Most Terrifying Things About America’s First Serial Killer

H.H. Holmes Had a Seemingly Normal Life

H.H. Holmes, born Herman Webster Mudgett, was a con man well before he was a crazed serial killer. He was a young father who got married at the age of 17, (well before his early 20s which was much more typical for the time). He fathered a son two years later.

Holmes’ life seemed pretty average. After having a son, he enrolled at the University of Vermont but dropped out of school after only a year. He later enrolled in the University of Michigan at the school of medicine and surgery. It’s hard to tell if Holmes developed sinister passions while studying medicine, but he did apprentice in New Hampshire with Dr. Nahum Wright, who was a known advocate of human dissection. Perhaps, his fascination with the what was inside the human body is what led him to study medicine in the first place. Holmes also picked up a creepy hobby during his college career.