Holmes is such a freak. I honestly don't know how to say that in any other way. I mean, this very attractive mountebank not only traps people in insurance scams but then he turns around and murders them in order to cash in on the profit of their life insurance policies. Yeah, thats really bad but that isn't why I call the phyisician/entrepreneur/serial killer a freak. The man is a freak because of the inhumane actions he carries out with his victims after killing them.
Ned is a young jeweler with a wife named Julia and a daughter named Pearl who moves his family to Chicago in 1891 in the search of opportunity--an kind of opportunity at all. He soon found himself managing a jewelry counter that occupied one wall of Holmes's drug store and for once in his life he saw the future gleam. The back story is pretty boring and rambles on for a few pages however it begins to take form of a potential murder when Holmes's catches a glimpse of the "tall and felicitously proportioned" Julia.
To make a long story short, Holmes seems inordinately attentive to Julia. Different parts of this section concerning Holmes's intense glares towards Julia and their flirtatious work ethic imply that a secretive liaison between the two is occurring right in front of her plain, insecure husband's face. Once Ned finally snaps and can't put up with the arguments between him and his wife anymore, he ends the marriage and leaves for Iowa, leaving Julia and his daughter in the care of Holmes.
This story becomes especially eary when Julia informs Holmes that she is pregnant and that he has no other choice but to marry her. He reacted to her proposal of marriage with warmth but insisted that he would only marry her on one condition--she was to have an abortion....on Christmas Eve. He was a physician and had executed the operation before: he would use chloroform and she would feel no pain whatsoever. Its not hard to guess what happens next. Holmes of course kills Julia by suffocating her with the chloroform drenched rag and then easily performs the same method on her daughter Pearl.
The whole scenario becomes even freakier when he offers Charles Chappell thirty-six dollars to cleanse the bones and skull and RETURN to him a FULLY ARTICULATED SKELETON! Chappell completes his work and returns the skeleton to Holmes who then turns around and sells it to Hahneman Medical College in Chicago for a great profit.
Okay, seriously, that's soooo messed up! Most have seen a skeleton in a doctor's office or a science room but those are made of plastic and have no emotional effect on us. But could you imagine personally knowing someone, hearing that they've been murdered, and then look at their skeleton? I definitely could not imagine that and if you can then you are a freak too.
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