H. H. Holmes

Herman Webster Mudgett (May 16, 1861 – May 7, 1896), better known as Dr. Henry Howard Holmes or H. H. Holmes and also known by the aliases Alexander Bond, Harry Gordon, J.A. Judson and Robert E. Phelps, was an American con artist and murderer active between 1891 and 1894. By the time of his execution in 1896, Holmes had engaged in a lengthy criminal career that included insurance fraud, forgery, swindling, three or four bigamous marriages, horse theft and murder. Known as the Beast of Chicago, the Devil in the White City or the Torture Doctor, he committed his most notorious crimes in Chicago around the time of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. Holmes was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Benjamin Pitezel, his accomplice in several of his cons. However, Holmes confessed to twenty-seven murders, including those of some people who were verifiably still alive. It is believed that he also killed three of Pitezel's children, as well as three mistresses, the child of one mistress and the sister of another. Holmes was hanged on May 7, 1896. Much of the lore attached to Holmes concerns the so-called "Murder Castle", a three-story building he commissioned on W. 63rd Street in Chicago. Details about the building, along with many of his alleged crimes, are considered exaggerated or fabricated for sensationalistic tabloid pieces with some accounts estimating his body count could be as high as 133. Many of these inaccuracies have persisted due to the combination of ineffective police investigation and hyperbolic yellow journalism of the period, which are often cited as historical record. Official findings suggest that the W. 63rd Street property was used for business, and that the irregular architecture was a product of fraud, rather than being designed to fulfill violent fantasies. Holmes gave...