Herman Webster Muddgett: First Mass Murder

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

Holmes was born on May 16, 1861 in Gilmanton, New Hampshire (Biography 1). He did not have a very enjoyable childhood growing up. When he was younger the idea of torturing animals at his house gave him pleasure. Which got him interested in

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

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

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

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.

In this passage, Dr. H. H. Holmes is deviously planning the blueprint for his house. Larson’s purpose in this passage is to bring out Holmes’s true evil and psychopathic impulses. The doctor wanted a chamber in the basement of his Chicago building where he could murder young women in secret and then store them under the building forever.

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

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

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.

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

After many of these people went into his hotel and would never come out again. According to history.com, “Medical schools purchased many human skeletons from Dr. Holmes during this period but never asked how he obtained the anatomy specimens” (History.com Staff 5). This is another way that Holmes would make “easy” money, since he was killing many people he would never run out of skeletons to

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).