Erick Larson wrote in Devil in the White City, “I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing – I was born with the Evil One standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered in the world, and he has been with me since” (Troy, Taylor). This statement was a quoted confession from Dr. H. H. Holmes himself in 1896. Holmes was the first major serial killer in America, even though he came after many others in his time. Thomas Neil Cream, the Austin Axe Murderer, the Bloody Benders, and Jack the Ripper came before him. His name was originally Herman Webster Mudgett. He was born on May 16th, 1860 in Gilman, New Hampshire. He was raised by his mother and father, who was a wealthy and respected citizen for 25 years. As a boy, Mudgett was always in trouble and was well known in his community for his rather sociopathic behavior. He would show cruelty to both animals and other children. The only thing keeping hope to society was the fact that he was an excellent student. He later changed his last name to Holmes in order to pursue both his medical and criminal careers. He had many other aliases in which he would hide under and try to derail the cops from finding him (Juan, Blanco). Holmes was medically trained to be a doctor and received his degree from the University of Michigan. He was not just into insurance fraud scams. His evil doings included forgery, claiming to find the cure for alcoholism, real estate scams, and pretending to have a machine that turned natural gas into water. He was quite the ladies man, had many wives, whom often had become his victims. Many of his medical partners became subject to him, also. He once even had three wiv...
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Holmes claimed the lives of hundreds, though officially under the law they were only able to charge him with 9 counts of murder, many died at his hands. In a day with better technology, a bigger population, and a changed society, we need to try and end serial killers for once and for all because who knows the impact they can
Scott, S. L. “What Makes Serial Killers Tick?”. Crime Library. Retrieved April 3, 2014, http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/notorious/tick/victims_1.html
Serial killers are everywhere! Well, perhaps not in our neighborhood, but on our television screens, at the movie theaters, and in rows and rows of books at our local Borders or Barnes and Nobles Booksellers” (Brown). When people think of serial killers, names such as Dahmer, Gacy, Bundy, and Gein are cited. During the time Jack the Ripper was executing his victims in London, Holmes began his gruesome career in Chicago (America’s Serial Killers). “Despite being America’s first serial killer, Holmes is hardly a familiar name and until now we haven’t had any popular visual record of his crimes: (Spikol). Why is it that people only think of the more popular killers with higher known profiles? They are all very similar to one another because they share characteristics. H.H. Holmes was a successful serial killer because he was well educated, cunning and charming. Those are just a few traits Holmes ...
H.H. Holmes, originally named Herman Webster Mudgett, was the first known American serial killer. His weapon of choice was the “Murder Castle” of which he created in Chicago. In this “castle”, it is believed that he murdered around 200 people. Holmes only confessed to the murder of 28, but the remains found were so dismembered and decomposed that a number could not be determined. It is also believed that Holmes sold the bodies of his victims for use in medical research facilities. Doctors and researchers were so desperate for bodies in this time that they raided cemeteries. Therefore, it was not questioned how he had access to such quantity of human corpses readily available. Holmes’ “Murder Castle” was a three story, block long hotel. Inside the seemingly normal hotel was a maze with over 100 windowless rooms opening to brick walls, oddly shaped hallways, stairways leading nowhere and doors in which opened only from the outside. Holmes got away with building the hotel by firing construction workers quickly so they could not figure out what he was planning.
2011. “Serial Killers and Mass Murderers.” American Decades. Ed. Judith S. Baughman, et al. Vol. 9:
A horrific crime was committed in 2012 in Aurora, Colorado. A 27 year old man by the name of James Holmes walked into a movie theater and brutally shot at the crowd, killing 12 and wounding an astounding 70 people. Holmes had plenty of ammunition to continue his deranged killing spree but luckily his gun jammed and he surrendered and was arrested shortly after. James Holmes appeared in court and tried to justify his actions by saying he has a mental illness and brought forth witness saying he is a sweet and academically gifted child. In the end the jury and judge didn’t believe it, or just didn’t care, and found him guilty which landed him with 3,318 plus years, or one life sentence for every person he had killed. There was massive amounts
Herman Webster Mudgett, aka Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, was one of America’s first noted serial murders, also known as "America's first serial killer". In addition to murder, Holmes enjoyed performing extreme forms of torture and mutilation on those he lured into traps. He is perhaps best known for what would later be dubbed the Murder Castle, a two-story hotel designed by Holmes with numerous trap doors, hidden passages, and torture chambers. Many have looked for what could have led to his later gruesome atrocities and have found few answers. However as is often the case with serial killers, the childhood of Holmes was shaped by physical abuse, difficulties in socializing with his fellow peers, and cruelty towards animals. The
Serial killers have captivated the attention of scientists from the first signs of their existence to modern day. Interested by these killers’ inhumane actions, researchers set out to determine the cause of such graphic, horrific crimes. The brain has been brought into question regarding the motivation of these cold blooded killers. After extensive research, abnormalities of both the chemical composition and material makeup have been identified within the brains of numerous serial killers. These differences are more than mere coincidence, they are evidence that killers do not think in the same way. The killers’ drives and motives are irregular, just as their brains are. Not only are these variations interesting, but they are also crucial to the justice system in regards to the punishment of past, future, and present sequential murderers. It is important that as a society we learn the differences in the mind of a killer, and also recognize and understand them. A serial killer’s brain greatly differs in function from the average citizen’s brain due to physical variations in the brain and a different chemical makeup.
“I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing. I was born with the evil one standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered into the world, and he has been with me since.” (qdt. in Roland 12) Mudgett, better known as H.H. Holmes, said this during a confession in 1896. Holmes is diligently studied and sometimes admired because, not only was he America’s first major serial killer, the depths of his intelligence for crime remain unchallenged. Herman Webster Mudgett was the most prolific killer in American history because of the elaborate design of his Murder Castle, ingenious ways of disposing of evidence, and finally the abundance of methods he uses to finance his lifestyle.
Thesis statement: Serial Murderers are not just murderers but also victims of the rotten hand they were dealt.
In fact, there was such a multitude of faults that “at night the lights and the infilling darkness served to mask the exposition’s many flaws” (254-255). This statement is extremely ironic to the beliefs of good versus evil, also mentioned as light versus dark. The fact that the darkness, or the evil, hides the flaws of the exposition serves to explain how darkness and immorality is needed to succeed in something as ambitious as the World’s Fair. Larson proves to his audience how momentous figures and events could not be possible without a lack of morality. Likewise, with this ironic statement, he demonstrates how said immorality is dismissed by the public. Irony is also used to convey the true nature of men as opposed to how they let themselves be perceived. Through the entirety of the book, Holmes is a metaphor for such irony. He is described in every scene in which he is present as “charming” and “warm,” but in reality he was a sociopathic serial killer. Others saw him only the way he presented himself, which was approachable, for he kept all of the darkness that festered inside of him hidden. To elaborate on Holme’s manipulative ways, Larson tells a specific story of Holmes taking two children to Indianapolis. When he bought an apartment, he requested help to set up a large wood stove in the house. When asked why he
percent out of the 160 cases reviewed of mass public killers, “had a serious mental health
When it come to the wrongdoing of serial murders the first thing people think of is that the offender is psychotic, white, abused as a child and experimented with animals. However that is not true, serial killers have different alternatives, motives and desires. Some are sexual sadist, act in necrophilia and are mission base serial killers. However people do not know that African-Americans consist of the largest racial minority group among serial killers, representing approximately 20 percent of the total amount of serial killers in America. (Bonn) Most believe that serial killers are white and other races are not likely to partake in that type of crimes. However two notorious well known black serial killers are Lemuel Smith & John Floyd
There have been many serial killer cases that have attracted the attention of not only the media but of mental health experts as well. Many experts from a variety of different fields have come together to answer one question: Why did they do it? It is believed that most, if not all, serial killers have a mental illness, motives, and/or trauma during their lives that made them start killing. Serial killers are not only the effect of nurture but also nature. The environment of their country, the United States is our focus, can cause the number of serial killers to increase especially if the country itself is unstable.
A serial killer is a person who murders three or more people over a period of more than 30 days, with a "cooling off" period between each murder, and whose motivation for killing is largely based on psychological gratification. Most people do not understand what can make a person want to kill multiple people for no reason other than own satisfactional gain. In actuality serial killers have been studied for over hundreds of years, and the information that has been documented continues to grow. The research that I have gathered about serial killers focuses on their childhood development, the differences and similarities between men and female serial kills, and finally general information on how their brains operate and their motives for committing such harmful acts.