Harloween: The Truth About H H Holmes PART 1

[Music] [Music] Hello everybody welcome back to my channel and thank you for joining me for another true crime video and today is sort of that extension of hallloween cuz I really really wanted to cover HH HS for hallloween but it is an extensive case one that I've actually been working on since last Halloween so I just needed more time but I'm ready to present it to you now and HH Holmes has always held a lot of meaning to me Devil in the White City by Eric Larson was one of the first true crime books I read when I was still a teenager it was actually given to me by an exboyfriend who knew I loved that mix of True Crime and the maab and when I left him it was really the only thing I kept that he had ever given to me because I loved that book I read it three times I couldn't believe that something like this had actually happened because it seemed to be too scary to believe and the author Eric Larson will kind of tell you that in his author's note Larson says quote I must insert here a notice however strange or maob some of the following incidents may seem this is not a work a fiction end quote so obviously my 17-year-old self believed every every single thing I read in that book and the two times I read it afterwards in my 20s I was blown away each and every time but when I picked up my well-worn copy of Devil in the White City in preparation for this video and began to read my 36-year-old self with a mind that has become more skeptical over the last decade felt something was off about the book now don't get me wrong I highly recommend it still it's a thrilling and entertaining read it will keep you turning the pages it's well written and well researched for the most part but to me so much of it felt speculative so I decided to turn to another source first of all our good friend the internet because if something's not true the internet can't wait to tell you through the internet though I encountered another book about HH Holmes written by Chicago native Adam Selzer and he was actually kind enough really kind enough to talk with me on the phone for 2 hours last winter about his book about HH Holmes about the inaccuracy from devil in White City what I discovered on This research journey and while reading Adam's book and talking to him about HH Holmes shocked me almost as much as the initial story of Holmes had when I was 17 but as always here more than almost ever before to understand what happened at the end we have to go back to the beginning and if you're looking for a sensationalized Wikipedia recitation of the life and crimes of HH Holmes this is not the video for you we are going to go back way back we're going to examine what we know and admit what we don't I'm going to start off with the story of HH Holmes that we all know that has been published in many newspapers and non-fiction books that has become an accepted part of American True Crime culture now keep in mind while you're listening a lot of this is true and what is not true or has not been proven I'll address as we go or I'll try to and I'll also kind of sum everything up at the end but before we dive back into the video I'd like to have a word from our sponsor mellan TV and for those of you who have already signed up for mellan TV have already been watching I have a really good recommendation that kind of fits in with today's video It's called Jack the Ripper the invention of the serial killer this is an episode that's part of the crimes that made history series and it examines the time period during which Jack the Ripper committed his crimes which was the Victorian era when purism reigned and forensic science was in its infancy London 1888 the capital of Victorian England was tarnished by a series of sorted crimes they took place in White Chapel a working-class district in the East End the police never solved the case but one name is associated with all these crimes Jack the Ripper this extraordinary case takes us to the very heart of Victorian England's 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that's really hard to come by these days thank you so much to mellan TV for sponsoring this channel I truly appreciate your support and thanks to all of you who understand sponsors are an essential part of this channel which allows me to keep bringing you content and let's dive back into the video HH Holmes has had many names and has been called many things he's been referred to as America's first serial killer Dr Death the torture doctor and many more but he was born Herman Webster mudget on May 16th 1861 in gilmont New Hampshire a remote town which at that time didn't even have a daily newspaper his parents were Levi mudget and theodate price and he had three siblings named Ellen Arthur and Henry the mudget family was well off financially but young Herman did seem to struggle with some family Dynamics he was very close to his mother having been described as a mama's boy but his farmer father seemed to have a problem with alcohol and would often take his frustrations out on his children when he was at the bottom of a bottle the family were also strict methodists who believed in holding their children accountable sort of the spare the rod spoil the child type of people if the children misbehaved they would be physically punished or locked in the attic for an entire day without food not being allowed to speak Herman mudget was a small slight child with intense blue eyes when he was five he started school and every day on his way to the schoolhouse he would pass by the local doctor's office now little Herman had an irrational fear of doctors as most children do but in these times Physicians would take to Hanging skeletons in their offices for the purpose of understanding the human body these were not made of plastic or plaster these were real human skeletons from like deceased people the remains of people people who had donated their bodies to science now it seems a couple of the older kids had caught wind of Herman's phobia and one day they dragged him into the doctor's office forcing him to come face to face with one of its skeletons at first the little boy was terrified imagining that the arms of the skeleton were raised as if to grab him and pull him to hell but then his horror turned to Fascination and it was the two boys who had hoped to terrify by him that ended up feeling unsettled by the way little Herman stared at the skeleton in Wonder now he was described by those who knew him as quiet studious and reserved he was actually very well-liked by the parents of his peers because he was a well- behaved child and he didn't get into trouble but his schoolmates couldn't understand why he didn't want to play rough and roll around in the dirt like they did so they didn't really associate with him resulting in little spending much of his early childhood in solitude but it soon became clear that Herman mudget was a very intelligent young man he spent most of his time alone in his room reading his favorite books by Jules Vern and Edgar alen Poe he had a creative mind one that thought outside of the box and he even invented a wind powerered machine that could be used to scare away birds in his father's Fields he didn't have a lot of friends true and the one friend he did have who was an older boy named Tom fell and died one day while Herman and Tom were playing together in an abandoned house now many people suspect and speculate that this boy Tom was HH Holmes's first human victim but there's no actual evidence or proof to support this it could have very well just been an accident something that Herman witnessed which may have affected him mentally and emotionally there's no evidence that Herman mudget killed this boy Tom when he was a kid there are also report reports that he had a box in his room where he would keep his most precious possessions like the first tooth that fell out or the picture of his first girlfriend perfectly normal stuff but also in this box he kept the skulls of animals that he had caught in the woods killed and then dissected when people talk about Herman's friend from his youth Tom some felt that Tom's death was Herman graduating past killing animals and wanting to see what a real dead body looked like but for the most part Herman mudget was just your average small town boy his initials are carved into a big Elm Tree on his grandparents farm and in the house someone had been tracking his growth progress on a door jam he liked hiking to high places and yelling out loud to hear the Echo come back at him he liked going on long walks by himself he went to church with his parents and he was polite to the ladies when he was 16 he completed school and went right into the workforce he actually became a teacher and he started teaching in his hometown of gilmington and then in Alton New Hampshire where he met the woman who would become his wife his first wife he would have many more wives after this her name was Clara lovering she was 17 she was pretty young naive and her father was actually in politics he represented their District in the New Hampshire State Legislature now young Herman had grown from a small timid child into quite the Suave ladies man he had nice manners he dressed well and he had a certain way about him that seemed to attract women to him he was respectful but he also had a way of pushing boundaries with people right he would stand Too Close touch too often and for too long and he had a habit of making eye contact for much longer than was perceived to be normal most of these women interpreted his forward ways as a keen interest in them they were flattered you know he was intense he was passionate they most likely thought that he behaved in this way only with them and paired with his bright blue eyes dark hair and fancy mustache they thought he was just dreamy I'm not sure why I said mustache like that mustache it just sounded fancier I don't know why but sometimes we just got to keep it classy is it classy enough now Clara lovering was not immune to his charms she was no exception her father wasn't important man in the community her family was well respected she was young and pretty and she could have had her pick of the boys in town but she was intensely attracted to Mr mudget despite his unfortunate last name Herman pursued her for the better part of a year trying to convince her that she should give into her desires and consummate their relationship so they were seeing each other he was courting her he was bringing her flowers they would go on walks you know chaperoned walks that was the time but he wanted to have sex with her and she wasn't really ready to do that you know this was the time where you would wait for marriage to do something like that so she was strictly opposed to having sex before marriage but despite his um aggressive tactics when he proposed to her she accepted and they were married on July 4th 1878 Clara later wrote about her husband saying that she had always felt he was pleasant in disposition tenderhearted much more so than most people in general he was of a very determined mind at the same time he was quite considerate of others comfort and Welfare two years later Clara gave birth to their son Robert mudget Herman now had a little family but he had grown bored of being a teacher and working odd jobs here and there he wanted to be a doctor a profession that had fascinated him for most of his life now Clara supported his decision and she and their son Robert moved in with his family the mudget while Herman spent a year apprenticing under a doctor nahom white the very same doctor whose office Herman used to rush by on his way to school at the age of five many years before Herman's Uncle Ruben his uh mother's brother had lived and worked with Dr white as an apprentice now Herman was also working under the doctor as an apprentice and would most likely have seen and taken part in some common if on ethical practices that were going on in the medical field at that time many doctors especially those who taught youngsters wanting to One Day become doctors themselves needed human bodies they needed them to demonstrate on and be able to show in real life what the human body looked like and how it functioned but there was a shortage of people who were willing to donate their bodies to Medical Science and even if there were many people who wanted to donate their bodies to science people just weren't dying fast enough so doctors and medical schools began essentially robbing Graves and stealing freshly buried corpses to use in their classes they figured that no one would ever know the difference and that no one would find out but people did find out and no one was really happy about it which created an even bigger shortage of bodies when these doctors realized that they were now being watched and it became a punishable crime having it be illegal didn't really stop it from happening Al together however they just had to get more creative and secretive it was considered at that time to be a natural part of your education as a medical student to at least once go and dig up someone's grave and remove their body so Herman learned under Dr White for a time and he would later call this man the doctor his best friend even though Dr White was 50 years older than Herman and after that mudget went off to the University of Vermont in Burlington here he he found lodging at the home of a Mrs Thomas brew and he roomed with another student of whites a man named Fred Eng Les now Eng Les knew that his roommate was a married man and Herman had asked him to keep that fact quiet but when Eng Les witnessed Herman flirting with their landlord's daughter Engles was compelled to tell this young woman that her new Suitor was already devoted to another young lady and it may seem nosy to you like why is Fred Engles throwing Herman under the bus but at this time if you got involved with a young man as a young lady and it it escalated to you know something physical and then it comes to find out that that man's already married you're a ruined woman essentially okay cuz you've already had sex before marriage and this guy is not going to leave his wife to marry you cuz that would be a whole another Scandal so you're like damaged goods at that point that's just how it was back then so Eng Les was trying to kind of save her that shame and embarrassment while living with Mrs Brew Herman mudget did some strange things first of all he got into a fist fight with his roommate not because Fred Eng Les had given the land lady's daughter a heads up but because Fred Eng Les had used Herman's mustache wax without asking also every morning Herman would get up early and have a glass of wine with an elderly Widow who lived nearby and one day he even brought some schoolwork home and apparently this schoolwork was the body of a dead baby that the land lady found in his room under his bed when she was sweeping can you imagine you're Mrs brew and you're just sweeping the rooms cleaning making the beds that's what you find under the bed I have no idea how he was still allowed to stay there after that but he is charming right he's Charming he's able to talk himself out of a lot of uh sticky situations as we will find now many people assume that the mustache wax fight happened mainly because Herman was still mad at Fred for exposing his relationship status and Herman's daily drink with the Widow was an effort on his part to have access to her money and then the baby thing well that was just some material he had gotten at Medical School to further his studies at home after only a year in Burlington Herman transferred to the University of Michigan in an arbor a bigger school that was known for its controversial focus on dissection a technique that at this time was fairly new Clara and little Robert lived with Herman in Michigan for about a year but they soon moved back to New Hampshire to live with Clara's parents the spring before he graduated it seems there was already some strain in this fairly new marriage for some reason Herman's mother and sister Helen disapproved of Clara they thought she wasn't bright or refined enough for their precious little Herman it's a mystery as to why they may have felt this way since Clara had taken on all of the parenting work as well as worked to earn money to pay for her husband's education but I suppose it does shine a little light on the strange Dynamics dare I say the dysfunctional Dynamics in the mudget family cuz Clara was a catch it is suspected that Herman had taken up with another woman at this time and having his wife and son so close compromised his ability to see this other woman in secret his professors at the University claimed that he'd gotten a reputation for being a scoundrel when he breached his promise with a woman from St Louis a widow and a hairdresser whose house he had been boarding at it appeared that Herman and this young Widow had something going on until she found out he was married and she went to the college and told on him she showed them letters that Herman had allegedly written to her asking her to marry him but Herman mudget was like no that's not my handwriting and since the handwriting samples he provided didn't seem to match up with the letters she produced he was acquitted and it did not affect his graduation now now after CLA left and went to move back in with her parents Herman would sometimes travel to New Hampshire to visit her and his son but the visits got further and further apart and eventually they stopped all together there is no evidence that Herman and Clara were ever legally divorced but they certainly were living separate lives I'm sure at this time Clara felt devastated at the turn her life had taken who would have seen it coming but considering what would happen later it seems like she kind of locked out those who knew him in Michigan remembered very clearly that Herman mudget enjoyed dissection a little too much even his fellow medical students thought he got a little too into it he lived on a street called a cemetery Street which conveniently was right next to a cemetery other students remembered that he would often go out on nighttime trips with a professor who was an advocate of dissection in order to raid the cemetery for fresh bodies to use he always staunchly denied these claims but it wouldn't be the most unbelievable thing about his story since many doctors and medical professors young and old took part in these activities so once again this is something that's not proven that he was a grave robber but it's easy to believe other than his university peers remembering him being super excited whenever it was dissection time they didn't really have anything nice to say about him they said he was aloof an elitist short with people he had absolutely no sense of humor he was impressed by nothing and he had no interest in even pretending to find anyone else interesting some even said he had an odd smell about him which earned him a very disgusting nickname which I will not repeat here because G trust me look it up look up his disgusting nickname but I'm not going to say it this summer between his Junior and senior years he took a seasonal job as a traveling book salesman he was tasked with going door Todo to sell one specific book which he did but instead of reporting back to the company he pocketed the money that he collected and they never heard from him again this was his first experience with the city of Chicago however it was a place that really impressed him and he promised himself that one day he would return there Herman did eventually graduate from the University of Michigan in 1884 even though one of his professors voted against it it seemed although he was an intelligent person he had been a pretty mediocre student he didn't Stand Out academically he wasn't that great of a doctor and he managed to make it out of medical school by the skin of his teeth where did that saying come from the skin of his teeth I'm sure that you guys know out there you're very smart put in the comments where that expression came from because we don't have skin on our teeth according to a doctor and a professor at the school named Dr Herdman once mudget had his diploma safely in his hand he approached the professor and told him completely stone-faced that the allegations the Widow had made against him were in fact true and then he walked away that old slippery scoundrel now after graduation Herman lived with his family for the summer in gilmington and in the fall he took a position as a school teacher and a doctor in the small town of Moors Forks New York right by the Canadian border he was technically a doctor now but this would be the first and only time he would actually work as a doctor legitimately and here we will see reports from the town's locals who knew him that paint a better picture of what he may have been like they said he was odd he had a problem with paying his debts his landlord a Mr Hayes remembered mudget coming up with every excuse in the book for why he couldn't pay his rent a young woman who had been giving him French lessons abruptly stopped the lessons allegedly saying that there was something lurking in his character that Only Time Will Reveal she said quote I do not like him I firmly believe that he would commit murder end quote once again this is just alleged and it's very possible that this is one of those quotes that kind of materialized after everything came out and the newspaper started talking about HH Holmes a lot and interviewing people from his past it's very possible that that whole quote is made up now when small poox came to town Herman packed a bag up with some medicine and he went around telling everyone that he was from the Board of Health and he had a smallpox vaccine and it was mandatory that they purchase it from him for2 cents for public health obviously other reports came out of moris forks that a young boy had been seen in Dr mudgett's company a few times but then this young boy had never been seen again and shortly thereafter the good doctor left in the middle of the night and never returned to the town again of course he left without paying rent and he also left Herman mudget behind in mois Forks from then on he would use aliases most often going by the name we have all come to know HH Holmes now it's the theorized that he used this name because he could claim that the H's stood for anything Henry or Harvey or Horatio and this would help him fly under the radar I do want to talk for a moment about this little boy that was seen in the company of Herman mudget while in Morris forks and then he was never seen again people once again write in books and talk about this little boy in Morris Forks as if he was another victim of uh Herman mudget or HH Holmes it is more likely that this little boy scene with Herman around town was his own son his son with claraa who was still visiting him sometimes at this point and it seems like his son did spend a little time with him in Morris forks and then went back with his mother so obviously nobody would ever see him again so at this point we have Mr Holmes he left New York because he couldn't pay his bills he couldn't really find a place to settle down and get a job financially he was in a bad position so what do you do when you're short on money well if you are HH Holmes you seek out an old college friend and suggests that he join you in an insurance fraud scheme of course Robert leok had gone to school with homes and when they reconnected they both found each other in desperate need of cash so they concocted a plan which included bringing in a guy into their scheme who would increase or take out a life insurance policy for $40,000 naming either Holmes or leok as the beneficiary they would then fake this man's death dressing a random corpse in his clothes and split the money three ways but this was truly a complicated plan not only did they have to find a body to substitute for the actual guy who wasn't really going to be dead but part of the plan was that the man would want to kind of disappear with his wife and his child so the guy whose death they were going to f was like yeah I'm okay I'm on board with this plan but I want my wife and my my kid with me so what I'll do is I'll write a note saying that I killed them first and then turned the gun on myself so we're going to need three bodies in order to convinc the insurance company that this whole thing was real now I don't know why the plan had to be so complicated and why we have to have this like note left behind and the fake murder and all that jazz but apparently they were really dedicated to making it as dramatic and hard to believe as possible so the co-conspirators decided that they all needed to go out and find one body each or what homes referred to as materials so they went their separate ways each on a mission to find his own portion of the materials which would be necessary to make this whole scheme successful their reward for all of this the insurance money was a lot of money back then but they had to execute it properly and play the long game Holmes actually took a train to Chicago and purchased a cadaver from a medical school but the others apparently hadn't been as quick in obtaining their materials so he put the body into Cold Storage I guess until it was go time and in May of 1886 he was actually returning to Chicago to pick up the cadaver and this is a strange part of the story but he'd apparently taken the body and split it into two barrels and for some reason he only brought one of the barrels back with him when he left Chicago leaving the other one in storage but when he was on the train heading back to New York from Chicago he apparently read an article about a Crackdown on insurance fraud so I guess they decided not to go through with the scheme anymore because it was too dangerous and they would get caught which is really hard for me to believe that you would spend all this time and and money and you know energy planning this huge scheme and actually like getting on a train and journeying somewhere to buy a body and then you just read an article in the newspaper and you're like well that's it for us I've been beaten Plan B time but Holmes was a man for which enough was never enough he only had one wife he needed another his second wife was named Murda bellnap and she knew Herman bludget or HH Holmes as Henry Howard Holmes he met her in Minneapolis in 1886 while she was working as a clerk at a music store and he was working for a druggist and renting a room from her parents it seems as if they got married in early 1887 which obviously was not a legal marriage since he was already married but she didn't know that now Murda did change her last name to Holmes and she kept his last name until the day of her death together Holmes and Muro went to Chicago where he would involve his new wife without her knowledge allegedly in his wrongdoings and schemey plots in May of 1886 he arrived in Chicago to settle down and get a job as a pharmacist but he needed to have a license to do so in the state of Illinois so he went to Springfield to take the 3-day exam he passed he got his license and then he headed to Englewood a suburb of Chicago today Englewood is known as one of the most dangerous places in Chicago but in 1896 it was a rapidly growing and developing area The Great Fire of 1871 had destroyed many of the neighborhoods to the North and the more Suburban field of Englewood along with the addition of railroad lines caused many who had lived in the city to migrate outwards it was close enough to the center city to commute there for work but far away enough to have more space and to feel like you were actually in the suburbs but there were more people going to Englewood than there were places to live at that time which is why it was developing and they were expanding and building houses but those who could not find apartments or homes to buy or rent would move into private residences as borders so 26 years old sharply dressed in standing at 56 Mr Holmes strolled the streets of Chicago looking for the perfect place and soon he found it when he happened upon holton's drugs a pharmacy owned by what has been described as the elderly Mrs Holton and her doctor husband now The Story Goes that the kind old woman was comforted by the young man's steady gaze and soothing presence and she confessed to him that she was having a hard time her husband the doctor was lying upstairs in their apartment and he was very very sick and he was dying so Holmes placed a hand comfortingly on her arm as she told him how hard it had been trying to manage the store and care for her ill husband at the same time and Holmes made her an offer that she couldn't refuse he told her that he could help out he could manage the store so that she could spend her time with Dr Holton he even promised to increase her profits she was grateful to have such a nice young man to talk to a shoulder to cry on and she agreed to bring him in to take away some of her burden as well as to keep her company now eventually Dr Holton did pass away and Holmes offered to buy the store from Mrs Holton and uh apparently she accepted and then she just vanished right that's the story holton's drugs became HH Holmes Pharmacy and local women who heard that a handsome and eligible doctor had just moved to town would flood into the store to bat their eyelashes at him hoping to be noticed but the customers who'd been going there for years although they liked the new owner and his polite ways they wondered where Mrs Holton was they hadn't seen her around town now HH Holmes told them that she'd taken the opportunity of retirement to visit family in California and as time passed and she still hadn't come back from her trip he told people that she liked California so much she decided to move there permanently now it's often said in retellings of this story that Holmes killed Dr Holton and his wife so that he could take over their building but in fact Dr Holton wasn't the man neither one of them were elderly Dr Holton was actually the wife and she was a younger woman and she just decided to sell the store and her husband Mr Holton he didn't die either at least not at that time obviously he eventually died he passed away in 1910 and the Holton are buried together at Oakwood Cemetery in Chicago so this is once again one of those obvious fictionalized stories that's told and retold until it becomes fact but it is very easy to debunk which Adam Selzer did do in his book now in March of 1887 plans were drawn up for a building that would occupy two lots across the street from the pharmacy and construction began in August often depicted as a three-story building this Castle The Murder Castle was initially only two floors the first floor would hold retail space restaurants pharmacies shops and stuff um the second would be long-term residential apartments that eventually homes and murder would move into once they were complete but then something happened in the city that was very exciting to Holmes and everyone in Chicago the world's Colombian Exposition was going to be held in Chicago all the most prominent cities like New York and Washington had been fighting for the right to have it in their City it was a very big honor to have it in your city but Chicago had been the one Chosen and Chicago was kind of an underdog in this race so there was a lot of pride in the city that it had been able to secure such an amazing event the exposition was essentially something something that was thought up after France held a magnificent World's Fair in Paris in 1889 with the Eiffel Tower as its impressive 300 M High centerpiece the US was like listen the French are trying to make us look bad they're stealing our Thunder this fair in France was an incredible success even the eiel tower which we and every other country have been making fun of turned out to be awesome we can't let this slide no one can think we're inferior to any other country in any way so the powers the beat in the US came up with the idea that they should hold a World's fair to celebrate Columbus discovering the new world 400 years prior not only that but it had to be bigger and better than the one held in Paris at all costs and this is really another reason why I suggest reading devil on the White City by Eric Larsson because there's so much we could talk about concerning the exposition there's so much I wish I could go into but I think this video is already going to be in three parts anyways so we don't have the time for it in this video and his book covers it so so well now Holmes heard about the fair and he knew that this event was going to draw thousands of people to Chicago from all over the world strangers who were in a strange city where they didn't know anyone and no one would miss them he approached one of his tenants who lived on the second floor a Dr Lawrence who will actually come into play in this story quite a bit Dr Lawrence and his wife Mrs Lawrence and he told Dr Lawrence that he was going to build a third floor onto his building which would act as a hotel for out out of town guests who were coming to see the fair HH Holmes told Dr Lawrence that if he just invested in this project say $3,000 they would both make a ton of money and so with uh Dr Lawrence's money the third floor was constructed and would become the site of many horrifying events because the way The Story Goes is HH Holmes didn't care about making money off the fair like he told Dr Lawrence his real plan was to lure these outof Town tourists to his hotel with cheap rates and then torture them until eventually they died he wasn't building a hotel he was building a Murder Castle and when the fair was done he would burn the building erasing all evidence of his crimes and collecting the insurance money winwin the house was created very strategically he hired separate contractors to construct separate parts of each room that way none of them would ever see the full picture or the end product he would hire men to work on the house and then fire them and hire different men to finish what they had started now let's talk about one room to show an example of how this might work behind the wallpaper and drywall there was sheets of metal and behind those there were blowtorches installed now when turned on those blowtorches would heat the metal causing the room to transform into an oven basically so one set of workers would install the blowtorches another set would install the drywall another set would be responsible for putting the sheet metal in so on and so forth this would ensure that no one would ever question what the real purpose of the room was for because they wouldn't really know what it looked like all put together and no one would figure out that this hotel wasn't like any other that they had ever stayed at so when and why did HH holes begin murdering people there's little or no evidence to back up any of the suggestions of the murders from his early life you know Tom and the little boy that was seen with him in moris Forks people called him a serial killer America's first serial killer but his reputation has been inflated by stories and allegations when we think of a serial killer we think of someone who Hills in sequence but because of a desire or a drive that we don't necessarily understand they have a type or a systematic reason that might not necessarily make sense to you or me for Holmes there was a reason why he appears to have killed all the people he killed they were in his way they were road blacks to him successfully carrying out all his many scams and schemes so what murders did he commit that we actually know about so there's kind of three categories for the murders that Holmes is said to have committed there's the the category of murders that people say he's committed like you know Tom from his hometown that we have absolutely zero evidence of there's the category of people he murdered or is alleged to have murdered that he later confessed to murdering but we don't have actual evidence to back up the fact that he did this it's all circumstantial and then there's the group of people that were like 100% sure that he murdered that that third category and we're going to talk about that third category in a little bit probably in the next video but first we're going to talk about that middle category the uh people that he allegedly murdered that we just have circumstantial evidence to prove he did so Holmes at this point is still married to Murda belnap they actually just had their daughter and there was a couple who lived in his building on the second floor Ned and Julia Connor so Ned Connor was a jeweler and Ned and Julia had a small daughter together whose name was Pearl and HH Holmes actually gave Ned a job which included room and board for his small family at first the work was legitimate work all on the up and up Ned would help out in the jewelry department and in the drugstore if he was needed but in no time Holmes had Connor helping him out with his more shadowy business ventures and it seems that just a few months after HH Holmes's own daughter was born he and Ned's wife Julia started an affair now Julia also worked for homes as a cashier at the jewelry counter and she helped him keep the books she was kind of like his secretary and Julia was known to be insanely jealous of women that her husband n interacted with but it also seemed that Julia had her own little something something going on on the side with Holmes many eyewitnesses at the time claimed that Julia Connor and HH Holmes um were again and on behind nd's back so maybe that's why she was so jealous because you know they always say that accusing your significant author of cheating on you suggests a guilty conscience of your own so maybe that's why she was just so insanely jealous but Ned and Julia eventually got a divorce and Ned left to go work someplace else now Holmes had a allegedly told Ned something private about Julia that he couldn't have possibly known if they hadn't been intimate and at that same time holes was also trying to get with Ned's sister Gertie allegedly he'd proposed to Gertie and told her that he would leave his wife and family if she would agree to run off with him but she did not agree on top of all of this it is alleged that HH Holmes owed Ned Conor some money and he had refused to pay him back so obviously Ned's like not super happy with Holmes right now now on December 13th of 1890 Julia Connor gave Holmes a promiser note for $1,942 and we can only speculate as to why she would do this she was most likely being told that this money would make her part owner of the store or the building or it would be invested into some amazing project or invention that would help make her an independently rich woman now that she was husbandless she did make some payments on the Note in 1891 two of them to be exact and it turns out that Holmes ended up suing her for the rest when she didn't finish her payments now after NAD left Julia and her daughter Pearl were still living in the castle and eyewitnesses claimed that Julia and Holmes argued loudly all the time see AJ Holmes had a tendency of using people he used his wife Murda and put a bunch of things in her name property and things like that he used his wife's mother to do the same put a bunch of properties in her name so that nothing could legally be tied to him he couldn't be held legally resp responsible for anything he had a tendency to start a lot of businesses and evolve a lot of people in these businesses to protect him from liability and it seems that Julia figured out he may have been doing the same thing to her so there was this guy named Patrick quinland he was the handyman at Holmes's Murder Castle and he was also Holmes's Lackey someone who did his bidding his dirty work now during July of 1891 Julia and her daughter Pearl had gone to Patrick's family farm in Michigan and they had stayed there for I think a couple of weeks and during this time little Pearl and Patrick's daughter cor who was about the same age became fast friends they played together they spent time together the following Christmas Patrick came home from Chicago to Michigan for the holidays and his daughter Kora asked about Pearl and her mommy Julia where are they are they ever coming back to visit and Patrick told his daughter that Julia had gotten married and moved away to California with pearl now back in Chicago no one had heard from Julia or little Pearl in fact December 24th 18 91 was the last time anyone had seen Julia or Pearl alive there was a family who also lived in the castle from 1891 to 1892 on Mr John Crow and his wife and children Julia had been friendly with the crows and had told Mrs Crow on Christmas Eve as she helped the family decorate their tree that she was going to South Dakota for her sister's wedding for Christmas Mrs Crow had given Pearl the gift of a little doll and Julia left that evening telling the crows that she would just be in South Dakota for a short time so she'd be leaving most of her things behind and she'd be back soon Julia said she would see the family the next day for Christmas but they never saw Julia or Pearl again one day Mrs Crow heard sounds in the apartment of Julia and Pearl and she thought they'd come back so she went up there but it turned out that it was a completely new family the doy that had moved in after 4 months in May of 1892 the doy told Mrs Crow that when they had arrived to their new apartment the dining room table was set as if for a meal that had never been eaten and Julia and Pearl's clothes were just lying around the apartment there was also a doll a little girl's doll laying on the floor that their landlord HH Holmes had hastily shoved under the bed with his foot when he saw Mrs Doyle looking at it Holmes had told everyone that Julia had gotten a telegram saying her sister was ill and she'd left suddenly Julia's toiletries were left on the dresser her clothes were still in the drawers Mrs Doyle said quote we found the bureau drawers filled with Mrs Conor's clothing of every kind and it was all neatly and smoothly put away the order in which everything of hers was except the clothing she had taken off before retiring made me disbelieve from the start the story of Holmes that she had gone away to Davenport end quote when Holmes had let the doy into the apartment he had packed up all the things that were left behind and told the Doyles that he was sending them to Julia it also turns out that Julia's older sister Isabella actually had been getting married in Davenport South Dakota on December 31st 1891 but Julie Julia and pearl had never made it to the wedding in fact Julia's parents had not heard from her since December of 1891 when she had written to them saying she was leaving Englewood because she was afraid of her ex-husband Ned who had been threatening to take Pearl from her now like I said it's just circumstantial we don't have like concrete evidence of this but it is suspected that HH Holmes wrote that letter to Julia's family pretending to be Julia so that people wouldn't look for her now Holmes would later tell his lawyer that he'd killed Julia and pearl but we don't know he did this or where he put their bodies years later when he would confess to a plethora of murders Holmes claimed that Julia had accidentally died when he was performing an abortion on her the most obvious answer is that she was pregnant with his child and he performed an operation on her that was not only illegal but not something he did a lot and he certainly wouldn't have been skilled at performing such operations it's not as if he was ever some brilliant doctor or surgeon and the sad truth is he most likely didn't care whether she survived or not as for Pearl she was probably collateral damage she was six when she went missing bones would later be found in his Celler that belonged to a girl who was speculated to be between the ages of 6 and 10 but they were too badly charred to determine who they came from before we talk about the next alleged victim I need to give a little background so all that follows will make more sense so there was a man named Dr Leslie Keeley and in 1879 he announced that he had discovered the cure for alcohol ISM this key cure was sort of the original pyramid scheme key founded an Institute in Dwight Illinois where patients could go and stay and be cured of their alcoholism and their demons and then he would grant them the title of graduate but then he would expect them to go out into the world and do speaking arrangements and kind of promote the key cure and The Institute in 1891 the New York Times wrote a glowing piece about the Doctor Who had found a way to cure one of society's biggest problems drunken this well one of HH Holmes's faithful employees a man named Benjamin pitel who will become very important to the story later on was in fact a raging alcoholic so Holmes actually paid for pitel to go and stay at the Institute during the Spring of 1892 so that he could come back with a clear head and get back to being a sober minion when Benjamin pittel returned after 4 weeks at The Institute he was still a drunk but he had brought something of value back to homes it seems that pitel had met a young woman who had been employed at the ke Institute her name was emilene srand and she was 24 years old tall blonde and beautiful pitel told holes that he felt she was even more beautiful than Julia Connor the bonus being that she didn't have any pesky baggage like kids or a husband now while at the Institute pitel had struck up a friendship with this young woman and told her that he was a very important man back in Chicago who worked for an even more important man and emiline had been born in a small town and had lived her entire life in a small town when she heard about this great City of Chicago and all the important business opportunities as well as the handsome businessmen there who were taking advantage of all these amazing opportunities she couldn't help but be impressed and intrigued Holmes wrote to emiline at The Institute offering to double her current income if she would come to Chicago and work as his private secretary an offer that she literally couldn't refuse it would have been crazy to refuse and so in May of 1892 amaline traveled to Inglewood and began boarding at the home of a Mrs hunt just a block away from her employer's hotel as soon as she arrived hommes began courting the small town blonde while her land lady looked on in extreme disapproval Mrs hunt knew HH Holmes knew he had a wife and a daughter and a reputation and observed that emiline was often out very late at night with him when she returned to the boarding house Mrs hunt would demand to know why emilene was out fullering with a married man and emilene would simply respond quote there is no harm in this I was outd driv driving with him and he took me to see his sick wife end quote emolene did not stay at Mrs hunts for long mostly because the woman was nosy and Holmes didn't like people getting into his business so he would kind of move her around from house to house and one of her land ladies claimed that Holmes did not allow Emily to stay at any one house for longer than a week and this woman also claimed that emiline was absolutely infatuated with HH Holmes talking nonstop about him he took her sightseeing around the city he brought her flowers he showered her with with gifts such as hair ribbons a tortoise shell comb a cameo brooch he bought her a bike and they spent Sunday afternoons cycling through the park they spent evenings going to expensive dinners in the theater by Midsummer emiline was not only his secretary but his full-fledged mistress and it wasn't something that the happy couple really tried to hide either Dr Lawrence and his wife noted that emiline and Holmes were very close they took music lessons together and they always had their lunch sent up from the restaurant on the first floor so they could eat together in his office on the second floor Dr Lawrence later commented saying quote the relations between Holmes and Miss seren were not strictly those of an employer and employee end quote The Following fall emilene began to write letters home to friends and families glowing with happiness about her new relationship with a man that she called Robert E Phelps this was an alias that Holmes used and this was the name he instructed emilene to use when talking about with others even though she did know his real name because she was his secretary and she did have access to his business papers and things before the leaves began to fall from their trees emilene and her doing Suitor were engaged to be married in a small private ceremony to take place the first week in December she had a wedding dress made and Holmes gave her 12 blank envelopes asking her to address them to her closest family and friends for the formal wedding announcements he'd be sending out right after the wedding now these envelopes would not be used used to send out the news of their happy nuptuals Holmes had much more nefarious plans for these envelopes addressed in Emil's handwriting the last time anyone saw emilene alive was on December 6th 1892 she had dropped by to see Dr and Mrs Lawrence to bring them a little gift for the holidays since she claimed she would be spending Christmas with her family back in Indiana emilene never came back from Indiana and when asked Holmes told everyone that she had left to get married it's theorized that on this same day Holmes and emiline were working in his office together and he asked her to bring him some papers from the walk-in Vault that he'd had installed next door and after she walked in he closed the heavy door on her and then locked it listening to her screaming from help from inside until her screams finally ceased basically she ran out of oxygen and she died that's what's been theorized 10 days later emilene's family in Indiana received in the mail an envelope addressed in their daughter's familiar and precise handwriting announcing her marriage to a Mr Robert Phelps the question is why would Holmes have wanted to kill emilene he seemed very happy with her I mean they were biking in the park and taking music lessons together well there could be multiple reasons one being the fact that she was his private secretary and had been so for 6 months enough time to gain insight into many of his illegal scams and plots there's also some suggestion that Emil may have been pressuring Holmes into popping the question and I mean it's all fine and good when they were walking hand inand through the park are going to see a show but he already had two wives it does seem that there was actually a wedding ceremony that he actually did have this wedding ceremony and she got to wear her dress and he did a fake marriage ceremony for her but they were never actually married so technically she would be wife three if you're counting his fake and illegal weddings as Real Weddings she would be wife three there's also reports that Ned Connor the ex-husband of Julia had found a way to talk to emilene and he told her that Holmes was dangerous and to watch her back well Holmes found out about this exchange and told Ned to mind his own business or else but by that time emiline may have been changing her opinion about her handsome and Charming fiance she may have started asking questions like hey this Ned guy says that you were with his wife and now his wife's disappeared so where is she or what are these things that I'm signing that don't have your name on them and have some fake business on them she may have been asking too many questions she had told Dr and Mrs Lawrence that she was spending Christmas with her family but she never made it to Indiana for Christmas and she never came back to Chicago later Mrs Lawrence would reveal that she saw Holmes Patrick quinland and another man carrying a heavy trunk out of the hotel and after that Holmes was gone for a few days but when he got back he showed the Lawrence's a wedding announcement card that said emilene had married someone named Robert Phelps and Dr and Mrs Lawrence are like who the hell is Robert Phelps cuz as far as we know for the last 6 months you two been canoodling so when did she have a chance to meet this guy and run off and get married to him none of her family had ever met this man nor did anybody attend the wedding and soon after this marriage that Holmes claimed emiline and Robert Phelps had they left for Europe all of emiline's things were sent back to her parents in a trunk and her mother noticed that the way emaline's things had been thrown sloppily and haphazardly into the trunk did not look at all like the way her daughter would have packed her things away to send them home emiline's father became suspicious after receiving a typewritten letter from his daughter that talked about you know her new husband being an alcoholic and a gambler and she was going to stay with him in Europe to help him get better so Emily's father actually contacted Holmes and was like hey do you know anything about this and Holmes was like I don't know I just know they got married and they went to Europe and you know you should probably give her a space and you know not bother her however it was said that a few weeks after emilene vanished the Lal medical school was gifted a skeleton from Dr HH Holmes the skeleton of a young female in her 20s and this is where we're going to end part one but don't worry story of HH Holmes and his murder hotel is far from Finish If part two is already posted I will place a link in the description box so you can easily navigate your way there but most likely it will be up within you know a couple of days hopefully I'm I'm working on it but thank you guys so much for being here don't forget to like this video if you liked it don't forget to share it if you think it's worth sharing also subscribe if you haven't already because my analytics saw that a lot of people watch but they don't always subscribe so make sure to subscribe if you haven't already and if you've already already subscribed make sure you still are subscribed because YouTube does like to unsubscribe people from my channel I'm not sure why I haven't figured it out yet but one day one day I'll have the answers also follow me on social media Instagram and Twitter links are in the description box and check out Adam Seltzer's website as well as his book I will put the links to um those things in the description box as well he's been awesome he's been a big help and he knows a lot about HH holes and Chicago in general actually he's he's very good with the history of Chicago and and everything that goes on there so he's very interesting person to talk to and it was a great book to read but until then stay kind stay beautiful and stay spooky because this is technically a Halloween video so we're still staying spooky and I will see you very very soon [Music] bye break now B going straight down and a river runs deep the mountains gets deep and the voice is getting too l this feel is i b it's looking like a they going back from the grave calling Not My Name better say I have M you don't know how deep it goes until it's getting you slowly it's all you got to let it go I got blood blood on the streams blood blood on the streams see

Channel: Stephanie Harlowe

Views: 321,051

Keywords: h h holmes, herman mudgett, clara lovering, emmaline cigrand, murder castle, mystery, true crime, stephanie harlowe, adam selzer

Id: cDDzulBPfq4

Length: 56min 56sec (3416 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 06 2020