Episode 457: H.H. Holmes Part 1

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast. What's the answer, and what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?

Hysterical, a new podcast from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Hey Weirdos, I'm Ash and I'm Alayna.

And this is officially a big series of Morbid. It's a multi-parter, and it's like a celebration of our fucking five podcasting years guy, five years, fiveyears.com.

I'm holding my hand up to signify five, should we? high? five, Freddie high?

Whoa, that was a good one, that was a really good one. Eyelash in my eye. Oh, we knocked the eyelash out of Ash's eyes, quite literally.

Ow, fuck, oh man. okay, death destruction.

You know, when they're like, not yours, so then they stab you further. This is it. It's five years we're blinding Ash right now. God, I've been going through it on this podcast lately. Oh guys, every episode last week, I was like, Yeah, my stomach hurts.

I got the stomach bug, that's what it was. She was gearing up to that stomach bug. The last episode that we did. I got the stomach bug that night, yeah.

So yeah, so for because everybody was like, Huh, Ash hasn't been doing great? The last couple episodes? Every episode, I was like, I don't know, my stomach is just really off, it's really off.

It was off for like a week. And then I was like, you know what I should do? I should eat chicken and waffles? Yeah. And then the stomach bug said, Oh, you stupid bitch, that's what it said.

Yeah, I heard it all the way from here, yeah, but yeah, somehow she got the stomach bug and she kept it to herself, so I appreciate that.

That's because you weren't anywhere near me. Yeah, thank goodness. love you so much. I love you so much.

I wanted to be alone, alone, leave me alone with my neurovirus. Hopefully, you know, we're getting out of that season, I hope so.

Let's, let's all just stop giving each other the stomach bug and shit. Be careful GI bugs are really, uh, they're really having a moment right now. Yeah. Ask Beach Gem on TikTok.

Beach Gem on TikTok She'll tell you all about it. Oh, and you know what I learned from Beach Gem? I think it was Beach Gem that said it. I know you've said it before, too, but I think you said it last time you were sick.

You can't use hand sanitizer to get rid of the neurovirus. And do you know why? Because it's wrapped in a lipid which is a fat. look at that, which is a fat.

Lipids science, science with morbid and beach gem. Yes, you have to wash your hands for at least 20 seconds.

Yeah, use soap and water that'll get rid of the GI buggies, but other than that, they're sticking around because oof, oof, yeah, they're hard to get gone.

No, you said, Hopefully they're leaving, I hope so. Let's all knock on wood together. April showers bring no stomach bugs, exactly.

That's how that goes, so it's called rhyming, look it up, it's called manifestation.

Okay, duh, uh, so yeah, this, like we said, this is five years guys, and I know you looked at the title of this episode. So this isn't going to be a big, exciting surprise, right? This second. But like, I hope you're excited cause you hit play, uh, you have been asking all of you.

A long time, for five years, all of it for H..H. Holmes.

Yeah, I have been wanting to do H..H. Holmes for five years, it's true, but I knew it was a big, long one, similar to Jack the Ripper.

I knew that it needed like real attention paid to it, like, cause it's just got so much extra joysh to it that I was like, this is like, you know, it's got history, it's got all this mayhem to it. You got to siphon through all the lies and find the actual facts in the case because this motherfucker lied.

Like a liar, like a liar, he lied right to everyone's face holes all the time. I like how you're doing a lot with your hands right now and the way that you were. Just like digging through the lies, I'm digging.

It made me think of the little girl in Knocked up and she's like, and then you dig and you dig, and then the baby's inside. Yeah, that's exactly it. You dig and you dig, and you dig, and you find a little of the truth. That's what they say, it's a little truth, baby.

But yeah, he was a liar. And I think we're going to get right into it. I don't know how many parts this is going to be many.

So just strap in. I think it's at least going to be three Buckle up brothers could be four. I'll let you know, probably in the next episode, for sure, how many parts it will be, but you know, strap in.

This is our big five-year series that we wanted to give to H.

H. Holmes Because he's a piece of shit. And, you know, the story is wild. So let's start at the beginning. That's a good place to go, it always is.

In the late 1800s, Herman Webster Mudgett Herman Webster Mudgett, take that in, H..H. Holmes real name is Herman Webster Mudgett.

So he could have been H.

M. Mudgett Yeah, wow, H...W.

MUDGETT Yeah, Webster, yeah, that was a little dyslexia for you. We'll just flip it upside down.

I was kind of just thinking about the real housewives of New York. When Luann says, Like the Herman Munster shoes, there you go, of course you are, yeah, but this is where we need to begin, because it's like, all right, so h.h.

Holmes objectively is a cool name, like H.h. Holmes flows. it's a very like, smooth name you would probably trust in, H.H.

Holmes If you didn't know this, H..h. Holmes, like all this aside, like every all of it, it would be a stage name, it would.

Like, H..H. Holmes sounds cool, yeah, Herman Webster Mudgett doesn't sound as scary, or maybe sounds scarier.

Actually, I should say, it sounds scarier, it just sounds kind of lame. But you know, Holmes, we're going to. We're going to refer to him as Holmes. Because that's what he went by for most of his name. That's what people knew him by, that's what his crimes are really under.

Um, we'll call him Herman for part of this, like in the beginning, but you'll know who we're talking about, um. But a.k.a. H..H. Holmes, he claimed and confessed to officially killing up to 28 people. Some people, most people, all people believe that it could be well over 200 people that he has killed, you believe?

I believe he's way up there, yeah, I think he's more than 28, okay, um, while the full extent of his crimes and the number of lives that he did take is probably something that we may never know. To the nth degree, you know, like, we're, I don't think we're going to be able to find every single person.

I would love to believe we could. Um, it was really his ability to kill without conscience or hesitation, really for financial gain. Most of the times, sometimes he did it because he just liked to do it, but most of the time it was for financial gain. Do you think it was like financial gain?

And he's he liked it. Oh, it was for sure a mix. Yeah, it was for sure a mix. And I think it was also the systematic way that he got rid of his victims in his murder castle. Which, don't worry, we will get to. It feels like a horror novel.

It doesn't feel like real life. Yeah, when you read the actual facts of this, you're like, that's not real, but it is, it's wild. And in truth, he wasn't really like a genius.

He wasn't as calculating as he's really made out to be. He was just a man who learned pretty early on in life that being a confident liar can get you a long way in the world. Unfortunately, sad but true, especially if you can create enough chaos and confusion to make it absolutely impossible to actually tell the difference between fact and fiction. You ever seen the Great Gatsby?

There you go, if you can spin a tale so wild that people can't tell if it's real fake. What is, what isn't? There's nuggets of truth here, there and everywhere he can. He got a long way with it, yeah, and when we go through this, you're going to see, damn, he went a long way with it.

I'm actually really, like, excited to hear your telling of this because I don't know that much about H. H. Holmes, to be honest, he's. It's weird that, like, I think, a lot of people, a lot of people, know the name H. H.

Holmes They know the murder castle, you know, they know, like the the things about it that we've all been told. But when you dig into it and you realize like he was not just a monster. He was such a piece of shit. Like, he was like he was a piece of shit in every aspect of his life. Good, it was like he was just such a shit bag.

It's wild. And he was such a fucking liar, such a liar. He had no qualms about hurting everybody along the way in various ways, like emotionally, financially, physically, anything you think like he just didn't care.

He didn't care. Full blown sociopath. I think he is full blown. Yeah, full blown.

And all he gave a shit about was money, yeah, that's all he cared about, and it didn't do him well in the end. I feel like if your main goal is just money, it's never going to work out that.

Well, if you look at like money obsessed people throughout history, they usually are like, Yeah, it doesn't work out in the very end. In the very end, it might work out along the way, but in the end it doesn't.

It can't be your only goal. No, it ultimately it ends up eating you alive. Yep, it really does.

Now, let's start at the very beginning of H.

H. Holmes So, H..H. Holmes, like I said, was born Herman Webster Mudgett in Gilmanton, New Hampshire. Ah, bitch.

On May 16th, 1861.

His parents were Levi Mudgett and Theodate Price. I think that makes him a taurus. Oh, there you go, wow.

I didn't see that for him. I'm going to double check that, uh? But according to H..H. Holmes himself, his early years in New Hampshire were, quote, no different from those of any other country. Bred boy.

And I was well-trained by loving and religious parents, eh? I don't know about that. His parents were methodists, they were very strict disciplinarians. His father, Levi, was a house painter and would later go on to serve as the town's postmaster, and his mother stayed at home.

She was a housemaker now. They were not known to be like strange, mean, to have any like dark ways about them by neighbors or anything like that. According to Adam Seltzer's book, H...H. Holmes, The True Story of the White City Devil. Uh, neighbors remembered the Mudgets as quote, very upright, God-fearing citizens living in a quiet, secluded section of the country. With no trace or taint of immorality or vice. In the family history for at least three generations, I love that they were like, now we can't tell you about that fourth generation.

They could be heathens of the highest order. But for three generations, these people did the damn thing and they seemed okay, okay, like we can vouch for three generations. We're not going back to that fourth. I don't know.

But it's weird because you get little again with the. There's a lot of parts of this story where you hear Holmes himself tell 40 different, like versions of the story, or you hear other places just give you different things. You will find, if you read about them, that they were, you know, there was nothing of note. In his childhood, with his parents that seemed to set off anything but him saying, like, you know, they were good people, I didn't really have anything wrong with them. That is probably true.

Remember, it was the 1800s? So I'm pretty sure they were strict disciplinarians, meant they beat the shit out of their kids when they got in trouble. And that was just normal back then. So I think it was one of those things that it was like, Oh yeah, whatever. And normal, like all throughout his life, really.

So what would he have said? Whatever, but Herman himself, I'm going to call him Herman for now. Wrote an autobiography from prison, later called Holmes's Own Story, and he wrote it in 1895. And he starts the book like this. This will tell you everything you need to know about what kind of theater kid this guy is.

Uh oh, quote Come with me, if you will, to a tiny, quiet New England village. Nestling among the picturesquely rugged hills of New Hampshire, this little hamlet has for a century been known as Gilmonton. Here, in the year 1861, I. Herman W. Mudgett, the author of these pages, was born.

Narcissist like, Wow, Okay, girl, calm down.

I twas I, the author of these pages, was born. It's fantastic, it's like, and the world was a worse place for it. So thank you for bringing us back to that moment where we all went, fuck. I also love that he starts the book with Come with me if you will.

Everybody else is like, Nope, no, we're like, No, no, I know. It reminds me of like the in, like Willy Wonka, when he's like, come with me and you'll see.

Like that, and it feels the same. Like when Willy Wonka did it, I was like, no thank you, and now when he does it, I'm like, no thank you. I don't anytime someone says, come with me, say no thank you.

I'm going to go this way. So, like we said, the Mudgetts were a well-liked family. Holmes childhood seems fairly unremarkable for the time period, especially. His mother remembered him as quote a good little child, very pretty and loving, as most moms remember their children being like, very pretty and loving. But not everyone remembered him as being so pretty or so loving as he began to get older. According to Ira Penick, a cobbler in Gilminton, he said Quote Herman was a hard worker, but still, there were some things about him I didn't like.

He was too fond of money. And Penick told reporters that there were a lot of times when he was around the shop that he would see money go missing when he had been around. Or when Herman would claim that he'd sent payment for a service, he would just pocket the money himself. That's fake as fuck. And, in fact, of the many stories that people got after he was arrested finally, which we will get to in the ultimate episode. At the end, a lot of people said that he was generally polite and pretty like, fine, like.

No one was like, Wow, he was so popular or cool, or, Oh, he was so weird and odd, and like, we hated him. It was just like, Oh, he was fine, I guess, like, whatever. But they always mentioned him possessing a very unhealthy preoccupation or obsession with money. That was always the thing. People were like, Yeah, he was fine.

He was polite, I guess, like he wasn't super offensive, but like, my god, that guy was obsessed with money. And it's like, when everyone in your life, that is the one like, like, common thread that everybody can touch upon, that's bad, yeah.

If you, you want to be known for, like, a little bit more than that, a little bit more than scrooge, Mcducking your way through life. I think I like that. It's a really good way of doing it. Was that an adverb?

Yeah, no, no, that would be l-y. That was a verb, it was a verb. I like it.

I like it, I like that. You scrooge McDucked as a verb. Yeah, you know. But by most accounts, he did struggle a little to develop healthy interpersonal skills as a child, which to me would be a red flag now, considering his adult activities. But at the time, you know?

Also the 1800s, so like, was there even people to make friends with? was anyone having healthy interpersonal skills at that point? I don't think so. But according to one of his neighbors, as a boy, he was, quote a boy easily influenced and did not appear to be well-grounded and firm principles. Not withstanding his excellent home training and instruction.

So he just couldn't stand in his own convictions and, honestly, didn't seem to hold any real moral strongholds of his own. And that's not good, that's a red flag to me. But other neighbors remembered him spending a lot of time by himself, kind of being a little bit of a loner sometimes. Um, another neighbor named Betsy, Betsy Hoadley.

Fucking love the name Betsy, you know, I thought you were going to be like, I know Betsy. Oh my god, that's my good girl, bets.

Betsy Hoadley, she said, I don't know if you heard that pup bark, um, but, she said quote. He always seemed to be by himself. I know that instead of playing with the other boys, he would wander off alone or on long walks. He was never much of a favorite with the other boys.

He seemed to be very secretive, he was too arrogant and domineering to be popular with the children again. That alone, to me, isn't a huge issue. But added into everything else later. And it's definitely another red flag that you're like, and what was he doing off by himself? That's the thing.

And being secretive, it's like you kill an animal. And also, of note, many who knew him as a boy later said that he would never make eye contact when addressing children or adults. Would not look you in the eye, he wouldn't look anyone in the eye. To me, I was like, Oh, that's, that's a little sketchy. But then if you read a little further into this, you see that. A couple of medical professionals did diagnose him at one point with stravidness, which is technically like, um, cross-eyed.

Oh, okay, now. This can make it nearly impossible to maintain eye contact physically. And people, you know it can actually like, hold people back. Because people think, look at it as being like, Oh, you're sketchy or untrustworthy, I just can't look at you. But it's really like, he honestly just couldn't look people in the eye.

Oh, that's sad. So like that isn't super fair to like label as like, oh, that's a little like, here's the thing. I'm sure he was like, he was objectively untrustworthy and objectively a criminal. So like, even if he could look you in the eye, I'm sure he wouldn't, but like, physically, he couldn't.

So, like, we won't use that as a red flag, we'll rest on that now. Although he did like to invent things when he was younger, and he showed interest in a few areas. He never showed a real direction, and he seemed to kind of float around without a real purpose for a while. Same, and it was really a bit later that he finally settled on medicine as his thing.

Now, the stories recounted to reporters after he was arrested. Um, are definitely influenced by what he did and what he was charged with and what he was found to have done. So it is like a little biased when you look at it later and people are seeing hindsight in full 2020 now. Remember now, these things are never super red flags until they add up and you sprinkle in some murder and then you're like, Oh, yeah, that all makes sense.

Exactly. Nevertheless, people definitely all kind of came to a consensus that he was odd, he was very apathetic, he was fucking obsessed with money. And honestly, when you put that on with today's understanding of the psychology of con artists or killers, it's pretty on par.

Lines up, Yeah, those line up, so it's not like everybody's just making shit up. This is who he was.

Now, one interesting story that's often told was that when he was a young boy, he always had like, a fear. Of the local doctor's office, which is pretty common in kids, and especially, I'm sure in the 1800s, the local doctor's office was a scary, fucking nightmare den. They just have all their like huge ass tools laying out. Like, I, I'm not going to fault little little Herman for that one. He's like, I bumped my knee.

They're like, we're going to cut it off. Yeah, it's like, Ah, and this guy, um, his name was Dr. Nahum White, I believe his last name was, or his full name was, and he was a known um like.

He was very into dissection, He was an anatomist, He was very good at his job. He was very respected, but he took dissection to another level. Sometimes. So he had things in his office that would have been a little morbid to him.

Oh, shit. And also like, a little scary for a child, so that makes sense. But one day, a couple of older boys dragged Herman forcibly into one of the rooms in the office and showed him a skeleton. Where where are all the employees?

Yeah, I mean, 1800s. They're like, I don't give a fuck, yeah, we're going to run in here real quick.

Don't, don't tell him to run in.

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This skeleton, by all accounts, was set up so that it had its arms outstretched, which, Herman said made it look like it was about to grab him. And it was like this, like big, like open mouth skeleton. Like, scary. And so it scared the shit out of him, like, totally traumatized him, but at the same time it fascinated him. Okay?

And he said that was the beginning of his fascination with medicine and anatomy. Okay, so what's the story behind this? I'm sure it scared the shit out of him. I don't know if that was the beginning of his real like fascination with medicine.

I think he's trying to use that as like, here's this origin tale of my, of my great career in medicine, which was bullshit anyways. So it's like, I don't know about that. Well, cause a lot of times you're inspired by, like, multiple things. Yeah, exactly. I was like, No, I think that you knew that doctors made more money.

And so you wanted to do that? Yeah, you could think that's more, cause you do love a pretty coin, yeah.

I think it's more that my friend. But during his teen years, he graduated high school at 16, and he started working a number of odd jobs. And finally, he ended up teaching at a local school for a little while. It was during this time, where he was teaching, that he fell in love with Clara Lovering.

Clara was a girl from a prominent family in nearby Loudon, New Hampshire. And now, interestingly, people who knew Herman early in life said that he had been obsessed with getting married very early in life. Um, even when he was like 14 years old, he was trying to get that dowry, he was trying to get that dowry. There you go.

And in fact, after his grandfather passed away, his grandfather left him a small parcel of land, which was very common. Um, and he took this as like, Well, I'm a landowner now, so I need to get myself a wife slow down. So at 14, he proposed to this girl who was actually boarding with that cobbler. Ira Penick, who was like, he was a weird kid and probably stole money from me and also proposed to this lady that was living with me when he was 14..

I guess this girl that he proposed to was like visiting the country from New York or something like. Was staying and boarding at Ira Penick's for the like some period of time, sure, and so Ira Penick was like, yeah, you can't marry this girl. She's going back to New York. And like, I'm supposed to be taking care of her, and like, you can't, just like, I can't, like, marry her. Off to you, you psycho.

Like, what the hell, what's happening? So she had apparently either accepted it and it was like, a no, you can't do that, or she didn't accept it. And the proposal returned to New York shortly after.

Um, but he was undaunted, though, don't worry about it, he wasn't gonna. That wasn't the end of his romanticism, but um, he tried again when he met Clara Lovering, so Clara was very well liked, very respected.

People thought she was sweet and kind and really didn't have a bad thing to say about her. A neighbor once said about her quote She was a very pretty little woman when she was first married and was very devoted to her husband. She was a She was of a modest and retiring disposition. Okay, that sounds great for 1800s.

Like, that's Victorian like you go girl, I think she was an. she was an It girl, she went on hot girl walks, there you go.

They were like, I always see her in the morning on her hot girl walk, she's drinking her greens, that's right, she is, she's getting it.

People said, you couldn't help liking Clara. Oh, I love that. Apparently, the two of them began officially dating at a church social when Herman Slash Holmes saw another boy hitting on her.

Oh, no, you don't. And he basically threatened this boy's life if he didn't back off. And that worked, apparently, and they began dating and like, why did that work so well?

I know I'm like, What's going on? Why was that boy like, You're not going to do shit, Herman? You can't even look me in the eye. But this guy was probably like, he probably will kill me.

Because a lot of people throughout his life were like, I think that guy's going to murder people, well, exactly like they. Just like, thought it like he didn't even need to do anything violent, he did later.

But when even before he was like, actively, outwardly violent, it's like people were like, I don't know. I just feel like he's going to murder someone someday. Like, he just had that vibe, it was foreshadowing, I know you can't really do anything off of that vibe.

Like, what are you supposed to do? Be like, I feel like you're going to murder someone, so you should get arrested. The EH, it worries, the EH does worry.

Go listen to the rewatcher. That's a funny, funny little tidbit. From there. The EH worries about Herman. It does worry about it. But it worked for Clara, this whole threatening the guy that was hitting on her thing.

I mean, I mean a guy that she was like, all right back in the day. He's going to fight for my honor. Yeah, two guys fighting over you.

Let's go. But you know what's sad? He's not going to. No, no, no, he's a piece of shit.

Yeah, of course. But he proposed not long after they began courting, and the two eloped in Alton, New Hampshire, in July of 1878, and they were both 17 years old. Now, on par with Herman's secrecy and general oddness, it was several months before his family, or Clara's family, even knew that they were married.

Uh, when they found out, they cause, they just got married in front of, like, a justice of the peace, yeah, when they found out, they were not happy on either side, apparently. Herman's mother, so H.H. Holmes's mother, said Clara couldn't have found much worse, which feels like a stark turn from the sweet family neighbors.

Remember? And from Herman being like, Yeah, my family is so kind and wonderful. I'm like, your mom didn't think this girl could find much worse than you. Oh, that's his mom, that's his mom.

Oh shit, so that's what I mean when I say, like, imagine if you found out that your mom said that about you? And she was like, she, and I guess she said like, Oh, she's going to have to support you. Oh, cause she, cause she knew she was like, he's a fucking deadbeat, like, I know this.

He's pretty, but that's about it, and he loves money, but he can't get it himself. So he's going to take yours. Yikes, it's like, Damn, your own mom knew.

That's rough, but then later, if you research a bit deeper into their family, it seems there was this weird, strange jealousy that his mother and his sister, Helen, actually had whenever he found a girl that he liked. I don't like that, there was something strange afoot there, I'm sure of it.

I just don't know what, you know what, though, like, some families are like that.

Yeah, like, especially if there's one boy, it's always like the crown jewel of the family. And it gets weird sometimes. Where it's like, I'm going to kill any girl that comes near him and stuff, and it's like, Yeah, I don't know. I think there's a TLC show about it, it's it's always been a weird vibe to me.

Yeah, when like, it immediately makes me question when like a like. That's why I love my mother-in-law like she was never, ever like that. No, mine, neither like.

It's a. In fact, she always is like, you know, thank you for making him so happy, kind of thing. Like. She's just always like, so kind and like, supportive of it, and she always has been.

Yeah, it's always a little off putting to me. When, like, mother-in-laws or future mother-in-laws are like, I'll fucking kill you. And it's like, Okay, all right, but you like, I'll see TikToks where, like, people who don't like even have kids yet.

They're like, someday my son will hate his girlfriend, and you're like, why are you gearing up for that? Here's the thing, like, you can't, yeah, period.

Like, you can't like, and you know what I'm saying, sit down, you can't, you cannot. It's just a it's a weird vibe.

It is like, you should like my personal thought process with that. And like, we're not getting off on a tangent, so don't worry, it doesn't fucking matter. I was going to say, I'm not going to go far.

Don't worry. But my personal thought about that is that like, I want to love the person, and I think we've talked about this before. They're like, I want to love the person my kids love.

Of course, whoever they are, as long as they're a good person and they make them happy. Let's go to me. I'm like, cool.

Eventually, I get more kids, like, I get to be dude, that's what my future mother-in-law always says. Drew's mom literally says she has six kids, see, and that's like, it's like that.

You should want, why wouldn't you want that? Yeah, that's the ultimate goal, exactly.

I will love to love the people my loved ones love, right? Like, you know, like that's how it should be. Like, you want to make sure they're like, if they're a shit person, obviously, then no.

But if, like, they've done nothing and you're just going into it, being like, I'm going to fuck your world up. Like, that's a bad way to go into any relationship. And again, you can't, you can't, so so Herman Munster's mom.

You can't. Yeah, oh wait, not Munster. God damn it, Herman Munster.

I'm stuck in a place of Ronies. You are so Herman Webster's mom you cannot, and sister you can't either, yeah.

Cause that's even weirder, that's all just yuckas that takes it even to a weirder place. Yeah, uh. But Clara's family was not too pleased either, but she was. They were not pleased that they weren't really established.

He wasn't stably working. Like they were like, Ah, you guys kind of jumped into this and they were both 17. Yeah, I mean, which at the time, I guess it probably wasn't that weird in the 1800s.

But like they weren't, I think they were both. Just like I would like you guys to have, like a decent life, so we got to get you on track. So Clara's family took matters into their own hands and set Herman up with a job as a clerk at the grocery store. At a grocery store in East Concord, and it was a grocery store where Clara's family owned. Um, and a lot of Clara's family members worked there too. And they said, if he, they went while working with him, they got to know him better.

Yeah, that's probably why they did that, yeah, and it was smart because they said. One thing about him was that if he even got the slightest compliment about anything, it would blow his head up wildly. Oh.

Like a very much like a narcissistic kind of vibe to it. I'm not diagnosing him. Don't worry, but get out of your armchair.

Get out, I'm out of my armchair. But I'm just saying, he, that's vibey with narcissism, for sure, he was definitely like a narcissism.

Adjacent is what I'm saying, uh? But he loved to be complimented, okay, and would obsess over it, and it would just make him be like, Oh, you know what I mean?

Like, Oh, you did really great at stocking those shelves. And he'd be like, Well, that's because I'm the greatest shelf stalker this side of the Mississippi. You fuckers like, bow down before me. Like it was like too much, like it was never like, thank you.

That's usually what you should just go with, but you know, whatever. By all accounts, at this time, the couple seemed fine, they seemed happy. In fact, people said he was seemingly in the beginning very smitten with Clara.

Um, people said he would walk like miles to see her after work and then walk miles back to work. I hate saying, Oh, I know. Cause in the beginning, it looks like there was intentions of possibly living a a life with, you know? But I think the intention was probably fleeting. To the point of being like, maybe it will, and it's gone like it was literally, like, couldn't even couldn't even blink without it.

Like, it was that quick, uh, cause he never had any good intentions ever again. So don't worry now. A year and a half later, the couple's son, Robert, was born in February 1880. Um, in in his teens, he had been, like I said, very aimless, didn't really know what he was doing. But they said when? When he got married and when he became a father, it did seem to awaken some kind of like, I got to get my shit together kind of thing.

That's usually what it should do. He wanted to be somebody he was claiming. Um, and Holmes's position as a store clerk didn't really give him an opportunity to, like, rise up the ranks, in his opinion, like enough, and he so. And it really was only meant to be a stepping stone. Because I think it was Clara's uncle who had owned the store. And he was like, I was just trying to give you this to get like a leg up.

Yeah, you know, so like, calm down, save some money, don't don't worry. He's like, I didn't want you to take over the fucking business, asshole.

Well, and his whole idea was like, Hey, I was giving you this leg up. Maybe you learn this business and maybe you go open your own store somewhere. Yeah, maybe maybe you get to know this whole business, you, and then you're a store owner somewhere else.

Right, and we can, you know, everybody's happy, and even if not that. Like, you tuck some money away. And you learned a little bit about business, you know, and working with people and finances and all this stuff, just about being in the working world.

Just being a human, you know? But he holmes quickly Herman, I should say at this point, he's Herman. But he quickly grew pretty tired of this work. He thought, quote that he thought he was quote altogether too bright for the life of a country storekeeper, okay? In an interview after he was arrested, Clara actually said to reporters. Father tried to encourage him by telling him that someday he could have a store of his own and could make a very comfortable living. But he seemed to think he was too smart for such an ordinary occupation.

He thought he could make a lot of money fast. He became imbued with the idea of becoming a doctor. And he used the talk of the immense fortune fortunes that physicians had made in a short time, especially if they invented some patent medicine, he became obsessed with creating some kind of patent patented medicine. I remember that part of the story now, despite his penchant for get rich quick schemes. Like he was that kind of guy, like, you know, those kinds of people.

TomMy HaverFord Exactly. He did seem at this time that he was becoming very serious about becoming a doctor. So which wasn't a get rich quick scheme. He was going to have to go through a lot of training, obviously.

And spend a lot of money exactly so. He did quit his job at the general store and he started studying with Dr. Nahum Wright, who are white. Excuse me, who had owned that practice in Gilminton, the one who owned that office and was an anatomist, that was very respected, very renowned.

Amputations, though, right, loved amputations. Loved a like, very morbid dissection, like he was just, and he, again. He was a very good doctor. By all accounts, he was very respected, held many esteemed positions. Like, not bad things to say about this doctor at all. He just at the time was seen as someone who took it to a different level.

Now maybe it wouldn't be, but back then it was. But he started working with him, he was studying underneath him. And it's funny because he came full circle back to that office with the skeleton that scared the shit out of him. That is funny.

Well, maybe that's why he said to, like, oh, it all started here, yeah. And it's like, I wonder if his like, extreme dissections and extreme, like, um, kind of, uh, displays of anatomy in that office was something that Holmes suddenly found himself drawn to, like, sparked something within him. And when he wasn't working with Dr.

White. He would spend a ton of time studying on his own time, uh, medical books, any medical book he could get his hands on, because he just wanted to start right away. And by 1881, he took a job teaching at the Potter District School in Gilmanton, which, remember, he had taught before. Um, and this was like a small class of like 15 students. So he didn't have a ton that he had to do for that job, so it allowed him a lot of time to study on the side.

Okay? Meanwhile, Clara and Robert were living with her parents in Loudoun. She was essentially raising him as a single parent, like he was kind of absent from that child's life. Um, or maybe that's a better thing, actually.

Maybe it was better for him, but the distance between her and Herman at the time was just getting bigger and bigger. Um, and in the spring of 1882, Holmes left. Herman, left Gilmanton for Burlington, Vermont, and he started studying medicine at the University of Vermont. So he was even further away now. It should be noted that medical schools at the time were regarded pretty dubiously. Uh, if you listen to our Burke and Hare series, you remember talk of resurrection men, resurrectionists or grave robbers. How could I forget?

Med students themselves were basically known to grave rob for their anatomy lessons. It was almost one of those things where, like, you could show how committed you were by being like, I dug my own corpse for anatomy today. Fantastic corpses were not easy to come by legally at the time, and pre-doctors got a doctor.

So they're going to do what they got to do at the time, got a doctor, um, I found. In one of the sources that we will list in the show notes, I found this epitaph of a nine-year-old girl named Ruth Sprague from 1846, who died in Hoosick Falls. This just kind of shows what people thought of physicians at the time, it reads. Her body dissected by fiendish men, her bones anatomized her soul. We trust has risen to God, where few physicians rise.

Oh, shit, which I'm, like, physicians going to who I was like. I don't know if that's really fair, but like, they might see your kid at some point or like you at the time. That's the only way. They had just discovered that you can't properly teach physicians without dissecting corpses.

It's just the way it is to this day. We do that because you have to, right. In order to learn about the human body, you got to open the human body up. It's just the way it is.

Hands on, baby, there you go. And like, fortunately now it's all legal and less grotesque, you know, much more ethical, much more all of that good stuff. Back then, nothing was legal or ethical or anything of the or fucking even hygienic like it's like.

Were they still throwing shit out the window at this point? It was wily. Then, like, if you look up pictures, I got to find the picture and maybe we'll try to post it of. Like these, you know, early med students in the 1800s, doing a dissection. And we can, like, blur out the thing if you want.

You can even put a note exactly just so, you know, it's really not gruesome, to be honest. But all of them are in three-piece suits and just wearing like leather aprons over their three-piece suits while doing an autopsy. Essentially, and it's like, I can't imagine eviscerating in a three-piece suit.

I don't think you are meant to, like that is a wild, but how fucking dapper is that? Oh, I was saying to you earlier today, we were having this discussion. Even just like the fact, like how women used to do their hair, I'm like, I want to do my hair like that.

I'm about to start fucking sleeping with socks wrapped all up in this noggin. Yeah, to make it, these soft curls. Yes, yeah, I love it.

Like the voluminous of it all, some things back then, they had it right. I mean, would I say that you should eviscerate in a three-piece suit? Now? No, but we got cool pictures from back then.

So that's all that matters, cheers. But either way, again, they were. They were looked at as a little little side-eye-y back then med students. I just wanted to set the tone. So very few peers or college faculty really seem to have even remembered Herman much from this time period.

But those that did said that he wasn't exactly their favorite person. He wasn't terrible, he just he wasn't that great either. Okay? A woman named Mrs.

Brew, who Holmes actually boarded with for nearly his entire stay in Burlington. Because they med students would stay at boarding homes like people would keep them in there. It's like, top chef there you go, it's exactly like that, she, she remembered Herman saying that he was married.

He was still married to Clara at the time. Don't you forget it, technically, but he was, quote, always flirting with a number of young girls in Burlington. What a piece of poop. And he actually paid particular attention to Brew's daughter.

Which she did not like. Oh no, and they're living together, yes, Mrs.

Brew also said that, um, Herman would wake up early every morning and leave the house for what he said were long walks for his health. Gotta get those steps in. But yeah, it's like he put on his Apple watch and he was out there. Herman, on a hot girl walk, trying to get that, trying to close those rings.

Trying to get to 10k baby on a hot girl walk? But he also would have wine with an elderly widow every day. And at first you're like, Wow, that's lovely, but then it's like, No, he was just trying to get her money.

Yeah, like he absolutely was. He was wooing her, Even Mrs Brew was like that bitch was trying to get her money.

Yeah, like, 100, you fake piece of shit. It's like in Gilmore Girls, when Kirk befriends elderly residents of Star's Hollow so that he can be put in their will and get their diamonds. And then he sells one to Luke later to propose to Lorelei.

You know, it's just like that, isn't it wild that Kirk did that? Yeah, like, I love Kirk, it makes sense.

It does, it, really does. He does. I think he doesn't quite get the the bad of it all, exactly.

You know now? According to Mrs Brew, Um, Herman was fine, generally pleasant, besides being a like, super flirt, um. But she said, when aroused and meaning aroused, like, um. I was like, I was going to say, I feel like I need to, like, quickly be like, she doesn't mean sexually aroused.

She doesn't mean they were aroused. Like when he would get, like, worked up, he had a most vicious and uncontrollable temper. My personal particular Herman story that is my favorite is that on one occasion, apparently, and this was confirmed by multiple people in the house. Herman's roommate, Fred Fred Engels, borrowed Herman's mustache wax without asking for it, without asking permission, and this led Herman to literally beat the shit out of him. Oh, no.

A huge physical altercation arose between them, like they bought the two of them shit. And quote. The Gilmonton boy literally cleaned up the room with his companion. That's how it was described.

Oh, my God and love. And I mean, this is my favorite because of what it is over, because it's ridiculous. And left him with black eyes and a scratched face.

Over a little bit of mustache wax, but the fact that it was over mustache wax is so Victorian, I can't. The only thing I can think of is that, like, it would have been probably pretty expensive back then.

And I also think he was just like a wild man, yeah, who was just ready to hurt someone at a moment's notice. I think you call that issues, issues.

I think so, give him a tea. So during this time, um, Herman was very focused on getting through med school as quickly as possible. He wanted to start making that bank.

And that's like, not, not the way you want to do it, that's cool, not like quick. And this was seemingly at the cost of literally everything in his life. Uh, well, most people knew he was married to a woman in New Hampshire.

He never really spoke about Clara to anyone, she never visited him. Instead, he just spent his time studying. Or he would kind of just pursue subjects that he didn't think were covered well enough in school, which you would think would make him smarter, but it didn't.

Mrs. Brew, Mrs. Brew said. Quote He always pictured himself as at the top notch of his profession. I rather thought he had a very high idea of his ability, that he was self-conceited. Oh, those are like the worst kind of people to be around, too.

Like, you're just like, Oh, you were like, like, a know-it-all is not my faith, and know-it-all is the worst kind of person ever. They really are. We fucking hate know-it-all. I hate them all.

They're the worst. Every time I look in the mirror, I'm like, Fuck you, oh my god, that's not what I was doing.

I have, you know, you have to laugh at yourself. But of all the subjects that he covered in med school, he was really into chemistry. Which is a very grim foreshadowing of his future activities in Chicago. By the way, which we will get to. Oh, I hate that. Can I just say I fucking hated chemistry in high school? I like chemistry, but it was one of the hardest subjects to me. I never, I never understood chemistry.

It's very interesting to me, but it is fucking hard. Like that was one of the subjects I struggled with. It is interesting biology I got you, but biology I loved.

It's hard. And organic chemistry, I think that's what I had to take actually in high school, and I literally almost fucked. You took organic chemistry in high school.

Okay, maybe not. I was like, what the fuck? probably not. I was like, probably not. Organic chemistry just sucks.

I don't know whatever we took, I didn't understand. But what's worse than chemistry is the other fucking one that you have to take. Maybe it starts with a P physics.

Yeah, fuck physics, fuck physics, oh my god, and I had this. I mean, like, don't fuck physics, like in reality, because, like, we need it.

No, we need so much physics, but like, I don't want to learn about it. Inertia. Who knows her? I don't know her, who knows?

Inertia. I hardly know her.

Inertia. I hardly know her.

With like, and with little free time, he had, he actually got a tutor to help him in chemistry because he was so focused on it. Okay, Dr. J. O.

Lindsley, who is a physician and expert in chemistry, and he did this because he thought the chem department just did a shit job. He was like, You're not doing enough, okay, that's just like who he was.

It's also like, you don't know what you're doing yet, so how do you know that they're not doing enough, like you don't really know? But he quickly turned his room at the boarding house into like a laboratory, essentially. Um, tons of bottles and all kinds of test tubes and fluids and unlabeled shit. And like, just it was starting to get wily up in there.

And it scared the shit out of Mrs Brew. Well, it would scare me too. He was like, she was like, it was starting to get a little too much for me. I think I'm like, fucked in the head with like things that I like relate other things to.

Why? what are you relating to? All I can think of right now? Is Jack in the nightmare before Christmas, trying to figure out the meaning of how or of Christmas? That's not bad.

And then Sally is Mrs. Brew. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

But my brain just did that. Like, he's just sitting there, like fucking around with liquids in his room. Yeah, right, he's, like, you know, dissolving.

Herman's like, What's this? ornaments and shit, like, that's what I think, that there's magic in the air.

I hope not. Oh no, he said. There's murder in the air, there's murder in the air, cause he's fucking terrible.

He's not Jack Skellington. I still love Jack Skellington. It's wild the amount of people that are in the same boat as you, yeah.

And it was honestly, it was a foreshadowing to who I would marry. Because I, I love me. A tall, a tall skeleton of a man, that's what I love. I love that with a great voice.

Oh my gosh, so there you go, cause I loved Jack's voice, and everybody on planet Earth loves John's voice.

I mean, I can't blame you, he does, he has a great one.

She struck him with her motor vehicle, she had been under the influence, and then she left him there. In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask.

Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia. Or a corrupt police coverup, if you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a coverup to prevent one of their own from going down.

Everyone had an opinion, and after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision to end in a mistrial. It's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery+.

Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like, at my locker and she came up to me and she was like, stuttering, super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around.

She's like, I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast, like doubling and tripling, and it's all these girls with a diagnosis.

The state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, well, yeah.

It's hysteria, it's all in your head, it's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since the Witches of Salem?

Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here, something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline, and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical.

Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcasts. you can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

Now, according to Mrs Brews quote, Herman was fairly wild over chemistry. wild enough, he was wild. I love that she used that word, too.

Like, he was fairly wild, she was like, that dude was feral up there, he was going off, but, she said, and he was all the time experimenting with liquids in his room. And while she kind of looked at it, as he was just very committed to med school. It's probably more likely that he just wanted to get as much experience with chemistry because he wanted to patent that medicine. To become fucking rich right away.

He knew that was the subject, that's why he got the tutor, that's everything it wasn't. Oh, they're not doing enough at school, and I'm just really committed to my education. It's like, No, I need to make a medicine so I can get a million, zillion dollars.

Fast track now. He was always telling everyone at the boarding house that he knew what he was doing with the chemicals. Everyone needs to chill, but I don't blame everybody for being scared, shitless. I'd be scared that it was just going to explode. I'm also surprised that he was allowed to have the amount of chemicals he had.

I know they just kind of let it happen. But Mrs Brews also said that when he left, finally, that they found about three pounds of shingle nails hidden away in his closet. I'm sorry, what?

And they never understood what he had them for. That's probably for the better. We probably don't want to know why. What are shingle nails like big nails?

I think, like, roofing nails, what the fuck? oh, like shingle nails, really heavy duty nails. But again, very determined to get this done as fast as possible.

And he was kind of overextending himself in all directions to get this done, he was constantly taking on extra work. But then one day this took a very dark turn. Because again, he's doing all this extracurricular work on top of all his work. So the darkest one might say was when Mrs.

Brew did her daily house cleaning, and one of these times she was sweeping upstairs and noticed a strong odor coming from Herman's bedroom. So she starts investigating the smell and she's coming over to his bed and she's like, What is that smell over here?

What the fuck is this? So she sweeps her broom under the bed and something comes flying out. And she was fucking horrified to discover that. When she swept out the object under the bed, that was creating the stench. It was, quote, the body of a baby, less than a year old, stretched out on a board. Oh my God.

I was not expecting that none of us were a real baby, a human baby. Less than a year old, who had obviously died, was obviously being used for dissection, and he took it home.

But you can't be doing that. He can't just take it home because it was on a board, so it was obviously being a medical specimen. Quote unquote, sure.

To be dissected. But he took it home to use it. No, no, no, no, no, no, that's not at all normal, in any stretch of any imagination or legal.

Nope, not at all. She fucking lost it, obviously, immediately confronted Fred Engels, because that was his roommate. Oh, yep, and she was like, Where the fuck did this come from?

And Fred was like, Uh, so he said, he had quote, He had excuse me. Fred confronted Herman. Yeah, because he was like, I don't know what that is like, that's not mine.

And he said that Herman told him that he had quote brought the body in during the night and had started to dissect it. And he had no idea how or where he had acquired this body. But, he said, Quote, the site was so repulsive to him that he could not go to sleep, realizing that that body had been in his room for how long? No fucking way, Mrs.

Bruce said she couldn't sleep for weeks, and even like 13 years later, when she talked about it, she was still like, shuddering about it. Of course, I can't imagine you have no idea what you're about to sweep under that, from under that bed, and it's a baby. And he did it again, another time.

He brought home another baby at one point. I'm surprised she didn't kick him out right then and there. Well, that's the thing. He never said where he got this baby. But as soon as he got back that night, she was like, Um, okay, new house rule?

Dissection of human remains cannot happen in my house. Like, didn't think I'd have to say that, didn't think I had to add that to the lease agreement. But here we are. Wow.

Yeah, it's like when you see those stupid warnings on like things that are like, Hey, don't eat this. Like very horrible liquid that will turn your stomach inside out. Yeah, and it's like someone ate that. Oh, 100%.

For that to have to be a warning, or like, don't stand in this trash compactor. And it's like that. That was because someone did it and they had to put it down. No, it's true.

That's now that's in her lease agreement for future tenants. And people are like, someone did that and we have to agree to it now. I'm that little asshole that one time ate a glow stick.

Damn, yeah, I had to go to the hospital, I forgot about that. Yeah, I was like, very little, yeah.

Like, it wasn't very recent, Yeah, it wasn't. it was like five years ago, guys.

And she was like, Bye, yeah, and she was like, That's fine, and she actually said that. He quote, did not think that the university here offered enough advantages for such a brilliant and promising young man. That's what he thought.

Woof. And that's basically what he told her Get out of here, yeah, and he was also. He was also apparently disappointed with the limited number of chemistry courses offered.

Very into chemistry. I wonder why. And he felt that he could go to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and that would be a better place to go with a better price. I'm from Michigan, I'm from Michigan.

So just a few months later, he followed through with the plan and he enrolled at the University of Medicine or Medicine at the University of Michigan. I was like, blah, blah, blah, the medicine in the Michigan and the medicine in the Blah, blah, blah, blah. So for now, he's leaving New England. Bye girl.

In his rearview mirror, Goodbye, don't come back. Oh, and throughout this entire thing, Clara has been supporting him financially by the way, Clara, sweetie.

And also raising their son, Sweetie No. Like, literally his whole life is being supported by Clara Herman. I don't know her.

Herman Fuck off So Herman relocates to Ann Arbor in 1882. And despite his mom and his sister not being happy about it, Clara and the baby went with him. This time. How dare you live with your husband and father?

Remember, they have a weird thing you can't. His mom and sister, Helen never liked Clara because of that weird jealousy thing, and they would frequently encourage him to end the relationship. Kind. Meanwhile, Clara's doing everything for him. But okay.

According to Laura Young, who ran the general store, after Herman left, she was Clara's cousin, she said. Quote When Herman went to Ann Arbor to study Mrs Mudgett, and Helen thought it was outrageous for Clara to go with him. His sister, Helen, made the statement long before Herman left that he was not going to live with her any longer and she must support herself. The sister used to say that Clara was not bright enough, not refined enough for Herman.

Bet you guys regret that, huh? Yeah, because your brother turned out to be one of the most disgusting con men and serial killers in history. Also outrageous.

Yeah, Helen, Clara's not bright enough or refined enough for your fucking monster of a brother. Yeah, Clara. Take several seats. You want to walk that statement back, Helen and mama Mudgett, like, like, really?

That's a whole bunch of wild right there. Yeah, that's one of those you wish you could take back that didn't age well, no?

Now, Clara began working as a dressmaker in Ann Arbor while he focused on finishing his medical degree. But they did not have a good marriage, even before the couple left for Michigan. Herman had said to Laura Young, Clara's cousin quote Being married would likely prevent him from rising as far in the world as he would have otherwise. And that he thought that he and Clara would not get on together very well. He is wildly narcissistic, like he's literally like, it's her dead weight that's making me not rise up in the world.

And it's like, No, I think you're just dumb and I don't think you're good at this. You're only moving around on her dime. Asshole. Yeah, literally, she's the only one doing anything and raising your child. I think she could actually launch you into success if you fucking gave her a second.

So when they moved to Michigan, they lived in a boarding house, and the other boarders there said that they remembered Clara very fondly. They said she was, quote, a very pleasant woman and willing to make any sacrifice that she might help Holmes along in his course. So they saw her as very sweet, very kind, and that she would do fucking anything for him. Aw.

Yeah, they also said the couple thought a lot and that Clara quote was sometimes seen around the rooming house with black eyes. Oh my god, ding, ding, ding. He officially crossed over into monster territory.

What the fuck? So not only is he just like a lazy asshole piece of shit, he's a woman beater, he's an abusive piece of shit, too. So we have violence.

Fuck you, Herman now. Clara struggled to keep the family afloat by herself for nearly two years, and the relationship was just crumbling steadily. And finally, just months before Herman graduated from the University of Michigan. She decided she had fucking enough abuse, and she packed up the few stuff that she had and took her son back to New Hampshire. I'm so happy that she was able to do that on her own volition.

And later, in letters, she claimed that in the decade that followed her going to New Hampshire, she, quote, had known very little of her husband. Wow, they actually remained married until he was executed. Oh shit, they never got divorced.

That's right. He never divorced her, but married several more times. That's so crazy. Yeah, he was a piece of shit.

Upon returning to Gilminton, Clara and Robert lived with, actually Herman's parents for a little bit. Until she was, yeah, how was that? I know? Until she was able to find work as a dressmaker and she relocated herself away. And once she was away from, you know, the mudgets.

I was going to say that situation. She focused only on Robert, She didn't think a fucking thought about what the fuck Herman was doing good, she didn't give a shit.

And actually, Clara's cousin Laura Young said even after he deserted her, she never chased after him, as many women would. I think, however, that if Clara had followed Herman after he left her, because that's the thing. He had left her to go away and kind of abandoned her while he was in school and took all her money. And she just didn't stick around and wait, but it was her who left at the end.

Like, she really got out of there. But, she said, I think, however, that if Clara had followed Herman after he left her and went West, that we never would have heard of her again. I think that he would have killed her as soon as she commenced to be in his way, for she would have never countenanced his actions. Absolutely.

Because he was escalating. But at first he's like talking shit about her, then he starts hitting her, and then he, as we all know, escalates to murder to the nth degree, of course, and he's cheating on her.

He's just like a piece of shit. Yeah, I have no doubt he would have killed her. She's very lucky to be ridded of that piece of dead weight, so good for her.

Clara lost like, 100 pounds there you go. Well in Burlington. You're like, I don't know how much she weighs, probably more than that. however much she weighs, that's how much she lost.

She lost a few stones, exactly. While in Burlington. Herman was a rigidly devout student of chemistry. Obviously, like we said, but in Michigan, he now shifted away from chemistry a little bit and back to anatomy, and he really liked dissecting bodies.

I don't love that. In fact, one of his fellow students, John Madden, said quote He seemed to take a good deal of pleasure in the uncanny things of the dissecting room.

That's what I mean. When you look at it now, hindsight is 20-20 and you're like, Oh yeah, that's fucked up. But like, Yeah, I don't know. Dissection is interesting.

I can't really say it's not, but the fact that he's a murderer makes that weird. I've never dissected anything. No, it's definitely interesting if you're doing it for the right purpose. Yeah, for like, biology and shit.

Yeah, but he also was quoted that John Madden, fellow student, was quoted as saying. Holmes talked a great deal about what he had done in the dissecting room, with what appeared to me at the time unnecessary gusto. And told me that. The professor of anatomy at the time was to permit him to take the body of an infant home with him for dissection. During the spring vacation, which was to begin the following day, I asked where he would find a place to carry on his work without offending his neighbors, and he replied with something to the effect that he would find a place. So see, it happened again, where he asked to take home an infant.

Why is it an infant? I don't know, but it's weird. Do you think I feel weird saying this? But do you think it's like an infant is easy to carry home versus an actual body? I guess, I mean, that makes absolute logical sense, like logistically, that does make sense.

Yeah, but infants are also very hard to dissect. I would think like it's not an easy evisceration or dissection for they're tiny.

Yeah, like, it's all tiny and it's upsetting. It's more upsetting than any human dissection has an element of upset, ...sadness to it.

But it's like a baby is a whole different level. And I would think that you would want to learn on a full grown body. Yeah, because you're gonna, I would think, learn more, exactly.

But there's just certain thing, I mean, at least you would think he would try it out. I don't know, though. It's just a strange thing, a strange quirk of him.

But all in all, he was said to be a pretty below average student, really, which is very interesting with all his extra work and everything. I don't know, maybe it's that he wasn't staying focused on actual....

I think that's exactly and taking the right steps. Like he was going to Z when you should have been at F, Exactly, I think it was.

He was concentrating on what he wanted out of it and not what he needed to get out of it. And a lot of times you need the foundations to build upon, and he was building with no foundation exactly. I don't think he was really focusing on the curriculum, I think he was just looking at what he wanted, which was chemistry, so he could patent a medication.

And he was looking at anatomy because I think he was starting to feel some type of way. I think he was only focusing on the things that he wanted for different reasons. And not for a medical degree to become a doctor to help people, because does he ever become a doctor? He does, oh, he does.

Okay, yeah, he graduates, and he works as a doctor for a little bit. Oh, okay.

I didn't know that, but he's really a fraudster, yeah, and always. One teacher even voted against him graduating.

Really, he graduated by the skin of his fucking teeth. Shit. He was not good at medicine, he was not very adept at it.

And one student described him hilariously as quote He was distinctly what might be termed dumb. He was slow to grasp ideas and not ready at all in reasoning. Okay, which is funny to hear, considering he's an actual piece of shit. You're dumb.

Exactly, and he thinks he's so fucking smart. Oh, he thinks he is the gift. This is also hilarious and disgusting. But another said he was below mediocre.

Another student also said that he smelled strange, oh, and that he had a nickname. uh-oh. do you want to know what his nickname was?

Of course, I want to know. His nickname was Smegma EW.

Please look that up. If you don't know what it is, that's so gross. Just google it and look at the first definition that comes up. I want to look at the first definition that comes up anyway.

Now, that's going to give you an idea of what he smelled like, apparently, why did he smell like that?

I'll just look it up. Oh my God, I can't even say that out loud. That's why I didn't. I'm just going to encourage you all to look it up.

Mine smelled like foreskin.

Why, though? why though? Oh ew, you know, when you say a smell and then you feel as though, and this is what?....

This gave me joy because it's like the great H.

H. Holmes, the infamous criminal of the century, was called Smegma. That's so nasty by his peers in med school, so this little bitch is nothing.

Nothing but a foreskin smelling, below average student who couldn't even keep his first wife. That's really fucking gross, yeah. So moving on from that.

Now, with Alclara supporting his stupid ass, Herman was forced to find his own fucking job and support himself while he finished the degree. I'm still really affected. So he now founded his own job with William Herdman, who was an anatomy instructor with the university, and he worked as his assistant. He was responsible to, like, you know, menial things like tending to the horses, doing his errands. But he also prepared the bodies and assisted in the dissecting room. At this point. Maybe he had plans to murder and defraud on like a galactic scale later.

But I think it was more that this was kind of the training, along with the whole chemistry, obsession. This is all the stuff that just kind of, like, slowly put the pieces together for him to become that later. I don't know if he had all that in mind quite yet, I don't think he really had. The foresight, probably came over time, you know?

But it was also at this time that he claims. He and his classmates. First came up with the idea of faking a death and then using a body as proof to defraud an insurance company, which became his thing. That's not good. Also, in 1884, Holmes was in some serious trouble. He had to defend himself before the medical faculty after being charged with breach of promise. Breach of promise.

He got himself a breach notice, which is not a fun notice to get because they're usually bullshit, usually. So he married this one, I think, was real, though, so he married. He's married to Clara, he's married to Clara, hasn't divorced her, hasn't legally separated from her in any way.

Fantastic married until he was executed. Remember that well. He's staying now at a boarding house, and the person who owns this house is a widow, who also was a hairstylist by the name Mrs Fitch. She and him started a relationship.

They started sleeping together. Girlie, he smells like smegma, No EW, and he made the promise of marriage to her, probably to get her into bed.

And to get her money, that's definitely what it was, to make her sleep with him. He was like, I will marry you, of course, I'll make you an honest woman.

Back in these days, that's fucking serious, that's serious business. You can't be married to someone else and promise marriage to another just to get them into bed. That's not just like distasteful and bad, that's like, Ooh.

Can't you like, hang for that shit? Back then? It's, I mean, I don't know if you can hang for it. But you're not going to graduate medical school, that's for sure. It's adultery, isn't it? It's, yeah.

Yeah, so Mrs Fitch found a letter he was writing to his actual wife, Clara, at the time, who he was still talking to and corresponding with. And kind of like, stringing along a bit. And she ran to the medical faculty and was like, look at this, look at this.

And then also showed them a proposal letter he had written to her, like, written down the proposal, signed it with his name. Well, shit. And she said, This is breach of promise. He promised me marriage and he's married to another. And if found guilty, he would not be allowed to graduate medical school, and everything he had done would be for fucking not.

So how did this fucker dance his way around that? So he denied it all and his professor, Professor Herman, who he was assisting under the anatomy assistant. He came to his defense and he vouched for him, saying he thought he was truthful. He was like, he's an upstanding guy, I've never had a problem with him.

I didn't, you know, I don't believe that this is real. Well, Holmes got off on the charges and poor Mrs Fitch was left to look like a liar. So he graduates, he's able to graduate. On fucking graduation day, he shakes Professor Herman's hand.

Or, excuse me, professor, his name was not Professor Herman. Oh no, not Herman. it was Herdman. excuse me. So I was close. It's like, you heard, with Herd.

You heard, man, but you heard with herd. But he shakes Professor Herdman's hand and says, Doctor, those things are true that that woman said about me. So he allowed this man to vouch for him. One went on The day of graduation was like, Ha ha, fucker.

That's it that is such a dick move because he could have. Just like, shaking his hand is one thing. When you're when you lied to his fucking face, you're shaking his hand and being like, Hey asshole, you lied for me, technically, and didn't even realize it.

Wow, that's fucked. And Herdman later said that this was the first moment that he realized that Holmes was, quote, a scoundrel, yeah, and he later found out that he was more of a scoundrel. Because after this, he dug a little deeper and found out that Herman Holmes there had burglarized his home, Herdman's home.

And while staying with him once in an extra bedroom, yep. He had pried open a locked drawer in his private library and had tried to steal stuff because he knew he kept valuables in there. What the fuck, so he had totally betrayed.

This man probably felt like he got like bitch, slapped, right? Like, what a violation in every way. And I would imagine, like, at that graduation, they're in front of a bunch of people.

Yeah, and he can't have any reaction to that, and he's just quietly being like, Hey, you vouched for me and you shouldn't have wow, but like, thanks.

And he said he did it with diploma in hand. Shook his hand and was just like, Thanks for letting me get this. Like, what a piece of shit. Wow, I'm trying to like.

Think of anybody that I can even compare that to, right? It's just so dirty, it is such a dirty pool.

Down and dirty now. Herman graduated from the University of Michigan in the late spring of 1884, and almost immediately he relocated to Moore's Forks. Yeah, girl, you did that. Not sure if I said that.

Right, you did. It's a tiny hamlet in upstate New York. It had previously been part of a larger town of Champlain. Oh, okay.

So once there, he opened a small tree nursery. He got weird with it, like Matthew Hoffman did. Yeah, he got a little weird with it, not as weird as Matthew Hoffman did, I will say.

Because he just kind of abandoned it a few months, it wasn't profitable, so he just abandoned it. Okay, but like, what a weird little direction to take. And he does that to everything in his life.

That doesn't serve him how he wants it to, he just abandons it. At one point, he hired a primary school teacher named Minnie Everett for French lessons. She terminated that relationship pretty quickly because she said quote and at the time she said this, there is something lurking in that man's character that time will reveal. Oh, shit.

I do not like him, I firmly believe that he would commit murder. Wow, Minnie, like you were just here to teach him French. What made you think he's going to revolt to murder?

And for her to say that time will reveal like it hasn't happened yet, but something's in there. I love that she was a full-blown witch. oh, a full-blown witch. You can't tell me anything else.

No, Minnie Everett. She knew there's been people that I've said that. Well, not the murder thing. But like, No, that's not the best feeling. When you're like, I fucking knew you were off. I had your number the second I saw you.

You have done that a couple of times that were like, Chef's kiss perfect, Oh my gosh, thank you. And at first you're like, No, it's fine, and then later you're like, What the fuck, how did you know that?

Yep, sometimes I just get a vibe you do. I bet Minnie was an empath, she definitely was.

He also aggressively refused to leave her alone after this for some time, so he was a stalker as well. Fantastic, Yeah, he's a little bitch. But after this failure, Holmes petitioned the local school trustees to hire him on.

And he was put in charge of the primary school like he was able to get a lot of. He's one of those that you're like, how are you able to get all these things? But it's all, he's a con man.

Yeah, and he saved money doing this, he was able to save a lot of money and he opened his own medical practice. That's terrifying.

During this early period in New York, he kind of perpetrated a small, but kind of big medical con. It was his first one. So a smallpox scare broke out in this town and people were urging residents to get vaccinated against smallpox, and he saw this as an opportunity.

So he somehow got his hands, probably by stealing on a load of vaccines. And he loaded up a wagon and he went door to door through the northern part of the state.

Vaccinating residents and telling them that it was mandatory, oh, and he was, quote. Representing himself as an authorized official of the Board of Health, he made the people think that it was compulsory. And in every household, he managed to get several cases for which he charged 25 cents each.

So at the time, no one questioned his authority or asked to see his credentials, they just allowed it. If this man is trying to poke you with a needle, yeah, you've got to ask for his cred, ask for anything.

Ask his name, ask for his library card, literally anything. Christ on a cracker, everybody. He made a lot of money doing it, though.

And obviously people must have been terrified, so they probably were like, just vaccinate me. But that's what he fed on, he prayed on it, he loved praying on that kind of shit.

Wow, so that was his first medical con. Can you imagine if that shit still happened today? Like, knock, knock, knock, hi, I'm here to vaccinate you.

No, I don't have any ID. don't ask me about it. Please leave like, No, I'd love your credentials, thank you.

But back in his medical office, he started setting up a laboratory because he was really trying to get that patented medicine. He was going to get rich from it and to help him with this. He was said to have brought in to stay with him for a while, his six-year-old son, Robert. No, no, no, no, no. And he quote and put him to work in the laboratory, putting up in bottles the liquid which Herman manufactured.

Although he never sold any of these things that he made, like he just couldn't get the right concoction together. He definitely tried, but he also couldn't convince anybody to try any of his cures because people didn't trust him. I mean, so they were like, Minnie came to teach him French, and she was like, You're a murderer.

Yeah, like, you're a murderer, Minnie knows, but what's weird about him is he's somewhat of an anomaly. In the sense that he was a get rich quick guy and he was a con man. But he also didn't shy away from hard work, like he would work for his cons, well, because he was money motivated.

Yeah, like he's very strange in that way, like he doesn't have that, like cut and dry, get rich, quick personality, right? It's strange. But it should be said that. While he claimed the boy in his company was his son, there is a lot of speculation that this was a completely unrelated boy who disappeared a little while after this.

Oh, no. According to The New York Times, there was a report filed shortly after he was arrested. Like way later. And it said that after he left his teaching position in New York, that he had quote went home, went to Massachusetts, but returned in a short time, accompanied by a small boy who disappeared shortly after his arrival, Holmes saying he had gone home. It doesn't appear that any investigation went into this boy's identity or disappearance, and nobody really went further into it.

But if this boy has what like was part of something nefarious, then he was his first victim. Holy shit. And they were never able to confirm whether that was Robert or not. And you would think it would be as easy as, like, somebody reaching out to Clara, Yeah.

And it's like, I don't. I think this might have been a boy that he took wow and used until he didn't need anymore. I hope not. I hope it was Robert and that he just went to Massachusetts to take him home.

I hope so, too. Like, that's honestly, I'm hoping that, but I don't know, I can't be sure because he's such a piece of shit, right?

It was also in New York that there were rumors about his inappropriate behavior with women and inappropriate like he was a pig. And on several occasions, he was known to have treated out-of-town women for what's only referred to as organic trouble in his office, What is organic trouble? Not sure.

And there were rumors that they were all like that. These women were treated and then disappeared because they were from a house of ill repute. Oh, you know, so they were treated as less dead. Yeah, but there was never any confirmation of this.

No identities that we can, like, hang our hats on. But that probably happened, it probably happened. And there were reports of Herman paying, quote violent attention to a young woman named Alan. What?

Who eventually left town and was never heard from again. Oh, hopefully, she actually did leave town, yeah. And actually, there were rumors around this New York town that Holmes had actually married her. But they said that like, there was rumors that he had married her, but then there was rumors that she left town.

But the ones that everybody kind of sits on is that she probably met a sinister end at his hands. It kind of sounds that way, and they just couldn't prove it and especially. But she was never found again.

Yeah, that's definitely. He did something, especially if he had already killed that boy, yeah.

Something happened here, right? There's, that's what I mean when I say. There's definitely more over the ones he confessed to and are confirmed, right? And I think a lot of people think that.

Now, despite honestly referring to him as a hard worker and a generally like fine man. Aside from his like preoccupation with like, out-of-town women and being a little weird. Residents found something just off-putting about him, right? Like people around him were, like he was never like mean outwardly to people he didn't do. Like, you know, he was a little weird, but like, not like super strange or eccentric. Like there was just something about it.

It's like, Minnie said there was just something that was going to be revealed. Can't put your finger on it. We just didn't know what was. And women in the village began sharing stories of his, you know, unwanted advances.

And the men began noticing a growing trend of homes, ignoring debts and making false promises to pay for things. And but he always had an excuse. Of course, he always had an excuse, so he was women, he was getting the reputation of being a pig.

Men, he's getting the reputation of being a fucking deadbeat. So on one occasion, his landlord confronted him and was like, Hey, you haven't paid your rent, and I've tried to get you to pay your rent for, like, fucking months. Oh shit. And he said it was, and he had come forward to him when he knew he had plenty of money.

He was like, he's a doctor, like, I know he has money, and he said. Quote. The doctor would stand quietly by and hear himself called a scoundrel and a swindler in the strongest terms. Then the tears would appear in the doctor's eyes and trickle down his cheeks, but he never said a word in reply.

So he would just sit there and let people be like, you're a fucking scoundrel, you're a swindler, you're a piece of shit. Like, you're just like, you're a deadbeat, blah, blah, blah. And he would just sit there and cry and never say anything.

That's very strange, right? And also like, sad, but like, I don't want to feel sad. No, he's no, because I think it's fake, it's fake as fuck.

Those tears are crocodile tears, my friend. He would cry because he knew it was going to disarm anybody around him. To see this mustachioed gentleman weeping openly after being called a scoundrel. After refusing to pay for things he should have fucking paid for well, and I think he's just like, especially a physician. They were probably like, what is happening right now? And back then they're like a man crying.

What so strange. He definitely did it just to disarm everybody, and probably he was just unhinged. I feel, yeah, he was a fucking monster.

But he took similar approaches with his medical office landlord because he always had an excuse for not paying, and then he would make empty promises to pay. And then he would just cry when he was confronted, or he would go into a rage sometimes when he was confronted. And they would just be like, forget it. Well, I was going to say that some people cry when they're mad. Yeah, and it could be that he was just trying to, like, keep it together, but he was crying, right?

And at one point, he produced a letter that supposedly was sent from someone in Gilminton, where he was from. Claiming his uncle had died and left him a substantial inheritance, which he said, Oh, see, I'll be able to pay you. Yeah, you just have to open the email attachment. Yeah, just look at this. yeah, open that email attachment. It's definitely not a scam.

Your royal uncle has passed away, exactly so. Herman's reputation in this New York village continued to decline towards the end of his residency in the village.

And not long before leaving, he was involved in a scheme that was to avoid paying his debts. That definitely will give you a little bit of a foreshadow into his later crimes. According to the daily Boston Globe. There was an older soldier, a veteran living in town, who had for several months been dealing with like an unknown illness. It was like a shuddering cough, a lot of pain, and the doctors kept trying to tell him it was malaria.

But this soldier said, No, that's not it. He refused to believe this diagnosis, and he believed that it was being caused by an injury he had received during the war. He said he had gotten shot, there was a bullet lodged in his lungs, in his like the area of his ribs.

And he said, It's pressing his ribs against my lungs and it's making it hard for me to breathe. I know that's what it is, but ultimately he was dying, so it really didn't matter to him personally what was going on.

But if the injury was the result of him serving in the war, in the military? His widow, when he passed away, was going to be granted his full pension. So he wanted to make sure which. I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, this man, I know. And this poor man was like, I want my wife and my family to get all of that money, yeah.

So I need to make sure that I'm diagnosed before I die correctly. Like he was doing this only for them. I'm like, what a good man, also, what a fucking like future to face. So for that reason, he asked Herman's landlord, Edward Steele, to be present for his autopsy. Which I'm like, Oh my god, imagine having to ask that.

No, but Edward Steele couldn't come to the autopsy, so it was conducted without him there and again, his cause of death was labeled as malaria, so Edward Steele felt horrible.

And he was desperate to make sure this widow got the full pension. So he asked Herman to do a second autopsy with him to help him. And he was like, Of course, I will. I love dissection, so when he so steele's like, Okay, you finish it.

You tell me what you think, I want to see what you have to say about this. So he asked him for the results at the end of it, and Herman looks at him and says, Yeah, I have evidence.

But only I'll only give it to you. So he's already extorting him. Yep, if that my rent is paid in full, wait like I'll only do my job if you pay my rent.

You're asking me to help out of the goodness of my heart, which I don't have. This widow, to make sure he had this man's dying wish you're. I have evidence that could help this, but I will only give it to you if you say that my rent is paid in full.

What a fucking jackass. And he said, If you don't do that, I'm going to keep the evidence of the autopsy. And the widow won't get the full pension. And I don't give a shit, oh my God. And the evidence he had, he had the actual ribs.

He had evidence that they were pressing against that man's lungs. He was correct. Wow, he kept those broken ribs because Edward Steele looked at him and was like, Go fuck yourself, yeah, you asshole.

I'll figure out another way to get her, her pension, and you know what he did, Thank goodness, he got that widow, his pension.

And Holmes Herman there, Herman fucking mudgett. He kept those two broken ribs. what a fucking no one knows what he did with them, but he kept those fucking ribs. What a crazy person.

Like, what, that's so weird, like, what? Yeah? So shortly after he had done this, you know? Extorted false evidence for payment of his rent.

Yeah, he tried to leave this village without saying anything to anyone or paying any of his debts. He was just going to leave all of it behind. And although his landlord literally found him loading the wagon and being like, Hi, you still owe me all this money there, he couldn't really stop him.

Like he, just the last anyone heard from him from this village was a letter sent from Tilton, New Hampshire, saying he had business to attend in New Hampshire. And he would be in touch to settle his debts at a future date. Doubt it, ding, ding, ding. He never did.

Wow, now. After leaving, Holmes returned to New Hampshire briefly and just tried to take full custody of Robert.

Yeah, wow, why not? No, I haven't been part of his life for six years, but why not?

No, and again, Clara and he were technically still married, so he never actually lost custody of him, he just abandoned them. Um, it's unclear what actually happened here. But Clara ended up taking their son to her father's house and he left the state. So, like, she was, like, no good try.

She's like, You're a murderous piece of shit. No, you can't have our son. But he definitely tried to, and without a job now or any source of income, he said. Um, quote Starvation was staring me in the face. Doubt it?

And he sold his horses in Tilton, and he boarded a train for Pennsylvania. And when he left New Hampshire for the last time, he wanted to leave behind everything, meaning he wanted to leave behind Herman Webster. Budget. Oh, he was now going to be known formally as Dr. Henry Howard Holmes.

H.

H. Holmes Do you have any idea how he came up with that name? I do not, he just wanted H.h.h.

Yeah, sounds like H.h. Holmes is, uh, I don't know how. I mean, I think he just made it, he thought it sounded good.

There's all kinds of speculation that he used, uh, Sherlock Holmes as his inspiration, but that wasn't published until a year after. Oh so incorrect, so it wasn't it you pressed an incorrect key? So I think it was just it was a name he came up with, I guess.

Okay, unfortunately, a good one. So H..H. Holmes now arrived in Norristown, Pennsylvania, which is a town just outside of Philadelphia, in the fall of 1885, and he found the city wasn't as bumping as he thought.

It was going to be a lot fewer opportunities than he was expecting. He was such an elder. This place is bumping. Wow, guys.

This place is so bumping, I couldn't let that go. a city could bump, I suppose.

But a lot isn't really known about this time period. There is some evidence that suggests that. Just days after, having arrived, he walked into the police precinct and told officers there that he was quote on the verge of starvation and had come here with the express intentions of committing suicide. That's a quote, by the way.

I don't know if that actually happened. That is a report. Police officers did say that happened, so who knows what that was about? They took pity on him and they let him stay in the station while they tried to find him some work.

And they ended up finding him work in the Norristown State Hospital, which was a state-funded psychiatric hospital a few miles from Philadelphia. So I thought that would never happen today. Here's the thing, because it's not clear if that particular part happened.

There's some stories like that. I don't know if that was later concocted by him to gain some sympathy, but he did get a job working at this hospital. You just don't know how this is the story, he tells.

I wouldn't believe shit that comes out of his face. Yeah, I don't know if I buy that, that's how he tells it. Such pity on you, you poor lad. But no matter what, he did get work at the Norristown State Hospital.

And years later, in his autobiography, Holmes said that it was a very troubling experience for him. He said. QuoTe So terrible, was it that for years afterwards, even now, sometimes I see their faces in my sleep? Good, the patients at the psychiatric hospital. I'm glad he was haunted.

Now, after just a few months in Norristown, he actually abandoned that job at the state hospital. Because that's what he does, and found a new position at a pharmacy in Philadelphia. Which is much more his speed, as would become his MO. This job also didn't last long, and there was some mysterious shit that happened before he left it. He abandoned the job and Philadelphia completely after a local boy died after taking some medicine purchased from Holmes at the pharmacy. Oh.

He claimed he had nothing to do with the medicine, nothing to do with the boy's death. But it definitely put a black mark on his already questionable reputation, and there really wasn't a future for him in Philadelphia after this. Because people were like, No, thank you, yeah, like, we're all set. Yeah, I'm doing an X sign with my fingers, just so, you know, everyone went, No, thank you.

Get away from us. So this is when the idea of faking a death and using a substitute dead body to defraud insurance came back around. They had talked about it a little in college. It's coming back and Holmes now is ready to do it, okay.

Because now he's like, I've tried this working thing for a minute or two too hard, and it's hard. So let's just scam insurance money please.

Now money. So, according to him, he apparently contacted an old college friend. Which imagine how hard that was back in the day. Yeah, you had to really want to contact someone. I think that all the time when I'm driving and I have my GPs on, how the fuck would I ever get anywhere?

Yeah, I wouldn't know where. Anything like, how do people do that? how do you do it? maps, I suppose.

They didn't, there was a point in time where they didn't have that shit. I'm saying either way. He was also his friend, was in dire straits financially as well, and they decided that they would get one more friend involved. And this other friend was going to be the one to increase his life insurance to $40,000 at the time. And he would do this by telling the insurance company that he dealt with some kind of life altering experience that made him concerned for his family's well-being.

So he wanted to up the amount. I feel like you might need to get a little more specific than that. I guess. Back then insurance was just like, Sure thing, buddy, yeah, now he would.

Then, later, this man, the plan was to send his wife and child somewhere out west, near California. And he was going to fake. Confess via letter that he had killed them both in some kind of alcohol induced frenzy. And add that he had dismembered and pickled their bodies. Christ, I figured that was to make sure he didn't have to show bodies to insurance.

But like, that's not the case, which is weird. And then he was going to have claimed to have killed himself in the note, this friend. Then the money would go to a quote unquote relative of this man. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge his friends. And he would move out to where his very much alive wife and kid were live. With some of the money that was shelled out to him, it was going to be between the three of them, you know, live in obscurity.

That's something I've never thought of. Like, if you murder your family and you're a murderer who gets your life insurance? Payout? like, will, like, do you get a payout if you've murdered somebody? No, I don't think you get it if you were like, but no, but like the person.

So like, if you have murdered and then killed yourself, whoever is in your policy gets that money. Ooh, that's a weird thought. Damn, I know it is weird, right?

And that's what that's what they banked on was like they could control who he wrote down in his policy. Right now. Me thinking the dismemberment detail was to make sure he didn't have to show bodies. Apparently that wasn't right. they had to show bodies.

Regardless, three bodies, which meant they were going to have to procure three imposter dead bodies, including a child, and put them in a pickle jar. Yeah, and like, I was like, you would have to dismember them, yeah.

That's a lot. So he went to Minneapolis so at this time, so this is what they wanted to do, plan the whole thing out. So Holmes had went to Minneapolis and Chicago during this time.

I don't know why I said, Minneapolis, Minneapolis is what I meant. I was going to let it go, and then I was thinking, the world won't. So I'm glad you corrected yourself, thank you.

Because that's. I rolled over and I said, Ah, that's not a big deal. Then I said, Yep, that's a big deal. Then I went back. Minneapolis is what I meant, and Chicago during this time.

And he was able to get a job as a drug clerk in a pharmacy. And, according to him, he was able to procure bodies pretty easily by buying them from med school anatomy rooms at the time. Because now he had money, Mr. Book, Mr.

Head exactly now. Also that was just very easy to do back then, as we well know.

He got two bodies, okay, he was able to buy two bodies, probably adult ones, I assume, and put them into barrels, which he stored in a room at the McCoy Hotel in Chicago. But apparently, after hearing or reading about how well insurance companies checked into cases like this and would like require a lot of evidence and proof. He decided they should abandon the whole idea.

Now he had two bodies now. Yeah, so this is when he says, Okay, well, that's. I just said like, Oh no, and I just buried those bodies in my basement.

Like, not a big deal. This story, people believe, was possibly concocted and changed a bit to help him explain why. There were a lot of bones found buried in his Chicago place. Oh good, he. They were probably the result of something even more sinister, just what we don't know.

But he wanted to make it look like, well. I purchased bodies legally and then I just buried them down there because we decided not to go ahead with the scheme. Like, don't fucking put those on me, buddy, and it's like, I know I think you killed those people. Like, there's a lot to unpack here.

That's the thing like, he'll, he comes out with things and it's like, Legal, right? I did it legally, and it's like, No, I think you killed them.

And I think you're so good at lying, that's the only thing you are good at is you're making this story up. So that we don't question those bones in the basement. But in reality, if they had questioned those bones in the basement, which they didn't. In time to identify them or figure something out, we probably would have figured out that those were missing people. Probably. Hundo P Guarantee you.

Damn so. He leaves Philadelphia in the spring of 1886 after definitely murdering people, and he eventually settled in Englewood, a suburban neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. And this is where shit really starts to get wild, and it's where you're gonna break.

And it's where we're gonna end part one. I knew it, and wait for part two. You shh, because the Chicago chronicles are really rare.

It's a whole new era. Are the Chicago Chronicles? Bumpin? They're, uh, they're Bumpin, in some way, not in a good way, I suppose, you said Bumpin, right?

I said, Bumpin, I sure did. That was something I said, You know, bumpits are coming back. That's upsetting.

Yeah, that's how I wanted this episode, but that's, yeah, that's an upsetting end to this episode, that's it bye, just kidding.

But yeah, stay tuned for part two. And um, he gets worse and worse. So fantastic. Happy anniversary to us, yay.

Five years, woohoo. Thanks guys, we love you and we hope you keep listening.

And we hope you keep it weird, but not so weird that this entire time, every single time Alina has said something about him. Writing his own autobiography, all you can think of is Ashley Simpson singing autobiography, while Henry Holmes, or is that his name Henry? And while he writes his autobiography, and he's like, my autobiography.

That's all I've been thinking. Bye, my autobiography, bye.