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Speaker 7: Are now listening to True Murder The most shocking killers
Speaker 7: in true crime history and the authors that have written
Speaker 7: about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every week,
Speaker 7: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
Speaker 7: killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 7: journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 8: Good evening. In the pantheon of serial killers, Bell Gunnis
Speaker 8: stands alone. She was the rarest of female psychopaths, a
Speaker 8: woman who engaged in wholesale slaughter hartly out of greed,
Speaker 8: but mostly.
Speaker 6: For the sheer joy of it.
Speaker 8: Between nineteen o two and nineteen o eight, she lured
Speaker 8: a succession of unsuspecting victims to her Indiana murder farm.
Speaker 8: Some were hired hands, others were well to do bachelors.
Speaker 8: All of them vanished without a trace when their bodies
Speaker 8: were dug up. They hadn't merely been poisoned, like victims
Speaker 8: of other female killers. They'd been butchered. Hell's Princess is
Speaker 8: a riveting account of one of the most sensational killing
Speaker 8: sprees in the annals of American crime. The shocking series
Speaker 8: of murders committed by the woman who came to be
Speaker 8: known as Lady Bluebeard, the only definitive book on this
Speaker 8: notorious case and the first to reveal previously unknown information
Speaker 8: about its subject. Harold Scheckter's gripping, suspenseful narrative has all
Speaker 8: the elements of a classic mystery and all the gruesome
Speaker 8: twists of a nightmare. The featuring this evening is Hell's Princess,
Speaker 8: The Mystery of Bell Gunnis Butcher of Men, with my
Speaker 8: special guest, journalist and author and professor Harold Scheckter. And
Speaker 8: we're waiting for Harold Scheckter to connect to the program.
Speaker 8: We'll give him a few minutes. Fascinating story. Harold Scheckter
Speaker 8: has been on the program, and here we go. Welcome
Speaker 8: to the program, Harold Scheckter, Thank you very much for
Speaker 8: this interview.
Speaker 6: My pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 8: Thank you, thank you. It's always a pleasure for me.
Speaker 6: For this.
Speaker 8: Customary question, why did you want to write this book?
Speaker 8: What was it about this book that so fascinated you?
Speaker 6: Well, I've been wanting to write this book for a
Speaker 6: while and other projects intervened. Uh. You know, I've been
Speaker 6: interested for a long time in the whole phenomenon of
Speaker 6: female serial murder. And when I came across the case
Speaker 6: of Belgunnis, which I did a number of years ago
Speaker 6: in a book called Women Who Kill by the feminist
Speaker 6: author Anne Jones, I was very struck by certain features
Speaker 6: in her case, you know that made it unique. I've
Speaker 6: written about other female serial murders before. In my book Fatal,
Speaker 6: I wrote about a female poisoner named Jane Toppin who,
Speaker 6: until John Wayne Gacy Kim came along, was listed as
Speaker 6: the most prolific American serial murderer in the Guinness Book
Speaker 6: of World's Records. She confessed to thirty one killings. But
Speaker 6: Jane Toppen, like other what they used to call female
Speaker 6: American porgies after you know, the notorious Renaissance poisoner Lucretia
Speaker 6: Borgia Chaine topp and poisoned her victims. She was a
Speaker 6: private nurse, so they were all patients, some siblings and
Speaker 6: good friends. The thing that made Bell gunn Is very
Speaker 6: unique was the fact that she would butcher the bodies
Speaker 6: of her victims after killing them. So you know, that's
Speaker 6: a characteristic that you usually don't associate with female serial killers.
Speaker 6: So that was one thing that, you know, that caught
Speaker 6: my attention about the case.
Speaker 8: Certainly. Now, just you talk about Bluebeard. But for those
Speaker 8: that don't know this legend or this story of the Bluebird,
Speaker 8: briefly tell us what the story of Bluebird is before
Speaker 8: we talk about this little community, this city outside of
Speaker 8: Chicago called Laporte where all of this happens. Tell us
Speaker 8: about the blue Beard.
Speaker 6: Well, blue Beard is originally a French fairy tale that
Speaker 6: was written by Charles Perraut, collected in his famous Early
Speaker 6: fairy Tale Anthology, tells him mother goose uh And in
Speaker 6: the Pierrot version, blue Beard is this creepy, elderly aristocrat
Speaker 6: with a blue dyed beard who weds a series of
Speaker 6: young women and takes them off to his castle and
Speaker 6: then tests them by going off on a trip and
Speaker 6: leaving them with the keys to all the room rooms
Speaker 6: in the castle, and he says, you can go anywhere,
Speaker 6: but just don't go into this one room, this forbidden chamber.
Speaker 6: And as soon as he's gone, of course, the young
Speaker 6: women's curiosity overcomes them. They enter this chamber. As soon
Speaker 6: as they do, he returns and says, you know, you
Speaker 6: violated my trust, and then he chops them up and
Speaker 6: hangs all their body parts in the chamber. So he
Speaker 6: has this bloody chamber full of the dismembered body parts
Speaker 6: and decapitated heads of all his wives. So that, you know,
Speaker 6: that's the basic premise of the Bluebeard story. Supposedly it
Speaker 6: was inspired by an actual serial murderer, guy named Gille Deray,
Speaker 6: who was a French aristocrat and a comrade in arms
Speaker 6: of Joan of Arc. So the term blue beard, you know,
Speaker 6: has come to be used in criminology generally speaking, you know,
Speaker 6: to describe men who wed and murder a series of wives.
Speaker 6: You know, there have been some very notorious blue beard figures.
Speaker 6: There was a French blue beard named Henrie Landerue. Charlie
Speaker 6: Chaplin actually made a movie Monsieur Verdoux that was based
Speaker 6: on Landrew. In our own country, there was a guy
Speaker 6: named Johann hawk Well that was one of his many
Speaker 6: aliases who married a string of wives and you know,
Speaker 6: knock them off. So yeah, so that's that's the derivation
Speaker 6: of the term blue beard, right.
Speaker 8: You talk about Laporte and outside of Chicago, but also
Speaker 8: you also talk about the prominence of Chicago in the
Speaker 8: late eighteen eighties. So tell us a little bit about
Speaker 8: both of these communities.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, Chicago, which basically had been reduced to
Speaker 6: ashes by the Great Conflagration of eighteen seventy two, I believe, anyway,
Speaker 6: had you know, Chicago originally was nothing but a few
Speaker 6: kind of huts on the muddy banks of you know,
Speaker 6: the lake, and it grew at this phenomenal rate. But
Speaker 6: initially most of the buildings, you know, were built of
Speaker 6: wood and the sidewalks through wood planks. It was really
Speaker 6: kind of a tinder box. And then you know, basically
Speaker 6: the whole city was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire,
Speaker 6: and they rebuilt it very very quickly. It was kind
Speaker 6: of this marble of urban growth. It was the first
Speaker 6: skyscraper city. So by the late nineteenth century, you know,
Speaker 6: it was the second largest herb the center of the
Speaker 6: country after New York City, this great metropolis which attracted
Speaker 6: these hordes of migrants from the surrounding countryside after the
Speaker 6: Civil War and ye so so so that was Chicago,
Speaker 6: and it had a very very large you know, relevant
Speaker 6: to my book at a very large Norwegian population, and
Speaker 6: Laporte was this little city, you know, located not far
Speaker 6: from Chicago, you know, a small community with you know,
Speaker 6: a nice business district and a lot of handsome farms
Speaker 6: surrounding it, one of which, well, one of which ultimately
Speaker 6: became the residence of Belgunnis, although the house that be
Speaker 6: moved into it actually served as a brothel for the town.
Speaker 8: So you also talk about that the she's her name
Speaker 8: is Brinhild Paul's Dadder Storest and you say, they're not
Speaker 8: much known in her very early years, but she was
Speaker 8: born in eighteen fifty nine and she'd worked a farm.
Speaker 8: So tell us a little bit about her early life,
Speaker 8: what was characterized by and also the religion that she practiced,
Speaker 8: her in her family practice as well.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, as you say, I mean Belle. You know,
Speaker 6: very very little is known about her. She's obviously until
Speaker 6: her crimes, you know, we're discovered, completely obscure figure. She
Speaker 6: was the daughter of a poor sharecropper in the small
Speaker 6: Norwegian town of Celbu, and you know, from what we
Speaker 6: know about her, she did all this kind of arduous
Speaker 6: farm labor as a child. You know, she was a milkmaid.
Speaker 6: And you know, again, whatever sort of drudgery that young
Speaker 6: farm children have to engage in, you know she did.
Speaker 6: She was apparently, you know, a very very devout churchgoer.
Speaker 6: You know, the only thing we really know about her
Speaker 6: are the few documents that exist, baptismal records and so on.
Speaker 6: You know, once her crimes were discovered, there were all
Speaker 6: these stories that grew up about her early behavior. But
Speaker 6: it's very very hard to know exactly how accurate those
Speaker 6: things are. You know, a lot of urban legends, or
Speaker 6: I guess in her case, rural legends immediately spring up
Speaker 6: excuse me about her. So again it's a little bit
Speaker 6: frustrated when you're doing a book like this, how little
Speaker 6: information is available about you know, about the early lives
Speaker 6: of these people. But other than the fact that she
Speaker 6: led this very very hard scrabble existence as the daughter
Speaker 6: of this poor sharecropper, we don't know very much about
Speaker 6: her early life.
Speaker 8: You do talk about, though, that she has an opportunity
Speaker 8: to move to the US because of her sister, So
Speaker 8: tell us what those circumstances are, and a little bit
Speaker 8: about her actually coming. Talk about a name change. So
Speaker 8: what's her name now? And tell US a little bit
Speaker 8: about those circumstances that she comes to the US.
Speaker 6: Well, her sister, her older sister, had emigrated. There was actually,
Speaker 6: you know, a large influx of Norwegian immigrants in the
Speaker 6: late nineteenth century, something I guess that would make our
Speaker 6: current president very happy these he was talking about more
Speaker 6: immigrants from Norway. And uh so Belle's sister, uh, you know,
Speaker 6: had invited her to come live with her. And you know,
Speaker 6: Belle made the trans Atlantic crossing, well, Bryn Hill had
Speaker 6: made the Trains of Lana crossing. And when she did,
Speaker 6: she americanized her name and became Belle Peterson. Uh. You know.
Speaker 6: She went to work apparently as a domestic and a
Speaker 6: housemaid and took in laundry. Uh. You know, she came
Speaker 6: over here for the reasons that many immigrants do, you know,
Speaker 6: you know, to achieve the American dream. I mean, Bell was,
Speaker 6: according to the testimony of people who knew her, including
Speaker 6: her sister, you know, very very kind of money crazed
Speaker 6: and again, you know, having grown up under these very
Speaker 6: very very difficult, straightened, you know, indigen circumstances, she was
Speaker 6: very eager to you know, make a good life for herself.
Speaker 6: You know, in Chicago at that time, which had the
Speaker 6: first apartment stores. You know, it was you know, the
Speaker 6: impression you get with Belle was sort of she'd wander
Speaker 6: around and you know, she'd have her She was like
Speaker 6: a kid with her face pressed to the glass of
Speaker 6: a candy store. There are all these material allurements that
Speaker 6: she wanted to be able to indulge in. So making money,
Speaker 6: getting rich, you know, became a very single minded focus
Speaker 6: for her.
Speaker 8: You talk about soon enough she is married to a
Speaker 8: man named mad Sorenson, five years older than her. He's
Speaker 8: just a night watchman, and she's married at twenty four
Speaker 8: years old. You say she wore a black dress, which
Speaker 8: is very interesting. Now, tell us a little bit about
Speaker 8: this problem with conceiving and what this leads to for
Speaker 8: her and Mads.
Speaker 6: Well. I mean, one of the things about Belle, and
Speaker 6: one of the paradoxes of her character, is that she
Speaker 6: had these very very powerful maternal impulses and was very,
Speaker 6: very very desperate really to have children. She did end
Speaker 6: up having children, though again among the various mysteries surrounding
Speaker 6: her is the question of whether she gave birth to
Speaker 6: these children, you know, whether these children were acquired in
Speaker 6: other ways. The first child that she did raise was
Speaker 6: a foster daughter named Jenny Olson, who was an infant
Speaker 6: born to this couple that she was friendly with, and
Speaker 6: when the mother died in childbirth, Belle persuaded a father
Speaker 6: to turn over the raising of this little girl to her.
Speaker 6: You know. Again, Ultimately Bell had a number of other children,
Speaker 6: but again it's not clear. Even though she claimed she
Speaker 6: gave birth to some of them, evidence seemed to suggest
Speaker 6: otherwise that she had either gotten them from orphanages or
Speaker 6: you know, there were rumors that Bell herself had been
Speaker 6: what they used to call a baby farmer. Baby farmers
Speaker 6: were women who had taken the unwanted children of poor women,
Speaker 6: were the illegitimate children of women, and you know, and
Speaker 6: you know, they were kind of like makeshift orphanages. The
Speaker 6: baby farmer had taken these infants and suppose that they
Speaker 6: placed them in other households, although some very notorious baby
Speaker 6: farmers actually murdered the infants once they took them in anyway. So,
Speaker 6: but yes, that Bell was always very very desperate to
Speaker 6: be a mother.
Speaker 8: You talk about also that when her lost for money
Speaker 8: and success, this madge didn't make a lot of money
Speaker 8: fifteen dollars a week, but they did have enough money
Speaker 8: to purchase this little candy store. Tell us a little
Speaker 8: bit about that business venture and what happened in terms
Speaker 8: of mysterious fire.
Speaker 6: Yes, well, as you said, they purchased this little confectionery
Speaker 6: shop on a well traveled, you know, business street, but
Speaker 6: it didn't do very well, and then the candy store
Speaker 6: mysteriously burned down one day. Nobody was there at the
Speaker 6: time except bel her that you know, I guess Toddler daughter,
Speaker 6: Jenny Foster daughter, so you know, there was an investigation.
Speaker 6: Ultimately the fire was ruled to be accidental, and Belle
Speaker 6: and Mads collected on this insurance money and they purchased
Speaker 6: purchased the little house in a slightly more upscale area
Speaker 6: of Chicago, and then there was a fire in that house,
Speaker 6: you know. Again not unlike other female serial killers of
Speaker 6: her ilk, you know, Belle was very much into committing
Speaker 6: her crimes in order to collect the insurance money on them,
Speaker 6: and at least two of them, you know, were crimes
Speaker 6: of arson. Again not it's not unusual for serial killers
Speaker 6: to you know, to indulge in arson. And then of
Speaker 6: course her crimes escalated to homicide.
Speaker 8: You talk about homicide, you talk about taking. In between
Speaker 8: eighteen ninety six and eighteen ninety eight, a couple of years,
Speaker 8: they became parents of more than four children, and then
Speaker 8: as well, there was soon after two of those died,
Speaker 8: and there seemed to be no suspicion. But you talk
Speaker 8: about enter and tyro colitis and hydrophallus. So the things
Speaker 8: were attributed to sort of these mysterious ailments or these
Speaker 8: children dying. But that was a characteristic of some of
Speaker 8: the people in her care, wasn't it.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Again, you know, if it didn't turn out that
Speaker 6: Bell was a serial murderer, those deaths would not necessarily
Speaker 6: seem to be suspicious because you know, there was a
Speaker 6: very very high mortality infant mortality rate at that time,
Speaker 6: and you know, and then the quality of medical treatment
Speaker 6: was such you know that you know, sometimes diseases that
Speaker 6: now would be very easily curable would prove to be fatal.
Speaker 6: So again, we don't know whether those children died of
Speaker 6: natural causes or at the hands of Bell Gunnis because
Speaker 6: she decided there were too many mouths to feed. Again,
Speaker 6: very very character during the late nineteenth century, you know,
Speaker 6: just not that long before you know, Bell Gunnis was
Speaker 6: committing her atrocities. You know, there were a number of
Speaker 6: very very infamous female serial poisoners in this country. A
Speaker 6: woman named Sarah Jane Robinson, another woman named Lydia Sherman.
Speaker 6: You know, these who were women who killed a number
Speaker 6: of their own children, again, sometimes partly to collect on insurance,
Speaker 6: sometimes because again they felt, you know, the kids who
Speaker 6: were just a drain on their energies and finance. So
Speaker 6: you know, it's very very possible, again given bell psychopathic nature,
Speaker 6: that those infants died at her hands. But again at
Speaker 6: the same time, you know, it is also conceivable that
Speaker 6: they died of natural causes. We just don't know.
Speaker 8: You talk about interesting development early on in eighteen ninety seven,
Speaker 8: in October, when the couple was visited from a man
Speaker 8: from the Yukon Mining and Trading Corporation. Interesting that later
Speaker 8: we find out what a master con artist this woman is.
Speaker 8: Tell us about this mining and Trading corporation idea, Well.
Speaker 6: You know, that's something actually I'm very proud to have
Speaker 6: uncovered because well actually a researcher of mine uncovered it,
Speaker 6: you know, but nothing nobody's ever written about that or
Speaker 6: known about that. In regard to Bell. But you know,
Speaker 6: it's a you know, it's interesting about it, as it
Speaker 6: turned out to be a scam. You know, they were
Speaker 6: approached by representatives of this mining company and they were
Speaker 6: going to be offered shares in these gold mines in
Speaker 6: return for Mads going up to the Yukon and you know,
Speaker 6: and and working for the company. But again, the whole
Speaker 6: but but they you know, they had to put up
Speaker 6: a certain amount of money up front, supposedly to cover
Speaker 6: that you know, Mad, the costs of Mads transportation and
Speaker 6: equipment and so on and so forth. But in return
Speaker 6: for this investment, you know, they were going to be
Speaker 6: getting the shares and whatever whatever gold was ultimately discovered.
Speaker 6: But the whole thing turned out to be a complete scam,
Speaker 6: and Mads and Bell ended up suing the company. But
Speaker 6: it was an interesting episode in terms of what it
Speaker 6: revealed about you know, again Dell's lust for money, her
Speaker 6: greed for money. You know, the fact that she had
Speaker 6: no qualms, you know, about sending her husband often to
Speaker 6: the wilderness for a very extended period of time. You know,
Speaker 6: she really, as her own sister testified, you know, the
Speaker 6: only feelings she really had for her husband, even though
Speaker 6: she was married to him for an extended period of time,
Speaker 6: and you know he served as the father of a child,
Speaker 6: but he was it was just you know, when she
Speaker 6: looked at him, all she saw were potential dollar signs.
Speaker 6: You know, she had no human feeling for him. Again,
Speaker 6: as we all know, very very characteristic of the psychopathic personality.
Speaker 8: You talk about April tenth, another fire breaks out of
Speaker 8: their home, this one attributed to defective heating apparatus, and
Speaker 8: you talk about the life insurance policy and sort of
Speaker 8: the luck that she had with the timing on that
Speaker 8: tell us a little bit about what happens with Mads
Speaker 8: and this insurance and her behavior.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, I wouldn't call the timing luck. Well, I mean, basically,
Speaker 6: you know, she had persuaded Mad's take out a life
Speaker 6: insurance policy, which was and then I forget the exact amount.
Speaker 6: I'm going to say two thousand dollars. You might remember
Speaker 6: better than I do, yep. But then she wanted him
Speaker 6: to take out another policy for more money, like thirty
Speaker 6: thousand dollars or whatever it was. So there was one day,
Speaker 6: you know, there was a day when the old insurance
Speaker 6: policy was set to expire and the new life insurance
Speaker 6: policy would go into effect. So there was one day,
Speaker 6: you know, on which both policies were in effect, and
Speaker 6: it just so happened that in that particular day, MADD's
Speaker 6: came home from work seemingly feeling as healthy as he
Speaker 6: had been when he left, and then within a very
Speaker 6: very short time suddenly got very very sick and died.
Speaker 6: So Belle ended up collecting on both insurance policies. So
Speaker 6: either that was totally fortuitous or as seems far more
Speaker 6: likely again given what subsequently came to light about. You know,
Speaker 6: she killed her first husband.
Speaker 8: You talk about, right after this windfall of money, she
Speaker 8: moves to a or buys a home that was a
Speaker 8: former bordello, and she adopts a different name. And yes,
Speaker 8: you talk about when they were married, Madge and Bella,
Speaker 8: they had taken in a border named Peter Gunnis. M
Speaker 8: tell us a little bit about this Peter Gunnis and
Speaker 8: his altered or stay.
Speaker 6: With Well, you know, we don't know a huge amount
Speaker 6: of details about Gunness. Peter Gunnis is stay with him.
Speaker 6: He was again apparently briefly a border with him when
Speaker 6: they lived in Chicago and had moved into that nicer
Speaker 6: house that they had purchased following the candy store fire.
Speaker 6: He was, you know, from the one surviving photograph of him,
Speaker 6: very very strikingly handsome young man. He was a widower
Speaker 6: with children of his own. And again we you know,
Speaker 6: the details are a little fuzzy, but after Belle purchased
Speaker 6: her farmstead porch, she reconnected with Peter and in a
Speaker 6: very short time they had become husband in wife and
Speaker 6: bell and Bella Sorensen was now Bella or Belle Gunnis.
Speaker 8: There was some talk about or controversy about how Mads
Speaker 8: had been killed or how he died. What was made
Speaker 8: of that in terms of official cause.
Speaker 6: Of death though, yeah, well there was some suspicion given
Speaker 6: how suddenly and violently he fell ill and died, that
Speaker 6: you know, there was some foul play involved. There was
Speaker 6: a couple of doctors called to the scene, one of
Speaker 6: whom in particular suspected and that he might have been poisoned.
Speaker 6: But ultimately, you know, it was rule natural death. I
Speaker 6: mean again, one thing that I have come to feel
Speaker 6: very strongly in doing my researchers into these late nineteenth
Speaker 6: or late twentieth century female serial poisoners. Is how fortunate
Speaker 6: all of us are to be living today in terms
Speaker 6: of the kind of medical care you get in A
Speaker 6: medicine was so primitive back then.
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Speaker 8: Under the idea that Navs had come to his fate
Speaker 8: by some suspicious circumstantives. Tell us what with the investigation revealed?
Speaker 6: Well, uh, you know there was some one of the doctors, uh,
Speaker 6: suspected that possibly the druggist, you know, met that Mads
Speaker 6: had come back from work with this terrible headache and
Speaker 6: Bell had gone to the pharmacy, and that the druggist
Speaker 6: had accidentally given her morphine instead of quinine to treat
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Speaker 6: died of you know, some ailment and possibly by this
Speaker 6: by this accident. In any case, you know, the main
Speaker 6: thing was, you know, Bell was never really suspected at
Speaker 6: the time at the time, you know, of having deliberately
Speaker 6: closed her husband's death. Fames were different later under other
Speaker 6: crimes were discovered.
Speaker 8: Now you talk about Peter's brother, Gus was suspicious of
Speaker 8: his brother's death, and so what does he do as
Speaker 8: a result of that suspicion.
Speaker 6: Okay, so we haven't actually talked about Peter's death yet.
Speaker 6: You know, Peter died very shortly after marrying Bell again
Speaker 6: under highly suspicious circumstances, even worse at least as suspicious
Speaker 6: as those surrounding mad stuff. You know. Supposedly he had
Speaker 6: gone into the kitchen to retrieve his shoes which were
Speaker 6: warming up by the stove, and when he stood up,
Speaker 6: a meat grinder fell on his head and killed him. So,
Speaker 6: you know, again there was a lot of questions about,
Speaker 6: you know, about Peter's death and a whole inquest into it.
Speaker 6: Again in spite of the strong suspicion of many many
Speaker 6: people that you know, that this supposed accident was highly
Speaker 6: highly improbable, and that you know, Belle had actually murdered him.
Speaker 6: The judgment, you know, the medical examiner ultimately ruled that
Speaker 6: it had been accidental and Peter afterwards came and Peter's
Speaker 6: brother I'm sorry, visited the farm shortly thereafter and decided
Speaker 6: to take you know, Peter, as I said, had been
Speaker 6: the father of several children, and the brother came and
Speaker 6: took one of the girls out of Bell's care because
Speaker 6: he was very, very worried about her well being.
Speaker 8: He also asked her about the twenty five hundred dollars,
Speaker 8: and she had said she told Peter that she had
Speaker 8: converted to mining stocks, but when he asked see those stocks,
Speaker 8: she couldn't produce them. Uh huh, right, And she had
Speaker 8: also she had also asked him to stay and manage
Speaker 8: the farm.
Speaker 6: But what was his response to that, Oh, you're talking
Speaker 6: about the brother? Yes, yeah, well, you know again he
Speaker 6: had brave suspicions about the manner in which his brother
Speaker 6: Peter had died, and so yeah, I mean he didn't
Speaker 6: want to hang around, which was a very very you know,
Speaker 6: wise move, as it turned out.
Speaker 8: You talk about the strength of this woman and the
Speaker 8: size of Belle Gunnis and the kind of work that
Speaker 8: she had to do often, so as you do in
Speaker 8: the book, tell us a little bit about just her
Speaker 8: physical attributes and the kind of work that she had
Speaker 8: to do.
Speaker 6: Well, she was a big woman, you know, if she
Speaker 6: weighed probably between two hundred and eighty and three hundred pounds.
Speaker 6: You know, well, she had done farm work from the
Speaker 6: time she was a child, so you know, after she
Speaker 6: murdered her second husband, she was basically there by herself
Speaker 6: on the farm for a while, and she had to
Speaker 6: perform all the you know, very very arduous manual tasks
Speaker 6: that go with running a farm like that. She was
Speaker 6: also you know, not a verse too, and quite proficient
Speaker 6: in butchering the farm animals. You know, she dressed like
Speaker 6: a man. So yeah, she you know, she was not
Speaker 6: only having to raise these children, but take care of
Speaker 6: everything involved in in running a farm.
Speaker 8: You talk about. By the winter of nineteen four she
Speaker 8: was in need of a man and she met Olaf Limbo.
Speaker 8: Tell us how she approached these men or how these
Speaker 8: men heard about her and her farm.
Speaker 6: Not long after Peter died, she began putting classified advertisements
Speaker 6: in various Scandinavian language newspapers up Midwest. Initially the advertisements
Speaker 6: were for hired hands. Eventually, you know, she was basically
Speaker 6: putting the ads in you know, which sometimes would say
Speaker 6: you know, comely widow, which was quite you know, fake news,
Speaker 6: false advertising. You know, comely widow with this handsome farm
Speaker 6: is looking for a qualified bachelor. You know, they were
Speaker 6: barrenal come ons. Essentially, you know, she was men who
Speaker 6: would be able to in the vest in the firm
Speaker 6: with the prospect ultimately of you know, of marrying her,
Speaker 6: and went yeah, sorry, go.
Speaker 8: Ahead, sorry, you say she attracted a certain type of
Speaker 8: person as well, because there is the victims are are
Speaker 8: numerous to show example of the very first ones are
Speaker 8: indicative of her m at least when this Olaf disappears
Speaker 8: and OLA's father writes inquiring about him, how does she
Speaker 8: deal with these people inquiring about their loved ones.
Speaker 6: Well, she's always writing, you know. Sometimes she would try
Speaker 6: to you know, she apparently got many many responses to these,
Speaker 6: and she would you know, only pursue certain kinds of prospects,
Speaker 6: you know, ideally the ones that she would encourage, you know,
Speaker 6: or guys who had very very few family connections that
Speaker 6: might come poking around, or whose relatives were all back
Speaker 6: in Norway or whatever. But when you know, but when
Speaker 6: friends or relatives excuse me, you know, did inquire about
Speaker 6: the whereabouts of their suddenly missing husbands or i mean
Speaker 6: brothers or whatever, you know, Belle would always have some excuse,
Speaker 6: you know, that they had left for other jobs or
Speaker 6: decided to go back to Norway. You know, I think
Speaker 6: it was in the case of Lynbau. You know that
Speaker 6: you said that he had suddenly decided she wanted to
Speaker 6: return to Norway to attend the carnation of the King.
Speaker 6: So she had some good reason, you know, for why
Speaker 6: they had left their farm, and she was as surprised
Speaker 6: and as puzzled as anybody else that they had suddenly absconded.
Speaker 8: So right, you talk about also one of the characteristics
Speaker 8: that people saw was that each man would come with
Speaker 8: a large trunk with his clothes and some of the
Speaker 8: things his belongings. And you say that what happened with
Speaker 8: those trunks.
Speaker 6: Well, they ended up, you know, being stored in the
Speaker 6: room in you know, in Bell's and Bell's farmhouse. Yeah,
Speaker 6: you talk.
Speaker 8: About the summer of nineteen oh six and Bell hires
Speaker 8: a local man, William brugiskey to what did she get
Speaker 8: him to do on her farm?
Speaker 6: Well, among other things, she asked him to take these polls,
Speaker 6: these pits supposedly for her to cross crash and garbage.
Speaker 6: So although he didn't realize it at the time, you know,
Speaker 6: he was really being asked to perform the function of
Speaker 6: a grave digger, but basically he thought he was just
Speaker 6: taken about garbage pits.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you talked too about We talked about Jenny Olson.
Speaker 8: And this is again the fall of nineteen oh six.
Speaker 8: She had turned into a pretty sixteen year old girl
Speaker 8: and had attracted deveral male admirers, and one of those
Speaker 8: was Emo Greening and he's a farm. Had what happens
Speaker 8: that year that perplexes Greening?
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, Jenny again, by this point she was a
Speaker 6: foster daughter that Bell had, you know, had taken it
Speaker 6: to her household back Chicago, raised from the time she
Speaker 6: was an infant, and as you say, she had grown
Speaker 6: into this very very lovely, blooming sixteen year old girl.
Speaker 6: And she suddenly announced that Bell is going to send
Speaker 6: her way to a seminary in California, and then she
Speaker 6: in fact disappeared again. As far as everyone knew, she
Speaker 6: was off in California at the school. Amiel tried writing
Speaker 6: her number of times but never got any response. So
Speaker 6: you know, he was disheartened and puzzled about that. He
Speaker 6: had been working at Bell's farm largely so he could
Speaker 6: hang around Jenny after she left. He quit that job,
Speaker 6: but he never heard from her. Nobody who tried to
Speaker 6: contact her ever got any response.
Speaker 8: You talk about Emo meaning quitting in June nineteen oh seven,
Speaker 8: and he's replaced by Ray lamp Lampier, and he's thirty
Speaker 8: seven years old. And tell us a little bit about
Speaker 8: Ray lamp higher lamp here.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, Ray, you know, there is a little bit
Speaker 6: of a mayor do well. He was a handyman. You a.
Speaker 6: Bell had hired a series of handymen calper out with
Speaker 6: the various tasks involved in her farm. She apparently would
Speaker 6: not infrequently take these guys as lovers, which was the
Speaker 6: case with Ray Lampfier. She put him up in the
Speaker 6: meadsuroom adjoining her own in the farmhouse. He for a
Speaker 6: while was led to believe, or somehow came to believe
Speaker 6: that she was going to marry him and he would
Speaker 6: become the master of this very very handsome farmstead. So yeah,
Speaker 6: I mean they were very very closely involved for a while.
Speaker 6: But Ray was you know, Ray was an alcoholic. He
Speaker 6: was apparently a skilled carpenter when sober, but he was
Speaker 6: an alcoholic and again something of the black sheep of
Speaker 6: his family.
Speaker 8: You right of the summer of nineteen oh six, however,
Speaker 8: Bell had embarked on a correspondence with a man named
Speaker 8: Andrew Algelin, and he was a wheat farmer that saw
Speaker 8: her ad tell us a little bit about best correspondence
Speaker 8: and what she was trying to convince him to do, and.
Speaker 6: How well Andrew. And by the way, I actually was
Speaker 6: on a podcast how long ago with somebody of Norwegian
Speaker 6: heritage who told me that the name, which I didn't
Speaker 6: know until I spoke to this guys pronounced hell Gillian.
Speaker 6: I also was always pronouncing it Helgalin, but hell Gellian. Yeah.
Speaker 6: So her correspondence with hell Gellian, which lasted for about
Speaker 6: eighteen months, constituted like around eighty two letters back and forth,
Speaker 6: is really one of the most well, those are some
Speaker 6: of the most chilling documents that I turned up, and
Speaker 6: of course of my research, because Bell spent, as I said,
Speaker 6: a year and a half setting this trap for this man.
Speaker 6: You know, she decided for a variety of reasons. You
Speaker 6: know that he was a very very attractive victim, largely
Speaker 6: because he had this very successful farm, He had a
Speaker 6: fair amount of money. He was lonely not only for
Speaker 6: female companionship, but also very nostalgic for you know, these
Speaker 6: Norwegian experiences in terms of Norwegian food and just Norwegian
Speaker 6: culture and so on and so forth. You know that
Speaker 6: Bell kept promising him he would enjoy so these letters,
Speaker 6: you know, which began relatively formally, you know, quickly became
Speaker 6: very very intimate, you know, very intense on Bell's part.
Speaker 6: So yeah, she just you know, she lured him and
Speaker 6: spent all this time and energy and efforts, you know,
Speaker 6: to lure him to his utter destruction. But when you
Speaker 6: read the letters, you know, and you realize how calculating
Speaker 6: they are, you know, and again how Belle is presenting
Speaker 6: herself as this you know, it's this woman who you
Speaker 6: know can't wait, you know, for how much she misses him,
Speaker 6: you know, how much she longs for him, How she
Speaker 6: kill wait to spoil him, you know, with all her
Speaker 6: Norwegian you know, down home Norwegian cooking, you know, and
Speaker 6: there are all these kind of sexual India windows, you know,
Speaker 6: gives you this very very powerful insight, you know, and too,
Speaker 6: how depraved her you know, her sensibility was. And again
Speaker 6: how cutting she was.
Speaker 8: Absolutely and at the same time we have to remember
Speaker 8: that that Ray Lampfear being the carpenter farm hand lover
Speaker 8: is thinking he's the guy that's going to be able
Speaker 8: to marry her. We're going to use this, Sarah. There's
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Speaker 8: we're talking about Ray Lampfear and Andrew helgelin Hell. Joe pardon,
Speaker 8: I have already belt Kelly little Hell Gillian, pardon me,
Speaker 8: Andrew Helgillian. He doesn't arrive right away. There's many many delays,
Speaker 8: and you you have that her urgency and desperation very
Speaker 8: evident in those letters to him. When he finally does
Speaker 8: arrive by January nineteen oh eight, what does Belle say
Speaker 8: to Ray Lanford, her former lover and farm hand.
Speaker 6: Well, basically she tells him to go live in the bar,
Speaker 6: you know, lat here again had been you know, living
Speaker 6: in that room. Drake chasing too, he chas him to
Speaker 6: Bells and you know, enjoying, among other things, her sexual favors.
Speaker 6: And suddenly hell Gillian shows up that he's completely supplanted,
Speaker 6: and you know, obviously unjustifiably, you know, we're very very
Speaker 6: reventful of their you know, for whole variety reasons.
Speaker 8: Though, now do you you talk about again the this
Speaker 8: first National Bank in Laporte and Bell and Andrew, but
Speaker 8: not Andrew's not the only person tell us about this,
Speaker 8: uh scene in the first National Bank.
Speaker 6: Well, they go to the bank supposedly in order to
Speaker 6: withdraw uh hell Gillian's money, and then the teller tells
Speaker 6: him that he's going to have to send these documents
Speaker 6: back to uh the Dakota is, you know, the bank
Speaker 6: hell Gillian's local bank, and they're going to have to
Speaker 6: wait for a while. Yes, absolutely, Yeah, So you know
Speaker 6: they come back whenever a week later, and the money
Speaker 6: is there, and Bell insists, Uh, that hell Gillian, you know,
Speaker 6: withdraw it. Hall immediately in cash. Uh, and hell Gillian disappears.
Speaker 8: The other the other thing that you write and is
Speaker 8: containing letters is what are the instructions to Andrew in
Speaker 8: terms of secrecy or privacy.
Speaker 6: Well, Belle is very very insistent that that hell Gillian,
Speaker 6: you know, not informed any of his family members where
Speaker 6: he's going. You know, she he hell Gillian has a brother,
Speaker 6: has a sister. You know, Bell in her letters keeps
Speaker 6: telling him, oh, you know, let's not you know, don't
Speaker 6: mention that you're coming here to get married. It'll just
Speaker 6: be so much more exciting to inform them afterwards. So yeah,
Speaker 6: she is urging him to, you know, to keep it
Speaker 6: a secret. However, as it turns out, he doesn't really
Speaker 6: follow her, you know, follow her instructions on that score.
Speaker 8: Well, you talk about that his brother, He told his
Speaker 8: brother he was going to be back in ten days,
Speaker 8: and after ten days there's no sign. So what does
Speaker 8: his brother Azel do in response, Well, his.
Speaker 6: Brother sends an employee over to Andrew's farm, who discovers
Speaker 6: this big cash of letters from Bell Gunnis and his brother,
Speaker 6: whose name again I am not entirely certain of the
Speaker 6: pronunciation of, but I think it's Asley a s l E.
Speaker 6: You know, immediately, you know, realizes, you know that Andrew
Speaker 6: has gone off to Port Indiana, uh to finally meet
Speaker 6: this woman that he has been corresponding with for all
Speaker 6: that time. M hmm.
Speaker 8: What happens meanwhile for Lee Ray Landfair in terms of
Speaker 8: relationship with Bell Gunnis.
Speaker 6: Well, Ray's relationship, you know, the two, you know, there's
Speaker 6: this terrible rift between the two of them. You know,
Speaker 6: Ray again has been completely you know, suddenly, Ray, who
Speaker 6: has really been going around sort of telling everyone, you know,
Speaker 6: that's only a matter of time because before he and
Speaker 6: Bell get married, he's going to become, you know, the
Speaker 6: co owner of this magnificent farm. Uh, you know, now
Speaker 6: realizes that, ah, you know, that's not going to happen.
Speaker 6: And after, well, after the disappearance of how Gilliant, there
Speaker 6: is this dramatic rift between Belle and Ray where Belle
Speaker 6: kicks him off the farm, you know, tells him to
Speaker 6: stay away. Ray goes to see his lawyer and says,
Speaker 6: you know, he's left his tools on the farm, and
Speaker 6: he goes back and tries to get the tools, and
Speaker 6: you know, well, has him arrested for trespassing, has I'm
Speaker 6: arrested several times for trespassing, you know, ultimately tries to
Speaker 6: get him declared insane and institutionalized. So there's, you know,
Speaker 6: this sudden, vicious, bitter, you know again break between the
Speaker 6: two of them. Yeah, so, I mean that's what happened.
Speaker 6: She but very also Yeah, but let me just add
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, there there's there's one key episode there,
Speaker 6: which was the evening that Helgellian suddenly disappeared. Bell sent
Speaker 6: Ray off on an errand to a neighboring town and
Speaker 6: told him to stay over. I somehow this transaction you know,
Speaker 6: that Ray was supposed to conduct, fell through, and Ray
Speaker 6: returned that very evening and went over to Bell's farmhouse,
Speaker 6: and something happened that night. And that was the night
Speaker 6: that hal Gallian disappeared. And what apparently happened is that
Speaker 6: Ray somehow witnessed Bell's murder of hell Gellian. And you know,
Speaker 6: the you know, the the the assumption always was that
Speaker 6: Ray was somehow maybe blackmailing Bell, and that was the
Speaker 6: source of this, the trouble between the two of them.
Speaker 6: And you know, Belle was just trying to get Ray
Speaker 6: out of the way, you know, by having her committed
Speaker 6: and you know, or identified as this criminal who had
Speaker 6: something against her. Sure.
Speaker 8: What's very very interesting too, is that, you know, unlike
Speaker 8: a summary trial, there was an actual trial for Ray
Speaker 8: lamdfear and he hires again a central figure in this story,
Speaker 8: Attorney Wert Warden, and during this cross examination of Bell,
Speaker 8: he starts asking her some very very pointed questions about
Speaker 8: mad Sorenson. Tell us just sort of the gist of
Speaker 8: and the tone of this cross examination that at the
Speaker 8: Lampfer's trial, well.
Speaker 6: You know Warden, and again I don't know that this
Speaker 6: would be permissible and a board of law nowadays, but
Speaker 6: but Warden, you know, Warden, uh kept asking her questions,
Speaker 6: you know about you know about uh all, you know,
Speaker 6: all the suspicions surrounding uh Peter Gunnis's death. You know
Speaker 6: the fact that you know, there was always from the
Speaker 6: beginning a lot of questions about the way Peter died,
Speaker 6: being you know, this whole story that this sausage grinder,
Speaker 6: you know, had somehow fallen off the stove, you know,
Speaker 6: and you know, hit him on the head and a
Speaker 6: few hours later he was dead from it. You know,
Speaker 6: it just struck many people as wildly improbable. So when
Speaker 6: sid Warden was questioning her understand about these charges against
Speaker 6: his client Ray, you know, he was trying to cast suspicions,
Speaker 6: you know, on tell you know, there were suspicions at
Speaker 6: you generally, you know, genuinely, you know, genuinely had so.
Speaker 3: M hm.
Speaker 8: She He also asked one question I thought was incredible
Speaker 8: was that he asked when her daughter, Jenny Olsen would
Speaker 8: be returning, right, So, yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean obviously there was you know, a more at
Speaker 6: this point already some suspicion that perhaps something on toward
Speaker 6: had happened to Jenny.
Speaker 8: You say to meanwhile, asl is asking still about Andrew,
Speaker 8: and you talk about another incident where this comes out
Speaker 8: later obviously, that two of Belle's children are near the
Speaker 8: cellar in the home, and you talk about what happens,
Speaker 8: what they experience in terms of Bell's reaction to them
Speaker 8: being near that cellar.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, I mean Bell was you know, by all accounts,
Speaker 6: and again this this somewhat paradoxical aspect of her nature,
Speaker 6: you know, a very loving, caring mother. But on this
Speaker 6: particular occasion, the children you know, reported to their you know,
Speaker 6: shirt up at school, you know, very very upset, crying
Speaker 6: and sobbing, and they said that they had sort of
Speaker 6: ventured down to the cellar and their mother had you know,
Speaker 6: had had beaten them and you know, yelled at them,
Speaker 6: which was very unusual for her.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 8: You talk about also that they're the incident where the
Speaker 8: event where they had the new farm hand Joe Maxon
Speaker 8: and around eight thirty at nine he goes to bed
Speaker 8: and then there is Bells living with Lucy, Myrtle and
Speaker 8: Phillip and then previously were playing some games. What happens
Speaker 8: that night? What does Maxon later talk about what happened,
Speaker 8: what he experienced?
Speaker 6: Well, Maxon, you know, enjoyed this deal with Bell and
Speaker 6: her three children, and then he retired to his bedroom.
Speaker 6: At that point, hel Gellian was gone where he was
Speaker 6: gone some max And was now occupying that bedroom. Adjasent
Speaker 6: to Bell's. Maxon went off to bed, leaving Bell and
Speaker 6: her children you know, playing some kind of game on
Speaker 6: the dining room floor. And then in the middle of
Speaker 6: the night he awoke, well, some smell of smoke awoke him.
Speaker 6: He officially thought it was the morning and maybe Bell
Speaker 6: was cooking, And you know, he woke up and and
Speaker 6: realized the house is on fire, and he immediately ran
Speaker 6: to the next bedroom and counted on the door. But
Speaker 6: you know, by that time the fire was really blazing
Speaker 6: and he had to get out of there. There was
Speaker 6: no response from the bedroom, so he ran back, escaped
Speaker 6: through his own treadroom window, and you know, with a
Speaker 6: very short time, the entire farmhouse was completely inflames and
Speaker 6: hoping the leaf just burned down to the foundation.
Speaker 8: Now, despite rumors, uh, there's a share of Smutzer who
Speaker 8: was involved with you know, Ray has been charged for
Speaker 8: trespassing and Bell has written letters to say that he
Speaker 8: is harassing her. And so what Shriff Smutzer thinks that
Speaker 8: this Ray Lampfear is the culprit and goes to look
Speaker 8: for him, doesn't he.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, miss Smutzer knew about the difficulties between
Speaker 6: Ray and Ray and Belle. And by the way, one
Speaker 6: you know, very important moment that we have neglected to
Speaker 6: mention was that on the day of the fire, Bell
Speaker 6: at Don into town, made her you know, went to
Speaker 6: her lawyer's office, made a last little testament, you know,
Speaker 6: told the number of people, including her lawyer, that she
Speaker 6: was afraid that they was going to kill her. So
Speaker 6: you know, she really made its own somehow that she
Speaker 6: was an imminent danger of being killed by Ray Lanfear.
Speaker 6: So yeah, so so Smutser was very very very well
Speaker 6: aware of the you know, the difficulty between Ray and
Speaker 6: and at Bell, and he sought out, he sought out Ray.
Speaker 6: It turned out Ray in fact, had been very close
Speaker 6: to the farmhouse at the time of the fire. He
Speaker 6: claimed he had been walking to a job he was
Speaker 6: doing and saw forum house in flames, but he didn't
Speaker 6: alert anybody for whatever reason. So yeah, the suspicion immediately
Speaker 6: alight about Ray lamps Fear for having been the cause
Speaker 6: of the fire.
Speaker 8: You have the investigators go to that building, the home,
Speaker 8: and it's almost completely destroyed, and the fire was an
Speaker 8: intense fire, as you right, and then all this left
Speaker 8: is the cellar, and so they start digging to try
Speaker 8: to find the remains of Bell and her three children.
Speaker 8: Tell us about that effort to find and identify and
Speaker 8: what happens in that identification and search.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, I mean, once the ashes had cooled sufficiently,
Speaker 6: investigators began excavating the rubble of the cellar, which was
Speaker 6: the only part of the house that was left. And yeah,
Speaker 6: eventually this woman who's body clutching the very very you know,
Speaker 6: the incinerated corpses of these three children. The immediate assumption
Speaker 6: was that Belle had awakened, you know, while the fire
Speaker 6: was blazing, and you know, and her children had run
Speaker 6: into her bedroom and Belle had you know, taken them
Speaker 6: to RUMs and maybe tried to save them, but that
Speaker 6: they've all died in the fire. I mean, initially in newspapers,
Speaker 6: Belle was portrayed as a heroic mother, you know, who
Speaker 6: perished in this conflagration, you know, while trying to shield
Speaker 6: her children from them. The one you know, the one detail,
Speaker 6: one feature of the case, you know, that was and
Speaker 6: even to this day, you know, it means highly highly
Speaker 6: you know, controversial and raises all kinds of questions about
Speaker 6: the case, is that the woman's body was lacking ahead
Speaker 6: who was just a torso and what was left of
Speaker 6: the limbs. But you know, the initial fault was somehow
Speaker 6: the head had disintegrated in the fire.
Speaker 8: Right now. You talk about also that in this dig,
Speaker 8: in this excavation, at one point they asked Maxon if
Speaker 8: there was ever any holes or dirt dug up in
Speaker 8: the spring. And so what does he say as a
Speaker 8: result in what is discovered?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean initially, well, what happened was that Aisley Heldelian,
Speaker 6: who had been corresponding with a teller, the teller at
Speaker 6: the Laporte bank who had handled this transfer of Andrew's money,
Speaker 6: received from this teller a newspaper clipping about the fire
Speaker 6: at the Gunnis farmhouse. And Aisley, again, who knew that
Speaker 6: his brother had gone to visit Bell and had been
Speaker 6: corresponding with Bell. Actually you know, Bell had written back
Speaker 6: and basically said she had no idea where Andrew had gone.
Speaker 6: Aisley decided to come to the port investigate things for himself.
Speaker 6: So he arrived at Laporte, went out to the farmstead
Speaker 6: and you know, it's kind of poking around, didn't see anything,
Speaker 6: you know, it's about to leave, and then as you say,
Speaker 6: you know, it suddenly occurred to him to ask Max
Speaker 6: and you know, if there had been any places on
Speaker 6: the farm that had recently been you know, recently been
Speaker 6: dug into and maximsaid, there was, in fact such a place,
Speaker 6: and he led hastly to it, and the two of
Speaker 6: them began digging, digging up, and you know, within very
Speaker 6: short order they uncovered the extremely grizzly remains of Andrew
Speaker 6: hegelians decapitated and dismembered body.
Speaker 8: How many bodies once they began the serious excavation were
Speaker 8: on earth? And what was media response? You talk about,
Speaker 8: you know, responsible journalism, and then you talk about the
Speaker 8: media at that time it's reporting right.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, they began searching through others what they
Speaker 6: called soft spots, you know, in Bell's yard. It's a
Speaker 6: little hard to know exactly how many victims they ultimately found,
Speaker 6: because sometimes you know, there were a bunch of bones
Speaker 6: mixed together. But they're apparently a minimum of eleven victims
Speaker 6: that they dug up, one of whom turned out to
Speaker 6: be Jenny Olsen, the foster daughter, who had presumably gone
Speaker 6: off to a seminary in California and who's whereabouts you know,
Speaker 6: you know whose faith that you know was you know,
Speaker 6: ultimately discovered. So you know, this was an incredibly sensational
Speaker 6: you know discovery. I mean, you know, here was this
Speaker 6: Midwestern farm woman who had you know, turned out to
Speaker 6: be you know, one of the most horrific Well they
Speaker 6: didn't have the term serial murder at the time, but
Speaker 6: that's what we would call her obviously. You know, serial
Speaker 6: murders who had you know, lured this whole string of
Speaker 6: lonely Norwegian batress or a farmhouse, you know, murdered them,
Speaker 6: chopped up their bodies, buried them in a hog lot,
Speaker 6: you know, turned her farm into well, you know, it
Speaker 6: became known as the murder farm, and you know, as
Speaker 6: you say, you know, the newspapers back then, toy called
Speaker 6: the Yellow Press, which was the precursor of the modern
Speaker 6: day tabloid, you know, treated this case very, very, very sensationally.
Speaker 6: I mean, it was inherently sensational and they played it
Speaker 6: up with every means at their disposal. So, you know,
Speaker 6: the Laporte murder Farm, you know, became really nationally notorious
Speaker 6: as this you know, it's a sight of these horrors,
Speaker 6: and you know, it immediately attracted as these kinds of places,
Speaker 6: do you know, these hordes of morbid curiosity seekers.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's incredible, the huge crowds you're talking about that
Speaker 8: were wanted to witness this and then the selling of
Speaker 8: photo uh you know, ghastly photos were especially prized, and
Speaker 8: that many names in the press, female Bluebird, Queen of Crime,
Speaker 8: and even Hell's Princess.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Well, you know again as we do now. You know,
Speaker 6: whenever there's some kind of major serial killer that has
Speaker 6: been you know, either at large or been discovered, you know,
Speaker 6: the press as a tendency to immediately coin some sort
Speaker 6: of horror movie or you know, fairy tale ogre nickname
Speaker 6: for the person. So yeah, all these all these names Forbell,
Speaker 6: you know, the Lady blue Beard, I mean, ultimately Lady
Speaker 6: blue Beard, you know, came to be the favor you know,
Speaker 6: because obviously both because of a number of victims she claimed,
Speaker 6: and also you know, very very significantly, and this really
Speaker 6: links her to the original fairy tale character blue Beard
Speaker 6: more than like a lot of like, you know, a
Speaker 6: lot of the male blue Beards, Henry Land Drew and
Speaker 6: Johann Hawk. They're called blue Beards because they murdered these wives.
Speaker 6: You know, Belle is much more like the fairytale blue Beard,
Speaker 6: and that she would dismember the bodies of her victims,
Speaker 6: you know, which the fairytale blue Beard did. But anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, the murder the first Sunday after
Speaker 6: the discovery of these crimes, and estimated sixteen to twenty
Speaker 6: thousand people, you know, flocked to the gunness form. They
Speaker 6: had excursion trains running from Chicago. It was, you know,
Speaker 6: it was a carnival. They had people setting up cake
Speaker 6: stands and ice cream stands, families you know, picnicking on
Speaker 6: the yards and you know, people scouring the place for
Speaker 6: any little kind of relic, you know what nowadays we
Speaker 6: would call murder Abelia. And then people selling all these postcords,
Speaker 6: postcards you know of let's say Andrew Helgellian's you know,
Speaker 6: dug up head. It's the fact, you know, people listeners
Speaker 6: who are interested, you know, can go, i mean go
Speaker 6: online and see a lot of these postcards. And then
Speaker 6: they had that you know, one of the most you know,
Speaker 6: kind of amazing features of this was they had put
Speaker 6: all of the decomposed remains of the victims they had excavated.
Speaker 6: They put them in this tarran shed, this little outbuilding
Speaker 6: on the farm and you can see they're these photographs
Speaker 6: of you know, it's like Disney World. You know, it's
Speaker 6: like people lining up to go see Pirates of the
Speaker 6: Caribbean or something. You know, these huge lines of people, men, women, children,
Speaker 6: all dressed up in their Sunday finest, you know, lining
Speaker 6: up outside this carrien shed so they could go in
Speaker 6: and you know, file in, you know, and walk past
Speaker 6: view you know, these reeking, rotting remains of these victims. So,
Speaker 6: you know, one of the things that always interests me
Speaker 6: when I'm researching these books, you know, it is discovering
Speaker 6: you know that a lot of phenomena that people now
Speaker 6: think are very specific, you know, to our own time.
Speaker 6: You know, we're all interested in this grewsome morbid stuff.
Speaker 6: You know, this has always been going.
Speaker 8: Long, so yeah, yeah, incredible. Part of this too is
Speaker 8: this is that there was a theory that despite again
Speaker 8: you can explain this, there's a coroner mac involved here,
Speaker 8: that there's the charred remains are very very small of
Speaker 8: a very big woman. But despite that, he makes his
Speaker 8: conclusions as to whether this is Bell. But the media,
Speaker 8: the press has a different story and theory about whether
Speaker 8: she's alive or not.
Speaker 6: Tell us about this plain in my book is subtitled
Speaker 6: the Mystery of Bell Gunnis and one of the central
Speaker 6: mysteries again which are beings alive to this day, is
Speaker 6: whether survive the fire or not. You know, there was
Speaker 6: always this split opinion. On the one hand, you know,
Speaker 6: were those who believed, you know, that Bell had perished
Speaker 6: in the fire. Again, then there's this other question, did
Speaker 6: Belle set the fire herself? You know, did she realize
Speaker 6: that you know, the law was finally closing in on her.
Speaker 6: You know, she knew Daisley hell Gellian, you know, had
Speaker 6: become very very suspicious of her. Did she finally, you know,
Speaker 6: just spiral out of control and commit suicide and kill
Speaker 6: herself and her children? You know, that would that's a
Speaker 6: plausible possibility. Another possibility was did ray Lam Fear, you know,
Speaker 6: set the fire in revenge and anticipating our discussion a little,
Speaker 6: but you know, he ultimately was convicted of arson. And
Speaker 6: then the other possibility was, you know that the torso,
Speaker 6: the woman's torso that was found in the basement wasn't
Speaker 6: Bell at all, That she had staged the whole thing,
Speaker 6: you know, that she had lured some woman to the
Speaker 6: farm that killed her and decapitated her, and you know,
Speaker 6: hurted the children, and had set the whole thing up
Speaker 6: and set the fire and then absconded and got away
Speaker 6: with it. As you said, I mean, the body, the
Speaker 6: woman's body that was found in the basement, you know,
Speaker 6: was much much, much smaller than what Bell weighed, you know,
Speaker 6: But there were some experts who testified, you know, the
Speaker 6: body had just shrunk as a result of the fire.
Speaker 6: You know, there are other experts who believe that I
Speaker 6: don't quite remember exactly what the charge Torso weighed. It
Speaker 6: was like seventy five pounds or something. You know, whether
Speaker 6: you know a two hundred and eighty pounds woman could
Speaker 6: shrink that much even you know, under you know, and
Speaker 6: subjected to that kind of intense heat. But that you know,
Speaker 6: again that remains a big question. You know. There are
Speaker 6: people to this day, you know, who believe that Bell
Speaker 6: got away with murder, well multiple murder.
Speaker 8: The thing is that there was a what's the word,
Speaker 8: an effort to be able to prove or disprove this,
Speaker 8: and they went about it a certain way. What was
Speaker 8: it the one thing that they were to search for
Speaker 8: that would conclude that she was still alive our pardon me,
Speaker 8: still alive or died in that fire.
Speaker 6: Well, they knew that Bell had recently had this dental
Speaker 6: work done and had a bridge made by the local
Speaker 6: dentist which had a number of gold teeth in it.
Speaker 6: So the feeling was if they could turn up this
Speaker 6: dental bridge which might have survived the fire. Sorry, yes, Alan,
Speaker 6: so my phone is something. So they decided that if
Speaker 6: they could turn up this dental bridge, you know, this
Speaker 6: would prove supposedly, you know, that the body was out
Speaker 6: of belt, you know, that the skull itself might have disintegrated,
Speaker 6: but the enamel of the teeth and somehow the gold
Speaker 6: you know, false teeth would somehow survive the flames. Uh.
Speaker 6: So they enlisted the aid of this elderly prospector whose
Speaker 6: name inevitably was Old Klondike. Well that's what they called him.
Speaker 6: And he constructed this sluice on the farm and began
Speaker 6: this process of sifting through the ashes of of the
Speaker 6: that were dug out of the cellar in his effort
Speaker 6: to locate this bridge. And after about a week's or
Speaker 6: worth of effort and fact, he did find this bridgework. Again,
Speaker 6: you know, that turned out to be not as definitive
Speaker 6: as some people hoped it would be. A you know,
Speaker 6: there are people who believe, well, you know, Bella was
Speaker 6: clever enough to have set up you know, the stage,
Speaker 6: you know, this whole supposed death of hers. She could
Speaker 6: easily have managed to extract this bridge work, even though
Speaker 6: was part of it was connected to one of her molars.
Speaker 6: There's also some there were also some testimony by some
Speaker 6: eyewitnesses who claim that full Klondike had planted the bridgework himself.
Speaker 6: So again, you know, the discovery of this bridge, it
Speaker 6: did not resolve the question of whether Fell survived the fire.
Speaker 8: Yes, And as a result of that, though the media
Speaker 8: still speculated that there wasn't that even though that they
Speaker 8: said that there was the part of her tooth, why
Speaker 8: would she take one of her own teeth out and
Speaker 8: instead of just throwing the bridgework take one of her
Speaker 8: teeth out? So that was the question. But some of
Speaker 8: this also came up at Ray Lamfeir's trial because they
Speaker 8: were trying to give an alternative to Ray being the killer,
Speaker 8: didn't they.
Speaker 6: Right? Well, you know Warden, who is representing Ray at
Speaker 6: the trial, I mean, whose basic defense was you know
Speaker 6: that Ray was not you know that Bell Gunnis sit
Speaker 6: sept the fire. You know, they knew, for example that
Speaker 6: on the day of the fire in addition to going
Speaker 6: and making her will and letting everyone know that, you know,
Speaker 6: she was afraid that Ray was going to kill her,
Speaker 6: she had also gone to the general store purchased some
Speaker 6: terre scene which Joe Max's a handyman, testified he had seen,
Speaker 6: you know, stored inside the house. But Warden's strategy, you know,
Speaker 6: for defending his client was to try to persuade the
Speaker 6: jurors that Belt herself had set the fire and that
Speaker 6: she was still alive, and you know that Ray was
Speaker 6: being framed for this.
Speaker 8: You talk about the noble effort by Warden to defend
Speaker 8: Ray Lampfear, but also at the same time you talk
Speaker 8: about a notable sighting that you talk about all the
Speaker 8: sightings of Bell Gunnis in all kinds of various places.
Speaker 8: But in the book, it's very very exciting when it
Speaker 8: looks like Bell Gunnis is discovered on the train. Tell
Speaker 8: us about this event, very very interesting part of this book.
Speaker 6: Uh, well, thank you for saying so, I'm trying to remember, well,
Speaker 6: forgive me for not immediately I know there was a
Speaker 6: woman who was heading for New York.
Speaker 8: Is that the one who was a widow the will
Speaker 8: and then seemed to recognize her.
Speaker 6: You know, she was identified, you know by some fellow passengers,
Speaker 6: you know, as Bell, and she got off the train,
Speaker 6: she was arrested and it uh you know, and held
Speaker 6: over by and uh yeah, and then it proved to
Speaker 6: be I I'm sorry, I don't exactly remember who she was,
Speaker 6: but you know, she was not Tel Gunnis. You know,
Speaker 6: she ended up suing the police. But you know, it's
Speaker 6: feel like Elvis Sidings in a way, you know, I mean,
Speaker 6: whenever there's some you know, some notorious criminal who is
Speaker 6: on the loose, you know, police are inundated with you know,
Speaker 6: sighting of this person. You know, there were people who
Speaker 6: sworn they had run into Bell, you know that they
Speaker 6: had run into Bell, and you know, seeing her not
Speaker 6: far on the road, not far from her farmhouse. One
Speaker 6: evening checked. I recently was contacted by a woman I
Speaker 6: haven't had a chance of specter yet, you know, who
Speaker 6: contacted me to say that her grandmother had known Belle
Speaker 6: Donnis and was one of these people who swore she
Speaker 6: had seen Belle in the vicinity after the fire. So yeah,
Speaker 6: I mean that was very very common in Belle was
Speaker 6: you know for years and years, decades really, you know, after,
Speaker 6: you know, after these events, there were sighting sum bell
Speaker 6: in all different parts of the country, sometimes out of
Speaker 6: the country.
Speaker 8: Wow, you you alluded to or mentioned that Ray was
Speaker 8: finally convicted of arson. Tell us just a bit about
Speaker 8: the trial and why he was not convicted of anything else,
Speaker 8: and what was the sentence for the arson in the end, Well,
Speaker 8: he was, Yeah, it was a.
Speaker 6: Little, it was a little, it was a little peculiar.
Speaker 6: He was, you know, convicted of setting the fire but
Speaker 6: acquitted a murder, which you know, is Warden himself pointed out,
Speaker 6: did really make a lot of sense because you know,
Speaker 6: presumably if you set the fire, you know, he was
Speaker 6: also responsible for for the murders. But you know, he
Speaker 6: was sent to prison. He died you know, shortly thereafter, tuberculosis,
Speaker 6: you know, protesting his innocence. Again, as with so many
Speaker 6: other features of the Gunnis case, there's all this ambiguity
Speaker 6: surrounding Ray's last days because there were claims made by
Speaker 6: a minister who befriended him that Ray, you know, had
Speaker 6: made a confession. But then you know, then the minister's
Speaker 6: own story, you know, is called into question again. The
Speaker 6: yellow Press initially leapt all over this. You know, and
Speaker 6: you know printed all of these you know, trumpeted the
Speaker 6: news of you know, raised supposed confession. But then it
Speaker 6: turned out that the whole thing might have you know,
Speaker 6: just been this concoction.
Speaker 8: So you you also talk about Ray with this. At
Speaker 8: the trial, they talked that one of the things that
Speaker 8: he couldn't get past was when he had said that
Speaker 8: he had ran past that fire and had said that
Speaker 8: he didn't want to it was he wanted to mind
Speaker 8: his own business, so he had saw the fire. So
Speaker 8: there was that that evidence at that And you say,
Speaker 8: then he passes away shortly after from tuberculosis. What happens
Speaker 8: with this story in terms of it fading away or
Speaker 8: remaining in the public's eye.
Speaker 6: Well, as I said, I mean, you know, periodically there
Speaker 6: would be these stories about people who claimed that, you know,
Speaker 6: that they had seen Bell or just for that person
Speaker 6: or that neighbor of theirs, they were sure the pelagonus.
Speaker 6: I mean, they really exploded back into the headlines in
Speaker 6: the nineteen thirties when a California woman named Esther Carlson,
Speaker 6: who poisoned this employer of hers, was suddenly suspected of
Speaker 6: being Bell. Gunnis Investigators searching through her possessions, discovered some
Speaker 6: photographs of children that were identified as Bell Gunnis's children,
Speaker 6: and there were people from the Port Indiana who were
Speaker 6: living in Los Angeles at the time, you know, who
Speaker 6: came to view Esther, Carlson Esther before she could be
Speaker 6: brought her trial for the murder of this employer. Herself
Speaker 6: died of tuberculosis, but there were these men who had
Speaker 6: known Bell Gunnis very well who came to view her
Speaker 6: body in the morgue and emphatically, you know, declare that
Speaker 6: she was Bell Gunnis. So you know, for a very
Speaker 6: very long time, the belief was, you know, that this
Speaker 6: woman Esther was Belgunnis. And again this became a you know,
Speaker 6: there's a lot of publicity.
Speaker 8: Attached to this, absolutely. You you also talk about just
Speaker 8: with this as well, that the newspapers printed the letters
Speaker 8: from Bell Gunnis to Andrew again very very sensationalistic portrait
Speaker 8: of this relationship and these letters.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Well, one of the interesting things about that.
Speaker 8: Is that.
Speaker 6: One of the most infamous letters that Bell had supposedly
Speaker 6: written to Belgellian is a letter that is was something like,
Speaker 6: you know, be prepared to stay forever. Uh, and you know,
Speaker 6: and that letter got a lot of publicity, and people
Speaker 6: who wrote about the Gunness case for many years afterwards,
Speaker 6: I mean, even like up until very recently, you know,
Speaker 6: would often cite that as the most chilling of the
Speaker 6: letters you know that Pelagonist wrote. Turned out, you know,
Speaker 6: that letter was a complete concoction by one of a
Speaker 6: journalists who was covering the case at the time. You know,
Speaker 6: it was a very very I mean in my own
Speaker 6: early readings of the Gunness case, I always assumed that
Speaker 6: that was an authentic letter. You know, that really, you know,
Speaker 6: revealed just how monstrous Pelgunnis was. You know that you
Speaker 6: was sort of statistically taunting him that way. But what
Speaker 6: I discovered was that letter was a complete you know,
Speaker 6: it was a complete forgery. But it was published at
Speaker 6: the time and the newspapers is a real thing. I mean,
Speaker 6: it gave you really, you know, insight and to the
Speaker 6: journalistic ethics of the time, you know, and you know,
Speaker 6: these writers for the Hearst newspapers and the poetry newspapers,
Speaker 6: you know, had no compunction about just making stuff up
Speaker 6: to make the story worse.
Speaker 8: Say, yeah, no, not at all. You talk about the letters,
Speaker 8: and for those who will read this book, there are
Speaker 8: all kinds of examples of Bell Gunnis and her correspondence
Speaker 8: with various people including Andrew Gillian and and also what
Speaker 8: I wanted to mention too is that there seems to
Speaker 8: be an absence of photos in a lot of these books,
Speaker 8: but in your book, some incredible, amazing photos are included.
Speaker 8: So I want to congratulate you on that, the incredible
Speaker 8: research in this book and just one incredible story. I
Speaker 8: want to thank you very much Harold Checkter for coming
Speaker 8: on and talking about Hell's Princess, the mystery of Bell Gunner,
Speaker 8: Whicher of Men for those Do you have a Facebook page?
Speaker 8: How could people find out more about your work which
Speaker 8: is incredible, prolific tell Asyla, I might do that.
Speaker 6: Well, you know what I suggest post is just googling
Speaker 6: my name. I do have a Facebook page, which actually
Speaker 6: is maintained by somebody else, because I'm not really a
Speaker 6: social media person. You know, it's uh, but you can
Speaker 6: find it on Harold ct Checker or Harold Checkter dot com.
Speaker 6: But yeah, just googling Harold Checkter, uh, we'll turn up
Speaker 6: lots of stuff. Let me just make one slight evandation
Speaker 6: to one of your remarks. The the actual hardcover book
Speaker 6: does not have illustrations, but I but there's the book
Speaker 6: was also published in this new format will Kindle in Motion. Right.
Speaker 6: It was really you know, very very exciting. Uh. And
Speaker 6: not only is that very very ritually illustrated, but some
Speaker 6: of the illustrations actually move, you know. There's this little
Speaker 6: animation that goes on. So yeah, so so, I mean
Speaker 6: the hardcover book is very very beautiful. I have to say,
Speaker 6: the actual cover of the book, beneath the dust jacket
Speaker 6: is you know, really striking. The other alternative, the Kindle
Speaker 6: in Motion, has all these illustrations.
Speaker 8: So yeah, that's what I got was the Kindle version,
Speaker 8: and it's incredible. Again the photos of you don't see
Speaker 8: so much anymore, and there were you know, striking and
Speaker 8: incredible and really added to the story. I want to
Speaker 8: thank you very much Harold for coming on. Hope to
Speaker 8: talk to you again real soon.
Speaker 6: Thank you, have a great thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 8: Good night.
Speaker 1: Three