True Crime Biographies: Ted Bundy, Edmund Kemper, H. H. Holmes, Charles Manson, Jack the Ripper (Serial Killers nonfiction Book 1) by Hourly History

Author:Hourly History [History, Hourly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hourly History
Published: 2018-10-16T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

The World’s Deadliest Fair

“I don’t know what it was that possessed me, but I took a surgical knife along with me.”

—H. H. Holmes

On May 1, 1893, the World’s Columbian Exposition opened to the public in Chicago. The Exposition, also known as Chicago’s World Fair, was a massive fair held in the city to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival to the New World. The fair spanned 600 acres across Lake Michigan waterfront and was visited by over 20 million people during its six-month run.

Holmes’ mansion was located only a few miles away from the fairground, and Holmes saw a lot of potential in this. He used his mansion’s close proximity to the fair to capitalize on his demented design of his castle. He told investors around the city that he was converting the third floor of his mansion into a hotel for visitors of the fair. Many investors believed him and gave him money to buy furnishings and complete renovations to make the property suitable for guests. Holmes never rented out any rooms to guests though, it was only a ruse to acquire modern luxuries for free. Investors wouldn’t be the only groups of people Holmes would use this ruse on.

Holmes attended the fair frequently for one purpose: to meet women. Holmes especially wanted to meet wealthy women he could scam for money. Although he never rented out any rooms in his mansion, he took out several newspaper ads for his hotel, which not only gave him credibility to investors but also the women he intended on luring to the mansion for several nefarious purposes.

Holmes saw Chicago’s World Fair as the perfect way to continue his business of selling skeletons without being detected. He couldn’t continue to murder women he was well-acquainted with. Earlier in life when people became suspicious of Holmes, he would simply leave town. He couldn’t do that now that he had his mansion. It was the monument of his life’s achievements, and he would not walk away from it. He needed to find a new way to acquire victims that wouldn’t lead police right to him.

Attendees of the fair gave Holmes unfettered access to his perfect victims. The women attending the fair were unknown in the city, so they wouldn’t be recognized as Holmes’ acquaintances, and no one nearby would realize that they were missing. As well, in a time where communication was limited, these women had no effective way to tell their families at home where they were staying and who they were staying with. When they disappeared, their families would only know that they went to Chicago and never came back. When they were eventually reported missing, the Chicago police had very little information to go off. Most investigations wouldn’t even get off the ground, and if they did, they would quickly reach a dead end.

The information that the police would never find painted a distressing picture of how these women spent the last nights of their lives. Inside Holmes’ mansion, several rooms designed to look like bedrooms were lined with asbestos, making them soundproof.

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