H.H. Holmes and the Murder Castle of Chicago

"I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing – I was born with the ‘Evil One’ standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered into the world, and he has been with me since."

– H.H. Holmes

Herman Webster Mudgett, a name lost to infamy, is far better known by his chilling alias: Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, or more simply, H.H. Holmes. He stands as one of America’s first documented serial killers, a figure whose depravity continues to fascinate and horrify. Operating in the shadowy corners of the late 19th century, Holmes is alleged to have extinguished as many as 200 lives. While he confessed to 28 murders, authorities could only definitively confirm nine. However, his wickedness extended beyond mere homicide. He was a master con artist, a bigamist, and a magnet for legal troubles, facing over 50 lawsuits in Chicago alone. His story is a dark stain on American history, forever intertwined with the chilling edifice known as the "Murder Castle."

Herman Mudgett’s life began on May 16, 1861, in the rural town of Gilmanton, New Hampshire. He was the son of Levi Horton Mudgett, a farmer and occasional trader and house painter, and Theodate Page Price, both descendants of early English settlers and devout members of their church. Herman was the second of five children, growing up in a family steeped in traditional values.

From an early age, Herman displayed an exceptional intellect, consistently excelling in his studies. However, his academic prowess was often overshadowed by the torment he endured at the hands of his peers, who subjected him to relentless bullying. Even more disturbing were the unsettling signs that emerged in his behavior. He was known to perform crude surgeries on animals, displaying a chilling lack of empathy. Accounts also suggest acts of cruelty toward younger children. Some even hint at his possible involvement in the death of a childhood friend, casting a sinister shadow over his formative years.

At the age of 16, Holmes, using his birth name Herman Mudgett, graduated from high school and embarked on a teaching career, first in Gilmanton and later in the nearby town of Alton. On July 4, 1878, he married Clara Lovering, the daughter of a prosperous family, whose financial support would later contribute to his education. In 1880, the couple welcomed a son into the world.

In 1879, at the age of 18, Mudgett enrolled at the University of Vermont in Burlington, but his time there was short-lived, lasting only a year. Two years later, in 1882, he pursued his ambition of becoming a doctor by entering the University of Michigan’s Department of Medicine and Surgery. He successfully graduated in June 1884. During his studies, he secured a position in the anatomy lab, working directly under the chief anatomy instructor. He also apprenticed under Dr. Nahum Wight, a prominent advocate of human dissection in New Hampshire. It was during this period that he discovered a morbid fascination with dissecting cadavers, a pursuit that would later fuel his darkest impulses.

Even as a medical student, Mudgett began dabbling in various fraudulent schemes and scams. He would steal corpses from the university’s anatomy lab, disfiguring them through burning or other means. He then strategically placed the bodies to resemble accident victims. With insurance policies taken out on the deceased, he collected the payouts upon their discovery. He was also known to profit from the theft and sale of cadavers and skeletons, demonstrating a complete disregard for ethical boundaries. His "passion" for dissecting corpses led to speculation that he used the bodies for his own twisted experiments.

Simultaneously, Clara endured abuse at Mudgett’s hands. In 1884, before his graduation, Clara and their son left him and returned to New Hampshire, never to see him again.

After medical school, he relocated to Mooers Forks, New York, where rumors began to circulate about Mudgett’s association with a young boy who subsequently disappeared. Herman claimed the boy had returned to his home in Massachusetts. Without an official investigation, Mudgett swiftly departed from the town.

His next destination was Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he briefly worked as a keeper at Norristown State Hospital. He soon resigned, finding employment at a local drugstore. However, a dark cloud descended when a boy died after consuming medicine purchased at the store. Holmes vehemently denied any involvement in the child’s death and promptly left Philadelphia.

In 1886, despite still being married to Clara, Mudgett entered into a bigamous marriage with Myrta Belknap in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The couple eventually had a daughter. Shortly after marrying Myrta, he filed for divorce from Clara, alleging infidelity. However, these claims lacked substantiation, and the suit never progressed. It’s likely that Clara was never even notified of the proceedings, and the divorce was never finalized.

Also in 1886, Mudgett adopted the alias Henry Howard Holmes, likely to conceal his fraudulent activities from authorities. He and Myrta relocated to Illinois, settling in Wilmette. However, Holmes spent the majority of his time in Chicago, drawn to the city’s burgeoning opportunities.

In Chicago, he secured employment at Holton’s drugstore, situated at the southwest corner of South Wallace Avenue and West 63rd Street in Englewood. Dr. Edward Holton, the owner, was a fellow alumnus of the University of Michigan, though a few years older than Holmes. Proving to be a diligent and capable employee, Holmes eventually acquired the store from Holton.

He then purchased an empty lot across from the drugstore and began constructing a two-story mixed-use building in 1887. The plans called for apartments on the second floor and retail spaces, including a new drugstore, on the first. When Holmes refused to pay the contractors for their work, they filed a lawsuit in 1888. Despite the legal challenges, construction continued, with Holmes employing a strategy of hiring and firing numerous construction crews. He did this to prevent anyone from gaining a complete understanding of the building’s design and to later dispute the quality of their workmanship, allowing him to avoid payment. Law enforcement later determined that Holmes never paid for any of the materials used in the building’s construction.

The local residents soon began referring to the building as "The Castle." The name would become synonymous with horror and death.

Upon its completion in 1891, Holmes placed advertisements in newspapers, offering employment to young women and promoting the Castle as a lodging option. He also cultivated an image of a wealthy man seeking a wife. Holmes’ employees, hotel guests, fiancées, and wives were often pressured to take out life insurance policies, with Holmes or one of his aliases named as the beneficiary. Around this time, people began to disappear without a trace. H.H. Holmes was creating a death trap.

Holmes was not faithful to Myrta, his second wife, and began an affair with Julia Smythe Conner. Julia was married to Alex Conner, who had moved into Holmes’ building and was working as a bookkeeper and at the pharmacy’s jewelry counter. After Alex discovered Julia’s affair with Holmes, he quit his job and left Julia and her daughter, Pearl, behind. Julia and Pearl remained at the hotel, and she continued her relationship with Holmes. Around Christmas in 1891, Julia and Pearl vanished. They were likely his first known victims. Holmes later claimed that Julia had died during an abortion, but what truly happened to them was never confirmed.

In 1892, Holmes added a third floor to his building, telling investors and suppliers that he intended to use it as a hotel during the upcoming World’s Columbian Exposition. However, the hotel portion was never completed. Furniture suppliers found that Holmes was hiding their materials, for which he had never paid, in hidden rooms and passages throughout the building. Their search made the news, and investors for the planned hotel pulled out of the deal. The sinister purpose of H.H. Holmes‘ "Castle" was beginning to reveal itself.

In May 1892, another girl named Emeline Cigrande began working in the building and disappeared in December. Another neighborhood girl by the name of Edna Van Tassel also "vanished" at about the same time and was thought to have been another potential victim.

Meanwhile, Holmes met Benjamin Pitezel after placing an ad searching for carpenters. Pitezel was also a petty criminal and alcoholic. Despite his flaws, the two became close friends, and Pitezel quickly became Holmes’ right-hand man for several criminal schemes.

In early 1893, a one-time actress named Minnie Williams moved to Chicago, and Holmes offered her a job at the hotel as his secretary. Williams owned some property in Fort Worth, Texas, that Holmes convinced her to sign over to him. Holmes later transferred the deed to Pitezel. In May 1893, Holmes and Williams rented an apartment in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, presenting themselves as man and wife. Minnie’s sister, Nannie, came to visit, and in July, she wrote to her aunt that she planned to accompany "Brother Harry" to Europe. Neither Minnie nor Nannie were seen alive after July 5, 1893.

In 1893, Chicago hosted the World’s Fair, a cultural and social event celebrating the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of America. The fair, scheduled for May to October, attracted thousands of visitors worldwide. During this time, H.H. Holmes opened his home as a hotel for tourists, but some guests would never be seen again.

Holmes capitalized on the influx of visitors by advertising in local newspapers. He referred to his establishment, located just a few miles from the fairgrounds, as the "World’s Fair Hotel." He lured unsuspecting victims through his advertisements and attended the fair with the Pitezel children, displaying a charming and impeccably dressed persona. He enticed wealthy women to his castle with promises of a good night’s rest. Many of these women, often from out of town and lost in the large crowds, became difficult to trace once they vanished into the dark corners of the castle.

When the fair closed, a long list of "missing" persons was compiled, with foul play suspected in many cases. While the exact number of victims remains a mystery, no fewer than 50 people reported missing were traced back to the castle, where their whereabouts ultimately ended.

On August 13, 1893, the third floor of Holmes’ building caught fire. Luckily, only a few people were in the building – all employees and long-term residents who could get out. Holmes had taken out insurance policies on the building with at least four companies, who promptly sued rather than pay.

With insurance companies pressing to prosecute Holmes for arson, Holmes left Chicago in July 1894. He reappeared in Fort Worth, looking to build on the property that Minnie Williams had transferred. That same month, however, he was arrested and briefly incarcerated for the first time for selling mortgaged goods in St. Louis, Missouri.

While in jail, he spoke with a convicted outlaw, Marion Hedgepeth, serving a 25-year sentence. Holmes had concocted a plan to swindle an insurance company out of $10,000 by taking out a policy on himself and then faking his death. Holmes promised Hedgepeth a $500 commission in exchange for the name of a lawyer who could be trusted. Given the name of Jeptha Howe, Holmes began planning his own death after he was released on bail. However, the plan failed when the insurance company became suspicious and refused to pay. Holmes did not press the claim; instead, he concocted a similar plan with his friend, Benjamin Pitezel.

Pitezel agreed to fake his death so that his wife could collect on a $10,000 life insurance policy, which was to be split with Holmes and attorney Jeptha Howe. The scheme, which was to take place in Philadelphia, called for Pitezel to set himself up as an inventor under the name B.F. Perry and then be killed and disfigured in a lab explosion. Holmes was to find an appropriate cadaver to play the role of Pitezel.

Instead, Holmes killed Pitezel by knocking him unconscious with chloroform and setting his body on fire. Holmes proceeded to collect the insurance payout based on the genuine Pitezel corpse. He then manipulated Pitezel’s unsuspecting wife into allowing three of her five children to be in his custody. The eldest daughter and the baby remained with Mrs. Pitezel while Holmes and the three Pitezel children traveled throughout the northern United States and into Canada. Simultaneously, he escorted Mrs. Pitezel along a parallel route, all the while using various aliases and lying to Mrs. Pitezel concerning her husband’s death, claiming that her husband was in London.

Holmes later confessed to murdering two of the children by forcing them into a large trunk, drilling a hole in the trunk, and attaching a gas line to asphyxiate the girls. Holmes buried their nude bodies in the cellar of his rental house in Toronto. Frank Geyer, a Philadelphia detective tracking Holmes, found the decomposed bodies of the two Pitezel girls in the Toronto basement.

Geyer then followed Holmes to Indianapolis, where Holmes had rented a cottage. Holmes was reported to have visited a local pharmacy to purchase the drugs that he used to kill the third Pitezel child and a repair shop to sharpen the knives he used to chop up the body before he burned it. The boy’s teeth and bits of bone were discovered in the home’s chimney.

On January 17, 1894, Holmes married Georgiana Yoke for a third time in Denver, Colorado. He was still legally married to Clara and Myrta.

Marion Hedgetpath, angry that he did not receive any money in the "faked death" scam, told police about the fraud that Holmes had planned. Afterward, the authorities doubled their efforts to find the elusive killer. The evil schemes of H.H. Holmes were starting to unravel.

Holmes’ murder spree finally ended when he was arrested in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 17, 1894, after being tracked there from Philadelphia by the Pinkertons. He was held on an outstanding warrant for horse theft in Texas, as the authorities had become more suspicious, and Holmes appeared poised to flee the country in the company of his unsuspecting third wife.

During his time in custody, Holmes initially claimed to be nothing but an insurance fraudster, admitting to using cadavers to defraud life insurance companies several times in college. But, over time, his stories changed once he admitted to killing 28 people. Other estimates range from 20 to as many as 200 victims. While incarcerated, Holmes was paid $7,500 (worth about $216,000 today) by the Hearst newspapers in exchange for his confession, much of which was found to be lies. Holmes gave various contradictory accounts of his life, initially claiming innocence and later that Satan possessed him. His many lies made it difficult for investigators to determine the truth.

With Holmes behind bars, Chicago police began to investigate Holmes’ building. The ground floor was divided into ordinary retail spaces, including a jewelry store, pharmacy, blacksmith shop, barber, and restaurant. The third floor comprised apartments, offices, and Holmes’ living quarters. But they discovered an elaborate house of horrors on the second floor and basement. The Murder Castle was exposed.

The second floor was a maze of some 35 small windowless rooms, stairs, doors that led nowhere, false partitions, trap doors, secret passageways, and a staircase that opened over a steep drop to the alley behind the house. Some trapdoors and dumbwaiters enabled him to move the bodies down to the basement. Some rooms were soundproof and had peepholes enabling Holmes to monitor their interiors. Others were connected to a gas line where victims could be asphyxiated.

The basement held a crematorium, a blood-spattered dissection table, vats of acid, surgical implements, various jars of poison, pits of quicklime, and torture devices attached to the walls. Holmes is thought to have stripped many of the bodies down to their skeleton to sell them for medical study.

Not only did they find the equipment to produce evil, but they also found large quantities of human bones, tufts of hair, bloodstained linen, and pieces of clothing that appeared to have been hastily concealed. Portions of bodies were so badly dismembered and decomposed that it was hard for them to determine exactly how many bodies there really were.

The building soon became known as the "Murder Castle." This terrifying creation solidified H.H. Holmes‘ place in history.

After a trial in which he acted as his own attorney, Holmes was sentenced to death for the murder of Benjamin Pitezel in 1895. Holmes appealed his case but lost. Though Canada and Illinois both tried to extradite Holmes from Pennsylvania, he was executed. He met his end on May 7, 1896, when he was hanged for the Pitezel murder in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Until the moment of his death, Holmes remained calm and amiable, showing very few signs of fear, anxiety, or depression. During the hanging, Holmes’ neck did not snap; he instead was strangled to death slowly, twitching for over 15 minutes before being pronounced dead 20 minutes after the trap had been sprung.

Holmes asked for his coffin to be contained in cement and buried 10 feet deep because he was concerned grave robbers would steal his body and use it for dissection.

Holmes’s life as one of America’s first serial killers has been the subject of many books, documentaries, and a feature film.

The Castle itself was mysteriously gutted by fire in August 1895. According to a newspaper clipping from the New York Times, two men were seen entering the back of the building between 8 and 9 p.m. About half an hour later, they were seen exiting the building and rapidly running away. Following several explosions, the Castle went up in flames. Afterward, investigators found a half-empty gas can underneath the back steps of the building. The building survived the fire and remained in use until it was torn down in 1938. The Englewood branch of the United States Postal Service currently occupies the site.

In 2017, amid allegations that Holmes had escaped execution, Holmes’ body was exhumed for testing. Due to his coffin being contained in cement, his body was found not to have decomposed normally. His clothes were almost perfectly preserved, and his mustache was intact. The body was positively identified as being that of Holmes with his teeth. Holmes was then reburied.