Notorious serial killers such as Ted Bundy and Jeffery Dahmer strike fear into any normal person who is speaking of them. These two murderers stalked, tortured, and killed their victims which sent the United States into a frenzy. Sadistic people seeking pleasure in the pain of others had been known for centuries but who was the first serial murderer who started this phenomenon of gruesomeness. Herman Webster Mudgett better known as Doctor H. H. Holmes made Bundy and Dahmer’s killings look like child’s play, he also was America’s first documented serial killer. Unlike the men stated above Holmes lured his victims to his home nicknamed “Murder Castle” and performed an autopsy while they were still alive. Holmes also used the art of conning to …show more content…
He had too many fraud schemes, along with so many mysterious disappearances at his ‘castle’, and how he randomly got huge loads of money. All three of these things would throw up red flags. He was caught committing insurance fraud and fled Chicago, bringing along his dimwitted associate Benjamin Pitezel, who was rumored to know about Holmes’ crimes. Pitezel was a drunk and a vulnerable piece of Holmes, so he came up with another brilliant plan to ‘fake’ Pitezel’s death. Holmes “snuck into his house, bound Pitezel and poisoned his erstwhile friend with chloroform while gleefully and mercilessly torturing him by burning his face and upper body with lighted benzene” (Gibson 228), this shows that even to his close friends Holmes was an evil, disgusting, sadistic human being. He felt no remorse, he felt absolutely nothing. Soon after killing Pitezel, Holmes made it his mission to kill Pitezel’s three children. Then returned to his first wife and now thirteen year old son to say that he amnesia all this time and then now suddenly remember who he was. Holmes was finally caught for his fraud charges and pled guilty. He was imprisoned for a little while before they suspected him of killing Pitezel and then soon discovered the three children were also missing. Soon after they found the bodies of the three kids and Chicago started its own investigation on Holmes. On July 20, 1895 the police entered the ‘castle’ Holmes had created discovering the hidden passages, dead ends, and most importantly the basement. The discovered multiple torturing objects, body parts, blood and they found that “beneath the floor were two brick cellars filled with bodies of women and children” (Gibson 236). Finally, Holmes had been found out for the murderer he was. This was a new type of murderer, no one had seen anything this gruesome ever before. Holmes was found guilty of 1st Degree murder and the sentenced to death. With only a few weeks left to