Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: People have been making wine in the San Julian region
Speaker 1: of France for centuries. The wine harvested from their grapes
Speaker 1: is their pride and joy. But like any product that
Speaker 1: depends on a plant in order to survive, the wine
Speaker 1: production there is vulnerable to crop failure. The year was
Speaker 1: fifteen forty five. That season, the vineyards were utterly ravaged
Speaker 1: by insects, devastating the winemakers of the region. So what
Speaker 1: did they do? Well? If it was you or I,
Speaker 1: the most we could do is start from scratch and
Speaker 1: hope that things turned out better next season. But remember
Speaker 1: this was France in the early Renaissance. For all the
Speaker 1: advancements in art and culture, it was still a very
Speaker 1: spiritually driven society, and there was recourse for the average
Speaker 1: person who felt that they had been wronged by an animal.
Speaker 1: They could take that animal to ecclesiastical court, and so
Speaker 1: that year the people of San Julyllen decided to do
Speaker 1: just that to a species of weavil that they blamed
Speaker 1: for the destruction of their vineyards. They hired Pierre Ducal
Speaker 1: to be their legal representative, and he filed a complaint
Speaker 1: with the court. It named the weevil species ringkites oroctus
Speaker 1: as the culprits and demanded punishment for the offending insect.
Speaker 1: The state appointed a legal team to defend the weavils
Speaker 1: and the trial was set. Predictably, the weavil trial did
Speaker 1: not last long. After hearing the opening statements of both sides,
Speaker 1: the chair of the court, Frescois Bonivart, made a ruling.
Speaker 1: He declined to pass sentence on the weevils, saying that
Speaker 1: the creatures acted according to their nature and according to
Speaker 1: the laws of God. Therefore, it was the prosecution who
Speaker 1: needed to reflect on their own worthiness in the eyes
Speaker 1: of God. The weevils represented, in the court's view, divine
Speaker 1: punishment on the people of Sant july En. Bonavard said
Speaker 1: that the citizens of San Julien needed to demonstrate that
Speaker 1: they were a good Christian community. They had to collectively
Speaker 1: repent of all their sins, pay their tithes to the church,
Speaker 1: and march in solemn procession around the vineyards. The list
Speaker 1: of pious activities was extensive, with the mandate that at
Speaker 1: least two people from every Son Julienne household participates in
Speaker 1: order for the repentance to be true. Not long after,
Speaker 1: representatives from Saint Julienne submitted a report to the local
Speaker 1: curate saying that they had done everything the court had
Speaker 1: asked and the weevils subsequently were no longer a problem.
Speaker 1: It was maybe inconvenient for the people, but their problem
Speaker 1: was over for forty one year years at least in
Speaker 1: fifteen eighty seven, a new generation of weavils would return
Speaker 1: and cause trouble for the people again. On April thirteenth
Speaker 1: of that year, representatives of San Julien requested legal assistance
Speaker 1: for dealing with another wave of their weavil driven blight.
Speaker 1: In their petition, they referenced the earlier decision of the
Speaker 1: Ecclesiastical Cords, saying that the weavils had an i quote,
Speaker 1: resumed their pegradations and are doing incalculable injury, and as such,
Speaker 1: they asked the Prince Bishop to appoint new legal representatives
Speaker 1: for the weavils since their original legal defendants were deceased,
Speaker 1: they wanted to try the case again, the same crime,
Speaker 1: just different culprits. This time, the state complied, and the Weavils,
Speaker 1: for the second time, now went to trial for destroying
Speaker 1: the vineyards of San Julien. As you'd imagine, the defense
Speaker 1: maintained the argument from fifteen forty six, saying that the
Speaker 1: weavils were created by God and thus had a right
Speaker 1: to feed on the grasses of the earth. The prosecution,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, argued that orrding to the Bible,
Speaker 1: animals are subservient to man, to which the defense rebudded
Speaker 1: that man certainly has a right to command the animals,
Speaker 1: but not to prosecute them. The trial finally ended not
Speaker 1: with a punishment for the weavils or another round of
Speaker 1: piety for the people of San Julienne, but with a
Speaker 1: compromise of sorts. The mayor offered the weavils a patch
Speaker 1: of land to live on where they could feast to
Speaker 1: their hearts content. The legal team for the Weavils agreed
Speaker 1: to this, but before the agreement was finalized, one of
Speaker 1: the weavil's advocates pointed out that he couldn't sign the
Speaker 1: agreement after seeing the land. It was barren and unwelcoming.
Speaker 1: Experts were dispatched to examine the land on behalf of
Speaker 1: the Weavils, and that's where the story ends as far
Speaker 1: as we know. You see, the final two pages of
Speaker 1: the court documentation no longer exist because, in an ironic twist,
Speaker 1: it seems that at some point in the past few
Speaker 1: hundred years, those pages were eaten by bugs. Bell was
Speaker 1: a hard woman, born of hard times. She grew up
Speaker 1: working on a farm in Norway before emigrating to the
Speaker 1: US in eighteen eighty one she was only twenty one
Speaker 1: years old. She worked other hard jobs in the Chicago
Speaker 1: area until she met and married another Norwegian immigrant, Mads Sorensen,
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty four, and it was around this time
Speaker 1: that Bell was awoken to the wonders of insurance. It
Speaker 1: struck her as odd that you could pay for something
Speaker 1: that you would hope you would never need, whether it
Speaker 1: was home fire or health insurance. She planned to get
Speaker 1: her money's worth out of it. Bell and Mad's Chicago
Speaker 1: home mysteriously burned down, and they received an insurance payout. Next,
Speaker 1: they purchased a small business, which, wouldn't you know it
Speaker 1: also burned down, and then they used that insurance money
Speaker 1: to buy a new, larger home. It was at this
Speaker 1: point that Bell's insurance schemes took a turn for the macabre.
Speaker 1: We mentioned that there are more than one type of insurance. Well,
Speaker 1: now Bell wanted to see what kind of money she
Speaker 1: could get off of life insurance. She and Mads took
Speaker 1: in four foster children and purchased policies on all of them.
Speaker 1: Within a few years, two of them had died from
Speaker 1: and I quote colitis. That's essentially colon inflammation caused by
Speaker 1: things like bacteria or food allergies or you know, poison.
Speaker 1: Mads must have been at least somewhat of an accomplice
Speaker 1: in these schemes. If he was, he should have considered
Speaker 1: that Bell's greed new no bounds, because next she took
Speaker 1: out a policy on him. The truly remarkable aspect of
Speaker 1: this next scheme was that Bell decided her initial plan
Speaker 1: was thinking too small. After taking out one policy on Mads,
Speaker 1: she decided the limits weren't high enough. She took out
Speaker 1: a second, higher policy, and she wasn't content for one
Speaker 1: policy to end and the other to begin. No, she
Speaker 1: waited until the one day that the two policies briefly overlapped,
Speaker 1: and then well Mads mysteriously passed away. Bell next married
Speaker 1: a man named Peter, who, surprise surprise, she also took
Speaker 1: out a life insurance policy on. He had two young
Speaker 1: daughters from a previous marriage. One of them died just
Speaker 1: a week after he and Belle married, and he only
Speaker 1: lasted a few months himself Beyond that. She claimed that
Speaker 1: Peter died after a meat grinder fell and hit him
Speaker 1: on the head. But the thing about meat grinders is
Speaker 1: while they tend to be secured to a counter at
Speaker 1: waste level, so how one happened to wind up falling
Speaker 1: on Peter's head is a mystery. Bell used all of
Speaker 1: this insurance money to buy herself a farm, and this
Speaker 1: would be the final most horrific stop on her murder spree.
Speaker 1: For this next phase of her plan, she actually put
Speaker 1: an ad in multiple newspapers across the Midwest asking for
Speaker 1: a husband to come live with her on the farm.
Speaker 1: Through this process, she attracted a man from South Dakota
Speaker 1: named Andrew Helgalin. Andrew traveled from his home in South
Speaker 1: Dakota to Illinois to be with Belle. But this time
Speaker 1: she didn't even wait for marriage before trying to get
Speaker 1: money out of him. She convinced him to withdraw a
Speaker 1: large amount from his savings at a local bank and
Speaker 1: give the cash to her. And Andrew, well, he doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to have been the wisest man of all time.
Speaker 1: He did exactly as she said, and he went missing
Speaker 1: the next day. But this time Bell might have bit
Speaker 1: off more than she could chew is Hee. Andrew had
Speaker 1: a brother who soon came looking for him. He was
Speaker 1: smart enough to check with the bank, who confirmed that
Speaker 1: Andrew had been there recently with Bell and withdrawn a
Speaker 1: large amount of money. Belle knew that her murder spree
Speaker 1: might finally be at an end. On April twenty eighth
Speaker 1: of nineteen oh eight, the workers on Bell's farm awoke
Speaker 1: to find the main house on fire. The house burned
Speaker 1: to the ground before the fire department could arrive. Once
Speaker 1: they did arrive, though, they found more than they ever
Speaker 1: could have bargained for. Beneath the ruins in the house's basement,
Speaker 1: they found the bodies of three children, as well as
Speaker 1: a woman's decapitated corpse, they wondered if this perhaps was Bell. Later,
Speaker 1: Andrew's brother arrived and helped the police identify Andrew's body
Speaker 1: buried elsewhere on the property, and more bodies were uncovered elsewhere. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: historians believe that Belle's final body count to be somewhere
Speaker 1: between twenty to forty people. It's hard to know for sure,
Speaker 1: given the nature of her crimes though. Oh and the
Speaker 1: body of that headless woman they found in the basement, well,
Speaker 1: it was exhumed in two thousand and seven, and the
Speaker 1: testing showed that the body was probably someone other than Belle,
Speaker 1: which means that she likely killed someone and cut their
Speaker 1: head off an attempt to make the authorities think that
Speaker 1: she had died in the fire and somehow lost her
Speaker 1: head in the process. Belle then set fire to her
Speaker 1: own house and fled out into the night, leaving historians
Speaker 1: very curious as to where she might have traveled next. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: Bell Ganess is known as the most prolific female serial
Speaker 1: killer in American history, and she's also the most successful,
Speaker 1: having made the modern day equivalent of about a million
Speaker 1: dollars off of those crimes. Whether or not she ever
Speaker 1: got to spend it, though, is one mystery that will
Speaker 1: probably never saw. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour
Speaker 1: of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey
Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
Speaker 1: over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until next time,
Speaker 1: stay curious.