Born Herman Webster Mudgett, Dr. Holmes started his criminal career
as a medical student by stealing corpses from the University of
Michigan. He used the corpses to collect insurance money from policies
taken out under fictitious names.

When he moved to Chicago he started a drugstore empire from which
he made a fortune. He built a hundred-room mansion complete with gas
chambers, trap doors, acid vats, lime pits, fake walls and secret
entrances. During the 1893 World's Fair he rented rooms to visitors. He
then killed most of his lodgers and continued his insurance fraud
scheme. He also lured women to his "torture castle" with the promise of
marriage. Instead, he would force them to sign over their savings, then
throw them down an elevator shaft and gas them to death. In the
basement of the castle he dismembered and skinned his prey and
experimented with their corpses.

When police grew suspicious about H.H's activities, he torched the
castle and fled. In the burnt hulk of the building, authorities found the
remains of over two hundred people. H.H. was caught when one of his
insurance schemes was unravelled by Pinkerton detectives. He was
hanged on May 7, 1896, after one the first sensational crime trial in
America. Not only was Herman the first American serial killer he was
also, according to author Scheckter, the first "celebrity psycho." Although
he never had the historical presence of his contemporary Jack the
Ripper, he did leave behind an impressive trail of blood unequaled for
almost eighty years.