H.H. Holmes- Is this a new suspect.

[alex_the_droog]

Found this link to a new book about H.H Holmes in which the author claims that HH( who is also his G G Grandfather) was the Ripper.

Not sure if this is a dubious attempt to sell books or not.

I know H.H.Holmes was rather committed rather depraved crimes, but i cant recall him being linked to the Ripper case. Also cant find anything on here.

thoughts

from hEll
Chris

http://www.businesswire.com/news/hom...veal-Identity?

[Heinrich]

It is highly improbable that the Whitechapel murders were done by a casual American visitor to London.

[Ally]

http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=3991&highlight=Holmes+Chicago

http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=2675&highlight=Holmes+Chicago

[miss marple]

There are always people out to make a buck or two by jumping on the Jack bandwagon. Mudgett was worse than the Ripper, Leave him alone, Americans can be proud.
Libelling dead relatives who are already serial killers maybe bad form ,but libbelling dead relatives as serial killers who led perfectly respectable lives, in order to make a fast buck is despicable. I am thinking of the author of Uncle Jack.
As for famous people.... nough said

Miss Marple

[Wickerman]

H. H. Holmes as a Ripper suspect is another modern conjectural waste of time.

From the summer of 1888 through to the summer of 1890 Holmes was obsessed with the design, construction & supervision over the contractors building his house of horrors in Chicago.
At this point in Holmes's life this was his supreme focus. There is no room for speculating that he could or even would have left his pet project unsupervised to travel to London, England, for no related purpose.

Regards, Jon S.

[The Good Michael]

H. H. Holmes as a Ripper suspect is another modern conjectural waste of time.

From the summer of 1888 through to the summer of 1890 Holmes was obsessed with the design, construction & supervision over the contractors building his house of horrors in Chicago.
At this point in Holmes's life this was his supreme focus. There is no room for speculating that he could or even would have left his pet project unsupervised to travel to London, England, for no related purpose.

Regards, Jon S.

He could have John, had he not been busy hiring and firing workers and cheating everyone he came into contact with out of money. There's
only so much evil a guy can do in a limited period of time while trying to get a good night's sleep as well.

Mike

[Archaic]

Hi Alex, and welcome to Casebook!

Interesting that Jeff Mudgett says he's a direct descendant of Herman Mudgett (aka H.H. Holmes), because I thought Holmes had only one child, a daughter named Lucy.
Lucy and her mother Myrta Belknap both used the last name "Holmes", not "Mudgett". After H.H. Holmes was revealed to be Herman Mudgett and hung for his crimes, it's easy to see why Myrta and Lucy would continue to use the much more common last name of "Holmes" in order to escape public attention.

Here's a web-page showing Lucy's passport info in 1918, when she went to Europe to do "war work": http://chicagogenealogy.blogspot.com...te-holmes.html

Even if Jeff Mudgett is a descendant, being descended in the female line I would expect him to have a different surname. Perhaps after doing his genealogical research he changed his own surname to his great-great-grandfather's original surname of "Mudgett"?

As for H.H. Holmes being Jack the Ripper, their respective crimes bear very little resemblance to each other; in fact they are quite different. And as Jon and Mike pointed out, in 1888 Holmes was busy working out his own sick fantasies in Chicago.

I'm not sure why anybody, least of all a descendant, would even want to try to claim Holmes was also the Ripper. Holmes is a fascinating case study all by himself, and much of his life and his crimes are still a mystery. I'd be more interested in reading a book that probed those mysteries, and told us how Holmes' wife and daughter dealt with their knowledge of his depravity. For instance, did his daughter even know the notorious killer was her father? Were stories passed down in the family? What about in the Mudgett side of the family? How did they react when they learned of the crimes?

Best regards,
Archaic

[Mayerling]

Hi Alex, and welcome to Casebook!

Interesting that Jeff Mudgett says he's a direct descendant of Herman Mudgett (aka H.H. Holmes), because I thought Holmes had only one child, a daughter named Lucy.
Lucy and her mother Myrta Belknap both used the last name "Holmes", not "Mudgett". After H.H. Holmes was revealed to be Herman Mudgett and hung for his crimes, it's easy to see why Myrta and Lucy would continue to use the much more common last name of "Holmes" in order to escape public attention.

Here's a web-page showing Lucy's passport info in 1918, when she went to Europe to do "war work": http://chicagogenealogy.blogspot.com...te-holmes.html

Even if Jeff Mudgett is a descendant, being descended in the female line I would expect him to have a different surname. Perhaps after doing his genealogical research he changed his own surname to his great-great-grandfather's original surname of "Mudgett"?

As for H.H. Holmes being Jack the Ripper, their respective crimes bear very little resemblance to each other; in fact they are quite different. And as Jon and Mike pointed out, in 1888 Holmes was busy working out his own sick fantasies in Chicago.

I'm not sure why anybody, least of all a descendant, would even want to try to claim Holmes was also the Ripper. Holmes is a fascinating case study all by himself, and much of his life and his crimes are still a mystery. I'd be more interested in reading a book that probed those mysteries, and told us how Holmes' wife and daughter dealt with their knowledge of his depravity. For instance, did his daughter even know the notorious killer was her father? Were stories passed down in the family? What about in the Mudgett side of the family? How did they react when they learned of the crimes?

Best regards,
Archaic

Hi Archaic,

If you are unaware there is (recently) Eric Larson's THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY (a best seller) dealing with three interweaved stories (Holmes and his evil "castle" and victims, the World's Columbian Exposition of 1892-1893 - a World's Fair with great effects on architecture and society, and a background that aided Holmes' murder spree, and the assassination of Mr. Carter Harrison (Senior) who was the Mayor of Chicago, by a nut job named Eugene Pendergast. There was also David Franke's THE TORTURE DOCTOR some thirty years or so ago. There is a more recent one whose title I cannot recall.

Also one author of fiction suggested Holmes was the Ripper. The author of PSYCHO, Robert Bloch, wrote a book AMERICAN GOTHIC, in which the central figure (who uses an alliteration name wth "G"s not "H"s) is being investigated by a female as the actual Jack the Ripper.

Jeff

[Archaic]

Hi Jeff.

Yes, I've read Larson's book; thank you. There was a good documentary made of it, I believe by PBS. I posted the link a couple of years ago on one of the Holmes threads.

Here's a 2003 NPR radio interview with Erik Larson about his book 'Devil In the White City': http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=1221345

Best regards,
Archaic

[vitularia]

Interesting that Jeff Mudgett says he's a direct descendant of Herman Mudgett (aka H.H. Holmes), because I thought Holmes had only one child, a daughter named Lucy.

Herman Mudgett married Clara A. Lovering on 4 Jul 1878 in Alton, Belknap, New Hampshire [Ancestry.com, All New Hampshire, Marriage Records Index, 1637-1947] and they had a son Robert L. Mudgett. An entry in the same index for a 1904 marriage for Robert L. Mudgett to Alexandra Gilbert gives his parents as Herman W. Mudgett and Clara A. Lovering.

Robert and Alexandra had a son, Bertram Harold Mudgett, born 1 May 1905, who died in San Louis Obispo, California 13 Jul 1989 and I believe Jeff is descended through that line. [Ancestry.com, All California, Death Index, 1940-1997].

Lucy, to the best of my knowledge, has no living descendants.

[John Wheat]

HH Holmes the Ripper I doubt it. Another man labelled as a Ripper suspect to make a few bucks.

[Ginger]

I don't think he could have been the Ripper, but Holmes is deeply impressive in his own right, like a Hammer movie come to life. I'm surprised his story's not better known.

[RavenDarkendale]

Considering the trouble HH Holmes (real name Herman Webster Mudgett) went to to hide the bodies of his victims (He built a special "murder castle with secret rooms and passages) I can't see him killing on the street and leaving the body to be found easily. If indeed he ever went to London at all...

[Digalittledeeperwatson]

All I have to say is...

Ugh. No, wait... If it can be proven he was in Whitechapel at the time I'll go along with it. Murder was business for that guy. Maybe it would have been a vacation for him. What's life without whimsy?

[curious]

Ugh. No, wait... If it can be proven he was in Whitechapel at the time I'll go along with it. Murder was business for that guy. Maybe it would have been a vacation for him. What's life without whimsy?

I agree. If Holmes happened to be in London at the time . . .

He killed so many -- and not just the ones he took such elaborate methods to hide the bodies. He killed men, women and children in so many ways and for so many reasons.

According to the great-great-grandson, Holmes was working on creating a potion to extend life or make people immortal and needed the female parts of reproduction, which may explain the uterus but not why were no ovaries taken? For Holmes was actually a doctor. The great-grandson also said that the main reason for the Whitechapel killings was because Holmes had a guy he was "training" and combined the two with his search for female parts, although he thought women of the age and lifestyle as the WC victims would mean their parts were not fit to be used.

Also, supposedly in the journal, was an entry that described how much better location they had found in a backyard with a fence.

Also, one journal post recounted how Holmes killed a matador following a bullfight and he maimed the bullfighter the way the bull had been maimed before the "fight." This death was important in the discussion of JtR because he slit the matador's throat twice. Once to watch the fear in the person's eyes knowing they were going to die, then the second slash to finish the job.

I'll be interested to see if Mudgett is successful in getting Holmes disinterred to try to prove his theory that he did not die by hanging.

curious

Plus, at one point