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- He didn't just kill people; he built a machine to consume them, brick by careful brick, while the world celebrated progress right outside his door. There is a particular kind of silence that settles over a room when you realize the person sitting across from you has been lying about their entire existence. It’s not loud. It doesn’t scream. It’s quiet, cold, and absolute. We often think of monsters as creatures of the night, lurking in shadows, but Herman Webster Mudgett—better known to history as Dr. Henry Howard Holmes—operated in the blinding light of day. He was a man who stood at the center of the American dream, right here in Chicago, during the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. While the city was plastered with white plaster and wonder, celebrating a century of American innovation, Holmes was constructing something far darker on W. 63rd Street. He called it his business enterprise. History would call it the Murder Castle. But before we look at the bricks, we have to look at the man who laid them. Because this story isn’t really about the building. It’s about the architecture of deception. Let’s go back. Way back. To Gilmanton, New Hampshire, in 1861. Herman was born into a devout Methodist family, the third child of Levi Horton Mudgett and Theodate Page Price. On paper, it looks like any other frontier life. His father was a farmer, a trader, a house painter. But beneath the surface, there was rot. Levi was a heavy drinker who beat his children cruelly. Herman grew up in an environment where fear was a daily companion, yet he also possessed an intellect that set him apart, and isolated him. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy, graduating high school with honors at just sixteen years old. But academic success didn’t protect him from cruelty. Classmates bullied him for being too smart. In one particularly haunting incident, they forced him to stand in front of a human skeleton and place its bony hands against his own face, trying to frighten him. Most boys would have run. Herman didn’t. He later claimed that instead of terror, he felt intrigue. That encounter sparked an obsession with death. He began dissecting animals. He started learning how things fall apart. It was a small seed, planted early, but it would grow into something vast and poisonous. By 1879, young Herman was enrolled at the University of Vermont, but his path soon shifted toward medicine. He transferred to the University of Michigan’s Department of Medicine and Surgery. Here, the mask of respectability began to form. He graduated in 1884, despite what records describe as mediocre academic performance. But his education wasn’t just in textbooks. He worked in the anatomy lab under Professor William James Herdman. Together, they facilitated body snatching to supply medical cadavers. This wasn’t uncommon in those days, but for Holmes, it was practice. He had apprenticed under Nahum Wight, a noted advocate of human dissection, in New Hampshire. Years later, when Holmes was suspected of murder and tried to downplay his crimes, claiming he was merely an insurance fraudster, he admitted to using these stolen cadavers to defraud life insurance companies while still in college. He learned early that bodies were assets. They could be bought, sold, lied about, and discarded. The line between healing and harming was already blurred for him. Fast forward to the late 1880s. Holmes moves to Chicago, adopting aliases like Alexander Bond, Harry Gordon, and J.A. Judson. He becomes a con artist, a swindler, a bigamist—he had three or four marriages, each one a different identity, a different lie. He stole horses, forged documents, and plotted insurance scams. But around 1891, his methods escalated. He commissioned a three-story building on W. 63rd Street. It was a hotel, yes, but also a laboratory of death. Known as the 'Murder Castle,' it featured soundproof rooms, gas chambers, elevators that led directly to incinerators, and secret passages designed to move victims without witness. It was a place where people could disappear. During the height of the 1893 World’s Fair, thousands flocked to Chicago. Holmes saw opportunity. He registered guests, took their money, and then took their lives. Official findings suggest the property was used for business, and its irregular architecture was a product of fraud rather than pure violent fantasy—but the result was the same. People went in, and they never came out. The truth about Holmes is difficult to pin down because he was a pathological liar. He gave contradictory accounts of his life, first claiming innocence, then later saying he was possessed by Satan. Researchers struggle to separate fact from fiction. For example, he claimed to have killed his medical school classmate, Dr. Robert Leacock, in 1886 for insurance money. But Leacock actually died in 1889 in Ontario, Canada. Holmes was lying. However, one connection was undeniable: Benjamin Pitezel. Pitezel was Holmes’s accomplice in several cons. They traveled together, scamming insurance companies across the country. But trust, in Holmes’s world, was a liability. Eventually, Holmes turned on Pitezel. He convinced Pitezel to flee to Mexico, only to track him down. Pitezel was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of his own wife and children—crimes Holmes orchestrated to collect insurance payouts. Pitezel confessed to everything, hoping for leniency, but Holmes was the one who walked free for a time, collecting the money. It was only after Pitezel’s execution that the full scope of Holmes’s crimes began to unravel. When Holmes was finally arrested, it wasn’t initially for murder. It was for insurance fraud involving the destruction of his own buildings. But as investigators dug deeper, evidence emerged linking him to numerous murders. Business partners, employees, guests at his hotel—they all vanished. Holmes confessed to twenty-seven murders. He named some victims, including three of Pitezel’s children, three mistresses, the child of one mistress, and the sister of another. But here is where the historian’s job becomes so painful. Many of these confessions are considered exaggerated or fabricated. Some of the people he claimed to have killed were verifiably still alive. The lore attached to Holmes—the Torture Doctor, the Beast of Chicago—is steeped in sensationalism. Tabloids of the era fed on the mystery, estimating his body count could be as high as 133. But official findings remain conservative. The irregularities in the building, the lack of effective police investigation at the time, and the hyperbolic yellow journalism created a legend that may never be fully dispelled. We know he killed. We know he did it for profit. But the exact number remains a ghost. In the 1990s, Holmes was often described as the first serial killer in U.S. history. But author Adam Selzer argues that this label misses the point. ‘Just killing several people isn’t necessarily enough,’ Selzer writes. ‘More often, it has to be a series of similar crimes, committed over a period of time, usually more to satisfy a psychological urge on the killer’s part than any more practical motive.’ Selzer adds that the murders connected to Holmes generally had a clear motive: someone knew too much, or was getting in the way, and couldn’t be trusted. The murders weren’t simply for love of bloodshed; they were a necessary part of furthering his swindling operation and protecting his lifestyle. Holmes was a criminal mastermind whose violence was a tool, not a passion. On May 7, 1896, Herman Webster Mudgett was hanged in Philadelphia. The Devil in the White City was silenced. But the questions remain. Why did we let him build? Why did we believe his lies? And how many others are still waiting in the dark corners of history, unnamed and forgotten? We remember them. Not the legends, not the tabloid headlines, but the real people caught in the machinery of a man who thought he could outsmart death itself. This story is drawn from public records and widely reported accounts. Our thoughts are with everyone affected. I’m Kristen Cameron. Take care of yourselves, and take care of each other.