"The Torture Dr."
Holmes's murders were often quite mundane, however at other times they seemed to be reminiscent of a gothic horror story such as the real as life elizabeth bathory, as he had his own castle filled with strange passageways, torture chambers and tombs. Holmes's crimes earned him notoriety that was matched in his day only by that of Jack the Ripper.
H. H Holmes being a swindler at heart did not use his real name, in fact he was born Herman Webster Mudgett, born a year before the civil war, in the small New Hampshire town of Gilmanton. Known as being a strange boy, he was often beaten by his father who believed that religion could be bludgeoned into his son and the other boys in town who bullied him mercilessly. He had only one friend who died when he was young, it may only be coincidence that young Mudgett was directly behind him as he fell from a second floor landing in an abandoned house.
When Mudgett reached the age of college years he took his chance and left to Michigan, there he saw opportunities in the hospital wards and dissection rooms to gain access to corpses for his insurance scams.
In 1886 the twenty six year old Mudgett was now in Chicago under the name of H. H Holmes. By now Holmes was already a bigamist, and he would then marry a Mrs. Hilton, owner of a pharmacy. Conveniently for Holmes she met her untimely death leaving the entire store under sole ownership of H. H Holmes.
With his business and sales of bogus medicine Holmes now had enough money to build a large house across the street from his pharmacy which he would call his "Castle". It became the home of his most bizarre murders, secret passageways connected over a hundred rooms each outfitted with peep holes and a gas vent.
He would lock up his lover who got on his bad side and poison her to death, lock up his janitor and watch him starve to death, and then make a device through which the room would ignite through the gas vent.
Holmes rented the rooms to tourists in 1893 as part of the Chicago World Fair. He killed some of his guests and sold the corpses to medical schools. Then Chicago became suspicious of Holmes based on the origins of the fire damage to part of the castle which he tried to claim insurance on. To avoid any trouble Holmes fled to other states and other scams taking on a partner named Ben Pitezel.
In 1894 the two men came up with a scheme which included splitting the payment of Pitezel's life insurance policy, but despite Holmes's background in this matter he decided not to find a corpse or share the money and killed Pitezel and took the insurance money. After killing the rest of Pitezel's family Holmes was finally tracked down and arrested.
Dubbed as Americas criminal of the Century he confessed to twenty seven murders, some think it to be around 200, where around 50 would be the more likely estimate. Herman Mudgett a.k.a H. H Holmes was hung on May 7th 1896.