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Or, in another practiced method, he would enter the room with a piece of cloth with chloroform, and silently take the life of the guest - usually women up to 25 years old. He could fill any room in the hotel with asphyxiating gas, making it even easier to immobilize his victims. Killing in the hotelĭuring the event the hotel was full, and Holmes had complete control over the rooms.
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Most serial killers are caught for not being able to hide the bodies of their victims, but with Holmes this was not the case. The oven was one of the key pieces to Holmes be able to reach so many victims. In the basement was the torture chamber, operating tables for removing the organs of the still-living victims, a piece of equipment for stretching the bodies until they split, an oven for burning the remains, and other gruesome tools. Many of the rooms hid a secret passage, hidden closets, peephole so that Holmes could watch from the outside and large shafts that went straight down to the basement where he tortured, killed, dissected and burned his victims. The building had three floors, the first floor was for stores, while the second and third floors were hotel rooms, approximately 30 rooms on each floor. He became a great partner of him, and later a key player in this story. It was during construction that Holmes met Benjamin Pitezel, an alcoholic man who was looking for a job. Moreover, this constant rotation helped his plan to not pay peoples who worked there.
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During the construction, he constantly changed workers and engineers, his intention was that only he knew every detail of the building. There was an empty lot in front of the pharmacy where he worked, Holmes bought it and a few months later began construction of his hotel. Construction of Holmes Castle, a hotel designed to kill Not by chance, he decided to build a hotel as close as possible to the square where the fair would take place, this would give him the credits to be able to kill people without raising suspicion. The event was the perfect distraction for Holmes’ plans.
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Great names of that time participated in the event, and more than 26 million people visited it. To understand the grandeur of the event, it featured some inventions such as the Ferris wheel (or a big wheel in some countries), dishwasher, and various other objects, machines, and foods that we use to this day.ĪRTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENT Ferris wheel presentation at World’s Columbian Exposition. It was a scenario appropriate to an event that would show the growth of the country: in less than a century a village turned into a large metropolis. In 1871 the city had suffered a major fire that destroyed much of it, and from this, to everyone’s surprise, it flourished exponentially in the following years. Therefore, in 1893, hosted the World’s Columbian Exposition. The goal of the politicians was to change this bad reputation. World’s Columbian ExpositionĬhicago at that time was known to be a violent, corrupt, disease-ridden, among others not good characteristics, as a result of its rapid growth. Shortly after, she disappeared and was never seen again. Later, he bought the pharmacy where he worked, through installment payments, but he did not honor the debt, so the lady who sold to him called her lawyers. When Holmes arrived in the city, he began working in a pharmacy.
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It was through this practice that he got his first “job”: stealing cadavers, dissecting them, and selling them illegally to colleges.Īfter graduating from medical school, his future was uncertain, so he decided to settle in Chicago in 1885 and adopt the name Henry Howard Holmes, or simply H.
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There he gained much experience with cadavers, and especially how to dissect them. In 1882, he entered the University of Michigan, where he studied medicine. There is no evidence that Holmes killed people as a child, but people in his circle died under very mysterious circumstances. He was known to kill animals and perform experiments on the dead bodies, and even kept them as a trophy. From an early age he showed signs of psychopathy. While his mother was extremely religious and punished Holmes with long periods without food or water for each transgression.īut it was not only the family relationship that turned Holmes into a killer. His father was an alcoholic and often beat him. Son of the first settlers to colonize America, Holmes was mistreated by his family. He was a cold and calculating man, the clues he left behind were rare, so the total number of victims is uncertain. Despite killing so many people, Holmes was convicted for only one crime: killing of his partner as well as his children.
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