Lady-killer Leonardo DiCaprio to play actual lady-killer
According to Deadline, Leonardo DiCaprio is set to play the role of Dr. H.H. Holmes, one of America’s first documented serial killers, in a film adaptation of Erik Larson’s non-fiction book The Devil In White City: Murder, Magic, And Madness At The Fair That Changed America. During the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, Holmes set a standard that few psychopaths since have equaled, constructing a hotel of horrors dubbed the “Castle” where he locked victims in soundproof bank vaults and gassed them, dropped them via secret chutes to his basement, then dissected their bodies and melted away their flesh with acid so he could sell their skeletons and organs to medical schools. The same building also contained Holmes’ drugstore and various other shops, as well as two floors of canted hallways, windowless rooms, doors that opened on brick walls, and stairways to nowhere. He was truly a special, productive kind of crazy that today’s TV-bred serial killers could learn from. Holmes was also apparently quite the romantic, having three wives at one time and several dozen more lovers, most of whom were included in his estimated 200 female victims, so obviously the guy had some charm—perhaps even DiCaprio-esque charm?