A few of Belle Gunness's favorite things: 🎶 Poisoning young children and burning down houses, bludgeoning new husbands and insurance check cashing, burying the bodies on her big pig farm, marry Belle Gunness and you'll come to harm... 🎶
The more I learn about turn-of-the-century American life, the more I realize how lucky any of us alive today are to be here. If you know who your 2nd or 3rd great-grandparents were, maybe offer them up a thank you for surviving as long as they did. (Consequently, if you don't know who your 2nd or 3rd great-grandparents were, we can help you.) These people survived cholera, yellow fever, smallpox, and the Spanish Flu, the horrors of early industrialization, droughts, starvation, malnutrition, common infections that could kill you because there were no antibiotics until 1928... and serial killers before we knew about serial killers. All of these things they survived so that you might exist.
Of course, people's probability to survive had a lot to do with where they found themselves. And one place you did not want to be was answering a lonely hearts ad in the Norwegian papers in the Midwest in the early 1900s. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Our story starts with a poor young Norwegian girl, one of 8 children.
Born in rural Norway in 1859, Brynhild Paulsdotter Storset learned the meaning of hard work early. She had many daily chores, including gathering sticks for the family's fire as they were too poor to buy firewood. The local children mocked her by calling her snurkvistpala, meaning "Paul's twig daughter." Later, inhabitants of her town would remember her bad behavior and frequent lying (sound familiar?).
As a teenager, Paul's twig daughter scrimped and saved working as a milkmaid to earn her passage to the United States. Changing her name to "Belle" when she reached New York's immigration entry at Castle Garden, she made her way across the country to join her sister Nellie in Chicago.
Nellie would later tell people that her sister was only interested in the pursuit of money. She was determined to make sure she'd never be called snurkvistpala again.
In Chicago, Belle met and married fellow Norwegian Mads Sorenson in 1884. Belle was said to have been a large, foreboding woman who was incredibly strong and resembled a toad when she frowned, which was presumably often. Mads was a balding, middle-aged man with a large forehead, square jaw, and small ears. It must have been a beautiful ceremony.
Mads Sorenson, about to get murdered... er, I mean married.
Early on into the marriage, the Sorenson's Chicago home burned down. They collected the fire insurance money (cha-chinggg!!!) on the property and used it to buy a candy store, which, soon—you guessed it—also burned down. What are the odds?
With their second insurance settlement (cha-chinggg!!!), they purchased a home in the Chicago suburbs. With the fire insurance fraud game getting a little too hot, Belle realized that you could insure people, too. Belle and Mads decided to take in several foster children. If you just thought to yourself, Oh no..., your instincts are correct.
Two of their four foster children died of acute colitis, or inflammation of the large intestine, a side effect of poisoning. Were they insured? Hell yes, they were. Cha-chinggg!!!
When Mads died soon after, Belle had pulled off quite a feat. Mads had two overlapping life insurance policies that were both active on one day only—the day he just so happened to die. Cha-chinggg!!!
With her $5,000 collected from both insurance policies, Belle then purchased a pig farm in La Porte, Indiana and married recently widowed Peter Gunness, taking his name, followed by his daughter's life and then his life. Cha-chinggg!!! Cha-chinggg!!!
Is it a mystery? Is it? The Weekly Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana, 24 Dec 1902.
Apparently, murder was suspected in Peter's death, by a coroner's jury no less, but the case was never tried in court. They skipped it like a brunch date. We're gonna have to bail this time. Put us down for next time, totes. But like, this murder, we just can't even right now...
It was then that Belle decided to start placing personal ads in midwestern Norwegian papers, looking for Nordic men with money.
This is a picture I found when I Googled "Nordic men with money." Thank you, lifeinNorway.net.
Belle Gunness's personal ad in Minnesota Tidende, a Norwegian language newspaper from the late 1800-early 1900s. My Norwegian is rusty, but I think this reads, "Large, freakishly strong, toad-faced woman looking for victim/husband. Dope pig farm, lots of space, bring cash money and proof of insurance. No scrubs." Photo courtesy of The Norwegian American.
Sadly, many men did respond. After reading her ad and corresponding with Belle, Henry Gurholt left Wisconsin for Indiana, sending a note home to his family that he was doing well and to please send potatoes for seed. It would be the last time they heard from him. Cha-chinggg!!!
Another responder was John Moe of Minnesota. Mr. Moe nearly emptied his bank account and then headed to La Porte, to disappear. Belle's farmhand and possible accomplice Ray Lamphere was later found wearing John's watch. Cha-chinggg!!!
A string of mostly middle-aged men with cash on hand flitted into the Gunness Farm, never to flit out again. Gunness supposedly passed these men off as "cousins."
What eventually got Belle caught was Andrew Helgelien, whose brother Asle went looking for him. Asle Helgelien discovered letters between Belle and Andrew, and found that Andrew had transferred a large sum of money from his local bank to one in La Porte prior to his disappearance. Asle was immediately suspicious, and wrote a letter to Belle asking her where his brother might be. He found Belle's response to also be suspicious, and when news reached him of a fire in La Porte on the Gunness farm in April of 1908, he left South Dakota for Indiana to investigate.
Andrew Helgelien, prior to being murdered. Courtesy of La Porte Historical Society.
Asle Helgelien talked to the La Porte sheriff and convinced him to let him inspect the Gunness Farm for signs of his brother. Noticing a hog pen that appeared to have recently disturbed soil with many slight depressions, Asle and others began digging and found the bodies of countless men, all of them decapitated, butchered into six parts, and buried in burlap sacks. Some of the bones they uncovered had been crushed on the ends and covered in quicklime to speed up decomposition. Quicklime was also found stuffed in the ears of the severed heads.
Found in the rubble of the burned down house were the bodies of three small children and one headless woman. The woman was initially thought to be Belle, as the dental bridges found near the body matched her records, but nearly all who knew Belle and were asked to determine if the corpse might be her answered definitively that they did not believe it to be. Belle had stood at nearly six feet tall and weighed approximately 200 or more pounds. The headless corpse was fairly lean, and, accounting for a head, would have stood about 5'3". The corpses of the children were identified as Belle's, and all of them contained strychnine in their stomachs.
Belle had been in town earlier that year, after receiving the letter from Asle Helgelien inquiring after his brother. There she had urgently requested of her lawyer that a will be made, stating that she was in fear for her life at the hands of Ray Lamphere, her former farmhand. She confided that he had threatened to burn her house down, killing her and her three children. She had also, conveniently, emptied all of her bank accounts. And then she bought kerosene.
It is estimated that Belle Gunness murdered about 42 people. Whether the body discovered in the rubble of the house fire was Belle's, or if Belle murdered her children and then planted a different woman's corpse in the house alongside her dental work, set it on fire and fled, we may never know.
Say what you want about sticks and stones, but calling someone "twig girl" has consequences.
Sources
"Belle Gunness," La Porte County Historical Society Museum (https://laportecountyhistory.org/exhibits/belle-gunness/ : 25 Oct 2022).
"Belle Gunness," Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_Gunness : 25 Oct 2022).
"Belle Sorenson Gunness," murderpedia (https://murderpedia.org/female.G/g/gunness-belle.htm : 25 Oct 2022).
"The Notorious Belle Gunness—She Dunnit!," The Norwegian American (https://www.norwegianamerican.com/belle-gunness/ : accessed 25 Oct 2022, pub 18 Apr 2022).
Reilly, Lucas, "Corpses in the Pig Pen: The Tale of Indiana's Most Notorious Serial Killer, Mental Floss (https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/562322/belle-gunness-murders : accessed 25 Oct 2022, pub 26 Nov 2018).
Rennie, Daniel, "The Story Of Belle Gunness, The Meat Cleaver-Wielding Serial Killer Of Turn-Of-The-Century Indiana," allthatsinteresting.com (https://allthatsinteresting.com/belle-gunness : accessed 25 Oct 2022, pub 5 Jan 2022).
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