Lady Bluebeard

2021-02-09 19:04:21 Written by Kashif wasli

Lady Bluebeard: Story of the female serial killer Belle Gunness

On April 28, 1908, a mysterious fire simmered through the small brick farmhouse of Belle Gunness, a widow who lived outside of the pleasant and reasonable town of La Porte, Indiana. The fire at first appeared to be no more than an awful tragedy that claimed the lives of Belle and her three lovely children, aged 1, nine and five, but then questions started to arise from the smouldering ruins. The answers, and the mysteries, that would arise from these ruins would make headlines across the Midwest.

In life, 48-year-old Belle Gunness had stood just under five and a half feet tall but had weighed a massive 280 pounds, nonetheless, the body that was discovered in the remains of her home was no more than 150. Had the flame somehow burned away the flesh from Belle's portly body? No one could tell for sure since the head of the body was missing. How had this happened? Could a falling section of the house have broken her head -- or had it been cut off by a killer who had set fire to the house to hide his crime?

 

Belle Gunness was no stranger to mystery or dispute. Many years before, her husband, Peter Gunness, had been murdered (according to Belle) when a meat grinder had toppled off the shelf in the kitchen and had hit him in the head. But when the coroner looked at the corpse, he allegedly muttered: "This is a case of murder." To make matters worse, one of Belle's children even told a classmate that her mother had struck him over the head with a cleaver. The authorities examined but Belle was so persuasive, and so formidable, at the inquest that no charges were ever filed. And after her husband's demise, Belle was never supposed a decent widow. It was common knowledge in town that she had taken her handyman, Ray Lamphere, to her bed on lonely winter nights.

It would be Lamphere that the sheriff would turn to when he began having his suspicions about an accidental fire at the Gunness home. He deemed the case a substantial example of killing and arson. He sent two of his deputies digging in the debris of the home for Belle's head and sent two others to arrest Lamphere. When drinking, the slow-witted handyman frequently boasted of sleeping with his employer, which came as a shock to those who only saw Belle as the burly woman who loved to dress in men's overalls and do her hog butchering. There was another side to the woman though, which Ray Lamphere saw -- as well as numerous strangers who were often seen going for a carriage ride with Belle on Sunday afternoons. 

 

On those circumstances, Belle was seen wearing a corset and her finest clothing, with her hair done in the latest styles of the women's magazines that came from Chicago and New York. Unrecognizable from the tough farm woman, she was usually accompanied by a gorgeous young man who had come with his suitcase at the railroad station a few days before. Ray Lamphere had endured these conscious strangers but had never lost his temper over any of them, until the winter of 1908. At that time, he was introduced to a gentleman from South Dakota, Andrew Hegelian -- Belle's new husband-to-be. Lamphere protested and Belle quickly fired him. Lamphere soon started drinking heavily and started showing up at Belle's house. She had him arrested for trespassing and then spoken of to the sheriff that "I'm worried that he'll set fire to the place."

 

This shortly came back to mind for Sheriff Smutzer and he had Lamphere locked up and accused with the killing of Belle and her children. The handyman alleged to be innocent but his cries fell on deaf ears until Asle Hegelian showed up in town from South Dakota, searching for his losing brother, Andrew. He told Sheriff Smutzer that Andrew had answered a matrimonial ad that had been placed by Belle Gunness in a Norwegian language newspaper. In her reply, Belle proposed true love and a life of married bliss, but also mentioned a quick $1,000 that she needed to pay off a mortgage. She finished her letter with "my heart beats in wild rapture for you --- come prepared to stay forever." And seemingly, he did. He withdrew his life preservations from the bank and was never heard from again.

 

By the time that Asle came in La Porte, he was confident that his brother had met with foul play. He became even more sure when he went out to the ruins of Belle's home and saw as the men digging for her head turned up eight men's watches, assorted bones and human teeth instead. He searched through the estate on his own and yelled to the men to start searching in the rubbish hole that was located in Belle's hog pen. As they started turning the earth, they discovered four bodies -- all of them expertly chopped apart and wrapped in oilcloth. One of the corpses belonged to Andrew Hegelian.

 

The town was stunned and more men came out to the farm to join in the search. On the following day, three more corpses were found and in all, 14 of Belle's fatalities were pieced together, with various teeth, bones and watches left over. The gruesome discoveries made headlines in newspapers all over the Midwest and relatives started to occur from all over the area to claim bodies. All of them told of lonesome brothers, uncles and cousins replying Belle's matrimonial ads and travelling hopefully to La Porte with their life savings stuffed in their pockets. Sheriff Smutzer figured that Belle had made about $30,000 from her sufferers. She had drugged them and then had cut up the corpses as she did her hogs.

 

But even with this dilemma cleared up, the unanswered issue of the body in the burned house stayed. Was it Belle's or had someone else been placed there to perish? Belle's head never appeared but the sheriff believed that her teeth might. A neighbour who had once been a prospector requested to sluice the debris for any of Belle's teeth.

 

He discovered many additional male teeth in the damages but only one of which could be correlated to Belle. This assured some of the residents that the 150-pound corpse had been Belle's but others scoffed, saying that any woman who would leave her children to die in a fire so that she could flee would not baulk at knocking out one of her teeth in the interests of evading arrest.

 

The lingering dispute spilt over into the courtroom for, despite the horrible findings on Belle's property, the sheriff doggedly prevailed in bringing Ray Lamphere to prosecution for her killing. Both sides battled hard and the jury finally brought in a rather interesting verdict. Lamphere was exonerated of the murder but was sentenced of setting fire to the house. He received a verdict of two to 21 years in the state penitentiary. He finally perished in jail, having contracted tuberculosis in prison while awaiting trial, but he admitted his role in Belle's crimes to his cellmate before he succumbed to the disease. He told him that he was familiar with Belle's ferocious activities and had even buried corpses for her when she was finished cutting them up. He said that the headless woman that was discovered in the fire was that a female beggar that Belle had found in Chicago. She had poisoned the woman with strychnine and then had placed her in bed with the children. She had eliminated one of her teeth and then had set the house on fire. After that, she had disappeared with the money that the men had unwittingly brought to her. Lamphere was presumed to hear from Belle after she got away to safety -- but he never had. Unbelievably, the moronic handyman perished in his prison cell, still in love with a human monster.

 

And what happened to Belle Gunness herself? No one knows. She disappeared without a glimmer in April of 1908 and was never heard from again.