Brief Summary H. Holmes: A Future Serial Killer

Born Herman Webster Mudgett in Gilmanton, New Hampshire on May 16th 1861, this future serial killer lived a privileged childhood from an affluent family. His father, Levi Horton Mudgett, was either a farmer or a post master of 25 years, varying upon sources. However, it is known that he was a well respected man despite his alcoholism. Holmes also lived with his mother, Theodate Page Price, his older brother Arthur, older sister Ellen, and younger brother Henry. Their family is believed to be the direct descendants of the first European settlers in New Hampshire. Holmes, being known as very intelligent at a surprisingly young age, expressed an interest in medicine, led him to practice on animals through cruel means of “surgery”. This was an

He would commit frauds and scams, beginning his life of crime by stealing corpses form the University of Michigan, where he was studying medicine, to make fake insurance claims after dressing the bodies up and claiming an accident happened. He graduated in June 1884, and then moved to Chicago to try and get a start in pharmaceutics. His criminal activity continued when in Chicago he started to take part in sketchy real estate investments and had a role in some back door business deals, for under which he used the alias: Dr. Henry H. Holmes. The pharmacy he worked at was that of Elizabeth S. Holton at the intersection of South Wallace Avenue and West 63rd Street, which was located in a neighborhood of Chicago known as Englewood. The doctor’s husband, E.S. Holton, passed away and Holmes bought the pharmacy from her. However, she then went missing mysteriously, and was forgotten about. Holmes then used his money from scams and cons to make a hotel on the other side of the

and Georgiana Yoke. He had a child with both Clara and Myrta. He was at no point diagnosed with a mental disease, leaving him completely at blame for his crimes, which resulted in a harsh consequence down the road. Holmes began his murders after the completed construction of his hotel, just in time for the World’s Fair. His plan was so evil he had to change builders often so only he would know what the purpose of the layout was. The hotel was a drug store and small commercial area on the first floor, his living quarters on the top, and about 100 rooms in between filled with unimaginable horror. The motive behind this murder castle was to kill dozens, including seduced women, employees, and friends, for their insurance money. How he would do this was either locking them into rooms with vents that released gas to asphyxiate them, or lock them in air tight rooms they would suffocate in. The bodies would then drop down chutes to the basement where he would pick the bodies apart for organs and bones to sell using his medical connections from college. Once the World Fair came to a lull, Holmes left Chicago and went around the United States and Canada, still pulling insurance fraud. His capture came from a failed scam when a former friend Marion Hedgepeth ratted out him and his fellow con man Benjamin Pitezel in a Texas jail after not