H.H. Holmes

For some reason people are always fascinated by serial killers (or maybe it's just me).  Earlier today I was reading an article on Cracked.com about the 6 most horrifying ways anyone ever got rich. (Not that I was trying to get any ideas)  Number two on the list is a man who went by H. H. Holmes.  He graduated from medical school at the University of Michigan and moved to Chicago where he began to murder people, strip them down to their bones, mount their skeletons and sell them to medical schools.  

It is assumed that he killed as many as 250 people, but only about 25 murders have been confirmed.  So how would one go about killing lots of people without looking suspicious?  A hotel is the perfect tool.  But the hotel Holmes built was not ordinary building.  Called "The Castle" by locals, the 2nd floor consisted of air tight rooms to suffocate guests, torture rooms, trap doors, sliding walls, doors that opened with brick walls behind them, and (my personal favorite) a greased body chute that led to the basement.  Once in the basement he would either do the skeleton thing or dispose of the body by cremation or dissolving in acid.  

So by now you're probably thinking, why am I so interested in this?  It fascinates me how people will take their fantasies to such an extreme that they will actually kill people.  Also, that nobody caught on to Holmes' scheme.  The "Castle" is the main thing that interests me.  I don't really think it's cool that so many people died such terrible deaths.  Apparently during the building of his "Castle" Holmes fired workers very frequently and went through several builders so only he would know the layout of the building.  Also, because he fired people so often, he didn't have to pay many of them.  A wise move by the Doctor, indeed.  I think it would be awesome to see the building and explore the death traps and see the logistics behind it all.

I know this makes me seem kind of morbid, but I bet you couldn't watch the documentary (65 minutes) and not be in awe of the terrible things this dude did.