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only possible one, was insanity. His defence lawyer simply read out Fish’s long confession as evidence that here was a madman. The jury, however, were unimpressed. Mad or not, they clearly wanted Fish to be punished for his crimes and he was duly found guilty and sentenced to death.
This didn’t seem to bother Fish in the slightest. When he was told that he was to die in the electric chair he reportedly said that this would be ‘the supreme thrill of my life’.
The sentence was carried out in Sing Sing Prison on January 16, 1936. At the first time of asking, the chair failed to electrocute Fish. Legend has it that this was because the metal pins that Fish had inserted into his body had caused the machine to short circuit. At the second time of asking there was no mistake and Fish was duly killed. His career of evil lives on, however, as his life and crimes provided some of the inspiration for Thomas Harris’s fictional serial killer Hannibal ‘the cannibal’ Lecter.
H. H. Holmes
H. H. Holmes was the alias of Herman Webster Mudgett, an American serial killer who is thought to have been responsible for literally hundreds of murders, although only a few of these were ever confirmed. His most notorious crimes involved entrapping large numbers of mostly female employees and guests at his Chicago hotel and torturing them, before gassing them to death and selling their bodies to medical schools.
T HE E VIL O NE
Mudgett was born in New Hampshire on May 16, 1860, the son of an alcoholic father and a timid, submissive mother. He later wrote, ‘I was born with the devil in me. I was born with the Evil One standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered into this world. He has been with me ever since.’ As a child, Mudgett was bullied remorselessly by his father, and his mother was too intimidated to intervene. However, the young Herman did well at school, being intelligent, charming, and good-looking. Despite the problems of his home life, he was convinced he would do well in the world and had an ambition to be a doctor. As an adolescent, he took to killing and dismembering small animals, conducting experiments on them, and became fascinated with anatomy.
By the age of eighteen, Mudgett had married a young woman called Clara Lovering and was studying at the University of Michigan Medical School. However, he was expelled from there for stealing corpses, and had to relinquish his hopes of becoming a doctor. He changed his name to Dr Henry Howard Holmes and found work at a pharmacy, which went well until the woman he was working for, a Mrs Holton, disappeared. At the same time, Mudgett remarried, though without divorcing his first wife, and had a daughter with his new wife, Myrta Belknap. The couple named their daughter Lucy. He then married yet again to a woman named Georgiana Yoke, and went on to have an affair with the wife of a colleague, Julia Smythe, who later became one of his victims.
T ORTURE ROOMS
Mudgett then murdered the pharmacist and his wife, and with the money he gained, began to construct a large building across the street from the store, which residents of the area called the ‘Castle’. It was a block-long, three-storey building and during its construction many of the building contractors were hired and fired. The reason, as it later emerged, was that Holmes did not want anyone to know what the real purpose of the building was. It had many secret rooms and passages, some of them fitted with gas jets. In the basement, there were large vats and secret chutes that led down to torture rooms. Also in the basement there was a dissection table and surgical tools.
While the building was under construction, Holmes was involved in various scams to make money. One of these was to take water from the tap, mix it with vanilla essence, and sell it in the pharmacy as ‘Linden Grove Mineral Water’. The authorities found out soon enough and he was banned from selling the
This didn’t seem to bother Fish in the slightest. When he was told that he was to die in the electric chair he reportedly said that this would be ‘the supreme thrill of my life’.
The sentence was carried out in Sing Sing Prison on January 16, 1936. At the first time of asking, the chair failed to electrocute Fish. Legend has it that this was because the metal pins that Fish had inserted into his body had caused the machine to short circuit. At the second time of asking there was no mistake and Fish was duly killed. His career of evil lives on, however, as his life and crimes provided some of the inspiration for Thomas Harris’s fictional serial killer Hannibal ‘the cannibal’ Lecter.
H. H. Holmes
H. H. Holmes was the alias of Herman Webster Mudgett, an American serial killer who is thought to have been responsible for literally hundreds of murders, although only a few of these were ever confirmed. His most notorious crimes involved entrapping large numbers of mostly female employees and guests at his Chicago hotel and torturing them, before gassing them to death and selling their bodies to medical schools.
T HE E VIL O NE
Mudgett was born in New Hampshire on May 16, 1860, the son of an alcoholic father and a timid, submissive mother. He later wrote, ‘I was born with the devil in me. I was born with the Evil One standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered into this world. He has been with me ever since.’ As a child, Mudgett was bullied remorselessly by his father, and his mother was too intimidated to intervene. However, the young Herman did well at school, being intelligent, charming, and good-looking. Despite the problems of his home life, he was convinced he would do well in the world and had an ambition to be a doctor. As an adolescent, he took to killing and dismembering small animals, conducting experiments on them, and became fascinated with anatomy.
By the age of eighteen, Mudgett had married a young woman called Clara Lovering and was studying at the University of Michigan Medical School. However, he was expelled from there for stealing corpses, and had to relinquish his hopes of becoming a doctor. He changed his name to Dr Henry Howard Holmes and found work at a pharmacy, which went well until the woman he was working for, a Mrs Holton, disappeared. At the same time, Mudgett remarried, though without divorcing his first wife, and had a daughter with his new wife, Myrta Belknap. The couple named their daughter Lucy. He then married yet again to a woman named Georgiana Yoke, and went on to have an affair with the wife of a colleague, Julia Smythe, who later became one of his victims.
T ORTURE ROOMS
Mudgett then murdered the pharmacist and his wife, and with the money he gained, began to construct a large building across the street from the store, which residents of the area called the ‘Castle’. It was a block-long, three-storey building and during its construction many of the building contractors were hired and fired. The reason, as it later emerged, was that Holmes did not want anyone to know what the real purpose of the building was. It had many secret rooms and passages, some of them fitted with gas jets. In the basement, there were large vats and secret chutes that led down to torture rooms. Also in the basement there was a dissection table and surgical tools.
While the building was under construction, Holmes was involved in various scams to make money. One of these was to take water from the tap, mix it with vanilla essence, and sell it in the pharmacy as ‘Linden Grove Mineral Water’. The authorities found out soon enough and he was banned from selling the
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