Describe The Differences Between Holmes And Myrta

The same year Holmes and Myrta had a child named Lucy.
Upon completion three years later, Holmes moved his drugstore into the bottom floor of the Castle and rented space out to other shops to maintain a normal appearance. The second floor contained his office and living space, while the third floor contained spacious “guest” rooms. The inside of the Castle housed a maze containing over 60 windowless rooms with one-way doors, false floors, trapdoors, doors that opened to brick walls, stairways leading to nowhere, sliding walls, sound-proof rooms, greased chutes and more. The Castle’s key features included asphyxiation chambers, iron (noise reducing) plates, blowtorches fixed into walls, dissecting tables, acid vats, alarms and a crematory.
Holmes claimed, “I was born with the devil in me... I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than a poet can help the inspiration to sing" (Larson, 109). The Murder Castle also housed torture equipment, such a long bed with straps to see how far the human body could stretch. It is rumored that Holmes got inspiration from Edgar Allen Poe for his torture chamber.
Chicago was bustling with excitement in anticipation for the fair and the local economy was booming.
Over 20 million people toured Chicago during the six months that the fair took place. Supplies and strangers spilled in and out of the city, leaving the police distracted and unable to keep up with the sudden burst of criminal activity. Holmes and Pitezel hired single woman as maids and secretaries, promising them life insurance policies. Pitezel believed that they were simply scamming the insurance companies as the beneficiary of the woman’s policies, but Holmes was actually murdering the women. Out-of-town guests came and went from the Murder Castle. Some were locked in gas chambers while others were locked in suffocation vaults near Holmes’s office where he could hear them scream. Eventually the bodies of the victims were dropped down a chute and into a furnace. Holmes cleaned the bones, rearticulated the skeleton and sold his victim’s remains to medical schools. No one suspected H.H. Holmes, the successful businessman who ran The
Castle.
When the fair ended in 1893, the Chicago economy slowed and creditors wanted their money for the construction costs that Holmes had failed to pay. The Castle caught fire multiple times. Some believe that it was Holmes himself who set the fires in order to collect the $60,000 insurance policy on the building and recover from debt. The insurance company did not put up with Holmes and the random revisions of the building’s ownership papers. Holmes abandons Chicago, but the police uncover the macabre labyrinth that he left behind.
H.H. Holmes traveled freely around the US and Canada unaware that Chicago law enforcement was onto him. He had property in Fort Worth, TX that was obtained illegally. It was rumored that he planned to build another Castle but did not follow through. In 1894 in Denver, Holmes married his third wife Georgia Yoke. They met at the fair and Georgia is said to be the only woman that Holmes loved. Holmes changed his name again in 1894 to H.M. Howard and was arrested for the first time on horse swindling charges. In prison he met a train robber named Marion Hedgepeth who gave him a new idea for an insurance scam. Holmes took Hedgepath’s idea and made his own scam. Pitezel and Holmes conspired to fake Pitezel’s death in Philadelphia. The plan was for Pitezel to assume the identity of inventor B.F. Perry and be unrecognizably burned in an accidental lab explosion. Pitezel’s wife Carrie, their children, Holmes and the lawyer would collect the $10,000 policy. Instead, Holmes fed his friend alcohol until he’d passed out and set his long-time business associate on fire. Georgia was in Philadelphia with Holmes but knew nothing about the scam or murder. Holmes made the murder look like a suicide, collected all of the Pitezel policy money and took Georgia to Indianapolis. Along with the lawyer and 14-year-old Alice Pitezel, Dr. H.H. Holmes officially represented “terminally ill” Mrs. Pitezel at the Fidelity Mutual Life Association of Philadelphia.
He then went to St. Louis, MS to promise Carrie that her husband was in hiding while he waited on their claim. He convinced her to allow him to take the children to keep from them from getting caught. Worried about the Pitezel kids catching on, he disappeared with three children and murdered them. He moved Georgia and the children simultaneously across the country without either party knowing about the other. He kept the children in secret hotels and had them write letters to their mother each day, which he never delivered. At the same time, he had Carrie and the other two children on the run by constantly supplying forwarding addresses. He told Carrie that her three children were in Indianapolis and then London with a wealthy woman. Holmes told her that her husband was in first in Canada and later fled to London. Holmes would have gotten away with the fraudulent Pitezel insurance claim if he hadn’t stolen the idea from his inmate in St. Louis, Marion Hedgepeth. Holmes used Hedgepeth’s idea and the lawyer he had recommended, but did not pay of Hedgepeth as promised. Hedgepeth outlined the scheme to police and HM Howard was quickly linked to H.H. Holmes. Detectives tracked down Holmes. In 1894, Philadelphia Detective Frank P Geyer arrested Holmes in Boston, moments before he planned to jump ship to England. Holmes was taken back to Philadelphia in connection to insurance schemes and Pitezel’s murder, but Chicago Police were not aware of Holmes arrest.
While awaiting trial Holmes claimed he was innocent and often told many different versions of the same story. Chicago police finally obtained probable cause to inspect the Murder Castle, after a custodian claimed he was never allowed above the first floor. Police had a month to inspect Holmes’s techniques before a mysterious fire burnt the building to the ground in 1895. Philadelphia Detective Geyer tracked Holmes’s activity and eventually found the decomposing bodies of two Pitezel girls buried in a cellar in Toronto, Canada. He later found bits of charred bone and teeth from a Pitezel boy in a cottage chimney in Indianapolis. Geyer said, "[Holmes’s] weakness was his belief that evil had boundaries” (Larson, 349). When he was arrested, Holmes had the letters that the three Pitezel children had written to their mother in his possession. Geyer used these letters to track their journey across the country.
By this time, Chicago and Philadelphia were fighting to try Holmes first. Holmes’s trial for the murder of Benjamin Pitezel was in 1895 in Philadelphia. Holmes fired his lawyers and defended himself. No murder defendant had ever chosen to represent himself in the United States before H.H. Holmes. The Philadelphia Inquirer described his appearance in court as “vigorous and remarkable,” while the Chicago-Times Herald wrote, “[Holmes] is a prodigy of wickedness, a human demon, a being so unthinkable that no novelist would dare to invent such a character” (Larson, 370). Holmes was not able to establish his case and hired his two attorneys back by the end of the first day. Five days into the trial, despite declaring innocence, the jury found Holmes guilty of first-degree murder of Benjamin Pitezel. He was sentenced to death by hanging and did not stand trial for any other suspected murders.
After trial, the Hearst newspaper paid Holmes roughly $7500 for a public confession published in the The Philadelphia Inquirer. Bragging, Holmes claimed to have killed more than a hundred people then decided that he officially killed only 27 people. He also claimed innocence, and possession by Satan in the articles. Holmes wrote, “I was born with the Evil One as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered into the world.” In 1896, at age 35, H.H. Holmes was hanged. His final words declared he was responsible for the criminal deaths of two women, but not responsible for the deaths of any members of the Pitezel family. The gallows malfunctioned and Holmes painfully dangled for 20 minutes before dying. Terrified of body snatchers, Holmes had his coffin filled with cement and nailed shut. Two guards watched over his grave while it was also filled with layers of cement, sand, and dirt. There is no stone to mark his grave. After reviewing missing person’s reports, Chicago police hypothesize that H.H. Holmes’s victim count could be as high as 230 men, woman, and children.
There is no single, direct motive for H.H.
Holmes’s murder spree. The Murder Castle was his design and playground. Herman Mudgett was sociopathic and suffered from antisocial personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. Characteristics of antisocial personality disorder include no anxiety, pathological lying, egocentricity and the absence of conscience (Dobbert, 2014). Herman exhibited signs of antisocial personality disorder from a young age. He dissected and performed surgery on dead and alive animals. It is also rumored that he killed a playmate as a young boy after being bullied (Herman, 2014). As an adult, he effortlessly lied to his friends and wives. He manipulated insurance companies and medical schools, while mercilessly torturing young woman. The bodies found by police in the Murder Castle were badly mutilated and nearly impossible to identify. The doctor sold most of his victim’s skeletons to medical schools and universities. He killed for curiosity, convenience and money. There is no evidence that Herman Mudgett ever showed remorse for any his crimes. He took pride in his work and claimed to be turning into the devil himself because he felt no guilt over what he did and didn’t care about his victims (H.H. Holmes, 17). The doctor also suffered from narcissistic personality disorder. He selfishly exploited others to achieve his goals and lacked any emotional connection to his victims. He was intelligent and dishonest. During construction of the
Castle, he had rooms built around an expensive bank vault. The vault was bought on credit, and Holmes threatened to sue the creditors if they damaged his hotel trying to remove the vault. H.H. Holmes knew the difference between right and wrong, and didn’t care. Preying on innocent people to get what he wanted, Herman fulfilled his fantasies carefully, resourcefully and patiently. He was completely unreliable but in complete control of his actions, which allowed him to experiment. Showing no signs of anxiety before being hanged for murder, Dr. H.H. Holmes believed that he was untouchable.