PageOneLit.com: Where did you grow up and was
reading and writing a part of your life? Who were your earliest
influences and why?
I grew up in Skiatook, OK, just
about 30 miles north of where I live now. I was editor of my
school paper at Skiatook High, which was my first experience
with formal writing. I practically lived at the
library when not at school or working on the paper. I drowned
myself in books when I was a kid. We were quite poor and books
were a wonderful escape from the bleak reality of our lives.
PageOneLit.com: Why do you write?
Because my brain won't leave
me alone. I actually have to write everyday to feel comfortable
in my own skin, and when it starts to get late, I get antsy as
all hell and have to give in and write something.
PageOneLit.com: In your new book, "DEVIL'S DISCIPLE THE DEADLY
DR. H.H. HOLMES" you have written an exceptional look at one of
the United Staes most deadliest killers - Who was H.H. HOLMES?
And what was it about him that interested you to write this
book?
When I first tripped across Dr.
Holmes (while researching for a novel I've written about a
serial killer), I simply didn't believe it. Too fantastic a
story. Don't you agree? Well, I tripped across him again and
went, No friggin' way. We would have heard
about this guy. You have to understand...I'm fascinated with
these guys and have been for decades, I've studied all the cases
that were available, but didn't trip across Holmes until the
dawn of the Internet's burgeoning.
When I saw a
small article on him in a Time-Life Book, I thought, Could
this have really happened? Well, it did. I was finally able to
get some hits using the guy's real name, Herman Webster Mudgett.
And that's
who Dr. Holmes was...this guy, Mudgett, born in New Hampshire,
who went to the University of Michigan Medical School, secured a
degree in the class of 1884, and after disfiguring his
3-year-old son (his first live dissecting victim),
Mudgett left NH for Chicago and became Dr. H. H. Holmes when he
stepped onto the platform at the Englewood Station.
Basically,
Holmes built a hotel at 63rd & Wallace in Chicago which boasted
a crematory, lime pits, acid vats, and a torture rack in the
basement. He had a greased chute from the top floors of the
hotel to the basement so he didn't have to lug those heavy old
bodies down to the basement. He killed, my estimate and I know
more about the guy than anyone on the planet, about 300 people.
PageOneLit.com: How did you research "DEVIL'S DISCIPLE THE
DEADLY DR. H.H. HOLMES" ?
It was gruelling. I started
in Chicago, of course, but ended up in all the major locations
of Holmes' life...New Hampshire, Philadelphia, Michigan, St.
Louis, Colorado, Fort Worth. It took me 8 years of searching
through microfilmed newspapers and running all over the country
to sift out enough data to finally satiate my hunger for
everything about this guy. My book covers his life from
birth, to way past his death, when the "Holmes Curse" sprung
up.
I found a
geneology in New Hampshire that gave the descendants of Herman
W. Mudgett down to about 1955. I contacted a few of his
great-great grandsons, but, surprise surprise, they wanted no
part of me. Actually, it really did surprise me. I
mean, it's been 110 years, for heaven's sake! The last survivor
the Pitezel family, his final victims, (and whose patriarch was
the murder for which he was finally convicted and
executed), died in 1994. She was a great granddaughter of
Tessie Pitezel, the only surviving daughter of Ben Pitezel. The
only surviving son, who was an infant at the time Holmes was
killing off the family, died in the flu epidemic back around
1920.
The house in
which Holmes was born and raised in Gilmanton, NH, is still
standing. It and the academy are really the only landmarks from
the book, but I got photos of them in the book. The academy is
now the city offices of Gilmanton.
I remember
being in the town offices, waiting to find the detective who was
going to show me around town, and commented to someone that they
had an infamous native son. The guy said, "I know!
Grace Metalious! She's buried here." Grace Metalious, of
course, wrote Peyton Place and scadalized the locals
during the mid-twentieth century. So I replied to this man,
"Well, then, you have two." He, of course, had never
heard of Holmes or Mudgett. The detective who took me around
knew the whole story and told me he had a friend in high
school who lived in the Mudgett house and has occupied Herman's
room. Wow.
One
of the most fascinating things about this story, when I was
researching, was that outside the historical societies...nobody,
and I mean nobody...knew his name! How in the world
did this story get buried so efficiently? I mean...c'mon. This
is an amazing tale. If I suggested it as fiction, I'd
be told it was way, way too far-fetched!
PageOneLit.com: Some say that Herman W. Mudgett, aka Dr. H. H.
Holmes was Jack the Ripper - Explain.
Holmes was doing his killing
at the same time Jack was terrorizing Whitechapel. And, ever
the showman, lore has it that when the boards opened beneath his
feet on the gallows, he cried out, "I am Jack." In the
past, Holmes' killings have been linked with Jack's not
only because they happened at the same time, but because of
Holmes' last words. A lot of Ripper buffs think Holmes was
Jack. But he was not. He never left this continent. He was
preparing to when he was arrested by the Pinkertons. Trust
me...this man was way too busy killing here to have
squeezed in the Ripper killings, as well.
I think a lot
of Ripper buffs believe that Jack came to America and "did his
thing" here, as well. But Holmes' killings could not possibly
have been more different from the manic slashing of Jack.
Holmes was a fastideous little man. He would have never, never
ever gotten himself all messed up. He was more Jekyll/Hyde
than Ripper. He used chloroform and drugs and gas.
Jack was
escalating like crazy when he killed Mary Kelly, his last
victim. For those slayings to have just ended abruptly like
that, he either had to be arrested for another crime or killed.
Any profiler can tell you that serial killers never just "quit,"
and they don't change their M.O.'s so drastically that their
cases can't be connected.
PageOneLit.com: What was the 'Human Elasticizer' ?
Ah, yes...the Elascticizer.
Basically, it was a torture rack in the basement of Holmes'
hotel. But Holmes was said to truly believe that he could
create a race of giants by stretching people on the
Elasticizer. I'm sure a lot of the victims who got to the
basement alive became very familiar with the device before they
mercifully died.
PageOneLit.com: In "DEVIL'S DISCIPLE THE DEADLY DR. H.H.
HOLMES" you write about Herman W. Mudgett, aka Dr. H. H. Holmes
financing medical school by collecting on life insurance
policies. Explain.
If there was anything Holmes
loved as much as women and killing, it was money. He went
through staggering amounts of cash. He once estimated that
about $10,000 flowed through his fingers every month in
Chicago...and this was in 1887 or so! That was a lot
of money.
Herman (to
differentiate *before* he went to Chicago) didn't have the means
to attend medical school. He had married Clara Lovering, a
local NH girl for a small inheritance that got him launched into
academia. But it was not nearly enough to support the lifestyle
that Herman craved.
He came up
with this scam, which he ran the rest of his life when low on
cash, to take out life insurance on a fictional person, then
deliver a body to prove they had died. Some of the bodies came
from fresh graves, one or two from the anatomy lab at the
University of Michigan, and I believe Herman killed some folks,
as well. The man was past having any scruples, even at that
young age. I personally think that Herman's first murder was at
age 11, but that's another story and covered well in the book.
I think Herman killed from a very early age and I think he did
it frequently. Maybe not while still in Gilmanton, although I
would put nothing past this man, but definitely once he
got away from home.
PageOneLit.com: What did you learn from writing "DEVIL'S
DISCIPLE THE DEADLY DR. H.H. HOLMES"?
That "old saws" hang around
for a reason...truth is absolutely stranger than
fiction. I couldn't make this stuff up! Nobody's
healthy mind can possibly come up with the depraved and insane
actions of God's damaged souls. Whether Holmes was born or
made...well...his parents were brutal. But a lot of parents are
and the kids don't become serial killers. Holmes had 4
sibilings that didn't. But he did have a brain injury in
childhood, and a recent A&E special on "Recipe for a Serial
Killer" linked those two things, when combined some sort of
mental disorder, as an absolute dynamite recipe to create the
monster: Abuse (emotional, mental, sexual, physical); mental
illness, and brain injury.
What
surprises me, after researching this guy, is that my 34-year-old
daughter calls my attention to things I post online that
could tempt "the loonies" on The Net, as she calls them. You'd
think I'd be a bit more street wise, wouldn't you? There's no
earthly reason why I should still be naive about anything!
PageOneLit.com: What's next?
I would like to get my first
novel, The Eighth Angel, out there, but have promised
more historical American serial killer life stories. So the
next book will be on the Bender family from Kansas who ran an
inn and killed some 21 boarders. They're not Dr. Holmes, but
they're a fascinating family. There was mom, dad, daughter,
son. And the daughter was the ring-leader. She was the one who
launched their career! That just stunned me. And I saw one
little scrap while doing research that also made my head spin.
It said, "Mom Bender, who had enticed at least a dozen men into
marrying her in her short 52 years..." Twelve husbands
in - what - 25 years? And she was married to the father of her
two grown children when they ran the inn? There's a lot, lot
more to this story. I'm looking forward to doing the traveling
research on this one.
There have
been a number of early serial killers who have gotten lost in
history simply because news didn't get moved around that much or
that quickly back then. And all are fascinating. I want to
write about all of them.
Again...there'll never be another Dr. Holmes. But what
is that old saw, "Never say never?"
PageOneLit.com: What was the last book you read?
I'm so glad you asked.
True Evil, a novel by Greg Iles. WOW! The basis for the
amazing plot in this book is actually something I've pondered
during the final years of this Bush administration, but I won't
spoil it for the other readers. It knocked my socks off.
PageOneLit.com: Do you have any hobbies? What are they? How do
they enhance your writing?
I guess you mean other
than researching and writing about serial killers.
I love, I mean
love, football. Go Bucs! Go Tigers (Clemson)! Go AF2
Champion Tulsa Talons! We have NFL Sunday Ticket here and from
noon until our eyes cross, we're glued to football on Sundays.
We watch any football. College, pro, arena...we don't care. If
it involves a pigskin, we're all over it.
I love to
laugh...I know, I know... Vampira loves a giggle. But everyone
who has interviewed me in person for this book has kept saying,
"You just don't look the part." And I don't. It's
part of my evil plan.
I love good -
empasis on good - standup comedy. Who doesn't need
laughs in this day and age? I've just discovered Jeff Dunham, a
ventrioloquist, and if you haven't seen him, you owe it to
yourself to visit his website. And no, I'm not getting any
kickbacks from either Greg Iles or Jeff.
I read, read,
read. That's essential for a writer.
I have pets who
are my babies. Right now, it's only kitty cats...we have
Freeway Kitty, Harley Kitty, Stoopid Gray Cat and his
littermate, Stealth Kitty. Nobody gets Stealth Kitty sightings
outside of myself and my husband. That is one big scaredy cat.
We love, love,
love dachshunds. We had a miniature named Vienna Sausage, who
died a couple years ago at age 16, and a standard named Oscar
Mayer, who we had to euthanize about four months ago at age 14.
I haven't gotten far enough past that to go get another doxie
yet, but it won't be long before we'll be adopting a couple. My
husband has been visiting the Dachshund Rescue site every day
now for a couple of weeks, so I won't be able to mourn my Oscar
Dog much longer before taking on some new babies. I have
friends who want to come back in the next life as one of my
pets. I don't blame them.
I have a lot
of professional associations that I do volunteer work
for...Oklahoma Writer's Federation, Mystery Writers of America,
and Sisters in Crime. I like to travel, but until we have a
bestseller, a lot of that now is confined to research.
I guess that's
about it. I love good TV. I love Southpark. I thought HBO's
Deadwood was the best thing ever, ever on TV. As a writer, I
would get distracted by just how good the writing was. And
because I have a crush on Denis Leary, I love FX's Rescue Me.
Oh, and I also love Eddie Izzard, so also FX's The Riches. Very
well done and I'm anxious to see how they're going to sustain
this story's premise for more seasons. Brilliantly cast, but so
is Rescue Me. And Southpark is...well...it's Southpark,
for heaven's sake. You either love it or you hate it
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