Ryan Reynolds (0:00)

Hey there, Ryan Reynolds here. It's a new year and you know what that means. No, not the diet resolutions. A way for us all to try and do a little bit better than we did last year. And my resolution, unlike big wireless, is to not be a raging and raise the price of wireless on you every chance I get. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch $45 upfront payment required. Equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first 3 month plan only. Taxes and fees. Extra Speed slower above 40 GB on unlimited. See mintmobile.com for details. Hello and welcome to my Victorian Nightmare. I'm your host, Genevieve Manion, and I'm here to talk about mysterious deaths, morbid fascinations, disturbing stories, and otherwise spooky events from the Victorian era. Because to me, there's just something especially intriguing, creepy and oddly comforting about horror and mayhem from the 19th century. So listener discretion is advised. Hello, friends, and welcome to this, my 24th episode. I hope that you had a lovely New Year's Eve. Mine was simply elegant. I stayed up till 1 o'clock in the morning. I wore a dress that I love that an ex once said I looked like a cartoon character in. So that's why he's my ex. I looked amazing and everybody thought so. I'd post a picture, but the only picture of myself wearing it was taken after I had like two bottles of Prosecco and raided the appetizer table like an animal. I am an appetizer shark. At a cocktail party. I swim around outside the door with the appetizers come out so I can strike the second the cheese puffs make their debut. I had plenty of tasty snacks at this party. And my friend Chrissy also planted a huge kiss on me at midnight. Romantically kissing a good friend is a whole. It's a whole sensation. We are just friends. She's one of my best friends. I actually recommend it, if only for anthropological reasons. Just to see what happens. It opens up a whole new world of synchronicity, I'd say. Especially if it's a two bottles of Prosecco deep kinda kiss. Cause it's like no holds barred, no fear, only stupidity. It was nice. So nothing but delightful times to report about New Year's Eve. Okay, I have some very exciting stuff to share with you today on today's show. Heavens. But before I get to the meat of the episode, the mutton, if you will, and before I get to the Nosferatu review that I promised you, I have some very exciting haunted Housekeeping. First, a lovely listener recently commented that she wished I had another podcast that she could listen to that wasn't quite so spooky. And and I understand things can get a little spine tingly around here. So I started another podcast, My Victorian Nightmares Dark Poetry. I was thinking about making minisodes of my favorite eerie Victorian poetry, if you recall, but I ultimately decided to make it its own thing because I don't know how much eerie Victorian poetry I can find. I might run out eventually. I don't know. I thought it might be nice to just sort of keep it in a tidy location of its own and Some folks may not be into the vampire autopsies and murder castles I talk about on this show. We're talking about murder castles today, by the way, but they may be into dark romanticism and poetic masterpieces written by history's finest death obsessed authors, read by yours truly, an operatically trained vampire who smoked clove cigarettes for about 20 years. And if you like falling asleep to this podcast, I know a number of you do get ready for the velvety smooth knockout dark Poetry is going to give you. And if I may be so bold, I believe it would also be lovely to listen to in the bath while you do your laundry if you want to gently creep yourself out on your morning commute or creep out your roommates in the other room. It's already available on Spotify, but I think it's probably going to take a couple days to populate into other networks. There's just one episode at the moment, but I'll be posting weekly. Please, oh please subscribe and rate it. Really excited about this and I designed some gorgeous artwork for it too that I just keep staring at like it's a newborn ghost baby. Okay, that lovely, exciting news aside, thank you for your comments that you leave on this podcast on Spotify. As always, they delight me. Leave all of the comments. Tell me what you do while you listen to this podcast. I would love to know. Leave comments on Spotify Leave them on Instagram yvictorianightmare. Feel free to email me@myvictorynightmaremail.com and please rate the podcast on Spotify. I am almost at 3,005 stars. If you do and you let me know in the comments I will personally thank you with all of the black heart emojis I can muster and if you would be so kind. Speaking of Instagram, if you would share my episode posts with your sexy friends in Stories, you shall be sent all of the Kissy face, Black heart Dracula emojis and a personal thank you because all of those things really mean a lot to me. They help my little podcast grow and encourage me to continue. Okay, let's now talk a little about Nosferatu. Prepare for the most overdramatic movie review you have ever heard. Because it's coming straight to you from my 17 year old goth girl heart. I loved this movie. I loved it so much. I'm gonna add a little spooky music to this review as well, just to help me set the scene here. That's nice. Okay. I simply could not believe how much I loved this movie. I have never seen so much detail in black ever in a movie before. There must be some new innovations in black color production because I swear there was a whole constellation of black shades in this film. So many facets that you could easily capture all of the micro expressions of a face clad in complete darkness. Every performance was as good as it could possibly have been. Every casting decision from moment to moment. I was a slave to this film. I drank a gigantic glass of seltzer before the movie and had to pee so bad. But I literally. It made me forget that I had to pee at numerous points. It paralyzed all of my other senses except those that could just hold me to the screen. And I know I'm about to sound, if I don't already, like the lamest, dorkiest, most dramatic high school goth girl. But I see, seriously cried. I cried a number of times. Not because I was sad. I just felt like I was home in a deeply spiritual way. In the darkest shots of this movie, I just wanted to nestle into the corners of the shadowed rooms. I wanted to sit down in each scene. I kept thinking, no, just let me stay here. As scenes ended, I just wanted to stay. What is this? If it's because like, of a past life or something, does this mean that like in my next life I'll see a historical movie of like panic grocery shopping during COVID and feel like, ah, I'm finally home. Why do I feel this way about this time and especially, especially this movie? I just do not know. This is by far the most realistic interpretation of this era that I have ever seen in a film. Although it was very stylized, every little detail, whether it was the costumes, which if this movie doesn't win the Oscar for best costume design, I will resign from the academy. I'm not in any academy, but I will be shattered. The details of the homes. Did you notice the needlepoint hair art in the corner of one of the scenes? The stress of just watching people crowded around a Christmas tree. Lit with candles. It was like watching that scene with Shelley Duvall talking to the psychiatrist in the Shining with the cigarette ash. Like you're just so on edge for too prolonged a time by a prop. It just nailed the darkness. Just how painfully dark this era was. Homes even lit with lamplight and candles unto know were so dark. The use of practical lighting was perfection. But again, I literally cried, tears streaming down my face. Watching especially the scene of Nicholas Hoult standing on the roadway waiting for Orlok's carriage with only the snow lit high above in the trees. It made me feel sweet black death. And I don't know if any movie I have ever seen has done this to me. This movie was a masterpiece and you can quote me on that. And a number of people told me it was a slow burn. And that made me nervous because like I've said before, Eggers has let me down with those slow burns. But there was no slow burn, no slow burn to be found at all in this movie. It just held you at a driving pitch from start to finish. And Lily Rose Depp. I take everything I've ever said about that girl being nothing but a Nepo baby. I am ashamed of myself. I am ashamed of myself. She murdered this role. How on earth did she move the way she did? I gotta find out how they made her do those contortions and spasms. She was horrifyingly perfect. I do have to say though, my one or two, maybe two heartbreaks. And I know I shouldn't have hoped for it the first place. It's a me problem. But I was hoping for at least maybe a flashback to a young orlok so we could see a hot Bill Skarsgrd Nosferatu. But it was not to be. Only goopy, gloppy Nosferatu with a heinous mustache and a weird little dong that broke my heart most of all. Not the dong, but the mustache. I really could have done without the mustache. But oh man. Though his bloody eyeball dying scene was awesome. I turned to Chrissy and I was like, that's what I'm talking about. And I got shushed by someone behind me. Understandably. I wonder if I have enough listeners in and around New York to rent a place to have a private screening with you guys. That would be fun. Let me know in the comments if you want to see a private screening with me in New York at some point. I don't know what point, but at some point that would be really fun. Today is, as you can tell, an extra long episode. Don't get used to it. This isn't the new format. I am but one woman producing now two podcasts entirely by herself. But I just could not stop digging deeper and deeper into the topic that we have today. I'm going to do my very best to separate the facts from the myths about the truly diabolical murders of H.H. holmes, and I have to give a warning that in this episode there will be a description of a number of murders, but in particular a disturbing murder of children. If you find that you are triggered by this topic, please be aware that it will be discussed H.H. holmes, otherwise known as Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, whose real name was Herman Webster Muchett, was a con artist, bigamist, thief and killer active between 1891 and 1894 who killed at least nine people. He confessed to 27 murders himself, but some sources, and dubious sources, it's important to note, have his killings listed as high as 2 to 300. A great deal of fantastical mystery and lore surrounds this man and his criminal career. There's literally, as I mentioned, a murder murder castle woven into this story. And if you've ever heard anything about him and his murders, even from trustworthy sources, I guarantee you've heard at least a few details with absolutely no real evidence to support them. You may even hear some today on my show because very trustworthy sources that you can cross reference with other trustworthy sources have details that are totally unsubscribing, substantiated. And I cross referenced the bejesus out of this story to make sure I was sticking to the facts as best that I could, only to find out from time to time that another resource that said something I thought was true was only said by Holmes in a memoir where he lied about most things. So like I said, I did do my very best, I promise. And it's strange. This isn't a guy that lived in like the 1400s before we had the foggiest concepts of forensic science. The 1890s saw wonderful advancements in forensic technology. He wasn't a loner burying bodies in basements of cabins in the woods with no one to suspect what he was up to. He was a pretty popular guy, especially with the ladies. He made acquaintances, conned the hell out of them. But he wasn't a guy who operated entirely in secret. Reading about this man's life and hideous crimes, I literally felt like I was in a nightmare. Not just because of the horror, but because it's so confusing. So many things make absolutely no sense. One minute he's in Chicago. Then he's in Toronto. Then he's in Boston, Indianapolis. Now he's on a cross country trip with three children that belong to a man he just burned alive. But now he's got another wife, a second wife in tow, while he's coaxing that dead guy's wife to travel alongside them, but always within a few miles of each other. And why are these people letting him do the things he's doing? They're all insane. While reading, I just kept waiting to read. And then he ended up back in high school with no clothes and all of his teeth had mysteriously fallen out. His history plays out like a nightmare with no damn sense to it. Why are all the details of his dastardly deeds so hard to get right? Well, I am going to do my best to clear that up. Discuss the bizarro twisted elements of his story, but also summarize what we know is true based on actual found evidence of his crimes and not just his confessions, which, as mentioned, were more or less worth a damn. I also have to say that in researching all of this, I did not fall down rabbit holes like I usually do. I wriggled and I squiggled and I picked up little carrot tops and other rabbit treats the entire way down to the center of the earth where I found and made friends with some rabbits and found another hole and eventually fell out the other side of the freaking planet. And that's when I stopped researching H.H. holmes and ate my dinner in the tub. Not out of the tub. I ate some shepherd's pie in a bowl in the tub at like midnight. I didn't eat anything all day because my face was stuck in the Internet trying to piece this guy's life together and inevitably being led in 900 different directions to some of the most fascinating information I have ever found. So please bear with me on this episode. I shall get to all of the essential points, but we are taking a number of detours on our way there. As I mentioned, the late 1800s was a time of great forensic science advances. You have the the emergence of fingerprint analysis, polarized light microscopes that were used in fiber analysis, forensic photography in its infancy. But this was when photography was now acceptable as a form of evidence gathering. Even though photography existed since 1827, photographing murder scenes was considered grotesque and macabre for most of that century, even disrespectful of the dead. And rules for criminal forensic photography were finally established in the 1890s about how to thoroughly photograph murder scenes. You had the taking of Mugshots established as part of a criminal booking protocol. This already existed, but it wasn't always done until the 1890s. Long story short, even though we were advancing in so many crime solving regards, Holmes was just too damn smart. His time, only nine of his victims bodies were ever found. But it is likely that he killed between at least 20 to 27 people. How do we know this if we never found the bodies? Well, he confessed to killing 27 people, although some of those people were found to be very much alive because he was a liar. Most of the others had however gone missing and were never found. Or perhaps found when pieces of bones were found in Holmes home. But there was no way to tell exactly who they were. Holmes was not sloppy. He was calculated and clean. He knew how to kill and conceal his work. He was a grade A psychopath who apart from being cunning and charming, was like I said, a pathological liar. But he had trouble keeping his story straight sometimes he wrote a memoir in prison after he was caught. And many facts in this memoir just do not line up with what was discovered to be actually true. And some lies are just silly. For example, in trying to claim innocence for the murder of Benjamin Peitzel, who he ultimately was found quite guilty of, he said in this memoir that this friend of his killed himself with chloroform and he merely burned his body to cover up the chloroform burns on his face so that he could collect insurance money on the guy. Cause you see, he couldn't get the insurance money if the company knew his buddy killed himself. Which both burning a dead body and fraudulently collecting insurance money is still a crime. And can you kill yourself with chloroform? Yes, you can. Apparently I just found out this is what I'm talking about. I had to read so many lines in this memoir at least five times just to understand what the hell he was actually trying to even convince people of. First he pled innocence and not too long after he claimed to be guilty but possessed by the devil. So suffice it to say, these and many other inconsistencies and downright half assed lies make virtually everything that he says about his life, his crimes, his motives, everything untrustworthy. But there was one more very important element of distortion in terms of fact finding about Holmes and his crimes. Good old yellow journalism. This is a term used to describe my favorite publication from the 1800s, the Illustrated Police News, Law Courts and Record. That paper was by no means the only bananas. Blood soaked over the top tabloid. The 1890s was awash in sensationalist crapola. Yellow journalism was a style of reporting that used sensationalized headlines and exaggerated stories to increase circulation. Papers like the New York World and New York Journal were in fierce competition for readers and their owners encouraged straight up lying by their journalists if that's what they had to do to get eyes on their papers. You may have heard the term if it bleeds, it leads. This is a quote by William Randolph hearst in the 1890s. He particularly noticed that his audience was drawn to horrific stories. And the more horrific the better, as the Illustrated Police News very well exemplified for at least the previous 50 years. Incidentally, it was called yellow journalism because of a cartoon in the New York World called the Yellow Kid. That's where it gets its name. Once H.H. holmes's victims were starting to be found, boy oh boy, did these papers have a field day. As if the actual facts weren't terrifying enough, they created an entirely fake story about Holmes having a murder castle where he would lure his many hundreds of victims. This was entirely fabricated. Interestingly though, this sensationalized crapola is still, still cited as legitimate, legitimate sources of information about Holmes all over. Because there was virtually no factual reporting about his murders, virtually no genuinely trustworthy historical records about his crimes. Seriously, Google HH Holmes and you will find at least one post that says that this guy had a murder castle and he killed 200 people definitively. And he had a never ending labyrinth of torture chambers and trapdoors and a basement crematorium in his castle that he would use to gas people to death. None of this is true, not any of it. But one of the most egregious inaccuracies, at least in my opinion, that you'll find plastered all over the first page of Google search results about Holmes is that he was America's first serial killer. He's not. Not even close. If you Google who was America's first serial killer, H.H. holmes comes up number one. Off the top of my head, I can name four earlier American serial killers you had. Thomas W. Piper, the belfry butcher who beat, raped and murdered four victims. These are just the ones that he confessed to. He was captured after the body of one of his victims, a little girl, was found in the belfry of his church where he worked. He operated between 1873 and 1875. Holmes murderous crime spree that didn't start until 1888 to 1894. So this guy predated him by well over a decade. There was Sarah Jane Robinson, otherwise Known as the Poison fiend, she killed 11 people for insurance money, including her own husband, children, friends and family she operated between 1881 and 1886. Again still before Holmes. Ooh, and have you ever heard of the Harp Brothers? Between 1794 and 1804, these guys killed at least 40 men, women and children. Dismembering, decapitating, disemboweling. They were just monsters who killed for nothing but bloodlust. And according to one of their wives, yes, they were both married after a rampage of murders in Tennessee where one of them used a tomahawk to split a guy's head in half. His wife said that year 17, 1898, was the turning point when her man declared war on all mankind. So it's unclear to me why Holmes is called America's first serial killer. I know it isn't because he was the first to simply be called that in newspapers. Did you know that the term serial killer was first used in 1981 to describe Wayne Williams, the Atlanta child killer who killed at least 31 children in Atlanta between 1979 and 1981? One of the most heart wrenching stories in American history. So again, no idea why Holmes wears this particular crown, especially because he wasn't even really a serial killer. Not by definition. The definition of a serial killer according to the Oxford Dictionary, is a person who commits a series of murders, often with no apparent motive, of, and typically following a characteristic predictable behavior pattern. Holmes killed out of necessity. He killed people who knew too much or who he swindled. It was always in the interest of either covering up a crime just to get rid of them because he had exhausted his use for them, or using this person to gain something like insurance money, for example. He used different techniques for these murders too, like chloroforming or suffocating and burning, for example. So we didn't have like one clear M.O. no predictable behavior pattern, incidentally. Side note, yet another one. Another egregious first serial killer title that really burns my bottom. And I know I'm getting a bit off topic. I will come right back to Holmes in a minute, I promise. Goes to Eileen Wuornos, who Charlize Theron, played in the movie Monster. Eileen Wuornos is called America's first female serial killer. Between 1989 and 1990, she killed at least seven people, but by no means was she the first you had. Belle gunness. Born in 1859. She killed more than 40 people, including her own children. Jane Toppan. Oh, God. Born in 1854, this woman killed dozens of people. She was a killer nurse who tortured patients with medicines and chemicals. She got off on it too. And God knows how many people Delphine Lalori tortured and murdered in New Orleans. We know it was at least 12. She was a slave owner that brutally tortured her slaves in her attic. She's portrayed in the American Horror Stories coven series. Holmes, incidentally, also inspired the fifth season of American Horror Story. I think that was the Lady Gaga one. I don't know. So you have ineffective detective work. A brilliant psychopath who lies through his teeth about literally everything. Newspapers publishing complete fantasies about that psychopath, and present day misidentification as America's first serial killer. The man's history is wrapped in his own lies and inaccuracies manufactured even still. And what really gets lost in all of this is are his victims. His actual victims. Whose tragic murders weren't considered evil enough. Eye catching enough to capture society's attention. From time to time, and frankly, often while researching, I would read things like what a letdown to learn the wild stories aren't true. What he did wasn't nearly as bad as what we were led to believe. Yes, it was. No, he didn't kill hundreds of people. He didn't kill them in torture chambers in a murder castle. Whether he killed five or five hundred people, to me, every single one of his murders was a mind bending tragedy. So many people were never found. So many families never having closure, Never knowing what happened to their daughter, their sister. And in the end, only one murder, the murder of Benjamin Peitzel, is he ever held accountable for. When he is executed on May 7, 1896. Taking all of the names, all of the locations of his victims to the grave. So please keep this in mind while I go through his history. I will cover it all. The facts and the fiction. Because the fiction is insane. But what is true is so, so horrible. It needs no sensationalization to make every murder of every innocent person matter. Christ, I haven't even gotten to the man's life. And we're still in the intro, folks. I warned you. This rabbit hole has never ending nooks and crannies. Okay, a little history about the man. As mentioned, his real name was Herman Mudgett. And he was born on May 16, 1861 in New Hampshire. He was the third child of Levi Horton Mudgett and Theodate Page Price. Both descendants of the first English settlers in that part of New Hampshire. His father was a farmer, trader and house painter. He was actually pretty successful. He was also allegedly a heavy drinker who would beat his family, starve them, and force them into isolation. This is according to Holmes memoir, by the way. It was also written in a newspaper that his father would smother his children in chloroform soaked handkerchiefs. But this was never said by Holmes. It was just written in one of these yellow journalism newspapers. So who knows what the source is? There isn't much information about his parents out there apart from what Holmes said in his descriptions of his childhood. Some historically historians believe he may have had a totally normal, not abusive, upbringing. Regardless, despite the possible terrors that Holmes faced at home, he excelled at school. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy and graduated with honors from Gilmanton academy at age 16. It's written in Wikipedia that he was bullied relentlessly because of his outstanding academic abilities. But was the source of this information Holmes? He could have just been a little creep. Not that I'm saying bullying is right. I'm just saying I suspect literally everything I read about this guy. I was bullied because I was so much smarter than everybody else. Sounds like something a psychopath would say. I'd only trust this if the source was one of those kids from his school who was like, he made us all look stupid, so we smacked him around and caressed his face with skeleton hands. Which is, by the way, how he was bullied. Allegedly, a pivotal moment in Holmes's life was when he was being bullied and children forced him to take the hands of a human skeleton that was just either chilling in like a science lab at school or a local doctor's office. I read two different details here in two different sources, but both of those sources say the kids held the hands of the skeleton to his face to terrorize him. And he said initially that he was terrified of this. But, and this is a quote from his memoir, it was a wicked and dangerous thing, thing to do to a child of tender years and health. But it proved an heroic method of treatment destined ultimately of curing me of my fears and to inculcate me. Inculcate and to inculcate me. First, a strong feeling of curiosity and later a desire to learn, which resulted years afterwards in my adopting medicine as a profession. So according to him, this experience essentially cured him of his. His fear of the dead, desensitizing him to morbidity. Not long after, he began dissecting animals and amphibians and eventually moving on to mammals like dogs, as many psychopaths do. And just a quick side note, little detour, little rabbit hole cranny over here. I'm Calling Holmes a psychopath because I've read a few psychological profiles on the guy by current day psychologists that call him as such. But did you know, even though the term psychopath was first used in 1847, it was not used to describe a person with antisocial personality disorder until the 1980s with the publication of the DSM 3. This was the first time it was defined as persistent violation of social norms. The terminology psychopath is actually not widely accepted as a clinical clinical term anymore for similar reasons as lunatic isn't used anymore. It was used too colloquially to describe just a generally insane maniacal person. But it is still used when describing the symptoms of someone who has been diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. Which again, I read a few journals that described him as such. Okay, we're driving back to the Holmes history highway. Just kidding. Come over here with me through through this creepy 1800s cemetery gate. This is not the same cemetery that we visited in episode six to visit Mercy Brown's vampire autopsy. That was in New England. This one is in Michigan. I'm going to tell you a little bit more about Holmes young adult ish years. And I think this is the perfect place to do it because he'll be showing up in a couple of minutes. Walk with me through this lovely cemetery trellis. I've never seen before of these in a cemetery before. It's really. Look out. The bats. Bats. I cannot believe that just happened. It's about 2am April 1884 and it is now starting to rain. But don't worry, I brought an umbrella big enough for two. Let's snuggle up here beside this tomb. Isn't it wild how everything looks new? Because it is. I always think it's so funny when in historically set movie cemeteries are old. Like they wouldn't be. Like this place just opened for business maybe 10 years ago. All the stones are fresh as a baby's bottom. Wait, that doesn't sound right. Is that the saying? Oh, it's soft. Soft as a baby's bottom. Oh wait. Those two approaching lanterns belong to a man named William James Herdman. And the other belongs to Mr. Henry Holmes. They're looking for something. And it appears that they've found what they're looking for. The freshest grave in the place whose owner died just three days ago. William and Henry are now digging up this grave with the intention of selling the body of this recently deceased person to the University of Michigan's anatomy lab. Let's step back over here. They're going to be digging for Some time time. And I'll tell you a little bit about the start of his murderous career. In 1878, Holmes married 16 year old Clara Lovering in New Hampshire. And in 1879 he would bring her to Vermont where he enrolled in the University of Vermont for just one year. They had a child together, but housemates of Holmes described him as a violent and abusive man to Clara. She moved back to New Hampshire in 1884 and had little contact with him after that. They never officially divorced or separated. This is when he transferred to the University of Michigan's Department of Medicine and Surgery. It's here that he met his professor, William James Herdman, and now fellow grave robber. Holmes graduated by the skin of his teeth and in 1884, even before he graduated, he grave robbed with his professor to make some extra cash by selling them to anatomy schools. He would also later admit to using cadavers that he dug up to defraud life insurance companies. Up until now Holmes had been going by the name given to him at birth, Herman Mudgett. But in 1886 he moved to Chicago and began using the pseudonym H.H. holmes. For a number of reasons it's believed he wanted to escape his past and give himself a clean slate. In college he was already a grave robbing bastard and known to surgeons of the school who purchased the cadavers from him. The father of his first wife, Richard Lovering, he died under suspicious circumstances. Details are unclear, but Holmes may have used the situation as one of his earliest fraudulent life insurance collection schemes. He was also the last person to be seen with a little boy who went missing. He claimed the little boy went back to Massachusetts, like just hopped on the Phongwa bus and off he went. It's very confusing because there was no investigation, none was done about this. But Holmes knew his name was still attached to this situation. As Herman Mudgett, he also engaged in petty crimes and manipulating and deceiving people out of their money before moving to Chicago. And to him, the name Holmes projected an air of respectability. Possibly inspired by the fictional detective, Detective Sherlock Holmes. This new name gave him a brand new Persona to slither into. And as soon as he got to Chicago, he got a job in a drugstore at the northwest corner of South Wallace avenue and West 63rd street in the Englewood section of Chicago. I looked that up on Google Maps to see what's there. Now there's nothing but a post office and an underpass. But there's a great piece of graffiti on the underpass that says Love all trust None. It has a picture of a snake that looks like a hand biting another hand. I'll put it on the Instagram. I feel like there's something historically poignant about this. I just can't tell you exactly what. Holmes was actually a good employee and eventually ended up buying the drugstore and the lot across the street, where in 1887, he initiated the construction of a large mix used building. It was partially offices, a drugstore and a hotel, which would later be called the Murder Castle in the yellow press. How did Holmes afford to have this building built? Well, he couldn't afford to have it built. He never paid the architects or steel company to build it. They took him to court and won. He was able to convince investors to give him the money to pay them off for the project by saying that he intended to use the building as a hotel. Hotel that would conclude construction before the World's Fair, where there would be a lot of travelers staying there. This detail that he used to convince investors that the building would be used as a hotel that would be built just in time for travelers, mostly young women coming to the exhibition is what inflamed the creative brains of journalists after Holmes's real murder victims were starting to be found. And before we get to the murder murder Castle, let's talk about the confirmed victims of Holmes. In 1894, Holmes met a man named Benjamin Freelon Peitzel, a carpenter with a criminal past and father of five. Holmes manipulated and used this man to help him with several criminal schemes. A district attorney labeled Peitzel as, quote, Holmes's tool, his creature. Holmes cooked up an insurance insurance fraud plan with Peitzel where they would find a cadaver to play the role of an inventor and blow up the fake lab that they put together, making it look like a man died in the explosion. Together, they would split the insurance money. It was Holmes's job to find the cadaver, but he didn't get around to it, so he killed Peitzel instead. He knocked him unconscious with chloroform and set his body on fire with benzene. He was still alive when Holmes lit him on fire. He collected the insurance payout and then went on to manipulate Peitzel's widow, Carrie Ann Canning, into believing that Peitzel faked his own death and was waiting for her and the children in Canada. This was presumably to prevent his family from suspecting anything was suspicious, which he feared they were beginning to. He just hadn't thought this far in the plan. Now, the details of the strangeness of this Next piece of history are a little tricky to piece together because again, all we know of what happened came from Holmes's confession, which was spotty at best, and the statements of those involved. But a number of them didn't live to tell the tales, and the ones who did were kept in a constant state of confusion. Holmes convinced Peitzel's widow to allow him to take three of her five children on a trip to Canada, where they were presumably going to meet their father. He told the widow to follow them, not travel with them. He did this to keep the family from speaking with each other again. He was concerned that they were onto him. And even more insanely, Holmes had a wife of his from a second bigamous marriage named Myrta Belknap, who He married in 1886. Come with them like, hey babe, gonna take a road trip with these three mysterious children to Canada for some reason you don't need to know about. And she was like, I'll make sandwiches. She claimed to have no idea what was happening and detectives believed her because this was a common feature in many of Holmes's crimes. People just went along with them. So he traveled with the children to another property that he had in Toronto. This is where he killed the 13 year old Alice, 9 year old Nellie, and 7 year old Howard Robert. He forced the two girls into a trunk, closed and locked the lid, drilled a hole in the side, put a hose that was connected to a gas line through the hole and suffocated them to death. He buried their nude bodies in the cellar. The charred bones of little Howard were found in the chimney of the house. It is believed that Holmes used cyanide to kill the child, but it is unclear if he burned his body like he did similarly to the boy's father with an accelerant like benzene, or if he placed him in a big stove in the cellar. A line from the daily Northwestern newspaper says boys digging under Holmes house in an unfinished portion of the cellar found the two feet of Howard Peitzel. They had been burned but not destroyed and were evidently too bulky to be put in the chimney hole. End quote. A few weeks or months earlier, Holmes cut contact with Peitzel's wife, who finally got authorities involved in a manhunt. Detective Frank Geyer, who worked for the Philadelphia Police Department, traced Holmes's steps all the way to this house. And he said, 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 forearm of A human being. End quote. The little girls were found first. Holmes was quickly traced to Boston where he was arrested. It was in Boston where Holmes met his third bigamous wife, Georgiana Yoke, who was completely unaware that he already had two other wives. It's unclear where his second wife was at this time, but he was planning to flee the country with his third wife by the time they caught up with him. This is when the stories of Holmes true and perceived crimes caught fire in the press back in Chicago. Before Mr. Peitzel and the children, it is presumed that he committed a number of other murders. One of his mistresses. Yes, he had three wives and mistresses. 31 year old Julia Smythe. When her husband found out that she was cheating with Holmes, he left her and her five year old daughter Pearl, and she stayed in one of the apartments in the Chicago building. She and her little girl disappeared on Christmas Eve 1891. Holmes claimed that she died during a botched abortion that he performed on her and claimed to have poisoned Pearl. Julia was never found, but the partial skeleton of a child, possibly, possibly Pearl's age, was found when excavating the cellar. Emmeline S. Grand, a secretary that Holmes hired to help him pedal some snake oil that cured alcoholism. She was last seen in December 1892. Her skeleton was actually found at the home of a Chicago physician who admitted to working with Holmes, Minnie Williams, who Holmes hired as a stenographer at the Chicago building. He swindled her out of a a property that she owned in Texas. Her sister, Nanny Williams came to visit her and both she and Minnie disappeared. The parents of those girls received a letter that said, quote, brother Harry says you need never trouble any more about me, financially or otherwise. He and sister will see to me. I hope our hard days are over. End quote. Holmes had been going by another alias at this time, Harry Gordon. That's what's meant by Brother Harry in that letter. It's presumed that he sent the letter to the parents to prevent them from suspecting anything was wrong in regard to the murder. Castle. Although heaps of the quote unquote facts surrounding this building were entirely fabricated. I'm talking claims that it had a chute to transport bodies to the basement. It had an elaborate torture dungeon with gas pipes to suffocate victims, trapdoors and secret soundproof rooms to torture and kill hotel guests, specifically hundreds of them who stayed in the building during the World's Fair. None of these things were true. But quite a number of people's disappearances and deaths were tied to the building, which just further inflamed the fantastical stories. A 68 year old creditor of Holmes named John de Bruyl died of apoplexy on April 17. Shortly after a witness saw him collapse in the building and Holmes poured a black liquid down his throat. Foul play wasn't suspected, strangely, but in 1895 it was discovered that Holmes had an insurance policy on this man and profited from his death. In 1891, Emily Van Tassel, an employee in the building's drugstore, went missing. Holmes confessed to killing her and Tassel's mother also believed that she was a victim, although her body was never found. Dr. Rustler, a man who had an office in the building, went missing in 1892. Holmes also confessed to killing this man, but his body also was never found. A stenographer, Kitty Kelly, also missing in 1892. Another possible victim, Lucy Burbank, her bank book was found with human hair in the chimney flute of the building in 1895. These are just a few people who were suspected to have been killed by Holmes either in the building or that died after having met him in the building or doing business there. So it wasn't a complete fabrication that murders were connected to this building. But let's discuss in a little more detail what was actually printed in the papers. I found a multi page expose quote unquote on the Murder Castle in the Chicago Chronicles, Sunday, May 3rd edition. And this is the title. By the way, you're going to want to go get yourself a soda pop to enjoy. For the length of this title it reads HH Holmes, the man of blood and his hideous crimes. Absolute indifference to human life. Show in his character true history of the operations of this great assassin. His record traced from birth to the shade of the gallows. Visit to to Moyamensing prison where he now awaits his doom. The Chicago Castle and its facilities for his atrocious work. End of headline. I will not read the entire article, but this is how it starts. On Thursday morning next, unless something unlooked for occurs to check the course of justice, the world will be rid of the arch criminal of this age. HH Holmes, the multi murderer, bigamist, seducer, resurrectionist, forger, thief and general swindler will be taken from his cell in the Moya Mensing Jail, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and hanged by the neck until he is dead. End quote. About the Murder Castle, it says Holmes would just as soon roast children in stoves and smother them in trunks. He had a predilection for chloroform but did not object to nitroglycerine or dynamite when they would best aid his purposes. And one of his favorite modes of disposing of women who readily succumbed to his gentle manners and wielding tongue was to entomb them in the vault of his famous castle in Englewood and asphyxiate them with noxious gases. It continues. He built his notorious castle with a view view of engaging in wholesale butchery. In it there were mysterious stairs, secret chambers, kilns for cremating purposes, and iron vaults in which to suffocate people who crossed his path or whose disappearances could help him to money and other property. Most schemes were worked from the castle, which he started to erect before the World's Fair. This building was designed as a regular murder festival factory. Holmes planned himself and engaged his own workmen, taking care to change them frequently so that none should have intimate knowledge of the intricacies of this place. Okay, so like most lies this fantastical, there's usually a grain or two of truth in there. The building was indeed constructed by teams of builders who would be switched out after just a few weeks or months. But this is because he wouldn't pay them and he'd find a way to swindle another team to come in and continue the work. It wasn't because he didn't want anyone to know the intricacies of the plans. The hotel space of the building was never finished or open to the public. And there were rooms with no windows that the paper described as secret torture rooms. But these were just places that Holmes used to hide furniture and property that he bought on credit that he had no intention of paying for to hide from credit predators so they couldn't repossess them. All of the evidence of crimes that may have been committed in this building were just too circumstantial to create a convincing case in Chicago. So Holmes was tried for the murder of only Benjamin Peitzel in Philadelphia. He wasn't officially tried for the murders of the children, but was found guilty and sentenced to death. Shortly after the conviction, he confessed to other murders again, some of which were people who were currently living, but most were missing. He was hanged on May 7, 1896, and buried in a coffin that he requested be contained in concrete and buried 10ft deep. Why, you ask? He was concerned grave robbers just like him would steal his body and use it for dissection. Eventually, the castle would be badly burned in an arson fire and torn down in 1938. That post office that I mentioned, it stands right there today and contains part of the original basement structure. It is also claimed to be haunted as the base of Mount Fuji. One employee told a terrifying story of hearing a sound in the basement and thinking another employee was there. So she poked her head around the corner to see, but no one was there. Then she noticed all of the chairs that lined the dark hallway had been stacked on top of each other. She had walked past them only a minute earlier where they were all simply lined up against the wall. Some see apparitions of a young woman and hear the sounds of a woman singing or humming. One of Holmes's own relatives says that he wanted to see the basement for himself. He went down and said he experienced terrible physical and emotional effects. He said, quote, before I walked down those steps, I was a non believer. Absolutely non. I would have walked into any building in the world. An hour later when I came out, my whole foundation had changed. I was a believer. Okay, this was a particularly tough episode in many regards. I hope you didn't get whiplash from being dragged with me down all of my rabbit holes. And I usually like to end with something nice to make you feel a little bit better, but I couldn't find anything nice regarding this story, to be honest. But I did find something interesting that might make you say, ah. I mentioned Holmes was a womanizer and a psychopath. And it's always crazy to me when you see these murderers and serial killers with their courtrooms packed with lady admirers. And while reading about Holmes and all of these wives and girlfriends and mistresses, it just makes you wonder, what is it? This man was a monster. It's the most bizarre phenomenon. But I found a female reporter's take on Holmes's magnetism that I think puts into words this phenomenon on better than anything I've ever read about this captivating nature of psychopathic men. Sadly, she's named only as a female critic in this Chicago Chronicle article. But this is what she said. I sat and tried to study him as I gazed at him. I tried to put behind me the knowledge of his crimes and tried to judge him, say, as a gentleman who had just been presented to me. His manner is perfect, and that is such a charm. A man with the deferential yet dignified bearing has a strong weapon where women are concerned. A man like that makes each woman to whom he pays court feel that she alone is the bright power before he bends. It is tact, sublimated, allied to an unrivalled knowledge of feminine nature. And it touches a most vital point. Personal vanity she may know evil of him, but he says to her, with you, I am good. I truly hate that. I understand exactly what she means. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please please rate the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Leave me your lovely comments and subscribe to this podcast and my new one, Dark Poetry. Be kind to yourselves and I will see you in your nightmares.