H. H. Holmes was America’s first serial killer in the late 1800s. More famously, he is known for designing and building a murder castle where he killed many women.

Although he confessed to a kill count of twenty-seven people, it is thought he could have killed as many as two hundred. He also admitted to killings that were found to be untrue. One victim was found alive and well. It has also been suggested that he might be responsible for the Jack the Ripper killings.

Many believe that if it had not been for the fraud he committed, he would never have been caught.

The judge at the time refused to hear the information about all the victims. This meant that many of the facts were not committed to record, and became lost. Many of them were not even identified.

Did the women simply go missing or were they murdered is a question many families must have asked at the time.

Sadistic Tendencies

Holmes was always fascinated with death. As a young child, he would mutilate animals and corpses. In 1884, he married his first wife and was violent towards her. He held various jobs across the country and would always be moving. In 1886, he would marry his second wife, Marta Belknap, never having divorced his first.

His early moves were a result of unexplained deaths occurring in close vicinity to where he lived. He pursued several professions, including an early attempt to become a doctor.

As he got older, this fascination developed into murdering women. It was clear his sadistic tendencies were evolving.

Holmes evaded capture because there were never any bodies. He stripped the bodies at death. With the help of a professional, he turned the skeletons into resources for the local medical hospitals. It is possible that in a dusty cupboard sits a skeleton of a Holmes victim.

Murder Castle

Through a clever system of property purchases and using a range of contractors, Holmes turned his hotel into a murder castle. In a scene that would be at home in a horror film, Henry Howard Holmes, as he became known, would trap and murder women looking for shelter in Chicago.

During construction, Holmes would use cons and misdirection with contractors. They never realised what they were building. He would constantly be hiring and firing crews. The architectural plans were kept in only his possession. He released small portions, as needed, to specific contractors. None of these ever received the full picture, so suspicion was never raised.

When finished, Holmes could pass through the house unseen. He could lock doors from the outside and control dangerous gas chambers from his closet. The elaborate system of mazes, trapdoors and gas chambers meant Holmes could move anywhere in the hotel, unobserved. Using these passageways, he could move undetected to murder his victims.

The hotel had vaults, chambers and acid pits built into some of the rooms. The human-size furnace in the basement was used to dispose of the bodies without a trace; it was this furnace that would lead to his downfall when he seduced a lady called Emeline Cigrand.

Cigrand and Pitezel

Cigrand was born in 1868 in Lafayette, Tippecanoe, Indiana; it is thought she was murdered in December 1892. She was discovered by Benjamin Pitezel, who was a companion of Holmes and ultimately one of his last victims.

Pitezel was a known alcoholic; during his work with Holmes, he was sent to Dwight, Illinois, for alcoholism treatment. At the time, a doctor was stating that they had an elixir that would cure him. It is unclear whether he was sent there for the cure or to steal the idea for Holmes. Months later Holmes did produce his own ‘cure’ for alcoholism.

Whilst there, Pitezel met Cigrand, as she was the personal assistant to the doctor. He returned to Holmes with tales of how beautiful this young woman was and how she dazzled. Holmes knew he had to have her for himself.

Cigrand and Holmes

Holmes wrote to Cigrand offering her a job as his private secretary and stenographer. To lure her, he offered her twice her salary. She accepted; the pay was favourable, and she had long wanted to live in the glamour and excitement of Chicago.

As soon as she arrived, Holmes started to court her. He used his soothing voice, amazing blue eyes and gentle touch to enchant her. It was said that he brought her flowers and expensive gifts, including a bicycle, a new invention. Frequently they were observed riding together through Chicago.

Despite several people warning Cigrand about Holmes, it was no good. When his creditors came to his office, Holmes always had a tale to ease her mind. Often he told her that people were jealous of his success.

When Holmes started renting his apartments out in 1892, Dr Lawrence and his wife moved in. They became friends with Cigrand.

She was one of the prettiest and most pleasant young women I ever met - Dr Lawrence

It was clear to see that Cigrand was infatuated with Holmes, who had now convinced her that he was the son of a British Lord.

Throughout her time with Holmes, Cigrand wrote often to her family about the amazing man she had met and how wonderful her life in Chicago was. When the family visited, although they had concerns about the design of the ‘Murder Castle,’ they failed to convince Cigrand.

After one visit, where a cousin questioned the dead space in the apartments, Holmes proposed.

Cigrand Disappears

Everything seemed to be progressing well with the young couple. Until December 1892, when Cigrand visited the Lawrences with a handmade gift. Mrs Lawrence commented that she could have left such a present until Christmas. Cigrand explained she was going home to Indiana for Christmas. She implied this would be a final move and that she was not returning.

It is impossible to know what had changed her opinion on Holmes. Could he have stolen the £800 savings she had arrived with, or had his mask slipped?

The Lawrences never saw her again. She never said goodbye for her trip and vanished. Mrs Lawrence asked Holmes several times where she was; he always had a different explanation. Finally, he told her that Cigrand had married Robert Phelps. He even went as far as forging the wedding notices and delivering them to some of her family and friends.

Arrest

Holmes had committed several cases of fraud and insurance theft. In 1894, he was pursued on a charge of arson. He left Chicago. His next location was Fort Worth. Here he inherited property and started to build his second murder castle.

Holmes constructed a plan where Pitezel would fake his death for the insurance money.

Instead of faking Pitezel’s death, Holmes murdered him. He then blackmailed his wife to allow him to travel with three of their children, two girls and a boy.

Following the children’s disappearance, a police detective, Frank Geyer, was assigned to find them. Geyer followed the movements of Holmes, where he discovered the bodies of two girls in a cellar. Following the path further, he found the remains of a boy in a cottage Holmes had rented.

Holmes was arrested and claimed several murders within the hotel. The mystery into Cigrand also started to unravel. What was unknown at the time of her death was that Phelps was a well-known alias that Pitezel had used in the past. This became evident as the police searched for evidence.

On the first inspection of the Murder Castle, police found a large kiln in the basement. When they opened the door, they found a lady’s footprint etched there. It was believed to be Cigrand’s footprint, made in her attempt to escape the tomb. Even stranger was the fact that the footprint was etched into the door and could not be removed.

The best guess that scientists have for the footprint is that Holmes lured the woman into the vault shoeless. As she walked through the room, she stood on acid that Holmes used to increase the temperature in the vault. The mixture of the chemical and burning etched the footprint permanently into the metal door.

A few weeks after Cigrand’s disappearance, LaSalle Medical College received a female skeleton from their associate, HH Holmes, for their courses. Mysteriously, the murder castle, as it had become known, was gutted by fire in 1895.

Trial

On arrest, Holmes claimed that his first victim was a former medical student, Robert Leacock, in 1886. He stated this was so he could claim his insurance money. However, it was later discovered that Leacock died in 1889 in Canada.

This was one of many murders that Holmes claimed to have committed, which were later found to be untrue.

Holmes went on trial for the murder of Benjamin Pitezel and his children; he was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was hanged on 7 May 1896. Even this, though, was not a straightforward affair. His neck failed to snap as the trap door opened; instead, it took him fifteen minutes to die of strangulation.

The Jack the Ripper Connection

Over the last decade, Holmes’ great-great-great-grandson has come forward to say his relative was Jack the Ripper. He claims he found two diaries, in which Holmes writes about killing and mutilating prostitutes in London.

The time frame for the murders and the travel would fit in with this claim. It is also clear to see from studying the cases that both Holmes and the Ripper had similar psychopathy.

His grandson also stated that Holmes actually escaped the hangman’s noose. Instead of hanging Holmes, they hanged a stranger that Holmes tricked to take his place. Holmes was exhumed years later for DNA evidence to prove he was the person killed.

If you consider the lies, even if the diary is authentic, which I doubt, Holmes could have lied about being Jack the Ripper.

Given the fact that Holmes was a compulsive liar, and that his great-great-great-grandson had a book to sell, I would deny the claim that Holmes was Jack the Ripper. Further evidence of the false claim is found when you consider the hangman story.

This lie was proven scientifically. Although a horrific killer and famous as the USA’s first recorded serial killer, we cannot add Jack the Ripper to these accolades.

I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing. - HH Holmes

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It was 31st May 1902 when a torrential thunderstorm battered the quiet Suffolk village of Peasenhall. Under cover of a violent storm, a killer struck. The result was two trials which left no one convicted of the crime.

Many historians believe that the murderer was fortunate to escape prosecution; others have offered an alternative theory that exonerates William Gardiner. If not guilty, Gardiner lived with the stigma of a murder he had nothing to do with. If guilty, we can only hope Gardiner was haunted by his actions.

Whatever the truth, an innocent woman died, and this case remains one of the most sensational unsolved crimes in Edwardian England.

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For nearly four decades, a dark cloud has hung over Phillip Island, Australia. What was originally recorded as a murder-suicide has faced growing scrutiny, with many asking whether it was, in fact, a double murder.

On the morning of September 23, 1986, 23-year-old Penguin Parade worker Elizabeth “Beth” Barnard was found savagely stabbed to death in her home in Rhyll. The letter A, an unmistakable reference to the mark of adultery in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, was carved into her chest.

It was an open secret in the close-knit community that Beth was having an affair with her married boss, Fergus Cameron.

Vivienne Cameron

That same morning, Fergus’s wife, Vivienne Cameron, vanished. The family’s Land Cruiser was later found near the San Remo bridge, leading authorities to a swift conclusion: a jealous wife had murdered her husband’s mistress in a rage and jumped into the water.

By November 1987, a coronial inquest backed this official narrative, closing the case with Vivienne presumed dead. But beneath the surface of this “open-and-shut” story lies a web of glaring discrepancies, ignored leads, and a silence that has blanketed the island for forty years.

The Flaws in the Official Narrative

From the beginning, the theory that Vivienne committed murder before taking her own life was riddled with holes. The knife found next to Beth’s body bore no fingerprints. Would a woman who was going to kill and then take her own life wear gloves or wipe her prints away? It seems unlikely.

In addition, a significant amount of Vivienne’s blood was found inside the Cameron home, including a drag mark across the bathroom floor that was never properly analysed. This heavily suggested she had suffered a severe, debilitating injury

For a severely wounded woman to then drive to Rhyll, commit a brutal murder, and take her own life seems improbable.

Despite extensive searches beneath the San Remo bridge, Vivienne’s body was never recovered. The only physical trace placing her near the bridge was her vehicle, which could easily have been driven there by someone else.

Witnesses and Unanswered Questions

After the inquest was closed, a key witness came forward stating he was actually with Vivienne on the night of Beth’s murder. His timeline matched statements from Fergus’s sister, Marnie, who said she was waiting with Vivienne for Fergus to return home.

Another witness reported seeing Fergus’s brother, Donald, along with his brother-in-law, Ian (the two men who discovered Beth’s body), digging a deep hole on Donald’s property the day Vivienne disappeared. Police never searched Donald’s property. Having settled on a conclusion early, investigators failed to look for evidence that might dispute it.

Police refused to consider alternative suspects, even though the physical evidence and blood spatter pointed toward a scenario far more complex than a straightforward murder-suicide.

Decades of Silence on the Island

The fallout from the crime created a heavy culture of silence on Phillip Island. The Cameron family rarely spoke of it, local media coverage was minimal, and mentioning the case publicly carried heavy social consequences.

Even decades later, the silence persists. Several local women recalled workplace bans on discussing the case, with one island business owner even losing customers after bringing it up to the wrong person.

Tragically, key figures in the case, including Donald, Marnie, and Ian, passed away without ever being formally interviewed by police. Fergus, who went on to remarry and build a life after the tragedy, remains in failing health.

Though a 2014 cold-case review maintained the original ruling, investigative work by journalists and authors has continued to challenge the official narrative.

Remembering the Women Behind the Headlines

Whatever the ultimate truth, it is essential to remember the two women behind the headlines, who have too often been reduced to one-dimensional figures: the ‘adulterer’ and the ‘murderer.’

Friends described Vivienne as a devoted mother of two young sons, a passionate equestrian who gave riding lessons, and a loyal friend who stood by loved ones in their darkest moments. Beth was remembered as a joyful, vibrant 23-year-old who brought her friends together and cared deeply for the island’s famous penguin colony.

It is entirely possible that both women were victims, and that Vivienne’s children were robbed of the truth about their mother. The hope remains that the full truth will eventually surface, bringing peace to the memory of two women lost to a tragedy far more complex than the world was led to believe.

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The 1994 World Cup was not without its controversy and heartbreak. Wednesday, we looked at the massacre in County Down which occurred; today we look at another death that was a result of the 1994 tournament. This time, it was a player.

Andrés Escobar was a Colombian player who made his debut for the national team in 1988. He was a defender who was described as a team player, one who always gave his best. Like many defenders, he was a player the rest of the team relied on heavily.

He was twenty-seven when he was selected as part of Colombia’s World Cup squad in the USA.

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World Cup Fever has hit us all. England have made the semi-final and tonight will play for a chance in the final against Argentina. I will keep my prediction on this to myself, to save upsetting anyone.

But as current excitement builds, we cannot forget the darkest times when football and violence collided.

The World Cup has been filled with its fair share of tragedy, and I am not talking about your national team getting knocked out. I am talking about murder in two distinct cases, one today, one Monday, where the World Cup became the catalyst for murder.

Italy v Ireland

It was the 18th June 1994 when Ireland faced Italy in the group stages. Against the odds, Ireland went on to win the match 1-0, and Irish pride was bursting. One of the areas where the historic match had been watched was a small, rural pub in Loughinisland, County Down. The euphoria was soon to turn to horror.

The pub was not in a controversial area. The pub boasted a clientele of both religions, and the atmosphere was generally welcoming and calm.

The second half of the game was underway when two gunmen from the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) burst into the pub. One was armed with an AK-47, the other a Czech-made rifle; they opened fire on the unsuspecting fans.

The gunmen killed six people before laughing as they left. One of the victims, Barney Green (87), was the oldest person killed in the conflict. Five other people sustained gunshot wounds but survived. All the victims were Catholic.

Background

The violence appeared random, but soon the full picture was revealed. This was a revenge killing. Two days before the match, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) had killed three UVF members in Belfast.

The day before the match, a Catholic taxi driver and one Protestant had also been shot in retaliation by the UVF. The UVF made a mistake, thinking that all the victims were Catholic.

The mass murder was investigated, but no one was ever arrested for the killings in the pub. The families of the victims started to suspect that the police had colluded with the UVF in the attack.

This became more believable when a Special Branch member was linked to the getaway car, and intelligence warned the suspects of arrest. The police then destroyed the getaway car just ten months after the attack.

Justice

In 2006, after much campaigning by the families, the court ruled that there was a “severe failing” of the police. They stated that the police had not investigated the shooting properly and to the full extent of the law, although they never cited any direct collusion.

Shortly after, the High Court quashed the report and ordered a new investigation.

The 2014 investigation was widely rejected by the victims’ families and branded a “whitewash”. The ombudsman then investigated again in 2016. Dr Maguire started from scratch, taking a broader strategic look at the local loyalist paramilitary unit and the importation of the weapons used.

2016 Report

The landmark 2016 report delivered a damning verdict, officially concluding that collusion was a “significant feature” before, during, and after the murders.

It found the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Special Branch possessed reliable intelligence regarding the local Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) unit but failed to pass it to the active detectives. They actively prioritised protecting state informers over bringing the killers to justice.

Special Branch identified the primary suspects within 24 hours. However, delays meant arrests weren’t made for a month. Intelligence later revealed that a police officer had leaked information to the suspects, warning them of the impending arrests.

It further found that key evidence, including the red Triumph Acclaim getaway car, was prematurely destroyed by police, ruining future forensic opportunities.

Following the publication of the 2016 report, retired police officers launched a high-profile legal challenge attempting to have the report quashed, arguing that the Ombudsman had overstepped his powers by explicitly accusing officers of “collusion”. However, the report stood firm after senior judges ultimately rejected the challenge.

Today

The case remains highly relevant in the Northern Ireland Assembly. In political debates, representatives continue to cite the Loughinisland report as the textbook template of “collusion, concealment, and protecting agents.”

To this day, despite the extensive exposure of institutional cover-ups, no one has ever been successfully charged or convicted for the murders.

A monument to the victims sits outside Macartans Church.

Few crimes cause more disgust than a mother who kills her own children. Initially, that is what the Esher Murders seem to be: a mother who brutally murdered her six children whilst their father was away.

However, when you study the case, you realise that the murder was not as simple as you first thought. You may even find yourself empathising with the mother and understanding her situation.

The last shock that this case will produce is why you have never heard of it. It is due to the cover-up instigated at the highest level that no one heard the name of Mary Ann Brough.

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Christiana Edmunds was one of the first famous killers to walk the corridors of Broadmoor. She was called the Chocolate Cream Poisoner, but she never considered herself one of the Broadmoor prisoners. Despite this, she remained a patient until her death, some thirty-five years after her incarceration.

Christiana Edmunds was described as a tall, handsome woman with a highly prepossessing demeanour. Unlike many of the poor women at Broadmoor, Edmunds came from an educated, middle-class background.

Some will argue that Edmunds was not mad but rather a cold, sadistic killer. This marks a sharp contrast with earlier historical poisoners like Mary Bateman, the notorious “Yorkshire Witch” who used arsenic to systematically defraud and murder vulnerable clients under the guise of magic.

While Bateman operated out of crude, calculated financial greed, Edmunds was driven by an altogether different force: an unhinged, obsessive romantic delusion. Whatever the truth, Edmunds’s criminal career started because of a man, a married man to be more precise, who was also her neighbour in Brighton.

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For more than a century, Mary Ann Cotton was the most prolific serial killer in UK history, until Harold Shipman surpassed her victim count in 2000. She was described as beautiful, charming, and ulti…

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When human body parts were found wrapped in plastic in the secluded woodland of Kersal Dale, Salford, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) immediately launched a massive operation, pulling together hundreds of officers, detectives, crime scene investigators, and specialist operations staff.

The complex and harrowing investigation began on April 4, 2024, when a member of the public found a human torso in the Salford woodland. From the outset, the Major Incident Team faced an uphill battle. They were dealing with partial remains, no immediate identity for the victim, and a race against time.

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We have all heard of Jigsaw, the popular protagonist in the Saw franchise movies. However, the UK has a real-life Jigsaw killer.

Stephen Marshall earned the nickname from the media when he stabbed his…

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My name is Thomas. I am fourteen; currently, I am lying in an alleyway in Greater Manchester, fighting for my life. It is 8 pm on Sunday 29 June 2003; the police have been called. I have multiple stab wounds.

Standing beside me is my best friend Craig; he is fifteen and staying with me until help arrives. He will tell the police that a hooded knifeman stabbed me. He is lying. They will find this out when they look at the CCTV. It was Craig who stabbed me. I asked him to, in a roundabout way. Let me start from the beginning.

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Breck Bednar represented every parent’s modern nightmare: he met someone he didn’t know online. If you have children, you understand the dread this causes. Tragically, Breck’s story ended in the most…

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It was meant to be a lighthearted talk show segment about secret crushes when Jenny Jones revealed that Scott Amedure had a secret crush on a friend Jonathan Schmitz.

It was a show they had done multi…

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In March 2017, 64-year-old Donald Harvey was found beaten to death in his cell at the Toledo Correctional Institution. His assailant, a fellow inmate named James Elliot, later told investigators he knew the family of one of Harvey’s victims. Harvey’s death brought a final, violent close to the life of a man known to history as the “Angel of Death.”

The story of Donald Harvey is a dark chapter that Hamilton County can never entirely move past. In the 1980s, Harvey worked as a nurse’s aide at what was then known as Drake Hospital. This county-operated facility functioned essentially as a warehouse for elderly patients who lacked the means for private nursing care. It was here that Harvey’s crimes reached their peak, though his path of destruction began long before.

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Charles Cullen was one of the most prolific serial killers in history, but this article is not just about him; this article is also about the courageous women who brought him to justice.

Amy Loughren …

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A forty-five-year-old woman, Nicola Bulley, disappeared while walking her dog along the riverside in Wyre, Lancashire, on 27th January 2023. A country-wide search was launched to locate the mother-of…

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As a true crime writer, I find myself subscribed to a plethora of crime reports and news outlets. It was through these that I started noticing a chilling connection: several women had been found dead…

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While the names Sharon Tate and the LaBiancas dominate the narrative of the Manson Family murders, the foundational act of the Family’s spree of violence lies with a musician named Gary Hinman.

His br…

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Much is known about the Tate murders; yet, many crucial questions still linger. Little, however, is known about the LaBianca murders.

Whenever I read any book on the Manson family, I am always dishear…

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The one thing I’m sure of with the Manson murders is that most of what we’ve been told is not the whole story. Most of this narrative was produced by the prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, in his book Hel…

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