Murder of Benjamin Pitezel by H. H. Holmes

Herman Webster Mudgett, later known as Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, was born May 16, 1861, in Gilmanton, New Hampshire. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy, the University of Vermont, and graduated from the University of Michigan's Department of Medicine and Surgery in 1884, where he was reportedly involved in body-snatching to supply cadavers and later admitted using cadavers to defraud life insurance companies while in college.

Holmes moved to Chicago in 1886 and took the pseudonym "H. H. Holmes." He worked at, and eventually bought, a drugstore in Englewood owned by Elizabeth Holton. He built a mixed-use building nearby, later expanded to three floors and marketed as a hotel for visitors to the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. This building became known through sensationalized press coverage as the "Murder Castle," with contemporary tabloid accounts describing secret torture chambers, gas chambers, and a maze of rooms. According to Wikipedia's summary of modern findings, these claims were largely fabricated; the building's irregular features stemmed from Holmes's fraud disputes with contractors, and hidden rooms were used to conceal furniture bought on credit rather than for violence.

Holmes is linked to the disappearances of several women associated with his business, including his mistress Julia Conner and her daughter Pearl Conner (December 1891), secretary Emeline Cigrand (1892), and Wilhelmina "Minnie" Williams and her sister Anna "Nannie" Williams (1893). Of the 27 murders Holmes later confessed to, only eight are considered confirmed by investigators cited in the Wikipedia account, including the Conners, Cigrand, and Emily Van Tassel (misnamed by Holmes as "Rosine Van Jassand"). Several other claimed victims, such as "Rogers" of Morgantown, Kate Durkee, and glass-factory owner L. Warner, were later found alive, and Holmes's claim to have killed medical-school classmate Dr. Robert Leacock in 1886 is disproven by Leacock's documented 1889 death from natural causes.

Holmes's clearest and legally established crime was the murder of his associate Benjamin Pitezel, killed on September 4, 1894, in Philadelphia as part of a life-insurance fraud scheme. Holmes subsequently gained custody of three of Pitezel's children — Alice, Nellie, and Howard — under false pretenses. He confessed to killing Alice and Nellie by gas asphyxiation in a rented house in Toronto on October 25, 1894, and to killing Howard in Indianapolis around October 10, 1894. Philadelphia detective Frank Geyer traced Holmes's movements and discovered the girls' remains in Toronto and the boy's remains in Indianapolis in 1895.

Holmes was arrested in Boston on November 17, 1894. In October 1895 he was tried in Philadelphia for Pitezel's murder, convicted, and sentenced to death. Following conviction, he confessed to 27 murders and six attempted murders, reportedly paid $7,500 by Hearst newspapers for his confession. He was hanged at Moyamensing Prison on May 7, 1896. His body was exhumed in 2017 for identification testing and later reburied.