Across the street, he constructed the three-story building that would later factor so prominently in tales of his atrocities. Holmes, the con artist wed a second woman, Myrta Belknap, and purchased a pharmacy in the city’s Englewood district. After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1884, he worked various odd jobs before abandoning his wife and young son to start anew in Chicago.Ī highly exaggerated 1895 newspaper report detailing Holmes' so-called murder castle He robbed graves and morgues, stealing cadavers to sell to other medical schools or use in complicated life insurance scams. Holmes’ proclivity for criminal activity became readily apparent during his college years. Verifiable information on his childhood is sparse, but records suggest that he married his first wife, Clara Lovering, at age 17 and enrolled in medical school soon thereafter. “The whole idea was just a vehicle to swindle suppliers and investors and insurers.”Īs Frank Burgos of PhillyVoice noted in 2017, Holmes was not just a serial killer, but a “serial liar to encrust his story with legend and lore.” While awaiting execution, Holmes penned an autobiography from prison filled with falsehoods (including declarations of innocence) and exaggerations newspapers operating at the height of yellow journalism latched onto these claims, embellishing Holmes’ story and setting the stage for decades of obfuscation.īorn Herman Webster Mudgett in May 1861, the future Henry Howard Holmes-a name chosen in honor of detective Sherlock Holmes, according to Janet Maslin of the New York Times-grew up in a wealthy New England family. “When he added a third floor onto his building in 1892, he told people it was going to be a hotel space, but it was never finished or furnished or open to the public,” Selzer added. And, while historical and contemporary accounts alike tend to characterize the so-called Murder Castle as a hotel, its first and second floors actually housed shops and long-term rentals, respectively. Far from being strangers drawn into a house of horrors, the deceased were actually individuals Holmes befriended (or romanced) before murdering them as part of his money-making schemes. The facts are these, says Selzer: Though sensationalized reports suggest that Holmes killed upward of 200 people, Selzer could only confirm nine actual victims. The three-story building at the center of the H.H. “nd, like all the best tall tales, it sprang from a kernel of truth.” Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil. Mired in myth and misconception, the killer’s life has evolved into “a new American tall tale,” argues tour guide and author Adam Selzer in H.H. Erik Larson’s narrative nonfiction best seller The Devil in the White City introduced him to many Americans in 2003, and a planned adaptation of the book spearheaded by Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese is poised to heighten Holmes’ notoriety even further.īut the true story of Holmes’ crimes, “while horrifying, may not be quite as sordid” as popular narratives suggest, wrote Becky Little for last year. More than a century after his death, Holmes-widely considered the United States’ first known serial killer-continues to loom large in the imagination. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than a poet can help the inspiration to sing.” In the killer’s own words, “I was born with the devil in me. According to the Crime Museum, an intricate system of chutes and elevators enabled Holmes to transport his victims’ bodies to the Chicago building’s basement, which was purportedly equipped with a dissecting table, stretching rack and crematory. Holmes claimed to have killed at least 27 people, most of whom he’d lured into a purpose-built “ Murder Castle” replete with secret passageways, trapdoors and soundproof torture rooms. Holmes’ execution on May 7, 1896, the Chicago Chronicle published a lengthy diatribe condemning the “multimurderer, bigamist, seducer, resurrectionist, forger, thief and general swindler” as a man “without parallel in the annals of crime.” Among his many misdeeds, the newspaper reported, were suffocating victims in a vault, boiling a man in oil and poisoning wealthy women in order to seize their fortunes.
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