H. H. Holmes (Herman Webster Mudgett)

What the record shows

H. H. Holmes, born Herman Webster Mudgett, was a swindler and murderer active in Chicago, Philadelphia, Indianapolis and Toronto between 1891 and 1894. He was convicted of one murder, that of his business associate Benjamin F. Pitezel, by a Philadelphia jury in 1895. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed the first-degree murder verdict on March 4, 1896, and he was hanged at Moyamensing Prison on May 7, 1896. He confessed to 27 murders, but several people he named were later found alive, and historians count about nine confirmed or probable victims.

According to the Wikipedia article and Smithsonian magazine, the earliest confirmed victims were Julia Conner, who worked in Holmes's Englewood drugstore, and her daughter Pearl, last seen shortly before Christmas 1891. Emeline Cigrand disappeared in 1892 and the sisters Minnie and Nannie Williams in 1893. Smithsonian reported that most of his victims were people he had befriended or employed and whose deaths served his frauds.

The case that ended his career was an insurance fraud. According to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court opinion in Commonwealth v. Mudgett, Pitezel was insured for $10,000 with the Fidelity Mutual Life Association, and Holmes had arranged with him to fake his death. Instead, Pitezel's body was found on September 4, 1894, at 1316 Callowhill Street in Philadelphia, where he had been living as B. F. Perry. Medical witnesses testified that he died of chloroform poisoning that could not have been self-administered, and the prosecution argued that Holmes burned the body to make the death look accidental. Holmes identified the body and the insurer paid the claim.

Holmes then took custody of three Pitezel children. According to the Wikipedia article, Howard Pitezel was killed in Indianapolis on October 10, 1894, and Alice and Nellie Pitezel in Toronto on October 25, 1894. Holmes was arrested in Boston on November 17, 1894, after a Pinkerton pursuit; the article credits a convict, Marion Hedgepeth, with alerting the insurer. Smithsonian reported that Philadelphia detective Frank Geyer found the girls' bodies in a Toronto cellar in July 1895 and that charred remains of their brother were found at a cottage Holmes had rented in Indianapolis.

A Philadelphia grand jury indicted Holmes on September 12, 1895, and the trial opened on October 28, 1895. According to the Supreme Court opinion, Holmes dismissed his lawyers after jury selection had begun and conducted part of his own defense. The jury found him guilty of murder in the first degree. On appeal the court overruled all 13 assignments of error, held that he 'had a fair trial, and that is all he has a right to demand', and affirmed the judgment. Before his execution he sold the Hearst newspapers a confession claiming 27 murders; the Wikipedia article and historian Adam Selzer, writing in Time Out Chicago, note that some of those named were still alive. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that he took more than 15 minutes to die on the gallows and was buried, at his request, in a concrete-filled coffin at Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, Pennsylvania.

The 'Murder Castle' at 63rd Street and Wallace Avenue in Chicago is the most contested part of the story. Smithsonian and Time Out Chicago reported that Selzer's research found the first floor held shops, the second long-term apartments, and the unfinished third floor was never opened; the Chicago press described the hidden rooms in 1893 as places where Holmes concealed furniture bought on credit. Reports of torture chambers and a crematorium came from the yellow press of 1895 and were largely debunked at the time; the claim that he killed hundreds first appeared in 1930s pulp magazines. The building burned in August 1895 and was demolished in 1938.

In 2017 a Delaware County judge allowed the grave to be opened at a descendant's request. PhillyVoice and NBC Philadelphia reported that University of Pennsylvania Museum researchers recovered the remains, that dental records and DNA identified them as Holmes, and that they were reburied on August 30, 2017. Mudgett was born in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, on May 16, 1861, graduated from the University of Michigan medical program in June 1884, and moved to Chicago in 1886, where he adopted the Holmes name.