Time for a midnight blog...

Funny how I only get around to posting in the middle of the night, it's a mom thing.  Today I think I'd like to write about one of my favorite serial killers, in fact maybe I'll write about a new one every few days, there's just not enough violence in the world these days, lol.  Anyway, today I'd like to spotlight  Dr. Henry Howard Holmes.

 

     This guy was fascinating.  He lived in Chicago in the late eighteen hundreds.  Holmes bought up a drugstore and then also bought up the spot across the street, there he proceeded to build a grand hotel.  The hotel would cater to mostly tourists visiting for the Chicago Worlds
 Fair.                                                                      

     This hotel was unique from others as it came complete with a maze of over a hundred windowless rooms, doors that opened up to brink walls,  oddly angled hallways, stairs that went nowhere, doors that could only be opened from the outside, and labyrinths.  Holmes changed construction workers many times during the building so people didn't understand the layout.  He then hired a staff (mostly female) and acquired insurance polices for said staff, and proceeded to torture and kill them.  And of course there were a good many hotel guests that also received complementary painful deaths. Some guests were locked in soundproof bedrooms that were fitted with gas lines so that he could asphyxiate them whenever he pleased.  Others were put into a soundproof bank vault near his office and left to suffocate.  Holmes set up a secret chute leading to the basement like Sweeney Todd to send down the bodies.  From there the bodies were further desecrated in twisted ways, and you know I'm gonna tell you how!  Some bodies were  meticulously dissected, stripped of flesh, crafted into skeleton models, and then sold to medical schools.  Others were cremated or put in lime pits.  The man thought up everything, he had two giant furnaces, pits of acid, many types of poison, and even his own stretching rack.  In one part of the castle Holmes also set up an illegal abortion ring, killing many woman and then selling their skeletons.

   
     Things went wrong for old Holmes in 1894.  He was tipped off by a former cellmate, the police also questioned a custodian who said he was never allowed to clean the upper floors.  Over the next month local police started to piece everything together, however a fire (probably started by Holmes) destroyed everything.  Death toll estimates range from 27 to 230, it's hard to tell because quite a few victims were only in town for the worlds fair, and some of the bodies were to well decomposed to tell.
     H. H. Homes was given 7,500 dollars in exchange for his confession of 27 murders, after first claiming he was innocent, then saying he was possessed by Satan.  Holmes was hung on May 7th 1896, though his neck didn't snap and so his death was slow and painful, lasting over 20 minutes from when the trap was sprung.  Holmes requested to be buried in concrete so that his body couldn't be dug up and dissected as he'd done to his victims, and his request was granted (assface).  Sadly, these days the murder castle is a U.S. post office.

I really wish he hadn't set fire to the damn thing so I could visit and take a tour.  I loves me a twisted killer with a murder house.  Goodness, maybe I could theme these with the days of the week!  Mental disorder Monday, Torture Tuesday, Woman killers Wednesday, Trapped in a box Thursday, Fillet em Friday, Spree Saturday, and Slow Death Sunday.  The only problem is that some killers will overlap by a lot.  Tune in tomorrow night for some tasty tasty cannibalism!