Landon Nelson

HERMAN WEBSTER MUDGETT

Herman Webster Mudgett, more commonly known as Henry Holmes was born on May 16th, 1861. He was raised in the town of Gilmonton, New Hampshire. As a child, Henry grew up with his mother and father as a single child, his family was wealthy. His father often was referred to as a raging alcoholic. His mother on the other hand was a strict Methodist who would often read Henry excerpts from the Holy Bible and try to teach him good morals. However these morals would be soon washed away with the help of his classmates in school. Kids in his school would often force Henry to touch human skeletons. Due to this, Henry became very fascinated with the human anatomy and death. Although this was a major catalyst to his curiosity with medical science, Henry was already known to be a very smart kid and loved medicine. After his experience with human skeletons, Henry decided to take his fascination to the next level. He proceeded by discecting animals for fun and he would read books about medicine. Eventually he would move on to college to become a doctor.

In his later years, Mudgett attended the University of Michigan where he was later expelled for stealing corpses and performing experiments on them. He would also use the corpses to make false insurance claims. Later, Mudgett moved to Chicago to start a pharmacist job under the name Dr. H.H. Holmes. Soon after he began killing people in order to steal their property. He would often kill is victims in his house, called the "Murder Castle" which he built himself. The house was equipped with secret passages, trapdoors, gas chambers and soundproof rooms. At the peak of his career and experience with murder. Herman attended the World Columbian Exposition in 1893 where he seduced and murdered a number of female victims. He would do this by getting control of their life savings then he would kill them. Afterward he would even go as far as selling his victims bodies to local medical schools.

In 1893, Mudgett attempted to burn his house down and retrieve the insurance money from the damage. He was caught and arrested, however he was soon released as the police did not know about his murderous lifestyle. After being released, Holmes teamed up with an associate, Ben Pitezel. Together, they traveled around the country to commit acts of fraud in places including Colorado, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas. In Texas, Mudgett was arrested for trying to fraud a drug company. While in jail, Mudgett's associate started a false patent office in attempt to scam inventors. After Mudgett was release from jail, he traveled to Pennsylvania to Pitezel's business and murdered him. Afterwards, he and Pitezel's wife went to the coroner to collect insurance funds. The murder of Pitezel was not excuse though. In fact there was wide investigation that took place after the fact where Mudgett was being investigated as his murderer. At first Mudgett and Pitezels plan was to pretend that Pitezel was dead. When he was really killed, it brought much attention to Mudgett because of his new found wealth that he acquired from Pitezel.

The investigation of Pitezel's death ultimately led to Mudgetts demise. While the police were investigating, Mudgett had Pitezels widow convinced that her husband was still alive, he never had mentioned how he had killed him. Mudgett was able to perform his last few murders including the killing of Pitezels 3 children. It was at this point where Pitezels widow knew the truth and Mudgett was arrested. He was charged with insurance fraud and later was put to trial for Benjamin Pitezels death. During his custody with the police, Mudgett first admitted to killing 27 people, it was later estimated that his victims ranged to as many as 200. After Mudgett was convicted he appealed his case and failed to plead not guilty. On May 7th, 1896, just 9 days before his birthday, Mudgett was hanged to die in Philadelphia. Since then, Mudgetts actions have been referred to in many pieces of literature including "The Devil in the White City" by Eric Larson.