Genghis Khan: Lord of the Steppes / Season 1, Episode 2
The Castle
EPISODE 2: THE CASTLE
CHAPTER 1: GROUND BREAKING
In the summer of 1888, H.H. Holmes stood before an empty lot on the corner of 63rd and Wallace Streets and saw something no one else could imagine.
The World's Fair was coming to Chicago. The announcement had been made just months earlier—Chicago had defeated New York in a fierce competition for the honor of hosting the World's Columbian Exposition. In five years, millions would descend on the city.
Holmes saw opportunity.
"I'm going to build a hotel," he told anyone who would listen. "Three stories. Modern amenities. Perfect for Fair visitors who can't afford the downtown rates."
The neighbors thought it seemed reasonable. Englewood was growing, and lodging would be in demand. The charming Dr. Holmes, with his pharmacy and his confidence, seemed like exactly the kind of businessman who could make it work.
They couldn't have been more wrong.
CHAPTER 2: THE CONSTRUCTION
The building rose slowly, in pieces.
Holmes hired construction crews the way a rotating door hires visitors—they came, they worked, they left. No single team stayed long enough to understand the whole design. Carpenters built rooms they would never see completed. Masons laid foundations without knowing what would be built above.
This was deliberate.
"I was constantly finding fault," Holmes would later admit. "Dismissing workers before they could complete their assigned portions. Hiring new crews who knew nothing of what came before."
The result was a building that only one person fully understood.
Holmes reviewed blueprints late at night, making modifications in his own hand. Passages appeared where walls should have been. Rooms gained extra doors that led nowhere—or worse, led somewhere terrible. The building's geometry defied logic, its floor plan a labyrinth that confused even those who lived there.
CHAPTER 3: THE MODIFICATIONS
What Holmes built was not a hotel. It was a killing floor.
The Gas System
Holmes installed gas lines throughout the building—standard for the era, when gas lighting was commonplace. But his gas lines served a different purpose.
In several rooms on the second and third floors, Holmes installed jets that he could control from his private office on the second floor. A flick of a valve, and asphyxiating gas would flow into sealed chambers. Victims would fall asleep, never to wake.
The rooms were soundproofed. No one would hear them scream—if they even had time to scream.
The False Walls
Between rooms, Holmes constructed hollow spaces—large enough for a man to stand in, small enough to go unnoticed on casual inspection. These allowed him to move through the building unseen, to observe guests without their knowledge, to access rooms without using doors.
Some walls contained chutes—metal-lined passages that ran from the upper floors directly to the basement. A body could be dropped down these chutes, sliding three stories in seconds, arriving in Holmes's private laboratory without ever being seen.
The Vault
On the second floor, Holmes installed a vault that appeared to be a safe. In reality, it was an airtight chamber large enough to hold a person. Once locked inside, a victim would slowly suffocate as the limited oxygen ran out.
Holmes could watch through a small aperture, timing how long it took for them to die.
CHAPTER 4: THE BASEMENT
The basement was the Castle's true purpose—everything else existed to feed it.
Holmes excavated far deeper than building codes required, creating a space that extended beneath the entire footprint of the building. The ceiling was low, the walls rough brick, the lighting deliberately poor.
The Kiln
Holmes installed a cremation furnace capable of generating temperatures hot enough to reduce a human body to ash. He claimed it was for disposing of medical waste, for burning refuse. Its actual purpose was obvious only to him.
The Acid Vat
A large metal tank, filled with quickite—a powerful acid capable of dissolving organic matter. Bodies placed in the vat would be rendered unrecognizable within hours, untraceable within days.
The Dissection Table
Holmes never stopped thinking of himself as a doctor. In the basement, he installed a proper surgical table, complete with drainage channels and restraints. Here, he could work in privacy, practicing the anatomy he had learned in medical school.
The Stretching Rack
Perhaps the most horrifying of Holmes's implements was a device designed for torture. Survivors—those few who would later escape and testify—described a medieval-looking apparatus that could stretch a human body past the breaking point.
Whether this was for extracting information, for sadistic pleasure, or simply for Holmes's curiosity remains unknown.
CHAPTER 5: THE FACADE
From the outside, the building looked almost normal.
Three stories of brick and stone. A corner entrance for the pharmacy. Upper floors with windows that suggested ordinary hotel rooms. Nothing that would attract unusual attention from passersby.
This was essential to Holmes's design. The Castle needed to appear legitimate—inviting, even—to attract the victims who would enter and never leave.
The ground floor housed real businesses:
Holmes's pharmacy, now thriving under his management. A jewelry store run by associates who asked few questions. A restaurant that served meals to guests who might be having their last supper.
The upper floors were presented as a hotel and apartment building. Rooms could be rented by the night or the week. Young women seeking employment could apply for positions that came with room and board.
Everything was designed to bring people in. The horror lay in what kept them from getting out.
CHAPTER 6: THE COSTS
Building a murder factory wasn't cheap.
Holmes financed the Castle through an elaborate web of fraud—ordering supplies on credit, then refusing to pay and challenging the invoices in court. Companies would sue, Holmes would counter-sue, and the legal battle would drag on until the creditor gave up or accepted pennies on the dollar.
He took out mortgages on the property, then took out additional mortgages with different lenders who didn't know about the existing loans. He sold portions of the building to investors who never received their shares.
By the time the Castle was complete, Holmes owed tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of creditors. But the building was finished, and the debts were just numbers on paper—problems to be dealt with later, or not at all.
CHAPTER 7: THE EMPLOYEES
Holmes needed help to run his operation.
He couldn't be everywhere at once. He couldn't personally oversee the pharmacy, the jewelry store, the hotel, and the basement. He needed employees—people who would work without asking too many questions.
Benjamin Pitezel
The carpenter who had helped build the Castle became Holmes's right-hand man. Pitezel was weak-willed, easily dominated, and desperate for work. He knew enough about Holmes's activities to be dangerous, which made him useful.
Pitezel handled the legitimate business operations, managed employees, dealt with creditors. He suspected the worst about his employer but needed the income too badly to walk away.
Charles Chappell
The skeleton articulator who cleaned and mounted human bones for medical schools. Holmes paid him well to process "specimens" without asking where they came from.
Chappell later claimed ignorance about the source of the remains he worked with. Whether that was true remains debatable.
The Young Women
Holmes employed a rotating cast of attractive young women in his pharmacy and jewelry store. Many were recent arrivals to Chicago, isolated from family and friends, vulnerable to a charming employer.
Some became his lovers. Some became his victims. Some became both.
CHAPTER 8: THE VISITORS
The World's Fair opened on May 1, 1893.
Suddenly, Chicago was flooded with visitors. Hotels downtown charged premium rates. Boarding houses filled to capacity. Englewood, just three miles from Jackson Park, saw unprecedented demand for lodging.
Holmes was ready.
His hotel offered reasonable rates and a charming proprietor. Visitors who couldn't afford downtown accommodations found the Castle convenient and affordable. They checked in, marveling at the modern amenities and the pleasant Dr. Holmes.
Not all of them checked out.
Young women traveling alone were particularly vulnerable. Holmes would offer them employment, room and board, the protection of a gentleman. They would accept, grateful for kindness in a strange city.
Days later, they would be gone. Their belongings would be sold or stored. Their families, hundreds of miles away, would receive no word of their fate.
CHAPTER 9: THE PATTERN
Holmes developed a methodology for murder.
Selection
Targets were chosen carefully. Young women with property or insurance were ideal—Holmes could profit from their deaths. Travelers without local connections were safe—no one would come looking. The isolated, the vulnerable, the trusting.
Seduction
Holmes was remarkably charming. He could convince women to fall in love with him in days, to sign over their property in weeks. His blue eyes and confident manner melted resistance.
Extraction
Before death, Holmes would extract everything of value. Bank accounts drained. Property transferred. Insurance policies purchased with Holmes as beneficiary.
Elimination
Death came in various forms. Gas in sealed rooms. Strangulation in the vault. Poison administered with medical precision. The method mattered less than the result.
Disposal
Bodies went to the basement, where they were cremated, dissolved, or articulated for sale. Nothing remained to identify the victim or prove their fate.
The system was efficient, impersonal, industrial. Holmes didn't kill in passion—he processed.
CHAPTER 10: THE SECRETS
The Castle kept its secrets well.
Neighbors heard occasional screams but attributed them to sounds from the Fair or domestic disputes. Strange smells from the basement were explained as chemical experiments—Holmes was a doctor, after all.
When employees noticed oddities—rooms that didn't appear on any floor plan, chutes that led to unknown destinations—Holmes provided plausible explanations. The building was complicated. There were storage areas. Nothing to worry about.
Those who grew too curious tended to disappear.
"I learned early," one former employee would later testify, "not to ask Dr. Holmes questions. People who asked questions had a way of no longer working there. Or no longer being anywhere."
CHAPTER 11: THE FIRE
In August 1893, a fire broke out in the Castle's third floor.
Holmes claimed it was accidental—a gas leak, perhaps, or a carelessly placed lamp. The damage was contained to a few rooms. Insurance would cover the repairs.
Investigators who examined the site found evidence suggesting the fire had been deliberately set. But Holmes had friends in local government, and the investigation went nowhere.
What the fire actually accomplished remains a matter of speculation. Perhaps Holmes was destroying evidence. Perhaps he was collecting insurance. Perhaps he was simply adding another layer of confusion to an already baffling building.
The Castle was repaired and reopened. Business continued.
CHAPTER 12: THE LEGACY
By the time the World's Fair closed in October 1893, Holmes had been operating his murder factory for nearly a year.
How many victims passed through the Castle's doors will never be known with certainty. Holmes himself claimed numbers ranging from twenty to two hundred. Physical evidence suggested at least nine specific murders. Historical analysis proposes figures between twenty and fifty.
What is certain is that the Castle represented something unprecedented in American crime—a building designed from the ground up for killing, a system engineered for death.
Holmes would leave Chicago in 1894, the Castle's web of debts finally becoming unsustainable. But the building would remain, its secrets buried in its walls and its basement, waiting for someone to finally uncover the truth.
That discovery was coming.
End of Episode 2