Belle Gunness

DESCRIPTION: "Belle Gunness was a lady fair In Indiana State, She weighed about 300 pounds, And that is quite some weight." "Her favorite occupation Was a-butchering of men." "Now some say Belle killed only ten, And some say 42." At last she vanishes with the cash
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1958 (Burt-AmericanMurderBallads)
KEYWORDS: homicide husband wife abandonment
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
April 28, 1908 - Burning of the home and children of Belle Gunness
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Burt-AmericanMurderBallads, pp. 74-76, "Belle Gunness" (1 text plus a fragment; also a bit of a poem on the same topic)
Cohen-AmericanFolkSongsARegionalEncyclopedia2, pp. 427, "Belle Gunness" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Janet L. Langlois, _Belle Gunness: The Lady Bluebird_, University of Indiana Press, 1985, pp. 145-150, "Belle Gunness Ballads" (4 texts, with the one on p. 146 being this)
Roud #21615
NOTES [8421 words]: This is one of those stories that apparently had quite a local vogue, but that no one wants to admit to; I checked a history of Indiana and four biographical dictionaries of various ages without finding a mention of Belle Gunness. She managed a peculiar sort of fame, though; in folklore, she became the "Lady Bluebeard" (Shepherd, p. 73).
Belle Gunness's public story begins with the fire at her home mentioned in the Historical References. After much searching, four bodies were found in the house: Gunness's three children and a woman. Whether the woman was Belle was never finally established. That should have been that -- except that, after the fire, the grounds were searched, and a number of bodies, mostly male, were discovered.
The accounts of who these men were are pretty lurid. It is generally believed that most were husbands and male friends Belle had murdered. Belle had only two husbands, both of whom died suspiciously, but whose deaths were publicly known and recorded. The other deaths -- the men buried on the farm -- seem to have been men she lured there with promises of a lucrative investment in her farm, then killed for their cash.
Sadly, it appears that we will never be able to get all the way to the bottom of her story. The forensics of today would solve the questions without doubt, but it was beyond the abilities of investigations in 1908.
Schechter, p. xvi, tells us of Belle's home town of La Porte, Indiana, "Like Fall River, Massachusetts, and Plainfield, Wisconsin -- the homes, respectively, of two of the country's criminal legends, Lizzie Borden and Ed Gein -- La Porte, Indiana, would become a macabre tourist destination, forever identified not as the birthplace of such proud native sons as William Matthias Scholl [of Dr. Scholl's] or Brewster Martin Higbee [sic.; possible author of "Home on the Range"] but as the site of an unspeakable horror: the ghastly 'murder farm' of Belle Sorenson Gunness, the Lady Bluebeard." (La Porte was also the home of E. E. Smith, whose "Skylark of Space" and "Lensman" books were critical in establishing the science fiction genre in the late 1920s and 1930s.)
Although histories won't touch Gunness, she has certainly attracted plenty of true crime writers. There are novels about her, e.g., Camilla Bruce, In the Garden of Spite: A Novel of the Black Widow of La Porte. Six books about her, plus some short items and chapters in books about serial killers, appear to be non-fiction, although I have not been able to directly verify the contents of some of them: Harold Schechter, Hell's Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men (by far the most popular, and a properly documented history; I thought it both highly reliable and quite balanced); Jane Simon Ammeson, America's Femme Fatale: The Story of Serial Killer Belle Gunness; Janet L. Langlois, Belle Gunness: The Lady Bluebeard; Lillian de la Torre, The Truth about Belle Gunness; (Rebecca Lo and) Jack Rosewood, Belle Gunness: The True Story of The Slaying Mother: Historical Serial Killers and Murderers; and Sylvia Elizabeth Shepherd, The Mistress of Murder Hill: The Serial Killings of Belle Gunness. There are enough copies of some of them on used bookstore sites that I am inherently suspicious. But while Lindberg calls de la Torre a "potboiler," and the description of the Lo/Rosewood book seems extreme, Shepherd and (especially) Schechter are serious, non-sensationalist works. Langlois is partly history but mostly a study of Gunness folklore; it has real value -- among other things it collects Gunness poetry -- but care must be taken to distinguish the folklore it collects from the facts; you can't really get the Gunness story from it. Ammeson is too imaginative to be trusted, constantly telling us what Belle was thinking.
There were also many imaginative accounts published at the time (Langlois, pp. 94-95, show several of their covers, with drawings of a much-too-attractive Belle), but these should be dismissed as pure imagination
Lindberg, p. 10, also reports that there was a cable television documentary, and discussions, at least, of a movie. Given the level of inaccuracy typically found in such productions, I have not attempted to learn more about those.
Gunness was born Brynhild Paulsdatter Størset on November 11, 1859 near Selbu, Norway (Schechter, p. 6), in the general vicinity of Trondheim (Shepherd, p. 14). She was probably the youngest of eight children (Lindberg, p. 44). In one sense, at least, she stayed close to her Norwegian roots: Most of the victims of her crimes were other Norwegian immigrants. Her parents were both still alive when she emigrated to America, but not for much longer; her mother died in 1885 and her father in 1890 (Lindberg, p. 44).
Records of her early life are few -- birth, confirmation, things like that. This led to claims such as one that her parents were circus performers and that as a child she had liked cutting the heads off her dolls; this story persisted for many years, but this was just a bit of fiction by a bad reporter who couldn't find out anything real (Langlois, pp. 24-25). Her family was poor and lived a hardscrabble life. After she became infamous, people in her home remembered her as an unpleasant child, but after that much time, and with her name bearing so much baggage, the testimony may not be reliable (Schechter, pp. 6-7). Lindberg, pp. 49-51, mentions reports of her being dour and harsh in America also, but here again, the sources may be biased -- or it many just be that she was still learning English! There are reports that she was intelligent and hard-working in school (Ammeson, p. 8), but this is surely anecdotal.
Similarly, there was a report that as a young woman, she became pregnant, but was attacked and miscarried the child (Lindberg, p. 46; Ammeson, pp. 1-7, imagines the scene in detail and suggests she killed her lover even though she doesn't know his name), but Schechter, at least, doubts the story. Lindberg suggests the abuse caused her to become the violent woman she was, but there are two problems with this: First, his argument is based on Freudian precepts (i.e. it's false), and second, there is no evidence of her violent streak for more than a decade after this time.
Lindberg, p. 24, says that she was prone to fits of "violent rage" which ended abruptly with "her manner suddenly self-contained." This makes wonder if, perhaps, the problem was actually with her affect -- that is, that people couldn't read her facial expressions very well. Others reported that she was obsessed with making money (Lindberg, p. 26).
Brynhild's ticket to American was paid for by her older sister Olina, who had migrated about a decade earlier. Brynhild emigrated in 1881 (Lindberg, p. 48; Langlois, p. 4, says that the ship was the Tasso, with which Ammeson, p. 10, tentatively agrees, in which case it was probably slow, since it still carried sails as well as an engine). She then went to her sister's home in Chicago.
There is no evidence that she ever wrote to anyone back in Norway (Ammeson, pp. 9-10), though of course there could be some letters that have not been preserved.
Like her sister (who now used the name "Nellie"), Brynhild decided to take a new name. So Brynhild Størset became "Bella Peterson" (this even though her father's name was Paul!). She became a domestic servant (Schechter, p. 10). Perhaps because of her impoverished background, she quickly displayed an obsession with wealth and with gaining it (Schechter, p. 11). Yet when she married, in March 1884, it was to a relatively poor man, Mads Ditlev Anton Sorenson, a department store night watchman (Schechter, p. 11;Ammeson, p. 17, also supports 1884; Shepherd, p. 16, says that the wedding might have taken place any time between 1883 and 1889, and there is some disagreement about exactly what Sorenson's job was).
There is much that is curious about the early years of this marriage. In 1894, the Sorensons somehow found the money to buy a candy store in Chicago. Within a year, the store caught fire; Belle was the only adult present at the time. Given that the store had not been a great financial success, there were thoughts of arson, but no proof was ever given; insurance eventually paid out on the store (Schechter, pp. 12-13. This is the first of many instances where modern technology would certainly have gotten to the bottom of something that proved utterly beyond the investigators of the time).
Belle was always said to have loved children, and although there are accounts of her beating the children she cared for in the early 1900s, there is also testimony that she treated them very well (Langlois, p. 75) -- but in the first eight years of their marriage, the Sorensons remained childless, except for adopting the child of a dying mother. This infant, Jennie Olson (called "Olsen" by Lindberg), born c. 1892, would figure in the story later. Belle also tried to adopt a daughter of her sister Nellie; Nellie's refusal to agree caused an estrangement that would never heal (Shepherd, p. 16).
Despite their eight previous years of childlessness, between 1896 and 1898, four more children joined the Sorenson home. Perhaps one or two were Belle's own children, but some must have been adopted (Schechter, p. 13; Shepherd, p. 16, thinks that all were foster children, and on p. 18 says that the birth certificates listed only a father, no mother). Two of these children died young, but the conditions listed on the death certificates are typical diseases of the time. That left two daughters, Myrtle and Lucy Sorenson (Schechter, p. 13).
In 1897, the Sorensons were tricked into mortgaging their property to a fake mining enterprise; fortunately, the company was prosecuted and they were made whole (Schechter, pp. 13-15; Lindberg, pp. 24-35, thinks that Mads wanted away from his wife). I can't help but wonder, though, if the way in which she was bilked gave Belle ideas for future reference.
Then the home they had bought with the insurance on their candy store burned down (Schechter, p. 15). And, soon after, Mads died, at a time when he was switching life insurance policies and so was the beneficiary of both -- for one day only, but he conveniently died on that one day, July 30, 1900 (Schechter, p. 16). Belle claimed that he had been unwell, and that she had given him quinine, but he died soon afterward despite that. The doctor wanted to see the quinine package, but she said she had thrown it out. Foul play could not be demonstrated; Belle received the life insurance (Schechter, pp. 15-16).
Mads's brother was suspicious enough to have the body exhumed for an autopsy, which found no physical signs of foul play, but the brother didn't pay for an internal examination, so poison remained a possibility (Shepherd, p. 16).
The whole thing left Belle under enough suspicion that she left Chicago and put an offer in the newspaper to trade her property in the city for a farm somewhere. Thus it was that she acquired her 48 acre property in La Porte, Indiana -- a residence already somewhat notorious for having once been a brothel (Shepherd, pp. 16-17). She also started calling herself "Belle" rather than "Bella" (Schechter, p. 18). The property was on McClung Road, and as of 1985 it reportedly still looked much as it did c. 1900 (Langlois, p. 21; Google Maps has a "Belle Gunness Housing Complex" at 144 McClung Road!).
Lindberg, pp. 28, claims that it was at this time that she first tried the technique that would later lure most of her victims: She placed a matrimonial ad in a Norwegian language publication. Lindberg says that this caused a fellow named Peter Frederickson to become interested in her. But nothing came of that.
Still, she somehow, she managed to acquire a new husband at this time, a widower named Peter Gunness who had once lodged with Mads and Belle; they married in April 1902 (Shepherd, pp. 17-18; Schechter, pp. 18-19). No one quite understood why he was interested in her; Belle was by this time very heavy and of course no longer young. She did, to be sure, own a nice property.
The younger of Gunness's two young daughters died shortly after the wedding, though once again the cause appeared natural (Schechter, p. 19). After Peter Gunness died, his brother kidnapped the remaining girl, possibly saving her life -- the more so since her father had a $2500 life insurance policy with the girl as beneficiary (Schechter, p. 30; Shepherd, p. 22).
On December 16, 1902, Jennie Olson, Belle's first adopted child, came to a neighbor's house asking help, saying Peter Gunness had burned himself (Schechter, p. 19). Eventually the neighbors brought a doctor. The doctor found that Gunness had been dead long enough that it was becoming rigid, and that his nose was broken -- but the evident cause of death was a severe blow to the back of the head; his immediate impression was that it was murder. Belle was reported to be almost incoherent. (Of course, hysteria can be faked, and incoherence is easier when speaking a language which is not one's native language!) She said that a meat grinder had fallen from a kitchen shelf and hit him; this also caused him to spill hot brine on his neck; after the blow, he said he was all right, but she found him dead on the floor some time later (Schechter, p. 20; Shepherd, p. 18).
The doctor and a colleague conducted an autopsy soon after. They found no sign of burns, and concluded that the cause of death was the blow to the head and the hemorrhage it caused. The broken nose was probably also caused by blows, although it might have been the result of a fall on a hard object (Schechter, p. 21; Shepherd, p. 20). All indications pointed to murder, but with the only evidence about the crime being Belle's, plus Jennie's which corroborated hers closely (Schechter, pp. 25-27), it was listed as an accidental death. (One can't help but wonder what would have happened had they known her past history. But people weren't tracked back then the way they are now.)
A few months after that she acquired a son, Peter Gunness (Shepherd, p. 18). She did that without anyone attending the birth and seemingly without needing to rest afterward! (Schechter, p. 29), so even though she hinted that the child was her own, odds are that it was an infant she had adopted or, perhaps more likely, stolen.
There was a claim, many years later, that Belle's daughter Myrtle told a young friend that her mother had murdered her father (Lindberg, p. 108), but this is multiple levels of hearsay and involved a very young girl who could not have remembered the event.
Belle was exceptionally strong for a woman of her size, and could easily handle tasks such as butchering hogs (Schechter, p. 32), but even she needed -- or declared that she needed -- people to work her property. So she started hiring farm helpers. The first was a Norwegian immigrant, Olaf Lindboe, who soon disappeared (Schechter, pp. 32-33), Then came Henry Gurholt, in April 1905 (Schechter, p. 33). Then came the ad in several Norwegian-language publications, which Schechter, p. 35, translates as "Wanted -- a woman who owns a beautifully located and valuable farm in first class condition, wants a good and reliable man s partner in same. Some little cash is required and will be furnished first class security." Schechter lists at least five men who responded, often selling property and arriving with a thousand dollars or more to offer to the alleged enterprise. Many were seen arriving at Gunness's farm, sometimes being introduced as her cousin; few were seen to leave, and they had a tendency to leave their trunks behind when they supposedly departed. And at about this time, she hired a local to dig a series of holes in her yard (Schechter, p. 36).
One wonders if perhaps one of those men paid too much attention to Belle's first adopted child, Jennie Olson, who was said to be very pretty and to have had many suitors. Belle allegedly shipped her off to a school outside the state. And, somehow, Jennie never seemed to answer letters from her admirers; indeed, it was only Belle who seemed to talk about her leaving (Schechter, pp. 37-38). She had had an opportunity to go back to her family a few years earlier and had said she wanted to stay with Belle (Shepherd, p. 50; Lindberg, p. 34, suggests that the big city was just too busy for her; making it more curious is a claim on p. 86 that she and all of Belle's children were terrified of Belle); eventually it cost her her life. (Lindberg, p. 148, states as a fact that Belle killed her because she had learned Belle's secret, but there is no evidence for this.) One wonders if Jennie was afraid to say she wanted to leave; there is testimony that Belle treated her harshly (e.g. Shepherd, p. 59).
Belle's letters to those she took on really were astonishing; to Andrew Helgelein, a farmer in Aberdeen, South Dakota whose disappearance led to the discovery of her secret, she once wrote "Take all of your money out of the bank and come as soon as possible"! (Schechter, p. 42). He had gone on what he said would be a brief vacation early in January 1908 -- and never came home.
In 1907, Ray Lamphere, a general handyman (Lindberg, p. 88), entered Belle's employment. And, seemingly, her bed; some accounts say he became infatuated. (According to Schechter, p. 40, he wasn't the only farm worker she took to her bed; Peter Colson also slept with her, and perhaps others. It sounds as if most of the claims that Lamphere was obsessed with Belle came from Belle herself; Schechter, pp. 55-57, summarizes her claims against him. Lamphere never really talked about their relationship -- except to a minister while he was in imprisoned for suspected arson; the minister leaked some of that information, but not enough to explain much; Shepherd, p. 90. Lindberg, p. 90, claims Lamphere was a bigamist, but I wonder if the drunken Lamphere was really bright enough to pull that off. Frankly, he sounds as if he had delusions as well, though that might be because of the alcohol.)
Lamphere was willing to sleep with Belle, and later to spy on her (he claimed he drilled a hole in the house and overheard Belle talking with Helgelein about how to murder Lamphere; Lindberg, p. 139), but he did not buy the life insurance she suggested (Shepherd, p.30), which may have saved his life. Eventually she got tired of him and tried to make him go away; he kept pursuing her, though it's not clear (to me, anyway) whether this was because of his feelings toward her or because he wanted his back pay (Schechter, p. 53). Nor is it clear just how persistent he was, but Belle tried to have him declared insane or otherwise forced to stay away from her (Shepherd, p. 31). Possibly she just didn't want his testimony about Andrew Helgelein accepted, because he saw Helgelein arrive, and resented it. As it turned out, Helgelein seems to have been present for only about a week; he showed up, brought his certificates of deposit from his home bank to the La Porte bank, was told he would have to wait for them to be verified before he could withdraw the money (something which made Belle quite upset), got the verification, took out the money -- and was never seen again (Schecther, pp. 49-51).
On April 27, Belle went to town and did a great deal of business. She had her lawyer make up a will and deposited it at the bank (Schechter, p. 60). The will left everything to her children and, if they died without issue, to the Norwegian Children's Home of Chicago -- which would get Belle's sister involved after the death, as she wanted her part of the estate. Interestingly, the will did not even mention Jennie Olson, the first foundling Belle took in -- an ominous hint about Jennie's fate (Schechter, p. 81; Lindberg, p. 147). She also deposited a great deal of money -- $720 according to Shepherd, $730 according to Schechter -- at the bank that She had not had a bank account until then. Plus she did quite a bit of shopping; for groceries and for, interestingly, a large quantity of kerosene. That night, her current farmhand Joseph Maxson said she served a normal dinner and played with the children that evening (Shepherd, pp. 28-29; Schechter, p. 60, reports that she bought candy and a toy train, which they played with that evening).
The whole whole house of cards collapsed on the morning of April 28, 1908. Around 4:00 that morning, Maxson was awakened to a crackling sound and the smell of smoke (Shepherd, p. 1). He tried to awaken Belle and the children who he thought were elsewhere in the house, but neither he nor anyone who came to the house thereafter could do so because they were locked away (Shepherd, pp. 2-3). Around 5:00 a.m., Maxson went to the town of La Porte, returning with the sheriff and fire crew. It was clearly too late for the fire crew to do anything.
Belle had earlier told people that she was afraid Ray Lamphere would burn her house down and kill her (Schechter, p. 58). Did she really suspect that -- or was she trying to frame him?
Shepherd, p. 3, reports that Sheriff Albert Smutzer suspected arson because of Belle's problems with Lamphere (Shepherd, p. 3). So the sheriff went looking for Lamphere, who was at work on a nearby farm (Shepherd, p. 4). Curiously, his first words were to ask if there were survivors of the fire, although he explained that he had seen it at a distance (Schechter, p. 74). His only excuse for not telling anyone about the fire was that he didn't think it his business (Schechter, p. 188; Shepherd, p. 171). He did have an alibi of sorts, although it too was odd and probably would not have been taken seriously by a jury: He had been sleeping with a Black woman in her seventies, Elizabeth Smith; she corroborated his story, but the testimony of an old black woman with a bad reputation wasn't considered very reliable (Schechter, pp. 75-76).
In time, a grand jury would be convened to consider charges against Lamphere (Schechter, p. 78); he was eventually charged with five murders (the four who died in the house fire plus Helgelein), plus an arson charge and an alternative charge of accessory in the murder of Helgelein (Shepherd, p. 113). But that was later -- after the situation had completely changed.
The fire was so severe that nothing was left of the house but three burned walls, which were quickly knocked down so that searchers could explore the wreckage to try to determine what happened (Schechter, p. 71).
The house was routinely searched. Eventually four bodies were found in the ruins -- an adult woman whose head was missing, two girls, and one boy (Sheperd, p. 4). The three children corresponded to Gunness's adopted family. There was no obvious evidence of violence, though the bodies were sufficiently burned that there could have been trauma which the forensics of the time could not detect, and the boy had suffered an injury to his forehead thought to be from a falling brick (Schechter, pp. 72-73).
The search didn't reveal much about the cause of the fire except that it was thought an accelerant had been used (Schechter, p. 68) -- which was interesting because of the kerosene Belle had bought the day before the fire. (This was by no means the most suspicious thing she ever tried to buy; at one time she had sent one of her men to try to by "Rough on Rats" [10% soot and 90% arsenic trioxide, readily available at hardware stores and used in several murders over the years; Blum, p. 86]-- and chloroform; Shepherd, p. 32; Shepherd, p. 89, also mentions "chloral," i.e. chloral hydrate, or a "Mickey Finn"; I wouldn't bet on Shepherd knowing they are distinct.) Had her own kerosene been used to start the fire?
At first, all anyone worried about was arson. However, Andrew Helgelein's brother Asle K. Helgelein wanted to know what happened to him, and had traced Andrew to the Gunness farm (Shepherd, 7). When the brother contacted Belle before the fire, she suggested he bring some money and help her investigate the case (Shepherd, p. 10). Asle eventually came, after the fire -- with letters from his local police asking the La Porte police to let him look around. He joined Maxon and others in investigating the property (Schechter, pp. 83-85), and eventually dug into a recently filled-in hole that Maxson had dug in March. And found a corpse (Shepherd, p. 11).
Once they realized what they had found, without digging it all the way out, they called the sheriff. Who found a carefully dismembered body (Shepherd, pp. 11-12). WIthout going into all the gory details, continued digging revealed more bodies (Schechter, p. 85). One of those found was Andrew Helgelein (Shepherd, p. 12), so, in a way, Asle Helgelein's investigation had succeeded. But now there was a much bigger crime to investigate: As the searchers went over the farm, they found many more bodies, usually dismembered and usually covered with quicklime, which dissolved the flesh and frequently made them unidentifiable (Shepherd, pp. 22-23. The identity of the victims was often important, because survivors would try to sue the Gunness estate for money she had stolen from her victims; Shepherd, p. 106. In a few cases, the bodies could not be identified but their deaths were certain because some of their property could be identified as having been in Gunness's possession; Ammeson, pp. 148-149).
There were so many bodies that the stench of the site could reportedly be smelled two blocks away (Langlois, p. 22).
The sheriff would eventually call in the Pinkertons (Shepherd, p. 171), but if they accomplished anything, it's not clear what. The Pinkertons by this time were less an investigative unit than a tool of corporate interests anyway. Ammeson, p. 77, suggests that Belle might have had an arrangement -- even a relationship -- with Sherif Smutzer, but I can't see any reason to believe this other than Smutzer's rather stubborn attitude toward evidence. Ammeson, pp. 84-87, goes so far as to suggest that Smutzer, Ray Lanphere, and Julius Truelson were all in on the act, and Ammeson, p. 174, say that Lillian de la Torre even suggested that Smutzer had descided to kill his former confederate Belle before she could kill him. But what odds? Belle had clearly committed her first murders on her own; why bring in three accomplices, one a drunk and one a drifter? Or even one confederate, who might be sheriff now but might soon be voted out? It would cut into the profits and risk exposure. The idea is absurd.
It was clear that Gunness had been a mass murderer. The question was, had she truly been killed by the fire? Of the four burned bodies, only the adult woman was missing a head. This was the more curious because, at the trial, a crematory attendant said that the skull was usually the last bone to burn (Shepherd, p. 187).
Belle, according to Shepherd, p. 25, had been about 5'7" and 200 pounds (not 300 as in the song, but still quite heavy for her height); Schechter, p. 40, makes her 280 pounds, which is not far off from 300 pounds; this is apparently based on the statement of a neighbor who talked to Belle about her weight after Gunness had visited a doctor (Schechter, pp. 178-179). Langlois, p. 38, quotes someone who said she was over six feet tall and 250 pounds -- an extraordinary height for a woman, particularly one from a deprived household; I think that simply beyond belief. Ray Lamphere's lawyer described her as "rather masculine in appearance. She was about 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighed between 210 and 225 pounds. Her hands and feet were large" (Shepherd, p. 68).
[An aside: Given her strength and her actions, eventually people suggested that Belle was a man in disguise rather than a woman (Lindberg, pp. 83-84; Langlois, p. 57, cites several people who apparently wondered about it at the time; de la Torre apparently gave the possibility serious consideration). Given her strength, seeming infertility, and behavior, I genuinely wonder about a chromosomal or hormonal disorder, but the photos of her in early life clearly show a woman, if one with a bulky figure, a very strong chin, and an expression that looks like she never smiled. And someone -- her husbands, her doctor, one or another of her farmhands -- would surely have noticed if she were male! Langlois, pp. 63-65, suggests that Gunness's size, strength, weight, lack of attractiveness, and masculinity were all (probably subconscious) attempts to make the evil person seem more evil; so too the suggestion that she was a man. I suspect Langlois is right.]
The dead body was overweight (the autopsy said it had "fat on abdomen two inches thick"; Shepherd, p. 82) but seemed shorter than Belle -- the autopsist estimated that she would have been "five feet, 4.44 inches" (his excess precision, not mine!) and was estimated to have weighed roughly 200 points prior to death (Schechter, p. 171), although the weight estimate was based on an unreliable estimate based on the weight of the badly burned body. Of course, without the head, and with the feet damaged, and with the fire having affected the rest of the body very severely, this was hard to prove. And the man who made the claim had had to sneak into the funeral home to tape measure and weigh the body (Schechter, p. 113)! The body did wear rings that seemed to be from Belle's weddings (Shepherd, p. 82).
Despite the fine dinner before the fire reported by Maxson, the dead had empty stomachs, implying that they were killed many hours after dinner (which would fit with a fire that started around 3:45 a.m.). All had limbs missing -- probably burned off, but it's worth recalling that Belle liked to cut up her victims. Thus, although the big question was whether the adult was Belle, there could be doubt about whether the three children were hers, though it doesn't appear anyone ever actually questioned that. The doctor said the cause of death could not be determined for at least one of the children -- she might have been dead before being burned (Shepherd, p. 83). What's more, the doctor thought the dead woman was younger than Belle's 49 years (Shepherd, p. 83. Belle was actually still 48, but the difference is minor). And a loose hand that was found was manicured, and Belle reportedly did not manicure hers.
Later on, a forensic examination reported arsenic and strychnine in the bodies of the dead woman and two of the children (Shepherd, p. 144) -- hinting that they had been poisoned first and the fire set afterward. The combination of arsenic and strychnine was also found in the body of Andrew Helgelein (Schechter, p.119). And arsenic tests, by 1908, were quite reliable. There were two complications: three of the stomachs had been sent for testing together and could have cross-contaminated, and the funeral home used arsenic preservatives (Shepherd, pp. 191-192), although that didn't explain the strychnine. The doctor who autopsied the boy said on the witness stand that he thought strychnine the most likely cause of death (Schechter, p. 174).
Remember too that Belle had a tendency toward arson. There was real reason to doubt that the dead body was hers. Sadly, the matter became enmeshed in partisan politics, including a race for sheriff, which badly hindered the investigation (Shepherd, pp. 96-102, although most of this is a quotation from a newspaper of the time).
Gunness's rather strange behavior on the day before the fire provided fodder for both sides. In addition to buying kerosine, opening a bank account, and writing her will, Maxson reported that she kept her children out of school that day, although the teacher, Carrie Garwood, later claimed that they were in school but had clearly been severely abused (Schechter, p. 59; Shepherd, p. 77. I wonder if Garwood was right about the abuse but had the date wrong. She said the children reported that they had started to go down the basement -- which was forbidden to them -- and Belle attacked them. Shades of Bluebeard indeed; one genuinely wonders if that might have been what caused Belle to polish off the witnesses). What seems certain is that Belle did not treat the children in her usual way on that day.
The fact that Belle's body could not be positively identified resulted in fears that she had rigged the fire and escaped. One of those who believed she survived was the La Porte chief of police (Shepherd, p. 104). And that led to all sorts of people trying to track her down -- and, on at least one occasion, to a woman being falsely apprehended, which perhaps calmed the frenzy a little (Shepherd, pp. 74-76), though Lindberg, p. 172, says that one of those who claimed to have seen her was the best man at Belle's wedding to Mads Sorenson, so he should have known her! The town of La Porte also found itself plagued by thousands of visiting gawkers and "investigators" (Shepherd, pp. 86-88). Her survival even became a political issue, with the two parties disagreeing over whether she had survived (the Democrats and their paper said she was alive; the Republicans believed her dead; Langlois, pp. 122-123).
Although the adult woman's head was never found, a man who was hired to operate a sluice on the wreckage found dental work -- and the local dentist declared it was Belle's based on her dental work (Shepherd, p. 103; Schechter, p. 146, notes the curious fact that the sheriff had just arrived on the scene when sluicer Louis Schultz found the dental work -- and that Ray Lamphere's lawyer had predicted that that would happen. What's more, no one actually say Schultz find the dental work; they were in his pocket when he gave them to the sheriff; Shepherd, p. 187).
Ammeson, pp. 140-141, seems convinced that the whole thing was a set-up and the dental work was fake; this seems to be the basis for her belief that sheriff Smutzer was up to something. Certainly there were questions about the provenance and chain of custody of the dental work (Shepherd, p. 109; according to Shepherd, p. 170, when they wanted to call the sluicer for the court case, he could not be found), and the dentist didn't have full patient records of Belle since she paid cash (Shepherd, p. 159). And apparently the dentist had told the sluicer what to look for. Still, the dental work does seem strong evidence that Belle was dead, particularly since there was a tooth still attached to the work. The coroner accepted it as proof (Shepherd, pp. 109-110).
Many did not believe it. Lindberg pp. 150-151, says that one member of the coroner's jury vigorously disagreed with the coroner, and on p 175 says that Coroner Mack was denied renomination at the next Democratic convention over this issue. Coroner at this time was an elected office, and Coroner Mack did not seem very competent during the trial of Ray Lamphere -- there were all sorts of questions that he did not consider and things he did not know; Schechter, pp. 170-171; Shepherd, p. 154. One of the books about the case offered a $4000 reward for Belle's capture (Langlois, p. 122). The newspapers and the locals spent years arguing about it.
The dental work wasn't the only issue. The position of the bodies was also curious. They were all together, with the woman's arms seemingly around the boy, even though the girls slept in a separate room from Belle, and they supposedly slept on the upper floor, yet their bodies were found together near the bottom of the debris pile (so Lamphere's lawyer; Shepherd, p. 196). Some thought the bodies had been arranged that way (Lindberg, p. 150).
There was also the question of Where did Belle's money went. It was estimated that her victims had made, shall we say, involuntary contributions of $51,000 or more -- yet she had only the $700 or so in the bank (Shepherd, p. 112). Paper money would probably have burned, but coin should at least have left traces.
The fact that Belle was missing and possibly dead produced a somewhat odd legal situation. There was no direct legal case to determine Gunness's relationship to the murders that resulted in the dead bodies on her property. Instead, the issue was litigated (insofar as it was litigated at all) in the murder/arson trial of Lamphere, with the prosecution claiming that Gunness was dead and that Lamphere was the arsonist who had killed her, while the defense offered the proposition that she was alive and had started the fire herself. These were not the only possible scenarios, of course (one that was bandied about, including by de la Torre, was that Belle had survived the fire but then been disposed of by Smutzer or others who were in on her secret; Langlois, pp. 127-128), but they are what the court case covered. The result was that the truth was never really discovered, although Belle had officially been declared dead.
There were periodic claims that Belle had accomplices in murder -- perhaps even some criminal organization sending her bodies to dispose of; one man, Julius G. Truelson, even claimed to be one of those accomplices. But Truelson's claims were just an attempt to get out of the Texas prison he was already in, and none of the other claims ever came to anything (Lindberg, pp. 102-103; Ammeson, pp. 128-133, makes it pretty clear that she believed Truelson's confession and that Sheriff Smutzer covered up the evidence).
Lamphere's trial began on May 9, 1908 (Schechter, p. 156). Lamphere's lawyer was one Wirt Worden, who had a checkered past -- two of his partners had been permanently disbarred for bribing a witness (Schechter, pp. 156-157). It took four days to seat a jury (Schechter, p. 157) -- surprisingly fast, I would say, given the notoriety of the case. The trial itself took about two weeks. The jurors were given the choice of six verdicts: First degree murder with a sentence of death, First degree murder with a sentence of life imprisonment, Second degree murder with automatic life sentence, Manslaughter, Arson, Not Guilty (Shepherd, p. 199).
It took a couple of days for the jury to reach a decision. They twice asked for more information; the judge denied their requests (which seems out of line with current procedure, at least) and made them listen to his jury instructions again (Schehter, p. 217). One wonders what information they were seeking. When they reached their decision, the verdict was, oddly, arson, with no murder count, which meant a sentence of 2 to 21 years (Shepherd, p. 202). The jury also wished to submit a signed statement explaining their verdict. Shepherd, pp. 202-203, implies that the jury's statement was read at the time; Shepherd, p. 218, says that they saw no point. According to Shepherd, the statement revealed that it was their belief that the body in the house had been that of Belle Gunness, but "the case was decided by us on an entirely different proposition" (Shepherd, pp. 202-203).
The strange verdict -- one that made little logical sense because it implied that Lamphere started the fire but that the fire did not kill anyone -- is thought to have been a compromise: Ten jurors thought Lamphere guilty of murder (and wanted to give him life), but one wanted to acquit and one wanted just the arson verdict (Shepherd, p. 222). Rather than tell the judge that they were hung, they decided on the arson verdict.
Lamphere apparently really wanted to appeal, but there was no money (Shepherd, p. 203). And his other request, for a new trial, had been rejected (Shepherd, p. 207). Perhaps just as well, since a new trial could well have gotten him a death sentence.
It proved effectively moot anyway. Lamphere died of tuberculosis on December 30, 1909 (Shepherd, p. 211). He was only 38 (Schechter, p. 229). It is highly unlikely that an appeal would have been resolved by then. He allegedly gave two "confessions" -- one to the minister who had visited him in prison, one on his deathbed to a fellow inmate (Shepherd, pp. 211-218). Both were heard by only one witness, and I don't really trust either. The two were so contradictory that they cannot be reconciled -- e.g. in one of them Lamphere chloroformed Belle with her own chloroform and robbed her, but the fire was accidental. Ammeson, pp. 171-172, seems to believe the other by the inmate, Harry Myers, which describes how Belle, with Lamphere's help, faked her own death. Neither one entirely fits the known facts. (Even at the time, experts pointed out that chloroform doesn't work the way Lamphere described; the victim struggles mightily until knocked out; Shepherd, pp. 219-220. And it leaves marks!) I think they both have to be disregarded. Similarly, Schechter devotes only half a page to the Myers allegations -- which were, after all, the words of a known criminal speaking after Lamphere could no longer confirm or deny the statements.
Elizabeth Smith, the last witness who might have clarified Lamphere's actions, herself died in 1916. Apparently she wanted to tell her side of the story -- but she wanted to tell it to a particular person (Lamphere's lawyer Worden), and he didn't arrive in time, so her story went unrecorded (Schechter, p. 144). A skull was found in the mess of her home, which some people suggested was the skull of the woman's body from Belle's fire, but neighbors said she had had it for years (Langlois, p. 43)
Joe Maxson, Belle's handyman, died in 1923 after being struck in the head by falling lumber while at work. I find it interesting that, in the interim, he was charged with beating and threatening his wife (Schechter, p. 249) -- given different philosophies back then, he must have been pretty violent to get in trouble for domestic violence. But, after that, there was no real possibility of significant additional information coming from witnesses.
Without going into all the details of the testimony as reported by the various books, I would only say that neither the prosecution's hypothesis (that Lamphere set the fire) nor the defense's (that Belle had rigged the whole thing and escaped) seems entirely satisfactory. If Lamphere set the fire, how did he get the accelerant into the house, and why did Belle behave so oddly the day before? And where did the strychnine come from? Would he have been willing to risk the children's lives? And there seems no evidence of him actually lighting the fire except that he asked about it. Plus Lamphere claimed that Belle conspired with Helgelein to murder Lamphere (Linberg, p. 139) -- yet what are the odds that Helgelein would have gone along with such a plot so early in his time with Belle? Lamphere's accounts make little sense.
If the defense had been right that Belle rigged the whole thing, how did her dental work get there? And why didn't she silence Maxson? And what happened to her?
A third possibility, not covered at trial, was that Belle committed suicide and took the children with her. This would fit Jennie Olson's fate, in a way: If Belle couldn't have Jennie any more, then no one could have her. So too with the younger children. And it is a known fact that people with Antisocial Personality Disorder, which Belle surely had, are prone to suicide (DSM-5, p. 661; Ammeson, pp. xi-xii, believes that Belle had Antisocial Personality Disorder, although she explains it badly enough that I doubt she understands ASPD). If Belle killed her children (possibly impulsively), lit the fire, and took strychnine, it would fit most of the known facts -- except that we don't know why she would commit suicide. And it doesn't explain Lamphere's guilty knowledge.
Ultimately, I think our conclusion must be, "Mystery unresolved" -- although it does seem as if Lamphere was involved somehow. Certainly, if the books accurately represented the testimony at the trial, I do not see how they could possibly have found Lamphere guilty. Given the option, I'd have used the Scots "Not Proven" verdict; in the absence of that, I'd have to vote "Not Guilty."
Shepherd, p. 239, gives as her final conclusion that Belle did not die in her burned house, and suggests that one Esther Carlson, who died in California, was Belle. She offers no justification for this view, but Schechter, starting on p. 248, explains how the idea came to be. It's not really relevant to the song, so I won't go into details, but several people around Carlson died of arsenic poisoning, and one of them had a joint account with Carlson that she could inherit (Schechter, pp. 250-252). Obviously there were some similarities to Belle. More notably, when she died, a photo of three children was found in her possession, and a native of La Porte who saw it said that they were Belle's children (Schechter, p. 254; Langlois, p. 127). Carlson wasn't nearly as heavy as Belle, but it was suggested that the tuberculosis which killed her might have caused her to lose the weight. Several observers thought she really looked like Belle (Schecter, p. 256), and apparently many in LaPorte believed it (Langlois p. 127). Alas, in 2014, investigators managed to prove that Esther Carlson had truly been born in Sweden, as she had claimed (Schechter, p. 258). I suppose Belle could have killed Carlson and taken over her identity (much harder, then, than creating a new identity from scratch), but that seems far-fetched.
One other attempt was made to resolve the mystery: Belle's grave was opened in 2008 and DNA testing done. The results were "inconclusive" (Schechter, p. 259). We could perhaps do better today -- although it sounds as if the real problem is that we don't have any reliable DNA to test against -- but the interest perhaps isn't there.
Ammeson, p. 177, believes "Belle was too smart to die in the fire; she got away that night... I also agree with Lillian de la Torre that Belle met up with Albert that night." But she admits that she could change her mind.
Schechter's conclusion (pp. 259-260) is the same as mine. Lamphere's confessions are implausible. The jury verdict is nonsensical. No hypothesis has been suggested that explains all the facts. We simply don't know the fate of Belle Gunness. Wherever and whenever she died, she took her mystery to her grave.
With Belle's children dead, the question of how to resolve her estate became complicated. The charity which she had listed as residual beneficiary didn't want the blood money. So, after the various claims against the estate were resolved, three of Belle's relatives split a bit more than $3000 (Shepherd, p. 210).
Belle's exploits even made it into early editions of the Guinness Book of World Records, according to Schechter, p.119. They guessed she had committed 28 murders, which was "the greatest number of murders ever ascribed to a modern murderess."
The song is mostly accurate, or at least can be defended, in its details. The statement that Belle weighed 300 pounds is not far off from the 280 pounds quoted in her trial. She was indeed strong enough to do hard farm work.
The statement that some thought she killed only ten people, and others as many as 42, is about right; ten is the approximate number of bodies actually exhumed from her yard (it was hard to tell, given the way the bones were scattered), but they probably did not find them all, and the number of men who might have been in contact with her who simply disappeared in the relevant period could have exceeded forty. Lindberg, pp. 229-231, gives an actual catalog of victims, and his list includes 39 names -- but 19 of them disappeared at an unknown date, meaning that we have no real evidence that they were involved with Belle. The list also includes some children who might have died accidentally. So the list isn't really a list of Belle's victims; it's a list of people whose fates are unknown. It appears that, to achieve this total of 42, it is assumed that Belle fed parts of the dead bodies to her hogs and/or chickens, but if she did that with some bodies, why did she bury others? We can't know, but I suspect the count of 42 is too high.)
It is interesting that the song sides with those who think she survived, and hence believes that she rigged the fire and faked her death.
The fame of the event brought thousands of people to town, and made La Porte infamous. Many people knew it as "Gunnessville"; Langlois, pp. 21-28, has a whole sub-chapter about what people said about the town.
Shepherd's photo section has a photo of Belle and the three children who died in the fire (I think reversed left to right), the burned house, and some horrid photos of the excavation of Belle's property. Lindberg has a photo of Belle as a young woman, Belle's home in Chicago, the photo of Belle and her children but with left and right reversed from the way Shepherd shows it, a fashionable photo of Jennie Olsen, one of Joe Maxson, one of the burned house, several of Belle's yard, pictures of Asle and Andrew Helgelein, several of those involved in the Lamphere trial (though not Lamphere himself), and Esther Carlson. Langlois has a (rather poor) copy of the Young Belle photo on p. 91, Belle and the children on p. 93, Jennie Olsen and Joe Maxson on p. 96, Andrew Helgelein on p. 97, Asle Helgelein on p. 98, several of the home after the fire on pp. 98-99, Ray Lamphere on p. 100, and Lamphere with his lawyer Wirt Worden on p. 101, with the Lamphere jury on the same page. Schechter does not have photos, but the paperback edition has the young Belle on its cover.
Folklore has gone far with the Gunness story. Langlois identifies two major sources in the story as it seemed to evolve in LaPorte: "Bluebeard" (Thompson S62.1) and "The Bloody Miller" (i.e. "The Wexford Girl (The Oxford, Lexington, or Knoxville Girl; The Cruel Miller; etc.)" [Laws P35]. She also sees two motifs, "The Culture Hero Returns" (Thompson A5XX, especially A581; also A560, A570, with regard to all the suggestions that Belle was alive). and "The Strong Man" (Thompson F610ff, especially F610.0.1, "Remarkably strong woman"; F615, "Strong man evades death: F628.2, "Strong man kills men"; I would throw in Thompson T173.1, "Strong Wife Tries to Stifle Husband in Bed")
Langlois quotes other Belle songs in addition to this. The most interesting, to me, is a fragment used in a play, which self-evidently went to the tune of "Pistol-Packin' Mama":
Lay that cleaver down, Belle, lay that cleaver down;
Cleaver-cloutin' Mama, lay that cleaver down (p. 29).
The play and parts of the song are described on pp. 29-32, with a continuous text, "The Ballad of Blood-Thirsty Belle," on pp. 146-148. It was written by Ruth Andrew Coffeen in 1947. Langlois quotes it again, with excerpts of other Gunness ballads, on pp. 81-82. A fragment of another song is on p. 131. On p. 111, she quotes this song. - RBW
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