More than 27 million people flooded into Chicago in the summer of 1893 for the World’s Columbian Exposition, a dazzling celebration of American progress known as the White City. For many visitors, it was their first glimpse of a metropolis lit by electric light. Just a few miles south, in the Englewood neighborhood, a three-story building on West 63rd Street stood in stark contrast to that luminous spectacle. Its owner, a charming and well-educated doctor named H.
H. Holmes, would later be remembered as one of America’s most notorious killers, and the building would become known as the Murder Castle. Herman Webster Mudgett was born on May 16, 1861, in Gilmanton, New Hampshire. His parents were devout Methodists, but his father was reportedly a heavy drinker with a violent temper.
As a bright child, Herman was often bullied by classmates. One incident involved them forcing him to stand before a human skeleton in a doctor’s office. Instead of fear, the encounter sparked a deep fascination. Afterward, family and neighbors noticed small animals in the area began to disappear.
Mudgett graduated from high school with honors and enrolled at the University of Vermont in 1879 before transferring to the University of Michigan’s medical program in 1882. While working in the anatomy laboratory, he and his instructor were alleged to have been involved in body snatching to supply the school’s dissection needs. Holmes later admitted to using stolen cadavers to defraud life insurance companies while still in college, a scheme he devised at about 20 years old. He married Clara Lovering in 1878, and she supported his education.
They had a son together, but he eventually abandoned them, sending word through a chain of acquaintances that his memory had been damaged and he could no longer be held responsible for his past. He then headed west under a new identity. Arriving in Chicago in 1886, he reinvented himself as Henry Howard Holmes. The city was growing rapidly, and newcomers were rarely scrutinized.
He settled in Englewood and took a job as a clerk at a drugstore owned by Elizabeth Holton. He quickly earned her trust and acquired ownership of the store through credit and charm. His financial methods involved borrowing against property, cycling through unpaid contractors, and concealing merchandise to avoid creditor claims. In one instance, he hid an entire furniture shipment in a sealed room, bricked up the entrance, and papered over the wall, leaving the building empty when the creditor came to collect.
While still married to Clara, Holmes married 24-year-old Myrta Belknap in Minneapolis in late 1886. He set up a respectable home with her in Wilmette, appearing to neighbors as a solid citizen and family man. During these years, he also crossed paths with Benjamin Pitezel, a carpenter with a criminal past, who would later play a central role in Holmes’ downfall. In 1887, Holmes purchased an empty lot across the street from his drugstore and began constructing the building that would become infamous.
Contractors and architects were constantly replaced amid disputes and unpaid invoices, ensuring that no single worker ever understood the full layout. In 1892, he added a third floor, claiming it would serve as a hotel for visitors to the upcoming World’s Fair. When investigators examined the building after his arrest, newspapers described purpose-built gas chambers, hidden trap doors, and vats of acid, dubbing it the Murder Castle. Historians later determined that many of these sensational details were embellished.
However, credible accounts confirm gas connections that served no obvious purpose, an alarm system wired to his apartments, and rooms that could only be locked from the outside. The building’s corridors and stairways were described as confusing and disorienting. Holmes’ victims were predominantly young women, often employed as secretaries or mistresses. He was said to have employed over 150 women during his years in Englewood.
Julia Conner came to work in his drugstore with her husband around 1890. After Holmes turned his attention to her, her husband left, but Julia and her 5-year-old daughter Pearl stayed. Julia and Pearl disappeared on Christmas Eve of 1891. When the castle’s cellar was excavated in 1895, investigators found the partial skeleton of a child consistent in size with a girl of Pearl’s age.
Emmeline Seagrand, 23, was hired as Holmes’ personal secretary in May 1892. Witnesses said she grew quieter over time. She was last seen in December 1892. Her family was told she had left to marry a man named Robert Phelps, who did not exist.
Her luggage trunk, returned to her mother, was empty. Her remains were later identified, and a man named M. G. Chappell admitted to preparing three sets of skeletal remains for Holmes.
Wilhelmina “Minnie” Williams arrived in Chicago in the spring of 1893, drawn by a man she planned to build a life with. She owned land in Fort Worth, Texas, valued at approximately $20,000. Holmes persuaded her to transfer the deed to a man named Alexander Bond, who was Holmes himself. Before she disappeared, Minnie invited her 18-year-old sister, Anna “Nanny” Williams, to visit.
On July 5, 1893, Nanny wrote her last letter to her aunt, describing plans to travel to Europe. Neither sister was ever seen alive again. Holmes continued to use Minnie’s name in his frauds long after she vanished. Holmes reportedly photographed the women who worked for him, posing them formally, and some of these framed photographs were later found hanging in his personal apartments.
The World’s Fair, which opened in May 1893 and closed in October, drew enormous crowds to Chicago. Holmes’ building was busier than ever, and investigators later believed this period marked the height of his activity. The city’s distraction provided cover for the disappearances. By autumn, Holmes’ financial schemes began to collapse.
After a fire in his building, he tried to collect a $60,000 insurance claim, which looked fraudulent. An insurance inspector began looking into his affairs and found that Holmes had abandoned his family in Wilmette. On November 22, 1893, creditors to whom he owed between $25,000 and $50,000 met together for the first time. Holmes appeared before them but failed to persuade them.
He left Chicago the next day. On January 17, 1894, in Denver, Holmes married a woman named Georgiana Yoke, whom he had met during the fair. Standing as a witness was Minnie Williams, who was alive at that ceremony. She vanished within weeks.
Georgiana later testified that she had no idea he was already married twice. In the summer of 1894, Holmes was briefly jailed in St. Louis. His cellmate was Marion Hedgepath, a train robber serving 25 years.
Holmes outlined a plan to take out a life insurance policy on Benjamin Pitezel, stage Pitezel’s death, substitute a body, and collect the payout. Hedgepath provided the name of an attorney in exchange for a promised $500. Hedgepath never received the money and eventually told police everything. Pitezel agreed to the scheme.
He traveled to Philadelphia under an alias to stage his own death. On September 4, 1894, he was found dead in a small office. Investigators determined he had been rendered unconscious, and the scene was staged to look like an accident. Holmes had killed his real partner to collect the $10,000 insurance payout.
Holmes then inserted himself into the grief of Pitezel’s widow, Carrie. He persuaded her to allow three of her five children, 13-year-old Alice, 9-year-old Nellie, and 7-year-old Howard, to travel with him, telling her her husband was not dead but in hiding. The children wrote letters home that were never sent. Detectives later determined that Alice and Nellie were killed in a rented house in Toronto, and Howard had been killed in Indianapolis.
Frank Geyer, a Philadelphia detective, was assigned to find the children. He methodically traced Holmes’ movements. In the summer of 1895, he followed the trail to Toronto and found the children’s remains in a cellar. Howard’s remains were recovered from a chimney in Indianapolis.
Holmes was arrested in Boston on November 17, 1894, tracked there by the Pinkerton agency. He immediately began talking, but his statements were dense with contradictions. The investigation led back to the castle on 63rd Street. Holmes was charged with the murder of Benjamin Pitezel.
The trial began in Philadelphia in October 1895. He dismissed and then recalled his attorneys, managing the case himself. When Georgiana Yoke testified, a court officer repeated her whispered words to the room, and Holmes wept. The district attorney, responding to Holmes calling her “my wife,” replied, “Which wife?
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Holmes was found guilty. While awaiting sentencing, he sold his confession to William Randolph Hearst’s organization for $7,500. He claimed to have committed 27 murders and six attempted murders, though the confession was contradictory and several supposed victims turned out to be alive. In his autobiography, he wrote, “I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing.
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On May 7, 1896, Holmes was hanged at Moyamensing Prison in Philadelphia. He was 34. His neck did not break, and he remained on the rope for more than 15 minutes before being pronounced dead. He had requested that his coffin be encased in concrete and buried 10 feet deep, fearing body snatchers.
In March 1914, Patrick Quinlan, the former caretaker of the castle, was found dead in his bedroom in Portland, Michigan, having taken his own life. Beside him was a note that read, “I couldn’t sleep. ”
In August 1895, the castle caught fire. Witnesses saw two men enter and leave quickly, and a half-empty gas can was found beneath the back steps.
No one was charged. The building survived, was repurposed, and was demolished in 1938. The site on West 63rd Street is now a United States Postal Service branch. For over a century, rumors persisted that Holmes had escaped execution, but in 2017 his descendants petitioned for an exhumation.
The body inside the concrete coffin was positively identified through dental records as Herman Webster Mudgett. He had not escaped.