May 16, 1861 - H. H. Holmes
Operating in Chicago during the 1893 World's Fair, Holmes constructed a hotel specifically designed to trap and kill victims — a building fitted with gas lines, sealed rooms, and a basement crematorium. His case is notable for the industrial quality of the enterprise: the fraud, the manipulation of accomplices, and the systematic disposal of evidence. The precise number of his victims remains unknown, in part because his own confessions were contradictory and self-serving.
From Wikipedia
Herman Webster Mudgett (May 16, 1861 – May 7, 1896), better known as Dr. Henry Howard Holmes or H. H. Holmes, was an American con artist and serial killer active between 1891 and 1894. By the time of his execution in 1896, Holmes had engaged in a lengthy criminal career that included insurance fraud, forgery, swindling, three or four bigamous marriages, horse theft, and murder. Known as the Beast of Chicago, the Devil in the White City, or the Torture Doctor, his most notorious crimes took place in Chicago around the time of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893.
Holmes was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Benjamin Pitezel, his accomplice in several of his cons. However, Holmes confessed to 27 murders, including those of some people who were verifiably still alive. It is believed that he also killed three of Pitezel's children, as well as three mistresses, the child of one mistress and the sister of another. Holmes was hanged on May 7, 1896.
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