Gun Laws

I chose to research what the requirements are to buy a gun in the US and I ended up finding out that in 36 states people don't need permits to buy guns. Since guns in these states are so easy to buy, a lot of them aren't registered. Huffington Post lists the states that it says are the easiest to buy a gun in, and one of them is Alabama. In Alabama, permits aren't required to buy a gun, but they are required to have a conceal carry weapon. This seems to be the trend with a lot of the states that made it onto this list. However, in a few states permits aren't required to purchase a gun or to carry a handgun. It shocks me that there is that little control over the purchasing and selling of guns in that much of the US. All thirty-six of the states that Huffington Post lists on its article do not require permits to buy a gun. Five of these thirty-six states don't require a license or permit for conceal carry handguns.
I then went on to look at the concealed weapon statistics for the US. According to gunstocarry.com, as of 2017 Florida has the most active conceal carry permits, but Alabama has the largest percent of the population who have permits. This site also had data on the amount of background checks that occur. From 2002 to 2016, the amount of background checks increased substantially, but then went down slightly form 2016 to 2017. Only eighteen states require checks on private gun sales, and a majority of states don't have any kind of checks on private gun sales. The cost to carry a handgun in a particular state varies anywhere from $30 to $550 all for varying amounts of times that the permit is valid.
Overall, I learned that most states don't require any kind of license to purchase to gun and that most states do require a permit to carry a concealed weapon. I also learned that most private gun sales don't involve background checks and that the cost to have a conceal carry weapon can vary depending on the state you are in.

H.H. Holmes Essay

H.H. Holmes, widely referenced to as America’s first serial killer, lived a life of crime primarily during his time in Chicago when he constructed a three-story hotel called the Castle. Inside the walls of this Castle, Holme’s committed numerous murders while also making a career out of committing money and insurance fraud. Without the large amounts of people and companies in the city, H.H. Holmes would not have been able to live the life of crime that he did through insurance and money fraud and his Murder Castle.

Headshots of H.H. Holmes

Herman Webster Mudgett, also known by his alias Henry Howard Holmes, was born in 1861 in a small town in New Hampshire. As a child, he was scared of the doctor, but quickly got over it when we was locked in a room with the doctor’s fake skeleton by some other kids. (biography.com) From then on, he was said to be “fascinated with skeletons” and obsessed with death”. (crimemuseum.org) Ironically, he later ended up becoming a student at the University of Michigan’s Med School. During this time, Holmes would steal cadavers from the university’s lab. He made a hobby of badly disfiguring them and planting the bodies to make them look like they had died in accidents. This was only the beginning of the crimes that Holmes would commit in the future, and it was tricky business because he was in a smaller area where he would more likely be caught than in a city. After graduating from med school, Holmes moved to Chicago and began working at a pharmacy. When the owner died, Holmes asked his now widowed wife if she would sell the pharmacy to him. She then suddenly went missing. Holmes claimed she moved to California, but it was never confirmed. (crimemuseum.org) This disappearance went widely unnoticed. People never questioned where the woman had gone, because city life consists of so many people that one missing person was never truly accounted for.

One Side of the Castle

Throughout his life, one crime that Holmes committed frequently was money fraud, or not paying people what he owed them. One time is when Holmes sold his drugstore, where he hired people to make large purchases and he used the money to buy a huge safe. He put this safe in it’s own room in his Castle and then made the door to the room smaller. When the people who had sold him the safe came to repossess it after he had failed to pay for it, Holmes told them not to do any damage to the building while they were removing it. (harpers.org) This was an incredible idea. By making the doorway smaller, the safe could not be removed without damage to the building, and if damage was done, Holmes could sue the company. Holmes made a career out of exploiting people who were not as devious as him, which were most people. Another time, he also claimed to have invented a machine that turned water into a glowing gas. Someone bought this from him for a good sum of money, but didn’t notice that one pipe in the mess of pipes for the machine connected to a gas company's line. (harpers.org) This is another example of Holme’s brilliance. Without the amount of people in the city, Holmes may never have found someone so gullible or someone who would not come looking for him once they realized the invention did not work. One more way that Holmes committed this money fraud crime was when he purchased the furniture for his Castle. He spent tons of money on furniture from The Tobey Furniture Company on credit and had it delivered, but he never paid for it. When the company came to repossess the furniture, they couldn’t find it. The Castle’s rooms were completely empty. A janitor was later bribed and revealed that Holmes had moved all of the furniture into a single room, removed the door frame, filled in the doorway with brick, and put wallpaper over it. Similar to the situation with the safe, Holmes had once again outsmarted a company and gotten away without paying them anything. He almost didn’t though. One of the furniture company’s employees found some of the furniture hidden between the third floor and the roof, but while trying to retrieve it, one of their foots went through the ceiling. Holmes was then able to sue them for damaging the building and he kept all of the furniture without ever paying for any of it. The furniture company let him off because they had other matters to deal with in the chaos of the city. Holmes committed many more of these money crimes, especially during the time he was building the Castle. He managed to hold off construction companies just long enough without paying them to somehow come up with a way to get the money, or manipulate his way into not paying at all. Holmes truly was a mastermind when it came to manipulation, and without the chaos and amount of available companies of the city, he wouldn’t have been able to commit his crimes. In a city situation, he was able to hide behind fake names and find people gullible enough to fall for his tricks.

Entrance to the Castle

Another one of Holmes’ most frequent crimes was insurance fraud, and it would eventually be his downfall. This chain of crimes most likely began during his time at the University of Michigan when we would steal cadavers. While he was there, there was a scandal involving Holmes where he would take insurance policies on the cadavers before planting them and then we would collect the insurance money after they were found. (crimemuseum.org). This fraud was a lot more likely to happen outside of a city setting because there are less people, resulting in Holmes more likely being caught and apprehended. Later, he became partners with a man named Benjamin Pietzel and they committed insurance fraud crimes together. After the World’s Fair in Chicago, Holmes left the Castle and traveled around the country commiting insurance fraud. In Texas, he stole horses and them sold them, a crime for which he was arrested. While in jail, he made a new insurance fraud plan with his cellmate, Marion Hedgepath, but this plan fell through. Holmes then made another new plan with Pietzel where Pitzel would fake his own death and Holmes would collect the insurance money and they would split it. When police found a body they believed to be that of Benjamin Pietzel, Holmes represented Mrs. Pietzel for the identification of the body and collected the insurance money for Mrs. Pierzel. A little while later he sent a letter to the insurance company, claiming he was Mrs. Pietzel, saying that she was thankful they had been so swift in sending her the money. (harpers.org). Shortly after this, Hedgepath told police about the plan they had created. Warrants were sent out for Holmes and he was eventually arrested in Boston and charged with Defrauding an Insurance Company. (NYTimes.com) While in custody, he started telling a long a twisted series of lies that no one could really understand. Police then decided to search the Castle for more answers, and then the truth began to unfold.

Another Angle of the Castle

While searching through the castle, police found random chimneys, stairways to nowhere, winding passageways that were designed to confuse guests, rooms with no doors, doors with no rooms, rooms that locked from the outside, gas pipes hidden throughout rooms so that Holmes could asphyxiate people when he pleased, peepholes, trapdoors, fake walls, an alarm system hooked up to every door so Holmes knew where everyone was at all moments, soundproof rooms, and more. (chicagotribune.com, crimemuseum.org, harpers.org) In the basement of the hotel, police found a torture chamber complete with a crematorium, medieval stretching table, and pits of acid for disposing of bodies. (harpers.org) Holmes had created a “Murder Castle”. He was able to this by hiring multiple construction companies during the building process, never keeping one company long enough for them to figure out what exactly he was building. For example, he claimed the crematorium was a furnace for blowing glass, but it was the wrong size for that. (biography.com) Slowly, all of Holmes’ secret murderous acts were uncovered. It is estimated that Holmes killed up to two hundred people. It is also assumed that most of these murders occurred during the Chicago World Fair, when his hotel had a lot of tourists, especially women, most of whom suddenly went missing. Urban life made this aspect of Holmes’ crimes possible. The World Fair attracted people from all over, who were not missed by Chicago locals when they never left the hotel again. These murders continued his insurance fraud crimes as well. Holmes required that all of his guests and employees have life insurance. He even offered to pay the premiums for people if they listed him as the beneficiary. This way, when he murdered them, he would collect the insurance money. It was also discovered that Holmes had murdered Pietzel and three of his children. Police no longer needed to convict Holmes of insurance fraud because they had him for murder.

Another Angle of the Castle

Without the city, Holmes wouldn’t have been able to commit any of his crimes. In a large city like Chicago he was able to use fake names to commit his crimes, and he was able to kill people without them being missed. The World’s Fair was a major time for him where he killed many people. He was able to hire many different companies for all of his projects because of the city’s abundance of these companies. The city is full of people who are oblivious to the world around them, which explains why it took so long for Holmes to be caught. He was smarted and trickier than almost everybody around him, and they never noticed the atrocities that were happening within the walls of the Castle.

Picture of H.H. Holmes

Eventually, Holmes confessed to twenty-seven murders. However, there are a lot of people who say he is lying (NYTimes.com) and even some that claim some of the people he was said to have killed were actually still alive. (biography.com) Holmes was hanged on May 7, 1896, and it was an execution that hundreds of people wanted to attend. (NYTimes.com) H.H. Holmes is often referred to as America’s first serial killer, a title he couldn’t have earned without the hustle and chaos of a city. He committed his crimes during the same time that Jack the Ripper was terrorizing London, leading one of Holmes’ surviving relatives to believe that he was also Jack the Ripper. The amount of people in cities who are living their lives and not realizing what all is happening around them are the reason that Holmes got away with what he was doing for as long as he did. He was a cunning man who knew how to manipulate people and cheat the systems to get what he wanted and he did it very successfully for the most part. City life is the driving factor that made it possible for Holmes to act as he did.

Sources:

(chicagotribune.com) This source gave me some basic information and also gave me a good list of items that were found in Holme's Castle.
(crimemuseum.com) This source gave me a lot information on Holmes' background.

(harpers.org) This source gave me more detailed information on Holmes' life and crimes.

(biography.com) This source gave me a brief overview of Holmes' life but also had details that other sources did not have. 

NYTimes Newapapers:

(https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1895/05/28/106063071.pdf) This gave me information about Holmes' trial and charges.

(https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1896/04/08/105746341.pdf) This source gave me information about Holmes' execution.

(https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1896/04/06/105745926.pdf) This source gave me information about Holmes' false confession.