One of America's first serial killers, H. H. Holmes's story was made famous by Erik Larson's book "The Devil in the White City", published in 2003. During his murderous career, he murdered between 20 to 100 people, confessing to the murders of at least 27. He was sentenced and hanged in 1896.
He was born Herman Webster Mudgett in 1861 in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, but moved to Chicago in his youth. He built a house full of tiny rooms to house and asphyxiate his victims in a pharmacy at 63rd and Wallace, which included a special furnace in which he would incinerate their bodies. He was active during the 1893 World Exposition in Chicago, and opened his house as a hotel to visitors. Many of the guests became his victims.
