Herman Webster Mudgett (May 16, 1860 - May 7, 1896), better known under the alias of "Dr. Henry Howard Holmes", was an American serial killer. Holmes trapped and murdered possibly hundreds of guests at his Chicago hotel, which he opened for the 1893 World's Fair. He confessed to 27 murders, although only nine have been confirmed. Holmes is often cited as the first American serial killer.
The case was notorious in its time, and received wide publicity via a series of articles in William Randolph Hearst's newspapers. Interest in Holmes' crimes was revived in 2003 by The Devil in the White City, a best-selling non-fiction book that juxtaposed an account of the planning and staging of the World's Fair with Holmes' story. In 2004, filmmaker John Borowski released the first ever documentary film focusing on the entire life of the torture doctor, entitled H. H. Holmes: America's First Serial Killer and a book entitled The Strange Case of Dr. H.H. Holmes, which contains Holmes' Own Story and The Holmes-Pitezel Case, as well as other material dating from the period of the case. In addition, Mudgett's story has most recently been told in a biography of his life by Harold Schechter entitled Depraved: The Definitive True Story of H.H. Holmes, Whose Grotesque Crimes Shattered Turn-of-the-Century Chicago.
