Hey weirdos, before we dive into today's twisted tale, let me tell you about a place where the darkness never ends.
Wondery Plus. It's like stepping into a haunted mansion where the floorboards creak with ad -free episodes and early access to new episodes lurks around every corner.
So come join us, if you dare.
Morbid is available one week early and ad -free only on Wondery Plus.
You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or an Apple podcast or Spotify.
You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast. Audible originals all in one easy app find the genres you love and discover new ones explore bestsellers new releases plus thousands of included audiobooks podcasts and originals that members can listen to all they want with more added all the time right now I am listening to the southern book club's guide to slaying vampires by grady hendrix and I just cannot get enough of it I never want to pause it I'm literally like loading the dishwasher listening to it on the treadmill listening to it constantly it's so awesome I love being able to listen anytime
time anywhere I want to.
And there's more to imagine when you listen.
Sign up for a free 30 -day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free.
Visit audible .com slash morbid.
You know what time it is?
It's time for a fresh approach to dog food and that's where the farmer's dog comes in.
Developed by board -certified nutritionists, which is pretty impressive, the farmer's dog is human -grade dog food that's made with real meat and veggies and gently cooked to preserve those nutrients.
Traditional pet food is highly processed and difficult to portion correctly, but the farmer's dog, it's changed that with their freshly made food.
They take the guesswork out of serving sizes by precisely portioning your dog's food based on their very unique nutritional needs.
Sydney and Blanche are eating the farmer's dog right now, and we absolutely love it.
What's really fun is each packet has their name on it, So it says Blanche's food, Sydney's food, which is just fun.
They love it. They can't read, but I kind of pretend that they do.
Maybe they can. Maybe they can.
Who am I to say? Get 50 % off your first box of fresh, healthy food at thefarmersdog .com slash morbid.
Plus, you get free shipping.
Just go to thefarmersdog .com slash morbid to get 50 % off.
That's thefarmersdog .com slash morbid.
Hey, weirdos. I'm Ash.
And I'm Alayna. And this is officially a big series of Morbid.
It's a multi -parter.
And it's like a celebration of our fucking five podcasting years, guy.
Five years. Fiveyears .com.
I'm holding my hand up to signify five.
Should we high five, Freddie?
High. that was a good one that was a really good one eyelash i bet oh we knocked the eyelash out of quite literally ow oh man okay death destruction you know when they're like not yours so this is it it's five years we're blinding ash right now god i've been going through it on this podcast lately oh guys um every episode last week i was like yeah my stomach hurts i got the stomach bug that's what it was she was she was gearing up to the last episode that we did uh i got the stomach bug that night yeah so yeah so because everybody was like huh ash hasn't been doing doing great every episode i
was like i don't know my stomach is just really off really off it was off for like a week and then i was like you know what i should do i should eat chicken and waffles yeah and then the stomach bug said oh you thought stupid bitch that's what it said yeah i heard it all the way from here yeah but yeah somehow she got the stomach bug and she kept it to herself so i appreciate that that's because you weren't anywhere near me yeah thank goodness love you so I love you so much. I wanted to be alone.
Leave me alone with my neurovirus.
Hopefully, you know, we're getting out of that season.
I hope so. Let's, let's all just stop giving each other the stomach bug and shit.
Be careful. GI bugs are really, uh, they're really having a moment right now.
Yeah. Ask Beach Gem on TikTok.
Beach Gem on TikTok.
She'll tell you all about it.
Oh, and you know what I learned from Beach Gem?
I think it was Beach Gem that said it.
And then you've said it before too, but I think you said it last time.
You were sick. You can't Use hand sanitizer to get rid of the Neurovirus and do you know why Because it's wrapped in a lipid Which is a fat Which is a Fat Lipids science With morbid and beach Gym yes you have to wash your hands for at Least 20 seconds yeah use soap And water that'll get rid of the GI buggies But other than that they're sticking around Because Yeah they're hard to get gone no you said hopefully They're leaving I hope so let's all knock on wood together april showers bring no stomach bugs exactly that's how that goes so it's called writing look it up it's called manifestation okay
uh so yeah this like we said this is five years guys and i know you looked at the title of this episode so this isn't going to be a big exciting surprise right this second but like i hope you're excited because you hit hit play uh you have been asking all of you a long time for five years all of it for hh homes yeah i have been wanting to do hh homes for five years it's true but i knew it was a big long one similar to jack the ripper i knew that it needed like real attention paid to it like because it's just got so much extra Jewish to it that i was like this is like you know it's got history
it's It's got all this mayhem to it.
You got to siphon through all the lies and find the actual facts in the case because this motherfucker lied.
Like a liar. Like a liar.
He lied right to everyone's face holes all the time.
I like how you're doing a lot with your hands right now and the way that you were just like digging through the lies.
I'm digging. It made me think of the little girl in Knocked Up and she's like, and then you dig and you dig and then the baby's inside.
That's exactly it. You dig and you dig and you dig and you find a little of the truth.
Yeah, that's what this is.
It's a little truth, baby.
But yeah, he was a liar.
And I think we're going to get right into it.
I don't know how many parts this is going to be.
Many. So just strap in.
I think it's at least going to be three.
Buckle up, brothers.
Could be four. I'll let you know probably in the next episode for sure how many parts it will be.
But, you know, strap in.
This is our big five -year series that we wanted to give to H .H.
Holmes because he's a piece of shit.
and you know the story is wild yeah so let's start at the beginning that's a good place to go it always is in the late 1800s herman webster mudget herman webster mudget take that in hh holmes's real name is herman webster mudget so he could have been hm mudget yeah wow hw mudget it yeah webster yeah i was a little dyslexia for you okay we'll just flip it upside down i was kind of just thinking about the real housewives of new york when luann says like the herman munster shoes there you go of course you are yeah but this is where we need to begin because it's like all right so hh homes may objectively
is a is a cool name like hh homes flows it's a very like smooth name you would probably trust in hh holmes if you didn't know this hh holmes yeah like all this aside it like every all of it of course it would be a stage name it would like hh holmes sounds cool yeah herman webster mudget doesn't sound as scary no or maybe sounds scarier actually i should say it sounds scarier it just sounds kind of lame but you know holmes we're gonna we're gonna refer to him as holmes because that's what he went by for most of his name that's what people knew knew him by that's what his crimes are really under um
we'll call him herman for part of this like in the beginning but you'll know who we're talking about um but aka hh holmes he claimed and confessed to officially killing up to 28 people some people most people all people believe that it could be well over 200 people that he has killed you believe i believe he's way up there yeah i think he's more than 28 okay um while the full extent of his crimes and the number of lives that he did take is probably something that we may never know to the nth degree you know like i don't think we're going to be able to find every single person i would love to believe
we could it was really his ability to kill without conscience or hesitation really for financial financial gain most of the times sometimes he did it because he just liked to do it but most of the time it was for financial gain do you think it was like financial gain and he's he liked it oh it was for sure a mix yeah it was for sure a mix and i think it was also the systematic way that he got rid of his victims in his murder castle which don't worry we will get to it feels like a horror novel it doesn't feel like real life yeah when you read the actual facts of this you're like That's not real.
But it is. It's wild.
And in truth, he wasn't really like a genius.
He wasn't as calculating as he's really made out to be.
He was just a man who learned pretty early on in life that being a confident liar can get you a long way in the world, unfortunately.
Sad but true. Especially if you can create enough chaos and confusion to make it absolutely impossible possible to actually tell the difference between fact fact and fiction you ever seen the great gatsby there you go if you can spin a tale so wild that people can't tell if it's real fake what is what isn't there's nuggets of truth here there and everywhere he can he got a long way with it yeah and when we go through this you're gonna see damn he went a long way with it i'm actually really like excited to hear your telling of this because i don't know that much about h .h holmes to be honest he's
it's weird that like i think a lot of people a lot of people know the name hh homes they know the murder castle you know they know like the the things about it that we've all been told but when you dig into it and you realize like he was not just a monster he was such a piece of shit like he was like he was a piece of shit in every aspect of his life good it was like he he was just such a shit bag it's wild and he was such a fucking liar such a liar he had no qualms about hurting everybody along the way in various ways like emotionally financially physically anything you think like yeah he didn't
care full -blown sociopath i think he is full -blown yeah full -blown and all he gave a shit about was money yeah that's all he cared about and And it didn't do him well in the end.
I feel like if your main goal is just money, it's never going to work out that well.
If you look at money -obsessed people throughout history, they usually are like...
Yeah, it doesn't work out in the very end.
In the very end, it doesn't.
It might work out along the way, but in the end, it doesn't.
It can't be your only goal.
No. Ultimately, it ends up eating you alive.
Yep. It really does.
Now, let's start at the very beginning of H .H.
Holmes. So H .H. Holmes, like I said, was born Herman Webster Mudgett in Gilmanton, New Hampshire.
Ah, bitch. On May 16th, 1861, his parents were Levi Mudgett and Theodate Price.
I think that makes him a Taurus.
Oh, there you go. Wow.
I didn't see that for him.
I'm going to double check, though.
But according to H .H.
Holmes himself, his early years in New Hampshire were, quote, no different from those of any other country bred boy.
And I was well trained by loving and religious parents.
i don't know about that his parents were methodists they were very strict disciplinarians his father levi was a house painter and would later go on to serve as the town's postmaster and his mother stayed at home she was a housemaker okay now they were not known to be like strange mean to have any like dark ways about them by neighbors or anything like that according to To Adam Seltzer's book, H .H.
Holmes, this true story of the white city devil.
Neighbors remembered the Mudgets as, quote, very upright, God fearing citizens living in a quiet, secluded section of the country with no trace or taint of immorality or vice in the family history for at least three generations.
I love that they were like, now we can't tell you about that fourth generation.
They could be heathens of the highest order.
But for three generations, these people did the damn thing and they seemed OK.
okay okay like we can vouch for three generations we're not going back to that fourth i don't know but it's weird because you get little again with that there's a lot of parts of this story where you hear holmes himself tell 40 different like versions of the story or you hear other places just give you different things you will find if you read about them that they were you know there There was nothing of note in his childhood with his parents that seemed to set off anything.
But him saying like, you know, they were good people.
I didn't really have anything wrong with them.
That is probably true.
Remember, it was the 1800s.
So I'm pretty sure they were strict disciplinarians meant they beat the shit out of their kids when they got in trouble.
And that was just normal back then.
So I think it was one of those things that it was like, oh, yeah, whatever.
And normal, like all throughout his life.
really so what would he have said like whatever but herman himself i'm gonna call him herman for now wrote an autobiography from prison later called homes his own story and he wrote it in 1895 and he starts the book like this this will tell you everything you need to know about what kind of theater kid this guy is uh -oh quote come with me if you will to a tiny quiet new england village nestling among the picturesque -esquely rugged hills of new hampshire this little hamlet has for a century been known as gilmonton here in the year 1861 i herman w mudgett the author of these pages was born narcissist
like wow okay girl calm down like look i twas i the author of these pages was born it's fantastic it's like and the world was a worse place for it so thank you for bringing us back to that moment where we all went fuck I also love that he starts the book with come with me if you will everybody else is like nope yeah we're like no no I know it reminds me of like the in like Willy Wonka when he's like come with me and you'll see no like that and it feels the same like when Willy Wonka did it I was like no thank you and now when he does it I'm like no thank you I don't anytime someone says come with me
stranger no thank you I'm gonna go this way so like we said the mudgets were a well -liked family holmes's childhood seems fairly unremarkable for the time period especially his mother remembered him as quote a good little child very pretty and loving as most moms remember their children being yeah like very pretty and loving but not everyone remembered him as being so pretty or so loving as he began to get older According to Ira Penick, a cobbler in Gilmanton, he said, quote, Herman was a hard worker, but still there were some things about him I didn't like.
He was too fond of money.
And Penick told reporters that there were a lot of times when he was around the shop that he would see money go missing when he had been around.
Or when Herman would claim that he'd sent payment for a service, he would just pocket the money himself.
That's fake as fuck.
and in fact of the many stories that people got after he was arrested finally which we will get to in the ultimate episode at the end um a lot of people said that he was generally polite and pretty like fine like no one was like wow he was so popular cool or oh he was so weird and odd and like we hated him yeah it was just like he was fine i guess like whatever but they always mentioned him possessing a very unhealthy preoccupation or obsession with money that was always the thing people were like yeah he was fine he was polite i guess like he wasn't super offensive but like my god that guy was obsessed
with money and it's like when everyone in your life that is the one like like common thread that everybody can touch upon that's bad yeah you you want to be known for like a little bit more a little bit more than scrooge mcducking your way through life i think is a really good way of doing it.
Was that an adverb?
Yeah. No, that would be L -Y.
That was a verb. It was a verb.
I like it. I like it.
I like that you scrooge McDucked as a verb.
Yeah, you know. But by most accounts, he did struggle a little to develop healthy interpersonal skills as a child, which to me would be a red flag now considering his adult activities, but at the time, you know.
Also the 1800s. So like was there even people to make friends with?
Was anyone having healthy the interpersonal skills at that point i don't think so but according to one of his neighbors as a boy he was quote a boy easily influenced and did not appear to be well grounded and firm principles notwithstanding his excellent home training and instruction so he just couldn't stand in his own convictions and honestly didn't seem to hold any real moral strongholds of his own and that's not good that's a red flag to me but other neighbors remembered him spending a lot lot of time by himself kind of being a little bit of a loner sometimes um another neighbor named betsy
betsy hoadley fucking love the name betsy you know i thought you were gonna be like i know betsy oh my god that's my good girl betsy betsy hoadley she said i don't know if you heard that um but she said quote he always seemed to be by himself i know that instead of playing with the other boys he would wander off alone or on long walks he was never much of a favorite with the other boys he seemed to be very secretive he was too arrogant and domineering to be popular with the children again that alone to me isn't a huge issue but added into everything else later and it's definitely another red flag
that you're like and what was he doing off by himself that's the thing and being secretive it's like you killing animals and also of note many who knew him as a boy later said that he would never make eye contact when addressing children or adults adults huh would not look you in the eye he wouldn't look anyone in the eye to me i was like oh that's that's a little sketchy but then if you read a little further into this you see that a couple of medical professionals did diagnose him at one point with stravidmus and which is technically like um cross -eyed oh okay now this can make it nearly impossible
to maintain eye contact physically and people you know it can actually like hold people back because people think look at it as being like oh you're sketchy or untrustworthy i just can't look but it's really like he honestly just couldn't look people in the eye oh that's so like that isn't super fair to like label as like oh that's a little like here's the thing i'm sure he was on like he was objectively untrustworthy and objectively a criminal so like even if he could look you in the eye i'm sure he wouldn't but like physically he couldn't so like why we won't use that as a red flag we'll rest
on that now although he did like to invent things when he was younger and he showed interest in a few areas he never showed a real direction and he seemed to kind of float around without a real purpose for a while same and it was really a bit later that he finally settled on medicine as his thing now the stories recounted to reporters after he was arrested um are definitely influenced by what what he did and what he was charged with and what he was found to have done so it is like a little biased when you look at it later and people are seeing hindsight in full 2020 now remember now these things
are never super red flags until they add up and you sprinkle in some murder and then you're like oh yeah that all makes sense exactly nevertheless people definitely all kind of came to a consensus that he was odd he was very apathetic he was fucking obsessed with money and honestly when you put that on with today's understanding of the psychology of con artists or killers it's pretty on par lines up yeah those line up so it's not like everybody's just making shit up this is who he was now one interesting story that's often told was that when he was a a young boy he always had like a fear of the local
doctor's office which is pretty common in kids and especially i'm sure in the 1800s the local doctor's office was a scary fucking nightmare den so they just have all their like huge ass tools laying out like i i'm not gonna fault little little herman for that one he's like i bumped my knee they're like we're gonna cut it off yeah it's like ah and this guy um his name was dr nahum white i believe his last name was or his his full name was and he was a known um like he was very into dissection he was an anatomist he was very good at his job he was very respected but he took dissection to another level
sometimes okay so he had things in his office that would have been a little morbid tm oh and also like a little scary yeah child so that makes sense but one day a couple of older boys dragged hermin forcibly into one of the rooms in the office and showed him a skeleton.
Where are all the employees?
Yeah, I mean 1800s.
They're like, I don't give a fuck.
Damn, I hope that they're just like, yeah, we're gonna run in here real quick.
Don't tell HIPAA. We're just gonna run in.
Morbid is sponsored by Squarespace.
Squarespace is the all -in -one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online.
Who doesn't want to stand out and succeed?
Get you a girl who can do both.
Every dream needs a domain.
Squarespace domains make it easy to find the best name for your business at one fair, all -inclusive price.
No hidden fees or add -ons required.
Every Squarespace domain comes with advanced privacy and security tools included to ensure that your domain remains online and protected.
Plus, Squarespace provides everything you need to to bring more of your dream to life, whether that means building a website or adding a professional email service.
Squarespace gives you everything that you need to offer services and get paid all in one place.
From consultations, events, and experiences, showcase your offerings with a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business.
Plus, streamline your workflow with built -in appointment scheduling and email marketing tools.
Head to squarespace .com slash morbid for a free trial.
And when you're ready to launch, use offer code morbid to save 10 % off your first purchase of a website or domain.
You know those photos sitting in your phone?
The ones that make you smile every time you scroll past them?
Well, at SmallWoodHome .com, they believe that you deserve better than that.
SmallWoodHome transforms your favorite memories into stunning gallery -quality artwork that tells your story.
All you have to do is upload your photo to SmallWoodHome .com, choose your style from classic framed prints to elegant wrapped canvases, and they'll handle the rest. With natural wood finishes like stained almond, black, or white, plus options for sleek acrylic fronts, there is a perfect match for every home.
And the best part? Every small wood home piece is handcrafted right here in the USA by real artisans who care about quality.
No assembly lines, no shortcuts, just beautiful, personalized art that is made to last. I love a handcrafted thing.
Over 3 million happy customers have have already discovered why smallwoodhome .com is just different.
They deliver gallery quality at prices that make sense and ship in just days.
I have so many photos in my phone that I'm about to send over to them that I can finally hang up on my walls and I'm really excited about it.
Right now get 30 % off when you use code morbid at smallwoodhome .com.
That's promo code morbid to get 30 % off your first order at smallwoodhome .com.
Give your memories the showcase they deserve.
This skeleton, by all accounts, was set up so that it had its arms outstretched, which Herman said made it look like it was about to grab him.
And it was like this big open -mouthed skeleton, scary.
And so it scared the shit out of him, totally traumatized him, but at the same time, it fascinated him.
Okay. And he said that was the beginning of his fascination with medicine and anatomy.
Okay. I'm sure it scared the shit out of him.
I don't know if that was the beginning of his real, like, fascination with medicine.
I think he's trying to use that as like, here's this origin tale of my of my great career in medicine, which was bullshit anyway.
So it's like, I don't know about that.
Well, because a lot of times you're inspired by, like, multiple things.
Yeah, exactly. I was like, no, I think that you knew that doctors made more money.
And so you wanted to do that.
Yes. Because you do love a pretty coin.
I think it's more that, my friend.
but during his teen years he graduated high school at 16 and he started working a number of odd jobs and finally he ended up teaching at a local school for a little while it was during this time where he was teaching that he fell in love with Clara Lovering Clara was a girl from a prominent family in nearby Loudoun New Hampshire and now interestingly people who knew Herman early early in life said that he had been obsessed with getting married very early in life um even when he was like 14 years old he was trying to get that dowry he was trying to get that dowry there you go and in fact after his grandfather
passed away his grandfather left him a small parcel of land which was very common um and he took this as like well i'm a landowner now so i need to get myself a wife slow down so he at 14 he proposed to this girl who was actually boarding with that cobbler ira pennock who was like he was a weird kiss yeah and probably stole money from me and also proposed to this lady that was living with me when he was 14 i guess this girl that he proposed to was like visiting the country from new york or something like was staying and boarding at ira pennock's for the like some period of time sure and so ira pennock
was like yeah you can't marry this girl she's going back to new york and like i'm supposed to be taking care of her and like you can't just like i can't like marry her off to you you psycho like what the hell's happening so she had apparently either accepted it and it was like a no you can't do that or she didn't accept it and the proposal returned to new york very shortly after um but he was undaunted though don't worry about it he wasn't gonna that wasn't the end of his romanticism but um he tried again when he met clara lovering so clara was very well liked very respected people thought she
was sweet and kind and really didn't have a bad thing to say about her a neighbor once said about her quote she was a very pretty little woman when she was first married and was very devoted to her husband she was a she was of a modest and retiring disposition okay that sounds great for 1800s like that's victorian like you go girl i think she was an she was an it girl she went on hot girl walks there you go they were like i always see her in the morning on her hot girl walk she's drinking her greens that's right she is she's getting it people said you couldn't help liking clara oh i love that apparently
the two of them began officially dating at a church social when herman slash holmes saw another boy hitting on her oh no you don't and he basically threatened in this boy's life if he didn't back off and that worked apparently and they and like why did that work so well i know why wasn't that boy like you're not gonna do shit herman you can't look me in the eye but this guy was probably like he probably will kill me so because a lot of people throughout his life were like i think that guy's gonna murder people exactly like they just like thought it yeah like he didn't even need to do anything
violent he did later but when even before he was like actively outwardly violent it's like people were like i don't know i just feel like he's gonna murder someone someday like he just had that vibe it was foreshadowing i i know you can't really do anything off of that vibe like what are you supposed to do be like i feel like you're gonna murder someone so you should get arrested the air it worries it does worry go listen to the rewatcher that's a funny it's funny little tidbit from there the air worries about him and it does worry about it but they worked for clara this whole threatening the guy
that was hitting on her thing i mean i mean a guy that she was like all right back in the day to fight for my own yeah two guys fighting over you but you know what's sad he's not going to no he's a piece of shit yeah of course but he proposed not long after they began courting and the two eloped in alton new hampshire in july of 1878 and they were both 17 years old now on par with herman's secrecy and general oddness it was several months before his family or Clara's family even knew that they were married wow uh when they found out they because they just got married in front of like a justice
of the peace yeah when they found out they were uh not happy on either side apparently Herman's mother so H .H.
Holmes's mother said Clara couldn't have found much worse which feels like a stark turn from the sweet family neighbors remember and from Herman being like yeah my family is so kind and wonderful i'm like your mom didn't think this girl could find much worse than you oh that's his mom that's his mom oh shit so that's what i mean when i say like imagine if you found out that your mom said that about you and she was like she and i guess she said like oh she's gonna have to support you oh because she because she knew she was like he's a fucking deadbeat like i know this he's pretty but that's about it
and he loves money but he can't get it himself so he's gonna take yours yikes it's like damn your own mom knew that's rough but then later if you research a bit deeper into their family it seems there was this weird strange jealousy that his mother and his sister helen actually had whenever he found a girl that he liked i don't like that there was something strange afoot there i'm sure of it i just don't know what you know what though like some families are like that yeah like especially if there's one boy it's he's always like the crown jewel of the family and it gets weird sometimes where it's
like i'm gonna kill any girl that comes near him and stuff and it's like yeah yeah i don't know i think there's a tlc show about it it's it's always been a weird vibe to me yeah when like it immediately makes me question when like uh like that's why i love my mother -in -law no mine neither like it's in fact she always is like you know thank you for making him so happy kind of thing like she's just always like so kind and like supportive of it and she always has been yeah it's always a little off -putting to me when like mother -in -laws or future mother -in -laws are like i'll fucking kill you and it's
like okay all right you like i'll see tiktoks where like people who don't like even have kids yet they're like someday my son i'll hate his girlfriend and you're you're like why are you gearing up for that here's the thing like you can't yeah period like you can't like and you know what i'm saying sit down you can't you cannot it's just a it's a weird vibe it is like you should like my personal thought process with that and like we're not getting off on a tangent so don't worry or maybe we are it doesn't matter i'm not gonna say i'm not gonna go far don't worry but my personal thought about that is that like i
want to love the person and i I think we've talked about this before.
They're like, I want to be the person my kids love.
Of course. Whoever they are.
As long as they're a good person and they make them happy, let's go.
To me, I'm like, cool.
Eventually, I get more kids.
Like, I get to be. Dude, that's what my future mother -in -law always says.
Drew's mom literally says she has six kids.
See, and that's like, it's like that.
You should want, why wouldn't you want that?
Yeah. That's the ultimate goal.
Exactly. I will love to love the people my loved ones love.
Right. Like, you know, like that's how it should be.
like you want to make sure they're like if they're a shit person obviously you know then no but if like they've done nothing and you're just going into it being like i'm gonna fuck your world up like that's a bad way to go into any relationship and again you can't you can't so so so herman munster's mom you can't yeah god damn it herman webster stuck in a place of rooney you are so heard herman webster's mom you cannot and sister you can't either yeah because that's even weirder it's all just yuckas that takes it even to a weirder place yeah uh but clara's family was not too pleased either but she
was they were not pleased that they weren't really established he wasn't stably working like they were like ah you guys kind of jumped into this and they were both 17 yeah i mean which at the time i guess it probably wasn't that weird in the 1800s but like they weren't i think they were both just like i would like you guys to have like a decent life So we got to get you on track.
So Clara's family took matters into their own hands and set Herman up with a job as a clerk at the grocery store at a grocery store in East Concord. And it was a grocery store where Clara's family owned.
And a lot of Clara's family members worked there, too.
And they said if he they went while working with him, they got to know him better.
Yeah, that's probably why they did that.
Yeah. And it was smart because they said one thing about him was that if he even got the slightest compliment about anything.
It would blow his head up wildly.
Oh. Like a very much, like, a narcissistic kind of vibe to it.
I'm not diagnosing him.
Don't worry. But. Get out of your armchair.
Get out. I'm out of my armchair.
But I'm just saying he, that's vibey with narcissism.
For sure. Of course it is.
He, like, narcissism adjacent is what I'm saying.
But he loved to be complimented.
OK. And would obsess over it.
And it would just make him be like, oh, you know what I mean?
like oh you did really great at stocking those shelves and he'd be like well that's because i'm the greatest shelf stocker this side of the mississippi you fuckers like bow down before me like it was like too much like it was never like thank you that's usually but you should just go with but you know whatever by all accounts at this time the couple seemed fine they seemed happy in fact people said he was seemingly in the beginning very smitten with clara um people People said he would walk like miles to see her after work and then walk miles back to work.
I hate saying. Oh, I know.
Because in the beginning it looks like there was intentions of possibly living a life with a clean, you know, but I think the intention was probably fleeting to the point of being like maybe.
And it's gone. Like it was literally like I couldn't even couldn't even blink without it.
Like it was that quick because he never had any good intentions ever again.
don't worry good now a year and a half later the couple's son robert was born in february 1880 um in in his teens he had been like i said very aimless didn't really know what he was doing but they said when when he got married and when he became a father it did seem to awaken some kind of like i gotta get my shit together kind of thing that's good that's usually what it should do he wanted to be somebody he was claiming um and holmes's position as a store clerk didn't really give him an opportunity to like rise up the ranks in his opinion like enough and he so and it really was only meant to be
a stepping stone because i think it was clara's uncle who had owned the store and he was like i was just trying to give you this to get like a leg up yeah you know so like calm down save some money don't don't worry he's like i didn't want you to take over the fucking business asshole well and his whole idea was like hey i was giving you this leg up maybe you learn this business and maybe you go open your own store somewhere yeah maybe maybe you get to know this whole business you and then you're a store owner somewhere else right you can you know everybody's happy and even if not that like you
tuck some money away and you learned a little bit about business you know in working with people and finances and all this stuff just about being in the working world just being a human you know but he holmes quickly herman i should say at this point he's herman but he quickly grew pretty tired of this work he thought quote that he thought he was quote altogether too bright for the life of a country storekeeper okay in um an interview after he was arrested clara actually said to reporters father tried to encourage him by telling him that someday he could have a store of his own and could make
a very comfortable living but he seemed to think he was too smart for such an ordinary occupation he thought he could make a lot of money fast he became imbued with the idea of becoming a doctor and he used the talk of the immense fortune fortunes that physicians had made in a short time especially if they invented some patent medicine he became obsessed with creating some kind of patent patented medicine i remember that part of the story now despite his penchant for get rich quick schemes like he was that kind of guy yeah like you know those kind of people tommy haverford exactly he did seem
at this time that he was becoming very very serious about becoming a doctor.
So which wasn't a get rich quick scheme.
He was going to have to go through a lot of training, obviously, and spend a lot of money.
Exactly. So he did quit his job at the general store and he started studying with Dr. Nahum, Nahum Wright, who are white, excuse me, who had owned that practice in Gilmonton, the one who owned that office and was an anatomist. That was very respected, very renowned.
Amputations though, right?
Loved amputations, loved a, like very morbid dissection like he was just and he again he was a very good doctor by all accounts he was very respected held many esteemed positions like not bad things to say about this doctor at all he just at the time was seen as someone who took it to a different level okay now maybe it wouldn't be okay but back then it was um but he started working with him he was studying underneath underneath him.
And it's funny because he came full circle back to that office with the skeleton that scared the shit out of him.
That is funny. Well, maybe that's why he said to like, oh, it all started here.
Yeah. And it's like, I wonder if his like extreme dissections and extreme like kind of displays of anatomy in that office was something that Holmes suddenly found himself drawn to.
Like sparked something within him.
And when he wasn't working with Dr. White, he would spend a ton of time studying on his own time uh medical books any medical book he could get his hands on because he just wanted to start right away and by 1881 he took a job teaching at the potter district school in gilmonton which remember he had taught before um and this was like a small class of like 15 students so he didn't have a ton that he had to do for that job so it allowed him a lot of time to study on the side okay meanwhile clara and robert were living with her parents in loudon she was essentially raising him as a single parent like
he was kind of absent from that child's life um or well maybe that's a better thing maybe it was better for him but the distance between her and herman at the time was just getting bigger and bigger um and in the spring of 1882 holmes left herman left gilmonton for burlington vermont and he started studying medicine at the university of vermont so he he was even further away now it should be noted that medical schools at the time were regarded pretty dubiously uh if you listen to our birkin hair series you remember talk of resurrection men resurrectionists or grave robbers how could i forget med
students themselves were basically known to grave rob for their anatomy lessons it was almost one of those things where like you could show how committed you were by being like i dug my own corpse for anatomy today Fantastic.
Corpses were not easy to come by legally at the time, and pre -doctors got a doctor.
So they're going to do what they got to do at the time.
They got a doctor. I found in one of the sources that we will list in the show notes, I found this epitaph of a nine -year -old girl named Ruth Sprague from 1846 who died in Hoosick Falls.
This just kind of shows what people thought of physicians at the time.
it reads her body dissected by fiendish men her bones anatomized her soul we trust has risen to god where few physicians were eyes oh shit they said physicians gonna who i was like i don't know if that's really fair but like they might save your kid at some point or like you at the time that's the only way they had just discovered that you can't properly teach physicians without without dissecting corpses.
It's just the way it is.
To this day, we do that because you have to, right.
In order to learn about the human body, you got to open the human body up.
It's just the way it is.
Hands on baby. There you go.
Like fortunately now it's all legal.
You know, much more ethical, much more, all of that good stuff back then.
Nothing was legal or ethical or anything of that, or fucking even hygienic.
Like it's like, or they still thrown and shit out the window at this point it was wily then like if you look up pictures i gotta find the picture and maybe we'll try to post it of like these you know early med students in the 1800s doing a dissection and we can like blur out the thing if you want but i mean like even put a note exactly just so you know it's really not gruesome to be honest no but all of them are in three -piece suits and just wearing like leather aprons over their three -piece suits while they're doing an an autopsy essentially and it's like i can't imagine eviscerating in a three
-piece suit i don't think you are meant to like that is a wild but how fucking dapper is that oh i was saying to you earlier today we were having this discussion even just like the fact like how women used to do their hair i'm like yeah i want to do my hair like that i'm about to start fucking sleeping with socks wrapped all up in this noggin yeah to make it these soft curls yes yeah i love voluminous of some things back then they they had it right i mean would i say that you should eviscerate in a three -piece suit now no but we got cool pictures from back then so that's all that matters cheers
but either way again they were they were looked at as a little little side eye i just wanted to set the tone so very few peers or college faculty really seem to have have even remembered herman much from this time period but those that did said he wasn't exactly their favorite person he wasn't terrible he just he wasn't that great either okay um a woman named uh mrs brew who holmes actually boarded with for nearly his entire stay in burlington because they med students would stay at boarding homes like people would keep them in there it's like top There you go.
It's exactly like that.
It's like Project Runway.
There you go. She remembered Herman saying that he was married.
He was still married to Claire at this time.
Don't you forget it.
Technically. But he was, quote, always flirting with a number of young girls in Burlington.
What a piece of poop.
And he actually paid particular attention to Brew's daughter, which she did not like.
Oh, no. And they're living together?
Yes. mrs brew also said that um herman would wake up early every morning and leave the house for what he said were long walks for his health gotta get those steps in but yeah it's like he put on his apple watch and he was out there herman on a hot trying to get that trying to close those rings trying to get to 10k baby on a hot girl walk but he also would have wine with an elderly widow every day and at first you're like wow that's lovely but then it's like no he was just trying trying to get her money yeah like he absolutely was even mrs brew was like that bitch was trying to get her money yeah
like 100 you fake piece of shit it's like in gilmore girls when kirk befriends elderly residents of stars hollow so that he can be put in their will and get their diamonds and then he sells one to luke later to propose to lorelai you know it's just like isn't it wild that kirk did that yeah like i love kirk it makes sense it really does he i think he he doesn't quite get the the bad of it all exactly you know now according to mrs brew um herman was fine generally pleasant besides being a like super flirt okay um but she said when aroused and meaning aroused like um i was like i was gonna say i
feel like i need to like quickly be like she doesn't mean sexually aroused she doesn't mean they were when aroused like when he would get like worked up he had a most vicious and uncontrollable temper my personal particular herman's story that is my favorite is that on one occasion apparently and this was confirmed by multiple people in the house herman's roommate fred fred angles borrowed herman's mustache wax without asking for it without asking permission and this led herman to literally beat the shit out of him oh no a huge physical altercation arose between them like they bought the two of them
shit in quote the gilmonton boy literally cleaned up the room with his companion that's how it's described oh my god and left and i mean this is my favorite because of what it is over it's ridiculous and left him with black eyes and a scratched face over a little bit of mustache wax is so victorian i can't the only thing i can think of is that like it would have been probably pretty expensive back then and i also think he was just like a wild man yeah he was just ready to hurt someone at a moment's notice i think you call that issues issues i think so give him a t no during this time um herman was very
focused on getting through med school as quickly as possible he wanted to start making that bank and that's like not not the way you want to do it that's cool not like quick and this was seemingly at the cost of literally everything in his life uh well most people knew he was married to a woman in new hampshire he never really spoke about clara to anyone she never visited him instead he just spent his time studying or he would kind of just pursue subjects that he didn't think were covered well enough in school which you would think would make him smarter but it didn't uh mrs brew but it didn't
mrs brew said quote he always pictured himself as at the top notch of his profession i rather thought he had had a very high idea of his ability that he was self -conceited oh those are like the worst kind of people to be around too like you're just like oh you were like like a know -it -all is not my fave and know -it -all is the worst kind of person ever they really are we fucking hate know -it -all i hate them all they're the worst every time i look in the mirror i'm like fuck you oh my god that's not what i was i had to say my funny part i love it it's not funny i'm just kidding i you know you have to
laugh at yourself uh but of of all the subjects that he covered in med school he was really into chemistry oh why which is a very grim foreshadowing of his future activities in chicago by the way which we will get to oh hate that can i just say yeah I fucking hated chemistry in high school I like chemistry but it was one of the hardest subjects to me I never got I never understood chemistry it's very interesting to me but it is fucking hard like that was one of the subjects I struggled with it is interesting biology I got you but biology I loved it's hard and organic chemistry I think that's what I
had to take actually in high school and I literally took organic chemistry in high school okay maybe not not i was like what the fuck probably not um i was like probably probably not organic chemistry just sucks i don't know whatever we took i didn't understand but what's worse than chemistry is the other fucking one that you have to take maybe it starts with a p physics yeah fuck physics fuck physics oh my god and i had this i mean like don't fuck physics like in reality because like we need it no we need so much physics like i don't want to learn inertia who knows her i don't know who knows
inertia i hardly know her inertia i hardly know her there we go don't worry i fixed it okay so loved chemistry not a great foreshadowing in this future uh mrs bruce said he was just always fucking around with liquids and concoctions in his room at the boarding house with like and with what little free time he had he actually got a tutor to help him in chemistry because he was so focused on it okay dr j o lindsley who was a physician and expert in chemistry and he did this because he thought the chem department just did a shit job he was like you're not doing enough okay that's just like who he
was like you don't know what you're doing yet so how do you know that they're not doing really now but he quickly turned his his room at the boarding house into like a laboratory essentially um tons of bottles and all kinds of test tubes and fluids and unlabeled shit and like just it was starting to get wily up in there and it scared the shit out of mrs brew like it would scare me too he was like she was like it was starting to get a little too much for me i think i'm like fucked in the head with like things that i like relate other things why what are you really all i can think of right now is jack
in the nightmare before christmas trying to figure out the meaning of how or of christmas and then sally is mrs brew yeah yeah absolutely but my brain like he's just sitting there like fucking around with his room yeah yeah right he's like you know dissolving herman's like what's ornaments and shit like that's what i hope not oh no he said there's murder in there because he's fucking terrible he's not jack skellington i still love jack skellington it's wild the amount amount of people that are in the same boat as you yeah and it was honestly it was a foreshadowing to who i would marry because i
i love me a tall a tall skeleton of a man that's that's what i love i love that with a great voice oh my gosh so there you go because i loved jack's voice and everybody on planet earth loves john's voice i mean i can't blame you he does he has a great one i am absolutely obsessed with a sweet treat after dinner and my favorite sweet treat right now is my mochi it's mine not yours just kidding you can have some too this is a cool creamy scoop of ice cream wrapped in a soft chewy dough it's like a sweet little ice cream dumpling or ravioli i'm obsessed.
It's pillowy. It's satisfying.
I feel indulged. I just love it so much. I really am obsessed with the strawberry flavor right now.
My mochi is only around 70 calories per piece, which like, hello, that's amazing.
My mochi is gluten -free and each box has six perfectly portioned mochi snacks.
Do I eat two a night?
Yeah. Yeah, I do because they're that good.
and guess what my mochi is the number one mochi ice cream in the u .s of a the strawberry flavor is bursting with fresh picked fruit flavor that tastes incredibly refreshing i love love love them after dinner this august look for the purple box of my mochi ice cream at your local grocery store and feel joyfully chill with the coolest treat around my mochi you know those photos sitting in your phone the ones that make you smile every time you scroll past them well at smallwoodhome .com they believe that you deserve better than that smallwood home transforms your favorite memories into stunning gallery
quality artwork that tells your story all you have to do is upload your photo to smallwoodhome .com choose your style from classic framed prints to elegant wrapped canvases and they'll handle the rest with natural wood finishes like stained almond black or white, plus options for sleek acrylic fronts, there is a perfect match for every home.
And the best part? Every smallwood home piece is handcrafted right here in the USA by real artisans who care about quality.
No assembly lines, no shortcuts, just beautiful personalized art that is made to last. I love a handcrafted thing.
Over 3 million happy customers have already discovered why smallwoodhome .com is just different.
They deliver gallery quality at prices that make sense and ship in just days.
I have so many photos in my phone that I'm about to send over to them that I can finally hang up on my walls and I'm really excited about it.
Right now get 30 % off when you use code morbid at smallwoodhome .com.
That's promo code morbid to get 30 % off your first order at smallwoodhome .com.
Give your memories the showcase they deserve.
now according to mrs bruise quote herman was fairly wild over chemistry wild enough he was wild i love that she used that word too like he was fairly wild she was like that dude was feral up there he was going off but she said and he was all the time experimenting with liquids in his his room and while she kind of looked at it as he was just very committed to med school it's probably more likely that he just wanted to get as much experience with chemistry because he wanted to patent that medicine to become fucking rich right away he knew that was the subject he that's why he got the tutor that's
everything it wasn't oh they're not doing enough at school and i'm just really committed to my education it's like no i need to make a medicine right so i can get a million zillion dollars fast track now he was always telling everyone at the boarding house that he knew what he was doing with the chemicals everyone needs to chill but i don't blame everybody for being scared shitless i'd be scared that it was just gonna explode i'm also surprised that he was allowed to have the amount of chemicals he had i know they just kind of let it happen but mrs brew also said that when he left finally that they
found about three pounds of shingle nails hidden away in his closet i'm sorry and they never understood what he had them for that's probably for the better probably we probably don't want to know why shingle nails like big nails i think like roofing nails like fuck oh like really heavy duty nails but again very determined to get this done as fast as possible and he was kind of overextending himself in all directions to get this done he was constantly taking on extra work but then one day this took a very dark turn wrote row because again he's doing all this extracurricular work on top of all his work
so the darkest one might say was when mrs brew did her daily house cleaning and one of these times she was sweeping upstairs and noticed a strong odor coming from herman's bedroom so she starts investigating the smell and she's coming over to his bed and she's like what is the smell over here what the fuck is this so she sweeps her broom under the bed and something comes flying out and she was fucking horrified to discover that when she swept out the object under the bed that was creating the stench it was quote the body of a baby oh less than a year old oh my god stretched out on a board oh my
god i was not expecting that none of us were a real baby a human baby oh less than a year old who had obviously died was obviously being used for For dissection, and he took it home.
But you can't be doing that.
You can't just take it home.
Because it was on a board, so it was obviously being a medical specimen, quote unquote.
Sure. To be dissected, but he took it home to use it.
No, no, no, no, no, no. That's not at all normal in any stretch of any imagination.
Or legal. Nope, not at all.
She fucking lost it, obviously.
Immediately confronted Fred Ingalls, because that was his roommate.
Oh, yep. And she was like, where the fuck did this come from?
And Fred was like, uh.
So he said he had, quote, he had, excuse me, Fred confronted Herman.
Yeah. Because he was like, I don't know what that is.
Like, that's not mine.
And he said that Herman told him that he had, quote, brought the body in during the night and had started to dissect it.
And he had no idea how or where he had acquired this body.
body but he said quote the sight was so repulsive to him that he could not go to sleep realizing that that body had been in his room for how long no fucking way mrs bruce said she couldn't sleep for weeks and even like 13 years later when she talked about it she was still like shuddering about it of course i can't imagine you have no idea what you're about to sweep under that from under that bed and it's a baby and he did it again another time he brought home another baby at one point i'm surprised not to this boarding house right then and there well that's the thing he He never said where he
got this baby, but as soon as he got back that night, she was like, um, okay, new house rule.
Dissection of human remains cannot happen in my house.
Like, didn't think I'd have to say that.
Didn't think I had to add that to the lease agreement, but here we are.
Wow. Yeah. It's like when you see those stupid warnings on, like, things that are like, hey, don't eat this, like, very horrible liquid that will turn your stomach inside out.
Yeah. And it's like, someone ate that.
Oh, 100%. for that to have to be a warning or like don't stand in this trash compactor and it's like that that was because someone did it and they had to put it down no it's true that's now that's in her lease agreement for future tenants and people are like someone did that and we have to agree to it now i'm that little asshole that one time ate a glow stick damn i had to go to the hospital i forgot about that i was like very little though like it wasn't very recent yeah it was it was five years ago okay it was like the other day no i'm just kidding it was a while ago but when the semester ended
that summer he told the mrs brew that he would most likely not be returning to burlington the following semester and she was like bye yeah and she was like that's fine and she actually said that he quote did not think that the university here offered enough advantages for such a brilliant and promising young man that's what he thought well that's basically what he told her get out of here yeah and he was also he was also apparently disappointed with the limited number of chemistry courses offered very into chemistry i wonder why and he felt that he could go to the university of michigan at ann
arbor and that would be a better place to go with a better price i'm from michigan i'm from michigan so just a few months later he followed through with the plan and he enrolled at the university of medicine uh medicine at the university of michigan i was like the medicine in the michigan and the medicine uh so for now he's leaving new england bye girl don't come back oh and throughout this entire thing clara has been supporting him financially by the way clara and also raising their son sweetie no like literally his whole life is being supported by clara herman i don't know her Herman fuck off.
So Herman relocates to Ann Arbor in 1882.
And despite his mom and his sister not being happy about it, Clara and the baby went with him this time.
How dare you live with your husband and father?
Remember, they have a weird thing.
You can't. His mom and sister Helen never liked Clara because of that weird jealousy thing.
And they would frequently encourage him to end the relationship.
Kind. Meanwhile, Clara's doing everything for him, but OK.
According to Laura who ran the general store after Herman left she was um Clara's cousin um she said quote when Herman went to Ann Arbor to study Mrs. Mudgett and Helen thought it was outrageous for Clara to go with him his sister Helen made the statement long before Herman left that he was not going to live with her any longer and she must support herself the sister used to say that Clara was not bright enough not refined enough for herman bet you guys regret that huh yeah because your brother turned out to be one of the most disgusting con men and serial killers in history also outrageous yeah
helen clara's not bright enough or refined enough for your fucking monster of a brother yeah clara take several seats you wanna or not walk that statement back helen and mama mudget like like really that's a that's a whole bunch of wild right there yeah that's one of those you wish you could take back that didn't age well no now clara began working as a dressmaker in ann arbor while he focused on finishing his medical degree um but they did not have a good marriage um even before the couple left for michigan herman had said to laura young clara's cousin quote being married would likely prevent
him from rising as far in the world as he would would have otherwise and that he thought that he and Clara would not get on together very well he is wildly narcissistic like he's literally like it's her dead weight that's making me not rise up in the world and it's like no I think you're just dumb and I don't think you're good at this you're only moving around on her dime asshole literally she's the only one doing anything and raising your child I think she could actually launch you into success if you fucking gave her a second so when they moved to Michigan they lived in a boarding house and the other
boarders there said that they remembered clara very fondly they said she was quote a very pleasant woman and willing to make any sacrifice that she might help holmes along in his course so they saw her as very sweet very kind and that she would do fucking anything for him oh yeah they also said the couple fought a lot and that clara quote was sometimes seen around the rooming house with black eyes oh my god ding ding ding he officially crossed over into monster her territory what the fuck so not only is he just like a lazy asshole piece of shit he's a woman piece of shit too so we have violence
fuck you herman now clara struggled to keep the family afloat by herself for nearly two years and the relationship was just crumbling steadily and finally just months before herman graduated from the university of michigan she decided she had fucking enough abuse and she packed up the few stuff that she had and took her son back to new hampshire i'm so happy that she was able to do that on her own volition and later in letters she claimed that in the decade that followed her going to new hampshire she quote had known very little of her husband wow um they actually remained married until he was executed
oh shit they never got divorced that's right he never divorced her but married several more times that's so crazy yeah he was a piece of shit uh upon returning to gilmington Clara and Robert lived with um actually Herman's parents for a little bit until she was yeah how was that I know until she was able to find work as a dressmaker and she relocated herself away um and once she was away from you know the budgets I was gonna say that situation yeah she focused only on Robert she didn't think a fucking thought about what the fuck Herman was doing she she didn't give a shit um and actually clara's
cousin laura young said even after he deserted her she never chased after him as many women would i think however that if clara had followed herman after he left her because that's the thing he had left her to go away and kind of abandoned her while he was in school and took all her money and she just said it was her who left at the end like she really got out of there but she said i think however that if clara had followed herman after he left her and went west that we never would have heard of her again i think that he would have killed her as soon as she commenced to be in his way for she would have never
countenanced his action absolutely because he was escalating by first he's like talking shit about her then he starts hitting her yeah and then he we as we all know escalates to murder to the nth degree of course cheating on her he's just like a piece of shit yeah i i have no doubt he would she's very lucky to be rid of that piece of dead weight so good for her there lost like exactly 100 pounds there you go while in burlington you're like i don't know how much you weigh however much you weigh is that's how much you lost just a few stones exactly while in burlington herman was a rigidly devout
student of chemistry obviously like we said but in michigan he now shifted away from chemistry a little bit and back to anatomy and he really liked dissecting bodies i don't love that um in fact one of the his fellow students john madden said quote he seemed to take a good deal of pleasure in the uncanny things of the dissecting room that's what i mean when you look at it now hindsight is 2020 and you're like oh yeah that's fucked up but like yeah i don't know dissection is interesting i can't really like say it's not but the fact that he's a murderer makes that weird i've never dissected anything
no it's definitely interesting if you're doing it for the right purpose yeah for like biology and shit yeah but he also was quoted that um john madden fellow student was quoted as saying holmes talked a great deal about what he had done in the dissecting room with what appeared to me at the time unnecessary gusto and told me that the professor of anatomy at the time was to permit him to take the body of an infant home with him for dissection during the spring vacation which was to begin the following day i asked where he would find a place to carry on his work without offending his neighbors and he
replied with something to the effect that he would find a place so see it happened again where he asked to take home an infant why is it an infant i don't know but it's weird do you think i feel weird saying this but But do you think it's like an infant is easy to carry home versus an actual body?
I guess. I mean, that makes absolute logical sense.
Like logistically, that does make sense.
Yeah. But infants are also very hard to dissect.
I would think. Like it's not an easy evisceration or dissection.
They're tiny. Yeah.
Like it's all tiny and it's upsetting.
It's more upsetting than any human dissection has an element of sadness to it.
But it's like a baby is a whole different level.
and i would think that you would want to to learn on a full grown body because you're gonna i would think learn more exactly there's just certain thing i mean at least you would think he would try it out i don't know though it's just a strange thing a strange quirk yeah um but all in all he was said to be a pretty below average student really very interesting with all his extra work and everything i don't know maybe it's that he like he wasn't staying focused on actual i think that's exactly and like taking the right steps like he was going to to z when you should have been at f exactly i think
it was he was concentrating on what he wanted out of it and not what he needed to get out of it and a lot of times you need like the foundations to build upon and he was building with no foundation exactly i don't think he was really focusing on the curriculum i think he was just looking at what he wanted which was chemistry so he could patent a medication yep and he was looking at anatomy because i think he was starting to feel some type a way and i think he was only focusing on the things that he wanted for different reasons and not for a medical degree to become a doctor to help people because does
he ever become a doctor he does oh he does okay yeah he graduates okay and he does like he works as a doctor for a little bit oh okay i didn't know that but he's really a fraudster yeah and always um one teacher even voted against him graduating so he graduated by the skin of his fucking teeth shit he was not good at medicine he was not he was not very adept at it and one student described him hilariously um as quote he was distinctly what might be termed dumb he was slow to grasp ideas and not ready at all in reasoning okay which is funny to hear considering he's an actual piece of shit it's
like you're dumb exactly um well and he like thinks he's so fucking smart oh he thinks he is the gift uh this is also hilarious and disgusting but another said he was below mediocre um another student also said that he smelled strange and that he had a nickname do you want to know what his nickname was of course i want to know his nickname was smegma please look that up if you don't know what it is that's so gross just google it and look at the first definition that comes up and that'll look at the first definition that comes up anyway give you an idea of what he smelled like apparently why did
he smell like that oh my god i can't even say that out loud that's why i didn't i'm just gonna encourage you all why him smell like foreskin why though why why though oh ew you know when you say a smell and then you feel as though and this is what this gave me joy because it's like the great hh holmes the like infamous like criminal of the century was called smegma that's so by his peers in med school school so this little bitch is nothing nothing but a four -skin smelling below average student who couldn't even keep his first wife that's really fucking gross yeah so moving on from that now without
clara supporting his stupid ass uh herman was forced to find his own fucking job and support himself while he finished the degree i'm still really affected so he now founded his his own job with William Herdman, who was an anatomy instructor with the university.
And he worked as his assistant.
He was responsible to like, you know, menial things like tending to the horses, doing his errands, but he also prepared the bodies and assisted in the dissecting room.
At this point, maybe he had plans to murder and defraud on like a galactic scale later, but I think it was more, that this was kind of the training along with the whole chemistry obsession this is all the stuff that just kind of like slowly put the pieces together for him to become that later i don't know if he had all that in mind quite yet i don't think he really had the foresight probably came over time you know um but it was also at this time that he claims he and his classmates first came up with the idea of faking a death and then using a body as proof to defraud an insurance company which became
his thing that's not good um also in 1884 homes was uh in some serious trouble he had to defend himself before the medical faculty after being charged with breach of promise breach of promise he got himself a breach notice which is not a fun notice to get because they're usually bullshit uh usually so he married this one i think was real though so he married he's married to clara he's married to clara hasn't divorced or hasn't legally separated from her in any way fantastic married until he was executed remember that well he's staying now at a boarding house and the person who owns this house
is a widow who also was a hairstylist hey by the name mrs fitch she and him started a relationship they started sleeping together girly he smells like smegma no and he made the promise of marriage to her probably to get her into bed and to get her money that's definitely what it was to make her sleep sleep with him he was like i will marry you of course i'll make you an honest woman back in these days that's fucking serious that's serious business you can't be married to someone else and promise marriage to another just to get them into bed that's not just like distasteful and bad that's like
can you like hang for that shit back then it's i mean i don't know if you can hang for it but you're not going to graduate medical school that's for sure it's adultery isn't it it's yeah yeah so mrs fitch found a letter he was writing to his actual wife clara at the time who you was still talking to and corresponding with and kind of like stringing along a bit oh and she ran to the medical factor faculty and was like look at this look at this and then also showed them a proposal letter he had written to her like written down the proposal signed it with his name well and she said this is breach
of promise he promised me marriage and he's married to another and if found guilty he would not be allowed to graduate medical school and everything he had had done would be for fucking not so how did this fucker dance his way around that so he denied it all and his professor professor herman who he was assisting under her anatomy assistant he came to his defense and he vouched for him saying he thought he was truthful he was like he's an upstanding guy i've never had a problem with him i didn't you know i don't believe that this is real well holmes got off on the charges and poor mrs fitch was left
to look like a liar so he graduates he's able to graduate on fucking graduation day he shakes professor herman's hand or excuse me professor um his name was not professor herman oh no not herman it was herdman excuse me so i was close it's like you heard with her you heard man uh but you heard uh but he shakes professor herdman's hand and says doctor those things are true that that woman said about me so he allowed this man to vouch for him why when on the day of graduation was like haha fucker that's it like that is such a dick move because he could have just like shaking his hand is one thing
when you're a fuck when you lied to his fucking face you're shaking his hand and being like hey asshole you lied for me technically didn't even realize it wow that's fucked and herdman later said that this was the first moment that he realized that homes was quote a scoundrel yeah and he later find out found out that he was more of a scoundrel because after this he dug a little deeper and found out that herman holmes there had burglarized his home herdman's home yup and while staying with him once in an extra bedroom yup he had pried open a locked drawer in his private library and had tried to
steal stuff because he knew he kept valuables in there what the fuck so he had totally betrayed this man probably felt like he got like bitch slapped right like what a violation in every way and i i would imagine like at that graduation they're in front of a bunch of people yeah so and he can't have any reaction and he's just quietly being like hey you vouched to remain you shouldn't have wow but like thanks what is now and he said he did it with diploma in hand shook his hand was just like thanks for letting me get this like what a piece of shit wow i'm trying to like think of anybody that i
can even compare that to right it's just just so dirty it is such a dirty down and dirty now herman graduated from the university of michigan in the late spring of 1884 and almost immediately he relocated to more mowers forks yeah girl you did that not sure if i saw that you did it's a tiny hamlet in upstate new york um it had previously been um part of a larger town of champlain oh okay so once there he opened a small tree nursery he got weird with it like matthew hoffman did yeah he got a little weird with it not as weird as matthew hoffman did i will say um because he just kind of abandoned
it a few months it wasn't profitable so he just abandoned it okay but like what a weird little direction to take um and he does that to everything in his life that doesn't serve him how he wants it to he just abandons it good at one point he hired a primary school teacher named minnie everett for French lessons.
Why? She terminated that relationship pretty quickly because she said, quote, and at the time she said this, there is something lurking in that man's character that time will reveal.
Oh, shit. I do not like him.
I firmly believe that he would commit murder.
Wow, Minnie. Like, you were just here to teach him French. What made you think he's going to revolt to murder?
And for her to say that time will reveal, like, it hasn't happened yet, but something's in there.
i love that she was a full -blown witch oh full -blown you can't tell me anything no minnie everett she knew oh there's been people that i've said that well not the murder thing but like that's like the best feeling when you're like i fucking knew you i had your number the second i saw you you have done that a couple times that that were like chef's kiss perfect oh my gosh thank you like in a first you're like no it's fine and then later you're like what the fuck how did you know that yep sometimes i just get a vibe you just you do i bet minnie was an empath path she definitely was anyway he also aggressively
refused to leave her alone after this for some time so he was a stalker as well fantastic uh yeah he's a little bitch but after this failure holmes petitioned the local school trustees to hire him on and he was put in charge of the primary school like he was able to get a lot of he's one of those that you're like how were you able to get all these things but it's oh it's he's a con man yeah and he saved money doing this he was able to to save a lot of money and he opened his own medical practice that's terrifying uh during this early period in new york he kind of perpetrated a small but kind of big
medical con it was his first one um so a smallpox scare broke out in this town and people were urging residents to get vaccinated against smallpox and he saw this as an opportunity so he somehow how got his hands probably by stealing on a load of vaccines and he loaded up a wagon and he went door to door through the northern part of the state vaccinate vaccinizing vaccinating residents and telling them that it was mandatory oh and he was quote representing himself as an authorized official of the board of health he made the people think that it was compulsory and in every household he managed
to get several cases for which he charged 25 cents each speech so at the time no one questioned his authority or asked to see his credentials they just allowed it if this man's is trying to poke you with a needle yeah you gotta ask for his cred ask for anything ask his name ask for his library card and literally anything christ on a cracker everybody he made a lot of money doing it though but and obviously people must have been terrified so they probably were like just vaccinate me but that's what that's what he fed on he prayed on it He loved preying on that kind of shit.
Wow. So that was his first medical con.
Can you imagine if that shit still happened today?
Like, knock, knock, knock.
Hi, I'm here to vaccinate you.
And no, I don't have any ideas.
Don't ask me about it.
Please leave. Like, no, I'd love your credentials.
Thank you. They say that time waits for no one.
neither should Payday.
To keep your money moving in the direction of your dreams, get Earnin'.
What is Earnin', you ask?
Honey, Earnin' is an app that lets you access your pay as you earn it up to $150 a day with a max of $750 between paydays.
Earnin' is the app that is helping millions of Americans take charge of their pay and avoid falling into debt traps.
Earnin's mission is to make financial momentum accessible to everyone.
It's your money, so put it in your own hands with Earnin.
I just feel like Earnin is good for so many things.
Like, you know, every now and again you get in your car and you say, oh, wow, who knew that I was on empty?
I should have known that, but I didn't.
And then you look at your bank account and you're like, oh, crap, I haven't been paid yet.
Well, you'll never run into that problem if you have Earnin.
An unexpected trip to the vet will not ruin your day because you'll have the money to pay for it.
Download Earnin today, spelled E -A -R -N -I -N, in the Google Play or Apple App Store.
When you download the Earnon app, type in morbid under podcast. When you sign up, it will really help the show.
Morbid under podcast. Earnon is a financial technology company, not a bank.
Access limits are based on your earnings and risk factors.
Standard cash outs take one to two business days with no mandatory fees.
Expedited transfer is available for a fee.
Tips are voluntary and don't affect the service.
Available in select states.
Terms and restrictions apply.
Visit Earnon .com for full details.
Download Earnon now and take control of your pay.
but back in his medical office he started setting up a laboratory because he was really trying to get that patented medicine he was gonna get rich from it and to help him with this he was said to have brought in to stay with him for a while his six -year -old son robert no no no no and he quote and put him to work in the laboratory putting up in putting up in bottles the liquid which herman manufactured although he never sold any of these things that he made like he just couldn't get the right concoction together sure he definitely tried um but he also couldn't convince anybody to try any of his cures
because people didn't trust him i mean they were like minnie came to teach him french and she was like you're a murderer yeah like you're a murderer minnie knows but what's weird about him is he's somewhat of an anomaly in the sense that he was a get rich quick guy and he was a con man but he also didn't shy away from hard work like he would work for his cons because he was like money motivated yeah like he's very strange in that way like he doesn't have that like like cut and dry get rich quick personality right it's it's strange but it should be said that while he claimed the boy in his company
was his son there is a lot of speculation that this was a completely unrelated boy who who disappeared a little while after this.
Oh, no. According to the New York Times, there was a report filed shortly after he was arrested, like way later.
And it said that after he left his teaching position in New York, that he had, quote, went to Massachusetts, but returned in a short time accompanied by a small boy who disappeared shortly after his arrival, Holmes saying he had gone home.
it doesn't appear that any investigation went into this boy's identity or disappearance and nobody really went further into it but if this boy has what like was part of something nefarious then he was his first victim holy shit do you they were never able to confirm whether that was robert or not and you would think it would be as easy as like somebody reaching out to clara yeah and it's like i don't i think this might have been a boy that he took wow and used until he didn't need anymore i hope not i hope it was robert and then he just went to massachusetts i hope so too like that's honestly
i'm hoping that but i don't know i can't be sure because he's such a piece of shit right it was also in new york that there were rumors about his his inappropriate behavior with women and inappropriate like he was a pig and on several occasions he was known to have treated out -of -town women for what's only referred to as organic trouble in his office.
What is organic trouble?
Not sure and there were rumors that they were all like that these women were treated and then disappeared because they were from a house of ill repute oh you know so they were treated as less dead yeah but there was never any confirmation of this no identities that we can like hang our hats on but that probably happened it probably happened and there were reports of herman paying quote violent attention to a young woman named alan what who eventually left town and was never heard from again oh hopefully she actually did leave town yeah and actually there were rumors around this new york town that homes
had actually married her but they said that like there was rumors that he had married her but then there was rumors that she left town but the ones that everybody kind of sits on is that she probably met a sinister end at his hands it kind of sounds that way they just couldn't prove it and especially she was never found again yeah like that's definitely he did something especially if he had already killed that boy yeah something happened here right there's that's what i mean when i say there's definitely more over the ones he confessed to and are confirmed right and i think a lot of people think
that now despite honestly referring to him as a hard worker and a generally like fine man aside from his like preoccupation with like out -of -town women and being a little weird um residents found something just off -putting about him right like people around him were like he was never like mean outwardly to people he didn't do like you know know he was a little weird but like not like super strange or eccentric like there was just something about it it's like minnie said there was just something that was going to be revealed can't know what was and women in the village began sharing stories of his you
know unwanted advances and the men began noticing a growing trend of homes ignoring debts and making false promises to pay for things and but he always had an excuse of course he always had an excuse so he was women women he was getting the reputation of being a pig men he's getting the reputation of being a fucking deadbeat so on one occasion his landlord confronted him and was like hey you haven't paid your rent and i've tried to get you to pay your rent for like fucking months oh shit and he said it was and he had come forward to him when he knew he had plenty of money he was like the doc he's
a doctor like i know he has money and he said quote the doctor would stand quietly by and hear himself called a scoundrel and a swindler in the strongest terms then the tears would appear in the doctor's eyes and trickle down his cheeks but he never said a word in reply so he would just sit there and let people be like you're a fucking scoundrel you're a swindler you're a piece of shit like you're just like you're a deadbeat blah blah and he would just sit there there and cry and never say anything that's very strange right and also like sad but like i don't want to feel sad no he's no because i
think it's fake it's fake as fuck those tears are crocodile tears my friend he would cry because he knew it was going to disarm anybody around him to see this mustachioed gentleman weeping openly after being called a scoundrel after refusing to to pay for things he should have fucking paid for well and i think especially a physician yeah they were probably like what is happening right now and back then they're like a man crying what so strange i definitely did it just to disarm everybody and probably he was just unhinged i feel yeah he was a fucking monster but he took similar approaches with his medical
office landlord because he always had an excuse for not paying and then he would make empty promises to pay and then he would just cry when he was confronted or he would go into a rage sometimes when he was confronted and they would just be like forget it well i was gonna say that some people cry when they're mad yeah and it could be that he was just trying to like keep it together but he was crying right um and at one point he produced a letter that supposedly was sent from someone in gilmington where he was from claiming his uncle had died and left him a substantial inheritance which he said
oh see i'll be able to pay you yeah you just have to open the email Yeah, just like this.
Yeah. Open that email attachment.
It's definitely not a scam.
Your royal uncle has passed away.
So Herman's reputation in this New York village continued to decline towards the end of his residency in the village.
And not long before leaving, he was involved in a scheme that was to avoid paying his debts that definitely will give you a little bit of a foreshadow into his later crimes.
according to the daily boston globe there was an older soldier a veteran living in town who had for several months been dealing with like an unknown illness it was like a shuddering cough a lot of pain and the doctors kept trying to tell him it was malaria but this soldier said no that's not it he refused to believe this diagnosis and he believed that it was being caused by an injury he had received during the war he said he'd gotten shot there was a bullet lodged in his lungs in his like the area of his ribs and he said it's pressing his ribs against my lungs and it's making it hard for me to
breathe i know that's what it is oh but ultimately he was dying so it really didn't matter to him personally what was going on but if the injury was the result of him serving in the war in the military his widow when he passed away was going to be granted his full pension so he wanted to make sure which i'm like i'm like i'm like this man i know and this This poor man is like, I want my wife and my family to get all of that money.
Yeah. So I need to make sure that I'm diagnosed before I die correctly.
Like he was doing this only for them.
I'm like, what a good man.
Also, what a fucking like - I know.
Future to face. So for that reason, he asked Herman's landlord, Edward Steele, to be present for his autopsy, which I'm like, oh my God.
Imagine having to ask that?
No. But Edward Steele couldn't come to the autopsy.
so it was conducted without him there and again his cause of death was labeled as malaria so edward steele felt horrible and he was desperate to make sure this widow got the full pension so he asked herman to do a second autopsy with him to help him and he was like of course i will i love dissection so when he so steele's like okay you finish it you tell me what you think i want to to see what you have to say about this so he asks him for the results at the end of it and herman looks at him and says yeah i have evidence but only i'll only give it to you so he's already extorting him yep if that my
rent is paid in full wait like i'll only do my job if you pay my rent you're asking me to help out of the goodness of my heart which i don't have this widow to make Make sure he had this man's dying wish.
I have evidence that could help this, but I will only give it to you if you say that my rent is paid in full.
What a fucking jackass.
And he said, if you don't do that, I'm going to keep the evidence of the autopsy and the widow won't get the full pension.
And I don't give a shit.
Oh, my God. And the evidence he had, he had the actual ribs.
He had evidence that they were pressing against that man.
He was correct. Wow.
wow he kept those broken ribs because edward steel looked at him and was like go fuck yourself yeah you i'll figure out another way to get her her pension and you know what he did thank he got that widow his pension and homes herman there herman fucking mudget he kept those two broken ribs what a fuck no one knows what he did with them but he kept those fucking ribs he never gave them over easy person like what that's so weird like what yeah so shortly after he had done this you know extorted false evidence for payment of his rent yeah he tried to leave this village without saying anything to
anyone or paying any of his debts he was just gonna leave all of it behind and although his landlord literally found him loading the wagon and being like hi you still he couldn't really stop him like he just the last anyone heard from him from this village was a letter sent from tilton new hampshire saying he had business to attend in new hampshire and he would be in touch to settle his debts at a future date doubt it he never did wow now after leaving homes returned to new hampshire briefly and just tried to take full custody of robert yeah wow just why not no you know i haven't been part of his life
for six years but why not no uh and again clara and he were technically still married so he never actually lost custody of him he just he just abandoned them um it's unclear what actually happened here but clara ended up taking their son to her father's house and he left the state so like she was like no no good try she's like you're a murderous piece of shit no you can't have our son but he definitely tried to and without a job now or any source of income he said um quote starvation was staring me in the face doubt it and he sold his horses in tilton and he boarded a train for pennsylvania and when he
left new hampshire for the last time he wanted to leave behind everything meaning he He wanted to leave behind Herman Webster Mudgett.
Oh. He was now going to be known formally as Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, H .H.
Holmes. Do you have any idea how he came up with that name?
I do not. He just wanted H .H .H.?
Yeah. Sounds like H .H.
Holmes is a – I don't know how – I mean, I think he just made it – he thought it sounded good.
There's all kinds of speculation that he used Sherlock Holmes as his inspiration, but that wasn't published until a year after.
Oh, so incorrect. So it wasn't it.
But you pressed an incorrect.
So I think it was just there was a name he came up with, I guess.
OK, unfortunately, a good one.
So he Holmes now arrived in Norristown, Pennsylvania, which is a town just outside of Philadelphia in the fall of 1885.
And he found the city wasn't as bumping as he thought it was going to be.
A lot fewer opportunities than he was expecting.
He's such an elder.
Well, this place is bumping.
wow guys this is so bumping i don't know a city could bump i suppose but that was great a lot isn't really known about this time period um there is some evidence that suggests that just days after having arrived he walked into the police precinct and told officers there that he was quote on the verge of starvation and had come here with the express intentions of committing suicide that's a quote by the way um i don't know if that actually happened that is a report police officers did say that happened so who knows what that was about um they took pity on him and they let him stay in the station while
they tried to find him some work and they ended up finding him work in the norristown state hospital which was a state -funded psychiatric hospital a few miles from philadelphia so i thought that would never happen today well Well, that's, here's the thing.
He either, because it's not clear if that particular part happened.
Yeah. There's some stories like that, that I don't know if that was later concocted by him to gain some sympathy.
Right. But he did get a job working at this hospital.
You just don't know how.
Yeah. This is the story he tells.
Like, I wouldn't believe shit that comes out of his face.
I don't know if I buy that.
That's how he tells it.
Such pity on you, you poor lad.
But no matter what, he did get work at the Norristown State Hospital.
And years later in his autobiography, Holmes said that it was a very troubling experience for him.
He said, quote, so terrible was it that for years afterwards, even now, sometimes I see their faces in my sleep.
Good. The patients at the psychiatric hospital.
I'm glad he was haunted.
now after just a few months in norristown he actually abandoned that job at the state hospital because that's what he does and found a new position at a pharmacy in philadelphia which is much more his speed um as would become his mo this job also didn't last long and there was some mysterious shit that happened before he left it he abandoned the job and philadelphia completely after a local boy died after taking some medicine purchased from homes at the pharmacy pharmacy oh he claimed he had nothing to do with the medicine nothing to do with the boy's death but it definitely put a black mark on his already
questionable reputation and there really wasn't a future hint for him in philadelphia after this because people were like no thank you yeah like we're all set yeah i'm doing an x sign with my fingers just so you know everyone went no thank you get away from us so this is when the idea of faking a death and using a substitute dead body to defraud insurance came back around they had talked about it a little in college it's coming back and homes now is ready to do it okay because now he's like i've tried this working thing for a minute or two too hard and it's hard so let's just scam insurance money
please now money so according to him he apparently contacted an old college friend which imagine how hard that was was back in the day yeah you had to really want to contact someone i think that all the time when i'm driving and i have my gps on i'm like how the fuck would i ever get anywhere yeah i wouldn't know where anything like how do people do that how do you do it maps i suppose they didn't there was a point in time when they didn't have that i'm saying either way he was also his friend was in dire straits financially as well and they decided that they would get one more friend involved
and this other friend was going to be the one to increase his life insurance to 40 000 at the time and he would do this by telling the insurance company that he dealt with some kind of life -altering experience that made him concerned for his family's well -being so he wanted to up the amount i feel like you might need to get a little more specific than that i guess back then insurance was just like sure thing buddy yeah now he would then later this man the plan was to send his wife and child somewhere out west near california and he was going to fake confess via letter that he had killed them both in some
kind of alcohol induced frenzy and add that he He had dismembered and pickled their bodies.
Christ. I figured that was to make sure he didn't have to show bodies to insurance, but like, that's not the case, which is weird. And then he was going to have claimed to have killed himself in the note, this friend.
Okay. Then the money would go to a quote unquote relative of this man, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, his friends, and he would move out to where his very much alive wife and kid were, live with some of the money that was shelled out to him.
It was going to be between the three of them, you know, live in obscurity.
that's something i've never thought of like if you murder your family and you're a murderer who gets your life insurance payout like will like do you get a payout if you've murdered somebody no i don't think you get it if you were like but no but like the person so like if you have murdered and then yeah killed yourself whoever is in your policy gets that exactly that's a weird thought i know it is weird right and that's what that's what they banked on was like they could control who he wrote down in his policy right now me thinking the dismemberment detail was to make sure he didn't have to show
bodies apparently that wasn't right they had to show bodies regardless three bodies which meant they were gonna have to procure three imposter dead bodies including a child and put them in a pickle jar yeah and like i was like you would have to dismember them yeah that's a lot so he went to many and so at this time so this is what what they wanted to do plan the whole thing out so homes had went to minneapolis and chicago during this time i don't know why i said minneapolis minneapolis is what i meant i was gonna let it go and then i was thinking the world you know i'm glad you correct thank you
because that's i rolled over and i said ah that's not a big deal then i said yep that's a big deal and i went back minneapolis is what i meant and chicago during this time and he was able to get a job as a drug clerk in a pharmacy and according to him he was able to procure bodies pretty easily by buying them from med school anatomy rooms at the time because now he had money mr burke mr hair exactly now also that was just very easy to do back then so as you well know he got two bodies okay he was able to buy two bodies probably adult ones i assume and put them into barrels which he stored in a room
at the mccoy hotel in chicago damn but apparently after hearing or reading about how well while insurance companies checked into cases like this and would like require a lot of evidence and proof, right.
He decided they should abandon the whole idea.
Now he had two bodies now.
Yeah. So this is when he says, oh, okay, well that's, I just said like, oh no. And I just buried those bodies in my basement.
Like not a big deal.
This story people believe was possibly concocted and changed a bit to help him explain why there there were a lot of bones found buried in his chicago place oh good he they were probably the result of something even more sinister just what we don't know but he wanted to make it look like well i purchased bodies legally and i just buried them down there because we decided not to go ahead with the scheme like don't fucking put those on me buddy and it's like i know i think you killed those people like there's a lot to unpack here that's the thing like he'll he comes out with things and it's like
legal right i did it legally and it's like no i think you killed them and i I think you're so good at lying.
That's the only thing you are good at is you're making this story up so that we don't question those bones in the basement.
But in reality, if they had questioned those bones in the basement, which they didn't in time to identify them or figure something out, we probably would have figured out that those were missing people, probably.
Hundo P. Guarantee you.
Damn. So he leaves Philadelphia in the spring of 1886 after definitely murdering people.
and he eventually settled in inglewood a suburban neighborhood on the south side of chicago and this is where shit really starts to get wild and it's where you're gonna and it's where we're gonna end part one i'm waiting for part two you because the chicago chronicles are really where it's a whole new era are the chicago chronicles bumping they're uh they're bumping in some way not in a good way i suppose you said bump it i said bump it i sure did that was something i said bump -its are coming back that's upsetting yeah that's how this episode yeah that's an upsetting episode that's it bye just
kidding uh but yeah stay tuned for part two and um he gets worse and worse so fantastic yeah happy anniversary to us yay five years woohoo thanks guys we love you and we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird but that's the It's weird that this entire time every single time Alina has said something about him writing his own autobiography all you can think of is Ashley Simpson singing autobiography while Henry Holmes or is that his name?
Henry? Yeah. And while he writes his autobiography and he's like my autobiography.
That's all I've been thinking.
Bye. My autobiography.
Bye. We'll see you next time.
survey at wondery .com slash survey.
Shopify's point of sale system helps you sell at every stage of your business.
Need a fast and secure way to take payments in person?
We've got you covered.
How about card readers you can rely on anywhere you sell?
Thanks, have a good one.
Yep, that too. Want one place to manage all your online and in -person sales?
That's kind of our thing.
Wherever you sell, businesses that grow, grow with Shopify.
Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify .com slash listen.
Shopify .com slash listen.
