Monster
Mudgett is born on May, 16, 1861 into a seemingly normal farming family of devout Methodists (parents Horton and Theodate) in Gilmanton, New Hampshire ... the middle child of five siblings, he has an older sister (Ellen) and brother (Arthur), and a younger brother (Henry) and younger sister (Mary). Extremely intelligent, he graduates from high school at sixteen, becomes a teacher, marries the first of three wives (he never bothers with divorces), Clara Lovering, has a son, Robert, and decides to better himself by further education (at eighteen), first matriculating at the University of Vermont, before taking medical courses at the University of Michigan's Department of Medicine and Surgery. He passes his examinations and graduates in 1884 ... taking with him a vast knowledge of the dissection of the human body, and how to defraud life insurance with available cadavers.
Michigan School Of Medicine
Shedding his wife and son (they move back to New Hampshire and survive the experience), a pattern starts in which the newly anointed doctor arrives in an area, and folks vanish or die under mysterious circumstances ... and then before fingers can be pointed his way, the physician vanishes too, before showing up at another local bearing a different moniker. Though still married, he also takes time to marry Myrta Belknap in 1886 (they have a daughter, Lucy, in 1889) ... she too will eventually be abandoned (his last wife is Georgiana Yoke, they marry in Denver, Colorado in 1894). In the late 1880s, using the name, Henry Howard Holmes (reportedly his homage to Sherlock Holmes), the doctor arrives in Chicago, just in time for the city's World Columbian Exposition (the city's celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' 1492 arrival in the New World, the event will become renown for introducing the public to the first Ferris Wheel, its electrical lighting, having life-size reproductions of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, belly dancing from a "hootchy-kootchy dancer named "Little Egypt," the first commercial movie theater, the first moving walkway, Juicy Fruit Gum, Cream of Wheat, and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, the first recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, Hershey chocolates, and Aunt Jemima pancake batter).
The World's Fair
The First Ferris Wheel
Establishing himself in Chicago, Mudgett works at a drugstore on South Wallace Avenue and West 63rd Street, eventually buying the business from the Holton family that owns it (Mr. Holton is a fellow Michigan alumnus). He then sets his sights on bigger game, buying an empty lot across the street in which he begins building a huge structure that will become his house of horrors. Paying just enough to get by, swindling contractors, farming out jobs to different construction companies, dodging bill collectors, what will soon be called "The Murder Castle" is soon open for business (which thrives as millions of people visit Chicago to check out the Fair) ... the first floor consists of legitimate stores, the second and third floors are made up of a maze of over a hundred deadly rooms, apartments and offices that include secret entrances, gas chambers, hidden soundproof areas, concealed stairways, doors that open on to walls, an elevator without an elevator shaft and an elevator shaft without an elevator, and numerous places where chutes lead down to a basement of pits filled with acid, quicklime, and dissecting rooms. Only Mudgett knows where everything is, including the corpses he starts producing, or what is left of them (investigated after Mudgett is caught, the structure will mysteriously burn down in August of 1895) .
The Murder Castle
Details Of Second Floor
A complete list of Mudgett's victims of course is impossible to put together, but experts estimate that as many as two hundred people may have had the misfortune of encountering the doctor when he is in monster mode. Among the unfortunates are Mudgett's mistress, Julia Smythe, and her daughter Pearl, another girlfriend named Emeline Cigrande, a fair visitor named Edna Van Tassel, an actress named Minnie Williams, and Minnie's sister, Nannie ... and on and on and on. What is known however is that Mudgett strikes up a friendship with a local carpenter with a criminal past named Benjamin Pitezel, who begins assisting the doctor with some of his more elaborate swindles, and that it will be a relationship with huge negative repercussions for Pitezel and his family.
Minnie Williams
Pitezel
Creditors, insurance companies, and family of missing individuals closing in, Mudgett locks up his castle and moves to Fort Worth, intent on converting a property "inherited" from Minnie Williams into another Horror Hotel, but in July of 1894 he is briefly arrested in St. Louis for stealing mortgaged goods ... in jail, he offers outlaw Marion Hedgepeth the chance to become involved in his latest scheme, faking his own death and the splitting the insurance proceeds with his co-conspirators ... Hedgepeth isn't interested, but Pitezel is (for later informing on his cellmate, the bandit will be pardoned by Missouri Governor Joseph W. Folk), with a slight change in plans, the death faked will be Pitezel's (in his role as goofus inventor named B.F. Perry, a cadaver appearing to be Pitezel will be found disfigured and blown to pieces in a lab mishap), and unsurprisingly, Pitezel's death proves to be all too real (Mudgett chloroforms Pitezel and then sets the body on fire using benzene). A problem
remains though, the insurance policy is made out to Mrs. Pitezel, and aware of the fraud, the wife wants to know where her husband is hiding out.
Hedgepeth
Seeking Mrs. Pitezel's portion of the profits too, Mudgett uses his honey tongued whiles to become the "protector" of the family ... sometimes escorting the mother and two of her children (using a variety of aliases), sometimes in the company of Alice, Nellie, and Howard ... who soon all go missing of course (gassed to death in a trunk and buried in a cellar, Alice and Nellie are discovered in Toronto, while the burnt remains of Howard are found in Indianapolis chimney of a cottage the killer once rented, compliments of the police work of Philadelphia Detective Frank P. Geyer who is investigating Mudgett for an old insurance fraud case). The same fate is to be doled out to Mrs. Pitezel and the remaining children too, but before those murders can take place, Pinkerton agents arrest in the murderer in Boston on November 17, 1894. House of cards a tumbling, Mudgett goes on trial in Philadelphia in October of 1895, is found guilt of four counts of first degree murder (for the death of Pitezel and three of his children), and six counts of attempted murder, and is sentenced to be hung by the neck until dead.
Murder
Detective Frank P. Geyer
Pitezel And His Three Murdered Children
A psychopath until the end, already convicted, for the sum of $7,500 (worth roughly $221,000 in today's currency), Mudgett gives his "official" biography to the Hearst newspaper chain ... confessing to twenty-seven killings (some of people that are still alive), claiming innocence to other nefarious deeds, and implies that he not only has been possessed by Satan, but is becoming the devil himself. Asking that the coffin his carcass is to reside in be placed in cement and buried ten feet deep so grave robbers could not steal it for dissection (to insure that no alternate con has taken place, Mudgett will be dug up in 2017 and undergo DNA testing on his teeth and mustache ... AND GOOD NEWS, NO MISTAKE WAS MADE!), Mudgett goes to the gallows amiable, and showing no fear of eternal damnation, after a last meal breakfast of eggs, toast, and coffee, once again claiming he had nothing to do with Pitezel's death (when asked if he is ready, his last words are, "Yes, goodbye."). And damnation begins immediately, instead of death being a quick snap of the neck, the murderer dances on air, slowly strangling for over fifteen minutes before being pronounced dead.
Headlines
Adios!
Mudgett
Gone to answer for his crimes as of May 7, 1896, the ultimate bogie-man still lingers on to haunt the masses today in novels, works of non-fiction, television shows, documentaries, as a subject for ghost hunters, and soon, if Hollywood has its way, as a starring vehicle for director Martin Scorsese and actor Leonardo DiCaprion, recreating for the screen, Erik Larson's 2003 bestseller, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America ... and somewhere, the arch-fiend is probably grinning!
Mugshot
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