The Night At The Corner Of A Street

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

His ambition was to create a game which involved the suffering of others. Killing people created him a sort of pleasure, “Holmes was enjoying himself. He had arranged the insurance fraud for money, but the rest of it was for fun. Holmes was testing his power to bend lives of people” (Larson 355). Holmes always looked for people that he saw as weak and he used them to create his game which to him was to see how far he could go in changing a person’s life. While Geyer was investigating the disappearances of the Pitezel children he said that all criminals had a motive but no one really saw clearly what Holmes’ motive was. Later Geyer was drawn to the conclusion of Holmes wanting to have power over people’s lives. Holmes wanted to control people and produce others a suffering as he did when Carrie Pitezel was put in a hotel by Holmes in front of the hotel her children were in, without any of them knowing, that was his game. In the novel both Burnham and Holmes had ambitions but both had very different ambitions, which led their lives in different paths. Burnham by having the ambition to want Chicago to prosper became America’s best architect. Holmes’ ambition took him to jail and eventually to his death. The novel The Devil in the White City, illustrates that everything is not what it seems using the character Holmes and the creation of the World’s Fair. Holmes was known as a charming doctor that starstruck every woman that he laid an eye upon. It was said by

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

    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

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

During the construction of the “Castle” Holmes hired a carpenter named Benjamin Pitezal as his assistant because Holmes deemed him to be unintelligent and easily manipulated due to alcoholism. The victims Holmes prayed on were generally young single woman with no social ties. Holmes used a variety of methods to kill the victims. After killing the individuals; Holmes stripped the corpses of flesh and paid an individual to assemble the bones into skeleton models to sell to medical colleges for money (Wilson & Seaman, 2011). When Holmes failed to pay his debtors he and his assistant went on the run. Holmes was arrested for fraud and bonded out, however while in his jail cell he bragged to another inmate about the insurance fraud who would later reveal the crime and link to the serial killers crimes. The pair moved state to state committing frauds and petty crimes. Holmes convinced Pitezal to fake his own death so the two could collect on a $10,000.00 in another fraudulent life insurance scheme (Schmid, 2006). Holmes turned on his assistant killing not only him, but three of his young children as well. Pitezals wife alerted authorities to her missing children and husband, she was informed the remains of her husband were discovered and the realization of what had occurred with her family was uncovered. Later the

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

The World’s Columbian Exposition, more commonly known today as the Chicago World’s Fair, brought forth numerous innovations people use commonly today: Juicy Fruit chewing gum, Shredded Wheat, the Pledge of Allegiance, the Ferris Wheel, books printed in Braille, automatic dishwashers, even Aunt Jemima pancake mix. In The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America, Erik Larson presents these brilliant inventions with a flourish that makes the reader feel as though he is there, experiencing the magic in person. However, despite the spellbinding descriptions and otherworldly air, the author explores a more macabre side to the story. The reader can never get too comfortable in the mystique of the Fair because lying at the end of each chapter about beauty, Larson reconstructs the White City in a different light. In the novel, Erik Larson uses diction and pathos to disquiet the reader while telling the chilling story of H.H. Holmes, what he did, and how he got away with it for so long.

H.H. Holmes arrives in the city of Englewood, Illinois. Holmes enters E. S. Holton Drugs and talks to the store owner Mrs. Holton about a job. She was in need of desperate help because her husband had cancer. The plot then goes to Mudgett’s childhood including scene in a doctor's office and the fake death a friend. Towards the later part of the chapter Mr. Holton dies and Holmes asks Mrs. Holton if he could buy the store, and she agreed.

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.

While Burnham and Root are collecting a structural group, a youthful, good looking, blue-peered toward specialist who calls himself H. H. Holmes lands in Chicago. Holmes, who was conceived Herman Mudgett, is hugely alluring to ladies, partially on the grounds that he breaks the conventional guidelines of romance. He has effectively hitched a lady named Clara, however he relinquishes her rapidly. In Chicago, he appreciates the sickening scents of the slaughterhouses that are the significant business of the city, and rapidly buys a drugstore that gets to be distinctly well known in light of the fact that he pulls in female clients. Holmes weds a

He lived a pretty good childhood. After shooting up the movie theater in Colorado, James Holmes was sent to court and doctors said he was acting odd. He pleaded not guilty in court. Once he was sent to jail, a couple days later he ended up laying on the floor naked and motionless and did not want to respond to any jail staff. At lunch he would take the meat out of the sandwiches and put it between two pieces of paper and ate it. He was also found smearing feeces on himself, licking the walls and eating paper.

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 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).

After the encounter with the skeleton, he started to become more and more obsessed with death and dead things. Holmes was known to dissect dead, and even alive, animals as a hobby. As he grew into his teens, he became a bully, too. Younger children were afraid of him, but Holmes saw his actions almost as payback for what he had to endure as a young child. Some could say that these encounters with dead animals, bullying classmates, and his obsession with death should have been