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