Rotten Mango - #73: Hotel Of Horrors (Serial Killer - H. H. Holmes)

Episode Date: June 16, 2021

You’ve booked a room in a nice hotel that everyone calls “The Castle.” You quickly realize things are not what it seems here.  Doors with spikes attached. Vaults filled with acid. Secret peepholes in the rooms. Staircases that start and stop out of nowhere.  You see the “elasticity machine” it’s supposed to stretch your body so you can be taller. The owner wants to create a new race of giants…  Everything feels so strange. Why the weird maze like layout? And who is H. H. Holmes? Source Notes: rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Better Bing? Better Boo. What? Full confidence you're going to go with that one. Yeah. Okay, no, I love it. You've booked a nice little room in a hostile. It's on the second floor. There are 35 other rooms on that floor,

but that should be relatively easy to find, right? You go up to the top of the stairs, second floor, okay, well which room is it? Do I take a right? Do I take a left? But you realize it's not that easy. The minute that you start walking, you see a hallway. And then another hallway.

There ends up being like six different hallways. Some of them lead to dead ends. There are staircases that appear out of nowhere. That doesn't make sense. I mean, you don't really have an idea of like architecture, but this just feels off. Something about it makes you feel unsettled. Why? Why would there be a staircase here? So your curiosity just overwhelms you. You go up this staircase. It's dark, it's dimly lit, and once you get to the top, there's nothing. There's not a door. There's not a hallway. It's just a wall. No way to go. You have to go back down and the whole time that you're getting back down to the second floor

You can't help but think why why would there be a staircase leading nowhere? That seems that seems dumb Fiscally irresponsible. I mean staircases take money to put in. So odd, this place is odd. So you start roaming around the second floor again. You take a left, but somehow you end up right back where you started. Then you start walking a little bit more. The hallway slanted at turn, so you have to duck a little bit to get through. Okay, this is too much. I just want to get to my room. Maybe I'll go up to the third level because I think that the owner's office is up there. So I'm just going to ask the owner, this is embarrassing,. I just want to get to my room. Maybe I'll go up to the third level because I think that the owner's office is up there. So I'm just gonna ask the owner,

this is embarrassing, dude, but can you please show me to my room? So you take the stairs up to the third floor, and again, more hallways, more doors. You open up a door and it's a room. Hello, is anyone in here? You walk in and the floor underneath you falls out. You fall into the second floor. And you look up and the floor underneath you falls out. You fall into the

second floor and you look up and the floor was fake. It was a trap door but now now you're sitting in this windowless, doorless, exitless room. Wait what's that smell? This gas starts pumping into this airtight tiny little quarters and you start feeling dizzy and the door opens. You're greeted with a man in a suit, and he tips off his hat. You realize you're staring at H, H, Holmes. Yes, bitch, we're doing the H, H, Holmes case. I'm still confused.

Wait, what's happening? You know H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H He's a serial killer. I'm sure a lot of you guys have heard about him or vaguely know about him He is he's kind of dubbed America's first serial killer in 2021 a lot of people will argue that Christopher Columbus is actually America's first serial killer But that's neither here nor there right now, okay? So we're talking about H.H. Holmes and he was famous for having this hotel of horrors a murder castle We're always just led to dead ends. There were trap doors, there were air, airtight rooms with these gas vents, I would just pump this and toxicating gas into your room and he would murder people. It's suspected that he might have over 200 victims. We're talking about his hotel of horrors. Let's get started, okay? We talked about it at a hotel before, right? Which one?

The guy who has like an attic he will stalk women? Oh yeah the the warrior dude. A little bit different, very different. Yeah that one um that one is very true crime but more of like a sexual pervert and don't get me wrong. H.H. Holmes I suspect was a raging sexual pervert but he was a massive serial killer like an insane one. So he's kind of considered the most prolific murder

known in criminal history. This takes place in the 1800s. Don't click away, okay, I know it's an old case, but I swear it's worth it. So just stick on for the ride. He was a serial killer before the word itself was coined like a hundred years later. I mean, this is absolutely nuts.

Because of how many times this story has been told, I do need to put a quick little disclaimer. Okay, there are some things that I could find you know Maybe four sources say this and then two sources say this in this variation. It was complex There's a lot and I feel like every time that it's told it's exaggerated a little bit for you know Documentary purposes everyone wants it to be a little bit creepy or a little bit scarier So just take this episode with the grain of salt, it's just gonna be a fun one, okay? All of this takes place in Chicago, so let me just set the scene for you because I'm taking you to the 1880s, 1890s, Chicago is still one of the biggest cities in the United States. Yes, correct, but back then it was like the

biggest. Like you could come from New York City, go to Chicago, and you would tell someone from Chicago or I just came out from New York City or just came by train. They would look at you and say, well how's the suburbs, Debbie? How's the suburbs? Karen, they would look down on you. This was the city to be in. It was the best city. It was known as the most American of American cities.

That's how people described it. Everyone wanted to migrate to Chicago. If you were an entrepreneur, this was the place to be. This was the only place that you could expect to make some big money because it had that much opportunity. So you had doctors, you had pharmacists, you had all these amazing people just migrating to Chicago. And there was one interesting thing about it that almost made people have this emotional attachment to Chicago, which was the great Chicago fire. This happened in the 1870s, like the entire city was burnt down. Just burst into flames.

Now Chicago is also called the windy city, so the wind just blew the flames from one wood building to another wood building and another. It even passed the river, that's how windy it was, and just blew through the entire downtown. I mean, it took forever. It took forever to put out this fire. And when they looked, it was just piles of wood, piles of ash everywhere. But for some reason, somehow, all of these people from Chicago were able to come together, rebuild all of these beautiful buildings.

And within a decade, it had one of the biggest populations in the United States. This did not back in the day. This is something that could kill an entire population. It could kill an entire town and it would never be the same again. But they rose better than ever. So people thought, okay, well this is like this emotional attachment. Chicago is this phoenix rising from the ashes. What kind of city is like this? None. No other city is like Chicago. It was actually even the birthplace of the Pingerton National Detective Agency. It was founded by Alan Pingerton. The company logo is like the Illuminati eye. Just like a straight-up eye, looking straight at you. The motto for this company is, we never sleep. Okay, I don't like that.

Okay, what do you think they do, right? At one point, this is one of the largest private law enforcement agencies in the entire world. Let's say you have this company, someone stole from you. You could either maybe contact city officials or you could hire your own private investigator, AKA the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, and they would get you your criminal faster, quicker, with probably less expenses.

So this was straight up, I mean, I can't think of one PI detective agency that's that big right now. That's private. It's not like State, Local, or federally-owned, right? Um, hello. You rotten mango! Oh! Oh, true crime? Oh, anonymous! But you can't hire them.

I can't go on a website and be like, hello anonymous. Please help me find out who's leaving this hate comment. I'm kidding. I wouldn't do that to you guys, okay? So it's said that the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, that's a mouthful, laid the framework for the FBI and the CIA. So think of it as they were doing positions that would later be taken over by these government agencies.

That's how intense they were. They actually had more detectives at one point than the US had military people. Like I'm talking all the branches. Yes, so it was huge. They had agencies all over the place. They were actually the secret service for Abraham Lincoln before there was a secret service because this was during the war. So everyone in the South was trying to kill Abraham Lincoln before there was a secret service because this was during the war so everyone in the south was trying to kill Abraham Lincoln

They actually prevented multiple assassination attempts Obviously not the last one, but multiple before he died. They prevented it. I mean, it's kind of crazy They're kind of wild and they helped bring down H. H. Holmes America's first serial killer It's wild Fun fact. Do you know how people say PI, like PI, the acronym. It was, yeah, so it's coined in a book, allegedly in a fiction book back in the day, and it was inspired by private investigator,

but some people think that the author was inspired by the I logo of Pinkerton. So like the Pinkerton I. Ah, Pink I. Yeah, yeah, so like a play on the words of private investigator, but also Pinkerton eye. But obviously that's not how you spot eye. You get it. So where are we going with, which honestly is not the coolest serial killer name. Herman Webster Muget. That's his birthday. How is that translated H H homes because he feels like it's not cool enough.

Oh, he changed it. Yeah, he straight up changes it. So we're going to call him homes for the rest of this, but he was born in New Hampshire in this tiny, tiny, little town, like a teeny town. Even in 2010, the population was 3700 people He's the third child and his childhood was probably normal at the time I mean he was beat by his dad. They were a very religious family He his dad was like a jack of all trades a farmer a trader a house painter He just did the absolute most and his mom she was super submissive to the husband just let him beat the kids

Just let them go to church nonstop. That was kind of the deal. Herman hated this. He hated every part of this deal. He hated the fact that his dad beat him. He hated the fact that his mom didn't do anything. He just hated everything about this small town. He wanted big things. He wanted to go out and make a shit ton of money. That was his ultimate dream.

And it was in this little town that he hears about the great Chicago fire and he was mesmerized. I mean he couldn't stop thinking to himself, how big was this destruction? How bad was it? How many people died? And he had this reoccurring fantasy. What if my parents died there? What if my parents were trapped in the flames? The fire would just burn them alive.

Can you imagine the screams? Can you imagine the smell of that? They would die and I would finally be free. This is interesting because Holmes was allegedly known for burning people alive later. So I don't know. This is all very troubling stuff but again nobody knew that anything was wrong with this kid because of anything the one thing that Herman Holmes was constantly told was that he was going to be somebody someday. And they always said, you've got a boy with a head on him, a lad with a future.

These are high compliments back in the day. And he was really smart. Like above average intelligence. That's how everyone described him. Successful at school, very polite, very well mannered. He just had this grace about him even when he was young. Like the way that he held himself, the way that he walked, he seemed way mature for his age. So people were really impressed, he had the look of a gentleman. And because

he was loved by a lot of adults, got good grades, the teachers freaking liked him, he was bullied a lot. And it seemed that maybe he had a some sort of lazy eye problem, that's what some sources said, some sources did not say that he had a lazy eye so it's just kind of confusing. And they bullied the crap out of him. These childhood kids, they do not play. So they bullied him. And there were a few traumatic instances in his childhood that were just strange. So when he's like five, he runs to the town doctor. A lot of the kids in the area hated going to this town doctor. And it's not just because it's the doctor and the doctor sucks when you're a kid.

But there was this rumor going around that the skeleton that was hanging in this doctor's office, like, you know, those medical skeletons, was actually that of a real human, and not a fake medical prop. So you're like, did you know? That's probably one of his, he probably killed him. Maybe that's his wife.

Well, oh, he has a wife, maybe that's his first wife. And he killed the wife. They had all of these theories that the real human noise swear I I saw it move actually the other day But they had all of these crazy rumors so when he gets there He sees two older kids from school that happen to be absolute bullies and they're just hanging out He walks in and they decide this is a crime of opportunity These two older kids they just grab him drag him into the room right next to this allegedly real human skeleton.

Remember this story because it's gonna come back, okay? And he starts screaming his face off. He's just sobbing like tears running down his face. And they start holding him down and trying to hug him with the skeleton's arms, like giving him a deadly embrace. And the doctor comes in and he's like, oh my god, what are you guys doing? YELLOW THE OLDER BOYS!

THEY RUN OUT AND HOMES IS JUST LEFT ON THE GROWN! BALLING! Now this is weird because he said this was the day that his fascination with anatomy just kick started. I mean he became obsessed with anatomy. It's always like that. Yeah, don't bully people because you never know when they'll become serial killers. No, no, no.

Oh, that, that, that, that also, but a lot of times like they have these kind of crazy interaction with these type of things and then they just get inspired. You would think it would make him hate it, but he gets really inspired. So he would constantly go to the doctor and ask for more information about human anatomy and the doctor was impressed the whole town Was impressed this guy smart maybe he'll become a doctor or something He's picking up this information super quick So there was another instance that he's hanging out with this local photographer

So he's like taking pictures of the woods and he sits down and he puts down his camera and the photographer lifts up his pants and Takes off his prosthetic leg. And Holmes is just standing there and he's like, 10. Just jaw dropped. What are you doing? The guy's like, what do you mean? I'm just taking it off. It hurts a little bit.

He's like, what even is that? Where is the rest of your leg? I mean, this is the first time that he's seen this and he becomes so fascinated with body parts. time that he's seen this and he becomes so fascinated with body parts and particularly this moment sparked his fascination with this memberment. You're looking at me like that sounds crazy but like I'm telling you it's you know that's what they said happened. So he starts gathering up these little animals. Now this is where the story gets fuzzy. Some people say that he was wildly abusive to these animals. Some people say that he absolutely loved

animals. He starts doing that he absolutely loved animals. He starts doing these secret medical experiments on salamanders and frogs. And then to rabbits, cats, stray dogs. There was a rumor that he had stolen his neighborhood dogs, like actual pets, like working dogs. He didn't want to kill them though, because I would be boring. So what he would do is he would get these chemicals and try to put them under anesthesia. He was a surgeon. So he'd put them under, cut them open, take out the organs, take out the bones, and then stitch them up, and they'd be dead. This was just like his thing. He didn't want to kill them first. He wanted to put them under before he starts taking out all

of these things. Once he was done, he would keep a skull. It said that he kept to like, cats, paws in a box. In a little treasure box. Bizarre kid, he would spend all day studying and then go dissect all of these live animals. I mean, this is a strange kid that we're talking about. I have just added something new to our bedroom, to our bed specifically, and it's been kind of fun, it's been different, it's been exciting honestly, and I'm obsessed with it, okay?

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That's helix sleep.com slash rotten for up to $200 off and two free pillows. to $200 off and two free pillows. And he had one friend, one friend named Tom. And this was his best friend. Everyone saw them together. Maybe Tom knew about his little treasure box. We don't know because it didn't last long. One day they're hanging out, they're walking through the streets.

They see this abandoned house. Now he's thinking to himself, hey Tom, why don't we climb to the top of that house? That seems like a fun thing to do. And of course these boys are like, yes, let's do it. They start climbing and climbing and climbing. And we don't know what happens at that top of the house.

But we do know that the end result is Tom mysteriously falls to his death and is laying dead on the ground while Holmes is looking down on him from the top of this house. Did he slip? Was he pushed? Was this an accident? Was it his first murder? We have no idea. How old was he? He was like early teenager, I believe.

Holmes on top of that made it even more suspicious because he didn't seem to mourn his best friend at all. He was so happy to have time alone, he thought maybe, oh, now that Tom's gone, I can dissect more animals, I have more free time to learn about human anatomy. So back in the 1800s, children didn't kill other children. I feel like in 2021, if this situation took place, there would be 55 million tiktok conspiracies about, oh my god, did this friend kill the friend, did they push each other off? But back then, they were like kids or kids, he would never do that.

Nobody suspected it until later on in Holmes' life. So he grows up. He turned 17 years old and he meets this woman by the name of Clara. And the next morning, so he meets her at night. And the next morning, he proposes marriage to her. I think he's a little weird. I think that this happened in the 1800s,

but I do think that Holmes is a little bit weird. And she accepts it. They get married. They have this beautiful cute little family started. she gets pregnant, they have a kid together. And then he decides, I don't really like this. Like I want to dissect people, what am I doing? Like I'm in this marriage and I don't get to dissect anything, what is this? He applies for medical school and he gets in.

So he starts studying human dissection and anatomy. His main mentor, his main professor, with the head of anatomy. And this guy would just let Holmes do whatever he wanted, because he saw, he saw this star pupil in front of him. So he said, whatever you need, I'm going to be here for you because I think, I think you're going to be a great doctor one day. So Holmes said, well, if you insist. So he started taking these cadavers home with him.

So at this medical college college they have dead bodies everywhere So you're supposed to dissect them. It's for knowledge. It's for education But homes he was like okay fine. I want to do this at home He would put them into a little bag and take these dead bodies home with them where he would dissect them Mutilate them. I mean he would just do violent things to these corpses. Yeah Just straight up do violent things. So what what exactly is he into he's into He's into anatomy in terms of like dissecting cutting people seeing how the limbs break and I Fall and get sought off I guess organ placement

All of that he's just so into it So he starts doing this for entertainment at first and then he slowly realizes wait, I can kill two birds with one stone I don't need to just do this for the fun of it. I can do this for money So he sets up these fake life insurance policies on fake people that don't exist now back then There's no Facebook. There's no you know IDs really so you could get away with it So he goes to an insurance agent and he says well, I want to get a life insurance on my wife. Then he would take a female cadaver, bring it home, mutilate this woman's body, make her face unrecognizable.

And then this, this wife would die. This random woman would die. So you'd call up the insurance agency, oh my God, she's dead and I'm the sole benefactor. What do I do? They would come look at the body and back then they could only identify you by your family. So your family would come in and say, oh yeah, that's my that's my brother. They'd give you the life insurance. That was it.

Okay, so they don't care how she died. I mean not really. So yeah, she's dead. So they they look at our body. She's dead. It was a horrible accident. There's acid in her face. Maybe it was a kitchen explosion That makes sense. Things were exploding all the time back in the day. Kitchens were dangerous back then, okay? So like that makes sense. Here's all the money so they would give him money. Then the next day He'd be like, oh my god, my friend's dead. My best friend John that he just got life insurance crazy Anyway, I'm the sole benefactor look Look at his body, and it's this mutilated man. Of course, it was a different, you know, life insurance agency, and I guess none of them talked to each other because apparently this worked. So he would get a lot of money from this.

Just mutilating corpses. Getting life insurance. It's bizarre. Yeah, it's bizarre. And it seems like he had a good run in Michigan until he decides to flee town This happened abruptly and there's kind of rumors about it It's the rumor is that he was seen with this little boy who just like managed into thin air and he was the last one seen with this boy The boy's gone. Yeah, the boy is gone

So people are wondering okay, well did Holmes do something to this boy? And he's not waiting around to get caught? Is that why or is it just a coincidence? Why is he hanging out with this little boy? We don't even know. So he flees and Clara, his first wife, uses this as a moment of a getaway. I mean, she had been in this emotionally abusive relationship, sometimes physically abusive. She's sick of Holmes.

I mean, this guy sucks. So she takes her baby with her and goes back to her family. Now they didn't officially divorce because she was so scared of homes, she couldn't even ask for that. Can you imagine that trauma your husband everyday just like cutting a body and the kitchen? I cannot. Yeah, in the kitchen. Yeah, or like on the dining table and you're just watching.

Could you even eat after that? Yeah, that's his hobby, you know? I was also thinking like, you know, autopsy technicians and stuff, medical examiners, when they look at humans, do they just envision like bags of meat inside of you? Because I wonder, maybe they can- Yeah, I also wonder like plastic surgeons.

Do they just wonder what they can do to you? Yeah, like I would totally fix your nose. Exactly, do they just see like, ugh. This lip is crooked, I think so. So nose. Exactly. Do they just see like, ugh. This lip isn't crooked. I think so. So they don't officially divorce, which seems to be a thing for Holmes. He doesn't really like to do anything the right way.

He doesn't like to tie up loose ends. He's going to get married frequently and never divorce any of these women, which is super illegal. So he first, afterwards, moves to Philadelphia and gets a job as a drugist, aka a pharmacist. Now one of the prescriptions that he made caused a woman to drop dead. So he's like, oh my god. Okay, I gotta go. Because I straight up poisoned this woman.

I don't want to find out what happens later. And besides, I don't think that I'm guilty with it. You know, I'm a pharmacist. How was I supposed to know that she was going to drop dead? So then he reinvented himself and he changed his name to Henry Howard Holmes. Now, he would constantly change up the ages in this. Sometimes he would present himself as Harry Howard Harvey

Wait, what he just changed up all the ages. Yeah, whatever he wanted just change up the age because he would he would constantly change his name Sometimes it wouldn't even be an age name. He'd be like, hi, I'm Avery. Avery Smith. So he would constantly do this. He arrives in Chicago, he abandoned his first wife, and he arrives at a Dr. E.S. Holton's drug store. There was a couple that owned it.

Now this is kind of debated. What's the couple killed? Were they not killed? We don't know. The husband had been struck with cancer. The owner of this pharmacy had been struck with cancer and the wife, she was taking care of him. She was running downstairs because they lived on top of the drug store.

And she'd be running downstairs when a customer came in. I mean, business was booming. Like I said, Chicago was booming. That was the problem. Business was so busy that she had not even a wink of sleep. I mean, she's taking care of her husband running downstairs, running the pharmacy, exhaustion! So, Inwax is man that she's never met before.

She knows all the locals, she knows all the customers. And he looks so sharp, that's the first thing that she noticed. I mean, the suit was perfectly tailored. It looked like it was, it was sewn on to his body. He had this wonderful top hat. Oh yeah, they wore top hats and body. He had this wonderful top hat. Oh yeah, they wore top hats and he would courteously take it off and kind of like do a little side bow every time a woman walked by.

And these women would walk by again because they're like, who is this hot man? With such polite manners and why does he look so rich? What's going on right now? So he walked in and she's thinking, wow, hopefully he buys something, you know, because I'm wasting my time. Maybe he's gonna buy something big. Maybe he's gonna buy a lot of things. The sky looks so nice. I mean, he says she just sells drugs. Yeah. So he's like oh he needs all the drugs. He needs all the drugs. I mean look at that mustache.

He had this really intense mustache that was perfectly groomed. He's got these piercing blue eyes. I mean the silky brown hair dressed impeccably But he said that he's not a customer. He actually wants to apply for a position as a drugist He recently moved into the area and he's looking for work. Do you need an assistant man? I mean it's an awfully busy story Is it just you and she's like oh my god? It just so happens that I've been desperate. Okay, you don't even she Unloads on him. She's like, my husband's upstairs. He's sick with cancer, and I'm running this thing. I'm not even licensed drug.

Yes, like I, I mean, this is, I'm so exhausted. You're hired. She hires him on this spot. She doesn't even check his background. But she knew that the first day that he showed up to work that she made the right decision because the way that he worked, I mean, he had these long fingers that were so careful, they moved with such precision. I mean truly like a surgeon's hands, I guess how people would describe it, he was so

meticulous, nothing was shaky when he was measuring these drugs, everything was done with such perfection. I mean he was amazing at his job, how did she get so lucky? That's how she just kept thinking. And then slowly, the business gets even better and better. I mean, she thought that this business tapped out, but she was wrong. Because once they had a hot pharmacist in town, I mean, there was a line out the door of woman

who suddenly had symptoms of just everything. OK, woman would walk in and say, oh my God, doctor, Holmes, I have this sudden urge to just show a hot young gentleman with a nice suit and a top hat, my left boop. I mean, I don't know what kind of symptom this is, but don't you think I should take something for it? I mean, that's a different website, okay. Okay, sorry. There'd be people walking in like, oh my gosh, I just have this, I just have this dire need to cook, you know, 25 apple pies for a handsome young man like yourself. It's a symptom.

What do I do? Just like flirting with this guy. Just completely no shame in the game. Throwing themselves on him and he was good at it. He received it. He flirted back. He was a smooth talker. He just made each woman feel so special to the point where the next lady they would walk in and they had

heard everything that he had just said to the woman before but then she'd walk out being like oh yeah no he likes me that was there was a connection there like that's how good he was okay when he wasn't working the whole neighborhood fell more in love with him because he would just walk around with his little walking stick he had a walking walking stick, okay? This guy's in his 20s, with a full walking stick, completely, and he's able-bodied, by the way, completely decked out in a suit, would, you know, stop to tip his hat at the lady's passing, just very charismatic, everything about it. And a few months in, Holmes offers to buy the drugstore. Now this is where the story is kind of divide between the sources.

Some say that the husband, you know, was cured of cancer or never had cancer and homes buys the drug store. They move off to a new land where they're going to be happier. And then the other story goes like this. The wife's husband has recently passed. She's left with this store. That's just a lot. Homes is running it for now, but how long is he going to stay?

She's way in over her head, so she decides, okay, you're right. I like you, so I'm going to sell it to you on the condition that I can live upstairs. This is the place that I shared with my husband. I don't really want to move. So you would still have to board wherever you're boarding and I'm going to stay upstairs. So he says, okay, yeah, let's sign a contract, sign the deed over to the pharmacy. I'll put a small down payment and I start running the business and how about every single month I give you more and more money, right, until the full amount is paid, because I'm a little bit strapped for cash, but the pharmacy is making a lot of money. So she's like, I mean, I do really like you, so that sounds good.

She signs this contract in the next day. The sign is changed downstairs to H.H. Holmes drugstore, and he starts running this. But the problem is, the problem is, he stops making these payments to pay for the drug store To fully own it so she she's starting to get annoyed. I mean you changed the name already. You're not paying me I got ripped off and I'm living upstairs and I have no money because this is what I was counting on you need to pay me If you don't pay me, I'm gonna get an attorney involved So the next couple weeks go by and these women would come in with their dresses, and they'd say, oh, Dr. Holmes,

this is how I'm feeling. Oh, by the way, where did Mrs. Holtin go? I haven't seen her around. Oh, she was so sad that she moved to California to be with her family. All poor women, yeah, she was in love with her husband. Anyways, thank you so much for the medicine, like they just didn't care. People believed the story, it made sense, and she was never heard from again.

Besides, I mean all the women, they were really busy just trying to be his wife, okay? Now, this is not me shaming these women. This was a time period where that was what you had to do to survive, okay? This is just, this is the game. And it just seemed crazy that Dr. Holmes wasn't married yet. Does it make sense? So a few months after that, out of nowhere, Holmes announces to the community that he has married a woman by the name of Merta Z. Belknap. And she's got this long, beautiful blonde tear, these brown eyes, she had this baby face, just super smooth. That's how everyone describes it. I'm like, it's a really weird description of someone

They met during one of his business trips and within a month they were married and she was like the opposite of him She was very quiet. She was shy a lot of people said that she was not nearly as charming or as charismatic I don't know if this is jealousy or if this was the truth But that's just kind of how they described it So she started to work in in the pharmacy, but business starts slowing down because of her. Because he can no longer flirt with these women, not because she was bad at her job, because that was the charm of the place.

So H.A. Chomes is like, well, you can't work here anymore, girl, you gotta go upstairs, just be a housewife, just start cleaning and shit, because I gotta flirt with these people. I gotta flirt, I gotta get my flirtation on. And he only got more seductive towards these clients afterwards. There would be so many occasions where people would walk in and there would be a full-on fight happening. Murder would be screaming like, how dare you!

And homes would be like, get out of here. It's just business. Just non-stop screaming. Downstairs in the pharmacy. So right when they're about to break up, which by the way, divorce is nearly impossible. So probably when it's divorced, she gets pregnant. Instead of working it out or trying to get a divorce, he sent her to live with her family and raised the child there. He would send money, he would visit occasionally, and murder for whatever reason still seemed to love him. And the sadness of this all is that she didn't know that they were not legally married at all. So technically she could have lived an okay life like she could have married someone else on paper.

She was never married before. There could have been a man out there for her. But she genuinely thought that she was ruined at this point because you know the 1800s. But he was still married to his first wife Clara, legally speaking. Now the drugstore, he's still running it. It's nice, but this isn't his dream. His dream is really to own this massive mansion, almost like a hotel. It would be three floors. The first floor would be retail shops. Maybe a pharmacy there.

And then the second floor would be maybe 35 rooms for people to board, like a hostel. And then the third floor would have more rooms. But there would be something special about this one something that people just couldn't put their finger on, you know He had this blueprint in his mind. He had all these contraptions in his mind and he was ready Who's ready to start doing this? He was ready to start making a killing off of this murder mansion is what it will be called later But he just you don't have enough money. mean, this takes money to construct a thing like this, so he starts thinking, how can I get more money? This drug store is nice, but it's not given me enough.

And then two things really push him over the edge, the first being that right across the drug store, there's this plot of land for sale. It's the perfect piece of land. I mean, this is the place where he really envisions his little murder castle. It's gotta to happen. So that is one. And then the second is that all over the news internationally, there was something breaking, some groundbreaking news on the other side of the world in London.

There was a killer on the loose. He was going around killing sex workers, slashing their throats, mutilating their private parts, stabbing them, cutting off their breasts, placing the breasts next to them, disemboweling them, cutting out their entire reproductive, like their vulva, their organs, all of that. And his name was Jack the Ripper. And even in America, all eyes were on Jack the Ripper. Because people wanted to know more. I mean, even in the 1800s, listen, there should have been a true crime podcast back then, right?

People want to know more. They want to shake their heads and say something like this would never happen in the great country of America. You know, London, there's some shady parts of London. It's too big of a city, but in America, we're all just hardworking farmers here. Like we're a quaint little country. Little do they know a man in Chicago was working on a blueprint to a murder mansion, a hotel of torture. When he saw that news, when you heard that news, his reaction was what? I'll do this or that's what people suspect. Now there is a conspiracy at the end of this podcast where people think that H. H. Holmes and Jack the Ripper were one of the same. They were the same person. Whaaat? So there is that conspiracy. We'll get to that at the end. But a lot of people suspect that this kind of pushed him over to the edge.

To be like, you know what? I need to make some news. I need to do what I have always dreamt of doing. So in comes this man by the name of Benjamin Jr. Pizzle. And this guy's important. He was dating an 18 year old by the name of Carrie and they get married. They start having children. they had five full kids That's a lot of kids and they were having a really difficult time putting food on the table

I mean Benjamin was like this attractive guy. He seemed to love his wife So what's the problem? Is he lazy? Well, he was a bit of an alcoholic Okay, so he couldn't really hold down a job The other only problem was that he had this really big growth on the back of his neck. I don't know why people kept pointing that out and a lot of sources they did. So he had this growth on the back of the neck. I don't know if that's like a con or something. He just had a hard time holding down a job. I feel like everything that's happened in the past year or two. My style has evolved a little bit. Sometimes I just want to wake up in the morning and put on something that feels nice. Like it could be a simple white tea or a pair of jeans, but when I put it on my body, I love like the softness of

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lived just kind of like an amazing space. It's got this gothic vibe to it. He's excited. He's like, wow, this might be the next job for me. Like, this is gonna be the best job ever. It's gonna be fun. He would actually later become Holmes' henchman, and he was called Holmes' creature. That's how people call him, right?

He would just be like the physical power of everything. He would just kind of look mean on the side. I mean, he seemed like a nice person. Just looked really tough. Looked a bit rough. Now, this was gonna be a crazy construction. Even though it's not a 12-story building, it's only its three-story building,

it's gonna take up the entirety of the lot. Like, imagine buying a piece of land, and there's no grass. Like, you were just building from corner to corner of this lot. That's it. Every inch of it almost. So, the bottom floor, like I said,

is gonna be open to the public. They're gonna have jewelry shops. They're gonna have a pharmacy. All of these amazing just, you know, public things. The second and third floors were gonna be residential and for rooms for people to board in to rent out. Now, there were a couple strange things about this construction, and only one of them

was noticed by the public. It usually, I mean, it doesn't take that long to build a building. Even a structure like this, it would take maybe people six months to build, but this one was taking one and a half years. That's a really long time. And the more they look at it, I mean, it's, they're trying to understand it, but I just, I don't think I've ever seen a chimney there before.

It's just a weird place to put a chimney. I mean, I don't know how chimneys work, but I mean, something about this house is odd. Another thing that nobody noticed until later is that the construction workers were constantly changing. They would only last like a week or two, and then they would be completely replaced. So they were close to 500 people

that worked on the house by the end of the the construction Which is intense so the first theory is that it obviously helped save money Homes would hire people to paint and then when they were two thirds done He would throw this huge fit. It's disgusting. You ruined my construction You're lucky that I'm not slapping a lawsuit on your face for this disgusting get out of my house And so he wouldn't pay them. Most of his house was done for free because he kept doing this. Just non-stop. So he didn't pay for a ton of the work. So they were fired before they were paid. He would make it seem like it was their fault. And then

secondly, I mean, we know this now, but nobody knew it back then. It was a deliberate plan, because by the time that this building was done only homes Would know the real layout of this place Only homes knew which rooms led to what how many rooms there were where were the trap doors the secret hallways the people's only he would know everything He would even scam for furniture, so he bought this huge vault like a bank vault So he bought it on credit and said, I'm gonna pay the rest back, you know, I'm gonna mortgage it or whatever, like put it on the loan, but he obviously didn't pay it back, right? So the sellers are like, okay, then fine, I'm gonna come

into your house and I'm gonna take the vault back. We're gonna repossess it. But when they get there, he had constructed a room perfectly around the vault and this tiny little door that the vault could not pass through. So he says, you're more than welcome to take the vault, but I can assure you, if you leave even one dent, one scratch on this construction, I'm gonna sue the shit out of you. Well, you put a lot of thoughts into this. Yeah, there was actually a model who did that, and I don't think that she did this knowingly, there was like um ah this is a very fascinating story there was like this uh this con man I guess is what you could call him who gifted a Victoria secret model this beautiful piano I think it was like worth hundreds

if not like a million dollars and this supermodel had a room constructed around the piano to show the grandness of it it was like this dome room and the piano there's no way they can take it out. They can't get it through the door. They can't get it through the window. They can't crane it out without lifting the roof out of the house. And so when they found out that this guy is a con man and he had conned all of these people, they want to get all of these possessions back, including the gifts that he gave to people. Are you talking about? Miranda Curran, the guy with that guy's name. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, you know, when they came to repossess the piano,

they couldn't. So they had to leave it. I don't know if they got it back after maybe she sold the house. This is like a while back. Maybe she still has it. Maybe the house has been sold. I don't know. Okay, side note, I am not saying that Miranda

curved at this on purpose because the room is beautiful. I see a reason why she did that. But for the bank vault, he did it completely on purpose. So let's talk about this castle. To the people that lived nearby, this was their bragging rights. This was a symbol of prosperity and money. If you lived near the castle, people would say,

well, how can I get to your place? And you would tell them, okay, so you take a right at the castle? Yeah, I know. I live near the castle. And then I'm like, three houses down. That's how people talked about it. Like it was like a landmark when you give directions.

It was pride for the neighborhood, but there was a huge difference between the outside of the castle versus the inside, which is kind of similar to serial killers and H.H. Holmes. So the outside looks so put together. It's almost like this beautiful gothic mansion looks huge, right? But on the inside, it's just not well built. It's like this beautiful gothic mansion. It looks huge, right? But on the inside, it's just not well built. It's like a maze. There's these low, dimmy, tight corners

and all these weird doors and it smells weird and the walls are peeling. What is happening? There were trap doors, secret hallways. Almost everything was soundproofed. Little suspicious. Most of the rooms were airtight. No windows. Yeah, most of them didn't have windows the rooms were airtight. No windows.

Yeah, most of them didn't have windows and they were airtight and they would have this little vent. It was like a gas vent and the tubes would lead back to home's office where he had this control panel and he could just put whatever gas or liquid through that vent to bring straight to your room I Think the most fascinating part about this house is that he had these greased shoots You know like a trash shoot. Yes, but he had them in specific locations from the second floor and the third floor Where it could fit human bodies and it would lead straight into his basement that only he had access to

Seems suspicious to rate into his basement that only he had access to. Same suspicious. Mm-hmm. So what is he doing? He's trying to kill people, but he's what he's utilizing the whole place. Yeah, so think about it. If you were a serial killer and you had a bunch of money, well, he didn't have a bunch of money,

but let's say you were and you had a bunch of money, you wanna kill people in your house with the ease and convenience and you wanna have all of these, you want to kill people in your house with the ease and convenience and you want to have all of these, you know, devices of torture. And then you want to clean it up as quickly and as cleanly as possible. How would you do it? That's kind of how he did this. And the whole house itself was like a trap.

I mean, the first floor is fine. It almost gives off this like air of safety because it's open to the public. You would never think that people are murdering people in a place where people are roaming downstairs. That doesn't make sense. It's like right on top of a mall. But then when you get to the second floor, there's trap doors. There's places to get stuck. There's these gas vents where he, you know, throws down gas that just completely knocks you out and then you wake up chained in like a torture room. And then once he's done torturing you, he's still on the second floor. He can't go through the ground for to get to the basement with your dead body. That's too much work and that's he could get caught.

So he takes you to this secret little shoot like a trash shoot and just throws you down and you arrive at the cellar your dead body does and then he just walks down to the cellar that only he has a key for and in the cellar he's got some more devices. So let's start from the very top floor. This floor had a shit ton of rooms too, right? Apparently it had maybe dirty rooms, that's what people say. Some people say it had no rooms, and it was just all furniture. It's all over the place. But it was just dimly lit, random turns everywhere, dead ends, doors, some of them were forever

locked, some doors just like didn't open, it was bizarre. They had gas pipes leading into the rooms not for heat, like I said, but you know, so homes could pump any type of gas that he wants into your room. Most of the doors were locked from the outside and homes had the key, and the second floor was even stranger. There's six different hallways, there's 51 doors. Why are there 51 doors? 35 rooms, most of them had no windows,

airtight soundproofed. Some of them were just as small as closets. A lot of these rooms have these discrete peepoles for homes to just peer through and stare at you while you're in your room, trap doors. There were these sliding fake walls. So you could just slide a wall open and suddenly he's in your room without even using the door. Fake rooms, fake trap doors, the trap doors were interesting. So let's say you go to the third floor, you walk into a room and it's just an empty room, white walls and a floor. And so you step on the floor, but it's a fake floor. It opens up and suddenly you fall to the second floor. But this room is terrifying. No windows, no doors to exit.

Just you. How does he come in? He's got like a fake little. Seek her door. Yeah. So you start freaking out. And then you start screaming, but it's soundproofed. Gas gets leaked into that room.

You pass out. Holmes comes in, takes your passed out unconscious body, and you wake up, chained to a torture device. Some rooms would just have higher floors. Like, you would have to go up three steps, right? The reason is because there were a bunch of hidden compartments. A lot of the floors were fake, so you would open up the floor, and there were just enough space to fit human bodies.

Were they stored there? It's hard to say if he stored weapons in the fake floors, or dead bodies, or maybe he would put them in there alive, because homes really like to suffocate people. But not with strangulation, but in the sense of like, he wanted you to lose air. So that's the second floor, then the ground floor, it's open to the public. Lots of people in and out, gives you like this vibe of like a safe building. Now the third floor, the basement, it had this massive oven.

Now this oven was a very odd size, and the people floor, the basement, it had this massive oven. Now this oven was a very odd size. And the people later, when detectives come, they would note that this is an odd size. It's too big for a residential oven. Like, are you cooking 25 Thanksgiving turkeys? Like, what's going on? It's just big enough to fit like a nice male human body, definitely female body, but it's not big enough to be a commercial oven. Like it's not big enough to like do woodwork or glass work, you know, it's just, it's like this, I mean it's perfect for more, that's how everyone said it. It's like the perfect morgue size. He also had a surgical table with all these surgical tools because he is a doctor. He had all of these just very

interesting implements of torture. So there was something that he called the because he is a doctor. He had all of these just very interesting implements of torture. So there was something that he called the elasticity determinator, which it sounds fancy, right? And he would tell people, I'm gonna be a scientist. I'm gonna create a new race of giants. I created this device and it's honestly a technological marvel. I mean, innovation at its best. You put

someone on there and you stretch them out twice to their normal length. That's amazing. I'm gonna create a new race of people and sometimes he would bring some people down there to show them. But when they looked at it, it was just a straight up torture device. Just chains on each side, chains for your arms and for your legs and it would just slowly pull you apart. It's not an elasticity determinator. It looks like an old school torture machine. What are you talking about? But he was convinced that he was going to sell this to some medical school and he was going to make a billion dollars. He had something called the iron torture room, where it was just iron all over the walls, and these iron

plates behind them. They had these torches that he could control from his room and he would essentially cook people alive. It would get so hot in there it was like this massive oven as well. And he just liked watching them getting cooked alive. He had a hanging room specifically dedicated to hanging people. He had this other compartment where it was just big enough like a little closet to fit a human body But the doors when you close it they have these massive long spikes. Yes another medieval torture device, right?

And he would slam it shut and the spikes they had nowhere to go but inside of you and you would die So there is a lot of evidence that homes really like to torture people He didn't really like an easy kill and there is also some evidence that it was sexual-based Like he got off on it sexually and it wasn't just for like insurance scams. So after a body is taken to the basement, they are already dead, they had been tortured, he got what he wanted out of them, he would skin them, remove the flesh, the fat, the organs, clean the bones, and then he starts doing something odd. He starts selling his victim's skeletons to medical colleges.

First study. And a lot of these medical colleges, because back in the day, they were in need for bodies, right? They thought that he was a grave robber. They had no idea that he was a serial killer. They thought, oh, well, this guy keeps bringing us skeletons. It's probably because he's robbing graves for money, and they would pay a lot of money. They'd be in, like, $2,000 a body.

So once this murder mansion is built, he's so freaking excited. Okay, he's ready to torture people. He puts up that drugstore across the street for sale and this nice little couple from Michigan comes to Chicago and they're interested. They got a little bit of money from their inheritance. This is the last of it, right? But they see it. They're like, wow, business is booming. Like, we're going to make this money back and more within like a year or two. I mean, but if you loved it and businesses so good, why are you selling it homes? He says, well, let me do what I love. So I gotta go do what I love full time now.

So they buy the place, they slowly move from Michigan, they open up their shop, yes, business is amazing, the drug stores kill in it, and then a week later They see these massive pieces of furniture being moved directly into the castle, you know the murder mansion And they see this sign H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H So on the first ground right across the street, and when they went to go look, I mean, it was a beautiful pharmacy. This was the pharmacy to be at. It made the original one across the street look like a cow shed.

So the Michigan couple, they lost everything and they moved back home. I mean, this guy's evil, like he scanned them out of everything. So even though business was booming, Holmes had a lot of expenses. Keeping up with this castle was not a cheap thing to do. So he wants more money, he starts scamming people, he would invite investors over and

show these machines that he created that could have usable gas as a heat source out of thin air. How do you do that? That sounds crazy! Then he would show him and it looked like a washing machine with legs, but then he had these gas pipes that were secretly attached to it, and he would put in this little liquid and he's like, oh, this is like mixture of water and like some extract that's super cheap. He would put it into the washing machine and then suddenly opens the door and gas comes out. They did not realize that it was attached to a gas pipe.

Oh, he just made gas. So they bought it for like $300,000. You could make gas too. By farting. So then the investors, they were scammed out of $300,000 in today's money by the time that they found out that it didn't work as they were told. He started selling this mineral water at the pharmacy, which was just, he added this bitter spice in vanilla extract to the water and said that it's going to cure you.

That's why it's so bitter. It's like from the extract of these crazy plants that you can't get here. That sounds like something I would fall for. He's looking at me like you would totally find that in Whole Foods, yes. No health benefit at all whatsoever. Now the other scams, they came in the form of murder. Holmes really like to hire female secretaries to work at his little murder hotel. And once you're an employee, you have this one rule.

You have to have a life insurance policy, you know? It's just part of the gig, so they would get it and he would become the sole benefactor. And then he would pay you some money, you'd be a secretary, and then you would just vanish into thin air. And he would have a lot of insurance money. So the first known murder that we have is the murder of Julia Smith. Now, she was a tall woman. This is kind of important to her. She was almost six feet tall. She had this full, beautiful figure. I mean, people said that she was almost hypnotizing. Like, that's how pretty she was.

That's how people remembered her. She had these beautiful green eyes. She came from a good family. So everyone was really excited. Like you were gonna marry someone important. Because you were that you are as pretty as a picture and as sharp as a tack. The world is your oyster. You come from a well-off family. You're gonna do so good. I mean you could marry anyone in the United States technically at this point. so when she chooses to marry a man by the name of Ned, the whole town was shocked. And when he was a watchmaker, he's talented, but he's not lazy, but he's one of those guys that like no matter how hard he tries, he just keeps failing somehow, and you're like, what? Why isn't this working for you? I don't get it, right? But she she fell in love so they get married and it was just off to a shaky start Julia was convinced That if she married a man like him she could be the reason for a success You know behind every man is a greater woman like that type of vibe like she was gonna change him

Like you have the potential and she just had to lead him in that direction, but it just wasn't working So they start resenting each other. She's like, why can't you just do it? And then he's like why you knew I couldn't do it and you married me like, what's going on? So then she gets pregnant. And everyone's like, oh jeez, like I hope. I really hope that for the sake of that kid, this like brings them together. She gets birth to a daughter by the name of Pearl. And things don't really go well. And then Nett is offered a job to run the jewelry shop at the castle in Chicago. So Julia is like, this is amazing. And then when they get there, they're boarding there,

that was part of the deal. And now Julia is offered a job as the secretary position at the castle run by Holmes. I mean, this is amazing, right? So her, Ned and Pearl, who's six years old, they're moving into the castle, they're immediately having the best time of their lives, especially Julia, because homes was dead set on seducing Julia and she was fascinated by the successful man in her life They start dating they try to they try to kind of keep it a secret from Ned

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that they're actually recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp and RottenMango listeners can get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com. FlashRotten. A friend tells him, hey, your wife is having an affair with your boss, like this is bizarre to tell you. So he's like, well, your wife is having an affair with your boss, like this is bizarre to tell you. So he's like, well, I'm gonna leave you. Julia's like, okay, leave!

Oh my god. So he's like, I'm leaving you, and Pearl, I'm leaving the baby. She's like, okay, yeah! I'll see you never. So Ned leaves the castle, and Julia was completely fine because she was about to marry Homes. I mean this wonderful handsome gentleman with like this successful business. Talk about an upgrade, right? So Julia starts demanding Homes to marry her. Once passed and she's like, what's the deal, bro?

Like I'm a divorced woman. I'm needing every married. Otherwise I'm gonna be ashamed to the community. Come on, put a ring on it. And then out of nowhere she claims that she's pregnant. It seems like she probably was and it probably was Holmes' baby. And he's really upset by this. So he thinks I got to play my cards right. So he convinces Julia, I already have a baby, right, from my, from murder. My wife that doesn't live with me. Oh, you have a baby, Pearl. That's not mine. I mean, do we really

need a third baby? Like, I'm going to, I'm going to treat Pearl, that's not mine. I mean, do we really need a third baby? Like, I'm gonna treat Pearl like she's my baby. So why don't we abort the baby that you have right now? That's the only way that I will marry you. Otherwise, it's just too much responsibility. It's just too much money for all these kids. She thinks about it and she says, okay, fine. But how do I do it?

And he says, well, I'm a doctor, so I can perform the abortion. And I will do it downstairs in my basement So tonight on Christmas Eve, let's go down to the basement and I'll make sure that it goes perfectly smooth But you need a rest before okay, so why don't you lay down in bed and I will put your daughter pro to bed in another room And I'll come get you so it goes to put pro down and She will never be seen from again. So he's like, okay, now Julia, let's go downstairs. And she too will never be seen from again. Now coincidentally, a medical college nearby gets a cadaver like a skeleton mounted on like one of those things and

and this doctor is looking at it and they're like, wow, how much should we pay $6,000 for this skeleton? I mean, it is marvelous skeleton. You know what's fascinating? I've never seen a female skeleton that was almost six feet tall. That's crazy. Oh my God. So now, Holmes has killed Julia.

He's got no girlfriend and he seems sad about this. So his best friend Benjamin is like, well, you don't need Julia anyway. It seems like Benjamin had no idea about the murder. Just thought that they broke up. So he's like, you don't need her. I'll find you a new girlfriend. In comes a woman by the name of Emily Segrant

from a rehab center that he had met her at. She's 24 years old, seems innocent. Everyone describes her like a flower. I don't like that phrase, but everyone, that's how everyone describes her, okay? So he hires her to be his secretary paying her like two thousand dollars a month and just starts courting her Taking to these fancy dinners buying her little gifts and she she's an innocent woman I mean she's expecting marriage from this in the 1800s You just don't date like this unless you're trying to get married. You don't have sex unless you get married

It's just the way that it was working So he kept saying of course of course. I'll propose soon. Don't you worry. Why don't you tell your family that you're going to get married to a Robert E. Phillips? And she's like, what? But your name is H.H. Holmes. He says, well, you know, I've been divorced before. So I don't want to burden your family with that type of information. I don't want them to be like, oh, my God, a divorcee. This is a sin, right? So just tell them I'm Robert E. Phillips. So she writes letters to them, oh my god, I'm at this man, Robert E. Phillips. I'm so stoked. We're going to Europe for our honeymoon. I've never been to Europe, but apparently he goes to Europe a lot. So

again, this is fueling the Jack the Ripper, you know, conspiracy later. So he goes to Europe a lot. We're going to Europe and home starts wedding planning and all of that and then December of that year He asked Emily to go into his vault his bank vault that he stole technically to get something Some papers in there So she gets in she's like, oh homes like I can't find the papers And he just casually walks up shuts shuts the door, and locks it. And he pulls up a chair, and he just listens. So it said that she seemed shocked at first, and then panicked, and then absolute terror kicks in.

She starts screaming. She wouldn't stop for at least a couple hours. And he was so turned on by her screaming in pure fear that he took off his pants and masturbated right there into a hangar chief in front of that bank vault, listening to her scream. The thought of the oxygen supply getting depleted with every scream, that thought seemed to really excite him. And then he sold another skeleton to a medical college, another woman.

We wonder what happened to her. Maybe a disease. And then another woman named Edna Van Tassel disappeared around this time. And Holmes just didn't need another mistress after this because he had big plans. Chicago had big plans. Okay, the Chicago World Fair was happening. And Holmes could literally make a killing from this. This was the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus arriving

in America on To Stolen Land. And it was like the Olympics, but just like celebrating America. Like this was just full on celebration. 200,000 people showed up on the opening day. And for the next couple of weeks, millions of people would come from all across the country and the world to go to the Chicago fair. People were mortgaging their farms to have one trip to Chicago. People were selling their stoves, like the cooktop stoves, to come visit the fair. Because there was like a 1,500 pound statue made out of chocolate. Honestly that sounds really gnarly.

Sounds kind of cool. So the housing demand was really intense. I mean, back in the day, you don't have like a... Travago. Hotel? Travago. Like, you didn't have that. You don't have trip advisor. So you would actually just show up to a place and hope that there's hostels or boarding somewhere. And a lot of the boarding would be personal homes. Like kind of an Airbnb, but with no regulations. People would just be like, oh, I have a room, and you would go in, pay them in cash, and just sleep there that night. So the castle, nearly every single room, was booked every single night during this freaking fair. We don't know how many people came in there

because it's not a hotel. There's no like bookings, there's no, you know, a log of this, but we do know that a lot of them never made it home. Whether they stayed in Chicago, ran away from their family, whether some other misfortune came to them, we don't know. But we do know that at least 50, for sure, never returned, but it could be upwards of 200 people. Holy moly. And nobody tracks it. No. Because there are so many people. And how do you tell your parents? Because I'm sure if they were trying to write a letter, you think homes would actually send out those letters?

Probably not. It said that a lot of them were probably cremated in his basement. Some of them were dissolved in acid. And some of them corpses were sold to medical colleges. Now, during this time, he gets a new girlfriend by the name of Minnie Williams, and he hires her as a secretary. This was like his method of getting a mistress, right?

And all of Holmes' friends, they were confused. They just kept telling him, I mean, put all your other girlfriends were so hot, like, what's going on with this one? Theory-rood stuff, OK? But they were like, what do you see in her? I mean, she's just not as hot as Julia and all these other girls. And he's like, what?

Don't say that. Come on. But there was something. Many was about to inherit a house in Texas. In Dallas, Texas, actually, that cost over a million dollars. So Holmes was fascinated by this. A million dollars is a million dollars. But her sister was on the deed, too.

So if many dies, there's still one other person right so he he's like coming up with this plot He somehow convinces mini to sign the deed over to him But now he's got two obstacles mini's got to die and then her sisters got to die and then he's gonna get that million dollar house So he starts dating her and he invites he calls up nanny Which is mini-sister. He says, hey, I'm your sister's new boyfriend. Well, he writes a letter, okay. And he's like, I want you to surprise visit Mini.

I want to pick you up from the train stop. On this day, I'm going to take you to the fair and it'll be so amazing. You're going to see your sister for the first time in years. And I'm going to take both of you guys to the Chicago fair and it'll just be amazing. Look, I just want to get to know you because maybe the Chicago Fair and I'll just be amazing. Look, I just want to get to know you because maybe I'm your future brother-in-law. So she accepts and she shows up and she's excited. She's got all her bags and he's like, ah, it's so wonderful meeting you.

Like, let me show you around. So if he turns lunch and then he gets back to the hotel, the murder hotel. And he says, oh, she's right in this room. And he opens the vault door and she's like, she's in the vault, that's weird. And he pushes her in and locks her shut. So she turned that vault into a killing machine? Yeah. Wow.

So there's speculation that there was some sort of acid on the ground of the vault that seared her foot, her feet, because when the investigators came in later, they found in prints of like her skin had just kind of fallen off on the walls Like it looked like she had been trying to kick a wall, but her skin had like stayed on so that seems like some work of acid, right? Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. He probably made it really really Insan in there. Yeah, so she's just screaming and soon he came up to Minion was like let me show you where your sister is and took her to a different room to torture her So both the William sisters died. They were murdered by homes

Around this time all the people that he's scammed they also start coming knocking on his door now This is that that's why it's kind of important that he tried to kill these girls because he needed to move So he's like if I have that million dollar house in, that could be my second like murder castle 2.0. That was the game plan, right? Because right now, all these creditors, they're knocking on my door, they're bringing their own henchmen now, they're pissed, they want their money, they want, they want all their, you know, shittying invention money back. So I gotta do something. Okay, Arsene. So he sets the house on fire to conceal not only his murders But he has insurance but for some reason only the top floor burns and he is suspected of arson

So the insurance company does not even pay him out and he decides to flee The insurance company after he killing 50 all these people They're like, yeah pay you. Yeah, and then he's trying to burn his house down there like nah No, you're a, yeah, I'll pay you. Yeah. And then he's trying to burn his house down there like nah. No, you're a shady guy, you know. He trying to burn his whole murder mentioned down? Whole, yeah. Wow.

So then he leaves. Now, before he leaves, he of course, Mary's another woman by the name of Georgiana York. They met, they get married, they go on the run together. But of course, she has no idea that they're on the run. She thinks that he's this wonderful, beautiful, business man, and they're just going from town to town doing business You know mr. International like that's what she thought the all time So they're going from all these different places. They make it to Texas. Just traveling all over the place

He ends up scamming more people out of like a lot of money like hundreds of thousands of dollars new identities And in the next six months they go from Fort Worth, Texas, Denver, St. Louis, Memphis, Philadelphia, New York I mean just insane, but they need more money because the house is falling through There were multiple family members that came forward from the William sister that was like, whoa, you're weird You know, we're like her uncle. What are you doing here? So he's like, okay, that's a little bit weird. They're gonna start asking questions about where the sisters are.

So I can't go there. I don't have this, you know, back up murder mansion now. So what do I do? Okay, that insurance scam that I did in college. I can do that now. So he calls up his best friend Benjamin. Well, he writes to him. And it's like, I need you to come down to Texas.

I've got a money making opportunity. Benjamin, you leave your wife and your five kids and I promise you, you're going to come back a rich man. So Benjamin gets on a train, meets him in Texas and they sit down and Holmes tells him the plant. Listen, I did this in college, okay. We're going to get away with it. I'm going to fake your death. I'm going to find a body that looks just like you. Okay. Well well not just like you, but your height, your build. And we're going to say that you're dead because you have a life insurance of like $300,000 in today's money. And we're going to use his body to prove that you're dead. But of course, we're going to burn his face off so that your family can identify the body and we get all this money and we can split it and it

will be amazing, right? Don't you think so? All we need is just like a super shady lawyer to help us really make sure that we get that insurance money. Well, and of course, we need a corpse. So while they're planning this in the middle of it, Holmes gets arrested for a serious crime. One of the worst crimes to get arrested for in Texas.

You're thinking murder arson fraud no he stole a horse okay Texans do not With horses they do not fork with horses like that okay if you steal someone's horse That's like a death sentence you're better off going to jail Texans will kill you over a horse back in the day Like in the 1800s. that's how they settle it. They'll kill ya. It's really scary.

So he goes to jail and he meets a man by the name of Marion Hedgepath. This is one of the worst outlaws at the time. This is like one of those guys that they make those western movies about. He likes to rob trains. And he was a violent robber. He would kill people here and there. I mean, just just a really bad dude overall you just don't want to be friends with this guy but homes immediately they start you know shooting the talk oh what'd you do oh I stole a horse oh I did this oh I did this you know my

murder castle obviously didn't say murder castle but like I have this crazy castle is trying to burn it down for our sin and he's like I just need I've got this perfect opportunity I'm gonna fake my own death. That's what he said. I'm gonna fake my own death. And I'm gonna get my life insurance money. Do you have a shitty like a shady attorney that you can refer to me to?

And Mary and Hedgepath being the bad criminal. He's like, yeah, I got an attorney. So he says, okay, if you give me $15,000 of that $300,000 you're getting from that life insurance, you're going to mail it to me, I will give you the name of a shady attorney that can help you with this. And they shake on it, he gets that shady attorney, homes gets out of jail, and meets up with that attorney, and they start putting this plan to work, right? So Benjamin agrees to all of this, as long as his wife and five kids get most of the money for it.

Because it would mean that he would have to spend time away from his family, and on top of that, his family would have to be on it. Like, you would have to tell, you know, his wife, you have to make sure that you tell the insurance agent that that's your dad has been there. We can never be seen in public ever again together. Like, we got to move towns, are you okay with this?

So we need to take most of the money, right? So he's saying all of this, and home is like, absolutely absolutely don't worry, okay? Go tell your family and then we got to put you in hiding. It's gonna be fine. We just need to find a corpse So homes starts thinking okay, well if the corpse we have to burn their entire face off How do we do it in a way where the insurance company doesn't think it's suspicious, right? Because they've gotten smarter these days Okay, maybe maybe we make it seem like this person is like some sort of inventor,

maybe like a patent officer for inventions. And he's in the lab, making a little invention, and there's a tragic lab explosion. He kills him, leaves his face completely unrecognizable because he was mixing all these chemicals. Oh yeah, that's good. That's good. Okay, let's do this. So he starts planning out.

They finish the jobs. Homes, his job is to find a cadaver that matches Benjamin. You know, Benjamin's family, their job is to ID the body. And Benjamin, his whole job is trying not to drink himself to death before this. But right before the plan is executed, they've got the body and everything, okay? Benjamin starts freaking out. Says, what if I get caught? Like my kids, like what would they think of their dad, you know?

Forever, I can't show up to any events with them. It's just too much on the line, I don't think it's worth it. Holmes realizes in the middle of this conversation that Benjamin really isn't gonna do it. But he needs some money. So, I'm just like, ah, okay, don't worry about it. Just let's drink, okay? Maybe, maybe some shots in you and you'll feel a little bit different. Get Spenderman's super drunk, get some chloroform on his handkerchief, and smothers Benjamin with

it, and burns his face off. Because the easiest way to make the entrance company believe that it's Benjamin is for it to be Benjamin Does the wife know later? No, she'll find out after he gets caught So they have Benjamin's little daughter ID her dad's body so the sources are split here some say that The parents made the kids really believe that the dad was dead to really sell it to the insurance agents, which that is traumatizing for a kid to ID the body, right? Some say that she knew it was a scam and she faked it and she identified what later found out to be was the real dead body of her dad. So either way, incredibly traumatic. Okay, so she identifies

the body and the money was supposed to get split. They received that like $300,000, which was only $10,000 back in the day, but you get it in today's money. And the whole, I mean, the insurance company was suspicious about the whole thing. They had reservations since the beginning because the body was just found in a way that it didn't make sense, but the little girl was so distraught.

The family was so poor, they didn't want to be known as that insurance company that refused to give a poor family with five children money when their sole income earner tragically died. Okay, that's like really bad marketing. So they give the family the money and the plan was for them to split it. Most of them would go to Benjamin's lawyer, some of them to the shady lawyer, some of them to the guy in jail, and then homes would get a cut. But homes is like, what, this doesn't make sense. You know, I had to kill Benjamin. I had to do the work.

Why should they get most of the money? Okay, I'm gonna keep the money. But the only way to keep the money is if this family is no longer breathing down his back. So he tells the family, okay, like, we're gonna go meet your dad. Carrie, which is Benjamin's wife, we're gonna go take you to meet Benjamin.

He's in hiding, but we can't travel like this. Like the insurance company, they're spooked out. They're kind of suspicious of you. If we travel with a single woman with five children, I mean, they know what they're looking for. So we gotta split up, okay? That's the easiest way. I will take three kids, okay?

You take two kids, and we'll just kind of float around the United States, and then eventually we'll go to Toronto and meet Benjamin. Sound good? So they split up. By the way, this whole time, he's still married. So while he's traveling the country, he's traveling not only with the three kids of Benjamin, but making sure Benjamin's wife and the other kids are traveling, but he's also moving his wife around the country and like putting her into hostels, like into boarding houses, and then just visiting her once in a while. And so he's still hanging out with his wife? Yeah, and being like, hey babe, sorry, you know how business be.

And then she'd be like, okay, love you, bye. The very first wife. No, this is his third wife. Yeah, Georgiana, very confusing stuff. It's a little bit weird. The 1800s had some weird relationships going on. Okay, she was just like, oh yeah, business makes sense. Bye. And he would leave.

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Article is offering eyeless nurse $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. So go to article.com slash rotten and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. That's So eventually home starts getting more and more annoyed. You know, the kids are separated from their mom, their whining, their crying. And so you decided now better than later, so he kills all three of them. So Howard, it's suspected that he was poisoned and then dismembered and cooked on top of a stove. The detectives later actually found remnants of human body parts on top of the stove, like in a pot. Oh my god. Allison Nally, the two girls, they were forced to climb into a wooden box.

He drilled a hole into the box and put a pipe through it, filled it with gas. And once they were dead, he stripped them naked and buried them in the floor of the basement. So these are Allyson Nally are the only bodies that they'll find alive and put together. So we find skeletonized bodies, we find some body parts in the murder house, but these are the two bodies that were found as is. And because they were stripped naked, it just that that leads to the speculation that he killed for some sort of sexual pleasure. It didn't make sense to strip them naked of their clothes. There wasn't really distinct clothes. It wasn't anything like that. It was just bizarre. So Holmes, you know, keeps going back to Benjamin's wife and other kids thinking about how he's going to kill them.

He doesn't really seem to have a plan at this point, and he doesn't do this one thing that just puts a whole... I mean, this is the reason he gets cut. Remember that guy in prison, the criminal? He forgot to send him the $15,000. So, this criminal's sitting in jail getting more and more pissed. He sees on the news paper clipping that clipping that Benjamin is dead and he's like, well, isn't that that guy that homestead he was friends with? That was on the news? Huh. So he calls up his lawyer and he says, I want to make a deal with the police.

So he tells them everything. Homes, you know, is setting up this fake insurance fraud, blah, blah, blah. I mean, he doesn't really know the full extent of anything, just fake insurance fraud. So the police, they start high. I mean, well, it wasn't really the police, the Pinkertons actually start tracking down. Yeah, the Pinkerton Detective Agency, they start tracking down Carrie Petzle and H.H. Holmes. They find Carrie first, Benjamin's wife, and they tell her the truth. We think that your husband's dead. And she's in shock. She's like, um, Benjamin's wife, and they tell her the truth. We think that your husband's dead. And she's in shock. She's like, um, what? Yeah, and your husband is dead. Holmes is probably the killer, and now he's with your three children, like, we've got to find out where they are. So she starts freaking out. Pinkerton, they, they go surveilling every town. I mean, they are following through everything, because there's no phones and letters take too long, and they don't even know where he would have stayed, so they're going from town to town to town, just finding, like, showing pictures, giving descriptions, as anyone seen this person.

And finally, they find him, and they arrest him, but he's not with the three kids, he's completely alone. And he tells the police, I didn't kill anyone. It was all insurance fraud, I didn't kill Benjamin, that was a cadaver I got from the morgue. That's not Benjamin. They say no, we know it's Benjamin. We're pretty sure it is. He says, well, if it's Benjamin, then he committed suicide. Why would he do that? Well, I mean, he's an alcoholic. He hated his life. That's why. Okay, well, where are the children? Um, the children are with my friend. What's her name? Many Williams? Remember the woman he killed for her property in Texas? So they search everywhere, okay? They

don't find many Williams, they don't find the bodies nothing. So they have to tell Carrie that yes, Holmes murdered Benjamin, but he also murdered your three children. That's when the police find out that there's a hotel of horrors in Chicago. When the detectives arrive at the hotel of horrors, or the murder castle, let's say, there were just scratches all over the walls. Like inside of these rooms, deep scratches, dense. It looks like people were bumping into the walls trying to escape. I mean, something torture has happened in here.

They go from room to room. They find more and more of the torture devices. They find remnants of even six-year-old Pearl down in the basement I mean this was a really really defficed. It's six-year-old. Pearl the daughter of Julia. Oh Yeah, they found the body. They found remnants of her body like her bones So it was evident that she had passed there. I mean she was murdered there, right? So the annoying thing about interviewing with H.H. Holmes is that sometimes he would say he killed 27 people. The next day he would say, oh I only killed two people but it was an accident. And then he would go back to 27. I mean it was just non-stop and the only thing that made it more frustrating

is that newspapers were trying to contact Holmes and pay him and give him a number. They would say, if you tell them, if you tell the police that you killed 50 people, we'll give you like $10,000. Because we want a headline that says you killed 50 people. So you just kind of go back and forth, like I killed all these people. And it was kind of smart for Holmes to do this because he would sit there

and he would list 27 people that he killed. The police would go on this wild goose hunt, find these people, and some of them were still alive, or some of them died of natural causes far, far away from H.H. Holmes. So this casted a lot of doubt on like, oh, did he really kill people? Well, that's what he thought that it would happen. But the police, they found so much evidence inside that murder house. They find the evidence of Benjamin's kids and even Benjamin that they were like, okay, no, we're going to trial and this trial was

Explosive, I mean at one point homes is his own lawyer and He's just doing the absolute most so then he gets found guilty of Benjamin's murder and he was sentenced to an execution By hanging so on May 7th of 1896 he was only charged for one person. Yeah. Because he was going to get hung anyway. OK. Super calm, not scared. Walks in. And at this point, there was a bunch of people there to watch.

This was like the biggest execution that year. That's a weird sentence to say. OK, this was like the biggest event of the year, OK? People are showing up. They're terrified. And it's just like another day for him. And he gets up there and the way that they were supposed to hang him is that they put a news around his neck. And he's on like this massive platform. They just kind of kick him off the platform. That's how you hang people, I guess. So that kick and this height is

supposed to snap your neck instantly. So it's technically death by hanging, but it's more of like you snap your neck in your dead, right? But for whatever reason, when he jumped off this platformer was pushed, his neck didn't snap. So he is fixated to death for the next 20 minutes in front of a crowd of people. Just 15 minutes of him twitching. His eyes were bulging, his veins were popping. He did not snap his neck.

This was not... There was, this wasn not snap his neck. This was not... This was in plant. Yeah. I mean, people were terrified. So after he dies, he had one wish. He says, okay, I never really fulfilled any of these wishes for the people that I killed. You said this before he dies. Yeah, he said, I want my grave to be ten feet in the ground. And I want my coffin encased insumment because he didn't want people to dig him up and use his bones or dissect him. Which is exactly what he did to his victim.

So it's like, what are you saying? But they did it. I don't know why. They followed with this and that's exactly how they buried him. And soon after that, a caretaker for the murder castle. I mean, it doesn't seem like he had any doings with any of these murders or any inside knowledge, right? But he committed suicide and the only note that he said

was just, I couldn't sleep. I mean, I can only imagine. Even being a caretaker for a place like that, I feel like I couldn't sleep. Even if there were no murders that happened there, it's terrifying, right? And then a weird thing came out in 2017. So the descendants of H.H. Holmes

speculated that Holmes didn't die. I mean, this has been a rumor that's been brewing since the day of his execution in the 1800s that Holmes had somehow found an unlucky fellow, put him in his place, and had him pretend to be Holmes, and he went on to live. And I think it has a lot to do with the fact that this has become almost like a legend, right?

It's almost not even a true crime story. It's just like this like tale that we tell, right? So people think maybe it wasn't him. Maybe there's some paranormal work. There's just a lot of these allegations. So the descendants of the home's family believed this story and they wanted his body exhumed. So in 2017, 2017, very recently, Holmes' body was dug up.

And this is why it gets creepy. Because he was buried 10 feet below the ground surface and because his coffin was encased and cement, they said that he didn't decompose much. And his clothes... His momified. Yeah, his clothes were perfectly intact and specifically his mustache was almost perfect still

just bizarre but they ran some DNA tests and yes he was homes and he was re-barried wow so before we end this podcast the whole conspiracy with Jack the Ripper, right? So Jack the Ripper, I'm sure everybody knows about this case, but um, essentially, like, the most unknown, weird mystery in Zero Killer Land, okay?

This happened in London, he killed sex workers, and he did it in such a brutal way. I mean, he would slit their throats in the middle of the dark London streets, he would, you know, mutilate them, disembowel them, cut off their breasts. It was really harsh stuff and he was never caught for any of this. There was a lot of speculation that this person must be from some medical background because he ripped out these women's wounds perfectly. I mean the precision of his cuts, it just didn't make sense. For him not to be a medical professional. A lot of witnesses who said that they saw Jack the Ripper in London during his crimes, they did a composite sketch.

If you compare it to pictures of H.H. Holmes, they do look very similar. The pictures were taken to former FBI agents and a lot of them said, I don't know, from my experience with composite sketches, it does look very similar. Some people tested the handwriting of H.H. Holmes and Jack the Ripper because Jack the Ripper wrote letters taunting people. And some people said, you know, it could be a match. It could be a good match. Holmes had even written in letters that he would send to his close friends that he wanted

to go to London. He loves London. He just talked a lot about London. He even had a friend in London. And I think the main speculation comes from the fact that Jack the Ripper, I mean, he was killing with increasing frequency. And then suddenly you just stopped. Zero killers don't really stop until they're caught. Maybe they're dead. Because once they're like addicted to the kill. So why did he just stop out of nowhere? Maybe he didn't stop. Maybe he just relocated

to the United States. But the killing style is very different now. But we don't know for sure. Because we really only have the bodies of the kids, which he wasn't in his comfort zone. Right, that was more of like a desperate, like, well, his life is falling apart. He's like trying to make things work. But we don't know what happened inside of the murder house. So I mean, it's okay if you put it that way. See, the problem with this theory that I have though, right, is I can talk myself into each option. Like if I want to believe it's the same person I could sit here and talk myself into that,

but then in reality, I feel like when I think about it for two seconds, I'm like, okay, but like, what are the odds, you know? And like, how can we say that there's only one evil serial killer in the world at once? I mean, look at how many serial killers there are right now. It's got to be two different people, right? Yeah. But it is fun to try to tie the two cases together a little bit. Yeah, that would be crazy. Yeah, that would be wild. Yeah, that'd be wild.

We'll never know. We'll never know. Like two of the biggest names. Yeah. Turn out to be one person, that's crazy. What would we call him? OK, that's a really good one. I love your input on this one, you know?

So the cops decided there was a detective who was working on this case, and he decided to turn the murder castle into a Disneyland attraction Don't sue me not a Disneyland, but essentially he wanted to give guided tours of the murder castle pay people per entrance V but right before he was even able to get this business started it burnt down Mm-hmm and there there were two people seen exiting the building before it blew up So it is our sin, but those people were also never caught. The building blew up, but the outside of it stayed around until it was torn down in 1938.

And that is the crazy story of H.H. Holmes. Well, the alleged story, because you know, I mean, it's been how long, how much of this do we know for a fact? How much of it is speculation, how much of it is just putting the pieces together, and what parts were altered during, you know, trying to make it more dramatic and more crazy? I still think it's wild. I mean, I think it's infamous for the fact that, imagine a serial killer does build a house. This is the house they would build. Creepy.

Don't let serial killers become architects. And I hope you guys enjoyed this sweet podcast and I'll see you guys on Sunday for the mini-sode. Bye!