True Crime with Kimbyr - Part 1: Evil Doctor Seduces, Traps & Kills In MURDER MANSION - H.H. Holmes | The Devil In Me

Episode Date: January 16, 2026

How did a charming doctor turn an ordinary building into a house of horrors? In True Crime with Kimbyr, Kimbyrleigha unpacks the chilling story of H.H. Holmes — the so-called “Devil in Me” — whose Murder Mansion hid secret passages, deadly traps, and unimaginable crimes. With careful research and a compassionate, analytical lens, True Crime with Kimbyr explores how manipulation, trust, and greed fueled one of history’s most disturbing serial killers. What really happened behind those walls — and how many victims were there? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel and if you've never been here before, my name is Kimberlea. Nice to finally meet you. Let me introduce you to H.H. Holmes and give you a tour of my very own World's Fair Hotel. In order to get to the hotel, we have to learn about the man whose mind created it. There are a lot of myths and legends when it comes to the story of H.H. H.H. H. Holmes, but like all of my videos, I try my best to only provide you with the most accurate information that I possibly can through diligent research from reliable sources. I am doing my best to bring you the facts that are known to be true about H.H. Holmes. Dr. Henry Howard Holmes was actually born Herman Webster Mudgeitz on May 16, 1861, in Gilminton, New Hampshire.

To his father, Levi Horton Mudgeett and his mother, Theudate Page Price. He was the couple's third child of five. He had an older sister Ellen and an older brother Arthur, a younger brother Henry, and a younger sister Mary. So essentially he was the middle child. His father Levi worked as a farmer and a house painter and both he and Theodate were devout Methodists. There's a lot of ways in which children become interested in their future profession, but for a little Herman Mudgeett, the way that he became interested in becoming a doctor wasn't exactly normal. He was actually terrified of the town doctor when he was younger and the little boys his age used to make fun of him because he had to be

a tough boy and he wasn't. He was a mama's boy. They saw him as weak. And they would pick on him for this. And ultimately, they locked him in the doctor's office with a skeleton. You know the kind that are used for studying anatomy? Well, we don't know what happened behind those closed doors. But when little Herman was let out, he had a new fascination with the human body. It was at that moment that he decided he wanted to become a doctor himself. Maybe this was some kind of exposure therapy. You know when you're exposed to your fears and you have no choice but to embrace them? and then it transforms into something that you're no longer terrified by. But then he became someone that people were terrified by.

And it didn't happen all at once. There were steps to Herman becoming Dr. Henry Howard Holmes. And the first was actually becoming a real doctor like he dreamed about. It definitely wasn't an easy profession to get into or an inexpensive one. His parents weren't exactly well off. His father was also known to be violent and controlling and his mother was overly religious and strict. And like I said, he became quite the mama's boy. But Levi expected a lot from his children, and by the time Herman was in high school, he sent him off to boarding school at Phillips Exeter Academy.

This academy was based on the Harkness method of teaching. I don't know if you've heard this before. This is usually done where the students are seated around a large oval table, and then they're asked to discuss concepts that are being taught. And they do this in an encouraging, open-minded environment with only occasional and minimal teacher intervention. All of this led Herman to become the way he ultimately was. He was intelligent, no doubt. But each of these aspects is another piece of the puzzle. He was only 16 when he graduated the academy,

and he took various teaching jobs until he was bored and trying to come up with a plan to further his education, and he found one. His plan involved a woman, a woman with a rich father. That's what he wanted. So he set out to find one. Herman was good looking. He was charming, a smooth talker. and it helped that he was intelligent and cunning, a con man even at 17.

He figured, I'll woo a woman, impress her with my intellect and determination to become a doctor, I'll share all my plans with her, we'll fall in love, and then we'll marry, and her father, of course, will pay my way through medical school because he wants his daughter to be well taken care of, financially and otherwise. Having a doctor in the family was very appealing back then, and dare I say, it kind of still is now. Well, things didn't go exactly as planned. Because before he met the woman of his dreams, or that had the wallet of his dreams, he met someone else.

While he was working doing odd jobs on a farm, he met the owner's daughter, Miss Clara Lovering. Herman let his heart win over his mind. He fell in love, forgetting all about his first love, money. For the moment anyway. And after a 15-month courtship, he married Clara on July 4, 1878. They were both only 17 years old and they kept the marriage secret at first, and they even lived apart, just so that nobody would know they were married, but they just couldn't bear it any longer. So they finally told her parents who approved of the union and gave Herman a job as a clerk at Clara's uncle's grocery store in East Concord. On February 3, 1880, Clara gave birth to their son, Robert Lovering Mudgets.

Things seemed to be progressing normally in their relationship. Love, marriage, baby in the baby carriage, and we know the dress. drill, but Herman wasn't satisfied. He didn't want to be a simple grocery store clerk, and he began to have thoughts about medical school again. He didn't have enough money to attend medical school, so instead he convinces his wife that he's going to move back to his hometown and start a medical apprenticeship. And he was going to do it with a man that was a very well-known, Dr. Naham White. He specialized in human anatomy, and this man exposes Herman to his very first corpse. Dr. White is known to carry out very unusual and grotesque dissections of the human body.

And at 18, after a year of working under Dr. White, Herman decides to finally enroll at the University of Vermont in Burlington. He's not making money. So he's forced to live in a boarding house that's owned by an old lady named Mrs. Brew. It wasn't the best situation, but Herman tried to make the best of it, and the best of it was Mrs. Brew's daughter. Hmm. Herman was living like a single man. It was like he wasn't even married. He was flirting so openly with her. People thought that they were dating. It seems like this was a huge transition in Herman's life

when he truly realized what his passions were. At the top of his list, women. He was a real ladies' man. And after a year, he decided, you know what, the University of Vermont, it's not for me. He's more determined than ever to become a doctor. For various reasons, one of which is the fact that being a distinguished doctor easily attracted,

the ladies. The money would be great and he is fascinated with the human body. As a matter of fact, Herman had become quite obsessed with dissecting cadavers. He was even caught with a baby's corpse hidden under his bed at the boarding house. And of course he explained it away. I'm just doing some homework. I'm studying to be a physician after all. But an ordinary person, we would have seen that as very sick and twisted but he was forgiven and you will see this as a pattern with Herman but I warned you this guy is sick he's deranged really because it's one thing to have a passion to help people and want to become a physician but it's quite another to bring your work home especially when your work is a deceased human being who knows what kind of

things he was doing to it but you will soon find out what he ends up doing to others I did a ton of research and found information in a ledger, a written record of the very first time Herman Mudgeon signed anything that can be traced back in history. It was on September 21, 1882, when he finally enrolled as a medical student at the University of Michigan Department of Medicine and Surgery. Clara and Robert actually moved in with Herman when he started his studies, but the marriage didn't last. Eventually, Clara decided to leave Herman because he only cared about himself. The little money he had was always spent on bettering himself in his career and not his family. He did little to nothing for Clara and their son. Besides, a boarding house isn't exactly the best place to raise a child.

So Clara moved back home while Herman stayed in Michigan and lived at this boarding house, which just happened to be right in front of the entrance to the Forest Hill Cemetery. Totally fitting for him. I can just imagine him looking out his window every day and at that cemetery. and being inspired. Back then, the first year of medical school consisted of studying human anatomy by working with cadavers on a daily basis. And I don't know what medical school is like these days, but they had three days a week where they would listen to lectures about a certain part of the body and then they'd be given the opportunity to open up a cadaver and literally examine that body part. Talk about hands-on learning. This was it. There was also a ton of medical terms and material

that the students were expected to memorize in order to pass each class and graduate. It was grueling. Not only that, money made a difference. That's right. Back then, the rich kids were able to pay their way through medical school. They didn't have to do the grunt work that the poor students had to do. They could go sit on the grass in the quad, flirting with the ladies, while the low-income kids had to be elbows deep inside a human stomach. And Herman really didn't think that was fair.

He despised the way that the rich kids got away with everything and did nothing at all. He could hardly pay his tuition. Back then, it was about $200 a year. And by today's standards, $200 in 1882 was about the purchasing power of about $6,000. And back then it was a lot. Herman didn't know how he was going to make the next payment. He was taking things day by day. And one of those days, he stayed back examining a cadet.

and you overheard the school's medical coordinator, Doc Nigel, talking to somebody about trading a dead body for cash. Legally, the school had to acquire their cadavers through a diligent process with a lot of rules and regulations, and that process only allowed the school to gain access to enough bodies for about 20% of their medical courses. Their need was much greater. They were attempting to shape the doctors of tomorrow, and they wanted them to have full access to cadavers to study at an exceptional level. One that would have been impossible to do if it wasn't for an underground body trade that was happening illegally. Herman was smart. He listened. He knew what was going on. Some of the bodies that were being brought to the university were suspicious. And Doc Nigel

would kind of turn a blind eye because he needed to acquire enough cadavers to satisfy the university so he could keep his job. Oh, and the fact that there was money being exchanged, that people heaked Herman's interest for sure. This is when his master plan was really put into motion and perhaps it's what created the serial killer in him. It seemed too easy. He lived right across the street from a cemetery. He could watch grave digers preparing a fresh plot, then wait around until the casket was lowered, and then at nightfall he could simply dig up the corpse. Put the empty casket back into the fresh dirt and beyond his way. Cha-ching.

I think because he was used to being so immersed in a world of cadavers, where they were more of an object than a person, he was able to separate the fact that these were human beings with families who deserved respect and dignity. To him, they were a means to an end. This was Herman's new job. And he didn't do it alone for long either. He recruited a fellow student, Robert Laycock.

Now, you may be wondering, because I'm, I would be. How do we know all this? It happened so long ago. We're talking like 140 years ago. Well, back in 1995, a New Jersey collector bought a bunch of 100-year-old wax cylinder recordings. And to his surprise, H.H. Holmes was on one of those recordings telling the story in his own words, confessing to the things that you're about to hear. Now for a little lesson, I don't know if you know what wax cylinders are. I find them to be very cool. actually want to buy some for myself because I had the opportunity to go to an antique store with John and we got to play one of these things. This is what they look like. Back in 1888, the Edison

company came up with this invention to record audio and it is mind blowing. They're called wax cylinders but they're not actually made of the wax, the way that you would think of wax like from a candle and by the way. This is literally how modern day music recording was born. Eventually they were made from celluloid, which is the first synthetic plastic to be created. It was quite an invention back then. These cylinders were used with a phonograph, and I'm sure that you've seen one of these before. The cylinder is attached to this machine and it spins similarly to the way a vinyl record would.

A sapphire needle then sits on the cylinder as it spins, and I'm not going to even attempt to explain the actual technology that produces the sound, but here's a video from Edison Tech Center with an example of how the cylinder phonon. works. The sound comes out of that big horn on top. So when this collector purchased some of these cylinders back in 1995, he expected to hear music. But to his surprise, one of the recordings was the voice of a man confessing to a series of vicious and unbelievable crimes. This is how we know what we do about the grave robber who became H.H. Holmes. The rest we gather from records, like an autographed book that belonged to the classmate and partner in crime, R. C. Lake Hawk. It included an inscription that read, I'm your true friend, and it was signed Herman W. Mudget. These two medical students went on to plan an intricate scam that fell outside the body snatching business in relation to paying their tuition for medical school.

They had big dreams, these two, big dreams that shattered many other peoples. This may be one of the very first get-rich schemes that was ever recorded, because on that cylinder, Herman describes their evil plan, which consisted of taking out a life insurance policy for $40,000, which is a lot, on a man who had a wife and a daughter as a beneficiary. Then they would steal corpses of a woman and a child to represent the real ones, then alert the father of the tragic murders by presenting him with the dead bodies. Subsequently, they would steal a man's corpse and then use it to represent the heartbroken father

who have resorted to taking his own life and present that corpse to the insurance company. Forging documents to make it look like Herman was the beneficiary. So then he would collect the insurance funds. Then he would kill the real family and then sell their corpses back to the school. Wow. That's sick. It's disgusting. But luckily this plan didn't come to fruition because he ultimately graduates, just barely at that.

But the school actually had to take a second vote about whether or not they should grant him his medical degree. But in the end in 1884, he does become Dr. Herman. Webster Mudgett. But that name would soon be too stained for him to use any longer. After graduation, he moved to New York because he thought that was where a lot more opportunity was. And he ended up getting two part-time jobs, one as a doctor and the other as a school teacher just to make ends meet. He wasn't legally divorced from Clara yet, but he began pursuing women. And eventually, he proposed to one of them. But the word got out that he was a liar and a two-timer, and not only that. People said he was using his title of doctor to scam people out of money.

The final straw was when a little boy went missing, a boy that some say was last seen under the care of his physician, Dr. Herman Mudgeett. Because he was a doctor, he was trusted and no investigation was even done. Herman decides to leave town for Pennsylvania. He lands a job at Norristown State Hospital for the clinically insane. But that lasted only a week, probably because Herman should have been in one of the rooms. But I digress. This is when Herman concocted his new plan. He would stage his own death and collect the insurance money. He thought he would have more luck working behind a counter at a drugstore than having to deal with people at a hospital knowing who he was, knowing too much about him.

That way, he could make this escape easily. He could be at arm's length. So he began the job at a pharmacy. He needed to work so that he could pay the life insurance premiums, but before he could really begin the scam, a boy that he sold medicine to ends up dead. Now, he swears that he had nothing to do with it, but he still leaves town because he doesn't want to deal with facing any type of responsibility or an investigation. Once again, he's on the move, this time to Minneapolis, Minnesota, working as a pharmacy clerk, still set on his plan to steal. his own demise. Also within this scheme was to finalize his divorce with Clara so he could marry his new love interest. A beautiful lady named Myrta Belknap, a woman who was in on his evil plan.

She agreed that she would become the beneficiary of his policy and then they would split the proceeds when he staged his own death. Minneapolis was also where Herman shed the name Herman Mudgeett, just like a snake would shed its skin. Out with his the old and in with the new doctor. Herman Mudgeett was now Dr. Henry Howard Holmes. He married Myrta as Holmes and she took that last name before his divorce was even finalized and no one was the wiser. Then he insured his life for $20,000 and waited for the right corpse to come along. He had negotiated with someone at a local medical school and the deal was that Herman, now Holmes, would be allowed to go into what's known as the dead room at the college and have a look at all of the dead bodies that come in every morning. But after two weeks of looking at dead body after dead

body, he couldn't take it anymore. Later, he said that it is what led him to want to take his own life for real. And he actually attempted to, but the police intervened. And instead, he was sent to a mental ward for two months. Shortly thereafter, Holmes decided it was time to make a big move. He and his new wife, Myrta, decided to move to Chicago in August of 1886. They said, Settled down and Wilmot, a beautiful suburb outside of Chicago. This is a really nice area. It's known for its tree-lined streets and green street lanterns and brick roads. By the way, we are getting closer to the hotel becoming a reality

and the tour of my finished recreation, along with snippets from the game The Devil and Me, showcasing the parallels between all of these places. I just want to share a little bit more with you before we go there. Holmes is in Chicago at the right time. As it gets closer to the 1890s, Chicago was becoming one of the biggest cities in America. It would soon be the home to the famous World's Columbian Exposition, which invited millions right up to Holmes doorway, so to speak, and into his murderous plans. Holmes finds work at a local drugstore that was looking for a pharmacy assistant. It was on the northwest corner of South Wallace Avenue and West 63rd Street in Englewood, Chicago.

This is what the area looks like today. The pharmacy was owned by Dr. Hulton. Now, many people were under the assumption from rumors and other renditions of the story. The Dr. Holton was an elderly man dying of cancer and that his wife Elizabeth Holton was desperately trying to keep up the store herself. So she gladly hired him, this distinguished Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, who went on to murder them and steal the drugstore for himself. That's actually not what happened.

Dr. Holtan was actually the wife Elizabeth. A fellow Michigan Medical School alumni. She was in the graduating class just a few years before Holmes. There might have been some camaraderie there, I don't know, but she did hire him and he worked very hard in the pharmacy, which he ended up purchasing from Holton when she got pregnant with her second child in 1887. Holmes was only able to buy the pharmacy because he forged mortgage papers. However, he was actually running the pharmacy and turning somewhat of a profit at the time,

enough money at the very least to buy a vacant lot right across the street. Right here where this post office now sits, this, this right here, is where the construction began in 1887 on what is known as Holmes Murder Castle. It wasn't a castle at all, but it has been dubbed as such. It was intended as a two-story mixed-use building with the first floor for retail spaces for things like a pharmacy, a barbershop, a jewelry store, etc. With the second floor to be made into apartments, but soon Holmes had other plans, which included a hotel. And I'm going to dive into all of that and all that Holmes intended. I am so excited that we are finally at the portion of the video that will reveal the details of not only my recreation of Holmes World's Fair

hotel, but snippets of the one from the devil and me game. John and I have been playing a nonstop since we got it. To create my dollhouse, I purchased the Garfield kit from Greenleaf. I'll link it below. And just because these are kits does not mean it is easy to make them. The wood is pretty lousy quality and it breaks off in splinters very easily. Own it all. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Buckslot machine by Aristocrat Gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dream package. The biggest prize in Yamaba's history. Club Serrano members can earn daily instant prizes and secure a spot in the finale

May 29th. Don't pass go and own it all. Only at Yamava celebrating its 40th anniversary. UN. Details at yamava.com must be 21-twinter. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. I don't know how many splinters I got while working on this house, but I can tell you I had a pair of tweezers on hand all the time. The house comes as basically wooden slabs with pre-cut portions along with a not very detailed and very hard to follow instruction manual. It's terrible. They probably haven't updated in decades. Who knows? I started on the foundation myself, which really is the most important part of the build. If it fails, the entire house can come crashing down. I was proud of myself. I did this by myself without any knowledge of woodworking.

And I can say that I could probably take on any other dollhouse build with ease because it was brutal. As you can see, I have candles holding up portions of it. There's tape. Anything I could find to secure. it as it dried. It was while I was creating the first staircase that I reached out to Whitney on Instagram just to comment her on the absolute talent she has when it comes to miniatures because I had been watching every one of her Greenleaf Garfield dollhouse videos trying to figure out how the heck to construct this monstrosity. She had built the very same dollhouse at least three times and her latest build was just out of this world. I mean look at the kitchen. It's just awesome. She's amazing. And surprisingly, she responded to me and told me that she was a huge

huge fan of true crime and had watched my channel. I had no idea that she actually made videos related to true crime by recreating scenes from horror movies. Soon, she offered to help me with this project and we became good friends in the process. Whitney's awesome. Please do me a favor and go show her some love and subscribe.

She really deserves it. These kind of channels, they just aren't pushed out as much by YouTube since it's kind of somewhat of a lost art. But really, it deserves a lot of love. Once Whitney came on board, Things went so much faster. I could finally focus more on the interior decorative aspects as she put together the exterior. Here we are working diligently in my kitchen and on my dining room table, which became the workspace for this entire project.

This is not an easy job. Whitney makes it look easy. And maybe I do too with measuring and cutting and securing wallpaper to each and every room or me installing these real hardwood floors. but it's grueling. However, it's worth it. I highly recommend building a dollhouse, or at the very least, a miniature one of some kind. So let's go back to the story for just a moment.

Now, to fund Holmes' dream building, he was still doing what he learned in medical school, and I'm not talking about working as a legitimate doctor, but instead robbing graves of innocent victims and selling them to Chicago School of Medicine. He even sold their caskets for a profit. At first, there wasn't anything unusual about the construction of this new building. As it came together, it was used for what it was intended,

a retail space with apartments for rent. But all that changed as the 1890s rolled around. Chicago was known as the second largest city in America, and it was in the running to be picked to host the World's Columbian Exposition, which is also known as the Chicago World's Fair. It was set to begin 1893 to celebrate the 400th year anniversary of Christopher Columbus himself arriving in the New World in 1492. Chicago won the rights to host the fair against places like New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis. The fair was huge. More than 27 million people attended the exposition during the six-month period that it was running. It was a very influential social and cultural event.

And according to Wikipedia, the exposition covered 690 acres, featuring nearly 200 new but deliberately temporary buildings, of predominantly neoclassical architecture, canals and lagoons, and people and cultures from 46 countries. When Holmes got word of this, everything changed. It was like something was awakening in him. That dream he had back in medical school, the one where he collected life insurance on that make-believe family that he hoped to dupe into his deadly plans but it never came to be. Well, it was like his mind wanted to create somewhat of a playground for this fantasy to become a real. reality. He never stopped being a con man. With the forged mortgage for Dr. Hulton's pharmacy, even the architects weren't safe from his scams. His new plan was to find investors who would financially back him in creating a third level to his building to expand the living spaces he

already had into hotel rooms instead of residential suites, with the purpose of housing the tourists who would come to the World's Fair in just a couple years. It would be huge and very profitable, legal even. Homes would just innocently and kindly offer these wide-eyed, curious and adventurous people a place to lay their heads and ease their minds. A luxury hotel, as extravagant as the fair itself. With all the amenities it could offer, every new invention, pulling out every stop, so it would be the go-to place for anyone in attendance. It would be so sought after that it would constantly be completely booked. But Holmes wasn't an innocent man or truly kind one, he only cared about himself and what he could gain from others. He would constantly

owe people money, but lie his way out of every single debt. Bill collectors were consistently harassing him. He would write bad checks just to appease them until the scam was found out. Maybe his plan was to run a legitimate business so he can truly pay his debts and live an upstanding life. Well, we will never know for sure. What we do know is that by 1892, the third floor was near completion. From what could be gathered from blueprints that have been obtained, it seems like he truly combined his entrepreneurial spirit with the devil inside of him. Now we can't know for sure if he built the hotel with the intention to actually lure people from the fair into his hotel to kill them. But looking at the blueprints of the second and third floor,

there were apparent blind walls that locked off certain hallways and doors, random alleyways leading and twisting, turning directions to nowhere, trap doors, shoots with a laboratory. Why would you need those if this was just a normal run-of-the-mill hotel? Definitely seems more like a place he could produce corpses for sale and no one would be missed. These people that were traveling to Chicago were coming from all over the world. If they went missing, their family would probably assume that that was the risk they took by leaving home for an unknown place. This was the age of the postcard, not the telephone.

It took a while to communicate with people that were far away. By the time Word would get to a family member, someone who would be. could be long gone. Artist Rick Uri used the original blueprints to draw a detailed version of the second floor. Here's the example I used for some of my recreation. You can see things like an exfixiation chamber, hiding places, sealed rooms, shoots leading to a basement, etc. Now this drawing brings in information from confessions that Holmes made himself. This is how we get an understanding of what these rooms on the blueprint were used for. Apparently Holmes also employed different architects, for different portions of the hotel, making it hard for them to be able to know how the entire

floor plan came together. He would only reveal part of the blueprints to each one, leaving certain rooms a total mystery. It was said that he employed over a dozen contractors, and that Holmes was the only one that knew the exact layout of the entire building. He would also fire the companies, usually within just a few weeks after they began working on the building. This was because he couldn't pay them, and then he would just hire a new company under a totally different name. One of the carpenters that Holmes hired became a very loyal assistant to him over the years. His name was Benjamin Pitzel. He's a man with a criminal past.

He had a wife named Carrie and five children, and they began living in the building while he was helping with its construction. But Benjamin goes on to help homes with much more, as you'll soon find out. So let's get into that now. By 1889, two years after construction began, Holmes's wife, Mirita, gave birth to their daughter Lucy Theodette Holmes on July 4th. But soon, things would begin falling apart as the hotel came together. By 1891, though the hotel was not fully completed, its retail stores were up and running. And Holmes's pharmacy was the local place to go for all of your needed remedies. The calm and cold or worse, he knew what would do the trick.

It's also the go-to place to get a job that generously included room and board. Soon he hired a man named Ned Connor to work at his jewelry counter. Ned and his wife Julia Smith and their eight-year-old daughter, Pearl, moved into the second floor while the third floor was still under construction. Julia was beautiful. And the moment Holmes caught a glimpse of her, his second passion after money came into full focus, women, more so sex and control. The rush of knowing that he could not only get any woman, but still a man's woman, was quite enticing to him. And he would lay it on thick from the get-go.

Ned and Julia came to Chicago to start over. They were struggling financially. So when Holmes offered these beautiful rooms and money to people like Ned, they would do almost anything for him. And Holmes purposely picked weak men that he knew he could control. Here's my recreation of one of the rooms Holmes would have. have most likely rented out to his employees or even his guests. It has a beautiful canopy bed, a vintage desk, standing mirror, and all of this would have been absolute luxury to a family

like Ned and Julia's. Holmes would have purposely chosen men like Ned because he saw them as weak, especially if they came with a beautiful wife. He knew these men could easily be manipulated and he wouldn't even hide the fact that he was flirting with Ned's wife. While Ned was working hard, in the jewelry store, Holmes was seducing Julia, showing her things that Ned could never show her, offering her a world that she could have never known if it wasn't for Holmes, the best of everything, including a job in his pharmacy. That was something people like Ned and Julia just wouldn't turn down, and it would give Holmes an opportunity to spend a lot more time with Julia. Let me show you one of my favorite parts of my dollhouse, the recreation of this pharmacy. I filled little glass bottles

with my own fake potions and poisons that I concocted from things in my kitchen. You have a little gold cash register and I love how you can see into other rooms of the dollhouse, which I will show you very soon. Holmes would have taught women like Julia how to identify different medicines and poisons as well. He housed many lethal drugs that he was able to have access to because he had a medical license. One of those drugs was called laudanum, which was a solution of opium powder in alcohol. And back then, this was widely used in small doses to treat insomnia or even help to keep crying babies quiet. But in larger quantities, it could kill you. As Holmes would train these women like Julia, he would show that he trusted them. He trusted them to keep these drugs safe.

And this would also help gain their trust. Soon, Julia was looking at Holmes as not. not only her boss, but a potential suitor. He was everything that Ned wasn't. He could give Julia a better life. And Holmes wanted Julia too. And he got her. They started a hot and steamy affair. Any chance they could get to sneak away

in one of the many rooms of the hotel and have sex right under Ned's nose, they did it. I made this portion of the house into Holmes' room. It includes a vintage writing desk with a real feather quill. He was caught between a rock and a hard place. had to have known about this affair, but he was desperate for money and couldn't risk losing his job so he probably kept quiet and just let it happen. But Julia was making it more of an issue. As you can imagine, her love for Holmes was growing as her love for Ned was fading and eventually

Ned confronted Julia about everything. Once Holmes knew that Ned knew for sure, he wanted him out of the picture. Ned was only in the way. Some accounts say Ned quit and just left Julian Pearl behind, but others say that Holmes decided to call Ned into his office and offer him a new opportunity. That sounds more like Holmes to me. He tells Ned he's been an outstanding employee and now he would like to sell him his very own jewelry store for a measly few dollars. The store was far away from Holmes's hotel. All Ned had to do was sign on the dotted line and leave his wife and daughter behind and never come back. Now Holmes could have Julia all to himself.

So here's my recreation of Holmes's office. I saw many rooms back then that had animal heads on the walls, and though I am not a fan of hunting, I added it for accuracy, and I even added some gloves. Whitney sold me these amazing red velvet chairs and couch and table, and I repainted them to match the theme, with a clothing rack that I transformed into a gun rack, as well as a pool table, which I thought would be a nice touch for both Holmes and his guests. I got a lot of my furniture from an actual dollhouse store in Torrance, California, called My Doll's House. And wow, that place blew me away. They had everything, including both new and vintage items, so I included both in this house.

The pool table is brand new, but a lot of my paintings and other furniture pieces date back to at least the 1960s. Now back to Holmes and Julia. They were happy. Ned's out of the picture, and things are still hot and heavy. But as the months wear on and Holmes has got to, and everything he's wished for, he began to get bored and his feelings begin to change, especially because Julie is now putting pressure on Holmes. She wants to marry him. The thing is, Holmes is still married to Myrta. He's officially still living in a home with her in Wilmet. And he goes there

almost every night. He has no intention of divorcing her. Myrta being at a distance allows Holmes to play, but then he still has a family he can go home to. He somehow juggles his wife and daughter, plus, women like Julia. To his wife, Merta, Holmes is known as a loving husband and a family man and a great father that doted on their daughter and always had to have a pet because he loved animals so much. It's so interesting to me how these killers can keep this facade and mask their true character because Holmes had no intention of marrying Julia and as a matter of fact, he was still putting out ads for new pharmacy assistants. It was like I said, out with the old and with the new, a revolving door of pretty young, innocent women that he could manipulate for his pleasure.

It makes me so mad. I, like, genuinely do not like him. I hate him. One of these women was Emmeline Sigrand. She came highly recommended by Benjamin, who had been away at the Keely Institute for a few weeks undergoing a treatment known as the gold cure for alcoholism in Dwight, Illinois. Dr. Leslie Keely ran this institute that was known to be able to cure alcoholics of what Healy referred to as the disease of alcoholism. And his cure was injections of bichloride gold. Patients of the institute would stay in the hotel that actually resembled a spa. It was like an upscale rehab center. It offered peace and comfort in a place to get sober. All of the patients would receive injections of bichloride of gold four times daily for four weeks. This treatment was

seen as more of a snake oil in the medical profession and many doctors were skeptical of its efficacy. But Benjamin was willing to try it because he was struggling with alcoholism for a very long time and in order to keep his job and his head on straight, he underwent the treatment. While he was there, he met a beautiful young secretary, Emmeline Sagrand. She was in her early 20s at the time and she was on a whole new level of beauty, mostly because she was intelligent and classy. It wasn't long before Dr. Holmes was writing to Emmeline about working for him. She would become secretary for his soon-to-be World's Fair Hotel, with their grand opening less than a year away.

And he would be paying her double what she was already making. So of course, she agrees. All the while, Julia is still in the picture, although Holmes had a sight set on trading her in for his new love interest. It was the same story over again, and it said in one of the documentaries that I watched that Holmes used the pharmacy like a spider would use a web. to entice women, trap them, and then do away with them one after the other. Of course, Julia caught on. After all, she's very smart. And she confronts homes about Emmeline, realizing that she's seeing a pattern here. College jealousy, heartache, normal expectation, Julia is fed up. It's been months and months and she's living with homes and she's working for him, catering to all of his needs, in more than one way, of course,

and there's no ring, no proposal. And she has no idea he's already married. His wife, Myrta, has been explicitly warned, never to come around the hotel. Julia finally breaks down and she admits that she's pregnant with Holmes's baby. And that means, according to Julia, they have to get married. There's no other option. Well, that's all Holmes sees his options. To him, that's simply not the case.

I hate thinking about how. much this woman probably loved him, how happy she was and what she felt like thinking that she was actually going to become Mrs. H. H. Holmes, but right after he presents her with the ring, he says that there is one condition for them to be married. She has to get an abortion. What a piece of crap. How dare he? How sad and humiliating and disgusting. I can only imagine what Julia must have felt like. Having to be faced with this decision to make a man. marry the man she loves, but having to get rid of a baby that their so-called love created in order to be with him. He tells her that in his medical career, he's performed hundreds of

these type of procedures and he can help and it's going to be okay. He'll make sure it's painless. But the truth is, it was highly unlikely that Holmes ever carried out even one abortion. The mortality rate for procedures like this back then were very high.