5. H.H. Holmes, aka “The Beast of Chicago”
We are continuing our list of most evil serial killers ever with Holmes who was a well raised, educated young man, who came from an affluent and happy family, and from a very early age, he showed signs of being extremely intelligent. As a teenager, he turned an eye to science, deciding to become a doctor, but also indulging in worrisome behavior, like performing surgery on animals or later, in med school, stealing corpses to perpetrate insurance scams.
In 1886 he moved to Chicago, Illinois, and began working at a pharmacy over which he soon took over, the original owner never to be seen again. He did well and soon purchased a lot across the street, where he had a three story building constructed that occupied most of the block. The ground floor was normal, space devoted to commercial ends mainly, the other two, however, which held his office and personal chambers, were an intricate maze of rooms, doors and hallways, fake exits and booby traps, basically the most evil serial killer ever dream house. He constantly kept hiring and firing construction workers, complaining about their incompetence, whereas the truth was he wanted to be the only one to fully understand the labyrinth of death he was creating. He would target female employees and mistresses, and seclude them in rooms to starve, suffocate, or hang them in “the hanging room”, among the many torture lounges in his palace. On occasion, his home would become a hotel, but the guests that left were never as many as checked in.
Paradoxically, the motive of the arrest of one of the most evil serial killers ever was not related to his unspeakable crimes, but to insurance fraud. It was only after he fell under investigation that evidence began to surface and the whole thing unraveled, resulting in his death sentence. The “Murder Castle”, as it was called, mysteriously burst into flames in 1895.
