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Herman Webster Mudgett (May 16, 1861[1] – May 7, 1896[2]), better known under the alias of Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, was an American serial killer. Holmes opened a hotel in Chicago for the 1893 World's Fair, which he built himself and was the location of many of his murders. While he confessed to 27 murders, of which 9 were confirmed, his actual body count could be higher.
The case was notorious in its time and received wide publicity via a series of articles in William Randolph Hearst's newspapers. Interest in Holmes' crimes was revived in 2003 by Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City, a best-selling non-fiction book that juxtaposed an account of the planning and staging of the World's Fair with Holmes' story.
Early life
Mudgett was born in Gilmanton, New Hampshire[3]. He was the son of Levi Horton Mudgett and Theodate Page Price. The family was descended from among the first settlers to the area. His father was a strict disciplinarian, and Mudgett was often bullied as a child. He claimed that, as a child, schoolmates forced him to view and touch a human skeleton after discovering his fear of the local doctor's office. The bullies initially brought him there to scare him, but instead he was utterly fascinated.
Herman Mudgett graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School in 1884. While enrolled, he stole bodies from the school laboratory. Disfiguring the corpses and claiming that the people were killed accidentally, Mudgett collected insurance money from policies he had taken out on each one. After graduating, he moved to Chicago to practice pharmacy. He also began engaging in many shady businesses, real estate, and promotional deals under the name "H. H. Holmes".
On July 8, 1878, Holmes married Clara A. Lovering of Alton, New Hampshire. On January 28, 1887, he married Myrta Z. Belknap in Minneapolis, Minnesota; he was still married to Lovering at the time, making him a bigamist. He and Belknap had a daughter named Lucy Theodate Holmes, born 4 July 1889 in Englewood, Illinois[4]. The family of three resided in the upscale Chicago suburb of Wilmette—although Holmes spent most of his time in the city tending to business. He filed a petition for divorce from his first wife after marrying his second, but the divorce was never finalized. He married his third wife, Georgiana Yoke, on January 9, 1894. He also had a relationship with Julia Smythe, the wife of Ned Connor, his one-time employee who later fled Chicago. Julia became one of Holmes' victims.
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