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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Today, we are going back to our previous

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Speaker 1: episode on Bell Gunness, which is part murder story and

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Speaker 1: part history mystery. Her crimes were discovered after a fire

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Speaker 1: in eight, but whether she perished in that fire is

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Speaker 1: still a little unclear. This episode is from previous hosts

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Speaker 1: Sarah and Debilina, and it came out September. Welcome to

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Speaker 1: Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Deblina

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Speaker 1: Chocolate Boarding and I'm fair Do And this topic. The

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Speaker 1: topic of this episode was a suggestion from listener Jesse,

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Speaker 1: and I feel like I should say that because it's

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Speaker 1: such a gruesome story. I don't want Sarah to be

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Speaker 1: mad at me for picking it. It does have a

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Speaker 1: decapitated body. Yeah, that's true. Are you putting that in

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Speaker 1: the plus category? No, that's not why I selected it.

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Speaker 1: I selected it because it was a listener's suggestion, and

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Speaker 1: it is an interesting story. It's a fascinating mystery, and

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Speaker 1: you know how we love those. It starts, at least

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Speaker 1: for most of the world, this is when it started

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Speaker 1: with a fire that took place the morning of April

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Speaker 1: eight at a small farm just outside of Laporte, Indiana,

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Speaker 1: which was then a town of about ten thousand, about

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Speaker 1: sixty miles from Chicago, and the farm was owned by

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Speaker 1: a widow named Belle Gunness, and her home there was

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Speaker 1: completely destroyed by the fire. But it was after the

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Speaker 1: fire that the real mystery started. So four charred bodies

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Speaker 1: were found in the cellar, and three appeared to be

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Speaker 1: the bodies of Gunnis's children, Myrtle Sorenson, Lucy Sorenson, and

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Speaker 1: Philip Gunnis, who were eleven, nine and five years old, respectively.

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Speaker 1: The fourth body, though, was kind of a puzzle, and

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Speaker 1: like I said, that's where the mystery really started. Yeah, First,

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Speaker 1: people assumed that the body was Gonna says, makes sense, right,

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Speaker 1: It's a woman's body, and Gonnas live there, so you

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Speaker 1: imagine that she would be there with her kids. But

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Speaker 1: there were a couple of problems right off the bat.

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Speaker 1: People thought that the body seemed a little too small

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Speaker 1: to be bell. She was a woman of some stature.

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Speaker 1: Let's say she was about five eight and approximately two pounds,

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Speaker 1: and this body appeared to belong to someone who was

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Speaker 1: much shorter and lighter. It was also missing head, making

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Speaker 1: it even harder to confirm the identity. I should correct

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Speaker 1: my earlier statement. This is why I thought you might

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Speaker 1: have selected because of the head. I know you like

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Speaker 1: missing heads, but only with the Ned Kelly things. Okay, okay, well,

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Speaker 1: and Henry the Fourth too. Whoops, okay, never mind. But

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Speaker 1: what really made people suspicious about this this find was

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Speaker 1: the arrival of a man named Ostle hell Glen, who

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Speaker 1: came on the scene looking for his brother Andrew. And

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Speaker 1: he said that Andrew had been corresponding with Bell and

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Speaker 1: insisted that police search the property and a look for

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Speaker 1: this missing brother. What they found, though, was really disturbing,

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Speaker 1: Andrew's dismembered body, plus the body of a lot of

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Speaker 1: other people. So listener Jesse commented on what a media

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Speaker 1: storm the story would have created if it had happened today.

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Speaker 1: But it actually started a bit of a media frenzy

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Speaker 1: back then too, As more bodies were dug up and

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Speaker 1: it became more and more clear that Bell had been

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Speaker 1: a ruthless killer. Newspapers gave her catchy nicknames like the

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Speaker 1: Mistress of Murder Hill and Lady blue Beard. But who

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Speaker 1: was Bell Gunnis really and why and how did she

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Speaker 1: kill all of these people? And another question which is

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Speaker 1: probably one of the main questions that people want to know, now,

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Speaker 1: did she really die in that fire? So we're gonna

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Speaker 1: look at all of the stuff, but we're gonna start

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Speaker 1: with that first question. Who was Bell Gunnis? So we

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Speaker 1: don't know too much about Bell Gunnis's early life except

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Speaker 1: that she was born in a small village in Norway

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Speaker 1: on November eighteen fifty nine, and her name was originally

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Speaker 1: brin Hilled, Paul's daughter store Set, and her family was

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Speaker 1: very poor and several sources actually suggest that her father

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Speaker 1: may have been a Stonemason and that she probably had

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Speaker 1: to work as a farm hand at an early age

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Speaker 1: to help her family make ends meet. But what we

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Speaker 1: do know is that sometime in or shortly after eight

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Speaker 1: Brynhild immigrated to the United States in her early twenties,

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Speaker 1: specifically to Chicago, and changed her name to Bell. She

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Speaker 1: had a sister named Nelly Larson who had immigrated to

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Speaker 1: Chicago also, so she had a connection there. But she

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Speaker 1: again returned to pretty grueling work. Yeah, and again we

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Speaker 1: don't know too much about those first years in the

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Speaker 1: United States for Bell, but we do know that she

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Speaker 1: probably worked as a house servant, which would have been

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Speaker 1: pretty tough work, and she probably didn't like it very much,

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Speaker 1: because her sister was later quoted as saying, quote Bell

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Speaker 1: was crazy for money, and working as a house servant

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Speaker 1: would not have afforded her much of that. By about

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Speaker 1: eighteen eighty four, she married a man named Max Mad's Sorensen,

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Speaker 1: who was also a Norwegian immigrant, but that wouldn't have

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Speaker 1: really been her ticket to instant wealth either, though. He

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Speaker 1: was a department store detective and later worked for the

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Speaker 1: Chicago Railroad. In the eighteen nineties, they opened up a

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Speaker 1: confectioners shop in downtown Chicago, but that wasn't very successful.

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Speaker 1: It was, however insured. Oh indeed, the building actually burned

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Speaker 1: down around a year into their business venture, and after

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Speaker 1: that they were able to collect a little bit of

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Speaker 1: insurance money. Maybe it doesn't seem like such a big

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Speaker 1: deal on the surface, but this kicked off a pattern

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Speaker 1: for Bell that would probably raise a few red flags today.

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Speaker 1: In eight Sorensen's house also burned down and they collected

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Speaker 1: insurance money for that, and the couple's first two kids,

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Speaker 1: who were also insured, died in infancy, officially of acute colitis,

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Speaker 1: but now looking back, people say the symptoms are similar

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Speaker 1: to if they had been poisoned. Okay, So even if

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Speaker 1: you look at all of that is just really really

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Speaker 1: bad luck or really weird coincidence, what happens next has

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Speaker 1: to make you a little bit suspicious at least. So

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Speaker 1: mad Sorenson dies on July nine hundred, which just happens

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Speaker 1: to be the one day that to life insurance policies

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Speaker 1: from different mutual associations overlapped. Officially, the cause of death

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Speaker 1: was heart failure, but his symptoms actually indicated strychnine poisoning.

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Speaker 1: And the insurance pay out because of those two policies

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Speaker 1: was pretty huge eight thousand, five hundred dollars, and that

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Speaker 1: was quite a large sum for the time, and it

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Speaker 1: said that Bell tried to go collect it just a

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Speaker 1: day after the funeral, so she was certainly not playing

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Speaker 1: the part of the grieving widow. It was probably suspicious,

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Speaker 1: but there wasn't an autopsy. So Bell got the insurance

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Speaker 1: money and went on her way. She did. She used

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Speaker 1: the money actually to buy the farm on the outskirts

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Speaker 1: of Laport, and she moved there with three kids, Jenny,

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Speaker 1: Myrtle and Lucy. And just an aside here about the kids.

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Speaker 1: It's generally accepted that Jenny, whose full name was probably

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Speaker 1: Jenny Olsen, was a foster child, but some say that

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Speaker 1: none of Bell's children were her own. According to an

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Speaker 1: article by Ted Hartzel in American History, Bill's sister Nelly Larson,

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Speaker 1: once said that Bell never had any children of her own,

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Speaker 1: though she would at times have as many as twelve

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Speaker 1: children in her care. So just an interesting thing to

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Speaker 1: think about as we go on. I mean, maybe there

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Speaker 1: was some money associated with fostering children, you know, maybe

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Speaker 1: you've got some money from the government for that or something. Um.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's something that people don't focus on the

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Speaker 1: most when they're talking about Bell Gunness, but it's something

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Speaker 1: that stuck out to me definitely in her story. It's unusual.

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Speaker 1: So in Bell married again, and her second husband this

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Speaker 1: time was a a widower and a butcher by trade named

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Speaker 1: Peter Gunnis, who was also a native Norway. And Peter

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Speaker 1: Gunnis came to the marriage with two kids already. One

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Speaker 1: was an infant named Jenny, and she mysteriously died just

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Speaker 1: a week after the wedding when she was home alone

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Speaker 1: with Bell, and the other was a five year old girl.

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Speaker 1: And after that incident with the baby. She was removed

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Speaker 1: from her father in Bell's care and taken away by

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Speaker 1: her uncle to Wisconsin. Peter Gunnis didn't really last that

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Speaker 1: much longer. Only eight months after the wedding, he was

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Speaker 1: struck on the head by a heavy cast iron sausage

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Speaker 1: grinder that fell off of a kitchen shelf, and it

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Speaker 1: was a fatal injury that, according to Hartzel's article, was

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Speaker 1: quote augmented by the crock of hot brine that quote

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Speaker 1: fell on him simultaneously. Sounds kind of suspicious, doesn't it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you would think so. And in fact, Bell's fourteen year

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Speaker 1: old foster daughter was said to have told people after

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Speaker 1: that that she had seen mama smack him on the

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Speaker 1: head with a cleaver, but later she did eyed this

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Speaker 1: when she was questioned by the corner. The corner and

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Speaker 1: other people actually were suspicious of this, but ultimately there

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Speaker 1: was no evidence, so they had to buy Bell's story

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Speaker 1: and she collected another in insurance money. But after Peter

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Speaker 1: Gannis's death, Bell started taking out matrimonial ads in Scandinavian newspapers.

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Speaker 1: She's looking for love. She describes herself as good looking

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Speaker 1: quote stout quote womanly an example of how one of

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Speaker 1: these ads might read. Quote, comely widow who owns a

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Speaker 1: large farm in one of the finest districts of Laporte County, Indiana,

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Speaker 1: desires to make the acquaintance of a gentleman equally well

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Speaker 1: provided with view of joining fortunes. No replies by letter

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Speaker 1: considered unless senders willing to follow answer with personal visit.

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Speaker 1: And probably my favorite part of these ads, they'd end

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Speaker 1: with lines like triflers need not apply. So she wanted

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Speaker 1: serious inquiries. She was not messing around now, and she

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Speaker 1: didn't just want to chat either. No scrubs exactly got

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Speaker 1: several responses to these ads, and basically this is how

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Speaker 1: it worked. She started exchanging letters with a guy and

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Speaker 1: they would get to know each other. She'd tell him

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Speaker 1: how great her set up at the farm was, tell him,

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Speaker 1: you know, express some sort of affection or something, tell

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Speaker 1: him that she loved him, even make veiled sexual overtures.

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Speaker 1: But at the same time, she made it clear that

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Speaker 1: she expected these guys to bring something to the relationship,

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Speaker 1: namely cash. So after corresponding with the guy for a while,

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Speaker 1: she'd invite him to report, but encourage him to sell

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Speaker 1: all of his belongings and property beforehand, and bring the

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Speaker 1: cash along with him. Like I got the farm, we

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Speaker 1: just need the money, come and bring it. Yeah, But

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Speaker 1: here's the catch. She didn't want any of these guys

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Speaker 1: to tell anyone close to them what they were doing.

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Speaker 1: So guys would show up, run a few errands with her.

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Speaker 1: Usually one of those errands would be to the bank,

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Speaker 1: go to her house, and then they'd pretty much never

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Speaker 1: be seen again. And this happened with several men, including

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Speaker 1: a guy named John Moe another named ole A Budsburg.

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Speaker 1: Both were from Wisconsin. And if anybody at all came

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Speaker 1: looking for these guys after the fact, Bell would just

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Speaker 1: say that she hadn't seen him, or oh, yeah, they

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Speaker 1: were here, but they left. And that's what she'd tell

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Speaker 1: her suspicious neighbors too, because they would see these men

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Speaker 1: go in and then never come out again, and she

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Speaker 1: just say they had left at night. They were gone already.

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Speaker 1: And in nineteen o six something happened that really people

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Speaker 1: couldn't ignore quite as much. Bell's foster daughter, Jenny, disappeared,

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Speaker 1: but Belle had an excuse there too. She told people

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Speaker 1: that Jenny had gone off to college in California, making

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Speaker 1: something of herself. It seemed yeah, and it seemed the

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Speaker 1: daughter being missing was barely a hiccup for her. She

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Speaker 1: just kept up the letter writing, and Bell's Melman even

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Speaker 1: said that she wrote around ten letters a day and

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Speaker 1: got about the same number back in the mail, and

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Speaker 1: on days that she didn't get any letters, she would

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Speaker 1: be kind of upset, kind of cranky. So this all

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Speaker 1: went smoothly for her, relatively so, until she struck up

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Speaker 1: a correspondence with South Dakota farmer Andrew Hilgaline. Presumably she

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Speaker 1: used the same strategy on him that she did with others.

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Speaker 1: His brother later found some of their letters, and several

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Speaker 1: of these have actually been preserved so people have translated them.

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Speaker 1: They were written in Norwegian and and saw the kind

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Speaker 1: of methods that she used and talking to them exactly so.

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Speaker 1: Throughout the letters, Bell would constantly remind him about bringing

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Speaker 1: the money to report and give him all kinds of

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Speaker 1: advice about how to bring it to She would say,

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Speaker 1: you know, tell him the denomination of the bills to

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Speaker 1: bring and tell him to sow it inside is underwear,

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Speaker 1: and that he again that he shouldn't tell anybody about it,

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Speaker 1: and just kept sort of repeating these things throughout and

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Speaker 1: Catherine Ramsland, who is a forensic psychologist who has written

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Speaker 1: about the Gunness case, says Bell's technique of regularly harping

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Speaker 1: on the money thing is actually a technique called seating

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Speaker 1: that's used in hypnosis. So she would try to implant

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Speaker 1: this idea of bringing her money into his unconscious mind

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Speaker 1: with constant repetition. It seems a little suspicious. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I guess they were distracted almost by the sentiments that

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Speaker 1: were also in her letter, because she would appeal to

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Speaker 1: the needs of the immigrant man too. He was probably

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Speaker 1: lonely and homesick in South Dakota, and her talk of

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Speaker 1: Norway probably comforted him. They weren't they weren't all just

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Speaker 1: about the money, So they could relate, They could relate

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Speaker 1: to each other. It seemed like a promising relationship. So

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Speaker 1: after a year and a half of writing these letters

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Speaker 1: back and forth, Andrew came to report in early nineteen

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Speaker 1: o eight and then vanished, just like all of the

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Speaker 1: other guys. But what Bell wasn't banking on was his

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Speaker 1: brother Osle, who knew where Andrew had gone. So Andrew

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Speaker 1: must have broken one of those rules of Bells don't

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Speaker 1: tell anyone. Yeah, he broke that rule. I think he

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Speaker 1: didn't actually follow instructions either as far as selling his

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Speaker 1: farm and you know, sewing the bills and his underwear

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Speaker 1: and all those things. He did have a lot of

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Speaker 1: money sent to the bank in report, but he didn't

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Speaker 1: necessarily follow all the rules. But Osley was concerned and

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Speaker 1: he started writing to Bell. He really thought that his

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Speaker 1: brother was going to return in a week or so,

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Speaker 1: and so when he didn't, he he reached out, and

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Speaker 1: he didn't believe Bell's explanations that Andrew had simply gone away.

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Speaker 1: Around the same time, Bell had some other trouble. She

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Speaker 1: fired her hired hand Ray lamp he here, and he

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Speaker 1: was said to be in love with her. He was

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Speaker 1: probably jealous of all the guys coming around, who knows,

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Speaker 1: but he started making public scenes after he was let go,

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Speaker 1: and Bell tried to take legal action against him and

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Speaker 1: have him declared insane. So maybe it was a combination

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Speaker 1: of pressure from this as well as some increasing questions

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Speaker 1: from these relatives of the men who she had written to,

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Speaker 1: as well as questions from her neighbors. But on April night,

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Speaker 1: Bell kept her kids home from school and she went

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Speaker 1: into town and saw her lawyer and wrote her will,

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Speaker 1: and she was also seen dying a lot of kerosene,

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Speaker 1: so went into town and did some did some errands.

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Speaker 1: Of course, from the intro we know what happened next.

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Speaker 1: Her house burned down, the bodies were found, and ultimately

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Speaker 1: they found between twelve and fourteen bodies, including the body

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Speaker 1: of the foster daughter Jenny, who hadn't gone off to college,

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Speaker 1: and a couple of other unidentified children. And there were

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Speaker 1: several theories as to what happened with the fire. Immediately after,

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Speaker 1: a lot of people thought that Belle had committed suicide

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Speaker 1: because she was afraid that all of her crimes were

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Speaker 1: about to come to light that they had been discovered.

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Speaker 1: Lamp Fear, however, was the one that the police immediately arrested.

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Speaker 1: Belle had told her lawyer the day before that she

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Speaker 1: was afraid of him, and he was charged with four

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Speaker 1: counts of murder and with arson, so it seemed initially

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Speaker 1: that that maybe he was to blame. It was found later, though,

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Speaker 1: that the four people in the cellar had died by

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Speaker 1: means other than the fire. They had probably been poisoned

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Speaker 1: by Stryck. Nine They found traces of strictnin and their

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Speaker 1: bodies actually, but the bodies had been mishandled so that

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Speaker 1: they couldn't prove it, so at lamp Here's trial in

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Speaker 1: May eight he was only convicted of arson. He died

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Speaker 1: less than two years later in prison, and on his

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Speaker 1: deathbed he confessed to setting the house on fire and

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Speaker 1: to helping Bell escape. He said the headless body belonged

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Speaker 1: to a woman from Chicago whom Bell had just hired

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Speaker 1: as a housekeeper. She killed the housekeeper and the three

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Speaker 1: children and planted the bodies to make it look like

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Speaker 1: an accident. He also admitted to helping Bell bury the

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Speaker 1: other victims, although he said that he wasn't involved in

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Speaker 1: actually murdering them. But he did describe how Bell did

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Speaker 1: murder her victims. It turns out that she poisoned a

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Speaker 1: lot of them. Some of them she left their bodies intact,

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Speaker 1: some of them she butchered. Some of the bodies she

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Speaker 1: actually dropped into a vat of hot water and then

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Speaker 1: covered with quicklime, which is a substance that kind of

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Speaker 1: burns like acid. So I'm assuming she did this to

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Speaker 1: disguise the bodies. So who knows how many of these

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Speaker 1: details are actually accurate, but this is probably the closest

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Speaker 1: scenario to most to what most people think happened as

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Speaker 1: far as Bell. What happened to Bell after the fire,

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Speaker 1: though nobody knows for certain what happened to her after

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Speaker 1: that or to her money. Historians estimate that she may

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Speaker 1: have extorted up to ninety dollars from her suitors, but

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Speaker 1: the day after the fire there was only seven hundred

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Speaker 1: in her Laport bank account. So we mentioned in the

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Speaker 1: beginning that Bell's story did get a lot of attention

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Speaker 1: at the time, and since then she's become sort of

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Speaker 1: a spooky local legend in that part of Indiana. Neighbors,

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Speaker 1: for instance, claimed to have seen her in the weeks

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Speaker 1: after the fire, and there have been numerous Bell sidings

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Speaker 1: since then, but the most notable one happened in Los Angeles.

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Speaker 1: In one so a considerable amount of time after after

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Speaker 1: her disappearance, a woman named Esther Carlson was accused of

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Speaker 1: poisoning a man she worked for named August Lindstrom for

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Speaker 1: two thousand dollars that he had put in a joint

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Speaker 1: bank account, and Carlson died before this went to trial,

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Speaker 1: but a couple of people familiar with Bell. They were

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Speaker 1: Laport residents who were in Los Angeles at the time.

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Speaker 1: Claimed a newspaper photo of Carlson matched that of Bell,

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Speaker 1: and others also confirmed the connection, but there wasn't any

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Speaker 1: definitive proof that this was the same woman. Still up

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Speaker 1: to her old murdering ways all the way in l A. Yeah, So,

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Speaker 1: I mean the question is still out there. Did she

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Speaker 1: die in the fire or not? It's really tough to say.

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Speaker 1: I mean, people have wondered about this for years. Authorities

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Speaker 1: eventually found a dental bridge with one tooth in it

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Speaker 1: in the ruins of the fire that a dentist positively

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Speaker 1: identified as Bell's, but historians were hardly convinced by this

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Speaker 1: and how convened. I mean, if you were going to

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Speaker 1: fake your death and a fire, leave behind your dental bridge. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Another point that I found in some of my research was, Okay,

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Speaker 1: Bell Gunness is obviously a psychopath. She's killed all of

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Speaker 1: these people, So is she really going to care to

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Speaker 1: pull out one tooth to leave in the stental bridge?

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Speaker 1: Probably not when you look at it that way. People

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Speaker 1: have not let this go though. In two thousand seven

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Speaker 1: late two thousand seven, Suzanne Mackay a great granddaughter of

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Speaker 1: Bell Gunness's sister and one of the last living relatives

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Speaker 1: of the infamous serial killer, gave a team of US

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Speaker 1: researchers permission to exhume the headless body that was found

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Speaker 1: in the cellar of the torched farmhouse, and they were

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Speaker 1: going to compare the DNA from the remains there to

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Speaker 1: saliva samples from bell sealed letters. So as far as

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Speaker 1: we know, the tests were inconclusive with that, and I

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Speaker 1: think that they got a sample from a DNA sample

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Speaker 1: from the family member also, and we're trying to test

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Speaker 1: that as well. And I looked for more recent updates

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Speaker 1: on that, and I couldn't find anything more recent in

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Speaker 1: the last couple of years, So I don't know for

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Speaker 1: sure if they were able to find a match or not.

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Speaker 1: I think what they're really looking for is to find

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Speaker 1: the opposite of that, is to find that there's not

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Speaker 1: a match, because most people believe that it was that

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Speaker 1: Bill's missing, and then you know, the mystery will still stand.

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Speaker 1: Where did she go? Do you have? Jenks to hey

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Speaker 1: so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this

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Speaker 1: episode is out of the archive. If you heard an

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Speaker 1: email address or Facebook U R l or something similar

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Speaker 1: over the course of the show that could be obsolete now.

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Speaker 1: Our current email address is History podcast at i heart

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Speaker 1: radio dot com. Our old health stuff works email address

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Speaker 1: no longer works, and you can find us all over

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