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You are now listening to true Murder. The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Good evening. This is your host Dan Zupansky for the program True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Bloodstains is the startling tale of one man's search for the truth after inheriting the personal diaries belonging to his great great grandfather, who he discovers was America's first and most notorious serial killer. Hermann Webster Mudget, better known by his
alias H. H. Olmes. Mudget, was the mass murderer who struck terror into the nation by being the proprietor of the infamous Murder Castle and stalking the streets of Chicago
during the eighteen ninety three World's Fair. During his incarceration awaiting execution well over a century ago, Holmes admitted killing twenty seven innocent victims, but the evidence the author locates indicates hundreds more likely from his investigation, Jeff Mudget, the direct descendant of H. H. Holmes, learns that Holmes's reign of terror was worldwide and not limited Chicago, as has
been so widely believed. Based upon never before revealed historical facts, Jeff pieces together a dynamic an extraordinary puzzle, including the strong possibility that Holmes was also Jack the Ripper. The book that we're going to be featuring this evening is Bloodstains with my special guest, Jeff Mudget. Welcome to the program, and thank you to agreeing to this interview. Jeff Mudget, Hey.
Dan, thank you very much. It's my pleasure to be here.
Well, thank you very much. It's going to be the pleasure of our audience to hear this incredible story. And again, first off, congratulations on a great book. It's a real thrill ride of a read for those people that are going to be fortunate enough to have read this book. Now. First off, normally ask why a particular author decides to write about this book. But let's get into your relationship
to Herman Webster. Mudget. Tell us a little bit about your family tree, a little bit, please, sure, d he.
Was my great great grandfather. The way I explained that more clearly is to tell everyone that he was my grandfather's grandfather. We are the legal direct descendants. That's not to say the only He had many women in his life, but were the only ones that he was the result of a legal marriage. And he was born in New Hampshire and Gilmington in eighteen sixty one. He was an
incredible mind and a huge intellect. Went on to University of Michigan Medical School, got his doctorate degree practice medicine, and then, as you've already described to the audience, built Murder Castle in Chicago for the World's Fair. That was his plan all along.
Now, how did you come to You start early in the book, and maybe you can just tell us how your grandfather, or Bert, how he viewed even speaking about his grandfather A. JH. Holmes, or again Walter Herman Webster Mudget, tell us a little bit about the subject and how your grandfather handled the subject of Herman Webster Mudget.
You know, I'm glad you brought that up because I like to describe that because to me, that's the major part of the book. Obviously, there's people that want to read about the murders and the castle and the history, which has been written about already. What I wanted to do was give my readers the inside story of how our family evolved around learning that this monster was in our background. So when I was a small boy, even when I when I grew older, my grandfather and I
had a very strained relationship. As a matter of fact, we didn't talk. I hated the man And the best way for me to describe it is he loved to fish. He used to go fishing every weekend. When I was a boy, there was nothing I liked doing more than to go fishing. He never invited me to go fishing. Imagine your grandfather never inviting you to go fishing. So I grew up with this strain. Well, I just gave
up on the man. Well, one night, when I was about forty forty five years old, at a family dinner, through some investigation that my grandmother had been doing about our genealogy and her belief that we were related to more famous people, it came out that we had a criminal in our background. And at that dinner table, my grandfather admitted that we were the descendants of the monster. HH.
Holmes and tell us more about this conversation at the dinner table. What your grandfather Birt had to say.
Well, he I still I can see it as clear, clear as day. He stood up at the head of the table once the name was mentioned, face White, slammed his chair back so hard against the wall the picture came down behind him, and he talked, pointed his finger at the whole family revolving around around the different chairs of the table, and told everyone that that name was never to be mentioned in this in his house ever again, and then stopped with his finger pointing at me, stared
for three or four seconds. I can still see it now, and then stormed out of the room. And I can see I can see my grandmother's eyes going back and forth, putting his eyes in my eyes like he was telling me something different. And uh at we all we all followed his orders when we never brought the name up, and within three or four years he died after that of cancer. But that's exactly the way it happened at the dinner table.
What did you ascertain or conclude, even though it might not have been so easy to conclude, what did you think of the entire thing? Why he had looked to you, and why did you think he had such a reaction, and as a result, no one else spoke about AJH. Holmes. But did you do some research?
You know, the research? Yes, the research became an obsession, Dan, and I took to learning everything I could about this man in our background and why, what could have caused
my grandfather to have this reaction. Well, as you can imagine, you know the twenty or thirty books written already about Holmes, he was the worst of the worst, and it quickly became what well as I, as I write about in the book, the question then came about my own self and my own identity of this thing in my background was responsible for why I was alive, the conscious decisions he had made that made it possible for me to be a human being. And to have that in your background.
And what I try to do is take my readers along with me and have them go on that journey of determining what we are as human beings. Even if you have the worst thing to have ever lived on this earth in your background.
Now, maybe we should go into your background a little bit too. You ended up being a lawyer, so maybe you can tell us what type of lawyer and what kind of person you became But despite your obvious success having become a lawyer, tell us if there was something that you thought to pique your interest once you realized who your relative was, this infamous monster, and why you
had this question that was nagging at you. Tell us a little bit about your your life and your background that would lead you to have this question sort of consume you.
Well, that's a that's a great question. The my entire life, I had had questions about thoughts that would sometimes emerge. I was, I was a law abiding citizen. I had never committed a crime. I was successful lawyer, had sailed in the navy, had a lovely wife and a daughter. But every once in a while, these things would come up that I had a hard time believing were normal things about evil, and not that I ever had the
temptation to partake in them. Before I had learned of this session, but I had doubts, and I had often thought about going to therapy, had it, thought about seeing if I could have had professional help to maybe define what this meant and maybe tell me if it was normal for all men to think the things that would pop up once in a while. So's that's pretty much a summary of my life before learning this was in our background.
Now, after your grandfather Bert made this statement that you were not to raise the name of HH Holmes again or Herman Herman Webster Budget again in your home, you said, this became your obsession. You researched everything you possibly could. For those that don't aren't so familiar with this historical infamous monster. What did you discover at that time that
you already weren't so aware of? What did you find about HH Holmes in terms of the crimes, the type of signature, the kind of characteristics of the crime itself, as they call him m O method up around day. So tell us what exactly characterized the murderous history of J. Holmes and why is he referred to as HH Holmes.
Well, he well, he had about thirty Dan, he had about thirty different aliases. He did not like the name Herman Mudget. He used the one he liked the most was J. Holmes, And that was because he was fascinated with Sherlock Holmes. As I read everything in the public domain about him, you it was obvious that there had never been a more deliberate and cold blooded villain, maybe
in the history of the world. Now, obviously you get into discussions about Hitler and now and those things that you know, where millions of people were murdered becase as the decisions they made. But I'm I'm I'm talking about the man that does it with his own hands, not not orders a man in military uniform to do it. So he was a prodigy of wickedness. He well at the University of Michigan if he had one of the
highest recorded IQs ever. And when you started, when I started to study the actions, the things he invented, the drugs he created, he was an incredible mind, and it was it was a sad thing to realize that that mind had gone to waste in order for him to follow the practices that you know, were just diabolical. He knew from an early age that his natural pent was murdered.
He grew up wanting to hurt people. One of the discussions I have in the book is about this thing that where our modern medical science needs needs to put a name on on the serial kills and called them psychotic to say that they had a mental disorder, that this thing is treatable. What I quickly came to know was that this wasn't a disorder. This wasn't a mental condition. It certainly wasn't treatable. This is what he was and what he wanted to be just evil.
Now you talk about this early age. Now maybe we're jumping ahead a little bit, but we will talk about the priest and the experience he had when he was six years old. But that is what's something you find out, not through the regular research obviously, so we'll we'll leave that for now. Now tell us continue with you. You talk about that this person was this incredible villain, and there was no certainly was not insane by any any standard.
He was just an embodiment of evil. What are some of the crimes that you because obviously you take to the reader on a discovery of the dimension that the history books are not aware of, new information and like I say, almost a new dimension to the villain himself. But at that time in your research, take us back to what you did find. What was the body count, what was his mo who did he target? What kind
of victims? What was his ruse that he used? Why was he a killer in terms of according to the history books, Well.
He was an incredibly charming man who who had well maybe hundreds of women who fell in love with him over his lifetime. He could hypnotize, he could put on this doctor, this friend, this neighbor that's always there to assist, and people flocked to him and with obvious terrible results.
The thing that I came up to see it right off the bat, before I got the material you were talking about, was that his life, the way he made his living was to sell the skeletons of some of the people that he had murdered to the medical schools across the country. Is were known as the most pristine
and he made quite a living doing it. He also made a huge amount of money for the time in life insurance three or four hundred thousand a year in the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties, which I don't know how that translates out to money now, but probably a lot of millions he was We just found out. The thing, Dan, that's amazing too, is that the information never stops coming in. We found out about a week ago that he had
a phony patent office in Philadelphia. Imagine a man with a patent office who watches an innovation walk in his front or something. Maybe the idea of a decade. He decides that can make some money, he murders the inventor and patents it for himself. Well that's the way, that's the way he thought. So it's that's why when people start reading the book and dig in a little deeper than what previous authors have done, and they've done a great job. I don't mean to say that at all.
The Devil and White City is a great book. A matter of fact, I recommend it to people to read before they read Bloodstain. But this is something we need to dig in further to learn about.
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What man, the mind of man is capable of, and this is certainly the one who will give us the outer extreme.
Now, according to the history books, and this is this is where that the story gets even more fantastic. But according to the history books, he was hanged for murder.
I'm what year, eighteen ninety six, I believe, maybe ninety seven. I don't know the exactly. I don't have my timeline in front of me. And there's so many years on in his life that you got thick. But I think eighteen ninety six. He was arrested in eighteen ninety four, I believe so. And as you know that we get into that alleged hanging in the book.
Yeah, absolutely, that's It's another fantastic aspect of the book. Now let's get to because I know the audience is reeling a little bit. They understand it. We're dealing with this charming super villain selling skeletons and organs, and so let's talk about the event where you became inextricably involved with your great great grandfather Forever. Tell us what the circumstances were that you became even more involved than just researching your family tree.
Right well, as you know, the story of Bloodstains is about some material my grandfather left me after he died. He was a He was a wealthy man when he died, As all families do they they squabbled over his proceeds. I wasn't involved. I remember about three or four years after his death, my father drove up to my house one day and said that he had something from Grandpa for me, and I didn't excite me much to the truth,
I hadn't expected anything and didn't really want anything. And he handed me a couple of old World War two ammal cases that I had been turned into fishing tackle boxes, and both my father and I thought it was his way of asking me to go fishing finally, and so he gave me these these and they were full of fishing lures and reels and wrenches, and they sat in
my garage for a couple three years. Well, one day I went out, and I don't know why it happened this one day, but curious, maybe a longing to have a little affection for my grandfather. Finally I turned them over and went through all this stuff. Nothing really interested me much. When I tried to stack it all together to close the lids and put them away forever, I couldn't get them closed, and one of the boxes actually got kicked over and the bottom opened up, and in
the bottom was a diary. And that's what such things, the story of led things is all about, about the killers' diaries that my grandfather had and had kept secret from the world his entire life, and had decided I was the one that would have them. And that was what the stare at the dinner table that night was all about. And my life became learning what they meant.
Now you say diaries, there was two diaries, and I'm correct, there's two diaries.
Right now, let me explain this, and this is how I do this because I get asked this every time. The story is about my great great grandfather's diaries. The question about whether these diaries will ever be revealed or whether they were actually in existence, will be up to my daughter to tell, because I want to respect her life and I'm not going to do it. So what I do is I tell people that the book is about the story of these two diaries, and they are the diaries of the killer.
I'm not sure I understood that, but we'll plow us.
The book is called fiction based on a true story, and it was done for legal reasons. As you know, there are there's no statute limitations on murder. The authorities, if they decided these books actually existed, to take them from me within about two or three days, I see. So that's after many consultations I decided that it was to be called fiction based on a true story.
Ah. Incredible, Well, thank you for answering that. That's even more intriguing and should be more intriguing to the audience. Incredible, Now are they fairly these diaries? Are? How many pages are we dealing with or how long would it take you to read these? And when did you fully read these I know I've read the books, so of course I'm asking a question, when did you How did you proceed with these diaries? Did you read them all in one night? How did you proceed with the reading of these diaries?
Now that would have been impossible. You're talking about a man with a mind that to comprehend you need to put some work into this was well, imagine reading the diaries of a Freud or Machiavellio. It's it's a lot of work. Plus we're dealing with the events which are so horrifying you could go sick as you read them, maybe like nothing that's ever been written before. So it took me. It took me two or three years to
get through them. And because so much I had written been written about homes that were directly opposed to what these books were saying, I had doubts about whether they were real at all or just hate. So, you know, as as explained in the book, the first thing we did was go check the handwriting on both books to make sure they were the same hand because we're talking about a book being written after he was hung. Well, that doesn't make much sense without without having researched the
facts which actually occurred. So you know we put I put a lot time and traveling back and forth across the country trying to find out if these things were true.
Now, how how how intrigued were you or how motivated were you after you got that initial confirmation that yes, this person was certain that this was the hand of A. J. Holmes.
Yeah, we had one of the one of the most highly thought of experts on forensic handwriting basically you know, told me in a private media that they were the same, which meant that he had not been on Well every book that's been written about Holmes, and the newspaper reports from the Times and the Tribune and the Philadelphia's everyone back then had reporters there watching him drop from the gallows. Well how did this happen? So then you know, all you did was you opened up another can of worms
and you had to go do more research. So as you can see that the more we dug in, the more questions came up.
Now, did you read initially in the history books about a phenomena called the Holmes curse?
Yet, yes, there was a after we had established that the handwriting was the same in both books, I started looking into the issue of if he had not been hung, where could I find evidence maybe supporting that conjecture or that circumstance. Well, the books all wrote about what you just mentioned, the Holmes Curse. Almost anyone that had been involved in his arrest, his trial, his execution was either killed or had terrible misfortune and tragedy strike them. After
the hanging. The newspaper The New York Times called it the Holmes Curse. There was talk of a supernatural events taking place, to paranormal. What I started looking at was the possibility that now he hadn't been hung, he had gone back and visited each of these individuals on his own for the next two or three years after the hanging. And this is what was the Holmes curse. Not a paranormal, not a supernatural event, but this evil man taking it on himself for vengeance.
Incredible, incredible. Now let's go back a little bit to what you first learned. You said it takes two or three years to get through all these and of course it is a matter of comprehension too. As you say, you're filled with doubt, but then as you keep proceeding with this, you're gaining more confidence that this is actually the truth, even as despite its horrific nature. When you first read us, the diaries itself tell us some of
the detail. I hate to ask for gory detail, but I think it's essential to understand the mind this evil genius. What was a reason that he gave for And some of it was revenge, obviously the Holmes curse points to that, But what are some of his motivation? What's his main motivation for his killing?
You know, you're getting into issues of whether what's the meaning of evil and why someone would murder when they're I tried to explain to the readers, we're talking about a man who was pure evil. Think of a flame, like a flame from a gas jet and a pure flame without smoke. That's what his evil was like. And he loved to hurt. He loved to torture, he loved to kill, He loved to see pain. He loved the question why someone would cry, why someone would scream from pain?
That was what his life was all about, besides making money. He loved. He loved money. So you're getting in to asking why he would have done I don't know if I can answer that, Dan, But like I said, I think of it as like that clear blue flame that just like to hurt other human beings.
Now, at what point do you and please explain this story about the recounting of the account of him visiting a priest at the direction of his parents that said that this priest wanted to speak to him, and he was six years old, and they dressed him in his finest clothing and he went and visited priest. Tell us about this incredible experience, and tell us what you think h Holmes is trying to say and conclude with divulging this event.
Well, it's a diary, so he was writing the events that occurred in his life. So you know, when he was a young when he was a young man, he stold by his parents that the family priest wanted to see him. He had known that the priest had treated him differently, and he mentioned in the books and that he could sense an interest. Well, on this particular day, as you know, he was went down by himself and was raped by the priest at a very young agent.
And when I read this in the diary, you know, I instantly jumped up and thought, here's the reason, you know, here's the thing, here's the event. Which caused this evil to emerge from this young boy's soul. It had nothing to do with being born evil. It had nothing to do with being the devil. It had to do with an event which happens too many young men and girls in their lives, you know, one of those terrible events right well, And to tell you the truth, that gave
me some solace. Event I actually thought, you know, maybe this is good for me in my life. I don't have anything to worry about moving forward. Yet, as you get, as you got deeper into the chapter and the diary and the event, you saw that instead of reacting as a normal young man would have, racing home, telling his father, having the authorities involved, having the priest removed, he used it to his advantage. And what he did was was blackmail.
Here's here's the think of this. You have a young man six or seven years old, Yeah, turning an event of sodomy into leverage, the blackmail a priest into telling him about the confessions of the town community, the confessions, and then using that to make money. Think of that. I don't know if there's ever been anything like that ever before on this earth.
Yeah, that's incredible.
He didn't tell his mother or mother when he went home.
Yeah, you captured that eloquently in the book, that he was just this very defiant It was nothing, it was an event, and he used it to his advantage.
That's all.
He was instantly of that mindset. He was ready for to be able to adjust, I guess to the situation.
Just adjust is a good word. And I've had many people tell me that the part of that chapter where he goes up and he touches the priest's face and he talks to the priests about how it's going to be between them and their relationship just since shivers through people as they read the book. So yeah, yeah, I don't really think I captured anything other than explaining what happened and what I read. So but it that that is probably the chapter that affected me the most of
all the events of his life. And as you know, there were some that, uh, he rivaled it and in that horribleness. So I always tell people when they decide to buy Bloodstains Dan that it's a very harsh read. It's not for the feint of heart. About halfway through, you've got to stick it out. You've got to be very tough. But I tell people if they finish. A lot of people are telling me it's changed in the way they think of good and bad and evil and doing good things for them and the way they think.
So I've been trying to tell people it's a harsh, harsh read, and don't take it up unless you're ready.
Yeah. Absolutely, And I think this audience is ready. I think that's the kind of people who listen to this program. Now we'll go back just a little bit too. You said from the very instant you opened the book that there seemed to be an odor. Maybe you can explain what your initial experience was in hindsight, because it is important a little bit later in the book. Of course.
You know, you're the first that's ever about any of my interviewers that have brought it up. And I commend you for that because it's a very important part, and I was always a little disappointed that some hadn't noticed that, or maybe skimmed through it. It wasn't I wouldn't say odor.
It was more of a presence or a feeling when you open the book, like something emerged as you read to touch you and to direct what parts of it wanted you to pay the most attention to And you know what, Dan, as I explained in the book, I did not. I wasn't a believer when I opened these books. I did not believe in To be quite honest, I was an atheist. I did not believe in ghosts or
hauntings or the devil those things. So for me to admit that there was something that came out of that book and touched me when I first opened it is quite an admission.
Yeah, I think it's of the same kind of mindset. I'm a skeptic. I'm open to all kinds of possibilities, but I'm by nature or a sort of a skeptic. And but then again, I'm still intrigued enough to listen. So I think that's what you do. Put the reader in a sort of a position that wow, you're you're reading an incredible entail. So you have to have a very very open mind here with this point.
Well, I think you're probably the same as I do. I will accept evidence, and I yearned for one day for someone to show me evidence that these things exist and and and and when they do, I'll accept it. But it has to be evident for me.
Yeah, absolutely, Now from this this presence that you you sensed the minute you opened this book. At what point do you you sense that there is there's a voice in your head, someone speaking to you? And how do you react to that?
Yeah? That and that we get into the book, you know, and that's uh there. What Stains is a story within a story. It has to do with an adventure story, as far as researching historical events like whether he was Jack the Ripper or whether he was actually hung, or whether he's buried along a railroad track in the Sacramento River, but as much of the book as a psychological journey that I had because of these voices that started to emerge in my head as I read. And I had
never had events like this in my life before. I had never heard voices. I had never seen a ghost in Evil States. But as soon as I started reading, I started having discussions I thought with myself over what was in the book. And before long, maybe six seven months, I started having full, full discussions with something I thought was HH Holmes and his beliefs in life and death and evil and the direction he wanted me to go
in my life, which started to be terrifying. And that's what I tried to explain in the book with these voices. I went to professional professionals for this. I went to therapists. I went to a neurologist. They started telling me I had that I had developed epilepsy, where the seizures could explain the voices in my head and this knowledge that I was having of homes that had been outside the history books. I wanted to believe in that condition, that epilepsy,
but it was difficult. And that's what the book's about. I give the reader the choice of accepting that it was the epilepsy and the seizures, or whether it was this thing in my head that came out of the books.
What kind of narrative would the voice be speaking to you in a tone? What what would it? What would JHM say to you?
Well, I think he was a very dapper gentleman, you know, well dressed, very mannerly. He's educated, and we would get into two discussions about whether there was a God, whether there was the devil, his lessons in life he wanted me to learn, and eventually how he thought it was my destiny to be the next and ah, what he said was a line of my family of people that had been like him, of monsters, and as you know from reading the book, my name was in It was
in the second diary. And uh so we started talking about what he expected of me, and they weren't the things. They were evil things, as you can imagine, things that he wanted me to learn to do.
Now in the second diary, it was in the in the borders or in yeah, in the borders of the diary itself, and there was other names, other family names, and and there was lines crossed through them. Explain that what you did see in that second diary.
Well there was the first diary had a in the second diary as well, there was a list of names. My grandfather was in it. He had been circled and then crossed out, which I reasoned that someone had once thought him a possibility and then decided not to by crossing it out. When and I go into this in one of the early chapters of the book below his name was my name, and my name was circled and there was no line through it. And it was almost as if I was had been decided upon to be to be.
Uh.
I didn't know what to be what, but it it was a chewing event to read your name in a book that had been written, well, I thought supposedly before I was born. So it was a hard thing to figure out logically.
When now from reading the diary you say, take you go on an adventure, and you take the reader on that. What are some of the things other than getting the handwriting expert to verify that this certainly is the handwriting of J. Holmes. What else are you trying to get confirmed? And what is in the diary that leads you to other places in this adventure?
Well, there's many, but one of the most interesting for me is the fact that he was He says in the diary that he was in London in eighteen eighty eight, the year of the Summer of Jack the Ripper. And so I became fascinated with anything Jack the Ripper, not necessarily because he did many more terrible things here in the United States, but you know the world, that's got to be the greatest mystery the modern man still, who is the Jack the Ripper? And to me it was
very exciting to maybe be able to solve the mystery. So, while his diaries were not detailed about two or three unfortunate prostitutes that he killed, he said when he was over there. It was fascinating his explana, his descriptions of the London Whitechapel area during the time, and then his leading the authorities on the wild goose chases and enjoying teasing them and making their crime seem more difficult.
Now let's get this straight too for our audience, because this is a hardcore true crime audience. You did the necessary research in this book to determine that he was actually in London at that time, No speculation, am I correct?
Not necessarily? We have circumstantial Evan See's the That's one of the difficult things, you know, and you know true crime when you're talking about something one hundred and twenty five years old. And when I practiced law, I did some criminal law, it's very difficult to bring out a piece of direct evidence. Much of what you need is, you know, as a pyramid, is circumstantial. So I knew that I could circumstantially prove that he was in London.
We even know the shift he rode over on, but would that prove he killed the actual two or three the Marrietto's and the Catherine I forget her Ei their last name, but the first two or three prostitutes there no, probably not. So as we dug in more and more, I realized that these days, you know, the guardians of the mystery, the guardians of the Jack the Ripper mystery, they and you know, and I understand their position. They every year they have an author come up and say
they know someone knows who Jack the Ripper was. It's always it's always crossed off alice. It doesn't work. So I knew that it was going to be very difficult to prove it. So about a month after I released my book, I was I was contacted by a man named Mark Potts who had done a lot of research on the Ripper and he thought Holmes was also the Ripper.
Now he had hired an expert that had been recommended by the British Library, a forensic handwriting expert who had done the handwriting on the first two Ripper letters, the Dear Boss and the from Hell Letters, the memoirs that Holmes had done while he was in prison awaiting Haynes. And she had concluded, and this was after I released my book, she had concluded that the handwriting was the same. So that is the piece of direct evidence. As you know,
that's not circumstantial. So all of a sudden, the people in London are saying, well, okay, okay, so maybe the handwriting is the same, but that doesn't prove he was the Ripper killer. Well they're starting to stretch pretty hard now. But what the handwriting does prove is is that he
was there that summer. Now, when you have someone like Holmes there and then he's writing about it in diaries, and then we have autopsies which state, you know that the talent that the organs that had been removed in four or five minutes during the fog of the Ripper killings needed surgical skill. You're starting to put a case together where beyond a reasonable doubt becomes possible all of a sudden, and maybe for the first time in history.
Yeah, yeah, it was another one of the fascinating aspects of this book. Now, the what I found again, it was a stretch for my imagination. But you say that, okay, that that that JH. Holmes was in London, But you talk about that he explains that this was a diversion. Please explain to our audience what that could possibly be. Explain this full story of what the murders represented to J. Holmes. Well, he was.
He went to London because he was fascinating. He was he was one of maybe the tide, Like I said, the intellects incredible, one of the pioneers of hormone science and longevity. He thought that he could create an elixure for him to live forever. Obviously out out pretty far out there, but in the next couple hundred years. I wouldn't be surprised if we have modern medical thanks or something like that. But he believed the secret was in
the ovaries of a woman. He had a counterpart in London and Wales actually that believed the same as science, famous scientists. At the time they met. They discussed it. He had an assistant who he knew he needed three or four pairs of ovaries a day to make up enough of the selection or not imagine that, so he
knew he needed help collecting them from the diaries. It was obvious to me that he had not actually killed those two prostitutes, but had directed them by his assistant as a sort of practice for when they returned to the United States.
Now there wasn't a case that or part of the story was that he needed the ovaries of women that were not prostitutes, people that were of certain class and a certain help explain that all.
Well, no, I think you've just done it. You know, he needed pure, healthy, young ladies, and obviously the prostitutes that you would have found in Whitechapel would not have qualified. When his diaries mentioned him him having murdered a woman on the other side of town in London, that was never brought up in any of the The Murders of the Ripper stories. So you know what, Dan, you're getting that.
And I know this, it's pretty far out on a stretched limb when you're talking about an assistant in him and the Ripper. And I was fascinated by the Ripper, but I don't want it to take away anything from the story here in the States, because Holmes doesn't need to be the Ripper to be the most terrible thing that ever lived here in the States. It's just, uh, I knew it could get me the attention I needed to have the world maybe understand him better if we
got into a discussion about the Ripper. You know what I mean?
Sure, you know you know. The thing is, what's incredible about your story is that Jack the Ripper represents one of the most terrifying characters in history and certain true crime history especially, and this book hands down makes the story of Jack the Ripper. The explanation of HH Holmes about the Jack the the crimes attributed to Jack the Ripper, because of the crimes previous to his supposed execution and then his incredible evil genius plans afterwards, makes the Jack
the Ripper look like a fairy tale. It really does.
H Elmes.
HH Holmes seems to be the embodiment that of Jack the Ripper. You know, doctor Jack, mister Hyde and Dracula and Dexter just thrown in there for good measure.
It's incredible, Frankenstein, you know, you know, but you're exactly right. That's uh and uh. This is not a make believe that's why. That's why Dan and you know. In the introduction to the story, my first line is there are no vampires between these stages, or wear wolves or mummies. They weren't needed. Bloodstains. Is the story of a real monster, my great great grandfather Hermann Webster Mudget.
So incredible. You're right now you talk about the the again. This is one of the most fantastic things to overcome in terms of thinking about this, this this super villain here. Please explain what you read in the in the diaries. You've already done all the research that you can possibly do about what history has already said about this person. Explain how HJH. Holmes explains to his great great grandson how he came to he executed, but escaped execution.
This to me is the most fascinating part of the story. And and as we've already discussed, I uh, you know, the Holmes curse got me going this way. And then the fact that the diary was was written with his hand after he was supposedly dead. So as I dug in, I got to the part about the when he was tried and then put in jail. You have to you have to remember this was the O. J. Simpson Trial
of the century. Every major city had a newspaper reporter there at the trial, and then the and then the judgment. When he was in in in Moyamenting prison awaiting hanging,
every day he had an interview. You go back to the archives I have I have I'm doing an interview Monday with w g N and the reporter there has been going through the Chicago Tribune archives from the eighteen nineties and just just digging up these fascinating things and sketches from these interviews in the prison cell and Holmes explaining how he felt himself changing, how his appearance wasn't the way he used to look, how his face was elongating,
his ears were sharpening, these things, and you read about these things in this Tribune and the New York Times, and it's amazing. He started hypnotizing the prison guard. The authorities knew that he had this ability, and they had worn the guards not to talk to this man. Well, he could handle that, no problem whatsoever. And over time he picked the one he wanted to use hypnotize this man, and then trained him into acting with the mannerisms that
would pull this fraud off. And as you read in the chapter, and I don't want to give way too much of the chapter, the guard was hung in his place. I believe this, and I have the ability to prove it one day, which is a fascinating thing, which any of your readers that pick up the book, read through it with me, and then wait over the next year
or so, we're going to prove that that's true. And I'll tell you how in a second he hired the Pinkerton Guards, the most renowned guards on the planet back then. He hired them to supervise as the body came down off the gallows. When it was hung, it went immediately into a coffin which was filled with concrete. He had donated money to a children's fund, and the judge had agreed not to do an autopsy, which was the violation of Pennsylvania law. The filled of a concrete they had
the Pinkerne's had a mule team waiting. They drug this concrete filled coffin to the cemetery outside of outside of the city. I've been to the cemetery twice. They had a ten foot hole waiting. Coffin went in that was filled with concrete. He gave the excuse for all this concrete to the paper, to the newspapers, that he was afraid of grave robbers and that they would ruin his soul. This man cared left about life after death, souls and
his carbons that had nothing to do with it. He knew that if that coffin was dug up and there was people offering thirty thousand dollars for his brain after the hanging to be taken to medical school. He knew if it was dug up, it would be the man hunt, the greatest man hunt since the Booth after the Lincoln assassination. They would have found him and they would have shot him immediately. He would have been dead. So with all
this concrete, he was fairly safe. And what we plan on doing, we're going to get a court order, we're going to dig up the concrete, and then we're going to do a DNA comparison of my tissue and what's left inside the concrete.
Yeah.
So I'm very excited about that one day to prove some of the the ideas and conjecture I had that's inside the book well and his and his diaries.
Jeff, you're going to have to promise to when that happens, to please contact me and we'll have to do another show absolutely about that event, because that will be one incredible event.
Well, I've got one better than that. Why don't you come down and do your radio show from the cemetery as we dig it up.
That would be amazing. That would be amazing. Yeah, that's even better idea. That'd be great. Yeah, maybe bring them, bring some film crew, be fun. Yeah, Yeah, that'd be a lot of fun. Well, that's amazing. Now now the continue with the trial again, it's you say it's the trial of the century, it's it's nothing compares to this. To O. J. Simpson, he has hypnotize this guard. And again you go through elaborate detail in the book how this is even possible. Again, you're stretching your mind to
conceive of something like this. But to be fair too as well, that he did pick the jail guard out of all the bunch of guards that were there to actually watch him, did he pick the one that was most closely familiar in terms of body size. And then he did do some things to try to at least get his weight down. But the most brilliant things were planning those ideas with the media. How much control he
had of the media. He was such a sensation. But instead of the other way around, where the media tells you what it's going to do, he really had them eating on the palm of his hand, didn't he.
Oh, there's no doubt about it. And you know what, damn, this is not something I make up. You can go back and review all of these newspaper articles and you can see once I've told you explain to you his plan. You go back and read the newspaper articles now and it'll click in your mind that it's obvious what's happening here. It's just it was a it was an amazing event he pulled off masterful.
Now, so with your research you realize that the history books are wrong, that he duped the entire world as the world was watching, and another person was executed in his place and no one discovered the ruse. What does H. H. Holmes again, according to the diaries, what does he go on to do and where does he go?
Well? Uh, and before we go there, and I stayed in the book at the end of the book, Dan, and you've read it. If when we do this DNA analysis, if it is him, I'll be the first to apologize and state that I was what I was wrong. I doubt it, but I'll be I'll be the first. After after he escaped, he went on to seek vengeance on those people, the judge, the prosecuting attorney, some of the EIGEH witnesses against him, and the insurance company that he
thought treated him poorly. That was the Holmes curse. After that, I think immediately he took off for Europe again, and then he fell in love with San Francisco and came out to the Bay Area and spent quite a lot of time there.
Okay, now tell us about the castle, well.
The murder Castle is to me. It shows his mind at work so well, and it's been written about very well. The Larsen covered it well. And the Devil in the White City and then scheckter and deranged or depraved. He realized that the World's Fair was coming. He saw it out its location, worked it back to where the transportation would have to deliver these millions of people to this the greatest show that the earth had ever seen. He found a piece of land at Junction Grove that was
already a pharmacy. It was owned by a couple that he murdered, and then he took possession of after he murdered the husband, and then he got the wife to mention him in her will as far as the property, and then he killed her. He took over the building, and then across the street he bought an empty lot
right there at the Junction Grove. And what Junction Grove means is the main railroad game from downtown Chicago went to south along the lake and then had a ninety to where the fair was going to be, so Junction Grove. He then devised plans for a three story building which the first floor would be the pharmacy where he would practice medicine. The second floor would be a hotel for all the young people that would come visit the fair and get off the train and be too tired to
continue on that night. They would be excited of seeing the fair the next day. The third floor was his office and living space. The basement was a torture chamber, which if you take the time to study the diagrams and what the police found there when they finally investigated it, you'll be shocked to see that it was probably the only building designed from the ground up, from below the
ground up to consume human beings after they've been murdered. Wow, acid bath furnaces, He had tables for operation, he had rooms for torture. He had the ability to move skeletons to medical schools and sell them organs, and just well, it was when people like you you've already brought when you think of Frankenstein and those and Dracula and those far worse. Yeah, incredible, And this was my great, great grandfather, So you'll see I'm not laughing. I try to chuckle
it up. But it was a terrifying event to know that was in me and that his blood stained my soul, and I had to figure out a reason why I was alive and to identify who I was as a man. And that's what the book's about.
Well, it's incredible to your journey to the present day location of the castle and you actually going into the remnants I guess of the basement of this and then you bring your friend Kim the filmmaker, and the source of a lot of sources of information at this US
Post Office is from someone named Terence. So it's an incredible what it's incredible account of what you're feeling at this time because again we we don't talk too much about it, but there is this journey that you've taken the reader along with of discovery, discovery of the things that go on in your head, this definition of evil,
can it be genetic? There's all these questions that you are going undergoing in your personal life at the same time as this journey of discovery to find out the truth and of course what your grandfather, Burt was trying to tell you in all of this, so it's an incredible story. When we get to the point where you're at the US post Office, they actually erected this structure
on the remnants of this evil rounds. Tell us a little bit more about the directive that you finally realized that is emanating from your grandfather Bert, the person that you really didn't think too much of once upon a time.
Well before we just one second. When your readers decide or they were making their decision about whether they want to read the book, they can go to our Bloodstains Facebook page and they can see the actual video of when we visited the basement of the post office, which was built on top of where the murder castle was, with some of the existing foundations built below, with a post office staff that does not go into the basement because they believe it is haunted. It's sealed up. They
don't go down below. We got the like you say, the custodian to go down with us and saw some things that we explained in the book. Now, now you talk about my grandfather, and that's the end of the book is about voices and about Holmes and my grandfather and I discussing who we are in life and death and good and Eve and me finally coming to understand why my grandfather was so stoic, why he was afraid of including me with any of the things he did, and what a great man he turned out to be,
and how much I miss it now. And that's that's that's the without ruining any of the story, that's the end of the book. And it doesn't matter telling your readers, your listeners about the end of the book. The book everyone that reads it. I get reviews every day now, and they all it all means something different to each that reads it than I'm just I just thoroughly enjoy going through each one.
Yeah, it's so fascinating tale. How many years did it take? I know that the research. You said it took two or three years to even read the diaries. How did it actually take you to begin the book, the writing of it and finish.
Well from when I started, you know, traveling and visiting and the notes, and I wrote the book probably three or four times, Daniel, as a writer know, I'm all about that. And oh, I've six or seven years before I actually was satisfied enough to send it out, and probably could have continued going until finally members of my family just you know, talk me into doing it, getting it out, getting back to regular life and moving on. And they were right.
Yeah, you did. This journey also took a certain toll I would imagine on you as well personally.
It's just.
For anybody that reads the book, your head does, your mind does a sort of a flip. So I can imagine living through it. I can't imagine, but I can only imagine living through this. So I'm sensing that now that the book is out and you're getting the necessary you know, you get a lot of feedback and a lot of and so you've it into a different time in this project. Again, You're going to be inextricably involved with J. H. Holmes forever from now on. You know
that anybody reads the book knows that. But a little bit of semblance of normalacy has probably come into your life now.
That's exactly right, and the voice has stopped the fear of insanity. I still have epilepsy, but not to the extent I did when I was going through Holmes's graves and terrible places, and it definitely life is much better now and I feel satisfied for the effort and I wouldn't change a thing I would have if I had to do it all over again, I would do it again because Dan, my family, you know, the stigma of having been related to that man. That's why they all
moved to California to get away from the stigma. And you know, for for decades they've been afraid to be called a mudget, to be known who we were related to. And I refused to do that. I wanted to tell the world that my family was good people, that even with this in our background, we made the choice of good and men were criminals, and I wanted to broadcast that to the world by telling them the truth about who this man was and the real story. So I wouldn't change a thing.
Yeah, it's incredible. I want to tell you, Jeff, I really appreciate you coming on the program, and I really appreciate the book. The read was just fantastic. It's you keep the reader on the edge of his seat. And I'm not kidding. This book is just one of the more incredible books that I've had the pleasure of reviewing in the last couple of years and discussing and reading.
It is a fantastic story and I highly recommend it for I'm sure the audience will be moved to look into this case if they haven't heard of AJ Holmes. I'm sure that you've done a great job of articulating who this person and is UH and a really good reason to pick up this book because it's just a fantastic read and an incredible, incredible story.
So Dan, let me let me do something for you because you've been so kind. If your listeners go to Bloodstains theobook dot com, all one word Bloodstains the book, and tell my manager Kelly that I promised your listeners a sign copy if they if they would choose one, tell them that you're they're friends with Dan, and we'll get we'll get them assigned one.
Well, that'd be great, thanks very much. I know hardcore fans will appreciate that for sure, certainly. So I want to thank you Jeff for coming on a little program here and talking about Bloodstains. Incredible story Herman Webster Mudget, your great great grandfather, and a great story about your family as well, and like you say, overcoming this I guess the Holmes curse and UH and this fine book as a result. So thank you very much, Jeff and you have a good evening, and I'm sure it'll be
talking to you soon. Good Night. You've been listening to the program True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history, and the authors have written about it with my special guest Jeff Mudget, author of Bloodstains. Good Night,