One of the more interesting periphery characters in the H.H. Holmes saga is Kate Durkee, a childhood friend of Holmes’ second wife, Myrta Belknap-Holmes, who was used as a dupe in his swindling schemes. Holmes is usually advertised as “America’s First Serial Killer,” but he was a swindler first and foremost. The stories of him…
Tag: HH Holmes
The Murder Castle Sign Shop Kidnapping (updated!)
1896 new info at the bottom of the post! A few weeks ago, the Chicago Tribune posted a few 1930s-era photos of the H.H. Holmes murder castle from their archives online. All of them have circulated before, but never in nearly such great quality, or, in some cases, uncropped. I’ve seen the photo of the stove and…
New H.H. Holmes “Murder Castle” photo found
Now and then someone will show me a “new” picture of the H.H. Holmes “Murder Castle.” They’re almost never real – there are plenty of buildings that looks similar to it around today, and there were hundreds more a century ago. But now and then I do still run across a new shot of the…
The Words on the Holmes Murder Castle
(UPDATED March, 2015, with new photo/data on the bottom) Some debate has come up lately about the cryptic words that appear in some later photos of the HH Holmes “Murder Castle.” No photo has emerged that’s really clear enough to read it, but there were some words carved into the turret at one point. They…
My HH Holmes Victims Master List
Note: This post is older; I have a new master list here, after spending another two years researching the case and putting my book together. Not too much has changed, but there are more suspected and debunked victims. The nine “canonical” victims that he presumably killed remain the same. CLICK TO SEE THE NEW LIST …
The Man Who Died in the Holmes Murder Castle: John DuBrueil, 1823-1891
Over the winter I went on a quest to catalog and document ALL of the HH Holmes sources I could find here in town that weren’t available online – lawsuit records, defunct Chicago papers, etc. The best of the Chicago papers constitute the best primary sources we have on the Chicago angle of the case,…
Shadows at the Body Dump?
Some interesting shots from the tours lately. First of all, for you Hull House fans, the last tree in the adjacent courtyard (subject of much ghostlore and superstition) fell down some time in the last week: The garden / courtyard area is the subject of a lot of real nonsense stories that go around –…
Bentley Sage, the Clairvoyant: Seems Legit!
So, just how many times did H.H. Holmes have his palm read, anyway? Annie Londonderry, a famous bicyclist who became a reporter for the New York World, read his palm while interviewing him in his cell (the full interview is in the expanded Murder Castle ebook) , and even the generally respectable medical report on his…