American Monsters: H.H. Holmes and The Chicago Murder Castle
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Sources:
https://allthatsinteresting.com/hh-holmes-hotel https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/enduring-mystery-hh-holmes-americas-first-serial-killer-180977646/ https://www.biography.com/crime/hh-holmes
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Zevon Odelberg is a true crime podcast host and disability advocate. Zevon has cerebral palsy and he wants Kinda Murdery to be welcoming community for people with disabilities and for people living with challenges of any kind. Life can be hard, but being together makes it better.
Speaker 1: Warning, Kind of Murdery contains adult themes, explicit language, and
Speaker 1: descriptions of violence. It is not suitable for anyone, and
Speaker 1: we recommend you stop listening now.
Speaker 2: True crime with a dash of the paranormal, the garish,
Speaker 2: the strange in the darkly comic. A podcast that's about
Speaker 2: more than just murder. It's my very own pocket dimension,
Speaker 2: home to a curated collection of bizarre and compelling stories,
Speaker 2: the unsolved, the unsettling, and the unbelievable. I cover it
Speaker 2: all just so long as it's kind of murdery. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 2: thanks for being here. I am Zevan Odeberg and this
Speaker 2: is kind of murdery again. Another big dose of gratitude
Speaker 2: for Jerry and Tracy Polly from Hillbilly Horror Stories who
Speaker 2: asked Kind of Murdery to participate in their Halloween special
Speaker 2: that dropped this Monday, October twenty eighth. So on over
Speaker 2: to Hillbilly Horror Stories and listen to that. If you haven't,
Speaker 2: and if you happen to find your way here because
Speaker 2: of Hillbilly Horror Stories, well then thank you so much
Speaker 2: for joining me. And as I teased in the Halloween special,
Speaker 2: with just a little bit of the story of HH
Speaker 2: Holmes and his infamous murder Castle in Chicago. Well, today
Speaker 2: I'm going to tell you the whole story. So if
Speaker 2: you're ready, please join me as we uncover what truths
Speaker 2: we can and solve what mysteries we may kind of murderies.
Speaker 2: American monster HH Holmes in the Chicago Murder Castle starts now. Oh,
Speaker 2: I almost forgot Happy Halloween, everybody. Four days before HH
Speaker 2: Holmes was set to hang on May seventh, eighteen ninety six,
Speaker 2: the Chicago didn't hold back. They ripped into him like
Speaker 2: a dog tearn into a bone, calling him a multi murderer,
Speaker 2: a bigamist, a seducer, a resurrectionist, a forger, a thief,
Speaker 2: and a general swindler. And that was just the warm up.
Speaker 2: They said this man was quote without parallel in the
Speaker 2: Annals of Crime unquote. And that's a fancy way of
Speaker 2: saying he was the nastiest piece of work in the
Speaker 2: history of history. Holmes didn't just kill people. He turned
Speaker 2: murder into an art form. He liked his victims close
Speaker 2: where he could watch them die, vaults to suffocate them.
Speaker 2: Boiling oil for a man who got too unlucky, poisoned
Speaker 2: for the rich ladies who happened to have just a
Speaker 2: little too much money in their bank accounts. The Chicago
Speaker 2: Chronicle wasn't writing about a man. They were writing about
Speaker 2: a monster, an American monster, one that played with people
Speaker 2: like toys until he got bored and tossed them aside,
Speaker 2: And in a few days they were going to string
Speaker 2: him up for it. Holmes claimed, who have killed twenty
Speaker 2: seven people, twenty seven poor souls who had the bad
Speaker 2: luck of crossing paths with him, and is so called
Speaker 2: murder Castle. Now, the murder Castle wasn't just a hotel.
Speaker 2: It was a death trap. Secret passageways, trapped doors, sound
Speaker 2: proof torture rooms. It was a building designed for one thing,
Speaker 2: to kill. Now, if you checked into the world's fair
Speaker 2: hotel holmes Little House of Horrors or giant Castle of Horrors,
Speaker 2: you might have thought you were just getting a room
Speaker 2: for the night. But then you'd run up a flight
Speaker 2: of stairs and find it didn't lead anywhere but to
Speaker 2: a dead end, literally a dead end. Open a door
Speaker 2: and boom, solid brick was staring you in the face.
Speaker 2: Step into a bedroom and suddenly the smell of gas
Speaker 2: fills the room, your lungs burning, panic setting in. You
Speaker 2: try to escape, but the door's locked. And even if
Speaker 2: it weren't, good luck finding your way out of that funhouse,
Speaker 2: you'd be lucky to find daylight again before Holmes put
Speaker 2: you out of your misery. According to the Crime Museum,
Speaker 2: Holmes had the sticks down to a science. Shoots and elevators. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they weren't for luggage, they were for bodies. Holmes would
Speaker 2: drop his victims down into the basement, where he had
Speaker 2: a dissecting table, a stretching rack, and a crematory. Hell
Speaker 2: of a way to end your vacation. But you see, Holmes,
Speaker 2: he didn't just kill. He ran an operation, a one
Speaker 2: man murder factory. He wasn't just kind of murdery. He
Speaker 2: was absolutely positively super duper murdery. Or at least that's
Speaker 2: how the story goes. The legend of HH Holmes and
Speaker 2: his so called murder Castle grew almost as large as
Speaker 2: the man himself is. He Holmes wasn't just any killer.
Speaker 2: He was one of America's first real serial killers. And
Speaker 2: it wasn't just the body count that made him infamous.
Speaker 2: It was that house, the Murder Castle. Initially, people thought
Speaker 2: it was just a regular hotel, a smart business move
Speaker 2: by Holmes to cash in on the eighteen ninety three
Speaker 2: Chicago World's Fair. But when the police finally took a
Speaker 2: good hard look inside, they found something straight out of
Speaker 2: a nightmare. The murder Castle wasn't just some run of
Speaker 2: the mill, spooky lodging with a few secrets behind the wallpaper,
Speaker 2: or a rotating bookcase. No, no, no, nothing that ordinary.
Speaker 2: This thing was a cathedral to the macabre. It wasn't
Speaker 2: built for guests, It was built for victims. As for
Speaker 2: the actual body count, well that's still up for debate.
Speaker 2: Some say Holmes killed as few as nine people, Others
Speaker 2: think he might have murdered as many as two hundred.
Speaker 2: Either way, he wasn't running a resort. He was running
Speaker 2: a slaughterhouse. In recent years, some historians have started poking
Speaker 2: holes in the legend of HH Holmes. In his so
Speaker 2: called murder Castle. There's no question they say that the
Speaker 2: man was a killer. He definitely earned that much. But
Speaker 2: some of the more twisted details, the gas chambers, the
Speaker 2: trap doors, maybe not. Experts think those could have been
Speaker 2: whipped up by the newspapers, the kind that didn't mind
Speaker 2: stretching the truth as long as it sold copies. This was,
Speaker 2: after all, the apex of yellow journalism, the fake news
Speaker 2: of the early twentieth century. And the truth, they say,
Speaker 2: these rational naysayers being the they I'm talking about, the
Speaker 2: truth they say, is horrifying enough without the embellishments. Holmes
Speaker 2: was a murderer, There's no debate about that. But maybe,
Speaker 2: just maybe he didn't need all the theatrical setups to
Speaker 2: get the job done. His life, though, well, it's turned
Speaker 2: into a real American tall tale, a bizarro version of
Speaker 2: Paul Bunyan, but instead of chopping down forests, Holmes was
Speaker 2: chopping down humans. The man himself has become something bigger,
Speaker 2: something darker, an American Jack the Ripper, a kind of
Speaker 2: devil in the American imagination. He is perhaps the prototypical
Speaker 2: American monster, just as the Boogeyman is the prototypical creature
Speaker 2: under the bed, And just like any good tall tale.
Speaker 2: Paul Bunyan, who I mentioned a moment ago, of course,
Speaker 2: he was an invention of the imagination, but there were
Speaker 2: some really big loggers chopping down some really really big
Speaker 2: trees back then. And the true story or true legend
Speaker 2: of H. H. Holmes, just like a good tall tale,
Speaker 2: all started out with a kernel of truth. Holmes was
Speaker 2: the real deal, just maybe not the matd architect of
Speaker 2: death that legend made him out to be. Or maybe
Speaker 2: maybe he was. So let's dig into the facts, strip
Speaker 2: away the sensationalism, and what do we really know. For starters,
Speaker 2: those reports claiming Holmes killed over two hundred people pure exaggeration.
Speaker 2: Only nine victims could be confirmed, and they weren't random
Speaker 2: strangers drawn into some haunted house. They were people Holmes
Speaker 2: knew the friend had romanced and manipulated before he killed
Speaker 2: them as part of his money making schemes. The man
Speaker 2: wasn't just a serial killer. He was a con artist
Speaker 2: with a body count. As for that murder castle everyone
Speaker 2: talks about, well not exactly what it sounds like. Sure
Speaker 2: it had a sinister reputation, but it wasn't some grand
Speaker 2: hotel filled with travelers doomed to meet a grizzly end.
Speaker 2: The first floor shops, the second floor long term rentals
Speaker 2: hardly the stuff of nightmares. But we're getting a little
Speaker 2: ahead of ourselves, because, after all, it is Halloween, and
Speaker 2: don't worry, the nightmares are coming. While sitting in prison,
Speaker 2: counting down the days to his execution. Holmes wrote an autobiography,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't some soul bearing confession. It was a
Speaker 2: book of lies. He claimed innocence, painted himself as a victim,
Speaker 2: and threw in a bunch of tall tales. The newspapers,
Speaker 2: which as I mentioned earlier, were deep in the throes
Speaker 2: of yellow journalism, ate it all up. They ran, with
Speaker 2: every exaggerated word, making sure Holmes's name would live on
Speaker 2: an infamy wrapped in a haze of half truths and
Speaker 2: outright fabrications. But the real truth, the truth that actually
Speaker 2: exists independent of our biases and opinions, Well, that truth.
Speaker 2: We don't know much about that truth for sure, because
Speaker 2: only Holmes knew the full story of what really happened
Speaker 2: inside that hotel. Only he knew for sure how many
Speaker 2: lives ended within its walls. And if you ask Holmes himself,
Speaker 2: he'd tell you he never had a choice. In his
Speaker 2: own words, he said, I was born with the devil
Speaker 2: in me. I could not help the fact that I
Speaker 2: was a murderer, no more than a poet can help
Speaker 2: the inspiration to sing. And well, we may never know
Speaker 2: the real truth about HH holmes career of violence, lies
Speaker 2: and bloody murder. There's a fair amount that we do
Speaker 2: know about the man himself, so let's get to that,
Speaker 2: and maybe along the way we'll uncover just a little
Speaker 2: bit more of the real truth about the bloody deeds
Speaker 2: committed by the horrible HH. Holmes. Now everyone knows the
Speaker 2: name HH Holmes, but that wasn't his first name. It
Speaker 2: wasn't his true name. That was Hermann Webster Mudget. Born
Speaker 2: in May eighteen sixty one to a wealthy New England family,
Speaker 2: Mudget grew up with all the privileges that money could buy.
Speaker 2: By all accounts, he was unusually intelligent, picking things up
Speaker 2: faster than most. He even chose his new name, Henry
Speaker 2: Howard Holmes, as a nod to Sherlock Holmes, the famous detective.
Speaker 2: But for all of his brains, there were cracks in
Speaker 2: the facade of his rationality. Early on, Holmes had a
Speaker 2: strange fascination with medicine, but it wasn't the healing kind.
Speaker 2: He reportedly started experimenting on animals, practicing his own twisted
Speaker 2: brand of surgery. And then there's the darker rumor that
Speaker 2: he may have been responsible for the death of a friend.
Speaker 2: It's the kind of thing that makes you wonder just
Speaker 2: when the switch flipped for him when he went from
Speaker 2: curious child to the man who'd become one of America's
Speaker 2: first and most notorious serial killers. Or was there even
Speaker 2: a switch? Perhaps h H. Holmes Hermann Mudget was just
Speaker 2: born an American monster. So, like I said, even relatively
Speaker 2: early in life, there were rumors of Holmes's strange proclivities,
Speaker 2: the torture of animals, the possible murder of a childhood friend,
Speaker 2: And as the rumors of his sadistic tendencies and possible
Speaker 2: violent crimes continued to gain momentum and credibility as Holmes
Speaker 2: got older and stuck to his unsettling ways. Well, the
Speaker 2: man who was then known as Herman Webster Mudget didn't
Speaker 2: stick around to face the consequences. In his twenties, back
Speaker 2: in his hometown, he'd married a childhood sweetheart named Clara,
Speaker 2: and she had borne him a son. But Mudget left
Speaker 2: his wife and young son in the dust without a
Speaker 2: thought and skipped town. And that's when Herman Webster Mudget
Speaker 2: became Henry Howard Holmes, a fresh start with a new name.
Speaker 2: It wasn't long before he found himself in Chicago, the
Speaker 2: Windy City, where he quickly got a job at a
Speaker 2: drug store on sixty third Street. His charm in medical
Speaker 2: nohow opened doors for him, and soon enough he wasn't
Speaker 2: just working at the drug store, he owned the place.
Speaker 2: Of course, rumors started flying that Holmes had done more
Speaker 2: than just take over the business. People whispered that the
Speaker 2: original owner hadn't just sold it, that Holmes might have
Speaker 2: killed him. But Holmes wasn't one to let rumors slow
Speaker 2: him down. He had bigger plans. As a verified con artist,
Speaker 2: he already had a knack for deceit, and now he
Speaker 2: was about to add bigamists to his resume. He married
Speaker 2: a second woman, Murda Bell Knapp, while still legally tied
Speaker 2: to Clara, and then with murder by his side, Holmes
Speaker 2: purchased a new pharmacy in the city's Englewood district, setting
Speaker 2: the stage for his next act in a career of
Speaker 2: crime that was just getting started. Debonair and preach Naturally charismatic,
Speaker 2: Holmes had a way of drawing people in. He was
Speaker 2: so damned likable that at one point he managed to
Speaker 2: be married not to one or two, but three women
Speaker 2: at the same time, and none of them knew about
Speaker 2: the others. But beneath that charm there was something that
Speaker 2: left a few people uneasy. Maybe it was the way
Speaker 2: he could smile and make you feel like you were
Speaker 2: the only person in the room, Or maybe it was
Speaker 2: the way you'd walk away and feel like you'd just
Speaker 2: been played. Still, his charm worked, wonders. It helped him
Speaker 2: pull off one financial scam after another for a while.
Speaker 2: It even helped him get away with murder. Harper's Bazaar
Speaker 2: once wrote quote, almost without exception, his victims appeared to
Speaker 2: have two things in common, beauty and money. They lost
Speaker 2: both translation, Holmes had a taste for the rich and
Speaker 2: the pretty, and once they were in his orbit, they
Speaker 2: didn't keep either their looks, or their money or their
Speaker 2: lives for long. I just mentioned how Holmes was so
Speaker 2: smooth that he managed to marry not just a second time,
Speaker 2: but a third, having long ago grown tired with Claire Barah.
Speaker 2: The new wife, Murda couldn't satisfy him either, so in
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety four, he tied the knot with Georgiana Yoke,
Speaker 2: and once again no one raised an eyebrow. This guy
Speaker 2: could have a whole house of cards stacked behind him,
Speaker 2: and people would still shake his hand and call him
Speaker 2: a gentleman. As C. E. Davis, one of holmes employees,
Speaker 2: later remembered, Holmes used to tell me he had a
Speaker 2: lawyer paid to keep him out of trouble, but it
Speaker 2: always seemed to me that it was the courteous, audacious
Speaker 2: rascality of the man that pulled him through. He was
Speaker 2: the only man in the United States that could do
Speaker 2: what he did. In other words, Holmes didn't just rely
Speaker 2: on legal loopholes or fancy lawyers. No, it was his audacity,
Speaker 2: his ability to charm you with a grin while picking
Speaker 2: your pocket that got him out of the messes he created.
Speaker 2: He had that rare blend of nerve and smooth talking,
Speaker 2: the kind that made you question your own instincts while
Speaker 2: he was halfway to the bank with your money. So
Speaker 2: let's get to the genesis of the murder cap vestle.
Speaker 2: In eighteen eighty seven, Holmes bought an empty lot right
Speaker 2: across from his drug store and kicked off the construction
Speaker 2: of a three story building. He told people it was
Speaker 2: going to be for apartments and shops, a standard business
Speaker 2: move in a city that was growing fast. But this
Speaker 2: wasn't just another building. It was an eyesore, big and ugly,
Speaker 2: with more than one hundred rooms stretching for an entire
Speaker 2: city block. But hey, Chicago was booming. New buildings were
Speaker 2: popping up all over the place, and nobody gave it
Speaker 2: much thought. The city was the beating heart of the Midwest,
Speaker 2: sitting right on the shores of Lake Michigan and serving
Speaker 2: as a hub for the sprawling railroad networks criss crossing
Speaker 2: the country. Chicago was the center of everything, a city
Speaker 2: on the move. But while the city was growing, something
Speaker 2: much darker was taking shape in that massive, ugly building.
Speaker 2: Little did the residents know they were about to live
Speaker 2: next to a house of horrors. For his mansion, Holmes
Speaker 2: had a clever plan. As I mentioned, the first flour
Speaker 2: would be all storefronts, prime real estate he could rent
Speaker 2: out to the flood of new businesses opening up in
Speaker 2: booming Chicago. The second floor apartments for newcomers trying to
Speaker 2: make a name for themselves in the windy city. Some
Speaker 2: of those tenants, though, well, they might have been signing
Speaker 2: a lease to their own deaths, because holmes third floor
Speaker 2: was something out of a nightmare, reportedly filled with asphyxiation chambers, mazes,
Speaker 2: and hidden staircases. It was a twisted labyrinth designed to
Speaker 2: confuse and trap his victims and the truly unlucky ones.
Speaker 2: They ended up in the basement. That's where the real
Speaker 2: horrors waited. Holmes had his own little house of horrors
Speaker 2: down there, and the rumors about what went on beneath
Speaker 2: the building's floors or what gave his house its bloody reputation.
Speaker 2: Holmes was smart, though he switched out builders and architects
Speaker 2: throughout the construction. Nobody ever saw the whole picture, just
Speaker 2: bits and pieces of odd, unsettling design choices. By the
Speaker 2: time anyone could put it all together, the place was
Speaker 2: already a monster, and Holmes was ready to feed it.
Speaker 2: In eighteen ninety four, when the police first got inside
Speaker 2: the World's Fair Hotel that's the real vanilla name for Holmes,
Speaker 2: so called Murder Castle, Well what they found was let's
Speaker 2: say confusing doesn't even begin to cover it. There were
Speaker 2: hinged walls that moved, false partitions, that hid more than
Speaker 2: they revealed. Some rooms had five doors, others had none
Speaker 2: at all. There were secret chambers, airless little boxes hidden
Speaker 2: beneath the floorboards, iron plated walls were there, too, designed
Speaker 2: to choke off all sound. It wasn't just a building,
Speaker 2: it was a maze, and every dead end had a
Speaker 2: deadly purpose. Holmes's own apartment was no less terrifying. In
Speaker 2: the bathroom there was a trap door that opened up
Speaker 2: to a staircase leading to a windowless cubicle, and in
Speaker 2: that cubicle a shute. And let's be clear that shoot
Speaker 2: wasn't for laundry. Now I mentioned how the first floor
Speaker 2: of the hotel was shops and the second was apartments. Well,
Speaker 2: in eighteen ninety two, Holmes added a third floor, and
Speaker 2: he told everyone it was going to be hotel space.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing. It was never finished, never furnished,
Speaker 2: never opened to the public. The whole hotel concept was
Speaker 2: just affront another one of holmes tricks to swindle suppliers, investors,
Speaker 2: and insurers. So while the legend paints him as some
Speaker 2: twisted innkeeper, the truth is he was running a long
Speaker 2: con and playing the game until the very end. You see,
Speaker 2: Holmes wasn't just a serial killer. He was a serial liar.
Speaker 2: The guy had a knack for weaving myth into his
Speaker 2: own story, dressing up his crimes with legend and lore.
Speaker 2: But just because H. H. Holmes World's Fair Hotel was
Speaker 2: never an actual functioning hotel business, it doesn't mean it
Speaker 2: wasn't a murder castle. Police discovered one room in particular
Speaker 2: that stood out. It was lined with gas fixtures. This
Speaker 2: is where Holmes would seal his victims in, flip a
Speaker 2: switch from an adjacent room, and wait while the gas
Speaker 2: did its work. Nearby, they found another shoote same deal,
Speaker 2: straight down to the basement, where the real horrors were waiting.
Speaker 2: Holmes had designed every inch of the place to confuse,
Speaker 2: to trap, and to kill, and he did it with
Speaker 2: chilling precision. But it wasn't just about the rooms. The
Speaker 2: entire place was wired up like a sinister machine. Every door,
Speaker 2: every step connected to an intricate alarm system. If someone
Speaker 2: so much as stepped into the hall or started heading downstairs,
Speaker 2: a buzzer would go off right in holmes bedroom. He
Speaker 2: knew exactly where you were, and once you were in,
Speaker 2: you didn't stand a chance. Now, as terrifying as all
Speaker 2: this sounds, and it certainly does, it's important to remember
Speaker 2: that some of these details have been questioned. Over the years.
Speaker 2: Historians have started to wonder if some of the more
Speaker 2: twisted designs, like the gas chambers and trap doors were
Speaker 2: exaggerated or even invented by the newspapers. And sure, some
Speaker 2: of the details may have been made up. But the
Speaker 2: first real clue as to what the twisted floor plan
Speaker 2: was all about came when the cops stumbled onto a
Speaker 2: pile of bones. Most of them were animal bone, sure,
Speaker 2: but mixed in with them remains and the smallest bones
Speaker 2: those belonged to a child, probably no older than six
Speaker 2: or seven. That's when it hit them. This wasn't just
Speaker 2: some oddball architecture. This was a house built for killing.
Speaker 2: And when the authorities made their way down into the cellar,
Speaker 2: that's when the full nightmare came to light. See next
Speaker 2: to a blood stained operating table, they found a woman's clothes,
Speaker 2: as if she'd been there just moments before. Another surgical
Speaker 2: surface stood nearby, a cold and empty The basement was
Speaker 2: littered with horrors. There was a crematory, shelves lined with
Speaker 2: acids strong enough to disintegrate anything they touched, and a
Speaker 2: bizarre assortment of medical tools. Some of them made sense,
Speaker 2: others not so much. And then there was the torture device.
Speaker 2: No one knew exactly how it worked, but just looking
Speaker 2: at it was enough to make stomachs turn. This wasn't
Speaker 2: just murder, it was methodical. It was clinical. Holmes wasn't
Speaker 2: content with just killing his victims. No, he wanted to
Speaker 2: break them first. As we now know, homes of session
Speaker 2: with dead bodies didn't fade after his college days when
Speaker 2: he moonlighted around with his horrible medical experiments, and neither
Speaker 2: did his surgical skills fade. So after dropping his victims
Speaker 2: down those shoots, he didn't just leave them there. He
Speaker 2: dissected them, cleaned them, and then, because for Holmes, there
Speaker 2: was always a way to make money, he sold their
Speaker 2: organs or skeletons to medical institutions or the black market.
Speaker 2: And as creepy as that murder mansion looked from the outside,
Speaker 2: and it did, it wasn't like Holmes had to drag
Speaker 2: anyone into it. His victims walked in willingly, likely charmed
Speaker 2: by holmes flattery and the image of wealth and success
Speaker 2: he projected. Some of them were probably even his employees,
Speaker 2: lured into the mansion under the guise of a job offer.
Speaker 2: In the two short years he operated his castle, Holmes
Speaker 2: hired more than one hundred and fifty women as stenographers.
Speaker 2: A few of them were even his mistresses. These women
Speaker 2: weren't just numbers to Holmes. They were ponds in his
Speaker 2: twisted game, and like so many others, they had no
Speaker 2: idea what kind of monster they were dealing with until
Speaker 2: it was far too late. Holmes had the habit of
Speaker 2: photographing the ones he liked the most. The women were young, beautiful,
Speaker 2: and far too trusting of the smooth talking gentleman who
Speaker 2: had all the right words. In a big, unfamiliar city, Chicago,
Speaker 2: with its endless stream of newcomers flowing in and out
Speaker 2: of the train stations, provided Holmes with a steady supply
Speaker 2: of fresh faces. People were always moving, always on the go,
Speaker 2: and his mansion, sitting right in the heart of the city,
Speaker 2: seemed like a safe enough place to land if you
Speaker 2: didn't know any better. And despite the women who went
Speaker 2: missing while working for him, murder wasn't what put Holmes
Speaker 2: in the crosshairs of the authorities. People come and go
Speaker 2: in a big city, they vanish, and nobody really bats
Speaker 2: an eye. In a place like Chicago, before modern technology
Speaker 2: could track your every move, it wasn't unusual for someone
Speaker 2: to drop off the map. It was easy, in fact,
Speaker 2: to write off the disappearances as young women moving on,
Speaker 2: finding a better opportunity, or maybe even heading back home.
Speaker 2: Holmes knew that he relied on it, and as long
Speaker 2: as people kept passing through his doors without anyone asking
Speaker 2: too many questions, he had all the time in the
Speaker 2: world to continue his gruesome work. But the grizzly details
Speaker 2: of what police found in holmes murder castle, many of
Speaker 2: which we've already discussed, didn't come to light until after
Speaker 2: his capture, and there's still more to unravel before that.
Speaker 2: To furnish his massive castle, Holmes relied on credit. He'd
Speaker 2: order furniture, fixtures, and anything else he needed, but when
Speaker 2: the creditors came knocking, well, they wouldn't find what they
Speaker 2: were looking for. In one instance, workers from a local
Speaker 2: furniture company showed up to repossess their property, only to
Speaker 2: be met with a building that appeared completely empty. As
Speaker 2: John Barlow Martin wrote for Harper's in nineteen forty three,
Speaker 2: quote the castle had swallowed the furniture, as later it
Speaker 2: would swallow human beings. It wasn't magic, though, Holmes had
Speaker 2: a trick up his sleeve. He bribed the janitor to
Speaker 2: help him hide the furniture, moving it all into a
Speaker 2: single room, and then walling up the door. By the
Speaker 2: time the repo men arrived, the place looked like a
Speaker 2: ghost town. Holmes was always one step ahead, whether it
Speaker 2: was dodging creditors or later covering up his far more
Speaker 2: sinister crimes. So I know, I just told you that
Speaker 2: the Murder Castle never actually operated as a hotel, and
Speaker 2: that was part of the legend of the monstrous HH
Speaker 2: Holmes that historians have mostly undermined these days. But just
Speaker 2: for the fun of it, or perhaps I suppose better said,
Speaker 2: just for the horror of it, here on Halloween, let's
Speaker 2: talk a little bit about that legend. I'm going to
Speaker 2: tell you the story as the legend goes, because, after all,
Speaker 2: legends are part of our history as well. So, according
Speaker 2: to the legend, the Murder Castle, Holmes's World's Fair hotel
Speaker 2: was ready just in time for the opening of the
Speaker 2: World's Columbian Exposition in May eighteen ninety three, a celebration
Speaker 2: of human ingenuity and progress. Some people would probably feel
Speaker 2: it necessary here to point out the extremely Eurocentric nature
Speaker 2: of that ingenuity and progress, but I really don't need
Speaker 2: to go down that rabbit hole. I mean, it was,
Speaker 2: after all, called the World's Columbian Exposition, so nobody had
Speaker 2: canceled Columbus. Yet. The fair was a massive cultural event,
Speaker 2: drawing over twenty seven million people from all corners of
Speaker 2: the globe to Chicago, and for homes, at least the
Speaker 2: homes of legend, it was a golden opportunity and most
Speaker 2: likely for the real homes as well. But back to
Speaker 2: the legend. He opened up his castle as a hotel,
Speaker 2: welcoming visitors who had come to see the wonders of
Speaker 2: the World's Fair, but for many of his guests it
Speaker 2: would be the last place they'd ever check into. The
Speaker 2: exact number of victims nobody knows for sure, but what's
Speaker 2: clear is that many of them were women, Women who
Speaker 2: had been charmed, seduced, and eventually swindled before Holmes put
Speaker 2: them in an earth grave. He had a pattern, what
Speaker 2: the fancy pants call a modus operendi. He'd get engaged
Speaker 2: to a woman, make her feel like she was the one,
Speaker 2: and then she'd vanish other victims. They weren't there for romance,
Speaker 2: they were there for work. Lured by the promise of
Speaker 2: employment in a city bursting, just absolutely bubbling with opportunity.
Speaker 2: But once they entered the doors of Holmes Hotel in quotes,
Speaker 2: they never made it out again. Holmes likely first victims
Speaker 2: were Julia Connor, the wife of one of his drug
Speaker 2: store employees, and her young daughter, Pearl. The two were
Speaker 2: last seen alive just before Christmas of eighteen ninety one.
Speaker 2: Julia had been close to Holmes, too close, according to
Speaker 2: the rumors, and when she and her daughter disappeared, no
Speaker 2: one thought too hard about it. It was Chicago, after all,
Speaker 2: people vanished all the time. But what happened to Julia
Speaker 2: after her disappearance was far more chilling. Holmes, always looking
Speaker 2: to make a profit, paid a local man to remove
Speaker 2: the skin from the corpse of an unusually tall woman.
Speaker 2: Ulias stood six feet tall, and her skeleton, stripped of
Speaker 2: any identifying features, was then sold to a medical school.
Speaker 2: No clues or traces of who the body had once been,
Speaker 2: just bones, and for Holmes it was just another transaction,
Speaker 2: another way to turn death into dollars, as he always did.
Speaker 2: After the World's Fair wrapped up, Holmes didn't stick around
Speaker 2: Chicago for long. He had bigger schemes to chase, and
Speaker 2: one of them involved an associate named Benjamin Petetzel. Together
Speaker 2: the two men hatched a plan that was as cold
Speaker 2: blooded as it was calculated. Potetzel would fake his own
Speaker 2: death and together they'd collect ten thousand dollars from a
Speaker 2: life insurance company. Easy money, or so it seemed, but Holmes,
Speaker 2: always the mastermind, had no intention of splitting that payout fairly.
Speaker 2: In fact, the plan was just another layer of Holmes's
Speaker 2: growing web of deception. The man was always looking for
Speaker 2: the next mark, and this time Petetzel was it. At
Speaker 2: one point, Holmes found himself behind bars for yet another fraud,
Speaker 2: and it was the first time and it wouldn't be
Speaker 2: the last. Well locked up, he got chummy with a
Speaker 2: fellow inmate and a notorious outlaw named Mariyon Hedgepath. Now Holmes,
Speaker 2: of course, was at this point going by one of
Speaker 2: his many aliases, H. M. Howard, and Holmes, being Holmes,
Speaker 2: couldn't resist bragging. By the way, Marion was more commonly
Speaker 2: also seen as a man's name back in the day.
Speaker 2: There So this Marion Hedgepath was a man and fellow
Speaker 2: inmate in the jail, and HM. Howard Holmes ended up
Speaker 2: spilling the details of his life insurance scam to Hedgepath,
Speaker 2: thinking nothing of it. But Hedgepath wasn't about to let
Speaker 2: that juicy bit of info slide. Later, when the heat
Speaker 2: was on, he helped investigators by revealing exactly what Holmes
Speaker 2: had told him. Holmes, ever, the charmer, might have thought
Speaker 2: he could outsmart anyone, but Hedgepath, Marion Hedgepath, he saw
Speaker 2: through the act and he knew how to play the
Speaker 2: long game too. The authorities eventually figured out that HM.
Speaker 2: Howard was none other than H. H. Holmes, but by
Speaker 2: the time they caught on, it was too late to
Speaker 2: stop his final murders. Holmes had already killed Benjamin Petetzel
Speaker 2: and he wasn't done. In a move that was as
Speaker 2: cruel as it was calculating, Holmes told Petetzel's widow that
Speaker 2: her husband was still alive hiding out. But the real
Speaker 2: horror came when investigators pieced together what Holmes had been
Speaker 2: up to with Potetzal's children. Holmes had turned it into
Speaker 2: a sick game. He kept three of the potetzl kids close,
Speaker 2: but always just out of their mother's reach. He was
Speaker 2: playing cat and mouse with their lives. At one point,
Speaker 2: Holmes even stashed two of the children in separate lodgings,
Speaker 2: just a few streets away from each other, close enough
Speaker 2: to touch, but far enough to stay hidden. It was
Speaker 2: a game for Holmes, one investigator remarked, and like the
Speaker 2: worst games, it was about power. He possessed them all,
Speaker 2: Potetzel's wife, her children, and he reveled in the control.
Speaker 2: To him, they weren't people, they were ponds, and he
Speaker 2: always made sure he was the one holding all of
Speaker 2: the pieces. Holmes run finally did come to an end
Speaker 2: in November of eighteen ninety four, when he was arrested
Speaker 2: in Boston on suspicion of fraud. And at first the
Speaker 2: authorities figured they were dealing with just another con man,
Speaker 2: a smooth talking swindler with a knack for staying one
Speaker 2: step ahead of the law. That was Holmes's bread and butter, lying, cheating,
Speaker 2: and scheming. But this time the police dug a little deeper,
Speaker 2: and when they started peeling back the layers of his
Speaker 2: shady dealings, while they stumbled onto something much darker. As
Speaker 2: we all know now, and as we've talked about for
Speaker 2: this entire show, Holmes wasn't just scamming people. He was
Speaker 2: killing them. And the real bombshell dropped as I'd just described,
Speaker 2: when Mary and Hedgepath told them of Holmes's plan to
Speaker 2: defraud the insurance company and murder Potetzel, and then they
Speaker 2: subsequently found evidence linking Holmes to Potetzel's murder in Philadelphia.
Speaker 2: When that happened, it wasn't about fraud anymore. They had
Speaker 2: a killer on their hands, and this time there would
Speaker 2: be no escape for H. H. Holmes. In July of
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety five, the trail of his crimes led Philadelphia
Speaker 2: detective Frank Geyer to a grim discovery. Beneath a cellar
Speaker 2: in Toronto. Buried there were the bodies of two of
Speaker 2: the Potetzal sisters. The site was enough to churn even
Speaker 2: a seasoned detective stomach. The corner, finding no visible injuries
Speaker 2: on the girls, believed that Holmes had suffocated them in
Speaker 2: a particularly cruel way by locking them in a large
Speaker 2: trunk and filling it with gas from a lamp valve.
Speaker 2: Death wasn't enough for Holmes. It had to be a slow, methodical,
Speaker 2: and heartless death, even for children. And the horror didn't
Speaker 2: end in Toronto. Authorities later found the charred remains of
Speaker 2: the third Potetzal sibling at an Indianapolis cottage Holmes had
Speaker 2: once rented. The pattern was clear. Holmes didn't just kill
Speaker 2: to escape detection. He killed because for him, it was
Speaker 2: part of the game. While Holmes sat behind bars, the
Speaker 2: murder charges against him were quickly overshadowed by an absolute
Speaker 2: mount everest of financial fraud that had been building up
Speaker 2: against him. In the end, Holmes was officially tied to
Speaker 2: nine murders. Of course, in typical Holmes fashion, he couldn't
Speaker 2: resist bragging, and he claimed he'd killed at least twenty
Speaker 2: seven people, three times as much as he most likely
Speaker 2: actually did. But his confessions were all over the place.
Speaker 2: He gave three different stories, each with a different number
Speaker 2: of victims, and none of them mined up. The true
Speaker 2: number of lives he took impossible to pin down. Holmes
Speaker 2: had designed his house to make sure of that, be
Speaker 2: acid baths to melt down body parts, a human sized
Speaker 2: stove to burn the evidence. Holmes was methodical about covering
Speaker 2: his tracks. In one pile of ashes, investigators even found
Speaker 2: a small gold chain from a woman's shoe. It was
Speaker 2: just enough to hint at the true scale of the
Speaker 2: horrors that had taken place in his castle, but not
Speaker 2: enough to give anyone a clear answer on how many
Speaker 2: sold had been lost. I read this quote to you earlier,
Speaker 2: said Holmes in his autobiography, penned in prison. Quote I
Speaker 2: was born with the devil in me. I could not
Speaker 2: help the fact that I was a murderer, no more
Speaker 2: than a poet can help the inspiration to sing. And
Speaker 2: in his warped mind, that's just how it was. By
Speaker 2: the end, Holmes wasn't just familiar with death, he knew
Speaker 2: it inside and out, and he wasn't about to let
Speaker 2: anyone make a spectacle out of his remains. So after
Speaker 2: he was ultimately bound guilty of Benjamin Petetzel's murder and
Speaker 2: sentenced to death, he asked to be buried in cement,
Speaker 2: paranoid that grave robbers would come sniffing around for his bones,
Speaker 2: and right before his death in eighteen ninety six, Holmes
Speaker 2: claimed that he was turning into the devil. He even
Speaker 2: said his face was taking on something downright demonic. And
Speaker 2: when he took the stand at his own trial, Holmes
Speaker 2: put on the same smooth act he'd used all his life.
Speaker 2: He represented himself, and the papers ate it up, calling
Speaker 2: him a quote remarkable unquote lawyer with a twisted kind
Speaker 2: of charisma. But as I just mentioned, charm only got
Speaker 2: him so far, and on September twelfth, eighteen ninety five,
Speaker 2: a Philadelphia grand jury found him guilty of Benjamin Potetzil's
Speaker 2: murder and he appealed. Sure, but for HH Holmes, it
Speaker 2: was game over. They hanged Holmes on May seventh, eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety six, at Moyamen Saint Prison. But even in death,
Speaker 2: he didn't make it easy. When the floor dropped, his
Speaker 2: neck didn't snap like it was supposed to. Instead, he
Speaker 2: lay there twitching for a full twenty minutes. It was
Speaker 2: a full twenty minutes before the beast of Chicago finally
Speaker 2: went still. As for his burial, they did it exactly
Speaker 2: as he wanted, ten feet deep in Philadelphia, packed in
Speaker 2: a cement filled pine box. After a life spent haunting Chicago,
Speaker 2: Holmes made sure he wouldn't be coming back, and he
Speaker 2: made sure that no one would be getting close enough
Speaker 2: to him to try to bring him back. And the
Speaker 2: mystery of HH Holmes didn't end with his hanging. Rumors
Speaker 2: kept spinning, whispers claiming Holmes had somehow cheated death and
Speaker 2: survived his execution. Those whispers held up all the way
Speaker 2: until twenty seventeen, when, at the request of his descendants,
Speaker 2: archaeologists dug up the remains from his grave. Dental records
Speaker 2: finally put the myth to rest. Holmes was exactly where
Speaker 2: they'd left him dead and buried. But hh holmes legacy
Speaker 2: had a dark ripple effect. Strange, twisted fates seemed to
Speaker 2: haunt those connected to his case. The man who'd first
Speaker 2: tipped off the police about Holmes's schemes, he was shot
Speaker 2: by a Chicago cop. The prison warden, the one who'd
Speaker 2: kept Holmes behind bars, took his own life. Even the
Speaker 2: District Attorney's office, where the case was prosecuted, went up
Speaker 2: in flames. And then there was Patrick Quinlan, the caretaker
Speaker 2: of Holmes's castle and the one man who knew all
Speaker 2: its secrets. In nineteen fourteen, Quinland died by his own
Speaker 2: own hand, leaving behind a note that simply read, quote,
Speaker 2: I could not sleep unquote. As for the murder Castle itself,
Speaker 2: it didn't last either. In eighteen ninety five, the place
Speaker 2: was gutted by fire. Word has it that two men
Speaker 2: were spotted slipping in that night, but they were never identified,
Speaker 2: and then the remains of the building were demolished in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty eight, and today an unremarkable US Post office
Speaker 2: stands on the site. H. H. Holmes monster that he
Speaker 2: absolutely was, was, for his own part, all too happy
Speaker 2: to paint himself as harmless. In his memoir, he wrote
Speaker 2: that he was but a very ordinary man, even below
Speaker 2: average in physical strength and mental ability. He added, to
Speaker 2: have planned and executed the stupendous amount of wrongdoing that
Speaker 2: has been attributed to me would have been wholly beyond
Speaker 2: my power. But Holmes's story proves one thing for a fact,
Speaker 2: sometimes the most ordinary man is the one hiding the
Speaker 2: darkest secrets. Happy Halloween, everybody. I'm Zevan Odelberg and this
Speaker 2: has been kind of murdery.
Speaker 1: If you like to show, please subscribe to view and
Speaker 1: tell your friends. You can find us on social media
Speaker 1: at Kino Murdery or email at Kindomurdery at gmail dot com.
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