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[00:00:01] You ever meet someone who seems a little too smooth, the kind of man who can look you straight in the eye while his hand's in your pocket, and when you catch him, he smiles like you are the one being rude. There's a certain flavor of villain that doesn't storm the castle or leave a trail of blood. No, he builds the castle out of lies.

[00:00:23] He sharpens his charm instead of a blade. And if he kills you, it's not for pleasure, it's for profit. This story isn't about a criminal mastermind. It's about a man who wanted to be remembered as one, but behind the whispers of monsters and murder was just a coward in a tailored coat. A conman with a God complex and a death wish wrapped in cheap cologne.

[00:00:50] Welcome to the House of Six. This is Myths, monsters and Mudget.

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[00:01:04] Jenn: Welcome to the house of six. I'm Jen, Jared. Yeah. You recovering from my, uh, breakdown. , technical difficulties today. I had some problems getting going with cameras and the sound and all of the above.

[00:01:19] Literally just started screaming like a lunatic. Your quote was, I just wanna be a podcaster what was my response? This is what a podcaster does. Right? Right. You are a podcaster. Yeah. Welcome to the party. Yeah. So this is hard. Editing is hard. , If you've listened to any of the previous episodes, I'm doing my best.

[00:01:39] I'm trying, , we're doing video and audio. I decided to go all in and do both and learn both all at the same time. I had never ever touched a microphone before we started these shenanigans. So yeah, learning on the fly here and just had a mental breakdown. You did. It was fun. We've all been sick in the household.

[00:02:07] So we've just got problems. Yeah. I'll blame that on how I look, even though this is really just how I look. What's that supposed to mean?

[00:02:16] This is, this is us. This is us all. It is glorious. This is so glorious. I decided to go back to serial killer roots up in here, and we've talked about this dude before. We talked about him in the Jack the Bri Cage. We're gonna talk about HH Holmes today because I felt like we need to go back to a, a like hardcore serial killer.

[00:02:40] Yeah. HH Holmes. Yes. Yep. So he is considered to be one of America's first serial killers. I don't know if that's factual, but, 'cause I mean, serial killers have been around since the Donna man, I'm certain. But, that's at least what he is called. And there are so many myths surrounding this dude. It is his murder castle that he's killed up to 200 people.

[00:03:12] All of it is utter nonsense. Oh yeah, yeah. , He was a bad dude. Yeah. And he did bad things. He was like, cool shit. Then you're like, no, not cool shit. Well. Yes and no. Okay. I just don't wanna give him too much credit because he is like the snake oil salesman of serial killers.

[00:03:30] Okay. You just had a lot of people that murder a castle, but yeah. , The myth around that is so much more exciting than it actually is. Okay. Isn't it always okay? Picture this.

[00:03:42] A towering three story hotel in Chicago with Labine hallways. Staircases that lead to nowhere. Rooms with no doors.

[00:03:51] Doors that opened, brick walls, trapped doors that drop into the basement, and hidden chs where bodies slid to the furnace below to be cremated. Sounds like squid games. Ooh, it's good. Watch it. I'm not really into that. It's way too graphic. But you got the reference Sounds like a horror movie. Right, right, right.

[00:04:15] They called it The Murder Castle and the man behind it. HH Holmes, America's first serial Killer, he confessed to over 200 murders. Some say he built that hotel specifically to kill, that he was a calculating status with a taste for blood and an eye for architecture. A devil in human form, a master of death.

[00:04:39] That's the story, but it's utter bullshit, nonsense. The castle, it never existed, not in that form. There were no trap doors into hell, no revolving torture rooms, no gas chamber closets, endless corridors filled with corpses. What did exist was a half finished, badly built commercial building, and a con man who wouldn't stop lying even when he was on his way to the gallows.

[00:05:10] Total piece of garbage. For the record, what do you think, what do you, what are you picturing in your mind? Like, what do you think this guy looks like? Top hat maybe. Maybe it was the time period. It was maybe like a beer with like a pointy thing to it. You know what, like I feel like a German like, Hmm, that's French.

[00:05:34] What I just did that was rich.

[00:05:36] Jared: It was French.

[00:05:37] Jenn: Like a mustache twirl. He did have an epic mustache. I wish I could sing for real without editing my voice, which I've done at the end of several episodes. But I wish I could sing because I would start singing that mustache song from my mustache. Your mustache.

[00:05:56] Yeah. Yeah. There you go. What was that movie? A Million Ways To Die In The West. Ways To Die. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, amazing. Neil Patrick Harris Mustache. Amazing. Sorry. Can't help it. It's a great zone. I know. So that's what I think of, that's what I wanna sing. Every time I see Hh a picture of HH Holmes, I wanna dance to the Mustache song.

[00:06:17] I'm sorry for all my sniffling and stuff that's just deal with it.

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[00:06:25] Jenn: Let's go back to Chicago. The year is 1893 on the surface. This city is dazzling. It is the Colombian Exposition, which is the Grand World Fairs, and it is in full swing celebrating 400 years since Columbus crossed the Atlantic. It's a year late. It was supposed to be 1892. That would be 400 years from 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

[00:06:54] The fairgrounds are a wonderland of electric lights, ivory white buildings, and cutting edge inventions.

[00:07:01] People are calling it the white city. It is a shining symbol of American progress. A little bit about the background of why. This was just so amazing. In 1879, Thomas Edison gets all the credit for bringing the light bulb to the market. He didn't invent anything. I will not go off on a tangent on Thomas Edison.

[00:07:24] All of what a trash human being. This man was. He was a horrible man. I won't even go into that. But anyways, in 18 82, years after he. Brought forward the light bulb. He opens the first commercial power station called Pearl Street Station in New York City, America's first power plant. This is a big deal, and it lit up about 400 lamps across 85 customers in lower Manhattan, not Vegas, but this was one of the coolest things that people had ever seen.

[00:07:58] And then the 1880s to the 1890s, then you have the war of the Currents. This was Edison on the side of DC Power and Nicola Tesla on the side of AC Power. By the way, Nicola Tesla won even though he died in poverty. And Edison is still trash 'cause he knows more people and he has political power. I'm just saying.

[00:08:15] So we're getting back to the 1893 rule's. Fair. It's all context. This wasn't just an exhibition, this was an ego trip on steroids wrapped up in architecture. Originally it was supposed to be 1892 to mark the 400th year of Columbus discovering the Americas QI role, but bureaucracy and drama, Congress couldn't pick a city.

[00:08:39] It was between New York, St. Louis, Washington, DC and Chicago were all in the running. Obviously Chicago won, but not until mid 1890, which means they had less than three years to plan, design and build an international exposition from scratch.

[00:08:56] Why all of this mattered? It debuted electricity on a massive scale. It drew 27 million visitors, which was nearly half of the US population at the time. It's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot. This huge. It was designed by America's best architects, Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law, Olmsted.

[00:09:15] Central Park, dude and others, they lit up a hundred thousand electric light bulbs, which was the first time many of these people had ever seen electricity. Yeah. Huge deal. And why all of this mattered. This was America's chance to say, we're not just, post-Civil War farmland, we're cultured, powerful, rich. Put Chicago on the map as a modern world class city.

[00:09:41] The downside to all of this is that it was built by unpaid laborers, many of whom were black immigrant, or both the city, hid its poverty behind the grand illusion of the fair. Thousands were displaced or went broke trying to capitalize on the tourism crime, spiked, of course, pickpocket scams, disappearances.

[00:10:04] 27 million people flooded the streets of Chicago in search of Marvels and miracles and just beyond the gleaming fairgrounds of Chicago is something else entirely. It is the second largest city in America, just behind New York City, and also one of the deadliest going back in time just a little bit. Entire neighborhoods are still being rebuilt after the great fire of 1871. Chicago burned to the ground. Yep.

[00:10:36] The Great Fire didn't just destroy the old Chicago. It created perfect conditions for a new one, shiny on the outside, chaotic, no underneath, and our guy knew exactly how to slip through the cracks. In present day 1893, the population has tripled in almost two decades, exploding past 1000002nd

[00:10:56] and with that growth came labor strikes, poverty, racial tension, political corruption and crime. Chicago was full of newcomers chasing opportunities and predators who knew how to take advantage of it. Also, cars are brand new at this point in time. So even though it predominantly you would have horse-drawn horses and carriages throughout the city, there were a couple of cars here and there.

[00:11:24] So that was, that was fun and exciting. It probably wreaked of horse droppings, factory smokes, meat packing plants. We're dumping waste into the river. Yeah, the Chicago River was a nightmare chicago's one of my favorite cities, by the way. I absolutely love it.

[00:11:42] The architecture there is truly amazing. That's where the great Michael Manos is from. Oh, shout out to Mike. He's never gonna hear this. Never gonna hear this.

[00:11:53] It's not just the city that's wearing a mask. This was the Gilded Age. Why this era matters to homes? The Gilded Age wasn't just a time of progress, it was a breeding ground for fraud. And this. Directly relates back to Holmes. People worshiped success no matter how you got it. If you wore a nice suit and said the right things.

[00:12:16] Nobody asked where the money came from. That's why Holmes thrived. You didn't have to be a mastermind. He just had to look like one play. The part reputation could be bought, names could be changed, and lies were easier to sell than the truth. If someone walked into your life with confidence, good posture, and a story that sounded just right, odds are you didn't ask too many questions you trusted.

[00:12:45] So what happens when someone decides to push that charm just a little bit further? What happens when fraud and charisma becomes a weapon? Boom, boom, ha ha, and a city full of smoke and mirrors. It's so easy to hide the truth, and eventually someone starts to notice missing people.

[00:13:07] Some say a killer walked the fairgrounds in 1893, that he built a castle of death to trap unsuspecting women, that behind the glamor of the white city, there was a devil in plain sight. The truth is murkier than that. This isn't a story about murder, it's a story about illusion and about how much we want to believe in monsters, especially if they wear a suit and smile.

[00:13:35] And this guy did

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[00:13:42] Jenn: before he was HH Holmes, because that name is just as fake as he was. The so-called devil of the White City was born, Herman Webster Mudget. Shit, that's even better than I could have made up all three of those names. Like they could have just mudget, you know? That's your name. That's your last name.

[00:14:04] I get it, Herman. Webster Webster. Yeah. That's honestly better than I, I was gonna be funny and I couldn't even be funnier than that. You can't be funnier than Herman Webster, budget. You cannot, uh, yeah. Born in 1861 in Gilman, New Hampshire. Isn't New Hampshire or New Hampshire? You, I say sure. Well, I'm gonna, but I mean, I'm not a local, so, you know, I call it New Hampshire and I feel like that's wrong.

[00:14:33] You always, you've always done that. Apparently. Where have I been? Oh, oh, we talk about New Hampshire all the time. Valid. It's one of the smallest state. I'll never know of think I've ever even heard you say that word before, because I would've gone, what the hell is she saying? New Hampshire. New Hampshire.

[00:14:52] New Hampshire. Anyways, the man who would one day confess to dozens of murders got his start in a quiet rural town full of dirt roads. Farm houses and just cattle or whatever is in New Hampshire at this point in time in life. I, I, I gotta go with Hampshire this whole, whole time. This is how I say the word.

[00:15:08] Sorry. My bad. Keep going. My bad. I can't unsay it. It's the last time I'm gonna say it 'cause there's no, this is where he was born. Okay. He moved away eventually. Yep. We moved on as a child nudge. It was apparently intelligent, awkward, and unsettling. There are some usual dark Lord origin stories associated with this dude.

[00:15:28] You know that he tortured animals. Yeah. Dissected frogs. He'd like to play doctor a little too, literally. But who knows how much of that is real? How much he lied about that. How much was made up. No, nobody knows. So I'm not gonna go into his childhood because nobody knows and it's probably lies anyways, agreed.

[00:15:45] What is very clear is that he had a gift for lying and he found out early on that charm was a currency that he could spend. He went to medical school at the University of Michigan, but instead of studying anatomy like a normal student, he used his time there to perfect a much more profitable skill.

[00:16:05] Insurance fraud. Oh, fraud. Yeah. He would steal cadavers from the lab, fake their identities, take out life insurance policies on them. Then he'd report the person dead, collect the payout, and then move on to the next cadaver. That's pretty genius. It is. I mean, at the time he's not the only one that did this mean at the time.

[00:16:24] That's damn genius. It, it, it is. I mean, you have access to body. It's, it's a no harm ish crime because he wasn't making the dead people. Right. Making people dead. Right. To be fair, this is a hell of a lot more organized than most 20 something guys with a stethoscope, with three access to corpses.

[00:16:46] At least he wasn't doing weird corpse things. I wasn't gonna go there. Okay. I was not. Well, you have to go there 'cause I'm sure it happened. Yeah. Anyways, he married young at least once, probably more, but he did not divorce, bother to divorce any of them before marrying somebody else.

[00:17:03] And by the time he left Michigan, he was already a man of many names. None of which were trustworthy. He was educated, well dressed, polite, and entirely full of himself. Not a bad looking dude. For, for the 18 whatevers. I don't personally find his picture attractive, but people have said at the time, he was a decent looking dude.

[00:17:28] Okay, I'm not a fan of the handlebar. By the time he moved to Chicago, he started calling himself Henry Howard Holmes Hh. I guess he liked the alliteration. I like alliteration. He wasn't hiding who he was. He was simply repackaging the scam in a newer suit.

[00:17:45] When Holmes arrived in Chicago in the late 1880s, he was not looking for a clean slate. He was looking for a blank check. In this new beautiful city,

[00:17:54] the city was busting at the seams, disorganized, full of people chasing dreams, and this was a Conman's playground. This was kind of situation for him. Chef's Kiss. Got it.

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[00:18:12] Jenn: He took over a drugstore on the south side. After the owner, Dr.

[00:18:17] ES, Holton and his wife fell ill when the man died, allegedly of natural causes, Holmes offered to buy the store from his widow, and then she disappeared. Uh, I don't have it. I don't know what happened to them. We don't have any documentation. We just know,, that Holmes claimed she moved to California.

[00:18:44] We don't know what happened. All we know is that a man died and the wife disappeared shortly after and nobody followed up on it. Okay. That's all we know. Maybe she got paid. I'm not gonna make any allegations. She got paid and actually just left. It's entirely possible. Yeah. People disappeared all the time because there's no, I'm going to LA to start an acting career.

[00:19:01] Sure, yeah. Good luck. Yeah. Even, especially back then, you know, I think that was, were there talkies in the 18? I wasn't thinking. Oh, there were, there were at the world fairs. They had talkies at the world Fair. Okay. Okay. They did, it was in my notes from earlier, but I didn't bring it up.

[00:19:14] He used this pharmacy to fund his bigger project as Strange three story building across the street. The locals called it the Castle, and it became the beating heart of his little legend. Holmes built it in phases, swapping out contractors so no one saw the whole blueprint.

[00:19:34] Mm-hmm. He included windowless rooms, dead end hallways, and sealed off spaces. Now, this was not to trap victims, this was to confuse creditors. He was running the scam. It was structure, designed for fraud, not murder. But still people died.

[00:19:54] Okay. And those deaths deserve more attention than the castle ever did because they're real. The castle was a big fake bunch of bullshit. So we have Julianne Smith, Connor. She worked in the pharmacy and she was the wife of Ned Connor, a man who leased space from home. Julia had an affair with Holmes after her marriage dissolved.

[00:20:17] She and her daughter Pearl, who was just six years old, were last seen in 1891. Holmes later claimed Julia died during an abortion. He performed, but nobody was ever found. And Pearl question mark, nobody followed up. Where was Ned?

[00:20:36] Jared: Yeah.

[00:20:36] Jenn: Why wasn't Ned asking questions? We don't actually know, because to be fair, documentation is crap.

[00:20:41] At this point in time. We don't know if he ever reported it to the authorities. Here's the deal, and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna try to dog police here or anything like that. But , politicians owned this city.

[00:20:55] Jared: Yeah.

[00:20:55] Jenn: And the police were there to make them happy to keep. The, the street's quiet.

[00:21:02] Mm-hmm. They weren't there to quote unquote solve crimes. They were looking for a little money themselves. Um, maybe, yeah. I mean, they also knew what was right and they knew what was good for them and the fact that, you know, certainly, and I'm sure there were plenty of police officers that were out there trying to do the right thing.

[00:21:18] Okay. Of course there were, but that really wasn't their job at that point in time. That's not why they were hired. Next we have Emmaline Segund. I don't know if that's right. A young typist. She disappeared in 1892 after Holmes promised her marriage and a wealthy future.

[00:21:36] Her remains were never recovered, though a trunk of hers was later found in Holmes' possession. He never mentioned what he did to. Then came the Williams sisters Minnie and Nanny. Ooh. , Minnie was reportedly in a romantic relationship with Holmes and Ed had inherited a valuable property in Fort Worth.

[00:22:00] , She signed the deed over to Holmes. Never do that ladies. And shortly after both she and her sister vanished. Holmes gave several versions of what happened. None of them involved murder and their bodies were never found. The thing about it is though these were not passion killings or trophies. These were women that Holmes used to get what they had and women who became legally inconvenient, emotionally difficult, and financially problematic.

[00:22:32] And in Holmes' world, that meant they needed to be disposed of. This was not a serial killer that enjoyed killing. Maybe it seemed to be out of convenience. He wanted what they had and so he took it.

[00:22:49] Jared: Okay.

[00:22:49] Jenn: Until he didn't want that anymore and then he took their lives. Seems like extra work, but okay.

[00:22:56] I don't know. That's interesting because it, to him, I think it was more work to make them go away, you know what I mean? With their life, I think it was easier for him just to kill 'em.

[00:23:12] Jared: Yeah.

[00:23:13] Jenn: I mean, he had this big castle. It did have a furnace in the basement. Now that's convenient. We don't have any proof that he used that furnace for cream to reasons.

[00:23:25] There's no proof of that. Okay. They didn't have a way to test that kind of stuff at that point in time. Right. All we know is that these women all disappeared and they never resurfaced. He, he did something to him. The murders that brought Holmes down and the ones that exposed him as a predator were the deaths of Benjamin Peole and three of his five children.

[00:23:49] Peole was a long time associate. He was a handyman and an alcoholic that Holmes used for various schemes. In 1894, Holmes convinced him to fake his death. For a $10,000 insurance policy, I was having a problem with the word policy.

[00:24:07] The plan was simple. Find a cadaver, stage an accident, collect the money. But Holmes had a better idea. What? We already got a body. It's Ben, he is a body. So he killed IL for real. Maybe with chloroform

[00:24:25] not in the way that you think chloroform putting it over your mouth. Yeah, right. You would have to hold it over somebody's mouth for like five minutes to even make them pass out. I think it's like three to five minutes to make them even pass out. It will kill you. But, um, it would also like eat off your skin.

[00:24:40] But anyways, they found chloroform in his throat. Gross. And then he set the body on fire in a rented Philadelphia apartment to stage an explosion probably with the chloroform. Then he used Pie's own family to help cover it up because he filed the insurance claim, the life insurance claim for the for his death.

[00:25:04] However, the insurance company got suspicious 'cause it's $10,000 and they decided to investigate.

[00:25:10] Holmes met with PI's wife, Carrie. I didn't think Carrie was an old school name. It's Carrie. And he convinced her that Ben was still alive and in hiding.

[00:25:21] This guy was smooth. I would never believe like whatever. He even had her legal permission to travel with their three of their kids, Alice, Nelly, and Howard. Under the lie that he was gonna reunite them with their father. Instead, he took them on this weird twisted road trip across several states, registering under false names in boarding houses and hotels, bunkers.

[00:25:51] in Indianapolis, he killed Howard, who was eight. He was just a little boy. He pretty bad.

[00:25:58] Jared: Yeah. Ugh.

[00:25:59] Jenn: I hate this. His remains, we don't know how, but his remains were later found, burned in a fireplace in a rented home. And then in Toronto, Indianapolis. Toronto. It was all over the place. He killed Nelly, who was 11, and Alice, who was 15.

[00:26:16] I'm so sorry for this in advance. He put their, put them in a trunk, sealed it shut, and then piped in. Chloroform to, yeah. Their remains were found buried in a basement, in another rental house.

[00:26:34] I hate talking about the death of kids. Mm-hmm. I mean, the death of anybody's awful. Mm-hmm. But like little kids, that's just the fucking worst man. It makes, I like, I wanna cry right now. I'm trying not to. That's terrible. But these were not crimes of impulse. They were logistical, they were strategic and honestly cruel.

[00:26:53] He didn't just kill them. He looked their mother in the eye and assured them that they were safe. Yeah. Yeah. And then he buried the truth with their bodies. And these, these murders were not some part of a grand criminal plan. This guy was flying by the seat of his pants. Yeah, that's what I was thinking just at the time.

[00:27:15] Whatever. Just what it just, exactly. It's Tuesday. Tuesday. Yeah. They were about convenience. They were about control of the situation. He needed the children out of the way so that he could manipulate their mother and collect the insurance payout, and then he could vanish and run his next con. And if it weren't for the suspicious, insurance company and a relentless detective agency, he might have gotten away with it.

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[00:27:48] Jenn: The kicker in all this is that all these people around homes vanished and no one investigated. And I'm even gonna say this isn't the police's fault because they didn't even know about it. This was a point in time when if you, where, how do I say this? Even if family and friends started asking questions, the police and the courts and the system were not built.

[00:28:16] There was no infrastructure to deal with sort of things,

[00:28:19] Jared: right? Wasn't right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:28:19] Jenn: There's no missing person databases. There's no forensic evidence. There's no centralized police communication. If someone vanished in Chicago but their next of kin lived in rural Iowa, there was no channel for reporting this.

[00:28:34] If they called their jurisdiction where they lived, they tell 'em to call Chicago. If they called Chicago Chicago, be like, call your people. We don't know. Like it's none of our business. It couldn't even print like the missing person on a milk jug. 'cause at the time, no, there was a milk jug there. No, they were glass jars.

[00:28:52] Yeah.

[00:28:52] Even if they did answer when they got these calls of the missing people, you know, she moved away. She ran off, she changed her name, she eloped, she got on a train, she left town. Like, what do you want me to do about it? The police weren't there for missing people. They just weren't, that wasn't their jobs.

[00:29:09] And Holmes knew this. Sure. And he counted on it. Sure. He picked these women that had a only a few close ties, women who were, had just enough scandal in their past, in their background that people would assume that they were up to no good. When somebody ask questions, he'd offer , a new lie and a polite smile.

[00:29:31] She moved away. She got ma married, she went to California and that was enough. Yeah. I wanna be that kind of person. Like, you know, Jared was just shady enough where I'm not, I'm not though. Like you are the least person that I've my reputation ever met. My reput is just a little too clean, I guess. You are squeaky clean.

[00:29:49] Let's talk about the attention that Holmes did draw because he did draw attention just not from law enforcement. Furniture companies sued him for unpaid inventory. Contractors, sued him for skipped payments on this. Murder. Castle landlords sued him for fraud and property damage.

[00:30:08] Creditors tried to track him down for bouncing checks and disappearing with goods, and he always used fake names, counterclaims and legal delay tactics to buy time and vanish over and over again. A few judgments were entered against him, but none of them were enforced. All of this property. It was not in his name.

[00:30:28] Yeah. Look, I don't know where we're going with this, but yeah, so far he is a perfect conman. He's a perfect conman. He did not have a permanent address. The murder castle was not his address. That was his place of business, and he moved through aliases like hats. , He would buy furniture and not pay for it.

[00:30:45] He'd buy it on credit. The furniture company would come to seize it, but because he had built this weird labyrinth of a building, he was able to hide the furniture and they couldn't repo it. Yeah, it's fricking brilliant. In a the worst way. Purchased at Dungeons to Go. That was funny.

[00:31:04] It was dumb, but it was funny. It was funny. All right. So by the time the bodies began piling up behind him, the system had trained itself to look the other way. Everyone thought he was just another con man. You know, he was doing, he was out there doing some shenanigans, and that's what made him lethal. It wasn't the murder castle, it was the legal system built to ignore the inconvenient.

[00:31:28] A city that was drowning in distractions with this world fair that's going on. And this dude was weaponizing politeness like crazy. HH Holmes was not brought down by a brilliant detective or a carefully laid trap. He was brought down by the insurance company, Benjamin Piel. Mm. And frankly, if there's one thing you don't mess with in America, it's IT insurance companies.

[00:31:53] We're not gonna go down that road 'cause it's a slippery slope. But anyways, even in 1893, it was the death of Benjamin Piel Holmes tried to collect the $10,000 insurance payout on the man's life and the claim was shady as shit from the very beginning.

[00:32:11] Alright. PI's body has been badly burned in what Holmes claimed was an accident, but it didn't set right with the insurer. Enter the Fidelity Mutual Life Association, and they did something wild for the time when he filed this claim.

[00:32:30] They said no, they refused to pay out until they could confirm the details. Holmes insisted the body was ole. It was, but the insurance company. Wasn't really sure. So they hired Frank Geier, who was a detective with the Philadelphia Police Department, but eventually he worked for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, which was like the proto FBI.

[00:33:01] Let me just sidebar into who the Pinkertons are, because this is some cool ass shit. I think of them as like the 19th century FBI, which it's totally what they are, but they were like crazy, wild. All right. Detectives, bounty hunters strike busting mercenaries, , all rolled up into one.

[00:33:21] The pinkertons were formed in 1850 by Alan Pinkerton, who was a Scottish immigrant. Who started out as a barrel maker. Cool. And ended up one of the most feared man in American private law enforcement. Their motto is, we never sleep. And their logo is an I

[00:33:40] Jared: Hmm.

[00:33:41] Jenn: Cool shit right there.

[00:33:42] Right. This is where the term private eye comes from. Ah, okay. It's so cool. But these weren't necessarily the good guys all the time. They did a lot of awesome shit. But they also were used to crush labor strikes, infiltrate unions, bust picket lines usually with violence. Yeah, right. Not so great, but they were still doing their jobs to be fair.

[00:34:06] Got job. They had no problem getting their hands dirty, and they were known for using questionable tactics to get results in the Holmes case. It was a soon to be Pinkerton agent who helped track his movements across state lines, to string together his fake identities. And they ultimately located him in Boston.

[00:34:28] They might not have caught Holmes red-handed, you know, with blood and a whatever, but if it had not been for him, for the Pinkertons, that he would've vanished. Yep. He would've vanished into smoke.

[00:34:39] rewinding a little bit, Holmes was not hiding. He was moving, he was fast, he was going under fake names in trains, suitcases, all of his lies. He had three piel children on this bizarre cross country journey under false names and the false claim that he was taking them to meet their mother Meanwhile, their mother, Carrie, was traveling separately under Holmes orchestration, believing that she was following her husband to a new life. Holmes had this whole narrative going and he kept them apart. He kept lying to them, left just enough clues , to stay ahead for a while. And in November, 1894, Holmes was finally arrested.

[00:35:22] In Boston on a different fraud charge. He was using the alias Henry M. Howard and living in relative comfort with his latest fiance. At this point, they didn't know the full extent of what was going on, but they were investigating the PI in short scam. And Frank Geier kept digging and he traced home's, travel patterns, and that's when he found the rental homes that he had taken the children to, and he found their remains.

[00:35:56] this is what changed everything. Finally, this guy put things together and they realized Holmes wasn't just a swindler, he wasn't just a liar. He's now responsible for the confirmed deaths of three children, and no amount of charisma is gonna smooth that over the, the guy's finally caught the shit bag.

[00:36:19] the authorities then turned their attention back to Chicago, now convinced there's more to the story. And so they search the castle. What they found there was a mess, secret rooms, gas lines, odd architecture. It was raising some eyebrows, but they weren't going to mass murder right yet. At this point, this is truly bonkers, is that after he was arrested and the press blew up, the murder castle narrative, the building became a true crime.

[00:36:50] Tourist attraction. Before that was even a thing. People, reporters, gawkers, came from all over to gaw at this building, poke around and steal shit because the building was not secured. It was unlocked. They just walked in and souvenir hunters showed up. I mean. They were ripping off doorknobs, wallpaper, floorboards.

[00:37:18] Like this is cra They took souvenirs. Yeah, it's weird. And then somebody set the building on fire in August of 1895. Mysteriously, , caught on fire. We don't know if it was an angry mob, a looter, someone trying to cash in on insurance 'cause we know that works. The remain, whatever remaining physical evidence there was, was destroyed in the fire.

[00:37:42] But fact of the matter is Holmes had not left behind this torture dungeon. He left behind chaos, built on financial fraud and architectural bs. He's just this guy and his behavior during all of this. Cool, collected, cocky, the son of a bitch, he played the part of this misunderstood gentleman and he offered up all these different stories.

[00:38:09] They changed every time he opened his mouth and he kept insisting he had done nothing wrong. Yeah. In a perfect conman, this guy, truth is out though the, the, the Piel case had proven he was not who he really was. He was not this genius mastermind. He was some rando willing to murder children to buy himself a little bit more time.

[00:38:33] Ugh.

[00:38:33] ​

[00:38:38] Jenn: So the trial,

[00:38:41] he was arrested in in late 1894. The trial didn't start until July of 1895 because this was such a big deal. It was huge, nearly a year later. And when it did, it wasn't some sweeping murder trial with testimony about gas chambers and, and basement. Acid vats. The case was focused almost entirely on the murder of Benjamin Piel and almost only him because it was the most provable, it was the most legally straightforward charge.

[00:39:13] There was the body, there was motive, there was a financial paper trail, and there were witnesses who could tie Holmes directly to the scene. And Holmes took this opportunity to show the world just how deep his bullshit reservoir went. He represented himself at points, and we all know that. That's really smart.

[00:39:38] Don't do that. Get a lawyer. He smirked, joked and acted as if the whole thing was an inconvenience. He described himself as, and I'm quoting a law abiding citizen with an unfortunate reputation. This fucking guy. He cross-examined witnesses with arrogance and flare and tried to charm the jury. But good news bears this time the evidence was overwhelming and his reputation was in tattered.

[00:40:11] The remains of the piel children were introduced. Dear sweet baby. Yeah. Goodness.

[00:40:18] Jared: Yeah.

[00:40:18] Jenn: , their discovery and presentation was emotional and horrifying. And Holmes, nothing. The guy barely blinked shit back. So the jury didn't take long. In November four, on November 4th, 1895, he was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.

[00:40:41] But Holmes wasn't done. No. This creeper didn't stop there. Of course he didn't. While waiting execution, we're going to introduce another dirt bag. Enter William Randolph Hurst. I could do a whole episode on this guy. So his newspaper bought his confession for $7,500.

[00:41:04] That is roughly in today's money of $275,000.

[00:41:09] Jared: Mm-hmm.

[00:41:09] Jenn: Gross. Mm-hmm. Gross. , It was serialized under the headline Holmes' own story and Peak Holmes Pity Party Melodrama. He wrote his own fan fiction. In all of this, he claimed to have killed. Now he's just confessing all over the place. He claimed to have killed 27 people, though some of them were found later Alive.

[00:41:35] This, this guy, some of the names were real, some of them we think he invented. He also implied he was possessed by Satan, born under the sign of the devil and incapable of feeling anything. Now, to be fair, the DSM didn't exist for another 60 years, but this guy was probably an actual psychopath. To be fair, he probably didn't feel anything.

[00:42:01] Yeah, yeah. , Doesn't change the fact that he's a dirt bag, and I stand by that. This was sensational. It was inconsistent. He was all over the place, and it was exactly what the people wanted. They ate it up. And maybe that was the whole point. Holmes went down in history, not as a con man. Yeah. Not as a loser, but as a devil in human form.

[00:42:26] Right. He wanted the infamy and the motherfucker got it.

[00:42:31] Jared: So

[00:42:31] Jenn: upsetting

[00:42:31] Jared: Espin,

[00:42:32] Jenn: so upsetting May 7th, 1896. Herman Webster Mudget, I'm not gonna call him HH Holmes anymore. He was hanged at, oof. This is a tough one. Moy Yaman Singh Moy Yaman Singh Prison in Philadelphia. True to form, theatrical to the end.

[00:42:55] This motherfucker, he requested that his body be buried 10 feet deep encased in to prevent grave robbers from digging him up and dissecting his corpse, the fricking irony of the sky. , He had stolen and mutilated bodies his entire adult life, and now he feared someone would do the same to him.

[00:43:19] Another good part of this story, and I'm sorry if this is gross, he did not go cleanly. He was hanged his neck, did not break upon the drop, and he, uh, twitched and flailed for 15 minutes before finally dying. And if that's not poetic justice, then I don't know what was, I hope he felt every 15 fucking minutes of that.

[00:43:40] Jared: Okay.

[00:43:43] Jenn: Sometimes I'm vengeful when it comes to things like this. Holmes went to his grave insisting that he was special, but the only thing remarkable about this guy was how many people he fooled and how easily he did it, gives his shit back.

[00:43:58] ​

[00:44:03] Jenn: So, let's talk about the

[00:44:04] press coverage of all of this.

[00:44:05] If he had lived and died quietly, he'd probably be a footnote if he didn't do all of this news story and sell, his story. I, I don't know why he. Here. Side note, why do people sell their, now I know why he did it. 'cause he wanted to go down in infamy, right?

[00:44:22] But like, he can't use the 7,500 bucks. What does he do with that? Where'd the money go? Who got the money? I didn't, I didn't Google that part.

[00:44:31] If it had not been for the press, we probably would not be talking to about him today. But because of the press,

[00:44:39] the press turned him into a monster. They didn't show him in his true colors as a con man, as a coward. They presented him in the light of a criminal genius, the architect of evil, the devil. Starking starking, stalking the streets of Chicago. They gave him nicknames like The Beast of Chicago and the Arch Fiend.

[00:45:01] They published diagrams of his murder castle, most of which were just totally made up, and they ran body counts like they were keeping score. So disgusting. And if you're, I've already said who, who we could blame this on. We can blame this on William Randolph Hurst, , his newspapers, particularly the New York Journal, paid homes for his confession.

[00:45:23] Not a court deposition, not a statement from investigators. A paid serial piece of self glorified nonsense written by Holmes himself. , Total melodrama and lies. Holmes said he killed 27 people. Later it ballooned to 100 and then 200, and the newspapers ran with it. Never questioned it, didn't fact check, didn't verify names.

[00:45:48] They didn't give a shit. It sold papers. That was the whole point, because this was sensationalism as a business model, the era of yellow journalism. I've mentioned it many times before. What's funny about this, it was named for the Yellow Kid, which was a cartoon mascot that ran in these trash fire publications.

[00:46:09] The goal was not the truth. It was to sell shock and spectacle. And editors didn't care if Holmes was lying. In fact, they wanted him to lie bigger. The bigger the better. It's like the first National Inquirer. 100%. They ran with terms like the House of Horrors, castle of Death one article claims Holmes had built a torture device that slowly crushed people in a shrinking room. Utter and nonsense, complete nonsense.

[00:46:41] The building was called Cursed. It partially burned down in 1895, which only added to this legend Later books, documentaries, historical societies leaned into the drama, and the facts were, were buried in this, in this whole thing.

[00:46:57] ​

[00:47:02] Jenn: Normally we have a theories section where we talk about suspects.

[00:47:06] There's one suspect, his name is Herman Webster. Mu AKA. , HH Holmes. So we know who did this, but there are some interesting theories that revolve around HH Holmes that I think are fun. Fun's a bad word to use when talking about murder. Go with it. Sorry about that. We talked about this a little bit in our Jack the Ripper episode that HH Holmes and Jack the Ripper are one and the same. Mm,

[00:47:35] Jared: mm-hmm.

[00:47:37] Jenn: There is an entire camp of theories that believe HH Holmes sailed to London in 1888 and became Jack the Ripper, slaughtering women in the East end before returning to Chicago to build his castle of death.

[00:47:56] A few problems with this theory is that there were no travel records that tie Holmes to London during the murders. In fact, there are records that show that he was in Philadelphia or Chicago at the times of the Jack the Ripper murders. Also, Jack's method for killing was very frenzied, anatomical, fast, very angry.

[00:48:21] , Holmes killed in secret. He usually used poison or gas. And Holmes never claimed to be the ripper, and he claimed everything else, right? All right. , I think if he would thought that it would make him more famous, he totally would've bragged about it. Would've, yeah. Would've ran with that. He was that guy.

[00:48:39] Dirt bag. The biggest issue is that Holmes didn't kill for compulsion. He killed for convenience. Uh, Jack was angry, frantic, quick, brutal Holmes just in and out. He wanted to disappear. He didn't wanna deal with all that. So he, no, he wasn't Jack the ripper.

[00:48:57] He was a fraud. He was a fraud. How many people did he actually kill? Holmes confessed to 27, but at least seven of those were later found alive. Okay. This guy, , most historians believed he killed around nine to 12, possibly more because there were other disappearances that surrounded him. But it's really hard to say.

[00:49:24] Yeah. , Not a hundred, 200 plus. That's all absolute. Who's got time for that? I don't know. That's a lot. , There were other people that he may have killed. He had employees and acquaintances that disappeared around him. And it's entirely possible that he is responsible for their disappearances.

[00:49:44] Unfortunately, without evidence, I don't think it's proper dis sensationalized that Yeah, I, I want those people to get their justice. But based off of what you're guessing, guesswork. Yeah. I don't think that's right. without bodies consistent records it, this is all going to be guesswork. Another theory is that he lied to protect accomplices or just for fame.

[00:50:12] Some people suggest Holmes had help maybe from housekeepers assistance or business partners who looked the other way or helped cover things up. Personally, I don't believe this 'cause I think he was a total control freak. I think he had to have control over everything, and he was a mega narcissist with an ego problem.

[00:50:33] So, you know, his confession was definitely self-serving. , There were contradictions and motivations probably for his legacy, but I don't think he would lie to protect somebody. I don't think he gives a shit about anybody himself. And here's the real question. Did he have a killing compulsion or was it all about the grift?

[00:50:54] Yeah, agreed. What do you think? Yes. He didn't have a killer compulsion. He didn't, eh, the convenience is the best way to put it. Yeah. I mean, I think he was definitely a psychopath. Yeah. Yeah. But 100% he showed no remorse. He lied with ease. He manipulated people like crazy. But he got to manipulate. He did everything to just get the life he wanted.

[00:51:18] Yeah. It was all for profit. I don't think he. I don't think he enjoyed it. It's just what he needed. Right. It was easy. Yeah, definitely.

[00:51:29] ​

[00:51:34] ​

[00:51:39] Jenn: I think the cultural impact is pretty clear here. . Yeah, you'll still find headlines that call him America's First Serial Killer. Netflix gave him a special, Leonardo DiCaprio bought the rights to his story. It's still in the works. It's been the works for 10 years.

[00:51:55] That would be really cool. I'd watch that shit.

[00:51:56] Jared: Yeah. Interesting.

[00:51:57] Jenn: , There are haunted house tours, conspiracy theories, ripper rumors, TikTok videos. I'm gonna make one, recounting his body shoot or a gas chamber, whatever. Let's be honest, Holmes was not a mastermind in that sense. He wasn't even particularly successful.

[00:52:15] He got caught, he was a mediocre con man with just enough charm to trick a few people. Kill a few more and lie his way into a better headline. Fact is that he didn't become infamous because of what he did. It was when he did it. The 1893 World's Fair.

[00:52:35] The Great Fire had already painted the city as one reborn from flames. The Gilded age press needed monsters to sell the paper, enter this pistachio, nobody with a fake name and a flare for self-promotion. And thus, the, the, the papers dubbed him the Devil of Chicago. None of it was true. Not even Holmes could keep his lies straight.

[00:52:58] We like our monsters brilliant. We're uncomfortable with the idea that evil can be banal or sloppy or mediocre. And that's what Holmes was. He was just a con man. But. That's not interesting and that's not fun and that doesn't make stories interesting. So they say he built a death maze.

[00:53:19] He wasn't Hannibal Lecter. Hmm. Or squid games. No, not even that. Interesting. Yeah, no, it was good. I actually learned a lot today. I did, I mean a bonus. I think the dude was seriously evil, but I don't think he was a devil. Right. He was just a shitbag. Okay. He was. Okay. So what do you think apparently I'm, he's a shitbag.

[00:53:49] No, that's what I think. No, I said he was, I, I mean I think that he was a smart con man up to a point. But I think he also probably got lazy. 'cause he kept thinking the whole, the, the same cons. Same boring cons that Ed worked for a period of time, caught up with him. 'cause you can't do that. You can't do that.

[00:54:09] You're, you can't be a great con man and do the same shit forever and ever and ever. I don't know. I'm not a con man. I've never been a particularly great liar. So, yeah. So he caught up with him? He got caught up with him. So that's today's tale of HH Holmes. I hope you all enjoyed it. If you are interested in listening to a little bit more, after editing, anything that didn't make the final cut, anything that went on too long, our tangents, our silly moments, our deep dive into the details that can be found at patreon.com/house of six.

[00:54:44] I enjoyed today. Thanks. It's fun. And we'll be back next week. We drop episodes every Tuesday. We'll be back next week with another interesting tale. I'm actually gonna pull something straight from today's episode and expand on it and make it a whole new episode. Uhoh own Taco Tuesday doesn't have to be tacos.

[00:55:07] What's another T word? Testosterone Tuesday. Oh, I was gonna say Testicle Tuesday. Testicle Tuesday. Alright, gimme another T word. Thanks everybody. Bye bye.

[00:55:32] Head over to patreon.com/has of six to unlock our bonus series. Where we take apart the myths, explore the weird parts, and share oddities that didn't fit into the main show.

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[00:55:49] And don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. It really helps us keep this going.

[00:55:54] Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Same house. Different haunting.

[00:58:15] Through trap lights, doors, and basement screams. He sold you rooms and stole your dreams. His mustache curled with every con. Now, letters sort where life went wrong.

[00:58:27] ​