Enter Herman Mudgett. A charming swindler and ingenious crook who would stop at nothing to make a dollar. His greed and cunning made his life nothing but a maze of forgery and fraud. Countless numbers of victims lost not only their money but their lives in a morbid killing machine he called his Castle.
In Chicago, he schemed his way into owning a conjoined row of turreted, three story buildings. The ground floor was dedicated to shops, the top floor to Mudgett's office and private apartments. But in between the floors he had built a nightmarish maze of 100 windowless rooms, stairways to nowhere, secret doors, and chutes that led to a torture room and mortuary in the basement. The Castle opened its doors as a hotel in time for the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893.
Herman Mudgett, now the owner of a grand hotel, placed newspaper advertisements offering women lucrative work or advantageous marriage in a large city. Being that he was handsome and suave, pretty applicants, one after another, responded to the ads. Mudgett persuaded each of them to bring him all she possessed, as he wooed her into captivity.
Over a period of three years, Herman Mudgett has a steady stream of gullible young women taking residence in the Castle, which proved to harbor a warren of soundproof, escape proof death chambers. Peepholes were everywhere. Doors were wired to activate a buzzer if the prisoners opened them. Gas lines in these chambers permitted Mudgett to asphyxiate an inmate whenever he felt the urge to off them.
Some of the women were taken below stairs while they were still alive only to be tortured if he felt they still had riches to be revealed. Once they were dead, he had many ways to dispose of the body. A metal door in the dirt floor gave access to a large lime pit. Behind one wall was a furnace hot enough to serve as a crematorium.
It was not murder, but fraud, that led to the serial killer's undoing. While he was in custody, part of the Castle caught fire and burned. Despite some of the charred ruins, police were able to find evidence of slaughter to a toll of 100 men, women and children.
Herman Mudgett was tried for murder and he confessed to 28 killings and an additional six attempted homicides. He stated that at times he would kill even if money was not involved. "I committed this and other crimes for the pleasure of killing my fellow beings to hear their cries for mercy."
Mudgett was hanged on May 7, 1896. At his request, his body was placed in a pine casket, embedded in cement and buried 10 feet under another two feet of cement. His wishes were to be safe from grave robbers and medical science.
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