Belle Gunness and her murder farm
The murders at Belle Gunness’s property in La Porte, Indiana, were exposed when her farmhouse burned to the ground in 1908. The body of a woman was discovered in the ashes and initially identified as Belle. But the body lacked a head, making definitive identification impossible. Irresponsible newspaper articles contributed to the confusion with salacious stories that were more speculative than fact-based.
One of the rumors that cropped up and persisted for decades was that Belle hadn’t actually died in the fire but had staged it and escaped. Sightings were reported all across the US, including one in a town in Mississippi in 1931.
BELLE takes this notion, that Belle Gunness staged the fire and escaped, and spins a dramatic tale of a woman determined to create a business to support herself. It’s just that the business in question happens to involve luring men to her property with lonely hearts ads, seducing them, and then murdering them and taking their money.My book BELLE, which comes out February 4, is inspired by the very real Belle Gunness, a notorious 19th century serial killer who lured men to her Indiana farm using lonely hearts ads.
Many myths and legends and could-be-true-or-maybe-not tales sprang up around Belle Gunness. My book takes some of these tales and weaves them into a narrative about a woman determined to succeed in a world built for and by men... even if she has to kill to do it.
Discovery
The discovery of the bodies in La Porte was big news and widely covered, with sensationalist stories appearing in newspapers across the country. In these accounts, Belle was given a number of appellations: La Porte Ghoul, Indiana Ogress, Human Vampire, Female Bluebeard, High-Priestess of Murder, Mistress of the Castle of Death, Queen of Crime, and Hell’s Princess. Her property was dubbed the “murder farm.”
Author Harold Schechter took one of these monikers for the title of his book, Hell’s Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men, which is the book I relied on most heavily for research about Belle and her case.
How many victims?
It’s not definitively known how many people Belle Gunness murdered. About a dozen bodies were discovered buried on the La Porte property in the days after the murders first came to light. And if you think about criminology in the 1890s, and how scenes were treated, you can easily see why it’s hard to say exactly how many people Belle killed.
There was no such thing as protecting a crime scene and methodically recording all the forensic evidence. Retrieving the remains of Belle’s victims was a matter of randomly digging up soft spots in the yard, witnessed by a curious crowd of onlookers. A makeshift morgue was set up in a barn, but it was not very secure and it was easy for anyone to sneak in and take home a gruesome souvenir.
There are a ton of amazing photographs from the crime scene, but I don’t have the rights to any of them. Instead, I encourage you to check out the masses of gawkers at the Murderpedia entry for Belle.
Also, the remains were dismembered and sometimes buried together, with multiple bodies in a single site. And because so many victims came from far away, were strangers to the area, and were not witnessed prior to their deaths, it was hard to identify them.
Between these difficulties and the sensationalist stories that were churned out to sell papers, you can find reports of as many as 40 victims of the “Female Bluebeard.”
Did she die… or disappear?
The murders at Belle’s property were exposed when her farmhouse burned to the ground in 1908. The body of a woman was discovered in the ashes and initially identified as Belle. But the body lacked a head, making definitive identification impossible. Irresponsible newspaper articles contributed to the confusion with lurid stories that were more speculative than fact-based.
One of the rumors that cropped up and persisted for decades was that Belle hadn’t actually died in the fire but had staged it and escaped. Sightings were reported all across the US, including one in a town in Mississippi in 1931.
BELLE takes this notion, that Belle Gunness staged the fire and escaped, and spins a dramatic tale of a woman determined to create a business to support herself. It’s just that the business in question happens to involve luring men to her property with lonely hearts ads, seducing them our of their money, and then murdering them.
In future newsletters, I’ll get into how my fictional tale of Belle diverges from the real woman’s history. If you have questions, do let me know! I’m happy to cover anything readers want to hear about.
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