Between 1879 – 1908 she killed both men and children by Poisoning (strychnine) / Bludgeoning (She
killed most of her suitors and boyfriends, and her two daughters, Myrtle and
Lucy. She may also have killed both of her husbands and all of her children, on
different occasions) for collecting life
insurance, cash and other valuables, and eliminating witnesses, in both
Illinois/Indiana, USA
On April 28, 1908 the bodies of Gunness' children were found
in the home's wreckage, but the headless adult female corpse found with them
was never positively identified. She was never tracked down and her death has
never been confirmed.
Belle Gunnes:
Norwegian born Belle Gunness immigrated to the U.S. in 1881.
A series of suspicious fires and deaths (mostly resulting in insurance awards)
followed. Belle also began posting notices in lovelorn columns to entice
wealthy men to her farm, after which they were never seen again. Authorities
eventually found the remains of over 40 victims on her property, but Belle
disappeared without a trace.
Her Profile:
Serial killer. Born Brynhild Paulsdatter Strseth on November
22, 1859 in Selbu, Norway. The daughter of a stonemason, Belle Gunness
immigrated to America in 1881 in search of wealth. What followed were a series
of insurance frauds and crimes, escalating in size and danger.
Not long after Gunness married Mads Albert Sorenson in 1884,
their store and home mysteriously burned down. The couple claimed the insurance
money for both. Soon after, Sorenson died of heart failure on the one day his
two life insurance policies overlapped. Though her husband's family demanded an
inquiry, no charges were filed. It is believed the couple produced two children
whom Gunness poisoned in infancy for the insurance money. Several more
unexplained deaths followed, including the infant daughter of her new husband,
Peter Gunness, followed by Peter Gunness himself. Her adopted daughter Jennie's
body would also be found on Belle's property. Gunness then began meeting
wealthy men through a lovelorn column. Her suitors were her next victims, each
of whom brought cash to her farm and then disappeared forever: John Moo, Henry
Gurholdt, Olaf Svenherud, Ole B. Budsburg, Olaf Lindbloom, Andrew Hegelein, to
name just a few.
In 1908, just when Hegelein's brother became suspicious and
Gunness's luck seemed to be running out, her farmhouse burnt to the ground. In
the smoldering ruins workmen discovered four skeletons. Three were identified
as her foster children. However the fourth, believed to be Gunness, was
inexplicably missing its skull. After the fire, her victims were unearthed from
their shallow graves around the farm. All told, the remains of more than forty
men and children were exhumed.
Ray Lamphere, Gunness's hired hand, was arrested for murder
and arson on May 22, 1908. He was found guilty of arson, but cleared of murder.
He died in prison, but not before revealing the truth about Belle Gunness and
her crimes, including burning her own house down. The body that was recovered
was not hers. Gunness had planned the entire thing, and skipped town after
withdrawing most of her money from her bank accounts. She was never tracked
down and her death has never been confirmed.
The Details:
Belle Sorenson Gunness (born as Brynhild Paulsdatter
Størseth; November 11, 1859, Selbu, Norway – April 28, 1908?, La Porte, Indiana)
was a Norwegian-American serial killer.
Standing six feet tall tall and weighing over 200 pounds,
she was a physically strong woman. She killed most of her suitors and
boyfriends, and her two daughters, Myrtle and Lucy. She may also have killed
both of her husbands and all of her children, on different occasions. Her
apparent motives involved collecting life insurance, cash and other valuables,
and eliminating witnesses. Reports estimate that she killed between 25 and 40
people over several decades.
Her early years:
Gunness' origins are a matter of some debate. Most of her
biographers state that she was born on November 11, 1859, near the lake of
Selbu, Sør-Trøndelag, Norway, and christened Brynhild Paulsdatter Størset. Her
parents were Paul Pedersen Størset (a stonemason) and Berit Olsdatter. She was
the youngest of their eight children. They lived at Størsetgjerdet, a very
small cotter's farm in Innbygda, 60 km southeast of Trondheim, the largest city
in central Norway (Trøndelag).
An Irish TV documentary by Anne Berit Vestby aired on
September 4, 2006, tells a common, but unverified, story about Gunness' early
life. The story holds that, in 1877, Gunness attended a country dance while
pregnant. There she was attacked by a man who kicked her in the abdomen,
causing her to miscarry the child. The man, who came from a rich family, was
never prosecuted by the Norwegian authorities. According to people who knew
her, her personality changed markedly. The man who attacked her died shortly
afterwards. His cause of death was said to be stomach cancer. Having grown up
in poverty, Gunness took service the next year on a large, wealthy farm and
served there for three years in order to pay for a trip across the Atlantic.
Following the example of a sister, Nellie Larson, who had
emigrated to America earlier, Gunness moved to the United States in 1881 and
assumed a more American-style name. Initially, she worked as a servant.
Her first Victim:
In 1884, Gunness married Mads Ditlev Anton Sorenson in
Chicago, Illinois, where, two years later, they opened a confectionery store.
The business was not successful; within a year the shop mysteriously burned
down. They collected insurance, which paid for another home.
Though some researchers assert that the Sorenson union
produced no offspring, other investigators report that the couple had four
children: Caroline, Axel, Myrtle, and Lucy. Caroline and Axel died in infancy,
allegedly of acute colitis. The symptoms of acute colitis — nausea, fever,
diarrhea, and lower abdominal pain and cramping — are also symptoms of many
forms of poisoning. Both Caroline's and Axel's lives were reportedly insured,
and the insurance company paid out.
A May 7, 1908 article in The New York Times states that two
children belonging to Gunness and her husband Mads Sorensen were interred in
her plot in Forest Home cemetery.
On June 13, 1900, Gunness and her family were counted on the
United States Census in Chicago. The census recorded her as the mother of four
children, of whom only two were living: Myrtle A., 3, and Lucy B., 1. An
adopted 10-year-old girl, identified possibly as Morgan Couch but apparently
later known as Jennie Olsen, also was counted in the household.
Sorenson died on July 30, 1900, reportedly the only day on
which two life insurance policies on him overlapped. The first doctor to see
him thought he was suffering from strychnine poisoning. However, the Sorensons'
family doctor had been treating him for an enlarged heart, and he concluded
that death had been caused by heart failure. An autopsy was considered
unnecessary because the death was not thought suspicious. Gunness told the
doctor that she had given her late husband medicinal "powders" to
help him feel better.
She applied for the insurance money the day after her
husband's funeral. Sorenson's relatives claimed that Gunness had poisoned her
husband to collect on the insurance. Surviving records suggest that an inquest
was ordered. It is unclear, however, whether that investigation actually occurred
or Sorenson's body was ever exhumed to check for arsenic, as his relatives
demanded. The insurance companies awarded her $8,500 (about $217,000 in 2008
dollars), with which she bought a farm on the outskirts of La Porte, Indiana.
The suspicion of murder:
In 1901, Gunness purchased a house on McClung Road. It has
been reported that both the boat and carriage houses burned to the ground
shortly after she acquired the property.
As she was preparing to move from Chicago to LaPorte, she
became re-acquainted with a recent widower, Peter Gunness, also Norwegian-born.
They were married in LaPorte on April 1, 1902; just one week after the
ceremony, Peter's infant daughter died (of uncertain causes) while alone in the
house with Belle. In December 1902, Peter himself met with a "tragic
accident". According to Belle, he was reaching for his slippers next to
the kitchen stove when he was scalded with brine. She later declared that, in
fact, part of a sausage-grinding machine fell from a high shelf, causing a fatal
head injury. A year later, Peter's brother, Gust, took Peter's older daughter,
Swanhilde, to Wisconsin. She is the only child to have survived living with
Belle.
Her husband's death netted Gunness another $3,000 (some
sources say $4,000). Local people refused to believe that her husband could be
so clumsy; he had run a hog farm on the property and was known to be an
experienced butcher; the district coroner reviewed the case and unequivocally
announced that he had been murdered. He convened a coroner's jury to look into
the matter. Meanwhile, Jennie Olsen, then 14, was overheard confessing to a
classmate: "My mama killed my papa. She hit him with a meat cleaver and he
died. Don't tell a soul."
Jennie was brought before the coroner's jury but denied having
made the remark. Gunness, meanwhile, convinced the coroner that she was
innocent of any wrongdoing. She did not mention that she was pregnant, which
would have inspired sympathy, but in May 1903 a baby boy, Phillip, joined the
family. In late 1906 Belle told neighbors that her foster daughter, Jennie
Olsen, had gone away to a Lutheran College in Los Angeles (some neighbors were
informed that it was a finishing school for young ladies). In fact, Jennie's
body would later be found buried on her adoptive mother's property.
Between 1903 and 1906 Belle continued to run her farm. In
1907 Gunness employed a single farm hand, Ray Lamphere, to help with chores.
The Suitors:
Around the same time, Gunness inserted the following
advertisement in the matrimonial columns of all the Chicago daily newspapers
and those of other large Midwestern cities:
Personal — comely widow who owns a large farm in one of the
finest districts in La Porte County, Indiana, desires to make the acquaintance
of a gentleman equally well provided, with view of joining fortunes. No replies
by letter considered unless sender is willing to follow answer with personal
visit. Triflers need not apply.
Several middle-aged men of means responded to Gunness' ads.
One of these was John Moe, who arrived from Elbow Lake, Minnesota. He had
brought more than $1,000 with him to pay off her mortgage, or so he told
neighbors, whom Gunness introduced him to as her cousin. He disappeared from
her farm within a week of his arrival. Next came George Anderson from Tarkio,
Missouri who, like Peter Gunness and John Moe, was an immigrant from Norway.
During dinner with Anderson, she raised the issue of her
mortgage. Anderson agreed that he would pay this off if they decided to wed.
Late that night, Anderson awoke to see her standing over him, holding a
guttering candle in her hand and with a strange, sinister expression on her
face. Without uttering a word, she ran from the room. Anderson fled from the
house, soon taking a train to Missouri.
The suitors kept coming, but none, except for Anderson, ever
left the Gunness farm. By this time, she had begun ordering huge trunks to be
delivered to her home. Hack driver Clyde Sturgis delivered many such trunks to
her from La Porte and later remarked how the heavyset woman would lift these
enormous trunks "like boxes of marshmallows", tossing them onto her
wide shoulders and carrying them into the house. She kept the shutters of her
house closed day and night; farmers traveling past the dwelling at night saw
her digging in the hog pen.
Ole B. Budsberg, an elderly widower from Iola, Wisconsin,
appeared next. He was last seen alive at the La Porte Savings Bank on April 6,
1907, when he mortgaged his Wisconsin land there, signing over a deed and
obtaining several thousand dollars in cash. Ole B. Budsberg's sons, Oscar and
Mathew Budsberg, had no idea that their father had gone off to visit Gunness.
When they finally discovered his destination, they wrote to her; she promptly
responded, saying she had never seen their father. Several other middle-aged
men appeared and disappeared in brief visits to the Gunness farm throughout
1907. Then, in December 1907, Andrew Helgelien, a bachelor farmer from
Aberdeen, South Dakota, wrote to her and was warmly received. The pair
exchanged many letters, until a letter that overwhelmed Helgelien, written in
Gunness' own careful handwriting and dated January 13, 1908. This letter was
later found at the Helgelien farm. It read:
“To the Dearest
Friend in the World: No woman in the world is happier than I am. I know that
you are now to come to me and be my own. I can tell from your letters that you
are the man I want. It does not take one long to tell when to like a person,
and you I like better than anyone in the world, I know. Think how we will enjoy
each other's company. You, the sweetest man in the whole world. We will be all
alone with each other. Can you conceive of anything nicer? I think of you
constantly. When I hear your name mentioned, and this is when one of the dear
children speaks of you, or I hear myself humming it with the words of an old
love song, it is beautiful music to my ears. My heart beats in wild rapture for
you, My Andrew, I love you. Come prepared to stay forever.”
In response to her letter, Helgelien flew to her side in
January 1908. He had with him a check for $2,900, his savings, which he had
drawn from his local bank. A few days after Helgelien arrived, he and Gunness
appeared at the Savings Bank in La Porte and deposited the check. Helgelien
vanished a few days later, but Gunness appeared at the Savings Bank to make a
$500 deposit and another deposit of $700 in the State Bank. At this time, she
started to have problems with Ray Lamphere.
In March 1908, Gunness sent several letters to a farmer and
horse dealer in Topeka, Kansas named Lon Townsend, inviting him to visit her;
he decided to put off the visit until spring, and thus did not see her before a
fire at her farm. Gunness was also in correspondence with a man from Arkansas and
sent him a letter dated May 4, 1908. He would have visited her, but did not
because of the fire at her farm. Gunness allegedly promised marriage to a
suitor Bert Albert, which did not go through because of his lack of wealth.
The turning point:
The hired hand Ray Lamphere was deeply in love with Gunness;
he performed any chore for her, No matter how gruesome. He became jealous of
the many men who arrived to court his employer and began making scenes. She
fired him on February 3, 1908. Shortly after dispensing with Lamphere, she
presented herself at the La Porte courthouse. She declared that her former
employee was not in his right mind and was a menace to the public. She somehow
convinced local authorities to hold a sanity hearing. Lamphere was pronounced
sane and released. Gunness was back a few days later to complain to the sheriff
that Lamphere had visited her farm and argued with her. She contended that he
posed a threat to her family and had Lamphere arrested for trespassing. Lamphere returned again and again to see her,
but she drove him away. Lamphere made thinly disguised threats; on one
occasion, he confided to farmer William Slater, "Helgelien won't bother me
no more. We fixed him for keeps." Helgelien had long since disappeared from
the precincts of La Porte, or so it was believed. However, his brother, Asle
Helgelien, was disturbed when Andrew failed to return home and he wrote to
Belle in Indiana, asking her about his sibling's whereabouts. Gunness wrote
back, telling Asle Helgelien that his brother was not at her farm and probably
went to Norway to visit relatives. Asle Helgelien wrote back saying that he did
not believe his brother would do that; moreover, he believed that his brother
was still in the La Porte area, the last place he was seen or heard from.
Gunness brazened it out; she told him that if he wanted to come and look for
his brother, she would help conduct a search, but she cautioned him that
searching for missing persons was an expensive proposition. If she were to be
involved in such a manhunt, she stated, Asle Helgelien should be prepared to
pay her for her efforts. Asle Helgelien did come to La Porte, but not until
May.
Lamphere represented an unresolved danger to her; now Asle
Helgelien was making inquiries that could very well send her to the gallows.
She told a lawyer in La Porte, M.E. Leliter, that she feared for her life and
that of her children. Ray Lamphere, she said, had threatened to kill her and
burn her house down. She wanted to make out a will, in case Lamphere went
through with his threats. Leliter complied and drew up her will. She left her
entire estate to her children and then departed Leliter's offices. She went to
one of the La Porte banks holding the mortgage for her property and paid this
off. She did not go to the police to tell them about Lamphere's allegedly
life-threatening conduct. The reason for this, most later concluded, was that
there had been no threats; she was merely setting the stage for her own arson.
Lamphere suspected of arson and murder:
Joe Maxson, who had been hired to replace Lamphere in
February 1908, awoke in the early hours of April 28, 1908, smelling smoke in
his room, which was on the second floor of the Gunness house. He opened the
hall door to a sheet of flames. Maxson screamed Gunness' name and those of her
children but got no response. He slammed the door and then, in his underwear,
leapt from the second-story window of his room, barely surviving the fire that
was closing in about him. He raced to town to get help, but by the time the
old-fashioned hook and ladder arrived at the farm at early dawn the farmhouse
was a gutted heap of smoking ruins. Four bodies were found inside the house.
One of the bodies was that of a woman who could not immediately be identified
as Gunness, since she had no head. The head was never found. The bodies of her
children were found still in their beds. County Sheriff Smutzer had somehow
heard about Lamphere’s alleged threats; he took one look at the carnage and
quickly sought out the ex-handyman. Leliter came forward to recount his tale
about Gunness' will and how she feared Lamphere would kill her and her family
and burn her house down.
Lamphere did not help his cause much. At the moment Sheriff
Smutzer confronted him and before a word was uttered by the lawman, Lamphere
exclaimed, "Did Widow Gunness and the kids get out all right?" He was
then told about the fire, but he denied having anything to do with it, claiming
that he was not near the farm when the blaze occurred. A youth, John Solyem, was
brought forward. He said that he had been watching the Gunness place and that
he saw Lamphere running down the road from the Gunness house just before the
structure erupted in flames. Lamphere snorted to the boy: "You wouldn't
look me in the eye and say that!"
"Yes, I will", replied Solyem. "You found me
hiding behind the bushes and you told me you'd kill me if I didn't get out of
there." Lamphere was arrested and charged with murder and arson. Then
scores of investigators, sheriff's deputies, coroner's men and many volunteers
began to search the ruins for evidence.
The body of the headless woman was of deep concern to La
Porte residents. C. Christofferson, a neighboring farmer, took one look at the
charred remains of this body and said that it was not the remains of Belle
Gunness. So did another farmer, L. Nicholson, and so did Mrs. Austin Cutler, an
old friend of Gunness. More of Gunness' old friends, Mrs. May Olander and Mr.
Sigward Olsen, arrived from Chicago. They examined the remains of the headless
woman and said it was not Gunness.
Doctors then measured the remains, and, making allowances
for the missing neck and head, stated the corpse was that of a woman who stood
five feet three inches tall and weighed no more than 150 pounds. Friends and
neighbors, as well as the La Porte clothiers who made her dresses and other
garments, swore that Gunness was taller than 5'8" and weighed between 180
and 200 pounds. Detailed measurements of the body were compared with those on
file with several La Porte stores where she purchased her apparel.
When the two sets of measurements were compared, the
authorities concluded that the headless woman could not possibly have been
Belle Gunness, even when the ravages of the fire on the body were taken into
account. (The flesh was badly burned but intact). Moreover, Dr. J. Meyers
examined the internal organs of the dead woman. He sent stomach contents of the
victims to a pathologist in Chicago, who reported months later that the organs
contained lethal doses of strychnine.
A morbid discovery:
Gunness' dentist, Dr. Ira P. Norton, said that if the
teeth/dental work of the headless corpse had been located he could definitely
ascertain if it was she. Thus Louis "Klondike" Schultz, a former
miner, was hired to build a sluice and begin sifting the debris (as more bodies
were unearthed, the sluice was used to isolate human remains on a larger
scale). On May 19, 1908, a piece of bridgework was found consisting of two
human canine teeth, their roots still attached, porcelain teeth and gold crown
work in between. Norton identified them as work done for Gunness. As a result,
Coroner Charles Mack officially concluded that the adult female body discovered
in the ruins was Belle Gunness.
Asle Helgelien arrived in La Porte and told Sheriff Smutzer
that he believed his brother had met with foul play at Gunness' hands. Then,
Joe Maxson came forward with information that could not be ignored: He told the
Sheriff that Gunness had ordered him to bring loads of dirt by wheelbarrow to a
large area surrounded by a high wire fence where the hogs were fed. Maxson said
that there were many deep depressions in the ground that had been covered by
dirt. These filled-in holes, Gunness had told Maxson, contained rubbish. She
wanted the ground made level, so he filled in the depressions.
Smutzer took a dozen men back to the farm and began to dig.
On May 3, 1908, the diggers unearthed the body of Jennie Olson (vanished
December 1906). Then they found the small bodies of two unidentified children.
Subsequently the body of Andrew Helgelien was unearthed (his overcoat was found
to be worn by Lamphere).
·
As days progressed and the gruesome work
continued, one body after another was discovered in Gunness' hog pen, her
victims:
- · Ole B. Budsberg of Iola, Wisconsin, (vanished May 1907);
- · Thomas Lindboe, who had left Chicago and had gone to work as a hired man for Gunness three years earlier;
- · Henry Gurholdt of Scandinavia, Wisconsin, who had gone to wed her a year earlier, taking $1,500 to her; a watch corresponding to one belonging to Gurholdt was found with a body;
- · Olaf Svenherud, from Chicago;
- · John Moe of Elbow Lake, Minnesota; his watch was found in Lamphere's possession;
- · Olaf Lindbloom, age 35 from Wisconsin.
Reports of other possible victims began to come in:
- · William Mingay, a coachman of New York City, who had left that city on April 1, 1904;
- · Herman Konitzer of Chicago who disappeared in January 1906;
- · Charles Edman of New Carlisle, Indiana;
- · George Berry of Tuscola, Illinois;
- · Christie Hilkven of Dovre, Barron County, Wisconsin, who sold his farm and came to La Porte in 1906;
- · Chares Neiburg, a 28-year-old Scandinavian immigrant who lived in Philadelphia, told friends that he was going to visit Gunness in June 1906 and never came back — he had been working for a saloon keeper and took $500 with him;
- · John H. McJunkin of Coraopolis (near Pittsburgh) left his wife in December 1906 after corresponding with a La Porte woman;
- · Olaf Jensen, a Norwegian immigrant of Carroll, Indiana, wrote his relatives in 1906 he was going to marry a wealthy widow at La Porte;
- · Henry Bizge of La Porte who disappeared June 1906 and his hired man named Edward Canary of Pink Lake Ill who also vanished 1906;
- · Bert Chase of Mishawaka, Indiana sold his butcher shop and told friends of a wealthy widow and that he was going to look her up; his brother received a telegram supposedly from Aberdeen, South Dakota claiming Bert had been killed in a train wreck; his brother investigated and found the telegram was fictitious;
- · Tonnes Peterson Lien of Rushford, Minnesota, is alleged to have disappeared April 2, 1907;
- · A gold ring marked "S.B. May 28, 1907" was found in the ruins;
- · A hired man named George Bradley of Tuscola, Illinois, is alleged to have gone to La Porte to meet a widow and three children in October 1907;
- · T.J. Tiefland of Minneapolis is alleged to have come to see Gunness in 1907;
- · Frank Riedinger a farmer of Waukesha, Wisconsin, came to Indiana in 1907 to marry and never returned;
- · Emil Tell, a Swede from Kansas City, Missouri, is alleged to have gone in 1907 to La Porte;
- · Lee Porter of Bartonville, Oklahoma separated from his wife and told his brother he was going to marry a wealthy widow at La Porte;
- · John E. Hunter left Duquesne, Pennsylvania, on November 25, 1907 after telling his daughters he was going to marry a wealthy widow in Northern Indiana.
- · Two other Pennsylvanians — George Williams of Wapawallopen and Ludwig Stoll of Mount Yeager — also left their homes to marry in the West.
- · Abraham Phillips, a railway man of Burlington, West Virginia, left in the winter of 1907 to go to Northern Indiana and marry a rich widow — a railway watch was found in the debris of the house.
- · Benjamin Carling of Chicago, Illinois, was last seen by his wife in 1907 after telling her that he was going to La Porte to secure an investment with a rich widow; he had with him $1,000 from an insurance company and borrowed money from several investors as well; in June 1908 his widow was able to identify his remains from La Porte's Pauper's cemetery by the contour of his skull and three missing teeth;
- · Aug. Gunderson of Green Lake, Wisconsin;
- · Ole Oleson of Battle Creek, Michigan;
- · Lindner Nikkelsen of Huron, South Dakota;
- · Andrew Anderson of Lawrence, Kansas;
- · Johann Sorensen of St. Joseph, Missouri;
·
A possible victim was a man named Hinkley;
Reported unnamed victims were:
- · a daughter of Mrs. H. Whitzer of Toledo, Ohio, who had attended Indiana University near La Porte in 1902;
- · an unknown man and woman are alleged to have disappeared in September 1906, the same night Jennie Olson went missing. Gunness claimed they were a Los Angeles "professor" and his wife who had taken Jennie to California;
- · a brother of Miss Jennie Graham of Waukesha, Wisconsin, who had left her to marry a rich widow in La Porte but vanished;
- · a hired man from Ohio age 50 name unknown is alleged to have disappeared and Gunness became the "heir" to his horse and buggy;
- · an unnamed man from Montana told people at a resort he was going to sell Gunness his horse and buggy, which were found with several other horses and buggies at the farm.
Most of the remains found on the property could not be
identified. Because of the crude recovery methods, the exact number of
individuals unearthed on the Gunness farm is unknown, but is believed to be
approximately twelve. On May 19, 1908 remains of approximately seven unknown
victims were buried in two coffins in unmarked graves in the pauper's section
of LaPorte's Pine Lake Cemetery. Andrew Helgelien and Jennie Olson are buried
in La Porte's Patton Cemetery, near Peter Gunness.
The trial of Ray Lamphere:
Ray Lamphere was arrested on May 22, 1908 and tried for
murder and arson. He denied the charges of arson and murder that were filed
against him. His defense hinged on the assertion that the body was not
Gunness'.
Lamphere's lawyer, Wirt Worden, developed evidence that
contradicted Norton's identification of the teeth and bridgework. A local
jeweler testified that though the gold in the bridgework had emerged from the
fire almost undamaged, the fierce heat of the conflagration had melted the gold
plating on several watches and items of gold jewelry. Local doctors replicated
the conditions of the fire by attaching a similar piece of dental bridgework to
a human jawbone and placing it in a blacksmith’s forge. The real teeth crumbled
and disintegrated; the porcelain teeth came out pocked and pitted, with the
gold parts rather melted (both the artificial elements were damaged to a
greater degree than those in the bridgework offered as evidence of Gunness'
identity). The hired hand Joe Maxson and another man also testified that they’d
seen "Klondike" Schultz take the bridgework out of his pocket and
plant it just before it was "discovered". Lamphere was found guilty
of arson, but acquitted of murder. On November 26, 1908, he was sentenced to 20
years in the State Prison (in Michigan City). He died of tuberculosis on
December 30, 1909.
On January 14, 1910, the Rev. E. A. Schell came forward with
a confession that Lamphere was said to have made to him while the clergyman was
comforting the dying man. In it, Lamphere revealed Gunness' crimes and swore
that she was still alive. Lamphere had stated to the Reverend Schell and to a
fellow convict, Harry Meyers, shortly before his death, that he had not
murdered anyone, but that he had helped Gunness bury many of her victims. When
a victim arrived, she made him comfortable, charming him and cooking a large
meal. She then drugged his coffee and when the man was in a stupor, she split
his head with a meat chopper. Sometimes she would simply wait for the suitor to
go to bed and then enter the bedroom by candlelight and chloroform her sleeping
victim. A powerful woman, Gunness would then carry the body to the basement,
place it on a table, and dissect it. She then bundled the remains and buried
these in the hog pen and the grounds about the house. Belle had become an
expert at dissection, thanks to instruction she had received from her second
husband, the butcher Peter Gunness. To save time, she sometimes poisoned her
victims' coffee with strychnine. She also varied her disposal methods,
sometimes dumping the corpse into the hog-scalding vat and covering the remains
with quicklime. Lamphere even stated that if Belle was overly tired after
murdering one of her victims, she merely chopped up the remains and, in the
middle of the night, stepped into her hog pen and fed the remains to the hogs.
The handyman also cleared up the mysterious question of the
headless female corpse found in the smoking ruins of Gunness' home. Gunness had
lured this woman from Chicago on the pretense of hiring her as a housekeeper
only days before she decided to make her permanent escape from La Porte.
Gunness, according to Lamphere, had drugged the woman, then bashed in her head
and decapitated the body, taking the head, which had weights tied to it, to a swamp
where she threw it into deep water. Then she chloroformed her children,
smothered them to death, and dragged their small bodies, along with the
headless corpse, to the basement.
She dressed the female corpse in her old clothing, and
removed her false teeth, placing these beside the headless corpse to assure it
being identified as Belle Gunness. She then torched the house and fled.
Lamphere had helped her, he admitted, but she had not left by the road where he
waited for her after the fire had been set. She had betrayed her one-time
partner in crime in the end by cutting across open fields and then disappearing
into the woods. Some accounts suggest that Lamphere admitted that he took her
to Stillwell (a town about nine miles from La Porte) and saw her off on a train
to Chicago.
Lamphere said that Gunness was a rich woman, that she had
murdered 42 men by his count, perhaps more, and had taken amounts from them
ranging from $1,000 to $32,000. She had allegedly accumulated more than
$250,000 through her murder schemes over the years—a huge fortune for those
days (about $6.3 million in 2008 dollars). She had a small amount remaining in
one of her savings accounts, but local banks later admitted that she had indeed
withdrawn most of her funds shortly before the fire. The fact that Gunness
withdrew most of her money suggested that she was planning to evade the law.
The aftermath and Belle's fate:
Gunness was, for several decades, allegedly seen or sighted
in cities and towns throughout the United States. Friends, acquaintances, and
amateur detectives apparently spotted her on the streets of Chicago, San
Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles. As late as 1931, Gunness was reported
alive and living in a Mississippi town, where she supposedly owned a great deal
of property and lived the life of a doyenne. Smutzer, for more than 20 years,
received an average of two reports a month. She became part of American
criminal folklore, a female Bluebeard.
The bodies of Gunness' three children were found in the
home's wreckage, but the headless adult female corpse found with them was never
positively identified. Gunness' true fate is unknown; La Porte residents were
divided between believing that she was killed by Lamphere and that she had
faked her own death. In 1931, a woman known as "Esther Carlson" was
arrested in Los Angeles for poisoning August Lindstrom for money. Two people
who had known Gunness claimed to recognize her from photographs, but the
identification was never proved. Carlson died while awaiting trial.
Burial, exhumation and DNA analysis:
The body believed to be that of Belle Gunness was buried
next to her first husband at Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois.
On November 5, 2007, with the permission of descendants of
Belle's sister, the headless body was exhumed from Gunness' grave in Forest
Home Cemetery by a team of forensic anthropologists and graduate students from
the University of Indianapolis in an effort to learn her true identity. It was
initially hoped that a sealed envelope flap on a letter found at the victim's
farm would contain enough DNA to be compared to that of the body.
Unfortunately, there was not enough DNA there, so efforts continue to find a
reliable source for comparison purposes, including the disinterment of
additional bodies and contact with known living relatives.
As Always, stay safe
!
-bird
***