After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - The American Ripper

Episode Date: February 1, 2024

Who was the American Ripper? How many people died at his hands? What on earth is a 'murder castle'? Anthony and Maddy head down a rabbit hole on the hunt for a man who is as much myth as real life monster.Edited by Tom Delargy, Produced by Stuart Beckwith, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code AFTERDARK sign up now for your 14-day free trial http://access.historyhit.com/checkout/subscribe/purchase?code=afterdark&plan=monthlyYou can take part in our listener survey here.

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Hi everyone, it's Maddie here. I'm just jumping in at the top of this episode to let you know that we are going to be talking about murders and historic infanticide. So if that's not for you, skip ahead to our other episodes. Listener beware. If you have pressed play on this episode of After Dark, hoping to uncover the true history of the man they call the American Ripper, think again. What follows is a series of dark twists and turns,

some carved into the landscape of his personal mythology by the very man himself. This is a history that disproves the old adage, truth will out, and demands you separate fact from fiction, even when that seems impossible. It is a case so unknowable that in 2017, the descendants of this man, one of America's first serial killers, requested that his body be exhumed to confirm that he had, in fact, died in 1896 following his execution. Family lore had it that perhaps he had duped America and somehow survived, going on to kill hundreds more. So in this episode, Maddy and I invite you to don your investigative hat,

stick as close as you can to the archival material, and join us as we attempt to unravel a tale so dark it still remains lost in the mists of myth-making and tales of horror. We will ask you to step inside the lair of a 19th century serial killer, his murder castle, as it has been called, located on 63rd and Wallace, Chicago, Illinois. There, it was said, soundproof rooms hid the cries of his victims. What's more, a series of pulleys, trapdoors, and macabre chutes were apparently strategically placed throughout the building, which helped him to dispose of upwards

of 200 bodies. Unless none of this is true at all. To begin then, let me introduce you to the man himself, Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, or H.H. Holmes for convenience. Except, in truth, that wasn't his name at all. Hello and welcome to After Dark, Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. I'm Dr. Maddy Pelling. And I'm Dr. Anthony Delaney. And this week, as you might have gathered, we're talking about the American Ripper, H.H. Holmes. I mean, I already have a million questions. This is such a complicated history. Before we get into who he was or who he wasn't, can you give us a little bit of context? We're in the US this time in the 1890s. Yeah, this history spans across the 1890s. The action of it spans across the 1890s. So just to

give a little bit of context about what's happening in America at that time, we have Grover Cleveland, and he is serving as the 22nd and the 24th president of the United States, respectively, between 1885 and 1889, and then again between 1893 and 1897. So Cleveland is providing the presidential backdrop to a lot of what we're going to discover happened during Holmes' case and during his life. Another thing that's going to be instrumental in this particular history, in this particular story, and in some parts, the myth making of H.H. Holmes, is that more than 25 million people visit Chicago in 1893 for the World Columbian Exhibition between May the 1st and October 3rd. So that's 1893.

We'll discuss it a little bit further when we get into the episode, but it's just this mass, huge, successful exhibition celebrating 400 years since the Columbus landing in America, which comes with its own problems, but we can discuss that when we get into the episode. And then in 1895, on the 20th of February, to be exact, the former enslaved civil rights activist Frederick Douglas dies. So we have a lot of change, a lot of flux happening, and that world exposition that really sits in the American historical lore as it goes forward. So that's the backdrop to what's happening while these cases are unfolding.

There's a lot there as well about who or what America is in those things that you've picked up from that period, thinking about civil rights, thinking about the mythology and the history of America as a nation going all the way back to Columbus. So that's the context. But we've got a man, one individual at the center of this story. He becomes known as the American Ripper, but you've introduced him here as H.H. Holmes. So who is he? Before I get into that, you've just sparked something which I hadn't fully appreciated, actually, in that this is America trying to find itself slightly. And of course, we're not that far from the American Civil Wars. And H.H. Holmes isn't

really this man's name. His real name is Herman Webster Mudgett, which is a very glamorous name. Sorry to anybody who's called Mudgett out there. And he was born on the 16th of May, 1861. So it's just registered with me. He was born at the outset of the Civil War. So he is coming into the world and into the new world, as it was termed problematically, at a time when they are fighting for their identity. What is America? What can America be? What should America be? And so this is the world in which Herman Webster Mudgett is born in 1861. His family came from a comfortable farming background, but certainly not rich. They would have been hand to mouth. It wasn't an affluent background necessarily. I'd be interested to know what you think about

the next two points. It is said in his lore that his father was a violent man. Now, as we will see when we go through this case bit by bit, there is often so much contradiction in some of these pieces of information. Some say his father was violent, some say he wasn't, and that was something that Mudgett himself invented later. So we have this potential that his father was a violent man, potentially coming from alcoholism, and there is reports that he was severely bullied as a child. Now, before I kind of go on to talk a little bit more about that, just in terms of the context of some of the people that we talk about in terms of misdeeds, Maddy,

just wondering if there's any red flags coming up for you there going, father was a violent man, and he was severely bullied in terms of that personality cult that comes up around some of these serial killers we talk about. Yeah, I think that's really interesting. And there's always an interest in the 19th century, in particular, in the psychology of killers. We've got things like phrenology looking at the shape of people's heads to confirm how much of a criminal and what kind of a criminal they were destined to be. And there's a sense that how you're formulated physically, how you're formulated in terms of your childhood early on does have an effect. And it's a real fascination.

I think there's a danger in this era of true crime in the 19th century. And it's something that we still see perpetuated today when people talk about killers from this period, from the early 20th century in particular. There's a tendency and a bit of a danger i think to almost make excuses for them exactly and often when you get killers of women and we're going to talk about h.h holmes and his crimes or mudget as he's now known to us in more detail but generally when you have men who kill women there's a sense of almost apology where the narrative is these men are polite they were respectable in society and it almost comes across as an excuse for what they do or a caveat to their crimes and i think we just have to hold that in our minds that kind of narrative and from what you're saying already this case is full of that kind of mythology that kind of narrative and from what you're saying already this case is full of that

kind of mythology that kind of storytelling and that he is already the center of the story rather than his victims yeah that's kind of why i brought it up because to me that's what it felt like when i was reading some of these sources that he is inventing some of this for himself. Also, our desire to understand why these people kill. And it was our conversation with Professor David Wilson was in the back of my mind going, don't look for that reason, look at the ways to stop it, because we can never understand those reasons. And those pieces of information, having been bullied, and his father was violent, that is going towards trying to explain, I think. And as you say, excuse then potentially can be used to do that too. And actually, I'm not sure

how useful that is, particularly if Mudgett is providing these details himself. We were talking about the bullying as potentially something that's added into the narrative later on, or that is used as an excuse by Mudgett or by the people around him. But I can see in my notes here in front of me that you've got an incident written down of bullying that involves a skeleton. So whether it's true or not, I need to know about this, please. Yeah, it's something that Mudgett leaves us himself,

where he says he was taken to a lab by, his bullies kind of coaxed him to a lab where there was a skeleton and an articulated skeleton for anatomy purposes and it was just a local doctor's lab that he had in his surgery and they took him to frighten him and placed him in front of the skeleton and there was an element of putting the skeleton's hands his bones or her bones on his face and that this was supposed to have really frightened him and while he did get quite scared he overcame that fear and then started to have this intrigue of death a caveat that in terms of him filling in parts of his narrative that that's

coming from him so i do think it's um it's an interesting thing but i think he might be inventing it as part of his lore you know definitely so we know something of his childhood even if it's an interesting thing, but I think he might be inventing it as part of his lore, you know? Definitely. So we know something of his childhood, even if it's a little bit, you know, we're taking it with a pinch of salt. What do we know about his adult life? In the beginning, not that much, because he gets married quite young. He gets married at about 17 to Clara Lovering,

and this is in about 1878. And they married in secret, some reports say, other reports say it wasn't secret, but the reports that say it was secret say that they married in secret, and then she went back to live with her family, he went back to live with his, and it wasn't until a few months later, almost a year later, where they actually said, oh, by the way, we got married. By the sounds of it, he had a lot of admirers in those early years, people were attracted to him. And I've given you a picture here where there's a very smart got married. By the sounds of it, he had a lot of admirers in those early years. People were attracted to him. And I've given you a picture here where there's a very smart looking gentleman,

but if you can do our usual gig, Maddy, and describe Mr. Herman Webster Mudgett for the listeners so they have an idea of what they're... And we'll put some of these pictures on socials too, but just so they have an idea in their head of the man we're talking about. I mean, it's difficult to look at him. He's a young man in this picture, but it's difficult to look at him knowing the crimes, knowing something of the crimes that he went on to do. And I think that's kind of colouring my perception of him. I will say he is quite handsome and you can see that he would have had admirers. He's in a suit and a bowler hat looking very Charlie Chaplin-esque. He's got a tie on and a

very crisp white shirt and the most notable thing um because i currently live with my husband who has been growing one of these no we've had endless conversations about the appropriate length and how to trim it much it has a very impressive mustache yes yes it's it's something in my life that i'm dealing with and coming to terms with. I haven't even seen that in any of those pictures on Instagram.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'll have to voice know you about this later. Oh, my God. It's controversial in our household. Hopefully it's not as large as this particular moustache.

This one looks like it's so large it's trying to get off his face. Yeah, Mudgett's moustache is sort of walking away, isn't it? Or flapping away he looks like someone who i mean he's looking quite directly at the photographer into the camera

he looks pretty put together respectable he's got what looked like very well kept clothes for this period possibly even brand new he looks respectable he. He's handsome, impressive moustache. The reason I asked is because I think all those elements that you just described become part of the ways in which he commits his numerous, as we shall see, frauds, and then lures in a lot of both men and women, because he apparently had a charm. You do hear later, oh, actually, he was quite monstrous in many ways. But again, that seems to be retrospective. I think at the time, people could easily be taken in by this man. Moving on then himself and Clara did have a child. They had a son, Robert Lovering Mudgett. So what happens then is Mudgett decides that he is going to leave his wife and son and

they move back in with her family. And he's going to go and join the University of Michigan's Department of Medicine and Surgery because he wants to become a doctor. Now, at this point, spoiler, is not him abandoning his family. This would have been not that unusual. He's going to make a future for himself and it's going to be a respectable future. And it's a step up for him in society. This is partially the American dream, I suppose, where he's going from a farming background to something that will raise his status in society. So this would have been totally acceptable to Clara and her family and potentially a huge opportunity for him.

Yeah, I wonder if Clara would have seen it like that, just putting that out there. I think she may have felt pretty pissed off, you know, as someone who married him age 17, presumably what was quite a romantic situation. You know, they were obviously very committed to each other and if a little bit impetuous. But yeah, I see what you're saying, that this would be his opportunity to advance his place in the world and therefore hers as well and their son. But yeah, I wonder, I would love to hear her perspective on that.

to hear her perspective on that? You won't, I'm afraid, because her voice particularly, and Robert's voice, is very missing from this narrative. And I think there are key voices in it, but we don't really come back to them. You'll hear a little bit more about them, but there's very little at the time about them. I think later, obviously, Robert lives into the 1950s, I think it is. So there was some attention placed on him later. But in terms of what's happening at the time, she gets forgotten and it'll become clear why she becomes forgotten as the story goes on. So we have a man here who he's quite good looking.

He obviously has some kind of charisma. Apart from a slightly scandalous early young marriage, he is respectable, apparently. So what happens? Well, it's at this point that when people look back on his life, as so often happens when somebody's misdeeds come to light, it's at this point that people start to say, ah, this was when he changed from a man to a monster. ah, this was when he changed from a man to a monster. While attending medical school, Mudgett lodged in a boarding house which was run by the ever-vigilant Mrs. Brew. She was, by all accounts, an exacting lady of a certain age who had high expectations

of herself and her lodgers. She also knew that by housing the future eminent doctors of the United States under her roof, she brought a level of sophistication and respectability to her house. Over the course of one particular week in 1883, however, as Mrs. Brew busied herself in and around her lodger's rooms, she noticed the faintest hint of an unpleasant smell. She stopped in her tracks and sniffed at the air. Nothing. She could neither place the smell or its origins now, but she had smelled something. She was certain of that. Day after day, the smell grew stronger, and now there was no denying what it was. Rot. Decay. And if Mrs. Brew didn't know better, it was death. So strong had

the smell now become that she followed her nose up the stairs, round the corridors, and finally to one particular closed door. The smell, you will by now have guessed, came from Mr. Mudgett's room. She rested her broom against the jamb of the door then, and rummaged in the front pocket of her apron, removing her master key. She slipped the key in the lock, took the broom in hand so she had an excuse of sweeping should she be discovered, and made her way inside. The foul stench threatened to wrap her in its noxious power, but covering her mouth and nose she went on. The smell, it seemed, came from under Mr. Mudgett's bed.

So gingerly she looked below its iron frame. To her horror, she immediately deduced that the stench was emanating from a concealed, dark object. She took her broom and gently swept the object from under her lodger's bed. Then, as she focused on the object in front of her, she felt fear course through her from the very tips of her toes. Before her, on the floor, was the mutilated body of a deceased infant. Now, Mudgett's explanation was that he and his dissection partner had taken to furnishing the anatomy school with cadavers in order to earn an additional income. At times, he explained, he would take some of these specimens home for

private study and further investigation. Mrs. Brew, disturbed but satisfied, insisted that no further bodies should be brought to, worked on, or stored in her house. She did not care how necessary and worthwhile the work was. Mudgett agreed, and that, for now, was that. I am on Mrs Brew's side here. What a name as well, Mrs Brew. I know, yeah, put the kettle on. Obviously horrifying. What's striking me straight away is

we've seen this before with Burke and Hare, where there's very close proximity between the anatomy industry, because it is an industry of acquiring cadavers, and there is money exchanged or favors exchanged in that process of getting a human body onto the anatomist's slab the proximity of that to actual murder is interesting so we're seeing that again in a slightly different context but we are seeing it again also if i remember correctly from the burke and hare episode they also stored bodies under the bed yeah i hadn't drawn that conclusion myself actually i hadn't drawn that link myself i think i mean this is a very minor point but I think it tells you so much about 19th century domestic space and the limited options for places to hide things.

Yeah, because it is not a good option, right? Well, I suppose if you have... Yeah, lodging houses. You know, you've got a community of people that's changing all the time. I imagine if those buildings survived today, if you were to look under the floorboards, that there'd be all kinds of objects that people had stored, that people had left with an intention of coming back, maybe stolen goods. I think those buildings would hold such a record of human misbehaviour. And I think this body is just an extreme example at one end of that spectrum,

I think. His excuse is that he has a human child dead under his bed that's been anatomised in some way. It's obviously had potentially some kind of medical procedures practised on it, and we don't need to maybe dwell on it more than that. But Mrs. Bruce seems satisfied. He is part of the medical school. So his excuse is very much that he needed this cadaver, this learning tool is how he's framing it. This is no longer a human child. It's just something that he's brought home with him from his work. I have several questions. First of all, has this body really come from the medical school? Or is this a child that he has killed and stored the remains of? And if that's the case, is this the first victim of Mudgett?

We don't know the identity of the child that was discovered under the bed. Holmes himself doesn't reference that incident. The person who tells us about that is Mrs. Brew. And she tells us after he's been caught for several other murders and fraud. The interesting thing potentially about it, to maybe say there might have been something more sinister going on, is that later, Holmes, as he's known, Mudgett at this point, is caught up in a couple of cases that relate to botched abortions. But we're probably dealing with something different here. My instinct on it, based on the secondary material and some of the primary sources actually, is that he probably did not murder this child, that this was a cadaver from the medical school that he has brought home, or a cadaver that he secured for himself and just

didn't take it to the medical school because he was involved in the trade. It's been said that he was a grave robber. I can see no evidence of the fact that he was robbing graves, but there is evidence of the fact that he was involved in the trade of cadavers, certainly. So I have a feeling he probably wasn't robbing the graves himself. But as we spoke about in the Birkenhair episode,

there is a line, isn't there, of trade that goes from the watchmen in the graveyards to the actual grave robbers themselves, then up to the medical professionals and then up to the heads of anatomy. So I think he's in that line of trade, but I can't find anything. I didn't find anything as I was doing this research to suggest that he was going to graveyards himself and digging up bodies. This is also what you're saying that's giving me a window onto sort of underground economy of medical students maybe being involved in abortions or offering abortions and obviously you know this is the body of an infant rather than aborted

pre-birth fetus but there's so much there about infant mortality about you know if we shift our focus away from Mudgett to the victims or at least to the people he's coming into contact with as a medical practitioner of sorts, we've got lots of stories there of poverty, of lack of choices, particularly for women, lack of healthcare. Really, really fascinating. Really fascinating.

So he seems to get away with this situation. Mrs. Brew, as horrified as she is, accepts the excuse. Yeah, this doesn't impact him too much it happens and it you might suspect that the medical school might have been informed there might have been some kind of investigation but no it doesn't seem that any of that occurred there may be a reason for that which i shall divulge in just a moment um what does draw attention to him though at the university is that he is sued for breach of promise where he apparently despite the fact that he's married to Clara remember he agreed to marry another young woman

in the pursuit of having sex with her and then once he had had sex with her just dropped her and wouldn't make contact with her and so she sued him that didn't look good for the university they were not happy about that. And because he was sued, there was a trial. He defended himself. He just said she was lying. That was his defense. And he was found not guilty. But that was when the spotlight was put on him negatively during his medical school days. So the body didn't count for much, but this breach of promise definitely put a negative focus on him. Poor old Clara for a start and poor whoever this young woman is. Does she have a name in the record, this woman who he promises to marry?

Not that I was able to find. That's actually one of the things that you will find with this story. There are young women dotted all throughout it that obviously had names, but some of them remain missing. Yeah. And you know, we're talking here about the 1890s, but something that certainly resonates with our own age, you know, that she's not believed when it goes to trial. It's his word against her and he wins out. It also says something about the formality of engagement and promises of marriage in this period that you could be sued for breach of promise. We've just spoken about the lack of opportunities and the lack of choices

that women had when it came to their own bodies. But this is at least something they could do. And especially if they had had premarital sex on the understanding, and sometimes not the understanding that marriage was on offer, that they could actually sue. In this case, obviously, it doesn't work. And I imagine that was probably the same in many, many cases. But it's interesting to me that there is that opportunity for this woman. It goes wrong, but. The other thing I would point out is her name will be discoverable. If there was a breach of promise, there will be a court record somewhere that has her name in it. So her name is in the archive in America.

But yeah, he walks free. Despite the negative attention, he doesn't really suffer too much from it. But later then, in 1884, so now he's graduating from medical school. Again, this happens after the fact when he's discovered. But his professor, William James Herdman, recalled that as Mudgett was graduating, he leaned into him and whispered, what the woman said I did, was true so he yeah it's strange isn't it like why why choose that moment to divulge that what she had said was true it's a very strange power play between him and the head of anatomy at the university at the time

yeah if we take this as face value what does that tell us about magic that he is a little bit flamboyant that he wants to get caught up until this point he's proven himself to be a pretty dodgy guy certainly not a respectable gentleman he's bringing bodies back and horrifying his landlady he's sleeping with young women and then not marrying them and in the process, treating on his own wife back home. But he hasn't committed any serious crimes at this point. He's sort of courting that attention, that bit of scrutiny. And to me, that says escalation is coming. Well, it is. One of the things that I would point out, just in terms of contextualising

Professor William James Herdman's testimony is, as I said, A, it comes after the fact when he's discovered. B, he goes on to say in that testimony that that was the first positive, I'm quoting now, that was the first positive evidence I had received up until the time that the fellow was a scoundrel. And I told him so at the time. And I told him so at the time. Now, caveat. Some documents will say that Professor William James Herdman was involved in that same anatomical cadaver trade, and that he was very much in cahoots with Mudgett as he was at the time. And he was just distancing himself from what was now this otherworldly murderous thing,

as opposed to just the trade in bodies. So take it with a pinch of salt, potentially, but it's another thing. And then that comes into the lore, then that comes into the H.H. Holmes lore of being, ah, people were noticing it early. But actually, this is somebody who may himself have had a dubious moral compass saying that afterwards. This is what's so fascinating about this case. Like, get to the truth of it, and you've hit gold, but getting there is difficult.

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who shaped and changed England forever. Subscribe to and follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. right mudget is about to leave medical school at this point in the story so perhaps a recap would be in order just before we go on because if you thought it was confusing so far buckle up guys so we have mudget who is from a farming background, marries Clara. They have a child. He abandons them both to her parents. He goes to medical school in Michigan. He is not the best student, but he graduates. In the time he's in medical school, his landlady, Mrs. Brew, has found this dark object, which turns out to be the cadaver of an infant under his bed. She tells him off for that. He also gets in trouble at the university

because of a breach of promise to a young lady who he said he would marry, despite being already married to Clara. And he graduates and then confesses to the head of anatomy that actually she was telling the truth. So that is where we are right now. Things are about to get even stranger. Tell me more. So when he leaves medical school, the archive goes patchy. He is traveling around certain parts of America. He is changing his name. Why, I hear you ask? Why is he changing his name? It's because he's operating various dodgy enterprises. He doesn't set up as a doctor straight away. He is doing some medical trade. We can see as he's going along, he's teaching as well at times,

but he's also becoming involved in certain businesses. Often those businesses are loosely connected to medical, his medical background. You will find him in Illinois, in Indiana, in Ontario, in Pennsylvania. So he is difficult to track down at this time, not only because he's moving, but also because he's changing his name. Some of the names that he employs, this was again later discovered, were Alexander Bond, Judson, I'm presuming that was a surname, Robert E. Phelps. I'm always fascinated by the insertion of the initial in the middle of these names. It's very, you know, the Gilded Age.

There's an initial in the middle of the thing. So Robert E. Phelps. And then notoriously, he lands on the name we know him by, H.H. Holmes. Do we know where he gets that name from? Well, interestingly, there is debate about this amongst H.H. Holmes aficionados. And some people say he was inspired by Sherlock Holmes and that it was, yeah, it was a Holmes reference. I mean, that's fascinating because to me that says he is begging to be discovered. He is absolutely asking to be hunted down and that he's leaving clues probably that's

not the case it seems that it sorry it seems that in the timeline it comes the year before the publication of the home stories so it's just a coincidence that he lands on that particular name but listen who knows? There may have been some crossovers. If you Google H.H. Holmes, you will see a lot of sources say that it's inspired by the Arthur Conan Doyle character. But further investigation in the early 2000s, from when exactly he started using that name, seemed to disprove that. But again, as with so many things with H.H. Holmes, it's really hard to unravel some of that. So now he is operating under the name H.H. Holmes.

He is essentially a full-time con artist and he uses this new identity to marry a second woman named Myrta Belknap. Yes, a second. Remember, H.H. Holmes is not married though. What about Clara? What's going on? By the time he's with Myrta, that back and forth has stopped.

So distance increases over time with Clara, and he's coming back less and less and less regularly. She does not know he's married a second time. She does not know about H.H. Holmes. So she's not in on this. She is now essentially abandoned. Clara and the son are essentially abandoned. We're right at the end of the 19th century here. And you would imagine it would be harder to be a bigamist in this period because of increased efficiency and record keeping, there's more thoroughness. But I suppose America is such

a vast place that if you move around, maybe not today, but certainly in the 1890s, to the extent that he's doing and you reinvent yourself constantly, maybe you can get away with marrying two women and nobody's going to notice. Again, spoiler alert, there's got to be more than two. So it only gets worse. But I do think your point stands. I think it's a good point. I think it's because of America's vastness, within that vastness becomes possibility. And that possibility feeds into the idea of the American dream, of course, which is this positive, affirmational thing that leads to success. But it also feeds into the ability to hide, deceive, purposefully lose yourself so that you can commit bigamy, essentially. And of course,

Myrta doesn't know about Clara either. So there's that. But he does set himself up when he marries Myrta in Englewood in Chicago, and he is running a pharmacy there. So again, we're coming into this idea of respectability. He bought the pharmacy or he bought the business of the pharmacy from another couple who were heading towards retirement, and he took over their premises, but was but he was running it his story takes on takes some roots here now and this is the time at which he purchases a plot across the road from the pharmacy which we've just been talking about and this is where he would build what became known as his murder castle murder castle yes um and this was on west 63rd Street in Chicago, Illinois. Now, it became known as a murder castle, but it's not a castle. It is actually, in many ways, a very ordinary building.

Originally, it was two stories high. It had storefronts. It was a drugstore on the ground floor and had apartments above. And in the grand tradition of After Dark, Maddy, there's another picture for you to describe. This one is interesting because this is even labeled as holmes's castle but tell us what this building looks like okay so it's a photograph of a pretty standard i'm guessing chicago street the building at this point it's a sort of block of several buildings together i don't know if they're not through into one space but they are it's three stories at this point um and there's shop fronts at the bottom with these lovely stripy uh sort of traditional awnings that come out onto the pavement um and sort of big glass shop fronts and then above there's these sort of bay windows i

guess that extend out to the street across all the floors. And they kind of form these almost columns around the building. There's, in this photograph, electricity outside. There's electric lines. It all looks quite modern, quite up together. It's not what you'd expect from a building dubbed a murder castle. It looks ordinary. It looks modern.

It looks urban. It looks like it's not out of place in a cityscape. There's people in this photograph walking around, shopping, going about their daily business. It all looks quite mundane. It ain't a castle, right? It's just a building and a shop. Like it's, again, is hinting all the way along with this, how this story has become so embellished. He's made into a monster. The monster hiding in the castle, right? You talk about the lore of this, the folklore of this. It's almost a fairy tale. He's the monster from a fairy tale.

Absolutely. And the folklore of that building goes on to say that actually what H.H. Holmes built in there was a murder pit, basically, where he could entice people in. He had soundproof rooms to stop people screaming so that they couldn't be heard out in the street. He had chutes that would take bodies from where he killed them to the basement so that they could be disposed of without having to travel through the building. He had cages. He had walls that would open onto just brick so that anybody who's in that house can't escape. And then once they've been killed, they can be disposed of pretty secretly. But none of this is true. This happens at the time in 1895, 1896. This idea that his home was, as you said, this almost fairy tale horror location.

It's not true. It's not true. It simply was what it looks like. Now, people were killed there and we'll come to that. And I think it's something got to do with the confusion around the story. The house becomes a metaphor for how confusing. It's full of dead ends. It's full of, well, that ends it's full of but that doesn't

make sense but this doesn't make sense wait where's that person where's that person gone and i think the house starts to encapsulate that it becomes a house of horrors in people's minds that so i mean it makes sense because if you were the builder working on the construction of a building that had soundproof rooms and shoots to throw bodies down and dead ends and things you probably ask some questions and it would probably get flagged up before it got finished trying getting planning permission for that yeah exactly but he does kill people in this building so who is he killing and what are his motives that's what i'm so i'm struggling with so much i can see that he's charismatic i can see that he likes to reinvent himself, that people are apparently drawn to him, even if there's a feeling of unease. He's marrying,

you say, multiple women. We've had two so far, but you insinuated that there are more. He's appealing to people. Why and how is he going about murdering people now? So let's come to motive first. We haven't spoken about a murder yet and we'll speak about multiple murders, but let's talk about what might be motivating him. And I think the key to that is in money. So when we talk about H.H. Holmes, before we even talk about the murders,

we have to talk about money. And in 1893, I hinted at this at the beginning of the episode, there is the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, which this is unbelievable to me. It attracted 27 million visitors to Chicago over a six month run. I mean, that is phenomenal. And it was hugely successful. So I'm imagining this to be something like the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, a sort of expo of industry, arts, the brightest, best elements of the nation. This obviously has a explicitly historical bent as well, you know, leaning into

the idea of Columbus as the sort of founder of America. And obviously that comes with huge caveats and imperialist implications. Is that a fair comparison? If we were visiting the expo, what would we see? Very much that. Celebration of industry, celebration of art, celebration of the new world, as you said, in terms of its imperialist undertones and overtones. it was very blatant actually. And that was even noted in some corners at the time, but certainly now in terms of its historical study, that's very noted and rightly so. But what it did bring to the area and to HH Holmes was the possibility of generating commercial profit from real estate. And this is the time you described in that picture that there was a third story going on that building.

estate. And this is the time you described in that picture that there was a third story going on that building. This is the time at which he tried to complete that third story in order to have more lodgers who are coming to visit the world's Columbian exhibition. So Holmes puts on this extra third level onto his building. He furnishes it all on credit. And then the creditors start to come and say, hey, remember all those things? And so what he would do, and I think maybe this is where some of the hidden room stuff comes from. He would take all of his furniture when they arrived and put it in one room with a locked door that they couldn't get into. And it was hidden. So they couldn't see their goods. And they were like, they couldn't reclaim them if they couldn't see them and they couldn't take them back. So I

think that's where some of that mythology comes from. So because the creditors are hot on his heels, he now leaves Englewood and he leaves his business and he leaves the pharmacy and he leaves that building and he marries again in 1894. So forget Clara, she's gone. Myrta's now also being left behind. Now we have Georgiana Yoke andorgiana becomes part of h.a jones's escape i guess and you know another person that he can tie himself to that helps him get away with what he's been doing so he's shedding one skin and adopting another disguise basically he's and he's just burning through these women these poor unsuspecting women who presumably are not in on his nefarious dealings,

his various disguises. Surely they're not in on that. You say that. There is a suggestion that they may have been, but not anywhere near to the extent that he was. This is me inferring from some of the things I've read. I think he would often go to his wives for support in a twisted sort of way. So for instance, Georgiana Yoke did know that he was on the run and she went on the run with him. So she goes to Boston with him

after the creditors start closing in. By the way, note, I am still talking about money here. I'm still talking about fraud, still talking about money. I'm still talking about dodgy businesses. I'm still talking about that. Murder is happening all the time and we're coming to it.

But once he flees Englewood and goes to Boston with Georgiana, his now third wife, that's when the house of cards or the murder castle starts to crumble. The Ripper's murders first came to light accidentally. Holmes was taken up in Boston on the 17th of November 1894 on an outstanding charge of horse theft in Texas, according to some sources, or fraud, according to others. Detective Frank Gehr of the Philadelphia Police Department was assigned to investigate Holmes on suspicion of multiple accounts of fraud. He also wished to know the whereabouts of another fraudster, Benjamin

Freeland Piteasel, with whom Holmes had been criminally associated. Piteasel was, in fact, Holmes's sometime accomplice in several cases of insurance fraud. He would later be described by an attorney as Holmes' creature. The story goes that together, Holmes and Pitt Easel planned to fake Holmes' death, claim the resulting life insurance money, and split it between them. But when the insurance company raised doubts over the legitimacy of the Holmes claim, Holmes and his accomplice backed off, not wishing to draw unnecessary attention to themselves. However, the Holmes claim, Holmes and his accomplice backed off, not wishing to draw unnecessary attention to themselves. However, the criminal pair had another harebrained idea. Rather than faking Holmes' death, they would fake Pittiesel's. His wife would then claim the $10,000 insurance

money and split it with Holmes. The plan was that Pittiesel would be killed in a laboratory explosion and that Holmes would ever so kindly secure an anonymous cadaver to back up the fraudulent story of his demise. Holmes, however, had another plan unknown to his friend. On the 4th of February, Holmes suffocated Pittiesel with chloroform and set his body alight with benzene. Why involve an unnecessary cadaver, he must have thought, when Pitt Easel with chloroform and set his body alight with benzene. Why involve an unnecessary cadaver, he must have thought, when Pitt Easel's body would have served just as well? That wasn't the end of Holmes' dastardly scheme, however.

He persuaded Carrie Alice, Pitt Easel's wife, that her husband was still alive and that he was in London. He promised he would take her and the children to him, but she would have to turn over custody would take her and the children to him, but she would have to turn over custody of three of her five children to him in order to go on detected as they travelled. Carrie Alice, assuming this was all part of her husband's plan, willingly turned over her daughters Alice and Nellie and a son, Howard. The children were 13, 9 and 7 respectively. Holmes then set about simultaneously transporting Carrie and her two children, and the three in his care, to Canada. He told Carrie that Alice, Nellie and Howard were nowhere near and that they would reunite in Canada. But the entire

time they were only metres from their mother, hidden in inns, lodging houses and rental properties as they went. On the 25th of October, 1894, while staying at a rental property on 16 St Vincent Street in Toronto, Holmes grew tired of the complications that came with his new charges. The Ripper forced young Alice and Nellie into a trunk, secured the lid over them, and drilled a hole into the box. He then attached a hose to a gas pipe and connected it to the hole in the trunk,

smothering the children inside. Holmes undressed their lifeless bodies and buried them in the cellar of the Toronto rental. All of this only came to light after the detective, Frank Gare, looked into the suspicious disappearance of their father, Ben Pittiesel. The Pittiesel girls' bodies were discovered by Frank Gare's associates in July 1895. Later, their brother Howard's remains were found in a cottage in Indianapolis. It appeared he had been murdered prior to his sister's. His teeth and some shards of bone were all that remained. These discoveries prompted a massive investigation of Holmes's castle back in Chicago. What,

they wondered with dread, had happened at the murder castle on West 63rd Street? murder castle on West 63rd Street. There's a lot to process here. This is quite a development. What's going on? Why is he stealing horses in Texas? And then he's gained a partner in crime. He has. Now, okay, let's rewind a little bit because I know that was a lot of information. So he may have been arrested for horse theft in Texas. I don't know when he was in Texas, but that's what one of the sources says. But another source says that it may just have been a series of fraud cases that they'd been looking at him for and that they finally just caught up with him in Boston. So horse theft slash fraud.

Either way, he was taken up by Frank Gehr's team. So Frank Gehr is the detective who is assigned from the Philadelphia Police Department to investigate fraud, not murder initially. And because he's looking at fraud, he then turns his attention to Ben Piteasel, who was associated with Holmes when they were in Chicago. And he was saying, well, where is this guy? I've heard lots about him, but where is he? Because there was an insurance claim in his name. So where is he? And he was named on certain other business ventures that H.H. Holmes had. So he tried to track down Ben Piteasel and in so doing realized, ah, So he tried to track down Ben Piteasle and in so doing realized, ah, okay, he died. Then the question was, okay, how did he die?

And that's where things started to unravel. So it was Ben Piteasle is the key to this all unraveling and the discovery of murders. Now, Ben Piteasle, it is worth saying, is not the first victim by no stretch, but he's the first one to be discovered in this investigation. victim by no stretch, but he's the first one to be discovered in this investigation. So like many of history's serial killers, Holmes Mudgett is kind of caught by accident, really. It's just by chance that someone's investigating a different aspect of his crimes and actually just someone associated, to their knowledge, loosely with Holmes. One thing I find fascinating about the Holmes and Pittiesel relationship is when they agree that they're going to fake Pittiesel's death, Pittiesel doesn't see it coming. Holmes says, I'm just going to get someone else's body. I'll pop it in the lab.

We're going to explode. People will think it's you. That's fine. No alarm bells ringing, no survival instinct, Pittiesel. No. And ringing, no survival instinct, Piteasel. No. And what's interesting is that probably suggests that it's not that unusual a claim from Holmes. Now, he had committed insurance fraud previously where cadavers were used. So actually, this was a mode that he used to get fraudulent claims of life insurance money. So actually, I suppose if you were Pitt Easel, you'd go, well, okay, he's done this before. Throughout his career, shall we say, Holmes or Mudgett often ties himself to these people. In his medical school days, his laboratory partner was supposed to be dealing in cadavers with. Now we have Pitt Ezel. And

in a way, it's messy, right? I think we would be unwise to think we're dealing with a particularly smart man here, despite the fact that he gets away with it for quite a long time. And by that, I mean fraud and murder. But he just seems like he's not really very focused, that it's slapdash. It's what do I need now? What can I do for the next quick thing? And he's not really very focused that it's slapdash it's what do i need now what can i do for the next quick thing and he's not thinking in terms of protecting his own discoverability i agree up to a point i don't think he's unintelligent i think he's manipulative he can read people he can charm people he can get them on side and if you think back to mrs brew when he's a student he's good at making up an excuse on the spot he got out of having a dead child under his bed

pretty well and pretty convincingly but i agree i think he's getting slapdash i think he's moved around so much he's reinvented himself so much and there are now there's a chain of people being left in his wake exactly that he's leaving a trace right like big time that kind of chaos where things start to escalate and then maybe panic sets in or there's a sense of trying to control a situation that is really expanding and the knock-on effects are being felt and now there's some police coming in from the side investigating an element that they've got a whiff of, and they're all coming in,

and he's trying to minimize the damage and calm it all down. And he thinks, okay, I'll get rid of all the pit easels. That's the way to do it. And this is fascinating to me. He doesn't seem to have any qualms about murdering children. Not that it's all right to go around murdering adults, but I would imagine psychologically that's quite a leap to murder children. And he's just wiping that family out.

And what tells me that it's kind of chaos at this point is the fact that he sets out on this journey with Mrs. Piteasel and her children. If he was thinking more clearly, maybe he could have killed them all in the same spot with Mr. Piteasel. You know, he's killing them in different locations, supposedly on the way to a transatlantic voyage to London. Which I think was never going to happen. And you can read two things into that, right? Either he was really intelligent, because if there's a collection of bodies, then that's possibly more suspicious than if there's one and an accident had happened.

Because then it looks like, oh, somebody tried to wipe out this entire family. Who's getting the insurance money? He is spreading them out over a huge journey, actually. So maybe that is his way of hiding the evidence that people aren't picking up on it. If he's leaving different bodies in different locations. Or he just hasn't thought that far ahead. And actually he's like, I don't really know what I'm going to do with Clara and the kids. Let's just keep going

and I'll deal with it when it comes up. As long as I get the money, who cares? It's so hard to get to the center of the case and the details of everything that he's done. But to get to the man himself, it's just, it's so difficult to find out who he was. So we have these bodies of these children, the Pitt easels and Mr. easel himself they're all discovered

at various points by the police and this leads them to go and look at the building that he owns back in chicago which is now known as the murder castle so presumably they go there with some level of apprehension what do they find so they're going to the castle but they're going to the castle with something that's important and that is with hh in custody, remember. So he's been taken up for either this fraud case or for the horse stealing, whichever it turns out to be. And he, in custody, admits to 27 murders across several states. But I will caveat this, he is paid for that confession by a newspaper and he's paid seven and a half thousand dollars for that. And here's the thing about this,

and this is why it's so confusing. He admits to 27 murders, but some of the people he admits to killing are still alive at the time he admits to killing them. So he didn't kill them. What? He's essentially creating this narrative of himself as it feels like he wants to make this more grandiose claim that he's

far more prolific a murderer than he really was. Or he's so mentally unwell that he really believes he's killed more people than he has. Yeah, maybe, maybe so. Do we get a sense from this confession that's paid out of him by a newspaper, which comes with its own issues. Do we get a sense from that, any kind of order of who he's killed and when? Does it become clearer? I'm going to say no to that. I think nothing is clear in this case, but there is a sense of an order. It transpires that potentially his first victim was a woman named Julia Connor. She was

the wife of a man who worked for him in the drugstore. We're back in Chicago now. And then that death was followed by the death of Julia's daughter, Pearl. And Holmes has been having an affair with Julia. So again, we have another, he didn't marry Julia. This isn't a fourth wife, rather. This is just someone he was having an affair with. And they had last been seen alive around Christmas 1891.

So we're going back three years prior to when he was having an affair with. And they had last been seen alive around Christmas 1891. So we're going back three years prior to when he was arrested. And shortly thereafter, it said, again, this is part of the folklore, but that Holmes had asked a man to remove the flesh from a corpse so that he could animate the skeleton as part of anatomical study. And the man at the time had noticed that he could animate the skeleton as part of anatomical study. And the man at the time had noticed that the corpse of the woman was particularly tall. And Julia is said to have been six foot tall, which was relatively tall for a woman at the time. And so there is a link was made that actually this was likely Julia's body and a piece of bone, which is thought to be Julia's,

from Julia's body was found at the castle during that search, linking Holmes to her disappearance. So this is what's being turned up at the castle. Further items then turn up that are not necessarily linked to Julia. A singed gold watch is found there, dress buttons.

These are thought to have belonged to a woman called Minnie Williams. Holmes had another affair with her and it's speculated that a tuft of human female hair that was found in the chimney flue in the murder castle belonged to Minnie's sister, Anna, who went to visit Minnie and then never came back. There was a letter that was sent from Anna, Minnie's sister, to, and I know all of these names are difficult to keep track of, believe me, but Anna went to visit her sister Minnie, with whom H.H. Holmes was having an affair. Anna then supposedly wrote back to her family saying, don't worry about me and don't worry

about Minnie. Mr. Holmes is going to take care of us financially from now on. You don't need to even think about us. We're set. But, it appears that he had killed her. Then there was the discovery of another relationship with 23-year-old Emmeline Sigrund. She was a secretary for Holmes and she disappeared. So there was a link made between the disappearance and her likely death. There was another man named John DeBrule who died outside the drugstore in Chicago in 1891. Holmes benefited from his death through an insurance claim, and he collapsed outside the drugstore. And Holmes was seen putting a dark black liquid into his mouth to try and revive him, apparently, but obviously he died. And then there are links to other people, disappearances and deaths. And I'll just list them just to say their names

because they get lost in all of this confusion. There was a Dr. Russler, a Kitty Kelly, John Davies, Harry Walker, George Thomas, Milford Cole and Lucy Burbank. So these are the people that are suspected of, either we know or are suspected of very likely having been killed by H.H. Holmes. But oh my goodness, how much of a mess is that narrative in terms of trying to

unpick what's true and what's myth? It's also really difficult to get a sense of his motive and why he's killing people. He's obviously motivated by money on the one hand, and a lot of the men that he's killing, unlike the the women he doesn't seem to be having sexual relationships with the men i guess we can't rule that out that doesn't seem to be an issue it seems to be that he's doing it for the insurance he's killing them and claiming the money but then with the women it's a completely different situation that it is sexual he's having sexual relationships with them and then when they become a burden or he promises things that he can't deliver he kills them yeah those seem to be two separate modes of operating two separate motives i suppose it speaks to a man who's incredibly greedy in all senses

who is incredibly selfish as well one One thing I don't understand, and I guess we don't need to go into too much of the literal detail here, but he's known as the American Ripper. It doesn't seem to me that he's doing anything particularly to these bodies to get that kind of name. Is this simply because we're not that many years out of Jack the Ripper in London in 1888,

and Holmes is racking up a similar, well, a much higher actually, potentially, body count. Why is he called the American Ripper? In the words of Ariana Grande's new song, Yes And, the and being that there was a suspicion, and his family held this suspicion, that he was Jack the Ripper, that he had committed the murders in London. And then now there's no, the archive doesn't hold this up, just to let you know, there's no evidence that he was there. And there's a whole documentary series on the History Channel about his family digging up his remains to make sure that he was in the grave, that he hadn't gone away. And presumably those descendants are from Clara and Robert, the initial family that he has, his wife who he marries when he's 17.

So he gives this confession to a newspaper. So it becomes public, people read it. And in it, you've said he kind of narrativizes himself, mythologizes himself in a way that we've seen many people do on the show. I think with lots of the cases we've dealt with, I'm thinking about the hangman Pierpoint does a very similar thing. I mean, he's not necessarily classed as a serial killer, although he did kill hundreds of people as validated by the state. But there's a similar thing that happens there. It was sort of self mythologizing and making yourself into almost godlike levels of powerful. How does the media pick up this story?

They're confused by it. They kind of can't make head nor tail of it in some ways. And as a result, they invent. So it becomes almost canon that H.H. Holmes probably killed up to 200 people. And the reason for this is because of his insistence that a third story be added to the murder castle in Chicago around the time of the Great Exhibition. And so the theory was, and this is in the 1890s, this didn't happen 50, 60, 100 years later, that he was enticing loads of people in as they were coming to Chicago to go to the Great Exhibition and that he was murdering them and that the bodies were just never discovered. And so the number that was placed on his tally was about 200. Now that just doesn't stack up. You know, there's a huge amount of exaggeration. And as I said, the murder castle becomes this place that's designed to bamboozle victims. But actually, what's happening is the public are bamboozled. They don't quite get what has happened. And therefore, they start to invent,

fill in some of the gaps. And that means that we are left with a story that has been mythologized, which is why this is perfect for After Dark, because we have the true crime element, we have the history element, and we have the mythology element all coming together. I did look for a haunting element when I was looking at this, but I didn't come for it because the building's not there anymore, just to see if I could get all three in one go. But the myth-making has definitely obscured the true nature of his horrendous crimes. And that is also a bad thing because they were bad enough as it was. They didn't need the myth-making to make them worse.

They were really bad. And in the end, A.J. Jones is only tried for one murder, and that is the murder of Ben Pitizel. That's all that it took. And we see this in other cases too. Sometimes they go, let's go for the one we can get, and let's make sure we carry out some justice here because the public will want to see a conclusion to this case.

Is the thinking there that even though there are the human remains that are found all over the so-called murder castle, that they can't prove his connection to them? Because that's pretty clear evidence that people have been killed and their bodies stored in that building, in a building that he owned. How does he not get done for them? I think it's not so much that they don't think that they can get him on it. What they want is quick justice as they see it. They want to turn this around quickly.

It's a big story. It's made national headlines and there's pressure. Let's get this done. Whereas if they had to maybe gather all of that evidence, look into all of those cases, see who couldn't they convict him for.

They had Ben. They had the details of that murder. They thought they could convict him for. They had Ben, they had the details of that murder. They thought they could convict him for that. And they were right because a Philadelphia grand jury found him guilty of Ben Padizel's murder on the 12th of September, 1895. So that's very quick, bearing in mind he's already in custody. The verdict is delivered within a year of his capture.

And then eight months later, he was executed at Moyamensing Prison. So it moves relatively quickly after that from capture to execution, bearing in mind the legal system has now developed and it's not a, oh, you were caught one week and you'll be executed the next week. We've moved on beyond that kind of 18th century, very quick justice to something that has to be a little bit more methodical, but he's still relatively quickly disposed of because of the profile of his crimes. What does this case tell us about America in the 1890s? Because it's a difficult case to get to grips with. And at the heart of it is one particular, arguably quite fascinating, arguably quite fascinating, terrifying individual, and a huge number of people, men and women and children who are victims of his violence, of his crimes. But more broadly, what does it tell us about this era? I think it tells us something about a number of things that are specifically American at this particular time. It tells us something about a number of things that are specifically American at this particular time. It tells us something about the American dream, because in another narrative where Mudgett

goes on to change the fortunes of his family and becomes more respectable, more affluent, and changes his life because of his industry. But that is not the history that we have. What we have is somebody who can't quite reach the lofty heights of the American dream. So it says something about the social pressure that the idea of the American dream is placing on men, particularly. We don't want to use that as an excuse, of course, but this is not a realized American dream. This is an American nightmare that possibly could only occur at this point in the late 19th century. I agree with all of that. I think as well, there's something, there's a sort of deep-seated fear or panic that's born from this case that this horrendous set of crimes, of murders, takes place in a city that has been at the centre of explorations about what America can be, what it's been in the past and where it's going. And it appears, I guess, in the public domain

to be a really grim answer to those questions that are being asked at that time. Here's the dark reality of what these systems of social climbing and things like insurance, those kind of processes of capitalism, what happens when they are abused or taken advantage of, and this is the dark reality of it. I think what's really fascinated me about this case is the fact that there's a gray area, an area of ambiguity between the man himself who committed these crimes Holmes and the monster that he becomes in the public imagination. And it's a transformation that he himself gets on board with, that he wants to put out there in the world, from the moment that he first sells his initial confession, right? Yeah, he, I don't know, does he justify it? He explains it. He mythologizes it, I suppose, by saying, I could not help the fact that I was a murderer

no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing. I find that so grim. His words are so grim. He's obviously a narcissist. And what he's doing there is putting himself on a platform, elevating himself and completely erasing the people that he killed. I think maybe that's the place to end today, thinking not about Holmes, but about the victims, the people that he did kill. Thank you very much for listening to this episode of After Dark, Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. You can catch our other episodes wherever you get your podcasts. And if you'd like to leave us a review, we would really appreciate it. We are also still taking requests, suggestions, ideas for future podcast episodes. You can contact us at afterdarkathistoryhit.com. That's afterdarkathistoryhit.com

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