter for a building being built in Englewod. There he meets H.H. Holmes and they become friends. He becomes Holmes’s

When H.H. Holmes arrives in Chicago, he looks like any other ambitious young doctor braving the journey to the Windy City to start a new life. “He walked with confidence and dressed well, conjuring an impression of wealth and achievement. He was twenty-six years old… He had dark hair and striking blue eyes, once likened to the eyes of a Mesmerist,” describes the author. Larson cites a physician, John L. Capen, “‘Great murderers, like great men in other walks of activity, have blue eyes’” (35). In including this citation, Larson clues the reader in on Holmes’ true nature in addition to eliciting a feeling of unease through his diction. With this first impression, the reader is already wary of Holmes and his actions. Larson further solidifies this distrust with the following passages. “The city had impressed [Holmes], he said later, which was surprising because as a rule nothing impressed him, nothing moved him. Events and people captured his attention the way moving objects caught the notice of an amphibian: first a machinelike registration of proximity, next to calculation of worth, and last is a decision to act or remain motionless.” (37) With this quotation, Larson explains how Holmes chose

To clarify, Henry Howard Holmes known as H. H. Holmes was America’s first serial killer. As a child, Holmes was terrified of the doctor, however a few bullies from his school forced him to touch the real skeleton in their doctor’s office which started his obsession with human anatomy. When Holmes was a teenager he interned at his local doctor’s office and later went to Michigan State for a medical degree and became a skilled doctor. Holmes took out fake insurance policies on the bodies he used in medical school after pouring acid on their face so they were unrecognizable in order to afford college. In 1889 Holmes designed and built a hotel to assist his murders.

According Florida Gulf Coast University Serial Killer Database, there has been 2,625 serial killers so far in the United States, the most of any country in the world. However, this trend all started out with H.H. Holmes: America’s first serial killer. H.H. Holmes was born in New Hampshire as Herman Webster Mudgett in 1861. He was extremely bright in school and excelled beyond the other kids in his class. Because of this, he was bullied a lot by his jealous schoolmates. One incident stands out among all others, which was when Mudgett was dragged into the town doctor’s office and forced to confront a skeleton which he had previously found revolting. Despite the bully’s intentions, this cured Mudgett of his fear of skeletons, and made him more curious about the study of the human body and medicine, which piloted the rest of his career. Mudgett studied at the University of Michigan, where he finished college and medical school. Mudgett then moved to Chicago and changed his name to Henry Howard Holmes (H.H. Holmes) in 1886, where his torturous fantasies all began. Although this criminal mastermind only made one small mistake to make investigators red hot on his trail, H.H. Holmes should’ve been caught sooner because of his suspicious activities including the building of his castle and being involved in scams at the same time numerous people he was affiliated with went missing while selling copious amounts of skeletons shortly after they went missing.

While he was at school, he was accused of stealing bodies, maiming them and collected th deceased insurance policies. But even after he graduation, Holmes moved to Chicago to work in the field of pharmaceuticals. Even though Holmes was still married to Clara, he married Myrta Belknap in 1887. They had a daughter named Lucy in 1889. He lived with Myrta and lucy in Illinois and spent most of his time in the land of Chicago.

After leaving Chicago, Holmes would appear next in Fort Worth, Texas. He had inherited the property of two railroad heiress sisters, both of whom he murdered (Murderpedia Editors n.d.). During his time in Texas, he stole two horses and shipped them to St. Louis. He sold both, making a decent sum of money; however, he was arrested for this scam and sent to jail in July of 1894. During his time in jail, he formulated a new insurance swindle with his cellmate, Marion Hedgepeth. Holmes planned to take out an insurance policy for ten-thousand dollars, fake his death, and then provide Marion with five-hundred dollars in exchange for a lawyer who could help him if there were any problems. He attempted this plan once he was released on bail, but the

He changed his name to H.H. Holmes and posed as a pharmacist in Chicago. That was an ominous start to his career. [7]

He had two children, one son and one daughter. He went out of sight for six years after abandoning Clara and his son. He would always somehow come up with some con as to where he was and what he was doing during the time of his victims' deaths. The police had always questioned him, but had never really pinned anything on him. No one wanted to believe that Holmes was an evil master mind. He was so handsome and charismatic. His tall stature and piercing blue eyes made women often swoon at the sight of him. He could also talk anyone into anything at the sound of his voice and the medical, knowledgeable jargon he used. He even got an old lady to give him her husbands pharmacy after his death sometime after he arrived to Chicago. Other sources said that he killed her and inherited the pharmacy without anyone knowing what happened. Either way the old woman should have been happy that such a noble man was running her pharmacy. He was always the perfect assistant, making sure that her money was going towards helping the company in any way. He would even meet up with venders, creating a stable environment for her and her dying husband. He eventually killed her but when others would ask he stated that she had moved to California, but had no forwarding address (Taylor, Troy).

A young woman from Indiana traveled to Chicago on behalf of an ad for a job at Holmes’s “hotel”. Holmes told the lady, Georgianna Yoke, that his name is Henry Howard and that Minnie is his cousin. On January 17, 1894, with Minnie as the witness, Holmes and Georgianna married at the Vendome Hotel in Denver, Colorado. After the wedding, the three traveled to Texas to claim Minnie’s property and organized a horse scam. Holmes purchased horses with counterfeit money and sold them in Saint Louis, Missouri to end up making a large profit. Once back in Chicago, Holmes killed Minnie. When the police questioned him as to where she was, he answered that he believes that she had killed her sister and fled to Europe. Seen as a respected man of the community, the police instantly believed him. Holmes later confesses that he put Minnie’s body in an acid vat after killing her. In July of 1894, Holmes was arrested for the first time as the result of the earlier horse swindle, but Georgianna quickly bailed him out. While in jail, Holmes met Marion Hedgepath, a train robber with a 25 year sentence. Holmes talks about his greed for money with Marion, and he gives Holmes the idea to take a $20,000 insurance claim out on himself and then fake his death. He also recommended a corrupt lawyer, Colonel Jeptha Howe, for Holmes to use in exchange for a $500 commission.

Eric Larson himself thought of H.H.Holmes as being a murderous psychopath. Holmes and his fellow builders of the hotel had quite a few things in common, they were both organized, determined, self driven and saw the bright side of what they were doing. The workers and him both were quite the con master, along with flattery and bribery, not to mention sometimes even bluntness. Larson steers towards the tracks in somewhat of a way to relate back to the fact he finds Holmes actions to be quite,¨horrifying¨. I have come to the conclusion that in our everyday life we are unaware of the people that go in and out of our lives, That random guy who held the door open for you at the store could've been a serial killer and you would've never known. We experience serial killer behavior in our everyday lives were just unaware of it.

Holmes was born into a well to do family, he often got in trouble and punished by his abusive father. He was also bullied because of how small he was. Researchers say that serial killers are “frequently the products of broken, or severely brutal homes, where they have themselves been subjected to gross cruelty, sexual abuse, and in some cases prolonged and systematic torture” (Whittington-Egan 327), this shows that Holmes’ home life was a contributing factor on how he became as sadistic as he was. Why would he later want to prey on women? He wanted power and people to feel how he felt when he was younger, hopeless and alone. According to Richard Whittington-Egan, Holmes’ motive for murder was “financial profit—admixed with sexual advantages” (351). As a young boy Holmes, like most serial killers in the making, had a fascination for torturing and dissecting animals. It was said that he left them “reveling in their pain and took care to make sure they stayed alive, helpless, and distressed for as long as possible” (Gibson 212), this shows how much his psychopathic tendencies were starting to develop at a really young age, and how he felt pleasure in other’s pain. Eventually, Holmes moved