Dating for Belle Gunness at the turn of the 20th century doesn’t seem all that different in practice from dating in the 21st. The two-time widow had perfected her system. She would post an ad in the paper (rather than on Bumble), wait for the interested to reply (receiving mail = swiping right), and then enter into a lengthy period of correspondence (endless letters rather than endless texts, of course), before finally inviting her top prospects to meet her in person.
But that’s where things begin to diverge. Rather than meeting for dinner or drinks, Belle would invite the most eligible man of the moment out to her farm in La Porte, Indiana, with the understanding that if the two hit it off, they would be married. It was a system that worked well for her—though not so much for the men.
George Anderson would become known as the one who got away—and not in the proverbial sense of the phrase. In a long line of suitors, George was the only one known to have gone to Belle’s farm with the intention of marriage and to have gotten out alive. The red flag that caused him to flee came the night after he arrived when he woke up suddenly in the middle of the night to find Belle standing over him with a sinister look on her face. He left as quickly as he could with only the clothes on his back.
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His instincts were right. Turns out, Belle wasn’t looking for love so much as a quick payday. If she had to off her suitors one by one to get it, well, no sweat off her back. It was a get-rich-quick scheme that would earn Belle the infamous distinction of being one of the most prolific female serial killers in the U.S.
“Her whole modus operandi, in an age before Craigslist, was luring these lonely bachelors to her farmhouse by putting matrimonial ads in Scandinavian-language newspapers,” Harold Schechter, author of Hell’s Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men, told Vice. “A string of these hapless guys just showed up, one after another, at her farm, and then disappeared. It's straight out of a gothic horror novel.”
“Triflers need not apply”
For a long time, it was believed that women rarely joined the fraternity of serial killers. But over a century’s worth of historical evidence to the contrary has proved that’s not the case (Nannie Doss, Aileen Wuornos, Dorothea Puente, to name just a few in this country).
While there is something about murderous women that is endlessly fascinating, probably something having to do with the misogynistic beliefs about how the “fairer sex” should behave, there is something about Belle’s story that holds an even greater pull.
It might be because, over a century after Belle committed her heinous crimes, so much of her life remains shrouded in mystery. Not much is known about her early years beyond the biographical facts of birth (Nov. 11, 1859, in Norway), given name (Brynhild Paulsdatter Storset), and the when of her emigration to America (Chicago, 1881).
She left behind a trove of letters preserved by the men she corresponded with and the ads she placed in the paper to lure in her victims. But there are no journals or intimate letters that explain her thinking or emotional state. Nor was she ever put on the witness stand at trial, or questioned by the authorities.
The extent of her crimes isn’t even clear. What we do know paints a very grisly picture of a woman who was willing to kill men and children if it benefited her own bottom line and freedom. But the tally of her victims remains at “at least 12” because the true extent of her murderous spree was never fully determined. We don’t even know for sure what happened to her. There’s a chance Belle died in the 1908 fire that revealed her crimes. But most believe she staged her own death and escaped, never to be found.
But we do know where the story most likely started—with her very first husband.
In 1884 in Chicago, Belle Gunness married Mads Ditlev Anton Sorenson. Life was hard for the newlyweds, who found themselves plagued by one misfortune after another. They had four children, but two died in infancy. They had a candy store and a home, but both burned down. And then, 16 years after they were first married, Mads died suddenly of heart problems.
How much more could one woman take, you might be thinking? But when the full extent of Belle’s crimes were later revealed, these early tragedies began to take on a new light.
The two children Belle buried? They died of acute colitis, a condition that has symptoms mirroring that of poisoning. The store and home that went up in flames? The couple pocketed a good little insurance nest egg for both and traded up. And the prematurely dead husband? It might be gauche to say, but it was Belle’s good fortune to lose him on the exact day when one of his life insurance policies ended and the other began, allowing her to receive payouts from both.
Mads’ family for their part knew something was fishy. In fact, according Jane Simon Ammeson in America’s Femme Fatale, his brothers had long suspected that Belle was trying to poison him. But they couldn’t convince the authorities—or their brother—to take their suspicions seriously, so Belle emerged from her family tragedy with her remaining children and a fresh pile of cash.
With her growing fortune, Belle moved out to the countryside and bought a large farm in La Porte, IN. Later when she was corresponding with a potential new suitor, she would describe her property to him: “I am the sole owner of a nice home, pretty location. There are seventy-five acres of land, apples, plums, and currants. Am on a boulevard road and have a twelve-room house, practically new, a windmill, and all modern improvements, situated in a beautiful suburb of Chicago, worth about $15,000.”
It was there in 1902, that she married for a second time to a man named Peter Gunness. This marriage was no less marred by tragedy than the first. The “bad luck” began when Belle’s new infant step-daughter died. A few months later, her husband died in an “accident” that the coroner thought suspicious, but couldn’t prove. Belle claimed that when Peter bent over to pick up his shoes warming next to the stove, a meat grinder fell off a shelf and landed on his head, knocking over a pot of boiling brine on its way down that burned him.
It was after the death—and insurance payout—of her second husband that Belle began to seek new suitors through Scandinavian-language newspapers.
One ad in 1907 read, “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.”
No moochers allowed. When things got serious, the full extent of this requirement became clear. Belle would invite the chosen men to visit her for the final meeting. Some she requested bring $1,000 cash with them. Others were told to sell all their assets and bring the profits. Oh, and they definitely shouldn’t tell their families what they were up to. Just think about the joy it would bring their loved ones when they finally learned that their dear Johns and Henrys and Olafs and Andrews had found true love and were living a whole new life in La Porte?
As Schechter puts it, “Like many psychopaths, she was very shrewd in identifying potential victims. These were lonely Norwegian bachelors, many completely cut off from their families. [Gunness] beguiled them with promises of down-home Norwegian cooking and painted a very seductive portrait of the kind of life they’d enjoy.”
One man after another fell for Belle’s deadly con. They would arrive at her farm with all of their money and would soon after be offed. That, too, Belle had down to a grim art. First, she would poison her victims. Then, ensure they were dead by hitting them in the head with a hammer. They would end up in either the pigpen or a graveyard in the backyard, but not after she had first chopped them into pieces.
This method is one of the reasons why the total count remains unknown. Twelve bodies were eventually identified, one woman, three children, and eight men. But because the men were dismembered, investigators didn’t do a full examination of the remains. They left that total at “at least,” and then moved on. Plus, they never went back to examine the mysterious circumstances surrounding the tragedy of her first two marriages.
“My sister was crazy for money. That was her great weakness”
For much of the time Belle was becoming the Black Widow, Lady BlueBeard, and Hell’s Belles, just some of the nicknames she would earn, she also employed and seduced a handyman on her farm, Ray Lamphere. It is thought that Ray had at least some inkling of what was going on. He might even have been blackmailing her. But regardless of the extent to which he knew his boss was a psychopath, he was definitely jealous of the many potential lovers she invited onto the farm. It became so problematic that, just before her last victim would arrive, Belle fired Ray.
In early January 1908, after nearly two years of correspondence, Andrew Helgelien moved to La Porte. A few days after he arrived, he and his potential new lover went to a bank to cash out all of his savings. He would never be seen again.
Belle must have known that this couldn’t go on much longer. Andrew’s family was very concerned about their missing relative, and people were starting to become suspicious. Then, on the morning of April 28, 1908, there was a huge fire at the La Porte farm. The people who rushed to the Gunness family’s aid were too late. After the home’s remains cooled, the body of a woman with no head was discovered with her arms wrapped around three children.
The children were identified as those of Belle Gunness, and it was assumed that the woman holding them was their mother. The missing head could never be explained. Ray Lamphere was arrested on suspicion of arson.
But as investigators began to dig around, new horrors came to light. Out in the yard, they found a graveyard filled with body parts. Suddenly, they realized that the woman of the house was not what she had seemed. They also began to question whether or not she was really dead.
During Ray’s trial, the two sides went back and forth over the last point. One called witnesses who testified that Belle had often worn the two rings found on the dead woman. The other side called medical professionals who said the dead woman appeared to have died from poisoning rather than the fire, suggesting she was a victim of Belle’s who was killed by the woman of the house before the fire.
Belle’s neighbor testified that, the day after the fire, he saw a “heavily veiled” woman and a man “who wore a gray mustache” on the La Porte property. He identified her as Belle. He was so shocked to see the supposedly dead woman that he tried to follow the pair in his buggy when they left the ruins, but theirs was faster.
In the end, Ray was convicted of arson, but it was clear that the murders were not his doing. While the authorities put out a warrant for Belle’s arrest in case she had in fact staged the scene, killed her own children, and escaped, she was never found.
As for any official explanation of why Belle did what she did, all we are left with are her sister’s words. As people around the country stayed glued to the salacious reports of what was materializing on Belle Gunness’ farm in La Porte, Belle’s sister in Chicago decided to speak out.
“My sister was crazy for money. That was her great weakness,” Nellie Larson told The New York Times. “As a young woman she never seemed to care for a man for his own self, only for the money or luxury he was able to give her. When living with her first husband in Austin she used to say ‘I would never remain with this man if it was not for the nice home he has.’”
It turns out, Belle stayed true to her word. When that home was no longer nice enough and when she had exhausted her arson-for-insurance scheme, she left him. Unfortunately, he was most likely the first in a long line of men who were not allowed to escape her.
