Further Reading For H H Holmes
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Like something out of an Edward Gorey cartoon, Herman Webster Mudget, best known by his alias H H Holmes, is one of the strangest chapters in the history of American crime. He wears the distinct honor of being one of the first documented American serial killers. Others had existed before (see: Serial Killers of the American Frontier) but Holmes represents the serial killer in the way that we understand them in modern times. He murdered for pleasure, there was a sexual component to his crimes, a cooling off period, and a ritual. Like most of these clowns, he confessed to way more crimes than he could be legally connected to, 27 in total, but could only be legally proven to have committed 7 of these murders.
Though an old timey murder specimen, Holmes is best known for his method of dispatching his victims, which is way different than your average killer. At the time of the Chicago’s World Fair Holmes managed to con numerous contractors into building his famous murder castle, a strange looking hotel on the corner of South Wallace Avenue and West 63rd Street. In this hotel, guests (mostly women) were sealed in air tight rooms and then asphyxiated. The rooms were rigged mechanically to dispose of the bodies by sliding them down through a network of slides to pits of lye in the basement where they would be dissolved. Holmes would then sell their skeletons to scientific material suppliers.
Episodes: 200-202
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