Shocking Mystery Cases #50

Anthony Marino and his associates discover a lucrative side business: insuring vulnerable people and collecting when they die. When their scheme produces results with a desperate woman named Mabelle Carlson, they set their sights on Mike Malloy, a down-on-his-luck drunk—but Malloy proves far more resilient than they bargained for, surviving a series of increasingly brutal attempts on his life. This true crime tale from 1952 captures the dark ingenuity (and ultimate frustration) of killers who find their perfect victim anything but.

When a charming man assuming the alias "Dr. Harry Holmes" gains control of an Illinois drugstore through cunning and murder, he parlays his position into something far more sinister: a sprawling hotel castle where unsuspecting guests—wealthy young women lured by promises of employment—disappear into his underground chambers. As Holmes grows bolder in his schemes, swindling insurance companies and disposing of his victims in acid and lime, a trail of suspicion begins to form that may finally expose the madman behind the castle walls.

Professor Reardon, a brilliant but obsessed scientist, reveals to a gangster his audacious dream of creating human life through grafting cadaver parts in his laboratory—a project that has ultimately ended in catastrophic failure. When his creation escapes into the night with murder on its mind, a young detective and the professor's own assistant must race to stop the creature before it claims more victims.