H. H. Holmes is known as the first serial killer in America. During the mid-1890s, he built a 3-story hotel in Chicago, which people called the “Castle”. It was known that he would lure people, specifically young women, into the hotel and they were never to be seen again and it is estimated that he killed about 200 people(Crime Museum para 4, 5, & 10). H. H. Holmes was an American sociopath who killed, kidnapped, and betrayed the trust of many.
H. H. Holmes, born with the name Herman Webster Mudgett, grew up in Gilmanton, New Hampshire. It is said that “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
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H. Holmes moved to Chicago and started working in a pharmacy, using H. H. Holmes as his alias and now well known name. “He eventually took over the business and was later rumored to have killed its original owner”(Biography para 4). After he acquired the pharmacy, he bought the lot across from it and started building his “Murder Castle”. During this time he married Myrta Belknap and had a daughter, while still being married to Clara as he had not filed a divorce yet. But after a few weeks of marriage with Myrta, he filed for a divorce on Clara, saying that Clara had been cheating and having affairs on …show more content…
After Pitezel purchased a life insurance policy, he and Holmes traveled all around committing other types of fraud. When Holmes returned to Missouri, he was arrested for a short period of time and while in jail met Marion Hedgepeth who agreed to help Holmes with his insurance scheme. After Holmes was released, he 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”(Britannica para