Herman Webster Mudgett (better known as Henry Howard Holmes) (born May 16, 1861 - died May 7, 1896) is the first serial killer to be officially registered in the United States.
At the trial, the maniac confessed to 27 murders (presumably there were at least 350 murders), explaining the reason for the atrocities as follows: “I was born with the devil in my soul. I could not help but kill, just as a poet, possessed by inspiration, cannot remain silent … The Great Enemy came to my mother's bed during childbirth to become my patron, and since then has remained my companion forever."
early years
Herman was born in a tiny New Hampshire village, into a family where love, compassion and human dignity were considered empty words. His father was an alcoholic and despot who often beat his son, and his mother was fanatical religious. If a boy born in such a family turned out to be quietly downtrodden by a worthless person, it would be for the best. But Henry was notable for his violent imagination, was far from stupid and did not inspire fears either to teachers or neighbors, despite the fact that from an early age he showed serious deviations in the direction of outright sadism.
1871 - When Henry was in his eleventh year, there was a terrible fire in Chicago. Then almost the entire city burned down, there were hundreds of victims. Many years later, at the trial, Henry confesses that, while the neighbors were discussing this tragedy, he with a shudder imagined how wonderful it would be if his parents lived in Chicago at that time. How they would scream and writhe in the fire, how they would suffer, dying, and he would observe all this from the side …
Sadist with a medical degree
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For a long time, only animals were the victims of the maniac: he conducted cruel experiments on them. But then Henry switched to people, at first, however, already dead. At the time, he studied for one year at a college in Vermont and entered the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, deciding that a medical degree could help him best in his hobbies.
The poorly guarded morgue at the Faculty of Medicine prompted Henry Holmes to think about an easy profit - he began to steal and "sell" corpses. Working at the same time as an insurance agent, the sadist was engaged in the design of life insurance for fictional people. Then he presented to the insurance company the dead man disfigured by him from the morgue, assuring that this was the insured person, and received the money. Over time, the trade in corpses, only already "obtained" on their own, will become the main business for the maniac.
Moving to Chicago
1884 - Herman received his medical degree, moved to Chicago and got a job as a pharmacist. Soon he got married, but then left his wife, then married again, and again … Moreover, he never divorced, that is, he was essentially a polygamist, and some of his companions disappeared in the most mysterious way.
1886 Herman Mudgett takes the name Henry Howard Holmes. In the summer that same year, he met a certain Holton, the owner of a small pharmacy on the corner of Wallace and 63rd Street in the Inglewood area, who was dying of cancer, and got a job with him. After Holton died, Henry Holmes was able to persuade the widow to sell the pharmacy to him, retaining the right to live in the same building. The old woman soon died - an enterprising "doctor" quickly sent her after her husband.
"Doctor of Torture" castle
After some time, he, through not entirely honest manipulations, bought out plots of land adjacent to his now pharmacy. Soon, an apparently unremarkable building was built on this territory, but a very strange building inside. Neighbors christened it "castle". Holmes registered it as a hotel.
This hotel was built for the 1893 World's Fair, dedicated to the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America (for which it was named Columbus) and held in Chicago. Part of the building was used for retail space. On the first floor of the "castle" there was a pharmacy and various shops, and on the upper two floors there was an office and a maze of several dozen rooms without windows, corridors leading to brick walls, stairs to nowhere. Holmes was constantly changing contractors during the construction of the "castle" - thus, only he could fully know the layout of the building.
Henry Howard Holmes Hotel.
The device of the "hotel of death"
The "Castle" turned out to be a real "death factory". Few of those who got into it came back alive. Corridors and passages were terribly intricate, well isolated from each other, rooms were locked exclusively from the outside. Most of the rooms were secretly piped through which Henry Holmes could supply poison gas if needed. A chute led from the upper floors to the basement, through which the maniac lowered the corpses of the unfortunate guests.
In the basement they were greeted by a "cutting room" - a room that was intended for removing meat from bones; the skeletons and internal organs prepared in this way were then sold by the sadist to medical schools. There were two ovens for cremation, a pit with lime and a vat, which could be filled with acid if needed - the maniac used them if the corpse or its remains had to be completely destroyed. For "entertainment" in the basement there were also instruments of torture, including a rack … This hellish car was controlled from the bedroom of the hotel owner himself.
Murders
More often, the victims of the sadist were blonde women whom he hired to work.
They once went up to the upper floors - and no one saw them again. Most likely, the women ended up in a soundproof room, where the killer supplied a deadly gas, and after their bodies he dumped through a gutter into the basement, where he either burned or removed the skeleton for sale. All this seems even more creepy because not all the victims who ended up in his "laboratory" were by that time dead.
On the first floor of the hotel there was a jewelry store, whose manager was a certain John - a family man with his wife Julia and daughter Pearl. Henry's wife, with his characteristic charm, was able to charm. She became pregnant with him and began demanding a wedding after her divorce, threatening to reveal about Holmes's machinations. The sadist instilled in Julia that he would marry if she agreed to an abortion, which he would have done - in the same basement. She agreed. After which no one saw Julia or Pearl. And after some time, Holmes sold the female skeleton to a local surgeon for $ 250.
The same fate awaited Emeline Sigard, who went to work for the hotel owner as a secretary. After the young lady, who became his mistress, began to insist on marrying her, Holmes locked her in a safe and listened with delight as she screamed, gasped and died in agony from suffocation. Her skeleton was also sold profitably.
The same fate overtook the maid Lizzie and her lover Pat - the cleaner.
Moreover, the maniac even killed his assistant - Benjamin Pitzel (loyal, like a dog, to his master, this man was so influenced by Henry that he always did his will without hesitation). He, of course, was insured. But Holmes did not want to share the money with Benjamin's family. Therefore, he strangled his son (then dismembered and burned), locked his daughters in a giant chest and put gas into it. Pitzel's wife Henry also killed.
During the World's Fair in Chicago alone, more than fifty visitors have gone missing. In addition, at that time the city was actively growing, quickly rebuilding after the fire. Many people came to Chicago in search of work, and no one worried about their loss either. Such people - mostly women - were hired by Henry Howard Holmes as maids, insured their lives, then killed, received insurance and money for the skeleton. There were occasional guests on the list of his victims.
According to the testimony of the sadist himself, in one of his isolated rooms, also closed in a fireproof closet, one of his wives ended her life - he listened with delight as she first screamed, then choked and eventually died in terrible agony from suffocation …
Another secretary Minnie Williams, who became his mistress, received an inheritance - a plot that was estimated at $ 50,000. Minnie, who had lost her mind from love, immediately transferred the property to Henry.
But the older sister of the girl in love did not believe in Holmes' good intentions, and he had to refute her doubts in every possible way. He took girls to restaurants, showed his house, took them to an exhibition. And when his sister lost her guard, he lured both of them into the safe and killed them. Having become rich in this way, the killer decided to leave Chicago, to hide from creditors in Texas, where the secretary's property was located.
On the site that he got from Minnie, he began to build a new castle, using the same schemes for deceiving workers and creditors. However, Texas turned out to be much harsher than Chicago, its residents quickly understood who they were dealing with. Therefore, the maniac was forced to go on the run, fearing Texas justice.
How long does the string twist …
For a long time, he traveled across America and Canada, committing murders along the way, but still remaining unpunished. Only in July 1894 in St. Louis, the police arrested a maniac traveler, and the judge even gave him a short prison term - the sadist was caught stealing horses.
After serving the due date, Henry Holmes invited his cellmate Benjamin Pitzel, who had also been released, to pull off his classic trick with fake insurance. Tom had to fake his death, and Holmes had to get money through Pitzel's wife. True, Pitzel didn't get to play the dead man. The maniac killed him, setting everything up as if it was a suicide, took the insurance from the widow, and out of habit sold the skeleton of the former cellmate to the nearest educational institution.
The last crime. Court
The next and last victims of the maniac were two daughters and Pitzel's son. But already in November 1894, employees of the Pinkerton agency, who had been sitting rather tightly on the sadist's tail lately, seized him and handed him over to the police.
At the trial, when it was said about the number of victims of the killer, at first the number 20 sounded. But after the opening of the "Castle of Death" they began to talk about at least 350 murders. Holmes himself confessed to only 27 of them.
Execution
The court sentenced Henry Howard Holmes to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out on May 7, 1896. Until his death, the killer was calm and friendly, showing practically no signs of fear, anxiety and depression. Coincidentally or not, the first officially registered American serial killer was dying painfully - 15 minutes. he dangled in a noose until his neck broke. The sadist's last request was to pour concrete over his remains so that no one could dig up the body and mock him, as he once mocked his victims. This request was fulfilled.
