Depraved: The Shocking True Story of America's First Serial Killer [Paperback]

After reading "The Devil in the White City", I was curious to learn more about H.H. Holmes/Herman Mudgett. Being familiar with some of his other work, Harold Schechter seemed to be a logical choice for the best book on Holmes. While the book was very thorough, some aspects of it left me with mixed emotions.

Parallel to the 1893 World's Fair hosted in Chicago, Holmes began a prolific killing spree. Inhabiting a large building known as the Castle, Holmes seemed to be an outstanding citizen. His charm allowed him to con insurance companies and other businesses. With bigamous marriages and several mistress, he also easily charmed women in a much more conservative time. Behind closed doors is when Holmes became a monster. Often through slow means such as poisoning and suffocation, Holmes disposed of his victims even after he left his house of horrors known as The Castle.

The major complaint I have with the book is that it tends to run a little long-winded at times. Section 3 is the documentation of Holmes fleeing Chicago and criss-crossing the country on various schemes. This is recounted in its entirety in Section 4 as investigators track the steps of Holmes.

This flaw is compensated by the details of Holmes' trial which created some humerous scenarios. The epilogue which discusses the "Holmes Curse" is also quite interesting.

While the two are not directly comparable, I enjoyed "The Devil in the White City" more than "Depraved". However the details of Holmes' life make this a solid read for those interested. Just skip the 4th section.

I picked this book up after after enjoying "Savage Pastimes," another book by the same author, and hoped for an informative and gruesome book about an infamous serial killer. "Depraved" was, in places, but the presentation was lacking, and the book had no focus and far too much irrelevant courtroom drama.

It opens up properly, with a thumbnail sketch of the times, H. H. Howard's infamous crimes, and more background info. It then lists some formative experiences from his childhood, and gives a short bio of his life up to the point he turned to murder. After that it loses its way though, with endless discussion of Holmes' travels around the country as he tries to perpetrate a minor insurance scam, and then far too many pages on his murder trail. Surprisingly, his trial is for the murder of a henchmen in an insurance scam, and he's never charged or prosecuted for the dozens of other far more interesting murders he committed. Unfortunately those are hardly mentioned in the book at all, and are not discussed in any detail.

Going by the middle 80% of the book, you'd think it was a biography about a small time hustler, scam artist, and bigamist who eventually got carried away and murdered a partner, and was subsequently tried and executed for it. The fact that he killed maybe 50 other people, built this incredible murder mansion, tortured dozens of people, and was the world's first documented serial killer, is almost an afterthought.

Let's be honest; the hook of the book, the reason anyone reads it, is that it's about H. H. Holmes, who killed a lot of people in various horrible ways, at a time in history when that sort of thing was almost completely unknown. That's' what the reader wants to know about, in as much detail as possible, with lots more about the, "mazelike corridors, soundproof rooms, sealed vaults, oversized furnaces, and chutes leading down to the cellar" that the book jacket talks about. Unfortunately, you get hardly more detail about those things than the book jacket says, with no detailed descriptions of anything, no charts or diagrams or photographs, no eyewitness accounts, and not even any speculation about how the crimes went down.

What you do get are maybe 200 pages (out of the 360 total) covering his seemingly endless and aimless cross-country travels while dodging the cops and tediously plotting to murder his assistant in a life insurance scam, hoodwink his widow, and dispose of the guy's children. Ten or fifteen pages would have been sufficient for that section, but instead it covers at least 100, most of it of the, "traveled from Chicago to Baltimore, checked into two different hotels under different names, didn't buy the poor girls new shoes, etc..." variety. It's as boring as it sounds from my summary. Worse yet, we then revisit that entire story when it all gets relived during Holmes' trial, which ends in his conviction for the murder of his henchmen, as part of a life insurance scam.

The author covered that section in so much detail for an obvious reason; he could just pluck it all from newspaper articles at the time, since there was extensive coverage of Holmes in the media of the day. Far, far less coverage is given to the castle itself, or Holmes' serial killing, and there's virtually nothing about why Holmes became what he was. We get one short childhood incident, lots of unsourced comments about his practicing torture on animals as a child, and then bang, he's being hung for one minor murder with almost no details about the bulk of his crimes. We know everything about a crime we don't much care about, and almost nothing about all of the crimes we wanted to learn about, and that's a definite flaw. I was skimming paragraphs and whole chapters by page 250 or so; bored with the irrelevant courtroom drama and wanting to get past his conviction for one life insurance scam murder, and on to more about his real crimes.

Basically this is a decent first draft of a book about H. H. Holmes, but it needs substantial editing to add detail about his castle and murders, needs to have at least 50 pages of redundant and boring reportage about his travels removed, and needs much more psychological analysis and discussion about Holmes and the society in which he lived.

My final, seldom-used non fiction scores:

Concept: 7

Presentation: 4

Writing Quality: 5

Presents/Explains the Topic Clearly: 5

Entertainment Value: 4

Rereadability: 3

Overall: 3.5

One of the finest of many books by serial killer expert and prolific author, Harold Schechter, is Depraved: an engaging and historically relevant treatment of Herman Mudgett, alias Dr. H. H. Holmes, whose unprecedented reign of fraud and murder in Chicago and Philadelphia in the late nineteenth century rivals anything in the annals of crime before or since. After learning some of Holmes's techniques to lure women into his life and ultimately into one of the lurid chambers in his "castle," it is apparent that many contemporary serial killers studied his methods.

Depraved is more than merely the chronology of a smooth, sociopathic con man and his hapless victims; the reader is transported back in time to a sepia-tinted tour of American history during the Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair of 1893), when the industrial age was beginning to transform lives and landscapes across the country. Students of history, crime, and the psychology of evil will uncover fascinating details in this thoroughly researched story. The "Gilded Age" was the perfect backdrop for Holmes's boundless avarice, murderous excess, and seemingly limitless supply of marks. Schechter even shapes his prose to reflect the vernacular and colloquialisms of the era, interwoven with news reports and official transcripts of Holmes's trial, touted at the time as "The Trial of the Century."

Holmes defies many of the stereotypical biographies of a serial killer. He had a relatively normal upbringing, an excellent education, and possessed a canny business sense that would have made him a legitimate fortune had his lust for money not been trumped by his lust for murder. It's possible that had Holmes not attempted his last insurance fraud, he may have gotten away with most of the crimes for which he has been immortalized in legend and lore. He may have grown old and forgotten and his castle demolished like many other lost landmarks in Chicago, its horrible secrets bulldozed to rubble. However, that would never have satisfied Holmes, for his depravity was only exceeded by his ego.

The top two floors of Holmes's castle were lined with small bedrooms that he let to travelers seeking lodging during the fair. Unknown to the hundreds of men hired (and fired) while constructing the castle, with its vault, crematorium, acid vat, dissection room, labyrinthine hallways, body chute to the cellar, and airless compartments, Holmes had created a gothic murder trap where an untold number of guests disappeared.

But there is much more to the Holmes saga than his hotel of horrors. His modus operandi is a blueprint for mass murder. Schechter tracks Holmes back to his early days as a druggist and entrepreneur, through his three bigamous marriages, numerous mistresses, business schemes, insurance scams, and his final cross-country odyssey that eventually leads to a noose around his neck. The second half of the book recounts a relentless investigation, a sensational trial and Holmes's shocking confession that stunned the nation.

Holmes's intriguing personality will leave you wondering - what preternatural obsession drives men to such acts?