Herman Webster Mudgett: America's First Serial Killer

Herman Webster Mudgett, most commonly known as H. H. Holmes, America’s first serial killer, was born on May 16, 1861 in the town of Gilmanton, New Hampshire. Born to Levi Horton Mudgett and Theodate Page Price, he was the third child of five. As a child, he was raised on a farm and often displayed signs of violence by torturing animals and from being abused by his father. He married Clara Lovering at the age of 17, and had a son together two years later. He enrolled at the University of Vermont in Burlington when he was 18, but did not like school and tried again a year later at University of Michigan’s Department of Medicine and Surgery, where he graduated in 1884. While he was still attending, he worked in the anatomy lab and years later

He attempted to build another ‘castle’ there, but there’s no word on whether or not it was actually built. In July of ‘94, Holmes was arrested for selling mortgaged goods in Missouri, but was bailed out rather promptly. While in jail though, Holmes had made conversation with a man named Mario Hedgepeth. Holmes had been planning on taking a $10,000 dollar insurance policy on his own life, and then faking his death. He offered Hedgepeth a $500 commision in exchange for the name of a lawyer who would help him carry out this plan. The lawyer he was directed to loved the idea and agreed to help him out, but when the time came to collect the money, the insurance company found it suspicious and didn’t pay. Holmes did not push further into it, but instead decided to try again using Pitezel. Pitezel agreed wholeheartedly as he wanted to provide financial support for his family, and $10,000 would make for a much easier style of living. The scheme was to set Pitezel up in Philadelphia as an inventor under a fake name and have him die and be disfigured in a lab explosion. Holmes was in charge of finding a cadaver to replace Pitezel in the scene, but instead burned Pitezel alive and used chloroform on him after, to make it seem as if it was suicide. He collected the insurance money and proceeded to manipulate Pitezel’s wife into letting him have three of her five children, Alice, Nellie, and Howard. He traveled around with the children across the US and into Canada, all the while evading Mrs. Pitezel. At one point, Holmes was staying with his wife who was unaware of the entire predicament. Holmes later admitted to killing Alice and Nellie by forcing them into a large trunk and locking them inside. He drilled a hole in the lid of the trunk and fed a gas line into it, asphyxiating the girls. He buried their nude bodies in the cellar of a rental house he