Modern Twist on H.H.Holmes' MO?

Last week, my mom and I were talking and the book Devil the White City came up. (Supposedly, it's being turned into a Leonardo DiCaprio movie, now.)

The book follows the intertwined stories of the Chicago World's Fair and serial killer H.H. Holmes who capitalized on the massive traffic the event drew to the city to find nearly untraceable victims (all young women) who he then murdered and disposed of in his hotel of horrors.

(Disclaimer: my mom liked the book, I wasn't as much a fan. There are some great documentaries on Holmes free on youtube, though, which I have thoroughly enjoyed.)

The book/topic came up again this week when I saw the discussion displayed on the right of this post online (original here) discussing the Startup Castle in Silicon Valley.

Billing itself as "a community of excellence" specially designed to gather and equip STEM rockstars in an environment with every drool-worthy support they could need (including dedicated Angel investors) to launch their own thriving start-up tech company, it's been dissected by a wide variety of sources from a bunch of different angles... and the conclusions are always scary.

What made me pick this particular discussion to show you, though, (aside from the great "organ harvesting" line) was how freakily well they drew the connection between the reasonable-on-the-surface screening criteria for the Castle and the type of person it would lead to attracting - docile and easy to make disappear.

Which is, of course, EXACTLY what H.H. Holmes did a century ago! Set himself up with a gorgeous building in a desirable location. Developed rules/requirements for who he'd let in that looked upstanding and suggested safety and class for everyone who made the cut, but subtly also resulted in collecting a bunch of people who were hard to track and easy to lose. 

Kind of creepy, no?

Makes me glad we have the internet these days to help draw attention to and spread awareness of this sort of thing. Not that I expect that will be enough to root out all such dangerous places, but it puts us far and away ahead of those poor souls in Chicago at the turn of the last century who didn't have it and paid the price.