Cameras have been rolling all week at Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, Delaware County. A television crew is recording a show on serial killer H.H. Holmes.
Holmes’ descendants received approval from a judge to exhume their relative’s body and it turns out they need more time. They’ve asked the court to amend the initial decree to give them the time they need.
Family lore indicates Holmes somehow escaped his own execution back in May, 1896.
A DNA test on the exhumed body should put that question to rest.
But the TV show in production on the case will also attempt to take Holmes’ story much farther, all the way to London.
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According to the History Channel’s website the show, "…sets out to prove a controversial theory: that H.H. Holmes and Britain’s most notorious serial killer, Jack The Ripper, were the same man.”
“I’ll take some persuading. I think that it’s a very tenuous connection at best but I’m willing to be entertained by the idea” Holmes expert Matt Lake said.
Lake acknowledges that the dates might match up for Holmes to be in London, but says the killers' different styles don’t.
He says Jack the Ripper was a violent, hands-on murderer while Holmes was more hands-off, preferring to gas his victims to death.
The Holmes/Jack the Ripper theory is not new. Holmes’ great great grandson wrote a work of historical fiction in 2009. He will also be one of the hosts of the History Channel show.
As crews continue to dig, Lake anxiously waits to see if any of the lore or theories will be solved.
“I’m looking forward to any more information that comes to the table,” Lake says.
