True Crime

The other day I watched a documentary about a man born with the name Herman Webster Mudgett in a little town in New Hampshire. He went to college and graduated as a medical doctor. While in school he took pleasure in dissecting cadavers, stealing bodies, disfiguring them and passing them off to insurance companies as deceased policy owners (which he himself had taken policies out). After he graduated, he began going by the name to Doctor Henry Howard Holmes (HH Holmes).

Two years after graduating from the University of Michigan he moved to Chicago, took a job working in a pharmacy. While the owner of the store was suffering a life-threatening disorder, Holmes convinced him to sell him the store. After the pharmacists death, the store owner's wife mysteriously disappeared. Holmes then began building a grand building that was soon dubbed 'The Castle' by those watching it go up. What they didn't know is that this castle was more like a castle than they could have imagined including various torture chambers and hidden rooms and passages.

In 1893, he opened his castle up to boarders during the 9 months of the World's Fair. During this time, many people suspect as many as 200 people were killed by Holmes in various ways of torture. To make a long story short, Holmes was captured and tried for the killing of one man (who was a party in his many insurance frauds and cons). Holmes had also killed four of the mans five children. He was executed for the one crime.

The whole time I watched this documentary on America's first serial killer, who believed Jack the Ripper was a (no pun intended) hack, all I could think of is...Why did he choose Henry Howard Holmes for his main alias?

If you would like to see this documentary, I watched it through Netflix.