H.H. Holmes: America's First Serial Killer and His Murder Castle

The Devil in the White City

By Victor J. Fisher

January 19, 2025

Herman Webster Mudgett, better known as H.H. Holmes, is often called America’s first serial killer. Between 1891 and 1894, he murdered an unknown number of victims in Chicago, many of them in a building specifically designed to facilitate killing. The true death toll will never be known. Holmes confessed to 27 murders, though investigators believed the actual number could be far higher. Some estimates reach into the hundreds, though these figures are likely exaggerated.

What makes Holmes unique in the annals of serial murder is not merely the number of his victims but the infrastructure he created to kill them. He built a hotel with hidden rooms, soundproof chambers, gas lines that could asphyxiate guests, and a basement crematorium to dispose of bodies. He transformed architecture itself into a murder weapon.

The Con Man Becomes a Killer

Holmes was born in New Hampshire in 1861. By all accounts, he was intelligent and charming, qualities he would use throughout his life to manipulate others. He attended medical school at the University of Michigan, where he allegedly participated in insurance fraud schemes involving stolen cadavers.

After medical school, Holmes drifted through various cities under various names, running scams and leaving debts behind him. He eventually settled in Chicago in 1886, taking a job at a pharmacy in the Englewood neighborhood. When the pharmacy’s owner disappeared under mysterious circumstances, Holmes took over the business. Whether he murdered her or simply drove her off remains uncertain.

Holmes used the pharmacy as a base to build something grander. In 1887, he began construction on a building across the street that would become known as the Murder Castle.

The Architecture of Death

Holmes designed the building himself, claiming it would be a hotel to serve visitors to the upcoming 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. He hired multiple contractors, firing them frequently so that no single worker understood the full layout. He claimed this was to avoid paying bills, but it also ensured no one could later describe the building’s true nature.

The completed structure was three stories tall and occupied an entire city block. The ground floor housed commercial spaces. The upper floors contained approximately 100 rooms configured in a deliberately confusing layout. Hallways led to dead ends. Staircases went nowhere. Doors opened onto brick walls.

Hidden within this maze were chambers designed for murder. Some rooms were airtight and connected to gas lines, allowing Holmes to asphyxiate victims as they slept. Others had walls lined with asbestos, making them soundproof. Chutes connected upper floors to the basement, allowing bodies to be transported without being seen.

The basement contained Holmes’s processing center: surgical tables, vats of acid, a crematorium, and quicklime pits. Here, Holmes could dispose of bodies, strip flesh for skeleton sales to medical schools, and eliminate all evidence of his crimes.

The World’s Fair Hunting Ground

The 1893 World’s Fair brought 27 million visitors to Chicago. Holmes positioned himself to profit. He rented rooms in his hotel, particularly to young women who came to the city seeking employment. Many of these women were never seen again.

Holmes was careful in his victim selection. He targeted people who would not be immediately missed: new arrivals to the city, women without local family connections, individuals who had told no one where they were staying. When victims disappeared, there was often no one to report them missing or connect them to Holmes.

Beyond simple murder, Holmes ran multiple fraud schemes. He would take out life insurance policies on employees or romantic partners, kill them, and collect the payouts. He would hire workers, avoid paying them, and sometimes eliminate them when they became too persistent in demanding wages. He would seduce women, promise marriage, drain their bank accounts, and dispose of them.

Holmes was, in every sense, a predator who viewed other humans as resources to be exploited and discarded.

The Unraveling

Holmes’s downfall began not with murder but with insurance fraud. In 1894, he executed an elaborate scheme involving his business partner, Benjamin Pitezel. The plan was to fake Pitezel’s death and collect insurance money. Instead, Holmes simply killed Pitezel and collected the real payout.

He then spent months traveling with three of Pitezel’s children, whom he had taken under the guise of reuniting them with their father. During this journey, he murdered all three children and buried them in various locations across North America.

A detective named Frank Geyer, hired by the insurance company to investigate the fraud, began tracking Holmes’s movements. Geyer found the bodies of the Pitezel children in Toronto and Indianapolis. When Holmes was arrested in Philadelphia on fraud charges, investigators began looking more closely at his activities in Chicago.

What they found in the Murder Castle horrified them.

The Investigation

In August 1895, police and journalists descended on Holmes’s building in Chicago. What they discovered confirmed the worst suspicions.

In the basement, they found human bones, blood-stained surgical implements, and a crematorium that still contained ash and bone fragments. They found vats of acid with human remains dissolving inside. They found chutes connecting to rooms above, designed for transporting bodies.

The building’s layout revealed its purpose. Secret passages, hidden rooms, and doors that locked from the outside all pointed to deliberate design for imprisonment and murder. Gas fixtures in sealed rooms showed how Holmes could kill without direct contact.

The investigation was hampered by a fire that partially destroyed the building shortly after police access began. Whether this was accidental or deliberately set to destroy evidence remains uncertain. What survived was damning enough.

The Trial and Execution

Holmes was tried in Philadelphia for the murder of Benjamin Pitezel. The evidence was overwhelming: Holmes had been the last person to see Pitezel alive, had possessed the insurance money, and had subsequently murdered the man’s children. On May 7, 1896, H.H. Holmes was hanged.

Before his execution, Holmes gave various accounts of his crimes. He confessed to 27 murders but later recanted and claimed innocence. He blamed his behavior on demonic possession. He expressed no genuine remorse.

The true number of Holmes’s victims will never be known. The chaos of the World’s Fair, the transient nature of his victims, and the thoroughness of his body disposal make accounting impossible. Estimates range from nine confirmed murders to the hundreds that some sensationalist accounts have claimed.

Lessons from the Holmes Case

Charm Conceals Danger

Holmes was, by all accounts, enormously charming. He seduced women, convinced investors, and manipulated everyone he encountered. This charm was not separate from his predation; it was the primary tool of it. We must remember that pleasant personalities can mask terrible intentions.

Institutional Gaps Enable Crime

Holmes exploited the chaos of rapid urbanization and the World’s Fair to select victims who would not be missed. He operated in the gaps between jurisdictions, moving frequently and using multiple identities. Better record-keeping, communication between police departments, and missing persons protocols might have stopped him sooner.

Infrastructure Matters

Holmes literally built systems to facilitate murder. This represents an extreme case, but the principle applies more broadly. When we evaluate environments, we should consider how physical spaces might enable or prevent harm.

Fraud and Violence Often Connect

Holmes was a con man before he was a killer, and his murders often served financial purposes. The insurance industry has since developed significant fraud detection mechanisms, partly because of cases like this. Financial crimes should not be dismissed as victimless; they sometimes indicate or facilitate violence.

The Legacy

H.H. Holmes entered American mythology as a uniquely American monster: an entrepreneur of death who commodified murder during the optimistic peak of the Gilded Age. His story has been told in books, documentaries, and films. The Murder Castle became a symbol of the darkness lurking beneath progress.

Whether Holmes deserves the title of “America’s first serial killer” is debatable. Others certainly killed multiple victims before him. But Holmes was perhaps the first to industrialize the process, to build infrastructure for murder, and to operate at a scale that shocked even a nation familiar with violence.

The Murder Castle is long gone, demolished and rebuilt as a post office. But the questions it raises persist: how do predators hide among us, and what can we do to find them before they claim more victims?

Until next time, stay curious, stay vigilant.

Yours in darkness,

Victor J. Fisher