# 28: H H Holmes & His Murder Castle

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 20 Jul 2023, 1 h 06 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/105f723ac/podcast/play/103880381/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-5-9%2F401851663-44100-2-1ae8f0502d327ab5.mp3

Today's episode is on serial killer H H Holmes and his murder castle! This story has inspired many horror movies including American Horror Story Hotel Trigger Warning: torture, mutilation Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:05] Hello everyone, and welcome to Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[0:09] Neil, a true crime podcast where we crack open some of the most
[0:12] notorious cases in history. Given the topics that we'll be
[0:16] investigating, it goes without saying that this show comes with
[0:20] a content warning. The details can get a bit heavy
[0:23] and you might find some of the themes we discussed triggering.
[0:26] Listener discretion is strongly advised, and check the
[0:29] description for some resources and further information.
[0:38] So HH Holmes is known as America's first serial killer,
[0:43] which is probably not true. They were probably all
[0:47] definitely serial killers before him, but that's just how he's
[0:51] known. He's the first kind of properly
[0:53] documented 1. Holmes is believed by some
[0:56] people to have claimed the lives of over 200 people in his
[1:02] killing spree, which is unlike any other case I've ever heard.
[1:07] I've never heard a number quite so high.
[1:10] And Holmes is also famous for infamous for his murder castle
[1:16] or murder hotel. So yeah, let's just get into it.
[1:19] But before we do, I just want to give my usual disclaimer that I
[1:22] mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone that I talk about in this
[1:25] video. This video is for educational
[1:27] purposes and everything that I'm about to say is just information
[1:31] that I have found on the Internet and I'm compiling into
[1:33] one video. South.
[1:35] HH Holmes is a pretty memorable name for a serial killer for
[1:39] anyone. In fact, HH Holmes is a pretty
[1:42] cool name. He gave himself that name later
[1:45] on in life because he needed to get away from his birth name,
[1:49] which of course we'll talk about later.
[1:51] He was born Herman Webster Mudgett on May 16th, 1861.
[1:55] But for the sake of this video, I'm just going to be calling him
[1:58] Holmes, even though for the first like half of it, his name
[2:01] was Herman Mudgett. He was born in New Hampshire in
[2:04] in the US to his father, Levi Mudgett and his mother Theodate
[2:09] Price. I hope I'm saying that right,
[2:11] but I've never heard the name Theodate before.
[2:13] So he was the middle child of five.
[2:16] He had an older brother and sister named Helen and Arthur,
[2:19] and a younger brother and sister named Henry and Mary.
[2:22] His whole family were Protestant Christians, although I don't
[2:25] know how strict they were. I've read a bunch of different
[2:29] sources. Some say that they were super
[2:31] strict and others said that it didn't really affect his life
[2:34] that much. So not too short.
[2:35] His father Levi was a farmer. Well, he came from like a
[2:39] farming family and he did do a lot of farming work, but he also
[2:43] did other jobs here and there. So he was a painter at one
[2:47] point. But I don't think his father
[2:48] really took on these extra jobs like for extra money because his
[2:53] family were really wealthy. He came from this farming
[2:56] background. It was a very wealthy career to
[2:59] be in. So I think he kind of took these
[3:01] other jobs like painting and teaching and stuff just for fun.
[3:04] But yeah, Holmes seemed to have been born into a very kind of
[3:08] nice family. They didn't really have any
[3:10] financial struggles. There was no, there was no kind
[3:14] of standout thing about his home life, really.
[3:16] Some sources say that his father was abusive at times to Holmes
[3:20] and his siblings. However, that is not confirmed
[3:23] anywhere. It's just on a few different
[3:25] sources. And to be honest, this was in
[3:28] the 1800s. I don't want to say that abusive
[3:32] parenting styles were normal back then, but the punishments
[3:37] that parents would give children back then would be deemed
[3:41] abusive if they were done today, if you know what I mean.
[3:44] So like, hitting your children and everything was normal back
[3:47] in those days, whereas today it's not really the norm.
[3:50] So while we can't be like 100% sure about what his home life
[3:54] was like, it has been confirmed that his school life was not
[3:59] very good at all. He was actually bullied quite a
[4:01] bit. He did have some friends.
[4:04] He wasn't a popular boy by any means, but it's not like he was
[4:07] a loner. He did have a couple of friends,
[4:09] but he was bullied for a lot of different things.
[4:12] But the main thing that they would bully him about was one of
[4:15] his eyes was constantly looking away.
[4:18] And these bullies knew Holmes very well and they knew that he
[4:23] had a crippling fear of the doctors and they would take
[4:27] advantage of this phobia. And one time the these bullies
[4:31] took Holmes down to the local doctor's office and made him
[4:34] stand and stare at a skeleton, a human skeleton.
[4:38] And Holmes was freaking out. At first he hated this.
[4:41] He hated being in the doctor's office and everything.
[4:44] But as he was looking at this skeleton, this fear began to
[4:49] turn into kind of a fascination, like he was looking at all the
[4:52] joints and he was just looking at this skeleton, and he became
[4:56] really interested in it. And after this incident that
[4:58] kind of set off a passion in Holmes about like human anatomy
[5:03] and biology and stuff. And he would read up on it in
[5:06] his spare time. He would talk to teachers about
[5:09] it. And from a very, very early age,
[5:11] it was very clear to Holmes's parents and his teachers that he
[5:15] was unusually intelligent. Like, highly intelligent for his
[5:20] age. He would pick things up faster
[5:22] than his classmates. He would return information
[5:24] easier. There was just something
[5:27] different about homes that no one else had.
[5:30] So now I just want to put in a little bit of a disclaimer.
[5:32] You've already heard me so many times in this video says some
[5:35] sources say, oh, this might not be accurate.
[5:38] And that is because this case is so old.
[5:41] Obviously, all the eyewitnesses of this case are long gone, and
[5:45] documentation wasn't very good back then.
[5:48] So when they were alive and when they remembered all these
[5:50] things, police weren't really documenting it very well.
[5:53] And because this case is so famous, it gets retold and
[5:57] retold. And it's kind of like Chinese
[5:59] whispers where people will end up adding things.
[6:01] And because it's been adapted so many times for like movies and
[6:04] TV shows, people add things in to make it more interesting, to
[6:09] make it more exciting. So it's hard to tell like what's
[6:12] been added for the sake of entertainment and what's
[6:15] actually the facts of the case. So if at any point during this
[6:19] video I say some sources say, or this might not be accurate, then
[6:23] just take it with a pinch of salt because I've tried to Fact
[6:26] Check this as well as I can, but it's kind of hard.
[6:29] So when Holmes was a young teenager, some sources said that
[6:33] he began projecting this kind of fascination with anatomy and
[6:38] biology onto real bodies. People say that he began
[6:44] kidnapping and killing and dissecting animals off the
[6:49] street, like stray ones, even people's pets.
[6:51] Although we don't know if that is true.
[6:53] A lot of people think that that fact might be made-up just to
[6:57] make it kind of fit the serial killer mold, because a lot of
[7:01] serial killers did kill animals and dissect animals when they
[7:05] were children. So it's a pretty kind of common
[7:08] serial killer trait, you know what I mean?
[7:10] Although there's no evidence that he ever killed any animals.
[7:13] His mother said that he loved animals, but whether that was
[7:16] because he was fascinated with killing them or whether he just
[7:20] loved animals, we don't know. Another piece of information
[7:22] that you might hear surrounding this case, but again, can't be
[7:26] confirmed, is that maybe Holmes's first ever victim was
[7:31] one of his childhood friends when he was very young.
[7:33] I personally don't know if I believe this.
[7:37] I don't think I do because there's literally no evidence
[7:40] and there were no eyewitnesses. So one day, Holmes and his older
[7:43] friend Tom were out exploring in the town.
[7:46] They came across this abandoned building.
[7:48] They were going up to all the top floors and everything.
[7:51] And then Tom fell from a ledge and he fell to his death.
[7:55] And some people believe that obviously this was around the
[7:58] time that Holmes suddenly became very obsessed with bodies and
[8:03] dissection and everything. And so people think that maybe
[8:07] this fascination got the better of him and he wanted to know
[8:10] what it would feel like to kill someone or to see a dead body in
[8:14] person kind of thing. And so a lot of people think
[8:17] that maybe he pushed his friend from this building and killed
[8:20] it. Personally, I think it was an
[8:22] accident. And then maybe years later, when
[8:25] it came out that Holmes was a serial killer, people kind of
[8:28] put two and two together, and they were like, maybe he could
[8:30] have killed his friend, but I personally don't think he did
[8:34] anywhere. At the age of 16, Holmes
[8:36] graduated high school. And because of his unusually
[8:39] high intelligence, he immediately began taking on
[8:43] teaching jobs in the town because he was smarter than most
[8:46] adults. Meanwhile, he was still doing,
[8:48] like, odd farming jobs with his father.
[8:51] And they would travel to different farms and do different
[8:53] jobs. And when he was 17 years old, he
[8:55] was on this particular farm when he met this farmer's daughter
[9:00] named Clara Loverin. And Holmes absolutely fell for
[9:04] Clara straight away, although she was seeing another man,
[9:09] another man that was working on this farm at the same time.
[9:11] And this man wasn't particularly nice to Clara.
[9:14] He would say mean things do mean things until one day Holmes
[9:19] caught him being mean to Clara. I don't know what he was doing,
[9:23] but Holmes obviously didn't like that he was in love with this
[9:25] woman. And so he stepped in and
[9:27] defended Clara and put this guy back in his place.
[9:31] And this absolutely won Clara over.
[9:33] She fell for Holmes, and the two of them got married.
[9:36] And then two years after they got married, they actually had a
[9:39] son together named Robert Mudgett. 2 years after that,
[9:42] when he was 22 years old, Holmes enrolled in a medical school in
[9:46] Michigan, and he graduated from there two years later when he
[9:50] was 24. And while he was there in that
[9:52] medical school, he began working as kind of an apprentice to one
[9:56] of the professors. But this wasn't just any
[9:59] professor, of course. This was the chief of anatomy.
[10:04] And this is when Horns's kind of fascination with human anatomy
[10:07] and biology and bodies became a little bit concerning.
[10:11] I say a little bit concerning. It became very concerning and
[10:15] actually very scary. Of course, while he was working
[10:17] alongside this chief of anatomy, he had access to and came into
[10:22] contact with a a lot of dead bodies because they would
[10:25] practice on them and everything. These dead bodies are called
[10:28] cadavers. So these are people that have
[10:30] donated their body for medical purposes.
[10:33] However, back in those days, it probably wasn't so consensual.
[10:37] A lot of people might not have donated their body.
[10:40] Things were a little bit more shady back then.
[10:41] Now he had access to free human bodies that he could practice
[10:47] on. And so he began stealing these
[10:50] dead bodies from the university and taking them home with him.
[10:53] And what he would do with these bodies is take them home and
[10:58] dissect them and mutilate them to the point where they were
[11:01] unrecognizable. They were barely even a human
[11:04] body. And then he would set up a fake
[11:07] life insurance plan on a fake person, a complete made-up
[11:11] person, and then claimed that that person had died.
[11:14] And of course, he had a dead body and it was unrecognizable.
[11:18] So it might be the person on the life insurance plan.
[11:22] You got paid a lot of money from these life insurance plans over
[11:26] and over again, mutilated, dissected, and then got money
[11:29] for several different bodies. And it was around this time that
[11:32] Herman Mudget changed his name to HH Holmes because, I don't
[11:37] know, maybe he was scared. Maybe companies were getting
[11:39] suspicious with Herman Mudget and so he needed to change it if
[11:43] he wanted to carry on making money from these fraud schemes.
[11:46] So HH Holmes actually stands for Henry Howard Holmes, but
[11:50] sometimes he would make up what the HS stand for.
[11:54] So he could have multiple different fake names, but they
[11:57] were all still kind of his name. So he'd call himself like Harry
[12:00] H Holmes. So then he could still be HH
[12:03] Holmes. But then if someone accused a
[12:05] Harry Herman Holmes of something, he can be like, oh,
[12:08] no, I'm Henry Howard Holmes, different name.
[12:10] He had hundreds of aliases throughout his life, not just in
[12:15] the kind of HH Holmes format. Like he would give himself
[12:18] completely different names, and you'll hear a lot of them
[12:20] throughout this case. Different surnames, different
[12:23] middle names, different initials.
[12:25] Like, it's a bit crazy. Anyway, back to the timeline.
[12:28] Just before Holmes had graduated from medical school, his wife
[12:32] Clara actually took their son and left him and went back to
[12:36] New Hampshire. Sources said that Holmes was
[12:39] actually abusive to Clara, so that was more of like an escape
[12:43] rather than a breakup. And because it was like an
[12:46] escape, it wasn't a mutual breakup.
[12:49] Clara and Holmes never actually officially divorced.
[12:53] And this is a running theme throughout Holmes's life.
[12:56] He would marry multiple women and never like officially break
[13:01] it off with them. And he was supposedly a very,
[13:04] very charming man. He could get pretty much any
[13:06] woman he wanted to, even though it wasn't much of A looker for
[13:09] the time. Apparently he was very good with
[13:11] his words and he would meet women, win them over, marry
[13:15] them, and then just never divorce them and move on to the
[13:19] next woman. So he'd have multiple different
[13:20] wives all at the same time. None of them knew about each
[13:23] other, which is illegal, but I mean, that's like the least
[13:27] concerning illegal thing that Holmes did in his life.
[13:31] So after Clara left him and Holmes graduated from medical
[13:35] school, he decided to go travel in a little bit.
[13:38] And by traveling, I just mean different American states.
[13:42] He would went to so many and he would just pick up jobs and drop
[13:46] them after a month and then just disappear out of town and no one
[13:50] knew where he went. But there were two states in
[13:52] particular, New York and Pennsylvania, where it is
[13:56] rumored incidents took place where a young boy would be seen
[14:00] in homes as company and then go missing and never be seen again.
[14:04] Again, I don't know if this is true or if this is just people
[14:08] trying to make the HH Holmes story a little bit more
[14:11] interesting. Anyway, in 1886, Holmes finally
[14:15] settled in Chicago after traveling all over America.
[14:18] He came across a little pharmacy owned by a woman named Elizabeth
[14:22] S Holton. And he really liked this
[14:25] pharmacy and it was sciency and he really liked science.
[14:29] And so he went in there and worked his charm and got a job
[14:33] immediately. And Holmes was very hard
[14:36] working. He was very good at his job.
[14:37] He made very close friends with Elizabeth Halton and her
[14:41] husband. And he really enjoyed working in
[14:44] this pharmacy. And around that same time,
[14:46] Holmes met who would become his second wife, a woman named
[14:50] Murder. And a couple of years later they
[14:52] had a daughter named Lucy. Now we're going to talk about a
[14:56] myth of the HH Holmes case. I would normally put this kind
[15:00] of thing in right at the end, but it makes more sense to put
[15:03] it in the timeline, just as long as you know that this is not
[15:05] true what I'm about to tell you, but it is part of the story.
[15:09] So a lot of people say that Elizabeth S Halton's husband,
[15:13] Doctor Halton, tragically passed away in suspicious circumstances
[15:18] one day, leaving Elizabeth S Halton to run this pharmacy all
[15:23] by herself. And a lot of people that believe
[15:25] this story believe that Elizabeth and her husband were
[15:28] elderly people. They weren't.
[15:30] They were, I believe, younger than Holmes.
[15:33] So this story goes that her husband tragically passes away.
[15:36] And now this elderly woman is left looking after this big
[15:40] pharmacy all by herself, and she really trusts Holmes.
[15:43] And so she sells the pharmacy to Holmes.
[15:47] And as soon as the deeds for this pharmacy and all of its
[15:50] land are in Holmes's name, she tragically passes away as well.
[15:54] But that story just isn't true. Neither of the Haltons died in
[15:57] suspicious circumstances or or around the time that they knew
[16:01] Homes. In fact, they were both very
[16:03] friendly with Homes, like I said.
[16:04] And so one day Homes offered to buy the pharmacy and all of its
[16:09] land off of the couple and they agreed.
[16:12] They decided to sell it to him and they went on to live long
[16:16] lives afterwards and I think they stayed friends with Homes
[16:19] for a while. So when Holmes purchased the
[16:28] pharmacy, he actually purchased another huge lot of land across
[16:32] the street and that is exactly where he began setting about
[16:36] building his murder castle. So the original plan, the
[16:39] original blueprints was for a two-story building a full block
[16:44] long. The bottom floor was going to be
[16:46] like shops. There was a barbers, there was a
[16:48] Jewelers, there was going to be a bigger pharmacy, I think.
[16:52] Although at some point during the construction of this
[16:54] building, Holmes decided that he wanted a third floor to make
[16:58] even more money from this building.
[17:00] And that was going to be the hotel floor.
[17:03] He was going to have rooms on there, get people to stay.
[17:06] Although one thing that a lot of people leave out of this case is
[17:09] that it was never actually a functioning hotel.
[17:12] So like he would charge people to come and stay in the rooms,
[17:14] but you know what I mean? It wasn't like advertised as a
[17:17] hotel, obviously, because there probably wasn't that many hotel
[17:21] rooms in there because a lot of it were murder rooms.
[17:25] So the blueprint for this building was so detailed, it was
[17:28] so intricate, and it was all designed for one purpose and one
[17:32] purpose only. To lure people in, torture them,
[17:36] murder them, dissect them, and then probably make some money
[17:39] off of their bodies, all without being caught as well.
[17:43] He put certain things in place that would mean he wouldn't get
[17:46] found out. So as you can imagine, the
[17:49] blueprints for such a building would look very suspicious.
[17:53] Builders would wonder why they were putting certain things in
[17:57] place. They would wonder why there were
[17:58] so many weird rooms. And Holmes had accounted for
[18:02] this. He was a very smart man.
[18:03] He would hire workers to do a small portion of the building,
[18:07] like one room or something, and then he would fire them with no
[18:11] explanation if they were getting a little bit too suspicious.
[18:14] And in true Holmes fashion, he would blame it on them as to why
[18:18] he was firing them, so he wouldn't have to pay them.
[18:20] He'd say that like they did something wrong or like they
[18:23] breached a tract and then he was getting work done for free as
[18:27] well As for the murder Castle itself and all of its rooms and
[18:32] all of its methods of killing. So like I said, the bottom floor
[18:35] was very non suspicious. It was a bunch of shops.
[18:38] It was a barbers, it was a jewelry shop.
[18:40] And Holmes was a very, very smart man that made the whole
[18:43] building look innocent because that's the only bit that you
[18:46] really go in unless you're staying at the hotel, which
[18:49] wasn't really a hotel, you wouldn't have to go up.
[18:52] He did this on purpose to kind of draw the attention there
[18:55] because that's where everything is happening.
[18:57] You wouldn't really think about the upper buildings, would you?
[19:00] So on the top 2 rooms, the very top third floor I believe was
[19:05] never properly finished. Homes just kind of used it as a
[19:08] big apartment and he stored a lot of furniture in there, a lot
[19:12] of furniture that he kind of swindled.
[19:15] That was another way that he would make money.
[19:16] By the way, sorry to interrupt the story about the castle, but
[19:20] he would get mortgaged goods and then he would sell them to other
[19:24] people. So he would buy them for a very
[19:26] small initial mortgage price and sell them on to other people for
[19:30] a full price. You know what I mean?
[19:32] So he's making a profit there. As for the middle floor, the 2nd
[19:35] floor where the hotel rooms were, but there weren't really
[19:38] many hotel rooms. There were probably about 35
[19:41] rooms on that floor, and these rooms included tiny little
[19:45] chambers. Most rooms didn't have windows.
[19:49] There were rooms with just four walls, and the only way to get
[19:52] into them would be through a trapdoor in the floor above.
[19:56] So once a victim would fall into this room, there'd be no way out
[19:59] and they'd slowly die in there. There were staircases that led
[20:03] to nowhere. There were hidden staircases
[20:06] that you could only access from trapdoors in certain rooms.
[20:09] There were tons of corridors, many of them like leading back
[20:13] onto each other. When in circles, they had like
[20:17] fake doors on them or no doors. They had dead ends and it was
[20:22] all just to kind of disorientate his victims and confuse them and
[20:26] distress them and get them in a panic so that he had more
[20:29] control over them. There were hinged walls that
[20:32] would like open like doors and there were shoots everywhere in
[20:36] the building so that he could put dead bodies from the 2nd
[20:40] floor in them and it would just drop them straight down into the
[20:44] basement for him to go and deal with later.
[20:47] And we'll talk about his basement in a minute.
[20:49] There was a huge vault room. So it was like a massive vault.
[20:54] It was a room with a big vault door on it that when people
[20:57] would go in, he would, he'd probably like trick them in or
[21:00] push them in or something. And then he'd lock this massive
[21:03] door and just leave them in there to die.
[21:06] A lot of the rooms would actually double up as gas
[21:09] chambers. So they were all airtight and
[21:12] they all had a little vent in them.
[21:15] And all of these vents had a control system up in Holmes's
[21:20] office on the 3rd floor. So what he did, what he fed into
[21:25] each vent was all up to him. There were a lot of tiny little
[21:28] compartments. You can't even call them rooms.
[21:31] They were probably just enough to fit like a squished up body
[21:34] in and they were like in the walls and in the floors.
[21:37] So the floor would be raised by like this much and that would
[21:41] just be a compartment like you could, you could lift up a part
[21:44] of the floor and they'd be like this much enough room for you to
[21:47] put something in there. I don't know exactly how he
[21:50] utilized these compartments in the walls and in the floors,
[21:54] whether he would put like a living victim in there and just
[21:58] suffocate them, like shut the door and then suffocate them.
[22:01] Whether he would put an already dead victim in there to kind of
[22:04] hide them. If someone wanted to come up
[22:06] onto the 2nd floor, maybe he would store weapons in there.
[22:10] So then if he needed them on the 2nd floor to kill someone, they
[22:13] were kind of still there, easy access, but they weren't
[22:16] onshore. Most, if not all of the rooms in
[22:19] the Murder Castle were soundproof, which I guess is
[22:23] pretty essential if you wanted to kill people in these rooms.
[22:27] There was a room and this this one is really kind of
[22:30] distressing. There was a room with iron
[22:33] plates all over the walls, and these iron plates had
[22:37] blowtorches behind them. And when the blowtorches were
[22:40] switched on, they would heat up these iron plates.
[22:43] And as I'm sure you can imagine, that would create a kind of oven
[22:47] effect on a whole room, and it would just cook victims alive.
[22:53] There was a hanging chamber. There were a lot of torture
[22:57] mechanisms where he would take victims after he'd like drugged
[23:01] them or chloroformed them. He would get them very weak and
[23:05] then take them to torture them before he would just straight up
[23:08] kill them. And a lot of these torture
[23:10] methods were very like medieval. So I'm talking like attaching
[23:15] their wrists to something and their ankles to something and
[23:18] then pulling these two things apart so it would pull the whole
[23:22] human body apart. I believe there was another one
[23:25] like a kind of wall compart again where the door had just
[23:30] spikes on it. So then when he would shut the
[23:32] door, these spikes would impale the person.
[23:36] I'm not 100% sure if that one was actually true because I only
[23:40] read it on one source, but I think it's still interesting
[23:44] whether it was true or not. And like I said, he put a lot of
[23:47] things in place to make sure that he wouldn't get caught.
[23:49] The basement could only be accessed from a trapdoor in one
[23:55] of the bathrooms I believe, so obviously only really Holmes
[23:59] knew how to get there. He also rigged the whole murder
[24:03] castle so that if anyone went onto the 2nd floor or opened
[24:07] like a certain door or went through a certain hallway or
[24:11] something, a buzzer would sound in his office and in the
[24:15] basement. And like in certain rooms where
[24:18] he would probably be killing or torturing people.
[24:21] And when these buzzers would go off, he would know to quickly
[24:24] stop what he was doing, hide the body, clean himself up, and then
[24:28] go down and meet this person. So no one could ever really get
[24:32] into the murdery rooms unless Holmes wanted them to.
[24:38] But yeah, the basement. So the basement was kind of
[24:41] Holmes's main part of the whole murders.
[24:45] Like that's where he had the most fun.
[24:47] It was like a sick playground for HH Holmes.
[24:51] It had dissection tables, it had vats of acid, it had a
[24:55] crematorium. He had ways of hanging up and
[24:59] displaying bodies until he figured out what he would want
[25:02] to do with them because he had so much to do down in this
[25:06] basement. But his usual kind of thing that
[25:10] he liked to do to his victims bodies after he killed them was
[25:13] to skin them and then remove any of the tissue, any of the
[25:18] muscle, any of the fat organs, everything from the bones.
[25:23] He would then clean the bones and I believe he put something
[25:27] on the bones to make them whiter.
[25:29] And then he would sell the skeletons of these real life
[25:34] victims. He would sell them to like
[25:36] medical schools and doctors and people that wanted skeletons for
[25:42] like research purposes didn't really want to pay full price.
[25:46] So obviously this was very sketchy.
[25:48] These professional medical schools and everything would
[25:51] just buy in a random skeleton off a random man.
[25:55] They knew it was shady. They probably didn't think that
[25:57] he killed them. They probably thought that maybe
[25:59] he was a grave robber or something.
[26:01] But because these medical schools and doctors were getting
[26:04] these skeletons at a cheaper price than wherever else you
[26:08] would get a skeleton from, they didn't really care that much.
[26:11] And so they just turned a blind eye.
[26:13] They just bought these off of HH homes and everything just
[26:17] carried on. So his victims tended to be
[26:20] young women who actually already worked at the hotel.
[26:23] Well, a lot of them already worked at the hotel.
[26:26] Or he would give them jobs at the hotel before he would kill
[26:30] them for a specific reason, which we'll talk about in a
[26:32] minute. But he would occasionally lower
[26:35] in strangers from the street, young women off the street.
[26:39] The reason that he would give a lot of these women a job at his
[26:42] hotel is because he would actually make all of his
[26:45] employees take out a life insurance policy and put him as
[26:49] the sole benefactor. So if anything happened to any
[26:52] of his employees, he would get the money for it.
[26:55] So not only would he get chance to murder someone and dissect
[26:59] them and have his fun, but he would also get money for that.
[27:02] As for the strangers that he would lure in off the street, in
[27:07] 1893 there was this huge fair visit in Chicago named the
[27:11] World's Colombian Exhibition, and this was a very kind of
[27:15] famous fair. It would attract people from all
[27:18] over, giving homes a very good opportunity to kidnap and kill
[27:24] someone that isn't from the area.
[27:27] Because this was the 1800s, there wasn't really any way to
[27:30] book hotels in advance. So the way that a lot of people
[27:34] would do it is just go to Chicago and find one that night,
[27:38] find a room that night. And so none of their relatives
[27:42] would know where they were. And they didn't have a phone to
[27:45] let them know where they were because this was 1800s.
[27:48] And so this was perfect for homes.
[27:50] No one would know where to check for these people when they went
[27:53] missing. There'd be no numbers to call.
[27:55] So he would go down to this fair and use his very charming
[28:00] personality. He would seduce these women.
[28:03] He would offer them a place to stay at his hotel overnight.
[28:06] Some of them he even proposed to at this fair.
[28:10] I don't know if that's 100% true, but I read that and that's
[28:14] crazy to me. But to be fair, his first wife,
[28:16] Clara Loverin, he proposed to her the following morning after
[28:20] he met her. So I mean, he seems like a very
[28:23] impulsive kind of guy. Anyway, he would learn them in
[28:26] that way. He would like flirt with them at
[28:28] the fair, give them a place to stay at his hotel, and then they
[28:32] would never leave the hotel again.
[28:35] He would kill them. But we don't know how many
[28:37] victims he claimed this way. Obviously, because there was
[28:40] number booking information, there were no phones, there were
[28:43] no names. So we don't know if he claimed
[28:46] any this way or if that's just a big fabrication.
[28:50] It could be up to 200 anyway. As for HH Holmes's first named
[28:56] confirmed victim, her name was Julia Smith and she was married
[29:00] to a man named Ned Connor, who actually worked in the jewelry
[29:04] shop underneath Holmes Murder Castle.
[29:07] And as Ned was working for Holmes, Julia would come and
[29:10] visit him at work and everything.
[29:12] She got to know Holmes, her husband's boss, and as they got
[29:16] to know each other, they kind of started flirting with each
[29:20] other. Obviously her husband didn't
[29:21] know about any of this, but then Julia and Holmes actually
[29:25] started an affair and at this point I believe Holmes was
[29:28] actually still married to murder his second wife.
[29:32] Eventually Holmes offered Ned, Julia and their six year old
[29:36] daughter Pearl a place to stay at the hotel so that Ned could
[29:40] be closer to work, but obviously it was just so that Julia was
[29:44] around more. But either way, they agreed and
[29:47] the whole family moved into the hotel.
[29:49] Eventually Ned caught on to his wife's affair with his boss
[29:53] Holmes, and Ned left. He split up with her, he moved
[29:57] away, he left her with the kid, and Julia just stayed at the
[30:01] hotel, carried on her relationship with Holmes.
[30:03] And then in 1891, Julia actually fell pregnant to Holmes.
[30:08] Well, this is rumoured that she fell pregnant to Holmes and so
[30:12] he offered to perform an abortion on her and he was a
[30:15] qualified Dr. so she let him. But she never survived this
[30:20] operation. Whether she actually had this
[30:22] operation or not, that's just the story that a lot of people
[30:25] tell. I don't actually know how Holmes
[30:28] killed her, but we can be pretty sure that he did kill her and
[30:32] also her six year old daughter Pearl.
[30:34] And then just two weeks after the two of them were last seen,
[30:38] Holmes was already renting out their room in the hotel.
[30:42] And this room still had all of Julia's belongings in it.
[30:45] It had her dresses hung up in the wardrobe.
[30:47] It had a doll on the floor, which probably belonged to
[30:50] Pearl. And when Holmes was showing
[30:52] people around this room, he actually kicked this doll under
[30:55] the bed, like, casually. Less than six months after that,
[30:59] Holmes met and hired a woman named Emmeline Sigrand to work
[31:04] at the hotel as a typewriter. Again, Holmes and Emmeline began
[31:08] an affair. And this was number secret to
[31:11] the other employees. I don't know if Holmes, his own
[31:13] wife, knew about this affair and just kept quiet.
[31:17] But everyone knew that Holmes and Emmeline were a thing.
[31:20] And then around the following Christmas, Emmeline also
[31:23] disappeared. And when people would ask Holmes
[31:26] what happened to Emmeline, where she went and everything, he
[31:29] would say that she moved to Europe to get married.
[31:33] And again, a similar story happened with a third woman
[31:36] named Edna Van Tassel. She began working at the hotel
[31:40] and went missing. Around this time, Holmes made a
[31:43] very good friend named Benjamin Peitzel, and he isn't very
[31:47] important to the story right now, but you need to know this
[31:50] for later on. So Benjamin Peitzel, and he was
[31:53] like Holmes's best friend. He was his right hand man.
[31:56] He was the only person Holmes really trusted in his life ever.
[32:01] But even then, he didn't trust him too much.
[32:04] Like Peitzel never knew about any of Holmes's murders or
[32:07] anything like that, but he knew a lot more than other people
[32:10] knew about Holmes. And Pixel was quite the opposite
[32:14] of Holmes physically. So Pixel was very, very tall.
[32:17] He was like 6 foot something whereas Holmes was only 5 foot
[32:21] 7. But Holmes was like the brains
[32:24] of everything, whereas Pixel was a little bit dumb.
[32:27] He was kind of like Holmes as hench men really.
[32:30] And Pixel has been described by people that knew of this
[32:33] relationship as Holmes as tool or his creature, which gives you
[32:38] an idea of the kind of relationship that they had.
[32:40] It was very kind of manipulative on Holmes's end.
[32:44] He could make Pixel do whatever he wanted.
[32:47] Holmes and Pixel would commit several different insurance
[32:50] scams together over the years. But like I said, Pixel, I don't
[32:54] believe ever really had any idea about the murders anyway.
[32:57] Like I said, that friendship isn't really important to the
[33:00] timeline right now, but I just wanted to put it in there.
[33:03] So remember Benjamin Pixel for later.
[33:06] HH Holmes's fifth confirmed and named victim was an actress from
[33:11] Boston named Minnie Williams. Minnie came from a very wealthy
[33:15] family from Texas and she owned a lot of land over there, which
[33:19] is probably the reason that Holmes was so interested in her
[33:21] because there was always a money motive for him.
[33:25] But his plan to get this land from Minnie wasn't as simple as
[33:30] get his name on the deed, then kill her, and then the land is
[33:33] his because Minnie's sister also shared the deed to the land.
[33:39] So Holmes would be third in line to inherit this land.
[33:43] So in order to be able to get it, he would have to get rid of
[33:46] both Minnie and her sister. Anyway, Minnie fell head over
[33:51] heels in love with HH Holmes. She would write letters back to
[33:54] Boston, back to her sister. Her sister's name was Nanny by
[33:58] the way. She would write letters to her
[33:59] sister saying that this was the man she was going to marry.
[34:02] She was obsessed with him, She loved him.
[34:04] And not too long into this relationship, HH Holmes, as I've
[34:09] been saying, a very charming, persuasive man.
[34:11] Supposedly he somehow managed to get Minnie Williams to sign over
[34:17] the deed to this land to a man that she'd never met before.
[34:22] And this man was named Alexander Bond.
[34:24] I don't know what reason Holmes gave Minnie to sign away this
[34:29] land, but she gave it to a man named Alexander Bond, who
[34:33] actually didn't exist. Alexander Bond was one of HH
[34:36] Holmes's many, many aliases. So the land was his.
[34:40] So the way that Holmes did this was he got in contact with Nanny
[34:44] and he said, don't tell Minnie, but come to Chicago.
[34:49] I'll pick you up from the train station, I'll take you back to
[34:51] the hotel and we'll surprise Minnie.
[34:54] So just don't tell her that you're coming over.
[34:56] So Holmes took Nanny up to one of the hotel rooms to settle in
[35:00] and everything. And then he said, oh, Minnie is
[35:02] in this room. And so Nanny went to surprise
[35:05] her sister. She got into this room and then
[35:08] the door locked behind her. She was in the vault room that I
[35:13] was talking about with the big huge door on it.
[35:15] Now, I don't exactly know how this went down because this
[35:18] really confused me in my research, but somehow I believe
[35:22] that Holmes leaked acid onto the floor of this room.
[35:27] And I don't know Nanny's exact cause of death, but I know that
[35:31] she died in that room. And eventually, when
[35:34] investigators found the murder castle and they were looking
[35:37] through all the rooms, they actually found an imprint of
[35:41] Nanny's foot, like, her foot skin on the door because of
[35:45] where it had, like, corroded and then attached to the door.
[35:48] And then she'd, like, ripped it. Like, it's disgusting.
[35:51] But that's what I think happened.
[35:52] I think maybe she died of starvation or maybe he gassed
[35:56] her in there or something. But yeah, that was kind of
[36:00] confusing for me. But the whole time, Minnie was
[36:03] just a few rooms away from her sister Nanny, as she was dying.
[36:07] And quickly after that, Holmes also killed Minnie Williams, and
[36:11] then the land was his. I don't actually know how he
[36:14] killed Minnie Williams. A lot of sources said that we
[36:17] don't know that the two sisters just went missing.
[36:20] Some sources say that he poisoned her.
[36:23] I don't actually know. So at this point in the
[36:25] timeline, insurance companies that are involved with HH homes
[36:29] are getting a little bit suspicious.
[36:31] They're noticing that he is taking out a lot of life
[36:33] insurance policies and a lot of his staff.
[36:36] And then they all seemed to go missing or die.
[36:39] And it was obviously very suspicious.
[36:41] But Holmes wasn't stupid. He knew that it was suspicious
[36:45] at this point. And so he fled before they could
[36:48] come to him. He ran away to Texas, to his new
[36:52] land that he just got. At this point, he'd already
[36:55] picked up another wife. I don't know if this is his
[36:58] third or his fourth at this point, but he had another wife
[37:01] named Georgiana York. He actually met Georgiana York
[37:05] in Colorado because after he killed the sisters, he travelled
[37:09] about a little bit to kind of lose the trail of police or the
[37:13] insurance companies. And then he eventually settled
[37:15] in Texas with his new wife. And so now he was in Texas, he
[37:20] began thinking about how he would carry on his murders
[37:23] because he obviously had to abandon his castle that he
[37:26] worked so hard to plant. And so he began thinking about
[37:29] building a murder castle 2.0 on this land.
[37:33] And it would be bigger, it would be more complex, it would be
[37:36] more or sadistic. But before he even had chance to
[37:39] put these thoughts to paper, Holmes was arrested.
[37:43] But not for anything that you might think.
[37:45] Not for fraud, not for murder, not for kidnapped, not for
[37:49] anything. He was arrested for stealing
[37:52] some horses. During his time in prison,
[37:55] Holmes met a man named Marion Hedgepeth, and he was a
[37:58] notorious criminal. He was serving a very long
[38:01] sentence, 25 years. And Holmes and Hedgepeth became
[38:05] quite close in prison. They shared a lot of the same
[38:07] interests, like crime, fraud. So while the men were in prison
[38:13] and they were talking about all the different crimes that they'd
[38:16] committed, Holmes said that he was planning his biggest
[38:20] insurance scam yet. But it was going to be really
[38:24] hard and he was a bit concerned about how he was going to pull
[38:27] it off. But this time he was going to
[38:29] fake his own death and claim his own life insurance money.
[38:35] Holmes figured out that he could earn $10,000 on his own life
[38:39] insurance claim if he pretended to be dead.
[38:42] But he was going to need a very good, very corrupt lawyer
[38:46] because he was going to need a lot of help and this person was
[38:50] going to have to know that he was still alive.
[38:51] And so Holmes promised Marion Hedgepeth $500.00 of the 10,000
[38:57] that he would get from the life insurance if Hedgepeth could get
[39:01] him in contact with a good lawyer.
[39:02] As soon as Holmes was out of prison, he went and met up with
[39:06] this really good lawyer that Hedgepeth got him in contact
[39:08] with, and the plan began. But of course, the insurance
[39:12] companies knew the name HH Holmes.
[39:14] They were very suspicious. They didn't believe it, and it
[39:17] was going to be a lot harder than Holmes initially thought.
[39:20] And this is where Holmes drafted in his old loyal friend Benjamin
[39:26] Peitzel. And remember, this guy would do
[39:28] anything for Holmes. And Holmes was very persuasive.
[39:32] But this guy was like his little puppy, like Holmes could make
[39:35] him do whatever. And somehow Holmes managed to
[39:38] persuade Peitz to fake his death and then they would get the
[39:42] money that way. Like pretend that he was dead
[39:45] instead of homes. And Pixel agreed on the
[39:48] condition that his family get quite a large cut of this
[39:52] $10,000 because he had a wife and five children, so he was up
[39:57] for it. It was a very dangerous and
[39:59] risky thing, but he was up for it as long as his family were
[40:01] getting paid. So the plan was to put Paixel in
[40:06] hiding and then find a cadaver that was the same measurements
[40:11] as Paixel. Because back then, obviously
[40:13] they didn't have like fingerprint testing or DNA
[40:16] testing or anything the way that they would make sure that a body
[40:20] was the right. Person, the way that they would
[40:22] identify a body would be to look at the measurements like the
[40:26] measurements of like the chest and then like how long a person
[40:29] is and everything. They needed to find someone who
[40:31] was very similar measurements to Pixel.
[40:33] They were going to get this cadaver, they were going to
[40:36] mutilate it, they were going to burn it and everything and then
[40:39] say that Pixel died tragically in a really bad accident.
[40:43] Maybe he got burned to death. Pixel's family, his wife and
[40:47] five children. Well, some of the children were
[40:49] very, very young, but the children that were old enough to
[40:52] understand they were all in on the plan.
[40:55] They were prepared to go and identify this fake body as their
[41:00] husband and their father. So the plan was that Peitzel
[41:09] would set himself up as an inventor named BF Perry, and BF
[41:14] Perry would be in the lab one day and die in a tragic lab
[41:19] explosion. And this explosion would leave
[41:21] him so disfigured and so unrecognizable.
[41:25] So everyone had their part in this plan.
[41:27] Obviously, Peitzel's job was to hide his family's was to
[41:31] identify him, and Holmes's job was to find the cadaver that
[41:36] matched his measurements. And so home set about finding
[41:39] this cadaver. But after a couple of days,
[41:42] Paitzel started having cold feet about the whole situation.
[41:45] He was a bit worried that they wouldn't be able to pull it off
[41:47] and he'd be worried about what had happened to his wife and
[41:50] kids. He was saying to Holmes that he
[41:52] didn't want to go through with it anymore.
[41:53] He wanted out. And Holmes obviously couldn't
[41:57] have that. Holmes needed his money.
[41:59] And so Holmes comforted Paitzel. He was like, it's OK, Like come
[42:02] back tomorrow and we'll discuss the whole thing.
[42:05] We'll strategize the whole thing, like don't worry, it's
[42:08] going to be OK. So Pixel came back the next day
[42:10] and spoke with Holmes. And halfway through this
[42:14] conversation, Holmes realized that Pixel wasn't going to do
[42:17] it. There was Number persuading him
[42:18] to do it, but Holmes needed him to do it.
[42:21] So as the men were talking and discussing this whole plan,
[42:25] Holmes was getting Pixel very, very drunk.
[42:28] And then once he was very intoxicated, Holmes knocked him
[42:31] out with chloroform and then burned him alive because who
[42:37] better to match Paixel's measurements than Paixel
[42:40] himself? So then Paixel's family went and
[42:42] identified this body, thinking that it was a cadaver, thinking
[42:47] that their husband father was safe somewhere, went and
[42:52] identified his dead body without knowing that it was him.
[42:55] And the whole thing was a success.
[42:57] They got the $10,000 in insurance money, but here is
[43:01] where Holmes decided that he didn't want to play by the
[43:04] rules. So obviously the plan was to
[43:06] give most of the money to the Pytzel family, 500 to Hedgepeth
[43:10] and then some to a lawyer, and then Holmes would keep the rest.
[43:14] But that's not very HH Holmes. He decided that he wasn't giving
[43:17] a single penny to the Pytzel family and so he was going to
[43:21] have to get rid of them. So supposedly Paixel was waiting
[43:25] in London this whole time for his family to come and meet him,
[43:27] and Holmes said that they should all make their way to London,
[43:32] but not directly because then that would look a bit suspicious
[43:35] and they'd probably find Paixel. Instead, what they should do is
[43:39] split into groups, two groups, and travel around a bit, go to
[43:43] different American states, and then all make their way to
[43:47] London to kind of lose the trail.
[43:49] So Holmes offered to Pais old wife that he would take some of
[43:54] the children. He decided to take the three
[43:56] middle children, leaving her with the oldest and the youngest
[43:59] and they would both make their own way around America for a
[44:03] while and then to London. Now this gets so confusing so
[44:08] I'm sorry if I don't tell it very well.
[44:10] So basically, Holmes had this wife the whole time, Georgiana
[44:13] York, and she had no idea that any of this was going on.
[44:18] She had no idea about the insurance scam, about Peitzel,
[44:22] about Peitzel's wife, about Peitzel's children, about the
[44:25] fact that Holmes had three of Peitzel's children in his
[44:28] possession. And what Holmes was doing was
[44:32] taking these three children to a different house every night or
[44:36] every few nights and leaving them there alone.
[44:40] And then he would go and get the wife and the other two kids,
[44:44] take them to a different house in a different area and leave
[44:49] them there. And then every night he would go
[44:53] home to his wife, who had no idea that any of this was going
[44:57] on, which is absolutely unbelievable.
[44:59] But I really do believe it because this is HH Holmes.
[45:02] And he seemed to get away with so much.
[45:05] How this man had enough hours in the day to move around two
[45:10] groups of people and and then still go home to his wife every
[45:14] night, who didn't suspect a thing is just insane.
[45:17] So anyway, I don't know how long this whole thing was going on.
[45:21] These three different groups of people, homes orchestrating this
[45:25] whole thing. I don't know how long that went
[45:27] on for, but obviously it wasn't part of Holmes's long term plan.
[45:32] And I'm sure you knew that this was coming.
[45:34] But of course, these three children were not a
[45:36] responsibility that Homes really wanted to have, and so he
[45:40] murdered all three of them. Their names were Alice, Nelly
[45:44] and Howard. Howard was actually killed
[45:46] first. It's believed that Holmes went
[45:49] and got a bunch of prescription medication, poisoned this boy,
[45:53] overdosed him, and then chopped up his body and burnt it on a
[45:58] stove, which is a very eerily similar kind of death to the one
[46:03] that his father also had at the hands of Holmes.
[46:07] And the way that we know for sure that it was Holmes that
[46:09] killed Howard was that some of his teeth and some of his skull
[46:14] were actually found in the stove of a house that Holmes had
[46:17] rented during this time. As for the 2 girls, Alice and
[46:21] Nelly, I don't know what Holmes said to them about where their
[46:24] brother was this whole time, but once they got over to Canada,
[46:28] that is when Holmes killed the 2 girls at the same time, he
[46:32] forced them to climb into a tiny wooden box.
[46:35] He then drilled a hole in the side of this box, fed a tube in
[46:40] there and then gassed them to death.
[46:42] He then stripped them naked and buried them in the floor of his
[46:46] basement in this house that he owned in Canada.
[46:48] And, and that makes a lot of people believe that these were
[46:52] probably sexual murders because obviously none of the other
[46:55] bodies had ever been found. So we can't be sure if there was
[46:58] a sexual element to any of the others.
[47:01] But the fact that the two young girls were found naked is very
[47:04] concerning. Meanwhile, Holmes was still
[47:06] orchestrating this whole thing with his wife and with Paitel's
[47:09] wife and with the other two kids.
[47:11] And Peitzel's wife had no idea that her three children had been
[47:15] murdered. So I don't know what Holmes
[47:18] planned on doing with Mrs. Peitzel and the two of the
[47:22] Peitzel children. But he still hadn't paid anyone
[47:25] their share of this $10,000 yet. He hadn't paid the lawyer.
[47:29] He hadn't paid Marion Hedgepeth, who was the guy in prison that
[47:32] gave him the name of the lawyer. And Hedgepeth knew what Holmes
[47:35] was like. He knew that Holmes had a habit
[47:38] of worming his way out of things like that, out of paying things
[47:42] that he owed. And so Hedgepeth knew that he
[47:44] probably wasn't going to get his $500 from this deal, and he
[47:48] wasn't happy. So he ratted Holmes out to the
[47:51] police. He told them about this plan
[47:53] where Holmes was going to fake his own death, but then that
[47:56] didn't work. So he faked Paitzel's death.
[47:58] And somehow Hedgepeth knew that Holmes had actually killed
[48:02] Paitzel and that it wasn't fake. And so Holmes was a murderer.
[48:06] So police tried to find Holmes, but they couldn't find him
[48:10] because Holmes was a very smart man.
[48:12] How many times do I have to say it?
[48:13] He he was always one step ahead of the police.
[48:16] But instead, police managed to track down Mrs. Peitzel and her
[48:20] two children, and they informed her of the whole situation, that
[48:25] that actually was her husband that she identified, and that
[48:28] her husband had been killed by HH Holmes.
[48:31] And obviously, she was so devastated for so many reasons
[48:35] as well. First of all, she just lost her
[48:38] husband. Second of all, her three
[48:40] children are now off with this dangerous man that's already
[48:43] murdered her husband. She knows what he's capable of.
[48:46] At this point, she didn't know that her children were already
[48:48] dead, and she just felt really betrayed.
[48:50] This was a man that promised them so much.
[48:53] He was a loyal friend of her husbands for years before this.
[48:58] She never expected any of this. And so she pointed them in the
[49:01] direction. She said, he's with my three
[49:03] children. Please go save them, rescue
[49:05] them, bring them back. And so police went, but of
[49:09] course the only two people they found were Holmes and his wife.
[49:12] I don't know what excuse Holmes gave as to why the three
[49:16] children weren't with him, but eventually police ended up
[49:19] searching all of his properties that he'd been like moving the
[49:23] family around in and they eventually found the bodies of
[49:27] both the 2 girls. Meanwhile in Holmes is
[49:30] questioning. He is admitting to all of the
[49:33] insurance fraud and everything like that.
[49:35] He knows he's going to go to prison for a long time for that,
[49:38] but he's denying murder. All the murders, Paitzel's
[49:41] murder, the children's murders, any murder that they were
[49:46] possibly suspecting him of, all he would admit to was the fraud.
[49:49] But police pretty much had proof that he had killed these
[49:52] children. Their remains were found in his
[49:54] homes. Who else is going to have left
[49:56] their remains there? You know what I mean?
[49:58] And so they pretty much pinned them on him at this point.
[50:01] And so they decided to search his other properties.
[50:04] And that is when they found the murder castle in Chicago.
[50:08] Of course, with the amount of murders that were committed in
[50:12] that murder castle, there was bound to be evidence in there.
[50:15] And there was, there was quite a bit.
[50:16] There was some of Minnie's hair. There was some of Minnie's
[50:19] jewelry, her shoe. They found the bones of 6 year
[50:22] old Pearl in the basement, who was the daughter of Julia Smith,
[50:26] the first confirmed victim. And obviously they found all the
[50:30] different trapdoor rooms and gas chambers and hanging chambers
[50:35] and everything like that. In a lot of these rooms where
[50:39] the victims had been like locked in and things, there were
[50:43] scratches on the walls and dents in the doors and just very
[50:48] obvious signs that people had been trapped in there against
[50:51] their will and they were trying to escape.
[50:53] Of course, they found the basement, which is where most of
[50:56] the gory stuff was, the acid baths, the crematorium which had
[51:01] so many bones in it, dissection tables, tools, equipment, things
[51:06] to hang bodies. There were blood stained women's
[51:09] clothes in there. Meanwhile, in Holmes is
[51:12] questioning. He was being one of the absolute
[51:16] most frustrating, confusing. One day he would admit to 27
[51:20] murders and then the next day he'd say, Oh no, I never
[51:23] committed a single murder. And then the next day he'd say,
[51:26] Oh no, it was just two. And then he'd be back to 27 the
[51:30] next day. And it was so confusing for
[51:32] police because they had no idea which one of his stories to
[51:35] believe. So obviously they kind of went
[51:38] with the highest number that he said, which was 27, because it
[51:43] seemed like a odd number for him to just come up with.
[51:46] So they kind of believed that one the most.
[51:48] However, as police started looking into these 27 supposed
[51:52] victims, they found that a lot of the people that Holmes was
[51:56] naming were either still alive or they died of natural causes
[52:01] elsewhere. So he'd deny murders that he did
[52:05] commit, but then he would confess to murders that he
[52:08] didn't commit, and then he'd take things back.
[52:11] And it's oh God. However, some people speculate
[52:14] that he did this on purpose. And of course, as everything
[52:18] does with HH Holmes, there was a money motive behind it.
[52:22] Supposedly, a local newspaper offered Holmes a lot of money to
[52:27] admit to killing 27 people so that they could run this really
[52:31] interesting story about America's first ever serial
[52:34] killer. If they were the first to write
[52:36] about this new interesting, crazy story, they would get so
[52:41] much money and so much press. And Holmes also benefited
[52:45] because he would get quite a bit of money.
[52:47] So you know, who knows how many people HH Holmes actually
[52:51] murdered in his time? We know it was definitely 9, but
[52:55] truly it could be up to 200. And I genuinely believe that.
[52:58] I know that is a really insane number to think about.
[53:04] I think it's definitely possible because of the whole building he
[53:08] had specifically for killing people.
[53:11] HH Holmes was found guilty of the murder of Benjamin Peitzel.
[53:15] At this point, they had found the remains of the three
[53:19] children. However, he was already going to
[53:22] get the worst possible sentence for being found guilty of
[53:25] Peitzel's murder. I don't suppose it really
[53:27] mattered how many murders he was found guilty of, just as long as
[53:30] he was given the worst possible sentence, and that sentence was
[53:34] execution. He was sentenced to death.
[53:36] HH Holmes was hung on May 7th, 1896 at Philadelphia Prison and
[53:42] he was reported to be eerily calm.
[53:46] Like he didn't care, he wasn't sad, he wasn't scared, he wasn't
[53:49] expressive in any way. Apparently it was just a very
[53:53] creepy thing to experience. So he did have one last wish,
[53:58] which I found very ironic. He wanted his grave to be dug 10
[54:02] feet deep, which is a lot deeper than the usual grave.
[54:06] And he also wanted his coffin encased in cement.
[54:10] And this was out of fear that people would try and dig him up
[54:14] and dissect him, something that he did to his victims.
[54:18] So he was happy to do it to at least nine people, probably up
[54:22] to 200 people, but he didn't want that doing to himself.
[54:25] So when it came to his actual execution, his actual hanging, I
[54:29] know I kind of skipped over that a minute ago, but we're coming
[54:32] back to it. So when someone is hung, they
[54:34] are kind of dropped from a height so that when they fall
[54:38] down and the neck goes into the noose, it snaps the neck and
[54:42] they die pretty much instantly. But with Holmes, when he was
[54:45] hung, his neck didn't actually snap, and so he was just hanging
[54:50] there strangling to death for about 15 minutes.
[54:54] And of course, this was being watched by I don't know how many
[54:58] people. A lot.
[54:59] It was a huge crowd because everyone knew who HH Holmes was.
[55:02] Everyone wanted to see him be executed.
[55:05] And eyewitnesses of that say that he was twitching for a full
[55:09] 15 minutes. It was a really creepy thing to
[55:12] watch and he was finally pronounced dead after 20
[55:16] minutes. So now we're going to talk about
[55:18] some conspiracy theories surrounding this case.
[55:21] And you don't normally get conspiracy theories on solved
[55:24] cases, but before I do get into those, I just want to kind of
[55:27] tie off some loose ends in this story.
[55:29] So As for Marion Hedgepeth, the guy that gave Holmes up to the
[55:33] police, he eventually completed his full 25 year sentence and he
[55:38] was back out, but he didn't learn from his prison sentence.
[55:42] He went straight back into a life of crime.
[55:44] And in 1909 he was actually shot and killed by a policeman during
[55:48] a shootout at a saloon. As for the murder castle itself
[55:53] in 1895 S, this is one year before Holmes was executed.
[55:59] It was actually blown up. It's rumoured that two men were
[56:03] seen entering the building from the back between 8:00 and 9:00
[56:06] PM on this particular night. They were in there for about an
[56:09] hour and a half and then they ran straight out and ran away
[56:13] and shortly after the men escaped.
[56:15] There were multiple explosions inside the murder castle and
[56:18] then it set on fire. These two men that supposedly
[56:22] were seen going in and then running back out have never been
[56:25] identified. However, investigators did find
[56:28] empty gas canisters outside under the steps.
[56:31] Somehow the building itself withstood the fire.
[56:34] Everything inside was pretty much burnt, like all the
[56:38] furniture and everything but the structure itself with study and
[56:41] surprisingly this building remained in use for another 40
[56:45] years until it was finally torn down.
[56:48] I'm very surprised that it wasn't torn down immediately and
[56:51] I find it really interesting to think who could have done that.
[56:55] So there's a lot of different theories as to who could have
[56:58] tried to blow up the murder castle.
[57:01] Maybe it was homes paying someone to go and blow up, like
[57:04] evidence and things like that. Maybe it was police or the
[57:07] government trying to blow up this building in trying to get
[57:10] rid of it. Who knows, Maybe it was a
[57:12] relative or a loved one or a friend of one of the victims and
[57:16] they just wanted that place gone.
[57:17] Or maybe, you know, it could have just been like teenagers
[57:21] causing mischief. In 1914, one of the caretakers
[57:25] that worked at the murder castle during the time of the murders
[57:29] sadly took his own life and he actually left a note that simply
[57:33] read I Couldn't Sleep. His name was Quinlan and his
[57:36] family said that he was haunted for the past few years and he
[57:41] saw a lot of hallucinations. And whether that's got anything
[57:45] to do with the murder castle or things that he might have seen
[57:48] while he was there, I don't know.
[57:51] But that's really sad either way.
[57:53] So now for the conspiracy theories, The first one being
[57:55] quite a popular one in this case, and that is that HH Holmes
[57:59] might have avoided his own execution.
[58:03] I don't know how this theory came to be.
[58:05] I don't know who came up with it, but a lot of people believe
[58:08] that Holmes somehow persuaded someone else to be hung in his
[58:14] place. And then Holmes just went off in
[58:16] hiding. And people have believed this
[58:19] theory for years, literally over 100 years.
[58:23] Even Holmes's own descendants believed this theory, so much so
[58:27] to the point where HH Holmes's great, great, great grandson,
[58:31] this descendant, I'm just gonna call him a descendant for the
[58:34] rest of the video. He demanded that HH Holmes's
[58:37] body was exhumed from this grave, from this cement and 10
[58:41] feet under and test it for DNA or whatever you can test a
[58:47] really old body for, to make sure that it's him.
[58:49] And this was in 2017, two years ago, this was done.
[58:54] His body was dug out of the ground two years ago.
[58:57] And because of how his body was in his coffin, like obviously in
[59:03] KSD and all this cement and it was so deep down, he actually
[59:06] didn't decompose as a normal body would.
[59:10] His clothes seemed to have not deteriorated at all.
[59:14] But the weirdest thing is that his mustache was perfectly
[59:18] intact. Like it was, it was still his
[59:21] mustache. Anyway.
[59:22] As for the identification, they checked against dental records
[59:27] and it was HH Holmes. And so they reburied him.
[59:31] And so I'm sorry, that's not really a conspiracy theory.
[59:34] I kind of lied, but it was only solved in the last two years, so
[59:38] it was a conspiracy theory that whole time.
[59:40] The second conspiracy theory is again one that his descendants
[59:44] do truly believe, and that is that HH Holmes is also Jack the
[59:50] Ripper. So I am absolutely sure that you
[59:53] already know who Jack the Ripper is.
[59:55] I'm not going to tell the whole story, but he is basically the
[59:58] UK's most infamous. Unidentified serial killer, so
[1:00:02] we have no idea who he was. He was active in 1888, but he
[1:00:07] operated in London. He killed mainly women.
[1:00:10] He's never been identified and the way that he would mess with
[1:00:16] the bodies after the deaths was very unique.
[1:00:19] So anyway, let's talk about why this theory even began in the
[1:00:23] 1st place. And that is because the Ripper
[1:00:25] murders and the HH Holmes murders are very, very similar.
[1:00:29] Like I said, they were all young women and both HH Holmes and the
[1:00:35] Ripper seemed to have a very good knowledge of human anatomy.
[1:00:39] And when I say good, I mean outstanding for that time, for
[1:00:44] 1888. These men were so intelligent.
[1:00:48] One of the Jack the Ripper murders, he took out the woman's
[1:00:51] full womb, and he can't do that without, like, knowledge of
[1:00:56] female anatomy. And obviously, we know HH Holmes
[1:00:59] had a medical degree or he went to medical school, Oregon,
[1:01:04] whatever. Yeah.
[1:01:04] In both cases, victims were murdered and mutilated,
[1:01:08] Mutilated so bad that you can barely tell who the victim was.
[1:01:15] And that was very unique for killings at that time.
[1:01:19] It seemed to be the main part of the murders for these men was
[1:01:23] the aftermath. They seemed to like the
[1:01:26] aftermath more than the actual killing.
[1:01:27] And people that believe that they saw Jack the Ripper in
[1:01:31] London at the time of the murders obviously gave police
[1:01:35] descriptions of this man. And these descriptions eerily
[1:01:39] fit HH Holmes. So obviously there's the dark
[1:01:43] hair, there's the mustache, but also like, look at the bridge of
[1:01:46] the nose. That's a very unique nose shape
[1:01:49] and the shape and the angle of the eyebrows.
[1:01:52] And like I said, Holmes descendant really believes this
[1:01:55] theory. And he took the composite sketch
[1:01:58] and the picture of Holmes. He took them to former FBI
[1:02:01] agents, and all of them said that that was one of the most
[1:02:06] accurate and similar picture sets that they'd ever seen in
[1:02:10] their careers. And in recent years, that same
[1:02:13] descendant of HH Holmes was actually given some of Holmes as
[1:02:17] old letters that he'd sent to his lawyer back in the 1800s.
[1:02:22] And a lot of these letters expressed a desire to visit
[1:02:28] London, which sounds very strange, but it's very accurate.
[1:02:32] One of Holmes's exact quotes to his lawyer was it's difficult to
[1:02:36] be found in London. And Holmes had a friend over in
[1:02:39] London as well. So that's like a motive for him
[1:02:42] to be able to, like, go over there and stay over there and
[1:02:45] have a reason to be there. Not that Holmes needed a reason
[1:02:48] to travel. He did that a lot.
[1:02:49] And some people believe that him HH Homes actually had a criminal
[1:02:55] record over in London. Now obviously Homes used a lot
[1:02:59] of aliases, so there's absolutely no way of confirming
[1:03:03] that this was homes. And I don't know what people's
[1:03:06] kind of evidence is or their argument is for the this, but a
[1:03:10] lot of people believe that Holmes was in London, He got a
[1:03:12] criminal record for something. He gave them a fake name and he
[1:03:17] had a criminal record over here. I don't know.
[1:03:19] To me, that's not really a piece of evidence.
[1:03:21] But to be fair, I don't think you need that piece of evidence
[1:03:24] because there's a lot of evidence anyway in those same
[1:03:27] letters. So the letter that Holmes sent
[1:03:29] his lawyer was sent to handwriting experts along with
[1:03:34] the Jack the Ripper letter that has been confirmed to have been
[1:03:37] from Jack the Ripper and and these experts found them to be a
[1:03:42] 97% match, which is very, very high.
[1:03:48] It's unlikely that you will ever get a 100% match even with your
[1:03:53] own handwriting. So you could write 2 letters,
[1:03:56] send them to the same people and they might give you a 97
[1:03:59] percent, 98%. That's insane that they were so
[1:04:03] similar. Holmes definitely did have the
[1:04:05] means to get to London. He was a very wealthy man, as we
[1:04:08] know from his and many, many, many insurance scams.
[1:04:11] And traveling was quite easy for the wealthy back then.
[1:04:15] So the Ripper killings, like I said, happened in 1888, and it
[1:04:19] was all in a very short period of time.
[1:04:22] Like, suddenly this killer came and he was killing women after
[1:04:25] women after women, and then he disappeared, which is very
[1:04:29] strange. It's not very common to see that
[1:04:31] in serial killers, especially serial killers that are getting
[1:04:35] away with it. They don't ever really just stop
[1:04:38] like that when a serial killer is doing well.
[1:04:41] So when they're committing all these murders, they're doing
[1:04:44] everything they want to do, and police aren't even close to
[1:04:47] finding them. Why would they stop?
[1:04:49] Because they're obviously getting something out of these
[1:04:51] murders. So why quit when you're ahead?
[1:04:55] They don't tend to quit when they're ahead.
[1:04:56] Well, it makes sense that maybe Jack the Ripper didn't just
[1:05:00] stop. He didn't abruptly stop, he just
[1:05:03] moved. Maybe Jack the Ripper continued
[1:05:05] killing but in his murder castle.
[1:05:11] Thank you so much for listening to usual disclaimer.
[1:05:14] At this point, I just want to say that if you've been affected
[1:05:16] by any of the topics we discussed today, please check
[1:05:19] the description where we've left some helpful resources.
[1:05:23] If you want to hear more cases like this one, make sure to
[1:05:25] follow Usual Disclaimer on your podcast app so that you get
[1:05:29] notifications when we post new episodes.
[1:05:31] And if you really enjoyed, I'd love it if you could leave a
[1:05:34] rating and a review too. Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[1:05:37] Neil is an Audio Boom Studios production.
[1:05:40] See you next time.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.