Original subtitles

In 1888, Britain's first serial killer,

Jack the Ripper went on a killing spree in London.

He was never caught.

But I know who the Ripper is.

His real name is HH Holmes.

And he was America's first serial killer.

And he is my great, great grandfather.

Previously on American Ripper.

This is the place that evil man built

that factory of death.

If we want physical evidence to link.

Ripper and Holmes, there is a strong chance that it is

underneath that lot.

This is a famous dear boss letter that is

the first letter to be signed Jack the Ripper.

The language certainly looks American.

The Ripper butchered Mary Kelly

to the point that she could have in theory been

an animal carcass.

Today, there is amazing cutting edge

technology that can create a composite photograph

from eyewitness accounts of what

Jack the Ripper looked like.

If you took this composite to a judge,

he'd issue a warrant.

Wow.

This is pretty compelling to me.

You've got Jack on the left, you've got Holmes on the right.

People have been telling me for years

that my theory is crazy.

At times I even began to doubt myself but now

I can look into the eyes of Britain's most notorious

serial killer and staring back at me

is a very familiar face.

He is obviously 27 years old here, okay,

if he was in London in 1888.

The photo here's a police photo

after his arrest and he would've been 32 or 33.

I know that we still have work to do

to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt

but for the moment,

I feel vindicated.

We now have

an image of a potential suspect.

We might be talking about Jack the Ripper.

HH Holmes.

How foolproof are these comparisons

in your experience?

The more eyewitness accounts that you have,

with the more details involved the better and better result.

I am really confident about how accurate it is.

We've been able to track down in the press 13

eyewitness reports of those who claim that they've seen

Jack the Ripper.

That's an unusually high number.

It's still not a smoking gun,

but that composite picture looks a lot like HH Holmes.

From what we have learned, I've been surprised

that my major objections are beginning to melt away.

There is not as dramatic a difference between these two

killers as I had thought.

We know the Ripper could have been a doctor

just like Holmes.

Both killer seem to have enjoyed the act of dissection

after they killed their victims.

Yeah and the conclusions the linguists

had with the dear boss letter was written,

in their opinion, by an American.

Yeah, like most investigators,

when I came here, I thought Jack the Ripper

was the quintessential disorganized killer.

But as we've heard about his ability to time the routes

of law enforcement, and how his methods evolved

with each kill, almost like he's perfecting a process.

I am beginning to think that maybe he was of a higher IQ,

more kind of organized, just like HH Holmes.

With an escalation this dramatic and this quick.

I would expect to see the killing continue.

But the Ripper murders just stop and we've seen.

Holmes's name, an alias, show up in ship manifest

from London to America after the Whitechapel killings.

I would say that this is the first

milestone where I am truly

intrigued by your theory.

We still have more investigating to do.

I want to continue subjecting letters and artifacts

to forensic analysis to see if we can find more links

between Holmes and the Ripper.

But what we are still missing is physical evidence

from the crime scenes.

We know no murder weapon was ever

recovered here in London.

So, if Holmes was the Ripper, whatever physical evidence

remains may have traveled with him back across the ocean.

Well, it appears that the trail leads back

to the States.

Guess we're on our way home.

After everything we learned in London,

I'm even more anxious to excavate under the post office

where the murder castle stood.

You and me both.

If we're going to find physical evidence two tie Holmes

to Ripper, that is where it's going to be.

So, what's the status on that?

Have you heard anything?

Yeah, my colleague gave me the name

of someone at the post office we can talk

to about getting access.

I think that as Holmes' great, great grandson,

you should try to set up a meeting with him.

And in the meantime, we should pick up Holmes' trail

where we left off.

If a gap in his timeline reflects when he was in London,

we should be able to pick his timeline back up

when he returns to Chicago in the spring of 1889.

Great.

Our Chicago investigation into Holmes' paper trail

revealed a gap in his whereabouts at

as the Ripper murders.

The evidence we found in London supports the theory

that Holmes was there when the.

Ripper killings were occurring.

But to truly connect the two killers,

we need to look for any traces of the Ripper

and what Holmes did next.

In Chicago in the spring of 1889,

HH Holmes hires construction crews to convert his property

on 63rd and Wallace into what we now know

as the Murder Castle.

His sinister intent was to build a place to kill

and dissect his victims in private.

His intentions for this building were definitely

for murder and disposing of human remains.

To find answers about physical evidence

that might still be buried at the site,

Jeff and Amaryllis meet with a documentarian

and historian who is an expert on the Castle.

He had ideally constructed this building

not only for murder and the disposal of human bodies

but for him to enact his pleasure in privacy

with these victims.

That's an interesting point to me because

we are just back from London and there,

we were looking at the Whitechapel murders

and the fifth Jack the Ripper victim

is so much more mutilated because

the fifth victim, Mary Kelly is the only victim

that was killed in private.

I have to wonder if this was kind of a killer

in his adolescence who is developing his taste

and his desires and if you take that to its

logical conclusion as an industrious,

entrepreneurial psychopath, creating your own hotel full

of such private rooms would be an interesting next step.

We've learned that the 1895 police investigation

of the Murder Castle wasn't at all thorough.

So, it's possible the police missed critical evidence

that could connect Holmes to Jack the Ripper.

And that evidence might still be buried underground today.

It's straight out of the mind

of Edgar Allen Poe when you look at this.

It is definitely not out of Architectural Digest.

On the first floor, there were shops and there was

a jewelry store, a drug store on the corner

and a blacksmith's shop.

When you go up on the second floor there were many rooms,

purposely built to disorient people and maybe victims

that got away from him.

For instance, you walk into this room which has five doors.

You would open the door and it is a brick wall.

And when he was constructing the building he would

repeatedly hire and fire construction crews

so no one knew the full layout.

Wow.

If you go up to the third floor

that is where Holmes had rented rooms and these rooms

these rooms were lined with asbestos

to make them sound proof.

Well, why, because he had gas lines coming from his office

which he could gas people in their sleep.

It was an odorless, colorless gas that would slowly

shut down the victim's central nervous system.

This was perfect way to kill an unsuspecting guest

with no struggle and without alerting any

of the other residents of the castle.

Essentially, turning his office into

a command center of death.

Was there ever any evidence of a murder

being committed in the building?

No, and that is how much of an evil

criminal genius Holmes was.

He knew how to cover up everything.

He had this hidden chute running from the roof

to the basement for a way of quickly disposing

of the bodies.

The basement was the most frightening place

in the whole building. Because they found

quicklime vats down there.

Holmes may have used these in conjunction with acid baths

to dissolve human flesh and as a chemist

he would have realized that a lesser known use

for quicklime is to prevent odor.

This would have been extremely important if Holmes

was hoarding body parts in the Murder Castle basement.

And supposedly he did have this crematorium

that he said was for glass bending but it was about

the size of the human body.

Hearing that the Murder Castle

was specifically designed not just to kill but also

to destroy evidence is really discouraging.

Because evidence is exactly what we need to definitely

prove Jeff's theory.

The good news is if we can get access to that lawn,

modern equipment is so advanced that it may find traces

of the murders that Holmes didn't know

he was leaving behind.

Where did these bodies go, were they burned?

Were they sold as skeletons?

Were they buried somewhere?

They are gone, though, those people disappeared.

This is the industrialization of murder.

This is the Henry Ford model of killing human beings.

You check them in and you send them to the basement

and who knows what becomes of their remains after that.

The swindler and criminal mastermind known

as HH Holmes is rumored to have murdered hundreds

of people inside his three story murder castle.

Now, his great, great grandson,

Jeff Mudgett and ex CIA operative Amaryllis Fox

are chasing down leads to determine if any evidence

connected to Jack the Ripper might still be buried

on the castle grounds.

The idea of being able to actually analyze

fresh physical evidence that hasn't been contaminated

becomes incredibly intriguing.

If properly excavated there is the potential

for history changing evidence.

HH Holmes may have slaughtered hundreds of victims

in the Murder Castle which was torn down in the 1930s.

The government later built a post office on the plot

and part of the Murder Castle basement would have lined up

exactly with the post office front lawn.

Given that we are talking about the end

of the 19th century, it seems unlikely that a home furnace

could fully destroy a human body and if that's the case,

we're looking at a potential treasure trove

of physical evidence and body parts.

So I'd like to go check out what furnaces at the time

were capable of and get a sense of whether

it's reasonable that there might actually

be human remains under that lawn.

I'm looking forward to pleading my case

at the post office.

Because the Murder Castle used to stand on grounds

now owned by the Post Office, there's more than the usual

amount of legal hurdles to overcome

before they'll let us dig there.

Finally meeting with someone with the legal authority

to make this happen is a huge step.

Wow, the heat is really overwhelming

when you stand near it.

While Jeff meets with post office officials

to secure permission to excavate the Murder Castle site,

Amaryllis visits a local crematory to investigate

whether any human remains could have survived.

Our cremation units go to 1600 dgrees

and a normal human body

takes about two hours to cremate.

Newspaper accounts describe the murder castle's

furnace as large enough to accommodate a human body.

We brought some bone and muscle and flesh

from a pig and so I was hoping that we could see whether

the remains could be entirely burned up or whether something

is left over.

Alright.

Scientists often substitute pig bones

for human bones in forensic research because of their

similar structure and bone density.

Both have comparable rates of decomposition

and reactions to stressors, such as heat.

Wow, look at that.

Just stand away for a minute.

It's different from how I expected them to look.

You're still left with very recognizable human bones

as the remains.

I mean this wasn't an efficient

or successful way of getting rid of a body.

No.

I'd be very surprised if he could have got

a wood burning stove up to 1600 degrees,

and then held it consistently for an hour.

That would have been a lot of wood.

You'd have to use a lot

of wood you had. That's a lot of wood.

He just couldn't put the body and throw some wood

on it and leave.

So, is the exhaust that comes from the burning

of human remains, does it have a certain odor that

in a residential environment would be noticeable?

If it didn't have the equipment that we have today,

it certainly would.

It's a very pungent odor.

Well, this is tremendously helpful to me,

because it's actually a very different result

from what we would have expected.

The fact that it would be incredibly difficult

to dispose of human bones by burning them,

convinces me that an excavation might allow us

to find the physical evidence we need.

If this was the disposal process he was trying

to use, that there would be fragments remaining.

Jeff, how did it go?

I think it went well.

We should have an answer in the next few days.

That is great news because

given what I've learned about 19th century furnaces today,

we are definitely going to find evidence under that ground.

Great, see you soon.

What I'd really like now that we're back is to begin

to build out Holmes' timeline starting in 1889.

Alright.

Some speculate the castle claimed

as many as 200 lives, but its true

body count remains unverified.

This was boomtown Chicago.

He saw it as a chance to make money.

Jeff and Amaryllis connect

with Chicago historian, Adam Selzer,

to look for clues hidden in the trail of Holmes' many cons.

Holmes was up to any number of scams.

All these furniture companies,

all these insurance companies.

We've got the ABC Copier company that he was borrowing money

on and never actually paying back.

So, this was a legitimate company?

It was more or less a legitimate company,

he just didn't legitimately own it.

They did this over and over again,

buying things on credit and then never paying for it.

I found at least 60 lawsuits in Chicago alone that this guy

ended up in.

This one is about buying barber shop goods

to outfit the place which he also never actually paid back.

Then he was selling this and he said it was mineral water

that he got out of an artesian well in the basement.

It is regular tap water.

The real amazing story bout Holmes is not

the serial killer aspect, it's the con, it's the fraud.

It's the man who manipulated everyone in his life.

They were calling him things like the King of Criminals

and the arch fiend of the century before they

suspected him of a single murder.

When does he go from being a skilled legal trickster

and scam artist to taking human life?

Well, the Conners were the first

of the allegedly murders that could have taken place

in the castle.

That would be Julia and Pearl Conner.

Pearl's the daughter?

Pearl is the daughter, yes.

Julia and her husband had come

to live in the castle building. Her husband Ned was working

in the jewelry department.

She ended up keeping the books

and also having an affair with Holmes.

Wow.

Where was the husband, was the affair going on

right under his nose?

For a little while, yeah, but then he left.

So Adam, why did he kill the Conners?

Most likely it was because she just knew too much.

She was keeping the books at the Murder Castle, and Holmes

was up to any number of scams that she might have

found out about.

Julia and Pearl then disappeared around Christmas of 1891.

Pearl looks quite young here.

She would have been about six when she disappeared.

Wow.

What did Holmes say happened to them?

Holmes was fairly consistent in saying that Julia

died in an abortion.

Then he had to get rid of the kid too.

Most likely he would have put Julia and Pearl down

with the chloroform and then just going

with the chloroform.

Now, when they were digging up the castle

a few years later, they started finding bones

that appeared to a six year old child.

No kidding.

If the police at the time found bones

in the murder castle basement, it supports the theory

that the furnace couldn't get hot enough to process

all these bodies.

He must have had to dispose of them in a variety

of different ways, including burial.

So if Pearl's body was buried underground,

what did he do with Julia?

While the police were digging up the castle in 1895,

they brought in this supposedly witnessed,

they called him the machinist or a bone rigger?

He bought several dead bodies from HH Holmes to turn

into skeletons which could then be sold to medical schools.

And one of those we think was Julia?

Presumably, yeah.

In one of the descriptions he says the body looked like

that of a jackrabbit which is been skinned by splitting

the skin down the base and rolling it back off

the entire body.

Wow.

That's not the Holmes I had been imagining at all.

Jeff, that's similar to what we have seen with Mary Kelly,

the fifth Jack the Ripper victim.

(Heme)

This body looked like that of a jackrabbit

that had been skinned.

Investigating the gruesome deaths

that occurred in HH Holmes' Murder Castle,

Jeff and Amaryllis unearth an unexpected link.

That sounds more Jack the Ripper like to me.

An original eye witness report,

offering a rare glimpse into the bloody aftermath

of Holmes' deeds,

and its similarity to the Ripper killings.

Hearing of a body laid horizontal and the skin removed

and flayed open like a jackrabbit is pretty striking.

Jack the Ripper's victims were all cut open along

the abdomen and splayed in that exact same fashion.

This makes me wonder if Holmes could have been conducting

the same kind of savage killings as Jack but because

it was in his own hotel, in his own castle,

it was never really known to the public.

Yeah.

Especially when you consider Holmes in the basement.

He had complete privacy there.

What I really want to get my hands on

is more physical evidence.

And for that we really need sites where we know that

Holmes was active.

He was active all over the country,

he had some scams going in St. Louis for a while,

several months in Fort Worth, Philadelphia.

He went to New York several times,

stayed at the Aster House, very fancy.

Right around 1893.

There was a woman named Mae Barretts who apparently met.

HH Holmes, went to work for him in New York and disappeared.

Well that's interesting.

We've been hearing story after story of victims

of Holmes disappearing in the murder castle.

But knowing that an employee of Holmes disappeared

in New York is an interesting lead.

This may mean that there are more victims

than we originally thought and potentially

more crime scenes.

He covered his tracks really well when he was in New York.

Most of the time he was traveling around I have

a pretty good idea what he was doing in the city.

New York is total mystery every time.

There is documentation that he took multiple trips

between 1889 and 1894.

One interesting gap for me is towards the middle

of spring of 1891.

There is not much data for him for a couple of weeks there.

Holmes being unaccounted for in New York

is an interesting thread for me.

I'd like to do some more research on crimes

that were occurring there that might have a similar MO.

Looking through media clippings and newspaper reports

is our best bet to see the if there's any evidence

of similar crimes in New York.

At the Evanston Public Library,

Jeff and Amaryllis access a database of local media

and police reports from the spring of 1891.

They're searching for any unsolved murders

in New York City that could be the work of HH Holmes.

This is the first of the results I found for New York.

Killed and Boiled her.

This is the slaughter of a little girl.

Holmes had interesting means of disposing of his victims,

though the MO seems a little off to me.

This is a multi victim murder spree.

That's not really Holmes' style either.

Holmes was a sophisticated, premeditative killer,

who mutilated his victims.

So we're looking for privately executed killings

where the body appears to have been dissected.

No link there.

I agree.

That string of murders was in fact, solved.

So we can eliminate that from our list.

That wasn't Holmes.

Yeah, this one's interesting.

Choked then mutilated,

body horribly slashed and disemboweled.

That really does sound more like Holmes' killing style.

This is 1891, so it's an appropriate time period

for Holmes to be in New York.

The murder was committed on the southeast corner

of Catherine and Water Street, in the East River Hotel.

Wait a minute.

That's very close to the Astor House where Holmes liked

to stay when he was in New York City.

Really?

Yes.

So, her name was Carrie Brown.

The victim was an aged woman.

There were marks about her throat,

before the mutilations were performed.

It says on the back was a mark like an X.

That's the same as the fourth ripper murder.

Catherine Eddows, the X on her cheek.

This was evidently the murderer's sign.

Many of the details recall the crimes with

which Jack the Ripper horrified London.

The crime remains unsolved.

This is crazy, the police at the time really thought

this murder was committed by Jack the Ripper.

Scotland Yard came over to New York to follow

that potential lead and Holmes was in New York at the time.

Choked then mutilated.

That really does sound like the Jack the Ripper MO.

Souring the archives for evidence

of a HH Holmes style killings in New York City,

Jeff and Amaryllis uncover something unexpected.

An unsolved murder in the Spring of 1891 that appears

to link to Jack the Ripper.

The crime remains unsolved and Holmes was in New York

at the time.

It's worth me going and digging though records

in New York and seeing whether we can turn up

some more information.

I'm gonna stick around in Chicago in case there's

an answer on our dig.

I'm gonna give up on getting the government

to allow us to excavate the Post Office grounds.

This remains an open.

Yes.

Case on New York Police Department books.

Yes, right.

Cases are never closed until we have

the actual perpetrator.

In New York City, Amaryllis connects

with former NYPD detective, Ike Illkiw,

an expert on the unsolved murder of Carrie Brown to get

the facts on the case.

From a detective's mind, could you walk me through

what happened with Carrie Brown?

We're talking about April 1891 and Carrie Brown was

a prostitute working on the East River.

And we know the Ripper targeted prostitutes

as his victims in White Chapel.

So apparently she had picked up a male, brought him up

to room 31, at what was then the East River Hotel.

She wasn't found until the next morning when the girl

that was hired to clean the room went up and there was

no answer to the door.

To the knock.

Does she provide any witness statement?

All it says is not the slightest noise was heard

during the night from the chamber, but in the morning

when a servant rapped on the door

the summons was unanswered.

With the assistance of the porter, burst open the door.

The woman was found in bed, quite dead

and covered with blood.

So, why do people believe that Carrie Brown might have

been a Ripper victim?

She was disemboweled, her intestines had been removed.

Is there a coroner's report?

Yeah.

Her abdomen had been ripped open by a dull,

broken table knife which was found in the room.

Part of the intestines had been removed and are missing.

So, an organ was removed.

Was her throat slit?

No, it was strangulation by clothing,

according to the coroner's report.

That's interesting because from what I learned

from investigators in London, each of the five canonical.

Ripper victims were killed by strangulation

and, or the cutting of the throat.

Right.

Was she disemboweled from between the legs

up through the abdomen?

It would appear so.

That is strikingly similar to.

Right.

Jack the Ripper's killings in London.

This is a picture of Catherine Eddowes,

who of course had been disemboweled and her uterus

and her kidney had been removed.

What strikes me comparing the Catherine Eddowes

and Carrie Brown autopsy photos, is that they both have

this cadaver on the dissection table feel to them.

HH Holmes had a long history of dissecting cadavers.

Holmes was described as opening up his cadavers

like a jackrabbit being dissected.

And that is not a bad description for both

Carrie Brown and Catherine Eddowes.

Assuming that Carrie Brown was a victim

of Jack the Ripper in America, then proving that Holmes

killed Carrie Brown means proving that

Holmes is the Ripper.

Why Holmes would execute this particular killing outside

of the Murder Castle, we don't know.

But it's a fascinating find.

What I always find interesting is the, where it says here,

the characteristics of this tragedy are so exactly similar

to the White Chapel murders that the police confidently

express the belief that the murderer is Jack the Ripper.

Carrie Brown was a quintessential Ripper victim.

She was a prostitute, she was strangled

and disemboweled indoors, just like the fifth

Jack the Ripper killing.

Class Jack M.O.

Amaryllis returns to Chicago to debrief Jeff

on her New York investigation while they wait

for news on the Murder Castle dig.

So more Holmes Ripper coincidences.

I mean they do keep piling up.

And I think we can say from this that it validates

our theory that Jack the Ripper may have been an American

and that his killing may have picked up in the United States

after it stopped in London.

Hold on, this might be the post office.

Yeah, Jeff Mudget.

Thanks for calling.

Do you have any word back on my request?

If Holmes really was Jack the Ripper,

this could be the only site where we can find evidence

that links Holmes to the London murders.

Gaining access to the castle lawn would be

a huge breakthrough in our investigation.

I appreciate the call.

Goodbye.

That didn't sound good.

No, they said no.

Post office shut us down.

They were concerned that the excavation would be

a disruption of the mail and perhaps even a disservice

to the community.

I mean, for any investigator to be told

that you're investigating a multiple homicide

but you're not allowed access to the scene of the crime,

is a really tough blow.

If this were a case that that was open and active right now,

we would be getting a different answer.

Getting underground at the Murder Castle was

the best chance we had at proving Holmes was the Ripper.

It sounds like an excavation is off the table for now.

That is a big disappointment.

I still have my fingers crossed that we'll get the chance

one day if we keep up the pressure.

Cold cases are tough.

There are always two steps forward, one step back.

This is definitely a setback for our investigation.

But we do have some evidence we haven't analyzed yet.

We have a couple of letters from the Jack the Ripper

killings that forensic linguists have told us may have been

written by an American.

And at this stage we have many samples

of Holmes' handwriting.

So I've sent those to a forensic handwriting expert

to see if there were any similarities

that could prove or disprove your theory.

If we do get a positive match, that would go a long way

to proving they are the same killer.

The normal lay person will look at letters.

The letter L looks the same, the G looks the same,

the T looks the same.

What the expert does, we'll look at patterns.

Like fingerprints, handwriting is unique

to each individual and different to fake or manipulate.

Forensic document examiners can identify criminals

and forgeries by studying writing samples.

Could you give us a few examples of what it is

you look for?

Sure.

In this particular case that I was working on

when you came in, we look for common letters

but we'll also look for common words.

In the word, In, this looks like a U, but in fact it's an N.

We'll look at different height relationships between

different letters, or,

the skill and speed of the writer, to provide the basis

for our identification or elimination

of a particular writer.

How would you tell when letters are written

by the same person who was intentionally trying

to mask their identity?

If I suspect a disguise, I will go right to the end,

because it's very difficult to keep up the disguise

from the beginning to the end.

And then start from the end and work our way up.

Then you'll see more of the natural writing of the person.

So, we have here two sets of letters.

And we're interested in your professional opinion

about whether or not they could have been penned

by the same hand.

OK.

How long does it take you to do this kind of analysis?

Generally about a week for us to turn it around.

Sounds good.

With the handwriting analysis underway,

Jeff and Amaryllis meet with Ray Johnson to plan

their next move.

We've been officially shut down from digging under

the post office.

And the frustrating thing is that that lawn,

where the Murder Castle used to stand,

is the only repository of Holmes' victims.

Well, I wouldn't say only.

While the Murder Castle was one of Holmes

most famous buildings, he did own property all over Chicago

in fact all over the country.

And the reason being was to cover up his various schemes.

Some of the properties he owned- were the Wilmette property

which he owned with his second wife, Myrta Belknap.

A small farm just outside of Joliet.

The glass bending factory in the North Side of Chicago.

And everywhere that he owned real estate

you can be sure he was killing people.

The unfortunate thing is that like the Murder Castle,

the other locations that he operated in had been torn down

to make room for condos and other buildings.

So to be able to dig there would be next to impossible.

So is there anywhere left that we could possibly

find physical evidence.

Well, the one business that Holmes did own that might be

worth investigating is the William Green & company.

Now, that is the location that I believe in 1892 he disposed

of one of his victims, Emeline Cigrand.

She moved to the castle and started working for Holmes.

She was a stenographer and secretary.

All of a sudden out of nowhere this announcement hits

the newspaper that she is getting married

to someone named Robert Phelps.

And one of her friends is like, That's odd because I had

contact with her on December 5th and 6th

and she never mentioned anything.

So, flags were going up all over the place.

And then she disappeared.

Now, when Holmes was approached about it,

he said that she got married in Minnesota.

At another point he said she got married in Michigan.

And then his story kept changing.

It wasn't until the actual investigation started that

someone who worked at the castle mentioned that

on December 7th they remember Holmes asking

men to help him carry a very heavy trunk out of the castle.

And where it went they weren't sure.

Where did they end up?

Well, that's when it gets really interesting.

William Green and Company.

They were a warehouse facility in the business of storing

and supposedly selling cement.

The funny thing is that they were buying a lot

of cement but they never sold any.

And check out the location of the factory.

The warehouse is located on North Water St.

1600 feet east of St. Clair Street and running to the river.

It kind of made the hair stand up on my neck when I first

saw where the warehouse was.

If you're serial killer and you're trying to get rid

of bodies, and you want to do it less conspicuously

then let's say burning them up in a furnace

in the murder Castle, it'd be much easier to dispose

of bodies by...

Incasing them in cement very easily and dropping

them in the Chicago river

Holmes was tied to this business that had a warehouse

along the Chicago River filled with cement.

On the hunt to prove HH Holmes

is Jack the Ripper, a tip from Ray Johnson has opened up

a new lead that could produce the physical evidence

Jeff and Amaryllis are looking for.

They've arranged a meeting with an underwater

reconnaissance team to uncover whether Holmes' cement

warehouse on the Chicago River may have been a front

to conceal it's true purpose.

Body disposal.

The area where the warehouse was located

was on the north side of Chicago River just west

of the mouth.

What type of area was it?

In the late 1890s, that was all factories and this was all

heavy industrial stuff.

Now it is obviously not.

It's highend hotels, residences.

Totally changed from that period.

Plus, the River itself has changed.

How do you mean?

Well, In 1892 they reversed the flow of the River.

While Chicago's industry booms in the 1870s

and 80s, the drinking water the city relies on is being

contaminated by sewage and commercial waste.

In 1885, a heavy rainstorm flushes the polluted water into

the lake starting an epidemic of waterborne diseases

that kills nearly 12% of Chicago's population.

The city begins a massive project to keep its water safe

by reversing the flow of the Chicago River.

It is regarded as one of the greatest engineering feats

of the 19th century.

The Army Corp of engineers dredged the River 15 feet

deeper and it took them about seven years.

When they dredged the River,

they dredged the entire river.

Including the portion that we are talking about now?

Including the portion we are talking about.

But,

Chicago River's a little bit unique.

Unlike many rivers that have a fair amount of flow,

Chicago River doesn't.

Everything kind of just sits there.

So, we have a better chance with this river,

it's worth taking a look.

That is encouraging.

It sounds like a higher likelihood

in this River that in most that something would remain there

for a long period of time.

I would guess that, yeah.

What do you say we go take a look at the site?

Sounds like a plan.

If we were standing here in the 1890s,

what would we be looking at?

If you look at that little atrium that kind of splits

the two Towers, that is kind of dead center where

the warehouse was.

So, how would we go about searching the bottom

of the river.

We've got an ROV.

A remote operated vehicle that we'll put in the water,

put the boat against the Riverwalk here

and work a kind of a grid pattern search.

What would we be looking for?

What I've seen in the past, for example in going to get

cannonballs out of some of the sites off of Canada,

you actually find holes in the muck...

Really.

Where the cannonballs went in.

Wow, like a depression in the bottom.

Exactly.

That hole will stay there for years.

That's kind of what I am going to be looking for,

do we have these craters which is an indication

that something has been tossed in there.

OK, so let's meet back up in the morning

and scan this river.

Consider this.

We are on the verge of using this submersible robot

to attempt to investigate HH Holmes connection

with Jack the Ripper.

We've got a chance of finding bodies encased in cement

at the bottom of this river floor.

What we don't know is what to expect.

These could be humansized cement coffins,

or they could be smaller chunks of cement

that contain body parts.

Either way, they could be time capsules of evidence.

He's in.

Adam, let out some cable.

We're going to run it a little bit further east.

Go ahead and bring her down.

What exactly are we looking at here?

Probably anywhere from three to six feet of silt.

Here we go, there we go.

Can we hold it right in there?

Wow.

Go up a little bit.

Just a little bit, OK.

You see these little bumps here?

Whoa, there are so many of them.

This is an indication that things have been dumped here.

Next time on American Ripper.

What could have been a more perfect place on Earth

for a killer of his nature than something like this.

Two miles from his hotel.

There was a number of things I found about women

with their throats cut.

My great, great aunt took a trip to Chicago

and was never heard from again.

I wonder how many unknown women were found

with Ripperesque type of murders in Chicago.

That's interesting.

Unknown woman, unknown woman.

Throat cut from ear to ear.

We have some results that are regressing.

A picture's worth a thousand words.

How can you best preserve a body for 100 years?

Encase it in concrete?

So, we're talking about a forensic time capsule.

Yea.