“The Devil In Me”: The True Story of H.H. Holmes

Mar 3

On March 4th, 1914 the body of 59-year-old Patrick Quinlan was found at his home in Portland, Michigan. He had ingested large amounts of strychnine in an apparent suicide but others believed he was haunted by the spirit of one of America’s first serial killers, H.H Holmes.

Twenty years earlier, Patrick had been employed by Holmes as a janitor at a location infamously known as Holmes’ Murder Castle in Chicago, Illinois. After later becoming the caretaker for the location many thought Patrick knew more about the murders than he let on. His family even claimed he was haunted by hallucinations and nightmares.

Based on the circumstances around his death, that may very well be true. Next to his body, Patrick left a single note that read, “I couldn’t sleep.”

Today we’re looking at the legends and myths surrounding the monster known as H.H Holmes. Often touted as America’s first serial killer who is said to have murdered up to 200 individuals in his murder castle.

But just how much of his story is true and what has been made up or exaggerated over the last hundred and thirty years?

PART 1 - Herman Webster Mudgett

Born on May 16th, 1861 in New Hampshire, H.H Holmes's real name was Herman Webster Mudgett. By most accounts, Herman had a normal childhood with his four siblings. Eventually, he graduated from the Phillips Exeter Academy and took on teaching jobs at the age of 17.

By 1880 Herman had a family of his own after meeting and marrying Clara Lovering and welcoming their son Robert.

After dropping out of the University of Vermont, Herman attended the University of Michigan’s Department of Medicine and Surgery, where the first reported instances of an evil within began to emerge.

Scams with Death

While working under the chief anatomy instructor, Professor William James Herdman, the two stole recently buried bodies from graves in order to supply the school with cadavers. This was a common illegal practice in the 19th century, especially in some universities.

Herman took it one step further and used the dead bodies in multiple insurance schemes. After making up an identity or convincing someone to fake their deaths, Herman took cadavers, mutilated their faces, and passed them off as the recently deceased. He would then split the insurance money with his accomplice, sometimes making upwards of ten thousand dollars.

Back at home, darkness followed Herman as he reportedly lost his temper constantly with Clara leading to violent outbursts. Eventually, this resulted in Clara taking their son and leaving Herman in 1884.

Across the Country

For the next two years, Herman traveled around the country stopping at New York, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota while working various jobs in drug stores and hospitals. Along with his day jobs, he ran several insurance scams and schemes making him a wanted man in parts of the country.

It’s believed this is why he took on the name Henry Howard Holmes, or H.H. Holmes for short, in order to evade arrest. In 1886, under his new name, Holmes led a new life even marrying a woman named Myrta Belknap while in Minnesota despite Herman still being married to Clara.

Arriving in Chicago

The newlywed couple headed to Wilmette, Illinois to start their new life together but Holmes spent most of his time in Chicago where he started to lay the foundation for a new scheme. One that would cement his place in serial killer history.

The first part of the plan was an innocent move, Holmes took a job at Elizabeth S. Holton’s drugstore in Englewood. Reportedly he was an extremely hard and loyal worker, enough so that within a few years Elizabeth Holton had sold him the store.

But Holmes had bigger plans, prior to purchasing the store in 1887, he purchased an empty plot of land across the street. By the end of the year, construction started on his new project, a large three-story building that many in the neighborhood nicknamed the castle.

Unsurprisingly Holmes scammed several construction companies into building the site, often having to hire a new company every few weeks, under a different name, when he neglected to pay.

As far as the story of H.H. Holmes goes this is where the myths and legends begin to twist with the truth of what kind of a killer he became.

PART 2 - Myths and Legends of a Monster

In the late 1880s, many workers flocked to Chicago in order to prepare the city for the World’s Fair, a six-month cultural and social event involving over 40 different nations. By the last day of the fair on October 30th, 1893 over 27 million people had attended making it a perfect location for a hotel business.

Murder Castle of H.H. Holmes

This is exactly what H.H. Holmes had been planning for when, in the late 1880s, his three-story building had completed construction. What Holmes had created wasn’t just a hotel, it was a death trap and his victims were innocent people from all over the world looking for work and to enjoy the fair.

While working at the Holton drugstore, Holmes would strike up conversations with shoppers and point them in the direction of his hotel where they could return later to purchase a room for the night. Those that did were usually given a room on the third floor but what they didn’t know was that the walls within the third floor were soundproof and there were hidden pipes connecting each room to a secret room nearby.

In the dead of night, Holmes returned to the doors of his guests, locking them in from the outside. He then entered the secret room and turned on the gas filling each room with deadly poison killing each of his guests.

Once the deed was done, Holmes entered the rooms, robbed them of their possessions, and dropped the bodies down a chute at the end of the hallway. The bodies tumbled down to the basement where the depraved Holmes had more work to do.

Using what he learned from his anatomy professor years earlier, Holmes peeled the skin off of his victims leaving just bones and then sold the skeletons to medical schools for a high price. Others he tossed into the furnace, destroying all evidence.

Kate Durkee

But Holmes had multiple scams going at once. He often passed himself off as a real estate mogul, meeting people and attempting to get them to pay him for property he supposedly owned.

One woman he scammed was a friend of his wife Myrta, Miss Kate Durkee of Omaha. Under the impression he would give her a good deal on a piece of property, Kate traveled to Chicago with forty thousand dollars in cash ready to sign paperwork.

Holmes showed her paperwork stating he owned property on Wallace Street and was able to sell it, in reality, the deed was forged using aliases Holmes was known to use in the past. None the wiser, Kate signed the deed and gave Holmes the cash, he then offered her a free room in his hotel. She accepted.

Holmes would later write her prayers as she faced death “were something terrible to remember.”

Leaving Chicago

The third floor of what was later called Holmes’ Murder Castle wasn’t the only nightmare guests would endure. The building was purposely built to disorient guests, it included over a hundred doors, many leading to brick walls. The halls themselves were described as mazes with multiple dead ends, doors that led nowhere, and trap doors that dropped victims into empty rooms.

By the end of the World’s Fair in 1893, H.H. Holmes' body count had reached upwards of 200 victims, and his janitor Patrick Quinlan was said to have been an accomplice in cleaning up blood and disposing of bodies for several years.

With the city now settling after the fair, many questions started to arise about those who went missing and some leads pointed to H.H. Holmes’s hotel. Believing it was only a matter of time before he would be questioned, Holmes decided it best to leave Chicago and join his friend and fellow con artist Benjamin Pitezel in another state.

A New Scam

The two had met years earlier in New York City and started working together to commit insurance and real estate scams across the country. Benjamin was not aware nor involved in any murders, strictly believing Holmes was solely a con artist.

Now together, in July of 1894, during one of their scams attempting to sell mortgaged property, Holmes was arrested in St. Louis, Missouri. While in jail he met outlaw and killer Marion Hedgepeth.

The two discussed Holmes' latest idea of faking his own death and collecting the insurance. For a price, Hedgepeth gave Holmes the name of a lawyer who would assist him in falsifying the records.

After he was bailed out, Holmes and Benjamin visited lawyer Jeptha Howe who agreed to help in the scheme. Unfortunately for Holmes the insurance company became suspicious and refused to pay out the money, but always the con artist, Holmes had a backup plan.

He convinced Benjamin to fake his death allowing his wife to collect ten thousand dollars in insurance and then split it with Holmes. With no real job and five children to care for, Benjamin easily agreed. While he went off to tell his wife, Carrie, of the plan, Holmes was supposed to grave rob a body fitting Benjamin’s description, instead Holmes’ need to kill struck.

Change of Plans

The plan involved setting a cadaver on fire and then passing off the death as a lab accident but when the two men arrived at the lab’s location in Philadelphia, Benjamin noticed Holmes was empty-handed. Holmes struck Benjamin on the head knocking him unconscious and then set him on fire, killing his friend and partner.

Holmes then met with Carrie and told her Benjamin was hiding out in London and he would meet him in a house Holmes owned in Toronto, Canada. After receiving the payout of insurance money, Holmes asked Carrie to allow him to take three of her children; Alice, 15, Nellie, 11, and Howard, 8 to Toronto. She agreed, it was the last time Carrie would see her children.

Wanted

Meanwhile back in St. Louis, Marion Hedgepeth told authorities of the conversation he and Holmes had in jail in exchange for a reduced sentence. At the same time in Texas, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency was asked to track down and arrest H.H. Holmes because of outstanding warrants for horse theft.

On November 17th, 1894 H.H. Holmes was tracked down and arrested in Boston by a Pinkerton detective. He was without the Pitezel children.

With the information provided by Marion Hedgepeth, it was determined that H.H. Holmes murdered Benjamin Pitezel. In October of 1895 Holmes was put on trial for his murder and found guilty. He was sentenced to death by hanging. That same year two unknown men were spotted breaking into the murder castle and burning it to the ground.

“I Was Born With the Devil in Me.”

With the case making headlines, Hearst newspapers offered Holmes $7,500 for his confession. Holmes confessed to murdering 27 people in multiple states and Toronto including Kate Durkee and Benjamin Pitezel. He was quoted as stating, “I was born with the devil in me.”

But ever the con artist it turned out Holmes had lied in his confession, something that became extremely evident when Kate Durkee, who was alive and well in Omaha, put out a public statement saying, “I have never been murdered – not by HH Holmes or by anyone else.”

It turns out many of the myths and legends we know today of H.H. Holmes aren’t exactly accurate and Holmes’ own statements didn’t help.

PART 3 - The Real Monster

The life and story of H.H. Holmes was affected greatly by what was called ‘yellow journalism’, a practice we have discussed in previous articles where newspapers often make up or sensationalized stories for shock value without any sources in order to sell more papers.

Truths and Lies

H.H. Holmes was a killer but his so-called murder castle was no more a murder castle than it was a hotel. In reality, the “murder” castle never existed. The building Holmes built was not a maze full of traps and a hundred doors, the first floor was full of storefronts and the second floor was full of rooms for permanent renting.

The real reason for the building was to steal money from investors and run more scams. For example, Holmes did claim to have plans to create a third floor as a hotel space in time for the World’s Fair but it was really just to entice more investors to give him money, the space was never fully completed.

He was also able to convince Kate Durkee into buying property he didn’t really own. But he never killed her.

Rumors of her death started when journalists looking into Holmes after his arrest found her name on property documents and, since they couldn’t find her in Chicago, they assumed he killed her. Holmes capitalized on this and added her name to his confession, something he possibly did to get more money from those purchasing his confession.

Stories of his murder castle took off in newspapers years and decades after it burned down preventing people from proving the stories inaccurate. In reality, when police were searching for Holmes they investigated his building in Chicago and found nothing out of the ordinary. While some murders may have occurred there, stories of finding body parts, bones, and bloody rooms are simply not true.

Other articles circulated claiming Holmes had tortured animals when he was a child or that his father was physically abusive but there was no proof to either of these claims. Other articles even blamed deaths on him that never happened.

Elizabeth Holten and her husband were said to have disappeared after Holmes began working in their drugstore, in reality, they never disappeared and lived long lives. But there were several disappearances and murders that could be directly tied to H.H Holmes.

The Connors

In 1891 Holmes allowed Ned Connor to open a jewelry counter in his building as one of the storefronts on the first floor. Ned eventually introduced his wife Julia and daughter Pearl to Holmes and, Holmes instantly took a liking to Julia.

The two began an affair which Ned soon discovered causing him to quit and leave Julia and Pearl behind. Christmas eve 1891 was the last time anyone saw Julia and Pearl alive. In his confession, Holmes claimed Julia died during an abortion he performed. As for Pearl, after the death of Julia, Holmes stated he poisoned her to get rid of her.

The partial skeleton of a child was found in the cellar of one of the houses Holmes owned in Chicago but it was not conclusively confirmed to be Pearl’s.

Other Possible Victims

The following year another woman, Emiline Cigrande, a stenographer working for Holmes in the building disappeared. For years Holmes claimed she had left after she married an unnamed man but in 1896 before his execution, Holmes changed his story. He confessed to locking her in the building’s vault until she suffocated, suffering a slow painful death.

In 1893 two more women who crossed paths with Holmes disappeared, Minnie and Annie Williams. Though Holmes himself gave contradicting information on what happened to the two, at one point stating Minnie killed Annie and later stating he killed both. It’s widely believed he is directly tied to their disappearance and probable deaths.

After meeting Minnie Williams, a struggling actress, Holmes convinced her to join him in Chicago eventually beginning a relationship with her. This was apparently part of a scam to get her to sign over her Texas property, and it worked.

At some point, possibly July 1893, Minnie’s sister Annie came to visit the two and wrote a letter to their aunt stating they were going to Europe with Holmes. The two Williams sisters were never heard from again.

The Pitezel Children

The following year in 1894 Holmes killed Benjamin Pitezel and until he was arrested in Boston, he had disappeared with three of Benjamin’s children. It’s unclear why Holmes requested to take the children from Carrie Pitezel, possibly to run other schemes or to simply gain her trust.

But at first, no one knew what became of Alice, Nellie, or Howard Pitezel until the case was given to Detective Frank Geyer of the Philadelphia police department.

While Holmes was awaiting trial for the murder of Benjamin, Geyer looked through the evidence found on Holmes during his arrest. He found a tin of letters written by Alice Pitezel to her mother that Holmes never mailed out. The letters told Geyer where Holmes took the children and was able to locate the house in Toronto where the children believed they would see their father.

In July of 1895, Geyer searched the Toronto house and found the badly decomposed bodies of Alice and Nellie buried in the cellar. Holmes had cut off Alice’s club foot in order to make the identification more difficult.

Holmes later confessed to stuffing the girls into a large trunk while they were alive and then pumping in gas to asphyxiate them.

Howard Pitezel

Though he was able to find the bodies of the girls, Geyer found no leads on 8-year-old Howard Pitezel until he started asking neighbors for information. One neighbor stated one of the girls told them their brother was staying at a rich woman’s home in Indianapolis.

Following this lead, Geyer tracked down locations owned by Holmes and his aliases and found a cottage he rented out in Indianapolis. There he found Howard’s teeth and pieces of his bones in the chimney. In his confession after trial, Holmes stated he used drugs to kill Howard, then chopped him up into pieces before burning the body.

Execution of H.H. Holmes

No other missing people or claims made by Holmes in his confession that were full of truths and lies could be verified. On May 7th, 1896 Herman Webster Mudgett was hanged at the Philadelphia County Prison. Holmes’s neck did not snap and he slowly suffocated to death over the course of twenty minutes.