Latest / Beheaded / Devil at the Murder Castle | H.H. Holmes

Transcript

Devil at the Murder Castle | H.H. Holmes · Beheaded

0:04
SPEAKER_03: Hello and welcome to Beheaded.
0:07
SPEAKER_03: This is season three, episode three.
0:09
SPEAKER_01: I'm Megan Moore.
0:10
SPEAKER_01: And I'm Elizabeth Black.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: I'm a little bit snuffy.
0:13
SPEAKER_01: Snuffy?
0:15
SPEAKER_01: Snuffy.
0:16
SPEAKER_01: And stuffy.
0:17
SPEAKER_01: Stuffy.
0:19
SPEAKER_01: Like a snuff olophagus.
0:21
SPEAKER_03: Uh, feel like a snuff alophagus in my face right now.
0:24
SPEAKER_01: Oh.
0:24
SPEAKER_01: I'm fine.
0:25
SPEAKER_01: I thought you were saying like I'm snobby in so many words, but you're saying you're snuffy, stuffy as in nasal congestion.
0:32
SPEAKER_03: I think snuffy was a word that my mom used when I used to, when I was like sick as a kid.
0:37
SPEAKER_03: Like, oh, you're snuffy.
0:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
0:38
SPEAKER_01: You know, my mom used to say, you know, when people like shiver and they say burr, like brrr.
0:43
SPEAKER_01: We always said verr with a V instead of a B, like V as in Victor.
0:48
SPEAKER_01: Why?
0:49
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
0:50
SPEAKER_01: But I said that my whole life.
0:51
SPEAKER_01: And someone called me out in like high school.
0:55
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, you mean brrr?
0:57
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, no, like you're shivery, verr.
1:00
SPEAKER_03: And they're like, uh, I don't know what family you were raised in.
1:02
SPEAKER_03: I grew up in a snuffy family.
1:04
SPEAKER_03: I feel so I apologize if I I sound congested.
1:09
SPEAKER_03: It's not the COVID.
1:10
SPEAKER_03: Are you sure it's not the COVID?
1:11
SPEAKER_03: It's not Omnicore.
1:13
SPEAKER_03: It's not delta.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's called Omnicore.
1:16
SPEAKER_01: What's it called?
1:17
SPEAKER_01: Uh Omnicron.
1:18
SPEAKER_01: Omnicron?
1:19
SPEAKER_01: Hold on.
1:19
SPEAKER_01: It's a Greek letter, and I should know this.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: Alphabet, Delta Gam.
1:24
SPEAKER_01: You know the whole Greek alphabet?
1:26
SPEAKER_01: No, I was never in a sorority.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: Omicron.
1:29
SPEAKER_01: Omnicron.
1:30
SPEAKER_01: Omicron.
1:30
SPEAKER_01: Omnicron.
1:31
SPEAKER_01: I'm uneducated and snuffy.
1:34
SPEAKER_03: I was gonna say, so we're season three, episode three.
1:37
SPEAKER_03: Your lucky number is 33.
1:40
SPEAKER_03: Oh, it is.
1:41
SPEAKER_03: And my age right now is 33.
1:43
SPEAKER_01: And factors.
1:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, everything going on.
1:46
SPEAKER_01: Are you saying this is our luckiest episode to date?
1:49
SPEAKER_03: I don't think we're that lucky because I cut myself while opening the wine.
1:55
SPEAKER_01: Actually, now that you say that, we had a lot of ominous signs tonight.
1:58
SPEAKER_01: Let's begin with the cutting of your hand, and then I'll go back to how I even got here.
2:02
SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
2:03
SPEAKER_01: Start no, start with that.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: It was a nightmare for you.
2:06
SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: So uh we this is a you know, we have a schedule of all of our episodes, but this is a week after Thanksgiving, and so we had to postpone our normal recording day.
2:18
SPEAKER_01: So it's a day we normally don't do anyway, and I'm on my way to Megan, so there's like more traffic than usual.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: But I'm like five minutes away from Megan's house, and I'm literally just stuck, like grid pattern, locked in traffic.
2:30
SPEAKER_01: And like we're in a residential area, there's no reason for there to be this much traffic.
2:33
SPEAKER_01: So I text Megan, I was like, I think there's an accident, I see like you know, police lights, don't know what's going on.
2:38
SPEAKER_01: I it takes me 20 minutes just to get to the next stoplight, and then the whole way.
2:43
SPEAKER_01: A block, and the whole road is closed.
2:45
SPEAKER_01: So I'm like, you know what?
2:47
SPEAKER_01: I can outsmart the system.
2:48
SPEAKER_01: I know a shortcut, so I cut through this other little way, a million cop cars, that way is closed.
2:53
SPEAKER_01: So I turn around.
2:54
SPEAKER_01: I go all the way around, like two miles outside of the way.
2:57
SPEAKER_01: Then I turn onto Megan Street.
2:58
SPEAKER_01: It's closed.
2:59
SPEAKER_01: And I was about to text Megan to be like, you know what, it can't even happen tonight because I can't even get to your house.
3:02
SPEAKER_01: It usually takes me maybe 20 to 30 minutes.
3:05
SPEAKER_01: It was an hour and a half.
3:07
SPEAKER_01: I'm so sorry.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: It was and I was almost like, we can't do it tonight.
3:10
SPEAKER_01: I'm not, I can't podcast.
3:12
SPEAKER_01: I'm pissed.
3:13
SPEAKER_03: I know that feeling when you're so frustrated when you show up.
3:16
SPEAKER_03: I at least I greeted you with like stew and wine.
3:20
SPEAKER_03: I was like, here's food.
3:21
SPEAKER_03: She was like, here's stew dinner, stew.
3:24
SPEAKER_03: I'm so sorry.
3:25
SPEAKER_01: I needed to use the restroom really bad.
3:27
SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm glad I even got here though, because honestly, I had one more turn to try and it worked.
3:32
SPEAKER_01: I was like, okay, this road I can take.
3:34
SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't have blamed you if you're like, no.
3:36
SPEAKER_01: I've done this well, Megan even joked.
3:38
SPEAKER_01: She's like, she's like, how about you just stay put in your car and I'll bring the recording equipment to your car?
3:43
SPEAKER_03: I was like Just run over there and podcast in your car.
3:46
SPEAKER_03: Right?
3:46
SPEAKER_03: Why not?
3:47
SPEAKER_03: I'm so sorry.
3:49
SPEAKER_03: We probably could have you're being you're in training right now for running again.
3:53
SPEAKER_03: You probably could have parked and ran and gotten your pool fast.
3:57
SPEAKER_01: In my jean jacket, just ran a casual four miles to your house.
4:02
SPEAKER_03: But but we've had other weird signs like Megan's hand.
4:06
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it was minor, it was a very minor cut.
4:08
SPEAKER_03: I just like pretty bloody.
4:09
SPEAKER_03: It was not anymore, but I had a blood drip.
4:12
SPEAKER_03: Um, it reminded me of a story I would like to tell.
4:15
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: I think I know this one.
4:18
SPEAKER_03: I've worked so right now, I'm in an established career, and I just want to say that.
4:23
SPEAKER_03: And I love my career.
4:25
SPEAKER_03: I am a customer support manager.
4:28
SPEAKER_01: Customer support manager.
4:29
SPEAKER_03: And no, no, but really, I I really, really love my job.
4:33
SPEAKER_03: But before I got into this company and I've moved my way up, I worked at seven restaurants before, and I was not a good server.
4:43
SPEAKER_03: I was not, I was a very bad restaurant employee.
4:48
SPEAKER_03: Not I I A plus in customer service, which is why I'm not a customer support manager.
4:54
SPEAKER_03: The people part was.
4:54
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, people part, I was great, but I was very clumsy.
4:58
SPEAKER_03: I was very just physically not good for the role.
5:02
SPEAKER_01: So how many times did you drop dishes?
5:04
SPEAKER_03: Oh.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: One's a shift.
5:06
SPEAKER_03: I I had at least two incidents where customers sued the company over things that I did.
5:14
SPEAKER_01: Megan.
5:15
SPEAKER_03: Sued?
5:16
SPEAKER_03: Sued.
5:17
SPEAKER_03: Oh.
5:17
SPEAKER_03: One, I won't say the names of the corporations.
5:20
SPEAKER_03: They were very corporate restaurants.
5:22
SPEAKER_03: Rhymes with snoobies.
5:25
SPEAKER_03: Rhymes with uh uh Chi Cheese Mame.
5:30
SPEAKER_03: People won't know what that means.
5:32
SPEAKER_03: They're very, they're very just American.
5:35
SPEAKER_03: Our European listeners are like, oh.
5:38
SPEAKER_03: They're very corporate restaurants that people would know of.
5:41
SPEAKER_03: Rhymes with schmafflebees.
5:43
SPEAKER_03: One I tripped and I spilled some corn chowder.
5:47
SPEAKER_03: And this lady swore I got corn chowder in the cornea of her eyeball and sued us.
5:54
SPEAKER_03: That's convenient.
5:55
SPEAKER_03: Just drop a chowder, burning chowder went directly into her eyeball.
6:00
SPEAKER_03: Conveniently cornea.
6:02
SPEAKER_03: Um, another time I spilled a blueberry milkshake on someone's white pants.
6:08
SPEAKER_03: She didn't sue us, but she was mad.
6:09
SPEAKER_03: Um, the other lady who I think tried to sue us, I spilled water all over her brand new iPhone.
6:16
SPEAKER_03: Whatever.
6:17
SPEAKER_03: Yikes.
6:18
SPEAKER_01: Um This is probably 2007 when iPhones were like a hot new thing.
6:22
SPEAKER_01: You can't spill anything on an iPhone.
6:24
SPEAKER_03: But the one that I was reminded of this evening was I was working at a corporate chain diner, and I was in charge of making all the milkshakes, and I loved my job, and I would make milkshakes all day long.
6:36
SPEAKER_03: And I thought I had a vanilla shake order up.
6:40
SPEAKER_01: I'm dead already.
6:41
SPEAKER_01: I'm dead already.
6:42
SPEAKER_01: Because you know that I know where this is going.
6:45
SPEAKER_03: And the only way I can describe this motion is by physically doing it, and it looks like I'm doing something inappropriate on a man.
6:54
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that okay?
6:55
SPEAKER_01: Really quick side note, because you know American Sign Language a little bit.
6:59
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that milkshake in Sign Link?
7:01
SPEAKER_01: I think it is milkshake in sign language.
7:02
SPEAKER_01: So you know, if you know sign language, you know the motion we're talking about.
7:05
SPEAKER_03: But there's a metal grinder and a metal tin, and you kind of grind the metal tin up and down.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: Trying really hard not to lose it.
7:13
SPEAKER_03: Anyways, I unknowingly cut my hand pretty bad while grinding it, but I was in the motion of everything and I probably felt it, but I was like, oh what's going on?
7:22
SPEAKER_03: I was really busy.
7:23
SPEAKER_03: Right.
7:23
SPEAKER_03: And I was so busy.
7:24
SPEAKER_03: I remember I was so behind on orders, and I'm blending it.
7:27
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, oh, is this the strawberry milkshake?
7:29
SPEAKER_03: I guess this is the strawberry.
7:30
SPEAKER_03: And I just pour it out into the glass and I whipped cream and I put the cherry on top and I walk it out and I very vividly, I was probably 19.
7:39
SPEAKER_03: Right.
7:39
SPEAKER_03: I very vividly remember walking out to the diner.
7:42
SPEAKER_03: Mind you, I was wearing a 1940s diner uniform.
7:46
SPEAKER_01: It looks like a nurse uniform.
7:47
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's like the candy stripe dress with the apron and the little like head headdress, and I come out, I'm like, here's your milkshake.
7:54
SPEAKER_03: And the guy's so nice.
7:55
SPEAKER_03: He's like, oh, I didn't order strawberry.
7:58
SPEAKER_03: I'm so sorry.
7:59
SPEAKER_03: Let me he's like, I ordered vanilla.
8:01
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, let me go fix that for you.
8:02
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, I thought it was vanilla.
8:04
SPEAKER_03: You're like, how is this a strawberry milkshake?
8:06
SPEAKER_03: He did not drink it.
8:07
SPEAKER_03: I want everyone to know he did not drink it.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: Thank the Lord.
8:11
SPEAKER_03: I go back, I realize my hand is just dripping in blood, and really it was my blood going into the milkshake.
8:18
SPEAKER_03: And I made a blood milkshake that was vanilla with all my blood in it that turned pink.
8:23
SPEAKER_01: Question, did anyone drink it?
8:25
SPEAKER_01: You put it in the back and like this is an employee like formal statement.
8:30
SPEAKER_03: I we discarded, we disposed, I bandaged up, we did, we disinfected.
8:36
SPEAKER_03: We we cleaned everything.
8:37
SPEAKER_03: He did not drink it, but he was I he could have just not have paid attention.
8:42
SPEAKER_01: Or he could have been like, you know what?
8:43
SPEAKER_01: Strawberry's fine.
8:44
SPEAKER_01: What if that happened?
8:45
SPEAKER_03: He wouldn't have had a blood milkshake.
8:47
SPEAKER_01: I ooh, honestly, I feel like you wouldn't even really notice that much vanilla ice cream to a small portion of it.
8:54
SPEAKER_03: Might have been good.
8:55
SPEAKER_03: We used to play pranks on each other and give each other like mustard milkshakes and stuff and play around maple syrup, which is actually good.
9:02
SPEAKER_03: Mustard ice cream.
9:03
SPEAKER_03: We would do like gross things in there and give them to the other coworkers, but never to customers.
9:08
SPEAKER_03: No one's that's not I didn't get fired from that job.
9:12
SPEAKER_01: But that was let's be clear.
9:14
SPEAKER_01: 107.
9:15
unknown: Okay.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: Um, anyways.
9:18
SPEAKER_01: There was a time where when Megan was visiting uh my hometown in Colorado, we had like this kind of chain of like different sports bars and like diners and things.
9:26
SPEAKER_01: And Megan just pointed at each of them, was like, I got fired from there.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: I used to work there, I think I got fired from there.
9:33
SPEAKER_01: I was like, make it.
9:35
SPEAKER_01: I was like, I know we're all young and silly in our jobs sometimes, but that was funny.
9:40
SPEAKER_03: I was a good employee.
9:41
SPEAKER_03: I was just klutzy.
9:43
SPEAKER_03: I spilled a lot of things, I made a lot of customers mad.
9:48
SPEAKER_03: That's okay.
9:49
SPEAKER_03: But I also would tell people all the time, I'm so sorry, it's my first day.
9:53
SPEAKER_03: And then I got called out on it.
9:55
SPEAKER_03: They're like, I've seen you working here for two years.
9:58
SPEAKER_01: They're like, You said that last time you messed up my order.
10:00
SPEAKER_01: You're like, I gotta go.
10:02
SPEAKER_03: So my boss at one point was like, You can't you have to stop telling people it's your first day working here.
10:08
SPEAKER_03: They know who you are.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: I knew.
10:10
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
10:11
SPEAKER_03: Um it's a good move though.
10:13
SPEAKER_03: But like I said, I'm a professional now.
10:15
SPEAKER_03: I'm more mature.
10:16
SPEAKER_03: I'm right.
10:18
SPEAKER_01: Um you own a house and are drinking nice wine.
10:20
SPEAKER_01: This is nice.
10:22
SPEAKER_01: I think it's like$8.99.
10:24
SPEAKER_01: There's a pretty unicorn on it.
10:26
SPEAKER_01: There it is.
10:27
SPEAKER_01: I think it works.
10:28
SPEAKER_01: Red wine North Coast.
10:30
SPEAKER_01: Still cutting myself up, trying to open it, but well, you didn't bleed on anything important.
10:34
SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's dripping though.
10:36
SPEAKER_01: The wine is dripping, not the hand, to be clear.
10:39
SPEAKER_01: Just lap it up.
10:40
SPEAKER_01: There you go.
10:41
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm my hand.
10:42
SPEAKER_03: Anywho, um, alright.
10:45
SPEAKER_03: Well, we always go through our little bit of banter.
10:48
SPEAKER_03: Um typical of us.
10:51
SPEAKER_03: Um, but speaking of blood.
10:54
SPEAKER_01: Ooh, ooh, that's a nice transition.
10:57
SPEAKER_01: Blood spatter and uh, you know, more of a morbid delights, I suppose you could say.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: Uh, we have a serial killer today.
11:04
SPEAKER_01: Bam, bam, bam! And this is exciting because we realized too, we were kind of going through our last few episodes, and we're like, a lot of our episodes have been in Europe, uh, you know, a lot very around a very specific time frame.
11:16
SPEAKER_01: Wanted to switch it up today.
11:18
SPEAKER_01: So we are doing a person who is a serial killer in the US, specifically.
11:23
SPEAKER_01: Well, he was floated around a few cities, but you probably know him from the Chicago area.
11:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, was known as the American Ripper, was known as the first serial killer in America.
11:33
SPEAKER_01: So it is Mr.
11:35
SPEAKER_01: H.
11:36
SPEAKER_01: H.
11:36
SPEAKER_01: Holmes.
11:37
SPEAKER_01: Bam, bam, bam.
11:39
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
11:40
SPEAKER_01: So this guy, if you don't know much about HH Holmes, you're gonna learn a lot about him today.
11:45
SPEAKER_01: But he has a lot of blood on his hands.
11:48
SPEAKER_03: I love his story.
11:50
SPEAKER_03: He's got a crazy.
11:51
SPEAKER_03: Not to be confused with Sherlock Holmes.
11:53
SPEAKER_03: He just likes the name.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:55
SPEAKER_03: I I do have to say, a lot of our executions are people who I really like, I feel for them.
12:03
SPEAKER_03: Right.
12:03
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, they have been misconstrued, they have been misrepresented, ostracized.
12:09
SPEAKER_03: Ostracized.
12:10
SPEAKER_03: Our last episode, G G I still can't say his name.
12:12
SPEAKER_03: Giordano Bruno.
12:14
SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
12:15
SPEAKER_03: He was someone who was like fighting for the cause and had good belief systems, and he was just ostracized.
12:21
SPEAKER_03: But this guy's an actual, like, I think deserves what he got.
12:25
SPEAKER_01: You could probably call him a psychopath slash sociopath.
12:28
SPEAKER_03: Which made it fun to read because I was like, oh no, he did not.
12:32
SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
12:32
SPEAKER_03: Every single time I was getting more and more information.
12:36
SPEAKER_01: And we should say it's just like right from the get-go, he is the pathological liar.
12:40
SPEAKER_01: So it's really hard to discern in the story like what he actually did versus what he said he did.
12:47
SPEAKER_01: Because he was one of those people where like when he finally confessed, he's like, Yeah, I killed 27 people.
12:53
SPEAKER_01: I tried to kill six other people, I did this, I did that, I killed these sisters, I did, you know.
12:57
SPEAKER_01: So, and then later he was like, just kidding, I actually didn't kill anyone.
13:01
SPEAKER_01: So it's one of those stories where like Whoa, Elizabeth, you're like jumping to the end here.
13:06
SPEAKER_01: I am not trying to, I just want to say in advance that it gets confusing because a lot of this is alleged.
13:12
SPEAKER_01: I'm doing air quotes like alleged killings, or because some of the people he said he killed, he confessed that he killed, were still alive.
13:19
SPEAKER_01: Well, not now, but back then.
13:21
SPEAKER_01: They were still alive at the time where he's like, Oh, I killed this person, and they investigated, like, actually, that person's still alive.
13:26
SPEAKER_01: So, just again, we're gonna go through the facts that we think we know, the killings we think we know, but we understand there's a lot of debate around some of these because he was a very mischievous and deceptive guy.
13:40
SPEAKER_01: So we just gotta say that at the forefront.
13:42
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, but we can go ahead and start with uh the very beginning of Mr.
13:47
SPEAKER_01: H.H.
13:47
SPEAKER_01: Holmes's life, who shocker, he was not born H.H.
13:51
SPEAKER_01: Holmes.
13:52
SPEAKER_01: Wait, what?
13:53
SPEAKER_01: They didn't name him HH?
13:54
SPEAKER_01: They didn't name him HH, which uh yeah, uh again comes into play later.
13:59
SPEAKER_01: You'll see why he renames himself.
14:01
SPEAKER_01: And his first, like his original name is really shitty, so you can't blame the guy.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: But he was born Herman Webster Mudget.
14:09
SPEAKER_01: I do not blame him for changing his name.
14:11
SPEAKER_01: Mudget is hideous.
14:13
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry.
14:13
SPEAKER_01: Mudget?
14:14
SPEAKER_01: And I'm sorry to any of our listeners who had the last name Mudget.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: That sucks.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: Please go get the shit.
14:18
SPEAKER_03: It sounds like a mixture of a muggle.
14:20
SPEAKER_01: And a midget.
14:21
SPEAKER_03: And a midget.
14:22
SPEAKER_01: We can't say that, can't we?
14:24
SPEAKER_03: Rolled around in mud.
14:25
SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
14:27
SPEAKER_03: A muggle, midget, a non-magic small person.
14:31
SPEAKER_03: A non-magical small person.
14:33
SPEAKER_03: In muds.
14:33
SPEAKER_01: Oh, are you?
14:34
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna get canceled for this whole conversation.
14:36
SPEAKER_01: The politically correct way is we're offending the small people in the nine person.
14:42
SPEAKER_03: Mud might also be offended in this.
14:46
SPEAKER_03: Rolled around in desecrated soil.
14:52
SPEAKER_01: That's what mudget means.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: If you have that as a last name, God bless you.
14:56
SPEAKER_01: Um, but Mr.
14:57
SPEAKER_01: Mudget was born in Gilminton, New Hampshire.
15:01
SPEAKER_01: Which go ahead, Megan.
15:04
SPEAKER_03: An hour away from where I grew up as a child in Bedford, New Hampshire.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: Was your original name?
15:10
SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
15:10
unknown: Okay.
15:14
SPEAKER_01: But she also had a name before she was married.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: Better than Mudget.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: It's better, it was way better than Mudgett.
15:20
SPEAKER_01: But that is interesting.
15:22
SPEAKER_01: Are you the youngest son of five?
15:26
SPEAKER_01: He was the third of five.
15:28
SPEAKER_01: Were you the third of five?
15:31
SPEAKER_01: I thought youngest son because I only thought there were three.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: And as you know, I'm really good at knowing how many children important people have.
15:38
SPEAKER_01: I was like, three of three.
15:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, youngest son.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: I wrote that down.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: Between two to six people.
15:45
SPEAKER_01: No, I was the youngest of two.
15:48
SPEAKER_01: Okay, youngest of two.
15:50
SPEAKER_01: He's the third in line.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: We don't know.
15:52
SPEAKER_01: I I thought there were three.
15:53
SPEAKER_01: You said there's five.
15:54
SPEAKER_01: We're not gonna get caught up on this again.
15:57
SPEAKER_01: This cannot become a trend of ours.
16:00
SPEAKER_01: Um, because he is a serial killer, which again, spoiler alert, we know that happens at some point, but some people speculate at a young age that, like, oh, he maybe he tortured animals or like showed early signs of being a serial killer.
16:12
SPEAKER_01: His own mother said that he actually liked animals, specifically dogs.
16:16
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so he wasn't kind of a person you would expect to be a person like that when he grew up.
16:21
SPEAKER_01: He, again, was part of a Methodist family, they were farmers, he did like animals.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: The only thing that he had that I wouldn't even call it strange because I think most kids would be like this, but he was kind of like irrationally scared of skeletons and dead bodies and things, which is funny.
16:39
SPEAKER_01: So one time he was literally taken to his doctor's office, which he didn't like, and they stuck him in this room with a human skeleton, like an actual real skeleton.
16:47
SPEAKER_01: They said, We're gonna cure you of this.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: You're just gonna sit in this room with the fucking skeleton and you're gonna stare at it until you're not afraid anymore.
16:54
SPEAKER_03: That sounds like a great method in the 80s.
16:57
SPEAKER_03: Obviously, he really liked skeletons after this.
17:02
SPEAKER_03: Maybe they went a little too far on that.
17:04
SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, I I understand the spirit of that of that punishment.
17:08
SPEAKER_01: I understand what you're trying to accomplish.
17:10
SPEAKER_01: But they just made him scare stare at the skeleton for a very long time.
17:12
SPEAKER_01: And he was like, all right, well, you know what?
17:15
SPEAKER_01: Kind of like the skeleton, kind of like being around this, you know, remains of the dead type of thing.
17:20
SPEAKER_01: So that was when he was very young.
17:22
SPEAKER_01: Um, but by the time he was 17, 18, 78 at this point, uh, he gets into his first marriage with a girl named Clara Elton.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: So again, grows into a man, gets married very young.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: Um, he, you know, is with Clara for well, actually, he never really was ever without her.
17:41
SPEAKER_01: Technically, he's married to her his whole life.
17:43
SPEAKER_01: But legally.
17:44
SPEAKER_01: Legally, yeah.
17:45
SPEAKER_01: With her for a certain amount of time, and by the time he's 21, says, you know, I've thought a lot about, again, the skeleton and my phobia of the dead and whatever, but I I really do see myself as a doctor.
17:56
SPEAKER_01: Like I want to study medicine.
17:57
SPEAKER_01: So I forget the name of his original university.
18:00
SPEAKER_01: He was at one place where he uh studied a little bit and then he dropped out, but eventually went on to Michigan.
18:06
SPEAKER_01: He went literally like Michigan University, which still stands to this day, to study medicine.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: So he graduated um two years later.
18:15
SPEAKER_01: Uh him and Clara were had a pretty turbulent marriage.
18:20
SPEAKER_01: Um, she ended up moving back to New Hampshire with her parents at the end of his term at at uh Michigan.
18:26
SPEAKER_01: But while he was there, he kind of experienced a lot of different things.
18:30
SPEAKER_01: So he really was attracted to one of the professors there who was very much into cadavers and dissection.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: And some people think maybe this is why he even kind of had some issues with Claire because she was like, hey, like I married this nice Methodist farm boy at 17 from New Hampshire.
18:47
SPEAKER_01: Like, who's this spooky person in Michigan who's really who's this spooky boy?
18:54
SPEAKER_01: This spooky boy who's really into, again, dissecting things and cadavers.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: When he was at Michigan again, he got he got very much into uh into dead bodies, I mean for lack of better word.
19:06
SPEAKER_01: And it got to the point where one of his uh boarding houses, the woman who ran it, actually came to his room one time because she had like such a foul stench coming from his room, and she was searching around his room, and she literally found, and this is again alert, this is gonna trigger you.
19:24
SPEAKER_01: She found a dead baby under his bed.
19:27
SPEAKER_01: And she freaked out as anyone would and confronted him, and she's like, What is this?
19:31
SPEAKER_01: Like, there's a dead, you know, not even body, but dead baby in your room.
19:35
SPEAKER_01: And he was like, Oh, no, no, no.
19:37
SPEAKER_01: He dismissed it.
19:38
SPEAKER_01: He was like, This is actually part of my school, it's part of my homework.
19:41
SPEAKER_01: That's not normal.
19:42
SPEAKER_01: It's a lesson on dissection, and she was like, Okay, checks out, like that's fine.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: No, yeah, like so.
19:49
SPEAKER_01: Around this time, we know that he's a little odd, a little too into cadavers, a little too into dissection, to the point where he's being found now with dead infants.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: Very creepy.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: Gross.
20:00
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, Clara moves back to New Hampshire at this time.
20:02
SPEAKER_01: Um New Hampshire is a great place, don't blame her, right?
20:05
SPEAKER_01: Go back there, please.
20:07
SPEAKER_01: Um, so he again uh eventually graduates uh with his degree, um, which again at this time I don't think you have formal medical school and residency.
20:14
SPEAKER_01: I think it's like, oh, you have a medical degree now.
20:16
SPEAKER_03: Like I know, could you imagine?
20:18
SPEAKER_03: He probably did he started at what 17?
20:21
SPEAKER_03: He probably got done with that in like 18 months.
20:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, oh yeah.
20:24
SPEAKER_03: He was done by the time he was, I think, 20, let's see, 21.
20:28
SPEAKER_03: And his his like um focus was anatomy and dissections and like aftermath of the body and amputation part of it.
20:42
SPEAKER_03: So I mean, I don't know how much training you really need in that, but he wasn't saving people.
20:47
SPEAKER_03: That was not his focus.
20:48
SPEAKER_03: His focus was actually analyzing the body, and this was in like the thriving period of science, and when I I just imagine those um like theater, like surgery theaters, you know, and then everyone would sit around and watch them dissect and open, and they would get excited when a body would die because they could get in, they can open it up and and learn from it, and that's the area that he was thriving in.
21:13
SPEAKER_03: Right.
21:14
SPEAKER_01: Ugh, it's gross.
21:15
SPEAKER_01: And if you guys remember from our episode two, uh sorry, season two, um, when we talked about William Burke and William Hare, very similar.
21:22
SPEAKER_01: Burke and Hare.
21:23
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that was their whole thing, was they literally would kill people to have these dead bodies to do these lectures and kind of describe, oh, this is what happens to the body.
21:31
SPEAKER_03: So it's glad you rem you reminded us of that.
21:34
SPEAKER_03: I kind of forgot about that episode.
21:35
SPEAKER_03: And that was in like uh That was fun.
21:37
SPEAKER_01: That was a really fun one, but that was kind of around the same time frame.
21:40
SPEAKER_01: I mean, a little bit earlier in the 1800s, but again, at this point in the 1800s, it was very much like, ooh, like dead bodies in dissection, and what can we figure out?
21:48
SPEAKER_01: Because it used to be such a thing where you wouldn't disturb a dead body, right?
21:52
SPEAKER_01: It was like it's dead, you bury it, you know, it's sacrilegious to to look at bodies after they're dead.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: And now we're very much at the time of like, ooh, sure.
22:01
SPEAKER_01: Why do I just think of Helena Bonham Carter through all this?
22:04
SPEAKER_01: Because she would be in a movie with these characters.
22:06
SPEAKER_03: I just keep thinking like Sweeney Todd and her character just like dropping bodies around in places and just being super slimy about everything.
22:16
SPEAKER_01: Well, even in like even in Les Mays when she plays the Game Keeper and they're like talking about the meat that they grind.
22:23
SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
22:24
SPEAKER_03: I don't know why.
22:25
SPEAKER_03: Helena Bottom Carter in her whole 1890 attire just keeps coming to my mind.
22:30
SPEAKER_03: I think that's fair.
22:32
SPEAKER_03: Poster child.
22:33
SPEAKER_03: Dirty, but kind of hot.
22:35
SPEAKER_03: Kind of gross.
22:36
SPEAKER_03: Cutting off limbs.
22:37
SPEAKER_03: Kind of like her.
22:38
SPEAKER_03: Kind of grotesque.
22:39
SPEAKER_03: Kind of beautiful.
22:40
SPEAKER_01: One of those things.
22:42
SPEAKER_01: Um, so so at this point, once he uh once he graduates, he bounces around a couple places.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: So he's in upstate New York for a time, um, and then he goes to Philadelphia.
22:51
SPEAKER_01: But mysteriously, in both of those places, he leaves because like small boys go missing in both of those places.
22:59
SPEAKER_01: So there's not a whole lot of detail in each of these situations, but basically he goes in a place, he tries to settle, there's a mysterious disappearance, he gets out of dodge.
23:08
SPEAKER_01: So he did this twice already, when again he's early 20s.
23:11
SPEAKER_01: But by the time it's 1886, he eventually moves to Chicago.
23:16
SPEAKER_01: So he goes there and he takes some uh pharmaceutical exams so he can work in a pharmacy there, and that's the first time we see that his name was actually changed to Henry Howard Holmes, H.H.
23:28
SPEAKER_01: Holmes.
23:29
SPEAKER_01: So that's again, he we don't we don't know if he's doing this because he's escaping some things that maybe happened in New York or Philly, or he just wanted to again assume a new identity, start a new life while he was there.
23:39
SPEAKER_01: He still has this wife.
23:41
SPEAKER_01: So uh also in 1886, um, he he marries again.
23:47
SPEAKER_03: But wait, I'm sorry, Elizabeth.
23:49
SPEAKER_03: Was he not or is he still married?
23:52
SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, but he just ignored that.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: He just kind of ignored Clara.
23:56
SPEAKER_01: Clara moved back to New Hampshire and he thought legally still married and just marries again.
24:00
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
24:00
SPEAKER_01: So he just documentation is very limited.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: He becomes a bigamist and he changed his name.
24:07
SPEAKER_01: He works at a new place, he's in a new city.
24:09
SPEAKER_01: So he just full on marries another woman named So easy Murda Belknop.
24:14
SPEAKER_01: Great name, Myrda.
24:17
SPEAKER_01: And uh and just uh again, just starts a new life in Chicago with her.
24:22
SPEAKER_01: So now he's working in a drugstore um as a pharma pharmacist, and he just becomes a really good worker there.
24:28
SPEAKER_01: Um, he really bonds with the owner of the pharmacy.
24:31
SPEAKER_01: I think you have her name.
24:32
SPEAKER_01: It's Elizabeth Holton, I want to say.
24:34
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
24:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, another Elizabeth.
24:37
SPEAKER_01: Another Elizabeth, yeah, got it.
24:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, but so it's her and her husband who own this drugstore.
24:41
SPEAKER_01: Uh her her husband is kind of like sickly and like lives upstairs, but she starts to really trust Holmes with again.
24:49
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's very charismatic, he's smart, he's good looking.
24:52
SPEAKER_01: Ted Bundy's.
24:53
SPEAKER_01: Very body-ish, yeah.
24:55
SPEAKER_01: So so eventually he actually buys the drugstore from them.
24:59
SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of kind of myths surrounding this.
25:01
SPEAKER_01: Like, did he force his way into the situation?
25:04
SPEAKER_01: Did he kill them?
25:05
SPEAKER_01: People say, like, oh, they just disappeared all of a sudden, and he sent them on their way, either like to the afterlife or out of state or something.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: In 1887, so this is a year after he moved to Chicago and married Murda, um, he and he's already owning this drugstore.
25:18
SPEAKER_01: He then purchases a lot that's right across from the drugstore.
25:22
SPEAKER_01: And it's a mixed-use building, you know, kind of storefronts, apartments, like just this big building that's right across the way.
25:31
SPEAKER_01: So he moves in there and he starts just renovating it in a lot of different ways.
25:36
SPEAKER_01: It's a very strange cryptic building that's a character of its own.
25:40
SPEAKER_01: People call it the murder castle, and there's a very good reason for that.
25:45
SPEAKER_01: Because this is a freaking spooky place.
25:48
SPEAKER_03: Murder castle.
25:49
SPEAKER_03: Murder castle.
25:50
SPEAKER_03: They called it a castle because it took up the entire block.
25:52
SPEAKER_03: It's huge.
25:53
SPEAKER_03: It's huge.
25:54
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
25:54
SPEAKER_03: And it's, I'm sure, like at the like looking up at it, it was probably very beautiful.
25:59
SPEAKER_03: They said he even had a Tourette at one point.
26:01
SPEAKER_01: Like it looked like an actual castle.
26:03
SPEAKER_03: It originally started as two floors.
26:06
SPEAKER_03: The first floor was all retail.
26:08
SPEAKER_03: It was another pharmacy, another drugstore, a jeweler.
26:12
SPEAKER_03: Was there anything else?
26:13
SPEAKER_03: Um, I think they said a candy shop.
26:15
SPEAKER_01: Like a candy shop, uh, yeah, a few small storefronts.
26:18
SPEAKER_01: Could get some kids in there.
26:20
SPEAKER_01: Right.
26:21
SPEAKER_01: Get the kids, get the women, hosiery.
26:25
SPEAKER_03: The second level was apartments.
26:28
SPEAKER_03: Right.
26:28
SPEAKER_03: And then he had the intention to turn this into a hotel.
26:32
SPEAKER_03: Right.
26:32
SPEAKER_03: And so in 1892, he started building the third floor.
26:35
SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
26:36
SPEAKER_03: But the issue was he never completed payment for the steelers and the architect architects just to build the first two levels.
26:45
SPEAKER_03: Right.
26:46
SPEAKER_03: And he always could complain that something was wrong.
26:48
SPEAKER_03: He was never satisfied with with their work, and at some point, always had a reason to kinda like totally deny payment for them.
26:56
SPEAKER_03: Right.
26:56
SPEAKER_03: And this obviously caused issues.
26:58
SPEAKER_03: And he starts building the third floor with the intentions of making this like a big high-rise hotel building.
27:05
SPEAKER_03: But he ran into the issues of all the contractors and he wouldn't pay them.
27:10
SPEAKER_03: Right.
27:11
SPEAKER_03: Which is one way to get on people's bad lists.
27:13
SPEAKER_01: Well, and it's like kind of, I mean, it could be multiple reasons why he got into it with them and didn't pay them.
27:20
SPEAKER_01: Some people think, again, that he's just this ultimate con artist.
27:23
SPEAKER_01: So what he would do is just give people like banknotes that were worth nothing and be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, build this, do that.
27:30
SPEAKER_01: Oh, sorry, did the check get lost in the mail?
27:31
SPEAKER_01: Right, exactly.
27:32
SPEAKER_01: Check didn't quite clear.
27:34
SPEAKER_01: Um, and then that was it.
27:35
SPEAKER_01: Like he just got away with not paying people.
27:38
SPEAKER_01: Other people think that he intentionally hired a bunch of different contractors, so none of them knew what this house was in its entirety.
27:45
SPEAKER_03: I feel like that is more reasonable.
27:47
SPEAKER_03: Right.
27:48
SPEAKER_03: It reminds me a lot of the Winchester house in San Jose, California.
27:52
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
27:52
SPEAKER_03: Where they just keep building, building, building, and people don't really know what they're building.
27:56
SPEAKER_03: Like you literally go up a stairwell to a door that's just a brick.
28:00
SPEAKER_03: Brick wall.
28:01
SPEAKER_03: Nothing.
28:01
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
28:02
SPEAKER_03: And that's what the quote unquote castle turned into.
28:05
SPEAKER_03: Right.
28:05
SPEAKER_03: It was mazes, it was hallways leading into nothing.
28:08
SPEAKER_03: It was different chambers, it was hidden rooms, false partitions.
28:15
SPEAKER_03: Like trapdoors, chutes that went down to the basement, which we'll get into.
28:20
SPEAKER_03: There were 40 rooms so far, and he was renting them out as apartments.
28:25
SPEAKER_03: The chutes are important.
28:27
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
28:27
SPEAKER_03: All the chutes ran into this large basement that covered sidewalks underneath grounds.
28:34
SPEAKER_03: Right.
28:35
SPEAKER_03: And it was a huge basement underneath.
28:38
SPEAKER_03: Right.
28:38
SPEAKER_03: And that also had its own compartments and hidden rooms and all this weird, weird stuff.
28:44
SPEAKER_03: If we were to walk through this modern day, we'd be like, what the hell was happening in this house?
28:50
SPEAKER_01: It's like a red room, but less sexy.
28:53
SPEAKER_01: Way less sexy.
28:54
SPEAKER_01: There's like acid vats there, there's crematoriums in the basement.
28:58
SPEAKER_01: And the funny part is that he always had different reasons why these things existed.
29:02
SPEAKER_01: Like being a doctor.
29:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like he's like, well, I need a crematorium.
29:10
SPEAKER_01: And I need Oh, yes.
29:12
SPEAKER_03: He had this whole glass bending profession in Murano, Italy, as if this is where all the pristine glass comes from.
29:20
SPEAKER_03: No proof that he ever partook in any type of glass bending whatsoever, but that was the reason that he used.
29:27
SPEAKER_03: Um he also had, yes, like you said, gas chambers, soundproof rooms, airtight rooms.
29:36
SPEAKER_03: Right.
29:37
SPEAKER_03: And the chutes that were just large enough for a man-sized body to go down, even if you're from the third floor, could go down to the basement into the crematorium to catch on fire.
29:51
SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
29:52
SPEAKER_03: Um, perfect for laundry.
29:54
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
29:55
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's the that's what's funny, is like in this era, a lot of the dumbbell waiters, you know, which is what you call the like kind of shoots that you would have which would bring up breakfast trays or whatever, those were common.
30:05
SPEAKER_01: And those went two ways, though.
30:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they went two ways and they were small, like just enough for a breakfast tray or laundry or something.
30:12
SPEAKER_01: This is literally the size of a full-grown man that goes one way down into the auditorium.
30:19
SPEAKER_01: Like, mmm.
30:21
SPEAKER_01: So he tried to get away with, oh no, this is convenient.
30:23
SPEAKER_01: This is for laundry, this is for this, um, this is for glasses.
30:26
SPEAKER_01: He always had a reason.
30:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and he's a kid.
30:28
SPEAKER_01: Got away with it for a while.
30:30
SPEAKER_01: Charming guy.
30:30
SPEAKER_01: So people really bought his stories.
30:32
SPEAKER_01: And again, no none of the contractors could go to the authorities and say, hey, I just built a house that has gas chambers, chutes that go down to a crematory.
30:40
SPEAKER_01: They never completed it.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: Because none of them knew that he had one guy working on chutes.
30:44
SPEAKER_01: And then would fire him.
30:45
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: Or not pay him, and then he wouldn't show up again.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: And then another guy working on a soundproof airtight room.
30:51
SPEAKER_01: Like, no one really knew what was going on here except for him and his victims.
30:56
SPEAKER_02: And his victims.
30:57
SPEAKER_02: Or did they know till the end?
30:58
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
30:59
SPEAKER_03: Um, so what we've kind of put together is the third floor, which was intended to be the hotel, eventually burned down.
31:08
SPEAKER_03: Arsene.
31:08
SPEAKER_03: Mysteriously, right?
31:10
SPEAKER_03: Arsene.
31:11
SPEAKER_03: No more third floor.
31:13
SPEAKER_03: The second floor was torture chambers, basically.
31:17
SPEAKER_03: Allegedly.
31:18
SPEAKER_03: And apartments and rooms.
31:20
SPEAKER_03: Both.
31:21
SPEAKER_03: And the first floor was um retail, like we said, jeweler, all that.
31:26
SPEAKER_03: Basement underneath that.
31:28
SPEAKER_01: Right.
31:28
SPEAKER_01: And it's really important to note, too, that in this first floor, right, of like the jewelry counter and the pharmacy and the candy store, all he employed there really was like young women, like attractive young women who pretty much come by the train full to Chicago.
31:43
SPEAKER_01: They're all from small towns.
31:45
SPEAKER_03: Why were they coming to Chicago, Elizabeth?
31:48
SPEAKER_03: To pursue the American dream?
31:50
SPEAKER_03: No, the fair.
31:51
SPEAKER_03: Oh, come on.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: I was like, I'm thinking of like Roxy Hart from Chicago.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: We practiced.
31:59
SPEAKER_01: Yes, also at the time, and this is this is a couple years later, but everyone is preparing for the World's Fair in Chicago.
32:06
SPEAKER_01: So big, huge, huge.
32:08
SPEAKER_01: Like this, I mean, honestly, I don't even know if they still have World Fairs.
32:12
SPEAKER_01: We might have to look that up for next time.
32:14
SPEAKER_01: But um, World Fairs were like the biggest thing.
32:16
SPEAKER_01: Each it was kind of like the Olympics, like different cities would host the World's Fair, and at the World's Fair, b big companies would kind of showcase like their biggest innovations, their biggest projects they had.
32:28
SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, if you guys are again Disney fans, you know that Disney showed a lot of his attractions at the World's Fair.
32:34
SPEAKER_01: So it was just like these were huge, huge events that would take place.
32:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, the construction would take place for years, they were huge events.
32:41
SPEAKER_01: So this is literally right next to the World's Fair.
32:44
SPEAKER_01: I think the the year of that World's Fair was 1893.
32:48
SPEAKER_01: So he's already kind of getting this hotel, quote unquote hotel ready for the World's Fair that's gonna happen a couple years later.
32:54
SPEAKER_01: So these women are there to get employed, to go to the big city, and to see the World's Fair.
32:58
SPEAKER_01: They're escaping their small towns for this slice of American pie.
33:03
SPEAKER_03: At this point, Holmes then takes on a mistress named Julia Smith.
33:08
SPEAKER_03: Smith or Smith?
33:09
SPEAKER_03: Or Smythe?
33:11
SPEAKER_03: It's it's not your normal Smith.
33:13
SPEAKER_03: It's S-M-Y-T-H-E.
33:15
SPEAKER_03: Right.
33:16
SPEAKER_03: Smythe.
33:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well her that's her maiden name.
33:19
SPEAKER_01: Her married name's Connor, so we could just call her Julia Connor.
33:22
SPEAKER_03: You know more than I do.
33:24
SPEAKER_03: Um she's married, and she is his mistress now.
33:29
SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
33:29
SPEAKER_03: And she worked as a pharmacist and a jeweler in the retail shops that we spoke of on the first floor.
33:36
SPEAKER_03: Right.
33:37
SPEAKER_03: She also had a daughter named Pearl.
33:39
SPEAKER_03: And her husband found out about the affair between Holmes and her and uh uprooted everything and left his wife and his daughter and was, you know, deal with your own situation.
33:53
SPEAKER_03: Right.
33:54
SPEAKER_03: They both mysteriously disappear on Christmas 1891.
34:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the the mom and the daughter.
34:02
SPEAKER_03: The mom and the daughter.
34:03
SPEAKER_03: Right.
34:03
SPEAKER_03: Um, Holmes said that there was an abortion involved, and it was something about how she died during the abortion.
34:11
SPEAKER_01: Well, this was kind of creepy because he claimed that he performed the abortion himself because he's a doctor, and he said the abortion that he performed went wrong, and oops, she died.
34:21
SPEAKER_03: Also, why are you not I have a lot of questions.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:26
SPEAKER_03: Why, especially in 1891, is no one questioning the fact that someone's giving an abortion.
34:36
SPEAKER_03: Also, he's had a history of these babies underneath his bed.
34:42
SPEAKER_03: Right.
34:42
SPEAKER_03: There's we don't know a lot about this whole situation, and it's very confusing, but basically nothing comes from it.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: It's creepy, yeah.
34:51
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, uh, why again are you performing this abortion if this woman already has a child?
34:57
SPEAKER_01: You already have a child from another woman, too.
35:01
SPEAKER_01: So it's not like children are completely out of the question.
35:03
SPEAKER_01: Like it just seems kind of odd that's his ultimate excuse.
35:07
SPEAKER_01: Is like, yeah, yeah, I was just trying to do an abortion on her, didn't work, she died.
35:10
SPEAKER_01: Casual, casual, terrible.
35:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
35:14
SPEAKER_03: About this time, we can kind of start getting an understanding, even though it's not confirmed that he's murdering and killing people, but it's about this time that we can figure out how he is killing people.
35:27
SPEAKER_03: Right.
35:27
SPEAKER_03: And he has his preferred methods.
35:30
SPEAKER_03: And this is again, he's using what they are now calling the castle is now called the murder castle.
35:36
SPEAKER_03: Right.
35:38
SPEAKER_03: Suffocation in the forms of chloroform, gas fumes, and then just airless vaults.
35:46
SPEAKER_01: Stick him in the airless.
35:47
SPEAKER_03: It just gets worse and worse.
35:48
SPEAKER_03: So either he is using his pharmacies and his drugs, and put I I just imagine like all those like 90s movies, and I was so scared as a kid, like getting kidnapped and having like a chloroform like cloth put over your mouth.
36:02
SPEAKER_03: That's how they do it.
36:02
SPEAKER_03: He would do that.
36:03
SPEAKER_03: Right.
36:04
SPEAKER_03: Um putting people and just spiking up the gas.
36:07
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
36:08
SPEAKER_03: And then just suffocating them full on in an airless again, those rooms that he had.
36:16
SPEAKER_01: Just leave them in the airless room.
36:18
SPEAKER_01: Airless room.
36:18
SPEAKER_01: Until there's no oxygen.
36:19
SPEAKER_03: Small room, little passage.
36:22
SPEAKER_03: Um, he also enjoyed starvation and burnings.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's brutal.
36:29
SPEAKER_01: He just, again, and who knows if it's like a true fascination with death, or if it's more like he's a con artist, so he uses death to get what he wants.
36:37
SPEAKER_01: Like, it's it's really hard to decipher with him because at the end of the day, he is a con artist.
36:42
SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, he is going from place to place, like cheating creditors, taking different names.
36:48
SPEAKER_01: Um, some of the rooms in the house were even used for like just furniture that he would buy on credit and then sell for cash.
36:56
SPEAKER_01: Sounds like sketchy people you find on Craigslist.
36:59
SPEAKER_01: Truly.
36:59
SPEAKER_01: So it's like, did he just do these murders to get out of bad situations with like debt and creditors, or was it just like he was a sicko who loved killing people?
37:08
SPEAKER_03: I I do think to an extent that he enjoyed the actual physicalness of it.
37:12
SPEAKER_03: Right.
37:13
SPEAKER_03: And the anatomy of it.
37:14
SPEAKER_03: Right.
37:15
SPEAKER_03: Um, 1893, he meets Minnie Williams, who's gonna be wife number four because we kind of skipped over one.
37:22
SPEAKER_03: There was Georgiana.
37:23
SPEAKER_01: There was another wife in there.
37:24
SPEAKER_01: There was another wife in there.
37:25
SPEAKER_01: He he technically was actually married three times.
37:29
SPEAKER_01: Oh, but I won't say three times as in like one after another, like all at the same time.
37:34
SPEAKER_01: He was married to three different women at once.
37:36
SPEAKER_01: The third one doesn't even really count because it was so like random and not brief because he still is married to her, but but he does but she wasn't really part of the story.
37:45
SPEAKER_01: He just met another woman.
37:46
SPEAKER_01: It was even in like Denver or something, like far away, married her, added her to the roster.
37:51
SPEAKER_01: I don't even understand.
37:52
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Minnie Williams, though, in 1893, she's like a one-time actress, had like one little like image of yeah, of fame, and then no one knows who she is.
38:03
SPEAKER_03: Right.
38:03
SPEAKER_03: Um, he offered her a job at the hotel, and he she was his personal stenographer, right?
38:10
SPEAKER_03: Which is like um shorthand, yeah, like writing.
38:15
SPEAKER_03: He convinced her to sign over the D to her house in Fort Worth, Texas.
38:22
SPEAKER_03: Smart.
38:23
SPEAKER_03: So much so that he um used an alias under the name of Alexander Bond and was his own notary as H.
38:33
SPEAKER_03: H.
38:33
SPEAKER_03: Holmes, which is also a fake name.
38:36
SPEAKER_03: All fake names on here, but he basically notarized himself to take over the deed of Minnie Williams' home in Texas.
38:43
SPEAKER_03: Right.
38:44
SPEAKER_03: None of this makes sense.
38:46
SPEAKER_03: No.
38:46
SPEAKER_03: Again, he's a conniving con artist.
38:48
SPEAKER_01: I love the names that he chooses, though.
38:50
SPEAKER_01: Bond and Holmes.
38:52
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Bond I don't think was a character in this day and age.
38:55
SPEAKER_01: Bond.
38:55
SPEAKER_01: But I just love Alexander Bond.
38:58
SPEAKER_01: Alexander Bond.
39:02
SPEAKER_03: Um Annie is Minnie's sister.
39:06
SPEAKER_03: Right.
39:07
SPEAKER_03: Supposedly the three of them meet up: Minnie, Annie, Holmes, or Bond, whoever he is at this point, Mudget.
39:16
SPEAKER_03: All of them.
39:17
SPEAKER_03: And he says that they go off on this big European trip.
39:21
SPEAKER_03: Never happens.
39:22
SPEAKER_03: Instead, conveniently, Annie and Minnie are missing and are never seen again.
39:28
SPEAKER_03: Right.
39:29
SPEAKER_03: Disappeared.
39:30
SPEAKER_03: Um, he's getting quite a reputation at this point that people are know that he's starting to sell skeletons on the black market.
39:39
SPEAKER_03: He sells organs on the black market.
39:42
SPEAKER_03: He has this doctor persona, but he is definitely working in the underground of the grittiness of the 1890s and like the dark alleyways of everything.
39:53
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
39:53
SPEAKER_01: He's got this mysterious mansion, all these women who come again just to Chicago without much of a background or just kind of gone one day.
40:02
SPEAKER_01: And he uses the same excuse for every woman.
40:03
SPEAKER_01: He's like, She moved back to California.
40:05
SPEAKER_01: They went to Europe.
40:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they're traveling.
40:07
SPEAKER_01: They moved back to New York, like, oh, everyone just comes and goes from Chicago.
40:12
SPEAKER_03: He's getting involved a lot in insurance companies, an insurance fraud.
40:17
SPEAKER_03: And he uh in July of 1984, he gets arrested for the very first time for selling mortgage goods.
40:26
SPEAKER_03: And this is in St.
40:27
SPEAKER_03: Louis, Missouri, because he's kind of traveling all over the United States.
40:30
SPEAKER_03: So in Missouri, he gets arrested.
40:32
SPEAKER_03: He's selling different goods like lamps and furniture.
40:35
SPEAKER_03: Right, like household goods.
40:40
SPEAKER_03: I'm laughing because I tried to say that word about four times and I couldn't.
40:45
SPEAKER_03: It's my snuffiness.
40:47
SPEAKER_03: I cannot say household goods.
40:49
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's like toy toy boat.
40:51
SPEAKER_03: Five times.
40:52
SPEAKER_03: Toy boat.
40:53
SPEAKER_00: Say it five times.
40:54
SPEAKER_00: Toy boat, toy boat, toy boy.
40:57
unknown: I can't.
40:57
SPEAKER_00: Toy boat, toy boat, toy boat.
40:58
SPEAKER_03: Don't make me do this.
40:59
SPEAKER_03: We're getting to the box.
41:00
SPEAKER_03: Okay, here we go.
41:01
SPEAKER_03: Um, okay.
41:02
SPEAKER_03: He gets arrested in Missouri.
41:03
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
41:04
SPEAKER_03: He's selling, so he buys a bunch of stuff.
41:07
SPEAKER_03: He refuses to pay his credit on it, and he's basically selling them again and then running off and stealing them.
41:13
SPEAKER_03: It's the early ages of credit card fraud.
41:16
SPEAKER_03: Absolutely, it is.
41:17
SPEAKER_03: He knows the system.
41:18
SPEAKER_03: He finally gets arrested.
41:20
SPEAKER_03: And while arrested, well, he is bailed out pretty early.
41:23
SPEAKER_03: This is only his first offense.
41:24
SPEAKER_03: Nothing to do with murder.
41:26
SPEAKER_03: Murders.
41:26
SPEAKER_03: He's just buying lamps and not paying for them.
41:29
SPEAKER_01: Yay, you can't get away with that.
41:31
SPEAKER_03: He meets um someone named Marion Hedgepath, who I thought was a woman.
41:36
SPEAKER_01: You did.
41:37
SPEAKER_01: You're like, she.
41:38
SPEAKER_01: I was like, pretty sure Marion's a man.
41:40
SPEAKER_01: She's like, no, Marion's a woman's name.
41:42
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I also think John Wayne's name is originally.
41:45
SPEAKER_03: It used to be Marion, which is also in holes they make fun of at the bookslash movie holes.
41:51
SPEAKER_03: They say Marion.
41:52
SPEAKER_03: Anyways, okay, so we're gonna say it's a man.
41:55
SPEAKER_03: Um he comes up with a plan where he's going to fake his own death and then get$10,000 in life insurance.
42:05
SPEAKER_03: Holmes is gonna fake his own death.
42:07
SPEAKER_03: Holmes, thank you.
42:08
SPEAKER_03: Holmes will fake his death, get$10,000 in life insurance.
42:11
SPEAKER_03: And he was willing to give$500 to Marion for finding the correct lawyer who would be okay with the skeeviness.
42:20
SPEAKER_03: Which Marion followed through and found a lawyer.
42:23
SPEAKER_03: He's like, I know a guy.
42:24
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, his name is Jephthah Howell.
42:28
SPEAKER_03: Beautiful name.
42:29
SPEAKER_03: Jeptha.
42:30
SPEAKER_03: Love it.
42:30
SPEAKER_03: Jeptha.
42:31
SPEAKER_03: Jeppa name your dog's dog.
42:33
SPEAKER_03: J-E-P-T-H-A.
42:36
SPEAKER_03: Jept how flows well.
42:38
SPEAKER_03: He said, This guy will get the job done.
42:40
SPEAKER_03: You can fake your death.
42:41
SPEAKER_03: He will run the insurance money.
42:43
SPEAKER_03: Give me 500 bucks for arranging this.
42:46
SPEAKER_03: One, two, three is so simple.
42:48
SPEAKER_03: Um, very sadly, insurance companies said no, and they failed to believe any of this and did not give up the money.
42:56
SPEAKER_03: Did that stop our good buddy Holmes?
42:59
SPEAKER_03: I wouldn't think so.
43:01
SPEAKER_03: He said, let's try it again.
43:03
SPEAKER_03: Right.
43:03
SPEAKER_03: This time I'm gonna grab my business partner, quote unquote.
43:06
SPEAKER_03: I just love business partner, so vague.
43:08
SPEAKER_03: Business partner.
43:09
SPEAKER_03: All we kept seeing was his business partner associate.
43:12
SPEAKER_03: Benjamin Peitzel.
43:14
SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
43:14
SPEAKER_03: You're welcome.
43:15
SPEAKER_03: Benjamin Peitzel.
43:16
SPEAKER_03: I want to say Pitzel.
43:18
SPEAKER_03: I don't know why my mind is there.
43:20
SPEAKER_03: I think for a while you were calling him Pitzell.
43:22
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
43:24
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna call him Ben.
43:26
SPEAKER_03: Ben this quote unquote mysterious business partner.
43:31
SPEAKER_03: Right.
43:31
SPEAKER_03: He goes, okay, you fake your death.
43:34
SPEAKER_00: Right.
43:34
SPEAKER_03: And then the insurance company will give your wife$10,000.
43:39
SPEAKER_03: But screw your wife, we'll cut her out of it.
43:42
SPEAKER_03: I will take$5k.
43:44
SPEAKER_03: My buddy, the lawyer, Hal will take$.
43:47
SPEAKER_03: You won't get anything.
43:48
SPEAKER_03: Sorry, don't worry, but we'll fake your death.
43:50
SPEAKER_03: We'll figure it out.
43:51
SPEAKER_03: Nothing in it for him.
43:52
SPEAKER_03: So none of this really makes sense.
43:54
SPEAKER_03: And he's like, okay, I I can do this.
43:56
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
43:56
SPEAKER_03: Um, and they say this is what we're gonna do.
43:58
SPEAKER_03: You're gonna have a new name.
44:00
SPEAKER_03: B.
44:00
SPEAKER_03: F.
44:01
SPEAKER_03: Perry will be your new name.
44:03
SPEAKER_03: Right.
44:03
SPEAKER_03: And we're going to say that you exploded in a lab experiment and you were so disfigured by this lab explosion.
44:12
SPEAKER_03: And he's like, Yeah, yeah, we can do this.
44:14
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
44:14
SPEAKER_03: And I'll just fake my death.
44:16
SPEAKER_03: Sure.
44:16
SPEAKER_03: And then we'll we're going to find a cadaver that looks just like you and be like, yeah.
44:22
SPEAKER_03: But it was disfigured.
44:23
SPEAKER_03: And you're like, well, here he is.
44:25
SPEAKER_03: And now you have a new name.
44:27
SPEAKER_03: Makes sense.
44:28
SPEAKER_03: Um, Ben was going for this, but then Holmes had a better idea without telling Ben.
44:34
SPEAKER_03: He's like, How about I just actually kill you?
44:36
SPEAKER_01: Because that would be more convincing for the insurance claim.
44:40
SPEAKER_03: And show the the actual body of you dead.
44:43
SPEAKER_03: So he um drugs him, chloroforms him probably.
44:49
SPEAKER_03: Alcohols him.
44:50
SPEAKER_03: Alcohols him.
44:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like beer me.
44:52
SPEAKER_03: That's how I get I alcohol Elizabeth every night.
44:55
SPEAKER_01: She just alcohols me all the time.
44:57
SPEAKER_03: Chloroforms him.
45:00
SPEAKER_01: That hasn't happened yet.
45:01
SPEAKER_03: And then lights him on fire.
45:03
SPEAKER_03: Right.
45:04
SPEAKER_03: Perfect combination.
45:05
SPEAKER_03: One, two, three.
45:06
SPEAKER_03: It's so simple.
45:08
SPEAKER_03: Later on in court, I'm gonna jump and then go back for just a minute because they talk about this about the whole chloroform versus fire.
45:16
SPEAKER_03: That's important.
45:17
SPEAKER_03: Uh he later they find out that perhaps it was not first become unconscious and then fire.
45:26
SPEAKER_03: They think from the autopsy it was fire first while alive and then chloroform afterwards.
45:33
SPEAKER_03: Make it look like that was first.
45:35
SPEAKER_03: Yes, but they think he was tortured with fire first.
45:39
SPEAKER_01: I imagine, like, hey, buddy old pal Ben, business associate partner I've known for a long time, who's part of my scheme.
45:47
SPEAKER_01: Let's just light you on fire.
45:48
SPEAKER_01: We don't need a cadaver.
45:50
SPEAKER_04: Have a lighter right now.
45:51
SPEAKER_01: I imagine that conversation in like a dramatic movie where he's like, Holmes, did you bring the body?
45:56
SPEAKER_01: He's like, Yeah, the body's here.
45:58
SPEAKER_01: I got the body in the face.
46:01
SPEAKER_01: Well, where's it?
46:01
SPEAKER_01: Why is this not a movie?
46:03
SPEAKER_01: Sits there and lights a match and says, Oh my god.
46:06
SPEAKER_01: Here it is.
46:08
SPEAKER_01: Oh.
46:09
SPEAKER_01: I kind of love it.
46:10
SPEAKER_01: We could be screamplaywriters.
46:12
SPEAKER_03: I mean, supposedly Leonardo DiCaprio has copyrights to this.
46:16
SPEAKER_01: It's true.
46:17
SPEAKER_01: I mean, not to spoil anything, but when we're reading a lot about this, they say Scorsese hat.
46:22
SPEAKER_03: Leo, if you're listening, I make a great Minnie.
46:25
SPEAKER_03: Oh, you want to be Minnie?
46:26
SPEAKER_03: I want to be Minnie.
46:27
SPEAKER_03: Elizabeth could be the dead ones.
46:30
SPEAKER_03: Thanks.
46:32
SPEAKER_01: What's her name?
46:33
SPEAKER_01: Can I be the first Minnie?
46:34
SPEAKER_01: You can be Clara.
46:35
SPEAKER_01: No, boo.
46:36
SPEAKER_01: I want to be, let me look.
46:37
SPEAKER_01: Julia.
46:40
SPEAKER_01: Julia and my baby Pearl.
46:42
SPEAKER_01: That's what I want.
46:42
SPEAKER_03: I want to be Minnie Williams, the one-time actress.
46:45
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
46:46
SPEAKER_03: Supposedly Leonardo DiCaprio has the rights to this whole story.
46:50
SPEAKER_00: You're right.
46:51
SPEAKER_03: We might be provoking them as we speak.
46:53
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
46:54
SPEAKER_03: But uh Martin Scorsese and him are supposedly making a movie of this.
46:58
SPEAKER_01: Please make that happen.
46:59
SPEAKER_01: We love a good DiCaprio Scorsese movie.
47:02
SPEAKER_03: We will ruin the ending very shortly here.
47:04
SPEAKER_01: Here we go.
47:05
SPEAKER_03: Um, okay.
47:05
SPEAKER_03: This this gets good.
47:06
SPEAKER_03: So he kills his buddy Ben.
47:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:09
SPEAKER_03: Somehow convinces Ben's wife that he needs to take custody of three of five of their children.
47:15
SPEAKER_03: Not all of them.
47:16
SPEAKER_03: No.
47:17
SPEAKER_03: Just the three middle ones.
47:18
SPEAKER_03: Not the eldest, not the baby.
47:20
SPEAKER_03: He just wants the two girls and the boy.
47:22
SPEAKER_03: Right.
47:22
SPEAKER_03: Um, Nellie, Alice, and Howard.
47:25
SPEAKER_01: And he kind of convinces her, like, hey, Ben's not dead.
47:28
SPEAKER_01: You knew this was a whole scheme.
47:30
SPEAKER_01: We all knew it was a scheme.
47:31
SPEAKER_01: Ha ha, that's just a fake body.
47:33
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna go take the kids and like try and meet up with Ben.
47:37
SPEAKER_01: We're unsure of his whereabouts, but we're gonna figure it out.
47:40
SPEAKER_01: So she buys this whole thing and they literally just run parallel paths all the way up to Canada, thinking at some point they're gonna find the dad, the husband.
47:49
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna find Ben.
47:51
SPEAKER_01: And he just again convinces her to take these three kids away.
47:55
SPEAKER_01: And when she even kind of asks about like childcare, like, oh, you're just gonna take care of these three kids, he says, No, no, no, my good friend Minnie, who's already dead at this point.
48:04
SPEAKER_01: Me, actress, one-time actress Megan, she's gonna help me take care of the kids.
48:11
SPEAKER_01: So don't worry, the kids are in great hands.
48:13
SPEAKER_03: At one point, they were even three blocks away, but she believed her kids were touring Europe with her husband who was in hiding because of this insurance scheme.
48:21
SPEAKER_03: Little did she know he was burnt to crisps.
48:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
48:24
SPEAKER_03: They find that Alice and Nelly, the two girls of the three that he took custody of, he stuffs them into a trunk and uh drills holes and puts a hose into the trunk and pumps gas into it because he loves the whole idea of suffocation, which is really creepy.
48:44
SPEAKER_03: He loves asphyxiation.
48:45
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so unfortunately, they do find the remains of at least the two kids.
48:50
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
48:51
SPEAKER_03: They later find the remains of the boy Howard.
48:54
SPEAKER_03: Right.
48:54
SPEAKER_03: Where they found that he at some point bought drugs and then knives, and they found his remains cut up in a fireplace.
49:02
SPEAKER_01: Right.
49:02
SPEAKER_01: Holmes had bought the drugs, like drugged the boy, cut him up, and then they found his like teeth and I think some bones in the fireplace.
49:09
SPEAKER_01: Unfortunate.
49:10
SPEAKER_01: That was confirmed.
49:12
SPEAKER_01: All of the the bodies of the kids, the um, I'm gonna say it wrong because we said it a bunch of different ways.
49:17
SPEAKER_01: The Pietzel kids.
49:19
SPEAKER_03: The pretzel kids.
49:21
SPEAKER_03: Why are we laughing at these children?
49:24
SPEAKER_03: Oh god, we're going to hell.
49:25
SPEAKER_03: We are part of this.
49:27
SPEAKER_03: Um, but the investigation is now formally started because they're like, there's like been a lot of shit going down in this murder castle, and now we have three decomposing bodies that we found of the children who are missing.
49:42
SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
49:43
SPEAKER_01: So they they start to, you know, get on to Holmes and his ways.
49:47
SPEAKER_01: So by 1895, they officially put Holmes on trial.
49:51
SPEAKER_01: Um, they arrest him, they take him in, they say, Hey, we found the remains of the kids.
49:56
SPEAKER_01: Um, we're still looking into the whole Benjamin Pietzel, like, you know, now I can't say it any other way.
50:03
SPEAKER_01: But we're we're looking into his his his murder, and you know, we just have a feeling that that you were not innocent in all of this.
50:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, so he he gets put on trial, and all jurors find him guilty.
50:14
SPEAKER_01: Which and like again, he's gotten away with so much at this point.
50:19
SPEAKER_01: So once you put it in front of a jury, they're like, Well, yeah.
50:24
SPEAKER_03: Did you mention about the horse theft?
50:26
SPEAKER_03: Was I just not listening?
50:27
SPEAKER_03: We didn't.
50:27
SPEAKER_03: Sorry, I kind of phased out.
50:28
SPEAKER_03: I started drinking my wine.
50:30
SPEAKER_03: Sorry.
50:30
SPEAKER_03: Um, the whole reason that got him over brought in.
50:34
SPEAKER_01: Right.
50:34
SPEAKER_01: Okay, go ahead.
50:35
SPEAKER_03: Only reason he was arrested because he was on a warrant for stealing a horse in Texas.
50:42
SPEAKER_03: That's probably got the that's the most minimalistic crime that he's committed.
50:47
SPEAKER_01: But you don't mess with Texas.
50:49
SPEAKER_03: But meanwhile, the um Frank Geyer of the Philadelphia Police.
50:55
SPEAKER_03: He's a detective.
50:56
SPEAKER_03: He's a detective of the Philadelphia police.
50:58
SPEAKER_03: Like, I just pictured the so-called like 1890s police station.
51:01
SPEAKER_03: We got our first detective.
51:02
SPEAKER_03: He's like, I think we've got a serial killer here.
51:05
SPEAKER_03: Right.
51:05
SPEAKER_03: The America's first serial killer.
51:07
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
51:08
SPEAKER_03: And he got arrested under a horse theft.
51:12
SPEAKER_03: But this whole other investigation was going on.
51:14
SPEAKER_03: Right.
51:15
SPEAKER_03: So it kind of snowballed in the body else.
51:17
SPEAKER_01: That's when they determined that it was just more than what he was uh leading on.
51:21
SPEAKER_01: Busted.
51:21
SPEAKER_01: Busted.
51:22
SPEAKER_01: And again, didn't take long to find him guilty.
51:25
SPEAKER_01: So they sentence him to death.
51:27
SPEAKER_01: Mr.
51:27
SPEAKER_01: Holmes, I know.
51:29
SPEAKER_01: He's on what?
51:29
SPEAKER_01: He's executed?
51:31
SPEAKER_01: Shocker.
51:32
SPEAKER_01: Shocker.
51:32
SPEAKER_01: But at this point, he's lied so much that no one can even keep what's going on straight, like we mentioned at the beginning, and that's why we wanted to preface the whole episode with it.
51:41
SPEAKER_01: Because at certain points he maintains his innocence.
51:43
SPEAKER_01: He says, I never killed Benjamin.
51:45
SPEAKER_01: I never touched those children.
51:47
SPEAKER_01: Like I was all just doing the right thing at the right time, always.
51:51
SPEAKER_01: Other times, Mr.
51:52
SPEAKER_01: Holmes says, I was possessed by the devil, and I'm a murderer, and I'm Satan.
51:58
SPEAKER_03: Very different types of claims about himself.
52:01
SPEAKER_03: He was possessed by Satan.
52:04
SPEAKER_03: Right.
52:05
SPEAKER_01: It's wild.
52:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so he has you know very specific quotes of like, the devil is in me, like my form is physically changed, my face is elongated, my eyes are sunken because I'm now being taken over by the devil.
52:16
SPEAKER_01: So in throughout this trial, he goes through these phases of I'm innocent.
52:20
SPEAKER_01: You know what?
52:21
SPEAKER_01: Actually, I only killed 27 people.
52:23
SPEAKER_01: Actually, I'm possessed by the devil and I'm the worst thing you've ever encountered.
52:26
SPEAKER_01: So no one can keep much straight because he's confessing to things, but some of the things he's confessing aren't even true.
52:32
SPEAKER_01: They're like, Well, you said you killed that person, but they're actually living in, I don't know, Nova Scotia right now and a happy life.
52:38
SPEAKER_01: So they couldn't verify a lot of the things he was saying.
52:42
SPEAKER_01: He was, again, calm, cool, collected, didn't show any like signs of insanity, but just claimed very odd things at very odd times.
52:51
SPEAKER_03: This shows how much, like, we really don't know.
52:54
SPEAKER_03: They say he killed anywhere between nine to two hundred people.
53:01
SPEAKER_00: That's a bit of a gap.
53:03
SPEAKER_03: The the range is a little bit unconvincing.
53:06
SPEAKER_01: You know, nine, two hundred, what's the difference?
53:08
SPEAKER_03: That's somewhere in between there, anywhere between nine to two hundred people is where he's at.
53:13
SPEAKER_03: He says twenty-seven.
53:15
SPEAKER_03: We cannot claim that number.
53:17
SPEAKER_03: Right.
53:17
SPEAKER_03: He says 27.
53:18
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I don't believe anything he says.
53:21
SPEAKER_03: He also um didn't pay back on that lamp and stole a horse.
53:25
SPEAKER_01: Ordered a bunch of things from a catalog on credit, paid, you know, sold it cash.
53:29
SPEAKER_01: So honestly, how many do you think he killed?
53:34
SPEAKER_03: I think realistically, you know what?
53:38
SPEAKER_03: A part of me wants to believe him.
53:40
SPEAKER_03: I don't know about 27.
53:42
SPEAKER_03: I want to say probably in the 30s.
53:44
SPEAKER_03: I think that's fair.
53:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would say 50s.
53:49
SPEAKER_01: Some are in the 50s because I think like he again started with weird things of like small children's disappearance.
53:55
SPEAKER_01: Oh, if we're including all that, maybe I'm gonna one-up you and say the 40s.
53:59
SPEAKER_01: Oh, oh, I know you said 50s.
54:01
SPEAKER_01: But you can want to be and say But yeah, I I think he started, and there was even a quote, and I wish we had it in front of us, but one of like his first wife said something along the lines of he's not like a bad person.
54:14
SPEAKER_01: I think he started with bad habits that evolved into larger habits that he had to cover up with even worse things.
54:20
SPEAKER_03: That actually defines a bad person.
54:22
SPEAKER_03: Kinda, right?
54:23
SPEAKER_03: Like we all start with who was that?
54:24
SPEAKER_01: Was that Minnie?
54:26
SPEAKER_01: Also, don't know where she went.
54:28
SPEAKER_01: He went to New Hampshire.
54:30
SPEAKER_01: Um, but but so she was kind of saying, like, yeah, maybe he started off small and went really crazy.
54:35
SPEAKER_01: So my opinion is that yeah, I think he started with small things, and I hate to say children or babies, but I think that's kind of where he started.
54:44
SPEAKER_01: Thinking, oh, again, maybe it was an abortion-related thing.
54:47
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, I don't want to get into all that, but I think I think in terms of like lives that he had actually taken, it started off small, children disappearing, things of that sort evolved into women disappearing.
55:00
SPEAKER_01: I want to say it's in the 50s.
55:03
SPEAKER_01: And he might not even know how many people he's killed.
55:05
SPEAKER_01: I think 60s.
55:06
SPEAKER_01: Creepy.
55:08
SPEAKER_01: How do we know?
55:09
SPEAKER_01: How do we find out?
55:11
SPEAKER_01: We go, ooh, we'll get into this of what it is current day.
55:15
SPEAKER_01: This is your part.
55:16
SPEAKER_01: Take it away.
55:17
SPEAKER_01: Oh no, well, yeah, we'll get into that as to what our theories are.
55:21
SPEAKER_01: We'll come back to it.
55:22
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, but so he is on trial October 1895.
55:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, they officially find him guilty.
55:29
SPEAKER_01: He's sentenced to death.
55:30
SPEAKER_01: Um, again, they really can't keep a lot straight with his story.
55:33
SPEAKER_01: So by the following May, which is May of 1896, on the 7th, May 7th, he is hanged at the Mayan Singh prison.
55:44
SPEAKER_01: Um, and they said that even to his dying day, again, calm, collected, charming, charismatic, they said even the prison guards kind of had a hard time escorting him to the gallows and being like, hey, today's the day you die, because he was just so sweet, like Ted Bundy, Ted Bundy-ish, of like, oh, you know, everyone's gonna die someday.
56:05
SPEAKER_01: Just had all these like funny one-liners and things that he would say.
56:08
SPEAKER_01: They they said something to the effect of like the way that he was receiving it was just like he was a guy going about his business in the office, just like, oh yeah, this is routine, this is something I'm used to, nothing, nothing weird.
56:20
SPEAKER_01: But he did a very specific request.
56:22
SPEAKER_01: He said, When I do die, I want to be buried in concrete 10 feet below.
56:30
SPEAKER_01: I don't want anyone to rob my grave, so he wants to make sure his grave is protected because he probably has some experience.
56:36
SPEAKER_01: Again, like maybe.
56:38
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, he knows that he could be used for um a as a cadaver for science and be cut up and get dissected.
56:46
SPEAKER_01: And his lawyers were offered money for his body.
56:48
SPEAKER_01: They said, Hey, we'll give you five grand for his body, we'll give you this for his brain, like different institutes around the area, and they all said, no, no, no, like that's not his wishes.
56:56
SPEAKER_01: We're just gonna bury him in this concrete.
56:58
SPEAKER_01: And it got so specific to the point where people thought that he didn't even die that day because they're like, he's just planning an escape.
57:07
SPEAKER_01: Like all of this is read, you know, it was just prime for him to escape the situation.
57:12
SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, as much romanticism is around it, as much myth is, you know, surrounding his death, um, he did die at the gallows that day.
57:21
SPEAKER_01: I don't know why I keep gasping through this whole thing.
57:24
SPEAKER_01: He he was hanged.
57:26
SPEAKER_01: Um he didn't, his neck did not break.
57:28
SPEAKER_01: And as you know, if you're a seasoned executionado, you can either die by nep neck snapping or strangling.
57:34
SPEAKER_01: He died by strangling, and he was there for 15 minutes strangling until they finally, after 20 minutes, pronounced him dead.
57:43
SPEAKER_01: Um, so again, but people still didn't buy it, even though they saw him die in front of their eyes, they're like, oh no, his tomb is.
57:48
SPEAKER_01: They thought it could have been a look-alike though.
57:50
SPEAKER_01: Right.
57:50
SPEAKER_01: So people really weren't sure for a very long time, to the point that in 2017 they actually exhumed his remains to make sure it was him, like to do DNA matching and say, oh.
58:02
SPEAKER_01: Cut through the cement.
58:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they cut it.
58:04
SPEAKER_01: 10 feet of cement.
58:05
SPEAKER_01: 10 feet of cement to be like, yeah, that was him, we got him.
58:08
SPEAKER_01: Imagine being a part of that excavation crew.
58:10
SPEAKER_01: How cool.
58:11
SPEAKER_01: Well, and it's so bizarre too, because again, so many people are fascinated with the myths surrounding him and who he was as a serial killer.
58:18
SPEAKER_01: But to the point to his great-great-grandson even thinks, like, he does a TED talk, literally, like he does like big public things about this.
58:27
SPEAKER_01: He thinks that his great-great-granddad was actually Jack the Ripper.
58:32
SPEAKER_01: So some people think that his time spent over in London, he wasn't just the American Ripper or the first dealer killer in America, that he was the Jack the Ripper.
58:41
SPEAKER_03: I don't know, that's a hard stretch.
58:42
SPEAKER_03: There was a lot about like going to Europe and stuff, but uh the traveling, I feel like in those times to go through all those states plus all London.
58:54
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I I would definitely be interested in of doing some more research on that.
58:58
SPEAKER_01: Um, but uh, but some interesting things too.
59:01
SPEAKER_01: So again, like none of this, none of his legend died with his death, right?
59:06
SPEAKER_01: Like he was such an interesting figure, and weird, weird things happened after he died.
59:12
SPEAKER_01: And I want to read this passage really quick from the book The Devil in the White City by Eric Larson.
59:17
SPEAKER_01: One of my favorite books, actually.
59:18
SPEAKER_01: Great books.
59:18
SPEAKER_01: The first Eric Larson book I read.
59:20
SPEAKER_01: If you have not read Eric Larson, I've talked about him before, posted about him, love him.
59:24
SPEAKER_01: But this book specifically is about Holmes.
59:26
SPEAKER_01: Strange things begin to happen that made Holmes' claims about being the devil almost seem plausible.
59:32
SPEAKER_01: Detective Geyer, who we mentioned, became seriously ill.
59:36
SPEAKER_01: The warden of Moya Men sing prison committed suicide.
59:40
SPEAKER_01: The jury foreman was electrocuted in a freak accident.
59:43
SPEAKER_01: The priest who delivered Holmes' last rights was found dead on the grounds of his church of mysterious causes.
59:49
SPEAKER_01: The father of Emmeline Syngrand, which we didn't really address.
59:52
SPEAKER_01: She's just another young woman that also disappeared.
59:55
SPEAKER_01: Another murder.
59:56
SPEAKER_01: Another murder.
59:57
SPEAKER_01: But her father was grotesquely burned in a boiler explosion, and a fire destroyed the office of the district attorney George Graham, leaving only a photograph of Holmes unscathed.
1:00:08
SPEAKER_03: It's all like burning.
1:00:10
SPEAKER_03: That's weird, mysterious.
1:00:12
SPEAKER_03: Really weird.
1:00:13
SPEAKER_01: It is a little weird.
1:00:23
SPEAKER_01: That's why they call him the the devil in the White City.
1:00:26
SPEAKER_01: That's why they call him.
1:00:27
SPEAKER_01: But his other name was the Beast of Chicago.
1:00:30
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:00:31
SPEAKER_01: Because they literally, there was so much again, like mystery and strangeness and and like just again, pure grotesqueness that that spanned his whole killing spree that they were like, this is more than just someone who's obsessed with death or obsessed with again killing young women or whatever it is, even just being a con artist, there's more to this story.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_03: I just got slightly scared.
1:00:54
SPEAKER_03: Like I just looked behind my shoulder for a minute, like, ugh.
1:00:58
SPEAKER_03: I know.
1:00:58
SPEAKER_01: Very, very sweet.
1:01:00
SPEAKER_03: Oh my god, what if we blow up next?
1:01:04
SPEAKER_01: After this episode, Beheaded is no longer because the guests are not Eric Larson who wrote a book about it, but us who did a one-hour episode on him.
1:01:13
SPEAKER_01: To be fair, Eric Larson hasn't published a book in a while.
1:01:15
SPEAKER_01: Hmm, where is he?
1:01:17
SPEAKER_01: No, but um, one other thing we wanted to say too about uh the the the murder um castle.
1:01:24
SPEAKER_01: Everyone has asked, like, what's happened to the murder castle?
1:01:27
SPEAKER_01: Like, is it still still?
1:01:28
SPEAKER_03: I would like to go and I wanna visit.
1:01:32
SPEAKER_01: Guess what it is today?
1:01:33
SPEAKER_01: I don't think you'd want to go there.
1:01:35
SPEAKER_03: What is it?
1:01:36
SPEAKER_01: It's not a DMV, but what else do you hate besides a DMV?
1:01:40
SPEAKER_03: A postal office.
1:01:42
SPEAKER_03: Perfect.
1:01:43
SPEAKER_03: Wow, did I get it?
1:01:45
SPEAKER_01: I did not do my research.
1:01:48
SPEAKER_01: Can you say it like in a way that you don't know?
1:01:51
SPEAKER_01: No, but um, you know, you're right, Megan.
1:01:53
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
1:01:54
SPEAKER_01: Today it is a postal office.
1:01:56
SPEAKER_01: So I think what had happened is actually during the time where Holmes was in prison, it burned down mysteriously.
1:02:03
SPEAKER_01: It's always mysteriously.
1:02:05
SPEAKER_03: Really quick though.
1:02:06
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
1:02:07
SPEAKER_03: While he was arrested, you're right, it did burn down.
1:02:10
SPEAKER_03: Someone saw two men running out of the building between 8 p.m.
1:02:14
SPEAKER_03: to 9 p.m.
1:02:15
SPEAKER_03: So they think it was Arson Arson's very specific.
1:02:18
SPEAKER_03: Never say that word.
1:02:20
SPEAKER_03: Again, burn burnings and fire is always like the theme of everything that surrounds him.
1:02:27
SPEAKER_01: So burned down when he was in prison.
1:02:30
SPEAKER_01: And then um it was kind of condemned for a while, just an abandoned building.
1:02:34
SPEAKER_01: And then I think in the 30s is when um the US Postal Service bought it.
1:02:39
SPEAKER_01: And to this day, good for them.
1:02:42
SPEAKER_01: No, but okay, they say that like, yeah, they knocked down the building and they just like created a new post office that sits there, but they say that the tunnels that are connected to the basement in his weird crematorium and all that crap is still there.
1:02:55
SPEAKER_01: So the only people that have gone there to like investigate who are not postal workers, um, is the history channel.
1:03:01
SPEAKER_01: They did like a ghost tour thing there.
1:03:03
SPEAKER_01: But they said ever since the history channel thing, they have not let any other visitors in to see the tunnels or like investigate the tunnels.
1:03:10
SPEAKER_01: It is very haunted.
1:03:11
unknown: Yeah.
1:03:12
SPEAKER_01: The post office workers say they've seen ghosts there.
1:03:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm kind of scared.
1:03:17
SPEAKER_01: Wanna go there?
1:03:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:03:19
SPEAKER_01: Pick up some mail, see some ghosts.
1:03:23
SPEAKER_01: So stupid.
1:03:25
SPEAKER_01: I know.
1:03:26
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna give you a package that goes to Chicago.
1:03:28
SPEAKER_03: You go to the post office to put for a signature pickup only.
1:03:33
SPEAKER_01: Got it.
1:03:34
SPEAKER_03: It's five million dollars if you want to.
1:03:41
SPEAKER_01: We go, we investigate.
1:03:43
SPEAKER_01: I have to go to the bathroom.
1:03:44
SPEAKER_01: Where's the bathroom?
1:03:45
SPEAKER_01: Is it down here in this mysterious trap door?
1:03:48
SPEAKER_01: You're so fucking stupid.
1:03:51
SPEAKER_00: I think it'll work, Elizabeth.
1:03:54
SPEAKER_03: Any final words?
1:03:55
SPEAKER_03: Well, I have a whole final story if you'd like.
1:03:59
SPEAKER_03: Are you not done?
1:04:00
SPEAKER_01: I thought it was done.
1:04:02
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I'm done.