H.H. Holmes (real name Herman Webster Mudgett) was an American con artist, bigamist, and serial murderer. His gruesome deeds made him famous, and the newspapers expanded that fame. People know the story of his murder castle, where gruesome tortures, dissections, and murders supposedly took place. But when you look at the story as a whole, what is actually true, and what is the result of yellow journalism? Join us as we add another entry into this, our Macabrepedia.
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H.H. Holmes (real name Herman Webster Mudgett) was an American con artist, bigamist, and serial murderer. His gruesome deeds made him famous, and the newspapers expanded that fame. People know the story of his murder castle, where gruesome tortures, dissections, and murders supposedly took place. But when you look at the story as a whole, what is actually true, and what is the result of yellow journalism? Join us as we add another entry into this, our Macabrepedia.
Twitter & Facebook: @macabrepedia
Instagram: @macabrepediapod
Email us at: @Macabrepediapod@gmail.com
Macabrepedia makes light of dark subject matters and may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
Marissa:burned alive with blow torches in the wall, a crematory in the basement shelves full of acids to disintegrate a body. Boiling a man alive and oil suffocating with chloroform. hidden rooms well sealed windows to eight easy suffocation laundry chutes that were used to transport bodies of the basement, dissections, grave robbing black market, Oregon selling these are all part of the law that has grown around a man who was born Herman Webster, Majid. The Chicago chronicle condemned him as quote, a multi murderer, big A mist seducer, resurrection, earnest forger thief and general swindler, and as a man without parallel in the annals of crime. Many of the facts around these murders are now considered to be false, concocted by yellow journalism to sell more papers. But the fact remains that he certainly did kill many people, often for life insurance payouts, some probably accidentally, and some to keep his other crimes hidden. This American tall tale was spun from more than just a few kernels of truth. And while Herman Webster Mudgett did many things terrible and evil. The world does not remember his name. instead. They remember his Murder Castle and a pseudonym, the man himself concocted Henry Howard or HH Holmes Join us as we add another entry into this our Macabrepedia
Matthew:Hello, and welcome to Macabrepedia a marriage of true crime and the truly bizarre we are your hosts Matthew and Marissa. And today it sounds like we are going into the dark side of Neverland Ranch. What? What are what are we talking about that?
Marissa:Alright, well, we I figured for our 50th episode, we could do some one of the big ones you know Jack the Ripper, HH Holmes yada yada. But the 50th episode was actually mid series when we were doing this a tenant packet panic. So this is actually episode 52.
Matthew:Okay, so the 52/52 episode that makes it feel like it's the one year anniversary episode. Yeah. If we had done them all once a week, but we've skipped a few weeks.
Marissa:Yeah, not many, but we have. But anyway. So first off, and as I mentioned in the cold open HH Holmes was not actually named HH Holmes the HH stood for Henry Howard homes, but he had many aliases in addition to that, but his birth name was Herman Webster, Majid,
Matthew:which is a better serial killer name.
Marissa:Yeah, it really is. Just sounds creepy.
Matthew:Majid demodulator I don't have any further jokes on that. Okay.
Marissa:So Born May 16 1861. In gilmanton, New Hampshire. Herman was the absolute middle child of five siblings born to a fairly wealthy family. Other sources say he had two siblings other say four or another say three, but let's just say he had four. He was the fifth.
Matthew:Okay, just to really hammer home a middle middle child.
Marissa:That's what I got from that.
Matthew:You also said like New Hampshire, like there has never been someone in New Hampshire capable of doing this
Marissa:New Hampshire is a nice state.
Matthew:Just like he's from all places, New Hampshire. Can you imagine New Hampshire?
Marissa:I know.
Matthew:We have five, five episodes on murderers from Massachusetts,
Marissa:and we do plenty in New England but not New Hampshire, New Hampshire. He had a pretty standard childhood by most accounts, though some do say that it was maybe not so standard that there's conflicting accounts here. Some say that he tortured and abused animals or that he was abused by his father. There is no proof of this, but who was to say based upon what he would do later. And to get away from his parents. He would often read popular novels of the era or he would hide in the woods. He would one little things that that he would keep and treasure one of his own teeth that he kept in a box. You know, whatever, for
Matthew:his whole life when he was a
Marissa:kid. Oh, it's not that weird when you're a kid, I guess. But um, so
Matthew:you never kept your tooth when you found out the Tooth Fairy wasn't real. Um, spoiler sorry. A lead digitally,
Marissa:allegedly. No, I never did. But I guess it was just because I wasn't weird when I was a kid. I have now but it wasn't that.
Matthew:I mean, I didn't I don't consider. I mean, I don't as a person who has done that. I didn't I don't consider that to be that weird. Let us know if you
Marissa:or if you've collected body parts.
Matthew:Yeah. Do you keep your own peeled scabs and teeth into a little box?
Marissa:I mean, I know my mom did. She kept my teeth. Oh,
Matthew:I thought you're gonna say your mom kept the boxes. scabs.
Marissa:Oh, no horrible, you know, which didn't
Matthew:keep my team taking little nibbles. You okay, that's that's a joke from another comedian. I have no idea. I can't remember who it was. Okay, well, George Carlin thinks George Carlin.
Marissa:I don't know. I'll just have to. I don't know.
Matthew:I'm just saying. I don't don't ask me about the fact that I recycled somebody else's jokes. I'm not really that funny.
Marissa:So anyway, when he was a kid, he was often bullied. One time he was even locked in a doctor's office with a human skeleton by his classmates, and he was terrified. And this grew into a fascination with dead things and dissections. He was he was genuinely terrified of the skeleton, like he was super scared. So I guess that just manifested into an interest later.
Matthew:Oh goodness.
Marissa:So when Herman was 16 years old, he graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy. The next year, he met and married Clara Lovering, and they had a child the next year, a son named Robert lowering budget. Hermann enrolled in the University of Vermont, in Burlington, and he apprenticed under a guy named named Wright, who was a human dissection advocate, but he didn't really care for it there. So he dropped out and then he enrolled in the University of Michigan's Department of Medicine and Surgery. While there, he was pretty mediocre student but this allowed him to work with the chief anatomy Instructure instructor, Professor William James Hurdman, and they collaborate collaborated to rob Fresh, fresh graves, searching for fresh corpses to dissect at the medical school. They would rob the graves and sell the bodies
Matthew:right. We've covered resurrection this. Yeah, we
Marissa:haven't covered Herman doing it.
Matthew:I know. I'm saying for your audience, they can go back and listen, we have Yeah, like that. That behavior was fairly common.
Marissa:Oh, yeah. At this time, it was. Herman did end up graduating from there in 1884. But it was a close thing because he was almost stopped from graduating when a widowed hairdresser came forward and said that he had made a false promise of marriage to her. Was this something why would that stop him from graduate? I don't know. I don't know that you graduate based on
Matthew:on character.
Marissa:I mean, I guess it did include his character but I don't know
Matthew:he's, he's still he's still in bodies. Well, and it's and that that that's just turned a blind eye but you said you like
Marissa:medical school, they had to have bodies they always did that.
Matthew:I know what I'm saying like, he's stealing bodies and that's okay. But promising a hairdresser for a date and not fulfilling it is grounds for not being able to graduate just saying
Marissa:Wild Times. During this time, he toted around Claire and Robert roommates described Robert were the two corpses that you know, his wife and child
Matthew:who are living life and
Marissa:roommates describe their relationship as violent, with Herman being very angry and aggressive toward Clara. And she eventually just got really tired of this and left moving back to New Hampshire. She claimed later that she rarely saw him afterwards. So they were still married. But she just never really saw him after that after this. But it's probably good for the child. Oh, maybe. Now he ended up fine. He was he's he ended up being perfectly normal. Fine guy. Okay. I'm just saying
Matthew:story. You're gonna tell us more details of that.
Marissa:Well, yeah, but not now. He traveled to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and he got a job at Norristown State Hospital.
Matthew:Right. We're talking we're going back to murder man.
Marissa:We're going back to murder man. Herman
Matthew:budget. Yeah, Permin monster now.
Marissa:But he quit after just a few days. And he felt it wasn't quite right for him. So then he got a job at a drugstore in Philadelphia. And while he was there, a boy died after taking medicine that was purchased from there. Hermann denied tampering with the medicine and denied any involvement, but he immediately left the city. At this point, he changed his name to avoid being recognized by previous victims of his various and sundry scams. He did this a few times. Actually. He had many aliases, as a walker
Matthew:will hold on. So this kid dies can take a medicine that he prescribed or the prescribed prescription for whatever and And then he dips out of town. I mean, that makes sense. But what are the other scams? This is like the I'm
Marissa:gonna get to the scams, okay? Because he's escaping scams. I
Matthew:don't know the scams is that a scam? So
Marissa:a lot of it was life insurance fraud. He would, he would he would dig up corpses and then use them as dead bodies of people taking life insurance policies out on so that he could get the insurance payout.
Matthew:So he digs up a body says, Hey, this is so and so. Yeah, this is yeah. This is Marissa here. As you see this is Marissa is life insurance. Really? That's not Marissa.
Marissa:Yeah, he was he was a big insurance fraudster, for sure. And he's just a great guy,
Matthew:entrepreneur.
Marissa:So in 1886, he moved to Chicago. Hold on,
Matthew:on the insurance fraud. We've also covered people who do insurance fraud stuff. And the way he's doing it is the best way so far. Everybody knows he's not killing the person to get insurance. He's, he's claiming that this person has insurance to our
Marissa:knowledge. He didn't, because he lied a lot. But to our knowledge, he didn't kill anybody to do well. Okay, at this point at this point in time, yes.
Matthew:Spoiler pickins.
Marissa:So he moved to Chicago at six and this is when he became known as Henry Howard Holmes. So obviously, HH Holmes This is when he adopts that name. And in 1886, while he is still technically married to Clara, he married a woman named Mirta Belkin up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A few weeks after this, he tried to file from divorced for divorce from Clara, saying that infidelity on her part was the reason tracks went up. Because these claims couldn't be proven. They didn't go anywhere, and they remained legally married. So at this point, he's committing bigamy, but whatever.
Matthew:So but does he is but he does actually legally marry her. So he has his wife's name is murder budget.
Marissa:Well, it would be murder Holmes at this point.
Matthew:Yeah, but technically, I'll tell you. It's murder. Murder. Mudgett. The wife of a murderer.
Marissa:Yeah. But they I mean, she thinks she's married to him legally, but he's already married. So she can't be.
Matthew:I thought it was funny. It's
Marissa:funny. So because of these claims, that couldn't be proven this didn't go anywhere. They remained legally married. Holmes ended up having a daughter with murder who was named Lucy Thea date Holmes in Chicago in 1889. We're gonna say something. Cynthia day, the data good name.
Matthew:So interesting name. And most of us have some kind of history to
Marissa:it. I don't know. It's good name. No, he spent much of his time in Chicago with Marta and Lucy attending to business. But he also married a woman named Georgie on a yoke in 1894 in Denver, Colorado. So he's now married to three women, the last two unknowingly to the women were unlawful. So point being this is a very charismatic and charming man, and he had many mistresses and fiance's in addition to these three women, so he's very popular with the ladies. When Holmes moved to Chicago, he happened to go into Elizabeth South Elizabeth eth s Hilton's drugstore, which was the corner of West 63rd street and South Wallace Avenue. She took a liking to him, and she offered him a job. Holmes did prove to be an excellent employee, and he even eventually bought the store from them. He also purchased an empty lot that was across from the drugstore, and began construction in that lot in 1887. For a two story building that would be both apartments on the second floor, and a retail drugstore on the first floor. So the construction on this new building was not without some problems. One of homes creditors died in the store in 1891 of apoplexy. apoplexy. And yeah, I'll get you every time. He was also sued by some architects and the Aetna iron and steel company when he refused to pay them for the work that they had done. Also something that comes up pretty commonly. He added a third floor to the building in 1892, telling various investors and creditors that he was planning to use it for the upcoming World's Columbian expedition. The World's Fair. Yeah, this was never fully completed, though. It was partially finished with three stories in a basement, and it was definitely used as a hotel for a period for these people who were coming to visit. one of if not the earliest victims was a woman named Joyce Julia Smyth. Smyth was the wife of Ned Connor, but also she was Holmes's mistress. Yeah, Ned Connor had been working at homes as pharmacies jewelry counter, but He quit and moved away after finding out about his wife's affair with homes. And this left Smyth and her daughter Pearl staying with homes with whom she continued the relationship. Julia and Pearl both disappeared on Christmas Eve 1891 and were never seen again. Homes claimed that Julia had died during an abortion, but later claimed that he had poisoned pearl to hide the mother's death. It's unclear if Holmes tried to perform the abortion himself. He did have a little medical training, though not at all remotely close to that. Yeah, I
Matthew:feel like he thought it was a pretty easy procedure.
Marissa:Maybe but it wasn't great. Apparently. That was his story if it even happened like that. A partial skeleton was found when excavating Holmes's cellar. Possibly a child. Pearls father, Ned was a key witness and Holmes is trial for this. Which we'll get to his trial later. But yeah, that's gotta be terrible. You know, your wife, you know, cheats on you. So you just leave and you leave your daughter because she's with her mother and then you find out that daughter dies.
Matthew:That's terrible. Yeah. And buried in a basement somewhere.
Marissa:Another woman disappeared in May of 1892. Emily's the grant. She'd been working in the building. And rumors after the woman disappearing claim that she had been pregnant by Holmes, possibly a victim of another failed abortion. This dude. All the ladies. He's telling you. Another young woman vanished from Holmes's building where she works named where he where she works named Emily Van Tassel. No knowledge if she was, you know, saying hammer not. Holmes was working at the Chemical Bank building when he became close with a guy named Benjamin pizzelle. Potential sorry, a carpenter. Benjamin had a criminal past but was trying to, you know, kind of make something of himself and he he became he was trying to show off something he invented but he also just became close friends with Holmes at this point. But Tesla was described as Holmes's right hand man and his quote, creature, as a district attorney later
Matthew:said, Nice he got it and got him got himself and Igor straight
Marissa:up fee or Yeah, a woman named Minnie Williams moved to Chicago and met Holmes, he offered her a job at the hotel as a stenographer. So she accepted. He actually convinced her to transfer the deed of her property in Fort Worth, Texas. So a guy named Alexandra bond. And Alexandra Bond was just another alias for Holmes. Holmes actually actually does the notary to transfer the property to him. So, yeah, I don't know if she actually knew that that was him. But yeah,
Matthew:telling you, man, this guy's got an entrepreneurial spirit. He definitely did. And he must be, I mean, the stache alone oozes with charisma.
Marissa:I mean, he's one of them. He's not bad looking man. But but the pricing
Matthew:it's it's more than just his looks like this. Do she is able to convince people of some stuff.
Marissa:Yeah. All the best criminal do best in quotations?
Matthew:Yeah. I mean, I guess
Marissa:Yeah. So anyway, homes and many rented an apartment in Chicago acting as husband and wife and her sister Annie came to visit them. But then shortly thereafter, neither woman was ever seen alive after July 4, July 5 at 93. Weird, super weird. She wasn't even the only stenographer of homes who went missing. woman named Kitty Kelly also went missing missing in 1892. And then between 1891 and 1893, six other people vanished. Holmes is suspected to have killed them all. Dr. rustler, who had an office in Holmes's building went missing in 1892, John G. David of Greenville, Pennsylvania, visited the World's Fair and then vanished. Henry Walker of Greensburg, Indiana, went missing in November 8 93. Henry Walker allegedly insured his life for$20,000 to homes and written to his friends that he was working for him before he disappeared.
Matthew:Insured his life to to his employer. Yeah.
Marissa:Yeah, well, actually, I read that. And I don't know if this is true, because a lot of this is maybe true, maybe not. But I read that
Matthew:whole supposed to be true crime. There's a lot of gray
Marissa:area in the story. There's a lot of different like versions of the story paths that it takes. But I read that actually a condition of employment for homes was to make a to take out a life insurance policy and make him the beneficiary. Yeah, nice. I don't know. Milford Cole of Baltimore, Maryland received a telegram from homes to go to Chicago, and she did in July 1894. before disappearing. Lucy Burbank bankbook was found in Holmes's castle in 1895 and was likely another victim. Holmes claimed an insurance policy on the hotel after a fire but the insurance companies Thought he was at fault went wrong and attempted to prosecute him for arson, which is when Holmes left Chicago.
Matthew:That's also something that's like the insurance companies get him get a probably assume that
Marissa:you're not going to just pay out without question. So this is July 18 94. Busy, busy, very busy few days, a few years here. This is also when he was arrested for the first time and jailed briefly for selling mortgage goods in St. Louis. He was bailed out fairly quickly. But he made a new acquaintance, maned Marian Hedgepeth. This guy, he just made friends everywhere. He's a likable dude. So Marian hedge path with with whom he planned to swindle an insurance company out of $10,000 by faking his own death, of which alias? Yeah, no, right.
Matthew:Oh, I could die like six times gonna be great.
Marissa:So much money. He promised Hedgepeth that he would give him $500 If he would supply the name of a lawyer he could trust. And Hedgepeth gave him the name jetset Jeff Theia. How never heard that name. It's good name Jeptha. Anyway, he was definitely on board with the scheme. And he agreed to help. However, the plan didn't work out because the insurance company became suspicious and refused to pay. I mean, yeah, he's not actually did. So after he decided to leave Chicago, this is when he went to Fort Worth where remember he now owned property for many Williams who had signed it over to him. When he got there, he started over and began building another structure. But again, he didn't pay the people who did the work. So any contractors, suppliers etc. They didn't get paid for the work that they did. When Holmes's scheme to fake his own death for insurance money failed, he in his right hand man's potential came up with a new plan. Potential agreed to fake his own death so that his wife could get $10,000 in insurance money, with the agreement that this money would then be split between both homes and potential. The plan was for potential to go to Philadelphia and pretend to be an inventor named B. F. Perry. Where he would be killed and importantly disfigured in a lab explosion.
Matthew:There you go. All right. All right.
Marissa:Holmes his job in this was to find a cadaver that resembled a Tesla enough that it could be mistaken for him with a few dis figurations. But Holmes was not to be trusted. Surprise, surprise. He later confessed that he knocked potential unconscious with chloroform and set his body on fire with benzene, a colorless and highly flammable liquid.
Matthew:And he said, I have just the corpse. Yeah, I know. Don't you worry, it's gonna No one is.
Marissa:Holmes would say that potential was still alive when he set him on fire. But forensic evidence later showed that the chloroform had been used after his death, not before. And this was speculated that it was to imply suicide that at home so that Holmes could not be convicted just in case he was charged. But as his wife was it on this, she the murder person she was in on the insurance fraud scheme. So this is also how he was able to convince her that he was still alive. So after potential died, Holmes collected the $10,000 insurance payout. Since potential had truly died, there weren't that many questions, I guess. He then somehow convinced potentials widow to take to place three of her five children in his care. This was Alice, Nellie and Howard. Holmes would travel with these three children throughout the northern us and into Canada. But meanwhile, he also separately would be escorting Mrs. P. Edsel. Also lying to her about where Piazza was, he claimed that he was hiding out in London. And he also lied about the whereabouts for other three children, which were in some cases only a few blocks away from her. Wow. Yeah. completely unknown to her and that's truly tragic. Holmes spoiler, Holmes later convinced confessed to killing Alice Nellie by forcing them into a large trunk and locking them inside. He then drilled a hole into the lid of the trunk and put one end of a hole through it, attaching the other into a gas line. asphyxiating the girls. He then buried their nude bodies in the cellar of a rental home in Toronto. And then he went to Indianapolis and purchased drugs at a pharmacy to kill Howard. Which whose body he caught up and burned. Oh, wow. Yeah, I mean, Piazza was actually his. I mean, he was he was called his right hand man his creature for a reason and And none of that loyalty was repaid at all. Obviously, he was killed and his children were killed. I mean, people speculate he did this to try to cover up his crime. But I don't know about that, because the eldest daughter was not placed in his care. Who would you think be more aware of what was going on?
Matthew:I mean, the guy they got, I mean, in a way, it seems like the guy knows what he's doing. I mean, and I mean, to get away with it effectively, like, I mean, I'm assuming this, the all of these things that you're you're talking about are coming out. After he gets caught for something. Yeah. Like, it's not like they're chasing him after like finding these things. No, no, not really. Yeah. Which means that he was the was pretty smooth until he wasn't. Yeah,
Marissa:I mean, they started to get suspicious. Authorities got suspicious of him, but he got away with it for a while. I don't know, smoke, I guess. Finally, on November 17 1894. In Boston, the Pinkerton national detective agency arrested Holmes. He was held in custody for suspected horse theft.
Matthew:What? Yep, that
Marissa:happens a lot, though. You know, they they think somebody's done something terrible, and then get them on a smaller crime and hold them for a while. Holmes had stolen horses from Texas, shipped them to St. Louis, and then sold them making a fortune but the authorities were suspicious of former.
Matthew:But this is still again, it's all at 94 at this time. Yeah. I know. Dude is just like, how many hours in the day is this dude have to dedicate to so many stones? Yeah, just so many just criminal activities.
Marissa:The bodies of the two girls would later be found by Frank Guyer, a Philadelphia police detective. They were decomposing at this point. And he would say that, quote, The deeper we dug, the more horrible the odor became. And when we reached the depth of three feet, we discovered what appeared to be the bone of the of a forearm of a human being. And then later went, Geiger went and found the boy's teeth and bits of his bones in the chimney of a home that Holmes had rented in Indianapolis.
Matthew:Why? Why what? Why would he do that? Why would he put the teeth in a chimney?
Marissa:I'm guessing he tried to burn the evidence.
Matthew:Oh, yeah. Yes, I'm thinking chimney as it led to chimney shoot. Like he's like, like, it's up top, rather than just like, and you know, and the part where you put like the wood or the coal or whatever. That makes more sense to find it there.
Marissa:After guy are found these bodies. They naturally went to Holmes's castle in Chicago and they'll over to other sources say that they did find a lot there. Surprisingly, they really didn't find any evidence that they could use there or maybe they just didn't use it because they already had him on some other stuff.
Matthew:Well, that's well, yeah, that that that's another tactic that we've kind of seen previously in this time period. But also you get it you get them one at a time so that you can try them and try and try and try them. But yeah, I mean he's known for the he's known for the Murder Castle it's weird that they that that's like the way that you present it as like an afterthought
Marissa:Well, it's because it's exaggerated that's that's
Matthew:that's like the thing that he's known knowns having this Murder Castle and
Marissa:yellow journalism it just sensationalized the whole thing and made it out to be so much more than it was. But the Murder House was gutted by a fire shortly after Holmes was arrested, unknown arsonist that the said that two guys were spotted leaving after that place was set on fire. But I mean, he was still alive at this point Holmes was. So it was right after he was arrested and it was just gutted by fire. All the evidence, I guess destroyed better. No. They don't. They never found that people who did it. The building was actually used as a post office until 1938. After that. Yeah, so in October 1895, Holmes was put on trial for the murder of Benjamin Benjamin puzzle. Hey, suppose a good friend and right hand man. Holmes represented himself as at the trial showing, of course he did. Yeah, of course, remarkable familiarity with the law. However, his charm was not quite enough for the jurors, and he was unanimously found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. It was clear, Holmes had also merged all three of the children that have been placed in his charge homes, then confessed to 27 murders in Chicago, Indianapolis and Toronto, and six attempted murders.
Matthew:Thing is tempted. Yeah, who got away?
Marissa:I don't know. I don't have that because they were just attempted and he confessed to them. And the thing is, maybe it
Matthew:was like, he just was he told them like nobody even realized that he had tried to Yeah, they're like, he tried to kill me.
Marissa:Well, also though, some of these people that he confessed to murder were We're still alive.
Matthew:Oh, he gets he wants to do it so much money. Yeah, we're confused. Yeah, I
Marissa:mean, why did he do this? It's unknown. But he was paid $7,500 by the Hearst newspaper for his confession. But I mean, he's in jail at this point. Yeah. The truth is we have no idea how many people Holmes killed, most likely somewhere between nine and 200, which I know is a huge range. Thanks for ya know, every source is like, oh, it's between nine and 200. Okay,
Matthew:between nine and 200. Yeah, that means you can definitely say nine. Yes, but you can also just anybody died between 1884 or 1882 and 1885. It was probably killed by him.
Marissa:Shortly before his death, he commented that he was turning into the devil. Even his face, according to him was taking on a demonic look.
Matthew:That's when he curled his mustache. Yeah.
Marissa:So may 7 1896. Holmes was hailed hanged at the Philadelphia County Prison for potentials murder, he went to the gallows rather nonchalant. He showed few signs of fear and anxiety, and he remained calm throughout the process. However, he did ask that his coffin be covered in cement and buried 10 feet deep, probably because he was concerned that people would do to him what he had done to others and grow up his grave. So when Holmes dropped from the gallows, he did not die immediately. Rather, his neck did not break, which was common, but he did not. He slowly strangled to death twitching for over 15 minutes. He was pronounced dead after 20 minutes of hanging from the rope. And his body was in turn into an unmarked grave and eat in Pennsylvania. There's just so much about the story. That or that that's exaggerated and mythical and mysterious.
Matthew:But the truth can be found in an episode of Supernatural which is a documentary that takes place in real time. And you can find it there
Marissa:so there are there are some things which I'll touch on here that there okay, so shortly after he moved to New York, a rumor spread that he had been seen with a little boy who disappeared. So this was another possible suspect or a possible murder victim, homeless claimed that the boy something went back to homes and Massachusetts, we don't know. You can at that time in a period in time, it's like you look them up on Facebook, you know, just and they went home. Okay, you know, it's pretty far away to find out so homes also lied a lot about who he killed for reasons only known to him. He claimed that he had killed a former classmate, Robert Lee caulk for insurance money. But it is an undisputed fact that Lee Cox actually died three years after Holmes said he killed him and in Ontario, Canada. So I just lied. Yeah. Yeah, there. There's also a myth that homes killed Elizabeth Holton and her husband. They're the ones who own the drugstore in Chicago when he first moved there already worked out. He bought their drugstore. But it's very unlikely that they actually killed them. Both of the homes actually outlived homes staying in Chicago.
Matthew:So of course, okay. If, if, if they both outlived him, then clearly he didn't kill them.
Marissa:Yeah, no, but people like to say that he you know, that's that's one of the things that he killed his employers. And yeah, he
Matthew:had, he had a very, very slow acting poison.
Marissa:Yeah, he bought the drugstore from them. And people say that he also killed them. But that's not likely to be the case. So it counts report that homes built this hotel portion to lower interest that he could kill, taking advantage of the nearby World's Fair. That's a lot of the mythology around him that, you know, he just built this to bring in tourists that he could just kill, you know, the story goes that he planned to murder them and sell their bodies or just their skeletons to a nearby medical school. But there's no evidence of this. In reality, it is sensationalist drama, though it's hard to say for sure. It's likely that Holmes personally knew each of his victims, rather than being strangers who came in for an overnight. He certainly did sell cadavers and skeletons to medical schools. That's absolutely true. But he also likely did this through grave robbing, and not outright murder. And as I said, I mean, supposedly, he also required his employees to carry life insurance policies. With him as the beneficiary. Yeah,
Matthew:I mean, if you have a body count that could go up to 200 It sounds like he's killing a lot of people, but also for some of these other things. It sounds like he's, he's not like, I don't know. It seems like he's doing a lot less homicidal ways like
Marissa:crime, but not necessarily murder. I mean, you did murder he might
Matthew:have just wanted to be a famous person. Yeah,
Marissa:maybe He also had a one story factory that he claimed was used for glass bending, but its own unknown if it was actually ever used for that. It's speculated that this factory was used to destroy evidence of his crimes.
Matthew:Because it would have like furnaces.
Marissa:Yeah. Patrick Quinlan, the former caretaker of the castle, died by suicide in 1914. And left a one sentence note, I could not sleep I thought was just interesting. I mean, it was years later, but he knew he knew the castle better than anyone and gnomes on a lot of ways. So finally, the most famous part of his story is his Murder Castle, with a name given to his hotel. The papers claimed this building had over 100 rooms laid out like a maze with trap doors, gas chambers, secret torture chambers, and even a basement crematorium. The rooms supposedly had doors that opened into a wall, windowless rooms, dead in staircases, and more. Beside a blood soaked operating table, they found a woman's clothes. Another another source said that, beside a blood soaked operating table, they found a woman's clothes and other surgical surface was nearby and a crematory lots of medical tools, a bizarre torture device and shelves of acids.
Matthew:Bizarre torture device, yeah, doesn't specify
Marissa:Holmes's fascination with dead bodies had apparently long lasted, but lasted long past college. But again, I mean, this doesn't line up with a lot of the story. So I don't know that this is necessarily true. This is more of a sensationalist part of it. They also said that he would drop victims down the laundry chutes, dissect them and then clean them and sell their organs and skeletons to medical institutions or on the black market. I don't think this happened from what I've read. But that is the story that everybody focuses on. I mean, a lot of the stories when I was doing this, a lot of them are actually report all that as a fact. But it's only maybe just in recent years when people have really thought about it and just think think that this is not true, but you
Matthew:can't just change it. I mean, if it's, but I mean if like if it's if it's if it's been reported, this fact report reported this fact, and then like, what 100 years later, you're like, you know what? Nah, nah, I don't know. That wasn't fact. Yeah. Do you have to have some kind of evidence to back that up?
Marissa:Well, the papers, the papers at the time, absolutely. Made that seem just like this horrendous murder factory almost. And they they put up like, diagrams of the layout of the hotel and stuff that you can see online. But it doesn't, I mean, again, the hotel was burned, you know, it was burned, it was pretty much gutted. And then it was tore down in 1938. I believe. So we can't say for sure. But every source kind of makes it seem like what they have reported is not quite
Matthew:true. Well, I mean, you said it was it acted as opposed to office till 1930. So I mean, I don't think it's going to be amazed with trapdoors, and all that stuff,
Marissa:right. And there were actually some, like hidden rooms, or the reason for it was because Holmes was really bad at paying his creditors. So he would buy furniture, and then when they came to repossess it because he didn't pay them, he would hide it in these rooms. Yes. So that was, that was why he had these rooms. But yeah, I don't know that lots of skepticism in recent years. The building, as I said, completely demolished in 1938, which is when of course, I stopped acting as a post office. But it was it was gone at that point. Home said, quote, I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet could help the inspiration to sing. No,
Matthew:he was an artiste. No, he was a psychopath.
Marissa:He was a psychopath. Some actually believe that he was friends, and maybe even mentored Jack the Ripper. I know,
Matthew:golly, kill nobody in the 1880s with
Marissa:Jack Welch. It was around the same time. So I'm saying this was owing in part to some diary entries, where he spoke of killing prostitutes in London. This Okay, these diary entries are. Well, his grandson had some had some journals that he said he inherited from his grandfather. And he did have them supposedly analyzed by handwriting analysis experts who concluded that they belonged to HH Holmes. The grandson claims that HH Holmes convinced someone else to go to the gallows for him something that contributed to the body being exhumed and tested in 2017 to make sure that it was him. It was him. Oh, it was actually remarkably well preserved, I guess because it had been encased in concrete
Unknown:and locked in. Well, Well,
Marissa:there's a lot of reason to doubt the veracity of these claims. But, you know, that's a tale for another time perhaps. So his son was Clara Robert, who I spoke about earlier. He became a city manager of Orlando, Florida. So he seemed to be well adjusted. His daughter
Matthew:Orlando, Florida has a bunch of secret hidey holes committed as Florida after all
Marissa:his daughter Lucy with Marta became a public school teacher. So his kids actually seemed okay his grandson maybe is or I don't know what he's doing now but at the time he was kind of you know how most people if they are descended from like a really terrible person will try to distance themselves from it. This guy's like whole hog into it. Oh, yes,
Matthew:like Markita sods ancestors yeah deny deny deny Yes, insistence that just one guy is like nah. I'll you want to brass scholar of his like, you're not but no, no, we can make money off this. We got wine. We got soaps, whatever.
Marissa:So Hulu is actually producing a show based upon the book Devil in the White City, which is about homes. And this will be starring Keanu Reeves. Oh, haha. Yeah. And it's being produced by Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio. See, that's why I didn't tell you earlier today. I was like, Ah, okay. It's not that I can't say I'm gonna save the podcast. But it's because Keanu Reeves is going to be in
Matthew:Jana Reeves Martin Scorsese, and DiCaprio Leonardo DiCaprio.
Marissa:So that is our episode on HH Holmes. And hopefully, you'll learn something. Probably not if you like true crime in the 1800s. But
Matthew:well, I mean, I as a person who's, you know, I've watched the cause like Netflix as a documentary on and stuff too. And they don't ever make it. They don't ever downplay the, the idea that it could all just be blown out of proportion. I don't think
Marissa:that's pretty much what I'm getting from all those. I mean, think about it. That would be I mean, I know that's the reason for him being such a famous murderer. Is this Murder Castle, you know, and all the crazy things that happened in it, but it does. It does seem a little far fetched.
Matthew:Yeah, I guess. I mean, I guess I mean, not necessarily. If you have a baby, if you have a big castle. Well, not a big if you have a skyscraper full of secret rooms and stuff. I mean, why not utilize that for murder? Yeah. Well, okay. Other than the fact that murder is wrong. I'm just saying if you were a psychopath, and you had a big difficult to maneuver, or to find things in Castle, of course, you're gonna do that. So I don't think I don't think it's got the money for it. I don't think it's that that crazy to think? Well, I
Marissa:think it's more likely that he he was a murderer, but he also did a lot of shady stuff on the side. And that it's pretty funny and more likely that he used these secret rooms to hide the stuff that didn't want to pay for sure. But yeah,
Matthew:I mean, the guy seems like he's he was a pretty clever dude.
Marissa:Yeah. He had to have been.
Matthew:So let's talk about finding bodies in our contemporary
Marissa:that sounds like our McCobb minute.
Matthew:Well, it's almost like a McCobb news break. But in Arizona currently. We which there's there's a there's a pretty massive drought that's been happening. Obviously Arizona is known for being kind of a desert area and most of it Yeah, but there's a debt there's a drought that has been lowering well not only just a drought, but a lot of a lot of people have been moving into the area as well and because of the fact that it's not an area that's known for a lot of moisture coming into the area there is a large lake called Lake Mead, and over the last year, decade or so that the water levels have been dropping considerably, and at this point, so it's a reservoir and at this point, it is only like 27% of its full capacity. Oh wow. Which also is it was weird. I didn't really do like a lot of research on this. As far as like there's you can see like there's like lines where the rock where like the like, there's a discoloration in the rock where it's like, dark on like the hills and then all then just like it's like white like chalk white. And then it goes down to the water level. And I don't know if that's like from where the water level initially was or anything. Anyways, that's not the McCobb part. This isn't a geology show.
Marissa:I should do that next
Matthew:geology podcast. But the but as the water level have been receding in the last four months from May to August of 2020. To five, at least five dead bodies have been or the remains have been found of humans. Wow. Really? Yeah. So they, some of them are just like bones that may be associated to this to a similar skeleton, the same skeleton or anything like that. But they're definitely human remains, and one in pretend that people drowned out there fairly, fairly regularly. Since like 2007. There has been like 100 and over 100 people who have who have drowned or gone missing in in the lake, there's
Marissa:no way stop going into the lake.
Matthew:Yeah, I don't know what I mean, I don't know what the body count of an average Lake is?
Marissa:I don't know. But we do hear about people dying at the lake near us sometimes.
Matthew:Yeah. And that could be from anything too. It's not necessarily being pulled under by JSON or anything. It could be boating crashes, or anything along those lines. But one of the bodies that was found in in May of 2022 was shoved in a into a steel drum, like a steel oil drum. Yeah. And that was of a male, who had possibly been in there since the 1970s, early 80s, who had not just accidentally found himself in a barrel to do that. But he was apparently shot and then stuffed into this barrel. And then that barrel was apparently sank into the lake.
Marissa:Well, at least he wasn't stuffed in the barrel and then toss him like live. I guess.
Matthew:I don't, I don't I don't know if the remains show if if he was bleeding out at that time. But there are people who are specialists in mob crimes. And this is kind of a hallmark of like mall of mobs for crimes. And like meet is not very far from Las Vegas, which was in the 70s and early 80s. Kind of like known for its connection to crime and all that, like, you know, organized crime and the mafia and stuff like that. So
Marissa:anyways, as vicious as
Matthew:for a while to lay dries up. But as the lake does dry up, more and more bodies have best been found.
Marissa:And that's kind of terrifying. How many lakes are there? How many bodies the bottom of the lake here?
Matthew:Yeah. And how many does go unfound? You know, you hear about, like scuba teams going down there and like looking around and dredging lakes and all this stuff to find to find remains, and apparently, they're not that good at it. You know, like, I mean, it's, yeah, it's a huge lake also. So obviously, it's not like, you don't you know, you can't search every square inch for every missing person.
Marissa:And depending on visibility, and whatever is, you know, on the bottom of the lake floor, that's got to be super difficult even with you are searching. Yeah,
Matthew:like that. And then yeah, it's probably, I think it's a lot harder to find, find a body in a lake than TV would let you right, lead you to believe. But anyways, that is our McCobb minute, moment. minute is terrifying.
Marissa:That is our episode. And we hope you guys enjoyed it. And so yeah, we've been doing this for over a year now.
Matthew:And if you like what we're doing here would like to support us, you can do that over on Patreon. It is $5. To do so you can put any amount you like, but $5 get your access to a bunch of extra content. I shouldn't say a bunch of that really oversells it. But we will be doing a the psychopath test to see if Marissa is a psychopath as far as test, whatever paper tests can, can provide. And that'll be coming up on the Patreon as well as a few other extra bonus episodes, one of which had taken a spot here as a kind of a, a teaser for that. But anyways, if you enjoy what we if you enjoy what we do here, you can support us that way. If you would also be so kind as to just share and let people know that we're out here doing this. That would also be greatly appreciated. Thank you for listening.
Marissa:And please leave a review. If you get a chance. We can you can leave a review on Apple podcasts and Spotify. And there's probably some other apps you can leave reviews on but those are like the two major ones.
Matthew:If you want to leave a leave a review on the side of a building on a post it note,
Marissa:take a picture send it to us
Matthew:feel free to do so. I think that'd be hilarious. But as always, thank you so very much if you have if you'd like to reach out To us, you can do so on Twitter and Facebook at Macabrepedia.
Marissa:We're also on Instagram and Macabrepediapod and you can email us at macabrepediapod@gmail.com.
Matthew:And thank you, as always, and join us next week as we add another entry into this hour Macabrepedia