Inside the Murder Castle: The True Story of H.H. Holmes and His Killing Factory

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In 1893, a pharmacist in Chicago built a hotel specifically designed to kill his guests.

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He installed gas lines in the bedrooms, secret passages in the walls, and a crematorium

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in the basement.

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His victims disappeared during the world's fair, and their skeletons ended up in medical

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schools across the country.

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This is the true story of America's first serial killer.

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So here's something most people don't know about H.H. Holmes.

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His real name was Herman Webster Muget, and before he became famous for killing people,

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he was actually really good at stealing furniture.

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I know that sounds random, but stay with me because it matters.

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In 1892, Herman ordered massive amounts of furniture from companies like Toby Furniture

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Company.

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He told them he was buying on behalf of a legitimate business and promised to pay cash

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on delivery.

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When the furniture arrived, he accepted it, and then he never paid.

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When the sheriff showed up with a warrant to recover the stolen goods, the hotel rooms

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were completely empty.

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The police were stumped until they bribed a worker who showed them where everything

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was hidden.

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Bedroom sets concealed behind fake walls covered with fresh wallpaper, dishes and crockery

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stuffed into spaces above the kitchen ceiling.

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This is important because it tells us something about the building that would become known

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as the murder castle.

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Does hidden rooms and secret passages everyone talks about?

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They were originally built for fraud, not murder.

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Herman was a con artist, and the architecture of his building reflected that.

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He designed it to hide stolen merchandise, avoid paying contractors, and run insurance scams.

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The killing came later.

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Herman Webster Muget was born in New Hampshire in 1861.

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His childhood fits a pattern we see over and over in serial killer cases.

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He was physically abused at home, had trouble making friends, and showed signs of early cruelty

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toward animals.

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Before he even turned 11, he was performing what he called "experimental operations on

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neighborhood pets."

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There's one story from his childhood that people always bring up.

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Some older kids chased him into a doctor's office and forced him to touch a human skeleton.

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Whether this actually happened the way he described it or not, something clearly connected

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in his brain between fear, power, and the human body.

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That connection would define everything he did later.

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He went to the University of Michigan Medical School from 1882 to 1884.

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He didn't finish, but he learned enough about anatomy to be dangerous.

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While he was there, he started stealing cadavers from the labs and reselling them to other medical

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schools.

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He also figured out how to run insurance fraud schemes using unidentified bodies.

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This is where his criminal career actually began, not with murder, but turning dead bodies

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into money.

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At the time he moved to Chicago, Herman had changed his name to Dr. Henry Howard Holmes.

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The title gave him authority he hadn't earned, and the new identity helped him escape the

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trail of fraud charges he'd left behind in other states.

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He was married to at least three different women at the same time, possibly four, each

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marriage, a part of a con, a way to gain access to money or property or social connections.

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In 1893, Chicago hosted the world's Colombian exposition, also called the White City.

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This was a massive event.

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Over 27 million people visited Chicago that year to see modern inventions like the Ferris

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Wheel, the zipper, and electric lights.

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The fair transformed the city into a temporary boom town, with thousands of people arriving

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every day looking for work and housing.

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Holmes saw an opportunity.

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He bought a pharmacy in the Englewood neighborhood from a woman named Mrs. E. S. Holton.

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Soon after that sale, Mrs. Holton disappeared.

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Holmes told people she had moved to California.

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She probably never even left the building, to be honest.

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Across the street from the pharmacy, Holmes constructed a three-story mixed-use building.

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The ground floor had retail shops, and the upper floors were designed as a hotel.

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He told people he was building it to accommodate the world's fair visitors, which made perfect

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sense given the housing shortage in the city.

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But here's where things get complicated.

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We know a lot about how this building was constructed because Holmes refused to pay anyone

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who worked on it.

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Construction companies sued him, and those lawsuits created a paper trail.

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An architect named Edward Gowler even produced detailed diagrams of the building's layout

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during one of these legal battles.

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According to these documents, the building started as a legitimate, if fraudulent, business

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venture.

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The transformation into a murder facility happened gradually.

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Holmes modified the building as he went, adding features that had nothing to do with running

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a hotel, and everything to do with controlling.

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And killing the people inside.

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The building had soundproof rooms.

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Gas lines were installed in some of the guest rooms, controlled by valves in Holmes' private

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quarters.

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There were hidden passages that allowed him to move through the building unseen, and

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peepholes where he could watch his guests.

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The building had shoots that dropped from the upper floors down to the basement.

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The basement is where the real horror happened.

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Police found a dissection table down there, along with massive vats that Holmes used to

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dissolve bodies and acid.

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There was an eight-foot-tall iron stove that looked like an oil furnace, but was actually

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used as a crematorium.

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Holmes would strip flesh from bones using the acid, burn what remained in the furnace, and

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then clean and articulate the skeletons.

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He sold those to medical schools.

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Think about that for a second.

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He wasn't killing people in a frenzy.

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He was processing them.

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He had a system.

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Trap them in the soundproof rooms, killed them with the gas, dropped them down the shoot

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into the basement, dissolved the tissue, burned the evidence, and sell whatever was left.

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This was industrialized murder.

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Now, I have to mention this because it's important for accuracy.

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A lot of what people believe about the murder castle is exaggerated.

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The torture equipment, the elaborate medieval dungeon aesthetic, most of that came from

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the newspapers in the 1940s, not from the original police investigation in the 1890s.

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The real building was horrifying enough without all the added mythology.

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The gas chambers were real, the acid vats were real, the crematorium was real, but Holmes

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wasn't stretching people on racks or building iron maidens.

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He was running an efficient, profitable murder operation, and that's somehow more disturbing

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than the Gothic fantasy version.

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Figuring out exactly how many people Holmes killed is basically impossible.

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He confessed to 27 murders at first.

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Then later changed his story and claimed more than 130.

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Newspapers at the time speculated he killed 200 people.

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Modern historians think the real number is somewhere between 9 confirmed victims and

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maybe 50 total.

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The victims we can confirm are mostly connected to his financial crimes.

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Mrs. Holton, the woman who sold him the pharmacy, was probably his first victim in Chicago.

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Julia Connor and her daughter Pearl disappeared after Julia's husband, who ran a jewelry counter

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in Holmes' store, left town.

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Many Williams and her sister Nanny both vanished after Holmes married many and gained control

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of her property.

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Imeline, one of his mistress' disappeared as well.

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But the case that actually got him caught was the murder of Benjamin Pytzel and three

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of Pytzel's children.

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Holmes convinced him to fake his own death for a $10,000 insurance payout.

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Then Holmes actually killed him and collected the money.

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To cover his tracks, he murdered three of Pytzel's children in three different states.

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Holmes was the crime that finally brought him down.

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A detective named Frank Geier tracked the murders across state lines and arrested Holmes

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in 1894.

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The insurance fraud was too big, too spread out, too complicated to hide.

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Holmes' trial happened at the peak of yellow journalism in America.

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Publishers like Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst were competing for newspaper

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sales by printing the most sensational, shocking stories they could find.

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Holmes was perfect for them.

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They called him the beast of Chicago, the torture doctor, the devil in the white city.

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They printed wild, unverified claims about his crimes, many of which came directly from

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Holmes himself, who loved the attention and kept changing his story to make himself sound

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more notorious.

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He told reporters he'd suffocated people in vaults, boiled, man in oil, poisoned, wealthy

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women.

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Some of this might have been true.

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A lot of it probably wasn't.

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The newspapers didn't care about accuracy.

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They cared about circulation.

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And Holmes, being a narcissist who craved in for me, was happy to give them whatever they

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wanted.

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There's even a persistent theory that Holmes was also jacked the ripper.

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The timeline sort of works.

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Holmes had medical training and jacked the ripper's murders showed anatomical knowledge.

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Some handwriting analysis claimed that Holmes writing matches letters supposedly written

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by the ripper.

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Holmes's great-great-grandson has publicly argued that his ancestor was in London during

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the White Chapel murders.

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Most historians dismiss this theory as wishful thinking.

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People want to connect two famous killers into one ultimate boogie man, but there's no

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solid evidence that Herman Muggett was ever in London and the theory mostly exists because

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it makes for a good story.

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Holmes was executed by hanging on May 7, 1896 in Philadelphia.

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He was 34 years old.

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He'd been convicted of murdering Benjamin Petzl, although everyone knew he'd killed far

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more people than that.

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According to witnesses, he was calm during his execution.

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He didn't seem afraid or remorseful.

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Right before he died, he recanted his confession and claimed he'd only killed five people, which

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is obviously a lie.

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Even on the gallows, he was still running a con, trying to control his own narrative.

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But here's the wildest part of the whole story.

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Holmes left very specific instructions for his burial.

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He wanted to be placed in a pine coffin, and then he wanted that coffin to be filled completely

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with cement.

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The heavy coffin was supposed to be buried 10 feet underground and covered with more cement.

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Why would he do this?

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Because he was terrified someone would try to steal his corpse.

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Holmes had spent years stealing bodies, cutting them apart and selling them to medical schools.

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He made money by turning human remains into commodities.

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He knew exactly how that system worked because he'd built part of it himself.

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He was so absolutely paranoid that someone would dig him up, dissect him, and sell his skeleton

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the same way he'd done to other victims.

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Even after this incredibly secure burial, rumors spread that Holmes had somehow faked his

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execution and escaped.

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People claimed he'd bribe officials to hang another prisoner in his place.

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These stories persisted for decades, which tells you something about how Holmes was perceived.

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People genuinely believed he was capable of conning the entire criminal justice system, even

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from inside a prison cell even facing execution.

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The story of H.H. Holmes is fundamentally a story about the commercialization of death.

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Herman Muget learned in medical school that bodies had value, and he spent the rest of

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his life exploiting that knowledge.

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He built a business model around fraud, murder, and corpse disposal.

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The murder castle was a factory, and human beings were the product.

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Because he, America's first serial killer, probably not.

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There were certainly other killers operating before him, but he might have been the first

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to industrialize it, to create systems and infrastructure specifically designed for repeated,

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profitable murder.

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The legend of H.H. Holmes is bigger than the reality, but the reality is bad enough.

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Nine confirmed victims, maybe 50 total, processed through a building in Chicago that started

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as a real estate scam and evolved into something much worse.

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The man who built it died cemented into the ground, finally anonymous, and a mobile.

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Exactly what he feared most.

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Thanks for listening to 10 Minute Murder, Bingeable True Crime Stories.

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My name is Joe, and I'm happy to be your host.

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If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you share it with your friends, your family, your

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acquaintances.

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Someone you talk to on the street randomly doesn't matter as long as you let them know about

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the podcast.

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Sign up for the newsletter, 10minutemurder.com, you'll find it there.

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Also on the website, you'll see a place where you can read the blog and also contact me directly.

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Like this message, subject, country music.

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Hey Joe, love the podcast and I've been listening since the beginning, I never miss an episode, but

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I do have one question.

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Most of the time the music you play is some sort of heavy beat or atmospheric, I don't know

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what to call it, but you know what I mean.

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You never really play any country music.

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Is there a reason for that?

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Not complaining for the record, just curious, Sam in Austin.

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And I tell you what Sam, first of all, thank you for the message.

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I don't really dig country music that much.

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I mean I like some of it.

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Some of it's okay.

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But there are parts of it that just kind of great on my nerves.

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It starts to sound the same to me when you listen to country music from the 90s and there

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are 2000s, that country music, love it.

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Can't get enough of it.

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And there's some modern country music that I do like, but I just don't really enjoy it

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that much as a whole.

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But just for you, you've probably been able to tell, but I'm playing this music right

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now just for you, Sam.

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This music is only for you.

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No one else gets to enjoy it unless you like country music then.

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I guess you can enjoy it.

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But Sam, I appreciate the email and thank you for listening to 10 Minute Murder.

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I'll see you next time.