The Real Monster of the Midway
Serial Killers are nothing new to today’s society. Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy shocked our nation with their violent, brutal, and at times unbelievable crimes, although none of them were as notorious as Herman Webster Mudgett better known as Dr. H.H. Holmes. A man that carried himself as a smart, intellectual member of society, but in reality he was a smooth talking conman and very disturbed individual. A man who designed and built a building with torture rooms that would serve as his play house. Being born and raised in Chicago, I enjoy learning about its rich history. I had heard about this serial killer before, but I was not aware of his complete story. I am taking this
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He had several stores and a restaurant in the building. The third floor had rooms and offices to rent and it contained Holmes’s bedroom but it was the 2nd floor that had the horrible secret of the building. This floor had 35 rooms all designed as killing chambers, his victims would get caught up in this maze where doors lead nowhere and once they would turn a corner Holmes would surprise them and eventually kill them. Now the basement was worst of them all he had a chute that led down there so he could easily dispose of the bodies, it was like a medieval torture chamber, acid vats, quick lime pits and crematorium and this is where he would clean his victim’s bones and mount them and sell them to local universities and medical schools. Now, I have heard of some of the things that serial killers have done but this takes the cake, it made my stomach turn. 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
It is while in jail Holmes confided in a cellmate by the name of Marion Hedgepeth of the plan to defraud the insurance company. Hedgepeth agreed to give Holmes the contact information of a crooked attorney in turn for $500 dollars, promised to be paid once Holmes received the insurance payoff. It was several weeks after this event before Holmes and Pitezel arrived in Philadelphia, where they rented a storefront and posed as a patent dealer. It is here where Holmes murdered Pitezel with chloroform, burning his face, and setting the building on fire in an attempt to make it appear like a chemical laboratory accident. Once the body was discovered, it had to be positively identified by a family member in order for the insurance company to pay the
With his “murder castle” complete and the World’s Fair being hosted in Chicago in 1893, Holmes had the idea to market his castle as a hotel. With all the visitors coming to Chicago, Holmes could lure more people into his castle to murder. For the next few years, he selected victims among his employees, lovers, and hotel guests to torture and murder. Some of his victims were locked in sound-proof rooms lined with gas lines that allowed him to asphyxiate them at any time. He would also lock some of his victims in a large vault next to his office, so he could listen as they screamed, panicked, and finally suffocated. After being murdered, the victim’s body would be sent down to the basement. The bodies were sometimes dissected, stripped of flesh,
H.H. Holmes personifies the stereotypical murder. Throughout his killing spree, Holmes pretended to be a gentleman, even marrying some of his victims. When Holmes was interrogated later, he described himself as Satan.(6) Using a friendly outward appearance, Holmes was able to escape suspicion when the victims’ family questioned disappearances. Holmes gave those families false hope that the victims would be found, or had just run away and had not died. When in reality Holmes had brutally murdered each one and hid all of evidence.
Herman Webster Muddgett or also known as H. H. Holmes was one of the so called first mass murders, Beginning with small harmless things such as stealing corpses from his school, and using them as insurance claims to, moving off to Chicago and becoming a pharmacist also moving in with a married couple and waiting for the right moment to hop on his rise to victory or at least what he thought was a great achievement, to murdering innocent people his tower of torcher, his castle of murder just to please his sick twisted mind.
Priest Holmes was a running back in the NFL. His career in the NFL was with to teams, the Baltimore Ravens and the Kansas City Chiefs. Some of his major achievements were first 1,000 yard rusher for Baltimore in 1998. He played in Super Bowl 35. These were just a couple of major achievements.
H.H.Holmes was America's first serial killer. He grew up in Gilmanton , New Hampshire. His real name is Herman Webster Muddget. He lived with his mom and two sisters . He was a middle child of his siblings and he was a mama's boy. He was born May 16, 1861. H.H. Holmes killed dozens of people who lived in New Hampshire.
H.H.Holmes, also known by his birth name, Herman Webster Mudgett was the first recorded serial killer in America. He killed as many as 250 people, maybe more. He built a hotel that was later known as the murder castle. H.H. Holmes built a small boys dream of a haunted house with different passageways, walled-up rooms and trap doors. The beautiful architectural building built across the street from a pharmacy, where Holmes worked as a doctor.
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.
1884 to 1886 he lived in Mooers Forks, New York City and Philadelphia. He was accused of the disappearance of a young boy in New York and the death of a boy in Philadelphia (Holmes). H.H Holmes denied having any form of involvement to either cases. In 1886 Holmes moved to Chicago, Illinois. When he moved to Chicago that is when he formally changed his name to Henry Howard Holmes, but better known as H.H Holmes. In Chicago he acquired a pharmacy (H.H Holmes).
HH Holmes did plan the event, as a matter of fact he planned the event for over 5 years. In 1885 Holmes got a job working at a drugstore, when the owner of the drug store passed away he left his wife in charge of the drug store. Holmes convinced the widow to let him take over the responsibilities and duties of the store. Soon the widow went missing and was never seen again. Holmes said she moved to California but it was never verified. After Holmes became owner of the drugstore he bought an empty lot across the street. He built and designed a 3 story hotel called the “castle”. Holmes hired and fired construction crews so that no one would have a clear idea of what he was creating. Holmes placed ads in newspaper in 1891 offering jobs for young
Dr. H. H. Holmes has a passion for murder, and he hides his true personality behind an act of a charming man managing a hotel. Since Holmes uses his creativity to disrupt the lives of innocent people, he brings out the Black City of Chicago. As a result of Holmes’s passion for murder, he has to keep his psychotic talent secret. Only very few people know Holmes’s true lifestyle, and if they do, he kills them. Holmes weaves his way into to his victims’ lives to manipulate them for his personal benefit.. Even though the White City masks some of Chicago’s problems, evil still
Since Holmes was not building a skyscraper and instead a three story hotel, he did not have the same issue. Instead, he faced another common problem: money. Though he was not poor, he was only a pharmacist and wished to be able to pay for the construction of a building that would cover the entire block. Just like Burnham, he came
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
Erick Larson wrote in Devil in the White City, “I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing – I was born with the Evil One standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered in the world, and he has been with me since” (Troy, Taylor). This statement was a quoted confession from Dr. H. H. Holmes himself in 1896. Holmes was the first major serial killer in America, even though he came after many others in his time. Thomas Neil Cream, the Austin Axe Murderer, the Bloody Benders, and Jack the Ripper came before him. His name was originally Herman Webster Mudgett. He was born on May 16th, 1860 in Gilman, New Hampshire. He was raised by his mother
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is the British writer and physician who created the famous detective Sherlock Holmes. He portrays Holmes so be the smartest and most effective detective in London, England. Holmes was a character very much of his time and place, who appealed to British readers directly by confronting the messy, changeable world they live in (Long). Most people in today’s time are still fairly familiar to such a strongly created character even though his mystery stories were written around the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Doyle got his inspiration for Holmes from his professor, Joseph Bell, the famous Scottish lecturer who taught at the medical school of University of Edinburgh. Doyle’s most famous book was “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, written in the early 1900’s. Which is a mystery where everyone thinks a ghostly, killer-like dog, which has haunted the Baskerville family for generations, killed Sir Charles. This is just one of the