H. H. Holmes: The Man Who Built Murder Into Architecture

[00:00:01] Kyle Risi: It is Chicago. 1893.

[00:00:03] Adam Cox: Right?

[00:00:04] Kyle Risi: You have come here for the World's Fair, where they will be showcasing the most innovative technologies on earth.

[00:00:13] you have your suitcase in one hand and you are buzzing with excitement You make your way towards a hotel in front of you. The receptionist, he smiles at you gently. He looks you up and down.

[00:00:24] Adam Cox: Oh.

[00:00:24] Kyle Risi: He takes your details Uhhuh, and he points you to your room upstairs.

[00:00:29] You take a [00:00:30] staircase, curiously, it ends at a wall. You take another set of stairs.

[00:00:35] They climb and they climb, but they go nowhere.

[00:00:38] You take a right, then a left, then you walk down a long winding corridor. At the end there is an empty room, except for a single trap door set into the floor.

[00:00:50] You open it and as you do you feel a pair of hands shove you forward. You fall in and the door slams shut above you.

[00:00:59] You are trapped [00:01:00] in a windowless room and absolutely nobody is coming to help you.

[00:01:04] Adam Cox: Bloody hell.

[00:01:05] Kyle Risi: Adam, you can check in at any time, but you can never leave.

[00:01:40] Welcome to the Compendium, an Assembly of Fascinating things, a weekly variety podcast that gives you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering.

[00:01:49] Adam Cox: We explore stories from the darker corners of true crime, the hidden gems of history, and the jaw dropping deeds of extraordinary people.

[00:01:57] Kyle Risi: I'm, of course, Kyle Reese, your ringmaster for this week's episode, [00:02:00]

[00:02:00] Adam Cox: and I am Adam Cox, the invisible animal coordinator for this week.

[00:02:04] Kyle Risi: Invisible animal coordinator.

[00:02:06] Adam Cox: Yeah. We've got a lot of invisible animals that need looking after,

[00:02:10] Kyle Risi: do we?

[00:02:10] Adam Cox: And um,yeah, it's, I'm rushed off my feet, Kyle,

[00:02:14] Kyle Risi: are they ghost animals by any chance? Because that might be quite fitting for today's episode.

[00:02:19] Adam Cox: Well, actually they were made up, but

[00:02:21] Kyle Risi: imaginary animals,

[00:02:23] Adam Cox: I was trying to find some work.

[00:02:25] Kyle Risi: We, yeah, we have so many invisible animals. I think you should employ me

[00:02:29] Adam Cox: pretty much. [00:02:30] Yeah.

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[00:03:50] Kyle Risi: Adam, that is enough of the housekeeping because today on the compendium, we are diving into an assembly of a mind that turned [00:04:00] design into deception and architecture into a machine for murder.

[00:04:05] Adam Cox: Architecture for murder. Mm-hmm. I am intrigued. Kyle,

[00:04:12] Kyle Risi: do you have any idea what we're talking about today?

[00:04:14] Adam Cox: Um,

[00:04:15] Kyle Risi: because you never really look over my shoulder anymore when I'm typing away.

[00:04:18] Adam Cox: I was like, you'll tell me eventually. What, what I'm like seeing here.

[00:04:20] Uh, no. I've got no idea. I haven't intrigued that. What is it,

[00:04:23] Kyle Risi: Adam? I want you to picture it.

[00:04:25] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:04:25] Kyle Risi: It is Chicago. 1893.

[00:04:28] Adam Cox: Right?

[00:04:28] Kyle Risi: The city [00:04:30] is electric. You have come here for the World's Fair, the Columbia Exposition, where they will be showcasing the most innovative technologies on earth, electricity, moving walkways, literally the future.

[00:04:45] Laid out in front of you,

[00:04:47] Adam Cox: okay?

[00:04:48] Kyle Risi: As you step off your street car onto a busting street on the corner of South. Wallace Avenue and West 63rd Street, you have your suitcase in one hand and you are buzzing with [00:05:00] excitement you make your way towards a hotel in front of you.

[00:05:03] It is big.

[00:05:04] It is solid.

[00:05:05] It's three stories tall and almost an entire block long.

[00:05:09] Adam Cox: I mean, a solid hotel. I would think so. I'm not staying in a tent.

[00:05:13] Kyle Risi: No, you're not. This is the respectable establishment where you'll be staying basically.

[00:05:17] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:05:18] Kyle Risi: The receptionist, they are friendly, they're polite, accommodating, even, which is what you'll expect from a hotel.

[00:05:23] I dunno why I put that line in that wind. He smiles at you gently. He looks you up and down.

[00:05:29] Adam Cox: [00:05:30] Oh,

[00:05:30] Kyle Risi: he takes your details Uhhuh, and he points you to your room upstairs.

[00:05:33] Adam Cox: Right.

[00:05:34] Kyle Risi: So far so good. Right?

[00:05:35] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:05:36] Kyle Risi: On the ground floor, everything feels very normal. People are shopping in the pharmacy.

[00:05:40] At the jewelry store. People are looking in amazement at the selection of fine watches that are on display.

[00:05:45] Everything is charming, reassuring, even.

[00:05:48] The hotel feels like you have made the right choice.

[00:05:52] But then you start heading to your room. You take a staircase, curiously, it ends at a wall.

[00:05:59] Baffled.

[00:05:59] [00:06:00] You then turn back and then you take another set of stairs.

[00:06:03] They climb and they climb, but they go nowhere.

[00:06:06] You take a right, then a left, then you walk down a long winding corridor. The angles feel off and the carpets are all disorientating.

[00:06:15] You try a door and it's a brick wall. You try another door and it's locked.

[00:06:20] You are now lost. Adam,

[00:06:22] Adam Cox: I feel like I'm in like some kind of fun fare.

[00:06:24] Kyle Risi: At the end of the corridor, there is another door with an empty room, [00:06:30] except for a single trap door set into the floor.

[00:06:33] Outta curiosity. You open it and as you do at that moment, you feel a pair of hands shove you forward. You fall in and the door slams shut above you.

[00:06:42] You are trapped in a windowless room that is also soundproof, so nobody can hear you scream, and absolutely nobody is coming to help you.

[00:06:52] Adam Cox: Bloody hell,

[00:06:53] Kyle Risi: Adam. As panic sets in, you start to notice something in the wall, a small dark hole, [00:07:00] perhaps a makeshift people.

[00:07:01] It's too dark to make out what's behind there.

[00:07:04] And as the minutes turn into hours, your fear turns into the terrifying realization that you might never leave this room, but then you swear you see a flash of movement coming from behind that people.

[00:07:19] Is someone watching you?

[00:07:21] Adam,

[00:07:22] as the Eagle Song Hotel California goes, you can check in at any time, but you can never [00:07:30] leave.

[00:07:30] Today on the compendium I'm gonna tell you the true story of HH homes and his murder castle.

[00:07:38] Adam Cox: Oh, I mean, I know of h Hi Chms. Mm-hmm. He came up, when we did the Jack the Ripper episode. Right?

[00:07:45] Kyle Risi: He did. Yeah. He was suspected as being a potential person who was committing all these crimes.

[00:07:49] Adam Cox: Yeah. One of the suspects.

[00:07:51] But do you know what? I don't think I know too much about him. I didn't realize there was like a hotel.

[00:07:55] Kyle Risi: Oh yeah, for sure. Adam, this story is freaking wild. This is the [00:08:00] story of one of America's first serial killers and his crimes have just become something of legend on a par with Jack The Ripper. Like his story has come to inspire pop culture ever since his crimes came to light.

[00:08:11] He even served as the inspiration behind season five of American Horror Story Hotel.

[00:08:18] Adam Cox: You know what? I was just thinking this feels like an season of American Horror Story. When it was good

[00:08:23] Because that hotel was this kind of weird place where the dead couldn't cross over. Yeah. And all this little creepiness and they had a load of [00:08:30] serial killers.

[00:08:30] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:31] Adam Cox: And because I was like, who builds a hotel? Which goes to a room, which then you get killed in.

[00:08:35] This guy.

[00:08:35] Kyle Risi: This guy. Yes.

[00:08:37] So Adam, today I'm the compendium. We will trace Holmes' rise to becoming one of America's first serial killers.

[00:08:43] We will look at how he orchestrated his gruesome crimes inside this purpose-built murder castle, and how he uses charming manipulation to draw his victims in.

[00:08:53] And finally, how he was brought down.

[00:08:56] Adam, this is a story of HH [00:09:00] Holmes.

[00:09:00] Adam Cox: I'm excited for this one.

[00:09:01] Kyle Risi: Oh yeah.

[00:09:01] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:09:02] Kyle Risi: Good. I'm glad. Shall we start at the top though?

[00:09:04] Adam Cox: Okay. So he was born a little boy. Yeah. He had these parents, which were kind of normal.

[00:09:11] Kyle Risi: No, Adam Hh Holmes wasn't born. HH Holmes. Oh.

[00:09:15] He starts his life as Herman Webster Mudget.

[00:09:18] Adam Cox: Yeah. That doesn't sound threatening.

[00:09:20] Kyle Risi: No, it doesn't. He was born on May the 16th, 1861 in New Hampshire.

[00:09:24] His parents were Levi Horton Mutt, and his mother was Theo Date. Paige [00:09:30] Price.

[00:09:30] Adam Cox: Is that a name?

[00:09:31] Kyle Risi: not a name that we recognize. Yeah, but this is her name, Theo Date.

[00:09:34] Adam Cox: Wow.

[00:09:35] Kyle Risi: There are four kids in total. He has an older sister, Ellen, two brothers, Arthur and Henry. Perfectly ordinary names. And then there's of course, Herman, which feels like it doesn't quite fit right.

[00:09:45] They are a farming family and they are of course devout Methodist, which usually means a strict household with clear rules and not a lot of emotional room to breathe, if you know what I mean.

[00:09:54] Right. We've all seen a lot of these families, ed guy came from a very similar family as well. Mm-hmm. [00:10:00]

[00:10:00] So we can get that sense of what it was like. And Levi doesn't really help by most accounts. He is extremely violent towards the dates and also to the kids, but he's also a really heavy drinker.

[00:10:09] So it isn't just a hard childhood It's also an unpredictable one Which makes it easy for little Herman to fall into this tidy story here.

[00:10:18] Right.

[00:10:18] He's from a bad upbringing. It's usually the foundation in which monsters are born.

[00:10:24] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:24] Kyle Risi: But in spite of this , Herman does really well at school, He's very clever. He gets good grades and by [00:10:30] most accounts he's really well behaved, which unfortunately makes him the perfect target for bullies.

[00:10:36] a few of the boys in his class, they get into this habit of really making his life hell. And a defining moment of this is when they discover that Herman has a phobia of doctors.

[00:10:46] Adam Cox: Oh, I guess what? He was just scared to go to the doctor. Scared of habit injections,

[00:10:50] Kyle Risi: prostate checked injections.

[00:10:51] Yeah,

[00:10:51] Adam Cox: as prostate. He's a kid. Ka.

[00:10:53] Kyle Risi: Well, I'm an adult now. Now I'm terrified of that. I know. It's coming up.

[00:10:56] Adam Cox: Oh, wait a second. It is, isn't it?

[00:10:58] Kyle Risi: It is, yeah. [00:11:00] Have you had your letter yet?

[00:11:01] Adam Cox: No. Have you?

[00:11:01] Kyle Risi: Not yet. Every time a phone goes off and it's for surgery, I'm like, oh, here it is. This is it.

[00:11:06] Adam Cox: They're gonna call you in.

[00:11:07] Kyle Risi: There's a certain age freaks in a man's life here in the UK where you get summoned to have your prostate checked.

[00:11:15] And actually, do you know what, it's not what you think either. Like I was speaking to some of the blokes at work and like you think, okay, you gotta walk into the doctor's office, you're gonna drop your pants, you're gonna lean over the table, spread your legs.

[00:11:25] Right? Real manly stuff. Right? I can handle that. It's not, [00:11:30] basically you have to, they make you lay on a bed uhhuh on your side in the fetal position.

[00:11:37] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:11:37] Kyle Risi: And then they lube up their finger and they stick your finger in your bum. So you're in a very vulnerable position as it is.

[00:11:43] It's not like you are spread eagle with your bending over a desk.

[00:11:47] So I dunno how I'm gonna handle it. I might not even go.

[00:11:50] Adam Cox: Come on. It's time. It's time.

[00:11:53] Kyle Risi: God dammit.

[00:11:56] Adam Cox: What are we talking about again?

[00:11:57] Kyle Risi: Hermann M homophobia of the doctor. Oh yeah, that's right. But [00:12:00] for injection reasons, not prostate reasons.

[00:12:01] Adam Cox: That's what I would've thought.

[00:12:03] Kyle Risi: So basically what they're gonna do is they're gonna use this to try and scare him.

[00:12:06] Adam Cox: What, book him an appointment

[00:12:08] Kyle Risi: with a prostate guy?

[00:12:11] No, apparently, they convinced him to come along with him while they break into the local doctor's office.

[00:12:16] And then once they're in, they actually force him to stand face to face with a human skeleton. One of those kind of skeletons that are on display.

[00:12:22] Herman, of course, he freaks out, but only at first because later he says that in this moment it actually helps him overcome [00:12:30] that fear and that he was instead really fascinated by it in hindsight.

[00:12:35] And so after that, he starts to become really obsessed with this concept of death, which leads into start dissecting animals as a hobby.

[00:12:42] Adam Cox: And so how old is he at this point?

[00:12:43] Kyle Risi: So he's like 11, 12 maybe. And Adam, he does horrific things he basically traps his neighbor's cat. And while it's still alive, he carries out an experimental surgery on it.

[00:12:52] Adam Cox: That's really cruel.

[00:12:54] Kyle Risi: While it's still alive.

[00:12:56] Adam Cox: And so he did all this because these boys,

[00:12:59] Kyle Risi: well I [00:13:00] think the boys gave him like an awakening, right?

[00:13:03] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:13:03] There's being fascinated by it. And then there's, you know, this

[00:13:06] yeah.

[00:13:07] Kyle Risi: But also they're kind of really backfires on the bullies though. ' cause they use this to try and get at him and he is like, ha, fuck you suckers. I really like this.

[00:13:14] Adam Cox: Yeah, that's true.

[00:13:15] Kyle Risi: So he graduates school at 16 and he takes up a position as a teacher in New Hampshire. This is actually where he meets Clara Lover Ring.

[00:13:24] Adam Cox: Love her ring.

[00:13:24] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:25] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:13:25] Kyle Risi: Love her ring. Oh, I love her [00:13:30] ring.

[00:13:30] They get married soon after, and in 1880 they have a son together who, they name Robert Lovering. Mut. at this point, he's 18 years old, so still quite young. He's married and also he's teaching, which like it's weird for me to think of an 18-year-old teacher.

[00:13:43] Adam Cox: Yeah. Considering most 18 year olds are

[00:13:45] Kyle Risi: taking drugs and

[00:13:46] Adam Cox: I have to mean that, but just, I dunno, to cut that kind of presence to teach kids.

[00:13:51] Kyle Risi: It is weird, isn't it? I guess it's just a different time.

[00:13:53] Adam Cox: Yeah. When it's more than just summer camp. Yeah, it's actual school.

[00:13:56] Kyle Risi: So he's newly married and soon after this he decides that he's going to enroll in the [00:14:00] University of Vermont, where he's gonna do a one year medical program that focuses on anatomy. And even at university, he's the target for bullies, which is kind of shit.

[00:14:08] You'd think that people would've grown outta that behavior by the time they go to university.

[00:14:12] So it's not clear if it's a result of the bullying or whether or not it's just because it's a one year program. But after one year he decides to leave and he doesn't go back to that particular course.

[00:14:22] So A couple years after that, he decides that he's gonna enroll in the University of Michigan to study medicine and surgery while he's [00:14:30] there, his enthusiasm for dissecting bodies takes a bit of a dark turn.

[00:14:34] Because it stops being purely about the academic side of things and starts to become something of an entrepreneurial pursuit.

[00:14:43] Because he starts stealing the cadavers from the lab deliberately disfigure them beyond recognition like faces destroyed And then he'll take out life insurance policies on the bodies, list them under fake names like John Smith or whoever, and then claim that they had died in some kind of horrific [00:15:00] accident. And then he'll collect the insurance payouts on them.

[00:15:02] Adam Cox: That's, um, yeah, that's quite Well It feels like back then it was so easy to kind of

[00:15:07] Kyle Risi: just get away with murder.

[00:15:09] Adam Cox: Yeah. Essentially murder, fraud and stuff like that. Obviously he gets caught, I'm guessing at some point. 'cause we know we're talking about him.

[00:15:15] But Yeah. So I'm trying to work out, this is just someone that's got a bit misguided, took the wrong sort of path in life, but it feels like he's not like maybe the best person anyway.

[00:15:25] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And it's easy to kind of hold this against him, but in his defense, [00:15:30] everyone is doing this.

[00:15:30] Adam Cox: Oh, okay.

[00:15:31] Kyle Risi: In fact, they would actually work together. One of his classmates would take out the policy in person pretending to be John Smith himself.

[00:15:37] And then Herman would pretend to discover the body later on and he reported, et cetera.

[00:15:42] And so of course once they get the payout, they would then share it.

[00:15:44] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:45] Kyle Risi: Which is a hell of an escalation, especially when you're still students like to go from dissecting bodies to then robbing them and then doing insurance for As a student

[00:15:53] Adam Cox: And he hasn't even graduated yet.

[00:15:55] Kyle Risi: No, he hasn't. Plus also I don't really understand how he's getting away with it, but as you said, it's probably easier [00:16:00] for people to get away with stuff like this back in the 18 hundreds

[00:16:02] I guess the beats being a stripper, right?

[00:16:04] Adam Cox: That's true. Having an early fans, uh, you just do some fraud,

[00:16:08] Kyle Risi: but also the way that he was able to get away with this is because autopsies weren't really routine for poor people.

[00:16:14] Insurers largely relied on eyewitnesses to kind of say, yeah, that is kind of John Smith, basically.

[00:16:20] But also, universities were reluctant to also report when these lab bodies went missing because Adam, believe it or not, the universities most of the time had stolen the bodies from [00:16:30] the local cemetery to begin with.

[00:16:32] And so they're not exactly gonna say, yeah, we stole these bodies from the cemetery and we would like to report them missing.

[00:16:38] Adam Cox: So why would they steal them in the first place? 'cause they needed bodies for the students to dissect.

[00:16:42] Kyle Risi: Absolutely. Yeah. 'cause there's a massive shortage of people donating their bodies to science. And so they would just go and steal them.

[00:16:47] Adam Cox: That's hilarious. Who, what professors are out there stealing bodies?

[00:16:51] Kyle Risi: I don't think it's the professors that are doing it though. I think it's people would go off and grave rob and then they would go to the universities and sell them the bodies. And they were happy to take the [00:17:00] bodies basically.

[00:17:00] Adam Cox: Right. And then they're losing all these bodies. 'cause who's stealing our bodies.

[00:17:03] Kyle Risi: Exactly.

[00:17:04] Adam Cox: That is bizarre.

[00:17:05] Kyle Risi: So eventually, Herman graduates medical school in 1884, he is essentially now a doctor with a tasteful, stealing bodies and a bit of insurance fraud.

[00:17:14] His marriage to Clara at this point starts to fall apart which is strange 'cause he seems like such a nice guy and he doesn't really stick around.

[00:17:22] He decides to abandon the family. He moves to New York, kind of north, new York near the Canadian border where he spends a couple [00:17:30] years working in various pharmacies and sales jobs.

[00:17:32] However, while he's there, a young boy goes missing an eyewitness says they last saw him with Herman.

[00:17:39] And so when he's questioned about this, he doesn't deny knowing the boy, only that he knows that the boy told him that he went back to Massachusetts, back to his hometown.

[00:17:51] And so bizarrely the cops accept this explanation. They go off, they do a few more inquiries, and while that's happening, surprise, [00:18:00] surprise.

[00:18:00] Herman Skips town.

[00:18:01] So it looks suspicious, doesn't it?

[00:18:03] Adam Cox: So is he guilty? Then?

[00:18:05] Kyle Risi: Let's find out. Because he then moves to Philadelphia where he gets another job in a pharmacy, While he's in town, there is news of a young boy who has just suddenly dropped dead after taking some medication.

[00:18:17] It's a massive story in the town, when the cops go to investigate, they manage to trace the medicine that this boy apparently had taken before he had collapsed back to Herman's Drugstore,

[00:18:28] Adam Cox: right?

[00:18:29] Kyle Risi: Of [00:18:30] course, when they go and questioned Herman about it, he obviously denies having any responsibility whatsoever. But then Adam, just like magic.

[00:18:38] Herman immediately leaves town.

[00:18:40] Adam Cox: Okay, so it's twice now that's

[00:18:42] Kyle Risi: happened. Yes, exactly. So it seems sus right now, we don't know if he does have anything to do with what happened to these boys.

[00:18:49] But in a move that certainly doesn't help his defense, Herman nudges decides that he's gonna change his name to Henry Howard Holmes or HH [00:19:00] Holmes.

[00:19:00] Adam Cox: Well that seems like he probably did have something to do with

[00:19:02] Kyle Risi: it. It does, doesn't, it seems very suspicious. But also, weirdly Henry's his brother's name is this, is that weird? Why, if you were gonna change your identity, why would you pick your younger brother's name?

[00:19:11] Adam Cox: Uh, easier to remember.

[00:19:14] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Thank you.

[00:19:16] I needed that. Yeah, that clears it up for me. So he makes a beeline for the windy city of Chicago.

[00:19:22] He arrives in Chicago in August of 1886, and he manages to find a job in a drugstore owned by a woman called Elizabeth [00:19:30] Holton.

[00:19:30] Now it's situated on the northwest corner of South Wallace Avenue and West 63rd Street. Now while he's there, he's super hardworking. Elizabeth comes to really trust and rely on him, and also they become really close friends.

[00:19:43] Now, according to the legend, Adam, when Elizabeth's husband dies, she's left in a hell of a lot of debt and to help her out, Holmes's offers to buy the drugstore from her, and after the deeds are handed over,

[00:19:57] Elizabeth is apparently never [00:20:00] seen or heard of ever again.

[00:20:02] Adam Cox: Oh, really?

[00:20:03] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:03] Adam Cox: So he's doing quite well for himself if he can just buy this business. I guess with the debt, I'm assuming,

[00:20:10] Kyle Risi: He's a doctor, maybe pharmacists pay quite well, I'm not quite sure.

[00:20:14] Adam Cox: Yeah. But then why does she disappear? That's the question, right?

[00:20:18] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Well, whenever regular customers asked where she is, he tells them that she's moved to California to be close to relatives.

[00:20:25] But real talk here, because census records show that Elizabeth Halton [00:20:30] was just fine. In fact, she was living nearby in Eaglewood with her husband until her death in 1930, long after Holmes has long gone anyway.

[00:20:38] So it is probably a bit more about the kind of the legend and the mysteries that kind of emerge out of this story. This is why it's quite difficult to kind of piece the facts of the story together because it's become such a legend. Do you know what I mean?

[00:20:48] Adam Cox: I see. So people are, I don't know, maybe fantasizing some of the facts or

[00:20:52] Kyle Risi: Yes.

[00:20:53] And it could be that maybe that's what he was telling her, like she's gone speak close to family. Maybe she should go to California for a bit, [00:21:00] but then it's come back and settled in Eaglewood.

[00:21:02] But still, you can't ignore how Holmes is already kind of rehearsing this persona, this kind of sinister character wearing this mask of a respectable businessman. Do you know what I mean?

[00:21:11] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:11] Kyle Risi: So At this point, Holmes is still married to Clara Lovering, right? But in 1887 he meets, a woman called Martyr Be Cap. And very soon they get married. So he's been a bit of a bigger mis here. 'cause technically now he's married to both of them.

[00:21:23] Adam Cox: Ah, yeah.

[00:21:24] Kyle Risi: So between 1887 and 1892, business at the drugstore is really [00:21:30] flourishing and Holmes the decide that he's actually gonna purchase the empty lots across the street.

[00:21:35] And his intention is to build a commercial property with a bunch of different businesses and apartments, including a hotel eventually.

[00:21:41] And it's because the city is booming economically at the time, the news of the welfare coming to Chicago in 1893 had just hit, and a lot of people kind of moving into the city to take advantage of kind of the opportunities that will be coming their way

[00:21:54] Adam Cox: And am I right in saying that this is one of those fairs that goes around the world?

[00:21:58] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So when we were [00:22:00] in Paris, remember they had that big old massive of greenhouse sort of thing.

[00:22:03] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:03] Kyle Risi: That was built for, I don't know, maybe the 1904 world. I don't know.

[00:22:07] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:08] Kyle Risi: Um, the, I thought Tower famously was built for that purpose as well to showcase kind of new feat in engineering.

[00:22:14] Adam Cox: Yeah. That's right. I think I've, uh, you know, it's in London, it's all over sort of thing. It's a really big deal. I dunno if they still do that.

[00:22:20] Kyle Risi: I think they do actually. I think very recently Dubai hosted it, but we might need to check that out at some point.

[00:22:26] Adam Cox: It feels like back then it was like really state of the art [00:22:30] transformative, like energy, electricity, that kind of thing.

[00:22:32] Kyle Risi: Exactly.

[00:22:32] Adam Cox: Now I imagine it's just, I don't know, more fancy iPhones.

[00:22:36] Kyle Risi: Yeah, it's just not really on our radar anymore.

[00:22:38] Mm.

[00:22:38] And so, like I said, this is an opportunity to capitalize on that, or at least that's how it's presented in terms of homes, why he's wanting to build this new commercial building.

[00:22:46] The ply is sizeable. It's an entire block wide. It stretches 162 feet long and 50 feet wide. It would eventually have three stories plus a basement with shops lining the ground floor, which he would rent out to local business owners.

[00:22:59] [00:23:00] He would have rented apartments and personal offices on the middle floor and the third floor would serve as a hotel for actual paying guests, especially when the welfare comes to town.

[00:23:09] But even before these crimes come to light, the building evokes enough unease that locals dubbed the property, the castle.

[00:23:17] And it's because it's on a scale that is not really been seen in the city before. It's this maze like labyrinth of rooms and corridors.

[00:23:25] It has over 60 rooms, so that's quite large, it also has 51 oddly shaped [00:23:30] doorways that open up into brick walls. Clearly designed to either confuse or disorientate anyone that is kind of trying to navigate the place.

[00:23:37] Hallways are often really narrow or really winding. Sometimes you'll have a really long corridor that has just got no doors lining it, and at the very end will just be one single door.

[00:23:46] Some span, like 50 meters in length, only to lead to like a single door. At the very end. It features blind staircases that randomly disappear behind a wall or cause you to kind of turn back after like, you've reached the very top, you're like, I've come all this way from nothing. There's nothing [00:24:00] here.

[00:24:00] There's also hidden passageways, like fitted behind bookshelves.

[00:24:04] just imagine staying there as a guest. How freaked out you would be as well.

[00:24:07] You'd be like, excuse me, sir, I finally got to my room and it's just a brick wall. And they're like, yeah, no refunds.

[00:24:13] Adam Cox: There isn't a room, it's just a corridor. I mean, this doesn't feel like it's very well thought out. So who designed this place?

[00:24:21] Kyle Risi: It's basically him. Really. Ah. But during construction, he is constantly cycling through different construction workers.

[00:24:26] And then like after a couple weeks or a couple months, once they've done their little bit, he'll [00:24:30] sack them using the excuse of their incompetence.

[00:24:32] But basically this means that no single team ever sees the full layout of the building.

[00:24:36] Adam Cox: So it's not like he's done this purposefully, like from the blueprints that we're gonna have all these weird corridors and stuff like that. It's because there's a bit of a mishmash going along?

[00:24:44] Kyle Risi: I think so, yeah. I dunno if he has got a clear idea. Maybe he does have some plans. He's quite a smart guy, but he's certainly keeping those as secrets.

[00:24:52] And so these construction workers that are working on this building, they only ever really know. The little bit that they have built in isolation.

[00:24:59] Do you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. [00:25:00] They don't really understand the context of it or where it's coming from. They're just like, I need you to finish this room. It's here. Lemme show you how to get there. Build it

[00:25:07] Adam Cox: right.

[00:25:08] Kyle Risi: However, homes does keep a few contractors on.

[00:25:11] These are the ones who basically ask the fewest questions and blindly do whatever he instructs them to do.

[00:25:18] In particular, this includes a carpenter he meets in 1889 called Benjamin Pit. Now Pit is a dodgy character and he knows not to medal, and as a result, he becomes [00:25:30] this kind of right hand man to homes and these schemes that he runs.

[00:25:34] Adam Cox: So does that mean then that Holmes was building this with kind of a murder room or whatever in mind?

[00:25:41] Kyle Risi: I think when we understand some of the features of the hotel and we uncover some of these crimes, I think it'll become very apparent that the answer to that question is yes.

[00:25:52] Adam Cox: So I'm guessing like there's some carpenters here that are like, why do you want like a chainsaw to like swing down from the ceiling all of a sudden it's like, um, [00:26:00] no reason.

[00:26:01] Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly. So once a hotel is finally finished, he rents out a lot of the businesses on the ground floor. He starts renting out apartments on the middle floor, and he starts employing some staff.

[00:26:11] And mysteriously, a lot of people in the area start to disappear and not to point any fingers at homes, but most of those people are his employees.

[00:26:21] And amazingly, one of the conditions for working for homes or renting a shop or even staying at the hotel as a guest, is that you [00:26:30] needed to sign a life insurance policy, which Holmes would pay for himself and name himself as a beneficiary.

[00:26:37] Adam Cox: Hang on, that sounds well dodgy. It

[00:26:39] Kyle Risi: does, you're not signing that, are you? But they did, and the reason why they did is because he would frame this as a very generous employee benefit.

[00:26:50] Adam Cox: So it doesn't matter if you are renting a shop or whatever. Mm-hmm. Or you are working in the hotel.

[00:26:55] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:56] Adam Cox: And if you are a paying guest. Mm-hmm. That one is really weird. The other [00:27:00] two I could see, okay, this is some kind of nice perk of, you know, working in this building.

[00:27:04] But a guest though,

[00:27:05] Kyle Risi: let me explain.

[00:27:06] So because the welfare was coming to the city, there is a massive boom in construction. Plus there's a huge increase in street cars all over Chicago, which means that the city has been ravaged by accidents.

[00:27:20] So people, when they get into these accidents, they are genuinely left, unable to support their families.

[00:27:25] So he uses this pretense of being a caring boss, where [00:27:30] if the worst should happen, he would get the payout and then expedite the money onto your families in order to help you in the event that you were in a tragic accident.

[00:27:37] Adam Cox: I see. And this is the time before they probably had like traffic lights, things like that.

[00:27:41] Kyle Risi: Yes.

[00:27:42] Adam Cox: And people were getting run down, left, right, and center.

[00:27:44] Kyle Risi: That's right. And so no one questions this until, of course the vanishings start piling up.

[00:27:50] And he liked to do a number of different things, including locking them in air, tight bedrooms, and then gassing them through kind of the lighting gas lines, because everything was gas at the time.

[00:27:59] So [00:28:00] he'd rig them so that he would then just turn on a valve, and then it'd just be like the gas would build up and they would just end up suffocating.

[00:28:06] Adam Cox: Oh, so we're getting straight into the killing.

[00:28:08] Kyle Risi: Yes.

[00:28:09] Adam Cox: That's a bit like a bit of a lead up. There's a mystery that go missing and whatever.

[00:28:13] Kyle Risi: Oh yeah. I've said twice and go missing now. Time to get to the killing.

[00:28:17] Adam Cox: Like how many Were going? Missing

[00:28:19] Kyle Risi: a lot.

[00:28:19] Adam Cox: Damn.

[00:28:20] Kyle Risi: We'll get to that in the end.

[00:28:21] He also had, uh, a soundproof bank vault built near his office on the second floor where he would basically lure employees in under the pretense of maybe [00:28:30] retrieving some kind of documents.

[00:28:31] He would then lock them in and he would just leave them in there until they ran out of air.

[00:28:35] There's also a secret room that he had with no windows. It was only accessible via a trap door. Mm-hmm. In the ceiling.

[00:28:42] He would basically drop you in there and then he would watch you through a peephole until they basically died of thirst or hunger, or if he got fed up with their pleas, he then just finish him off with gas.

[00:28:55] Adam Cox: Wow. So he has created multiple torture rooms?

[00:28:58] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:28:59] He even [00:29:00] rigs up the upper floors with a custom motion detector kind of alarm system, and it's basically. Silent for a start. So it's all rigged up into his, personal apartments. he can use this to remotely monitor victim's movement.

[00:29:13] So This is how he would know if someone that he had trapped, managed to stumble out of one of the gas rooms or climbed out through one of the trap doors or whatever and where they're now roaming through the hotel, this would signal to him and then he can come and get them.

[00:29:24] Adam Cox: I see. So it's, is it like a wire or something then?

[00:29:27] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:27] Adam Cox: Yeah. And so it's connected to a door. So they're basically, or whatever [00:29:30] it is, they managed to get out. It just rings a little bell in his

[00:29:32] Kyle Risi: room.

[00:29:32] Adam Cox: I see. It's like before CCTV.

[00:29:35] Kyle Risi: Yes.

[00:29:35] Adam Cox: The best that they could do.

[00:29:36] Kyle Risi: Once these victims are dead, of course he needed to dispose of their bodies and he can't just lug them through the hotel.

[00:29:42] Instead he uses a series of secret metal shoots That he can dump the bodies directly into the basement

[00:29:48] Adam Cox: Right

[00:29:49] Kyle Risi: down there. He's completely set up to basically dissect them. He will remove their flesh, he'll remove their organs. He'll basically turn you into a skeleton. One of those medical model skeletons that you normally [00:30:00] see on display in hospitals, which he then systematically sells to medical schools.

[00:30:04] Adam Cox: So that's why he's doing this.

[00:30:06] 'cause he is still loving to dissect,

[00:30:08] Kyle Risi: Basically he's found a way to make money from his passion.

[00:30:10] Adam Cox: Yeah. I mean,

[00:30:11] Kyle Risi: which is important.

[00:30:14] Adam Cox: It's good. We should, um, you know, well done to him for that. But then, so he is taking the skeletons or whatever body parts, what's selling them to universities.

[00:30:22] I mean, In some ways it's smart. I mean, it's morbid,

[00:30:25] Kyle Risi: it's awful. What do you

[00:30:26] Adam Cox: mean it's horrible? But it's to build a whole building that traps people, to [00:30:30] gas them, to then dump them into a cellar, to then dissect them to themselves.

[00:30:33] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:34] Adam Cox: That's quite impressive in a way.

[00:30:36] Kyle Risi: You just keep harping on about how impressive this is. Maybe we should move on before, before our freaks of the show get really worried.

[00:30:42] Adam Cox: I bet it is horrible. Don't get me wrong.

[00:30:44] Kyle Risi: But it's great.

[00:30:46] Adam Cox: But it's impressive.

[00:30:48] Kyle Risi: And again, Adam, the weird thing is no one's asking questions.

[00:30:51] Adam Cox: Which is weird. These people who are going missing, I don't understand what is wrong with people in the 19 hundreds.

[00:30:57] Kyle Risi: Not even the people that he is selling these [00:31:00] organs to or the, the medical models to

[00:31:02] Adam Cox: Yeah. Like why, how do you find all these bodies?

[00:31:06] Kyle Risi: Exactly. So, and the reason why they're not asking questions is because he's a medical doctor.

[00:31:09] Right. It's commonplace at the time. To rob Graves and then sell these corpses to universities.

[00:31:14] So it's largely driven by the shortage of cadavers needed for study. And I'm sure people do have questions, but they knew better not to ask those questions else risk cutting off that supply.

[00:31:24] Adam Cox: Isn't it weird to think that was the norm back then that people were grave robbing and that's why people [00:31:30] turned a blind eye or accepted it.

[00:31:31] Kyle Risi: At the same time though, it is why we have the medical knowledge that we have today. Because of that we have to also kind of morbidly respect. The history that came before.

[00:31:41] Adam Cox: Yeah, that's true. Anything we know about the body has become from a morbid curiosity. Right?

[00:31:48] Kyle Risi: Exactly. Yes, of course. Anything that he is unable to sell, he basically, he disposes of, using Lyme to break down the bodies. He also has these two furnaces that are set up in the basement to just incinerate any [00:32:00] of the bodies or any of the evidence.

[00:32:01] Adam Cox: Wow.

[00:32:02] Kyle Risi: But he's also torturing them as well, because down there in the basement, he also has a stretching rack.

[00:32:09] Adam Cox: Oh God.

[00:32:10] Kyle Risi: He's unhinged Adam.

[00:32:12] Now in 1891, by the way, all of this is happening. The building is still being constructed. What? Yeah. Yeah. It's wild.

[00:32:21] In 1891, while the building's still being constructed, Ned Connor and his wife Julia smi, they move into the building.

[00:32:28] Now Ned works as a watchmaker selling [00:32:30] jewelry, which is also where Julia works as well. Holmes strikes up an affair with Julia, and eventually Ned finds out.

[00:32:38] Of course, he's devastated, but he's also furious. He leaves Julia and he also abandons their younger daughter, Pearl.

[00:32:45] A little while later, Julia tells Holmes that she's actually pregnant with his baby and she demands that he marries her.

[00:32:52] Adam Cox: But he's not gonna reveal that he's got two other wives.

[00:32:55] Kyle Risi: No. Martha's still obviously in the picture, but she lives out in the suburbs, so she's not really on the scene. So we're not [00:33:00] quite sure whether or not he is telling her the truth that he's connected to, that he has another wife.

[00:33:04] But technically he's got two other wives, and so Holmes does the right thing and he agrees

[00:33:13] Adam Cox: He's a good, honorable man.

[00:33:15] Kyle Risi: Yes. But he does tell her though that they can't actually have a child together because it wouldn't look good for his image as this respectful businessman.

[00:33:22] Adam Cox: Why? Oh, because he's marrying someone else and everyone knows that he's married.

[00:33:25] Kyle Risi: Yes, exactly. So Holmes suggests that he carry out an abortion [00:33:30] on her.

[00:33:30] Adam Cox: Oh.

[00:33:31] Kyle Risi: Which she agrees to. And by some twisted logic, they plan it for Christmas Eve.

[00:33:36] Adam Cox: Ew.

[00:33:37] Kyle Risi: It goes catastrophically wrong or exactly as planned, depending on how you look at it.

[00:33:42] Adam Cox: I feel like it's probably exactly as planned.

[00:33:44] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Julia dies as a result of an overdose from chloroform. Of course, he's now left with Pearl, which he can't explain away Adam, he kills her too. When the tenants ask, like where she is, he just tells 'em that Julia went to Iowa to attend a [00:34:00] family wedding. Of course, she never comes back, and apparently no one ever asks any questions after that.

[00:34:05] Adam Cox: People just,

[00:34:07] Kyle Risi: they're just absorbing their own lives.

[00:34:09] Adam Cox: I, but it feels like enough people have gone missing that people should be at least suspecting, but then I'm guessing, I dunno, new tenants move in and whatever. Yeah.

[00:34:17] Kyle Risi: Well, people's attention spans are just too short for the 18 hundreds. Who knows.

[00:34:21] Adam Cox: Maybe

[00:34:22] Kyle Risi: after Christmas though, just like he had done with some of these other victims, he hires a man named Charles Chapel to turn [00:34:30] Julia into a skeleton model for just $20.

[00:34:33] Now, he finds Charles, believe it or not, through a newspaper advert that literally offers a service. It's called like articulation.

[00:34:39] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:40] Kyle Risi: Or Articulators. And again, no questions are asked. And it's because the demand for skeletons in medical schools means that people will often turn the other way.

[00:34:47] It's all business. And Holmes knows exactly how to exploit that.

[00:34:51] Now, according to the accounts, Charles comes to the hotel, Holmes introduces himself as Henry Gordon.

[00:34:57] He shows him Julia's body [00:35:00] interestingly, for a reason I can't quite understand, Charles is only asked to articulate Julia's arms because Holmes is gonna do the rest of the body himself.

[00:35:08] so Holmes detach the arms, he puts him in a bag, and off Charles goes.

[00:35:11] Adam Cox: So why just the arms?

[00:35:13] Kyle Risi: I get the impression that maybe Holmes wanted to get a good price for Julius skeleton because she's six foot tall, so she's quite tall, especially for a woman of that period. So I think maybe he maybe struggled with doing arms and maybe he was confident doing the rest of the body, but he wanted a professional to do the [00:35:30] arms so that when he took the skeleton to some kind of medical school, he can be like, look as a female who's six foot tall and they're paying top dollar for it.

[00:35:36] Adam Cox: Right. Okay. And I'm guessing he is, it's all like the hands and the thumbs and everything like

[00:35:41] Kyle Risi: that? I think so. Yeah. Either way it's gross how business like this entire transaction is, right? They're literally discussing her like she's a piece of furniture.

[00:35:48] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:35:48] Kyle Risi: Which is a bit, a bit morbid, but this isn't the only time he hires Charles. He actually calls on him two more times. Once for a man, and then another time for another woman that he's killed. Again, I'm assuming they're all [00:36:00] employees.

[00:36:00] However, after the third skeleton Holmes actually refuses to pay Charles, he tells him basically that he's struggling financially, which may or may not be true. I know like the construction of the hotel was really going off kilter. The deadline for the welfare was coming up, so maybe he was low on cash, I'm not sure.

[00:36:16] And because of this, Charles decides that he's gonna keep the skeleton himself, and for years it just sits in his living room, which of course becomes a vital piece of evidence once all of his crimes eventually come out in the future.

[00:36:28] Adam Cox: Okay. And so is he just keeping it [00:36:30] in a box or something

[00:36:30] Kyle Risi: like that?

[00:36:30] Yeah, he's hoping that maybe he's gonna come to him with the money at some point. Mm-hmm. and then he would hand it over. But he is basically keeping it for ransom at this moment in time.

[00:36:38] Adam Cox: I see

[00:36:39] Kyle Risi: now, a few years earlier, likely in Boston, Holmes actually meets a woman called Minnie Williams.

[00:36:45] At the time, she was an aspiring actress and also an heiress to a chunk of land in Texas. He introduces himself as Henry Gordon.

[00:36:52] They date for a while. Things don't really work out.

[00:36:56] They do, however, keep in touch by sending each other love letters every so [00:37:00] often.

[00:37:00] Eventually, however, in early 1893, Minnie shows up in Chicago. They end up reconnecting and homes offers her a job as a stenographer, which is basically a shorthand typist.

[00:37:11] And soon after that there were a romantic relationship, basically. Start up again.

[00:37:15] Of course, she knows him as Henry Gordon. So she's confused when everyone starts calling him HH Holmes, like around the business and stuff. So she's I thought your name was Gordon.

[00:37:26] Adam Cox: Yeah. How did he think he's gonna get away with that?

[00:37:28] Kyle Risi: Basically [00:37:30] explains this away by saying that this is his way of keeping his romantic side quests separate from his respectful business persona and Adam, to her, it completely makes sense. And also, if I'm honest, to me it makes sense as well.

[00:37:41] Adam Cox: These, this guy is pulling the wall over so many people's eyes.

[00:37:44] Kyle Risi: He must be extraordinarily good looking if he's able to manipulate these people and lure them in this way. Right.

[00:37:49] Adam Cox: That or just got a gift of the gab. Mm-hmm. Or everything. He kind of, he must look just quite normal.

[00:37:55] Kyle Risi: He does look quite normal.

[00:37:56] He's got a classic bowl of hat on. He's got a big mustache. He looks quite young. [00:38:00] He looks respectful. Yeah.

[00:38:01] Adam Cox: Yeah. So he is now shacked up with this other woman. Mm-hmm. Whilst his other wife. Who's just not really around. She must be quite happy. Just have not having him around either to, to stay away, right?

[00:38:09] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And as time goes on, he takes an interest in her assets, specifically the land that she's inherited in Fort Worth in Texas.

[00:38:18] Now, she doesn't really know how to protect her assets at that point, or what to even do. she's just inherited these assets and she's like, oh, I dunno what to do, but I'm really rich, sort of thing. Yeah.

[00:38:27] Adam Cox: And I bet he's like, I can help with that. [00:38:30]

[00:38:30] Kyle Risi: Exactly.

[00:38:30] Adam Cox: Life insurance.

[00:38:32] Kyle Risi: No. So basically what he does, he invents another alias called Alexander Bond as some kind of legal entity. He persuades her to sign over the bond to the property over to this Alexander Guy. Basically, he convinces her that it's some kind of trust.

[00:38:47] Like a lawyer or something. But really it's him. It doesn't exist. It's just him.

[00:38:51] she buys it. she agrees. She signs everything over. But the irony in the sloppiness of this alias is a loss on me because basically he's got a guy called Alexander [00:39:00] Bond to persuade her to sign over the bond to the property.

[00:39:03] Adam Cox: You're thinking about it. It's like, we need a Bond. Alexander Bond.

[00:39:08] Kyle Risi: I know I've got the perfect name, but it sounds trustworthy, right? It's literally in the name.

[00:39:14] Adam Cox: So she knows that Alexander Bond is an alias and that what?

[00:39:17] Kyle Risi: No, she thinks Alexander Bond is real.

[00:39:19] Adam Cox: Oh, I see. Well, his name's Bond. It must be legit.

[00:39:24] Kyle Risi: Of course, the scam is wraps up in obviously all the paperwork designed to benefit him [00:39:30] exclusively. Which eventually comes into effect when he proposes to her and they end up getting married.

[00:39:36] By the way, he's still married to Clara and he's still married to Marta.

[00:39:40] Adam Cox: That's a crime in itself.

[00:39:41] Kyle Risi: It is a massive crime. I mean, he may have told Millie that they've divorced. It is possible, like he lied about being married at all.

[00:39:49] So I don't know if she knows the full situation of what he's in, but we know that Martha's living in the suburbs and we know that Clara's back home in New Hampshire.

[00:39:56] Adam Cox: Sure. And he is also probably going by a different name, so he can probably easily

[00:39:59] Kyle Risi: Oh, [00:40:00] of course.

[00:40:00] He's going by a different name. Yes, exactly. So Saka Love Lovering is not gonna know.

[00:40:05] Yeah.

[00:40:05] But also, Martha's not actively running the business anyway, like she's not really got anything to do with it. So the deception likely works well in his favor there, because like Yeah, she's not around.

[00:40:15] Adam Cox: I bet she's having an affair.

[00:40:16] Kyle Risi: Yeah, probably

[00:40:17] Adam Cox: Yeah. Everyone was doing it in the 1890s.

[00:40:19] Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly.

[00:40:20] Anyway, after they get married, he suggests that Minnie invite her sister Annie to come and visit when she arrives. He is incredibly welcoming. He [00:40:30] shows her around the hotel. She's charmed by Holmes, but then one day while Nanny is in the office, Holmes ask her to go into the vault to fetch a file.

[00:40:38] Adam Cox: Uh oh.

[00:40:39] Kyle Risi: Yeah. She goes inside, he locks her in, and then he feeds gas into the vault and he murders her.

[00:40:45] Adam Cox: Damn.

[00:40:46] Kyle Risi: Minnie also vanishes around about this time. Conveniently, I think maybe he was trying to lure nanny in, because of course with Minnie out the way, it means that she then inherited property. But with Nanny out the way as well, it goes to [00:41:00] him.

[00:41:00] Later on, Holmes actually confesses to poisoning her in her sleep, but we can't really be sure of this because as you'll find out later on, he contradicts himself so much in his story, even when he eventually confesses. We just cannot place exactly what he's done, so we have to go by the evidence.

[00:41:16] Adam Cox: I was gonna say, how do we know so much about this, but

[00:41:19] Kyle Risi: clearly mostly through eyewitness testimony, but also the evidence that we're gonna find inside the basement, and also what Holmes tells us as well,

[00:41:27] Adam Cox: right?

[00:41:28] Kyle Risi: In other confessions, he says [00:41:30] that he puts her body in a trunk and then dumps it into Lake Michigan. So there's different conflicting accounts.

[00:41:35] Eventually. construction of the castle is finally finished and home benefits from the massive influx of people that start visiting for the welfare.

[00:41:44] But when the fair leaves the city, the castle's kind of struck by a strange series of unexplained fires and also unsuccessful insurance claims.

[00:41:54] Adam Cox: And are they all started by him?

[00:41:56] Kyle Risi: Possibly. You would think so, wouldn't you? Of course, sensing [00:42:00] fraud. Insurers contact the police, which obviously draws the police's attention to homes.

[00:42:04] The police also then start to notice that there is a suspiciously high number of missing people that are associated with him in one way or another.

[00:42:12] Adam Cox: So did he cause those fires then, or is it just a kind of,

[00:42:16] Kyle Risi: I think now that he's benefited from the World's Fair he maybe wants to cash in on the insurance and maybe just be done at the hotel.

[00:42:22] I'm not sure.

[00:42:23] Adam Cox: Sure. I can understand that. But I almost feel like. He can't do it too often, like mm-hmm. He's, he gonna draw too much attention to himself. [00:42:30]

[00:42:30] Kyle Risi: Yes. The police are now sniffing around.

[00:42:32] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:42:32] Kyle Risi: So Adam, the question is, what is a serial killer to do at this point?

[00:42:37] Adam Cox: Do some more killing?

[00:42:38] Kyle Risi: No, he leaves Chicago.

[00:42:39] Adam Cox: Oh, okay.

[00:42:41] Kyle Risi: He actually makes a beeline. For Fort Worth, Texas.

[00:42:44] Adam Cox: Okay. So he does a runner.

[00:42:45] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. And as we know in Fort Worth, Texas, he now owns a lovely bit of soil in the form of Mini's property.

[00:42:53] Adam Cox: Oh yeah, of course. Poor mini.

[00:42:55] Kyle Risi: It's the perfect location for him to set up and start again with a brand new motor [00:43:00] castle.

[00:43:00] Ah. So I reckon that was a plan all along. He was gonna burn down the murder castle Because I guess it gets rid of all the evidence that's in there, right?

[00:43:07] Adam Cox: Well, yeah, there's gas chambers.

[00:43:08]

[00:43:08] Kyle Risi: So he goes Fort Worth, and he starts constructing a new property He has dug the foundations at this point. He's also in the process of buying all the materials. When all of a sudden the cops come sniffing around looking into some very dodgy insurance claims from Chicago.

[00:43:25] So basically it all catches up with him very, very fast

[00:43:28] Adam Cox: Okay. So did he manage [00:43:30] to get rid of the other castle then the building? 'cause I'm just thinking there's so much evidence there. Nope,

[00:43:34] Kyle Risi: it's still there.

[00:43:35] Adam Cox: Ah,

[00:43:36] Kyle Risi: he still has it. Yeah. And it's still being run. So he's still getting all the rent from the shop owners and the people who are renting the apartments. Maybe he's got a manager in there. I'm not sure.

[00:43:44] Adam Cox: I see. Okay.

[00:43:45] Kyle Risi: And so Adam, he has to make a run for it again, but not before stealing some horses.

[00:43:50] So now he's got insurers looking for him, and the cops are looking for these horses as well. So he skips to a few different places, but to his dismay, when he gets to those places, the cops come [00:44:00] sniffing around again.

[00:44:00] So constantly chasing him around from city to city.

[00:44:03] Eventually he gets to Denver, Colorado in January of 1894 and assumes a new alias, Henry Mansfield Howard, and quickly meets and marries a respectful daughter of a religious family called Georgiana Yolk.

[00:44:18] Adam Cox: Ah, and are they rich?

[00:44:19] Kyle Risi: They are very rich. But also, dude, you are on the run. Do you really have time for this?

[00:44:25] Adam Cox: There's always time for a wife. Yeah, there's

[00:44:27] Kyle Risi: There's always time for love and murder.

[00:44:29] Adam Cox: [00:44:30] Mm-hmm.

[00:44:30] Kyle Risi: I guess.

[00:44:30] Adam Cox: And so these horses he stole, was he like. Galloping,

[00:44:33] Kyle Risi: I dunno, I dunno what capacity he stolen the horses. I guess he just needed transportation and maybe he wasn't, didn't wanna rely on maybe trains and things like that to get to these big cities. I guess maybe the most efficient way to do it is buy horse.

[00:44:45] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:44:46] Kyle Risi: But he's stolen these horses, basically, and that's what they're looking for.

[00:44:49] Adam Cox: Gotcha.

[00:44:49] Kyle Risi: So soon after this, they flee to St. Louis, and in July, 1894, he's finally busted for stealing the horses Of course, Gianna's family, they have money and so they managed to bail him [00:45:00] out.

[00:45:00] But while he's waiting for the paperwork and the money to be sorted, he ends up striking up a conversation with a convicted train robber named Marian Hedge Perth.

[00:45:08] Because Marian is about Guy Holmes figures, he might know some dodgy contacts that will help him pull off his next scheme because right now he needs money. He needs money A to pay back the Gianna's family for the bail that he is got, but he also needs money to get the hell out of a Dodge.

[00:45:24] What he wants specifically is ion, to put him into contact with a dodgy lawyer, someone who will basically [00:45:30] help facilitate a $10,000 life insurance policy that is gonna take takeout on himself.

[00:45:36] Adam Cox: So he's gonna try and fake his own death.

[00:45:37] Kyle Risi: He's going to fake his own death. And basically he offers Marian $500 in commission for setting up that initial meeting.

[00:45:44] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:45:45] Kyle Risi: Marian agrees. It's a guy called jva, how, and JVA is all in. Unfortunately, the plan fails when the insurance company becomes suspicious and they refuse the payouts altogether.

[00:45:57] Adam Cox: Is that because of his name?

[00:45:59] Kyle Risi: It's not [00:46:00] because of his name? No, it's basically because the policy was taken out yesterday and the guy died too.

[00:46:06] Adam Cox: That's when you have to wait at least two weeks.

[00:46:08] Kyle Risi: Exactly. So they're gonna try again, but they're gonna plan it better this time. They'll wait the required time before putting in the claim,

[00:46:15] Adam Cox: told you,

[00:46:15] Kyle Risi: but of course they can't now fake his death again because he's already dead, right?

[00:46:20] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:46:21] Kyle Risi: So instead they rope in his old mate, Benjamin Pit.

[00:46:25] Adam Cox: He was the carpenter.

[00:46:27] Kyle Risi: Yes, he was. He's this dodgy [00:46:30] carpenter friend.

[00:46:30] So Petzel agrees to fake his own death. Basically, he's going to go to Philadelphia where they're gonna stage the whole death, and then he's going to go into hiding Holmes and Pit's Wife will then go off to claim the money, and then from there they'll split the money between the three of them, including the lawyer.

[00:46:46] Adam Cox: And so does Pit's wife know about this?

[00:46:48] Is she

[00:46:48] Kyle Risi: in a, she knows she's all in.

[00:46:50] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:46:50] Kyle Risi: So Pit sets himself up as an inventor in Pennsylvania under the name of EF Perry. He's basically gonna stage a lab explosion where he ends [00:47:00] up getting killed and horrifically disfigured in the process.

[00:47:03] Holmes's part in all of this is that he's gonna source a body that will play the role of pit.

[00:47:09] Right? But instead of finding a body, Holmes decides I'm just gonna kill pit. Oh

[00:47:14] Adam Cox: God.

[00:47:17] I mean, yeah, that's, that's one way.

[00:47:21] Kyle Risi: He knocks him unconscious using chloroform, and then he basically sets his body on fire. He then links up with Pit's wife, right? He tells her everything went according [00:47:30] to plan. Pit is of course lying low until they can get the money and then they're of course gonna make a run for it.

[00:47:35] She has no idea that he's actually dead. And so when the required amount of time goes by, they then go off together and they claim the money.

[00:47:41] By the way, I have no idea where Gianna is during any of this. She may as well be dead. I have no idea.

[00:47:48] Adam Cox: Oh yeah. Was he not married?

[00:47:49] Kyle Risi: He got married.

[00:47:51] Adam Cox: He does like to marry a wife then leave her.

[00:47:54] And also, what name is he going by now? 'cause he's technically dead. But is it Who's dead? Actually dead.

[00:47:58] Which of his aliases is [00:48:00] dead?

[00:48:00] Kyle Risi: Oh God. It might be Henry Gordon who's dead.

[00:48:02] Adam Cox: That's why I was thinking, is it that one?

[00:48:03] This is just,

[00:48:04] Kyle Risi: it's messy, isn't it? Yeah.

[00:48:06] Anyway, they go to collect the money. They get the money and Holmes says, okay, we now need to get to safety and link up with your husband pit.

[00:48:15] Right? But we can't travel together. But I also cannot travel alone.

[00:48:20] You have five kids, Mrs. Pit. And so how about you sign over custody of three of them to me. I'll take Alice, Nelly, and [00:48:30] Howard.

[00:48:30] That way if I'm stopped on my way up to Canada where we're gonna meet, it'll look like I'm a respectful father or a businessman.

[00:48:39] Adam Cox: Wow, that's um,

[00:48:40] and she's just gonna be like, yeah, sure, I'll sign away. Three kids.

[00:48:43] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. He tells her, you keep the eldest son for protection. Obviously you take the baby 'cause he needs his mother.

[00:48:48] And we'll then make our way along different routes up towards London and Canada.

[00:48:53] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:48:54] Kyle Risi: That is basically where they're gonna reunite with pit pit's dead.

[00:48:58] So eventually both of them get to [00:49:00] Detroit. They are just about across the border into Canada and make their way to London. Right.

[00:49:05] They still are separate though. They're staying literally just blocks away from each other when homes. Is arrested by the Pinkerton National Detective Agency

[00:49:15] Adam Cox: okay.

[00:49:16] Kyle Risi: Does that ring a bell for you?

[00:49:17] Adam Cox: Is that like a private detective agency?

[00:49:19] Kyle Risi: It is, yeah. They're this famous private security and detective agency that's was like established by Alan Pinkerton in 1850 or something. They wrote a fame after falling a plot to assassinate, [00:49:30] President-Elect Abraham Lincoln.

[00:49:32] And as a result, when Lincoln became president, he hired the agency as his personal security agency during the Civil War. I see. So a lot of history going on there. Mm-hmm. But yeah, he gets busted by them.

[00:49:44] And it turns out they've been trailing him four months ever since he made the rookie mistake of failing to pay Marian Hedgepath.

[00:49:53] Adam Cox: Oh yeah. That's the one he, put his confidence in.

[00:49:55] Yeah. And screwed over. Mm-hmm. So Marian basically said, go after this [00:50:00] guy. Yeah. One, he owes me money and two. Did like he's a crook at the end of the day.

[00:50:03] Kyle Risi: That's right. Yeah. So yeah.

[00:50:04] Adam Cox: Wow.

[00:50:05] Kyle Risi: So basically the Pinkerton detective agency, they start digging into the allegations, and once they do, our whole pattern begins to emerge. All the dodgy fires, the suspicious kind of disappearance, all of it.

[00:50:17] None of it, of course, is definitive. Not yet. At this moment in time, But they do have the outstanding warrant outta Texas. And the fact that he skipped bail and that's enough to basically keep him in custody.

[00:50:29] Adam Cox: So it must have been [00:50:30] quite wild for them to, as they're. Trying to track him down, find out all about him.

[00:50:34] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:50:35] Adam Cox: And then go, oh wait a minute, there's these su suspicious fires.

[00:50:38] Kyle Risi: Yes.

[00:50:38] Adam Cox: Then these missing people.

[00:50:40] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. But they don't know about the circumstances behind the missing people just yet,

[00:50:44] Adam Cox: I guess it's just like this is a really odd character. There's more going on with this story.

[00:50:49] Kyle Risi: That's right.

[00:50:50] And so in July, 1895, they arrested

[00:50:53] at first he puts up this kind of tough guy attitude like all bluster or bravado. But he completely freaks out [00:51:00] when, pretty quickly they threatened to send him back to a Texas jail. And then he's like, please don't send me back to Texas.

[00:51:06] Describing the punishment there as rough and ready, which basically means he doesn't wanna become someone's bitch. Maybe Texans like

[00:51:13] Adam Cox: Wow. Is it? Yeah. I didn't realize prisons there was so bad.

[00:51:15] Kyle Risi: I don't know. But he is freaks out by the idea of going back to Texas,

[00:51:19] Adam Cox: I feel like he's quite posh.

[00:51:20] Imagine if he was British, he'd be going pip.

[00:51:21] Kyle Risi: Yeah. He is a doctor.

[00:51:23] Adam Cox: That's true.

[00:51:24] Kyle Risi: Yeah. But he doesn't come from a very posh family though, like an elite family.

[00:51:27] Adam Cox: No, and he is not a nice man.

[00:51:29] Kyle Risi: No, he is [00:51:30] not.

[00:51:30] And so out of fear of being someone's prison play thing, he confesses to the insurance scams, but he does deny murdering pit. instead he spins the story about how he managed to get a body from a doctor in New York who then shipped it over to Philadelphia Forum to then use as part of the scam.

[00:51:47] But this is where the Pinkerton detective agency really earns their reputation. One of the inspectors remembers that when they first examined pit's body, it was in full rigor mortis suggesting [00:52:00] that whoever the body was must have died within a 24 hour period. Right. If the body had been shipped all the way from New York, that takes days and days and days.

[00:52:08] And by that time, all the muscles in the body would've then relaxed and it would no longer have rigor and mortis.

[00:52:14] Adam Cox: Yeah. So if he was a good doctor, he would've known that.

[00:52:17] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. So they quiz homes on the process that he supposedly used to stiffen the body to make it look fresh. And of course, Hovis doesn't have an answer for that. And so he crumbles basically the gig is [00:52:30] up and he is busted.

[00:52:32] Adam Cox: Ah. I guess if you had lied better and said that you got the body, I don't know, from down the road or something. Not far,

[00:52:37] Kyle Risi: you found the body locally, then he might have been done for not reporting the fact that he's found a body.

[00:52:42] Whereas if he uses the excuse that he got the body from a doctor in New York, he could at least say, well, it was a, a donated body.

[00:52:50] Adam Cox: I, yeah, I get that. But now he can't obviously prove it and yeah, he's asking

[00:52:55] Kyle Risi: basically they don't believe him now.

[00:52:56] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:52:57] Kyle Risi: So he's been busted for the [00:53:00] insurance scams and also murdering pit.

[00:53:01] And so the police, they launched a full on investigation.

[00:53:04] They begin interviewing all his former employees back in Chicago many of these women would simply be just vanish without explanation and never to be seen again.

[00:53:13] They also uncover the life insurance policies that Holmes claimed were kind of employee perks.

[00:53:20] Cleaners they also start reporting that the second and third floor of the castle were strictly off limits to them and so all of this is enough to rouse serious suspicion that [00:53:30] something dodgy was going on in Chicago.

[00:53:32] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:53:32] Kyle Risi: And so over the next month, investigators begin uncovering the building itself, and it turns out it's an absolute labyrinth. As we already know, room after room feature after feature each more macabre than the last.

[00:53:44] They find all the hinged walls. They find all the false partitions. They find doors that open up onto just solid brick. They find trapped doors in rooms. They obviously find all the gas jets installed specifically to asphyxiate people, but they also [00:54:00] find the makeshift silent alarm system that's wire directly into his apartment.

[00:54:04] They're like, why do you need a silent alarm?

[00:54:06] Adam Cox: Yeah. Like finding all this, like what is this place? Yeah. And the thing is a lot of the tenants and people that work there probably wouldn't have known this was there.

[00:54:16] The thought that you are working in a building where people are being tortured,

[00:54:19] Kyle Risi: literally and murdered.

[00:54:20] Yeah. Crazy.

[00:54:21] Of course in the basement they find his operating table and all these surgical instruments, all of it is bloodstained. isn't he meant to be a doctor?

[00:54:29] Adam Cox: Yeah. [00:54:30] Clean.

[00:54:30] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:54:30] They find the crematory ovens along with acid vats and quick line pits that he used to destroy the bodies. They do find remains in them, but they're almost entirely like turn to dust.

[00:54:41] it makes it impossible to identify whether or not the remains were even human.

[00:54:45] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:54:45] Kyle Risi: So you could argue, Adam, that much of this was just circumstantial evidence, right?

[00:54:50] Adam Cox: Well, surely there's blood on the knives.

[00:54:52] Kyle Risi: Yeah. But could it be animal blood? There's no DNA testing back then, right?

[00:54:56] So what they need is to uncover some physical evidence and they [00:55:00] find that very, very quickly because they do end up finding a very, very clearly human bone fragment that belong to a small child, which they assume belonged to, Pearl Connor. They also find a piece of bone that lightly belonged to Julia Connor herself. That's obviously Pearl's mother. Mm-hmm. On account of it obviously being found alongside the bone of the child that they found.

[00:55:21] They also find women's hair in the chimney

[00:55:24] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:55:24] Kyle Risi: They find clothing, including jewelry that belonged to Minnie Williams, which they [00:55:30] were able to verify through a jeweler she had purchased it from before she disappeared.

[00:55:34] So that's, to them, that's quite concrete.

[00:55:36] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:55:37] Kyle Risi: Other macabre evidence that they find includes Adam scratch marks that appear to have been made by people desperately trying to escape from the rooms that they've been trapped in.

[00:55:46] Adam Cox: Oh my God.

[00:55:48] Kyle Risi: One of the most disturbing details is found in the basement.

[00:55:52] They discover a fully distinguishable bare footprint, clearly female, on top of one of the line pits, which means that they [00:56:00] clearly knew that they were about to face death

[00:56:03] Adam Cox: like it is unreal.

[00:56:04] Like to even come up with this kind of building, this torture building. Like this guy is just so twisted.

[00:56:12] Kyle Risi: It's pretty fucked, So while they're excavating, three people discover a tunnel that led from the basement out onto the streets.

[00:56:19] They decide to follow it and it ends up in what looks like a dead end. At the end of the tunnel, they strike a match to get a better look to see if it's a false wall and the right, because behind [00:56:30] it is a massive, massive oil tank and the fumes that are coming off it cause the tunnel in that moment to explode as that match is lit.

[00:56:39] Shit. And even though homes provides various confessions or contradicting each other, he never ever explains what the oil tank was used for or why it was there.

[00:56:48] Adam Cox: So the people that were investigating, they all died.

[00:56:51] Kyle Risi: They didn't die. Actually, but several people were injured. So it caused a massive like kind of gas explosion.

[00:56:57] Adam Cox: So they found it. He never explained it. They, I guess they had [00:57:00] no evidence because it was all set of light.

[00:57:02] Kyle Risi: Yeah, that's right.

[00:57:03] Adam Cox: Geez. So

[00:57:04] Kyle Risi: Holmes is now sitting in jail. All the pieces are coming together because of course they've now found all this baba shit.

[00:57:10] But while the Castle was being investigated, there was one other pressing issue that they had to deal with

[00:57:15] when Word reaches Mrs. Pretzel. Holmes has been arrested. She makes a desperate dash to collect her three children, Alice, Nelly, and Howard.

[00:57:24] When she gets there, the police are like, yeah. When we arrested him, he wasn't with any [00:57:30] kids.

[00:57:30] Adam Cox: Oh God.

[00:57:31] Kyle Risi: So the Pinkerton detective agency, they initiate, uh, literally a nationwide manhunt to try and find them And while all of this is happening, this story obviously explodes in the media.

[00:57:40] This is how it gets pretty much nationwide. Everyone is fascinated by what the police are and covering, obviously at the murder castle. And also now everyone is standing on tender hooks trying to work out, wondering where these kids are. but sadly, it doesn't take them long before the police find their remains.

[00:57:54] They find Howard age 11, he was suffocated in a trunk and dumped in a reservoir somewhere.

[00:57:59] His two [00:58:00] sisters, Alice 15 and Nelly 12, they were both strangled, stuffed into a trunk and then buried under a line pit in a basement of a house their homes had been renting in Indianapolis.

[00:58:10] The landlady basically confirms that she rented him the property, so that's how it was linked to him.

[00:58:15] Adam Cox: God,

[00:58:16] Kyle Risi: it's awful. It's really awful. What he does to them.

[00:58:18] Three months later, in October, 1895, Holmes is then put on trial for the murder of Benjamin Pit. He is found guilty and found guilty of the murders of AL'S children as well. [00:58:30] So that's good.

[00:58:30] At least they got justice.

[00:58:32] But once that guilty verdict comes down and he's sentenced to death, that is when all of the confessions start coming out, right?

[00:58:38] Adam Cox: Really?

[00:58:39] Kyle Risi: And it is incredibly difficult to know how truthful any of them are. A lot of people think he underplays the number of people that he killed. Like he admits to killing 30 people, but then some of the people he claims to have killed are still very much alive and well, a bit like Elizabeth Holton, who they find living in one of the neighboring, uh, neighborhoods.

[00:58:57] Adam Cox: Yeah. Like What is Mo for? [00:59:00] Exaggerating the number of people he killed unless he's just I'm just gonna use this to become famous. But it didn't seem like he was doing it for fame.

[00:59:05] Kyle Risi: It could also be that he's killed so many

[00:59:08] Adam Cox: that he's just forgotten.

[00:59:09] Kyle Risi: He's forgotten.

[00:59:10] Adam Cox: That's, that's worse.

[00:59:12] Kyle Risi: So he is sentenced to death by hanging. But the public, of course, remember at this moment in time, they don't want him to go to the gallows because they still wanna really know what happened.

[00:59:21] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:59:22] Kyle Risi: And so the public are desperate to know. Eventually a newspaper offers him $7,500 in exchange for a [00:59:30] truthful confession.

[00:59:31] Adam, that's an incredible sum. This is how desperate the public wants answers, because it's the equivalent of $215,000 today.

[00:59:39] Adam Cox: I mean, that's a lot. But even if they offer that, who's that going to? To him or to the,

[00:59:44] Kyle Risi: probably to his ancestors. He's still got a son out there.

[00:59:47] Adam Cox: Oh, yeah.

[00:59:48] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Wherever Robert is,

[00:59:49] Adam Cox: what a great dad.

[00:59:50] Kyle Risi: By the way, the newspaper that offers the money is owned by a guy called William Randolph Hurst, who is Patty Hurst's grandfather.

[00:59:59] Adam Cox: Really?

[00:59:59] Kyle Risi: [01:00:00] Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[01:00:01] Adam Cox: Huh.

[01:00:02] Kyle Risi: Anyway, Holmes gives a new confess. It's literally a 10,000 word. I said, I've written down here a 10,000 page ramble. No, it's a 10,000 word ramble, basically, where he admits to killing 27 people. So I guess like people have gone, yeah, but you said blah, blah, blah, and you sent me and this person's still alive. And he's just like, okay. Yeah, it's 27 people

[01:00:20] Adam Cox: round up.

[01:00:21] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[01:00:22] And even then, newspapers are awful. Like they end up serializing the 10,000 word letter. To kind of boost their newspaper sales. It's [01:00:30] gross.

[01:00:30] Adam Cox: So what you're saying is the press have always been, you know, a bit of a piece of shit.

[01:00:34] Kyle Risi: Bit of shit bags. Yeah.

[01:00:35] But even in the confession, he contradicts himself. Constantly about things that are easy, very viable, which makes us really difficult to know. Like I said, what the truth actually is, he's just a habitual liar, and although he admits to some of the murders.

[01:00:49] He also does at times also claim that he's completely innocent. So like he'll admit to the murders, but then he'll say, but I'm also innocent. But the reason why he says that he's innocent is because [01:01:00] he says that he was possessed by Satan.

[01:01:02] And then in the letter he'll talk at length about how while he's in prison, he starts to notice that his appearance started to morph taking on like a Satanic cast. He even says that Satan was emerging out from within him.

[01:01:16] Adam Cox: So is he just because he is confined or is he just gone a bit crazy?

[01:01:21] Kyle Risi: Could be. Could be a little bit from column A, a little bit from column B, but also this is what he says, right?

[01:01:27] He says, I was born with the devil in me. I could not help [01:01:30] the fact that I was a murderer. So maybe he's got like this impulse that he just cannot control and the only way for him to explain it is by him saying, it's 'cause I've got the devil in me.

[01:01:39] Adam Cox: I see.

[01:01:39] Kyle Risi: I understand how that would be a rational explanation when you're a Methodist and you live in that time.

[01:01:43] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:01:44] Kyle Risi: He says, no more than a poet can help the inspiration to sing. I was born with the evil one standing as my sponsor beside my bed when I was ushered into the world. And he has been with me ever since.

[01:01:54] Adam Cox: I see. So yeah, he is saying like it's, yeah, he was born with it. Like we've found out that he's dissecting [01:02:00] cats. Yeah, I guess he's admitting that that's part of him.

[01:02:02] Kyle Risi: He's eventually executed by hanging on the 7th of May, 1896 in Philadelphia County prison. And what a piece of shit. He requests that his coffin be encased in cement and buried 10 feet deep cause he was terrified by the notion of someone stealing his body and using it for dissection.

[01:02:20] What a fucking piece of shit.

[01:02:22] Adam Cox: Yeah, you get, you don't get any requests.

[01:02:25] Kyle Risi: Exactly. But also this proves that he knows exactly how messed up what he's been doing is [01:02:30] 'cause suddenly he's like, no, don't do anything with my body. You yuck, gross. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Apparently though when the trap door opens on the gallows, his neck doesn't snap.

[01:02:39] And so he ends up twitching, therefore 15 minutes before he is eventually pronounced dead.

[01:02:44] And do you know what? That's well deserved. I say, I'm glad he suffered.

[01:02:48] Adam Cox: Do you think that's done on purpose? 'cause sometimes they, depending on how high, like high you fall, right. That kind of,

[01:02:54] Kyle Risi: oh, do you think they did that to try and torture him

[01:02:55] Adam Cox: sometimes? Because I feel like this guy is not a nice man. Would someone have done that?

[01:02:59] Just

[01:02:59] Kyle Risi: [01:03:00] possibly. Yeah. Maybe he make the rope a bit shorter.

[01:03:02] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:03:02] Kyle Risi: But also get this, for years people believed that the murder castle's caretaker, a guy called Pat, Quinlan must have known what was happening in the castle this entire time.

[01:03:11] He's a fucking caretaker. Do you know what I mean? And over the years, newspapers have offered him all sorts of money to tell them what he knew.

[01:03:20] But Adam, he never does.

[01:03:21] But on the 7th of March, 1914, almost 20 years later, pat ends up committing suicide, and next to his body, they find a note that simply [01:03:30] read, I couldn't sleep anymore. So either this is an omission that he was Holmes' accomplice, or that he was potentially ravis by guilt for turning a blind eye.

[01:03:40] Adam Cox: Yeah, no, I think you're right.

[01:03:42] To me, that's someone who knew at some point. Yeah.

[01:03:44] Kyle Risi: Sure.

[01:03:45] the motor Castle. Of course, no longer there today it has since been demolished. But in August, 1895, just after Holmes' crimes came to light, two men were seen entering the back of the castle between eight and 9:00 PM and half an hour [01:04:00] later,

[01:04:00] they were seen running away, followed by several explosions.

[01:04:04] And there are two possible explanations for that. Either they wanted to destroy the building so it didn't become like a macabre tourist landmark. Or they were somehow involved, which was the popular opinion of the time.

[01:04:15] Adam Cox: So that they Yeah, get rid of the Of evidence.

[01:04:18] Kyle Risi: Get rid of the evidence, yeah.

[01:04:19] Adam Cox: Do you think they might have been the people that built it?

[01:04:21] Kyle Risi: What? The construction people?

[01:04:22] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:04:23] Kyle Risi: I mean it was a whole team of different people. Yeah. So I don't think one person knew the extent, but [01:04:30] maybe with the money that he got from the newspapers, he paid someone to go and destroy the evidence. 'cause this was while he was obviously still on trial. Ah,

[01:04:37] Adam Cox: I see.

[01:04:38] Kyle Risi: Of course, over the years, this story has really fascinated people all over the world and has become something of a legend.

[01:04:45] Like we said at the beginning of the show, the fifth season of American Horror Story takes place in the hotel inspired by this story with the character James Marsh being modeled after homes, apparently.

[01:04:56] There's also a theory, as we mentioned again at the top of the show, that Holmes may have [01:05:00] been jacked ripper, and the theory was popularized by his great-great grandson, Jeff Mudget.

[01:05:05] And the theory hinges on the idea that when Holmes first fled Chicago after the murders, he apparently went to London for a bit, which aligns with the timeline of the Ripper murders and might explain why they stopped all of a sudden because he ended up going back to Chicago.

[01:05:21] Adam Cox: Interesting.

[01:05:22] But then it seems like those deaths, they weren't like. Dissected in that sort of way.

[01:05:27] Kyle Risi: But maybe when you are living out of a suitcase, you [01:05:30] do things differently.

[01:05:30] Adam Cox: You just, you have to adapt with, you know, roll the punches.

[01:05:33] Kyle Risi: Yeah. But there are no travel records to support that idea. But at the same time we do know that he had a propensity to move around under different aliases.

[01:05:43] Adam Cox: That's true.

[01:05:44] Kyle Risi: There's also, of course, the Devil in the White City, which is a book by Eric Larson released in 2003, which recounts basically the story of Holmes, which is where a lot of the podcasts get their sources from.

[01:05:55] But over the years, a bunch of people have proposed adapting that [01:06:00] book into a film, and the first person to propose it is Martin Scorsese.

[01:06:06] Adam Cox: Really?

[01:06:07] Kyle Risi: Yeah. he wants Leonardo DiCaprio to star as HH Holmes

[01:06:11] Adam Cox: like has this been a film I feel like it should have been by now.

[01:06:15] Kyle Risi: Well, I mean, they've come pretty close.

[01:06:17] It has been shelved hulu did pick it up as a TV series starring Keanu Reeves, I don't know, as HH Holmes or maybe someone else, But again, that's also fallen through, but they are still trying to make it happen.

[01:06:28] Scorsese is reportedly [01:06:30] working on trying to finalize the script, and so there is hope that maybe by the end of 2026 they might have made some progress in deciding what is gonna be a TV show or whether or not it's gonna be an actual film.

[01:06:43] If Martin Scorsese's involved, it's probably gonna be a film.

[01:06:46] Adam Cox: Yeah, that's interesting. I think it's weird how we're like, oh, that makes such a great movie, but actually a bunch of people died. This is horrific.

[01:06:55] Kyle Risi: Now listen on that real quick. I get it. Lots of people died. This also happened a long [01:07:00] time ago, so I think when it comes to sensitivity, it almost exists on a scale.

[01:07:03] It's always appropriate to be sensitive when people lose their lives.

[01:07:06] But this is also a really historic thing, right? It's the first American serial killer. And I think so many of the details over the years have been lost. We can't guarantee all of the facts in this story.

[01:07:18] So I think what you tend to find is that it's embellished enough over the years for us to look at this as a bit of entertainment.

[01:07:25] I dunno, is that the right thing to say? Are people gonna cancel me?

[01:07:27] Adam Cox: I think I hear what you're saying. Like [01:07:30] it's, it's quite far removed in terms of ancestors and things like that.

[01:07:33] Kyle Risi: Yes.

[01:07:34] And don't get me wrong, I honestly don't believe that he built the murder castle for the specific purpose of killing people.

[01:07:40] I think he built the murder castle as a business, ' And then he built in features that allowed him to carry out his hobbies.

[01:07:47] Adam Cox: He's an entrepreneur.

[01:07:49] Kyle Risi: He, but he is also a killer.

[01:07:50] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:07:50] Kyle Risi: So I think, did he build the castle for the sole purpose of murdering people?

[01:07:55] No.

[01:07:56] Did he build the castle for the sole purpose of doing business? [01:08:00] Yes. And as it was being constructed, he was like, it'd be really nice if I had a trap door so I can kill people occasionally.

[01:08:05] Adam Cox: Well, Yeah, if he said that he's always had like the devil in him, then he is let me mi mix my hobby and my business together.

[01:08:13] Yeah. Weird, weird man. But I had no idea that was,

[01:08:17] Kyle Risi: Hey, I haven't understood the end bit yet.

[01:08:18] Adam Cox: Oh,

[01:08:18] Kyle Risi: and Adam, that is the story of HH Holmes.

[01:08:22] Adam Cox: I had no idea. I had no idea. Generally that was not what I was expecting.

[01:08:28] Kyle Risi: Wasn't what I was expecting either. [01:08:30] If I'm honest, I didn't really know this story. I knew of, but I didn't know the story.

[01:08:33] Adam Cox: I thought he was just a, like a regular serial killer, not this man on the run. Wow.

[01:08:39] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[01:08:39] Adam Cox: Interesting. Well told.

[01:08:41] Kyle Risi: Anyway. Should we do a couple shout outs?

[01:08:43] Adam Cox: Let's do it.

[01:08:43] Kyle Risi: Guys. As you know, HR have been harder work assigning the idea roles to our certified freaks and our top tier members.

[01:08:50] Adam Cox: But the only problem is why we know your job title. We don't actually know what your job actually entails.

[01:08:57] Kyle Risi: So when you hear your name, take note [01:09:00] of your job title, and then use the link in the show notes to submit your official job description to hr.

[01:09:07] Adam Cox: They want to know what your duties involve, who you report to, and any major incidents that have happened under your watch.

[01:09:13] Kyle Risi: They also wanna know how you are, of course, tracking against your KPIs, if you have any. And of course, when you submit those, we'll read some of the best ones on a future episode.

[01:09:24] This week we'd like to extend a very big welcome to Amy Campbell Our Popcorn Machine [01:09:30] Whisperer

[01:09:30] Adam Cox: Natalie Our Boom-Whip Recoil Incident Documentation Specialist

[01:09:34] Kyle Risi: that's just a bunch of words. Say it again. Our boom, whip, recoil, instant documentation specialist.

[01:09:41] Adam Cox: Yeah, I don't know what that is.

[01:09:43] Kyle Risi: I'm sure Natalie is gonna work that one out.

[01:09:44] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:09:45] Kyle Risi: We have Sam Goessling Our Fire-Eater Temperature Variance Filing officer

[01:09:49] Adam Cox: Tracy Reis Our Cotton Candy Density Estimation Trainee.

[01:09:54] Kyle Risi: This too thick.

[01:09:56] We have Melina Cameron Our Deputy Coordinator of Conflicting [01:10:00] Drum Tempo Signals

[01:10:01] Adam Cox: conflicting, and then and finally, we have SharaLeigh Fries Our Acting Supervisor of Conflicting Ring A nnouncements, whatever that means.

[01:10:12] Kyle Risi: Welcome to the Compendium guys.

[01:10:14] And this week's job description is actually from Jessica Sue, our Foghorn synchronized blast timing technician.

[01:10:21] Adam, do you wanna read this one out?

[01:10:23] Adam Cox: Yeah. So Jessica Sue says, being the Foghorn synchronized blast timing technician is a very tough role in the [01:10:30] compendium.

[01:10:30] Our last one went deaf, silly workplace incident. Her main role is to adjust horn pressure based on tent, acoustics, humidity, and clown density. Mm.

[01:10:42] This ensurers blasts are loud enough to startle, but not so loud that the lion files a conformal complaint. There are tweets that are like that.

[01:10:54] She also says that she has to report to the monkeys and lions as they make the foghorn schedules. They are [01:11:00] very strict. They do. They crack the whip.

[01:11:02] She says They have had a few small incidents once she accidentally left the foghorn on too loud and a tightrope walker was blasted right out of the tent.

[01:11:11] He was okay after surgery, which was fine though. He will never walk the tightrope again.

[01:11:15] Kyle Risi: No, you'll never work in this city again.

[01:11:18] Adam Cox: Yeah. But she's been assured he will been assigned a better suited role.

[01:11:22] Kyle Risi: Oh

[01:11:23] Adam Cox: yeah. In the kitchen. Thanks. Good that we try and keep our stuff.

[01:11:26] And Jessica believes she consistently delivers high impact honks [01:11:30] under pressure, demonstrated exceptional judgment in moments of escalating nonsense and room to grow in restraint. And she's hoping to be promoted to chief honk engineer, director of unexpected noises, or casually known as the Emergency WA consultant.

[01:11:48] And like Monica Geller, she says she wears an unattached headset that makes her look like she knows what she's doing. Oh,

[01:11:53] Kyle Risi: yes, she definitely one of them. Right? It's how you know it is. How you know you're important, but yes, well done.

[01:11:58] Adam Cox: That is a brilliant [01:12:00] job description.

[01:12:00] Kyle Risi: This is what we expect, bitches.

[01:12:02] Adam Cox: She's thought about this. It's not just chat GPT.

[01:12:06] Right. Then should we run the outro for this week?

[01:12:08] Kyle Risi: Let's do it.

[01:12:10] And that brings us to the end of a fascinating foray into the compendium and assembly of fascinating things. We hope you enjoyed the ride as much as we did,

[01:12:17] Adam Cox: and if today's episode has sparks your curiosity, then please do us a favor and follow us on your favorite podcast app. It truly makes a world of difference and helps more people discover the show.

[01:12:27] Kyle Risi: And for our dedicated freaks out there. Don't forget, the [01:12:30] next week's episode is already waiting for you on our Patreon. And as always, it's completely free to access.

[01:12:35] Adam Cox: And if you want even more, then join our certified Freaks tier to unlock the entire archive. You get to delve into exclusive content and get a sneak peek at what's coming next.

[01:12:44] Kyle Risi: We drop new episodes every Tuesday, and until then, remember the walls of history hold both truth and legend.

[01:12:52] We'll see you next time.

[01:12:53] Adam Cox: See you.

[01:12:54]