H.H. Holmes: A Private Confession.

H. H. Holmes was a serial killer who committed his crimes between 1884 and 1894. He is believed to have killed more than 200 people, though he first confessed to have killed 6 and then changed his declaration to 100.

He was condemned to hang and I must say that during my service I had never experienced something as disturbing as his death: the rope failed to snap his neck and he twitched for fifteen minutes before actually dying. I thought that would be the eeriest thing I would have to face, but months later when we had to search his house we found what we called his “last letter” though it might have been meant only for himself for it contains a detailed description of his crimes since the beginning for which he knew his life would end.

Here I present you the whole document, hoping it gives you the same chills it gave us.

“Building my hotel was probably one of the major accomplishments in my life. It is magnificent, I must even say that I should have received a medal for its design. What’s more impressive is the way I got to buy it: I was working in a pharmacy for Dr. E.S. Holton and after the poor man passed away I had to persuade the sorrowful widow to sell the drug store to me. It was not easy but she finally accepted. Shortly after that, she disappeared, what a shame.

Then I managed to buy The Palace, an old building across the street which was very famous in the neighborhood. That’s when my dream began since I turned it into the glorious hotel standing there now.

I made the design myself. I didn’t want to miss any detail. I drew up a hotel plan with several rooms, hidden passages, trap doors, torture rooms, and a dungeon-like basement. I was really careful because I knew I would have to hire staff and I didn’t want anyone getting their nose into my business.

However, when the hotel opened I decided I would hire only women who would never find their way out. Before hiring them, I would urge them to make me a beneficiary in their insurances, that was my only way to get an extra benefit from all this.

Most of my victims were blonde, young women, but I must confess I had no trouble in killing men and children as well. I consider myself to be very creative, apart from all the trap doors and passages I had built gas chambers and ovens. I also have a large air-tight vault near my office which was meant to put victims and let them asphyxiate. I used poison with some of my victims and most of them were dissected after death. Finally I flayed their flesh from their bones so I could sell skeletons – recently I had started to sell organs, too – to Medicine Schools. Unfortunately, there are corpses which I could not use – mostly kids’ corpses – so I just cremated or buried them in the lye pit.

All good things must come to an end and I know my end is coming. My last attempt to escape was asking my dear friend, Benjamin Pitezel to help. The idea was to fake his death in order to get the insurance money. However I decided to change the plan and ended up killing him to keep the insurance for myself. I convinced the widow to allow three of her children to travel with me and simultaneously travel with her.

I have recently killed the three children, the girls were the first ones, they were so annoying I could not stand it anymore. Later on I moved to Indianapolis where I killed Pitezel’s young boy. I remember dismembering the corpse and burning the remains in a cottage’s fireplace.

I returned to Boston, I’m in my cell writing this now. However I suspect that my meddling cellmate is planning something. There is no way he knows about my little secret. He must be annoyed by the horse I recently stole. I have always enjoyed big challenges so now we will see if police can see through my caper. “

Of course we had already figured out the whole crime! We got to talk to some employees who were working at the moment in his hotel and found out that they were never allowed to clean the top floor. We searched the whole hotel and we found the remains of some of his victims. Although he never confessed how many people he killed, missing reports from the area have given us an idea.

It is funny though, I remember his last request was to be buried in concrete since he did not want anyone to dissect him as he dissected his victims.

You may be wondering what happened to the hotel. It was burned in August of 1895, a year before Holmes was put to death. His Hotel was a masterpiece in what architecture concerns, it is a shame it was meant for one of the darkest purposes I can conceive.