True Crime All The Time - HH Holmes

Episode Date: April 26, 2021

HH Holmes is often called one of the first serial killers in the United States. Born Herman Mudgett, he took on various aliases over his life, including his most famous one, HH Holmes. Holmes was a con artist and a serial killer. While living in Chicago, he built what many have called his "murder castle." In 1893, the World's Fair came to Chicago and it is believed that Holmes lured many to his "murder castle" under the guise of employment or a place to stay while visiting the fair. It's also believed that many who came never left.Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the infamous killer HH Holmes. Although he was only tried and convicted of one murder, historians agree that he killed many more, some people believe the number of his murders could top 200. Was Holmes a con artist who killed to keep from getting caught? Or, did he find out that enjoyed killing and began killing as a way to satisfy an urge? You can help support the show at patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contact, merchandise, and donation informationAn Emash Digital productionSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello everyone and welcome to episode 230 of the True Crime All the Time podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And with me as always is my partner in True Crime, Mike Gibson, Gibby. How are you? I'm good. How about you, man? I'm doing great. You and I just had some of my mom's vegetable soup. Oh man, love her soup. It's so good. It is. Got to give props to my mom on that. Love your mom's soup. Oh, that just came out wrong. It's episode 230. So, you know, I decided time. to pull one of the bigger cases out of the hopper. Yeah.

And so we're going with HH Homes. And Triple H. Yeah. It's going to be an interesting episode. One that I've wanted to do for a while and one that we get a lot of requests for. What I will say is it's going to be a long episode. It is. Because there's a lot of information, but I really didn't feel as though it was enough for two.

So I think we have to hurry. We've got to really jump right in. Just dive into it. Yeah. Let's give our Patreon shoutouts. We had Tammy Andre jump up to our highest level. Hey, Tammy. Erica Sindel.

Hey, Sindel. Mary New Power jumped up to our highest level. Hey, there's some new power there. Lauren Lobhan. What's going on, Lobhan? Jessica Pickle jumped out to our highest level. And she is a pickle. Krista Bartel jumped out to our highest level.

Hey, Crystal. So did Dag Gutormson. Ooh, some Dag de Torfum. Yep. As did Kim Messer. Hey, Kim. A lot of people really coming out strong. We had Trisha Al.

Hey, Trisha. Brett McDonald jumped out of our highest level. Hey, thanks, Brett. Angelina, Buendia. Good dia. That's what I'm going with. Yes. Andrea I Fantacone, jumped out of our highest level.

Hey, I fantacone. Richard Harding. Hey, Richard. He jumped out of our highest level. Jenny Koch. What's going on, Jenny? Joseph Schutt jumped out of our highest level. Hey, shoot.

So did Sidney Davies. What's going on, Davies? And so did Holly Austin. Hey, appreciate that, Holly. And then. And last but not least, Cassidy Gorash jumped out higher than our highest level. Man, thanks, Goresh. Yeah, so a lot of amazing new Patreon support.

And then if we go back into the vault, Gibbs, this week we selected Gail Tedro. Well, thanks, Gail. Been with us a long time. We appreciate the new support, the continued support. It's just really all amazing. We had some great PayPal donations as well from Brittany Nicholson. Hey, Brittany. Dwayne.

I appreciate that, Dwayne. Megan Philbin. Hey, Megan. And Teresa Valencia. Valencia. So thanks to all of you as well. Gibbs right now on True Crime All the Time Unsolved. We're discussing the 1966 murders of Kathy Bernhardt and George Ann Formicola, two teenagers,

good friends. Yeah. Who disappeared and were found murdered near Rochester, New York. It's a brutal case, man. It's brutal. and there's a lot going on. I think people will be fascinated by this set of murder, so definitely check that out.

All right, we tried to do that quickly so we can jump right into H.H. Holmes, one of America's first serial killers. You know, this guy was a con artist, a pathological liar, and absolutely a cold-blooded killer from a young age. He committed crimes to make quick cash, to fund his various illegal business pursuits.

He managed to avoid the police for many years. And I don't know. It was like he somehow always seemed to get out of town just in time to avoid either a lawsuit or an arrest from the people that were angered by being a part of his swindle or his con. You got to know when to leave. And I think he had that kind of sixth sense. This guy was a jack of all trades from the standpoint that he could basically make money doing anything, which is a good skill to have. Sure.

Now, he preferred to do it at the expense of others. And obviously that's where the con artist part comes in. But he was good at it, kind of mastering the art of making money through. other people and sometimes through the misery of other people. And although the numbers are wildly exaggerated, he did kill many people, including three innocent children. I've seen the claims of his murders in the 200 to 250 range. But I think a lot of people think that that's way, way high.

But like you and I always talk about. And especially with the case like this, it's in the 1800s. Who knows how many individuals this guy really killed. Yeah, you can't really get a total on that. No, but we'll talk about it and why people think it's this or that. So in this episode, we'll look at his life, his history of crimes, and how he finally got caught. The legend of H.H. Holmes is filled with many false rumors. and wild accusations to the point that, you know, like we said,

it's virtually impossible to know the full truth of his story. H.H. Holmes was born May 16th, 1861 in Gilminton, New Hampshire. His birth name was Herman Webster Mudgeett. And Gibbs, to me, the timing of his birth is interesting because it was just about a month after the Civil War broke out. And I know you remember that. You've talked about it quite a bit. Oh, yeah.

What it was like for you as an adolescent. Being in it. When the Civil War broke out and being asked to do things that you have a hard time letting go of. That was good when a musket. Yeah. I know. You've told me. I can handle it.

He was born into a wealthy family and really enjoyed kind of a privileged childhood. His father, Levi, was a farmer. but he was also an alcoholic who beat his children and often locked him in the basement when they got out of the line. Both his father, Levi, and his mother Theodate were strict disciplinarians and devout Methodists. Theodate, there's a name you don't hear off. Yeah, I don't know that I've ever heard of that name. And I'm not sure I'm saying it correctly. Now, not a lot is known about his early life, but he was a troubled child. He was highly intelligent. He was highly intelligent. had an interest in medicine, he dabbled in the dissection of animals.

You know, I think he probably looked at it as an early practice on surgery, maybe. Maybe, yeah. But, I mean, I think we would look at it today and say maybe there was a little bit of him enjoying hurting animals. Yeah. He may have caused the death of one of his childhood friends who died from a fall. when the two boys were playing together in an abandoned building. There was a story about Holmes being terrified of the local doctor for whatever reason.

I don't know why, but one day some kids locked him in this guy's office and there was a skeleton in there. And it was after that that he was cured of his fear and he really became interested in medicine. Hanging out with that skeleton worked. Yeah. Now, it might have done some good. it might have done some harm as well. And we might see some of the effects of that harm later in this episode. Yeah, I don't think there's any doubt.

Herman Mudgeett married a woman named Clara Lovering on July 4th, 1878, but abandoned her and their young son after a few years of marriage. And you might hear me go back and forth, right? Mudgeett, Holmes, same person. Clara followed him to Ann Arbor and Burlington, Vermont for his education. But to me, Gibbs, here's the thing. She paid for his classes. And then when her own money ran out, her father paid for his schooling.

He eventually moved on to the University of Michigan and left Clara behind. So, you know, what I got out of it was that, okay, maybe he did love this woman. he fathered a child with her, but maybe he also used her and her money, her family's money to help him pay for school. And then it was basically, you know, audios. I'm on to the next thing. Moving on. He began medical school at the University of Michigan on September 21st, 1882. I think it just also shows you how old the University of Michigan is. But that's a good, that's a good school, though. Yeah, it's a good school for medicine still to this day.

Yeah, lousy football team, but also not great to have H.H. Holmes on your alumni list. Yeah. But I'm sure there's, you could take every college around the country, even some of the most prestigious ones. Yeah. And there's going to be someone that they would like to wipe off the list of having had attended their university. Yeah, actually, I think Holmes applied to a house. state and they said no no they wouldn't let him in exactly one of his first criminal enterprises was stealing cadavers and using them to make false insurance claims he may have also enjoyed doing experiments

on the bodies he teamed up with another student to learn about you know this type of life insurance fraud and we'll get into the details of it but i think it's interesting right he grew up in a fairly wealthy family, but obviously they weren't giving him a bunch of money. He didn't have enough to pay for medical school. And I think this is part of what influenced him to start committing some of his early crimes. His first elaborate attempt at an insurance fraud scheme involved purchasing a corpse, because that's usually my first thought. I've got to get a corpse. Right. Where can I go buy a Corp set. And he took it to Rhode Island. Now, he had insured his life as H.H. Holmes for $20,000. There's a lot of money back then. In the 1800s? Yeah. What do you think that would be today?

Bebo, beep, bo, beep, boop. Yeah, that's an easy, uh, 472. 472. Okay. All right. Let's go with it. So he checked into this hotel as H.H. Holmes. He retrieved the corpse. He used, he used, he Utilated it. Some report said he beheaded the corpse, but then he left. And he came back to the hotel after shaving his mustache. You know, 1800s. There was a lot of pretty wild and woolly mustaches going on. Was. And he had one. He had one of the like a Wyatt Earp, I call it. Yeah. You know, kind of goes up, then comes back down, goes up back up a little bit. Got to use that wax and shape it just right. Yeah. I don't know if it's a handlebar exactly. I don't know what the definition of a handlebar is. It might have been a handlebar mustache. But when he came back to the hotel, he inquired about his friend H.H. Holmes. And I'm sure Gibbs, he was shocked to find out that his friend was deceased. He tried to collect the insurance money after his quote unquote friend died. But the company refused to pay. I think when they looked into it, they thought, thought it was just a little bit too suspicious. But that's pretty daring.

Really daring. I'm going to pass this corpse off as myself, collect my own insurance money as H.H. H.H. Holmes didn't work, but I think you can see where this guy was a little bit ingenious. He wasn't afraid to try to rip off the system, and we're going to see it time and time again. He didn't have an issue with doing fraudulent.

No, absolutely not. And murder. Does not leave that part out, right? As we'll find out. Yeah. The summer of his junior year, he got a job as a traveling book salesman. But instead of paying off the debt for the books, he just kind of kept all the profits for himself and just said, I don't know the heck with you. Number one, I'm not giving you any of the money. And I'm not paying for these books either. Yeah, I don't play that way, man. Yeah. I'm going to just take it all. in 1885 he moved to Chicago. His first job was working for the ABC copier company.

This might have been one of his first honest jobs and probably one of the big reasons why he left. He stole 50 gallons of glycerin and just disappeared. It's a lot of glycerin. It is. Well, it's a 50 gallon drum. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if it was one drum, but if you think about the quantity, 50 gallon drum, that's a lot of liquid.

Yeah, I, strapping that to your back. What are you doing? I don't know. It's like seven, eight pounds a gallon. So that's a lot of weight. Right.

And maybe he stole it gallons at a time. I don't know. Yeah. But he moved to Englewood and he began working at a pharmacy where he took on the alias Dr. Henry H. Holmes. And this is another thing that we're going to see. I mean,

this guy used a lot of, different names and you see that with con artists it's kind of part and parcel of the gig right if you're going to be a con artist if you're going to try to swindle people most likely you're going to have to use a bunch of different aliases sure and he did now this one it's been reported that he based off of Sherlock Holmes really yeah he liked the novel so much he said let me use that name maybe he was said to be a very charming person. And that's also something that you hear often about a lot of con artists. You kind of have to be one of these people that can talk your way into things to be a good con artist, to swindle people. And this is essentially how he got the job. The store was owned by Mrs.

Holton and her husband, Dr. Holton. Dr. Holden was dying of cancer in the upstairs apartment. Holmes offered to buy the store and said that he would allow them to live upstairs. After he bought the drugstore, Dr. Holton died and Mrs. Holton suddenly moved to California. Now, I don't think it's ever been confirmed, but many people suspect that he killed them both to get them out of the way and just take control of this drugstore. You know, the thing about that is if people are thinking they're moving to California. It's going to take some time to get out there back then.

And by the time that they show up missing, I don't know. It's going to be a little harder track down. Yeah, you're not calling them on the phone. Also, California was a little wilder in the 1800s than it is today. I mean, think about what he did. And we're going to see this a number of times. Hey, I'm going to buy this store. I don't know if he put any money down.

maybe it was just a, I'll pay you X every month until I get the store paid off. But you guys can live upstairs. Well, what easier way to gain control and ownership of the drugstore than just to kill these people? And I think that's probably most likely what he did. Holmes married a woman named Murda Bellknap in 1887. You know, it's interesting because he was not legally. divorced from Clara. So that made him a bigamist. We're going to see that a number of times as well.

He just didn't seem to have much respect for things like that or fear, I guess, either way. Right. To me, Gives, it was pretty much as though if he wanted something or someone. Yeah. He was going to do whatever he wanted to do. It didn't matter if there were potential legal consequences. Obviously, it didn't matter anything about the moral kind of dilemma around the event. He just didn't care. Well, just the fact that he was still legally married to Claire, it shows you. Now, he still was talking to Clara. They weren't living together. He told Clara in 1888 that he'd moved to Chicago. He never came back to see her. And for a long stretch of time made no contact. with Clara. In the summer of 1888, Merta became pregnant and moved back in with her parents.

At first, Holmes came to visit her fairly often, but I don't think it was too long before he kind of stopped contacting her as well. I don't think he wanted the responsibility. Right. It sounds like, because, you know, to me, it almost sounds like if you look at each relationship, he ended it after a child was born. I'm not saying that was the only factor, but it's kind of hard to dismiss that the similarities between the two incidents. Yeah, then all of a sudden he would distance himself from them. Holmes purchased an elaborate three-story building near the pharmacy on West 60th Street in Chicago. He created a drug store on the first floor, kind of a semi hotel on the second.

And then he had his personal residence on the third floor. You know, he lived in these upper floors and he had a number of rooms dedicated to torturing and killing victims. This is an interesting building. No matter what you want to call it, a house, a hotel, there's been differing opinions on what you should call it. But there's no doubt that inside there were trap doors with shoes. to transport bodies to the basement for burning or disposal, there were doors that could be locked from the outside. Okay.

I'm going to put it out there right now. If you're advertising this is a B&B or an Airbnb or an Airbnb. Yeah. Or an Airbnb. Didn't have that back then. No. Any type of, hey, give me X amount of dollars and you can stay the night here. If I noticed that the door only locks from the outside, I'm out.

Yeah. You know, that's kind of a real big red flag for me. Not going to stay here. You know, a lot of papers ended up dubbing this building the murder castle because of what they believe happened inside here. There was a soundproof office on the second floor hooked up to a gas line. And it was thought that it was the basement. that was really his murder factory. Inside the basement was a kiln.

And Holmes tried to tell people that it was a kiln for like blowing glass, making glass, something like that. But there's no way. It was definitely the wrong size for that. It's thought that it was the second floor where the majority of victims were killed. It had mazes, trap doors, you know, in the basement, there were vats of acid. and quick lime pits. And the kiln was ultimately used as a crematorium.

Sound like a nightmare place. It is. It is a nightmare. I mean, I think that's how you get the moniker murder house, right? Most people don't have vats of quicklime in their basement because what do killers use quicklime for, right? Disposing of bodies.

What would you use a large kiln for? if you're not making pottery or blowing glass or whatever, you're burning bodies. And here's the thing that really kind of gets a lot of people. So obviously he had to have all of this built. Oh, for sure. And I would hate to work for him. Well, you would because he had teams and teams of construction workers. And basically, he would just keep firing them and hiring someone new.

so really no one ever saw the full extent of what he was building. Oh, so they can never put it together. Right. If you only saw bits and pieces of it, then, okay, maybe you don't put the whole thing together. And the other thing is it's been alleged that, you know, when he fired them, he wouldn't pay them. And that's kind of a thing with him too. Yeah. Start something, maybe even get in.

investors to back you, but instead of paying out the money that the investors give you, you're just going to stiff workers or whoever's involved in whatever it is. What's the way to make a bunch of money, you know, get it from your investor, but never pay it out. Keep it to yourself. Yeah. And I think he did that a lot. The home was completed by 1892. All right, Gibbs. Let's take a quick break to talk about Anna Louisa. You know, this is a company that you and I are excited about, but I know for a fact, my wife and daughters are in love with. They ordered some items, necklaces, rings, and when they came, I mean, you would have thought it was Christmas morning. They were so excited once they saw these pieces of jewelry.

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That's code T-Cat at buffy.co. So we mentioned it up front, right? we don't know how many victims H.H. Holmes had. The number ranges from, I think, nine confirmed, nine at the low end to as many as 250. But one of his victims was a woman named Julia Connor. Julia, her husband, Ned, and her daughter, Pearl, moved to Chicago from Iowa. She began an affair with Holmes and became pregnant. Ned found out when he overheard Holmes saying something about it. Ned left and Julia moved into the house with H.H.

Now, Holmes said that he would marry her if she got an abortion. But the caveat was Gibbs, he had to perform it himself. In September 1892, he murdered Julia and poisoned her 12-year-old. year old daughter with chloroform. And then he basically told everyone, hey, she moved back to Iowa. She just didn't like it here. Yep. But it's kind of like what we said about the individuals that own the drugstore.

Sure. Much easier in the 1800s to say, hey, somebody went back to or went somewhere. Yeah. There's no Facebook. You can't just ding them and say, hey, are you okay? Yeah. Or, hey, we miss you. How you doing?

Yeah. What's you've been doing. His next victim is thought to be. been Emmeline Seagrand. Holmes met Emmeline through his furniture business partner, a guy named Benjamin Pitzel. She became his personal secretary. And it's thought Gibbs that because of that position, she most likely knew about a number of his business ventures, his swindling, his con artistry, if I'm able to say it that way. Khan artistry.

I like that. I wonder if they give classes in that. If they do, you should hang out your shingle and start teaching those classes. There you go. My shingle. So apparently, Emmeline was set to marry a non-existent man by the name of Robert Phelps. Holmes even went as far as to fake wedding announcements from Emmeline and Phelps. The wedding announcement was sent out on December 6th.

and Emma Lyon was supposed to be married December 7th, 1892. But all of a sudden she and her fiancé, and I'm using my air quotes here, went missing. Her remains were later found in a trunk. So, you know, we're kind of talking about some of the victims known or really kind of thought to be proven to be murdered at the hands of H.H. Holmes. It was a pretty good gig, though. I mean, what he did there because, you know, hey, haven't seen her around.

Oh, she got married to what's his name? And then got up and left. They took off. Yeah. Well, you know, I don't like to give these guys credit, right? They're bad people. They did horrible things. Right.

But it's kind of hard not to say that the guy was pretty smart. He was cunning. He was cunning. And he was a really good con artist. he was really good at making people believe things. And we're going to give some more examples of those as we go along. Right. I think if you look at this one, it's very believable, right?

Okay. She's going to get married. Hey, I got a wedding announcement. So seems legitimate. Yeah. And then they get married and they leave and go somewhere. We never hear from them again. Now, when the body's found in a trunk, it's a little harder to explain that.

But then we have to get to 1893. And that was a big year for both Chicago and H.H. Holmes. The Colombian exposition was being hosted in Chicago. Big deal. It was something that was going to bring in thousands of tourists to the city. And H.H. used this to his advantage. And basically what Holmes did was he used the large crowds as a way to lure unsuspecting victims into his murder castle.

He advertised his home as a hotel for tourists, which is interesting because, I mean, when you kind of read all of the descriptions, it definitely does not seem like a quote-unquote hotel. Right. But you have such an influx of people to the city that are looking for rooms to rent. So you just want a bed. Yeah. So probably you're able to advertise it. way you want. Most of his victims died inside the murder castle. Holmes had a pattern of getting engaged

to women. And then it seemed like his new fiance would disappear pretty shortly after the engagement. That was kind of, you know, one of his MOs. He also offered unsuspecting victims odd jobs to lure them inside. Basically, anything. that he could do to lure people into his place. Women were the majority of his guests at the hotel. And when they couldn't afford to pay for their rooms, he would forgive their debts, which is a nice thing to do.

Sure. The problem is these women would suddenly leave town. Yeah, but what was suspicious was they never took any of their belongings with them. Yeah, pretty suspicious, right? You know, most people, when they're going to leave, it's not like a lot of people had fast collections of things back in the 1800s. If you're going to leave town, you're taking your stuff with you. And there was a lot in some of the papers back from that time frame Gibbs about how women were getting more and more freedom to go out, especially without male supervision. Yeah.

Escorts. Without escorts. And Holmes targeted these women. He convinced them to trust him. And he had some legitimacy, right, to back him up. He posed as a friendly pharmacist and businessman. He was charming. And I think he was able to charm a number of young women

that had come to town for the fair into entering his home. In a number of different ways, either romantically with an offer, for a place to stay or with an offer for an odd job. There's a number of ways that I think he lured these women in. On March 31st, 1893, the Chicago Tribune published an article about homes. And, you know, this is interesting because of the timing of it, the authors wrote about how he didn't pay for hundreds of dollars worth of furniture that he bought on credit for his

hotel. And I've already said it. This is what he did. He figured out a way to get what he wanted up front. Yes. And then he would figure out a way to get out of paying for it altogether. That's what a good con man does. Exactly. But after the article was published, you had a lot of angry merchants showing up, trying to get their furniture back. What they found were empty rooms. There was no furniture to get back. No. that they could see. One of the furniture companies even paid a man to watch the house. And when they saw furniture coming in, they sent someone to collect the furniture because obviously he hadn't paid his bill. They even got a warrant, but they found nothing, right? The rooms were completely empty, but they bribed a man $25 who worked there to help them find the furniture. Basically what Holmes had

done, he'd hidden it all inside a secret room. He took out the door frame. He bricked the room up. And then he covered it with wallpaper. It's so bizarre. I know. He just didn't want to pay for the furniture. Yeah. I've got it. I'm going to secure it in this room and not use it. Well, my assumption is that happened once the article came out. Yeah. And all these angry people started coming to say, hey, we want our money or we want our furniture. So maybe he thought, I'll hide it for now. Right. And then when the heat dies down, I'll get it back out.

Yeah. I'll still have my furniture. I'll be able to use it. They chose not to prosecute him. And instead, they, they all just took their furniture back. Another scheme he had was dissecting bodies, removing all identifying features, and selling the skeletons to medical schools. That was a pretty big scam for a few people back in the day.

It was. Yeah, I think back in the day, grave robbing was quite lucrative. It wasn't hard to figure out where to go to get what you wanted. Oh, yeah. Easy picking. Do a little digging, get you a skeleton, a number of skeletons. And I think there were a number of institutions that were willing to pay pretty good money for them. And or bodies, right?

I shouldn't just say skeletons. I think bodies as well. I wonder how you get a receipt for that when you buy something like that. Pay cash. Do they give you like a? It just says body. Body on it. Yeah.

Two victims came from these crimes. Minnie Williams and her sister, Annie. Minnie Williams's inheritance was worth at least $75,000. That's a lot. That's a ton of money back then. Yeah. She became the secretary after. emmeline quote unquote left you know after she fate got married but right was actually killed by

homes minnie was wealthy but she came to the north because it was reported she was a little wild and she really wanted to enjoy her freedom it's not clear how she met h h homes but minnie wrote to her sister annie that she married a man named harry gordon and she asked annie to come up to visit. Annie arrived and wrote a letter to her aunt dated July 4th, 1893. This was the last time anyone heard from her. It was all part of a plan. On the part of H.H. Holmes, the murder hotel mysteriously caught fire one day killing Minnie Williams. The insurance company didn't want to pay out her life insurance because they thought her death was mysterious. So that part of his plan got foiled, right? The life insurance policy, he's not going to get that.

So Holmes turned his attention to Minnie's inheritance that was supposed to go to Annie. So he killed Annie as well. You talk about killing just for the sake of greed. Oh, yeah. That's exactly what this was. Now, there were some interesting stories in the papers about H.H. Holmes. Gibbs at one point, he claimed to have invented a contraption called the super fine gas generator. Sounds like something you would come up with in your garage. Yeah. And I think it's basically what he did. Gibbs,

this apparently was a machine that could turn ordinary water into gas. That's a heck of an invention. Well, who wouldn't want to have that? I'll take one of those. And while you're at it, throw in a bridge in Arizona. Yeah. So what Holmes did was he built up the buzz about this machine to the point

where he even managed to get an article about it printed in a local newspaper, that caught the attention of a Chicago corporation. And Holmes set it up to have someone come out to take a look at his invention. It was described as something like a big bowl on stilts. It had a fire underneath it. And it had all these wires and pipes, right, coming out of it. I'm sure this guy was skeptical. but apparently he sat and watched it for 10 hours straight. And everything that used gas was turned on in this three-story building. Right. But over the 10 hours, the gas meter never moved.

Interesting. Right. So it's like, man, this contraption is powering the whole building. It's not even spinning. No. It's not costing anything hardly in gas. The guy was blown away. And he went back and he told his bosses how, you know, amazing it was.

Now, some reports say that the gas company bought it for $25,000. Some reports say that the newspaper articles and the endorsement by the gas corporation helped home sell it to a man in Canada. Either way, it was later discovered that basically all he had done was tapped into the city's main gas line. Right. bypassing his meter, making it look like the machine was making gas when really he was just powering everything from the city's main gas line.

Again, another great con. Well, it is. And you hate to give the guy credit, but you can't say that he wasn't ingenious in certain aspects. There was another story about how he dug a well in the cellar of his drugstore and said that he tapped into some type of artesian well. Oh yeah. Right. So he got chemist to say that what was down there was some type of miracle mineral water. Make you youthful again or something. Sure. I mean, it'll do all kinds of things for you. In one of the papers it said this water contained more of like a bunch of different things that were supposed to be good for you

than any water on earth. So it's magical, right? It's the, it's the find of the century. So what he did was he ran a pipe to a soda fountain and people flocked in to pay five cents a glass for this miracle mineral water. Eventually another chemist analyzed it and found, You know what? This is just plain old water. Yeah. Coming out of Lake Michigan. Yeah.

Nothing special, guys. No, just another scam, another con. There are tons of stories like this, Gibbs. I mean, we don't even have time to talk about them all. If they are true, as reported, I really do think it helps give you a sense of how clever the guy was, how diabolical and genius, throw all these different words in you want. one, bottom line, he was really good at deceiving people. You know, he was a good con artist, no doubt, but he was also not going to be caught by anybody.

Or if he was, he would figure out a way to get out of it by either getting rid of those people. You hit the nail on the head, right? Good con artist. But also, I think of a smart guy to keep coming up over and over with. these really kind of ingenious plans. And then add on top of that that we know he wasn't afraid to kill people. So he's not too worried, right? He's going to try this. If it works great, if it works until somebody finds out, that's okay too. Because whoever comes after me, I'll figure out a way to get rid of them and make my problems go away. All right, Gibbs,

let's take our last break and let everybody know that this podcast is sponsored by Better Help. If there's something interfering with your happiness or preventing you from achieving your goals, Better Help is there for you. Better Help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapists. You can start communicating in under 48 hours. This is not a crisis line. It's not self-help. It's professional counseling done securely online.

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You had a lot of creditors, PIs that were investigating him. In the fall of that year, he was called to attorney George Chamberlain's office, and he was confronted by 24 different creditors and a detective. They asked him to go into the hallway while they set around talking trying to make a decision about what his punishment should be. Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, I'll just wait right here, guys. You let me know what you're going to do to me and come out and I'll go ahead and do it. Yeah, I'll wait while you figure out what nasty punishment you're going to give me. I mean, we're joking because obviously he didn't wait around, right? He escaped, probably not the best tactic on the part of the police or, you know, whoever all these people

were. Holmes Hotel was owned on paper by the Campbell Yates manufacturing company. The company had about $60,000 worth of insurance. We mentioned, right, it caught on fire, killing many Williams. Someone from the insurance company sent inspectors to look at the building after the fire. Two individuals, Hiram Campbell and A.G. Yates signed the proof of loss, basically saying, okay. There was a fire and the insurance money should be paid out. There was a big problem, though. These guys weren't real people. And once the insurance company figured that out, they pressured Holmes with the lawsuit. But he disappeared on December 15th, 1893. He had to get out of Chicago, right? He had to escape his creditors. The fire insurance company was coming after him.

Many Williams had signed land over to him. And he decided that he wanted to see what he could do with that property. Now, while he was on the run, he also married another woman named Georgiana Yoke, but he didn't kill her. Yeah, but like his other wives, he did abandon her. Yeah, I don't know if he had a fear of commitment, but he, at the very least, had no desire for commitment. That's for sure. Holmes ended up partnering with a man named Benjamin Pitzel. who was also a con man himself.

Benjamin was originally from Terre Haute, Indiana, but he would eventually become another victim of H.H. Holmes. What happened was Pitzel took out an insurance policy on himself. And together, they planned to fake Pitezl's death to get the $10,000 payout. I'm sure that's what Holmes told Pizel was going to happen. But the entire time, He planned to murder this man and steal his life insurance money all for himself.

Just so you know, I don't have a life insurance policy. I know you probably think I do. You probably think the beneficiary is you, but it's really not. I'm sure. So don't, I just don't want you to get any funny idea. I mean, I know we made that agreement that we would do that. But I shouldn't think that that's still valid. Yeah.

I haven't paid for it forever either. You know how cheap I am. You are cheap, so I believe you. Yeah, okay. So he's on the run, and Holmes was arrested in St. Louis for fraud. He used Minnie's property to commit a scam involving horses. And while he was inside the jail, he started talking about all of his schemes to another inmate named Marion Hedgepeth.

Now Hedgepeth knew him as H.M. Howard. Like I said, he used a lot of different alias. Holmes was released on August 1st, 1894, after he confessed his life insurance scam to Hedgebeth. This was really the first big mistake, Gibbs, I think, that he made that would ultimately lead to him getting caught and eventually being convicted. But after he was released from prison, he murdered Benjamin Pitzel. The last time anyone saw Benjamin was September 1st, 18th. Three days later, his body was found in a rental house in Philadelphia. His body was charred and there was chloroform in his stomach.

There had been some type of small fire or explosion that released deadly chemicals. There was a broken bottle and a pipe next to his body. The police initially believed he accidentally burned to death. But again, it was all part of an elaborate plan put in motion by, Holmes. The home was rented by a man who didn't exist named B. F. Perry. It was Pitzel who actually lived in the house. The plan was to fake his death and get the money. But instead, Holmes tied him up, poured benzene on him and lit him with a match while he sat and watched him die. Brutal. Messed up. Yeah. And I think, you know, this is one of the interesting things about homes, right? You have guys that are

con artist. You have guys that perpetrate Ponzi schemes. This is a guy who kind of did it all. He was involved in scams and fraud and schemes, but I also think he had no qualms about getting rid of his partners or anyone that might have caught on to him. I also think Gibbs, there's a part of him that enjoyed murder. So it's like he kind of had it all. Yeah. All the stuff you can have, it's like H.H. Holmes had it. Well, this was a guy that was willing to go to any extent to get what he wanted. Yeah. I think that's absolutely true. The other thing he did was he poured chloroform into Pitzel's stomach, so it would look like poisoning. And they actually had a lawyer by the name of Jeptha Howe, who they kind of recruited into their scheme. He was the one who

initiated the claim for the insurance money, Holmes, Howe, and Paisel's 13-year-old daughter, Alice, came to Philadelphia to identify the body. Alice was unaware that it was actually her father she was saying. Okay, that's pretty macabre bringing a 13-year-old to view the burned body of her father, and she's not even sure it's him. Eventually, the life insurance company issued the $10,000, $7. Howell received $2,500, Mrs. Pitzel received $500, and Holmes took $7,000. Look at that. He took the bulk of it. Right. As a good con artist would, he promised to pay hedge path $500, but he never did. And again, I think this was another mistake, right? This is a guy who you told all about things you had done and had kind of involved him.

in this Benjamin Pitzel thing. It wasn't really long after the payout that the life insurance company got suspicious and they began investigating. They really did do a lot of investigating back then. Those life insurance companies. Yeah. Well, let's be fair.

You and I have dealt with a lot of insurance companies, a lot of different types of insurance companies over the years. What's the one thing they really don't want to have to do? Pay. Pay. Yeah. So if there's a way, not to. If there's any inkling that something's afoot, yeah, they're going to go into full

investigation mode. I think you and I have worked with some insurance companies that their first response was to refuse to pay. Absolutely. And put it on to you to prove that you deserve the money. You know, I can remember a lot of fights that you and I had with insurance companies over money that we know we were owed. Exactly. And this is in business. This is in our personal life. We're not trying to scam any life insurance companies for real. But it's always been that thing.

I mean, that whole movie was made, you know, Matt Damon with the life insurance. Yeah. Medical insurance. Yeah, where it was proven that they denied claims that they knew were real.

Right. And should have been paid out. But if that's your go-to, and I think that's what happened in the movie, they're going to save more over time. And their customers maybe don't have the money to fight them. And I think that's what a lot of companies think. Yeah.

When Holmes got back to St. Louis, he told Mrs. Pitzel that Alice was still in Indianapolis and that Mr. Pitzel was alive and in hiding. Holmes was able to talk Mrs. Pytzell in allowing him to take three of her children in September of 1894. I think his reasoning was she needed a rest. He would take, you know, the burden of these three kids off her plate. Okay. Is that a good con man at work? I would have to say so. Why does this guy want to take on the responsibility of three children? We already know he leaves his wives. Yeah. After they have children. He's not a compassionate guy. No. That means. there's always a motive, right, behind everything that he did. Well, over time, he murdered all three

of them. The middle children, Alice, Nellie and Howard all traveled with him under the kind of ruse that they were going to see their father. Because remember, Benjamin's dead. Oh, yeah. But nobody else knows that. The family thinks that, you know, he's often hiding because they faked his death, or at least his wife thinks that. He took the children to Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Detroit, and Toronto. Even got up to Canada. So he was kind of traveling quite a bit. Yeah.

And as he traveled, he kept sending letters telling Mrs. Pitzel that he was in various cities. At some point, she got worried. and she started traveling to these cities looking for her children only to then get another letter saying that he'd moved on. And he kept doing this to hide the fact that he murdered her children and the fact that her husband was dead. So we talked about why would he do this? And again, it's to try to cover up a crime that he's already committed. He checked them into a hotel in Toronto and, in October, but really no one knew where they went after that. No records indicated that they had bought any train tickets leaving Toronto.

Well, it later came out that Holmes murdered Pytzell's two daughters in Toronto and her son in Indianapolis. Later, he sent a letter to Mrs. Pitzel telling her to get a can from her house and throw it down in a corner. Okay, pretty strange. instructions. Very weird. She got the can out.

She didn't throw it down, though. She set it down carefully. And this saved her life because the can was filled with nitro glycerin, which if she would have thrown it down, would have exploded and killed her. So he had set a bunch of things in motion. This one, however, didn't work out. The other thing that Holmes did while he was on the run was he reunited with his first wife, Clara.

Hey honey, I'm home. Yeah. After how many years? I mean, a very long time. And I've read a number of different accounts about this, Gibbs. You know, there are some accounts that say he told her that he had an accident. He lost his memory. Yeah, that's a good one.

He was in a fugue state, right? Like on Breaking Bad. He didn't know who he was or what he was doing. but he reunited with Claire and his son in New Hampshire. The police were after him this entire time. Then he went to Boston and promised to come home soon. But, you know, like many of his promises, he's not going to keep it. He never returned.

No. And one reason for that is the police finally caught up with him in Boston on November 17th, 1894. And every time they interviewed him, Holmes told them a different story. but he did confess to killing 27 people. He told them, oh, sure, I've killed 27 people, matter-factly. But some of the victims that he claimed later turned out to be still living. Which was a problem as far as accountability for his numbers. Well, when you're confessing, yeah, that tends to be a problem.

And I think it's a large part of why the accuracy of this number, has to be questioned. Well, it can't really be 27. It can't be that 27 because some of the people are still alive. Right. But there are some other victims that we have information on. One is a woman named Emily Van Tassel. She met Holmes at an ice cream parlor where she was working. He trapped her inside the murder castle in July 1894 and she was never seen again. He did confess that he poisoned her with Sinai. Yep. And so that one is pretty much believed, right?

Because she's never surfaced. His very first victim was a man named Dr. Russell, a tenant who failed to pay him his rent. Well, you don't pay your rent. You get hit with a chair in your head and your skull got crushed in. At least that's what happened to him. Yeah, that's what he confessed to. Kitty Kelly was a stenographer who worked for homes. and mysteriously disappeared.

Now, he never confessed to killing her, but most historians agree that he did. Because you've got to think about how old this case is, Gibbs. Historians have been studying this thing for well over 100 years. Yeah, yeah. Harry Walker worked for Holmes in the summer of 1893. He was last seen in November of that year. He disappeared, and Holmes claimed that he burned him inside the kill.

W.F. Cole was a business partner of Holmes. He arrived in Chicago in July 1894 to meet Holmes and was never seen again. And Holmes hit him in the head with a gas pipe and killed him. Yep, that's what he confessed to. A janitor mysteriously disappeared inside the murder castle. A woman named Lee entered the restaurant during the World Fair. Holmes poisoned her with chloroform. And it's thought that, that he most likely sold her skeleton. Well, he's always trying to make a buck. Robert Latimore was another janer who tried to steal money. And Holmes said he starved this man to death inside one of his secret rooms. Anna Betts and Gertrude Connor were poisoned by a prescription issued by Holmes. A woman named Lizzie worked in the restaurant.

Holmes said that he suffocated her inside the vault because Gibbs, she wasn't paying attention at work. It's kind of rough. Yeah. Now, see, this one kind of really jumps out at me. As far as I know, she didn't know about any of his dealings or schemes or scams. She wasn't set to out him. He literally just killed her, I think probably number one, because he wanted to. And then he made the claim that she wasn't paying attention at work. Yeah. I mean, if that was the case, we would all be in trouble. Oh, man. At one point. or another. Why are you looking at me like that? You would have been gone a very long time ago. Yeah, it's true. A man named Rogers was lured into the building to sign some checks.

And he too was starved to death and gassed in the vault. Brutal. That starved at death. You know, that says, man, be a rough way to go. Yeah. Be a rough way to go because of how long it would take. Yep. I mean, you're talking a number of days of varying stages of pretty much torture. I mean, I go three or four hours without eating and, you know, I get real cranky. Well, I know. I remember that time I did that hunger strike to get this chair here, you know. It was rough on you.

It was rough. Thank goodness you finally gave in. Days after Holmes was arrested, Mrs. Pitzel and the lawyer, Howell were also arrested. The police lured heard of Boston with a decoy letter written by the detention. and they arrested her when she arrived. I think because investigators believed that she was part of this whole scheme. Police, they didn't stop interviewing Holmes, right?

They kept trying to get more information out of him. And I think he was pretty eager to tell them a bunch of wild stories that many of which were proven not to be true. Well, sure. I mean, he's a con artist anyway, right? Maybe he doesn't even remember what he told him last time. Yeah. He's telling somebody lies.

He's just going to keep making new things up until he gets out of this bad situation. He said that he and Pitzel bought a corpse in New York, shipped it to the house, and then started the fire. I mean, this was his way of telling the police that, hey, Pitzel's still alive. Right. But police didn't believe him. Mrs. Pitzel told him her husband left her in St. Louis and went to Chicago. He wrote that he was going to Philadelphia. then he wrote another letter saying he'd made himself a business under the name B.T. Perry.

When Mrs. Pitzel heard the news of B.F. Perry dying, she worried that it was her husband. But Holmes assured her it wasn't. And that's when he told her the plan that he had with her husband. He convinced her to request the insurance payout. Fidelity insurance requested that they come to Philadelphia and identify the body. But Mrs. Pytzel was so sick that Alice went with them instead. That's how she ended up going. Holmes later returned to St. Louis and gave Mrs. Paisel the $500. And it was after that that he took her children like we already talked about. But, you know, I think it kind of shows you how she got snowed. Now, at a certain point, she was let in on the scam, but it was always that. that her husband was still alive, right? The scam didn't involve killing her husband. In reality, it did, but that's not what Holmes told her. But at a certain point, she realized that Holmes lied to

her about everything, and especially about her children. And she began pushing the police to find them. Eventually, her indictment was thrown out after Holmes confessed to his crimes. Allegedly, he told the police, I was born with the devil in me. I couldn't help the fact that I was a murderer. No more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing. It's kind of a famous quote. It's become a famous quote because it was splashed on the front of every newspaper in the country, I think. Now, he denied murdering Julia and said that he accidentally killed her during the abortion.

No one knows what really happened to Pearl. he did tell them about Minnie and Annie Williams, but what he said was that many killed Annie in a fit of jealousy. And then to cover up the crime, he threw the body in Lake Michigan. He said he killed Howard Williams when he came looking for his sisters, but police figured out that that wasn't true. Holmes also made claims that Minnie Williams was alive

and that she was the one who was watching Miss. is Pitzel's children. So, I mean, he's all over the map, obviously, but every twist in turn Gibbs, I think is designed to cover up something else, right? These children are gone. Mrs. Pitzel knows that I took them. Well, let's kind of fuse two different things together, the death of Minnie Williams. She's not dead. She's the one that's actually watching the children, they're not dead either. In fact, everyone's dead. Again, it's another con artist ploy.

He did confess to killing Emmeline Segrin. He said he was jealous of her engagement, which is somewhat strange because it was thought to be fake. Sure. Yeah. But, hey, you know, he suffocated her in the vault. While he was incarcerated, Gibbs, he wrote 256 pages, trying to convince people that he was innocent. But there's no doubt that his behavior became extremely erratic.

The Chicago Tribune released a two and a half page story on him titled H.H. Holmes Crook, detailing out the long history of all of his crimes and all the women he murdered. They put a lot of pressure on the police to find the missing children. But H.H. Holmes was only convicted of murdering one person. Benjamin Paisal, and that conviction occurred in early 1895. His appeal was rejected. Police went to Toronto to try to find the missing Paisal children, and their investigation took them to a cottage that Holmes had rented for a few days.

It was on July 15, 1895, that a detective discovered the bodies of Alice and Nellie at the cottage, Holmes had put the girls in a trunk with a small hole drilled through and he gasped them. Then he buried the bodies in the basement. When they were unearthed, they had no clothing on, but it's not known for sure if they were sexually assaulted. The girls' bodies had no injuries. So detectives thought Holmes and another individual convinced them to get into the trunk, telling them that they were going to play hide and seek. Then he put the gas through the hole and killed them. Brutal, man.

That is a horrible way to think about, you know, two young girls dying. Yeah. Trapped together, sisters, scared to death, most likely, inside of this trunk. Sure. Especially when you hear that drill starting up and you realize something's just not right. And then when the gas comes pouring in, ooh, yeah. Then detectives traced him. to Indianapolis and they found out that he had rented a house there and installed a large oven.

And it came out that Howard Pitzel was playing outside when Holmes invited him in, dosed him with chloroform, dismembered his body and cooked it in the oven. Howard's burnt remains were found inside the house. And, you know, gives with papers back then, they had a lot of trouble with ages. you and I have found that doing our research. But I'm pretty sure that all three of the kids were 13 years or younger. Yes. They were young kids.

So imagine, you know, two and a half pages in a newspaper, that is huge. And if you ever look at old newspapers, the print is very small. It is. It really is. Compared to today, two and a half pages back then, it's a lot of information to come out about this guy. And the news just kind of exploded. And I think what it did is it exposed him as not only a Swindler, not only a con artist, but a killer and a child killer. So once that comes out, that's when you get every newspaper in the country, starts printing articles.

It was everywhere. Every street corner news guy was selling it. Authority searched Holmes House to get more information. as they excavated, the house of horrors was revealed. They allegedly found vats of acid with human bones, charged shoes, bones scattered across the floor, and they found the large kiln. The home had secret passages.

We've talked about some of this. It had fake walls, trap doors, soundproof rooms, and pipes to distribute gas. And the, controls for the gas to all of these different rooms, we're in Holmes' bedroom. Yeah.

He could kill anyone he wanted from his bedroom. Just by spinning that dial. Inside the basement, they found a lab with dissection equipment. Behind a fake wall was a butcher's table, quick lime vats, more bones, bloody clothes, and the crematorium. Inside a large oven, they found, a woman's watch chain and a garter buckle.

The watch chain turned out to have belonged to many, and the garter buckle belonged to Annie. So I think that's where you get some, you know, real clarity on who for sure were victims of H.H. Holmes. Right. On March 9th, 1896, Holmes was sentenced to die by execution. he was hanged on May 7th of that year. It's less than two months.

Yeah, pretty quick for from sentencing to execution. And they were quick back then. You know, we mentioned it. His appeal was denied very quickly. He was hanged at 10.13 a.m. It was the week before his 35th birthday. And apparently he professed his innocence before he died. His declaration was about two minutes long.

and he only accepted responsibility for killing two women accidentally. He denied killing Pitzel, denied killing his children. But in all of the reporting, it was said that he seemed indifferent about the whole thing. And he seemed unafraid as he walked up to the gallows. And I mentioned it, right? He was only ever tried and convicted for one murder, the murder of Benjamin Piedel. Heitzel. But even his death, Gibbs didn't stop rumors that he had somehow committed yet another con. A rumor started going around that he tricked his captors into letting him go. And apparently

before he died, he made specific requests for a double deep coffin to be covered with cement. I think he was very paranoid about being exhumed and used for science experiments because I think he had done it a lot. Yeah, you know how easy it was to dig up bodies. He didn't want to have that done to him himself. So a lot of people thought that he had bribed prison officials to sub out his body with a cadaver. In 1898, a former janitor at the murder castle, a guy by the, the name of Robert Latimer told the police that he saw letters proving Holmes tricked his lawyer, a priest, and prison workers into burying a different body. Latimer was one of the people Holmes

confessed to killing, but obviously he was still alive because he's talking to police. He claimed his former boss went to a coffee farm in San Parenorimbo, Paraguay. Well, the problem is the town doesn't exist. So that's tough. You can't go to a place or a city that doesn't exist. That's right. An 1898 article from a Chicago paper claimed Holmes was alive and working at the coffee farm in San Paren Naremba. It also shows you any kind of the journalistic standards of back in the day. I think they did print a lot of things as fact, even though they couldn't prove them and they would later come out to be proven false. They also printed some sensationalized stuff too. Oh yeah back then. I mean, we do today, right? Papers today still print or online, you know, try to be sensational.

I think it was even more sensational back then. They were trying to sell copies. And like I said, the standards, I think were a little different. And I think it's one of the reasons why the story of H.H. Holmes is filled with a lot of false rumors because a lot of them were spread by newspapers back, you know, during the, that time period. Historians seem to agree Gibbs that there are only nine victims that they can definitively attribute to H.H. Holmes, but I mean, the rumors of 200 plus victims have lingered for years. And I think there are some important points to make, right? H.H. H. H. Holmes knew these nine victims. You know, historians add that his home technically was not a hotel. He didn't add the third floor until 1892. He told people it was going to be a hotel, but he never finished it. It was another one of those projects where, okay, he got people to invest money in it. He never spent the money. He probably had some work done, didn't pay the workers. In two, 2017, his body was exhumed for all this time, right? Rumors still ran rampant that Holmes didn't actually die. He had fled to South America. His family wanted to end the rumors once and for all. In April of that year, researchers and analysts exhumed the body from Holy Cross Cemetery in Philadelphia. His great-grandchildren, John, Richard and Cynthia Mudgeett petitioned to get the body

exhumed and they received permission in March of 2017. The University of Pennsylvania's Anthropology Department performed the DNA analysis. The results weren't definitive, though. The best that they could determine was that the remains were from a relative of homes. How bizarre would that have to be that that's your relative? You know, when you hear these stories, when you go on the internet and you read all this stuff and hear all this stuff, got a little unnerving. Yeah, I mean, he also had a very kind of distinctive last name, right?

So if you're walking around with the name of Cynthia Mudgeett, right? Yeah. People might put two and two together doesn't mean that obviously you're related to him. But I do want to talk about this DNA analysis. So it can't be a total stranger, right? Whoever's buried there has to either. be him or a relative. So unless he killed one of his close relatives and buried him in his place, I think it's pretty likely that it's him. I don't think he made it to South America.

I think he's buried there. Gibbs, you know, as we wrap up this case, Holmes was called by the Chicago Tribune, a swindler of men, betrayer of women. And pretty much that's how he operated, right? He preferred to murder women and scam men, and he believed that women were easy to trick. He was given the title of one of America's first serial killers. Like we said, I think at the low end, he killed nine people. Most likely he killed many, many more. Sure, at the murder castle, murder house.

Yeah. There's no way to know for sure how many could. it be 50, could it be 200, could it be 250? There's no way to know. And I think that's why a lot of people are fascinated with H.H. Holmes. Throughout his life, he used a lot of different aliases, H.M. Howard, Dr. Henry H. Holmes, or just H.H. Holmes, as most people know him today, he was not only a serial killer, but a con artist. He was also a bigamist, right? surely was. I do think there was a part of him that enjoyed killing people, maybe for the power

it gave him, the thrill it gave him. But I think many of his murders involved money or the fact that maybe somebody was on to him and he was going to do whatever he had to do to ensure that he wasn't caught. And if that meant killing people, hey, he wasn't above that. No, that's what he would do. And if he enjoyed it, well, then he definitely had no problem with it. I think this is a fascinating story, Gibbs, on a number of levels. A lot of it comes from speculation and some of the salacious coverage that was put out on

homes at the time. There's no doubt to me that if you're finding vats of Quicklime, a kiln, and you're finding body parts scattered around in clothing, there was a lot of bad stuff, right, that went on inside that building. The fact that it happened during this really kind of tourist heavy event that people flocked in from other parts of the country, where they quickly missed by their family, or were they missed at all back in those days. And maybe they were headed to Chicago from back east and were headed out to California. And their family thought, okay, they probably made it to California and we'll never hear

from them again. But it wasn't the case. They ended up dying in the murder casket. But that's it, man, for the case of H.H. Holmes. I did hear that Scorsese was going to actually make a movie about H.H. Holmes. Yeah, I think I heard some buzz about that too.

And I would definitely watch it. Yeah. I think they were going to use Leo. Scorsese likes Leo. Yeah, that's true. They all like Leo. Tarantino's really kind of gotten into Leo a little bit too. Yeah, I noticed that.

Yeah, again, fascinating story that a lot of people know about when you're, if you make a movie about H.H. Holmes, you can make it any way you want. Mm-hmm. Because there's a lot of facts that just can't be known. So you can really embellish some of the, the more salacious thoughts or rumors about what he did inside the the murder castle. You can really get freaky with it. You know who would be good in that movie? You?

Yeah. And you too. Yeah. All right. Let's sign up. Just case they're listening. Besides the fact that we've never acted in anything in our lives. Hey, man.

We made it this far in our life. Those low budget films you did, they don't count. Don't even bring those into the. conversation. I was director, producer, writer, and actor. And cleanup man. And cleanup man. All right, buddy, we got some voicemails. You want to check those out? Yeah. Hi, this is Danny. I'm in Maryland. I'm new to your podcast, but I've already been through so much at it. You guys literally get me through my day. I, sorry, teen giddy all the way. Like, I can't with you sometimes. You, you both. You guys are hilarious. I love the stories.

guys tell I just all the things that you cover the respect you share the victims I tell all of my family and friends about every time somebody sees my mug or I got a crime junkie hoodie too anytime anybody sees it I'm like oh my god you guys have to listen to their podcast you guys got to sign it for the patreon you just have to you guys will love it so um definitely looking forward to the rest of my episodes that I have I'm a patreon member I definitely have no regrets on that you guys are just awesome keep it up Well, that's really cool. I appreciate it. You know, a lot of people don't really know what Patreon is for us. They hear the names maybe in the beginning, but you and I do try to put out a lot of content on Patreon.

We put out at least one full-blown episode a month on both video and audio. And then we put out things during the week. But it's good stuff. It's good stuff. And appreciate the kind words. Yeah, we do. Hi, my name is Carrie. And I'm a huge fan of your guys's podcast. I actually was born in Dayton, Ohio, but I currently live in North Dakota. I just listen to the podcast about Drew Shudine from North Dakota, and I just wanted to tell you guys that you did a great job on that, because I actually lived here when that case was going on, and I really appreciate your guys' banter during the episodes. It just makes me crack up when I'm at work, and you guys do a great job, and I'm definitely team give you. Well, who is not Team Givy? A news flash.

At a certain point, okay, I try not to take it personally, but at a certain point, it hurts my feeling. Does it? No, not really. I'm happy for you, man. It's awesome. Y'all tickle me to death. So this is I-N-A calling in from Texas again. And I just got to say, man, y'all just tickled the shit.

me. I'm from Texas, and I'm listening now to the Daniel Rowalkie, I think is how you say it. The peasant that tried to take over, or wanted you take over Texas. Berg, you trip me out. I'm giving you the two, but Ferd got you on this one. He said, I don't seem taking over any states, let alone Texas. Oh, that tickles me because he could have tried it. It wasn't going to work. And then Mike, you are, Bergey, you just fucking blew my mind when you were like, he's got high ambitions. Y'all just tickle the hell out of me.

Keep doing what you're doing. Guys, y'all make my work day so much better. You truly do. Driving for 14 hours a day is a pain in the root group. But y'all have seemed to cure that for me, and I just really appreciate everything y'all do. And from Texas, y'all stay safe and keep your own time of ticking. I'm pretty sure I can call in on every episode because y'all are just like riding with my best friends, chilling, talking. Oh, y'all just trip me out.

Y'all tickled me. Thank you all for everything. Bye. Well, Gibbs, you and I are always happy when the audience and y'all like what we're doing. I'm glad that y'all like it. Ida Mae cracks me up because she does leave a lot of voicemails. She left one the other day that said, Gibby said the dumbest thing she's ever heard. And then she went on to say what it was.

At the end of it, she said, but man, I'm still 97% Team Gibby. I'm still in there. I'm still in there. But we appreciate it. And it's nice to hear that we're kind of riding along with you. I like that idea. Yeah. Shotgun.

Yeah. Hey, Mike and Gibby. My name is Jessica Gregory, originally from Buffalo, New York and living in Rock Hills, South Carolina. I just wanted to call to let you guys know that I so appreciate your podcast. I listen every morning. I'm a high school English teacher, and I thought, you know, what better way to start my day than with, you know, some murder.

So thank you guys so much for everything that y'all do. We really appreciate it. I know a lot of other teachers listen to y'all. We're all true crime fans, and we just really appreciate you guys and everything that y'all do, help us get through our day and help us start our day off on the right foot. Thank y'all and keep your own time taken. Man, I love those English teachers.

And I know they love me. Yeah, I was wondering where you were going with that. Yeah. I didn't know if you were going to get specific about it. Yeah, obviously, we love teachers. My wife's a teacher. Yes, she is. My dad was a teacher. My stepmom was a teacher.

So a lot of teachers in my family. But we do have a lot of teachers who listen to the show. A lot of them are into true crime. I think as a teacher, you probably need an escape. Yes. You know, judging by. some of the things that I hear my wife say. Yeah.

After that day's over, yeah, you need an escape. You need something to kind of take you away. A little Calgon moment. A little Calgon moment. I know I'm dating myself there, but some people will get the reference. All right, buddy, we had one thing in the mailbag. Lori Austin sent us a metal replica of the USS Cole battleship. Really?

is badass. Cool. And what's unbelievably cool was that she actually served on the USS Cole and she was on the ship at the time it was bombed back in 2000. If you remember that. Yeah, sure do. So number one, appreciate her service. Absolutely. But appreciate the fact that she took the time to send something in that really means something to her and now it means something to us. Yes. So thank you, Lori. Right. That is it. for another episode of true crime all the time. So for Mike and Gibby, stay safe and keep your own time ticking.