Speaker 1: This episode MA contained content of a graphic nature, including
Speaker 1: descriptions of physical and sexual violence against adults, children, and animals.
Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised. Hi, I'm Shannon. Hi I'm Tanya,
Speaker 1: and we are Crimes and Consequences, a hardcore true crime podcast. Shannon,
Speaker 1: my love, Oh my dear heart, Tanya. How are you?
Speaker 1: I am good? How are you? I'm doing pretty good.
Speaker 1: We gotta make our weather report. Just a little feeling
Speaker 1: run down us. All my usual complaints, but that's not
Speaker 1: too bad to have, honestly. So, yeah, I had a
Speaker 1: physical therapy today, so my shoulders a little sore. But
Speaker 1: how is that going? It's going good. So my physical
Speaker 1: therapist is somebody I went to college with, so I'm
Speaker 1: known for a really long time. And I told her,
Speaker 1: I said, it's starting to feel better. I told her, like,
Speaker 1: before we started our session today, I've only gone to two.
Speaker 1: Today was number three. And she's like, yeah, physical therapy
Speaker 1: really works. And we were kind of laughing because I
Speaker 1: was like, this bullshit works, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: this boodoo. Yeah, this who works. But it really has
Speaker 1: been feeling a lot better. So I think the prescription
Speaker 1: was for twelve visits, so yeah, so I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: it for the next six weeks. So, oh good. I
Speaker 1: know your your mobility is pretty limited on that side.
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it when you show me at our
Speaker 1: movie date. But no, that's awesome news. Well good, I'm glad.
Speaker 1: That's the latest and greatest. What she got today got
Speaker 1: us a story. I want to take you back. Gosh,
Speaker 1: when was it? Was it the late nineties in your
Speaker 1: garage the candles. Shannon and I had a candle making
Speaker 1: business for a little while. It was so fun. It
Speaker 1: was probably the mid eighties, the mid nineties, mid nineties,
Speaker 1: mid to late yeah, okay, And so to pass the time,
Speaker 1: when you have to pour candles in a container, you
Speaker 1: have to wait and check for air bubbles. So Tanya
Speaker 1: and I would just sit out in the garage and
Speaker 1: just talk and it would be cold, but it was
Speaker 1: okay because there was a heater in there and we
Speaker 1: were watching our candles set up. We started playing, you know,
Speaker 1: the usual fun game f Mary Kill and we are
Speaker 1: well back in the day. Now this is the nineties
Speaker 1: for wrestling. So we would pick wrestlers and Tanya loved
Speaker 1: Hunter Palmsley Triple h God. He was so fucking It
Speaker 1: would usually just be down to two him and the
Speaker 1: rock him, and they were really the hottest. No one
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even consider, And so it would always be
Speaker 1: like Hunterhearst Houndsley in the shower fingering or the rock
Speaker 1: Doggie on the stairs. It would be so close. It
Speaker 1: would be like, oh gosh, it's hard. It was a
Speaker 1: really difficult It was like totally Sophie's choice because it
Speaker 1: was really a hard decision to make. And then we
Speaker 1: would do it with Paul Bearer, mister Fuji. It would
Speaker 1: be like two horrible choices, two nightmare choices, and we
Speaker 1: would just be giggling and laughing so hard. And I
Speaker 1: just bring it up because this week's story. His initials
Speaker 1: are triple H, and he went by H H. Holmes.
Speaker 1: Oh triple eight. Yes, there was a triple H back
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds. He was not a wrestler. He
Speaker 1: was America's first serial killer. Oh America, girl, I'm going
Speaker 1: to take you right back. America at the end of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century was a country racing full speed into
Speaker 1: the future. Cities rose like steel giants, electric lights flickered
Speaker 1: to life in places where darkness used to settle without argument.
Speaker 1: Railroads carved new lines across the landscape, carrying strangers from
Speaker 1: one end of the country to the other faster than
Speaker 1: most newspapers could print their names. And in that rush
Speaker 1: toward progress, something unexpected happened. The country became anonymous. People
Speaker 1: arrived in cities where no one knew who they were,
Speaker 1: where they came from, or what ghosts traveled with them.
Speaker 1: A man could reinvent himself overnight, a woman could vanish
Speaker 1: in the space of a single block. Entire lives could
Speaker 1: unfold or collapse in crowded streets where everyone minded their
Speaker 1: own business. It was the perfect ecosystem for a predator.
Speaker 1: And in the early eighteen nineties, while Chicago prepared to
Speaker 1: showcase the wonders of modern civilization to the world, a
Speaker 1: man moved quietly through the city with a smile on
Speaker 1: his face and something far darker in his mind. His
Speaker 1: given name was Herman Webster Mudget, but the name history
Speaker 1: remembers the name he gave himself was doctor Henry Howard Holmes.
Speaker 1: Holmes appeared respectable, polished, soft spoken. He dressed well, paid
Speaker 1: attention to details, and carried himself like a man the
Speaker 1: world ought to trust. People described him as charming and intelligent,
Speaker 1: a gentleman, a doctor, but charm as camouflage. An intelligence
Speaker 1: is a weapon. Holmes didn't simply kill. He designed murder.
Speaker 1: He engineered it. He built a structure, brick by brick,
Speaker 1: that operated like a machine for disposing of human beings.
Speaker 1: He turned anatomy into opportunity, He turned anonymity into cover.
Speaker 1: And when the world finally discovered what he'd done, it
Speaker 1: struggled to understand the truth because America didn't have a
Speaker 1: word for a man like him. Not serial killer, not psychopath,
Speaker 1: not organized defender. Those weren't invented yet. Holmes was the first.
Speaker 1: And the story you're about to hear isn't the mythologized version,
Speaker 1: not the Hollywood embellishment, not the half remembered urban legend,
Speaker 1: and not the water down folklore of a so called
Speaker 1: murder castle. This is the Holmes who existed in reality, calculated, inventive, cold,
Speaker 1: and extraordinarily patient. A man who saw human beings not
Speaker 1: as people but his assets. A man who could build
Speaker 1: a house that didn't just hide death, it produced it.
Speaker 1: A man who learned exactly how easy it was in
Speaker 1: the chaos of a booming country to make someone disappear
Speaker 1: without a trace. So tonight we're going to step into
Speaker 1: that world. We're going back to the beginning, before the
Speaker 1: newspaper headlines, before the confessions, before the trial, back to
Speaker 1: the child who learned how to lie without blinking, and
Speaker 1: the medical student who discovered how profitable a body could be.
Speaker 1: And then we descend into the castle. Because to understand
Speaker 1: doctor H. H. Holmes, you have to understand the machinery
Speaker 1: he built and the system he exploited, long before the
Speaker 1: country even realized a monster was walking among them. Hermann
Speaker 1: Webster Mudget was born on May sixteenth, eighteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, a place where church pews outnumbered
Speaker 1: storefronts and the rhythm of daily life was slow, predictable,
Speaker 1: and tightly controlled. His parents were strict Methodists, committed to
Speaker 1: discipline and moral order. In that era, obedience was a virtue,
Speaker 1: silence was expected, and fear was considered a tool. Holmes
Speaker 1: would later insist his childhood was pleasant, calm, and ordinary.
Speaker 1: The people who knew him remembered something very different. Neighbors
Speaker 1: described him as unusually bright, but unnervingly detached, a boy
Speaker 1: who didn't laugh with other children, didn't scare easily, and
Speaker 1: lied with a casual confidence that adults didn't know what
Speaker 1: to do with. He seemed to understand early that people
Speaker 1: believed what they wanted to believe, and if he delivered
Speaker 1: the right expression at the right place moment, he could
Speaker 1: get away with anything. It was an early form of manipulation,
Speaker 1: and Holmes mastered it effortlessly. But the story he repeated
Speaker 1: most often, the one he claimed that shaped him, was
Speaker 1: the now famous skeleton incident. According to Holmes, neighborhood boys
Speaker 1: once forced him into a doctor's office where they shoved
Speaker 1: his hand into a human skeleton to terrify him. He said,
Speaker 1: the fear melted into fascination. He said that moment sparked
Speaker 1: his lifelong obsession with anatomy. It's a neat story, it's
Speaker 1: a cinematic story. But there's one problem. There's no evidence
Speaker 1: it ever happens. Holmes wrote that story himself years later,
Speaker 1: while awaiting execution. Historians believe he created it as part
Speaker 1: of his personal mythology, a dark origin Taleman to explain
Speaker 1: or even justify everything that came after. But whether the
Speaker 1: Skeleton's story he was real or not, something else was true.
Speaker 1: Holmes understood the power of narrative. He understood how to
Speaker 1: make people remember him the way he wanted to be remembered.
Speaker 1: He understood how to turn himself into a character. And
Speaker 1: long before he became a doctor, long before he built
Speaker 1: the castle, long before he made his first body disappear,
Speaker 1: Holmes learned to become whoever he needed to be. But
Speaker 1: childhood is only the prologue. The real transformation, the moment
Speaker 1: Holmes learned exactly what a human body was worth, began
Speaker 1: at the University of Michigan Medical School. Shut up, shut up.
Speaker 1: He worked at U of M. He was at U
Speaker 1: of M. Oh Yes, this is where he learned the
Speaker 1: value of a body. By the early eighteen eighties, Herman
Speaker 1: Webster Mudget had shut his skin. Distance from his childhood
Speaker 1: gave him freedom, and he stepped into the world of
Speaker 1: higher education with a new kind of confidence. He enrolled
Speaker 1: in the University of Michigan Medical School in eighteen eighty two,
Speaker 1: a decision that would alter the course of his life
Speaker 1: in many others, in ways no one could have predicted.
Speaker 1: Medical schools in the nineteenth century were worlds unto themselves.
Speaker 1: The halls carried the metallic smell of discarded instruments and formaldehyde.
Speaker 1: Anatomy labs were crowded with cadavers, bodies obtained from sources
Speaker 1: that ranged from legally ambiguous to outright criminal. Grave robbers
Speaker 1: known politely as resurrectionists. That was their yes, their street term,
Speaker 1: supplied much of the demand. It was an open secret.
Speaker 1: Everyone knew about it, and no one talked about it
Speaker 1: because dissection was essential to learning, and the supply had
Speaker 1: to come from somewhere. Holmes stepped into this world like
Speaker 1: a man entering a library he already meted. He understood
Speaker 1: anatomy quickly, not just the structure of the human body,
Speaker 1: but the opportunities it presented. There are students who study
Speaker 1: because they must, and there are students who study because
Speaker 1: they see advantage. Holmes was the latter. This was the
Speaker 1: first time he was surrounded by corpses, not as symbols,
Speaker 1: not as stories, but as raw material. Bodies were accessible, movable, convertible,
Speaker 1: and in the right circumstances, profitable. Holmes discovered a method
Speaker 1: that exploited both medical anonymity and insurance loopholes. This process
Speaker 1: was simple, elegant, and ruthlessly efficient. You create a false identity,
Speaker 1: You take out a life insurance policy under that identity,
Speaker 1: then you obtain a cadaver that resembles the imaginary policy holder,
Speaker 1: and finally you mutilate that body to sit just a
Speaker 1: violent accidental death. Doesn't this remind that story that you
Speaker 1: covered the two parts with that irishman? Oh? Yes, Michael Malone. Yes,
Speaker 1: I was thinking of him when I was doing this.
Speaker 1: They tried to kill him and kept trying to kill him,
Speaker 1: and kept over and giving him gasoline. Almost. Oh right,
Speaker 1: paint Dinner. I think it was paint Dinner's paint Thinner. Yes, yeah, terrible.
Speaker 1: It was. Holmes, with his medical knowledge, authenticated the corpse,
Speaker 1: the insurance company paid the claim, and the false identity
Speaker 1: died without question. He ran these schemes with fellow student
Speaker 1: Robert Leecock, but even among the ethically flexible students of
Speaker 1: nineteenth century medicine, Holmes stood out. He had no hesitation,
Speaker 1: no discomfort, no internal conflict. He had found his first
Speaker 1: entrepreneurial model, death is business. He learned the paperwork, the anatomy,
Speaker 1: the insurance codes, the art of forging documents, and most importantly,
Speaker 1: he learned how easy it was to make a body disappear,
Speaker 1: the first unconfirmed victim. This is one story that rarely
Speaker 1: makes the mainstream accounts a young woman who came to
Speaker 1: the medical school for tutoring. She studied stenography, and she
Speaker 1: was bright, independent and fascinated by scientific education in a
Speaker 1: time when most women weren't encouraged to pursue it. And
Speaker 1: she visited home several times, and then she vanished. No
Speaker 1: missing person's report, no newspaper alert, nothing. But around the
Speaker 1: same time, Holmes was overheard asking a fellow student about quote,
Speaker 1: disposing of a female corpse discreetly end quote. That phrasing,
Speaker 1: even in the morally gray world of nineteenth century anatomy,
Speaker 1: raised some eyebro Yeah, I read flat flag? What Yeah? What?
Speaker 1: The woman was never identified and herds as appearance never recorded,
Speaker 1: but the timing and the silence speaks for itself. Holmes
Speaker 1: had crossed the line internally from fraud involving corpses to
Speaker 1: creating a corpse himself, and he learned something that would
Speaker 1: shape the rest of his life. Young women could vanish
Speaker 1: without consequence. No one came looking, no one raised hell,
Speaker 1: no one cared enough to ask questions. Disappearance was easy,
Speaker 1: Disposal was easy. Death was easy. And with that realization,
Speaker 1: Hermann Webster Mudget began shedding his old identity entirely. He
Speaker 1: walked toward a new life, a new city with a
Speaker 1: new name. Holmes Holmes arrived in Chicago in eighteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: a city bursting at the seams, smoked from factories, clung
Speaker 1: to the skyline, street cars rattled, immigrants poured in by
Speaker 1: the thousands. The air tasted like ambition and ash. Chicago
Speaker 1: was a place where you could beat anything, a place
Speaker 1: where a new name was enough to rewrite a man's
Speaker 1: entire past. Holmes called himself a doctor, and no one
Speaker 1: questioned him. He took a job at a drug store
Speaker 1: in Inglewood, a working class neighborhood that smelled of coal
Speaker 1: dust and opportunity homes. Sold medicine with a warm smile,
Speaker 1: he counted change with a soft hand, and when the
Speaker 1: aging owner of the drug store died unexpectedly, Holmes comforted
Speaker 1: the widow with gentle words and patient eyes. Not long
Speaker 1: after she disappeared, Holmes acquired the drug store Hmmm, and
Speaker 1: with it the financial footing he needed to build something
Speaker 1: far more ambitious, something the world would later name the
Speaker 1: Murder castle, though that phrase didn't capture the cold precision
Speaker 1: behind it. Holmes purchased a vacant lot across from the
Speaker 1: drug store and began construction on a three story building
Speaker 1: that defied logic. The workers who built it complained constantly,
Speaker 1: the blueprints changed weakly. Holmes kept the plans locked away.
Speaker 1: He hired carpenters, then fired them, then hired new ones,
Speaker 1: then fired them too. It wasn't incompetence, it was strategy.
Speaker 1: No single person ever saw the building's full design. When
Speaker 1: the investigators eventually entered the building in eighteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: they documented features that read like architecture of a nightmare.
Speaker 1: Hallways that led nowhere, staircases ending abruptly at blank walls,
Speaker 1: rooms with no windows, no vents, no escape doors that
Speaker 1: locked from the outside, only secret passages and hidden corridors.
Speaker 1: Shoots leading directly to the basement, angled perfectly to accommodate
Speaker 1: a human body. A sealed vault with gas jets that
Speaker 1: could be activated remotely and in the attic. A walk
Speaker 1: in kiln lined with firebrick capable of reaching temperatures high
Speaker 1: enough to obliterate bone. Well, damn, he had crematorium in
Speaker 1: his attic crematorium that shoot down to the basement. Did
Speaker 1: you ever see American horror story Hotel. No. I never
Speaker 1: watched that one. This is so reminiscent of it. This
Speaker 1: wasn't chaos, this wasn't accidental. This was engineering. Holmes didn't
Speaker 1: build a home. He built a machine, a structure designed
Speaker 1: to confuse, isolate, weaken, and finally erase. The castle was
Speaker 1: the body, Holmes was the brain, and the young women
Speaker 1: who entered it were raw material. Inglewood had no idea
Speaker 1: what it was living beside Chicago had no idea what
Speaker 1: it had invited in. Because the castle was only the stage.
Speaker 1: The real horror was what and who disappearing inside it.
Speaker 1: The castle didn't become famous overnight. It didn't announce itself.
Speaker 1: It didn't scream or cry out or drip blood into
Speaker 1: the sidewalk. It blended in. It looked like any other
Speaker 1: large commercial building. In Inglewood, offices on the first floor,
Speaker 1: rental rooms above. People entered constantly, travelers, employees, customers, deliverymen, neighbors.
Speaker 1: But the ones homes focused on most were young women.
Speaker 1: Chicago in the early eighteen nineties was full of them,
Speaker 1: newly independent, newly urban, newly vulnerable women came from small
Speaker 1: towns and farming communities across the Midwest, hoping for work, education,
Speaker 1: or excitement. They answered newspaper ads promising respectable employment. They
Speaker 1: rented rooms cheaply, often with little more than a trunk
Speaker 1: and a handwritten letter of reference. Holmes didn't choose victims
Speaker 1: at random. He selected women who were isolated, transient, or unprotected,
Speaker 1: women who wouldn't have family nearby to question their absence,
Speaker 1: and once he hired them, Holmes encouraged them to take
Speaker 1: out life insurance policies, policies that listed him as the beneficiary.
Speaker 1: It was one of his earliest red flags, and it
Speaker 1: was the one almost no one noticed. I'm sorry, don't
Speaker 1: take a life insurance policy out on me. I start it,
Speaker 1: stop it. Julia and Pearl O'Connor the first documented disappearance so.
Speaker 1: Julia Connor was working at the castle's pharmacy counter when
Speaker 1: Holmes noticed her. She was charismatic and attractive. Entrapped in
Speaker 1: a failing marriage, Holmes exploited that instantly. He offered her stability, attention, affection,
Speaker 1: then seduction. Julia and Holmes began an affair, and soon
Speaker 1: she and her daughter, Pearl lived inside the castle itself,
Speaker 1: and then Christmas Eve eighteen ninety one, they vanished. Holmes
Speaker 1: later claimed Julia died during a botched abortion and that
Speaker 1: Pearl went elsewhere. But holmes lies always came in half
Speaker 1: formed fragments. His stories shifted with each retelling. What didn't
Speaker 1: change were the forensic traces later recovered in the castle
Speaker 1: the case file discovery. In the basement of Julia and
Speaker 1: Pearl during the eighteen ninety five excavation, investigators found small,
Speaker 1: fragile femur fragments belonging to a child between six and
Speaker 1: eight years old, a partial dental plate consistent with young
Speaker 1: girl's fragments of jewelry identified by relatives as Julia's, strands
Speaker 1: of long, dark hair lodged inside a drain gate, chemical
Speaker 1: residues consistent with quick line decomposition. There was no abortion,
Speaker 1: there was no departure, there was no disposal. Julia and
Speaker 1: Pearl's remains tell a story Holmes refused to Emmeline's. The
Speaker 1: grand was intelligent, careful, and far more guarded than holmes
Speaker 1: usual targets. She worked as a scenographer. She had a
Speaker 1: family nearby, and she had her own plans, her own ambitions,
Speaker 1: but Holmes had a talent, a dark talent for creating trust.
Speaker 1: He courted her. Proposed marriage described a future so detailed
Speaker 1: it became almost tangible. Then one afternoon, Emmaaline told a
Speaker 1: coworker she had a meeting in Holmes's office to talk
Speaker 1: about the future. She was never seen again. Months later,
Speaker 1: a trunk belonging to Emmaline was found in the castle's basement, locked,
Speaker 1: tagged and empty. Her body has never been recovered. Her disappearance,
Speaker 1: like so many others, was buried under the weight of
Speaker 1: a city too busy, too crowded, and too chaotic to
Speaker 1: notice a single missing woman. The Minnie Williams, was wealthy
Speaker 1: by nineteenth century standards. She inherited Texas property worth thousands
Speaker 1: Home saw her as a gold mine. He seduced her,
Speaker 1: convinced her of his affection, then persuaded her to sign
Speaker 1: the deed to her property over to a man named
Speaker 1: Alexander Bond. Bond was Holmes himself. When Many's sister, Nanny
Speaker 1: arrived in Chicago to visit, the two sisters were last
Speaker 1: seen entering the castle together. Neither was seen again. What
Speaker 1: investigators found instead were forged letters, forged signatures and property
Speaker 1: transfers that pointed to Holmes as the sole beneficiary. The
Speaker 1: sisters were gone, their assets were not. Holmes didn't kill impulsively.
Speaker 1: He killed for reasons money, control, convenience, and when the
Speaker 1: castle's architecture required a body, he provided one. So how
Speaker 1: many disappeared? The truth is simple and chilling. We will
Speaker 1: never know the full number. Chicago in the eighteen nineties
Speaker 1: recorded thousands of untraced disappearances each year. People vanished from
Speaker 1: boarding houses, factories, tenements, and rail lines without paperwork, without
Speaker 1: follow up, and without anyone filing a missing report. Holmes
Speaker 1: knew this, He navigated it, and he fed off of it.
Speaker 1: The castle didn't merely hide victims. It processed them, and
Speaker 1: it reduced them. It eliminated all evidence that they were
Speaker 1: ever there. And Chicago and all its industrial glory, was
Speaker 1: the perfect hiding place. But everything changed in eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: three when the World's Fair came to town, and suddenly
Speaker 1: the entire world walked straight past the castle, never suspecting
Speaker 1: the darkness inside. In eighteen ninety three, Chicago transformed into
Speaker 1: something extraordinary. After years of construction delay, political wrangling, and
Speaker 1: national pressure, the World's Columbian Exposition finally opened its gates.
Speaker 1: Over six hundred acres of gleaming white buildings rose from
Speaker 1: the muddy swamp land near Lake Michigan, lit at night
Speaker 1: by more electric bulbs than most Americans had ever seen
Speaker 1: in their lifetime. It was called the White City, a
Speaker 1: mirrored dream of what America hoped it could become. Modern, bright, safe,
Speaker 1: and full of promise. But that was the illusion above
Speaker 1: the surface. Down in Inglewood, just a few miles away
Speaker 1: stood holmes Castle, dark, labyrinth, and carefully designed to be
Speaker 1: everything the White City wasn't. The fair brought twenty seven
Speaker 1: million visitors through Chicago. It was a tidal wight. Twenty
Speaker 1: seven million and eighteen three. Yes, it was a tidal
Speaker 1: wave of humanity, mothers, fathers, businessmen, inventors, students, countless, young
Speaker 1: women traveling alone, searching for independence, excitement, and opportunity. For Holmes,
Speaker 1: it was a banquet, the perfect cover, the perfect stream
Speaker 1: of victims, a city flooded with strangers no one would
Speaker 1: ever trace. Holmes placed advertisements in newspapers across the Midwest
Speaker 1: and East Coast, would say young women wanted good pay,
Speaker 1: travel opportunities, room and board included it was innocent enough
Speaker 1: the kind of add Thousands of employedlawyers posted during the fair.
Speaker 1: Women arrived with trunks and dreams. They entered Holmes's office
Speaker 1: with resumes neatly folded, and they signed employment contracts written
Speaker 1: in his elegant handwriting. And then they vanished. Some were
Speaker 1: last seeing buying a new dress for their job. Some
Speaker 1: mailed letters homes saying that they had arrived safely. Some
Speaker 1: walked into the castle confident they had secured their future
Speaker 1: homes made sure they never had one. The fair created
Speaker 1: a crisis of lodging. There simply wasn't enough places to stay.
Speaker 1: Boarding houses overflowed with guests. Thousands slept in makeshift dormitories
Speaker 1: or took rooms in private homes. Homes exploited this chaos.
Speaker 1: He rented out rooms in the castle to visitors. Guests
Speaker 1: came and went. Most left unharmed, but enough disappeared that
Speaker 1: investigators would later struggle to reconstruct exactly who stayed there
Speaker 1: and who never checked out. He understood the genius of noise.
Speaker 1: When everyone is shouting, no one notices a single missing whisper.
Speaker 1: So the case file missing Persons during the Fair between
Speaker 1: May and October eighteen ninety three, Chicago police recorded a
Speaker 1: staggering number of disappearances, many of them young women traveling alone.
Speaker 1: Numerous missing persons were never identified. Many were travelers with
Speaker 1: no local contacts. Everything that made Holmes's checklists women trying
Speaker 1: to flee marriages or family, you know, getting away a
Speaker 1: degree of desperation, and newspapers were flooded with pleas like
Speaker 1: missing daughter, last letter sent from Chicago, seen at the fair,
Speaker 1: no contacts. Since many young women fell into that, Holmes
Speaker 1: didn't need much to hunt victims. They came to him
Speaker 1: because the World's Fair made Chicago shine like the future,
Speaker 1: and predators understand better than anyone that bright lights cast
Speaker 1: the darkest shadows. The castle was running at full capacity,
Speaker 1: and while Chicago celebrated its triumph of modernity, Holmes perfected
Speaker 1: the art of making people vanish. But eventually, even he
Speaker 1: made a mistake, and it wasn't the castle that betrayed him.
Speaker 1: It was a man he thought he could control, a
Speaker 1: man named Benjamin Pitzel. For all his charm, for all
Speaker 1: his intelligence, for all his architectural brilliance, HH Holmes was
Speaker 1: undone by something surprisingly simple, greed and the belief that
Speaker 1: no one not even the law would ever be smart
Speaker 1: enough to catch him. By eighteen ninety four, Holmes had
Speaker 1: a new accomplice, a carpenter named Benjamin Pitzel. Pitzel was
Speaker 1: a father, an alcoholic, and a man desperate for money.
Speaker 1: He saw Holmes as charismatic and successful, a man who
Speaker 1: could offer him steady work and a sense of purpose.
Speaker 1: Holmes saw Pizel as something else, a tool, a liability,
Speaker 1: and eventually opportunity. Holmes and Pizel had run several insurance
Speaker 1: scams together, but the last one, the one that would
Speaker 1: expose everything, was supposed to be their biggest score. Yet.
Speaker 1: Holmes proposed a ten thousand dollars insurance fraud scheme. Pizel
Speaker 1: would bake his own death in a lab accident. A
Speaker 1: burned body would stand in, the insurance company would pay
Speaker 1: the claim, and they would split the money. But Holmes
Speaker 1: had a different plan. He never intended to split anything,
Speaker 1: and he never intended for Pizel to walk away alive.
Speaker 1: In September of eighteen ninety four, Holmes and Pizel traveled
Speaker 1: to Philadelphia under assumed names. They rented a small office
Speaker 1: space where the accident was supposed to take place. Holmes
Speaker 1: had already prepared the corpse, or so Pizel believed. Holmes
Speaker 1: gave Pizel chloroform enough to render him unconscious, not enough
Speaker 1: to kill him. Then, while Pizel was still alive, Holmes
Speaker 1: set him on fire. The medical examiner later noted blistering
Speaker 1: patterns and lungsoot that proved Pizel inhaled smoke while dying.
Speaker 1: Holmes didn't stage death, he orchestrated one. He left Pizel's
Speaker 1: body in the office, arranged debris around to make it
Speaker 1: look like an explosion, and filed the death certificate under
Speaker 1: the alias they had created. The insurance company paid the claim,
Speaker 1: Holmes pocketed the money. Then, unbelievably, he visited Pizel's widow, Carrie,
Speaker 1: and told her the fake death had gone perfectly, that
Speaker 1: her husband was alive, and that he was now on
Speaker 1: the run. He looked her in the eyes and lied
Speaker 1: with total ease. Now the children. This is where Holmes
Speaker 1: cruelty entered territory that still chills even hard investigators. Holmes
Speaker 1: offered to escort three of the Pizel's children, Alice, Nellie,
Speaker 1: and Howard, across several states, claiming he would reunite them
Speaker 1: with their father. Carrie, desperate and trusting, agreed. Holmes then
Speaker 1: took the three children on what history now calls the
Speaker 1: Murder Tour. They traveled through Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Detroit, Toronto, and
Speaker 1: several small towns in between. The children believed that they
Speaker 1: were going to see their father, and Holmes knew none
Speaker 1: of them would ever see their father again. Howard, the youngest,
Speaker 1: at just ten years old, was murdered first. Holmes rented
Speaker 1: a small cottage outside Indianapolis. Neighbors saw him buying a
Speaker 1: large wooden trunk and a quantity of stove fuel. They
Speaker 1: heard a child crying inside the house one afternoon, and
Speaker 1: then silence. Howard's remains were later found burned, crushed, and
Speaker 1: concealed in the chimney flu of the rented home. Scorched bone,
Speaker 1: fragments of small femur, pieces of jawbone with developing teeth,
Speaker 1: charred scraps of a wool coat. Holmes didn't bury him,
Speaker 1: he incinerated him piece by piece. After killing Howard, Holmes
Speaker 1: took the two girls to Toronto. They stayed in a
Speaker 1: rented house while Homes traveled back and forth between cities
Speaker 1: under various aliases. Witnesses reported seeing the girls through the window,
Speaker 1: Alice reading, Nelly brushing her hair, unaware they were never
Speaker 1: going home. Did he tell them anything about like what
Speaker 1: happened to their brother? They did not cover that. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if they were sounds like he'd be so charming.
Speaker 1: They could tell shit, many of them right, yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: very gaslight, very misleadings, just diabolical. Detective Frank Guy would
Speaker 1: later discover the truth. In the cellar of that Toronto house,
Speaker 1: Geier found a large wooden trunk, its lid nailed shut.
Speaker 1: Inside were the skeletal remains of Alice and Nelly, the
Speaker 1: bone positions showing that they had been placed on top
Speaker 1: of each other. There was evidence of binding strands of
Speaker 1: blonde hair, clothing fibers consistent with the garments known to
Speaker 1: be theirs, in chloroform residue inside the trunk lining. Holmes
Speaker 1: had killed them quietly, no screams or struggles, just two
Speaker 1: children in a box, their lives treated as afterthoughts in
Speaker 1: one of Holmes's endless schemes. Now Detective Frank Geier the
Speaker 1: man who followed the footsteps of a ghost. Geyer was
Speaker 1: a seasoned Philadelphia detective known for his patients and his
Speaker 1: ability to read the small details others overlooked. When he
Speaker 1: was assigned to find the missing Pizel children, he knew
Speaker 1: immediately that Holmes was lying, but Geier didn't know how
Speaker 1: deep the deception went, not until he traced the rental records,
Speaker 1: interviewed landlords, followed ticket stubs, and checked rooming houses across
Speaker 1: half a dozen states. Geier discovered corpses and places where
Speaker 1: Holmes had stayed days, sometimes hours before. He found burned chimneys,
Speaker 1: acid pits, abandoned trunks, ash piles, clothing scraps, and the
Speaker 1: faintest biochemical traces of decomposition in floorboards. What began as
Speaker 1: a search for missing children became the expose of a
Speaker 1: serial killer unlike anything America had ever imagined. Holmes fraud unraveled,
Speaker 1: his alibis collapsed, and suddenly the castle in Chicago wasn't
Speaker 1: the biggest mystery anymore. The castle was just the beginning,
Speaker 1: because Holmes had killed far beyond its walls. He wasn't
Speaker 1: a man who needed a layer. He was a man
Speaker 1: who carried the machinery of murder inside of him, and
Speaker 1: once investigators realized what they were dealing with, they turned
Speaker 1: their eyes back to Chicago, to Inglewood, to the building.
Speaker 1: No one ever fully understood the Castle. By the time
Speaker 1: the detectives began investigating the Chicago Castle in Earnest, the
Speaker 1: building had already taken on a kind of mythic presence
Speaker 1: in Inglewood. People whispered about its strange layout, its endless renovations,
Speaker 1: its revolving dora of female employees who rarely stayed long enough,
Speaker 1: or stayed at all. But no one truly understood what
Speaker 1: the building was until they stepped inside. And what the
Speaker 1: public later called the Murder Castle doesn't capture what investigators
Speaker 1: actually found. This wasn't a haunted mansion or a Gothic horror.
Speaker 1: It wasn't theatrical. It was industrial, mechanical, and methodical. Homes
Speaker 1: didn't build a torcherd house. He built a processing facility,
Speaker 1: one that disguised death with the efficiency of a man
Speaker 1: who viewed murder as an extension of business. So we're
Speaker 1: going to walk through, as the investigators did, first floor,
Speaker 1: the front of the deception. The first floor looked harmless enough, shops,
Speaker 1: offices of pharmacy rooms. Anyone might walk into on an
Speaker 1: ordinary day. But the moment detective stepped past the rental front,
Speaker 1: the atmosphere changed. The walls tightened and the corridors narrowed,
Speaker 1: and the air grew colder, old plaster and dust mixing
Speaker 1: with something else, something metallic, that had never quite left
Speaker 1: the building. It was the smell of the second floor
Speaker 1: and the second floor the maze. Detectives described the second
Speaker 1: floor as a tangle of hallways that led nowhere, but
Speaker 1: that phrase doesn't do it justice. The layout made no
Speaker 1: architectural sense. There were doors that opened into blank walls,
Speaker 1: rooms without windows, rooms without door knobs on the inside,
Speaker 1: rooms fitted with gas fixtures connected to valves hidden in holmes.
Speaker 1: Personal office investigators found hidden staircases behind wall panels, narrow
Speaker 1: corridors that looped back on themselves, rooms that trapped sound,
Speaker 1: and shoots, vertical shafts running down into the basement. Homes
Speaker 1: didn't build fear, He built disorientation. He created a place
Speaker 1: where a victim could move from room to room, losing
Speaker 1: their bearings, losing their sense of direction, losing hope, while
Speaker 1: homes remained in total control. The sealed vault. One of
Speaker 1: the first major discoveries was a sealed vault, a seal
Speaker 1: lined room with a heavy door, air tight seams, and
Speaker 1: the faint chemical traces of charred human tissue. On the
Speaker 1: inside of the vault door were scratch marks, human scratch marks.
Speaker 1: Investigators could see the clawed trails left by someone trying
Speaker 1: to desperately get out. The vault connected directly to a
Speaker 1: gas line controlled from Holmes's office. Victims locked inside were suffocated,
Speaker 1: their bodies left in the sealed room for hours before
Speaker 1: being moved down the chute to the basement. This was
Speaker 1: not chaotic, it's not improvised. It was planned. The third
Speaker 1: floor contained apartments supposedly for permanent tenants, but most rooms
Speaker 1: showed no signs of long term habitation because no personal belongings, clothing, pictures, nothing.
Speaker 1: It was as if the people who lived there had
Speaker 1: simply evaporated or never left the room alive. Now descending
Speaker 1: into the basement, this is the true heart of the castle.
Speaker 1: The basement is where investigators finally understood the full scope
Speaker 1: of holmes design. It wasn't a basement at all. It
Speaker 1: was a workshop, a laboratory, a disposed facility. What they
Speaker 1: found was so disturbing that investigators had trouble placing it
Speaker 1: into official reports without stripping away emotion, but this is
Speaker 1: what they documented. Item one a dissecting table, long, wooden, heavy,
Speaker 1: heavily stained. The stains were a mix of old and
Speaker 1: new layers upon layers that took a chronological story of
Speaker 1: repeated use. Dark blotches confirmed to be human blood, knife
Speaker 1: marks carved deep into the surface. Item two of bone,
Speaker 1: saw and surgical kit. Not the polished professional kits you'd
Speaker 1: expect from a doctor. These were worn, utilitarian and coated
Speaker 1: and rust. Several blades contained microscopic fragments of human tissue
Speaker 1: embedded in the metal. Item three a six foot chemical
Speaker 1: vat filled with corrosive substances, sulphuric acid could climb and
Speaker 1: other compounds used to dissolve organic matter. The walls of
Speaker 1: the vat were coated with softened bone residue, white, chalky,
Speaker 1: and unmistakably human. Item four the cremation kiln, a large
Speaker 1: walk in furnace lined with firebrick, capable of reaching temperatures
Speaker 1: of above sixteen thousand degrees fahrenheit, hot enough to reduce
Speaker 1: bone to brittle shards. Inside the ash, investigators found melted
Speaker 1: jewelry bone splinters, fragments of human pelvic bones, the scorch
Speaker 1: remains of woman's corset stays. Item five. Bone fragments multiple individuals.
Speaker 1: Partial rib cage from a young female child size vertebrae,
Speaker 1: mandible sections with dental growth patterns indicating victim between six
Speaker 1: and ten years old, a nearly intact adult femur. Fragments
Speaker 1: of a skull bearing signs of blunt force. Trauma six
Speaker 1: was personal items scattered cross shelves and in corners of
Speaker 1: the basement. Women's shoes size three through eight, hairpins, pieces
Speaker 1: of cloth buttons, a woman's pocket watch, charred remains of
Speaker 1: letters never mailed. Item seven. The shoots. Three vertical shafts
Speaker 1: angled perfectly led from the second floor into the basement.
Speaker 1: Investigators dropped sandbags down one chute and watched them land
Speaker 1: directly beside the dissecting table. Holmes designed the gravity to
Speaker 1: do the lifting for him. The basement floor showed layers
Speaker 1: of dried biological residue. Tests were rudimentary in eighteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: but investigators noted pooled blood under work benches, spray patterns
Speaker 1: near walls, coagulated droplets near the cistern. Experts later concluded
Speaker 1: that multiple individuals had been processed there, likely over the
Speaker 1: span of years. Case file for Holmes his behaviors Even today,
Speaker 1: Holmes checks nearly every box of the modern organized offender.
Speaker 1: Meticulous planning, controlled crime scenes, intentional concealment, methodical disposal, no
Speaker 1: emotional attachment, no panic, no remorse, no escalation curve. He
Speaker 1: was dangerous from the first kill and a chilling ability
Speaker 1: to blend into society without suspicion. You know who this
Speaker 1: reminded me of to you, Richard Kuklinsky, that we just did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if his psychological was compartmentalization, and that's we're finding to
Speaker 1: be huge in criminal cases, the person's ability to compartmentalize.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, detach yourself. You know. Yes, Holmes didn't behave
Speaker 1: like a man battling inner demons, and he behaved like
Speaker 1: a man conducting business. And that's what makes him particularly terrifying.
Speaker 1: His victims weren't obstacles to overcome, they were resources to
Speaker 1: be managed. The confession that revealed nothing. While awaiting execution,
Speaker 1: Holmes wrote a memoir titled Holmes's Own Story. He really
Speaker 1: should have considered that name. That is a bit of
Speaker 1: a tongue twist. Holmes. Holmes own that doory. It reads
Speaker 1: like a fever dream, a bizarre blend of lies, half truth,
Speaker 1: self praise and outright invention. He confessed to twenty seven murders,
Speaker 1: then recanted, then confessed again, then added details that were impossible,
Speaker 1: then denied everything. Most of what Holmes wrote was fiction,
Speaker 1: an attempt to control the narrative even as the news
Speaker 1: waited outside his cell. But in the end, the memoir
Speaker 1: buried the deeper truth. Not because Holmes wanted to admit guilt,
Speaker 1: but because he wanted to remain unforgettable. Holmes cared about
Speaker 1: one thing above all else, legacy. He wanted to be remembered, feared, disgusted, studied.
Speaker 1: A century later, he got exactly what he wanted. But
Speaker 1: charming psychology can only go so far. Eventually, even the
Speaker 1: most polished monster has to sit in front of a
Speaker 1: judge and explain the unexplainable. That moment finally came for Holmes,
Speaker 1: as he turned it into a performance. Holmes wasn't afraid
Speaker 1: of the law. If anything, he relished it to him.
Speaker 1: The courtroom wasn't a threat, it was a stage. I
Speaker 1: know he's a Taurus, but this is like total Leo
Speaker 1: rising behavior, And I totally say that with love to
Speaker 1: Leo Risings. Yeah. So it was a stage, an audience,
Speaker 1: captive an audience, a captive room of people forced to
Speaker 1: listen to every word he said. And Holmes loved an audience.
Speaker 1: When he appeared for trial in eighteen ninety five, charged
Speaker 1: only with the murder of Benjamin Piss, he behaved less
Speaker 1: like a defendant and more like a socialite attending a luncheon.
Speaker 1: He smiled, he nodded politely. He greeted the press as
Speaker 1: if they were old friends. He offered corrections to their notes.
Speaker 1: He provided quotes, polished, witty, almost flirtatious. Reporters adored him,
Speaker 1: Lawyers admired him. Jurors found him oddly likable. And that's
Speaker 1: the most disturbing part. Holmes charmed people while on trial
Speaker 1: for murder. He represented himself, of course, of course, of
Speaker 1: course he did. Holmes fired his lawyers and represented himself
Speaker 1: for large portions of the trial. His legal arguments were
Speaker 1: articulate and well constructed. He crossed examined witnesses with the
Speaker 1: confidence of a seasoned attorney. He objected with perfect timing.
Speaker 1: The courtroom became his Kingdom. He leaned back in his chair,
Speaker 1: He observed the jury, He made small jokes, He disarmed
Speaker 1: tension with a smile, And when the prosecution described the
Speaker 1: gruesome details of the Pizel case, Holmes didn't flinch, not once,
Speaker 1: No shame, nothing, just the calm expression of a man
Speaker 1: evaluating the weather. But charm doesn't erase facts. The insurance
Speaker 1: fraud trial linked Holmes directly to Pizel's death. Rental records
Speaker 1: placed him in the cities where pizels children disappeared. Forensic evidence,
Speaker 1: crude by modern standards but devastating in eighteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: pointed straight to him. Detective Geyer's testimony was the tipping point,
Speaker 1: a blow so thorough and methodical that the jury visibly recoiled.
Speaker 1: Geyer traced holmes movements. He wrote down the dates, the addresses,
Speaker 1: train stations, receipts, landlords, neighbors, ash piles, bone fragments, chimneys, trunks.
Speaker 1: Every detail drew the news tighter around home Holmes's neck,
Speaker 1: and Holmes knew it. The verdict, the jury didn't debate long.
Speaker 1: Holmes was found guilty of the murder of Benjamin Pitzel
Speaker 1: and sentenced to death. Not for Castle, not for the women,
Speaker 1: not for the hundreds of disappearances, just for Benjamin. But
Speaker 1: in the end it was enough. Holmes accepted the verdict
Speaker 1: with the same serene, unsettling composure he had held through
Speaker 1: the entire trial, as if none of it applied to him.
Speaker 1: He thanked the judges, nodded politely to the jury. He
Speaker 1: shook hands with the bailiffs. A killer to the end,
Speaker 1: but always a gentleman. For a man who spent his
Speaker 1: entire life controlling every room, he walked into the prison
Speaker 1: at Moyamensingh must have felt suffocating. The walls were thick, stone,
Speaker 1: the air damp, the light dim. Holmes had charmed crowds,
Speaker 1: seduced employees, deceived families, and manipulated entire sees cities. But
Speaker 1: inside these walls there was no one left to memorize,
Speaker 1: no audience, no stage, just time, too much of it.
Speaker 1: While awaiting execution, Holmes kept himself busy by writing letters
Speaker 1: and talking to reporters, crafting a memoir so filled with
Speaker 1: contradictions that historians still struggled to separate deliberate lies from
Speaker 1: calculated omissions. He pivoted between innocence and guilt with theatrically
Speaker 1: smooth transitions, confessing to twenty seven murders, retracting them, then
Speaker 1: confessing again with new details each time. Holmes treated confession
Speaker 1: like another khn. He told stories that made him seem brilliant, mystical, misunderstood.
Speaker 1: He claimed he was born with the devil inside him,
Speaker 1: a dramatic flourish meant to romanticize his crimes, not explain them.
Speaker 1: In reality, Holmes didn't fear death. He feared being forgotten.
Speaker 1: The day of his execution, on May seventh, eighteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: Holmes was led from his cell to the prison courtyard,
Speaker 1: where the gallows stood. The morning was cool and still,
Speaker 1: the kind of quiet that fields stage like the world itself,
Speaker 1: was waiting for the performance to begin. Reporters filled the
Speaker 1: viewing area. Clergy stood nearby. Officials whispered to each other
Speaker 1: with stiff shoulders and white knuckles. Holmes walked with calm,
Speaker 1: steady steps. His posture was perfect, his shoes shined. His
Speaker 1: face carried a faint, unreadable smile, the same polished expression
Speaker 1: he had worn in the courtroom, at the Castle, in
Speaker 1: the drug store, and in every lie of his life.
Speaker 1: He climbed the scaffold, as if accepting an award. When
Speaker 1: asked if he had any final words, he delivered them smoothly,
Speaker 1: without tremoor. I have few words to say. I am
Speaker 1: innocent of killing Pitzel. I could not have killed him.
Speaker 1: A final lie, unnecess unbelievable, but delivered with the same
Speaker 1: confident cadence he always used. A liar's last breath is
Speaker 1: still a lie. The drop that didn't break his neck
Speaker 1: now the hangman pulled the lever and Holmes fell, and
Speaker 1: the rope snapped tight. But the drop was miscalculated, and
Speaker 1: Holmes's neck did not break. Instead, he began to strangle slowly.
Speaker 1: For nearly fifteen minutes, his body hung suspended between life
Speaker 1: and death. Witnesses reported small twitches, spasms, the jerking of
Speaker 1: limbs as his body struggled against the inevitable. The crowd
Speaker 1: stood in stunned silence, watching a man who had inflicted
Speaker 1: so much slow suffering now experiencing his own. It was
Speaker 1: a macabre's symmetry, a fitting end. Holmes's face remained strangely
Speaker 1: composed even as he died, another grotesque anomaly and a
Speaker 1: life full of them. But some, as later claimed, he
Speaker 1: looked serene, even peaceful. Others said his calm expression made
Speaker 1: the scene more horrifying. Most murderers died anonymously, Holmes made
Speaker 1: sure his death was theatrical. The strange request. Holmes insisted
Speaker 1: on being buried ten feet deep in a coffin filled
Speaker 1: with cement. He claimed it was because he feared grave
Speaker 1: robbers would steal his body and dissect it. The irony
Speaker 1: was unmistakable. Holmes feared in death the exact violation he
Speaker 1: had flicted on so many others. But there was another layer.
Speaker 1: Some criminologists believe Holmes wanted to prevent future scientists from
Speaker 1: cutting into his brain, studying it and discovering the truth
Speaker 1: about what he'd been. Holmes wanted to control the narrative
Speaker 1: even underground. Even after the rope tightened, Holmes was gone,
Speaker 1: But the question he left behind was not why did
Speaker 1: he kill? The question was how many did he kill?
Speaker 1: And the truth is we still don't know. A legacy
Speaker 1: America couldn't forget. Holmes didn't start the American fascination with
Speaker 1: serial killers, but he became the blueprint for the ones
Speaker 1: who followed the manipulation of Ted Bundy, The Double Life
Speaker 1: of Dennis Rader, the organizational precision of Robert Hansen, the
Speaker 1: outward respectability of John Wayne Gacy, the quiet brutality of
Speaker 1: Gary Ridgeway. All of them echo Holmes. All of them
Speaker 1: walk in a path he carved. Holmes was the prototype,
Speaker 1: the earliest model of a predator, shaped not by madness
Speaker 1: but by opportunity. And as America grew more crowded, more anonymous,
Speaker 1: and more complex, men like Holmes began to appear with
Speaker 1: terrifying frequency. He wasn't a single monster. He was the
Speaker 1: first chapter in a long book the country would spend
Speaker 1: a century trying to understand. Holmes died believing he outsmarted everyone,
Speaker 1: the police, courts, journalists, the public, and in many ways
Speaker 1: he did. He took his secrets with him. He buried
Speaker 1: his true victim count deep inside the cement coffin he demanded.
Speaker 1: Holmes wasn't afraid of hell. He wasn't afraid of judgment.
Speaker 1: He wasn't afraid of death. He was afraid of analysis.
Speaker 1: He was afraid of being known. He was afraid of
Speaker 1: losing control of the story, because control was the only
Speaker 1: thing he ever cared about. Holmes didn't just kill people,
Speaker 1: He erased them. He reduced them to ash, to acid,
Speaker 1: to fragments no one could identify. He turned human life
Speaker 1: into something transactional, disposable, untraceable. But the one thing he
Speaker 1: couldn't erase was the lesson he left behind. That progress
Speaker 1: hides predators, that charm conceals cruelty, that danger often looks
Speaker 1: like a gentleman who smiles warmly, offers a handshake, and
Speaker 1: seems like the safest man in the room. In the end,
Speaker 1: the Castle wasn't the monster Holmes was, and more than
Speaker 1: a century later, the shadow he casts still lingers over
Speaker 1: American true crime, a reminder of how darkness evolves, adapts,
Speaker 1: and waits for the right moment to walk among us again.
Speaker 1: And that, my dear Tanya, Wow, the story of America's
Speaker 1: first serial killer. Wow, what a great story. I mean
Speaker 1: it's not but you know what I mean. Yes, no,
Speaker 1: thank you, right, fascinating, right, Yes, that hotel you have
Speaker 1: to see so you know, American horror story. Our listeners
Speaker 1: watch it. I know you've got to see the correlation
Speaker 1: because Tanya. Number one, Evan Peters always gets me there, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So he's in it and he's like the crazy owner
Speaker 1: of it, and the Hotel is set up very similar
Speaker 1: Sarah Paulson, she plays Sally. It's Lady Gaga is in it,
Speaker 1: Matt Balmer's in it. Yeah, oh, Kathy Baby. I stopped
Speaker 1: watching American Horror Story probably after Coven. I don't remember.
Speaker 1: I watched four or five seasons. I think Hotel came
Speaker 1: after Coven because I was gonna stap at Hotel too,
Speaker 1: but then when I was called when Lady Gaga was
Speaker 1: on there, so you know, I wrote that he was
Speaker 1: a prototype, but it makes me think of more of
Speaker 1: an archetype. He's like the major arcana of negative cards. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, just right. I mean, in any basement that
Speaker 1: has quick line, my god, where's the door? It's crazy.
Speaker 1: I feel for those victims, but yeah, there's always a predator,
Speaker 1: you know. I'm always fascinated too, like how do they
Speaker 1: put these cases together? Like that police Geyer, Yes, a
Speaker 1: detective Geyer. I don't know, like it's just and this
Speaker 1: is the beginning. I mean, telephones were just introduced, I know,
Speaker 1: like how did these I mean you said, like everything
Speaker 1: is just fascinating. It's fascinating that we know all this
Speaker 1: stuff about it, considering Holmes light about everything to find
Speaker 1: like factual information is just craziness. So it's a it's
Speaker 1: a really interesting story. So I'm really glad you covered it.
Speaker 1: Thank you. She Yeah, I want to thank Tiffany m.
Speaker 1: She emailed and suggested that we cover it and I
Speaker 1: was all over it. Yeah, And I also want to
Speaker 1: give a shout out to gabriel Gabrielle sorry and Bethany
Speaker 1: sent it out love to you guys, so you email.
Speaker 1: It was just so much love. I could feel us
Speaker 1: in it and I was like, who are these girls?
Speaker 1: Are these ladies so we've just want sent our love
Speaker 1: and say hey, yeah, thank you Gabrielle in Bethany. So
Speaker 1: all right, well thanks again Shannon, Thank you everyone for
Speaker 1: listening episode. Please visit our website Crimesoconsequences dot com. If
Speaker 1: you would like more episodes. You can subscribe to our
Speaker 1: Patreon at patreon dot com, slash t nt Crimes or
Speaker 1: Quinn subscribe through the Apple podcast app and what you
Speaker 1: get is you get early release ad free and you
Speaker 1: get an extra episode. Woho. So check that out and
Speaker 1: I think that's all the business. Sounds like it. Shannon,
Speaker 1: my club, I will see you next time, yes, my queen.
Speaker 1: Until next time, until you fine ye