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: Butchie Doe

date_of_death: June 7, 2018

age: 59

cause_of_death: Cancer

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Arthur "Butchie" Doe was one of the most hated mobsters in all of Boston Mob history. Suspected in 3 murders he also survived 4 attempts on his life. Prone to bouts of unspeakable violence, he worked with a team of Charlestown townies and they would rob banks all over Boston. Known to screw over his own crew, he shot one individual to death so he didn’t have to share the spoils of a bank robbery.

popular name: Frank Palermo

date_of_death: May 12, 1996

age: 91

cause_of_death: Natural causes

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Boxing has a dark history of gangsters, crooked fights and mysterious murders. In the world of boxing at the time, Frank “Blinky” Palermo, a member of the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra crime family, was indeed royalty. Along with his partner, Frankie Carbo, a New York Lucchese crime family member, Palermo managed and controlled many of the professional boxers around the country. Although this Philly hustler was only five feet tall, he was a giant at assault and battery, big at bootlegging, jobbing, racketeering, numbers runner, petty thief, shakedown artist, wiseguy - Blinky was a man of many talents. Palermo's partner was Mafioso Frankie Carbo, a soldier in New York's Lucchese family who had been a gunman with Murder, Inc. During the 1940s, Frankie Carbo became a boxing promoter, working along with Ettore "Eddie" Coco, James "Jimmy Doyle" Plumeri, Frank "Blinky" Palermo, Harry "Champ" Segal, & Felix Bocchicchio. The group was known as "The Combination", together they were highly successful in fixing high-profile boxing matches. Even worse Palermo would cheat his stable of fighters out of their share of the purses of their fights. In 1961, the Feds zeroed in on Carbo and Palermo and were charged, tried and convicted of committing a dozens of crimes. Blinky Palermo was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Upon his death, he was laid to rest at Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, PA.