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H.H. Holmes, byname of Herman Mudgett, (born May 16, 1861?, Gilmanton, New Hampshire, U.S.-died May 7, 1896, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), American swindler and confidence trickster who is widely considered the country's first known serial killer.

Mudgett was born into a wealthy family and showed signs of high intelligence from an early age. Always interested in medicine, he allegedly trapped animals and performed surgery on them; some accounts of his life even suggest that he killed a childhood playmate. Mudgett attended medical school at the University of Michigan, where he was a mediocre student. In 1884 he was nearly prevented from graduating when a widowed hairdresser accused him of making a false promise of marriage to her.

In 1886 Mudgett moved to Chicago and took a job as a pharmacist under the name "Dr. H.H. Holmes." Soon afterward he apparently began killing people in order to steal their property. The house he built for himself, which would become known as "Murder Castle," was equipped with secret passages, trapdoors, soundproof rooms, doors that could be locked from the outside, gas jets to asphyxiate victims, and a kiln to cremate the bodies. At the reputed peak of his career, during the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, he allegedly seduced and murdered a number of women, typically by becoming engaged to them and then killing them after securing control of their life savings. Mudgett also required his employees to carry life insurance policies naming him as beneficiary so that he could collect money after he killed them. He sold the bodies of many of his victims to local medical schools.

In 1893 Mudgett was arrested for insurance fraud after a fire at his home, but he was soon released. He then concocted a scheme with an associate, Ben Pitezel, to defraud an insurance company by faking Pitezel's death. After Pitezel purchased a $10,000 life insurance policy, he and Mudgett traveled to Colorado, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas, where they committed other acts of fraud (along the way, Mudgett also married). Returning to Missouri, Mudgett was arrested for fraud and briefly jailed in St. Louis. While in jail he met Marion Hedgepeth, a career criminal who agreed to help Mudgett in the insurance scheme with Pitezel. Meanwhile, Pitezel moved to Philadelphia and opened a fake patent office to swindle inventors. After his release from jail, Mudgett traveled to Philadelphia and killed Pitezel. He then convinced Pitezel's widow, who had been aware of her husband's involvement in the insurance scheme, that her husband was still alive, later giving her $500 of the money he collected. Worried that some of Pitezel's five children might alert the authorities, Mudgett killed three of them. Insurance investigators were alerted to the fraud by Hedgepeth, and Mudgett was arrested in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1894. He was tried in Philadelphia for the murder of Pitezel and was sentenced to death by hanging.

Mudgett confessed to 27 murders (he later increased the total to more than 130), though some researchers have suggested that the real number exceeded 200. Mudgett sold his story to the Hearst Corporation for $10,000.

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H.H. Holmes, American swindler and confidence trickster who is widely considered the country's first known serial killer. After initially confessing to 27 murders, he increased the total to more than 130, though some researchers put the real number at more than 200.

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One of the most bizarre stories in Chicago history is the tale of America's first serial killer, Dr. Henry H. Holmes, and his Murder Castle.

In the summer of 1886, Holmes, whose real name was Herman Mudgett, went to work in a drugstore owned by Dr. E.S. Holton, in Englewood, a suburb of Chicago that is now part of the city.

Holmes, who graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School, had already racked up a fairly impressive resume of fraud, forgery and petty theft by this time, including, while still a med student, taking out insurance policies on cadavers he stole from the school. He would disfigure the bodies, claim they were the victims of accidents, and then collect on their insurance.

Unaware of Holmes' previous activities, Dr. Holton, who was dying of cancer, was easily charmed by the young man. After Dr. Holton died, Holmes took over the drugstore-mysteriously, the widow Holton soon disappeared and was never seen again-claiming he had purchased it from Mrs. Holton who had moved to California.

In addition to being a killer, Holmes was also a bigamist and a philanderer. In 1878, he had married Clara Lovering in New Hampshire but later abandoned her. Nine years later, he married Myrtle Belnap in Minneapolis, despite still being married to his first wife.

That marriage ended in 1889 but a year later he was having an affair with Julia Conner, the wife of one of his employees. By 1893, he had tired of Connor and began a relationship with Minnie Williams. Shortly after, Connor and her daughter disappeared. A year later, he married Georgianna Yoke and shortly after that Williams and her sister, who Holmes had also seduced, disappeared.

But the murders of those women only hinted at the horrors that would be attributed to Holmes. In 1889, he purchased a large lot across the street from the drugstore and started building a three-story, block-long hotel, which the media later dubbed the Murder Castle.

During the hotel's construction, Holmes repeatedly changed builders so only he completely understood the design of the structure.

And it's no understatement to say the design was unusual. While the ground floor seemed normal enough-it housed his relocated drugstore and several shops-the upper two floors contained his personal office and a maze of more than 70 rooms with no windows as well as doors that opened into brick walls, hallways built at odd angles, secret passages, trap doors, soundproof rooms, stairs that led nowhere and doors that could only be opened from the outside.

Even more bizarre were the more special design elements he incorporated, such as a hot burning, gas-fueled kiln in the basement and vault rooms with mysterious gas lines controlled from his office.

In 1892, Holmes' lodging house was completed and he began advertising rooms for rent, specifically targeting out-of-town visitors coming to Chicago for the upcoming World's Fair.

Additionally, he placed classified ads in small town newspapers in the various parts of the Midwest, offering jobs to young ladies. His ploy was to offer a young woman a position but stress she needed to withdraw all her money from the bank because she would need funds to get started. He would also take out a large life insurance policy on her. Once the young woman had settled into the hotel, she would become his captive and disappear.

No one knows for sure how many people Holmes killed, although he later said 27, and some sources have claimed he murdered as many as 200. At the conclusion of the World's Fair, Holmes, who was being harassed by his creditors as well as detectives hired by the families of some of the missing people, tried to burn his castle in order to collect $6,000 in insurance money. When that failed, he abandoned the hotel and set out for Texas, where he planned to build a duplicate.

But it wasn't Holmes murders that brought him to the attention of police. In 1895, he was arrested for trying to defraud an insurance company of $10,000 for the death of an accomplice, Ben Pitezel. The company originally thought the body wasn't Pitezel, but realized that not only was it Pitezel but he had been murdered by Holmes.

A dogged Philadelphia detective began retracing Holmes' tracks and discovered that not only had Holmes murdered Pitezel but also the dead man's three missing children.

Chicago police began searching the abandoned hotel and discovered in the basement a vat of acid with a human skull and parts of eight ribs not quite dissolved, mounds of quicklime, the kiln, a dissection table, surgical tools and more bones.

In August 1895, much of the Murder Castle was mysteriously destroyed by fire. Some believed it was set by a Holmes associate who didn't want the police to discover anything else while others felt it was someone who wanted to rid the neighborhood of such a blemish. A month later, Holmes was convicted in Philadelphia of Pitezel's murder and sentenced to death by hanging.

Throughout his incarceration, Holmes wrote different confessions, each a blend of rationalization, prevarication and a bit of truth. In one version written shortly before his execution, he wrote, "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 song."

On May 7, 1896, Holmes was hanged and buried, according to his wishes, in a coffin filled with cement that was covered with even more cement (he was concerned about his body being dug up by grave robbers). He lies in the Holy Cross Cemetery, located south of Philadelphia.

As for the Murder Castle, following the fire the upper floors were removed while the street level shops reopened. In 1937, the aging structure was sold to the U.S. government, which demolished it for a post office, which still stands on the site.

There are no plaques or signs memorializing the heinous crimes once committed on the site. It's as if it was all just a bad dream.

The former site of Dr. H.H. Holmes notorious Murder Castle is on the corner of South Wallace and 63rd streets in Chicago, which is now the Englewood Post Office.

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One of the most bizarre stories in Chicago history is the tale of America's first serial killer, Dr. Henry H. Holmes, and his Murder Castle. In the summer of 1886, Holmes, whose real name was Herman Mudgett, went to work in a drugstore owned by Dr. E.S.

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The largest city of the American Midwest, Chicago, Illinois, was founded in 1830 and quickly grew to become, as Carl Sandburg's 1916 poem put it, "Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation." Established as a water transit hub, the city evolved into an industrial metropolis, processing and transporting the raw materials of its vast hinterland.

Chicago: Prehistory and Early Years

The name Chicago comes from a Miami Indian word for the wild leeks that grew on the bank of the short Chicago River. Over the centuries the Miami, Sauk, Fox and Potawatomi tribes all lived in the area. The 1673 Marquette and Jolliet expedition crossed the Great Portage between the Chicago River and the Illinois, 10 miles of flat, often waterlogged ground separating the two great water transit systems of North America, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Valley.

Did you know? In 1860 the Republican National Convention was held in Chicago. Illinois legislator Abraham Lincoln won the nomination there with strong backing from editor Joseph Medill's Chicago Tribune.

The first non-Indian to settle within Chicago's future boundaries was a Santo Domingan of mixed African and European ancestry, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, who arrived around 1780. In 1803 the U.S. Army built Fort Dearborn on the south bank of the Chicago River. It was destroyed in an Indian raid in 1812 but rebuilt four years later. In 1830 platted lots for the future city were sold to help finance the Illinois and Michigan Canal.

The 1832 Black Hawk War ended the last Native American resistance in the area. Chicago was incorporated as a town in 1833 and as a city in 1837, when its population reached 4,000. In 1848 Chicago got its first telegraph and railroad. Two innovations-grain elevators and the Board of Trade's wheat grading standards-quickly transformed the way crops were sold. By 1854 the city was the world's largest grain port and had more than 30,000 residents, many of them European immigrants.

Chicago: The Great Fire and Rebuilding

In October 1871, a fire destroyed one-third of Chicago and left more than 100,000 homeless. Its initial spark remains unknown (legends of Mrs. O'Leary's lantern-kicking cow notwithstanding), but it was fueled by drought, high winds and wooden buildings. The factories and railroads were largely spared, and the city rebuilt with astonishing speed.

In the late 1800s Chicago grew as a national retail center and produced a crop of brand-name business tycoons, including Philip Armour, George Pullman, Potter Palmer and Marshall Field. In 1885 Chicago gave the world its first skyscraper, the 10-story Home Insurance Building. In later years architects Louis Sullivan, Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius all added to the city's growing skyline. In 1893 Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition, which drew over 20 million visitors to its "White City" of plaster Gilded Age buildings built on former bogland beside Chicago's south lakefront

Chicago: Labor and Unrest

The 1886 Haymarket affair, in which police fired on protesting workers (and, in the confusion following a fatal anarchist bombing, each other), ushered in an era of protest and reform for the multitudes of workers who kept Chicago's meatpacking, manufacturing and shipping industries running. In 1894 declining wages at the Pullman Palace Car Company factory triggered a crippling national rail union boycott. In 1906 journalist Upton Sinclair published "The Jungle," a novel that exposed cruel and unsafe practices in the city's meatpacking industry.

Nationwide social upheavals surrounding World War I brought many African-American migrants to Chicago from the South. They found new opportunities and a vibrant cultural community that soon gave birth to Chicago's versions of blues and jazz. Tensions arose between the newcomers and Chicago's established Irish, Polish and German ethnic groups, leading to a string of bombings of African-American homes between 1917 and 1921, as well as an eight-day race riot in 1919.

By the 1930s Chicago's population reached 3 million. Gangsters Al Capone and John Dillinger grabbed headlines, but the real power lay with the city's political "machine," a system of patronage that controlled city politics for the better part of a century.

Chicago: Postwar Years

Between 1950 and 1960 Chicago's population shrank for the first time in its history, as factory jobs leveled off and people moved to the suburbs. Poor neighborhoods were razed and replaced with massive public housing that solved few of the problems of poverty and violence. Riots in 1968 gave vent to anger following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and violent police response marred protests at the Democratic National Convention that year.

The 2000 U.S. Census reported Chicago's first decade-over-decade population increase since 1950. Immigrants still flock to the "windy city," though now from Asia and Latin America more than Europe. Chicago remains a center of trade: Airports supplement the old rail and water transit hubs, and agricultural futures are traded electronically from the floor of its storied Mercantile Exchange.

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The largest city of the American Midwest, Chicago, Illinois, was founded in 1830 and quickly grew to become, as Carl Sandburg's 1916 poem put it, "Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation."

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The 100 rooms of the H. H. Holmes house were allegedly filled with trapdoors, gas chambers, staircases to nowhere, and a human-sized stove.

If you were staying at the World's Fair Hotel - more commonly known as the H. H. Holmes hotel - you might run up a flight of stairs and find that it led to nowhere.

You'd open doors and see only solid brick. You'd enter a bedroom and suddenly smell gas seeping in. You'd try to run, only to realize you were locked in. Even if you could open the door, you probably couldn't find your way out of the house. And before long, you'd meet your gruesome end.

Or at least, that's how the story of the H. H. Holmes house goes. As one of America's first known serial killers, H. H. Holmes became infamous not only for his crimes but also for his legendary "murder hotel" in Chicago. Sometimes called a "murder castle" or a "murder mansion," this mysterious building was initially believed to be a normal hotel - and just a way for Holmes to make money during the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.

But a police investigation later revealed something far more sinister. While it remains unknown how many people Holmes murdered in his house of horrors, he once boasted of killing 27 people. However, some estimates claim the actual number may have been as low as 9 - or as high as 200.

In recent years, some historians have cast doubt on whether the H. H. Holmes house was really a "murder castle" at all. While there's no doubt that Holmes was a serial killer, experts have suggested that some of the most sordid details of his home - like the homemade gas chambers and trapdoors - may have been mere products of yellow journalism.

But at the end of the day, only the man himself ever knew all of the secrets of the H. H. Holmes hotel - and how many people died within its walls.

H. H. Holmes Arrives In Chicago

H. H. Holmes first came to Chicago in 1886, leaving behind more than one previous life. Born Herman Webster Mudgett, previous scandals gave him good reason to change his name.

Like in college, when he worked in the anatomy lab and mutilated cadavers to defraud life insurance companies. Or when he was the last person to have been seen with a missing little boy in New York. Or when he worked as a pharmacist in Philadelphia and a customer died after taking his pills.

After all these incidents, Mudgett simply skipped town and eventually changed his name to Henry Howard Holmes. Soon after his arrival in the Windy City, Holmes got a job in a drugstore on 63rd Street, using his knowledge of medicine and his charming personality to secure the position.

Holmes was fashionable, bright, and likable. In fact, he was so likable that at one point in his life, he was married to three unknowing women at once.

In 1887, he bought an empty lot across the street from the store where he worked and began construction on a three-story building, which he said would be used for apartments and shops.

The structure was ugly and large - containing more than 100 rooms and stretching for an entire block. But Chicago was a city on the rise, and new construction was going up all over this part of the American Midwest.

After all, Chicago was perfectly situated on the shores of Lake Michigan as a central hub for the expansive railroad networks that crisscrossed the nation, all extending like spokes in a wheel from the city.

Little did residents know that a house of horrors was about to emerge in that very same place.

The H. H. Holmes Hotel, The "Murder Castle" Of Chicago

For his mansion, H. H. Holmes planned for the first floor to contain an entire block of storefronts that he would be able to rent out to the flood of new businesses opening up in the city.

The third floor would contain apartments for new residents looking to make it big in the Windy City. Eerily, some of those unsuspecting residents may have eventually become Holmes's victims.

Those victims got to see the second floor - one that was allegedly full of "asphyxiation chambers," mazes, and hidden stairs. And the especially unlucky victims made it down to the basement, which hid the elaborate horrors for which the H. H. Holmes house is now famous.

Throughout the building's construction, Holmes apparently switched builders and architects frequently, so that no one involved was able to realize the gruesome end goal of all the odd parts.

The house was completed in 1892. And by 1894, police would be exploring its winding passages while Holmes sat behind bars. At first, authorities were confused by what they found.

There were hinged walls and false partitions. Some rooms had five doors and others had none. Secret, airless chambers were found underneath floorboards - and iron plate-lined walls appeared to stifle all sound.

As for Holmes's own apartment, it had a trapdoor in the bathroom, which opened to reveal a staircase that led to a windowless cubicle. In the cubicle, there was allegedly a large chute that tunneled through to the basement. (Spoiler alert: It wasn't used for dirty laundry.)

One notable room was lined with gas fixtures. Here, Holmes would apparently seal his victims in, flip a switch in an adjacent room, and wait for the horror to unfold. Another chute was found nearby.

All of the doors and some of the steps were connected to an intricate alarm system. Whenever someone stepped into the hall or headed downstairs, a buzzer sounded in Holmes's bedroom.

It should be noted that these descriptions have been met with some skepticism by historians - especially in recent years - and so it's worth keeping in mind that at least some of the designs may have been exaggerated or even invented by the newspapers of the era.

Uncovering The H. H. Holmes Murder Hotel

The first clue about the bizarre floor plan's true purpose came to the cops in a pile of bones.

Most of the bones were from animals, but some of them were human. They were so small that they almost certainly belonged to a child, one who was no more than six or seven years old.

And when authorities descended into the cellar, the scope of the building's hidden horrors was finally revealed.

Beside a blood-soaked operating table, they found a woman's clothes. Another surgical surface was nearby - along with a crematory, an array of medical tools, a bizarre torture device, and shelves of disintegrating acids.

Holmes's fascination with dead bodies had apparently lasted long past college, as had his surgical skills.

After dropping his victims down through the chutes, he reportedly dissected them, cleaned them, and then sold the organs or skeletons to medical institutions or on the black market.

How An Influx Of Transient Workers Provided Fresh Boarders

Though the mansion didn't look inviting in the least, it's unlikely that any of the victims were dragged into its depths. They entered on their own volition, likely enchanted by the owner's flattery and apparent affluence.

In some cases, they may have even been his employees. During his two short years in the castle, Holmes hired more than 150 women to work as his stenographers. A few of them were known to be his mistresses as well.

Holmes sometimes photographed his favorites. They were young, beautiful, and trusting of this gentleman in the big and unfamiliar city.

As a city on the rise that was well-connected thanks to its railway hub, Chicago undoubtedly had a fresh flow of people coming in and out of Holmes's mansion.

But despite the well-connected women who went missing under his employment, suspicions of murder weren't what led to Holmes's demise.

People come and go all the time in a big city, often without notice. And before the age of advanced technology, it was especially hard to trace them. So the disappearance of the young women working under Holmes could've always been excused as them simply moving on or heading back home.

Ultimately, theft and poorly-planned financial schemes were what led to the arrest of Holmes in Boston on November 17, 1894.

After decades of criminal activity (the scale and complexity of which you really need a book to fully grasp), H. H. Holmes was behind bars.

While he was in jail, connections between him and at least one murder were revealed - and a pile of financial charges were obscured by the more sinister accusations that emerged. When all was said and done, Holmes was officially linked to 9 murders total.

Though he boasted of committing at least 27 murders, he gave three different confessions while imprisoned - all with contradicting numbers.

The true amount of victims was impossible to corroborate because the home was specially equipped for Holmes to disintegrate leftover body parts in acid baths or to burn them in a human-sized stove. (In one pile of ashes, investigators found a small gold chain from a woman's shoe.)

The Devil In The White City

"I was born with the devil in me," Holmes would later explain. "I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing."

As recounted in Erik Larson's book The Devil In The White City, H. H. Holmes began his murder spree at a moment in history when an unprecedented throng of unknown, unaccompanied strangers were flooding the streets of Chicago, looking for temporary housing.

The 1893 Chicago World's Fair was one of the most attended cultural events of the era, with millions of people participating in the historic celebration.

Noting the thousands of people who went missing during the World's Fair, some papers suggested the actual count of Holmes's victims may have numbered in the hundreds.

For the most part, Holmes represented himself at his trial - displaying his classic grace and a "remarkable familiarity with the law," according to one paper of the time.

However, his charm wasn't enough for the jurors - and he was unanimously sentenced to death by hanging.

Very familiar with what could be done to a person's corpse after death, Holmes asked if his body could be encased in cement within his coffin.

Shortly before his death in 1896, H. H. Holmes suggested that he was turning into the devil. Even his face, he said, was taking on a demonic look.

His execution was an agonizing affair. When the floor was dropped beneath him, his neck didn't snap like it was supposed to. He lay twitching for about 20 minutes before he was pronounced dead.

Strange Deaths In The Aftermath Of The H. H. Holmes Hotel Being Uncovered

Later, strange fates befell the people connected to the case of the H. H. Holmes hotel.

The man who had initially tipped off the police to H. H. Holmes's illegal dealings was shot by a Chicago police officer. The warden at the prison where Holmes had been held killed himself. The office of the district attorney (who argued the famous case) caught on fire.

And Patrick Quinlan - the former caretaker of the castle who, after Holmes, knew the most about the haunted building - died by suicide in 1914.

He left a one-sentence note: "I could not sleep."

As for the murder castle itself, it is no longer standing today. In 1895, the mansion was gutted by a fire - which may have been started by two men who were seen entering the building at night. The remaining structure was torn down in 1938. And today, the H. H. Holmes house is the site of an unassuming post office.
After this tour through the H. H. Holmes hotel, read about the hospital serial killer who was known as "The Angel of Death." Then, check out the tale of "Lobster Boy," the circus performer who became a murderer.

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How Chicago's First Serial Killer Built A 'Murder Mansion' To Torture His Victims

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Whether known as H. H. Holmes, Herman Webster Mudgett, or the "Devil in the White City," he may have been America's first serial killer - but is it all a myth?

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"If you had always assumed that Chicago earned its nickname as the Windy City from the chilly gusts coming off Lake Michigan, you would be wrong. The city is windy, according to most local legends, because of the hot air bellowing from politicians."
Actually, you'd be right, but you'd be fighting an uphill battle against the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Historical Society, and the Chicago Public Library. The above quote comes from the November 20 New York Times, in which Jeff Zeleny writes about the national attention currently focused on Chicago, the home base of our next president. And just as Zeleny erroneously believes Chicago's famous nickname originated with windbag politicians in the late 19th century -- New York Sun editor Charles Dana wrote about "the nonsensical claims of that windy city" as Chicago pols loudly wooed the organizers of the 1893 world's fair -- he uses "bellowing" instead of "billowing" to describe the wind that blew toward New York from the mouths of the city's former leaders.

Truth be told, though even the city's library system (that's 79 branches of pure intimidation) won't acknowledge the findings of New York City administrative law judge and Straight Dope reader Barry Popik, the May 9, 1876, Cincinnati Enquirer featured the following headline: "THAT WINDY CITY. Some of the Freaks of the Last Chicago Tornado." That's at least 13 years before Charles Dana told Chicago politicians to put a sock in it. And in January 1886 the Louisville Courier-Journal used the nickname to refer to the wind from Lake Michigan that blankets the city every winter.

So it's settled, right? No, probably not, unless Obama can be persuaded to set things straight in his inaugural address.

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The origins of the term "Windy City" have been misreported (again)

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"If you had always assumed that Chicago earned its nickname as the Windy City from the chilly gusts coming off Lake Michigan, you would be wrong. The city is windy, according to most local legends, because of the hot air bellowing from politicians."

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The 1893 World's Fair in Chicago-known at the time as the Columbian Exposition-celebrated the 400th anniversary Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas. The enormous exhibition featured many wondrous exhibits, including the United States' first gas-powered motorcar, the Daimler quadricycle, and a 1,500-pound statue of the Venus de Milo made of chocolate. However, the World's Fair became better known for a structure that was more gruesome than organizers could have imagined-the so-called "Murder Castle" of H.H. Holmes, America's first documented serial killer.

Who Was H. H. Holmes?

H. H. Holmes was born Herman Webster Mudgett in New Hampshire in 1861. As an adult, he abandoned his young wife and child in 1885 to move to Illinois. Once there, he changed his name to Holmes, reportedly as an homage to the fictional English detective Sherlock Holmes, the literary creation of author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Soon after his arrival in the Chicago area, Holmes took up work at a pharmacy located near Jackson Park. Eight years later, Jackson Park would become the site of the 1893 World's Fair.

The Columbian Exposition, as it was called, was designed by some of America's leading architects, including Frederick Law Olmstead, and included exhibits from more than 40 countries.

The event attracted more than 27 million visitors to Chicago, an incredible number considering the limited transportation options of the time. Holmes took advantage of some of the many visitors to the city, including young women who came to Chicago for jobs at the fairgrounds.

The 'Murder Castle'

Historians believe Holmes, a masterful and charismatic con artist, had swindled money from his drugstore employers. He purchased an empty lot in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago, and built a labyrinthine structure with shops on the first floor and small apartments above.

This edifice became Holmes' booby-trapped Murder Castle. The space featured soundproof rooms, secret passages and a disorienting maze of hallways and staircases. The rooms were also outfitted with trapdoors over chutes that dropped Holmes' unsuspecting victims to the building's basement.

The basement was a macabre facility of acid vats, pits of quicklime (often used on decaying corpses) and a crematorium, which the killer used to finish off his victims.

Holmes' Victims

Holmes lured many visitors to the Columbian Exposition to his sinister lair, with the promise of cheap lodgings. The exact number of his victims is still debated by historians.

Holmes was apprehended soon after he fled Chicago, in October 1893, following the conclusion of the World's Fair. He was arrested in Boston for the alleged murder of his assistant, Benjamin Pitezel, and two of Pitezel's children.

Interestingly, while on the run, Holmes had misled Pitezel's wife as well, collecting the insurance money for his former assistant and living with his widow and three of their children. Police eventually discovered the body of one of the murdered children, and this discovery led to Holmes' arrest.

Following his arrest, Holmes claimed to have killed more than 200 people in his Murder Castle. However, he ultimately confessed to 27 murders, including that of Pitezel and two of his daughters.

Experts now believe he may have, in fact, killed as few as nine-still a significant number, but not the scores the killer claimed.

While in captivity, awaiting his trial and sentencing, Holmes authored an autobiography, Holmes' Own Story, in which he wrote, "I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing."

The most famous literary work on Holmes, however, is the best-selling non-fiction novel The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, which was published in 2003.

After a brief incarceration, Holmes was hanged for his crimes in Philadelphia in 1896. His body is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery outside the Pennsylvania city.

What Happened to the Murder Castle?

Despite Holmes' arrest and execution, rumors have persisted for more than a century that the serial killer bribed authorities to avoid punishment. The theories suggest that Holmes was allowed to escape and that officials hanged another man.

In response to these rumors, in March 2017, Holmes' descendants, who live in Delaware, petitioned to have his remains exhumed so that they can undergo DNA testing. The results concluded the remains did in fact belong to Holmes.

Meanwhile, the fate of the site of the killer's exploits is also shrouded in intrigue. With Holmes, allegedly, safely ensconced in prison, in 1895, the Murder Castle was gutted by fire, after witnesses reportedly saw two men entering the building late one night.

The building itself remained standing until 1938, when it was torn down. The site is now occupied by the Englewood branch of the U.S. Post Office.

Sources:

The Site of the Infamous Murder Castle: Exploring Illinois.
World's Columbian Exposition of 1893: Paul V. Galvin Library Digital History Collection, Illinois Institute of Technology.
Blood Loss: The decline of the serial killer: Slate.
Serial Killer H.H. Holmes' Body Exhumed: What We Know: Rolling Stone.

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The 1893 World's Fair in Chicago-known at the time as the Columbian Exposition-celebrated the 400th anniversary Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas. However, the Chicago fair became better known for the so-called "Murder Castle" of H.H. Holmes, America's first documented serial killer.