Drenth was born in 1889 in the Netherlands and settled in West Virginia, where he ran a small business and, under the name Harry Powers, wrote to women through matrimonial agencies and lonely-hearts columns.
In 1931 he brought Asta Eicher, a widow from Illinois, and her three children, Greta, Harry and Annabel, to a property at Quiet Dell, and later Dorothy Lemke of Massachusetts. All five were killed, in a garage he had fitted out with a basement and drainage, and buried on the site. He took their money and possessions. The press called him the Mail-order Bluebeard, after the advertisements he answered.
The bodies were found in August 1931 after Asta Eicher's neighbours and a local banker pressed the police. The discovery drew thousands of sightseers to Quiet Dell, and food and drink were sold at the scene.
He was tried, convicted, and hanged at the West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville on March 18, 1932.
The design of the building is what the case is remembered for: rooms constructed for the purpose, in advance, by a man who had already selected the people who would be brought to them. The correspondence he kept ran to hundreds of letters from women he had not yet reached.
The figure of five or more reflects that correspondence rather than any further established death.