Americas First Serial Killers Essay example

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FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY | H.H HOLMES | AMERICAS FIRST SERIAL KILLER | | Kevin Hutter | 10/20/2011 |

H.H HOLMES, THE FIRST AMERICAN SERIAL KILLER, IN THE FOLLOW RESEARCH PAPER WE WILL BE LOOKING AT PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF HIS CRIMES TROUGH HIS EARLY CHILDHOOD TILL HIS EXECUTION IN THE LATE 1800’S |

Herman Webster Mudgett, better known under the alias of Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, was one of the first documented American serial killers in the modern sense of the term.
Mudgett was born in Gilmanton, New Hampshire [4] to Levi Horton Mudgett and Theodore Page Price, both of whom were descended from the first non-native settlers in the area. According to the 2007 Most Evil profile on Holmes, his father was a violent alcoholic,

Those who viewed it said it appeared to be a medieval torture rack. A few rooms were lined with asbestos, and the place was filled with doors that opened to brick walls, stairways to nowhere, an elevator without a shaft and a shaft without an elevator. There was an airtight and soundproof vault, human-sized greased chutes leading from the living quarters to the cellar. The bedrooms had peepholes and were equipped with asphyxiating gas pipes connected to a control panel in Dr. Holmes' closet. [9] Holmes was nothing if not thorough. Holmes had no remorse and didn’t think twice about killing his victims. During the Great Chicago World Fair in 1893, when the city filled with visitors, Holmes would rent rooms and/or lure girls and young ladies to his "castle" where he would attempt to seduce them before drugging them. They were then popped into one of the empty shafts that ran through the building. The hapless girls would come round only to find themselves trapped behind a glass panel in an airtight death chamber into which Holmes would pump the lethal gas. Afterwards the body would be sent down a chute to the basement which contained vats of