Henry Holmes, whose real name was Herman Webster Mudgett, entered U.S. history as the first officially recognized serial killer. The investigation began not with a hunt for a murderer, but with an insurance fraud case after the death of Benjamin Pitezel in Philadelphia in 1894.
Police learned of the scheme from inmate Marion Hedgepeth, who had introduced Holmes to lawyer Jeptha Howe and, after not receiving the promised $500, exposed the plot. The insurance company turned to Allan Pinkerton’s agency, where detective Patrick Geyer took over the case.
While reviewing suspicious insurance claims, Geyer found a similar case in New York in 1891 and then linked Holmes’s name to the Chicago hotel known as the Castle. He discovered that mail for both Holmes and Mudgett was being forwarded to the same address, confirming they were the same man.
The trail led the detective from Chicago to St. Louis, then Detroit and beyond. Mudgett was eventually arrested in Boston, but refused to discuss Pitezel’s three children, whom he had taken with him. Geyer later found them dead: two sisters were killed in Toronto by candle gas pumped into a trunk, and the youngest child, Howard Pitezel, was also murdered.
The investigation also uncovered the design of the Castle, built ahead of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. Officers found sealed rooms disguised as guest quarters, a basement with a dissecting table, a crematory, and spaces used to dispose of remains. Investigators said remains of more than 200 people were found in different parts of the hotel.
Mudgett was convicted of murdering Pitezel. Before his execution, he sold newspapers a confession to 27 murders and later claimed he could describe another hundred. He was hanged on May 7, 1896. At his own request, his body was buried in cement because he feared it would be dug up and used for study.