The Murder Hotel at the Columbian Exposition

Herman Webster Mudgett, better known as Dr. Henry Howard Holmes or more commonly known as H. H. Holmes, was an American serial killer of the 19th century. He was born in Gilmanton, New Hampshire on May 16, 1861.

Sometimes referred as the Beast of Chicago, Holmes killed his victims in his specially constructed home, referred to as the World's Fair Hotel, and later nicknamed the The Murder Hotel. The home was located 3 miles west of the 1893 World's Fair: the Columbian Exposition. Evidence suggests that the hotel portion was never officially open for business.

Born to an affluent family, Holmes had a privileged childhood. It has been said that he appeared to be unusually intelligent at an early age. There were haunting signs of what was to come. He expressed an interest in medicine, which reportedly led him to practice surgery on animals. Some accounts indicate he may even have been responsible for the death of a young childhood friend.

At the age of 16, Holmes graduated from high school and took teaching jobs in Gilmanton and later in nearby Alton. On July 4, 1878, he married Clara Lovering in Alton. Their son, Robert Lovering Mudgett, was born on February 3, 1880, in Loudon, New Hampshire.

Holmes enrolled in the University of Vermont in Burlington at age 18, but was dissatisfied with the school and left after only one year. In 1882, he entered the University of Michigan's Department of Medicine and Surgery and graduated in June 1884. While enrolled, he worked in the anatomy lab. Holmes had previously apprenticed in New Hampshire under Dr. Nahum Wight, a noted advocate of human dissection.

When in medical school at the University of Michigan, he stole several corpses from the lab, disfigured them, and tried to collect insurance by saying they died in an accident. Over the years, he perfected these scams, and supposedly became the beneficiary on the policies of several women who worked for him, many of whom mysteriously disappeared.

Housemates described Holmes as treating Clara violently, and in 1884, before his graduation, she moved back to New Hampshire and later wrote that she knew little of him afterwards. After he moved to Mooers Forks, New York, a rumor spread that Holmes had been seen with a little boy who later disappeared. Holmes claimed the boy went back to his home in Massachusetts. No investigation took place and Holmes quickly left town. He later traveled to Philadelphia and eventually got a job as a housekeeper at Norristown State Hospital, but quit after a few days. He then took a position at a drugstore in Philadelphia, but while he was working there, a boy died after taking medicine that was purchased at the store. Holmes denied any involvement in the child's death and immediately left the city. Right before moving to Chicago, he changed his name to Henry Howard Holmes to avoid the possibility of being exposed by victims of his previous scams.

In late 1886, while still married to Clara, Holmes married Myrta Belknap in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He filed for divorce from Clara a few weeks after marrying Myrta, alleging infidelity on her part, but the claims could not be proven and the suit went nowhere. Surviving paperwork indicated that she probably was never even informed of the suit. In any event the divorce was never finalized. It was dismissed June 4, 1891, on the grounds of "want of prosecution". Holmes had a daughter with Myrta, Lucy Theodate Holmes, who was born on July 4, 1889, in Englewood, Chicago. Holmes lived with Myrta and Lucy in Wilmette, Illinois, and spent most of his time in Chicago tending to business. Holmes married Georgiana Yoke on January 17, 1894, in Denver, Colorado, while still married to both Clara and Myrta.

Soon after his arrival in the Chicago area, Holmes took up work at a pharmacy located near Jackson Park. Eight years later, Jackson Park would become the site of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Historians believe Holmes, a masterful and charismatic con artist, had swindled money from his drugstore employers. He purchased an empty lot in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago, and built a labyrinthine structure with shops on the first floor and small apartments above.

This building became Holmes’ booby-trapped castle of horrors. The space featured soundproof rooms, secret passages and a disorienting maze of hallways and staircases. Most of the rooms had gas vents, which were controlled from the killer's bedroom. Many of the rooms were soundproof and could only be locked from the outside. One chilling room featured a dissecting table, stretching rack and industrial oven. Holmes would often dissect his victims and strip them of their flesh. He would then cash in and sell their bones to medical schools as human skeleton models.

The rooms were also outfitted with trapdoors over chutes that dropped Holmes’ unsuspecting victims to the building’s basement. In the basement were acid vats, pits of quicklime and a crematorium, which Holmes used to finish off his victims.

Holmes lured many visitors to the Columbian Exposition to his sinister lair, with the promise of cheap lodgings. The exact number of his victims is still debated by historians.

The Columbian Exposition, attracted more than 27 million visitors to Chicago, an incredible number considering the limited transportation options of the time. Holmes took advantage of some of the many visitors to the city, including young women who came to Chicago for jobs at the fairgrounds. Unfortunately, some of his guests did not survive his hospitality.

One of Holmes' early murder victims was his mistress, Julia Smythe. She was the wife of Ned Icilius Conner, who had moved into Holmes' building and began working at his pharmacy's jewelry counter. After Conner found out about Smythe's affair with Holmes, he quit his job and moved away, leaving Smythe and her daughter Pearl behind. Smythe and Pearl remained at the hotel and she continued her relationship with Holmes. Julia and Pearl disappeared on Christmas Eve of 1891, and Holmes later claimed that she had died during an abortion, though what truly happened to the two was never confirmed. Another likely Holmes mistress, Emeline Cigrande, began working in the building in May 1892, and disappeared that December. Another woman who vanished, Edna Van Tassel, is also believed to have been one of Holmes' victims.

In early 1893, a one-time actress named Minnie Williams moved to Chicago. Holmes claimed to have met her in an employment office, though there were rumors that he had met her in Boston years earlier. He offered her a job at the hotel as his personal stenographer, and she accepted. Holmes was able to persuade Williams to transfer the deed to her property in Fort Worth, Texas, to a man named Alexander Bond, an alias of Holmes. In April 1893, Williams transferred the deed, with Holmes serving as the notary. The next month, Holmes and Williams, presenting themselves as man and wife, rented an apartment in Chicago's Lincoln Park. Minnie's sister, Nannie, came to visit, and in July, she wrote to her aunt that she planned to accompany "Brother Harry" to Europe. Neither Minnie nor Nannie was seen alive after July 5, 1893.

Holmes left Chicago after the World’s Fair. He left caretakers in charge of the hotel with strict orders not to go to the upper floors where the torture rooms were. He moved to Texas for a time, intending to create another murder hotel, on the property he inherited from the Williams sisters, but he eventually decided he didn’t like it in Texas. He ended up in St. Louis where he was arrested for a horse swindle, during which time he got the idea to make money by faking his own death.

He eventually convinced a long time friend, Benjamin Pitezel, to help with the scheme. Holmes used Pitezel as his right-hand man for several criminal schemes. Pitezel would pretend to be an inventor injured in a lab accident, and then they would fake his suicide for the insurance money. The only problem for Pitezel was that Holmes didn’t fake the death, he killed him.

Holmes proceeded to collect the insurance payout on the basis of the genuine Pitezel corpse. Holmes then went on to manipulate Pitezel's unsuspecting wife into allowing three of her five children, Alice, Nellie and Howard, to be in his custody. The eldest daughter and the baby remained with Mrs. Pitezel. Holmes and the three Pitezel children traveled throughout the northern United States and into Canada. Simultaneously, he escorted Mrs. Pitezel along a parallel route, all the while using various aliases and lying to Mrs. Pitezel concerning her husband's death, claiming that Pitezel was hiding in London, as well as lying to her about the true whereabouts of her three missing children. Holmes was staying at another location with his wife, who was unaware of the whole affair. Holmes would later confess to murdering Alice and Nellie by forcing them into a large trunk and locking them inside. He drilled a hole in the lid of the trunk and put one end of a hose through the hole, attaching the other end to a gas line to asphyxiate the girls. Holmes buried their nude bodies in the cellar of his rental house at 16 St. Vincent Street in Toronto.

Holmes' murder spree finally ended when he was arrested in Boston on November 17, 1894, after being tracked there from Philadelphia by the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. He was held on an outstanding warrant for horse theft in Texas, as the authorities had become more suspicious at this point and Holmes appeared poised to flee the country in the company of his unsuspecting third wife.

Frank Geyer, a Philadelphia police detective assigned to investigate Holmes and find the three missing children, located the decomposed bodies of the two Pitezel girls in the cellar of the Toronto home. Detective Geyer wrote, "The deeper we dug, the more horrible the odor became, and when we reached the depth of three feet, we discovered what appeared to be the bone of the forearm of a human being." Geyer then went to Indianapolis, where Holmes had rented a cottage. Holmes was reported to have visited a local pharmacy to purchase the drugs which he used to kill Howard Pitezel, and a repair shop to sharpen the knives he used to chop up the body before he burned it. The boy's teeth and bits of bone were discovered in the home's chimney.

As police dug into Holmes’s background, they learned from the custodians of the Chicago hotel that they were never allowed to clean the top floor. The police investigated and found the grisly remains of Holmes’s victims. While Holmes only confessed to killing 27, police, at the time, estimated that the real number might be closer to 100-200 victims, due to all the missing persons reports from that area in the years Holmes was operating "The Murder Hotel". Most believe the 100 figure is most accurate.

In October 1895, Holmes was put on trial for the murder of Benjamin Pitezel, and was found guilty and sentenced to death. By then, it was evident that Holmes had also murdered the Pitezel children.

While in captivity, awaiting his trial and sentencing, Holmes authored an autobiography, Holmes’ Own Story, in which he wrote, "I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing."

On May 7, 1896, Holmes was hanged at Moyamensing Prison, also known as the Philadelphia County Prison, for the murder of Pitezel. Holmes' neck did not snap; he instead was strangled to death slowly, twitching for over 15 minutes before being pronounced dead 20 minutes after the trap had been sprung. Until the moment of his death, Holmes remained calm and amiable, showing very few signs of fear, anxiety or depression. Despite this, he asked for his coffin to be contained in cement and buried 10 feet deep, because he was concerned grave robbers would steal his body and use it for dissection.

Despite Holmes’ arrest and execution, rumors have persisted for more than a century that the serial killer bribed authorities to avoid punishment. The theories suggest that Holmes was allowed to escape and that officials hanged another man.

In response to these rumors, in March 2017, Holmes’ descendants, who live in Delaware, petitioned to have his remains exhumed so that they can undergo DNA testing.

University of Pennsylvania anthropologist Samantha Cox, who did the forensic science on the exhumed remains, stated that because of his unique burial requests, Holmes' body had not properly decomposed. She said his clothes were almost perfectly preserved and his mustache was intact on his skull. The corpse had decayed and because of the condition of the body she couldn't get any DNA out of it. Instead Holmes' teeth were used to identify him.

The fate of the site of the killer’s exploits is also shrouded in intrigue. With Holmes, allegedly, in prison, in 1895, the upper floor of the Murder Castle was gutted by fire, after witnesses reportedly saw two men entering the building late one night.

The rest of the building remained standing until 1938, when it was torn down. The site is now occupied by the Englewood branch of the U.S. Post Office.