In the late 1800s in Chicago, Dr.Holmes, built a 60-room hotel. It contained all the amenities of luxury living; doors that led to nothing, rooms without windows, and hidden passageways. For four years, Holmes held various guests prisoner, torturing and eventually killing them. Some rooms were sealed shut and used as gas asphyxiation chambers, others were lined with iron plates and had blowtorches built into the walls to burn his victims.
The prison rooms had rudimentary alarm buzzers to alert him if anyone tried to escape. The thing that eventually lead to Holme’s arrest was not the blood-splattered surgical table, or his jars of poisons and boxes of bones, or even his very own crematorium; it was an insurance fraud scheme. The murders were revealed when police conducted a search of the hotel.
He was hung for his crimes but never showed remorse- he claimed he was possessed by the devil. In the 1930’s, the building was burned to the ground and replaced with a post office.