In 1896, America’s first serial killer, Herman Webster Mudgett, was executed. During the Chicago World’s Fair in the early 1890s, Mudgett opened a small hotel, later nicknamed the “Murder Castle,” to which he lured unsuspecting female guests. Part of his motivation was sexual, and part involved a financial scheme in which his victims would take out life insurance policies and name him as beneficiary. Once inside the Castle, he tortured and killed them, and sometimes dissected their bodies, selling their skeletons to medical schools. When eventually arrested on charges of insurance fraud, police linked him to the murder of his business associate, and in the course of their investigation they discovered the Murder Castle. There they found bones of many victims mixed together, a dissection table covered with blood, and burnt body parts. Mudgett confessed to 27 murders, writing a detailed account of those activities, but the actual number may have reached over 100. He was tried, then hanged.