H.H. Holmes
You will probably not recognize the name H.H. Holmes, I didn’t either, but he is sometimes also known as American’s first serial killer. He was born in 1860 in New Hampshire as Herman Webster Mudgett. After graduating from medical school he took on the alias H.H. Holmes. He bought a pharmacy in Chicago from a widow and later killed her and disposed of the body. After running the pharmacy for a while, he bought a large piece of land across the street and not far from the soon opening World’s Fair.
It was here that he built a hotel and stores. The hotel was filled with windowless rooms, doors leading into brick walls and staircases to nowhere. The hotel also had a vault were he could torture victims without being heard and a chute that led to basement where he had installed furnaces to dispose of the flesh and organs. The skeletons he put together and sold to medical schools and doctors.
He was finally discovered after fleeing Chicago and admitted to killing 27. However, there have been estimates as high as 200 murdered. He was hung in 1896.
He was able to keep his secret for so long due to his cunning ability to lie and the fact that the hotel was built using many different workers who were often fired after just working two weeks.
The book The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
