America's First Serial Killer

Secret passages, sliding walls, trapdoors in the floors, oddly angled hallways, stairways to nowhere, windowless rooms, doors which opened only from the outside...

A fun house?

No. This was no fun house. This was a torture-chamber of horrors in real life, built in Chicago 1893. At this time the World's Columbian Exposition (World's Fair) was held in Chicago, and many people were drawn to the fair. Holmes Castle seemed to be exactly the place to stay. Large, it took up a whole block and was three stories tall. Built by a man by the name of H.H. Holmes.

Sound-proof sleeping chambers with peepholes, asbestos-padded walls, gas pipes leading into some, and sliding walls, or vents that Holmes controlled from some other place in his huge “castle”, which he himself only knew the actual lay out, as he would change builders during the construction.

You would definitely not want to spend a night here. Your sleep would be permanent. After being asphyxiated. Or worse. It was believed that Holmes would place his victims into these special chambers, and then pumped lethal gas into them, controlled from his own bedroom where he would watch what happened.

In some cases he might ignite the gas to incinerate them, or sometimes a stretching rack he had devised.

Holmes had trapdoors in the floors with greased shoots, leading down into a two-level cellar. There he had installed a large furnace. In some cases it is thought that he would take twisted pleasure in dissecting the corpses, strip the flesh from the bones, and sell the skeletons to a medical school. (Later on, it was said that parts of bodies found were so dismembered and decomposed that it was difficult to tell how many bodies there actually were.)

His alias was Dr. Henry Howard Holmes. Aside from being a psychopathic serial killer, he was a swindler. He liked to swindle insurance companies. In many cases having a ready made corpse for the body of someone so as to collect on the insurance. He was also married to two women at the same time in two different states. He also liked to marry rich widows and then get them to leave him their wealth and then kill them.

His undoing was his last swindle. He found a lawyer who would go in on a plan to swindle an insurance company out of $10,000 by taking a policy out on himself, and faking his own death. He promised a man he went in on with $500 commission for the name of the lawyer who he could trust his plan to. The insurance company became suspicious and refused to pay. He decided to try a similar plan with his associate, Benjamin Pitezel. Pitezel had agreed to fake his own death, arranging that his wife would collect. Holmes was to find an appropriate cadaver to play the role of Pitezel. Instead, Holmes killed Pitezel. Evidence in the case against him was that he had administered chloroform to Pitezel after he died, trying—presumably--to fake a suicide.

The only thing that foiled Holmes was that he forgot to pay off a man who helped supply him with the name of the lawyer to help him with this scheme, and he tipped off the police.

As far as “the Castle” Holmes built in Chicago, a custodian for the place informed the police that he was never allowed to clean the upper floors, and so the police began a thorough investigation over the next few months. There are conflicting numbers as to Holmes' victims, but it has been said that anywhere from 20 to 100, and as many as 200, based upon the missing persons reports of the time, and testimony of his neighbors who saw him escorting young women to his hotel. Yep. A real life “Hotel California” where nobody leaves. He apparently liked blondes.

Holmes was convicted of murdering Pitezel and he confessed soon after, to 30 murders in Chicago, Indianapolis and Toronto. Some of these people were actually still alive. Apparently the man was such a good liar, even he couldn't keep track of his lies. At one point he even said he was possessed by Satan. You think?

On May 7, 1897, Holmes was hanged. It's really too bad we can't hang them a second and maybe a third time. However, he didn't die right away. It took him approximately 20 minutes to die.

Stalkers, Rapists, Killers & Pedophiles-The Nasties of the World.

I come to the blog post today trying to clear my worst memories of something that happened when I was a child, and to talk about the book by Tami Hoag, Down the Darkest Road, which brought back these memories. I wasn't going to post this, tried to quit thinking about it. But, now I feel I have to. It's a subject that doesn't come up all that often, and maybe it should. Here is the book.

Here is description of the book:
Four years after Lauren Lawton's sixteen-year-old daughter disappeared, the world gave up the girl for dead. Lauren's husband took his own life. Her younger daughter is looking only for what's left of her childhood. But Lauren never surrendered. She knows who took her child, and there's not a shred of evidence against him.
Looking for a fresh start, Lauren and her younger daughter Leah move to idyllic Oak Knoll. So has Lauren's suspect. And it feels that history is about to repeat itself.

Leah is turning sixteen, and Oak Knoll has a cunning predator on the hunt. But as sheriff's detective Tony Mendez and his team sift through the circumstances of an increasingly disturbing case, a stunning question changes everything they thought they knew...

Tami Hoag is one of my favorite authors of suspense/detective works. I think I must have dog-eared and highlighted every book I've ever had of hers--except for this last one, since I didn't want to mar it up, as it was a hardbound. I read such books for enjoyment, but also as learning tools. And I must say this one hit me where I live, because a pedophile lived next to me while I grew up.

Yep. Only back then, you didn't know about such things. They didn't have neighborhood warnings about such people taking up residence next to you. I recall people whispering about him having gone to jail for something he had done to a little girl. I didn't know what that could mean. In fact, in her book Tami has placed this in the 1980's, and they didn't have DNA like they do now, and couldn't keep known sexual offenders away from schools, like they do now. In the book, it made it difficult for the police to do their job, and gave the offender more rights than the victims--which sucks.

This man who lived next to me was married. He collected junk, and filled his house and garage with junk. He would come into our house, not knocking, and call out--but he never came further than the doorway--at least I don't think so. But I could be wrong, since such unsavory creatures tend to feed their own depravity by stealing underwear of the women they stalk, and I know he stalked me. He drove an old van--always painted aqua, or some ridiculous color. I know he worked for the college (so he could look at all the young women and fantasize about them).

And he tried to touch me once--I think I was 14 or 15 at the time. Yep. I told him I'd scream if he didn't let me go. And he did. I was really lucky. Lucky his wife was home, right next to the van, and that he had fear enough to leave me be. But I still had to live next to him. I later learned he had taken pictures of me in my yard--something I had suspected. I felt he always had watched me, and then I had proof, not that I needed it.

This book by Tami Hoag was really good. I thought I had it figured out, but she twisted it in a way that was really surprising. It dredged up some unpleasant memories. But it also made me realize how lucky I am.

I have been working on my WIP, and the whole stalker, serial killer thing fuels the detectives in this case--until they find out the stalkers, and serial killers are not human. I try to help my writing about the detectives in the book with the help of other writers like Tami Hoag, in order to get down the lingo, background and police procedural. My nephew has helped me too, since he is with the sheriff's police, and has been for 30 years. I've talked to him about guns and such. It's interesting. I find it a challenge to blend reality with my vampire writing. It's a challenge to blur the edges and make the reader believe this could happen.


Next time I'll post something more up-beat. Until then...