Depraved

the shocking true story of America's first serial killer

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Last edited by ImportBot
March 17, 2024 | History

Depraved

the shocking true story of America's first serial killer

  • 3.00 ·
  • 1 Rating
  • 20 Want to read
  • 1 Currently reading
  • 2 Have read

Even as a child in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, Herman Mudgett was considered a lad with a future, a boy who professed filial devotion while secretly fantasizing his parents' deaths. By age eleven he was conducting secret experiments on small animals and strays, becoming skilled at disabling his subjects without killing them. In 1886 he appeared in the Chicago suburb of Englewood, Illinois, and introduced himself as Dr. H. H. Holmes to the wife of the ailing owner of Holton's drugstore. He was hired on the spot, and under his management the store prospered. But when Holmes's attempt to purchase the drugstore from Mrs. Holton went sour, and she sued him, she inexplicably disappeared - never to be seen or heard from again.
As Jack the Ripper was terrorizing London, Holmes was building his infamous "Castle," a grandiose residence and veritable fortress bristling with battlements and turrets. He hired and fired a succession of workmen to build the castle, thus eliminating witnesses to its secrets: a labyrinth of trapdoors, winding passageways, dark dead-end halls, stairways to nowhere, bedchambers fitted with peepholes and asphyxiating gas pipes, soundproof vaults and torture chambers, greased chutes large enough to send human bodies from the living quarters to a cellar equipped with acid vats, a crematorium, a dissecting table, and cases full of gleaming surgical tools.
Alternately donning the mantles of doctor, druggist and inventor, Holmes was also a get-rich-quick schemer and bigamist, with three wives and innumerable lovers - at least one of whom ended up a prize skeletal specimen, sold to a medical college for nearly two hundred dollars. But his increasing audacity and carelessness during his reign of terror led to his discovery and to "The Trial of the Century," in which Holmes finally confessed to twenty-seven murders. While he later recanted - maintaining his innocence until his final breath - he had already achieved immortality as the most monstrous criminal of his day.

Publish Date
Publisher
Pocket Books
Language
English
Pages
373

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: Depraved
Depraved: The Definitive True Story of H.H. Holmes, Whose Grotesque Crimes Shattered Turn-of-the-Century Chicago
January 27, 2004, Pocket Star
Mass Market Paperback in English
Cover of: Depraved
Cover of: Depraved
Depraved
October 1, 1998, Pocket
Paperback in English
Cover of: Depraved
Cover of: Depraved
Depraved
June 1, 1996, Pocket
Paperback in English
Cover of: Depraved
Depraved: the shocking true story of America's first serial killer
1996, Pocket Star Books
in English
Cover of: Depraved
Depraved: The Shocking True Story of America's First Serial Killer
September 1994, Pocket Books
Hardcover in English
Cover of: Depraved

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Book Details


Published in

New York

Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references (p. 370-373).

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
364.1/523/0977311
Library of Congress
HV6248.M8 S34 1994, HV6248.M8S34 1994

The Physical Object

Pagination
373 p. :
Number of pages
373

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL1433830M
ISBN 10
0671732161
LCCN
93045648
OCLC/WorldCat
29549194
Library Thing
129372
Goodreads
1199937

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History

Download catalog record: RDF / JSON / OPDS | Wikipedia citation
March 17, 2024 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
November 11, 2022 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
November 17, 2020 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
August 11, 2011 Edited by ImportBot add ia_box_id to scanned books
April 1, 2008 Created by an anonymous user Imported from Scriblio MARC record.