Imagine this for a second. You wake up, and it's
the middle of the night. The air smells like
smoke. We're in La Porte, Indiana. The date is
April 28, 1908. And this is a quiet place, you
know? A rural farm town where everyone thinks
they know everyone else's business. Right. But
tonight, something is very, very wrong. The sky
is glowing orange. A farmhouse is on fire. Just...
Burn into the ground. And when the sun comes
up and the smoke finally clears, the whole town
is thinking, okay, this is a tragedy. Horrible,
heartbreaking accident. Absolutely. They find
bodies in the rubble, a mother and her three
kids. The story seems to be written already.
Mm -hmm. The community is ready to mourn. They're
ready to write the eulogies. But that's not where
this story ends. Not even close. Because then
a man named Allah Helgi Yellen shows up. And
he is not there to pay his respects. No. He's
there because his brother, Andrew, is missing.
And he has this terrible feeling about this specific
farm. He's looking for answers. And he decides
the only way he's going to find them is with
a shovel. And he goes right out back to the hog
pen of all places. And that's the exact moment
this whole thing flips from tragedy into, well,
an absolute nightmare. Because when Azel and
a few other guys start digging into that soft,
turned -over earth in the pigsty, they don't
find old farm tools. No. They hit something.
Yeah. Something soft. A gunny sack. And you have
to really picture the scene. It's muddy, it smells
awful, and they pull this heavy, wet sack out
of the ground. They cut it open. And inside.
It's not what anyone could have ever expected.
Inside that sack are human remains. Two hands,
two feet, and one head. And that was just the
first one. The first of many. So today, we're
doing a deep dive into the story that turned
that farm into one of America's most gruesome
crime scenes. We're unpacking the life of the
woman they called Hell's Belle, the Butcher of
La Porte. We're talking about Belle Gunness.
And the scale of what they found on her farm
is... It's hard to even wrap your head around.
This isn't just a murder. It's a mass grave.
I mean, they literally stopped counting the bodies.
They did. Some reports say 14 victims. Others
speculate it could be as high as 40. 40 people,
that's just, it's a staggering number, even by
today's standards. And the biggest question of
all is, did she actually die in that fire or
did she get away with everything? And that's
our mission today. We're going to sift through
the historical records, the newspaper clippings
from the era, the police investigations, all
of it. We want to figure out who she was. Was
she some victim of circumstance who just snapped?
Or was she a cold -blooded predator right from
the very beginning? So let's start at that beginning.
Before the murder farm, before she was even Belle
Gunness, who was she? Because monsters like this,
they aren't born, right? They're made. Exactly.
To understand the end, you have to go back to
the origin. She was born Brynhild, Paul's daughter,
Stursef. Brynhild, quite a name. A very Norwegian
name. She was born November 11, 1859, in Silbo,
Norway. And life in rural Norway in the mid -1800s.
That had to be tough. Oh, incredibly tough. This
was not a life of comfort. She was the youngest
of eight children. Her parents were tenant farmers.
Life was defined by hard physical labor. Just
to survive. To get by. The records show that
by the time she was a teenager, maybe 14, she
was already working on neighboring farms. Doing
what kind of work? Mostly herding and milking
cattle. But this is a really crucial piece of
her background because it tells you about her
physicality. Right. She wasn't learning needlepoint
in a parlor somewhere. Not at all. She was outdoors.
She was handling large animals. That kind of
work builds incredible physical strength. But
it also, you know, it desensitizes you. To what?
To the realities of farm life. Blood, muck, birth,
and slaughter. It's all just part of the daily
routine. Life and death are just... Exactly.
It creates a certain kind of pragmatism. And
she was clearly saving up for something bigger.
She had her sights set on America. Classic American
dream story. It was the era of mass migration
from Scandinavia to the Midwest. She worked for
years to save up the money for a ticket, and
she finally made the trip in 1881. And she arrives
at Castle Garden in New York, which was the precursor
to Ellis Island. And that's where Brynhild disappears.
She steps off the boat and rebrands herself.
She becomes Belle. A new name for a new life.
A much simpler, more American sounding name.
Yeah. But she doesn't stay in New York. She heads
straight for Chicago where her sister Nellie
was already living. And this is where her resume
starts to take a very dark turn. A very specific
and in hindsight a very disturbing turn. Because
the job she gets isn't what you'd expect. It's
not domestic service or factory work. Well, she
did a little domestic work at first, but then
she lands a job in a butcher shop. And let's
be clear about what that means. She's not wrapping
sausages at the front counter. No, she is in
the back, cutting up animal carcasses. Okay,
let's just pause on that image. Physically, what
did she look like? She was imposing. The sources
say she stood about 5 '7". Which was tall for
a woman back then. Very tall. And she weighed
somewhere between 200 and 250 pounds. She was
not a small person. She was immensely strong.
You'd have to be to do that kind of work. Absolutely.
And now she's acquiring a very specific technical
skill. She's learning how to efficiently dismember
large mammals. She's learning anatomy, how to
separate joints, how to use cleavers and saws
with precision. It's not just about brute force.
It's a skill. You have to know where to cut.
It's a skill set? You learn how to take a large,
heavy thing and break it down into manageable,
portable pieces. And as we're about to see, this
wasn't just a job for her. It was training. It
was an apprenticeship. That's a terrifying thought.
So she's in Chicago. She's working. She meets
a man. In 1884, she marries her first husband,
Mads Sørensen. And on the surface, they seem
to be building a life. They opened a candy store
together. Sounds very quaint, doesn't it? A candy
store. But this is where the pattern starts to
emerge. A pattern of... Let's call it fire and
finance. The candy store burns down. It does.
The business was supposedly struggling and then
suddenly a fire. And then their home burns down.
Yep. Not long after. And in both cases, what
was the result? An insurance payout? A nice insurance
payout. Now you have to remember, this is the
late 19th century. Insurance fraud via arson.
It was common. It was even called Scandinavian
lightning in some circles. There were no databases,
no easy way to track claims. OK, so burning down
a building for cash is one thing. But what happened
inside that home? That's something else entirely.
This is where it gets really dark. They had two
infant children who died. Both of them. Both
of them. The official cause of death was listed
as acute colitis, which is basically an inflammation
of the intestine. But the neighbors had their
doubts. Oh, yeah. There was a lot of gossip.
First, people were saying they never even saw
Belle look pregnant. So there were questions
about where these children even came from. They
might have been foster children or informally
adopted. Possibly. But more to the point, the
symptoms of colitis, cramping, vomiting, they
look a lot like the symptoms of certain kinds
of poisoning. Like what? Like arsenic or strychnine.
Things you could buy at any general store to
kill rats. Readily available. And let me guess.
The children were insured. Of course they were.
And Bell collected a check after each death.
It's so cold. It's so transactional. She's turning
lives into cash. But the biggest, most brazen
act of this Chicago period was the death of her
husband, Mads. Oh, this one. This incident on
July 30th, 1900. This is a masterpiece of cold,
calculated planning. If you wrote this in a novel,
people would say it was too convenient to be
believable. It's all about the timing. Explain
the insurance situation he had. Okay, so Mads
had two separate life insurance policies. One
was an older policy that was set to expire on
July 30th, that very day. The other policy was
a brand new one, and it was set to begin on.
Let me guess, July 30th. The exact same day.
So for one day and one day only, both policies
were active. They overlapped. So if he dies the
day before, she gets one payout. If he dies the
day after, she gets the other. Precisely. But
if he dies on that specific single day. She gets
both. She gets both. And what do you know? On
July 30th, 1900, Mads comes home from work complaining
of a headache. A headache. Belle says she gave
him some quinine powder for the pain. A little
while later, she checks on him and he's dead.
And the official cause of death? Cerebral hemorrhage.
Yeah. A stroke. Ah. Which, you know, it's plausible
it happens, but given the timing, that quinine
powder sounds incredibly suspicious. But nobody
could prove anything. Not back then. No toxicology
screens. It was her word, and it passed. And
financially, it was a home run for her. She collected
on both policies a total of $5 ,000. And five
grand in 1900 is, that's a lot of money. It's
a fortune. It's equivalent to something like
$180 ,000, $200 ,000 today. More than enough
to start over? It was enough to leave Chicago
behind, buy that farm in Indiana, and start the
next even deadlier phase of her life. This is
where you see her motive is just. It's pure greed.
It's a business transaction. She liquidated her
husband on the day of his maximum value. So she
takes that blood money, moves out to La Porte,
Indiana, and buys a pig farm, a fresh start.
And of course, a fresh husband. Peter Gunness.
They get married on April 1st, 1902. April Fool's
Day. You cannot make this stuff up. It's like
she's mocking the whole institution. And the
bad luck starts almost immediately. Within one
week of the wedding. Peter's infant daughter
from a previous marriage dies. While alone in
Belle's care. Unknown causes was the official
finding. But just think about what that does
to Peter. He's now grieving. He's vulnerable.
He's isolated on this farm with this woman. And
he's next. He didn't last long. Just eight months
later, Peter Gunness is dead too. In the story
she tells about his death. It's just bizarre.
It almost defies the laws of physics. It's completely
unbelievable. She claimed that he was in the
kitchen, reaching up for something on a high
shelf, and a heavy cast iron meat grinder fell
off the shelf, hit him squarely on the head,
and crushed his skull. A falling meat grinder?
I mean, those things are heavy, but for it to
fall with enough force to kill a grown man instantly,
wouldn't he have moved? Or hurt it? It's a ridiculous
story. It requires this perfect, magical trajectory
for the grinder and for Peter to just stand there
and let it happen. It sounds like something a
child would make up. And the local authorities,
they weren't buying it, were they? Not for a
second. This wasn't Chicago. The district coroner
was extremely skeptical. He actually convened
a coroner's jury, an inquest, because he was
sure it was murder. They looked at the wound.
The angle of impact didn't seem consistent with
a falling object. It looked like he'd been hit
with a swung object. But they couldn't prove
it. They couldn't. Bell put on the performance
of a lifetime. The grieving widow, cursed with
terrible luck, crying, wailing. And without modern
forensics, without blood spatter analysis or
anything like that, it was just her word against
a dead man. So the case was closed. Yeah. And
she got another payout. Another $3 ,000 in insurance
money. So now she's a two -time widow. She's
got cash. She's got the farm. But she wants more.
And this is where her strategy evolves. She stops
marrying local men. Probably because she was
running out of them and people were getting suspicious.
And she starts importing her victims. This is
the start of the Lonely Hearts scam. Exactly.
This was a whole genre of crime back then. If
you were lonely, especially in a rural area,
you'd turn to the personal ads in the big city
newspapers. So around 1905, Bell starts placing
ads in Norwegian language papers out of Chicago.
And what were these ads like? What was the bait?
They were designed to attract a very specific
profile. A middle -aged man, probably a Scandinavian
immigrant like yourself, maybe a widower, lonely,
and most importantly, with money. With cash savings.
The ad would promise a comfortable life on a
beautiful farm with a loving wife. But there
was always a catch in the letters that followed.
The requirement. Bring your life savings. Yes.
She'd write things like, we need to pay off the
mortgage together, or we need to invest in more
livestock. She framed it as a test of their commitment.
If you really want to build a life with me, bring
your cash to prove it. It's so predatory. Let's
talk about some of these men by name, because
they weren't just numbers. Henry Gerholt. Henry
Gerholt was a farmer from Wisconsin. He entered
an ad, traveled to La Porte, and at first it
seems like things were going great. He actually
wrote a letter home to his family. What did he
say? He said he liked the farm, said Bill was
a good woman, he was happy. And then he made
a very specific request. He asked his family
to mail him his seed potatoes. Seed potatoes.
He was planning to plant a garden. He was planning
to stay. He was literally putting down roots.
It shows you he had no idea he was in any danger,
and that was the last anyone ever heard from
him. So when the family doesn't hear back, they
contact Bell. And she's just completely dismissive.
She says, oh, Henry, he ran off with some horse
traders, just packed up and left for Chicago.
But he left his things behind. Crucially, yes.
He left his trunk and his heavy fur overcoat.
And in the Midwest, in the early 1900s, a fur
coat is a valuable, essential item. You don't
just leave it behind. Then you have the case
of John Moe. John Moe from Minnesota. He corresponded
with Bell for months. This wasn't a quick thing.
She groomed him. And when he finally came to
the farm in 1906, he did just what she asked.
He liquidated his assets and brought a large
amount of cash with him. And then he vanished.
Just like Henry. But this time, there's a witness
of sorts. A carpenter who did odd jobs on the
farm. What did he see? He was inside the house,
and he noticed John Moe's trunk. But it wasn't
just John's. He told people later that he saw
more than a dozen trunks stored in the house.
A dozen just sitting there. That's like a collection
of trophies. Or just practical storage. But it
speaks to the sheer volume of men passing through
that farm. They'd arrive, hand over their cash,
and then they would just cease to exist. And
because so many were immigrants or drifters,
no one would notice for months, maybe years.
She was exploiting their isolation. She weaponized
it. But that kind of operation can only last
for so long. Eventually, someone's going to come
looking for their loved one with more determination.
And that brings us to 1908, the year it all unravels.
The pressure was definitely building. And it
was mostly because of one man, Al Helgelian,
the brother of another victim, Andrew Helgelian.
And Al was persistent. He was. And he had proof.
He'd found the letters between his brother and
Belle. And what was in them? The whole playbook.
Yeah. Belle. begging Andrew to come, telling
him to put all his money, and this is the really
damning part, telling him to keep his move a
secret from everyone. Don't tell anyone you're
coming here. That's a massive red flag. A huge
one. And Belle knew he was getting close. She
must have felt the net tightening. She even went
to a lawyer and complained that Azza was harassing
her, trying to set up a preemptive defense. And
that's the context for the fire in April 1908.
Exactly. The farmhouse burns to the ground. And
for a moment, The story is that Belle Gunness
is the final victim. Right. They find the four
bodies in the cellar, the three children, and
a headless adult woman. The assumption is that's
Belle. The papers run stories about the heroic
mother who died trying to save her kids. But
then, Al Helgelian arrives in La Porte. And he
is not buying it for one second. He finds a man
who used to work for Belle, Ray Lamphere. And
they start looking around the farm. They do.
And they're drawn to the hog pen. Because the
ground there, it's all uneven. There are these
soft spots, these depressions in the dirt. It
looks like it's been dug up recently. To a farmer's
eye, it's obvious. So they grab shovels. I just
can't imagine the scene. Digging in the muck
of a pigsty, just hoping to find something. Anything.
And they hit that gunny sack. And inside. It's
his brother. The sack contains the dismembered
remains of Andrew Helgelian. Alciel identified
him right there on the spot. My God, to find
your brother like that. But that was just the
start. The police are called and the whole property
becomes an archaeological dig from hell. They
started finding those slumped depressions everywhere.
All over the yard, near the outhouse, down by
the lake. And the descriptions from the newspapers
are just, they're so graphic. Burlap sacks filled
with what one reporter called masses of human
bone wrapped in loose flesh that dripped like
jelly. It's horrifying. But from an analytical
perspective, the condition of the remains told
a story. How so? Every single body had been dismembered
in the exact same way. Decapitated, arms removed
at the shoulders, legs severed at the knees.
Methodical. Incredibly methodical. This isn't
a crime of passion. This isn't a frenzied rage.
This is a process. This is the work of a butcher.
It goes right back to that job in Chicago. It's
the exact same skill set. She was processing
these men the same way she processed cattle.
dismantling them to make them fit into sacks
for easy disposal. So how many bodies did they
ultimately find? On day one, they found parts
belonging to five people. The next day, six more.
After that, it got so chaotic and the press coverage
was so intense that the official count gets hazy.
They literally just said they stopped counting.
So the estimate of 14 to 40, that's based on
the remains they found and the number of men
who were known to have gone there. Correct. So
she goes from being this tragic victim to the
butcher of La Porte overnight. But the biggest
question of all still hangs over everything.
That headless body in the fire. If she killed
all these men, did she die in the fire? Or was
that body someone else entirely? And if it was
someone else, the fire wasn't an accident. It
was the final piece of the cover -up. This is
where the hired hand, Ray Lamphere, becomes the
key witness. Right. He was Bell's on -again,
off -again lover. and farmhand. Right. And he's
immediately the prime suspect for the fire. And
he didn't help his case with what he was wearing
when they arrested him? No. He was caught wearing
John Moe's overcoat and carrying Henry Gerholt's
watch. I mean, it's like she dressed him to be
the fall guy. So Ray is arrested and convicted
of arson. And in jail, he starts to talk. He
sings like a canary. He confesses to a minister,
to a journalist. He lays out the whole operation.
He says Bell lured the men, drug their coffee,
killed them with a cleaver, and he helped her
bury the bodies. And what did he say about the
fire? He claimed Bell specifically asked him
to burn the house down. But here's the twist.
Ray swore that the headless body in the cellar
was not Bell Gunness. Then who was it? He said
it was a decoy. A woman that Bell had lured to
the farm from Chicago. Murdered. and planted
in the house specifically to fake her own death.
Okay, but that's the word of a convicted accomplice.
Is there any actual evidence to support that
theory? There is, and it's pretty compelling.
The doctor who examined the remains of the headless
woman testified about it. He noted that the body
was, at most, 5 '3", and it weighed about 150
pounds. But Belle was 5 '7", or taller, and over
200 pounds. Exactly. The body in the fire was
significantly shorter. and at least 50 pounds
lighter than Belle Gunness. You don't shrink
four or five inches in a fire. The skeleton doesn't
just get shorter. No. And then there's the most
obvious clue. The missing head. It was never
found in the debris. Never. And a human skull,
especially the teeth, is incredibly resilient.
It doesn't just vaporize in a house fire. The
fact that it's missing strongly suggests it was
intentionally removed. Because if you want to
fake your own death with a body double, the first
thing you have to do is get rid of the face.
You have to make identification impossible. So
Ray's story starts to look very plausible. Belle
knew Al Hagelin was coming. She needed to disappear.
So she gets a decoy, kills her, removes the head,
puts her own dental bridge near the body to throw
people off. She plants evidence. Yes. They found
her dental work in the ashes. Then she takes
the cash she's stolen over the years, and she
just walks away before Ray sets the fire. And
Ray Lampert, he died in prison, right? He did,
of tuberculosis. not long after his conviction.
But he stuck to his story until the end. So,
did she get away? Was she ever seen again? That's
the million -dollar question. For years after
the fire, there were reported sightings of Belle
Gunness, people in Chicago all over the Midwest.
But none were ever confirmed. She became a ghost.
A legend. But we have DNA now. They tried to
solve it recently, didn't they? They did. In
2008, a team from the University of Indianapolis
exhumed the headless corpse. The plan was to
extract DNA from the bones and compare it to
DNA from the saliva on an envelope flap that
Bell had licked. Modern science trying to solve
a century -old mystery. What did they find? Frustratingly,
the results were inconclusive. The sample from
the envelope was just too old, too degraded.
They couldn't get a definitive profile. So we
still don't know for sure. We still don't know.
The mystery remains. And in the meantime, the
farm itself became this dark tourist attraction.
Oh, it was a total media circus. People came
by the trainload from all over the country to
see the murder farm. They gawked at the open
graves. Vendors set up stands selling ice cream
and popcorn. That's just so ghoulish. Selling
popcorn at a mass grave site. It speaks to that
dark public fascination with a story like this.
It had everything. A mysterious, monstrous woman.
Gruesome secrets. and an ending that was a complete
question mark it's inspired so much hasn't it
books movies ballads novels you name it she's
become a fixture in american true crime folklore
right up there with lizzie borden or h .h holmes
so to sum it all up we have a norwegian immigrant
who starts with the american dream and twists
it into this this industrial scale nightmare
of murder for profit her method is what makes
her so unique The combination of her raw physical
strength, her butcher skills, and this cold,
calculating greed. She wasn't the thrill killer.
For her, murder was a business model. And it's
the ambiguity of her end that makes her a legend.
Absolutely. Because if that was her body in the
fire, then it's a closed, if brutal, loop. But
if it wasn't. And that's the really chilling
thought I want to leave everyone with. If Ray
Lamphere was telling the truth, if that headless
body was just a pawn in her game. It means Belle
Gunness got away clean. She walked off that farm
with a fortune in cash and just dissolved into
the crowds of 1908 America, free to start over
somewhere else. That raises the question, doesn't
it? For how many years afterwards did she live
out a quiet life? How many people sat next to
a large, older Norwegian woman on a streetcar
in some city or bought something from her in
a shop with no idea they were standing right
next to the butcher of La Porte? It's a terrifying
thought. That's all the time we have for this
Deep Dive. Thanks for listening. We'll see you
next time.