Malvern Contractor Helps Solve Mystery Surrounding America’s First Serial Killer

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Image of H.H. Holmes via Wikipedia. Background image of the skull found in Holmes's final resting place in Delaware County via the University of Pennsylvania.

Chesco Coring & Cutting was part of the History Channel team that exhumed the body of Herman Webster Mudgett, better known as 19th-century serial killer H.H. Holmes, from Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, writes Frank Burgos for PhillyVoice.

The exhumation was done for an American Ripper documentary following suspicions of the killer’s great-great-grandson, Jeff Mudgett, that Holmes had fled to England to become Jack the Ripper.

Scientists Samantha Cox and Janet Monge from Penn’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology were tasked with determining if Holmes was actually buried there.

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The process was tricky, as Holmes was supposedly buried 10 feet down in a coffin encased in concrete. The scientists initially found an empty coffin, but there was another one below with the names Mudgett and H.H. Holmes on it.

Then, it was Chesco Coring & Cutting’s turn. For 12 hours, the Malvern-based contractor worked to reach Holmes’s remains before DNA analysis could provide an answer.

“The best we can say is that this skeleton is a relation to the Mudgett family,” said Cox. But without a definitive DNA sample, we cannot say “this is H.H. Holmes.”

Read more about Chesco Coring & Cutting’s role in exhuming serial killer H.H. Holmes at PhillyVoice here.

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