Herman Webster Mudgett, better known as Dr. Henry Howard Holmes or H. H. Holmes and also known by the aliases Alexander Bond, Harry Gordon, J.A. Judson and Robert E. Phelps, was an American con artist and murderer active between 1891 and 1894. By the time of his execution in 1896, Holmes had engaged in a lengthy criminal career that included insurance fraud, forgery, swindling, three or four bigamous marriages, horse theft and murder. Known as the Beast of Chicago, the Devil in the White City or the Torture Doctor, he committed his most notorious crimes in Chicago around the time of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893.