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  • Essay / Serial Killers: HH Holmes - 2489

    As if cast straight from the depths of nightmares, both fascinating and terrifying. Serial killers hide behind bland, normal lives. They often manage to evade arrest for years, decades and sometimes forever. These are America's Serial Killers. “Even when some of them are arrested, we may not recognize who they are because they don't fit the distorted image we have of serial killers” (Brown). What is this distorted image? Killers live in everyday life, they are the ones who insinuate themselves into someone's life without knowing it to torture and kill them. The serial killers that are in the movies, Norman Bates, Michael Myers and the main evil spirit of SAW, those are just those characters. They were invented as exaggerated fictional characters from the Hollywood imagination. Serial killers are everywhere! Well, maybe not in our neighborhood, but on our television screens, in movie theaters, and in rows and rows of books at our local Borders or Barnes and Nobles booksellers” (Brown). When people think of serial killers, names like Dahmer, Gacy, Bundy, and Gein come up. While Jack the Ripper executed his victims in London, Holmes began his gruesome career in Chicago (America's Serial Killers). “Despite being America's first serial killer, Holmes is not a household name and until now we have had no popular visual record of his crimes: (Spikol). Why do people only think about the most popular killers and the most famous profiles? They are all very similar to each other because they share characteristics. HH Holmes was a successful serial killer because he was well educated, cunning and charming. These are just a few traits of Holmes...... middle of paper ...... on the deaths of Julia and Pearl Conner, Minnie is also said to have investigated the murder of Emily Van Tassel. (Taylor)With all the women in Holmes' life, it would seem that Holmes had every chance to settle down and live a normal life. So why would he continue on the path he was on? Of all the women in Holmes' life, it was his second wife, Myrtle Z. Bellman's father, Holmes, tried to con and kill, unsuccessfully (America's Serial Killers). Holmes was never arrested for the incident with his stepfather. . However, he was later arrested in “July 1894, Holmes was arrested for the first time. It was not for a murder but for one of his projects” (Taylor). Being arrested should have frightened Holmes and set him on the straight and narrow path, but it did not. It was in prison that Holmes met one of his accomplices, Marion Hedgepeth (Nash, Bloodletters 448).