H. H. Holmes? First Serial Killer? by Aliza Brylinsky
Within many Cozy Cat Press mysteries, readers can find the stories of small communities or subsections of an existing city, living out their day to day lives until a murder or other mystery comes around to shatter the aura of peace that prevailed for so long. This is especially true if the community is planning some grand event that is interrupted because of the events—fingers will be pointed, and communities will draw tighter around themselves in an effort to discern who they can trust and if the perpetrator of the crimes will strike again. Often, a large effort on the part of the local law enforcement will be put in place to catch the culprit, but it is ultimately up to the author of the tale to decide whether or not the criminal faces any kind of justice for the trauma and stress that they have put the community under.
These same circumstances have played out in the real world, perhaps on a greater scale than most people would think. While the event in question—the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, set in Chicago—was not in fact cancelled or largely impacted by the crimes, there was still a very real threat lurking on the sidelines of the celebration. The fair drew over 27 million people to its glittering “White City”, constructed as a tribute to the 400th anniversary of Columbus landing in America and meant to be a showcase of different cultures and innovation. Very little of the Chicago residents in attendance there knew that a murderer was hiding in their midst, within the city.
His name was H.H. Holmes. Born in New Hampshire, Holmes attended the University of Michigan’s medicine and surgery department in his youth, and then moved throughout the United States in the early parts of his adulthood, committing several frauds along the way and possibly several murders—several disappearances and other incidents happened in the towns that he was a resident of, though he was not definitively tied to any of them. Arriving in Chicago in August of 1886, Holmes first took a job at a local drugstore and then purchased an empty lot immediately across from it, where he began construction on a “mixed-use building”. Though the building was never officially completed within Holmes’s lifetime, it contained disturbing hints into his true nature when later examined. Chutes that would drop down into a crematorium in the basement for disposing of bodies, airtight rooms that were used as gas chambers, and secret passageways—all of them hinted at Holmes’s true nature, which was in such stark contrast to how friendly and personable he seemed to anyone who interacted with him.
Holmes was eventually arrested for his crimes in July of 1895 and executed by way of hanging in May of 1896. Yet this could not erase the fact that he was responsible for the deaths of at least 27 people, with some claiming that he may have committed up to 200 murders in his life. It could not erase the fact that his case received widespread attention and media coverage in the years surrounding the World’s Fair, making Holmes (in essence) one of the first “serial killers” in America. And it also could not erase the fact that Holmes’s presence was one of the first times that the greater population realized that there could be murderers hiding in their midst—just as many individuals in Cozy Cat novels are forced to confront.
For more information on H.H. Holmes or the Chicago World Fair, books such as Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City are highly recommended.
