Is Meghan Markle Related To Serial Killer H.H. Holmes?

Britain's newest royal may have an infamous serial killer in her family tree.

A new television documentary on Britain's Channel Four called “Meet the Markles” explores Meghan Markle's life and family history. While researching the Duchess of Sussex' family, the show's producers discovered that one of America's first documented serial killers, H.H. Holmes, may be a distant relative — at least according to Holmes' great-great-grandson.

H.H. Holmes was the pseudonym of physician Herman Webster Mudgett, who confessed to 27 murders in Chicago between 1888 and 1894. Some believe he could have killed as many as 200 people after creating a house of horrors dubbed the "Murder Castle" in a building he owned, according to Biography.

The three-story, block-long building included rooms that had gas jets to asphyxiate victims. There were also trapdoors and chutes so that he could move the bodies down to the basement and dispose of them in a kiln. An undetermined number of people were killed in the building when he opened it up as a hotel during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, according to The Associated Press.  

Holmes’s great-great-grandson, lawyer Jeff Mudgett, appeared on “Meet the Markles” on May 15, and told the cameras he found out that he and Markle are eighth cousins.

Meghan Markles H H Holmes public domain Getty

Mudgett also believes his great-great grandfather could be the killer behind Britain's most infamous cold case, Jack the Ripper, after traveling across the pond to carry out his crimes, a theory that gets explored in The History Channel’s 2017 series, “American Ripper.” 

Despite all this unpleasantness, a spokesperson for "Meet the Markles" told a British tabloid that the documentary is "humorous and warm in tone."

[Photo: Getty Images, Public Domain]