Local Happenings

The Peculiar Case of H.H. Holmes: A Concert Review

By Molly MacGregor (mmacgregor@css.edu)

December 13, 2024

Content Warning: This article contains disturbing content that some readers might find triggering

     A peculiar case indeed: one young, charismatic doctor; a “murder hotel”; nine confirmed victims and dozens more suspected; all taking place around the history-making 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Baritone Calland Metts and Scholastica’s own Dr. Jessica Schroeder brought the chilling confessions of the prolific killer known as Dr. H.H. Holmes to life in a song cycle performed in the Mitchell auditorium as part of the Lunch With Friends concert series.

     Minneapolis-based composer Libby Larson adapted the text of the piece from Detective Robert Corbitt’s reports on his investigation and, most chillingly, the words of Holmes’s confessions. You’re likely wondering about the facts of the case, and so was I. The details of Holmes’s crimes were difficult to decipher because of the lyricism of the piece and the added challenge of making out the words that Metts sang through the occasionally overpowering piano and his operatic vocal techniques. 

     Even without the musicality, the facts of this case are difficult to get straight. Holmes’s unreliable narration of his own story is part of what makes the details presented in this song cycle murky- can we trust a killer and professional conman to tell the truth? Another reason is that Holmes lived from 1861 until 1896 and during this period in history, yellow journalism—the purposeful inflation of facts to create sensational “news” stories that would intrigue audiences and sell more papers—was rampant.

        The song cycle tells the story of the fraudster and murderer over the course of five short movements. The piece opens with Metts singing acapella a list of some of the evidence that helped convict Holmes: pearl dress buttons, a woman’s shoe, bones. When the piano joins in, it’s with an eerie note made even eerier by the screws and hair curlers placed inside the piano. The method of placing objects between piano strings at precise intervals is called prepared piano and is used by other composers as well. The note alterations were made primarily in the higher and lower note ranges, leaving the middle notes of the piano ringing as usual. The prepared piano allowed for a shocking contrast between jaunty, upbeat accompaniment and tinny, choppy notes that would be at home in a horror movie soundtrack. 

     The first movement also includes Holmes’s self-descriptors: “A gentleman– I am– the kind you want for a companion/ A civic-minded man– the kind you want in your circle/ A business man—the kind you want for your partner.” This self-aggrandizing continues throughout the piece and seems to be a tenant of his self-image. 

     Movement two provides a bit of the killer’s background. At twenty years old, he began medical school at the University of Michigan, leaving his wife and child in New York. Inspired by the lack of money in his bank account and the profitable business of supplying human cadavers and skeletons to medical schools, he struck up a business partnership. “It is well known,” sang Metts, “[t]hat in the state of Michigan—if one studies medicine—/All the materials needed for dissection/Are supplied by the State.” 

     At this time, medical schools were operating under a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy for the sources of the cadavers and skeletons needed for their curriculum. Grave robbing and selling the bodies to medical schools was a common (and profitable) practice. An article in the Smithsonian magazine explains that, while illegal, authorities often turned a blind eye toward it since supplying bodies for medical study was seen as a benefit to society. 

     With this context in mind, and the driving motivation of profit, Holmes devised a convoluted scheme with one of his classmates, a “trusted friend, of modest means, already insured for life” as the lyrics describe him. What I understood from this verse is that Holmes and his friend were attempting to execute elaborate life insurance fraud. It would require three bodies in three different cities that would then be discovered “badly decomposed” and then money would be collected by a relation of the policy holder and split three ways between Holmes, his classmate, and the relative.  

      Author of the book Devil in the White City, Erik Larson clarifies that they intended to fake the death of three people—a family—to collect the life insurance payout. Their plan was to find three cadavers that somewhat resembled the people. Metts sang a shocking line to conclude the movement: “The plan is too complicated/ I kill my classmate instead/ I use his insurance/ To bide my time.” It’s difficult to know if this confession is the truth or the exaggeration of a murderer and professional fraudster. 

           The next movement of the piece begins with a jaunty, upbeat accompaniment that is jarringly incongruous with the content of the lyrics, in which Holmes lays out a list of murder confessions complete with gruesome details of their killings and the profit the bodies generated. The movement is innocently titled “I Build My Business.” 

     Movement three deals with the “murder castle,” one of the most famous aspects of the case of Dr. H.H. Holmes. He built the large building supposedly to function as a hotel during the Chicago World’s Fair, but its real purpose seems to have been murder. “First you set the stage—” Metts sang, “I built my hotel/ Then you set the method—secret vaults, secret rooms.” And then a line that made my lips curl with disgust: “You employ young ladies; stenographers, cooks, waitresses, maids.” What follows is Holmes’s detailed account of the murders of thirteen women that supposedly took place at the deadly hotel. 

     Some scholars debate whether this building was designed for murder specifically or if the murders that likely took place there were designed to cover up Holmes’s other dubious deeds, like refusing to pay the contractors who built the hotel or to cover up his multiple wives, affairs and children. 

     The contemporary debate on Holmes seems to oscillate between two views: Holmes as a prolific, unrestrained killer or Holmes as a conman committed to profit and willing to murder in order to maximize it. The program for the performance included a paragraph by the composer Libby Larson, in which she describes Holmes as “among the first documented American serial killers.” Many others have described him this way as well but Adam Selzer, author of the book HH Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil, doubts whether he fits the definition of serial killer since his murders possessed clear motives: money or covering up other crimes. 

     She also wrote that “[Holmes] confessed to 27 murders, of which nine were confirmed. It is estimated that he could have committed 250 such crimes.” If we can’t trust many of the newspapers of the time and naturally question the reliability of Holmes, then an accurate account is difficult. Perhaps this is why Larson turned toward Holmes’s own words, understanding that the point of her piece is not to inform on facts but to disturb, to intrigue, and to entertain. 

     While I may have left the lunchtime concert with only a vague idea of the historical events, I had a not-so-vague pit of disgust in my stomach. The performance was incredibly successful in conveying emotion- Metts was properly disturbing as Dr. Holmes and Schroeder’s uncanny piano accompaniment stirred the hairs on the back of my neck. And isn’t moving an audience what music is for?