Original subtitles

♪

♪

[heart beating]

[hissing]

[heart beating faster]

[coughing]

Woman: Help!

[coughing]

♪

[coughing]

[thud]

♪

Narrator: Step back in time.

♪

Discover a place.

♪

[howling]

Investigate a crime

And reveal a murderous history.

♪

♪

♪

My name is robert jordan.

I am a retired news anchor and reporter here in chicago.

I worked at wgn television for 45 years.

I've covered all kinds of stories, big and small,

So I know the city and the atmosphere

And culture here as well as anyone.

[siren]

Ask any chicagoan what might be the most important year

In the history of this city,

And you'd probably get an answer of 1893:

A time when chicago hosted the world's fair.

It was a period when this scrappy city

Took its place on the world stage.

But forever linked to the history of chicago

Is also a mysterious character

Someone described as the incarnation of pure evil.

A person who confounded the police,

Enthralled the press,

And who upended what chicago thought it was a century ago.

His legacy continues to haunt the city to this day.

♪

Narrator: In the 1890s, chicago had outgrown its status

As a wild frontier city.

It drew immigrants and dreamers

And drove capitalism and innovation.

Its meat-packing plants fed a nation.

It was the city that invented vacuum cleaners,

Zippers, and the brownie.

In the ten years up to 1890,

Chicago's population doubled to over one million.

Its architects looked upward

And created the world's first skyscraper city.

Rick kogan: At the end of the 19th century,

Chicago was, to my mind and all I have learned, crazy.

It was a town of unbelievable hustle

And a lot of unbelievable hustlers.

The sheer number of people.

When you look at old photographs of chicago at that time,

Of course there are no cars in them,

But the streets are so jammed

With wagons and horses and people.

I think it would have been terribly intimidating

Even for some sophisticated new yorker,

Or from some traveler from london.

Sam mitrani: Chicago went from being this swampland

On the edge of lake michigan,

To the second biggest city in the country

[snaps fingers] basically like that.

It's something that had never really happened before

In that way in human history.

Paul durica: It had recently recovered from a fire

Of only about 20 years before that more or less wiped it out,

And it's completely rebuilt with modern skyscrapers,

Electric lights, wide boulevards, and parks.

And so someone entering the city at that time in the early 1890s,

Would be at the forefront

Of what life was like in the united states.

Jordan: One new arrival to the city

Is a 25-year-old doctor named h.H. Holmes.

Once here, he saw this as a place to build a fortune.

Almost immediately he has success

And is employed by a pharmacist.

Durica: It's not long before he can convince the owners

To actually sell the business to him.

But really what he's trying to do is amass enough money

That he can open his own establishment,

Which he does across the street from this pharmacy.

Jordan: Holmes, who is recently married,

Uses his mother-in-law's money

To buy a vacant lot near the pharmacy.

He begins the construction of a multi-story complex

Meant to house multiple businesses.

His creation will play a central role

In one of the most infamous stories in chicago history.

Durica: If you read accounts of the case,

They'll say that holmes constructed a castle.

That's a little bit of a misnomer.

It didn't have towers or turrets

Or a gate or a moat or anything like that.

It was much more like a kind of, like, business building,

Where you would have a couple of storefronts on the first floor,

So maybe a restaurant and a pharmacy.

And then the second and third floor

Would be basically, like, rooms that could be rented out.

Adam selzer: Chicago in the late 19th century

Was growing so quickly

That nobody could really keep tabs on what was happening.

Building regulations were almost completely ignored.

You could build a building without anybody having any idea

What was going on inside there.

Narrator: The population explosion in late 1800s chicago

Had inspired a construction boom.

Chicago's architects experimented

With new techniques and materials.

Modern steel frames gave rise

To some of the world's first skyscrapers.

Jordan: Holmes takes advantage of chicago's lax building rules

To build what some would later describe as

"a maze of corridors."

Strange hidden spaces, even a secret staircase

That could only be accessed via a hidden trapdoor.

As strange as holmes' design is,

A bigger concern to people in the neighborhood

Is that he's not paying his bills.

Durica: He would hire various laborers and contractors

To work on the house, then they would get to a point

Where they would start charging him,

And he would basically, like,

Kind of like cut off his dealings with them,

Basically leaving parts of the interior unfinished.

Jordan: On the surface, holmes is projecting the image

Of a chicagoan on the rise.

He is introduced to julia connor, her husband ned,

And their daughter pearl.

Selzer: And it seems that julia persuaded ned

To go move to the big city.

They had lived in a small town in iowa,

But she seems to have wanted something more,

So they came to chicago.

Mitrani: The story of coming to chicago to make it

Was typical of the day.

There were certainly many more opportunities in chicago

For a varied life, for all kinds of different jobs

Than existed in the small towns of the united states.

Kogan: Chicago was a land of opportunity.

I think in that time that if you had ambition, hustle,

And some amount of smarts, you really could have made it here.

Durica: So you may have failed at some other point

In your existence, but here you're an entirely new person.

A person who grew up on a farm, you can suddenly become

A sophisticated urbanite simply by moving to chicago.

Jordan: Julia learns how to keep books for holmes,

And he makes her a cashier in his pharmacy.

Within months julia and holmes have begun an affair.

Julia's husband ned finds out about it and divorces her.

Selzer: Holmes seems to have met very few women

That he didn't try to start up an affair with.

I'm not sure how successful he was overall,

But with julia he seems to have been seeing her fairly openly,

And everybody in the place knew about it

Except holmes' wife myrta,

Who was living in another apartment in the same building.

♪

Jordan: Christmas eve, 1891.

Holmes, julia and pearl celebrate christmas

In the castle.

It's the last time the two of them will ever be seen alive.

[coughing]

[siren]

Two years have passed since h.H. Holmes seduced julia connor

And chicago is buzzing.

The coming of the world's fair, set to begin in may of 1893,

Is driving chicagoans mad.

Investors from all over the world

See this as a prime opportunity.

Narrator: The 1893 world's fair would mark the 400th anniversary

Of columbus' arrival in the new world.

A previous world's fair, held in paris,

Had given rise to the eiffel tower,

Then the tallest man-made structure on earth.

Some thought chicago wasn't up to hosting the fair.

Outsiders called it the windy city,

Complaining that it was full of simple, profit-seeking windbags.

Durica: Immediately various cities

Began to kind of bid on hosting it.

Should it be in philadelphia, or should it be new york,

The largest city in the united states?

But then you have this one upstart city: Chicago.

Kogan: Chicago was not a vacation destination

For anybody in those days,

Certainly not from the east coast.

And I think the idea was to show

How sophisticated this frontier town had become.

Durica: It was the city where you would find skyscrapers

Taller than any other place in the united states.

It was the city with parks and boulevards

And a modern transportation system.

So if you wanted to demonstrate

Everything that the united states had to offer

And everything in the 19th century

That was paving the way for the marvels of the 20th,

Chicago is where you should have the world's fair.

Jordan: Millions from around the world are expected to visit

The amazing fair, and h.H. Holmes sees dollar signs.

Holmes wants to build a third floor on his castle

And open it as a hotel.

Investors see this as an opportunity to make money.

Selzer: That worked out very well for holmes,

Because people were being entirely too free

With their credit.

He could just show up with a letter saying,

"hey, give this guy all of your stuff and I'll pay for it,"

And that worked like a credit card.

Jordan: For holmes, business prospects are looking up,

And once again, so is his personal life.

[woman giggles]

Before the opening of the world's fair,

Another attractive woman finds herself

Falling under the spell of holmes.

Her name is minnie williams.

Selzer: Minnie williams was an aspiring actress

Who decided to give up on acting

And move to chicago and get a real job.

And there's probably a lesson here

About giving up on your dreams, because the first thing she did

Was get a job working for h.H. Holmes.

Jordan: In late spring, minnie writes to her sister, nannie,

And tells her all about her new partner

And invites her to visit them in chicago.

When holmes discovers that nannie is, in fact, wealthy,

He's all for this invitation,

And even tells them that if nannie comes to chicago,

They will all go to visit the world's fair.

Narrator: The world's fair opened on may 1, 1893.

The grounds featured awe-inspiring

Neoclassical buildings painted in white,

Spread out over nearly one square mile.

It would draw more than 20 million people.

Mitrani: The world's fair was one of the world's

Most extremely gigantic, amazing enterprises

That had ever been carried out up to that time.

Durica: Visiting the 1893 world's fair

Was, according to some descriptions,

Like walking into a dream.

In fact a lot of people know of it as the white city,

But it was also called the dream city.

It's basically a sort of utopian version

Of the urban experience,

And all you have to do is pay 50 cents to enter.

♪

Selzer: The world's fair must have been like a preview

For what the 20th century was going to be like.

Not only were you seeing these massive buildings

On a scale most people had never seen before,

All with electric lights,

You could see things like early examples of automobiles,

Hamburgers, hot dogs, moving pictures.

All of these things that we would come to associate

With the 20th century were out at the world's fair.

Mitrani: And this symbolized the dawn of this new century,

As much as the turn of 1900 actually did.

Jordan: Nannie, the sister of holmes' latest conquest, minnie,

Arrives in chicago.

And true to his word,

Holmes takes her to the world's fair on July 4.

But then something mysterious happens.

Within 24 hours, both minnie and her sister nannie have vanished.

Mitrani: Chicago is full of missing people.

It normally had thousands of missing people,

And then the fair happens,

And thousands of people descend on the city.

These people do not have cell phones.

What do they have? They have a way to call the police.

So you have mothers from indiana,

You have fathers from ohio calling the police in chicago

Saying, "I can't get track of my daughter."

[siren]

Jordan: To outsiders, minnie and nannie are just two more women

Who move in and out of holmes' life.

Meanwhile, his business ventures are getting unwanted attention.

Holmes may have been able to avoid the questions

Surrounding the disappearance of the williams sisters,

But he wasn't able to get away

From the many investors who were seeking him.

The truth is that holmes never intended

To operate the castle as a hotel.

Selzer: From all accounts, that third floor wasn't much better

Than a papier-mâché facade

That was just there to trick investors.

He had figured out pretty quickly, I think,

That you could make a lot more money

Pretending to build a hotel

Than you could from actually owning and operating one.

We don't know of a single paying guest.

Jordan: Investors and lawyers are catching on to holmes,

And begin demanding payment.

Holmes sets fire to the top floor of the castle

Trying to raise money through an insurance payout.

But the insurance company doesn't come through

With the big payday that holmes hopes for.

Holmes arrived in chicago with big dreams.

Now seven years later, he's in debt with a damaged castle

And mysterious disappearances all in his wake.

It's time to get out.

[laughs]

Selzer: Chicago was getting a little too hot for holmes.

All of the insurance schemes were catching up with him.

Durica: Then he begins to kind of move around the country.

He's enacting these various schemes,

Whether it involves real estate fraud or life insurance fraud,

But it's all about pulling off a con.

Jordan: In September of 1894,

11 months after the world's fair ends,

Holmes is in philadelphia concocting a new scam.

Holmes convinces a friend to fake his own death.

Selzer: So holmes apparently said, okay,

Here's what we're going to do now,

We're going to go get a life insurance policy on your life

And then fake your death.

We'll get a dead body that looks like you,

Then we'll say that it was you,

Cash in the life insurance, live like kings.

Jordan: The plan calls for holmes' friend to leave town

While holmes himself looks after the friend's three kids.

Holmes will then claim the insurance pay out.

But the plan falls apart.

Selzer: The insurance company was able

To put two and two together.

They knew that this guy had a huge record

Of swindles in chicago.

He'd been caught over and over again.

So they figured out,

At least that something wasn't on the level here.

Jordan: Authorities do catch up with holmes and arrest him,

But by then, the three young children are gone.

And so is holmes' friend.

Is he a great scam artist or a much darker serial killer?

♪

♪

Jordan: Holmes has been in jail for months in philadelphia,

And authorities are now charged with the task

Of trying to figure out who or what he is.

They're looking for evidence that could aid

In the investigation of the three missing children.

For that, they bring in the chicago police department.

They have heard of holmes' castle

And the rumors of people disappearing therein.

♪

Durica: The chicago police force,

From our perspective, can be faulted

For not having investigated holmes more thoroughly.

But you have to keep in mind

This is a city of over a million people,

Crimes are occurring on an everyday basis,

And the idea that somebody might be,

In some obscure pocket of the city,

Committing crimes systematically

Would never have occurred to the police in that moment.

Mitrani: The chicago police force,

By the time they're investigating holmes' castle,

They're less than 50 years old.

The basic idea for the police

Comes out of the fear of the wealthy of the working class.

You had just a few years before, in 1886,

Had this giant explosion of working-class anger

At their employers.

This is called the haymarket affair.

It began and was led by an anarchist organization

Dedicated to overthrowing capitalism.

[screaming]

Wealthy people are willing to pay more and more taxes

To have a force that can protect them

And protect their property

From this fear they had of the poor.

Durica: Marshall field, who owns the largest department store

In the city of chicago, goes so far as to buy a gatling gun,

Which is kind of like an early version of a machine gun,

And give it to the chicago police.

So once again, should they need it, they could restore order.

[horse neighs]

[screaming]

Mitrani: So the police entering holmes' castle

Would not have had any training in investigatory techniques.

They would've had some training in how to use a billy club.

But that's about as far as it went.

Jordan: As the police explore the castle,

It becomes apparent to them that this is no ordinary building.

They discover what they think are hidden rooms

And what might be a room-sized walk-in safe.

And in the basement, it only gets weirder.

The police discover a metal tank.

They find dirt where it shouldn't be.

Police soon discover something strange.

[girl laughing]

A rib, a jawbone, a pelvis.

They have discovered their first victim.

♪

The police take the bones to a local doctor who examines them.

The bones are human, probably from a girl, aged six to eight.

The news leaks out and the press pursues a shocking rumor.

The victim might be little pearl connor,

The girl last seen with holmes on christmas eve

Four years earlier.

Reporters have fanned out throughout the neighborhoods

Looking for anyone who can supply information

About this story.

Narrator: Chicago was home

To nine general circulation newspapers,

Which could reach half a million people within 24 hours.

Fierce competition forced editors

To push for entertaining stories.

The press lived by an adage:

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Kogan: Newspapers were incredibly important in chicago.

Virtually everybody in this town was walking around

With a newspaper tucked under their arm.

I think of newspapers at that time

As essential as milk to a family.

Durica: The newspaper industry is really kind of coming

Into its own towards the end of the 19th century.

Through inventions like the telegraph and the telephone,

Now information can be shared over wide distances.

Also you have an extensive railroad network,

And chicago is very much at the center of this railroad network.

So now you can send newspapers

Kind of any place that you want to go.

Jordan: Journalists muscle their way into the castle,

Looking for clues or scoops;

Anything that can help them find a story.

Kogan: Everybody wants to understand evil, on any level.

Why would someone do something like this?

What is their flaw?

So I think reporters were eager and happy

To feed that insatiable appetite.

♪

Narrator: During the summer of 1895,

The investigation into holmes and his castle

Spurred lurid headlines not just in chicago,

But around the country.

The press described holmes as evil; more than a swindler.

He was a new kind of killer;

A murderer of untold numbers of women.

The speculation imagined the holmes castle

Was the design of a madman,

A personal crematorium for disposing bodies.

One story described how holmes trapped one victim

And that she suffocated

Because acid pooling on the floor consumed the oxygen.

Mitrani: There's no serial killers up to this time.

There's no idea of the serial killer.

This is something new.

Who is this person, why would someone do this?

Holmes was a shock to the police as much as to the public.

Kogan: There are a lot of things that will drive

Any journalist, then and now, wild.

The notion of discovering the story of the first serial killer

Would've driven them nuts, absolutely nuts.

Durica: The new york world,

Which is known for its kind of sensationalistic style,

Puts out a very lengthy article complete with illustrations

About holmes' castle, holmes' "murder castle."

Selzer: The new york world took all the most sensational parts

They had seen in the chicago papers

And then added their own names

Like "the room of the three corpses,"

"the black closet," "the death shack,"

"the secret hanging chamber," "the maze".

Durica: When the new york world provides an illustration

Of what happened within holmes' castle,

There's nothing really to prove what they claim,

But the chicago police can also not disprove it either.

Selzer: In one article that got reprinted initially

In a few local papers

And then quoted in every article about holmes

Published in the next 50 years,

They kind of crystallized the whole myth

Of holmes and the murder castle.

Mitrani: Holmes starts a turning point.

From this point forward, the police start to figure out

How to use the fear of crime as a way to legitimize themselves.

It's terrible if you're a police officer

If people think that your job

Is just to protect the rich from the poor.

Now you've got a new mission.

Jordan: The police confront holmes

About the bones they found in the castle basement.

Holmes reminds them that he's a doctor.

Selzer: Holmes had a whole story

That it was just a couple of bodies that he'd bought

From a medical school to defraud an insurance company

Almost 10 years before.

He had this whole long story about how he'd bought bodies,

But then he'd chickened out

And he had the bodies buried down in the basement.

So, yeah, there's some skeletons down there, but that's all.

Durica: Looking at the holmes case from our perspective today,

You might wonder why there are so many questions

Around that physical evidence.

And the very simple answer to that is,

The forensic science that exists today just wasn't present then.

You couldn't analyze blood samples,

There was no fingerprinting, no dna evidence,

Really all you could do was kind of look at whatever you got,

Which in this case were a bunch of bones.

Man: Watson!

Selzer: Holmes was lucky to have committed the crimes that he did

When he did, because just a few years later,

We started having things like forensic analysis of bones,

A few years after that came fingerprints.

It would have been a lot harder for him to get away

With these things just a few years later.

Jordan: The chicago police can't prove

Who the bones in the basement belong to.

Spurred on by the media furor,

A 35-year-old man by the name of myron chappell

Showed up at the police department

Claiming that he had worked with holmes to bury bodies.

[indistinct talking]

He even says he has proof: The skull of a victim.

Chappell tells them that the entire building was nothing more

Than a sophisticated killing machine.

The stories of the murder castle appear to be true.

♪

[siren]

♪

Jordan: The chicago police hope the sudden appearance

Of myron chappell will help them

Finally pin murder charges on h.H. Holmes.

Chappell leads police into the basement of the castle

And tells them that holmes would kill the victims

On the upper floors of the building

And then lower them through hidden shafts

Down into the basement.

♪

Selzer: He took them around the castle and said, okay,

If you dig down here in the basement,

You will find the acid pit where we would dissolve the bodies.

And if you dig over here, you'll find the bleach pit,

That's where we would bleach the bones.

Jordan: A picture is beginning to emerge of staggering crimes

Committed by a stealthy serial killer.

♪

But soon chappell reveals something even more shocking.

He says that holmes had the bones of the murder victims

Articulated into skeletons,

And that he sold the skeletons

To universities and medical schools.

Narrator: Myron chappell's bone-selling claim

Fits a late 19th century chicago trend.

New laws were passed to require medical degrees for doctors.

More than a dozen new medical schools opened,

Creating a market for skeletons.

Jordan: The police follow up on chappell's story

Of holmes selling skeletons

To universities and medical schools.

But according to records, no purchases were made

During the times that chappell had indicated.

It's another dead end.

And it gets worse for the police.

The newspapers track down chappell's son

Who says that his father was a drunkard

Who had no real connection to holmes.

Selzer: It quickly became known that this guy was

Kind of leading them on a wild goose chase,

And it's entirely possible the police had put him up to it.

The police realized, I think,

That if they poured enough whiskey down his throat,

He would have confessed to anything they told him to.

Jordan: The investigation into holmes has gone cold.

The police have been searching the castle for nine days,

And they are no closer to finding out what happened

To those who disappeared

Or to proving that holmes was anything more than a scammer.

♪

Kogan: Chicago doesn't like to be embarrassed,

And especially if you're one of the so-called leading citizens

Of chicago, you don't like to see mud slapped on the city.

And in holmes' case,

He was slapping, blood was being slapped on the city.

Durica: If, as the architects

Of the chicago world's fair believed,

Chicago was to be the city of the future,

Then having someone like the american equivalent

Of jack the ripper roaming its streets

Challenges that belief.

It suggests the future might not be as bright

As people would like to believe.

Selzer: I think the fact that holmes became

So big at the time

Almost reflects a bit that chicago,

Even after the world's fair,

Was still thought of as the wild west.

It was still a frontier city where anything could happen;

Even things like h.H. Holmes.

Durica: The chicago world's fair

Pointed towards order and virtue;

What cities could become in the decades ahead.

But when we look at the holmes case,

What we see is disorder and vice.

And just because you want one

Doesn't mean that you lose the other.

Jordan: The chicago police are at their lowest ebb

In their search of holmes' castle.

Their leads are drying up, and there seems to be no way

To prove what happened to the people who disappeared.

Kogan: The underlying thing was that they wanted the answers

To who these people were.

They didn't want a bunch of nameless bones

And nameless bodies.

And I certainly think that

If you look at, wow, what came out of this whole holmes thing,

I think was an increased interest in

And advancing of forensic science.

Jordan: Even with the rumors still swirling

Of murder and missing people,

The chicago p.D. Is ready to give up.

It looks like holmes may never be pinned

To murder in the castle.

But don't forget, holmes traveled far beyond chicago.

He left behind more mysteries and strange rumors.

And then finally, a break in the case from an unlikely source.

♪

♪

Jordan: After all the dead ends in chicago,

It's looking like h.H. Holmes has convinced the world

That he's not a killer, just a swindler and a cheat.

For a while, holmes might have thought

That he was getting away with it; but he was wrong.

The philadelphia police, who had arrested holmes

For the faked death of a friend in an insurance scam,

Discover something huge.

They suspect holmes isn't telling the truth

About the three children he'd promised to watch for his friend

Who was his partner in the scam.

Selzer: He told everybody, "oh, they're off with their father,

Because he did fake his death.

I'm a big insurance swindler, and I admit that,

But he's off in south america someplace with the kids."

So they put a detective named frank geyer on the case

Who traced holmes' steps all over chicago and canada

Where he had been traveling with the kids.

Narrator: In the summer of 1895,

In the weeks surrounding the investigation

Of the holmes castle,

Philadelphia police detective frank geyer

Followed a paper trail of places holmes had rented

After leaving chicago.

In a toronto cellar, geyer found the remains of two children.

And in a cottage outside indianapolis,

The remains of a third child.

The bones matched the descriptions

Of all three of the missing children.

Selzer: It wasn't until they started finding the bodies

Of his friend's children that people realized,

Okay, this guy is not just an insurance swindler,

This guy is a murderer.

Jordan: With the evidence against him mounting,

Holmes confesses to something shocking.

[muffled scream]

The friend never faked his death.

Holmes murdered him for the insurance money.

And holmes keeps going.

Selzer: Holmes just decided to confess

To everything they had accused him of.

If he was going to be a monster,

He was going to be the biggest monster.

Kogan: He'd been able to escape from jams

Throughout his pre-murderous career,

And he was a very, very arrogant guy,

Who thought that you can get up and say anything you want

And get away with it.

Jordan: Holmes starts talking directly to the press.

He describes his own face as being

"marked by a deep line of crime and being that of the devil."

Selzer: They paid him a great deal of money for this,

But the newspapers wanted a sensation,

So what he did was he confessed to even the stuff

That had been debunked,

And then threw in a few extra things just for good measure.

♪

Durica: The reason why holmes began to spin the stories

That he did, and tried increase his reputation,

In many ways is connected to his career as a con artist.

What he wants to do is make one last score.

And how is he going to do that?

By selling his story to the newspapers.

And how do you make that story worth something?

You make it as sensational and as crazy as possible.

Jordan: Holmes claims to have killed 27 people

And hints at more.

Selzer: There were a number of cases where he confessed

To killing someone, and they weren't even dead yet.

One, a woman named katie durkee,

Even walked into her local post office

The day after the confession came out,

Banged her fist on the desk and said,

"I wish to issue a statement. I have never been murdered,

Not by h.H. Holmes, not by anybody else."

In all of the sensationalizing of it,

We do kind of forget that there were real people behind this,

There were real people who were killed

And real people whose lives were destroyed,

And holmes seemed to have had very little remorse about that.

Jordan: We still don't know how many people

Holmes killed or why.

In chicago, some believe

The bones found in the castle basement

Did belong to little pearl connor,

The girl who disappeared with her mother julia

On christmas eve.

Selzer: On christmas of 1891,

Julia and pearl were supposed to go to davenport

To julia's sister's wedding.

But they never arrived.

A couple of months later,

Holmes was writing letters to julia's father,

Saying, "hey, do you know where julia is?"

But really this was just to cover up his own tracks.

Almost certainly he knew exactly where they were; they were dead.

We don't really have details about how they died,

But holmes wrote a number of different confessions,

And the one thing he was pretty consistent on

Was that julia died during an abortion.

My guess with pearl

Is he probably would have killed her with cyanide,

Just because he decided that was the easiest way

To get her out of the way after her mother died.

Jordan: And the fates of minnie williams

And her sister nannie,

Who were with holmes in the castle

During the world's fair,

Also remain a mystery.

Selzer: The police came up with all kinds of theories

About what might have happened.

One of them was that there was a walk-in safe in the building,

And some people said that on the inside,

They could see the outline of a woman's footprint.

So they speculated maybe nannie or minnie

Were locked inside of that place.

But they never figured out for sure

What happened to minnie and nannie.

Kogan: Nobody knows how many women he killed,

Nobody knows how many women were destroyed in acid and other ways

In that horrible basement of his.

No one has solved the mystery.

Not just the mystery of who he was and what made him evil,

But the nature, the exact nature of his evil.

Selzer: Holmes was often described

As america's first serial killer.

He wasn't even really the first one in chicago,

But it's a very compelling story, it's exciting,

It's a guy with a castle full of torture equipment.

It's a classic horror story.

Jordan: Two years after leaving chicago,

Holmes is in philadelphia on trial for murder.

The jury reacts so quickly

That they find him guilty in three hours.

♪

Holmes is sentenced to hang.

♪

Holmes goes to the gallows.

The event is so popular, the authorities issue tickets.

Holmes then cements his place in history

As one of the country's most enduring and unresolved villains

With one more lie, saying, "I have never committed murder."

It was philadelphia's careful police work that caught holmes,

But it was the chicago p.D. Investigation

That made him infamous.

Selzer: After holmes' execution,

Things like the chicago vice commission were established.

They started cracking down on corrupt officials

And getting rid of ineffective detectives and police officers.

The idea was that they were gonna not be the sort of city

That had people like h.H. Holmes in it anymore.

[horn honks]

Jordan: The holmes case shines a light on chicago,

Behind the glorious image presented by the city's elite

During the world's fair.

The city learned that it hasn't yet shed the perception

Of its lawless frontier roots.

The world's fair may be long gone,

But it did leave behind a legacy:

The building that is today the museum of science and industry.

And a reminder that the dream of a stronger, greater,

World class chicago lives on.