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parents: Levi Horton Mudgett and Theodate Page Price
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after malicious classmates expose him to a human skeleton in a local doctor's office. begins dissecting animals
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age 16
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to clara lovering in alton
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he finds the school unsatisfactory
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named robert lovering mudgett
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stole cadavers from lab, claimed insurance money by disfiguring the bodies so their deaths looked accidental
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abandons wife and son, completes scams and engages in suspicious behavior for the next couple of years, skips town from new york to massachusetts to philadelphia during this time and changing his name to henry howard (h.h.) holmes as a result
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gets a job at elizabeth s. horton's drugstore. after her husband dies, he buys the store with monthly installments of $100. he leaves once he earns enough money to fund himself, and purchases the empty lot across the street.
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still married to clara lovering. divorce papers were filed, but never finalized
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during construction, holmes met benjamin pitezel, a carpenter with a criminal past. he becomes holmes' right-hand man.
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named lucy theodate holmes
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holmes was constantly hiring and firing construction workers during this time so nobody would fully understand the floor plan of his block-long, 3 story building featuring oddities such as stairways leading to nowhere, doorways opening up to brick walls, oddly angled hallways, and other confusing, almost maze-like qualities.
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holmes used his murder castle to lure victims, mostly female employees of the hotel. some were locked in rooms such as gas chambers, others were left in a soundproof bank vault to suffocate, etc. he installed a unique alarm system on all of the doors, allowing him to know whenever a guest was moving around the hotel. through chutes or dumbwaiters, he transported his victims' bodies down to the basement, which contained lime pits, dissecting equipment, a stretching rack, and more.
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homes (she knew him as henry gordon) had previously entered into a relationship with williams, a railroud heiress,while on a business trip. they exchanged love letters until she moved to chicago.
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holmes convinced her to transfer her texas property to alexander bond (another alias of his). afterwards, holmes/gordon proposed to williams and invited her sister, annie williams, to his hotel. he suffocated her in the bank vault. minnie also mysteriously "vanished".
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while still married to both clara and myrta
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after forming a connection with a crooked lawyer while incarcerated, holmes fails to fake his own death in order to collect $10,000 in life insurance (the company became suspicious). benjamin pitezel decided to conduct the same swindle, but he actually really died. herman set him on fire. also he killed ben's children too
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his old cellmate snitched and the police looked through the murder castle
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surprise: he was found guilty
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he ded