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Speaker 1: Hey, history fans, here's a rerun for today, brought to

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Speaker 1: you by Tracy V. Wilson. We hope it makes previous

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Speaker 1: episodes for this date easier to find in the feed.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to this day in History Class from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot Com and from the desk of Stuff you

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Speaker 1: Missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore

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Speaker 1: the past one day at a time with a quick

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Speaker 1: look at what happened today in history. Hello and welcome

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Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and it's November. H. H.

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Speaker 1: Holmes was arrested on this stay in e nine. You

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Speaker 1: probably have heard of H. H. Holmes. He was the

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Speaker 1: one with the murder Castle. Sometimes he's described as being

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Speaker 1: the first serial killer in the United States, but really

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Speaker 1: the same could be said of other killers as well.

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Speaker 1: He was born Herman W. Mudget in New Hampshire on

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Speaker 1: May sixteenth, eighteen sixty one. His parents were very strict

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Speaker 1: and in many ways abusive, and his only childhood friend,

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Speaker 1: a boy named Tom, died in a fall while they

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Speaker 1: were playing in an abandoned house. At that time, this

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Speaker 1: was determined to be an accident, but there are people

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Speaker 1: who think this might have been his first victim. He

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Speaker 1: got married in eighteen seventy eight, although he eventually left

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Speaker 1: his wife but stay legally married, and he started studying

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Speaker 1: medicine at the University of Vermont when he was nineteen.

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Speaker 1: He was not a great student in medical school, but

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Speaker 1: he did start up some crime while he was there.

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Speaker 1: He started using the school's cadavers to commit insurance fraud.

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Speaker 1: He would take out insurance policies on them as though

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Speaker 1: they were his family members, and then stage fake accidents

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Speaker 1: with their bodies to collect on it. It's not totally

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Speaker 1: clear whether he graduated from medical school or not, but

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Speaker 1: a child died after getting medicine from the drug store

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Speaker 1: where he worked, so he left and went to Chicago,

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Speaker 1: and that is where he started going by the name H. H. Holmes.

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Speaker 1: He took over a drug store in Chicago that was

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Speaker 1: owned by a Mrs Holton. He bought it from her

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Speaker 1: after her husband died. Except he got the money to

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Speaker 1: buy the drug store by mortgaging what was in the

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Speaker 1: drug store before he actually owned it. He also stopped

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Speaker 1: making payments on his purchase of the store, and Mrs

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Speaker 1: Holton sued him. Before mysteriously disappearing. He told other people

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Speaker 1: that she moved but couldn't give a flording address. He

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Speaker 1: got married again in seven even though he was still

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Speaker 1: married from before, and his new wife eventually left him

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Speaker 1: to give birth to their daughter, staying with her parents

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Speaker 1: after the baby was born. Then Herman Mudget, now known

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Speaker 1: as A. H. Holmes, bought some land and started building

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Speaker 1: his murder Castle. He was making it to be a

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Speaker 1: very good place to murder people. There were secret shoots

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Speaker 1: that went into the basement, an airtight vault, windowless rooms

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Speaker 1: with gas jets in them, with the controls to the

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Speaker 1: gas jets being in his office. There were also hidden

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Speaker 1: passages and to cover up what he was doing, because

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Speaker 1: this would probably seem really suspicious if you were the

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Speaker 1: lead contractor on this project. He worked with a whole

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Speaker 1: rotating series of carpenters and contractors, and he fired them

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Speaker 1: one after the other so that no one person had

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Speaker 1: a total sense of what this whole structure was going

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Speaker 1: to be like. He finished the Murder Castle in May

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Speaker 1: of eighteen ninety and at that point people were starting

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Speaker 1: to get excited for the Chicago World's Fair, so in

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Speaker 1: anticipation of that, he re outfitted his murder Castle to

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Speaker 1: be a hotel while continuing to also run the drug store.

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Speaker 1: The hotel opened long before the World's Fair arrived, and

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Speaker 1: many of his employees, a lot of them young women,

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Speaker 1: started mysteriously disappearing. There was also a series of women

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Speaker 1: that he courted and in some cases became engaged to,

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Speaker 1: who also disappeared. So did a woman named Julia Connor.

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Speaker 1: He was the estranged wife of a man that Holmes

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Speaker 1: agreed to sell the drug store to, and when she

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Speaker 1: disappeared she was pregnant. Then, during the actual World's Fair,

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Speaker 1: he started selectively allowing women to stay in the hotel.

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Speaker 1: When a man came to rent a room, he would

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Speaker 1: say they were all booked up, but when a woman

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Speaker 1: came there was a room available for her. By this point, though,

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Speaker 1: he had started to get the attention of the authorities.

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Speaker 1: Some of this was because creditors had brought up the

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Speaker 1: fact that he had not paid them their money back. Also,

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Speaker 1: the families of these missing women had said, hey, they

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Speaker 1: were working for this guy named h. Holmes. He set

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Speaker 1: fire to the building hoping to collect insurance, but failed.

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Speaker 1: He fled Chicago. He spent some time in jail for fraud,

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Speaker 1: and while he was in jail, he confessed some of

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Speaker 1: his fraud to another prisoner after his release. That prisoner

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Speaker 1: alerted Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company about Holmes's crimes because

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Speaker 1: Holmes was supposed to pay him five hundred dollars and

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Speaker 1: did not do it. So when Holmes was finally arrested

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Speaker 1: on November seventeenth of eighteen ninety four, it was for

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Speaker 1: insurance fraud, not murder. He was finally connected to some

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Speaker 1: of these murders, though after he was arrested he was

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Speaker 1: put on trial. He was hanged on May seventh of

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Speaker 1: eighteen ninety six. There are, though, folks who insisted that

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Speaker 1: he faked his own death and that someone else was

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Speaker 1: buried in his grave. DNA tests have since concluded, though,

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Speaker 1: that those remains really did belong to him. We do

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Speaker 1: not know his total death count, in part because the

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Speaker 1: Murder Castle was destroyed in a mysterious fire on August

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Speaker 1: eighteen eighty five. You can learn more about all this

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Speaker 1: on the January twelve episodes of Stuff You Miss in

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Speaker 1: History Class. Thanks to Casey P. Graham and Chandler Mays

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Speaker 1: for their audio work on the show, and you can

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Speaker 1: subscribe to This Day in History Class on Apple podcast,

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Speaker 1: can tune in tomorrow for a landmark in the world

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Speaker 1: of film from the boot of the block