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H.H. Holmes

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Murderer

The Resume

    (May 16, 1861-May 7, 1896)
    Birth name was Herman Webster Mudgett
    Known as America's first serial killer
    Business partner with Benjamin Pitezel
    Operated in Chicago, IL

Why he might be annoying:

    As a child, he tortured and dissected living animals.
    As a young man, he married a local girl and quickly abandoned her.
    Soon afterwards, he married another woman, though not divorced from his first wife, making him a bigamist.
    He soon tired of this girl, and sent her to live with her parents.
    He bought a pharmacy from a widow, and when she complained that he had stopped making payments, he killed her.
    He had an affair with the wife of a shopkeeper. When he got her pregnant, she demanded marriage. Instead, he killed her and sold her skeleton to a local medical school.
    Soon afterwards, he took another mistress, and killed her by locking her in his safe, listening to her cries for hours until she suffocated. He then sold her skeleton to the medical school.
    He leased the vacant lot across the street from the pharmacy and built a huge castle, containing a hotel to accommodate tourists to the World's Fair.
    The basement of the hotel was a gigantic torture room.
    The hotel rooms contained hidden gas jets which Holmes operated from his office to incapacitate guests, and chutes and trapdoors which led to the basement.
    He strapped victims to an operating table and tortured them.
    He had a torture rack in his basement, as well as chests full of surgical equipment.
    When done torturing victims, Holmes burned them in an oven or dissolved them in a giant vat of acid.
    He eventually killed his partner, Pitezel, to collect his life insurance.
    To 'cover his tracks,' he also killed Pitezel's children.
    He was arrested in Boston trying to flee the country.
    He confessed to Pitezel's murder and was executed by hanging.
    At his own expense, he had his body buried beneath tons of concrete so nobody could mutilate it in revenge.
    He is thought to have killed more than 50 people.

Why he might not be annoying:

    He was considered to be handsome and charming.
    He was beaten often by his father as a child.
    He was very intelligent.
    When he was five years old, bullies dragged him into a doctor's office and scared him with a human skeleton, which likely caused him to become a psychopath.

Credit: Big Papa


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 6 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 4 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 411 Votes: 57.42% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 19 Votes: 89.47% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 11 Votes: 81.82% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 12 Votes: 25.00% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 165 Votes: 50.30% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 79 Votes: 55.70% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 36 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 28 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 76 Votes: 51.32% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 103 Votes: 66.02% Annoying
    In 2012, Out of 22 Votes: 63.64% Annoying
    In 2011, Out of 16 Votes: 81.25% Annoying
    In 2010, Out of 156 Votes: 66.03% Annoying
    In 2009, Out of 46 Votes: 73.91% Annoying
    In 2008, Out of 72 Votes: 75.00% Annoying
    In 2007, Out of 103 Votes: 76.70% Annoying
    In 2006, Out of 195 Votes: 73.85% Annoying
    In 2005, Out of 359 Votes: 69.64% Annoying
    In 2004, Out of 956 Votes: 68.62% Annoying
    In 2003, Out of 949 Votes: 70.18% Annoying
    In 2002, Out of 997 Votes: 78.74% Annoying