H.H. Holmes: America’s First Serial Killer Hotel

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Chicago, mid-late 1893, the World's Fair brought millions. And H. H. Holmes brought one of America's first documented serial killers. He built a labyrinthine building, nice storefronts up front, but inside a maze of windowless rooms, trapdoors, gas lines, and soundproof compartments. Patients from his drugstore, employees, and renters vanished. Evidence later found suggested secret stairways, disorienting corridors, and rooms designed for torture and murder. Bodies were cremated in on-site furnaces. Ledgers listed sums charged to deceased tenants. Holmes boasted to acquaintances about his victims. He was finally arrested for insurance fraud and then linked to multiple disappearances. Convicted of murder in 1895, he drew headlines for the calculated business-like cruelty behind his crimes. The Murder Castle is gone, but the ledger of vanished lives remains a chilling ledger of how ordinary ambition can hide monstrous intent.