Herman Mudgett  AKA  H.H. Holmes

Better known as H.H. Holmes, Herman Mudgett started his life of crime early, mainly fraud and forgery. Some of his biggest pieces of ‘work’ was his so-called cure for alcohol scam, real estate scams, and a machine that apparently made natural gas from water.

In Chicago he managed to secure a pharmacy by defrauding the pharmacist. He built a row of three-story buildings onto it, and opened it as a hotel called The Castle. Over time, many women checked into the hotel, but very few checked out. Over a period of three years, Mudgett selected his victims and lured them into special escape-proof and soundproof chambers in other parts of the hotel, where he would torture them. Once the women were dead, their bodies would go down a chute to the basement, and were either sold to medical schools or cremated.