Holmes’ hotel was designed such that he could drop bodies by chute into the basement with the greatest of ease. Some of the bodies ended up being dissected and stripped then sold to medical schools. Some corpses were cremated and some were placed in lime pits. The hotel also had two giant furnaces, pits of acid, poison and even a stretching rack. This place was a souped up killing venue. See what I mean about it being too far fetched to be a movie?

Holmes moved to Texas for a while but found the police a little inhospitable, so he spent a few years moving around America and Canada, all the time with his stooge Pitezel in tow. He convinced Pitezel to fake his own death for another insurance scam, but Holmes tied him up and burned him alive instead. Using his devilish charm he convinced the now widowed Mrs Pitezel to allow him to take three of their five children on a trip with him. They ended up being victims too, the little boy was found stuffed up a chimney. The picture below shows Pitezel’s great grand daughters who are lucky to have ever been born.

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After finding the bodies of the two little girls, police began to track him down. Initially he was held for stealing a horse as this was the only solid charge they could hold him for, everything else was conjecture. However, once they searched the upstairs of his hotel in 1894 and found bits of people everywhere he was finally sent down. He approached the gallows in 1896, without any sign of fear, anxiety or remorse. When the platform was taken from under him his neck didn’t break and it took a long 15 minutes of twitching before he finally died. He was pronounced dead after 20 minutes.

And what became of that hotel? Well, they blew it up and a post office now stands where it used to be. I think that’s probably for the best.

Now that, is a pretty mental tale, no? To add an extra curve ball to the stew, some researchers (one of whom is Holmes’ great great grandson) believe that he could have carried out at least some of the Jack the Ripper murders. How about that?