H. H. Holmes

Born in New Hampshire in 1861. 

Holmes is widely considered the United States' first serial killer. His given name was Herman Webster Mudgett. 

Unlike many serial killers, Holmes had a fairly normal childhood with respectable parents. There are no credible accounts of animal abuse or other signs, beyond rumors. However, when he was young, two bullies did try to terrify him by dragging him into a doctor's office. Rather than being afriaid, Holmes was fascinated by the human skeleton there. 

He later credited this moment with his decision to study medicine. 

In 1878, Holmes married Clara Lovering. They were both 17. After dropping out of college in Vermont, Holmes went to study medicine at the University of Michigan. 

Although he brought his wife and baby son, he had already begun to have affairs. Clara showed signs of physical abuse, often appearing with black eyes. She moved back to New Hampshire without him before he graduated. 

In New York, rumors that Holmes killed a little boy spread after he was seen with a boy who disappeared soon after. 

Holmes claimed the boy had simply returned home to Massachusetts. Police were never involved, but Holmes left town. He dabbled in fraud, using cadavers to collect life insurance policies and sell fake medicines. He ran away from debts, and rarely paid his rent. 

In Philadelphia, a boy died after purchasing drugs from the pharmacy where Holmes worked.

Again, he skipped town.

Right before moving to Chicago, he changed his name to Henry Howard Holmes to escape connection with any of his previous crimes. 

Although his divorce from Clara was never finalized, Holmes married Myrta Belknap, and they had a daughter. In Chicago, Holmes found work at a drugstore, which he eventually bought. 

Young women came from around the country, eager to work in the big city. These women were new to the area, and happy to accept jobs offered by Holmes. He also purchased the land across the street, in his wife's name to avoid debtors. He made plans for a building on the property, with stores on the first floor and apartments on the second. Holmes' design had some disturbing quirks. 

There was a hidden compartment between the two floors, and a stair case between floors that was only accessible through a trapdoor in a second story bathroom. 

The second floor was confusingly designed, with windowless rooms and doors that inexplicably opened into brick walls. Maybe more disturbingly, some rooms could only be opened from the outside. Because Holmes had repeatedly changed construction companies while building, no one but him ever had access to the horrors of the full floor plan. 

He referred to the three floor, block-long building as his "castle.

All the while, Holmes continued swindling anyone he could. He often hid goods in the hidden compartments of the house, refusing to pay. He also had a giant safe put in, and once locked an employee inside it. The employee screamed, and Holmes was satisfied to find that the safe was soundproof.

Holmes hired a young couple to work for him, Ned and Julia Connor. 

They worked in the pharmacy, and lived on the second floor. Soon, Julia and Holmes were having an affair, despite their spouses also living there. Ned packed up and left when Julia became involved in Holmes' schemes. Holmes took out debts and started businesses in her name. 

In 1891, Julia and her young daughter Pearl disappeared.

No one ever saw him bend any glass. But the furnace was useful for one thing: 

Making young women disappear. 

Women came from all over to find work in the big city, and stayed in boarding houses like Holmes'.

They usually had no friends in Chicago, and only limited communication with their families back home through letters. In other words, there was usually no one to report them missing, or even notice anything was wrong. Once the furnace was installed, the disappearances increased. Emeline Cigrand came to Chicago looking for work in 1892. He employed her as a typist, and by Christmas she had disappeared. 

Holmes explained her absence with that would become his go-to line: She had gone to Europe to get married. 

Girls who came to Chicago for work were usually cut off from their social networks, so there was no one to dispute his claim. In preparation of the World's Fair, Holmes told everyone he was putting in a third floor to serve as a hotel. Although he never completed the floor, he made thousands from investors. 

Before any of his crimes could catch up to him, Holmes set fire to the building in 1893 to claim the insurance money. He again took to traveling the country. 

Fortunately for him, he met two young heiress sisters, Minnie and Nannie Williams. He married Minnie within a few months. He convinced his new wife to transfer the deed to her Fort Worth property to a man named Alexander Bond. 

"Bond" was simply one of Homles' many aliases. 

He also met another swindler to team up with, Benjamin Pitezel. 

"bond" transferred the deed to "Benton T. Lyman," as alias for Pitezel. As if it wasn't convulated enough, Holmes served as the notary. After taking out thousands of dollars in mortgages, he and Pitezel skipped town. They moved to St. Louis, where Holmes bought another drugstore, and they ran some scams together. 

In St. Louis, he was briefly incarcerated for selling mortgaged goods. In jail, he met an outlaw who listened as Holmes explained his plan to fake his own death for a hefty insurance payout.

In exchange for $500, the outlaw gave Holmes the name of a reliable lawyer for the scheme. The plan failed when the insurance company became suspicious and refused to pay out the policy. They packed up again for Philadelphia. 

The new plan was for Holmes and Pitezel to defraud an insurance company by cashing on Pitezel's life insurance policy. Pitezel was supposed to play the part of an inventor named B. F. Perry, and be disfigured and killed in a lab experiment gone wrong. But at the last minute, Pitzel got cold feet. 

Never one to turn down a good scam, Holmes went through with it anyway. He got Pitzel drunk, gave him a large dose of chloroform, and burned the body. 

After staging the scene to look like an accident, Holmes and his young wife fled. The $10,000 payout went to Pitezel's widow, but Holmes was able to convince her that Pitezel died owing him money. He offered to accompany the middle three Pitezel children to their aunt in Indianapolis. 

On the way, he found out that he was wanted by the police. 

He dragged the children all around the country, on the run with him. 

Remarkably, at the same time he also escorted Mrs. Pitezel across the country on a parallel route. Neither the children or their mother knew of their proximity to each other. The children even gave Holmes letters to mail to their mother, which he never did. 

Holmes continued to employ various aliases in his travel. And he lied to Mrs. Pitezel, maintaining that they had faked Benjamin's death and he was hiding out in London. At one point in Detroit, Mrs. Pitezel and her childern were separated by only a few blocks. While carrying out two different lives with the woman and her children, Holmes was staying at a third location with his wife. She had no idea about what was going on. 

Eventually, he decided that the children were slowing him down, and therefore would have to die. He poisoned the youngest boy with cyanide.