EVIL PSYCHOPATHS (True Crime) (30 page)

Part Eight: Psychopathic Women Killers

Belle Gunness

At close to six feet tall and weighing in at more than fourteen stone, Belle Gunness was a big woman, a big woman who killed at least twenty people and is estimated by some commentators to have actually dispatched close to a hundred, a number of them – in particular her own immediate family – killed for insurance policies.

Although, like most details of her life, knowledge about Belle’s birth is sketchy, most agree that she was born as Brynhild Paulsdatter Størseth, in Selbu in Norway in 1859. While still a young woman in Selbu, an incident is said to have occurred that was to change her personality, and her life, forever. It seems she got pregnant, although we do not know who the father was. Attending a dance, she was attacked and kicked in the stomach, losing her baby. Belle was never the same again and resolved to go to America to seek her fortune, as her sister, Nellie, had done some years previously. She worked for three years as a servant and saved enough to pay her passage to the New World.

She left Norway in 1881 and, at this point, changed her name to the more American-friendly ‘Belle’. In the beginning, she worked, as she had in Norway, as a servant, but she was very ambitious and always wanted more.

In 1884, she married a man called Mads Albert Sorenson in Chicago. They opened a confectionery store, but it proved a flop. A year after it opened, it mysteriously burned down. According to Belle, a kerosene lamp exploded, but no evidence was found to support that claim. Nonetheless, the insurance money was paid out.

They used the insurance money to buy another house, in the suburb of Austin, but in 1898, that, too, burned down. Once again, the insurance money for that went towards the purchase of another house.

Insurance was proving pretty lucrative to the money-hungry Belle and she picked up even more when her husband, Mads, died suddenly in July 1900, coincidentally the day that two insurance policies overlapped. The doctor initially suspected that his death was due to strychnine poisoning, but he had been treating Mads for an enlarged heart and eventually concluded that he had died of heart failure. Luckily for Belle, there was no autopsy.

Belle’s in-laws were both appalled and suspicious when she applied for the insurance money just one day after Mads’ funeral. It was $8,500, a tidy sum in those days. Whispers began that she had poisoned him and they started to agitate for the body to be exhumed and an inquest to be carried out. It is unclear whether this actually happened, but what is known is that the insurance companies coughed up yet again and Belle bought a farm just outside the town of La Porte in Indiana into which she moved with her children in 1901. Some researchers assert that the couple actually had four children, but two, Caroline and Axel, had died in infancy of acute colitis. Interestingly, the symptoms of that illness match perfectly the symptoms of many forms of poisoning. Needless to say, both children had been insured.

Shortly after she moved in, there was the customary fire. The boat and carrriage houses were destroyed and Belle collected more insurance money.

She met Peter Gunness and married him in April 1902, but tragedy struck when his young daughter died of unknown causes just one week after the wedding. When she died, she had been alone in the house with Belle. And then, before too long, it was time for Peter Gunness to take his leave. His demise was extremely suspicious, especially to the neighbours who began a whispering campaign against Belle. According to her, he was working in the shed when a heavy part of a sausage-grinding machine fell off a shelf above him onto his head, split his skull open, killing him and earning Belle $3,000 in insurance. The neighbours found it hard to believe that Gunness could have made such a mistake and the district coroner who reviewed the case announced that he thought Gunness had been murdered. An inquest was convened to investigate the death. Matters were made worse when Jennie, one of Belle’s children, told a friend at school that her mummy had killed her poppa with a cleaver.

The child denied having said this when she was brought before the inquest and Belle swayed the jurors herself with a bravura performance in the dock, playing the role of a woman left all alone to bring up her family. It helped that she was heavily pregnant and she was released.

Rather than re-marry immediately, she now hired a series of men to help run the farm and by 1906, a man called Ray Lamphere was installed as her handyman. Around this time, Jennie, the child who had given evidence at the inquest, disappeared, Belle explaining that she had gone to a Lutheran college in Los Angeles. Needless to say, Jennie had actually been killed.

Belle decided that she was now ready for marriage again and placed an advert in a number of newspapers, saying:
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
.’ It should probably have read: ‘Anyone wanting to survive need not apply’.

Well-off suitors started to arrive at the farm and almost as quickly disappear. John Moo came from Elkhart lake, Wisconsin, willing to pay off Belle’s mortgage in exchange for wedded bliss. He disappeared a week after arriving. George Anderson, another Norwegian immigrant, from Tarkio, Missouri, wisely did not bring his money with him, and although Belle had turned out to be not quite as attractive as he had hoped, he agreed that he would pay off her mortgage if they married. He would return to Tarkio, get the money and come back and marry her. That night, he awoke in the farm’s guest-house to see Belle standing by his bed with a strange, sinister expression on his face. He let out a yell and she fled from the room, almost dropping the candle she was carrying. Anderson leapt out of bed, put his clothes on as quickly as he could and ran for his life down the country road that led to La Porte, all the while expecting her to come after him. In La Porte, he jumped on the first train to Missouri.

Nevertheless, they kept flooding to the farm, lonely, middle-aged and older men with sizeable wallets. But none of them ever left. A widower from Iola, Wisconsin, Ole B. Budsburg, was seen at the La Porte Savings Bank on 6 April 1907. There, he signed over the deed to his land in Wisconsin and walked out with several thousand dollars in his wallet. When his sons found out where he had gone, they wrote to Belle, enquiring as to his whereabouts. She wrote back saying she had never seen him.

Puzzlingly, Belle began to have large trunks delivered to the farm which she manhandled herself. The shutters of the house were closed all day and night and when darkness fell, Belle could be seen digging away in the pig-pen. Passers-by noticed that there was a lot of digging at the farm, some of it done by Lamphere.

The suitors kept arriving . . . and disappearing. Andrew Helgelien turned up after an amorous correspondence with the widow Gunness. He brought with him his savings of $2,900 and it was duly cashed by him a few days after his arrival. Then, a few days later, she began to visit the bank to make deposits, firstly of $500 and then $700.

But things were starting to go wrong. Ray Lamphere was in thrall to Belle, deeply in love with her. He would do anything for her and was insanely jealous of the men who came with the intention of marrying her. Things became fraught between them and she fired Lamphere. Then, possibly worried that he would go to the authorities and tell them what she had been up to, she made an appointment at the courthouse in La Porte. There, she declared that Lamphere was not right in the head and represented a danger to the public. They summoned Lamphere to a hearing but found him to be of sane mind. Unperturbed, Belle had him arrested a few days later for trespassing.

Lamphere began to threaten Belle with exposure, even confiding in one farmer that Helgelien would not be a problem; ‘We fixed him for keeps,’ he said.

They may have ‘fixed’ Helgelien, but his family were troubled by his disappearance and his brother, Asle, wrote to Belle. When she replied, saying that he had probably gone to Norway to visit family, Asle did not believe her. He said that he believed his brother was actually still in the La Porte area. She persuaded him that if he came to La Porte and instigated a manhunt, it could be expensive for him. He delayed his visit for some months.

Belle began to panic. There were now two people who could, conceivably, expose her and send her to the gallows. She took steps to neutralise one of them, informing a lawyer – not the police – that Lamphere had threatened to kill her and burn her house down. She told him she wanted to make a will and left everything to her children. She then went to the bank and paid off her mortgage, having withdrawn all her money.

A man called Maxon, who had replaced Lamphere at the farm, awoke on the morning of 28 April with the smell of smoke in his nostrils. The house was on fire. He screamed Belle’s and her children’s names, but there was no response. Flames blocking his escape down the stairs, he jumped from the window of his room which was on the second floor and ran to town to get help. But, by the time they arrived at the farmhouse it was little more than a smouldering ruin. They searched the property and found four bodies in the cellar. One, that of a woman, was headless and so, could not be positively identified as Belle, although it was presumed it was her. The bodies of her children were lying next to her.

Lamphere was, of course, suspected and was picked up immediately. Unfortunately for him, a witness was found who said that he had seen Lamphere running down the road from the farm just before the fire broke out. He was charged with murder and arson. Meanwhile, the sheriff and his deputies began a careful search of the ruins, looking for evidence.

Was it the body of Belle Gunness that was found? When the remains were measured, it strangely proved to be the corpse of a woman only five feet three inches tall, eight or nine inches shorter than Belle. Further complicating matters was the fact that she weighed just under eleven stone, some three stone lighter than Belle. Either being burnt to death is very slimming or this was not Belle Gunness. Her friends certainly did not think it was her. Several neighbouring farmers looked at the corpse and said it was not her. Some friends who arrived from Chicago said it could not be her. The La Porte clothiers who made her dresses and other garments categorically stated that it was not her.

Then, the case was thrown wide open when the doctor examining the dead woman’s internal organs, found that she had died of strychnine poisoning.

However, on 19 May, Louis ‘Klondyke’ Schultz, who had been detailed to sift through the debris to try to find some dental evidence from the headless corpse, that would link it to Belle, discovered two human teeth. They were identified as two porcelain teeth and a gold crown on some bridgework that had belonged to Belle. That was enough proof for the coroner and at a subsequent inquest it was declared that the body found in the ruins was, indeed, that of Belle Gunness.

Meanwhile, Asle Helgelien had arrived on the scene, insisting that a search be carried out for his brother. On 3 May, the first of a series of grisly finds was made – the body of Belle’s daughter, Jennie. Then, one after another, the bodies began to be pulled from the earth in the pig-pen – Ole B. Budsberg, Thomas Lindboe of Chicago, who had been one of Belle’s handymen, Henry Gurholdt of Scandinavia, Wisconsin who had brought $1,500 to Belle with the intention of marrying her, Olaf Svenherud of Chicago, John Moo, Olaf Lindbloom from Iowa and many more whose remains could not be identified. More than forty men and children were discovered buried in shallow graves around the farm.

Ray Lamphere admitted to arson, but denied the murder of Belle and her children. He was found guilty of arson, but acquitted on the charge of murder and was sent to jail for twenty years, dying in prison in 1909.

He made a deathbed confession, claiming that, although he helped Belle to bury a number of her victims, he had not taken part in their murders. He explained her method. She would welcome her guest with a hearty meal and a cup of drugged coffee. When the man had fallen asleep she would come up behind him and split his head with a meat cleaver. Or sometimes she would chloroform her victim when he was in bed asleep before carrying the body to the basement where she would dissect it. The remains were buried around the farm or sometimes they were fed to the pigs.

He also shed some light on the headless woman, he explained that she had been lured to the farm believing she was going to be Belle’s housekeeper. But Belle, of course, had other plans for her. She had drugged her, killed her and cut her head off, throwing it into a nearby swamp. Then she chloroformed her children, suffocated them and put them in the basement. She dressed the woman in her clothing, set fire to the house and fled, leaving her false teeth behind. Lamphere had been part of the plan, but she had evaded him after the fire and disappeared.