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This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.

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Emoji moment from Sadie who writes I'm not crying, you're crying. This is what I said during my first appointment with my physician at Mochi because I didn't have to convince him I needed a GLP one. He understood and I felt supported, not judged. I came for the weight loss and stayed for the empathy. Thanks Sadie. I'm Mayra Amit, founder of Mochi Health. To find your mochi moment, visit joinmochi.com.

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Sadie is a Mochi member, compensated for her story. You're listening to an Ono Media Podcast. Hi everybody and welcome back to the into the Dark podcast. I'm your host Peyton Moreland. I'm so glad you are here and listening. If you don't know what this show is, it is essentially a true crime podcast that also ventures into everything dark, spooky, haunted, confusing, all of the things that have to do with darkness, murder and mystery. We start the show off by first doing my 10 seconds, which is just a little like, what's going on in my life before we get into the nitty gritty. So I've mentioned on a couple episodes, but last year I got really into women's college basketball. Basically. UConn, Paige, AZ, KK, Gino, the whole thing, okay, college basketball team. They were known for the girls. The players were known for posting on TikTok going live. They kind of amassed a following and they're a really good team. Really, really good team. Well, last year they ended up winning the national championship and it was really heartbreaking and devastating for me that that team was going to break up and move on to the next season. But this last weekend, the old team all came back to UConn and were recognized for their national championship. And it was just like so heartwarming for me to see all the girls back together. Our last year's team, I mean, it's not just me. It was kind of a thing. Like it was a thing on social media and I definitely partook in it. But yeah, it was so heartwarming to see all the girls back together with the coach Gino. But then it was also like one of those things that was just heartbreaking because you're like, it's over. Like that was it that's it? Is it done? Paige is gonna. She plays for the wnba. These girls are now going to start their new season with UConn. Like, oh, it's just such a thing for me. It's such a thing. Like, I. I bald my eyes out at the national championship game when Paige, basically their star player, played her last game. And it's just like a never ending heartbreak for me. And I don't know if it's because I came into the fandom so late, so I really didn't get a lot of time with this team, with the girls to like, watch their entire journey. I just like learned about everything after the fact, the entire lore. And so I don't know if it's like one of those things that was like, just so good and amazing, but it didn't last that long for me. I don't know honestly what it is and why it's so heartbreaking for me. But yeah, it definitely has affected me more than just like a random college basketball team. But yeah, all that to say I'm still a Yukon girl. I now know that UConn is in Connecticut. Don't worry, guys. When I first talked about, I was very early into the fandom. Since I first mentioned it on the show. I have gone like so far in these girls is like high school stories all the way to them getting drafted. So I've done the whole, the whole deep dive now. But yeah, I. I have never even really been into like, sports that are like. What's the word? Like ball sports. Like baseball, softball, soccer, football. I've never. Volleyball. I've never really been into any of those because I was a dancer. But yeah, the Yukon Girls was the first time I ever got really, really interested in a sport like that. And it was just like double plus that it was women's and college basketball. It was just so fun. I never in a million years thought that would be me, but here I am. Ride or die. I love my huskies. I'm still hoping the team wins the national championship this year without Paige. And then I'm excited to see where Az gets drafted. If she goes one, if she goes two, and where she ends up. But yeah, that's my 10 seconds for this episode. Let's get right into today's case. Trigger warning. This episode includes discussions of violence against animals and children. I will give you a trigger in the story, but please listen with care now. Nothing can ruin a fun vacation quite like a terrible hotel. When you've been traveling, sometimes you just want to lie down in bed. And get a good night of rest. And it's annoying to end up tossing and turning because the mattress isn't supportive and the pillows are thin. Or even worse, you find insects or mice in your room, mysterious stains on the wall or fixtures that aren't working properly. It just isn't home. And it's even worse when it's worse than home. But some hotels can be even worse than this, which is a lesson people learned the hard way during the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. Now, if you don't know what this 1893 World's Fair in Chicago is, I would stop now. I feel like I need to do an entire episode on this fair because I have done a deep dive into this world's fair before. And honestly, none of it makes sense to me. None of it makes sense. I don't understand. Okay. Essentially, In Chicago in 1893, a whole bunch of places all over the world came together again. 1893, okay? Came together in Chicago and built a world's fair that essentially showed like different parts of the world. So you could like tour the world, basically. But at, in Chicago, at this world's fair, I'm telling you, it doesn't make sense. They built humongous, humongous buildings just to tear them down after the fair. Go look into it, okay? Go look into it. But anyways, it was a huge event, okay? Tourists came from all over the world to stay in Illinois. And some of them booked rooms in a particular unnamed three story hotel on, on 63rd Street. Then they didn't get a good night's rest. Many visitors woke in the middle of the night to find their rooms smelled like gas. They couldn't get the doors or windows open. And when they screamed for help, nobody came. Almost like no one could hear them in this hotel. Others made it out of their hotel rooms just to fall through trap doors or they would head for the stairs only to find the exit bricked up. So, yeah, you're not hearing me wrong. Okay? Huge world fair, that's mysterious all on its own. But that is not the topic of today's story. All of these people around the world are coming. They have to stay somewhere. There is a certain group of people who end up staying in this unnamed hotel in the city. And then these weird things start happening. You guys, doors that go nowhere, I mean, trap doors. Like it. It's a. It's a nightmare experience. And this next part that I'm going to tell you is true. Okay? This is not false. This is not a made up story. The reason that these visitors had this experience was not because they were all hallucinating on some weird drug or are just making it up. Now, the real story is that this hotel they were staying in had actually been designed to let a serial killer pick off the people who stayed there one by one. Now, if you've watched American Horror Story hotel season, this might sound familiar to you, and it is because it is partly based off of this true story. And I know it sounds like something out of a scary story, it sounds like something that would be made up on American Horror Story, but sadly, this is all true. And I'm going to tell you the backstory on it today. I am covering a highly prolific serial killer who lived more than a century ago. He murdered a shocking number of people and became very famous after he was caught. He was actually one of the first American serial killers to become a major celebrity household name. And during his lifetime, he used many different names to avoid the authorities. But in this episode, I'm gonna call him by the name he is best known by. Henry Howard Holmes or H.H. holmes. Now, that's not his legal name or the one he was born with. It's said he chose it because he was a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes stories, which makes a lot of sense because HH Holmes was very smart and he loved to read. So as a child, this serial killer, he had every perk he could ever dream of. He was born in 1861, and Holmes's parents were quite wealthy, so he had a lot of opportunities as he was growing up. He seemed to have a perfect life, or at least it looked that way from the outside. But the truth was, Holmes's father was very strict and sometimes violent against him. And he also got bullied all of the time. But that wasn't the darkest thing about Holmes childhood. He was also weirdly fascinated with death. And according to rumors, all of the wild animals and neighborhood pets tended to go missing when he was home. Apparently, trigger warning. He enjoyed killing them and dissecting them. Except Holmes claimed he was just obsessed with learning how their bodies worked. He. He said he felt bad about killing the animals. He didn't enjoy the act of taking their lives. But this was the only way he could think of to learn about anatomy. And in fairness, Holmes did seem fascinated with medicine, biology, and natural sciences. By the early 1880s, when Holmes graduated from high school, he had decided that he wanted to be a doctor. So he enrolled in med school. And that's when his problems really started. Even though Holmes loved learning about how the body worked. He was a bad student. He barely passed his classes, and a few of his professors thought it would be better for everyone if he just dropped out. Holmes wasn't discouraged, though. He stuck with the program and did everything he could to keep his grades just high enough to stay enrolled. And it's possible that Holmes had dark motives for wanting to even remain in school. See, this wasn't only an opportunity to learn more about how bodies worked. He'd also found a way to profit from med school. He was running a scam. This is surprising because like I mentioned before, Holmes came from a wealthy family. Especially at this time, he didn't need money, but apparently he liked the rush of defrauding other people and getting away with it, of tricking people. See, he got into the habit of buying life insurance policies on strangers. He would name himself as a beneficiary, often without the insured person even knowing what he was doing. Keep in mind, this is the 1880s. There are no computers, there's no Internet. There's limited phone usage at this time. A lot of the time, the insurance company had no way to confirm if the person actually knew homes or approved of the life insurance policy, so they would just grant it as soon as Holmes sent in the application and the first payment. Now, as soon as he learned that the paperwork was done, he would steal a body from his med school's morgue. He'd then pose the person somewhere outside so it looked like they'd been in a traffic accident or suffered a heart attack. And when their remains were discovered, Holmes was always nearby, and he'd tell the police and any reporters on the scene that the deceased was the same person he had recently insured and they had died in a horrible accident. And then he would call the insurance company and collect on the policy. Again, there's no way, really for employees to tell that he's lying. At best, they would call the police or check the local papers and the reporters and police would repeat what Holmes had told them at the scene, because this is how things worked then. Then the company would send the money to Holmes. This is like an elaborate scheme. And he got away with this scam countless times before he eventually got caught. His professors were very upset. It was a huge scandal, but it was actually a different accusation that almost led to Holmes being expelled. See, over the years, he apparently became very close with a young widow named Mrs. Fisher Fitch, although her first name has never been recorded. Somewhere along the way, Holmes actually proposed to Mrs. Fitch, and she said yes. And then they slept together and afterward Holmes called the engagement off. Now, Mrs. Fitch at this point publicly accused him of tricking her into having sex with him. And in 1884, this is a very serious allegation, was almost enough to get Holmes kicked out of school. Except Holmes denied everything. He said he had never proposed to Mrs. Fitch or been intimate with her and she was just like making this up out of nowhere. It sounds like the professors didn't really believe him, but Mrs. Fitch also didn't have any proof, so the school had no choice but to just let him keep studying. And he managed to graduate with a medical degree. And then shortly afterward, Holmes married a completely different woman. They had a child together soon after the wedding. However, if you think this was a sign that he was about to settle down and be an honest man, finally think again. Almost as soon as the child was born, Holmes skips town, leaving his brand new family behind. This is also when he began using fake names. It seems like he didn't want his wife or child to find him, but or for anyone to connect him with his previous life insurance scams. So instead, Holmes moved to Chicago, Illinois and set up shop as a pharmacist. Remember that doctor's appointment you were supposed to make a while ago? The one you meant to book but you got sidetracked and completely forgot about it until now? You know that dentist appointment for your biannual cleaning overdue annual checkup that's been three years in the making? Dermatologist appointment for that rash that's just looking a little bit off? Why not book it today? ZocDoc makes it easy to find the right doctor. Right now it is all online. You'll probably be able to book an appointment before the end of this ad. Zocdoc is a free app and website where you can search and compare high quality in network doctors and click to instantly book an appointment. With Zocdoc. You can filter for doctors who take your insurance, are located nearby, are a good fit for any medical need you may have, and are highly rated by verified patients. And then once you find the right doctor, you can see their actual appointment openings. Choose a time slot that works for you and then just click to instantly book a visit. Appointments made through Zocdoc also happen fast, typically within just 24 to 72 hours of booking. More often than not, you can even get in the same day. Honestly you guys, ZocDoc is such a lifesaver. I think it is so hard to figure out what is right for you. You're having to search, do a hundred searches. But Zocdoc makes it easy. It is all in one place. You can do it right there and then book right there. So stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to Zocdoc.com Peyton to find and instantly book a top rated Doctor today. That's z o c-o c.com Paton P A Y T O N zocdoc.com Peyton all right, you guys. Fall is here, kids are back in school, vacations are over, and it is officially the start of cozy season. Which means it's time to slide into some bombas. You know Bombas, the most comfortable socks, slippers, tees and underwear out there, made from premium materials that actually make sense for this time of year. This is what I love about Bombas. They have the season's softest materials. Think merino wool that keeps you warm when it's chilly, but cool when it's hot. Cotton that is softer, stronger and more breathable than regular cotton. And even rag wool. The thick, durable, classic cozy sock you'll want all fall. And they have footwear. It is not just socks. Bombas designed slippers that make it hard to leave the house again. You can get inside slippers or even outside slides. And the best part is their mission. For every item you buy, Bombas donates one to someone experiencing homelessness. Over 150 million items have been donated thanks to customers and with their happiness guarantee, if you're not 100% into what you got, they'll make it right. No risk, all reward. Plus they are available through international shopping to over 200 countries. You guys know I love Bombas. I posted a Q A on my Instagram the other day and someone said, what's your favorite socks? And I know they only ask because I'm always raving about bombas and I needed to say it for them. You need new socks and go check out bombas. Head over to bombas.com audio and use code audio for 20 off your first purchase. That's bombas B-O-M-B-A-S.com audio don't forget code audio at checkout for 20 off. By now it was the late 1880s. He was in his 20s. Now HH Holmes was young, he was handsome and he continued ripping people off. When he moved to Chicago, Holmes had a lot of different ways of making money and he was always trying to come up with new scams and get quick rich schemes. Like how at one point Holmes decided he wanted to own the pharmacy. He worked at instead of renting it, he went to a meeting with the woman who owned the building and she was never seen again. Holmes told everyone that she had spontaneously decided to move to California. Apparently, she wanted a fresh start in a brand new home. Nobody was ever able to tell if that was true or not. But HH Holmes soon produced paperwork saying he was now the new owner of the building that she had left behind. She had left it to him. Well, sold it to him is what she said. I'll be honest, this is very suspicious. The timing of the cell, the woman's disappearance, and the fact that Holmes managed to get everything he wanted from this woman. It's hard to believe, but no one could prove that Holmes had done anything wrong in the situation. And so he gets the building. But also suspicious. Not long afterward, Holmes gets married again. His new wife probably didn't even know about the family he had abandoned in New Hampshire. She also didn't know his real name or that he was working as a pharmacist. Apparently, Holmes had lied to her about everything. His identity, his profession, even his home address. But his new wife believed he was legitimate. She added his name, her bank account, and gave him access to all of her wealth. Only for Holmes to disappear and take all of his wife's money with him. For years, he ran this same scam against other women. He was always finding ways to meet wealthy heiresses, widows, and well to do ladies. He always used a different name with them, so they never knew who he really was. They would date for a while, then he'd propose, sometimes go through with a wedding and convince her to give him access to her fortune. Then he would vanish without a trace. We know for sure that Holmes did this at least three to five times. He may have had even more wives who haven't been identified. I mean, it went as far as sometimes he even wore fake beards and other disguises when he was flirting with a potential new wife. That just shows how elaborate his con was. The point is, by doing this, Holmes accumulated a lot of money and he actually used it to buy a vacant lot right next door to his pharmacy that he allegedly stole. Holmes told people he wanted to build a house there so he could live close to work. He wouldn't need a commute. It was right next door. Except this house was huge, three stories high, with bedrooms, offices, and a large space that could be used as a restaurant. In fact, when Holmes built the structure with all of the money he had stolen, he wrote on the deed that it was actually a hotel, not a house. Then he approached different investors and asked them if they wanted to buy a share in his hotel business. To be clear, Holmes never actually planned to run a hotel. It was just another scam, a way to get businessmen to pay for his house while he had no intentions of paying them back. And once again it worked. He collected a ton of cash from investors, then promptly found ways to avoid them. I mean at this point Holmes was very bold and flagrant in his scams. It was really only a matter of time before he would get caught again. And on April 18, he 1891, it looked like the 29 year old was now in danger of finally paying for his crimes. See, Holmes was having a problem with one of his investors, a man named John Dubriel. John had given Holmes a lot of money to build his so called hotel and now he wanted to know why he wasn't making a profit. He felt like Holmes owed him a cut of his proceeds. Of course there were no proceeds because Holmes had never actually opened the hotel. So he had to keep making excuses for why he wasn't sending money to John. Except now John was tired of Holmes's evasiveness. He announced he was going to visit him at the pharmacy during the middle of the work day when he knew Holmes was going to be there and he wasn't going to leave until he got his money. Holmes didn't know what he was going to do. But that day John took the subway and got off at the stop that was right in front of Holmes's supposed hotel. He took a few steps toward the front door and then collapsed. As it turns out, John had a medical condition that caused seizure like symptoms. And by a complete coincidence, he was having a fit in the street right before his meeting with Holmes. Now when Holmes saw John twitching and spasming outside, he ran over to him. He announced to the passersby that he was a doctor, he knew what to do and he carried John into his home. Except Holmes had no intention of actually helping John. In fact, he knew that if John died of his illness, all of his problems would go away. He wouldn't have to pay John back or explain that the hotel wasn't real or keep making excuses. So Holmes pried John's mouth open and poured poison down his throat. And sure enough, John died a short while later. Then Holmes called the authorities and said, hey, this guy died of his illness outside of my business. There were enough witnesses around to corroborate the story. They had all seen John collapse and they knew Holmes was a pharmacist they all assumed he had done everything he could to save John. And for that reason, the medical examiner decided not to give him an autopsy. Nobody was even suspicious. And this whole experience was pretty eye opening for Holmes. He had killed a man and gotten away with it scot free. And this had helped him financially because he would never have to pay John again. So this entire experience makes Holmes feel powerful and excited. In fact, the entire situation was thrilling for Holmes. And more importantly, at least in Holmes eyes, it showed that he could make a large profit by murdering people. So he continued his earlier scam of marrying women for their money. But now, instead of taking the cash and running, he would actually sometimes kill his wives. So he would just inherit their wealth. The problem was, this still wasn't enough for Holmes. He wanted more. More money, more excitement, and more victims. He began trying to think of ways to lure wealthy people to himself and steal from them. And eventually he actually decided to open his house hotel for real. And that was because in 1893, the World's Fair was in Chicago. Holmes knew people would pour into Chicago from all across the country. Many of them would need a place to stay and would arrive in the city without any reservations. On the books. It was unlikely they'd bother to mention the name of their hotel in letters to their friends and family. They had more important things to write about, like the World's Fair, so no one would ever trace the hotel guest back to Holmes, meaning he could scam and murder them without consequence. And that's why he decided to convert the third floor of his house into an actual hotel while he continued working and living on the bottom two floors. And more importantly, he did some remodeling before this fair. And these changes ensured his business would one day come to be known as the Murder Castle. See, the Murder Castle was designed so the people who went in would never come out. It was full of secret passageways. There were halls and staircases that ended in abrupt dead ends. So if someone walked down them, they would soon find themselves trapped with no way to get out. Holmes also installed peepholes in a bunch of doors and walls so he could spy on the people that were staying at his hotel. And there were hidden trap doors all over the place. If anyone stepped on them, they would fall down a chute into the basement. The drop was far enough that it could kill or even injure people on its way down. But Holmes wasn't leaving anything to chance. So he also set up pipes that could release poisonous gases into certain rooms. This allowed him to kill his customers in their sleep. And all of the walls were soundproofed. Nobody who set foot in the castle was safe. Not even the staff Holmes had hired. See, he convinced different cleaning crews, restaurant workers, and administrators to come work for him. And he also offered them a deal. He would buy a life insurance policy for everyone who accepted the job, and he would pay for it himself. The staffer didn't need to do anything. Sometimes Holmes also offered to buy life insurance plans for his employees. Spouses, fiances, children, other family members. Well, these workers failed to realize that Holmes had listed himself as a beneficiary. And some of them had the misfortune to go missing during their shifts or suffered deadly freak accidents while at work. Of course, each time this happened, Holmes would make a lot of money. It was enough for some employees to suspect that these accidents weren't really accidents. Holmes had clearly put his workers in danger or maybe murdered them outright. But nobody could prove it. And then there were his other victims, the clients who booked rooms at his hotel while they checked in. Holmes made the same offer he had for his employees. He said he would generously buy any customer a life insurance policy and pay for it out of pocket. And if someone took him up on this offer, they'd head up to their room and never be seen again. Each time he killed someone, Holmes had to dispose of the body. And to this day, nobody is entirely sure how he did it. But there is one theory that's very popular among historians and true crime investigators. And before you're like, why would these people even do this? It was a different time, okay? People didn't know as much about life insurance. It was just a different time. So the consensus about how he got rid of bodies was that many people believed Holmes had a personal morgue actually set up in the basement of the hotel, and that's where he put his medical training to work. Allegedly, anytime someone died on Holmes's property, he would dissect them. Any parts that were soft and easy to dispose of, he would either bury or burn. And that left him with bones and other tissues that were harder to destroy. And Holmes sold all of that to a local medical school. Again, 1890s, there were strict rules that made it difficult for colleges to buy human remains. So this meant med students didn't have many opportunities to practice surgeries or perform autopsies. So, honestly, there was kind of a thriving black market back then for fresh human bodies. And a lot of school officials didn't ask too many questions about where their med school corpses had come from. This Made it very easy for Holmes to make his victims disappear without a trace. He'd apparently planned the perfect crime and he was committing it again and again. Except by the time Holmes was in his 30s, he had actually begun getting sloppy. The problem was that he was so focused on what he wanted, he stopped covering his tracks. To make a long story short, someone accused Holmes of being a con artist and he was arrested and thrown in jail. He paid his bail and got out after a few days. But before he could be released, he. He befriended another man who was also under arrest and his name was Marion Hedgepeth. Now, while they were in jail, Holmes told Marion that the two of them could make a fortune together. He would take out a life insurance policy on Marion, they would fake his death and then they could split the income. And Marion was all in on the scheme. He thought it was a great idea. So the two of them bought a policy and in a huge shock, Holmes didn't kill Marion. They actually faked his death just like they agreed. Except this time around, the scam didn't pay off. By this time, Holmes kind of had grown a reputation. He hadn't been convicted of any scams, but there had been a lot of conversation and accusations against him. The insurance company didn't trust him and they refused to pay for Marion's policy. In fact, they actually wanted to investigate H.H. holmes. He had no choice but to abandon his home, his hotel and his pharmacy in Chicago. He fled to St. Louis, Missouri. Now you'd think that by this time, Holmes might have learned his lesson. He'd realized that the crime didn't pay and he would try to lay low for a little while. But that's not what he did. Holmes moves and tries to pull off the exact same scam again. See, he gets in touch with a former business associate named Benjamin Peitzel. And the main thing you need to know was that Benjamin was another con artist. He had helped Holmes with some scams in the past. It's also possible he knew Holmes was a serial killer and had a history of helping him dispose of bodies. It's kind of hard to say for sure, but the point is, Benjamin knows that Holmes is a bad person. And he's also not a very honest person. And Holmes knew he could take advantage of him. So in the fall of 1893, he told Benjamin that they could take out an insurance policy, fake Benjamin's death and get rich. Now, Benjamin loved the plot, but he knew his wife Carrie wouldn't approve. So he told Holmes, hey, we have to Keep it a secret from her. Instead, he and Holmes bought an insurance plan worth $10,000, which was a fortune at the time. And then Benjamin left town. He wrote letters to Carrie regularly and his plan was to eventually stop riding very suddenly. And then Holmes would send her a note saying Benjamin had died of an illness or an accident. That way she would have documentation to show the insurance company that he had passed away. Holmes would even ship a dead body to St. Louis and say it was Benjamin's. And eventually the real Benjamin would reveal to his wife, Haha, never mind, I'm alive. And then he and Carrie could reunite in another state with brand new identities. Except this is not how the plan played out. Benjamin stops writing Carrie, but Holmes never sends her a letter explaining that he had died. Instead, she had just stopped hearing from her husband one day and didn't know why. So Kerry starts to worry and finally she goes to the police to report her husband missing. It took until September 3, 1894, for the investigators to figure out what had happened to him. That day, a man in Philadelphia went to visit a friend who he hadn't heard from in a while. And when the man went to his friend's house, he actually found it unlocked and empty. But there was a terrible smell coming from inside. The man went in and found Benjamin's badly decomposed body. The police actually identified Benjamin quickly, and they also determined he had been murdered. His killer had fed him poison and then lit him on fire when he was dead or very close to it. Presumably he had wanted to make it look like Benjamin had burned to death or had died in an explosion. But he had done a really bad job of staging the scene. Now this probably won't surprise you, but the killer was H.H. holmes. He had murdered his friend Benjamin, collected the entire insurance payout, and then skipped town. To this day, it's actually a little unclear why he did it. Maybe he was just getting greedy. He didn't want to share the money with Benjamin. Or perhaps they had some kind of fight that escalated to murder. The point is, he'd killed his friend and left his body in his own Philadelphia house. Except he had rented the house under a fake name. And the friend who found Benjamin's body didn't know who Holmes was. So this meant the police had a hard time connecting Benjamin's murder to Holmes. Carrie also hadn't figured it out yet, but she was starting to get suspicious. Except this is when she made a tragic mistake. See, Carrie knew she would never get her husband back, but she at least wanted to make sure she got her share of his life insurance payout. This meant she needed to handle a lot of paperwork at her home in Missouri while also working with police in Philadelphia where Benjamin's body had been found. And since Carrie couldn't be in two places at once, she actually asked her 15 year old daughter Alice to travel to Philadelphia and handle matters there. And since Alice didn't want to be alone in a different city, she brought her two younger siblings with her. They were 12 year old Nellie and 8 year old Howard. Now, unfortunately, Carrie unwittingly sent her children right into a trap. Once they made it to Philadelphia and started talking to the police, Holmes realized his scam was falling apart. And rather than risk losing the money, he reached out to Alice and invited all three of the kids to come visit him. He used his real name because they already knew him. It was pointless to lie about his identity. Alice wrote her mother a letter at this point and she mentioned that she had been in contact with HH Holmes. It struck her as a very surprising coincidence that he was living in the same city where her father had died. And that was the last thing Carrie ever heard from her daughter. As the days went by, Carrie developed a horrible feeling. She knew something terrible had happened to her children. So she went to the police again and said, hey, I think H.H. holmes murdered my two daughters, my son and my husband. Of course, she had no proof. She didn't even know for sure that Alice, Howard and Nelly were dead. But the accusation was serious and the police actually leapt into action. They launched a massive nationwide manhunt. Holmes's picture was published in every newspaper and detectives all across the United States were told to be on the lookout for men fitting his description. They even brought in private eyes to try and track down more evidence about where Holmes had gone. With this much attention, he couldn't hide for long. And on November 17, 1894, Holmes was apprehended in Boston. Now, right away, he confesses to committing insurance fraud, but he's like, listen, I did this, but I had nothing to do with any of the disappearances or Benjamin's homicide. Not that police believed him because all of the people he was doing these scams with died. Nevertheless, they charged him with Benjamin's murder while they tried to gather more evidence about the other missing people who had come into contact with Holmes. And almost overnight, Holmes became famous for being a possible serial killer. The papers gave him all kinds of nicknames, including the arc, Friend of the age, and the greatest criminal of this expiring century. Basically, they made Holmes even more famous than he already was. From the manhunt, and before you knew it, wild allegations started coming out. People who had known Holmes as a child began talking about how all of their pets and animals in the neighborhood had gone missing. They also talked about a playmate of Holmes's who had actually died young. To be clear, there's no evidence whatsoever that this child had been murdered or that Holmes had anything to to do with this death. But the rumor mill was churning. And as terrible as Holmes was, the gossip made him sound even worse. He was kind of painted as this evil monster or demon rather than just a human serial killer. Some even speculated he might have traveled to London at some point in the recent past and might have been Jack the Ripper. Everyone basically hated H.H. holmes by the fall of 1895, which is when he went on trial for Benjamin's murder. Now, Holmes at this point is claiming innocence on the stand. He insisted he didn't know who had killed his friend, he'd never committed a violent crime. But the evidence was too strong and his credibility and reputation, it had already been destroyed by the press. It also didn't help that while the trial was going on, law enforcement officials were searching all of his former homes. And when they went through the hotel that was back in Chicago, they found the basement full of bodies and body parts that Holmes hadn't disposed of. And there were three freshly dug graves in the cellar of his Philadelphia house. When search teams dug them up, they found the remains of Alice, Nellie and Howard carrying Benjamin's children. All of this to say it was impossible for Holmes to now explain all of these dead bodies in all of his homes away. Even though he was still only charged with Benjamin's murder, the evidence was adding up to show he was definitely a serial killer. Ultimately, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. Now, apparently as soon as Holmes realized he was gonna die anyways, he decided to drop the innocence act. While he was sitting on death row, he began giving confessions, dozens of them. He admitted to police that he killed 28 different people. These included former wives and lovers, hotel employees and guests. This was absolutely shocking. But even more shocking, the police thought he was underestimating. Given what they had already found in their investigation, they thought that Holmes could have killed up to 200 people. It's hard to say for sure. Recordkeeping at this time wasn't great. Rumor mill flies even within police. And since there was no DNA testing and forensic science wasn't very advanced, it's. It wasn't possible to identify all of the bodies and body parts. Plus, there were a lot of people who crossed Holmes's path at some point and then went missing afterward. But that doesn't prove he did anything to them. Some of those people honestly could have disappeared for other reasons. All of this to say. It is still difficult even to this day to say exactly how many people Holmes murdered. We also don't know many of their names or exactly how they died. Many of Holmes's victims never received justice in a court of law, but he was eventually convicted of the murders of Alice, Nelly, and Howard. Not that it made a huge difference in terms of his sentence. He was already scheduled to die. And on May 7, 1896, he was executed by hanging at age 34. This wasn't the end of Holmes story. See, people were fascinated by H.H. holmes life and his crimes and by the hotel where he had killed so many terrified employees and people. Some enterprising locals bought the property and actually offered tours of it for a small fee. They called it the Holmes Horror Castle. They treated it more like an attraction than like a site where countless people, I mean, according to police, maybe even over 100 of them, had lost their lives. Sure enough, this hotel becomes a big money maker. Plenty of Chicago locals and tourists from out of town paid to go in and see the Murder Castle. Except if you're thinking of visiting now to see the maze like passageways for yourself, you're out of luck. The attraction was only open for a few months before it caught fire and burned to the ground. And that's the end of the story for H.H. holmes. Everything he had built turned to ash. And the people who had tried to profit from his crimes were left with nothing. Meanwhile, he went to his death with many open questions about how prolific of a serial killer he was. Now, I chose to tell this story this week because it feels like the perfect account for Halloween. It is a nightmare come to life, featuring a serial killer, a frightening hotel full of traps and mazes, and a staggering number of deaths and disappearances. But this isn't a fictional scary story. It's true. Holmes just goes to show that you never know what frights are hidden just out of sight, what monsters dwell among us, and how terrifying the world can actually be. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode, and I will see you next time as we go further into the dark together. Goodbye.