Martin Scorsese to Direct a Film About a Serial Killer Starring Leonardo DiCaprio - Deadline
The director will adapt Erik Larson's bestseller The Devil in the White City, with DiCaprio playing the role of the killer.
This is the story of America’s first known serial killer, who operated under the alias Holmes in late 19th-century Chicago. Ahead of the 1893 World’s Fair, he built a sinister hotel filled with labyrinths and windowless rooms. In its basement, authorities discovered a personal crematorium, numerous torture devices, and the remains of dozens of missing tourists.
Erik Larson's work is a scientific analysis of the events that took place during the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. It was during this time that Herman Webster Mudgett, better known as Henry Howard Holmes, constructed a hotel in the city that became a nightmare for young women.
Holmes designed the building in a way that allowed him to keep some victims in a soundproof room near his office, while others were killed with gas in their bedrooms. The bodies were then sent down a chute to the basement, where they were meticulously dissected. Skeletons and organs were sold to medical schools, while the rest was burned or dissolved in acid, leaving no evidence behind.
After the ill-fated fair, Holmes left Chicago and set his sights on Texas, where he became involved with the two daughters of a railroad magnate. He killed one and promised to marry the other. Holmes continued his murderous spree for a long time before being arrested in 1894 for horse-racing fraud.
Following his arrest, other complaints began to surface, and serious suspicions arose after an employee of the "Murder Castle" exposed the horrors he had witnessed upon learning that Holmes was in custody. Holmes confessed to 27 murders, though police attributed over 200 deaths to him. However, due to a lack of evidence, these claims could not be proven.
Holmes was executed in May 1896.