Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 374: Belle Gunness Part I - Holes in the Hog Pit

Episode Date: July 20, 2019

It's Heavy Hitter time as we cover the most vicious black widow America has ever seen: Hell's Princess herself, Belle Gunness. Join us on the first part of our series as we cover Belle's road her murderous plot to rob countless Norwegian bachelors of both life and money as well as her murder and disposal methods. 

There's no place to escape to. This is the last talk on the left That's when the cannibalism started Original white people are interesting People Straight from the source of course right from the hinterlands Uh-huh straight from the the islets and the fjords of speed in and Norway come some pretty Interesting people, but I'm gonna go out in a living here that I I'd like to believe Not 100% of them come to America to murder. I agree

I think that we should start welcoming them again. I think that we welcome them a lot right now I think we should re-welcome them. Okay. Well, say Norwegians. We do not own we do not immediately Suspect you of murder. Well You can come back welcome to the last podcast on the left everyone. I am Ben kissal with Marcus Parx Hello, Ben. How are you buddy? I'm doing good. You're looking good. And now we have the new Open-minded open borders open borders Henry Zeprowski Well, it's so brave to welcome the Norwegians back into our good graces. My borders are so open I'm wearing a brazier up on my underpants. I

Am I ate black licorice this morning? Why did you eat black licorice this morning? I just did it's a Scandinavian thing You know the ice the Icelanders love black licorice. It is disgusting. No, that's they like whatever is bad They never got red licorice. So they didn't have any other alternatives. So for them That's just licorice and they don't even know how bad they have it licorice Licorice sounds like a Greek god that is just like in the corner drooling He really doesn't do anything. He's licorice. They sometimes let me clean up after Thor That's not bad licorice. You're doing such a good job. All right today's episode This is gonna be so badass surprisingly not as much information as there should be about this character

We're gonna cover today. We're talking about Belle Gunness. Yeah, yeah Belle Gunness was an American black widow serial killer from La Porte, Indiana Who over a period of 24 years in the late 19th early 20th century murdered at least 14 people although some historians estimate that her body count could be as high as 40 Wow Many of Belle's victims were newly arrived Norwegian immigrants who were seduced not by Belle's non-existent good looks But more by the promise of a traditional Norwegian life on a nice farm not too far from Chicago

Nothing I would like better than a nice traditional Norwegian life just out there You got your wooden air pump shoes on. Oh, yeah, I'm wearing that. I'm wearing the new those air max 720s But back in the day it was the same but made out of wood Yeah, and it's just you with your huge flaxen haired children pulling big like the big tillin Like cross things that go on your shoulders the big things with the ropes on them with the blades at the end of it I'm not farmer The word you're looking for is plow. Ah See I was thinking guillotine. I don't know you know what it you

I think about with Norway. I think fish inside of big jars of frothy milk Tradition now well, that's the Norwegian dream these men were looking for but that's not what they found It turns out when they went looking for the Norwegian dream all that we found was nothing in trouble there It is Belle Gunness is a fairytale villain come to life one of the most And I'm gonna put it out there unfortunately because we don't like to fucking celebrate these serial killers. Do we know we do not? We do not we we celebrate the triumphant Victims who whom perhaps beat the serial killer or the detectives who found the serial killer, but not today today Got us in being a fucking she is she is all sorts of metal

I'll give it a pass just cuz she was born in the 1800s a different time to be born Well, that's a funny thing about black widows while movies give us the impression that black widows are hot young Sexy and seductive in reality most black widows look a lot more like Uncle Fester than Joan Cusack Come on leave fact uncle Fester was doing really good when he got all cute He I loved you remember when he had the bowl cut way Adam family values. He was really really good, but you know he was sport in a real hog Yo, of course. Yes. Well, Bell Gunness was no exception to this rule one monstrous account of Bell's looks Made while she was still around reads more like the description of a creature from Norwegian folklore

Rather than an actual woman. This is how it read She was a fat heavy featured woman with a big head covered with a mop of mud colored hair Small eyes huge hands and arms and a gross body supported by feet grotesquely small I mean, that's a great tinder profile. It is me. It's to the point. You know what you're gonna get and I guarantee you I don't know this, but I guarantee you she's a good cook Maybe is she a good cook come and see how my bosoms match my shoulders And how even my body can be balanced upon my feet the size of the apples, but she

Was fucking jacked that I would compare her. She has come similar in the the line of serial killer to me She is an ultimate monster. She's a true true monster and I would put her close to the pans ram and Edgene's of the world were just these birth things that just slid out as a perfect package of evil Well, Edgene was let's give him a little bit He was he was a goal But Belle Gunnice was a malicious being like she was a being that was put on this earth to kill for money Oh my the thing was Gunnice's hideousness was not just on the outside Besides the slew of Norwegian bachelors that ended up buried in Belle's hog pits

Gunnice murdered many of her own Children as well in addition to anyone else that might suit her needs This needs to be season 98 of the bachelorette Individibly only one person leaves and since Gunnice was such a nefarious character She had some of the best nicknames in the true crime biz The Laporte ghoul The Indiana ogres. Oh, man. It's from glow The female blue beard the high priestess of murder and of course

Hell's princess Man, I just see her with her toad face sitting on a pile of brimstone with a big lollipop He's like in hell sick call me a princess But I also the nickname that didn't stick was tiny foot bitch. Oh, yeah, no, she had big feet No, she had tiny feet. I don't know what happened grotesquely small feet was how they described it And speaking of hell's princess that just happens to be the name of our main source for this series hell's princess By Harold Schechter. All right It is like all a Schechter's work top-notch true crime alive with historical detail and

Beautifully written and if you have Kindle unlimited Hell's Princess is free So just go and click the button for Harold because Harold deserves it And if you don't have Kindle unlimited go buy a copy of Hell's Princess because I really could not recommend this book enough It's fantastic. Thank you so much Marcus For thank you for promoting the freeway that people could read my book Maybe you could come by my house and throw a couple of dollars He gets a cut it's all it's all a part of the deal of course It's also available in hardback right now

It's I think it just came out like earlier this year, but it's fucking great You can also just buy it on Kindle as well if you don't have this Kindle unlimited that is true I never heard of Kindle unlimited before it sounds like a really Like fancy fun way of saying you read too much That's never read a book. I have read a book. I've read more. I read Howard Stern's book. I don't read a lot of fiction Do you think that Kindle only has fiction? This book is not non. It's non fiction. Oh, sorry, buddy I don't want to support Chinese property or Chinese intellectual property theft, so I don't buy the Kindle What?

Hey bud Well without further ado, let's get into the story of Belle Gunnice Belle Gunnice was born in the Norwegian district of Selbu in 1859 with the much more Norwegian name of Brinhild Polsdaltes Storset Because she was Paul's daughter and the name of the farm where her father leased land was Storset, okay, nice simple way to name your name is you are dirt

Dirt and stick and because of how much dirt I can see It's very very simple to name people in the brightest parts of the world But also what I love that this is one of the traditional I watched a documentary on Belle Belle Gunnice I believe it was called the Hell's Princess and it was they all went to Selbu and they always say the same shit Well, you go to the idyllic town where one of these serial killers are from they'd be like and we cannot understand How such maniac can come from the delicious and wonderful fjords of Selbu and just mean like I'm sorry Maybe it's cuz it's boring. Yeah, it's full of black liquor ish No, we really don't know anything about Belle's first 14 years or so all we know is that she was a farm girl

Meaning she milked she churned she wrangled and did all the things that farm kids are expected to do Oh, yeah, and that reminded me of Amish paradise churning up to butter Yes, we saw weird all last week in Syracuse. I it was great. He's fantastic life. Wonderful. Check out. We're down But Bell's family was exceedingly poor and Bell's desire to rise up from poverty became a pathological need and this need Influenced just about every decision she made in life part of this need came as it strangely often does from a cruel nickname Oh bullies from the world bully should be thanked. I don't know. She turned out to be a horrible person This one is bad

You don't think they called fucking Steve jobs like Steve blowjobs skinny Steve and shit like that I mean it pushes you up. It gives you it gives you fuel. He turned out to be a raging sociopath successful American Since Bell's family was poor they had to scavenge spruce twigs from the forest for firewood. This became Bell's job And as a result she was given the nickname Snirke vist Paula which translates to Paul's twig daughter What that's not that I was much far far worse than that snirke vist Paula sounds pretty awful

Snirke vist Paula sounds like a fun little smurf. I tell you what it's better than being called Paul's a pig daughter. That's not so bad It's just a twig daughter Now the people of Selbu had differing opinions about Bell Gunness when her crimes finally came to light the people who actually knew her Such as a former named rude who employed Bell as a dairymaid described her as a well-behaved Diligent person was because she was great at being a dairymaid honestly. She was good because she also was physically strong Right from a little girl like we're gonna get to a point where we're gonna see Bell grow up to being close to six feet tall 225 pounds like it's not that she's obese. She's fucking jacked 280 pounds all right so now we have to ask the question in fantasy match-up world celebrity serial killer death match

Catherine Knight Bell Gunness who's winning the battle of the female beast? I'm going Bell Gunness. Oh, I don't know I just burned my tip. It just got I just might I got so bowing go'd from this the idea of the two of them fighting each other I I don't know. I'd have to see it. I've had to see it play out. I'd like to see what Bell looked like during conditioning Okay, but the description of Bell as a well-behaved Diligent person was far too boring and measured for many of the people of Selbu After the crimes came to light a newspaper called Selbegan wrote that Bell was quote Remembered by many as a very bad human being capricious and extremely malicious She had unpretty habits always in the mood for the dirty tricks She was a scum of society

Stone-cold and such a nice accent. Yeah, it was used to show up because I actually heard that she invented the flat tire And other rumors sprang up in the wake of her murders as well Allegedly when Bell was 17 she got pregnant by a local big wig But when he found out about the pregnancy he allegedly beat Bell until she miscarried. She lives a hard Hard fucking life. Yeah, but that's the thing is that it said that this guy died of something awfully similar to arsenic poisoning Soon after but in Harold Schecter's estimation. This is far from a Bell Gunness origin story It's most likely that this was a myth that was established after the fact Okay

Well, there's a lot of people that wanted to be a part of the story like man like many of these serial killers Especially in the past you're gonna see people add on to these notorious stories because it gives you an identity It gives Selbu an identity. They actually put a sign up for the Gunness homestead What used to be the Gunness home what we would call the Gunness homestead, which was actually the Storset homestead where they would go and and they actually celebrated there And so there was a lot of folklore that was attached to her because of the kind of mythic proportions of her crimes That would come about and she would be viewed as a literal monster But but also should the hard scrabble life that they came from seemed to directly

Influencer because they were they were sharecroppers essentially and Ended up working for and seeing the richer side of town all of these like rich people going to school back and forth every day And she did the MC Hammer thing where she looked at it and she's like I want to build a glass house on the top of Compton Right. Well, I can't even imagine how difficult it would be to play scrabble in Norway Think about it with their snorkels merchants. Like how would you even get the words out? I don't know very difficult Belle was only one of seven children and in the late 1870s early 1880s Her sister Olina

immigrated to America and married a man named John Larson and Olina Posdar Storset became Nelly Larson they I grew up with all these people in Wisconsin. They all went to would they all went to Stevens Point, Wisconsin I know every single one of these people And after a few years Nelly decided it was time for her sister to come as well So she paid the way for her sister to come on over and Brinhild Posdar Storset Americanized and became Bella Peterson Hi, my name is Bella Peterson

Oh Okay, all right Now while the journey to America from Trondheim by way of haul was not as bad as it once was because the travel time had dropped from about six Months to ten days. The ride was still fucking awful. Yeah, dude This it was rough getting to America all of this boat travel sounds. Yeah fucking gnarly Can you imagine what the bathroom is like on a boat day nine? Oh, I'm gonna tell you exactly what it was like. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well meals consisted of hard biscuits rancid butter and

Salty herring soup that was so disgusting that most passengers couldn't eat it and what was more They all had to go to the bathroom in tiny literal shit holes Where all the feces just piled up higher and higher and higher as the journey went on Well, that's why you got to take a dump in one of those double dare buckets It has the little red and blue lines on it and whoever gets the dump over the blue line They get extra herring Do you think that they dared each other being like, okay, Sven? Let me get on your shoulders the last person to add a duke to the top of the pile and the toppers over loses

And so they just try to get at the top the highest time. Oh, that's what's kind of gray Oh, it's a piece of herring, but you know, I honestly paid about $45 for this same meal in a Michelin star restaurant. They're doing this now. Yes, I believe that you did And vomit was pretty much everywhere due to all the seasickness covered damn near every inch of the decks up top Despite the fact that the steamers all advertised that they all had dedicated cleaning crews to prevent such buildup This must have been nice for one dude who had a poo-poo and vomit fetish One guy that was just like can we take it again? We take the ride again really liked it here I am loving this is this Delta comfort

This is incredible But even through all that Bell made it to America docking in either Boston, New York or Quebec City Because we're not really sure which one but from one of those cities she along with throngs of other Scandinavian immigrants Made their way to the Scandinavian strongholds of America places like Minnesota, Wisconsin or in Bell's case Chicago Chicago They advertise new single women to come to Chicago because they believe that they Would put these big advertisements in national newspaper say come to Chicago There is work for you. And so are these influx of these like plump

Swedes and single these single plump Swedes and norweds Come over through just like yeah, they got some they got some boat dirt on them, which is dookie But once you brush that off that's some prime wife material Absolutely, I love a big strong Midwest gal. They're all over the place out there Yeah, and you know interestingly enough when Belganis came to Chicago that was around the time within about five years or so that H.H. Holmes was doing his thing so technically if they could have met Belganis could have been a hero when she murdered H.H. Holmes She would have joined the hotel kissel There's a lot of truth and they think there is one line of thought that was saying that she may have been inspired by H.H. Holmes

And we're gonna see as we go. It's actually there are some Simularities essentially just because what I I guess what I'm not gonna say the term appreciate about Belganis is the fact that she didn't tell people shit That's why we don't know a lot of factors about her life, especially early on She was she kept to herself because she knew that her that secret sunk ships She didn't want to fucking let anybody know what her fucking scam was much like H.H. Holmes that would Excalibur very covertly cover all of his actions for as long as humanly possible Well in Chicago Belganis like three quarters of the Norwegian immigrant women in that town

She took up the business of housekeeping helping out her sister's new family with sewing cleaning and laundry But a life of housekeeping wasn't gonna satisfy the newly christened Bel Peterson According to Bell's sister Nellie Bell was quote insane on the subject of money and would do anything to get it Yeah, also just cut to her with her shoulders knocking hummels off the walls just like Amelia Bedelia trying to vacuum the curtains It must have been a nightmare to have Belganis as a cleaning lady It's time to clean the tables and it's just like all set up for dinner and then just pulling the tablecloth Pretty intense pretty intense Well from what the sister said Bell never really cared for anyone as far as a potential husband went

The only thing Bell cared about was how much money the guy had or how much comfort he could provide and still Bell's first husband was able to provide neither good Mads Ditliff Anton Sorensen Was a handlebar mustached night watchman at the Mandel brothers department store where he was paid 15 bucks a week Which is about 450 bucks in today's money So what does the night watchman do so they just like his boss shows up in the morning? He's like how was he's like it was night Once again, I looked at the sky and I didn't see a single son. No Another good job for me. I did well tonight

Well the two of them were married within a gear of Bell's arrival in America and the ceremony was performed by the Reverend John Z. Torgerson who according to Shector performed so many weddings in Chicago that he came to be known as Cupid's noted aid. Oh Work so well on a work so well on a tombstone. Yeah, that is noted aid Cupid's noted aid does sound like half of the creams that I was sent for my butthole But Bell didn't get to murdering right away nor did she do anything even remotely criminal for quite a while She was married to old Mads for a full decade before anything went awry from what her sister said Bell was instead

Laser focused on having children. Hmm. In fact, it was this need for children that drove a wedge between Bell and her sister While Bell was never able to conceive Nelly had already popped out five kids as the turn of the century neared Oh, that's a tough that how that's tough. That is like being down five touchdowns and there is not much time left in the game No, because you had to plant your seeds in America Yeah, to continue your family line and they love having big children But Bella Bell seemed to she just I don't know they never really answered in any of these books about whether or not she had Problems conceiving but it seemed like she did. Oh, yeah, must have. Yeah, well Bell figured Sister's got five kids, right? Why not just let me

Have one there's because they're my kids Yeah, but what if you just let me have it because they're not Pogs It's not it's not a trading card. Here's a trade for you. You'll get the one Four-headed case of from a me for the kid. I keep do I need to put on my scary monster voice? Do you want me to do it? Because I'm rookie Okay, have the child Take Tim he's he's horrible

But the way it seems to be intimated I read about it It actually did become very scary that yeah Bell Became so focused on this child that she would send her to go visit And you're like let her visit with her auntie and she would come and stay at Bell's house And then she'd show up and Bell will answer the door and essentially be like take her Why don't you come and take her then and like you had to like do she made it physical? To the point where they had to take the kid and then they cut ties with each other it destroyed their relationship But this is the first example of just like Bell is a non-stop. She's a force of nature

Yeah, yeah, it's the hand that violently rocks the cradle here, but it wasn't the sister that cut the ties It was Bell that cut the ties when the sister finally said no, you're not taking my four-year-old daughter Bell to stop talking to her and to cut ties completely And they hardly spoke for the rest of their lives Okay, but that doesn't mean that Bell gave up on getting kids an 1891 Bell who was well known in the Chicago Norwegian community as a woman who desperately wanted a child She happened to come across a dying woman with an eight-month-old baby Hmm, and as the woman lay dying

The woman supposedly put her infant daughter Jenny into Bell's arms and made her swear to take care of the child And the dying woman's husband shattered by grief just let Bell take her at least for a time But after a few years the husband decided he wanted to regain custody But Bell bought the request and was granted sole custody of a child that wasn't even hers to begin with okay And it was around this time that Bell discovered the black widow's best friend insurance fraud What I like all that what's interesting too, but Bell is that she came out she figured this shit out Yeah, she figured out these crimes like she didn't have a helping hand like she it's true crime

Like what it was like she might have been reading true crime things But I don't know if it even really talked about insurance fraud I'm not really sure like she kind of piece it all together. She lived vaguely honestly for about 10 years of her life Right, and then it was just straight up a life of fucking crime. Well, H.H. Holmes wasn't he also doing insurance fraud? Yeah, yeah, so it was like the new it was their big thing back then yep Yeah, that's been that's when you could still get away with stuff before all these goddamn laws came into place Really stifled the American experiment. I was talking about with that a little bit last night I thought I think it's interesting right because you look at people like B.T.K. and Jeff Dahmer

They had legit jobs like they went to a job there on some level like We talked about a little bit when we you see the last book on the left It does come up quite often that we say a lot of it maybe has to do with the extended game Like it comes with like a life of leading a the dichotomy of I live this suburban normal life Right job, and then I'm also this monster at night But it's interesting to see about even Jeff Dahmer's been like well, you know, you got to make an honest living where Bell and Gunnice was a pure criminal Yeah, like every single thing had to be done crookedly and fast and brutally and I wonder what the difference is

What's the real difference between a serial killer and someone like her that also puts you in the H.H. Holmes category where you are a fucking Straight-up supervillain. Well, I think people like Bell Gunnice and people like Karl Pansram They just they don't lie to themselves They they have no compunction whatsoever about who they are and what they are and so they go for the gusto at every turn Perhaps something as well with being a lady in what the early 19th century Maybe there's late early 20th century late 19th century Perhaps being a lady in the early 20th century not all the jobs available for you No, she had plenty of jobs like she was keeping things like that what she doesn't like well

I mean well, but let's get into where her jobs actually took her because she had Plent there was no no, there's no excuse for Bell Gunnice There's no excuse at all in 1884 she and her husband bought a candy store in Chicago Oh, yeah where they sold cigarettes and a few groceries in addition to the candy It's the Marcus store Yeah, nicotine and candy that's That needs to be the name of your bio nicotine and candy

It's what fuels me. I know it a needless to say though. Nobody wanted to buy candy from a surly Norwegian and her browbeaten husband So after less than a year a fire from a supposed Exploding kerosene lamp burned the place to the ground when only Bell and Ginny were minding the store But investigators never found any traces of glass Hmm, but somehow Bell was able to convince the insurance investigators that yes a kerosene lamp had exploded I had nothing to do with this and with that Bell learned that she could get away with major crimes without consequence And she took her first step towards the more Murderous side of insurance fraud wait, so it started with her blowing up a bunch of candy

And then she turned to murder. That's a pretty big leap I don't know man arson and murder have been connected for forever. It's the same with it's some kind of release It's some kind of because that's where I put this to is that yes It was for insurance fraud, but I also think she just likes setting fires. Yeah Yeah, she might have been a little black metal. She might have had a little black metal in her with coming from Norway and everything It's the same strain. It's the same strain of people, but then I also wonder in when I read like all of this kind of shit I wonder if she just she also figured out cuz she lied her way through so much shit And it's interesting to see cuz I wonder if she did it seemed from what it will see later examples

She did a lot of the the crying woman like she'd go hysterical so that when they would go to like question her and she'd be like Like she does this thing where I think they're just be like alright lady fucking let's get this over with like they would she has some kind of technique Well, her other technique besides the hysterical woman was the stone wall Where she would even if that because she wasn't that good of a liar like every time she told a lie It wasn't like people would Believe her automatically it would make you go. Hmm Alright, I guess but you but she could you could never prove that she was lying But you couldn't prove that but she couldn't prove that she was telling the truth either

But she stuck to her lies and she kept stonewalling people with it over and over and over again until finally like I don't want to deal with you anymore. She Casey Anthony that that's honestly. Hey That works, but before Bell was gonna get to murder. She's somehow acquired for more children Wait, what the hell do you some somehow acquire for more kids? I don't know. There is no explanation There's no explanation. She literally just showed up with these kids and then she she did try to say Oh, no, they're mine. She tried to be on say it. Yeah for a second Oh, yeah, she cried tried to claim that they were all biologically hers But in order for that to be true Bell would have had to shit out two consecutive sets of twins over the course of two years

After not being able to conceive for the 15 years prior it was a skinny babies Because I only ate a spaghetti when I was away at the child and they became a thing as a spaghetti you buy it Yes, yeah, thank you. I kill you did I say it out loud So now she's got five kids now she's got five none of which are hers none of them are hers But most likely Bell either straight up stole those babies or bought them from desperate women Mmm, and it seems like Bell bit off more than she could chew while two of the kids made it past infancy Two didn't even make it past six months Geez to the kids immediately died right off the top

Which I was talking about with Marcus because I don't know because we're gonna find out She is gonna have a habit of every child that runs across her is gonna end up fucking in the fucking grave But my question is is that I don't know whether it was just straight-up negligence or if she actually killed those children It seems like kids just died back in the day. Seriously. Did she get this these kids by playing the rings game at the world's county fair? Like they used to do with goldfish and they just die immediately because you didn't put them in salt water It's just kids in big plastic bags with water up to their eyeballs How the hell are all these kids died well I mean we don't know if the kids just died or not because the infant mortality rate in America at that time was

Staggeringly high kids. It was very difficult to get a kid past like two or three years old But it could also be the bell just decided that four was too much, you know, there's like four kids. Ah, do I really need four kids? Because you know she later proved she was not above using murder to solve an inconvenience Okay, but still two children did survive and the Swarzen family kept trucking along even after Mads was swindled out of $20,000 in today's money by a fake Alaskan mining scam They got scammed hard because a lion miner because I mean that's difficult to see because I mean you do have to go to the street and cover yourself with dirt On the walk in and being like I know racks Take your axe like I get that is a lying miner, but I also feel like it's bird her as soon as she got scammed

She was just like I gotta up my fucking scam game myself Right. Yeah, cuz she repaid those losses with another fire insurance scam. What's she burned down now? What did she burn that she burned down part of their house and they had insured their belongings So they didn't burn down the whole house Just but they burned down enough belongings to claim like six hundred fifty dollars in losses So if your husband or your wife asks you like what part of the house do you like least? Just know that your view you've hit hard times financially and maybe that part of the house will get burnt out the breakfast Nook, I've only ever cried in the breakfast

But when the century turned in 1900 Bell decided that after almost 20 years of marriage it was time for Mads to go. Oh He didn't do anything wrong. It doesn't sound like he didn't do anything right either I guess see Mads had taken out a $2,000 life insurance policy that was set to expire on July 30th 1900 now Mads could have extended that policy But he instead chose to switch to a policy with the higher payout of three thousand dollars But Mads ever the practical one set up the switch where the larger policy came into effect Before the smaller one ended that meant that there was exactly one day where both

Policies would be in effect very smart and the total payout for both combined was a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in 2019 cash And it just so happened that July 30th 1900 was the day that Mads Sorenson died well it just so happened to align perfectly with bell one and a hundred and twenty thousand dollars Just it just sort of worked out that way. It's kids met. It's weird how it happens like that I what do you think though Marcus? Do you think she planned it? Yeah, do you think that what I mean? Obviously planned it but like

when they when the plans were laid out like because Bell Gunness is such an interesting combination of hesitation with also these like bursts of like Fucking sudden decision. She's not like she's an opportunist. Yeah, and so how long you think and she's waiting to kill Mads for one Of these insurance policies. I don't think she was plan what what I think is I don't think she was planning to wait to kill him I think when she saw that there was this one day when both of these will pay out I think when she saw there was one day where she could make a hundred and fifty thousand dollars I think she just went huh?

Boy That's a big check if she did it If she did it on accident she needs to go and play roulette immediately and just get double zero every single time because that would be incredible No, I really do I mean I think she's you know like what the best criminals are where they're able to they are Premeditated, but they're also able to jump on an opportunity the moment that it comes across That the moment that it comes to the forefront Well supposedly Mads had come home from his night watchman job on the day he died with what bell called a quote

fearful headache According to Bell she'd given him some quinine powder and sent him to bed Now Bell said she then went downstairs to make dinner But when she came back up her husband stone dead stone dead From what she told investigators her best guess was that the druggist had done a bit of a goof him up and had given her Not quinine, but morphine. It is what we call in my home country of Norway and oopsie poopsie But when investigators asked to see the medicine or at least the rapper came in Bell had conveniently already thrown it away And by stonewall in these guys the cause of death was marked as a simple cerebral hemorrhage and Bell was a hundred and fifty thousand dollars richer

That's a hard day at work So after the death of her husband Bell visited some relatives in Fergus Falls, Minnesota And why wouldn't you want to go to Fergus Falls, Minnesota? It's beautiful. It's right near Red Wing, Minnesota It's a matter of fact gorgeous area. Is that where the water is just gravy. Yeah. Yes indeed. Yes, that's right Well it was while she was in Fergus Falls that she decided that she and her children might be happier on a farm That's why I never let my parents go to a farm because at no point because they would be like Ben likes to run around and hit his head Into walls maybe a farm life would work like no, I don't think so they just want to put you to work And then farms what do we now know about farms and serial killers and becomes like labs for your evil delights

It just further isolates you from everybody else. Yeah, or at least, you know her children's happiness That's kind of what she claimed to relatives. Okay, most likely the real reason Why Bell wanted a farms that she realized that being a miserable ogre in her 40s with three kids Probably wasn't gonna shake out well in the single scene and if she wanted to pull another insurance scam She needed another man But you know which that's what she could have used back in the day was that on the Instagram all those being like a Woman's like a like tea that you don't know how strong she is and she put her in a hot water Like you need that kind of like like Instagram meme stuff to boost your confidence

And that's how you get a man. It does seem like she had a lot of confidence. Yeah, to be fair I wonder what it was like on a day-to-day with her because people talk about her as like inscrutable Like you have no clue It's like she was kind of quiet and then she'd show up and be like they're all visiting and she's just sitting there staring and then out Of nowhere, she's like, I think we should live on a farm and you're being like, what were you thinking about Bell this? You know what she must have had one or two jokes in her. Yeah, you know, they're still Norwegian. It's a funny area Chicago's a funny area. Minnesota's a funny area, Wisconsin. Uh-huh. She had a couple of zingers well It's thought but not confirmed that Bell placed an ad in the classified section of the Chicago Tribune

And she was soon contacted by a man looking to unload a farm in nearby La Port, Indiana Now according to Harold Schecter who did his homework on the port as he does with everything It seems that this town was home to a ridiculous cast of particularly American characters It's very interesting I do love the first mayor that wanted to change it from La Port because he's like this is fruity name There's no we don't need some fruity name some French name for La Port like this ain't something he wanted to change it to Dorsberg Everyone house has a door you see well La Port is French for the door

So he wanted to call it Dorsberg. Oh, it's interesting. That makes a lot of sense Well in La Port in the inventor category you had FT wrench who created a collapsible sanitary toothbrush. Oh Yeah, it's for upstairs and downstairs very nice. Maybe we can get him to advertise There was antiposs J. Bowell who invented a dog powered butter churner That's adorable. Mm-hmm, and you had dr. SB Collins who made Collins painless cure for opium eaters. It's meth This gives me the pep I need to quit opium More famously you had dr. Shoal he a foot fame

Yeah Yeah, and Frederick C. Menon who invented both jiffy pop and an over-the-counter gonorrhea test that never quite got off the ground Because it involved swabbing your own turds. Well, so this is it now Are they making the jiffy pop and the gonorrhea treatment in the same in the same shop at the same lab? Yeah, we need to have real we need to have wool separating these things As far as the arts went La Port was also the hometown of Zernes sharp who co-created the Dick and Jane books and You had Brewster Martin Higley who wrote the American classic home on the range Wow There's a lot of American classics going on here. Yes indeed. I love that book

But none of those people have survived what book home on the range home on the range home on the range Well, if you'll read it It's if you read the lyrics technically it's a pamphlet But none of those people have survived in the American imagination quite like Belle Gunness and the farm She ended up buying in La Port over on McClung Road already had quite a history before Belle even arrived The original owner was La Port founding father John Walker He built this house for his daughter, but she was run out of town after the Civil War for supporting the Confederacy Just when my daughter was a racist

Why did I build this house the farm was then sold to a man named be our car? But be our car son G. Hilly car was a notorious Indiana outlaw and after G. Hilly was shot and killed be our car sold the farm to Maddie Altec Maddie then turned the place into a high-class brothel that catered to men looking for a discreet good time Outside of Chicago. They take the train down to La Port. Have a good night. Go right on back Yeah, just the shifty eyes on the way back on the train. Just look at everybody knew everybody knew what was happening You have your hat slightly crooked one of your shoes is missing But Maddie's business came to an end quite suddenly however when she died from a heart attack

Oh, it was rumored that Maddie Altec was actually poisoned by her sister Eva Rupert Who ran a competing brothel in South Bend, Indiana? Oh my goodness But nothing was ever proven and the house remained in reputation as a brothel. There was also a number of suicides There was there was a very strange sets of circumstances on this farm I do it. There's something about this place like even now they say if you go if you go to the actual Farms there there's a home built on the same exact foundation of Bell's original home, right that they say is Ridiculously haunted and that the land is just it's cuz it's gorgeous. Yeah, I watch this like walk through of it It's it's really really beautiful these beautiful rolling hills that seems to have only attracted

Tragedy now notice if you listen closely you can hear the faint sounds of a faked orgasm Oh, yeah, oh, this is the best I've ever had it. Yes business man. Yes, man. Who sells shower curtains? Yes, that's those are the ghosts of the brothel past But by the time Bell was done with the farm it would have a new reputation and a metal as fuck name Abattoir acres Oh cool, it sounds like all the trees are made of steel and soon after arriving in the port Bell would have a new name as well Gunness Yeah, dude. You gotta have that goodness. You're so kind of that goodness got enough curbs

Fill your neighbor all over bread She'll kill you and your family goodness. I like it. It's not a bad gun. It's okay See when Bell's first husband was still alive the couple had boarded a man named Peter Gunness But Peter moved to Minneapolis with his brother gust in the mid 1890s gust the long form of Gus No, it's a goose it might be goose I think it's goose it do you they're both terrible names. They are Or gust Gunness the gust Gunness next to wind Gunness next to this is my brother Kai to Gunness Lord well in Minneapolis Peter married and had a kid

But during the birth of the second child Peter's wife dot oh and it was around this time that Bell made a visit to a cousin in Minnesota And she just happened to reconnect with Peter Gunness Now by this time Bell had grown into the beast that we know her as today with Schechter describing her as course and Manish with a frog's mouth. She was working that field alone. She said that she talked to her like she Dressed manly in that time period where it's like heavy leather jacket leather cap do it all this hard-ass fucking Manual labor all day long and she it's the pay-ins ram fucking exercise routine where you do you let nature and

Turn you strong. So she's just digging this kind of shit up. She's a fucking big slapping hands. I'm in love with her in a way I know she does sound beautiful. So she's like Pepe the frog if he took HDH Is that right? Yeah, well frogs mouth. Oh, yeah But even so the 48 acre farm was too good for Peter Gunness to pass up Especially, I mean the guy had two young daughters to think about so yeah, that was probably more his motivation than like say greed You know, he saw an opportunity and he took no yet. She had huge tracks of laughs Yeah, it's Monty Python. Very good But within months of moving to the port Peter Guttis

Suddenly only had one daughter to take care of. Oh, the infant who his first wife died given birth to died suddenly herself At the age of seven months from quote a Dima of the lungs. How was that? That's your lungs just kind of stop working. They fill up with fluid and they stop. No But then this is that is this more one of the more suspicious deaths Yeah, they're not really sure because Peter Gunness by then had also become suspicious of Bell while living with her because I she just I think she just would get silent Like something must have happened like living in that house with her I think she was a woman of very few words

They're working on all the time and it's something about her Fascination with the children what it becomes very scary. Oh, she just gives you the oogie boogies. Oh, yeah, oogie boogies Okay, yeah, actually that's I would compare it to the oogie boogie man. Oh, yeah Yeah, yeah in less songs Yeah Well within six months of his daughter's death Peter Gunness would be dead as well Hmm on December 16th 1901 the Gunness's neighbors were awoken by young Jenny Gunness knocking on their door According to the little girl her stepfather Peter had burned himself and needed help

But when Albert and Swan Nicholson arrived at the Gunness home They didn't see a burned man at all what they saw was Peter Gunness lying dead in a bloody heap on the floor with a broken nose So the Nicholson's called up the County Coroner a man named Dr. Bowell Pawn further inspection Dr. Bowell saw that in addition to the broken nose Peter also had a nasty contusion on the back of his head Hey, they're a bell hair beautiful and names dr. Bowell Let's take a look at the patient nose ain't good

I don't think that's what he died of Broken heart you think it was a broken heart not the yeah, there's a big old hole In the back of his head there Oh His name is dr. Bundy ball Right. Do you check his bowels or is that just your name? I just check my own I Check my own and see how they're doing. I guess doctors gonna take care of myself for Doctors gonna take care of myself. It's like when you're playing the masks come around for ceiling

The most sober corner in Indiana well naturally dr. Bowell's first impression was that Peter Gunnis was the victim of a murder Muir there. Oh dear, but Bell who has given a damn good performance of a hysterical woman I feel like there's gotta be there's there's something in her performance. It must be yeah, well seriously well She had a whole song and dance already cooked up and ready to go according to her Peter had gone into the kitchen to fetch his Shoes because Peter liked leaving his shoes near the stove to keep his shoes warm. Oh, okay Yeah, but when he leaned down to get his shoes the family meat grinder

Somehow fell off a shelf and knocked him in the head of course now on its way down The grinder had also knocked over a bowl of hot brine that Bell was planning to use for head cheese. Mm-hmm You don't you fucking you would like it Kessel. No, I apparently was famous for her sausages and her head cheese She had this whole series of big Succulent hogs that she'd slaughter and then we'd find out um they they husband-fed hogs Whoa He's had head cheese. I think I've had had cheese before I'm pretty you we should rediscover it man because it's Wonderful, I don't need to rediscover head cheese. It's a light culinary pervert. There's a wonderful delight

It's not a wonderful delight. It's what they eat in the Sawyer family in Texas It's Texas chainsaw massacre cuisine. That's the best thing that they did You just pay so much money for it. You have forced yourself to be like this is classy No, we go back to Queens. Go back to Queens. You go to a real Polish jelly. I'll show you Kessel I'll show you and your smile will come across your big fat German face Smile will spread Well, Bell said that the hot brine burned her husband But still Peter assured Bell that he was fine and he went to go lay down

Then hours later Bell said that she found him dead on the floor Now while the coroner reserved judgment until after the official autopsy It sounds like the best story. I've ever heard it. I'll tell you what I've never laughed I haven't laughed that much since I saw Schindler's list It's one of the funniest films I've ever seen refines should have got an Oscar for the comedic turn I just thought it was quite sad actually. Yeah. Well, you're fucking dumb. I'm But you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. Thank you. That's very nice The Fort Wayne Daily News trumpeted that Peter Gunnice's death was just another murder in a particularly bad week for La Porte, Indiana

Even before Peter Gunnice's murder a citizen had been killed in a bank shootout a grocer had been killed in a robbery Someone had killed a servant girl with arsenic laced bonbons And the teenager had almost stabbed his own mother to death with a carving knife. This was one week How big is this strange hellscape of a town? It's the Midwest. What have we now? And what do we now know about the Midwest? It's wonderful people. Yes, they're very friendly But they but they're also one and fives of fucking murder Yeah, this is a land of werewolves. Yeah, dude There's a this whole time period that from the 1880s into the mid

1900s we talked about it with fucking we got all of the hits. Yeah. Well, it's cold It's cold guys and that drives people crazy But still dr. Bowell wasn't ready to call this a murder even though he found no evidence whatsoever of burns I tell you what the only burn I see evidence is of is the fact that he married this wrong woman Pretty roasty, mr. Bowell But despite the fishiness of the story the autopsy couldn't prove that Belganis had taken a meat grinder to her husband's head So dr. Bowell arranged a personal inquest with Belganis where Bell gave pretty much but not quite the same story Hmm. She said that night

She'd been stuffing sausage after putting the kids to bed. Good woman. Good. Good woman. Good strong woman I wonder too because it does sound like a five-year-old tell on a story too The way she tells the story if you like and then I was stuffing a sausage and then I went to the grinder And I cleaned the grinder and then I put it on the shelf and then a Peter he take his shoes So warm so warm my defier. I mean she sounds like a Muppet so you want to believe her Well after she was done She cleaned the grinder and put it back on the shelf and at around 11 She said Peter went to the kitchen and Bell said she heard a crashing sound

She sped to the kitchen to find her husband on the ground covered in brine saying quote Mama a bird me so terrible. I would love to see her rushing to the kitchen Honestly like the goombas for Mario Brothers the movie with Dennis Hopper And from what Bell said the reason why the body wasn't burned at all was because she had quickly covered the burns in a paste of Vaseline and baking soda which prevented any lasting injuries Then a couple hours later. She heard Peter again saying mama mama Which is just anybody who calls their wife mother mommy So weird man, yeah, mother. Hello. Good night mother. Good night father. I'm the vice president now

Aren't you happy mother? Can I have another boy? I actually think Mike Pence calls his wife something like that I think it is mom. Yeah, yeah Anyway, no need to get into the real horror stories here Well supposedly the last thing Peter Gunn has said before he dropped dead to the floor was quote oh Oh mama, I guess I'm gonna die and then he died. Oh We got a broken nose that he just fell straight forward on the ground and just Whole thing broke in and and that was that the entire time Bell was telling this story to dr. Bowell she had not the barest hint of emotion

In fact when dr. Bowell asked if Belle and her husband lived happily. She just shrugged and said quote As far as I know He's good enough for me. Tell me what I tell you what I don't know if I'm happy or sad at all I'll tell you they changed my name from dr. Butthole So this is as good as it gets for me. This is as good as it gets. Okay. Well speaking logistically meat grinders. They're heavy I mean, they're heavy enough, especially the ones from the early 1900s But one fallen from the shelf probably isn't enough to straight up kill a man Hell I had a 40 pound metal subway sign fall on my head earlier this year. I like I was a few stitches. I was fine

You are fine That you're fine. Oh, yeah, definitely no changes. I've seen right you're not you're not wearing your shirt as a pants and your pants As your shirt you're doing great. Yeah, you're not just carving I am vengeance into the walls with your pen knife over and over again But I had a sausage grinder. I've had one and I've used them. They're about eight pounds. Yeah I made my own sausages with intestine lining Nice. When did you do this in in Queens, New York 2011? Yeah, I had a sausage grinder Jackie bought me a sausage grinder from the meat grinder and I made my own sausages for a small period of time

which I really enjoyed doing but it's a lot of work and Anybody who's not specifically into sausages gets pretty upset because the term for not wanting to know How something is made is don't want to see how the sausage gets made like that is the and it's a term for a reason The thing is though if you had a particularly strong particularly large woman putting all of her 280 pound frame and a swing in that meat grinder down and that might just be enough for a murder Oh, yeah, we're gonna know that berserker style is her favorite. Yeah, she's fucking She knows how to swing a fucking hammer

It might not have even been a fucking meat grinder It might have just straight up been a hammer It seems like she just walked right out fucking behind him because you look I mean that's a crime He had a fucking hole in the back of his head and a broken nose She just went what and he just dropped like a sack of potatoes and that was it They take a lot of strength to kill somebody in one stroke. Yeah, and Bell's performance at his funeral was Suspicious to say the least really although she made sure to moan and wail at the appropriate time. She'd bear But while she had her face buried in her hands while she was moaning and wailing

It was noted that she was seen more than once peeking through her fingers to make sure that people were noticing How much he was moaning and wailing and it was all so suspicious the way she would just randomly yell I didn't do it I do there's something scarier almost about somebody who's so I think that people that are scary are the It's like we talk about like liars is up being scary and people being sneaky and like not really knowing who somebody is But what if it's the opposite where the monster appears in front of you and is The monster like and she is not like she's literally completely fucking insane And so she thinks she's doing these massive ruses and she's thinks she's doing the stuff But it's like a polite society that can't seem to

Just say you're a monster like you you are doing this while she is openly fake mourning her husband and just killing Children and dudes are ready. I think you've actually hit on something with polite society Because I think part of what let bell gunness go for so long was Midwestern politeness sure people just not wanting to call her on Her shit and just saying okay, and that's how you want to do it Okay, this sounds like every political funeral as well. Well in reality. They all hate each other And then they just sit there and pretend to be mildly sad that his dad I Would can't wait to see just one person just tap dancing on Dick Cheney's fucking cat

But at the end of the day there wasn't enough evidence for a charge so the death was rolled again Accidental another so how many accidental deaths so we got the two kids. Yeah, we got four deaths four so far Yeah, no five five. Yeah. Wow. Yeah five so far five deaths two husbands three children So this is why you said it's 14 to 40. Yeah possible. Yeah, okay Well, what was even more bizarre to the people of the port though was what happened a few months later Unbeknownst to anyone in town Bell had been quote-unquote Pregnant this whole time what now it was possible that Bell who as I said was five seven two hundred and eighty pounds It might have been one of those unnoticed

Pregnancies like maybe there was a baby bump there, but no one really saw it It's those those sad stories or someone's like I thought it was a fight My daughter radar was born That's not so bad. There was a whole show about that. I didn't know I was pregnant. I know It's actually very sad to watch that show. Yeah, it is terrifying. Yeah But when a midwife came to assist Bell on the day of the child's quote-unquote birth The midwife found that the baby had already been born bathed and dressed Furthermore, she found Bell washing clothes in the backyard and the next day the midwife saw Bell out and about

Chasing her pigs around. Oh my unless she was literally dropping her intestines every step she took She did not just have a child well first of all, you know you show up and you meet the kid and She's just like excited to meet the infant and just shows up And it's just me in a little sailor costume. Yeah, hi Yeah, Bella Gunness is my mommy My name is Henry Zabrowski. Yeah It's just like, you know name it up

But the she said in response to her grappling with pigs outside the day after she gave birth was like in all the country They wife and never gets a rest like she's just straight up being like this is just how we do it in Europe Stonewalling I say again stonewall. Yeah, he's a hero a pig hero. Yeah, and the baby was way too old to be a newborn Okay, I like but like it was noticeably older. Just smoking a cigar like Milton Burrell He had a fucking stoke. Oh like a who framed Roger Rabbit. Just the loud baby But again, nothing could be proven and so everyone just went along with it The Midwest is very nice, but this is just bordering on extremely stupid here Nothing is happening. Like where are the where's the baby coming from? Well right now. We're we're just at the very beginning

Yeah, so this is just two husbands. So I think a lot of people being like if three husbands go They're not a start thinking There was also the matter of Peter Gunness's first daughter swan hilled thankfully though Peter's brother goose showed up soon after Peter's death and managed to whisk swan hilled away Before bell decided that the little girl was too much of an inconvenience. So swan hilled got away in a gust of wind He took the baby

The only thing gust would say about bell was this I didn't like her eyes That's it That's it. At least that's all we know Okay, but with peter out of the picture for good bell now had to manage an entire farm by herself Oh, but she was well suited to do so According to the neighbors bell could lift and toss a 200 pound hog like a sack of laundry Honestly, it's if she wasn't such a bad person. It is midwest hot

It is just like you see a woman that can just like pick it like you know pick up a pig fucking crush a whole fucking Stein of beer make her own head cheese make her own head cheese some kick ass sausages if she wasn't a sociopath Looks are only that's only one element. Ah, yeah There's a lot of love in there the med with the midwest was full of held us at this time. Oh, yeah She is a midwest quaint I love it, but it takes a lot of fucking physical strength to be a murderer. This was her crossfit We've done we've seen this before where she's lifting dogs and she's just fucking cheeky. She yanks up She knows how to fucking butcher it. She's crazy. Yeah

Yeah, and she had no problem shooting butchering scalding and gutting her pigs whenever she needed. Okay Not surprisingly though Not a single goddamn person in the port had anything nice to say about bell gunners at any time Not even about her sausage. Are you telling me she didn't get one? Thank you for the good sausage Well, she was what you might call a bad neighbor Ah, especially when it came to her cows now speaking as the son of a cattleman There's nary a sin as great as routinely letting your cows break a fence line to wander over to another man's land to grace

Don't even get me going on that that cows eating all my grass. I paid for that grass my grass You know that there's at least one in ten farmers though We're out there jerking off watching the cows eat their grass. You know what I mean? Somebody else's cows So I'm like, uh, yeah, I mean grain cock. I mean Oh, yeah, the typical grain cock now once or twice is acceptable But if it happens again and again, then you got a problem So what but okay because the grass is for their cows grasses for their cows I'm not fucking pay. I'm not paying to have some other man's cows graze on my land to be fair

My cows need that graze, but you don't pay for the grass. It's grass. No, you do pay you pay for the land is sacred Okay, so you talk about wanting land in Wyoming. You want to buy attractive land you make up Another just made up sentence because that okay to lay it out very plainly and simply Is that when you have a pasture the cows only have so much grass to eat And after the cows eat all that grass then you now have to buy hay To feed your cows So if you got other cows on the land eating up all the grass, then you're actually out very real money I see now now I see I don't want to buy land in Wyoming

You do want to buy land in Wyoming. We've talked about this drunkenly several times We'll get into this later on more and more for the rest of your life Well bell gunness didn't really give a shit that her cows kept breaking her fence line to graze on her neighbor's pasture And finally the neighbor captured bell's cows penned them up until bell that she wouldn't get them back until she paid him a dollar I want a dollar Give me a dollar. What does this make a deal? What is going on? So bell went over and actually stole some of his cows and pinned them up at her place And said now you owe me a dollar

So did she just grab them and put two cows on her shoulders and just walk out? How the hell do you steal cows? It might be that she just dragged them out of there And I think it's almost been like now you owe me a dollar like super like Like oh, I didn't know who I'm fucking with here. Like she's like I thought that I was being extreme By pinning up your cows like you just cownapped Several of my cows. Yes, and you are holding them hostage Yeah, the Hatfield and McCoy's if they just never brushed their teeth and never ever uh, I don't even know what the Hatfield McCoy's didn't brush their teeth They didn't no no

We're gonna do an episode on the Hatfield and McCoy's in the future. It's a very fun story. All right. I'm excited Yeah, well when the neighbor tried to go over to bell's case bell's place to get the cows When he tried to open up the gate to just take him right uh, she pulled a gun And threatened to kill him on the spot. So he paid her a dollar Just pay her a dollar, but a dollar's a lot of money. Yeah, what do you do 20 bucks? That must have been 20 bucks Yeah 20 30 40 maybe it's not that just give her some money. Yeah And people were but people were fighting hard for that dollar man. They had to earn that dollar to that. That's when a dollar meant something Back then and it's also about pride too

Just straight up being like you want you want to see how far we can go Do you want to see how far we can push this you don't think this you're not the first fucking dick? I've cut today Fucker like you think like honestly like you start seeing the real bell Immediately. Oh, yeah, scary. Well bell carried on like this for about two years until she finally gave in And put an ad in a local norwegian paper called the skandinavan for a hired hand And the man who answered the call was a 30 year old norwegian immigrant named olaf linbo And he actually was made of snow. He was a snowman

I had a carrot for a nose And for a dick weird Yeah, no, it's not known when bell gunness decided to kill olaf Or if she had even planned to kill him when she placed the ad she might have just been actually looking for help But it is known that olaf showed up in the port with his entire life savings of 600 dollars Which was not a paltry sum in 1904. Yeah olaf worked for bell for about two months and wrote his father in norway to say that he might marry soon But in april bell went over to her neighbor chris christopherson

I love it. Yeah chris christopherson. Yep. The chris christopherson Absolutely, and she told chris christopherson that olaf had suddenly left the story She told chris christopherson was that olaf had gone to the world's fair in st. Louis That's funny bell because I was thinking about taking my songs all over this great country I don't know maybe doing smacked it. That is some people say I got the look. I'm not really sure You have it buddy. You can't trust these agents You have it, but at the same time bell also told swan nicholson that olaf went back home to see the new king of norway crown That's a big day. Why wouldn't he travel 10 days on a boat to go see some jackasses crown?

But she told a third story to olaf's father claiming that olaf had just picked up and gone west and again Nobody said shit. Geez and with that gunness's murderous pattern was set a few months after olaf linbo disappeared He was replaced by henry gerholt who was drawn again by a help wanted ad There's something that's very interesting about her the laziness of her lies too. Yeah where she could not Give a fuck What she said to this person or to that person? She just was cold as ice She just didn't even try to keep the story straight. Yeah, and I guess they just didn't gossip, huh?

They just didn't even tell each other the stories that were told to them. I don't know man I honestly have no clue. I know she got away with joseph is not very big in the german and nor norwegian cultures Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Maybe I don't know if chris christopherson and swan nicholson were talking to each other And maybe not and they might have said like he might be at chris might have told me he went to the world's fair Oh, she told me that he's going to see the king of norway crown. I don't know. Let's get hammered and go cow tipping. All right, cool So within three months bell was back at chris christopherson's place saying that henry gurholt had up and left for chicago Hmm. I thought I think he drowned in a beer vat. I'm pretty sure if only So the question is how did bell gunness murder her many victims?

Well, the interesting thing here is that the most common weapon in a black widow's arsenal is poison Because when you're running a husband-to-husband scam, it doesn't look good to leave a lot of blood in your wake But bell gunness was much more animalistic Judging from the bodies found buried on her property Gunness stabbed or chopped at least some of her victims to death Face to face taking them down with the rage and power of a linebacker Yeah, it's technically metal, but it's so it's awful. She just fucking would just Fucking prison yard style like ray lewis. Yeah one victim's arm was covered in defensive wounds

And a tuft of gunness's hair was found still clutched in the fist of the victim's severed arm from when the dude tried fighting for his life I will say when she did this for a period of time. I imagine she did vary it up slightly I imagine some chic because there's a the one of the folklorists attached to her is that she'd poison their food until they like Lightly so they would be all fucked up and trying to sleep and she'd brain them in their sleep I'm certain she did that. I'm certain she did poison. I'm certain she shot him in the head I'm certain that she did all the stuff ice picked them in the side of the head They found one skull on her property that had a pinhole right at the fucking temple in it Which is just she just fucking ice picked him probably while he was asleep

But she did also really enjoy face-to-face murder. Okay. So after the murder of Henry Gerholt Bell changed tactics instead of posting in the help wanted section of the skandinavan Bell posted a different kind of ad altogether in no less than three Norwegian newspapers throughout the Midwest the ad read as thus Wanted a woman who owns a beautifully located and valuable farm in first-class condition Wants a good and reliable man as a partner in same

Some little cash is required and will be furnished first-class security And from what her mailman dj hunter said this ad earned bell up to 10 letters a day Every day and take it for me dj hunter the skateboard mailman Radical Bell how many husbands you going through whoa, I think I killed about a nine Bell you're hilarious And from the correspondence that bell began with select victims Norwegian after Norwegian started arriving in La Porte with pockets full of cash

Looking for the widow Gunness No George Berry from Tuscola, Illinois showed up with $1,500 after telling people he was headed to La Porte for a job And possibly marriage. I'm assuming there was no picture attached to any of these wanted ads, right? No, no because because what she would do is that the it wasn't the ad wasn't for like looking for a husband It's that guys would send letters and then she would slowly reel the man I see and we're gonna in the second episode is when we're really gonna get to some of the letters Yeah, but she would she kind of seduced them over letters

She'd set up this being like we got a great situation here. I make my own fucking head cheese I'll suck that dig like she did like all this kind of shit And then there's the two biographers of her that I was watching the interview with them say that Sometimes they'd come and part of they'd show up with half their money kind of wondering going on but But more times than not it seems to be like 90% of the time They'd spend a couple days with bell. They'd go back to norway and come back with the rest of their money So something's going on. Wow. Yeah, there is something there is someone for everyone And I firmly believe her and Leatherface

Would have made a dream a couple Well, Christian Hickman from Wisconsin sold his farm for $2,000 and got his subscription to the Decorah Boston forwarded to La Port now his amultil of Osage, Kansas, or maybe it's Osage Who knows okay? He told his boss that he was leaving to marry a rich widow and john moe of elbow lake minnesota Withdrew $1,000 from his bank and told the teller that it was going to good use in la port Oh, man But one of the sadder stories involved ola budsburg of iola wisconsin

Oh, they have a great car museum in iola. They really do What they have a car museum in iola. Is it a it's a great car? Yes, and they have the kissle car I believe that's an iola wisconsin very nice. What is it? Just like it's a fucking uh beer wagon that runs on shit No, it's Oh, you're seven hours away Hey, well, ola left two adult sons behind Matthias and oscar and they were later Unnecessarily described in newspapers as quote slow of thought and utterance

That's no reason no reason to roast them. Well once their dad's dad Not at all Ola had told his sons that he was going to la port to manage a farm But ola had told his brother that he was really going to la port to marry a rich widow And about a week later ola showed up back at the bank in iola with bell gunness in tow Sometimes when they only brought half the money bell would go back with them to their hometown And make goddamn sure they got all of it I will just say this never go to the atm in a situation where you may be paying for services

Because they will be like take out a thousand and then yes, that's how that works And then there's always some dude shows up all the time like honestly being like, yeah, you're gonna get a thousand out Like where are you from and she's like um her Manager, yeah when I was out in las vegas at the casino I could tell like something because I was just having fun. These were old dudes Yeah, but there was a lot of dude pressure to pull out more money from the atm. Oh, yeah Oh, no, I got hit up a lot That's a weird gambling thing where I was I want the one time I played blackjack and I lost $500

In maybe seven minutes sure guy a guy across me said you should go get more money And I was just like this is just because I'm bad at this game Well according to a cashier named jw krum packer No, no, no, no, that's not a name. That's a gay cookie elf Oh Budsburg and gunness cashed a mortgage note and that was the last time that anyone ever saw ola budsburg alive Bye everybody. It's been a fun afternoon Like I can't wait to see that ola again

Is immediately gone. Did no one pull him aside and just be like, what are you doing bro? Like are you sure man? Because it's totally it looks I mean I mean, it makes total sense. Yeah, you are you are doing the thing that they all believe that you're kind of helping society You're marrying this rich old lonely widow That you don't know you're in his town, right? So they don't know her reputation You don't know that there's already been seven guys that have showed up and immediately disappeared And she's just doing kind of the handpicking wife thing right where she's the the playing the stereotype

We're just showing up being like I want to be a part of this whole thing I want to see the money and like they're like, uh, this is this funny old bro And it looks like Widow games. I think these are widow games. That's a great new that should be through the hunger games I want to see the widow games Which is women trying to get money or men trying to get money from other people. Yeah Well, from what a local farmhand named amel greening said a different dude showed up at the gunness homestead almost every week And bell always introduced them as her quote-unquote

Cousins that I'm fucking Yeah Most of the men brought trunks full of belongings But nobody ever saw these cousins leave And the trunks always managed to stay behind Eventually a whole room in bell's house was devoted to men's clothing and by amel's reckoning that room held about 15 trunks that is horrifying And you imagine right because now you're all the way from fucking Scandinavia or Norway

And you show up and first of all she looks a little different the way she should describe herself in the letters Right, so you just sit here and just like oh wow, I'm okay All right. This is cool. You know, I mean land is beautiful, you know, and she's a snake Oh, you could put your stuff in the trunk room trunk room And then you just open a door and it's just like 15 different pictures of her at disney land with another different man all in the same position All like in front of a ferris wheel same stuff and all of their bullshit

Collecting dust in a room and you just drag it and she's like oh there's not enough room And she just like opens up one truck of some other's dude shit and just throws it in the fireplace Like oh, there's a spot to for you. This is straight up a horror movie No, it's the driver's license attic and nothing but trouble or the the photos Yes, or the photos from get out. Yeah. Oh my goodness Well, it's still even though guys were showing up. No one saw him leaving and all their stuff was left behind No one questioned it not really Here's another query

What did bell do with all of those bodies? Well that question was partly answered by the actions of a polish immigrant named willian brogiski. All right now Isn't it often how many beautiful questions are answered by the polish people of our country? Is this what you want to do right now? Yeah, what questions have been answered by the polish people of this country? Oh, man, I'd say oh How do you make a brat both spicy and sweet? What's the recipe for ice? We lost it two generations ago

Oh my goodness, that's fun When the summer of 1906 bell hired brogiski to dig a few holes in her hog pen Six feet long three feet wide and four feet deep There's a lot of widows looking for a polish immigrant to dig a couple of holes in their hog pen I I don't actually think that's true She told brogiski that these were trash holes and brogiski had no reason to think otherwise Yeah, but as you can imagine the real purpose of these holes Carps disposal

I actually was imagining that Mm-hmm But bell didn't just stack the bodies of her would-be suitors in the hog pit serrat instead Bell butchered each and every one of her victims Each one was done pretty much the same bell would saw off the head arms and legs Then she would wrap each appendage in a burlap sack before Tossing the gruesome packages along with the torso into one of the holes just filling it up filling it up filling it up And then she'd bury them

But there was also a kind of rage that went along with some of these dismemberments While some of her victims were carefully butchered with saws Others were hacked with what seemed like axes and some of the bones have been smashed with hammers Sweet But once the parts were in the hole bell would cover them with quick lime Always making sure to place the heads face up So she could look them in their dead eyes one last time before saying goodbye forever These guys did not do anything wrong. No, she was she hated them so much. She just a straight up monster

Okay And the degradation of these bodies went even further than that some of her victims ended up in bell's abandoned privy vault Meaning that these victims were actually buried in piles of bell's own shit It seems like that was pointedly done. Yeah, they said that they found several bodies in a row Underneath the shedder where she then had to Move the shitter because you have to get either you build it on top of it or it's just a little building, right? So you'd have to like scoot it And go through your own shit dig a big hole put people you especially don't like and seem to be several heads

Specifically, uh-huh underneath the shitter put the shitter back on top of it and just Loot her up. So uh Oh the sausage poops that must have been coming out of bell gunness Absolutely disgusting. Although do we know did any of her victims asked to be buried in the shitter? Was anyone just like put me make sure you put me put me in there I said please But it wasn't just lonely eager norwegian men who were the victims of bell gunness in the fall of 1906 bell murdered her own Adopted daughter. Oh, although we have no idea why bell murdered jenny gunness

The most likely explanation was that jenny who was 16 at the time Discovered just what her mother had been up to over the last couple of years because bell gained nothing but suspicion For her daughter's death. There was no insurance policy or anything like that But no matter the reason bell showed no sentimentality in disposing of the child She'd cared for over the last 16 years She was hacked up just like all the rest and got tossed in the hogpits right alongside the dismembered remains of men Like goose dove thunes and eddy canary Eddie canary eddy canary. He tried to warn everybody and then he got murdered

That's what always happens, but bell gunness for me. I think there's almost a Thresholds of closeness that she would allow people and I I almost think she viewed people with timelines That I think that I think what your theory is probably one obviously close or something close to it Where jenny was either discovering or asking questions about like why did I have 15 step fathers this year? Like why why is this happening? Where do they go? Like i'm certain it's that but I also wonder if she just looks at jenny just being like I don't need some woman also as a competition to me number one or two You know too much about me and I need to be able to fucking

Run and gun Whenever I want because this is a scam that can only go for so long If anyone you meet puts an expiration date on you with like one of those little like what are you those little guns a price Smart a little price then you have to go Mark is so good to meet you 11 21 23. I'll see you soon What was that about man? But there was one man in bell gunness's life who would somehow survive till the end It would even become a possible accomplice in her later crimes

that idiot's name Was ray lamb fear And that's where we'll pick back up for a bell gunness part two Yeah, wait, I have made my official decision I've made my official decision on this Catherine night would run away in tears bell gunness would win the fight That's what I think because Catherine night was more emotional and More, um, uh, what do you call that? Uh, when you're when you're doing things and you're being When you're doing things and being

Oh my god Sentimental and manipulative Manipulative Catherine night was more manipulative and it seems that bell gunness was just a little bit more transparent with how brutal she was I'll put it in a wrestling terms. It's like yoko zuna versus x pock Oh, well x pock can take a beating, but yeah push comes to shove. Yeah zuna's gonna win. Yeah. Yeah I Wonder because I think they could trade a couple of shots back and forth. Yeah, I think the two of them could trade some shots

I I don't know but Bella because what it is is that she likes a sneak attack Like she that that's her thing like she likes you not knowing she likes total control When Sam and Catherine night sort of did the same thing, but it was way more of an emotional outburst Right bell was always locked in the pocket. Yeah. Yeah tough to say Well, those are the fun conversations we get to have here on this show Thank you all so much for listening and we are thrilled to see everyone We will see you on sunday july 21st in los angeles and get your tickets for San Diego the belboa theater. We will be there on saturday

We cannot wait to see everyone. We've got some tickets still available for that So go out there and get those and we're gonna have a great time and um Yeah, and of course we had a wonderful time at comic con So thanks you all so much for coming out to our oakland show and uh and for watching our live stream Yeah live from uh live from comic con It's gonna be fun, man. I can't wait. I love seeing the people I love seeing the people kisser, you know, I know you do I I know you do call me later

You're gonna that's not even the miss clean. That's your old catchphrase. No call me now That's that's what you used to do. Do you remember how that was the only impression you had for a while? Do you want a dog? And call me now and that was yeah, but yeah, I miss do you want a hot dog? Do you want to do that? No, I can do a whole series of sentences in in impressionable voices Uh, yes, so thank you all so much for listening. Um any other Do we have our midwest tour coming up speaking of the midwest? We're gonna be in minnesota We're gonna be in meadow walk. Hey

We're gonna be in Des Moines. Can't wait to see everyone there get those tickets, please Yeah, and we got another we got a northwest tour coming up too. We're gonna be doing Bethlehem, pennsylvania Uh, and uh, atlantic city and I can't wait for this ac show man. I can't work. Yes Yeah, this is gonna be fun. I can't wait to see what high rollers we meet Oh that type here because we got we got a bunch of high rollers coming to the vip So if you're in the vip crowd for the ac show just watch out Um for these high rollers. They're just you know what they're gonna do. They're fine. They're wonderful people They will try to buy your wife. Well, that's that's an indecent proposal indeed. Yeah, that's what I always say about high rollers and ac

wonderful people You guys are so The puritans that I have to hang out with people. I love your high rollers. I love the high rollers. Um, all right I guess that's about it. Everyone. Thank you so much for listening. Inhale yourselves. Hail satan. Oh, hey again mugus de lesions Help me Oh, yeah, uh-huh This show is made possible by listeners like you

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