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Bell
Gunness
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The Black Widow of the Heartland…Belle Gunness, on this Moment of Indiana History.
When asked to name the Norwegian-American who put Northern Indiana on
the map, most would probably guess legendary Notre Dame football coach
Knute Rockne. In a neighboring county, however, a different Scandinavian
immigrant is remembered as one of the most monstrous figures in American
criminal history. Born Brynhild Storset in Norway in 1859, the woman who
came to be known as Belle Gunness arrived in the U.S. in 1881. She settled
in Chicago and married countryman Mads Sorenson, with whom she set up
a confectionery business. When the shop mysteriously burned to the ground,
Belle and her husband collected enough insurance money to purchase a new
home. That home too was consumed by flames, and, in a matter of time,
Belle’s husband dropped dead the day his two life insurance policies
overlapped. Fraud had given way to murder, and by 1902, Belle was plying
a macabre money-making scheme from a home base in LaPorte, Indiana. From
her farmstead on McClung Road, Belle lured lonely hearts from across the
Midwest by way of personal ads placed in the matrimonial columns of Chicago
dailies and Norwegian language newspapers. A steady stream of suitors
responded to her offer of wifely companionship in exchange for a sum needed
to pay off a mortgage. One by one the gentleman callers arrived and promptly
disappeared.
In the spring of 1908, as one vanished suitor’s brother was making
persistent inquiries and threatening to investigate, Belle’s farmhouse
went up in flames. The bodies of her three children, and one presumed
to be Belle’s, were found. The woman’s charred and decapitated
remains were considerably smaller than Belle’s, however; records
showed Belle was a portly woman standing five feet eight and weighing
200 pounds. Furthermore, dental evidence positively identifying the corpse
as Belle’s was later judged to have been planted at the scene. Further
excavation revealed a gruesome enterprise: body parts belonging to more
than forty men and children were buried in the hog pen. A lovesick handyman
named Ray Lamphere was charged with arson and murder; though he admitted
to having set the blaze, he denied having murdered his employer and her
children, or anyone else for that matter. Before he died in prison, Lamphere
revealed Belle’s technique, which involved chloroform and a meat
cleaver, and his own assistance in burying the bodies. The dying man also
described how his Svengali-like boss had murdered her own children along
with a female drifter, left their bodies in the house, and convinced Lamphere
to set it on fire while she waited for him. The duped accessory reported
that Belle had murdered 42 men altogether, and had accumulated 250,000
dollars.
Frequent sightings of Belle were reported over the next couple of decades,
and legends flourished. One story placed her in a Mississippi town, where
she lived as a grande dame. In 1931, a woman named Esther Carlson was
arrested in Los Angeles for having poisoned a man for his money. Several
of those who knew her recognized Esther as Belle. The identity was never
proven, however, and Esther Carlson died awaiting trial.
This Moment of Indiana History is a production of the Indiana Public
Broadcasting Stations in association with the Indiana Historical Society.
More information is available on-line at “moment of Indiana history.org.”
Writer: Yaël Ksander
This Moment of Indiana History is a production of the Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations in association with the Indiana Historical Society. More information is available at “Moment of Indiana history dot org."
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