Depraved: The Definitive True Story of H H Holmes, Whose Grotesque Crimes Shattered Chicago

The heinous bloodlust of Dr. H.H. Holmes is notorious — but only Harold Schechter's Depraved tells the complete story of the killer whose evil acts of torture and murder flourished within miles of the Chicago World's Fair. "Destined to be a true crime classic" (Flint Journal, MI), this authoritative account chronicles the methods and madness of a monster who slipped easily into a bright, affluent Midwestern suburb, where no one suspected the dapper, charming Holmes — who alternately posed as doctor, druggist, and inventor to snare his prey — was the architect of a labyrinthine "Castle of Horrors." Holmes admitted to twenty-seven murders by the time his madhouse of trapdoors, asphyxiation devices, body chutes, and acid vats was exposed. The seminal profile of a homegrown madman in the era of Jack the Ripper, Depraved is also a mesmerizing tale of true detection long before the age of technological wizardry. Even as a child in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, Herman Mudgett was considered a lad with a future, a boy who professed filial devotion while secretly fantasizing his parents' deaths. By age eleven he was conducting secret experiments on small animals and strays, becoming skilled at disabling his subjects without killing them. In 1886 he appeared in the Chicago suburb of Englewood, Illinois, and introduced himself as Dr. H. H. Holmes to the wife of the ailing owner of Holton's drugstore. He was hired on the spot, and under his management the store prospered. But when Holmes's attempt to purchase the drugstore from Mrs. Holton went sour, and she sued him, she inexplicably disappeared - never to be seen or heard from again. As Jack the Ripper was terrorizing London, Holmes was building his infamous "Castle," a grandiose residence and veritable fortress bristling with battlements and turrets. He hired and fired a succession of workmen to build the castle, thus eliminating witnesses to its secrets: a labyrinth of trapdoors, winding passageways, dark dead-end halls, stairways to nowhere, bedchambers fitted with peepholes and asphyxiating gas pipes, soundproof vaults and torture chambers, greased chutes large enough to send human bodies from the living quarters to a cellar equipped with acid vats, a crematorium, a dissecting table, and cases full of gleaming surgical tools. Alternately donning the mantles of doctor, druggist and inventor, Holmes was also a get-rich-quick schemer and bigamist, with three wives and innumerable lovers - at least one of whom ended up a prize skeletal specimen, sold to a medical college for nearly two hundred dollars. But his increasing audacity and carelessness during his reign of terror led to his discovery and to "The Trial of the Century," in which Holmes finally confessed to twenty-seven murders. While he later recanted - maintaining his innocence until his final breath - he had already achieved immortality as the most monstrous criminal

From the bestselling author of Deviant and Deranged comes the story of America's first documented serial killer, H.H. Holmes--a murderer whose crimes eclipsed those of Jack the Ripper, with 27 victims by his own admission. His path of blood says as much about modern psychopathology as the age in which he lived and killed. Photographs.

LIST OF ENTRIES: Ads -- Alligators -- Animal torture -- Aristocrats -- Art -- Axe murderers -- Bathtubs -- Bed-wetting -- Black widows -- Blasphemy -- Robert Bloch -- Bluebeards -- Board games -- Body parts -- Calendars -- Cannibalism -- Cards, comics, and collectibles -- Causes -- Characteristics -- Civil servants -- Clans -- College courses -- Courtroom theatrics -- Cults -- Jeffrey Dahmer -- Death wish -- Definition -- Albert DeSalvo -- Disposal -- Doctors -- Escape -- Executions -- Fan clubs -- Fantasy -- FBI -- Albert Fish -- Foreigners -- John Wayne Gacy -- Edward Gein -- Grave robbing -- Groupies -- Fritz Haarman -- Head injuries -- Gary Heidnik -- The Hillside Stranglers -- History -- H. H. Holmes -- Homebodies -- Homosexuality -- Housekeepers -- Impotence -- Insanity -- Internet -- IQ -- Jack the Rippers -- Jekyll / Hyde -- Jokes -- Juveniles -- Edmund Kemper -- Kidney -- Killer couples -- Krafft-Ebing -- Peter Kürten -- Lady-killers -- Letters -- Lover’s Lane maniacs -- Lustmord -- Lycanthropy -- Charles Manson -- Marriage -- “Mask of sanity” -- Mass murder -- Models -- Motives -- Movies -- Multiple personality -- Murder rings -- Nazi buffs -- Necrophilia -- Nicknames -- Dennis Nilsen -- Nomads -- Nursery rhymes -- Nurses -- Orchards -- Ovens -- Carl Panzram -- Paraphilia -- Partners -- Marcel Petiot -- Phases -- Photographs -- Plumbing -- Poetry -- Poisoners -- Political correctness -- Pornography -- Post-homicidal depression -- Power tools -- Profiling -- Prostitutes -- Pyromania -- Quarry -- Quicklime -- Racism -- Recommended reading -- Records -- Refrigerators -- Rippers -- Ritual -- Russia -- Sadism -- Sadism -- Satanism -- Slipping through the cracks-- Songs -- Richard Speck -- Spree killers -- Statistics -- Jane Toppan -- Tourist attractions -- Transvestism -- Triad -- Triggers -- Trophies -- Types -- Unsolved -- Upbringing -- Joseph Vacher -- Vampires -- The vanishing -- Wannabees -- Wartime -- Weapons -- Whereabouts unknown -- Women -- The wrong man -- X chromosome -- X-Files -- X-rated -- X-rays -- Y chromosome -- Zealots -- Zeitgeist -- Zines -- Zombies -- Special Appendix : probing the mind of a spree killer : the blood trail of Andrew Cunanan . Relates the story of Dr. H.H. Holmes, who, in 1890's Chicago, within miles of the Chicago World's Fair, alternately posed as a doctor, druggist, and inventor to lure twenty-seven victims to his labyrinthine house, filled with trapdoors, asphyxiation devices, body chutes, and acid vats, where he committed evil acts of torture and murder Legend lays the blame for the disaster on Mrs. Patrick O'Leary's cow, though the likelier suspects were a crew of young hooligans-neighborhood boys sneaking a smoke in the hayloft of the O'Leary's ramshackle barn at 137 De Koven Street on Chicago's West Side. Recounts Dr. H.H. Holmes' heinous crimes in Chicago during the late nineteenth century, describing the methods he used to torture and kill his victims, his charming outward personality, and the clues that led authorities to stop him Chronicles the life of Herman Mudgett, better known as H.H. Holmes, who, in the late 1800s, committed twenty-seven murders in his "Castle," fully equipped with torture chambers, surgical tools, acid vats, and a crematorium A reference guide to serial killers and the crimes they commit includes profiles of such notorious figures as Texas killer Joe Ball, necrophile Ed Gein, and pedophile and cannibal Albert Fish Brief articles examine serial killers, their crimes and victims, and the methods they used to kill and dispose of the bodies Contains alphabetically arranged entries that provide information about a variety of topics related to serial murderers