In addition to the furnaces and lime pit, the murder castle also featured a host of poisonous liquids, corrosive acids as well as a stretching rack. Two giant furnaces were used to burn evidence as well as corpses. Some of the corpses, Holmes would bury in a lime pit for disposal purposes. These were the skeletons that he would later sell to medical schools as skeleton models. In the basement, Holmes would use his medical training to dissect some of the bodies and others, he would peel off the flesh to remain with a skeleton. One such mechanism relied on a metal chute or a makeshift elevator that transported the corpses to the basement. Since no murder castle can be complete without a mechanism of dealing with the corpses, H.H.Holmes employed various mechanisms of dealing with the corpses. This meant that Holmes monitored his guests and employees closely. This alarm system would alert him whenever someone was roaming inside the hotel, especially in the upper floors. To evade capture and detection, Holmes invented an ingenious alarm system that was installed in all the hotel’s doors. This room was sealed by a brick wall to prevent victims from escaping. Inside this room, victims would be left to starve to death. via Īnother room used by Holmes was a concealed room that could only be accessed through a trapdoor in the ceiling. This room was in the second floor of the building.
Holmes also had a room dedicated to the hanging of his victims. The incineration chamber, on the other hand, was lined with iron plates and fitted with blowtorches. The room used for asphyxia was soundproof and was fitted with gas lines that allowed Holmes to asphyxiate his victims any time he wished. Some of the rooms were used for asphyxia while others were used for incinerating victims. The 100 murder rooms of the World’s Fair Hotel had different purposes. Disturbingly, Holmes found a way to profit from his hobby, by selling skeletons to universities and forcing his employees, most of whom were women, to take up life insurance policies and name him as the sole beneficiary.
Hh holmes hotel serial#
As if that were not enough, the would-be serial killer disfigured corpses so that they looked like they had been involved in accidents. During his time as a student at the University of Michigan Department of Medicine and Surgery, Holmes took out insurance claims on cadavers. The completion of the hotel meant that Holmes could at last embark on his murderous campaign, which lasted for four years.Īpart from being a serial killer, Holmes had also made a name for himself as a swindler, and a fraudster. Pitezel became Holmes’s right-hand man, and one of the investigators of the Holmes case would later describe him as Holmes’s tool. Since Holmes could not fulfil his murderous desire on his own, he hired a carpenter by the name of Benjamin Pitezel, whose criminal history made him the perfect henchman. Via Then: via The Serial Killerīefore its acquisition by Holmes, the vacant lot at 601-603 W.63rd Street housed the World’s Columbian Exposition hostelry. The three storey hotel building contained 60 hotel rooms. The rest of the building was designed for commercial use to belie the building’s true purpose. The drug store, which he now owned occupied the ground floor while the 100 windowless rooms and his personal office occupied the top floors. It is probably for this reason that Holmes named his hotel the World’s Fair Hotel. The opening of the hotel could not have been more perfect for Holmes, as it coincided with the 1893 World’s Fair. This meant that no one apart from Holmes knew the layout of the building. Being the insane genius that he was, Holmes hired different contractors to construct different sections of the building.
On this lot, Holmes wished to build a hotel that would become the hallmark of his murderous life.
Holmes acquired a bigger lot right across the street. Those who enquired into her whereabouts were informed that she had relocated to California to be close to family. Holton that Holmes was not going to honour his side of the sale agreement, so she sued Holmes. Holton’s wife, an offer that she accepted, on condition that she would continue living in the building. Holton, a man who was dying of cancer.Īfter the death of the good doctor, Holmes offered to acquire the drugstore from Dr. Holmes got a part-time job at a drug store owned by a Dr. The man, who would later admit to murdering 28 people, built the murder castle a few years after arriving in Chicago in August 1886.
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