Doctor On A Killing Spree

Around the 1880s, when Jack the Ripper's killings were terrifying the people of London, Americans thought they were safe, but they didn’t know that a mad doctor was on a killing spree. He was the “Holmes” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle warned us about, as Dr. Watson hinted in one of his journals that it's a blessing that Sherlock Holmes decided to use his powers to solve the crimes and what an amazing criminal he would have become if he decided to go against the law. H. H. Holmes was the latter one.

I was born with the devil in me.

– H. H. Holmes

In most cases of serial killers, some factors are strikingly common, like violent family, poverty, and negligence, along with some mental problems. H. H. Holmes was a born criminal, he liked torturing animals, and his aggression intensified due to violence from his father. When a person does not have a high IQ and follows wicked paths, he cannot go far with his plans, but the problem arises when an educated and intelligent lad like Holmes decides to choose unlawful paths. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy at the age of 16, some notable alumni of the school include Franklin Pierce (US President) and Mark Zuckerberg.

In 1878, he married a girl named Clara Lovering, and as he was interested in anatomy and dissections, he did his graduation from the University of Michigan under the Department of Medical and Surgery. During this time in college, he used his financial cleverness to claim life insurance money from the cadavers stored in college dissection halls, in short, he did insurance frauds. He kept buying things with credit instead of paying and got away with it every time.

Even though he had a good education, he didn’t get a good job in the medicine department, or maybe his “evil” mind wanted something else. Clara left her due to his violent behavior, he got into multiple jobs but left each one due to some tragic incidents, and in one of his jobs at the drugstore, a boy died after receiving medications from him. Due to his bad past, it became difficult for him to get other jobs, so he decided to change his name and shift to Chicago, where he married two other women after buying the drugstore while and being officially married to Clara.

After his conviction, many newspapers also discussed his skills of manipulation, charm, and deceit as he married four women in a span of 16 years and always got away with his credit frauds. Terms like “Charm Killer” and “Casanova's Murders” appropriately defines him.

MURDER CASTLE

After moving to Chicago, he found a job at Elizabeth S. Holton’s drugstore at the northwest corner of South Wallace Avenue, and this was a turning point in his life, albeit not a “turning point” people of America would have ever hoped in the life of people like Holmes. He proved to be a hardworking employee and eventually bought the store, and he was earning good enough for his livelihood, but he had different plans. Soon after he became the owner, the former owner who lived in the apartment on the first floor mysteriously disappeared (or moved to California, as he told later). As described in the legendary book of Napolean Hill, “Think and Grow Rich,” a BURNING DESIRE for anything can be transmuted into its physical equivalent, and it can be a positive or negative desire.

I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing —

- H. H. Holmes

In precise, murder was his passion and desire, and now he wanted to follow his passion. Holmes purchased an abandoned lot across the drugstore, he planned to build a drugstore, retail stores, hotel, apartment, and his “Murder Castle,” which he dreamt of. He ensured that his building was surrounded by women by turning away all the men who wanted to live in the apartment and focusing on selling stuffs usually bought by women. His murder castle was mainly established on the second floor, and the whole structure of the house was bizarre.

No one knew what was inside the house, no one bothered to know as Holmes was a charming, respectable, and mysterious drugstore owner, but people started to wonder some weird things about him and his “castle.” People observed that he allowed very few men to live inside his apartment, and even more weird was the strange disappearance of the females living inside. When people tried to inquire about that, he told them they left the town in the middle of the night and left all their belongings inside the apartment, he gave debts to many women, and due to his “forgiving” nature, he didn’t bother to collect his money after they left the town. This was very hard to believe, and police started to inquire into this matter.

The police department became alert due to the large disappearance of women and their daughters, but no one had filed a case against Holmes, and no evidence was available. Some of the police officials knew that something was wrong inside the castle as no one saw any women going anywhere before their disappearance, and no sound came out of the house. It was already known to the people that the castle had soundproof rooms and passages that were like a maze, and it was also published in the article when it was being built, which made the investors pull out their money from the hotel construction.

One day police officers decided to enter the “murder castle” without the consent of Holmes and discovered that the house was a torture chamber, it included many interlinked passages to the basement, different tubes, and channels for the mazes, but the most horrifying thing was yet to be discovered. When the cops explored more rooms on the second floor, they found airtight rooms with gas pipelines and rooms with hinged walls and false partitions. Cops were shocked to see and were able to imagine how Holmes could have used his castle to tortured the women. It was believed that Holmes used chutes to transport the bodies to the basement after killing them inside torture rooms and were further dissected by him to sell their organs and bones in the black market. There was a blowing furnace in his basement, which he told was for blowing glass; however, it was surprisingly small for that purpose but big enough for burning bodies.”

After many such killings and murders, he was finally put on trial for the murder of Benjamin Pitezel, was found guilty, and sentenced to death.

He confessed to 27 more murders, but it was believed that he had killed more than 200 people. It was his seduction skills and charm that helped him lure women to his castle, and the accurate number of his victims was never determined due to the complete disappearance of their bodies and lack of evidence that might have linked him to the crime. The complete enigmas of the murder castle were never unveiled. He was a medical professional and knew ways to destroy a body by dumping the remains in lime or acid pits.

The way he murdered Julia Smythe and Pearl Smith was very disturbing, in his confession, he told that she died during an abortion, but later it was found out it was Holmes who did her abortion, and his sole intention was to kill her. This theory was not confirmed, and what truly happened to both of them was never really known, which made him the most horrific serial killer in America's history. He vanished his victims completely, and that was his way of getting away, more than 170 of his victims just disappeared, it was never known what actually happened to them, and he never confessed.

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FOOTNOTES: Republishing my medium article.

https://saralverma.medium.com/doctor-on-a-killing-spree-cccfb9c575d2

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