The Life of America’s First Serial Killer

Being known as America’s first serial killer may not have been on Herman Webster Mudgett’s bucket list however, pursuing a career in scamming and murder was. Mudgett, also known as H. H. Holmes was born intellectually smart and used his gift for infamous reasons. Starting out with a passion for medicine he began studying animals and animals corpses, this then led to his obsession with disassembling human corpses and murdering victims for satisfaction. As a scam artist and murderer, H. H. Holmes can be classified as a human monster that possesses more fearful characteristics of a naturally born monster than a fictional character such as, Norman Bates.

Born into a wealthy family on May 16th, 1861 …show more content…
Mudgett grew up with a fear of doctors and his classmates bullied him for that. During a class his classmates forced Mudgett to touch the skeleton in their classroom, once Mudgett touched the skeleton, his innerself began to come out. Mudgett fell in love with the idea of corpses as it made him feel happy and satisfied. According to Biography.com editors, later in his life, Mudgett enrolled into the University of Michigan as a medical student. Here his first crime was committed. Mudgett began to steal the corpses out of the laboratory and conduct his own experiments on the dead bodies. After Mudgett was done with the bodies he would turn them in for false insurance claims claiming that they were killed in an accident. Mudgett would put himself down as a beneficiary of the bodies and soon collected the insurance money from each. If this did not work out, Mudgett would sell the bodies to hospitals for scientific research (Editors 1). Mudgett soon became a professional fraud and scam artist. Upon graduation, Mudgett changed his name to H. H. Holmes for legal purposes and move to Chicago where he then later began putting together murder plots for every woman he had encountered (Editors 1). Mudgett got a job at a local drug store in Chicago where he later convinced the owner to let him buy the store. Shortly after the agreement, the owner became mysteriously ill and died. Soon after the death of the drug …show more content…
He would lure people in and book them for rooms. During this time many people were travelling and needed a hotel to stay at. With Mudgett’s hotel right on the block, he attracted many people. After the World's Fair ended, 50 people were reported missing (Davey 1). Many of the hotel victims were women who Mudgett had seduced and then burned their bodies in a kiln in the hotels basement to get rid of their bodies (Editors 1). Mudgett is also believed to be responsible of the death of three children, three of his wives, and one girlfriend. Mudgett’s secret life of crime came to an end when his hotel burned down, revealing what was behind the closed walls. Mudgett was hanged and requested to be buried under cement so nobody could dissect his body just like he had done to his victims (Editors