Long, narrow corridors that would only allow passage of one person at a time and a number of walls formed blind corners which created the perfect location for Holmes to stalk his victims. Its design was a maddening maze of rooms and doors that could rival the Winchester Mystery House. Holmes’ torturing was allegedly done on the second floor of his Murder Castle. The steel bound chamber (above) and bones unearthed in the quicklime grave (below). With the door sealed shut and gas freely flowing into the room, anyone shut inside would have quickly been asphyxiated. The expense to build such a room would have been phenomenal.Īlso included in the room was a gas pipe supposedly included to light the room, but police suspected that Holmes would blow the gas light out through any one of several pipes outside of the vault, which pointed to the light. The steel walls were asbestos lined to absorb sound and the door was secured with a top-of-the-line lock, which only Holmes could open. The vault was tall enough to stand and walk around inside. The basement housed Holmes’ methods of body disposal.īesides his offices, the only other room of note on the third floor was a steel vault located beside Holmes’ office. The labyrinthine second floor had a total of 51 doors and 35 rooms, several of which were rooms for rent. His office was perched in the northeast corner of the third floor.
The bottom level housed Holmes’ relocated pharmacy, where he had electrical devices which would warn him if someone were to walk the upper floors.
#HH HOLMES HOTEL WINDOWS#
There were several sets of wooden, bay windows overlooking the street.
It was three stories tall and included a stone basement and stone foundation. Murder Castle was 162 feet long and 50 feet wide and had a brick facade. Murder Castle 2nd floor plan, crematory, stove and closet trap door. He had air-tight chambers and a room of steel, lined with asbestos, where the wildest shrieks of his victims would be deadened, and he had a multitude of secret stairways and passages through which he could effect his escape at any time. Holmes himself had planned the building, having no architect, and he took good care that the workmen were changed frequently, so that no one should know what the interior of the structure was like. With such a place at his disposal, containing hundreds of rooms, torturous passages, secret chambers, trap-doors, dumbwaiters, with a rope for lowering down bodies into vats, a tank and a retort for disposing of them, it is hard to understand why he went elsewhere to commit murders. Holmes’ Castle Reveals His True Character, which ran on Sunday, August 18, 1895, captured the macabre building in all it’s glory.īut his castle, it now seems, as its labyrinths are explored, was his principal place of operation, and there it was that he planned and schemed and where many beautiful women are believed to have met their end. No less than 50 “missing” persons were traced to Holmes’ Castle by police, though it is likely there may have been somewhere close to 250 persons who may have found their end in Murder Castle.Īn excerpt from page 40 of The Chicago Tribune’s article Modern Bluebeard: H. Holmes wasn’t the only person who capitalized on these fortuitous logistics, but he was certainly one of the more prolific. The list of missing when the World’s Fair finally closed was immense, conditions and atmosphere in Chicago during the fair facilitated unscrupulous activity of all kinds. Given the proximity of the World’s Columbian Exposition, this location was perfect for luring in prospective “tenants” who wished to find lodging near the fair. Holmes’ frequent dismissal of the construction crews is also suspect to having been intentionally done so as to conceal the real horrors contained within the building.Ĭonstruction of the Murder Castle was completed in 1892– just in time for the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 (also called the Chicago World’s Fair). Given Holmes’ knack for dismissing construction crews without payment, it is highly likely that he also neglected to pay for building supplies. It is also unclear whether he paid for any of the materials used to build his Murder Castle. Holmes regularly hired and fired his construction crews– usually without payment. Holmes' Murder CastleThe behemoth of a building was erected on the empty lot and construction on the property commenced in 1889 under the direction of Holmes himself.
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