January 23, 2012 • 24 mins
As a student, Herman W. Mudgett used corpses to commit insurance fraud. In 1886, he moved to Chicago under the alias H.H. Holmes. In 1888, Holmes started constructing a building with secret passageways and an airtight vault. So, what was it for?
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to blame a chalk reboarding and I'm fair Dowdy,
and this episode is about a character who almost needs
really no introduction. He's one of our most requested topics
(00:23):
and probably one of the most gruesome stories that ever
gets requested. It gets requested around Halloween a lot, a lot. Well, yes,
especially this Halloween, because we did Bell Gunnists, which is
sort of a similar Tarle story. So of course I'm
talking about H. H. Holmes, whose crimes and murderous exploits
were featured in Eric Larson's best selling book Devil in
the White City, which is kind of a chronicle of
(00:44):
what was going on in Chicago at the end of
the nineteenth century, particularly as it pertained to the World's
Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair. The
time of the World's Fair is often thought of as
a kind is kind of the height of holmes mental activity,
which is why he fits into that story. And he's
also often called America's first serial killer, although we now
(01:07):
know from previous podcasts that others like Bell Gunnists may
have been close on his heels, But I think what's
really interesting about the home story isn't that the bone chilling,
gruesome nature of his crimes. It's how he how he
really pulled them off. I mean, that's what interests you too,
I think to blame it absolutely. I mean, when you
learn his story, you find yourself asking over and over again,
(01:30):
how did he not get caught? Why did people fall
for his schemes and fall into the traps that he
sat And why didn't more people report all of the
suspicions they were feeling exactly So it's kind of similar
to the Bell Gannist story in that way, because I
think you sort of ask yourself those kind of questions
whenever you how did it get so far? Yes, and
there are some ideas about why he was able to
(01:52):
get so far literally get away with murder for so long,
And we'll take a look at those as we tell
the story of his crime spree and the sort of
house of horrors that he built in Chicago in the
late eighteen hundreds, which came to be known as Murder Castle.
But first we're going to take a look at his
early days and take a look a little bit about
what the childhood of a serial killers like so. Holmes
(02:15):
was born Herman W. Mudget May sixteenth, eighteen sixty one
in Gilmanton, which was a small farming village in New Hampshire.
He had a brother and a sister, and his father, Levi,
was a farmer and a postmaster. His mother was a
very religious woman, and both parents were devout Methodist, but
(02:36):
the father was especially strict, and he doled out harsh
punishments for even minor misbehavior and his children. Consequently, Little
Herman Mudget was beaten quite a lot as a child,
and according to a History magazine article by Phil Jones,
Mudget's father would even use kerosene vapor on the children,
(02:56):
sometimes to make them be quiet when they were being
too noisy. As a child, Mudget spent a lot of
time on his own inventing things like a wind powered
device to scare birds off his family farm. A lot
of sources also suggest that another early pastime of his
was experimenting on animals, both dead and alive, which of
course basically mounted to torture, though Larsen's book suggests that
(03:20):
this might have just been speculation on the part of researchers.
His only childhood friend was a kid named Tom, who
died in a fall when they were playing in an
abandoned house. Obviously, this was considered an accident at the time,
but after learning what You're about too and the rest
of this podcast, it might seem more like Mudget's first
victims suspicious. So Mudget graduated from school at age sixteen
(03:43):
and initially went to work as a teacher in New Hampshire.
And while he was teaching, he met a woman named
Clara A laver Ling who he just totally won over
with his charm. And that's something important to consider for
these podcasts. To the sort of power he had over
women is really a recurring theme throughout this story. They
(04:03):
found him very good looking, of course, he had dark
brown hair and blue eyes and a thick mustache popular
at the time. But his manner too, was charming. He
was affectionate. He had a way of making them feel
like they were really the only women in the world,
and so he'd get close to them and not just um,
not just in a like charming them kind of way.
(04:27):
He would actually touch them and that wasn't exactly appropriate
at the time. But instead of being offended by this behavior. Um,
A lot of women who he met seemed excited by it. Yeah,
I mean, I think we've all met someone like that,
that person who just sort of really hangs on every
word you say, maybe touches your arm when you're having
a bad day and you're telling about it, and just
(04:49):
kind of makes you feel like you're the only person
in the world, or potentially creeps you out. Depends actually
creeps you out on how far they take it. Yeah,
I guess, depending on how observant you are. But and
I mean I can see I can see him crossing
that line with with some people. Apparently he didn't cross
the line too much. A lot of women were taken
with him and Mudget and Claire married on July four,
(05:12):
seventy eight, when Mudget was about eighteen years old, and
they had one child together, a son, But it didn't
take long for the romance here to die out. Mudget
started going away for long periods of time and then
finally just left, even though the two were still legally married.
Then Mudget decided he wanted to study medicine, and so
he went to college at age nineteen. He started out
(05:33):
at the University of Vermont and Burlington, where, according to
Jones article, he paid tuition with Claire's inheritance, so we
can see maybe a motive for marrying her in the
first place here. But after about a year he transferred
to the University of Michigan Medical School in ann Arbor,
which was, according to Lawcen's book, known for its emphasis
on dissection, picking a program that fit his strong fuits.
(05:56):
So Mudget wasn't remembered as an especially stellar student, though,
and this might have been because his mind was occupied
by a lot of other things, one of which was
making money. So according to an article in biography by
David Goldman, it was while he was at the University
of Michigan that Mudget took his first stab at insurance fraud.
(06:18):
So he'd steal cadavers from the anatomy lab at school
and then disfigure them so that they couldn't be recognized.
Then he would take out insurance policies on the cadavers,
setting them up as some kind of fictional family members,
and of course naming himself as the beneficiary. And then
he'd staged these accidents in various locations to make it
(06:40):
look like the cause of the accident caused the cadaver's death,
and then he'd collect on the insurance policy and get
the cash. After leaving college, and there's actually some question
I think about whether he actually graduated or not. Some
sources say yes, others say that he was expelled when
his cadaver ever stealing was discovered. But after he left,
(07:03):
Mudget traveled to various cities for the next six years,
basically scamming people wherever he went, trying to make a
buck however he could, even if it came down to
skipping out on lodging bills without paying. I mean, he
was really trying to get out of paying every last
dollar if he could. In Philadelphia, when he was working there,
a child died after taking medicine from a drug store
(07:24):
that he worked at, so he fled the city soon after.
So by six Mudget had landed in Chicago, and once
he was there, he started looking for a job in
a suburb of growing suburb Englewood, which was south of Chicago,
and since he had had that whole issue with the
child dying from the medicine, he changed his name. He
(07:44):
started going by the alias H. H. Holmes and went
into a drug store that was owned by an elderly
woman named This Holton, asking if she needed anybody to
help in her store. Basically, he told her his credentials,
which him pretty impressive, and he used that a magnetic
charm we talked about earlier that he'd used on young
women when he was flirting with them, and um, Mrs
(08:07):
Holton ended up opening up to him, you know, telling
him that her husband, who lived with her in the
apartment upstairs, was very ill. He was dying. She really
needed somebody like Holmes to come in and help her
out with the store, so she ended up hiring him,
and he eventually took over operation of the store pretty
much completely. After Mr Holton died, Holmes offered to buy
(08:29):
the store and to allow Mrs Holton to keep living
in the apartment upstairs. He got the money to buy
the place in a pretty shady way, though he did
it by mortgaging fixtures and merchandise from the store itself.
He also agreed to make payments of one hundred dollars
a month to Mrs Holton to cover the balance. According
to both Jones and Goldman's articles, though Holmes eventually stopped
(08:52):
making these payments and Mrs Holton filed a wall suit
against him before it could go very far, though, she
just disappeared. So loyal customer, you know, this lady has
been an institution in this neighborhood for a while. Loyal
customers started asking where's Mrs Holton, and Holmes just told
them that she'd gone out to California visiting a relative.
Uh and then well, lo and behold she decided to
(09:14):
stay in California to move there, but he couldn't give
them any kind of forwarding address. Meanwhile, though Holmes was
proving a bit of an institution himself. He built up
a following. People, especially female customers, really liked this charming
young single doctor who had taken over the drug store
and was running a pretty successful business. So not long
(09:37):
after buying the store, Homes started a courtship with Murda Belknap,
who he'd met before when he was living in Minneapolis
for a little while. He drew her in with that
charm that we keep mentioning, and with the allure of
the big city of Chicago. I mean, to a girl,
I guess the Minneapolis wasn't as hot a ticket as
Chicago was at the time, so she was really attracted
(09:59):
to the idea of living here in the big city,
intriguing Cancelman, and they got married on January seven, and
of course he didn't tell her that he was already
married to somebody else under a different name. But apparently
he did try at this time to petition for divorce.
He filed a petition with the Supreme Court of Cook County, Illinois,
(10:21):
claiming that his first wife had been unfaithful, so he
was going to totally destroy her reputation in the process.
But he never followed up on that petition, so it
was eventually dismissed. Meanwhile, Murda did come to Chicago and
lived and worked in the store with Holmes, and at
first everything was okay, it themed, but she started to
get jealous of the way the female customers flirted with Holmes.
(10:43):
They would, for instance, often ask for him specifically, and
eventually Murder became more possessive and also pregnant, and so
Holmes asked her to manage the stores books, which got
her out of the store and upstairs into the office
all day. And it's interesting seen the way this described,
It's not as though he was angry with her for
(11:04):
being possessive. He just saw her as kind of an
obstacle to what we're trying to do exactly. So she
was unhappy being stuck up in this office and ended
up going to live with her parents and will met
in Illinois where her daughter where she had her daughter
with Holmes Lucy, and Holmes would sometimes visit them and
bring money for them and gifts to his daughter, and
(11:25):
he'd even play with his daughter Lucy and seemed to
dote on her while he was there. When he was there,
he seemed like the perfect husband. That's how he acted.
But his visits started to become few and far between.
So by this point Holmes a k a. Mudget had
abandoned to families and he was running this booming business
and that was clearly the foremost thing on his mind.
(11:48):
So in the summer of thinking about expanding business even more,
he bought a whole block of land across the street
at the intersection of sixty three and Wallace in Inglewood,
which is undeveloped at this point, and he started sketching
out some ideas for a new building that he wanted
to put there was going to be a mixed use
(12:08):
development that's probably what people would call it now, But
he had some strange ideas about how he was going
to build it. To say the least, he did. And
we should mention why he was designing this place himself,
why he was doing the sketching. He didn't want to
work with an architect because then he would have to
reveal all of the secrets of the structure and its
intended purpose. It was very mixed use if you think
(12:29):
about indeed, and he needed to avoid this situation at
all costs, so he designed the whole thing himself. And
the plan was for the first floor to have retail
shops and the second and third floor to have apartments,
and that would include holmes own flat and his office,
which would be in a corner of the second floor.
(12:50):
And the apartments he was planning weren't exactly normal apartments either.
They weren't normal. In fact, they were really creepy and weird.
He planned, for example, to have a secret wooden shoot
that would stretch from the second floor to the basement.
That's unusual, not like a laundry shoot or a trash shoot.
Just yeah, and he planned to oil the shoot too,
(13:11):
that's weird. He also wanted another room fitted with a
large walk in airtight vault that had asbestos coated iron walls.
Some of the rooms were also designed to be windowless
and have and to have gas jets installed, the controls
to which were to be in homes office. There were
also plans for a hidden staircase or several hidden staircases
(13:34):
and passageways, and the large basement that it had was
intended to contain more hidden chambers and a sub basement.
So Holmes really seemed to like planning this building. It
was kind of a delight for him, but actually getting
it built with a really big challenge, because like an architect,
construction workers could just as easily become familiar with the
(13:57):
scope of his project. You know, start really, I think
secret staircases, shoots, airtight vaults, all of that, putting it
together and make some assumptions. So he wanted to keep
all of these suspicious details as secret as possible. So
he addressed this problem just as he had acted like
his own architect. He acted as his own contractor and
(14:20):
hired lots of different carpenters and other workmen to come
in and build little parts of the structure just by
putting ads in the paper for for guys to come
help him out, but when the workers would come to
collect their pay after finishing whatever small project they were
involved in, he'd act like he was displeased and tell
them they had done a bad job, even if their
(14:41):
work was fine, and fire them on the spot. Ironically,
it fulfilled another demand of Holmes, which was penny pinching.
It did. It helped him save money, and he was
able to continuously cycle through different workers so that no
one person knew the layout of the entire thing. So
one person would maybe install part of the gas jet
(15:02):
or something and then be fired, and another person would
maybe start the wooden shoot, and you know, a third
person would finish it or something. I mean, and I
think this is the first part where it surprises me
that word didn't get out. Not so much that this
is a really strange construction project that's going on, but
that don't go work for doctor Holmes because he never
pays his workers. Yeah, it is surprising that word never
(15:24):
got out. I guess that's the advantage of hiring individual
random workers rather than going with a company or a
group I suppose though. But also he supposedly would test
certain workers and asked them to do these really deplorable
things for extra cash. Yes. In his book, Larson mentions
a particular bricklayer named George Bowman. For example, Holmes apparently
(15:48):
pointed out a man to Bowman once and asked him
to drop a stone on the man's head for fifty dollars.
He said the man was his brother in law and
that they didn't get along, and that was sort of
his reasoning for asking Bowman to do this. So it's
also possible, of course, I mean, we're not sure. It
might have been that Holmes had an insurance policy on
the brother in law, the supposed you know, quote unquote
(16:10):
brother in law, But it might have just been a test,
as we mentioned. But Bowman ultimately he didn't do it
and he left the job soon after. But he was
really creeped out by the situation, but again didn't go
tell anyone about it. There were a few guys, though,
who passed these weird tests that Holmes would set up,
and over time they became his accomplices. One was a
(16:32):
man named Patrick Quinlan, who ultimately became the caretaker of
the murder House. Another was Benjamin Pitzell, who was a
carpenter who Holmes once posted bail for and he becomes
pretty important later in the story in the second episode.
So one disadvantage to working this way, to working rotating
(16:52):
through workers, I guess um and never working with the
same crew for the for ant extended period of time,
was that it just was really slow. The whole building
process was really slow, so homes building took years to complete.
It was finally done in about May of eighteen nine,
and Homes sold his drug store across the street, and
he apparently told the new owner, the person who bought it,
(17:14):
that he wouldn't have to worry much about competition in
the area. He'd probably assumed to me, don't worry, I
won't reopen my drug store. Yes, But of course then
he went across the street to his new building and
immediately opened another drug store, so I guess the joke
was on the new guy. He also opened several other
businesses on the building's first floor, including a restaurant and
a barbershop. But we're going to focus more on all
(17:37):
of those apartments that the second and the third floors
of Holmes This building. They had about seventy rooms initially,
but then as talk of the eight World's Fair started
to heat up, Holmes decided that he wanted to turn
his building into kind of a hotel for the fair,
and the Fair at that point was set to be
located conveniently right down the street from Homes Building, so
(18:00):
perfect location. Making this change, though from apartments to a
World's Fair hotel, would not only allow him to get
a better fire insurance policy, you know Holmes always after
the best insurance deal, but it would also attract more
clients to his building. So in eighteen e one, acting
again as his own architect, he planned the necessary adjustments
(18:23):
and employed his usual method of rotating through workers so
no one person would really catch on to the overall
planned what he was doing. But even though he was
still managing to keep his labor costs low by constantly
firing workers, he still needed some more cash to get
his project completed. So he took advantage of visiting his
(18:44):
second wife, Murder, who's still living in will met with
her parents when her rich uncle Jonathan Belknap comes to visit.
While Belknap is there, Holmes comes and he brings gifts
for everyone, and he makes this big show of being
a great husband, even though of course we know that
he's an absentee husband. Belknap was initially suspicious of Holmes
(19:05):
because he knew he and Murder had had a rocky relationship,
but over the course of a few days Holmes does
manage to win him over a bit. So when Holmes
later asked him to endorse a note for two thousand,
five hundred dollars which he claimed he'd used toward a
new house for him and Murder, Belknap complied, I mean,
he looks at this and he thinks, hey, maybe them
(19:26):
living together in their own house will be a good
thing for their marriage, and finally had his act together.
Holmes wasn't planning on building a house, though in Casey
didn't guess that, He went back to Englewood and forged
belknap signature on a second note to put toward construction
of his new hotel, and not long after that he
asked Uncle Belknap himself to come visit Englewood and see
(19:49):
his building, and Belknap couldn't quite put his finger on
why that he was really wary about holmes offer. For
some reason. He didn't want to offend him or offend
his niece, though, so he agreed to go ahead and
visit the new place. Once he arrived, he got this
full tour from Homes of all the shops on the
(20:10):
first floor and then the rooms upstairs. Belknap didn't really
have a great impression of the whole thing. He thought
it was gloomy and weird, which is a sense that
we'll also get from others who visit this place later. Finally, though,
Holmes invited Belknap to go on the roof of the building,
and Belknap just at this point did not feel good
(20:32):
about this offer at all. Yeah, I mean, part of
it is he just doesn't really like home still, even
though he wants to try for the sake of his niece.
But he also thinks the situation is kind of strange, strange,
getting stranger by the minute, So he makes an excuse,
saying that he's too old to take on that number
of steps, and Homes just keeps trying though, and trying
(20:53):
to convince some bragging about the view up there and
so forth, and telling and he can check out the
construction better from there, but Belknap wouldn't budge. So then
Holmes invited Belknap to spend the night. He didn't want
to do this either, um. He finally agreed with him though,
just because he figured I'm refusing so much, I'm really
going to offend him at this point. So to keep
things um just sort of you know exactly, he decides, Okay,
(21:18):
I'll stay the night. So that night, after Holmes shows
him to his room on the second floor, Belknap locks
his door. He still has that sort of uneasy feeling,
and after what happens later on, we find out that
he'll be really glad that he did that. So that's
it for part one of this podcast. But next time,
of course, we're gonna see what happens with Belknap's fate.
(21:40):
But of course we're going to check out some more
details also on holmes reign of terror during the World's Fair,
his eventual flight from Chicago, and we're going to discuss
how he ultimately gets caught, which is an interesting story
in itself, and the fate of the Murder Caspital too.
Don't forget that. Oh yeah, I mean, the Murder Castle
is like a character in itself and this whole story,
(22:03):
so we will absolutely find out what happens with that.
Until then, though, you'll have to enjoy some listener mail.
So we have an awesome postcard here from listener Lana,
and she says, Sarah, Deblena, I adore your podcast and
it came in handy on my recent trip to Prague,
(22:24):
where I came upon the grave of Chico bra Hay.
Thanks to your expertise, I was able to provide my
friends with tales of his drunk moose as well as
his metal nose. And in parentheses, she says, his relief
has a line at the nose to mark the prosthetic.
Keep up the great work, all the best. So her
postcard is a is a photo of his monument. And
I think Deblena and I looked pretty close. We were
(22:46):
trying to see the line, but I think it's something
you must have to be there in person. I can't.
I've been staring at it a while and now I
feel like I can see it, But I think I
might be just making it up in my head. I
don't know. Yeah, maybe maybe we should look around the
office for a magnifying awesome and see if we can
tell check it out. Oh, I trust Laana, So thank
you Lana. And that's the that's another good fact for
(23:07):
us to know about Tica, that the nose is even
on his tomb Indeed, and if you want to share
any details of your own travels with us or send
us some ideas for future podcasts, please write us or
History podcast at house to Works dot com, where you
can also find us on Facebook or on Twitter in
this in history and if you want to learn more
about other kind of creepy houses, potentially cool houses, they
(23:30):
don't all have to be murder castles. We do have
an article on eccentric homes with hidden passageways, so be
sure to check that out by searching for centric comes
with Hidden Passageways on our homepage at www dot house
stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our
(23:51):
new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join House to
Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing
possibilities of tomorrow. The Househuffork's iPhone app has a ride.
Download it today on iTunes
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to blame a chalk reboarding and I'm fair Dowdy,
and this episode is about a character who almost needs
really no introduction. He's one of our most requested topics
(00:23):
and probably one of the most gruesome stories that ever
gets requested. It gets requested around Halloween a lot, a lot. Well, yes,
especially this Halloween, because we did Bell Gunnists, which is
sort of a similar Tarle story. So of course I'm
talking about H. H. Holmes, whose crimes and murderous exploits
were featured in Eric Larson's best selling book Devil in
the White City, which is kind of a chronicle of
(00:44):
what was going on in Chicago at the end of
the nineteenth century, particularly as it pertained to the World's
Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair. The
time of the World's Fair is often thought of as
a kind is kind of the height of holmes mental activity,
which is why he fits into that story. And he's
also often called America's first serial killer, although we now
(01:07):
know from previous podcasts that others like Bell Gunnists may
have been close on his heels, But I think what's
really interesting about the home story isn't that the bone chilling,
gruesome nature of his crimes. It's how he how he
really pulled them off. I mean, that's what interests you too,
I think to blame it absolutely. I mean, when you
learn his story, you find yourself asking over and over again,
(01:30):
how did he not get caught? Why did people fall
for his schemes and fall into the traps that he
sat And why didn't more people report all of the
suspicions they were feeling exactly So it's kind of similar
to the Bell Gannist story in that way, because I
think you sort of ask yourself those kind of questions
whenever you how did it get so far? Yes, and
there are some ideas about why he was able to
(01:52):
get so far literally get away with murder for so long,
And we'll take a look at those as we tell
the story of his crime spree and the sort of
house of horrors that he built in Chicago in the
late eighteen hundreds, which came to be known as Murder Castle.
But first we're going to take a look at his
early days and take a look a little bit about
what the childhood of a serial killers like so. Holmes
(02:15):
was born Herman W. Mudget May sixteenth, eighteen sixty one
in Gilmanton, which was a small farming village in New Hampshire.
He had a brother and a sister, and his father, Levi,
was a farmer and a postmaster. His mother was a
very religious woman, and both parents were devout Methodist, but
(02:36):
the father was especially strict, and he doled out harsh
punishments for even minor misbehavior and his children. Consequently, Little
Herman Mudget was beaten quite a lot as a child,
and according to a History magazine article by Phil Jones,
Mudget's father would even use kerosene vapor on the children,
(02:56):
sometimes to make them be quiet when they were being
too noisy. As a child, Mudget spent a lot of
time on his own inventing things like a wind powered
device to scare birds off his family farm. A lot
of sources also suggest that another early pastime of his
was experimenting on animals, both dead and alive, which of
course basically mounted to torture, though Larsen's book suggests that
(03:20):
this might have just been speculation on the part of researchers.
His only childhood friend was a kid named Tom, who
died in a fall when they were playing in an
abandoned house. Obviously, this was considered an accident at the time,
but after learning what You're about too and the rest
of this podcast, it might seem more like Mudget's first
victims suspicious. So Mudget graduated from school at age sixteen
(03:43):
and initially went to work as a teacher in New Hampshire.
And while he was teaching, he met a woman named
Clara A laver Ling who he just totally won over
with his charm. And that's something important to consider for
these podcasts. To the sort of power he had over
women is really a recurring theme throughout this story. They
(04:03):
found him very good looking, of course, he had dark
brown hair and blue eyes and a thick mustache popular
at the time. But his manner too, was charming. He
was affectionate. He had a way of making them feel
like they were really the only women in the world,
and so he'd get close to them and not just um,
not just in a like charming them kind of way.
(04:27):
He would actually touch them and that wasn't exactly appropriate
at the time. But instead of being offended by this behavior. Um,
A lot of women who he met seemed excited by it. Yeah,
I mean, I think we've all met someone like that,
that person who just sort of really hangs on every
word you say, maybe touches your arm when you're having
a bad day and you're telling about it, and just
(04:49):
kind of makes you feel like you're the only person
in the world, or potentially creeps you out. Depends actually
creeps you out on how far they take it. Yeah,
I guess, depending on how observant you are. But and
I mean I can see I can see him crossing
that line with with some people. Apparently he didn't cross
the line too much. A lot of women were taken
with him and Mudget and Claire married on July four,
(05:12):
seventy eight, when Mudget was about eighteen years old, and
they had one child together, a son, But it didn't
take long for the romance here to die out. Mudget
started going away for long periods of time and then
finally just left, even though the two were still legally married.
Then Mudget decided he wanted to study medicine, and so
he went to college at age nineteen. He started out
(05:33):
at the University of Vermont and Burlington, where, according to
Jones article, he paid tuition with Claire's inheritance, so we
can see maybe a motive for marrying her in the
first place here. But after about a year he transferred
to the University of Michigan Medical School in ann Arbor,
which was, according to Lawcen's book, known for its emphasis
on dissection, picking a program that fit his strong fuits.
(05:56):
So Mudget wasn't remembered as an especially stellar student, though,
and this might have been because his mind was occupied
by a lot of other things, one of which was
making money. So according to an article in biography by
David Goldman, it was while he was at the University
of Michigan that Mudget took his first stab at insurance fraud.
(06:18):
So he'd steal cadavers from the anatomy lab at school
and then disfigure them so that they couldn't be recognized.
Then he would take out insurance policies on the cadavers,
setting them up as some kind of fictional family members,
and of course naming himself as the beneficiary. And then
he'd staged these accidents in various locations to make it
(06:40):
look like the cause of the accident caused the cadaver's death,
and then he'd collect on the insurance policy and get
the cash. After leaving college, and there's actually some question
I think about whether he actually graduated or not. Some
sources say yes, others say that he was expelled when
his cadaver ever stealing was discovered. But after he left,
(07:03):
Mudget traveled to various cities for the next six years,
basically scamming people wherever he went, trying to make a
buck however he could, even if it came down to
skipping out on lodging bills without paying. I mean, he
was really trying to get out of paying every last
dollar if he could. In Philadelphia, when he was working there,
a child died after taking medicine from a drug store
(07:24):
that he worked at, so he fled the city soon after.
So by six Mudget had landed in Chicago, and once
he was there, he started looking for a job in
a suburb of growing suburb Englewood, which was south of Chicago,
and since he had had that whole issue with the
child dying from the medicine, he changed his name. He
(07:44):
started going by the alias H. H. Holmes and went
into a drug store that was owned by an elderly
woman named This Holton, asking if she needed anybody to
help in her store. Basically, he told her his credentials,
which him pretty impressive, and he used that a magnetic
charm we talked about earlier that he'd used on young
women when he was flirting with them, and um, Mrs
(08:07):
Holton ended up opening up to him, you know, telling
him that her husband, who lived with her in the
apartment upstairs, was very ill. He was dying. She really
needed somebody like Holmes to come in and help her
out with the store, so she ended up hiring him,
and he eventually took over operation of the store pretty
much completely. After Mr Holton died, Holmes offered to buy
(08:29):
the store and to allow Mrs Holton to keep living
in the apartment upstairs. He got the money to buy
the place in a pretty shady way, though he did
it by mortgaging fixtures and merchandise from the store itself.
He also agreed to make payments of one hundred dollars
a month to Mrs Holton to cover the balance. According
to both Jones and Goldman's articles, though Holmes eventually stopped
(08:52):
making these payments and Mrs Holton filed a wall suit
against him before it could go very far, though, she
just disappeared. So loyal customer, you know, this lady has
been an institution in this neighborhood for a while. Loyal
customers started asking where's Mrs Holton, and Holmes just told
them that she'd gone out to California visiting a relative.
Uh and then well, lo and behold she decided to
(09:14):
stay in California to move there, but he couldn't give
them any kind of forwarding address. Meanwhile, though Holmes was
proving a bit of an institution himself. He built up
a following. People, especially female customers, really liked this charming
young single doctor who had taken over the drug store
and was running a pretty successful business. So not long
(09:37):
after buying the store, Homes started a courtship with Murda Belknap,
who he'd met before when he was living in Minneapolis
for a little while. He drew her in with that
charm that we keep mentioning, and with the allure of
the big city of Chicago. I mean, to a girl,
I guess the Minneapolis wasn't as hot a ticket as
Chicago was at the time, so she was really attracted
(09:59):
to the idea of living here in the big city,
intriguing Cancelman, and they got married on January seven, and
of course he didn't tell her that he was already
married to somebody else under a different name. But apparently
he did try at this time to petition for divorce.
He filed a petition with the Supreme Court of Cook County, Illinois,
(10:21):
claiming that his first wife had been unfaithful, so he
was going to totally destroy her reputation in the process.
But he never followed up on that petition, so it
was eventually dismissed. Meanwhile, Murda did come to Chicago and
lived and worked in the store with Holmes, and at
first everything was okay, it themed, but she started to
get jealous of the way the female customers flirted with Holmes.
(10:43):
They would, for instance, often ask for him specifically, and
eventually Murder became more possessive and also pregnant, and so
Holmes asked her to manage the stores books, which got
her out of the store and upstairs into the office
all day. And it's interesting seen the way this described,
It's not as though he was angry with her for
(11:04):
being possessive. He just saw her as kind of an
obstacle to what we're trying to do exactly. So she
was unhappy being stuck up in this office and ended
up going to live with her parents and will met
in Illinois where her daughter where she had her daughter
with Holmes Lucy, and Holmes would sometimes visit them and
bring money for them and gifts to his daughter, and
(11:25):
he'd even play with his daughter Lucy and seemed to
dote on her while he was there. When he was there,
he seemed like the perfect husband. That's how he acted.
But his visits started to become few and far between.
So by this point Holmes a k a. Mudget had
abandoned to families and he was running this booming business
and that was clearly the foremost thing on his mind.
(11:48):
So in the summer of thinking about expanding business even more,
he bought a whole block of land across the street
at the intersection of sixty three and Wallace in Inglewood,
which is undeveloped at this point, and he started sketching
out some ideas for a new building that he wanted
to put there was going to be a mixed use
(12:08):
development that's probably what people would call it now, But
he had some strange ideas about how he was going
to build it. To say the least, he did. And
we should mention why he was designing this place himself,
why he was doing the sketching. He didn't want to
work with an architect because then he would have to
reveal all of the secrets of the structure and its
intended purpose. It was very mixed use if you think
(12:29):
about indeed, and he needed to avoid this situation at
all costs, so he designed the whole thing himself. And
the plan was for the first floor to have retail
shops and the second and third floor to have apartments,
and that would include holmes own flat and his office,
which would be in a corner of the second floor.
(12:50):
And the apartments he was planning weren't exactly normal apartments either.
They weren't normal. In fact, they were really creepy and weird.
He planned, for example, to have a secret wooden shoot
that would stretch from the second floor to the basement.
That's unusual, not like a laundry shoot or a trash shoot.
Just yeah, and he planned to oil the shoot too,
(13:11):
that's weird. He also wanted another room fitted with a
large walk in airtight vault that had asbestos coated iron walls.
Some of the rooms were also designed to be windowless
and have and to have gas jets installed, the controls
to which were to be in homes office. There were
also plans for a hidden staircase or several hidden staircases
(13:34):
and passageways, and the large basement that it had was
intended to contain more hidden chambers and a sub basement.
So Holmes really seemed to like planning this building. It
was kind of a delight for him, but actually getting
it built with a really big challenge, because like an architect,
construction workers could just as easily become familiar with the
(13:57):
scope of his project. You know, start really, I think
secret staircases, shoots, airtight vaults, all of that, putting it
together and make some assumptions. So he wanted to keep
all of these suspicious details as secret as possible. So
he addressed this problem just as he had acted like
his own architect. He acted as his own contractor and
(14:20):
hired lots of different carpenters and other workmen to come
in and build little parts of the structure just by
putting ads in the paper for for guys to come
help him out, but when the workers would come to
collect their pay after finishing whatever small project they were
involved in, he'd act like he was displeased and tell
them they had done a bad job, even if their
(14:41):
work was fine, and fire them on the spot. Ironically,
it fulfilled another demand of Holmes, which was penny pinching.
It did. It helped him save money, and he was
able to continuously cycle through different workers so that no
one person knew the layout of the entire thing. So
one person would maybe install part of the gas jet
(15:02):
or something and then be fired, and another person would
maybe start the wooden shoot, and you know, a third
person would finish it or something. I mean, and I
think this is the first part where it surprises me
that word didn't get out. Not so much that this
is a really strange construction project that's going on, but
that don't go work for doctor Holmes because he never
pays his workers. Yeah, it is surprising that word never
(15:24):
got out. I guess that's the advantage of hiring individual
random workers rather than going with a company or a
group I suppose though. But also he supposedly would test
certain workers and asked them to do these really deplorable
things for extra cash. Yes. In his book, Larson mentions
a particular bricklayer named George Bowman. For example, Holmes apparently
(15:48):
pointed out a man to Bowman once and asked him
to drop a stone on the man's head for fifty dollars.
He said the man was his brother in law and
that they didn't get along, and that was sort of
his reasoning for asking Bowman to do this. So it's
also possible, of course, I mean, we're not sure. It
might have been that Holmes had an insurance policy on
the brother in law, the supposed you know, quote unquote
(16:10):
brother in law, But it might have just been a test,
as we mentioned. But Bowman ultimately he didn't do it
and he left the job soon after. But he was
really creeped out by the situation, but again didn't go
tell anyone about it. There were a few guys, though,
who passed these weird tests that Holmes would set up,
and over time they became his accomplices. One was a
(16:32):
man named Patrick Quinlan, who ultimately became the caretaker of
the murder House. Another was Benjamin Pitzell, who was a
carpenter who Holmes once posted bail for and he becomes
pretty important later in the story in the second episode.
So one disadvantage to working this way, to working rotating
(16:52):
through workers, I guess um and never working with the
same crew for the for ant extended period of time,
was that it just was really slow. The whole building
process was really slow, so homes building took years to complete.
It was finally done in about May of eighteen nine,
and Homes sold his drug store across the street, and
he apparently told the new owner, the person who bought it,
(17:14):
that he wouldn't have to worry much about competition in
the area. He'd probably assumed to me, don't worry, I
won't reopen my drug store. Yes, But of course then
he went across the street to his new building and
immediately opened another drug store, so I guess the joke
was on the new guy. He also opened several other
businesses on the building's first floor, including a restaurant and
a barbershop. But we're going to focus more on all
(17:37):
of those apartments that the second and the third floors
of Holmes This building. They had about seventy rooms initially,
but then as talk of the eight World's Fair started
to heat up, Holmes decided that he wanted to turn
his building into kind of a hotel for the fair,
and the Fair at that point was set to be
located conveniently right down the street from Homes Building, so
(18:00):
perfect location. Making this change, though from apartments to a
World's Fair hotel, would not only allow him to get
a better fire insurance policy, you know Holmes always after
the best insurance deal, but it would also attract more
clients to his building. So in eighteen e one, acting
again as his own architect, he planned the necessary adjustments
(18:23):
and employed his usual method of rotating through workers so
no one person would really catch on to the overall
planned what he was doing. But even though he was
still managing to keep his labor costs low by constantly
firing workers, he still needed some more cash to get
his project completed. So he took advantage of visiting his
(18:44):
second wife, Murder, who's still living in will met with
her parents when her rich uncle Jonathan Belknap comes to visit.
While Belknap is there, Holmes comes and he brings gifts
for everyone, and he makes this big show of being
a great husband, even though of course we know that
he's an absentee husband. Belknap was initially suspicious of Holmes
(19:05):
because he knew he and Murder had had a rocky relationship,
but over the course of a few days Holmes does
manage to win him over a bit. So when Holmes
later asked him to endorse a note for two thousand,
five hundred dollars which he claimed he'd used toward a
new house for him and Murder, Belknap complied, I mean,
he looks at this and he thinks, hey, maybe them
(19:26):
living together in their own house will be a good
thing for their marriage, and finally had his act together.
Holmes wasn't planning on building a house, though in Casey
didn't guess that, He went back to Englewood and forged
belknap signature on a second note to put toward construction
of his new hotel, and not long after that he
asked Uncle Belknap himself to come visit Englewood and see
(19:49):
his building, and Belknap couldn't quite put his finger on
why that he was really wary about holmes offer. For
some reason. He didn't want to offend him or offend
his niece, though, so he agreed to go ahead and
visit the new place. Once he arrived, he got this
full tour from Homes of all the shops on the
(20:10):
first floor and then the rooms upstairs. Belknap didn't really
have a great impression of the whole thing. He thought
it was gloomy and weird, which is a sense that
we'll also get from others who visit this place later. Finally, though,
Holmes invited Belknap to go on the roof of the building,
and Belknap just at this point did not feel good
(20:32):
about this offer at all. Yeah, I mean, part of
it is he just doesn't really like home still, even
though he wants to try for the sake of his niece.
But he also thinks the situation is kind of strange, strange,
getting stranger by the minute, So he makes an excuse,
saying that he's too old to take on that number
of steps, and Homes just keeps trying though, and trying
(20:53):
to convince some bragging about the view up there and
so forth, and telling and he can check out the
construction better from there, but Belknap wouldn't budge. So then
Holmes invited Belknap to spend the night. He didn't want
to do this either, um. He finally agreed with him though,
just because he figured I'm refusing so much, I'm really
going to offend him at this point. So to keep
things um just sort of you know exactly, he decides, Okay,
(21:18):
I'll stay the night. So that night, after Holmes shows
him to his room on the second floor, Belknap locks
his door. He still has that sort of uneasy feeling,
and after what happens later on, we find out that
he'll be really glad that he did that. So that's
it for part one of this podcast. But next time,
of course, we're gonna see what happens with Belknap's fate.
(21:40):
But of course we're going to check out some more
details also on holmes reign of terror during the World's Fair,
his eventual flight from Chicago, and we're going to discuss
how he ultimately gets caught, which is an interesting story
in itself, and the fate of the Murder Caspital too.
Don't forget that. Oh yeah, I mean, the Murder Castle
is like a character in itself and this whole story,
(22:03):
so we will absolutely find out what happens with that.
Until then, though, you'll have to enjoy some listener mail.
So we have an awesome postcard here from listener Lana,
and she says, Sarah, Deblena, I adore your podcast and
it came in handy on my recent trip to Prague,
(22:24):
where I came upon the grave of Chico bra Hay.
Thanks to your expertise, I was able to provide my
friends with tales of his drunk moose as well as
his metal nose. And in parentheses, she says, his relief
has a line at the nose to mark the prosthetic.
Keep up the great work, all the best. So her
postcard is a is a photo of his monument. And
I think Deblena and I looked pretty close. We were
(22:46):
trying to see the line, but I think it's something
you must have to be there in person. I can't.
I've been staring at it a while and now I
feel like I can see it, But I think I
might be just making it up in my head. I
don't know. Yeah, maybe maybe we should look around the
office for a magnifying awesome and see if we can
tell check it out. Oh, I trust Laana, So thank
you Lana. And that's the that's another good fact for
(23:07):
us to know about Tica, that the nose is even
on his tomb Indeed, and if you want to share
any details of your own travels with us or send
us some ideas for future podcasts, please write us or
History podcast at house to Works dot com, where you
can also find us on Facebook or on Twitter in
this in history and if you want to learn more
about other kind of creepy houses, potentially cool houses, they
(23:30):
don't all have to be murder castles. We do have
an article on eccentric homes with hidden passageways, so be
sure to check that out by searching for centric comes
with Hidden Passageways on our homepage at www dot house
stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our
(23:51):
new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join House to
Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing
possibilities of tomorrow. The Househuffork's iPhone app has a ride.
Download it today on iTunes
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com