Today I bring you the chilling story of Herman Webster Mudgett, better known as HH Holmes, this story at first will be amazing and will make us wonder how is a man able to conceive such a macabre idea ?, the creation of a mansion worthy of a story horror of the nineteenth century, full of acid pools, rooms with walls that closed crushing their victims, gas chambers, traps that being stepped on activated all kinds of poisonous darts, spikes, shots, etc. His mansion opened its doors to general public in the form of a hotel for the 1893 World's Fair, and it would be the facade of a sinister "torture temple" in which Holmes would torture and murder women and children in the most terrifying ways possible.
Who was Herman Webster Mudgett?
(May 16, 1861 - May 7, 1896), also known as Dr. Henry Howard Holmes or simply "Dr. Holmes, "was an American serial killer who confessed to up to twenty-seven murders and fifty assassination attempts; modern investigations calculate the number of their murders about two hundred.
Source
Dr. Holmes from a young age received a lot of abuse and mistreatment, this caused him to escape from home, since then began to make money thanks to several scams, among which is to sell a supposed cure to alcoholism. Soon after, he had a triple life , was married simultaneously with three women. Needy of money, falsified the documents of possession of a pharmaceutical company and after doing this he murdered to the real owner, immediately claiming a large fortune, which he would use to build his enormous mansion.
The Castle
As it was known by locals, it occupied an entire block and had several floors. Holmes hired several companies, to which he never paid and interrupted his works soon. In that way, he was the only one to know the building in detail,since its strange structure could wake up the curiosity of anyone. The ground floor was made up of businesses and was relatively normal, although its second and last floor were full of traps, stairs that did not get anywhere, secret rooms and a twisted labyrinth secret of corridors, where the doctor could spy on his clients through a window hidden in the walls. With open some gas taps, Dr. Holmes could be asphyxiate the occupants of some rooms without even moving.
A lift truck and two "slides" helped to lower the bodies to a warehouse where according to the requirements of each, they could be dissolved in a keg of sulfuric acid, reduced to dust by incineration, or sunk alive in a keg full of lime. In the room he called "the dungeon" there were several instruments of torture.
Throughout the six months that lasted the killing factory of Dr. Holmes, was active and occupied at all times. The executioner selected his victims meticulously, They should be ladies who were wealthy, young, beautiful, single and to avoid visits, his residence had to be located as far as possible from Chicago.
The hotel rents began to fall and Holmes was in need of money so he burned the top floor of his property and he claimed a insurance of $ 60,000, without thinking that the company could do an investigation before pay him. After the discovery of the insurer, the doctor took refuge in Texas, where made scams that took him for the first time.he got out of jail months after, having a new criminal plan.
An accomplice, named Pitezel, was to buy life insurance at a Philadelphia company. After this they would present a disfigured corpse as theirs. In this way the insurance policy that would charge Mrs. Pitezel would be distributed. However Holmes changed his plans and killed Pitezel, saving himself from the search for the disfigured corpse and keeping all the insurance money, and then he got rid of the pietzel children
However, a partner of jail reported it, and the police conducted an investigation. Holmes confessed to the insurer the fraud and the murders of Pitezel and his family.
Once the murderer, the police searched the hotel, and it was discovered that it had been used as the torture and execution chamber. The agents found gas chambers, a furnace large enough to contain a human body, kegs of acid, and rooms equipped with surgical instruments for dissection, as well as all kinds of devices tdevices for torture. One of the machines that caught the most attention of the journalists: an automaton that had the ability to tickle the soles of the feet of the victims to death till die.
During the trial Holmes confessed to having killed 27 people in all his life, however, it is an unlikely number, since Dr. claimed to have killed people who were still alive, to mocking the judge and all those present in the Tribunal. Although it is not knownthe number of victims of Holmes, the discoveries made in his castle indicate an approximate number of two hundred women.
Holmes was sentenced to death by the Court of Philadelphia and hanged on May 7, 1896, with thirty-four years of age.