It’s 1893, and you’ve made it to the World’s Fair in Chicago, Illinois. All the hotels are booked solid, and there’s no place to stay. Fortunately, a man by the name of H.H. Holmes has opened up his property, and rented you a room in the newly renovated Castle! Lady luck was definitely on your side, or was she?
The property was 3 stories tall, and was an entire block long. It was so imposing, the community had dubbed it “The Castle.” The bottom floor of the castle contained shops, the top was Holmes’ personal office. The middle floor was a maze of confusing hallways, dead ends, and secret passageways. It contained more than 100 rooms, and doors that opened to brick walls.
At the end of the day, you lay down and fall asleep, only to wake up in a huge bank vault. You would shout for help, bang on the walls, the door. Eventually panic would set in and your screams would leave you struggling for air – for you didn’t realize it before, but the room was sound proof, and oxygen was limited. You would die, scared and alone.
But that wouldn’t be the end for you. Once you were gone, your body would be collected, and dropped through a greased chute, that would deliver your body to a work room in the cellar.
The cellar was brick-lined and dark, easily compared to a dungeon. It was filled with various apparatus such as quicklime vats, an acid tank, a dissecting table and surgeon’s cabinet, as well as some contraptions of his own invention. One such contraption was called the “elasticity determinator.” Holmes claimed it could stretch subjects to twice their normal height, where he could eventually create a “race of giants.”
You would be spared this torture, and instead meticulously dissected and stripped of your flesh. Your bones cleaned and crafted into a skeleton model. Today, you stand in a university, for all medical students to study and learn from.
How and why did this happen to you? Well, that’s simple. You stayed in the Castle. Renovated to be a “Hotel of Horrors.” You fell asleep, and that’s when H.H. Holmes turned on the gas that vented into your room. You passed out, only to wake in his vault, where only he could hear your screams.
Beyond loving the sounds of your screams, your captor was a very greedy man. He needed money, and he had connections. He had contacts whom he had met in medical school, and with little difficulty, he was able to sell your skeleton, and even some of your organs. At least you weren’t one of his many wives.
Mr. Holmes, born Herman Webster Mudgett, was a sharp and dashing man. He married many times, sometimes to multiple women at once, usually to the wealthiest of women. Emeline Cigrand was one of those women. Though they never married, she had accepted his marriage proposal. Shortly afterward, she disappeared into thin air. Holmes claimed she had run off with another man. Without further explanation, he packed up her clothes and personal belongings and sent them back to her family.
He later confessed to locking Cigrand in his vault and raping her before killing her.
Holmes always had his wives, and female employees, take out life insurance policies, listing him as the sole beneficiary. Killing them, and making them disappear, always gave him an influx of cash.
He also helped women by performing hundreds of illegal abortions. Some of his patients died as a result of the procedure, and their corpses were ultimately processed and the skeletons sold.
But it wasn’t enough. When the World’s Fair ended, creditors were closing in. Holmes left Chicago and traveled around the US and Canada, continuing with insurance fraud and the occasional murder.
Holmes may have never been caught, if it wasn’t for this greed. In Philadelphia, he concocted a plan with a former employee, and friend, Benjamin Pitezel. Pitezel had an insurance policy for $10,000. They conspired to fake Pitezel’s death – Holmes would produce a charred corpse and claim it was Pitezel, who would have “burned in a laboratory explosion.” Instead of following through with the plan though, Holmes got Pitezel drunk and set him on fire after he passed out.
Holmes convinced Pitezel’s wife to allow 3 of her 5 children (2 girls and 1 boy) to stay in his custody, while the insurance claims were sorted out. He told her that her husband was hiding out in South America for the time being, and he traveled with the children through the northern US and into Canada.
He collected the insurance money, but the police had been alerted to the plot and Philadelphia detective, Frank Geyer, began to track Holmes down. He finally arrested Holmes in Boston on November 17, 1894.
While Holmes sat in prison, the Chicago Police investigated his operations in that city, and the Philadelphia police began to try and unravel the whole Pitezel situation, specifically what had happened to the 3 missing children. Geyer eventually discovered their remains, Holmes had killed them all. They found the boy’s teeth along with some bits of bone inside a chimney in a home that Holmes had rented in Indianapolis.
The Hearst newspapers paid Holmes $7,500 to tell his story, and in a series of articles, he confessed to killing 27 people in Chicago. Chicago Police investigated the Castle, and utilizing missing persons lists, estimate the body count to be closer to 230.
Holmes stood trial in Philadelphia on October 28, 1895 for the murder of Benjamin Pitezel, where he was found guilty of first degree murder. On May 7, 1896, he was hanged at Moyamensing Prison, also known as the Philadelphia County Prison. He remained calm and amiable, showing very few signs of fear, anxiety or depression.
His neck did not snap immediately, instead he died a slow death, twitching for over 15 minutes before finally being pronounced dead 20 minutes after the trap was sprung.
Holmes requested that he be buried in concrete so that no one could ever dig him up and dissect his body, as he had dissected so many others. His request was granted, however there is evidence to suggest that Holmes did not, in fact, die by hanging.
A former janitor at the murder castle, Robert Lattimer, claimed that he had seen letters proving that Holmes conned his lawyer, priest, and jail officials into burying a dead man in his place. It is believed that Holmes could have bribed officials at the prison to substitute a cadaver for his own corpse, and flee to South America.
When an undertaker’s wagon, containing a casket, drove out of the prison yard 2 hours after the hanging, it was supposed to contain the body of Holmes. Instead, it contained a living Holmes. It is believed that he moved on, becoming none other, than Jack-the-Ripper.
Needing to know the truth, Holme’s great-grandchildren, John and Richard Mudgett and Cynthia Mudgett Soriano, petitioned the Delaware County Court to exhume his body. On March 9, 2017, the court granted permission for the exhumation of Holmes’ body, and tasked the University of Pennsylvania’s Anthropology Department with performing DNA analysis.
It took quite a while to get his body out of the ground, courtesy of his unique burial requests. His casket was buried and covered in 7 – 3,000 pound barrels of cement. When his body was finally out of the ground, anthropologist, Samantha Cox, told the NewsWorks online site that his body had not properly decomposed.
His clothes were almost perfectly preserved, and his moustache was still intact, on his skull. However, his corpse had decayed. “It stank,” Cox told the news site. “Once it gets to that point we can’t do anything with it. We can’t test it, can’t get any DNA out of it.” So in order to get a proper DNA sample, they had to use his teeth.
Tests confirmed that the body in Holmes’s grave, was in fact, the notorious serial killer himself.
Holmes has once again been buried, this time at Holy Cross Cemetery, in Yeadon.
If we look at horrific crimes in history, there are few that compare with those of Albert Fish.
