1. The First American Devil
By Calvin Settles II

3. Herman Webster Mudgett
Herman Webster Mudgett was born May 16, 1860 in Gilmanton, New Hampshire
He was born to Levi Horton Mudgett and Theodate Page Price
He grew up in a very strict household and his father ruled with an iron fist

4. Herman’s Childhood As a child he was often bullied
Herman’s fascination to death and the dead was brought upon by a childhood prank
The kids who bullied him took him to a body that they had found to make him touch the human skeleton. This was in attempt to scare him. Instead he realized that he was fascinated

5. School Life Herman attended the University of Michigan Medical School
During his time at school, he would go and steal dead bodies from the school laboratory
Mudgett would collect insurance money from the bodies that he had stolen
He would act as if the bodies were accidentally killed to do so

6. His Career Herman moved to Chicago to practice pharmacy
While he was there he became involved in real estate and other questionable businesses
He used the alias Dr. Henry Howard Holmes or “H.H. Holmes” to conduct all of his shady business

7. Love Life On July 8, 1878 Herman married Clara A. Lovering
On January 28, 1887 he married Myrta Z. Belknap
On January 9, 1894 he married Georgiana Yoke
He had a child by his second wife named Lucy
He never divorced his first wife
The bigamist was a lady’s man
He also had relations with Julia Smythe who was the wife of Ned Connor

8. The Birth of Death
H.H. manipulated his way into buying a drug store in Chicago
He bought the store while the owner, Dr. E.S. Holton, was dying of cancer
He told the wife of the owner that she could remain to live in the upstairs apartment
As soon as Dr. E.S. Holton died Holmes killed the widow
When people asked about her whereabouts he told them that she had moved to California to stay
Holmes then bought the lot across the street from the Drug Store
In this lot he built his “Castle”
This building was three stories tall and it as a whole block long

9. The Castle
This Castle that Holmes had build had hallways, doorways, and stairways that lead to nothingness
The building had weird angled hallways
There were doors that only opened from the outside
He changed builders several times while the building was being built. He did this so that only he knew what the building plan was and so that there was a unique building structure that had no particular building signature
This Castle was nicknamed the “Murder Castle”
In his castle, Holmes killed many people
Because his castle was a hotel, people would come to stay in it all the time. He would lock them in the rooms and kill them
He had a chamber in the bottom of the Castle where he stored all of the bodies. Some he burnt. Some he put in a lime pit to rot. The others he dissected meticulously

11. America’s First
Holmes was known to be the first American serial killer, killing what was thought to be over 200 people in various ways. Some he trapped and used gas to kill them. Others he killed by hand
He acquired the nickname “Devil in the White City”
He took some of the bodies that he had killed and sold them to schools

12. Arrest of Holmes
On November 17, 1894 Holmes was arrested when the people caught wind of the life- insurance fraud and the murder of one of his business partners, Benjamin Pitezel
He was held on an outstanding warrant because of a horse theft
The custodian of the Castle told the police that he was never allowed to clean the upper floors of the Castle. The police conducted an investigation over the next month where they found evidence that led them to knowing that he killed at least 20 people
It was later estimated that he killed 230 people based on the number of missing people that had come to that area
Holmes claimed to have been possessed by the devil
He was executed by hanging on May 7, 1896

13. Works Cited
Larson, Erik. The Devil in the White City. New York: Vintage Books, 2003.
"H.H. Holmes." Wikipedia. 9 Oct <
H._H._Holmes>.