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Speaker 5: You are now listening to true Murder. The most shocking
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK. Every
Speaker 5: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 5: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 5: journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 6: Good evening. This is your host Dan Zupansky for the
Speaker 6: program True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime
Speaker 6: history and the authors that have written about them. Bloodstains
Speaker 6: is the startling tale of one man's search for the
Speaker 6: truth after inheriting the personal diaries belonging to his great
Speaker 6: great grandfather, who he discovers was America's first and most
Speaker 6: notorious serial killer. Hermann Webster Mudget, better known by his
Speaker 6: alias H. H. Olmes. Mudget, was the mass murderer who
Speaker 6: struck terror into the nation by being the proprietor of
Speaker 6: the infamous Murder Castle and stalking the streets of Chicago
Speaker 6: during the eighteen ninety three World's Fair. During his incarceration
Speaker 6: awaiting execution well over a century ago, Holmes admitted killing
Speaker 6: twenty seven innocent victims, but the evidence the author locates
Speaker 6: indicates hundreds more likely from his investigation, Jeff Mudget, the
Speaker 6: direct descendant of H. H. Holmes, learns that Holmes's reign
Speaker 6: of terror was worldwide and not limited Chicago, as has
Speaker 6: been so widely believed. Based upon never before revealed historical facts,
Speaker 6: Jeff pieces together a dynamic an extraordinary puzzle, including the
Speaker 6: strong possibility that Holmes was also Jack the Ripper. The
Speaker 6: book that we're going to be featuring this evening is
Speaker 6: Bloodstains with my special guest, Jeff Mudget. Welcome to the program,
Speaker 6: and thank you to agreeing to this interview. Jeff Mudget, Hey.
Speaker 7: Dan, thank you very much. It's my pleasure to be here.
Speaker 6: Well, thank you very much. It's going to be the
Speaker 6: pleasure of our audience to hear this incredible story. And again,
Speaker 6: first off, congratulations on a great book. It's a real
Speaker 6: thrill ride of a read for those people that are
Speaker 6: going to be fortunate enough to have read this book. Now.
Speaker 6: First off, normally ask why a particular author decides to
Speaker 6: write about this book. But let's get into your relationship
Speaker 6: to Herman Webster. Mudget. Tell us a little bit about
Speaker 6: your family tree, a little bit, please, sure, d he.
Speaker 7: Was my great great grandfather. The way I explained that
Speaker 7: more clearly is to tell everyone that he was my
Speaker 7: grandfather's grandfather. We are the legal direct descendants. That's not
Speaker 7: to say the only He had many women in his life,
Speaker 7: but were the only ones that he was the result
Speaker 7: of a legal marriage. And he was born in New
Speaker 7: Hampshire and Gilmington in eighteen sixty one. He was an
Speaker 7: incredible mind and a huge intellect. Went on to University
Speaker 7: of Michigan Medical School, got his doctorate degree practice medicine,
Speaker 7: and then, as you've already described to the audience, built
Speaker 7: Murder Castle in Chicago for the World's Fair. That was
Speaker 7: his plan all along.
Speaker 6: Now, how did you come to You start early in
Speaker 6: the book, and maybe you can just tell us how
Speaker 6: your grandfather, or Bert, how he viewed even speaking about
Speaker 6: his grandfather A. JH. Holmes, or again Walter Herman Webster Mudget,
Speaker 6: tell us a little bit about the subject and how
Speaker 6: your grandfather handled the subject of Herman Webster Mudget.
Speaker 7: You know, I'm glad you brought that up because I
Speaker 7: like to describe that because to me, that's the major
Speaker 7: part of the book. Obviously, there's people that want to
Speaker 7: read about the murders and the castle and the history,
Speaker 7: which has been written about already. What I wanted to
Speaker 7: do was give my readers the inside story of how
Speaker 7: our family evolved around learning that this monster was in
Speaker 7: our background. So when I was a small boy, even
Speaker 7: when I when I grew older, my grandfather and I
Speaker 7: had a very strained relationship. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 7: we didn't talk. I hated the man And the best
Speaker 7: way for me to describe it is he loved to fish.
Speaker 7: He used to go fishing every weekend. When I was
Speaker 7: a boy, there was nothing I liked doing more than
Speaker 7: to go fishing. He never invited me to go fishing.
Speaker 7: Imagine your grandfather never inviting you to go fishing. So
Speaker 7: I grew up with this strain. Well, I just gave
Speaker 7: up on the man. Well, one night, when I was
Speaker 7: about forty forty five years old, at a family dinner,
Speaker 7: through some investigation that my grandmother had been doing about
Speaker 7: our genealogy and her belief that we were related to
Speaker 7: more famous people, it came out that we had a
Speaker 7: criminal in our background. And at that dinner table, my
Speaker 7: grandfather admitted that we were the descendants of the monster. HH.
Speaker 6: Holmes and tell us more about this conversation at the
Speaker 6: dinner table. What your grandfather Birt had to say.
Speaker 7: Well, he I still I can see it as clear,
Speaker 7: clear as day. He stood up at the head of
Speaker 7: the table once the name was mentioned, face White, slammed
Speaker 7: his chair back so hard against the wall the picture
Speaker 7: came down behind him, and he talked, pointed his finger
Speaker 7: at the whole family revolving around around the different chairs
Speaker 7: of the table, and told everyone that that name was
Speaker 7: never to be mentioned in this in his house ever again,
Speaker 7: and then stopped with his finger pointing at me, stared
Speaker 7: for three or four seconds. I can still see it now,
Speaker 7: and then stormed out of the room. And I can
Speaker 7: see I can see my grandmother's eyes going back and forth,
Speaker 7: putting his eyes in my eyes like he was telling
Speaker 7: me something different. And uh at we all we all
Speaker 7: followed his orders when we never brought the name up,
Speaker 7: and within three or four years he died after that
Speaker 7: of cancer. But that's exactly the way it happened at
Speaker 7: the dinner table.
Speaker 6: What did you ascertain or conclude, even though it might
Speaker 6: not have been so easy to conclude, what did you
Speaker 6: think of the entire thing? Why he had looked to you,
Speaker 6: and why did you think he had such a reaction,
Speaker 6: and as a result, no one else spoke about AJH. Holmes.
Speaker 6: But did you do some research?
Speaker 7: You know, the research? Yes, the research became an obsession, Dan,
Speaker 7: and I took to learning everything I could about this
Speaker 7: man in our background and why, what could have caused
Speaker 7: my grandfather to have this reaction. Well, as you can imagine,
Speaker 7: you know the twenty or thirty books written already about Holmes,
Speaker 7: he was the worst of the worst, and it quickly
Speaker 7: became what well as I, as I write about in
Speaker 7: the book, the question then came about my own self
Speaker 7: and my own identity of this thing in my background
Speaker 7: was responsible for why I was alive, the conscious decisions
Speaker 7: he had made that made it possible for me to
Speaker 7: be a human being. And to have that in your background.
Speaker 7: And what I try to do is take my readers
Speaker 7: along with me and have them go on that journey
Speaker 7: of determining what we are as human beings. Even if
Speaker 7: you have the worst thing to have ever lived on
Speaker 7: this earth in your background.
Speaker 6: Now, maybe we should go into your background a little
Speaker 6: bit too. You ended up being a lawyer, so maybe
Speaker 6: you can tell us what type of lawyer and what
Speaker 6: kind of person you became But despite your obvious success
Speaker 6: having become a lawyer, tell us if there was something
Speaker 6: that you thought to pique your interest once you realized
Speaker 6: who your relative was, this infamous monster, and why you
Speaker 6: had this question that was nagging at you. Tell us
Speaker 6: a little bit about your your life and your background
Speaker 6: that would lead you to have this question sort of
Speaker 6: consume you.
Speaker 7: Well, that's a that's a great question. The my entire life,
Speaker 7: I had had questions about thoughts that would sometimes emerge.
Speaker 7: I was, I was a law abiding citizen. I had
Speaker 7: never committed a crime. I was successful lawyer, had sailed
Speaker 7: in the navy, had a lovely wife and a daughter.
Speaker 7: But every once in a while, these things would come
Speaker 7: up that I had a hard time believing were normal
Speaker 7: things about evil, and not that I ever had the
Speaker 7: temptation to partake in them. Before I had learned of
Speaker 7: this session, but I had doubts, and I had often
Speaker 7: thought about going to therapy, had it, thought about seeing
Speaker 7: if I could have had professional help to maybe define
Speaker 7: what this meant and maybe tell me if it was
Speaker 7: normal for all men to think the things that would
Speaker 7: pop up once in a while. So's that's pretty much
Speaker 7: a summary of my life before learning this was in
Speaker 7: our background.
Speaker 6: Now, after your grandfather Bert made this statement that you
Speaker 6: were not to raise the name of HH Holmes again
Speaker 6: or Herman Herman Webster Budget again in your home, you said,
Speaker 6: this became your obsession. You researched everything you possibly could.
Speaker 6: For those that don't aren't so familiar with this historical
Speaker 6: infamous monster. What did you discover at that time that
Speaker 6: you already weren't so aware of? What did you find
Speaker 6: about HH Holmes in terms of the crimes, the type
Speaker 6: of signature, the kind of characteristics of the crime itself,
Speaker 6: as they call him m O method up around day.
Speaker 6: So tell us what exactly characterized the murderous history of J.
Speaker 6: Holmes and why is he referred to as HH Holmes.
Speaker 7: Well, he well, he had about thirty Dan, he had
Speaker 7: about thirty different aliases. He did not like the name
Speaker 7: Herman Mudget. He used the one he liked the most
Speaker 7: was J. Holmes, And that was because he was fascinated
Speaker 7: with Sherlock Holmes. As I read everything in the public
Speaker 7: domain about him, you it was obvious that there had
Speaker 7: never been a more deliberate and cold blooded villain, maybe
Speaker 7: in the history of the world. Now, obviously you get
Speaker 7: into discussions about Hitler and now and those things that
Speaker 7: you know, where millions of people were murdered becase as
Speaker 7: the decisions they made. But I'm I'm I'm talking about
Speaker 7: the man that does it with his own hands, not
Speaker 7: not orders a man in military uniform to do it.
Speaker 7: So he was a prodigy of wickedness. He well at
Speaker 7: the University of Michigan if he had one of the
Speaker 7: highest recorded IQs ever. And when you started, when I
Speaker 7: started to study the actions, the things he invented, the
Speaker 7: drugs he created, he was an incredible mind, and it
Speaker 7: was it was a sad thing to realize that that
Speaker 7: mind had gone to waste in order for him to
Speaker 7: follow the practices that you know, were just diabolical. He
Speaker 7: knew from an early age that his natural pent was murdered.
Speaker 7: He grew up wanting to hurt people. One of the
Speaker 7: discussions I have in the book is about this thing
Speaker 7: that where our modern medical science needs needs to put
Speaker 7: a name on on the serial kills and called them
Speaker 7: psychotic to say that they had a mental disorder, that
Speaker 7: this thing is treatable. What I quickly came to know
Speaker 7: was that this wasn't a disorder. This wasn't a mental condition.
Speaker 7: It certainly wasn't treatable. This is what he was and
Speaker 7: what he wanted to be just evil.
Speaker 6: Now you talk about this early age. Now maybe we're
Speaker 6: jumping ahead a little bit, but we will talk about
Speaker 6: the priest and the experience he had when he was
Speaker 6: six years old. But that is what's something you find out,
Speaker 6: not through the regular research obviously, so we'll we'll leave
Speaker 6: that for now. Now tell us continue with you. You
Speaker 6: talk about that this person was this incredible villain, and
Speaker 6: there was no certainly was not insane by any any standard.
Speaker 6: He was just an embodiment of evil. What are some
Speaker 6: of the crimes that you because obviously you take to
Speaker 6: the reader on a discovery of the dimension that the
Speaker 6: history books are not aware of, new information and like
Speaker 6: I say, almost a new dimension to the villain himself.
Speaker 6: But at that time in your research, take us back
Speaker 6: to what you did find. What was the body count,
Speaker 6: what was his mo who did he target? What kind
Speaker 6: of victims? What was his ruse that he used? Why
Speaker 6: was he a killer in terms of according to the
Speaker 6: history books, Well.
Speaker 7: He was an incredibly charming man who who had well
Speaker 7: maybe hundreds of women who fell in love with him
Speaker 7: over his lifetime. He could hypnotize, he could put on
Speaker 7: this doctor, this friend, this neighbor that's always there to assist,
Speaker 7: and people flocked to him and with obvious terrible results.
Speaker 7: The thing that I came up to see it right
Speaker 7: off the bat, before I got the material you were
Speaker 7: talking about, was that his life, the way he made
Speaker 7: his living was to sell the skeletons of some of
Speaker 7: the people that he had murdered to the medical schools
Speaker 7: across the country. Is were known as the most pristine
Speaker 7: and he made quite a living doing it. He also
Speaker 7: made a huge amount of money for the time in
Speaker 7: life insurance three or four hundred thousand a year in
Speaker 7: the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties, which I don't know
Speaker 7: how that translates out to money now, but probably a
Speaker 7: lot of millions he was We just found out. The thing, Dan,
Speaker 7: that's amazing too, is that the information never stops coming in.
Speaker 7: We found out about a week ago that he had
Speaker 7: a phony patent office in Philadelphia. Imagine a man with
Speaker 7: a patent office who watches an innovation walk in his
Speaker 7: front or something. Maybe the idea of a decade. He
Speaker 7: decides that can make some money, he murders the inventor
Speaker 7: and patents it for himself. Well that's the way, that's
Speaker 7: the way he thought. So it's that's why when people
Speaker 7: start reading the book and dig in a little deeper
Speaker 7: than what previous authors have done, and they've done a
Speaker 7: great job. I don't mean to say that at all.
Speaker 7: The Devil and White City is a great book. A
Speaker 7: matter of fact, I recommend it to people to read
Speaker 7: before they read Bloodstain. But this is something we need
Speaker 7: to dig in further to learn about.
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Speaker 7: What man, the mind of man is capable of, and
Speaker 7: this is certainly the one who will give us the
Speaker 7: outer extreme.
Speaker 6: Now, according to the history books, and this is this
Speaker 6: is where that the story gets even more fantastic. But
Speaker 6: according to the history books, he was hanged for murder.
Speaker 7: I'm what year, eighteen ninety six, I believe, maybe ninety seven.
Speaker 7: I don't know the exactly. I don't have my timeline
Speaker 7: in front of me. And there's so many years on
Speaker 7: in his life that you got thick. But I think
Speaker 7: eighteen ninety six. He was arrested in eighteen ninety four,
Speaker 7: I believe so. And as you know that we get
Speaker 7: into that alleged hanging in the book.
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely, that's It's another fantastic aspect of the book.
Speaker 6: Now let's get to because I know the audience is
Speaker 6: reeling a little bit. They understand it. We're dealing with
Speaker 6: this charming super villain selling skeletons and organs, and so
Speaker 6: let's talk about the event where you became inextricably involved
Speaker 6: with your great great grandfather Forever. Tell us what the
Speaker 6: circumstances were that you became even more involved than just
Speaker 6: researching your family tree.
Speaker 7: Right well, as you know, the story of Bloodstains is
Speaker 7: about some material my grandfather left me after he died.
Speaker 7: He was a He was a wealthy man when he died,
Speaker 7: As all families do they they squabbled over his proceeds.
Speaker 7: I wasn't involved. I remember about three or four years
Speaker 7: after his death, my father drove up to my house
Speaker 7: one day and said that he had something from Grandpa
Speaker 7: for me, and I didn't excite me much to the truth,
Speaker 7: I hadn't expected anything and didn't really want anything. And
Speaker 7: he handed me a couple of old World War two
Speaker 7: ammal cases that I had been turned into fishing tackle boxes,
Speaker 7: and both my father and I thought it was his
Speaker 7: way of asking me to go fishing finally, and so
Speaker 7: he gave me these these and they were full of
Speaker 7: fishing lures and reels and wrenches, and they sat in
Speaker 7: my garage for a couple three years. Well, one day
Speaker 7: I went out, and I don't know why it happened
Speaker 7: this one day, but curious, maybe a longing to have
Speaker 7: a little affection for my grandfather. Finally I turned them
Speaker 7: over and went through all this stuff. Nothing really interested
Speaker 7: me much. When I tried to stack it all together
Speaker 7: to close the lids and put them away forever, I
Speaker 7: couldn't get them closed, and one of the boxes actually
Speaker 7: got kicked over and the bottom opened up, and in
Speaker 7: the bottom was a diary. And that's what such things,
Speaker 7: the story of led things is all about, about the
Speaker 7: killers' diaries that my grandfather had and had kept secret
Speaker 7: from the world his entire life, and had decided I
Speaker 7: was the one that would have them. And that was
Speaker 7: what the stare at the dinner table that night was
Speaker 7: all about. And my life became learning what they meant.
Speaker 6: Now you say diaries, there was two diaries, and I'm correct,
Speaker 6: there's two diaries.
Speaker 7: Right now, let me explain this, and this is how
Speaker 7: I do this because I get asked this every time.
Speaker 7: The story is about my great great grandfather's diaries. The
Speaker 7: question about whether these diaries will ever be revealed or
Speaker 7: whether they were actually in existence, will be up to
Speaker 7: my daughter to tell, because I want to respect her
Speaker 7: life and I'm not going to do it. So what
Speaker 7: I do is I tell people that the book is
Speaker 7: about the story of these two diaries, and they are
Speaker 7: the diaries of the killer.
Speaker 6: I'm not sure I understood that, but we'll plow us.
Speaker 7: The book is called fiction based on a true story,
Speaker 7: and it was done for legal reasons. As you know,
Speaker 7: there are there's no statute limitations on murder. The authorities,
Speaker 7: if they decided these books actually existed, to take them
Speaker 7: from me within about two or three days, I see.
Speaker 7: So that's after many consultations I decided that it was
Speaker 7: to be called fiction based on a true story.
Speaker 6: Ah. Incredible, Well, thank you for answering that. That's even
Speaker 6: more intriguing and should be more intriguing to the audience. Incredible,
Speaker 6: Now are they fairly these diaries? Are? How many pages
Speaker 6: are we dealing with or how long would it take
Speaker 6: you to read these? And when did you fully read
Speaker 6: these I know I've read the books, so of course
Speaker 6: I'm asking a question, when did you How did you
Speaker 6: proceed with these diaries? Did you read them all in
Speaker 6: one night? How did you proceed with the reading of
Speaker 6: these diaries?
Speaker 7: Now that would have been impossible. You're talking about a
Speaker 7: man with a mind that to comprehend you need to
Speaker 7: put some work into this was well, imagine reading the
Speaker 7: diaries of a Freud or Machiavellio. It's it's a lot
Speaker 7: of work. Plus we're dealing with the events which are
Speaker 7: so horrifying you could go sick as you read them,
Speaker 7: maybe like nothing that's ever been written before. So it
Speaker 7: took me. It took me two or three years to
Speaker 7: get through them. And because so much I had written
Speaker 7: been written about homes that were directly opposed to what
Speaker 7: these books were saying, I had doubts about whether they
Speaker 7: were real at all or just hate. So, you know,
Speaker 7: as as explained in the book, the first thing we
Speaker 7: did was go check the handwriting on both books to
Speaker 7: make sure they were the same hand because we're talking
Speaker 7: about a book being written after he was hung. Well,
Speaker 7: that doesn't make much sense without without having researched the
Speaker 7: facts which actually occurred. So you know we put I
Speaker 7: put a lot time and traveling back and forth across
Speaker 7: the country trying to find out if these things were true.
Speaker 6: Now, how how how intrigued were you or how motivated
Speaker 6: were you after you got that initial confirmation that yes,
Speaker 6: this person was certain that this was the hand of A. J. Holmes.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we had one of the one of the most
Speaker 7: highly thought of experts on forensic handwriting basically you know,
Speaker 7: told me in a private media that they were the same,
Speaker 7: which meant that he had not been on Well every
Speaker 7: book that's been written about Holmes, and the newspaper reports
Speaker 7: from the Times and the Tribune and the Philadelphia's everyone
Speaker 7: back then had reporters there watching him drop from the gallows.
Speaker 7: Well how did this happen? So then you know, all
Speaker 7: you did was you opened up another can of worms
Speaker 7: and you had to go do more research. So as
Speaker 7: you can see that the more we dug in, the
Speaker 7: more questions came up.
Speaker 6: Now, did you read initially in the history books about
Speaker 6: a phenomena called the Holmes curse?
Speaker 7: Yet, yes, there was a after we had established that
Speaker 7: the handwriting was the same in both books, I started
Speaker 7: looking into the issue of if he had not been hung,
Speaker 7: where could I find evidence maybe supporting that conjecture or
Speaker 7: that circumstance. Well, the books all wrote about what you
Speaker 7: just mentioned, the Holmes Curse. Almost anyone that had been
Speaker 7: involved in his arrest, his trial, his execution was either
Speaker 7: killed or had terrible misfortune and tragedy strike them. After
Speaker 7: the hanging. The newspaper The New York Times called it
Speaker 7: the Holmes Curse. There was talk of a supernatural events
Speaker 7: taking place, to paranormal. What I started looking at was
Speaker 7: the possibility that now he hadn't been hung, he had
Speaker 7: gone back and visited each of these individuals on his
Speaker 7: own for the next two or three years after the hanging.
Speaker 7: And this is what was the Holmes curse. Not a paranormal,
Speaker 7: not a supernatural event, but this evil man taking it
Speaker 7: on himself for vengeance.
Speaker 6: Incredible, incredible. Now let's go back a little bit to
Speaker 6: what you first learned. You said it takes two or
Speaker 6: three years to get through all these and of course
Speaker 6: it is a matter of comprehension too. As you say,
Speaker 6: you're filled with doubt, but then as you keep proceeding
Speaker 6: with this, you're gaining more confidence that this is actually
Speaker 6: the truth, even as despite its horrific nature. When you
Speaker 6: first read us, the diaries itself tell us some of
Speaker 6: the detail. I hate to ask for gory detail, but
Speaker 6: I think it's essential to understand the mind this evil genius.
Speaker 6: What was a reason that he gave for And some
Speaker 6: of it was revenge, obviously the Holmes curse points to that,
Speaker 6: But what are some of his motivation? What's his main
Speaker 6: motivation for his killing?
Speaker 7: You know, you're getting into issues of whether what's the
Speaker 7: meaning of evil and why someone would murder when they're
Speaker 7: I tried to explain to the readers, we're talking about
Speaker 7: a man who was pure evil. Think of a flame,
Speaker 7: like a flame from a gas jet and a pure
Speaker 7: flame without smoke. That's what his evil was like. And
Speaker 7: he loved to hurt. He loved to torture, he loved
Speaker 7: to kill, He loved to see pain. He loved the
Speaker 7: question why someone would cry, why someone would scream from pain?
Speaker 7: That was what his life was all about, besides making money.
Speaker 7: He loved. He loved money. So you're getting in to
Speaker 7: asking why he would have done I don't know if
Speaker 7: I can answer that, Dan, But like I said, I
Speaker 7: think of it as like that clear blue flame that
Speaker 7: just like to hurt other human beings.
Speaker 6: Now, at what point do you and please explain this
Speaker 6: story about the recounting of the account of him visiting
Speaker 6: a priest at the direction of his parents that said
Speaker 6: that this priest wanted to speak to him, and he
Speaker 6: was six years old, and they dressed him in his
Speaker 6: finest clothing and he went and visited priest. Tell us
Speaker 6: about this incredible experience, and tell us what you think
Speaker 6: h Holmes is trying to say and conclude with divulging
Speaker 6: this event.
Speaker 7: Well, it's a diary, so he was writing the events
Speaker 7: that occurred in his life. So you know, when he
Speaker 7: was a young when he was a young man, he
Speaker 7: stold by his parents that the family priest wanted to
Speaker 7: see him. He had known that the priest had treated
Speaker 7: him differently, and he mentioned in the books and that
Speaker 7: he could sense an interest. Well, on this particular day,
Speaker 7: as you know, he was went down by himself and
Speaker 7: was raped by the priest at a very young agent.
Speaker 7: And when I read this in the diary, you know,
Speaker 7: I instantly jumped up and thought, here's the reason, you know,
Speaker 7: here's the thing, here's the event. Which caused this evil
Speaker 7: to emerge from this young boy's soul. It had nothing
Speaker 7: to do with being born evil. It had nothing to
Speaker 7: do with being the devil. It had to do with
Speaker 7: an event which happens too many young men and girls
Speaker 7: in their lives, you know, one of those terrible events
Speaker 7: right well, And to tell you the truth, that gave
Speaker 7: me some solace. Event I actually thought, you know, maybe
Speaker 7: this is good for me in my life. I don't
Speaker 7: have anything to worry about moving forward. Yet, as you get,
Speaker 7: as you got deeper into the chapter and the diary
Speaker 7: and the event, you saw that instead of reacting as
Speaker 7: a normal young man would have, racing home, telling his father,
Speaker 7: having the authorities involved, having the priest removed, he used
Speaker 7: it to his advantage. And what he did was was blackmail.
Speaker 7: Here's here's the think of this. You have a young
Speaker 7: man six or seven years old, Yeah, turning an event
Speaker 7: of sodomy into leverage, the blackmail a priest into telling
Speaker 7: him about the confessions of the town community, the confessions,
Speaker 7: and then using that to make money. Think of that.
Speaker 7: I don't know if there's ever been anything like that
Speaker 7: ever before on this earth.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's incredible.
Speaker 7: He didn't tell his mother or mother when he went home.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you captured that eloquently in the book, that he
Speaker 6: was just this very defiant It was nothing, it was
Speaker 6: an event, and he used it to his advantage.
Speaker 7: That's all.
Speaker 6: He was instantly of that mindset. He was ready for
Speaker 6: to be able to adjust, I guess to the situation.
Speaker 7: Just adjust is a good word. And I've had many
Speaker 7: people tell me that the part of that chapter where
Speaker 7: he goes up and he touches the priest's face and
Speaker 7: he talks to the priests about how it's going to
Speaker 7: be between them and their relationship just since shivers through
Speaker 7: people as they read the book. So yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 7: don't really think I captured anything other than explaining what
Speaker 7: happened and what I read. So but it that that
Speaker 7: is probably the chapter that affected me the most of
Speaker 7: all the events of his life. And as you know,
Speaker 7: there were some that, uh, he rivaled it and in
Speaker 7: that horribleness. So I always tell people when they decide
Speaker 7: to buy Bloodstains Dan that it's a very harsh read.
Speaker 7: It's not for the feint of heart. About halfway through,
Speaker 7: you've got to stick it out. You've got to be
Speaker 7: very tough. But I tell people if they finish. A
Speaker 7: lot of people are telling me it's changed in the
Speaker 7: way they think of good and bad and evil and
Speaker 7: doing good things for them and the way they think.
Speaker 7: So I've been trying to tell people it's a harsh,
Speaker 7: harsh read, and don't take it up unless you're ready.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Absolutely, And I think this audience is ready. I
Speaker 6: think that's the kind of people who listen to this program.
Speaker 6: Now we'll go back just a little bit too. You
Speaker 6: said from the very instant you opened the book that
Speaker 6: there seemed to be an odor. Maybe you can explain
Speaker 6: what your initial experience was in hindsight, because it is
Speaker 6: important a little bit later in the book. Of course.
Speaker 7: You know, you're the first that's ever about any of
Speaker 7: my interviewers that have brought it up. And I commend
Speaker 7: you for that because it's a very important part, and
Speaker 7: I was always a little disappointed that some hadn't noticed that,
Speaker 7: or maybe skimmed through it. It wasn't I wouldn't say odor.
Speaker 7: It was more of a presence or a feeling when
Speaker 7: you open the book, like something emerged as you read
Speaker 7: to touch you and to direct what parts of it
Speaker 7: wanted you to pay the most attention to And you
Speaker 7: know what, Dan, as I explained in the book, I
Speaker 7: did not. I wasn't a believer when I opened these books.
Speaker 7: I did not believe in To be quite honest, I
Speaker 7: was an atheist. I did not believe in ghosts or
Speaker 7: hauntings or the devil those things. So for me to
Speaker 7: admit that there was something that came out of that
Speaker 7: book and touched me when I first opened it is
Speaker 7: quite an admission.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think it's of the same kind of mindset.
Speaker 6: I'm a skeptic. I'm open to all kinds of possibilities,
Speaker 6: but I'm by nature or a sort of a skeptic.
Speaker 6: And but then again, I'm still intrigued enough to listen.
Speaker 6: So I think that's what you do. Put the reader
Speaker 6: in a sort of a position that wow, you're you're
Speaker 6: reading an incredible entail. So you have to have a
Speaker 6: very very open mind here with this point.
Speaker 7: Well, I think you're probably the same as I do.
Speaker 7: I will accept evidence, and I yearned for one day
Speaker 7: for someone to show me evidence that these things exist
Speaker 7: and and and and when they do, I'll accept it.
Speaker 7: But it has to be evident for me.
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely, Now from this this presence that you you
Speaker 6: sensed the minute you opened this book. At what point
Speaker 6: do you you sense that there is there's a voice
Speaker 6: in your head, someone speaking to you? And how do
Speaker 6: you react to that?
Speaker 7: Yeah? That and that we get into the book, you know,
Speaker 7: and that's uh there. What Stains is a story within
Speaker 7: a story. It has to do with an adventure story,
Speaker 7: as far as researching historical events like whether he was
Speaker 7: Jack the Ripper or whether he was actually hung, or
Speaker 7: whether he's buried along a railroad track in the Sacramento River,
Speaker 7: but as much of the book as a psychological journey
Speaker 7: that I had because of these voices that started to
Speaker 7: emerge in my head as I read. And I had
Speaker 7: never had events like this in my life before. I
Speaker 7: had never heard voices. I had never seen a ghost
Speaker 7: in Evil States. But as soon as I started reading,
Speaker 7: I started having discussions I thought with myself over what
Speaker 7: was in the book. And before long, maybe six seven months,
Speaker 7: I started having full, full discussions with something I thought
Speaker 7: was HH Holmes and his beliefs in life and death
Speaker 7: and evil and the direction he wanted me to go
Speaker 7: in my life, which started to be terrifying. And that's
Speaker 7: what I tried to explain in the book with these voices.
Speaker 7: I went to professional professionals for this. I went to therapists.
Speaker 7: I went to a neurologist. They started telling me I
Speaker 7: had that I had developed epilepsy, where the seizures could
Speaker 7: explain the voices in my head and this knowledge that
Speaker 7: I was having of homes that had been outside the
Speaker 7: history books. I wanted to believe in that condition, that epilepsy,
Speaker 7: but it was difficult. And that's what the book's about.
Speaker 7: I give the reader the choice of accepting that it
Speaker 7: was the epilepsy and the seizures, or whether it was
Speaker 7: this thing in my head that came out of the books.
Speaker 6: What kind of narrative would the voice be speaking to
Speaker 6: you in a tone? What what would it? What would
Speaker 6: JHM say to you?
Speaker 7: Well, I think he was a very dapper gentleman, you know,
Speaker 7: well dressed, very mannerly. He's educated, and we would get
Speaker 7: into two discussions about whether there was a God, whether
Speaker 7: there was the devil, his lessons in life he wanted
Speaker 7: me to learn, and eventually how he thought it was
Speaker 7: my destiny to be the next and ah, what he
Speaker 7: said was a line of my family of people that
Speaker 7: had been like him, of monsters, and as you know
Speaker 7: from reading the book, my name was in It was
Speaker 7: in the second diary. And uh so we started talking
Speaker 7: about what he expected of me, and they weren't the things.
Speaker 7: They were evil things, as you can imagine, things that
Speaker 7: he wanted me to learn to do.
Speaker 6: Now in the second diary, it was in the in
Speaker 6: the borders or in yeah, in the borders of the
Speaker 6: diary itself, and there was other names, other family names,
Speaker 6: and and there was lines crossed through them. Explain that
Speaker 6: what you did see in that second diary.
Speaker 7: Well there was the first diary had a in the
Speaker 7: second diary as well, there was a list of names.
Speaker 7: My grandfather was in it. He had been circled and
Speaker 7: then crossed out, which I reasoned that someone had once
Speaker 7: thought him a possibility and then decided not to by
Speaker 7: crossing it out. When and I go into this in
Speaker 7: one of the early chapters of the book below his
Speaker 7: name was my name, and my name was circled and
Speaker 7: there was no line through it. And it was almost
Speaker 7: as if I was had been decided upon to be
Speaker 7: to be.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 7: I didn't know what to be what, but it it
Speaker 7: was a chewing event to read your name in a
Speaker 7: book that had been written, well, I thought supposedly before
Speaker 7: I was born. So it was a hard thing to
Speaker 7: figure out logically.
Speaker 6: When now from reading the diary you say, take you
Speaker 6: go on an adventure, and you take the reader on that.
Speaker 6: What are some of the things other than getting the
Speaker 6: handwriting expert to verify that this certainly is the handwriting
Speaker 6: of J. Holmes. What else are you trying to get confirmed?
Speaker 6: And what is in the diary that leads you to
Speaker 6: other places in this adventure?
Speaker 7: Well, there's many, but one of the most interesting for
Speaker 7: me is the fact that he was He says in
Speaker 7: the diary that he was in London in eighteen eighty eight,
Speaker 7: the year of the Summer of Jack the Ripper. And
Speaker 7: so I became fascinated with anything Jack the Ripper, not
Speaker 7: necessarily because he did many more terrible things here in
Speaker 7: the United States, but you know the world, that's got
Speaker 7: to be the greatest mystery the modern man still, who
Speaker 7: is the Jack the Ripper? And to me it was
Speaker 7: very exciting to maybe be able to solve the mystery. So,
Speaker 7: while his diaries were not detailed about two or three
Speaker 7: unfortunate prostitutes that he killed, he said when he was
Speaker 7: over there. It was fascinating his explana, his descriptions of
Speaker 7: the London Whitechapel area during the time, and then his
Speaker 7: leading the authorities on the wild goose chases and enjoying
Speaker 7: teasing them and making their crime seem more difficult.
Speaker 6: Now let's get this straight too for our audience, because
Speaker 6: this is a hardcore true crime audience. You did the
Speaker 6: necessary research in this book to determine that he was
Speaker 6: actually in London at that time, No speculation, am I correct?
Speaker 7: Not necessarily? We have circumstantial Evan See's the That's one
Speaker 7: of the difficult things, you know, and you know true
Speaker 7: crime when you're talking about something one hundred and twenty
Speaker 7: five years old. And when I practiced law, I did
Speaker 7: some criminal law, it's very difficult to bring out a
Speaker 7: piece of direct evidence. Much of what you need is,
Speaker 7: you know, as a pyramid, is circumstantial. So I knew
Speaker 7: that I could circumstantially prove that he was in London.
Speaker 7: We even know the shift he rode over on, but
Speaker 7: would that prove he killed the actual two or three
Speaker 7: the Marrietto's and the Catherine I forget her Ei their
Speaker 7: last name, but the first two or three prostitutes there no,
Speaker 7: probably not. So as we dug in more and more,
Speaker 7: I realized that these days, you know, the guardians of
Speaker 7: the mystery, the guardians of the Jack the Ripper mystery,
Speaker 7: they and you know, and I understand their position. They
Speaker 7: every year they have an author come up and say
Speaker 7: they know someone knows who Jack the Ripper was. It's
Speaker 7: always it's always crossed off alice. It doesn't work. So
Speaker 7: I knew that it was going to be very difficult
Speaker 7: to prove it. So about a month after I released
Speaker 7: my book, I was I was contacted by a man
Speaker 7: named Mark Potts who had done a lot of research
Speaker 7: on the Ripper and he thought Holmes was also the Ripper.
Speaker 7: Now he had hired an expert that had been recommended
Speaker 7: by the British Library, a forensic handwriting expert who had
Speaker 7: done the handwriting on the first two Ripper letters, the
Speaker 7: Dear Boss and the from Hell Letters, the memoirs that
Speaker 7: Holmes had done while he was in prison awaiting Haynes.
Speaker 7: And she had concluded, and this was after I released
Speaker 7: my book, she had concluded that the handwriting was the same.
Speaker 7: So that is the piece of direct evidence. As you know,
Speaker 7: that's not circumstantial. So all of a sudden, the people
Speaker 7: in London are saying, well, okay, okay, so maybe the
Speaker 7: handwriting is the same, but that doesn't prove he was
Speaker 7: the Ripper killer. Well they're starting to stretch pretty hard now.
Speaker 7: But what the handwriting does prove is is that he
Speaker 7: was there that summer. Now, when you have someone like
Speaker 7: Holmes there and then he's writing about it in diaries,
Speaker 7: and then we have autopsies which state, you know that
Speaker 7: the talent that the organs that had been removed in
Speaker 7: four or five minutes during the fog of the Ripper
Speaker 7: killings needed surgical skill. You're starting to put a case
Speaker 7: together where beyond a reasonable doubt becomes possible all of
Speaker 7: a sudden, and maybe for the first time in history.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, it was another one of the fascinating aspects
Speaker 6: of this book. Now, the what I found again, it
Speaker 6: was a stretch for my imagination. But you say that, okay,
Speaker 6: that that that JH. Holmes was in London, But you
Speaker 6: talk about that he explains that this was a diversion.
Speaker 6: Please explain to our audience what that could possibly be.
Speaker 6: Explain this full story of what the murders represented to J. Holmes. Well,
Speaker 6: he was.
Speaker 7: He went to London because he was fascinating. He was
Speaker 7: he was one of maybe the tide, Like I said,
Speaker 7: the intellects incredible, one of the pioneers of hormone science
Speaker 7: and longevity. He thought that he could create an elixure
Speaker 7: for him to live forever. Obviously out out pretty far
Speaker 7: out there, but in the next couple hundred years. I
Speaker 7: wouldn't be surprised if we have modern medical thanks or
Speaker 7: something like that. But he believed the secret was in
Speaker 7: the ovaries of a woman. He had a counterpart in
Speaker 7: London and Wales actually that believed the same as science,
Speaker 7: famous scientists. At the time they met. They discussed it.
Speaker 7: He had an assistant who he knew he needed three
Speaker 7: or four pairs of ovaries a day to make up
Speaker 7: enough of the selection or not imagine that, so he
Speaker 7: knew he needed help collecting them from the diaries. It
Speaker 7: was obvious to me that he had not actually killed
Speaker 7: those two prostitutes, but had directed them by his assistant
Speaker 7: as a sort of practice for when they returned to
Speaker 7: the United States.
Speaker 6: Now there wasn't a case that or part of the
Speaker 6: story was that he needed the ovaries of women that
Speaker 6: were not prostitutes, people that were of certain class and
Speaker 6: a certain help explain that all.
Speaker 7: Well, no, I think you've just done it. You know,
Speaker 7: he needed pure, healthy, young ladies, and obviously the prostitutes
Speaker 7: that you would have found in Whitechapel would not have qualified.
Speaker 7: When his diaries mentioned him him having murdered a woman
Speaker 7: on the other side of town in London, that was
Speaker 7: never brought up in any of the The Murders of
Speaker 7: the Ripper stories. So you know what, Dan, you're getting that.
Speaker 7: And I know this, it's pretty far out on a
Speaker 7: stretched limb when you're talking about an assistant in him
Speaker 7: and the Ripper. And I was fascinated by the Ripper,
Speaker 7: but I don't want it to take away anything from
Speaker 7: the story here in the States, because Holmes doesn't need
Speaker 7: to be the Ripper to be the most terrible thing
Speaker 7: that ever lived here in the States. It's just, uh,
Speaker 7: I knew it could get me the attention I needed
Speaker 7: to have the world maybe understand him better if we
Speaker 7: got into a discussion about the Ripper. You know what
Speaker 7: I mean?
Speaker 6: Sure, you know you know. The thing is, what's incredible
Speaker 6: about your story is that Jack the Ripper represents one
Speaker 6: of the most terrifying characters in history and certain true
Speaker 6: crime history especially, and this book hands down makes the
Speaker 6: story of Jack the Ripper. The explanation of HH Holmes
Speaker 6: about the Jack the the crimes attributed to Jack the Ripper,
Speaker 6: because of the crimes previous to his supposed execution and
Speaker 6: then his incredible evil genius plans afterwards, makes the Jack
Speaker 6: the Ripper look like a fairy tale. It really does.
Speaker 7: H Elmes.
Speaker 6: HH Holmes seems to be the embodiment that of Jack
Speaker 6: the Ripper. You know, doctor Jack, mister Hyde and Dracula
Speaker 6: and Dexter just thrown in there for good measure.
Speaker 7: It's incredible, Frankenstein, you know, you know, but you're exactly right.
Speaker 7: That's uh and uh. This is not a make believe
Speaker 7: that's why. That's why Dan and you know. In the
Speaker 7: introduction to the story, my first line is there are
Speaker 7: no vampires between these stages, or wear wolves or mummies.
Speaker 7: They weren't needed. Bloodstains. Is the story of a real monster,
Speaker 7: my great great grandfather Hermann Webster Mudget.
Speaker 6: So incredible. You're right now you talk about the the again.
Speaker 6: This is one of the most fantastic things to overcome
Speaker 6: in terms of thinking about this, this this super villain here.
Speaker 6: Please explain what you read in the in the diaries.
Speaker 6: You've already done all the research that you can possibly
Speaker 6: do about what history has already said about this person.
Speaker 6: Explain how HJH. Holmes explains to his great great grandson
Speaker 6: how he came to he executed, but escaped execution.
Speaker 7: This to me is the most fascinating part of the story.
Speaker 7: And and as we've already discussed, I uh, you know,
Speaker 7: the Holmes curse got me going this way. And then
Speaker 7: the fact that the diary was was written with his
Speaker 7: hand after he was supposedly dead. So as I dug in,
Speaker 7: I got to the part about the when he was
Speaker 7: tried and then put in jail. You have to you
Speaker 7: have to remember this was the O. J. Simpson Trial
Speaker 7: of the century. Every major city had a newspaper reporter
Speaker 7: there at the trial, and then the and then the judgment.
Speaker 7: When he was in in in Moyamenting prison awaiting hanging,
Speaker 7: every day he had an interview. You go back to
Speaker 7: the archives I have I have I'm doing an interview
Speaker 7: Monday with w g N and the reporter there has
Speaker 7: been going through the Chicago Tribune archives from the eighteen
Speaker 7: nineties and just just digging up these fascinating things and
Speaker 7: sketches from these interviews in the prison cell and Holmes
Speaker 7: explaining how he felt himself changing, how his appearance wasn't
Speaker 7: the way he used to look, how his face was elongating,
Speaker 7: his ears were sharpening, these things, and you read about
Speaker 7: these things in this Tribune and the New York Times,
Speaker 7: and it's amazing. He started hypnotizing the prison guard. The
Speaker 7: authorities knew that he had this ability, and they had
Speaker 7: worn the guards not to talk to this man. Well,
Speaker 7: he could handle that, no problem whatsoever. And over time
Speaker 7: he picked the one he wanted to use hypnotize this man,
Speaker 7: and then trained him into acting with the mannerisms that
Speaker 7: would pull this fraud off. And as you read in
Speaker 7: the chapter, and I don't want to give way too
Speaker 7: much of the chapter, the guard was hung in his place.
Speaker 7: I believe this, and I have the ability to prove
Speaker 7: it one day, which is a fascinating thing, which any
Speaker 7: of your readers that pick up the book, read through
Speaker 7: it with me, and then wait over the next year
Speaker 7: or so, we're going to prove that that's true. And
Speaker 7: I'll tell you how in a second he hired the
Speaker 7: Pinkerton Guards, the most renowned guards on the planet back then.
Speaker 7: He hired them to supervise as the body came down
Speaker 7: off the gallows. When it was hung, it went immediately
Speaker 7: into a coffin which was filled with concrete. He had
Speaker 7: donated money to a children's fund, and the judge had
Speaker 7: agreed not to do an autopsy, which was the violation
Speaker 7: of Pennsylvania law. The filled of a concrete they had
Speaker 7: the Pinkerne's had a mule team waiting. They drug this
Speaker 7: concrete filled coffin to the cemetery outside of outside of
Speaker 7: the city. I've been to the cemetery twice. They had
Speaker 7: a ten foot hole waiting. Coffin went in that was
Speaker 7: filled with concrete. He gave the excuse for all this
Speaker 7: concrete to the paper, to the newspapers, that he was
Speaker 7: afraid of grave robbers and that they would ruin his soul.
Speaker 7: This man cared left about life after death, souls and
Speaker 7: his carbons that had nothing to do with it. He
Speaker 7: knew that if that coffin was dug up and there
Speaker 7: was people offering thirty thousand dollars for his brain after
Speaker 7: the hanging to be taken to medical school. He knew
Speaker 7: if it was dug up, it would be the man hunt,
Speaker 7: the greatest man hunt since the Booth after the Lincoln assassination.
Speaker 7: They would have found him and they would have shot
Speaker 7: him immediately. He would have been dead. So with all
Speaker 7: this concrete, he was fairly safe. And what we plan
Speaker 7: on doing, we're going to get a court order, we're
Speaker 7: going to dig up the concrete, and then we're going
Speaker 7: to do a DNA comparison of my tissue and what's
Speaker 7: left inside the concrete.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 7: So I'm very excited about that one day to prove
Speaker 7: some of the the ideas and conjecture I had that's
Speaker 7: inside the book well and his and his diaries.
Speaker 6: Jeff, you're going to have to promise to when that happens,
Speaker 6: to please contact me and we'll have to do another
Speaker 6: show absolutely about that event, because that will be one
Speaker 6: incredible event.
Speaker 7: Well, I've got one better than that. Why don't you
Speaker 7: come down and do your radio show from the cemetery
Speaker 7: as we dig it up.
Speaker 6: That would be amazing. That would be amazing. Yeah, that's
Speaker 6: even better idea. That'd be great. Yeah, maybe bring them,
Speaker 6: bring some film crew, be fun. Yeah, Yeah, that'd be
Speaker 6: a lot of fun. Well, that's amazing. Now now the
Speaker 6: continue with the trial again, it's you say it's the
Speaker 6: trial of the century, it's it's nothing compares to this.
Speaker 6: To O. J. Simpson, he has hypnotize this guard. And
Speaker 6: again you go through elaborate detail in the book how
Speaker 6: this is even possible. Again, you're stretching your mind to
Speaker 6: conceive of something like this. But to be fair too
Speaker 6: as well, that he did pick the jail guard out
Speaker 6: of all the bunch of guards that were there to
Speaker 6: actually watch him, did he pick the one that was
Speaker 6: most closely familiar in terms of body size. And then
Speaker 6: he did do some things to try to at least
Speaker 6: get his weight down. But the most brilliant things were
Speaker 6: planning those ideas with the media. How much control he
Speaker 6: had of the media. He was such a sensation. But
Speaker 6: instead of the other way around, where the media tells
Speaker 6: you what it's going to do, he really had them
Speaker 6: eating on the palm of his hand, didn't he.
Speaker 7: Oh, there's no doubt about it. And you know what, damn,
Speaker 7: this is not something I make up. You can go
Speaker 7: back and review all of these newspaper articles and you
Speaker 7: can see once I've told you explain to you his plan.
Speaker 7: You go back and read the newspaper articles now and
Speaker 7: it'll click in your mind that it's obvious what's happening here.
Speaker 7: It's just it was a it was an amazing event
Speaker 7: he pulled off masterful.
Speaker 6: Now, so with your research you realize that the history
Speaker 6: books are wrong, that he duped the entire world as
Speaker 6: the world was watching, and another person was executed in
Speaker 6: his place and no one discovered the ruse. What does H. H.
Speaker 6: Holmes again, according to the diaries, what does he go
Speaker 6: on to do and where does he go?
Speaker 7: Well? Uh, and before we go there, and I stayed
Speaker 7: in the book at the end of the book, Dan,
Speaker 7: and you've read it. If when we do this DNA analysis,
Speaker 7: if it is him, I'll be the first to apologize
Speaker 7: and state that I was what I was wrong. I
Speaker 7: doubt it, but I'll be I'll be the first. After
Speaker 7: after he escaped, he went on to seek vengeance on
Speaker 7: those people, the judge, the prosecuting attorney, some of the
Speaker 7: EIGEH witnesses against him, and the insurance company that he
Speaker 7: thought treated him poorly. That was the Holmes curse. After that,
Speaker 7: I think immediately he took off for Europe again, and
Speaker 7: then he fell in love with San Francisco and came
Speaker 7: out to the Bay Area and spent quite a lot
Speaker 7: of time there.
Speaker 6: Okay, now tell us about the castle, well.
Speaker 7: The murder Castle is to me. It shows his mind
Speaker 7: at work so well, and it's been written about very well.
Speaker 7: The Larsen covered it well. And the Devil in the
Speaker 7: White City and then scheckter and deranged or depraved. He
Speaker 7: realized that the World's Fair was coming. He saw it
Speaker 7: out its location, worked it back to where the transportation
Speaker 7: would have to deliver these millions of people to this
Speaker 7: the greatest show that the earth had ever seen. He
Speaker 7: found a piece of land at Junction Grove that was
Speaker 7: already a pharmacy. It was owned by a couple that
Speaker 7: he murdered, and then he took possession of after he
Speaker 7: murdered the husband, and then he got the wife to
Speaker 7: mention him in her will as far as the property,
Speaker 7: and then he killed her. He took over the building,
Speaker 7: and then across the street he bought an empty lot
Speaker 7: right there at the Junction Grove. And what Junction Grove
Speaker 7: means is the main railroad game from downtown Chicago went
Speaker 7: to south along the lake and then had a ninety
Speaker 7: to where the fair was going to be, so Junction Grove.
Speaker 7: He then devised plans for a three story building which
Speaker 7: the first floor would be the pharmacy where he would
Speaker 7: practice medicine. The second floor would be a hotel for
Speaker 7: all the young people that would come visit the fair
Speaker 7: and get off the train and be too tired to
Speaker 7: continue on that night. They would be excited of seeing
Speaker 7: the fair the next day. The third floor was his
Speaker 7: office and living space. The basement was a torture chamber,
Speaker 7: which if you take the time to study the diagrams
Speaker 7: and what the police found there when they finally investigated it,
Speaker 7: you'll be shocked to see that it was probably the
Speaker 7: only building designed from the ground up, from below the
Speaker 7: ground up to consume human beings after they've been murdered. Wow,
Speaker 7: acid bath furnaces, He had tables for operation, he had
Speaker 7: rooms for torture. He had the ability to move skeletons
Speaker 7: to medical schools and sell them organs, and just well,
Speaker 7: it was when people like you you've already brought when
Speaker 7: you think of Frankenstein and those and Dracula and those
Speaker 7: far worse. Yeah, incredible, And this was my great, great grandfather,
Speaker 7: So you'll see I'm not laughing. I try to chuckle
Speaker 7: it up. But it was a terrifying event to know
Speaker 7: that was in me and that his blood stained my soul,
Speaker 7: and I had to figure out a reason why I
Speaker 7: was alive and to identify who I was as a man.
Speaker 7: And that's what the book's about.
Speaker 6: Well, it's incredible to your journey to the present day
Speaker 6: location of the castle and you actually going into the
Speaker 6: remnants I guess of the basement of this and then
Speaker 6: you bring your friend Kim the filmmaker, and the source
Speaker 6: of a lot of sources of information at this US
Speaker 6: Post Office is from someone named Terence. So it's an
Speaker 6: incredible what it's incredible account of what you're feeling at
Speaker 6: this time because again we we don't talk too much
Speaker 6: about it, but there is this journey that you've taken
Speaker 6: the reader along with of discovery, discovery of the things
Speaker 6: that go on in your head, this definition of evil,
Speaker 6: can it be genetic? There's all these questions that you
Speaker 6: are going undergoing in your personal life at the same
Speaker 6: time as this journey of discovery to find out the
Speaker 6: truth and of course what your grandfather, Burt was trying
Speaker 6: to tell you in all of this, so it's an
Speaker 6: incredible story. When we get to the point where you're
Speaker 6: at the US post Office, they actually erected this structure
Speaker 6: on the remnants of this evil rounds. Tell us a
Speaker 6: little bit more about the directive that you finally realized
Speaker 6: that is emanating from your grandfather Bert, the person that
Speaker 6: you really didn't think too much of once upon a time.
Speaker 7: Well before we just one second. When your readers decide
Speaker 7: or they were making their decision about whether they want
Speaker 7: to read the book, they can go to our Bloodstains
Speaker 7: Facebook page and they can see the actual video of
Speaker 7: when we visited the basement of the post office, which
Speaker 7: was built on top of where the murder castle was,
Speaker 7: with some of the existing foundations built below, with a
Speaker 7: post office staff that does not go into the basement
Speaker 7: because they believe it is haunted. It's sealed up. They
Speaker 7: don't go down below. We got the like you say,
Speaker 7: the custodian to go down with us and saw some
Speaker 7: things that we explained in the book. Now, now you
Speaker 7: talk about my grandfather, and that's the end of the
Speaker 7: book is about voices and about Holmes and my grandfather
Speaker 7: and I discussing who we are in life and death
Speaker 7: and good and Eve and me finally coming to understand
Speaker 7: why my grandfather was so stoic, why he was afraid
Speaker 7: of including me with any of the things he did,
Speaker 7: and what a great man he turned out to be,
Speaker 7: and how much I miss it now. And that's that's
Speaker 7: that's the without ruining any of the story, that's the
Speaker 7: end of the book. And it doesn't matter telling your readers,
Speaker 7: your listeners about the end of the book. The book
Speaker 7: everyone that reads it. I get reviews every day now,
Speaker 7: and they all it all means something different to each
Speaker 7: that reads it than I'm just I just thoroughly enjoy
Speaker 7: going through each one.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's so fascinating tale. How many years did it take?
Speaker 6: I know that the research. You said it took two
Speaker 6: or three years to even read the diaries. How did
Speaker 6: it actually take you to begin the book, the writing
Speaker 6: of it and finish.
Speaker 7: Well from when I started, you know, traveling and visiting
Speaker 7: and the notes, and I wrote the book probably three
Speaker 7: or four times, Daniel, as a writer know, I'm all
Speaker 7: about that. And oh, I've six or seven years before
Speaker 7: I actually was satisfied enough to send it out, and
Speaker 7: probably could have continued going until finally members of my
Speaker 7: family just you know, talk me into doing it, getting
Speaker 7: it out, getting back to regular life and moving on.
Speaker 7: And they were right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you did. This journey also took a certain toll
Speaker 6: I would imagine on you as well personally.
Speaker 7: It's just.
Speaker 6: For anybody that reads the book, your head does, your
Speaker 6: mind does a sort of a flip. So I can
Speaker 6: imagine living through it. I can't imagine, but I can
Speaker 6: only imagine living through this. So I'm sensing that now
Speaker 6: that the book is out and you're getting the necessary
Speaker 6: you know, you get a lot of feedback and a
Speaker 6: lot of and so you've it into a different time
Speaker 6: in this project. Again, You're going to be inextricably involved
Speaker 6: with J. H. Holmes forever from now on. You know
Speaker 6: that anybody reads the book knows that. But a little
Speaker 6: bit of semblance of normalacy has probably come into your
Speaker 6: life now.
Speaker 7: That's exactly right, and the voice has stopped the fear
Speaker 7: of insanity. I still have epilepsy, but not to the
Speaker 7: extent I did when I was going through Holmes's graves
Speaker 7: and terrible places, and it definitely life is much better
Speaker 7: now and I feel satisfied for the effort and I
Speaker 7: wouldn't change a thing I would have if I had
Speaker 7: to do it all over again, I would do it
Speaker 7: again because Dan, my family, you know, the stigma of
Speaker 7: having been related to that man. That's why they all
Speaker 7: moved to California to get away from the stigma. And
Speaker 7: you know, for for decades they've been afraid to be
Speaker 7: called a mudget, to be known who we were related to.
Speaker 7: And I refused to do that. I wanted to tell
Speaker 7: the world that my family was good people, that even
Speaker 7: with this in our background, we made the choice of
Speaker 7: good and men were criminals, and I wanted to broadcast
Speaker 7: that to the world by telling them the truth about
Speaker 7: who this man was and the real story. So I
Speaker 7: wouldn't change a thing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's incredible. I want to tell you, Jeff, I
Speaker 6: really appreciate you coming on the program, and I really
Speaker 6: appreciate the book. The read was just fantastic. It's you
Speaker 6: keep the reader on the edge of his seat. And
Speaker 6: I'm not kidding. This book is just one of the
Speaker 6: more incredible books that I've had the pleasure of reviewing
Speaker 6: in the last couple of years and discussing and reading.
Speaker 6: It is a fantastic story and I highly recommend it
Speaker 6: for I'm sure the audience will be moved to look
Speaker 6: into this case if they haven't heard of AJ Holmes.
Speaker 6: I'm sure that you've done a great job of articulating
Speaker 6: who this person and is UH and a really good
Speaker 6: reason to pick up this book because it's just a
Speaker 6: fantastic read and an incredible, incredible story.
Speaker 7: So Dan, let me let me do something for you
Speaker 7: because you've been so kind. If your listeners go to
Speaker 7: Bloodstains theobook dot com, all one word Bloodstains the book,
Speaker 7: and tell my manager Kelly that I promised your listeners
Speaker 7: a sign copy if they if they would choose one,
Speaker 7: tell them that you're they're friends with Dan, and we'll
Speaker 7: get we'll get them assigned one.
Speaker 6: Well, that'd be great, thanks very much. I know hardcore
Speaker 6: fans will appreciate that for sure, certainly. So I want
Speaker 6: to thank you Jeff for coming on a little program
Speaker 6: here and talking about Bloodstains. Incredible story Herman Webster Mudget,
Speaker 6: your great great grandfather, and a great story about your
Speaker 6: family as well, and like you say, overcoming this I
Speaker 6: guess the Holmes curse and UH and this fine book
Speaker 6: as a result. So thank you very much, Jeff and
Speaker 6: you have a good evening, and I'm sure it'll be
Speaker 6: talking to you soon. Good Night. You've been listening to
Speaker 6: the program True Murder, the most shocking killers in true
Speaker 6: crime history, and the authors have written about it with
Speaker 6: my special guest Jeff Mudget, author of Bloodstains. Good Night,