FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY | H.H HOLMES | AMERICAS FIRST SERIAL KILLER | | Kevin Hutter | 10/20/2011 |

H.H HOLMES, THE FIRST AMERICAN SERIAL KILLER, IN THE FOLLOW RESEARCH PAPER WE WILL BE LOOKING AT PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF HIS CRIMES TROUGH HIS EARLY CHILDHOOD TILL HIS EXECUTION IN THE LATE 1800’S |

Herman Webster Mudgett, better known under the alias of Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, was one of the first documented American serial killers in the modern sense of the term.
Mudgett was born in Gilmanton, New Hampshire [4] to Levi Horton Mudgett and Theodore Page Price, both of whom were descended from the first non-native settlers in the area. According to the 2007 Most Evil profile on Holmes, his father was a violent alcoholic, and his mother was a devout Methodist who read the Bible to Herman. He claimed that, as a child, schoolmates forced him to view and touch a human skeleton after discovering his fear of the local doctor. The bullies initially brought him there to scare him, but instead he was utterly fascinated, and he soon became obsessed with death. Born to an affluent family, Holmes had a privileged childhood. It has been said that he appeared to be unusually intelligent at an early age. Still there were haunting signs of what was to come. He expressed an interest in medicine, which reportedly led him to practice surgery on animals. Some accounts indicate that he may have been responsible for the death of a friend. [2]
Holmes also talked about his childhood lies and pranks and how his father punished him. It was in college, he says, where he did his first truly dishonest act: He represented a fraudulent book, earning money from it for his expenses. He received a medical school diploma, he says, from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and then opened a practice. He then attempted unsuccessfully to commit his first insurance fraud, helping