Chicago, Illinois is the largest city in the Midwest. It is the home of over three million people, making it the third most populous city in the United States. The city was rebuilt bigger and better than ever after the conflagration of 1871 destroyed much of it. The fire blazed from October 8 to October 10, 1871, obliterating over four square miles of the booming city. Chicago was the host of the Chicago World’s Fair (World’s Columbian Exposition) of 1893. People flocked in hundreds to marvel at the grand exhibit. The fair was a sight to behold, covering 600 acres and attracting over 20 million visitors. It was a celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America. As tourists eagerly attended the fair, more ominous events were taking place just blocks away. Herman Webster Mudgett was committing some of the most heinous acts that would shock and horrify the nation when disclosed 2 years later. The following is an account of the life and crimes of the man known to many as “Dr. H.H. Holmes.”
Herman Webster Mudgett was born in Gilmanton, New Hampshire in 1860. He was highly intelligent and excelled in his studies. He usually avoided company, as he was often the object of ridicule and mockery by his classmates. During one particularly traumatizing incident, Herman was reluctantly dragged into the office of the village doctor by some of his older schoolmates. The doctor was away on a house call and the boys forced the hands of a human skeleton upon Herman’s face. Although he was petrified by this experience, Herman later claimed that it was the start of his lifelong fascination with anatomy. By age eleven, Herman was dissecting kittens, salamanders, frogs, rabbits and dogs and performing medical experiments on them. In 1884, Herman received his medical degree from the University of Michigan. He was also a skilled con artist and often swindled insurance companies by using a scam that he was quite fond of. He would take out a life insurance policy on a non-existent person and substitute a human cadaver, claiming that it was the insured individual. He would then cash in the policy.
Mudgett arrived in Chicago in 1886 and was now living under the alias of Dr. Henry Howard Holmes. He worked as an assistant to an elderly widow who owned a drugstore. Soon after selling the drugstore to Holmes, the widow mysteriously disappeared. With the combination of the revenue from the pharmacy and the proceeds from his scams, Holmes began constructing a massive building across the street from the drugstore.
The exterior of the building was affluent and impressive, much like its owner. Unbeknownst to everyone, behind its grand façade, Holmes’ castle was a labyrinth of terror. The building contained over one hundred rooms. Some of these rooms had gas pipes connected to a main tank located in the basement. Via a control panel located in his office, Holmes had the power to fill any of the rooms with poisonous gas at his whim. Other rooms were soundproofed to prevent others from hearing the cries for help from within. These rooms were also insulated with asbestos addled padding. The rooms were all connected with secret passages, bogus walls, trap doors and hidden shafts. Greased chutes were located on the second and third floors and ran down to the basement where Holmes’ personal laboratory was located. Here he kept surgical instruments, a dissection table, acid vats, calcium oxide (quicklime) pits and a kiln large enough to contain a human body.
In 1891, Holmes formed a sexual relationship with Julia Conner, the wife of a man who rented space inside the castle. When she became pregnant, her husband left her. Holmes performed a botched abortion on her, killing her in the process. He then asphyxiated her young daughter with chloroform. In 1892, Holmes became intimate with his secretary, Emeline Cigrand. One day he sent her into a vault to retrieve a document. He then locked her in and watched her die of suffocation. In 1893, Minnie Williams became Holmes’ new secretary and mistress. She owned property in Fort Worth, Texas valued at $40,000. Holmes killed both Minnie and her younger sister after having her sign her property over to him. By this time, Holmes was using the Chicago World’s Fair to his advantage and offered lodging to some of the tourists. Many of them were never seen or heard from again. Holmes married constantly and at one time had three wives simultaneously, each of them completely unaware of the others. In 1894, he married his third wife, Georgiana Yoke, and innocent woman who was oblivious to the horrible deeds that her husband was committing. He married her under the pseudonym of Henry Mansfield Howard.
Holmes drew attention to himself when he committed insurance fraud in Texas. Due to a corrupt attorney, Holmes was freed. Detective Frank Geyer of the Pinkerton Agency was assigned to investigate the insurance fraud. Geyer would soon discover that Holmes was responsible for deeds much more horrible and severe than swindling.
Holmes subsequently killed his friend and associate, Benjamin Pitezel, using the insurance scam that he favored. He took out a $10,000 life insurance policy on Pitezel to which his wife, Carrie Pitezel was the beneficiary. Instead of supplying a cadaver and passing him off as Benjamin, he killed him. After Benjamin’s death, Holmes continued to lead Carrie to believe that her husband was alive and well.
Frank Geyer began re-tracing all of Holmes’ steps, traveling from one state to another. Eventually on his journey, he came upon the bodies of three of the five Pitezel children whom Holmes had murdered. All three of the children were under Holmes’ care at one point or another during the twisted game that he was playing with the Pitezel family.
After the grisly discovery of the children’s bodies, police searched Holmes’ castle on July 18, 1895. There they found mixed bones, a dissection table soaked with blood and the charred remains of hundreds of victims. It was not possible to identify all of the victims because the bone fragments were too small to contain the necessary characteristics for positive identification. Over 50 of the missing visitors of the World’s Fair were traced back to Holmes’ castle.
Thanks to the tireless efforts of Frank Geyer, Holmes was sentenced to death on November 30, 1895 for the murder of Benjamin Pitezel. While awaiting his execution, Holmes wrote a memoir in which he discussed 27 of the murders that he committed. He was executed by hanging on May 27, 1896.
