Timothy O'Bryan

popular name: H. H. Holmes

date_of_death: May 7, 1896

age: 34

cause_of_death: Execution by hanging

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: The country’s first serial killer was a smooth-talking doctor who ran a murder hotel in Chicago. The tale of H. H. Holmes and his Murder Castle is perhaps one of the most fascinating cases in American criminal history. Born Herman Webster Mudgett, he was a bright young doctor who had graduated from high school at sixteen and always had a penchant for anything to do with death. While enrolled in the University of Michigan’s Department of Medicine and Surgery, he worked under Professor William James Herdman in the university’s anatomy lab. The pair were said to have aided body snatching to supply bodies as medical cadavers, which Mudgett then burned or disfigured with acid, then planted to it look as if they had been killed in an accident. Mudgett began taking out insurance policies on these people—before he stole, disfigured, and planted them—and would later collect the insurance money once the bodies were discovered. After graduation, Mudgett started a new job working at a Philadelphia drugstore. When a child died after taking medicine purchased from the drugstore Mudgett was employed at, the young doctor denied any involvement and immediately left the city. Before he moved to Chicago, he changed his name to avoid any connection to his previous scams. Herman Webster Mudgett, M.D., donned the name Henry Howard Holmes. In 1893, the bustling city of Chicago won the honor of hosting the World’s Columbian Exposition. While the World’s Fair brought millions of visitors from all over the world, nearby, a clever killer hid in plain sight, capitalizing off of the slaughter of naive tourists. For the next two years Holmes either killed or is suspected of killing around two dozen people using his murder mansion residences to facility cruel and diabolical murder of men, women, and even children. He was finally caught and convicted of murder in 1894 and executed in 1985. Until the moment of his death, Holmes remained calm and amiable, showing very few signs of fear, anxiety, or depression. Despite this, he asked for his coffin to be contained in concrete and buried ten feet deep, because he was concerned grave robbers would steal his body and use it for dissection. Despite popular belief, Holmes's neck did not break; he instead strangled to death slowly, twitching for over fifteen minutes before being pronounced dead. He was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, Pennsylvania.

popular name: Danny Hansford

date_of_death: May 2, 1981

age: 21

cause_of_death: Homicide - gunshot wounds

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: The shooting of Danny Hansford by wealthy preservationist Jim Williams at Williams' home in Savannah, Georgia was the subject of the best-selling 1994 true crime novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. Claiming self defense, Jim Williams was acquitted of Hansford's murder after not one, not two but four trails. In 1997 this well-written, award winning novel was made into a confusing, disjointed movie by Clint Eastwood.

popular name: Frank Lonardo

date_of_death: October 19, 1929

age: 42

cause_of_death: Gunshot wounds from a mob hit

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: One of four brothers that made up the Lonardo crime family, Frank was gunned down during a card game in the back of a downtown Cleveland barbershop years after the murder of his brothers Big Joe and John Lonardo. While the crime was never solved, it was generally understood that his murder was part of a plot to eliminate all the Lonardo brothers connected with the bootlegging racket and that Frank Alessi was involved in the planning of the execution.