America’s First Killer

Tall, charming, and blue eyed, H.H. Holmes was a mysterious but yet extremely intelligent guy. Holmes graduated from Michigan University’s medical school. During his time at Michigan he studied and excelled in chemistry and Anatomy. Soon after he graduated Holmes began a career in fraud, poison, and murder. He had many victims, and is known to be America’s first serial killer. Some say he may even be Jack the Ripper from the U.K (Jones 1). Herman Mudgett aka: H.

H. Holmes grew up in a wealthy family and showed that he was highly intelligent at a young age. Holmes was very interested in medicine. He would trap animals and preform surgeries on them. Some sources say that Holmes also killed a childhood playmate. On May 16, 1861 America’s first serial killer was born.

Holmes was from a city called Gilmanton, New Hampshire. As Mudgett got older he enrolled at Michigan University’s medical school where he studied Chemistry and Anatomy.

Holmes almost didn’t get to graduate because a women falsely accused him of a false promise to marry her (Plummer 1). When 1886 came around Holmes moved to Chicago. While he was in Chicago Holmes took a job as a pharmacist and this is where he got the name “Dr. H.H. Holmes” (Jones 1). Soon after he took this legendary historical name, Holmes began killing his victims to steal their property. While doing so he built a house for himself and his victims.

This house became to be known as “Murder Castle.

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” Holmes as mysterious and heartless as he was had an extremely intelligent mind. His home was a hotel that consisted of secret, passages, soundproof rooms, trapdoors, doors that could be locked from the outside only, gas jets to asphyxiate his victims, and a kiln to cremate his victim’s bodies. During the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago 1893, he seduced and murdered a number of women. The way he did was by becoming engaged to them and then killing them after securing control of their life savings. Holmes also had required his employees to carry life insurance and naming him as beneficiary so that he could collect money after he killed them. Holmes would kill his victims by gassing, strangling, or poisoning them.

He would also sometimes strip the victims of their skin by using quicklime because he would sell their skeletons to near by medical schools (Jones 1). Holmes was arrested for insurance fraud in 1893 after there was a fire at his home. This is when He and Benjamin Pitezel came up with a scheme where Pitezel would pose as a wealthy patent broker and take out a $10,000 life insurance policy. Pitezel would then go into hiding while Holmes would work on a dead corpse to fake Pitezel’s death. They did this so that they could get the insurance money and split it (Goldman 2). Holmes had Pitezel move to Philadelphia to start his new life. This is what Pitezel thought he was doing at least, Holmes killed Pitezel when they got to Philadelphia and then left his body in a room above a store. Holmes being as clever minded as he was, convinced Pitezel’s family that the scheme would work, and they let their children to travel with Holmes from city to city so that he could elude authorities.

Little did Holmes know that one of his colleagues, (who put him in touch with a crooked lawyer) snitched on him when Holmes did not give him his promising’s out of the proceeds. The information that the co-worker leaked to the authorities tipped off detective Frank Geyer. Detective Geyer suspected that there was more to the story other than insurance fraud. He then followed Holmes’s trail from the Midwest to Canada. This is when he found the bodies of Nellie and Alice (Pitezel’s kids) in Toronto. Holmes killed the kids by forcing them into a trunk and then suffocated them by attaching a gas hose to an aperture in the trunk. The Son Howard was found in a house near Indianapolis.

After word got out about what Holmes had done, Chicago Police broke into Holmes’s “castle”, and this is where they found a walk-in vault, trapdoors, stairways leading to nowhere, closets with secret passage ways, doors that opened into brick walls, rooms with chutes leading to the basement, and some rooms were equipped with gas pipes (Goldman 2). Holmes was charged with Pitezel’s murder, then after he was charged the press jumped all over the story and reported every gory detail from the search of the missing children (Goldman 2). The press called Holmes a “human demon, a being so unthinkable that no novelist would dare to invent such a character” (Goldman 2). The press were all over Holmes, they kept finding out more and more information like Holmes confessing to 27 murders. Suspects were saying that Holmes killed or kidnapped up to 230 people. After confessing up to 9 murders were confirmed.

Despite what the press or anybody said Holmes was very smart and this is why he did not get caught for the longest time (Jones 3). Leading up to Holmes’s capture, Detective Geyer was hired by an insurance company and with the help of a police detective from Toronto by the name of Alf Cuddy, the found the St. Vincent St. Cottage. The two searched all over the cottage in and out, they got some feeling that something was missing so they started digging in the cellar. This is when they found the arm of Mrs. Pitezel, her kids were also found in the cottage (Jones 3). Many wonder on what fueled Holmes’s love for killing. Some say sex, yes. Greed, yes. More than anything though it was power. Holmes loved the feeling of being in power, just like any other serial killer. It fueled them in a way that nothing else could. Holmes also had a grim sense of humor, He told a hanging man “Take your time about it, I am in no hurry” (Jones 3).

This can be disturbing to many people, but maybe that why he stayed in power or even why many people feared him. Before Holmes was arrested The Hearst Corporation Cooperation paid Holmes a lot of money for him to give them his story. This money was no use to Holmes because he was going to prison, and after his six day trial he was sentenced to death by hanging. Holmes was often fearful that somebody would try to steal his body after he was put to rest. So he had very specific details on how he wanted to be buried, Holmes requested that his coffin was to be filled with cement, buried ten feet into the ground, and then topped with another layer of cement (Rowan 2). Holmes lived a very dark life. Nobody really knows how many people Holmes actually killed or kidnapped.

The scary thing is that soon after homes died, the detective that caught him became very ill, the jury foreman on his case was electrocuted, the priest who gave him his rites died suddenly, and a fire broke out in the insurance company that he had cheated. All that was left in the building was a picture of Holmes and a copy of his arrest warrant (Goldman 2). People were scared that Holmes may have escaped his execution, so they dug up Holmes body at the Holy Cross Cemetery. There was many news stations and reporters at the site of the burial when they dug up the body of H.H. Holmes. The head detective on the job had to have tests run to confirm the identity of Holmes. This Process took a couple of days and then they later confirmed that is was Holmes’s body in the coffin.

His body was found not to have decomposed normally. His clothes were almost perfectly preserved and his mustache was found to be still intact. The body was positively identified as being that of Holmes with his teeth. Holmes was then reburied. People are still unsure because Holmes knew how to fake his death or even more so escape his execution. Holmes gave various contradictory accounts of his life, initially claiming innocence and later that he was possessed by Satan. His propensity for lying has made it difficult for researchers to ascertain the truth on the basis of his statements. While writing his confessions in prison, Holmes mentioned how drastically his facial appearance had changed since his imprisonment.

He described his new, grim appearance as ‘gruesome and taking a Satanical Cast,’ and wrote that he was now convinced that after everything that he had done, he was beginning to resemble the Devil. On March 7, 1914, the Chicago Tribune reported that, with the death of Quinlan, the former caretaker of the Castle, ‘the mysteries of Holmes’ Castle’ would remain unexplained. Quinlan had committed suicide by taking strychnine. His body was found in his bedroom with a note that read, ‘I couldn’t sleep.’ This may be the haunting of Dr. H.H. Holmes, but who knows. The blue eyed, tall, charming, and mysterious killer, who is accounted for 230 or more murders finally got caught after a long run of fraud and darkness. He was finally executed on May 7, 1896. Some say that it took Holmes around fifteen minutes to die. Holmes was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery, so go visit America’s first serial killer grave (Rowan 2)!