Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 200: H.H. Holmes Part I - The Horrid Meat

Episode Date: November 11, 2015

It's H.H. Holmes, America's first urban serial killer on the 200th episode of the Last Podcast On The Left! Join us as we cover the transitionary hellhole that was America in the late 1800s and how H.H. Holmes, one of the most well-rounded psychopaths in modern history, was perfectly suited to rack up a body count of more than no less than 9 and no more than 200.

There's no place to escape to. This is the last talk. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? And I'm me likey. Ooh me likey, the ambrosia salt flavored slick I get every time I suck the devil's cock in order to succeed. But I gotta tell ya, line my pockets with gold. Are we good to go, Marcus? We are. Alright, welcome to the last podcast. On the left, everyone, I am Ben Kissel. I'm staring at the beautiful Marcus Parks.

And to my left, there's a fella. Who is he today? Oh god, I, you know. Just be yourself today. I'm me. You know what's sad is that every time I'm somebody else, I'm still just me. That's nice. Well, today we're going to be talking about somebody who also sort of played a character. He was two people and one of the people built a murder hotel. We'll be discussing H.H. Home. Today is the 200th episode of last podcast on the left, which is a testimony to what laziness can create.

You know, and the fact that we just kept going. God, we just kept going. 200 weeks. Marcus, how has your brain changed in these 200 weeks? We both, we've all been through several girlfriends. We have, we all got been through five. Damn. Oh my god. I know, I, God, I just think about that. And then we all got many new different types of McCall t-shirts.

Yes. I'll look at it. Marcus got a new one right now. He's wearing a t-shirt that's got the Zodiac color on it, but in the fashion of the tarot card, the magician. Yes. Henry is wearing a t-shirt 200 weeks ago, never even existed. The band didn't exist. He's wearing the cowmen t-shirt. And you're wearing a Putin, wearing a horse t-shirt. Nope. Vladimir Putin's shirtless riding a horse.

And maybe a bear, actually. And so we decided, like, you know, we had visited H.H. Holmes a little while ago. Like, actually towards the beginning, 200 weeks ago, which is years ago at this point. And now we're starting to come back to H.H. Holmes. And I got to say, when you really start reading and researching H.H. Holmes, it's like, you kind of forget. It's because he's so old-timey. It's like, when you actually start researching Jack the Ripper, who was happening at the same time, this guy was a fucking, for real monster.

Very dangerous man. He looks like if beef jerky wore a top hat, you know? He looks so old-timey and like Western trail and just like, well, I'll just pull my pants up and I go in milk cows. He's the evil walrus. Right. He is. He does have that mustache and he's got kind of like a cross-eyed stare. There's only one picture of him. There's two. There's one for when he was in medical school.

There's a few pictures of him. And when you look at his face, because again, what I love about the 1890s is how whenever they describe as someone as handsome, isn't they mean they did not take a soft bullet to the face during the Civil War? Right. Now, you know he's polio-free, so you go marry that man. What I like about him is that his knees aren't cracked and his back isn't bent. He's handsome. He's handsome. He's charming. And again, charming, I think we did it last time.

Charming just means, again, in the 1890s, that you just yell a lot. You're like, yeah, yes, yes, yes. Come with me. Yes, here it is. Made him. Ah, quite a box of lady, I see. I put him in my knee. How many pairs of goddamn underpants do you have on? He is a charmer. To research for this episode comes primarily from two sources. The Devil in the White City by Eric Larson, which is required reading not only for those interested in serial killers, but also history in general. It is a fantastic book.

For a lot of people, it's one of the only true crime books they've ever read, but it's about H.H. Holmes and also simultaneously about the World's Fair in 1893 in Chicago, which sounds boring, but it's actually fascinating. And the other book is Depraved by Harold Schechter, who is one of the greatest true crime writers that we have. He also wrote Deranged about Albert Fish. He wrote Deviant about Ed Gein. He's got a thing for the D's. Oh, no. It's just so...

I want you to know that H.H. Holmes is really just a symbol of his time. And you wouldn't believe he made fake mineral water. It's just nefarious. That's how he sounds. It is exactly how he sounds. It is how he sounds, but he is a bit of a hero of mine, so please... I have no one. All alone and sad. We will be starting the last podcast on the left book club series,

and like they used to do in seventh grade with the Pizza Hut situation, if you read a book, you got a free personal pan pizza. If you read these books, Marcus, maybe you send them a bone. Yeah. What's the problem? Do you feel that... What was that program again? That was the... The Pizza Hut...

Read it. Yeah, read it. That made us all really fucking fat. Yeah, it definitely made me treat food as a reward system. Yeah, she was like, we were rats in a lab. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so let's get into the world of Mr. Henry Hankey Holmes. Well, Henry Hankey Holmes, Henry Howard Holmes, original name,

Herman Webster Mudget, give it a redo. That's what I'm really surprised he didn't go as like, my name is Randall's sexy chase. He eventually became better known as H.H. Holmes. He was America's first urban serial killer. We talked about frontier serial killers a while back, but this was... He was the first guy, at least that we know of,

that operated within the American urban centers. And this is back in the day when cities were so new that urban did not just mean like a racist, like, you know, like how to describe a type of pant or a type of hat. Right, right, right. So operating primarily out of Chicago in the late 1800s, Holmes had a confirmed body count of nine. He confessed to 27 and is estimated to have as many as 200 victims,

although that is very much the ceiling. Well, that's like, that says Henry Lee Lucas number. Yeah, that's, yeah, exactly. Holmes is most famous for his creation of what came to be known simply as the Murder Castle. Which is a great nickname for your house to have, especially if you're using it to murder people. Yeah, or a great name for a burger restaurant.

The Murder Castle, come on down. But I feel like murder, yeah, Murder Castle, but again, it's like the Heart Attack Cafe. Right, right. You got to lean on how bad the food is. Right. Yep. The Murder Castle was a three-story block-long building

that Henry Howard constructed solely for the purpose of attracting, trapping, and killing young women. Don't forget Drifters. He did get some Drifters. And most of this information we know about H.H. Holmes because he was a complete pathological liar, nothing he said was real. Everything was a con.

This guy was an incredible villain. Like, you literally call him a villain. Like, he's bigger than, he's bigger than a Dahmer. I was yelling, I was ranting about this in my apartment last night. My girlfriend, she's looking at me like I was crazy person as I was yelling again about how he is, he's a Joker.

Yeah, that's my view. But we'll get, Marcus has his own alternative. He's the Joker if the Joker got into real estate. Yes, yes. I would love to hear the Yelp reviews, by the way, if this hotel existed today. You know? So much for being called the modal castle.

I arrived home completely safe. Two stars. So little is known about the childhood of Herman Webster Mudget. We know that he was the youngest of three, the son of a farmer named Levi, and a housewife named Theodate. Or is it Theodate? Who gives a shit?

It's the worst name for woman I've ever heard. Theodate. Yeah, her name has been like Gaper. Gaper isn't so bad. I don't think so. I think Gaper. My name's Gaper Sundry. I will say I'm going on one date at least.

Oh man, where's my stool? Oh, there it is. It's up inside me. Interesting. Gaper Sundry or Theodate Mudget? Which one are you going with? Either way, they could sit on a bowling ball and be like where's my bowling ball?

Yeah, it's amazing. Well, they were good people, Henry. They were devout Methodists. You know devout religious people are the best people that have ever been. Oh yes. Yeah, like Osama bin Laden. No religion doesn't ruin everything.

No. Well, Holmes was beat regularly as a punishment and was often locked in the attic, but even though he described himself as a quote, mother's boy. I'm a mother's boy. Self-described mother's boy. Self-described mother's boy, yes.

He also would fantasize about his parents' death, particularly when he heard about the great Chicago fire. He said that he would sit there and imagine them burning alive until their bones were nothing but ashes. But don't get me wrong, I love them. I do want to say there was that great Green Day song of the Kerplunk album, I believe, where all they did was discuss killing their mothers

and their father. If you do want to kill your parents, it's sort of a normal fantasy to have, because technically they are keeping you in prison in a situation you don't want to be in. Yes, you are a little slave. You are an owned person when you are a child, but when it comes down to it,

they took you into this world, they could take you out. Right. And that's a Bill Cosby thing, and he was a rapist. The story that H.H. relayed most about his childhood was of a day in which some older neighborhood boys, knowing Holmes was terrified, Holmes said of the local doctor's office, they forced him inside.

Now, doctor's offices, this is important to remember, they, in this time period, were particularly horrifying places. Well, all science was horrifying at the time. Yeah. This is like, this is the time where it's like, I could put on a coat and be like, I could be a doctor and then walk in the thing.

Well, he's got small enough hands to reach the side of a woman's cavity. No, he's definitely a doctor. You could tell. Yeah, you would just like walk in him, think of a bit of a cough, and then the doctor would be like, bring in the leeches, and then the whole thing would just turn into you.

But that's like an old school, then another doctor would be like, leeches, that is a wave of the past. Let us use the snakes. The snakes are much larger, and they get their mouths more around the buttock. And then somebody's like, well, let's replace his blood with mayonnaise.

See if that works. Ah, yes, my sandwich tastes delicious with mayonnaise. I imagine they could only make the soul more lubricated. Well, you're really not that far off. Modern medical science was just beginning. They were starting to get out of the belief in humors, and phrenology was still kind of a thing at the time, but we were starting to transition into modern medical science.

And that's another thing that's important to remember about this time, is that this was a time of transition in America. And it was a rough transition. It was a very rough transition. Because the idea is it was going from frontier America to America we know now. It's literally that big of a jump. It's like going from the first...

Well, pre-internet, post-internet. Yeah, it's a big switch, and it was a hard one switch. And a lot of people died of the flu in a bad way, in a way that they were like, we can cut off his feet, and we'll scare the flu out of the top of his head, thinking that we're going to come after the head next. You know what I mean?

They're like, no, no, no, no. And then people started getting better. Yeah, exactly. And it was also post-Civil War. There was a lot of stuff going on in America at the time. So that's important to remember during all of this shit. But what doctors would have in their offices at this time is they would have fresh corpses in the back

that they would use for dissection. Because they were really starting to figure out that if you wanted to cure the human body, it was a good idea to know what the human body actually did and how it was put together. Also, it's fun to hide the skeleton in your wife's bed and be like, I'm in here, darling, come see. I've just been done brushing my mustache.

And she goes, oh, how would you go to me again? And then you're a raper. Because again, it's the 1890s, and sex was very misunderstood. Interesting. Yeah. But of course, this was very, it was pretty controversial to work on bodies before this, right? It was controversial during this time as well.

Of course, there were some medical schools that would actually hire local hooligans to raid the local graveyards, dig up corpses, and bring them back. We're also going to learn more when he goes to medical school. It's true. They thought it was to desecrate a corpse to do an autopsy. But then they decided the best way for science to move forward

is to playfully hack at corpses and see what their guts look like. I mean, technically, it's science, because they need to know what the guts look like. But every once in a while, you got a guy who gets to the middle school who really wanted to see what the guts look like. A little bit too much. Yeah. Too much.

Yeah. So these doctor's offices, they also had a lot of them had these actual beautiful skeletons hanging in their offices. Like they were bare. Only you would go. No, they are beautiful. No. It's just skeletons.

I don't know. I can't tell one skeleton apart from another skeleton. Is that how you flirted with Carly when he first met her? I can tell you have a beautiful skeleton. I am, yeah. It's mostly how a skeleton looks after it's outside of the body and how well it's put together. Just describe your perfect skeleton.

I have to know now. What's your favorite kind of skeleton? The best kind of skeleton is one that looks exactly like it would look if it was still covered in muscle and cartilage and blood. You're just talking about a skeleton. I'm talking about a skeleton, but once you remove all of the muscle and the blood You're just talking about a regular skeleton.

Yeah, but outside of a body. You're skeleton shaming, you know? And I can't wait. Again, I think we've talked about this before. I'm going to be a terrifying skeleton. And I hope I'm in a middle school. No, it would be so good. Your arms outstretched and like a pirate hat on top of you.

Yeah. It'll be big. So what these kids did to little HH homes is that, of course, he said that he was very terrified of the skeleton inside. He said that he found the pharmacy that they went to to be the most abhorrent place he's ever seen. Which I also again think is the sound of a boner rising. Like truly, I feel like that was the thing.

He was more like morbidly fascinated with the pharmacy and never wanted to. He knew something terrible was going to happen as if he ever like really got close to that skeleton. Yeah, exactly. So he just did what Dell closed. The founder of Improv told us all to do, follow the fear. Yes, he did.

And so they dragged him. Yeah. They dragged him inside. And they dragged him inside, kicking and screaming. And they put him right in front of the skeleton. Look at it, look at it. And he opened his eyes. And he said that suddenly all of his fear fell away.

And that is when he first gained the curiosity of the human body. And that was what first spurred him to medical school. So most of what we know about HH homes came from his writing. As far as his childhood goes. Yes. And his confessions and stuff like that. So how much can we take literally? How true is it, do you think?

Well, I think there's a lot of it that's true. But I think what's stuff like this is when we talk about Jeffrey Dahmer, right? Jeffrey Dahmer began to realize he was having fantasies about men being asleep. Right. And that turned into when he would visualize the jogger that he would watch every day who ran past his house. You imagine him lying down in bed completely asleep. I think HH Holmes in a little bit was so fascinated.

Probably had seen that skeleton walking on the street several times. He was also known as, he was like the smartest kid in class. That was the thing is that he was this very, very, very like bright, bright kid, very ambitious. And everyone was very jealous of him. I think there was a part of that's what he said. They said they were jealous of him, which is why they did this prank to him in the pharmacy. But I think you can see the inkling of he knew that once that he liked it. I think he knew that he liked it.

I think that he was afraid to say what it was because everyone else found skeletons to be incredibly creepy. But he kept being like, I want to dance with it in the moonlight. You know, and they're like, that's a weird reaction. It's like, I hate that you was just like, we asked what's five plus three fucking Herbert. I want to dance with the skeletons. Hopefully they come to life. And so, yeah, so the practical joke totally backfired. And it turned out that he loved the skeletons very similar to when parents want to not have their children smoke cigarettes

and they have them smoke a pack of cigarettes. And then the next day the guy just, the kid becomes a truck driver and can't get enough of Palm Alls. So by 11, of course, this is when a switch just turned by 11. He's dissecting live animals. He's keeping them alive for as long as he can during the experiments. He has a little tiny treasure box that he kept in his family's cellar. It's filled with keepsakes of his killings. You have various skulls.

You have cats paws. But he said he also had in there a picture of his 12 year old sweetheart. Interesting. And it's again very similar to Dahmer in this respect. And also, this was viewed as a healthy interest in science at the time. Now we know is one of the top three signs that your child is a serial killer. So he did briefly have one friend growing up, a little boy named Tom. Unfortunately, Tom died tragically in a fall while the boys were playing together in an abandoned house.

And whether Holmes had a hand in his death or not, we'll never know. But there were suspicions. So he definitely did say, he said that he, when Tom died, they asked him if he was sad because he knew it was his only friend. He was like, I'd rather be alone. Yeah. So maybe he made himself alone. You know, and that's a really great way to, if you're feeling single and you want to love being single, make yourself be alone. Love it.

Yeah. Just embrace it. Yeah. He must have been a scary, intense little boy. Yes. Terrifying little boy. He had the view, because you could see probably the reflections in his eyes of the three story fucking Liberanthian murder hotel. He was already thinking about, and this is what they said, that these fantasies about killing people in a mass way in a trap, like started as a child.

Really? Yes. He had been the murder castle, the castle. It started as just the castle. It was a seed planted very, very early because of the writings of Andrew Carnegie, and he would read all of these things about like succeeding in modern America. And he was like, I'm going to be a titan of real estate. And then meanwhile, he's just like, and then I could make a skeleton farm just for old Herbert. I'm sure like after he said that, they're like, yeah, absolutely, you should do it.

And then he continued talking. They're like, oh, we've just encouraged a serial killer. Okay, great. So Holmes graduated high school at 16, became a teacher, and at the age of 18 met and married his first wife, Clara Lovering. Wooden stuck around for long, soon left Clara for medical school, and she would be largely forgotten. She should think her goddamn lucky star, she was largely forgotten, or she would have ended up in a goddamn college as a teaching tool. So he was drawn first to the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor, which was known at the time as the leading medical school in the art of the dissection of human corpses. And this, according to Holmes, was where his career as a criminal truly began.

Now, an important thing to remember about Holmes was the diversity of his crimes. Like, while a lot of serial killers, they like to commit a lot of their non-murderous crimes such as arson theft, breaking and entering, et cetera, and their youth, Holmes was a career criminal. Well, he was highly ambitious. Yes. And there was one of the killer profilers on the Netflix documentary, H.H. Holmes, is very, very good. He was basically describing what makes H.H. Holmes incredibly unique in the area of any serial killer is that he graduated college, and that he had ambitions. Like, he had this sort of, like, go get him. He wanted to be a millionaire.

He wanted to be one of these, like, self-made American success stories. And technically he was, in terms of notoriety, but he, if he, if something had come along and saved him, he could have, like, I don't know, maybe he was never going to be saved. Isn't that a situation where, yes, he did graduate college, but this is the closest thing to the major that he would want to choose? Yes, he majored in being and hacking up bodies. Jeffrey Dahmer was like, University of Michigan, do you guys have a Thai boy fuck class? Oh, you do not. You do not have a, okay. No, no, no. Making a human zombies course?

I would tell you, young Jeff, we do have the cafeteria open late, and I got to tell you what, they're serving spring rolls until five o'clock in the morning, if you get me. Wink, wink, wink, wink, wink, wink. I mean, that's where you could fuck a boy. I think I'm going to go see if the chocolate factory's hiring. Do you agree before you? Well, I guess that's what happened when you'd come to old serial killer university. So while Holmes was, as we'll see later, an accomplished bigamist, his favorite crime was fraud, which he was able to easily accomplish through a combination of a charming demeanor and dashing good looks. Again, he just wasn't heinously ugly. He was 5'8", 155", dark hair, blue eyes, a little bit shorter than me. Actually, Henry, around your size.

Yeah, I'm AJ Holmes' size. I'm Tom Cruise' size. It's a movie star's size. Like me, a movie star. Well, TV stars. Well, TV supporting characters. So physician John L. Capen said about his eyes, they are blue. Great madras. Like great men in other walks of activity have blue eyes, and he remarked on Holmes ears. He had Biden ears. He had pointy ears.

And this makes, okay, I see. He had ears that indicated devilry and vice. Yeah, Dick Cheney had to have his clipped. Oh, I feel like a pit bull. I voted for vice president. See, Holmes was also a fantastic ladies man. He was somehow able to find this middle ground between proper and scandalous behavior. He'd stare too long, touch a little bit too much, stand a little bit too close. Had he not been an attractive man, he would have been seen as just a complete and total creep.

He literally would just run his hands up and down women's arms and stuff like that. But they were so taken aback because number one, when you'll see later on is that when this dashing man from out of town shows up and he looks and dresses like, he dresses like he's a millionaire and acts like he's a millionaire. And it's just nothing but farmer's daughters who are ready to be taken away. This is at a time when women meant nothing unless they were married. So they would kind of walk around and when you have a guy in a fancy bowler hat come and touch your arm, even though he's a little grabby, but he's willing to be your husband and maybe take care of you, you just jump right on the opportunity. And you never know, maybe he's vice president Joe Biden.

Joe Biden had this game. When he was doing that weird mouth whisper into that little girl's ear. Oh yeah, he is very uncomfortable. A lot of sociopaths don't understand human touch and what makes people, what's appropriate and what's not. I'll put it this way out there, guys. If you want to flirt with a woman and you think, I mean, a lot of what you want to do is like in a bar, right? You want to do the thing where you lean in close and you like talk in your ear because it's lying out there and you can get close to her. If your teeth touch her ear low, you're not doing good.

No, no, no, no, she's not going to love it. Well, speaking of Joe Biden and politicians, I think the H.H. Holmes had all the hallmarks of a successful politician. And in fact, the way people describe H.H. Holmes and his demeanor is eerily similar to how people describe Bill Clinton. Because they said Bill Clinton had what they called a cone of attention. That he can do this thing where he makes you feel like you're the only person in the room. Which is what all politicians are. They're all pedophiles and murderers. Anybody who wants to be president has watched a boy suck off another senator and he was like, well, you'll get your pipeline.

Like, he'll sign a contract while it's happening. Not even thinking about the boy sucking. That's why Keystone failed, Ben, because Barack Obama refused to see a little boy get sucked off by an old man. Makes all the sense in the world. You're blaming the EPA. If that's the case, then I'm all for it. Keeping it out. No Keystone pipeline if it requires a child to suck off an adult in front of the sitting president of the United States of America.

And I think that's generous, Ben. No problem. I'm so excited. I'm happy that you released that, Tom. I'm rational. I will change. But I don't think he smelled like Clinton. But I would also say, what do you mean you don't think he smelled?

What did Clinton smell like? Probably smelled like sweet perfumes and the light waft of McDonald's fries. Not motor oil and sardines. Everyone just smelled like grease and things like that. Well, that's all I could think about when I was looking at all the pictures of H.H. Holmes like the class he graduated with medical school and I just imagined like crotch smelled. Oh, yeah. You know, just like them washing themselves with powders and like, and then every once in a while going to a stream and slapping some water in their pits. Right.

Doing the old Irish shower, which is when you just dump a bunch of whiskey on your head. Just covered in juices from hacked up corpses all day. That's how you knew a scientist was like, was because he reeked of death. Oh, yeah. Butchers have such an odor to them when they come home. Imagine what this must smell like. Well, speaking of medical school, back to H.H. Holmes' time there with so many corpses at hand. Holmes was struck with the idea of the scam that would eventually cause his whole life to unravel years later.

The plan that he hatched for the fellow student who was Canadian. That means he's a liar and a thief. Corpse fucker. It's very possible. The plan was to take out life insurance policies on each other, steal a cadaver from the school, and then fake the death of the other one, then collect the money and split it. Oh, God, you know, it's just a weird plan to describe to somebody to come up and be like, I've got a great idea. And he's just like, so we've got to handle the corpses there. That's what you're saying.

We got to literally go and get the corpses from the basement and we got to take them out and bring them to the mail and burn them. Yeah. It's a great plan. The very few people have that much access to corpses. So I guess they just utilize the the goods around. Can you imagine fucking like watching Jeffrey Dahmer run around those corpse rooms? Oh, my God, today is the day I smile. Today is the day I dance. He's just going around playing, just sucking off corpses left and right.

And I'll see you tomorrow, Jimmy. And I'll see you tomorrow, Tommy. You wonder if, you know, Dahmer would have never built a house of horrors. I don't think he had the mental capabilities. You didn't build a house of horrors. It was an apartment in the middle. It was a condo of horrors. But he did.

But think about it. I mean, he would have been a doctor. I think the Dahmer would have just been happy with the job. He would have been a doctor. He would have been a doctor huckstable, is what he would have been. Slightly worse than the doctor who wants to replace blood with mayonnaise. He'd be like, we drilled the hole. We drill the hole in your head, this will totally get rid of your cough. Think about it this way, like H.H. Holmes is more of a Bob Dylan while Jeffrey Dahmer is more of a Daniel Johnston.

A trained accomplished artist versus more of an outsider artist. Jeffrey Dahmer's alter, very ramshackle, very haphazard. But H.H. Holmes, a beautifully constructed, well-oiled machine. But it also quickly fell to decay because he was not, what we're going to learn is that he strung that whole hotel together by bad loans and basically getting money from creditors and not paying them back. Which is what I did to become an actor. Perfect.

But I would also equate H.H. Holmes to Charles Manson just in terms of being like he is the dark image of his time. Yeah, because America at this time was a very transient country. So the idea of stealing a corpse, taking out a life insurance policy on one of your friends, and then saying, hey, my friend died, and then collecting the insurance money on it, it's not the worst idea in the world because you can just change your name at any time. And also what's very interesting with that is that I think there's also a trust in America that was happening at the time. This is what they were talking about. When he was doing the hotel killings, Jack the Ripper was also happening at the same time.

And America, the attitude was like, well, at least we'll never have a Jack the Ripper. They never assumed that someone would use corpses to scam somebody because it was this thing that people were really superstitious about, about doing anything bad to the dead. And so using corpses as a scam was just like, again, Dylan going electric. And to your point about Manson as well, Manson was a mirror of the counterculture. And so he was able to fly under the radar a little bit. No one could even believe that hippies could do such horrific things.

This was the time of the industrial boom. McKinley was about to be elected by the Rockefellers and all that. He was being an evil square. He was kind of being like Ted Bundy, too. He was an evil college Republican. People would never believe a guy with a top hat would do anything wrong, though. They'd say, oh, he's a businessman. He's got to be good. H.H. Holmes was the man that every other man in America aspired to be.

The can-do attitude, the bootstrap attitude, that I'm going to be, my place is at the top, is what he used to always believe, because he was, of course, this Henderson, a big Andrew Carnegie fan. But Holmes, as far as the insurance fraud, he looked at the mistakes of the ones who got caught. He knew from being in medical school that if a body was badly burned or decomposed, there was no real identifying the corpse. You just had to sort of take whoever found the body at their words that, like, yes, this is Herman Webster Mudgett.

Because the names could be changed. Overnight, Herman Webster Mudgett could become H.H. Holmes. And any new person that came upon, that met you, they had to take on faith that you were who you said you were. Unless there was someone chasing you, or unless there was someone else there, it was like, no, his name is not Herman Webster, his name is Henry Howard. My name is Martin von Spiderman. I was bitten by a respectfully medicated spider.

Now I can climb walls and I am married to the great redhead, Mary Parker. I'm a cloveter. I'm from Queens, New York. And again, there was, like, very little photographs of anybody at this time. You couldn't just be like, well, you don't look anything like your Facebook profile. I don't think so. Yeah, exactly. And there was no, like, cross-referencing was unheard of unless you were a part of, say, like, the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Yeah, and Tinder was just grabbing a woman out of a carriage.

Was it that something? Just screaming, Hey! Well, he is a charmer, though. I'm just gonna go with him. Yes, that's the people, if they call it the gilded age, the age of excess, or the age of screaming. The age of screaming, dude, to make your point. Yes! Do it, my wife, now!

No, thank you, thank you. Oh, look, he only barely smells of fish. Now, one could argue that H.H. Holmes was among the most well-rounded psychopaths of modern history. He had all the charm of the best politicians democracy had to offer. He had the cunning and shrewdness of the most successful businessmen and the complete indifference to human life of the 20th century's greatest dictators. He was kind of like the Patrick Ewing of serial killers, right? Well, H.H. Holmes is a winner.

Don't even get me started on the Knicks, please. We can't talk about that. Yeah, and I would say he's more of a Michael Jordan, because although he was wonderful at basketball, not that great at baseball, but still good enough to play in the major leagues. And a sociopath. And a complete and total sociopath. No, he was a winner. Difference. Go watch the Michael Jordan Hall of Fame speech.

I actually find it to be very inspirational. Some people don't like it. I love it. I love exactly what he is. Yes, he was a jerk off, but guess what? You don't become number one without leaving some footprints on the heads of those below you. That's correct. Michael Jordan is a textbook psychopath. Right. Good guy. Good basketball player. Good basketball.

Yeah, great basketball player. Non-crumple shirts. Oh, great shirts. They don't make it. The shirts don't make it. Isn't that great? So this, as I said, the age of excess, Mark Twain put it, the gilded age, H.H. Holmes was what all men aspired to. You could compare the type of men, the type of man that people wanted to be at this time

to the type of men that people wanted to be in the 80s. The Gordon Gekos. Greed is good. Like being a psychopath, being a sociopath at that point in time was seen as something that you should aspire to. Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead. Doesn't matter what we leave in our wake. Doesn't matter the destruction we leave behind us. All that matters is that I get mine.

Capitalism was the perfect political ideology at this point. The idea was the ideal man. It was the American hope that you could go from being a fishmonger in the streets of Boston to being like fucking Andrew Carnegie. Totally. That's the kind of attitude you needed. Yeah, because this was also the time when American dynasties were first really starting to be formed. Like when you're Carnegie's, you're Rockefellers, like the first celebrities of America,

a lot of them were businessmen. Like this is when the culture of celebrity kind of began in America. Yeah, and they were like the Kardashians where they kept their asex stuff privately in their basements with their slaves. This is where the oligarchy begins. But H.H. Holmes, of course, when he heard Andrew Carnegie say, my place is at the top, he thought my place is at the top of murder, mayhem, destruction. Well, I think a part of it is that I think he genuinely thought that he was going to become a millionaire.

I think that he was going to become a millionaire by doing everything that he was doing. I think a lot of his stuff was money-based because he was taught that it was a social thing. It showed that you were in charge of the room if you were the richest man in the room. But I think he just kept killing people. Yeah, he just kept killing people. And when there was somebody in his way, he killed them. But then you would double kill them. He would do them real fast. But then I think the murder hotel just became too much for him.

It was a real money pit. If you've ever seen that Great Tom Hanks movie, it's very similar. It's like the movie Money Pit. You remember when the fountain little boy pees on him when he wakes him up? Yeah, and then they lock him in the room and turn on the gas. That's where it changes into the H.H. Holmes house. Oh, I see. So H.H. Holmes, he graduates medical school, he gets a job in Philadelphia at a pharmacy,

and maybe accidentally poisoned a woman with one of his concoctions. Can we say it was on purpose? We can say it was quote-unquote accidental. How's about that? We can definitely say he was faking being a pharmacist, and that's the truth, is he didn't know how to make fucking medicines. Yeah, he was faking that definitely. But he faked it good enough after he left Philadelphia. He arrived in Chicago that he had gone to years earlier.

Like he had traveled to Chicago while he was in medical school because he said his first criminal enterprise was selling books door-to-door. He would show them a copy of the book and say, like, yes, if you give me this copy, if you give me money, when I get back to Michigan, I will send you through the Pony Express, your very own copy of this book. That is the Nigerian print scam. Yeah, that's so true.

And then he just kept all the money. And of course all these people are idiots, but they also trusted him that this, because he was just so, like, it was amazing how much he could get people to instantly trust him. He was guileless. He had no, his confidence. And when he said you just trusted him because he was just saying these things and he was like, they also say he was real fast, real brusque. He would come and be like, I don't really want to give you that.

Thank you for the money and I will definitely post with. I will be sending it. Oh, you'll see. Not two nightshades from now. And then it's like out the door. Yeah, and then you'd leave thinking that he was your best friend in the world. Like you'd come in, pissed off, and you'd leave him, slap it on the back telling you a joke. Like, boy, that Henry Howard, do I love him.

I will say that shit ended for him though. And we'll get to that. Yeah, that shit did end. That only charm only takes you so far. So he leaves Philadelphia, Herman Webster Mudgeit, and he arrives in Chicago in 1886 as H.H. Holmes. Now this description of Chicago that I'm about to give, this is all from, you know, Clarkson's description in Devil in the White City, which really I cannot recommend enough. So at the end of 19th century, Chicago completely, it was a boom town.

The city had bounced back completely from the great fire of 1871 because in 1871, the reason why Chicago went up so fast is because it was just all wooden buildings. And they just slapped fake stone exteriors on all of them. And so as soon as the fire happened, which they believe was started by cow, they actually probably was started by a bunch of kids who were starting fires. Yeah, it was probably, yeah, a bunch of teenage psychopaths. Yeah, and it was a tinderbox. They could describe Chicago as a tinderbox and just a burst into flames.

I had no idea how big that disaster was until I read Depraved. And it was like the idea, it's like, it just, one fire and it just went like, and like the whole city went up. It was the best thing that ever happened to Chicago though, right? It actually was. Yeah, besides the deep dish. Oh, don't even get me started. Yes, because with all of this other land out of the way,

with all these old buildings out of the way, Chicago could kind of start from scratch in Chicago became the birthplace of the skyscraper. The first modern buildings built anywhere really in the world were built in Chicago because it had the infrastructure of a settled area. It had everything was pay, everything was good to go, but it also had the land and the people already there. Yeah, it's kind of like... It just sprouted everything up. What should be happening in Detroit, but instead they're just letting packs of roving dogs be made.

Yeah, maybe in Baltimore, maybe that CVS will turn into a murder castle of its own. And of course, with progress came people. Every day, thousands of trains were in and out of Chicago carrying thousands of people. And on every single one of these trains rode single young women who had never left home before, for this was, in America, the infancy of female independence. And what they would do with these trains if they had a full, it was because they do, they'd have special like single women trains. And they would do is that in the front of the train, they put two big inflatable balloons

and then a big fake brassiere over it. So that's how you knew it was rolling into town. And then there was a Joe Francis type who wheeled in a huge video camera. He was just like, go a little crazy. Girls go a little crazy. Yes, yes, do it with a thing where the girls are poof and the fuse explodes. And it takes 45 minutes for them to take booby selfies. So this, like I said, the infancy of female independence, this was the first time in America that women had ever struck out on their own.

Because, you know, you had the advent of the railroad network in America. So getting from place to place was actually fairly simple. For the very first time, if a woman had the money and the gumption, she could go anywhere she wanted to. And Chicago was the center of the Midwest. So every woman, every young woman who wanted to strike out on her own, every young woman who wanted to have an adventure before she got married, all went to Chicago.

Now they just go get big there. That's what most people do. You know, Chicago is a lovely town because when I go to Chicago, I feel like a supermodel. I will say people are beautiful. There are beautiful women and really good-looking dudes out there. Chicago's a good, strong city, but they can get stout. Yep, they just totally missed out. They should have gone to Pewaukee, Wisconsin.

That was a hip town back then. And for these girls, there were jobs waiting for them. Typewriters, stenographers, seamstresses, weavers. These women could actually go there. They could live on their own. They could get paid a living wage. Of course, before this, women didn't have jobs outside of just farm woman. Farm woman.

She's not allowed to do any of the work. She just stands next to the farm. I make sure the pigs are pink. Despite Chicago being the urban center of the Midwest, bit of a hellhole. Garbage, pile high in alleyways. Billions of flies swarm the streets. The corpses of dogs, cats, and horses

ride it in the streets in the same place where they died. The corpses froze in the winter, bloated and burst in the summer. Ah, the city. Love that city. And the smell of Chicago. See, meat was a big business in Chicago at the time. The area around the Union Stockyards, they said it smelled like decomposing bodies,

burnt hair, and cow shit. Don't get me hungry. Yeah, that is great. Famous muckraker and critic of the American meat industry, Upton Sinclair, who you all remember from junior year of high school, the jungle? The jungle. Because you wrote about how meat is all gross there.

You had people in it. Yeah, yeah, people in the meat. He said that the odor of Chicago had... An elemental odor, raw and crude. It was rich, almost rancid, sensual and strong. I don't know why I made him sound like that. I think it's because his name is Upton. Yeah, it sounds like an Upton to me.

He was a muckraker. I was a sick boy. I lived in a wheelchair to the age of nine, and all I asked my father was to let me roll through the garden. I just wanted to see the tulips spring forth in the earlier parts of the year, but my croop kept me from the strong elemental winds and the parlans and the bees

and also my weak feet and the horrid meat I would see coming from the kitchen to the living room. And I loathed it. God, I kind of want it for an alarm clock or something. I like that. The horrid meat, over it. Can you say that like five times?

The horrid meat! Horrid meat! Oh, shit, I'm late to work! Horrid meat! God damn it, where are my pants? So death came easily and often in Chicago, not just to animals, but also to humans. Every day, an average of two people were killed by trains.

Streetcars fell on pedestrians from draw bridges. I think two people killed it. What, are they sleeping there? How do you get two people a day killed by trains? I am one to believe that all trains are phantoms and I will show you scientifically, Reginald. I dare this train to dare cross through me. I want to feel its ectoplasm.

Well, you gotta learn, so you check it off. I challenge you, train to do. As fake as a cloud, as fake as the moon. You don't have to do it, okay. We've lost our fifth scientist this week. We can officially announce trains are not phantoms. Not only was the trains, horses got spooked and trampled through crowds

and fires killed dozens of people a day. And women went there to go on vacation. Yeah, this is a hotspot. This is like Miami. Murder widespread for the most part, unpunished because the police force hadn't even come close to growing along with the population. Chicago in 1892,

it saw almost 1600 murders and those are just the ones that we know about. So they didn't have the government structure put in place. They didn't have sanitation. They didn't have any, they had no, I mean, what, this is a 20 year change after the fire? I mean, municipal government wasn't really a thing yet. Yes, they were literally,

everything was private industries. I mean, like waste companies were private industries. It was all, capitalism was at its height. Yeah, actually like firemen, you had to pay firemen to come. And they do that to this day as well. I mean, but they, technically, are they not legally compelled to come fight fires?

The firemen, yeah. If you call 911 and tell them if there's a fire, they have to come. There was a story two years ago. I forget what county it was. The firemen stared at the fire and let it burn because the people who lived in that home did not pay the, the fee they have to pay to have fire service.

Oh, that's illegal. That's in Mumbai. No, that's here in Grand Old United States of America. I think that's illegal. We'll talk about it later. Yeah, I want to arrest the firemen now too. And I'm going to do, I'm going to go down to downtown New York and the financial district.

And I'm going to civilian arrest a firefighter. It's going to go great. Yes. So these, yeah. So murder was just something that happened that nobody really even gave a fuck about. Of course they gave a fuck, but there wasn't really many detectives around in Chicago

at the time. And Chicago was also comparatively, compared to say New York and Philadelphia, still a fairly new city. It wasn't, it didn't have the jumpstart that those other cities had. It was still trying to find its identity. So author and publisher, Paul Lindo,

described Chicago as quote, a gigantic peep show of utter horrors while others simply just called it Satanic. They just again didn't believe in trains. Yeah, I guess so. And despite this, Chicago against all odds was chosen as the site of the 1893 World's Fair.

It's like when they gave the Russians the Olympics. Actually, it's exactly like when they gave the Russians the Olympics. They just gave it to the dark horse, man. You give it to the up-and-comers. It's like our Mets. The dark horse was St. Louis. Well, St. Louis is, I don't even know, it's a dead horse.

The dark horse. St. Louis sucks. It's a scam anyway. We should never want the Olympics. It's a huge waste of money. It's a gigantic waste of money. And I hate having all these javelin throwers everywhere, stealing our women.

And it's dangerous walking down the streets. You never know when they're practicing. See, America, the reason why we wanted to make such a huge show is because in the 1889 World's Fair, the Eiffel Tower had been unveiled in Paris. That's a big one, though. That was a big get.

That was a big get. That was a huge get. That was what Paris, that was Paris' big fuck you to the world. Is that, hey, we're Paris. We're here. Look at this gigantic cock. We're going to put it right in the middle of the body.

But it's talking the entire world. And you'll go through all these tapes of the Ibertaire. We're rich. And we're the rich citizens. And we're the rich citizens. And we're the rich citizens. And we're the rich citizens. And we're the rich citizens.

And we're the rich citizens. And we're the rich citizens. And we're the rich citizens. And you know your tower is totally useless, right? You just got to go up there and look at your city. I mean, it doesn't really serve a purpose. Oh, yeah. So America at the Paris World's Fair

had given what you would call a dismal showing. good we are killing native americans kinda well we were really good at it this is in chicago this while this is in paris this is there of course wild bills uh... wild buffalo bills wild west show did also have quite a big showing at the world's fair in chicago uh... but america it was our turn to shine because the four hundredth anniversary of christopher columbus's discovery of america

was coming up and with four years until the exhibition was so open the vote for the location of the fair came down to new york chicago and st louis and when st louis gave up and shifted its votes to new york city one chicago and exclaimed judgment i'm prepared to state that any person from st louis would rob a church and another man shouted or poison his wife's dog and that's a fun conference that is fun

that's he thinks conferences and and government stuff was way better back in the day that you can yell stuff about wife's pies and poison dogs they eat soup through your nose that's about the worst way to eat soup because you smell it before you taste it yes the deviants but chicago would went out in the end

and so the columbian exposition was slated to be held in chicago four years later in eighteen ninety three and that would mean that literally millions of people would be traveling in and out of the city from march until october of that year it was the perfect time for hh homes almost as if chicago at this time in place have been made just for it just looks like lucille ball in that classic scene where she has

too much chocolate coming down the conveyor billy's all these people coming to my goodness i can't kill them all so quickly but it's it's it's more like a it was it's a chicken and egg type thing it's something like hh homes was going to happen eventually you can see again if you have one mirror image like like again we want to go with manson in the sixties you have the free love movement you have like all like you know the accepting each other and the and hippie groups shit like that all the different sort of like thinking really kind of

coltie family groups there was gonna be somebody who's gonna come and take advantage of that they're gonna plug into that someone's going to that's just how humans work and because we're adaptable we really figure out how to fuck something up if we really can in the in the best way possible and hh homes was was built for it and you know grim sleeper there's a great document in the grim sleeper the crack epidemic in the grim sleeper correlate perfectly with one another i

mean it was just a perfect storm for him as well somebody takes advantage of it it's like what eddie was talking when eddie from roundtable talked about the story about how they there was all the gang violence we talked about on on the nine eleven episodes in height yeah when nine eleven the day of nine eleven up in martian heights a lot of people disappeared all at once because all the cops were all downtown and yes so we do humans do bad things like that but we also invented saltwater taffy actually i think saltwater taffy was invented at the uh... world's fair of

eighteen ninety-four yeah wow yeah all right eighty ninety three excuse me wow that's amazing that's a taffy fact huh this is a good podcast taffy fact segment that's for sure yeah so after homes arrived in chicago in eighteen eighty eight five years before the world's fair he traveled out to

englewood a fast-growing suburb of chicago uh... and he quickly found a pharmacy across the street from a vacant lot on the corner of wallace and sixty something sixty-third he talked to the elderly woman inside and found out that her husband was at the moment upstairs in their apartment dying of cancer and she should have been suspicious when his first reaction merely was like really he says he's dying of cancer right now

i'm very sad about it i don't really love the uh... i'm laughing with grief oh i said okay good day madam so when am i going to get my books okay so homes immediately sensed that he could take advantage of the situation he offered his services as a pharmacist to help earn her time of need course admitting the fact that he had just accidentally quote unquote accidentally killed someone doing the same job in philadelphia but then he

told her later on and she literally was like but at this point he does or he become so good at the job there where he was really good at the customer turn around read comment and he quickly give them their medicine she was just like he told him that he basically said he's like you know accidentally killed somebody in philadelphia and she's just like everybody's accidentally killed somebody we're pharmacists really in the late eighteen hundreds yeah and today to this day yeah no no pharmacists do accidentally kill people all the time all

the time just remember that when you go to uh... your local cbs is that pharmacist literally kill people all the time all the time because anybody can be a pharmacist all right you go in there let's say you can even go through school to be a pharmacist and be a killer like a jay holt yeah remember anybody can become anything in any of those people can kill you at any time president of america as well so the old man died soon after holm started working there and following his death holms offered to buy the pharmacy from the old widow widow on a

payment plan of course she said yes of course you're the best thing that said you're the best thing that possibly could have come along of course holms never delivered on the payments each month you'd have some excuse or another to explain away why he couldn't pay her and eventually the old lady filed suit against them and soon after she filed suit she disappeared completely oh well she wants to go during the army now i think that that exactly what happened there were recruiting elderly widows at the time for her one yeah yeah that well though you know the frontier

wars were said the indian wars were still raging on and they needed plenty of old one well they would use old women as decoys they would put him out until they would put him out into a field and go help help any native americans come i'm I'm desperately and I'm just sick for corn. My corn addiction is really just I am sick I got the shivers. I've got the sweats and then they'd be like here You hear you both sweet old woman have corn for for to soothe your ailments and then And then you know to kill all the fucking Native Americans. Oh, that's how that and then the men with guns come out

I'm not a scholar. I don't I'm not a history. I think it's very possible well what HH Holmes told everybody is that she had gone to visit relatives in California because all the old Customers were asking after and as time went on when they were fine like wow She's really been in California for a long time. He said oh she loved it so much She's just decided to stay there It's like she dug herself a hole laid down in a bit and covered that yourself in dirt there It seems like a strange analogy for the move to California. It's like her ghost went there So less than a year after HH arrived in Chicago Holmes decided it was time to take another wife a one miss

Myrta Z. Belknap beautiful names back in the 1890s Myrta, what do you think the Z stood for? So Myrta she was from Minneapolis and after a short courtship in which HH wrote letters about subjects ranging from Romantic gestures made by the rich and famous to the intricacies of pig slaughtering Myrta moved to Chicago and became his wife I think and and and to this day that is what all messages on okay Cupid now consist of Did you know that this man bought a hotel for his wife as an expression of his love and also When they boiled the bristles off of the pigs oftentimes they're still alive and they're squealed

technically we're 90% matched and I'm just so sick of going out on dates and being a single girl in the city has just become really overwhelming I hate meeting people at bars, so I Guess I'm gonna have to go with this mustachioed millionaire that from Missouri from Missouri County. He calls it. He calls it Welcome to my family So this girl Myrta Not once did it ever cross her mind that anything was wrong with her husband. She said here was a lover of pets And always had a dog or a cat usually a horse

And you would play with them by the hour teaching them little tricks or romping with them And about his interactions with babies. She said often when we were traveling There happened to be like a baby in the car and he would say go and see they won't lend you that baby for a little while And when I brought it to him you'd play with it for getting everything else until his mother called for it or I could see That she obviously wanted it back. Yeah, well, this is the era before DVD stores in the blockbuster videos So you just had to go rent a baby Taking the baby and pulling on its arms. Yeah, it's like it's miraculous how a baby's arms just hold to its body So I tug and I tug and I tug and they do not remove them

Yeah, it's sort of a stretch arm strong time. I must use science to see if I can separate the arms from this baby Oh, no, I think I think the mother wants it back. No, I brought my doctor's hammer So Myrta could not stand the attention that Holmes recede from women because we said earlier He was quite a ladies man And of course women would come to the pharmacy Just to hang out with him just to flirt with and she would work with him there for a little bit And then couldn't handle it and then he sent her upstairs to go to live in the house above them and Do the desk work and then they got more and more tense between the other guys in Chicago like like how bad must they have been for

HH homes to be the only hope for these poor single women But it's any guy with the top hat is back in the day. It's a wasn't just him It was it all of these on trip these women were going to Chicago to meet a man just like him an Ambitious man on the rise with a fucking suit caught on suit coat on and a fucking top hat And there was a bunch of these guys. I just some of them just you know couldn't like most of them couldn't fuck Most of them their dicks just didn't work. Yeah horrible drunks. He was just more of a you know supervillain mm-hmm and So they of course she was sent upstairs away from homes because he didn't necessarily he wasn't necessarily angry with her

He just started to see her as a nuisance because that's how Psychopaths really see people. It's like nothing more than a nuisance something to just get rid of and she within a year of marriage got pregnant and And she just got shuttled off to live with her parents before she gave birth and there she would stay and murder she would be one of only two she would be one of only two of Holmes's romantic conquests in Chicago to Survive their relationship and we don't it's possible that he did have some feeling for her at some point Or it's possible that he just couldn't be bothered to get rid of her Or it's possible that he just didn't have the opportunity to get rid of no

It seems like he but as you see throughout the rest of his story He keeps going back and checking in on murder and his kid and like the I See was her daughter. Is he staring at a dead cat to come? Was it ever a sexual thing though with these cadavers and these animals? Yes. Yes, because he jacket. Well, you'll find out yeah We got funner stories later down the line. Yeah, yeah, but he um if funner stories, I mean I'm a disgusting person. I mean I would say Lots of come in other words. Don't worry about don't worry about episode two. There's plenty of come I know we had a lot of come talk on the last couple episodes. I know you all needed a break loved it

So we decide but you know we you can't have all come all the time We can't you can't you got to keep them wanting more. It can't just be dessert, right? but he I He did have sexual proclivities, but I do think it's sort of like a Gary Ridgway and there are people that have um connections to people it's like um, I had a listener send me a Facebook message talking about how his dad knew his dad was Hit on Jeffrey Dahmer Yeah, and then him and Jeffrey Dahmer Jeffrey Dahmer would be at the bar all the time and he saw him out all the time at the

Gay bars and we go up to him and he'd hit on him being a great dancer should hang out and Jeff Dahmer kept saying no Could be like nah, ma'am. No, and he's like why he's like you're just not my type Yeah, you know so they have feelings in a way they have like a thing worse He also might not when Dahmer said not his type. He's like people will know when you go missing So you're really not my type So Holmes shed of a wife completely turned his attention across the street to the aforementioned vacant lot He bought the land in the summer of 1888 and thinking ahead registered the deed under a fake name HS Campbell the site of his murder castle had finally been chosen

Oh, what a day could not have been more perfect. I mean for a murder castle You know I mean For a hotel it could have been better for like anything else for any other business Yeah, no, no for a business for a hotel for everything. He had been watching that corner for years It was perfect because of course the World's Fair was coming in just a few short years Chicago was growing rapidly. They said there was an apartment rush at this time that people were just rushing to get apartments Wherever they couldn't Chicago the train the L train was coming was being built into Englewood and so people working in the city could travel in and out this spot was

Perfect for everything that he won and one last scam to sell the pharmacy before moving across the street What he did was is that he sold the pharmacy to a guy guy basically he put the pharmacy at this time I'm selling this for some X amount of money a guy from out of town came in to see to like to check it out and H.H. Holmes had paid a bunch of people to show up and and pretend to be customers there Because what he was doing is he would buy he would get stuff on credit inside of the pharmacy And then he'd sell all of it and then not pay people back and get it So that's how he was making money and so what he did was he basically he faked it being a busy pharmacy Sold this guy at this crazy price and he but he didn't really read the contract

He left to go get his family and come back to the pharmacy when he came back H.H. Holmes had removed all of the fixtures inside of it And anything that was fancy and then the guy moved in there like was like okay We're gonna start this business and then looked across the street to see that the castle spring up and then Literally a sheet come off of a new pharmacy that H.H. Holmes had opened across the street from his that had all of the his fixtures inside of it and it was like twice the size and super fancy location location location He got the perfect one and it seems like he's gonna have a very successful business on his hands well How do you measure success? Technically it's like you know how they say that Stalin was a great man. Yeah, it's kind of like that

Well from hardcore history. That's what he talks about Jengus Khan. I hate when he says Jengus Khan I know that's how you're supposed to say it It's technically Jengus. It's totally you're supposed to say Jengus in hardcore history hits the Jengus real hard by being like Jengus So you know it's supposed to be Jengus and then Jengus Khan was the greatest man that ever lived but that's what he said by greatest He again, it just means he just had a big impact on history The most greatest men of history were actually fucking horrible. Yeah. Yeah exactly like H.H. Holmes Like I was telling y'all in the hotel in Washington, DC

Could have been a Hitler could have been a Hitler. Mm-hmm, but you know what he didn't have the stones to put together those camps I must say his brain. I don't know technically. He'd put together one camp. Yeah, but it was small We had such a good time in Washington DC you remember oh my god Thank you guys so much We did DC pod fest this last Saturday and it was unbelievably fun and the the fans who came out were so incredibly kind Everybody was everybody was great. We had such a blast Yeah, and this will you know this prove that yeah, we can do some out-of-town shows so here in the future We're definitely gonna be traveling out of New York City. Book us

Please book us if you have a venue outside of New York City that you think Can draw some people that you think has a big contingency of last podcast on the left fans get ahold of us We'll talk absolutely. We really only asked for bus fare No more bus fare. No more bus. We need we are asking for it at a minimum train fare No more but I cannot you don't want any more buses you do yeah Oh, yeah, you are the but remember Ben You weren't the one that had to deal with the man with the scars all over his face asking you to come in his mouth That was very friendly it made me feel very pretty he was very friendly exactly sweet and

When I turned him down He politely thanked me for my time But it was I wish I had more time with you yes I wish I had more time because my bus was leaving in 30 minutes long story short. We were at port authority We were we departed to Washington DC I was slightly late because there was a problem on the a-train not exactly my fault When Marcus was waiting a man propositioned him because he is so attractive and homeless people love Marcus's crooked teeth because they think they're normal teeth and

You know my offer to blow job So I actually think he could have been a great great time for you You should have killed 15 minutes and gotten blown by the guy. Oh god. He's sloppy blow job He's like don't remind me of my wife Let's go to scratch so gross Yeah, dude hail yourselves and thanks for all the beef jerky from Randy again. Oh, thank you so much I went through that I'm gonna say it's the best batch. She's made yes. I'll say a hundred percent. It's the best batch I treat him like children. I love all of them. I love all the batches the same on hail sweet Satan

Yeah, and if you guys want a last podcast on the left t-shirt, you can go to cave comedy radio calm slash merch And while you're there you can listen to all the other shows that me and Ben do together round table of gentlemen Abe Lincoln's top hat you can hear some of the shows that I do with Henry sister Jackie page seven sex and other human activities And I bet we got a lot of new listeners on this episode every time we do a heavy hitter We tend to gain a few new listeners that are looking for some more serial killer knowledge out there So if you're a new listener, be sure go join the Facebook groove. There's a lot of great discussions there Go follow us on Twitter at LP on the left. Ben is at Ben kissle Henry is at Henry loves you and in case you didn't see it on the Facebook page to clear it all up

Henry five seven. I am five foot seven. I am six feet tall Ben is six foot seven But there was something with the and of course follow Marcus Parks on Twitter at Marcus Parks That's right. There was something with the picture that we took outside of Washington DC in front of the White House It was an angle. I don't know why I looked so Freakishly big, but we are normal. So I'm normal size. I am I am of average height. I DC people are like, oh, you're not a midget Technically I'm short for a center in the NBA. Yeah, and everyone was telling me. I thought you would be tinier Fuck you. I'm fucking as big as I gotta be. It's ridiculous. I love my height I'm the perfect height for a drummer a swimmer and a climber. Yes all three of those things. I am okay

Yeah, I haven't seen you swim once except climbing. I am very good. Why I have to take a shit That's great. Yeah, and if you are a new listener to the show go back and archive all the other heavy hitters We've done. I think you'll love them and then if you are like it wasn't violent enough on this one It gets very violent. I promise you extremely violent, but this is how our heavy hitters go man We get our you get you really your background information You really got to paint a picture because with all these guys context is extremely important I'm also gonna just put it out there as a guarantee in the next couple of weeks. You're gonna get your violence We are looking for some pretty fucked up things and I hope that you guys enjoy being upset on your way to work

Yeah, yeah, because I'm gonna enjoy being upset at work. Yeah Haha, I would slide off my back because I don't feel feeling. Yeah Yeah, oh and people were talking about donations and stuff and we're doing a patreon thing soon. It'll be very soon Yeah, yeah, watch out watch out for that may go select. Hail yourselves. Hail me. I'll keep For more shows like the one you just listened to go to cave comedy radio comm