In the sin book of human history, there is such a special group of "people", but the "demons" are obviously more appropriate than the title of "people", they are serial killers.
In 1888, a serial killer who committed a series of brutal murders in Whitechapel, London's East End, caused shock to the world.
None of the victims were spared an autopsy, exposing their bodies on the streets, and the modus operandi was the best in history, and who the killer was is still a mystery. Even at the auction in 2007, there was a cloak that could detect the DNA of the murderer, but in the end it was still due to insufficient evidence, and it has become an unsolved case, which is the famous "Jack the Ripper".
killer
In fact, about who the murderer is, perhaps at present, it is not the most effective clue for the public, and the reasons and stories behind this group are the content that people are more willing to know today, and it is also the most worthy of study.
Compared with Jack the Ripper's mysterious identity, almost at the same time, the serial murder case in the United States has a nearly similar modus operandi, and the criminal is known as the first serial killer in the history of American crime, and the first serial killer with schizophrenia.
The killer's name was Henry Howard Holmes, and his name still ranks first in the first row of the U.S. Crime History List.
The reason why he is not "famous" as Jack the Ripper is probably only because it is not a suspense case, in fact, Henry's criminal history and the number of murders are far more than "Jack the Ripper", and even so far no one can stand out.
Henry grew up with an increasingly deformed mentality, and he developed from a small test knife for human body deplanatory during his school days to an obsession with killing games, and even carefully designed a "killing hotel" full of mechanisms.
In three years, he killed more than 200 people, and his humanity has long been extinguished.
Holmes possesses the common traits of a serial killer that criminal psychologists have summed up, he is calm, lonely, good at disguise, patient, and more importantly because of his psychological pathology.
According to the conclusion summarized by the FBI, the relationship between psychopathy and serial killers is very interesting, not all psychopaths will become serial killers, and serial killers will have traits consistent with psychopaths to a greater or lesser extent.
Brain scan
In fact, there is indeed a certain amount of scientific data as a basis for such remarks, and the brain scans of Brian Dugan, a vicious rapist in the FBI, showed that the areas of his brain about sympathy and remorse were seriously inactive.
So, how did Holmes, such a heinous serial murderer, come to be raised? What did he do? What is the final outcome?
Distorted personality formation
The famous American pedagogical journal "Pediatrics" has published a new study, showing that the bad experience of childhood is closely related to the criminal behavior of growing up, and the conclusions of this study, whether it is pushed forward or backward, can be strongly confirmed.
Looking at the childhood of the dissected demon Henry, it was exactly as expected.
Nineteenth-century Americans
Holmes was born in 1860 to a middle-class family in New Hampshire, USA, to wealthier parents who immigrated to the area from Britain.
Holmes has been born in the United States since he was a child, he has been very intelligent, hands-on, like to play with things in his hands, the neighbors like him, he also likes to greet them every day.
To outsiders, Holmes was cheerful and sunny, but what they didn't know was that as soon as his father returned home at night, Holmes's nightmare would begin.
Holmes's parents have a bad relationship, they always quarrel and fight in front of him, Holmes cried, he was thrown out of the door by his parents to ignore him, and continued to quarrel.
quarrel
In particular, his father was an alcoholic, often abusing him, punching and kicking him, tying him up at every turn, stuffing his mouth with a rag soaked in kerosene, and locking him up in a small black room at night where he could not see his five fingers, and he was closed for several days without food.
And her mother turned a blind eye to all these choices, because she was never absent from holmos's abuse in her daily life.
The neighbors have long been accustomed to the noise of this home, and whenever the neighbors come forward to inquire during the day, they are perfectly digested by the husband and wife, because they can always pose that we are fine and others are nosy.
And Holmes was in the little dark room, listening to his parents talking and laughing to the outside world, he seemed to see the darkest parts of his parents, and his hatred for them was accumulating little by little.
Crying boy
In this sense, the parents were Holmes's future enlightenment teachers for the devil.
And this was just part of Holmes's childhood misfortune, the terrible experience at home, so that he did not dare to speak, but it was this that made him the most special one in the school.
Holmes was very good in school, but he was always alone and did not like to talk, so he was not accustomed to many classmates and was always bullied by all kinds.
Perhaps frightened, Holmes never dared to resist, which made them even more unscrupulous.
boy
Once, Holmes was dragged by several classmates into a clinic that had just received many dead people, and they put Holmes together with human skeleton equipment, locked the door from the outside, and waited for the next day to see him ugly.
Holmes looked at the naked skeleton, he curled up in a ball at first, he was too scared to shout, but after a while, Holmes actually took the initiative to step forward, he stared at the skeleton carefully, reached out and touched the blood vessels and muscle lines on it, he was no longer afraid, but felt very wonderful, very beautiful.
In this way, Holmes stayed with the skeleton all night, without crying, without fear, and the doctor who came to work the next day opened the door and saw holmes who was asleep, and even these adults admired his courage.
The beginning of the devil
However, is this really just courage?
The abuse of his parents made him timid, and the bullying of his classmates made him begin to be sensitive, which was obviously not a normal childhood, let alone a happy childhood.
At this time, the young Holmes also learned to endure and adapt, and he became rarely crying, not because he did not care, but "holding", and whenever he had time, Holmes ran into the woods, always smiling when he returned.
It turned out that after Holmes felt the beauty of the skeleton that time, he liked the dissection, he went to the woods to catch small animals for dissection, and whenever there was something unhappy, he would always run into the woods and "digest" himself.
woods
Killing critters with his own hands and dissecting them, Holmes seemed to him to be operating on them like a doctor.
Blood and bones, Holmes has never been afraid, Holmes's twisted personality is gradually forming, but everyone around him is unaware.
Dissection technique bonus
When Holmes was a teenager, he was arranged by his parents to work.
At this point, he did the only thing so far to rebel against his parents, he quit his job to go to school, his goal was medical school, he loved anatomy, he wanted to be a real surgeon.
surgeon
At the age of 18, Holmes was admitted to the University of Michigan School of Medicine, where he specialized in medical surgery research, where he was about to undergo systematic training, and his best grade was in the clinical anatomy course.
Holmes studied diligently on weekdays, and was timid about other students, and the first course of dissecting live animals was completed quickly and skillfully, because this was his "old business".
Holmes liked to study anatomy knowledge, often alone in the laboratory for a whole day, the teacher praised his diligence, his classmates envied his concentration, and only he knew where his motivation was.
Soon, Holmes was given the opportunity to dissect the human body, and his movements were skillful, swift, and sharp.
doctor
What's more, each dissection carried an unabashed smile, and it was clear that he had found an unprecedented pleasure here, after all, it was much more interesting than dissecting animals.
However, Holmes was not content with daily anatomy training, and at the age of 24, Holmes began stealing the academy's corpse home and dissecting it himself.
As it happened, chicago was plagued by traffic accidents at that time, and there were so many corpses transported from the hospital to the medical school every day for research, and no one would notice that the bodies were lost.
At the same time, the clever Holmes began to think of a way to "get rich", what he called "corpse classification". For the stolen corpses, he divided them into two categories according to whether they could make money or not.
insurance company
Holmes first deliberately destroyed the face of the stolen body, causing various signs of accidental death, forged the name of the deceased, pretended to be the family of the deceased, pretended to claim compensation from the insurance company, and defrauded the insurance money.
Among them, there are some corpses that do not have this value. For these corpses, Holmes dissected them to satisfy the pleasure of deformity, and sold some of the bones anonymously to the medical school.
Holmes repeatedly succeeded from insurance companies, and no one doubted this, and holmes made a profit of one hundred thousand dollars in this way, which was a huge income in the United States at that time, and even more unmatched on campus.
One might ask, isn't he suspected of doing this so frequently? The answer is: yes.
U.S. Police
In view of the fact that Holmes used the same method to deceive the bail many times, the police have also had suspicions, but holmes's smartest thing is that he is very agile, and the ability to detect the surrounding environment and people that he has developed from childhood makes him vigilant to escape when the police are just about to take action.
Layout for the horror program
Holmes's dream as a child was to become a surgeon, but not to treat the sick and save people, but to satisfy the pleasure of dissecting corpses.
No, when he was satisfied with the pleasure and tasted the economic benefits brought by it, he did not hesitate to give up the idea of becoming a doctor.
He, a perverted demon in a white coat, had now "made a makeover."
Old photos of the United States
He fled to the outskirts of the city and carefully changed his name, which needs to be added, Holmes's real name is Herman Webster Madgate, and because of this, the police can not continue to find him.
Holmes wandered here for a few days, taking a fancy to a grocery store widow who had no relatives, no children, and lived alone. That is to say, if she disappeared, no one would pursue her at all, and this was the opportunity holmes saw.
Holmes disguised himself as a job seeker, got a job at the grocery store with a seemingly generous appearance, and it wasn't long before the widow disappeared for no apparent reason.
As Holmes had expected, no one cared much about the matter, and instead became the heir to the grocery store.
American grocery store
As for where the widow had gone, there was no doubt that she had been persecuted by Holmes, and the moment she was learned of her disappearance, she had become a pile of white bones.
Holmes designed to commit a crime in a short period of time, despite his impending doubts, because he had already planned a long-term plan, and this crime was only the first step in the plan.
His plan was to build a perfect "murder hotel" that was as intricate as a labyrinth, with a prison cell with a cushioned wall to prevent the prisoners from committing suicide, as well as gas rooms, gas chambers, incineration rooms, lime wells, etc.
The hotel is full of sliding walls, there are more than 100 rooms, but there are no windows, the walls must be absolutely soundproof, each room has a heavy mechanism to ensure that the prisoners can not escape, and all the rooms are controlled in Holmes's bedroom.
Hotel
Such a hotel is actually the "slaughterhouse" of Holmes.
Holmes opened a grocery store during the day and meticulously perfected his design drawings at night.
Before long, Holmes also converted the grocery store into a pharmacy, made money from his daily medical treatment, and manufactured and sold counterfeit and shoddy drugs, which also made him a lot of money.
A few months later, Holmes made enough money that he began looking for someone to build a hotel.
Build a hotel
Holmes divided the drawings into multiple parts according to the design from easy to difficult, and he constantly changed the construction team, providing different drawings each time, so that even the chief foreman could not elaborate on the structure of the hotel, and the hotel secrecy was done to the extreme.
After four years, a perfectly soundproofed three-story above ground and one basement hotel-style building was completed, and Holmes also painted the exterior wall a warm white, which looks like an ordinary hotel from the outside, but inside is a large maze that can only be entered and exited.
Ordinary people walk in and don't notice anything out of the ordinary, but all the mechanisms are in Henry's hands, and he wants to make it a hotel, a hotel, and he wants to make it a labyrinth, a labyrinth.
Hotel report
In order to attract customers, Holmes also rented out all the first floor and used it as a shopping mall to sell jewelry and clothes, which shows that Holmes's prey is women, especially single women.
Demons are on earth
As soon as the hotel opened, Holmes began to wait for the arrival of prey, as he expected, there were often single women who came to the door by themselves, Holmes warmly welcomed, and created ambiguity with each other, these women were also recruited, after signing the property transfer documents, automatically disappeared.
The local police have opened a case to investigate the disappearance of the person, but when they searched Henry's hotel, they did not detect anything unusual, and naturally excluded his suspicions.
Holmes still opened the door to "do business", but although he was calm about the police coming to the door, it also affected the business.
World Exposition
Soon, Holmes ushered in a "career explosion period".
In 1893, Chicago held the World's Fair, and for a time people from all over the world flocked to Chicago, and there were many people on the street every day.
Holmes knew his chance was coming, and he expanded the sales area on the first floor, selling the items that women liked, and started discount sales in his hotel.
As a result, there are many women staying at the hotel every night, which is also the highest occupancy rate since the hotel opened.
Holmes chose this time to attack because these people were basically tourists, that is, foreign populations, and the jurisdiction and rights of the local police were quite limited.
Holmes and his hotel
In the night, it was Holmes's carnival alone.
Holmes manipulated the switches of every room, and even if some people began to realize that something was wrong, it would not help to run out.
He arbitrarily cut off the sliding walls of the hotel, causing the victims to panic, Holmes confiscated the property, forced the victims to sign the documents transferred to him, threw them out of the elevator shaft after signing, or locked them in the gas chamber, torturing them until they were out of breath, and he was satisfied to see the vicious faces of the victims before they died.
Next, Holmes began to defraud the insurance money one after another by the means he had used before.
Cruelty to women
When he learned that some people could not cheat the insurance money, he dragged the victim to the basement with many torture devices to torture and kill, his treatment was extremely cruel, he skinned the victim, took the scalpel and fell with his hands, did dissection experiments, and also bleached part of the bones and sold them to medical school for money.
The women who entered the hotel all came in and out, and their whereabouts were the same.
But after a while, this pattern of slaughter waiting for the prey to come to the door could no longer satisfy him, and Holmes began to think about taking the initiative.
This time, Holmes travels to Texas to kill a pair of sisters, burns down his house, fakes an accident, and again defrauds local insurance agencies of insurance money.
Femicide
The police finally discover Holmes's abnormality and investigate him.
Holmes was alert at the first time this time, he packed up his things from the hotel and ran away, and also set fire to the hotel himself, faked as an accidental fire.
At the time of escape, Holmes did not forget to go to the insurance company to apply for compensation, and on the way to escape, he continued to cheat in a way, while waiting for the insurance company's compensation.
However, this fire, instead of allowing Holmes to be compensated in time, exposed his own evil deeds.
The devil will finally surrender
The police found countless incomplete human bones from the ruins of the hotel, which caused an uproar at the time, and people realized that this hotel was actually a "death hotel".
In 1895, pinkerton police caught Holmes trying to escape, after being caught, Holmes desperately defended himself, for the iron facts displayed by the police, he refused to admit no regrets, the police helpless, first imprisoned him.
Reports about Holmes
While in custody, Holmes also meticulously wrote a written statement of innocence for himself.
But justice will only be late, not absent, and no matter how cunning Holmes may be, it will not delay his conviction.
In 1896, Holmes was sentenced to hanging, and while awaiting execution, Holmes was diagnosed with mental illness.
After confessing his sins, Holmes said, "When I was born, Satan stood by the bed like a Heavenly Father and led me into this world. ”
In addition, he added: "But after a while, his face is gradually changing into the face of the devil. ”
hanging
At 10:25 a.m. on May 7, 1896, Holmes was hanged, and he struggled desperately on the gallows, glaring at everyone viciously and threatening everyone with harsh words, and finally Holmes held out for 15 minutes before swallowing his last breath.
For such a murderous demon, is there really nothing he is afraid of? Yes, he was afraid of something that only he knew, and he said it himself.
Holmes had made his only request before his death, fearing that doctors would steal his body for research, and fearing that the families of the deceased would treat him cruelly, and he demanded that his coffin be sealed with cement immediately after burial.
Treating others with his own heart, probably like this, it is also ridiculous to say that the life of this demon is also ridiculous, and what he has been doing to innocent people all his life is the thing that he is most afraid of happening to himself.
Is he protecting himself? No, he was simply creating "trouble" for himself.
After Holmes' death, someone rebuilt a hotel on top of the ruins of the hotel and named it "Castle of Terror" in an attempt to make a profit by developing it into a local chicago tourist attraction.
This practice was undoubtedly attacked by everyone, and the hotel was demolished.
Chicago has regained its former policing, but this story is a sad thing that locals don't want to mention again, because he is alone, and the city is full of panic and blood.
To this day, more than a hundred years later, the locals are creepy about this legendary event.