Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 375: Belle Gunness Part II - I Love Being a Farmhand

Episode Date: July 27, 2019

On the conclusion to our series on Belle Gunness, we take a look at the useful idiot that became a central part of Belle's life, the victim that got Gunness discovered, and the fiery scheme that may have let her get away with the whole thing.

There's no place to escape to. This is the last time on the left See you've come all the way from Norway. Mm-hmm. You just got all of your beef the Norwegian dirt off your clogs You're sleeping on a down bed and what you now believe is this may be the most comfortable bed You've ever been in oh, yeah outside of the the churn that you slept in back in the home country Yeah, you're in a small mattress, and you hear like you're like, huh finally get some sleep Bell says she's gonna make me something nice in the morning for breakfast Oh, yeah, right and she's real adamant about how nice breakfast is gonna be of course But you're sleeping some reason she will let you sleep in the bed together the first night because you're the border this night

But you awaken to see Something not like a mixture of Norman Bates's mother and Jason Standing above the bed while you're sleeping and then going oh Pitter-patter, pitter-patter, pitter-patter away That is absolutely Freightening well, I don't imagine this whole story is about being afraid of Yahya's This is being afraid of your Nana if your Nana could be an unstoppable Killing machine. Oh, yeah, that's Bill good. I think my grandmother was about to do that

But thankfully the Lord took her at 89 before she could kill This is the last podcast on the left. I am Ben. I'm staring at the beautiful face of Henry. No it I'm staring at both of you. Yeah, but in New York City I'm with Marcus not to me and then Henry Zabrowski is in LA like always Yeah, so obviously we are on to part two of Belle Gunness and she is she's kind of a dream woman. Is that what you're saying Henry this fucking tiny-footed bitch Tiny-foot bitch from Norway who's out there killing our people. I tell you what you want to go into that big Clotted cream covered spiders web. I understand like you get you get these fucking sweet-ass letters

You were promised a bunch of salted fish and it's much corn as you can put into a barrel. Yeah, buddy I'm taking my cock and balls over there So when we last left Belle Gunness She had already murdered two husbands as many as four of her own adopted children and twice as many lonely Norwegian bachelors who were summoned forth from towns across the Midwest by Bell's ads in Norwegian language Newspapers, I also read another one of her ads that I really enjoyed that at the end with triflers need not apply Oh, no triflers. That was fun. She's the one no scrubs. No, no scrubs man You can't get in her ride dude because it's her ride fucking ends it. You're great

Yes, well, it sounds like she's very good at writing copy. She should have just gotten a job in marketing I mean, this is sort of like the peak industrial time for the country. Come on Well, she was very good at writing copy in Norwegian when she tried writing in English. She did not sound very intelligent come and get it Okay But not every man who was summoned by Belle ended up in her hogpits George Anderson from Missouri What I just hope that's not a euphemism for the front and the back Front back hogpit

Well George Anderson from Missouri said he came to the Gunness home and fell fast asleep in the guest bedroom on his first night Completely satisfied with the arrangement. He'd found he thought he'd hit pay there. Wow. I fucking nailed this That type of pure sleep I know it I've only had it maybe three or four times in my life pure victory where you just have the covers pulled up to your chin like it's an Old Norman Rockwell painting of a man's sleep. He was like, ah An easy night's sleep for a man who's done everything perfect And it's always disaster always means you're going to wake up dead always

But run midnight George said that he had a dream that quote something uncanny was hovering above him When he opened his eyes Belle Gunness was silently standing next to his bed watching him sleep Just standing there just like wide-eyed with the covers like up disease that she goes Just out of the room so slight but okay, let's be honest though If she was like a super cute, you know woman that he just moved in with this would be romance No, would people people love to stare at their partners when they sleep They say oh my god, I'm so happy to be with you and then you wake up and you say oh my god, honey

I can't believe that you're looking at me. I wanted to look at you, too You are speaking as a six foot seven man I will say that if I saw any woman and I've had these before when you wake up and eyes are just locked on you Almost as if like, are you gonna leave? I dare you to leave. I It's very frightening women are frightening. Yeah, I do not want to wake up to have someone Borrowing like if they're laying in bed next to you and they're resting their chin Like that's nice. That's really nice because you know it's like and they're looking at you lovingly Belle Gunness was towering over his bed fully dressed

standing and staring well Can I see them one more time before you kill me? And then when he just kind of uttered a squeak of surprise Oh, she just muttered something unintelligible and ran out of the room. Well, that's okay That's uncomfortable. All right It is expected George did not close his eyes again for the rest of the night and left it done and kept the whole Experience to himself because what are you gonna do? Who are you gonna tell?

You're not gonna go tell the cops that I went to some ladies house and I woke up and she was standing over my bed staring at me Go arrest her. It's not criminal. It's just weird. Okay But one man in Belle's life somehow set himself apart from all the rest and he would play the role of either Patsy or Accomplished later on in Belle's life. Although it seems fairly obvious that this guy was more of a useful idiot than anything else Hmm that idiot's name was Ray lamp fear He's sort of a Midwest riffraff. Yeah from Rocky horror picture Okay

Perhaps part of the reason why Ray lamp fear survived his brush with Bell when so many other men didn't was because Ray Was a local and locals can be trusted always Anybody from the outside which I also don't really understand because Bell Gunness also wasn't local Yeah, but Bell never killed a local nor did she commit any crimes Okay locals don't shit where you eat in other words. Absolutely a known as the weak and worthless No account son of a formerly prominent member of the LaPorte community Ray lamp fear was known to spend every penny He earned on drinking gambling and purchased affection. Oh my goodness. What could that? Honestly, that's just just cut to him licking a honey ham in an alleyway

Oh, this is better than a girlfriend Because oh sweet salty ham. You can't leave or divorce me until you're in the vacation home. That is my belly Wonderful wonderful and Ray was not a savvy gambler. Oh according to Schechter Ray once lost $50 in one night on a LaPorte saloon slot machine which in today's money amounts to about $1,500 All right This is just a little bit of gambling advice from Uncle Ben Kissel stay away from the slot machines

The casino makes all their money on the outside. You got to play your roulette play your blackjack You even have a little fun with your craps the slot machines. That's how they get you Mm-hmm, but you learn that the hard way by being built by a fucking casino owner That's like no Benjamin my new best friend. You see for just a hundred dollars. You get this one big coin I did play a large slot machine on the way out of an Atlantic City hotel one time. It was quite fun And I pulled the big knob and I got But it's like big no money because it was like no money, but like a big version of it The no one actually knows how Bell and Ray got to be tangled up in each other's lives

Some say that Bell just straight up stopped Ray in the street and offered him a job in a place to live Because she was in need of a little affection. Oh Damn, man. She just saw his fucking fucking swagger Some walkers would be like checking like parking meters for change and like picking up cigarettes off the street They're like, yeah, I make myself a millionaire That's all you gotta do if you scoop up enough street dust together Or you can blow it in somebody's face and they give you $50 to go away Just cut just cut like oh if I want to ride your hips

Just cut to her vision just zooming in with the hearts like the Instagram super zoom That's the one but more likely Ray heard through the local carpenters union that the widow Gunnice out on McClaying Road had work to offer and since Bell still had to keep the honey trap of the farm in good working order Because it wouldn't do if the guy showed up and the farm looked like shit Of course, she just hired Ray as an actual laborer See Bell Gunnice did usually have someone living in one of the bedrooms of her house to take care of some of the day-to-day Operations of the farm, but she had recently lost longtime employee Amel Greening See Amel was young and he'd been hanging around the Gunnice homestead because he had matrimonial ideas about Bell's daughter Jenny

Oh, but after Jenny had suddenly quote-unquote gone to California a lot of people seem to be going to California these days from Indiana switch switch switch Interesting yeah, did Bell told everyone that she went to college in California suddenly of course Yeah, but after that Amel lost interest and just quit. He's like I got no reason to hang around here anymore Okay, so she's on the look for she's on the lookout for her next Kato Kalin She needs someone in the guest house. You need somebody in the guest house You can pin all your crimes at all times. This is important for all of us boys to know sure Now Rayland fear wasn't interested in a daughter for matrimony

Ray was more interested in Bell herself and while marriage was certainly on the table for him He was just as happy to be Bell's fuck-boy in the meantime All right, you know to say why go out and buy milk if you got milk and inside this man that's living in your guest room All right He was a smallish guy and although he was 37 Bell still had a good 11 years on her new farmhand Mature and you know the townsfolk they got a good chuckle out of the thought of Ray giving it to Bell night after night But Ray flipped it and took every chance he could get to brag about how he was plowing the widow Gunnice Making your standard love just put the peanuts in a vagina

Me I can get all of me up in there And I just spin and I spin and I spin and I spin and she screams she screams I got to say I love being a farmhand All right, sir. We're just in line here at this bagel store. Is there a reason why you're telling us the plight of the tiny man? Because I am wet to the touch and currently I am touching your shoulder But the thing was from the reviews Bell got from both Ray and other farmhands Bell was a bit of a wonder between the sheets really a different employee a man named Peter Colson He both worked for and slept with Bell Gunnice for over two years

He said that she would creep into his room at night Tiny little feet mm-hmm and Quote make love to him with sweet words and caresses. Oh, yeah, dude. I think she had I think she made love like a mother cat Oh, she's heard like a cat really. Yeah, she's clean and all the fur I mean like it's like special attention. There's something about she likes her little snacks She likes a little boy snacks, which is like but they're not I mean they're men They're they're full-grown men. All right. Yeah, but you know like it'd be fun being treated like a little bonbon Sure, huge woman. It reminds me of ace venture a pet detective when the woman which I finally understood this better as I got

Older when she pays him in a blowjob when she rescue when he rescues her dog didn't understand what he was doing as a child I did not know what was happening. That's what he puts his hands up. He's like, whoa Oh, wow. Yeah, that was a little sex job. I just thought that she was tickling his feet or something Well, this is what Peter Colson added about Bell's bedtime habits in a direct quote She was soft and gentle in her ways. I never saw such a woman. I never saw said shut your woman And Ray Lamphere was digging in deep on the gunnest grounds in more ways than one really He was going around town telling people pretty soon He was gonna be the master of the farm and everybody else could kiss his ass

Well, I'm gonna trash all the wheat. I'm gonna murder all the cows. You know what I'm putting in a goddamn roller coaster Because it's daddy's farm now Everybody come over to daddy's farm where you're gonna get just you're gonna scream yourself to death with enjoyment Interesting it seems almost like small people may have a complex I'm bigger than you think, you know, like something like that By the way, Puffin almost got killed by a pit bull today. So be careful out there Oh, wait, you pull somebody's papers on the fucking yard. You gotta be able to fucking get over there gonna split your wig, bro I know I know it was his bad

But Ray Lamphere's dreams all died when Andrew Helgaleen showed up Andrew was a 49 year old wheat farmer from South Dakota who had previously done 10 years in the penitentiary For robbing the Red Wing Minnesota post office then burning it down an attempt to hide his crimes If you get rid of the building the crimes no longer exists But whatever happened in there you got to just delete the memory of the entire incident But can we just say like one thing is theft the other thing is arson Maybe just stick with the theft. Yeah, because all he did was double up his crime and make it a lot worse Mm-hmm, but this also showed Belganis was very particular about who she fucked and who she murdered and she kept them very separate

She seemed to really only like fucking her employees. Yeah, she'd get the employees and she'd fuck them for a long time Mm-hmm There's something about sort of the Transactual nature of them being an employee that she would let them live like the fact that she had multiple employees that she fucked and then let live It's very interesting about how every single potential husband who showed up immediately died where that's where Ray Lacombe actually got out Pretty easy and he doesn't even understand what he was. She just was such a master manipulator Yeah, so this is the only time in human history For someone who was conducting an interview to ask the question fuck Mary kill and not have it be just like a super hacky

Questions if three podcasters who don't want to answer that question anymore. Yes, okay Well, Andrew was of course a Norwegian immigrant and it answered one of Bell's ads in a newspaper called the Minneapolis Tintendi, which I think is that is obviously It's some kind of pronouncement. I don't know what that is to tend a you want to see the centerfold on that Big piece of corn who core to the we can't wait to see the Minneapolis to tend I Think it's the word for newspaper because I know there's the Bergen to Tindy Oh, of course, we all know about the Bergen to Tindy Yeah, but while other men came running into Bell's arms after only a couple of letters

Andrew Helgeline proved the toughest fish to land Andrew and Bell corresponded with each other for 18 months Before Andrew finally set foot in the port and in that time Bell wrote between 75 and 80 And 80 letters begging him to come. Wow thirsty. Oh, yes. Yeah See from what we know from the few men who survived bell gunners There usually weren't more than a few letters exchanged between Bell and her victims before the victims came running because of either loneliness or greed Mm-hmm, but as far as we know Bell spent more time reeling in Andrew Helgeline than any other Victim and luckily for historians and our listeners alike the vast majority of Bell's letters to Andrew

actually survived Now Bell gave Andrew the big sales pitch right up top She told him that she had a beautiful farm full of fruit trees right in the middle of a neighborhood Where fans your folk had their summer homes Wow, but she had her real home there That's better that's even better you are everyone knows that living in that living at the vacation spot is so much better You know about living in Dubai, you're not just like workmen slaves for the rich people There was 74 acres of paradise Bell said worth $400,000 in today's money although both of those claims were gross exaggerations her actual claims about half that okay

And besides just boasting about her own land Bell made sure to lay it thick when it came to stroking Andrew's ego Hmm one of her letters read in part you impress me with being a good man with a strong and honest character a Real genuine Norwegian and every respect and it is difficult to find such a man and not every woman appreciates There are plenty of these American dudes around here, but I would not even look at them no matter how often they ask Did they call so they called them dudes back then yeah, well dude was an insult is that right? Yeah, dude is like punk. You know what was also originally an insult my father told me for some reason This is a piece of information. He traveled down the line a dude is a hair on an elephant's butt Huh, that's what he said now granted he also believes that Jesus Christ is the king

And at this point the world should have already ended but that is one thing that he didn't tell me Yeah, it's like my father only ever taught me one thing in Polish He's like well the only thing you gotta know Henry Thomas is that uh is the Baji Dupa. Yeah, Dupa kiss my ass in Polish Yep, that's all he says. Yeah, my grandfather used to tell me that a dude was a guy with underwear that was full of holes I Don't think we were ever told the truth none of us Wow, I had to learn how to shave from a magazine Really? Yep

Now usually these types of sentiments were enough to lower amount out to the port where he would soon be stripped of all his worldly belongings and murdered with either a hatchet or a meat cleaver before being sliced into six separate pieces and Buried in the hogpen. Geez, but Andrew was playing hard to get so Bell started playing up the romantic aspect Here's an example of her switch in tone written in a letter that came just a month after correspondence began I Long so to know you better, but I will try to wait with the patience until you get here I have now thrown away all other answers. I got and keep all of yours in a secret place by themselves Can you hear me squeeze?

You truly do not know how highly I prize them as I have not found anything so genuinely Norwegian and real in all the 20 years. I have been in America. Oh my goodness Wow, look at that. That's a hard sell Very good. I'm compelled. I seem to have spilt a bunch of honey on my chair Oh, it comes from McRavis. He yikes But with every letter Bell had a similar refrain take all your money out of the bank and come to the port as soon as possible Oh, you know, you just take all your money out. Won't you bring it to me? Nothing bad would happen Nothing at all. Come to me. Come to me. Yes

And she had one other strange request that gave Andrew a little pause Bell said that his moving to the port would be all the sweeter if it came as a total and complete surprise to Everyone. Wow. So it was paramount that she not tell a single soul Not even his family Wow, that would just be so Romantic that is so it would ruin it. It would ruin it. It would ruin it if anybody knew your location See this man with one of those amish beards with long with a pipe Let's take out a big straw hat. Just looking at these letters being like this fucking chick. She's gonna fucking kill me

And I love it Love it. And she also made sure to tell him to come alone Because he said it would be best if they were alone at the beginning Of course it would be sending a not-so-subtle hint that there would be plenty of Alone time activities waiting for when he showed up. Oh, Bell. My friend. Harry is actually a cock Is it okay if I bring a cock? Yeah, he can watch us make the bouncy Oh, he loves that don't come on my beautiful tiny feet. I couldn't hit him if I tried Bell And Bell wasn't shy with the double entendres either and one letter. She wrote quote

We shall be so happy once you get here then I will make a cream a pudding quote and quote Many are the good My downstairs stove and making the bouncy Bell always made sure to hit on the promise of a little slice of Norway right in the middle of Indiana When Andrew delayed his departure in December of 1906 She wrote quote, who will eat all this Norwegian cod fish and cream a pudding and enjoy all the pleasures I have planned was that another double entendre as she masturbated. Oh, I guess I have made food And I'm going to let it sit for several months while you take the boat to America. It is a Norwegian way

But when Andrew delayed his departure again in September Bell went for the Hail Mary. Oh Oh Make up your mind as soon as possible as to what you really intend to do in your next letter Let me have the great happiness to hear that you are soon on your way here as then I will be the happiest and I will know that I have found the best friend in the world I thought you were gonna say she posed in a picture that would be the centerfold of Cherry magazine Yeah, she's just Hail Mary. She did the same exact George Costanza pose And with that Bell got him

Andrew either forgot about or ignored all of the red flags that have been popping up over the last 18 months Okay, and there was more she also insisted that he leave not a single cent behind and that he should sell Everything and bring all the cash carefully sewn into his underwear. Oh my goodness He can't resist it man. That's a passionate woman. You can once all of you. Mm-hmm Yeah, all of your money That's a part of it but she's gonna make the bouncy bouncy and she's gonna cover you in cream pudding and you're gonna get all the salted codfish that you Want on a bunch of fruit trees. I guess that's that's good then

And so Andrew Helgeline came to La Porte in January of 1908 and as soon as Andrew arrived Bell tossed her old fuck buddy Ray Lam fear aside without even so much as an explanation Oh, that's sad Ray later said quote after he came. She had no use for all right Tell you what I'll wait forever for that sweet sweet bouncy bouncy She's got me hooked god damn it. I love salted cod. It used to make me throw up. It's all I love it It's okay Ray. It'll get better as such Ray went from sleeping in the upstairs guest bedroom To making his own straw bed in the barn

Literally overnight, so he's just I'll be sleeping with the pigs then huh? Oh, I guess Ray doesn't have a place in the house anymore, huh, but well, I hope you have a good time having us Bell I was good enough for you. I'm smart. I'm smart. You could put me in charge of things So it's like it's like the movie get out where he was like no longer the prized guy and now he had to just go watch This other dude just live in his life Mm-hmm, and you know what was more Bell wouldn't even let Ray talk to Andrew Helgill in about this Ray said quote She gave me the dickens and told me to leave them alone. What's the dickens gave him the dickens He's given her the dickens, and I got the dickens sleeping out with the caddy of pigs

Well, I hope you don't do any dickens in there. That's very dangerous and bad But pretty soon Bell discovered that Andrew had not taken her advice to bring every cent He was worth in cash. Oh, Andrew had brought about three thousand dollars in deposit certificates So after waiting all of three days Bell forced Andrew into town to cash the deposit certificates at the local bank Oh, but much to Bell's displeasure It would be five more days before the certificates could be cashed Oh, that meant that Bell who was used to taking down her prey within the first couple of nights had to spend almost two weeks entertaining Andrew and keeping up the facade that she wasn't gonna immediately murder him the moment she got the money

Honestly, that is really hard for her This is full-on Debbie investor Like her having to like a milk him like having to be nice to him just been like Y'all he could make some bouncy bouncy and he's just like The best time I love America It's just like because apparently she also slowly feed them poison and oranges. That's another one of those folktales Did you wonder because oranges are very rare? Yeah

On January 14th, Bell Gunness got the money $2,839 went into Bell's pockets that morning half in cash and half in coin and on that same day Bell sent Ray on a horse trade errand Which cleared the house of adults. So just go trade out that horse with another horse. Would you like that's what a horse trade air? Okay, yeah, but I love Derek Derek is that's my favorite of our brown horses. Yeah, I just trade them out with another horse. Oh, they're not just tradeable They each have their own personalities You don't even sleep in the bar. You don't know what these animals are like I don't want to break this to you, but your great-great-great grandson loves Pokemon go

Yeah, it's genetic And besides Bell and possibly the kids because remember there were three children knocking around the house this whole time Geez Ray Lamphere was the last person to see Andrew Helgeline alive When it came to murdering Andrew Bell didn't even wait until that night to do the deed So as we said what we don't know exactly how Bell Gunness killed her victims. There are theories Some victims we know Bell poisoned because investigators found arsenic in the stomachs of the bodies They eventually dug out of Bell's hogpits But it wasn't the arsenic that killed them seems like the arsenic was just either a way to lay them in low or

To make their death that much worse I think it's she got pleasure I think she got pleasure out of the pain that they were in but it was to make sure she's smart Yeah, she didn't want to fucking struggle. Yeah, he's not trying to fucking like this is not a battle to the fucking death here All right, this is your death. Yeah, it's not a battle to the death But if your death involves a lot of blood, it's gonna make Bell really happy. Oh, really? Yeah, or a little slippery tiny feet Well, it's thought it as that as the men were dying in agony Bell would approach them in their beds and take either a meat

Cleaver or a hatchet to the skull of the victims to finish them off That she didn't need to do that. No could have done without that definitely didn't need that no way No, she just double tap She would double tap to make sure that they were done. Okay Then after the murder the bodies would be taken to either her cellar or her Abattoir where they would be dismembered into disposable chunks not unlike Canadian serial killer Robert Picton She also had pig sense. Yeah, because she knew that the pigs were actually just getting more succulent She got married

Pigs are getting bigger and rounder and she's making the best sausages in town right an investment in herself I wonder if the pigs knew they were doing something wrong You know because animals do know I don't think they're supposed to eat human flesh I think I think they're supposed to eat whatever they want. I think the pigs knew she was up to no good Mm-hmm. Yeah, but they weren't complaining. No, definitely. They were they were getting theirs See, even though pigs are technically smarter than dogs I think a dog would feel worse about eating a human than a pig would I think I actually agree with Marcus's hot take Okay, we'll have to ask a pig

But the thing is with Andrew though is that he seemed to be a different case Now maybe Bell knew that she only had the day to kill Andrew until Ray got back from the horse errand Right, but I think it's possible that after 18 months of courtship and almost two weeks of playing nice Bell just lost her shit It was Andrew Helgeline's body who bore the defensive wounds we mentioned in the first episode Judging from the state of his dismembered body It's probable that Bell attacked him head-on with a full steam of rage and a meat cleaver in her hand Whoa scary

You're sitting down to dinner because I bet you at this point you've built up almost like a schedule Where Bell would make you breakfast and she's working the field and you're looking over the land and you're having a nice time And I bet you it would be she'd come home make dinner. He's enjoying himself. He's the king of this castle He's about to fucking own this whole farm and then finally she gets back from the bank Yeah, instead of the normal pepe pepe pepe pepe pepe you're jingle jingle jingle jingle jingle jingle she's covered in coins She's got a whole fucking sack of his money and she puts it down He's just like oh, we will have our dinner now, and then it's just like Yeah, and also the longer that Andrew Helgeline was alive the more there was a chance that he was gonna find evidence of

The previous ten murders. Mmm. That's gonna be a creepy day on the farm. Yeah, cuz there's you know, they're filled in the hog pits There is an entire room full of men's clothing and trunks Yeah, it's all over the place and all it takes is for All it takes is for Andrew to open the wrong door one day or to just go down into the cellar and see that the cellar is Covered in blood what we didn't really even cover that the last episode because it's true she had one room filled with luggage and clothes and pictures of dozens of men and you know that happened to at least a couple of them where they just were like

Oh, what's in here? This is gonna be my house. Cool. I wonder what kind of room this must be some kind of billiard's room and then that that Bump bump Bump bump as each eye connects like sees all the Pictures and all this shit and then it just boom in the back of the head when we know that Bell killed Andrew that day Because when Ray returned that night quote to see what the old lady was up to Really? Andrew Helgeline was gone never to be seen again until a shovel turned out his butchered body So Andrew went to California as well. I didn't seem like he's much of a tanner

You know I mean no movie star So I don't really know what uh why he's going west, but I tell you what it's good to be back in the saddle again But this dude had to know something was going on, right? Her Kato Kalin He will we will talk about this. This is this is heavily debated. Yeah in the by Gunnice heads That's what we'll call them. They're called We don't know whether or not he wasn't accomplice, but it seems to be I mean she kept him around for a reason Yeah, right. I think she kept him around the fuck and

To work his farm. I don't know. I mean honestly. She must have needed some companionship And with that murder Bell added Andrew's life savings to her already large pile of cash Give you some perspective a newspaper added up the total sum of Bell's ill-gotten gains after the discovery of her crimes They came to a figure of one point two million dollars In today's money good for her paper but that's in that paper But that's also with you know the all the insurance payouts from her first two husbands Right, I wasn't a tidy some bit or wasn't like a small some but still even after that She would have had to have made like about eight hundred grand from her other victims

Oh, gee and when I said good for her I really don't mean good for her But over seven years it kind of like it cuts down Mm-hmm So you could see why she kept needing to feed the need to feed the bank account, but what was she spending all this money on? They didn't they didn't have entertainment What did she maintenance on the farm because I don't know how successful the farm was the whole thing could have been operating the red The whole thing could have been like a murdering husband version of Netflix Now Andrew did indeed take one of Bell's pieces of advice and keeping his move to report a closely held secret

He didn't even tell his own brother that he was moving Geez, but Andrew did leave quite the trail of evidence behind ooh like little like little candies See when no one heard from Andrew for almost two weeks both his friends and family started getting concerned Yeah, so a farm hand named John Holt who'd been charged with looking after Andrew's livestock started poking around Andrew's cabin And eventually Holt found dozens upon dozens of relatively steamy letters full of promises of land and love From a stout mysterious woman in the Port Indiana who called herself Bella Gunness He's looking at these letters and he falls in love himself indeed the original. This is the dream woman Yes, this is dream. This is beautiful. This is what really this is what actual penthouse forum letters are

They're not so steamy. It doesn't end up in a wonderful threesome. Mm-hmm. Usually it ends up in near-dear Well pretty soon Aisle Helgel and Andrew's brother started writing about Gunness to ask just what the fuck happened to Andrew as always though Bell stonewalled Aisle at every turn with a steady torrent of make-up bullshit She wrote that she'd also like to know where Andrew had run off to Everybody's asking some question of a is Andrew because I don't know he's wow flip it and reverse it She said as far as she knew Andrew either gone to Chicago or New York to look for the other Helgel and brother the notorious Professional gambler. Oh Meanwhile, Bell was also dealing with fallout from lay lamp from ray lamp fear who is understandably still feeling a bit

Jilted. I'm not just me. Okay. No. Yeah, I got a night-in chug And I got an easy attitude and I'm great at plowing both the field and your sweet sweet took a sweet sweet belt God, I love you. I tell you what? It's the last you see to me All right, because I'm going myself really to California and I'm gonna see Oh, very nice. He's like the girlfriend from Wayne's world. He's like, you're not careful. You're gonna lose me Lost you three months ago February 3rd ray either quit or got fired from the gunnest farm and bell pretty quickly replaced him with a guy named Joe Maxon. Oh, you're gonna replace me some guy named Joe, huh? Oh, it's some guy named Joe

Oh, smart money is probably on ray quitting over a wage dispute because over the coming weeks and months ray embarked on a campaign of Skulking around the gunnest farm in an attempt to recoup his wages and to get his stuff back Oh my god. Yeah, I found a bunch of potatoes in the garbage. I can resell these at the fair. Yes It's like when you play borderlands and you have to do all the side missions because people are thirsty Meanwhile, like you don't think bell who is an actual super villain can't see him Skulking around just like looking through a curtains is watching ray like Nobody could see me like cartoonishly tip-toeing like trying to take whatever is it nailed down. She's like, oh that ray

I love him. Look at him steal. He is a man after my own hot. Oh Oh, well finally bell had enough and called up the local sheriff sheriff smutzer and had Oh god, so much liverwars The amount of liverwars that sheriff smutzer has consumed is really remarkable And smutzer had ray arrested for trespassing for which ray was fined one dollar. Oh, that's such a cute amount of money You're fined one dollar. Oh I'm almost happy. I guess I won't get a lollipop today. Cool. Thanks. Here's your dollar The ray still didn't stop and so in late march in 1908 bell filed an affidavit

Alleging that ray lamb fear was insane Now bell is starting to discover that love is the most dangerous game of all indeed She claimed that ray came to her house at night usually drunk and just looked through the windows And when asked to describe his mental state, she said that he was silent melancholy restless Seclusive dull profane filthy Intemperent sleepless And criminal you think he's cool for you. Here you go. You're gonna fuck some guy named joe Here you are there. You didn't get joe is gonna

Joe is gonna have filled the luggage room. He's gonna move all the luggage around in the luggage room So oh looks in a fucking way. Are you fucking like are you fucking tiny for the bitch? You're fucking tiny for the bitch and i'm gonna say it out loud because my friend man Wow You got a great tension. You got a wonderful attitude. I love you. You got tiny feet. No, I want to kiss him I still love you bell. You know that for a fact derailed ray derailed on that sounds like the first friend of yours that really gets into the cure There's a god listen to it. I'm like, I don't want to be sad with you right now

Well, this report was actually enough for a formal hearing even though ray's physician Dr. Bowell Said that ray was just fine. It's fine. I took a look at ray. Yeah, ray. I spent a lot of time We went up to the ground together a ground station, you know, I checked his asshole Six seven times in the bathroom. I gotta say only two or three of those times I had chin in it Wow I don't know what you want from me. I'm just a doctor. Do you check a lot of patients buttholes at the old grayhound station there doctor? Just when they pay me

But still a three member insanity committee had to be formed to examine ray lamp fear officially They said his memory was good. His speech was intelligent and coherent And while he was not perfectly sane because he was quote slightly nervous He was not Insane, okay, so they let him go y'all should be nervous Because her sweet sweet crevice is gonna make some cream pudding that he's gonna make all y'all slaves like it did to me It's coming for you next you think you're immune to a beautiful norweed Where there's sweet sweet bosoms and her salted cod? I swear to god, I'm gonna burn this courthouse down

Yep. Well, I wish we could go back and say he was crazy, but Yeah, too late. No take backs. Yeah, no. I know we had the no take backsy rule. Of course this whole episode just made things worse And bell had ray arrested again in early april and that charge actually went to trial during which bell claimed that she saw ray Sculpting around her pig pen and when she tried to shoe him away He pulled a fence post out of the ground and ran off with it Hey, the only one the only one is a charge here. I have a charge, too. I'm taking This is the size of him. I'm just gonna steal this massive inconvenience for me And I'm going to run to send you a message. I'm running away with it

But bell's campaign against ray was starting to backfire See even though witnesses put ray at another farm at the time of bell's fence post story Ray's attorney figured that maybe ray needed a little extra push to get an acquittal So to destroy bell's credibility Ray's defense attorney started asking questions about bell's checkered past Interesting. Oh, it's always the fucking money. It's always the money that does it He asked about peter gunness's mysterious death mad sorensen's mysterious death

And the suddenness of her daughter's move to california to quote-unquote go to college. Yeah And all this time bell was not only writing letters to more men But was also continuing her game with aizel helgeline She told aizel that andrew had sent her a letter from chicago But when aizel asked for the letter bell told him that ray lamb fear had stolen it Of course, he did it along with that fence post Absolutely ray lamb fear is the hamburgling I need us to say aizel didn't buy it and kept asking questions and sending letters

Now it was obvious to bell that aizel wasn't gonna give up And it was only a matter of time before aizel showed up and leport himself And aizel was not gonna keep it quiet where he was headed to Furthermore the townsfolk were starting to finally connect a few dots after bell's dirty laundry Was laid out plain for all to see during ray lamb fear's trespassing trial in other words The end was coming. Oh, yeah, man. The fucking net the net was dropping and she was watching it all happened So she really made a mistake. She put herself under oath. I would assume right was she on the stand

Well, it wasn't that it wasn't even necessary that it was under oath It was just now when it became clear to everyone like oh people around belganis tend to end up dead A lot and there's been a lot of cousins coming to the house And no one's seen them leave everyone's seen them get there, but no one's seen them leave So finally the midwestern politeness is starting to break down and to the to the point where it's like We may actually have to arrest this woman. Oh, but to be fair the cream pudding is very good Yeah, man. It's fucking salty, but belganis was a one of those she truly was very smart She truly was uh an actual villain and she knew that the one thing that her plan could not abide was eyeballs

Yeah eyeballs looking at her shit. She needed to operate in quiet and private And which is why she killed every single person that had any sort of connection to her bullshit Except for ray who I think she just also had a weird fucked up Moonlighting kind of scenario with where she was suing him and doing all this shit But she would also kind of goad him the two of them were kind of in this lock back and forth Where I think ray knew a lot of shit there was going on too, but he actually was kind of Happy to be a part of it. Yeah, it seems like the closest relationship She's ever had but I think the fact that ray was not killed

Shows you that ray doesn't have didn't have anything to do with it Because if ray did have something to do with it if ray did have knowledge She would have just fucking murdered him and not had any compunction about it Maybe she thought he was too dumb to convince anyone that he was telling the truth But think about this how she went to the law. It's so interesting that she actually used the police The last people she should be speaking to the last people she probably wants to be speaking to There's there's a weird emotional connection. Like it's almost shows the suing him Was almost a proxy of murdering him where she didn't want to kill him for some reason

Yeah, maybe it was also in her mind. She's like, there's no way they could think I murdered all these people Why would I call the police? Yeah, I'm just a good gal. Yeah, could be okay But no matter what ray lamphyr's role was in all this it became clear to bell that something had to be done But to this day What bell did exactly? Is still a mystery that nobody not even herald schachter has ever been able to solve Wow All we know or at least what we think we know is that bell had a plan

In late april 1908 guness told a clerk at the dry goods store that ray lamphyr was perfectly capable Of murdering bell and her children before setting fire to the guness home Which struck the dry goods clerk as an oddly specific thing to say Yeah, very specific. It's really really specific. Yes, especially to someone that is little more than an acquaintance Right. Yeah, just like ray lamphyr's my he works at my farm. I sometimes fuck him. Oh, you guys fuck He's gonna kill me. He's gonna kill my children. He's gonna set fire to the house. Wait a second. You're fucking right Then on the morning of april 27th bell guness's two young daughters Myrtle and lucy came to school highly distressed

Saying they'd been beaten by their mother that morning for almost going into the cellar It turned out the girls had been forbidden from even going close to the door But on that morning they'd forgotten the long-standing decree and it started making their way downstairs But before they got to the bottom bell discovered the incursion and dragged them back upstairs Where they got a scolding and a beating which surprisingly was not common behavior for bell It was out of character for her It's a part of her game look at btk with his daughters. Look at all all of these people that had full-on families Gary richway had family. They didn't fuck with their families. Mm-hmm

In the next day bell's behavior got even more suspicious She paid a visit to her lawyer melvin e leliter and told him that ray was threatening to burn down the house And as such she wanted to make a will bell left everything to her children myrtle lucy and philip But this struck the lawyer as somewhat odd because bell failed to mention her fourth child who had quote-unquote Gone to college and was now quote-unquote getting married. Wow. It's also weird how she kept doing the air quotes Yeah, she kept doing that as she spoke. I just seems to me. I guess it's a weird norwegian quirk I guess so but should but bell said should the children also Somehow die. I don't know they might die. Why are you moving your arms like that, man?

Why are you acting like it's some kind of hypothetical one day? This will be an I don't know emoji. You don't know that yet though bell wrote that all of her money was to go to the norwegian children's home of chicago And after making the will bell went to the store and bought candy cake and a toy train for the kids as a quote Little surprise. Oh, no. This is great as long as their kids are neal young. You're gonna love that model train Then finally bell bought a bunch of groceries and two gallons of kerosene

Interesting weird and it was while bell was paying for the groceries in the kerosene That who should walk into the store but ray lamp fear. Oh my god in a town of five people You will run into each other. You're fucking to everybody. It's like a big town, but it's a small town You know what I mean? It's like everybody knows everybody and ray lamp fear. What about walking? Oh my god walking in with your ex your ex is right there spot two gallons of kerosene And you just see each other and they kind of wink and they kind of give a knowing smile You know what I mean? Yeah, they didn't wink and give a knowing smile I don't know making that up

telling stories Weaving tales indeed indeed. He just walks in it was said that ray did nothing more than Silently watch her untie her horse and leave for home. They did not interact with each other They didn't look at each other. It was like the other didn't exist bell. Wait Bell wait a second Don't you remember when you told me you love me, baby Yeah Said you'd be bumming back this rainy day bell. No. Oh that lucky horse

Single tear sad by the next morning though bell Gunness's quote-unquote fears about ray lamp fear Would be realized for the gun is home would be nothing more but a heap of ash and rubble Fly from your grave Fly from your grave According to farmhand joe maxon the fire began at about 4 a.m He said that he was asleep in the upstairs guest bedroom and had at first assumed that bell was just burning breakfast But when joe awoke fully he realized that the whole house was filled with smoke So he made his way outside and he tried going back in for bell and the kids

But while he was trying to break down the front door with an axe because the way he'd come out was now presumably impassable Part of the roof collapsed Neighbors soon arrived and used a ladder to climb to bell's bedroom for rescue, but they found that the bed Was empty. Uh-oh So by this point all that was left to do was to let the fire burn out to see just how many of the Gunness's were dead Now it's 1906 for you. Well, all we can do now is let it burn down. No way we can stop this player. There's nothing wet There's no way we get it like a water or nothing like that. No, we just Let it get tired. Our big thing is we let fire get tired. I've heard that that's a good technique

By the time the flames died down a few hours later, there was nothing left but three brick walls and a pile of rubble Now it was immediately clear to investigators that the fire was man-made because the fire had obviously been started at where else But the cellar door using what else but a shitload of kerosene. Oh weird It's weird weird some naturally suspected bell, but sheriff smutzer immediately set his sights on ray lamp fear because bell Had made sure to voice her concerns often and loudly Over the previous few days. See nothing gets past sheriff smelcher. He knows exactly what's going on here Digging began for the bodies of bell and her children almost immediately while the ruins were still smoldering

And about 12 hours after the fire began a shovel hit something soft When the bodies were uncovered it looked to investigators as if bell had thrown a quilt over the bodies of the children To try and protect them from the flames But it was all for naught as all four bodies had burned beyond recognition Yeah, I mean that's not gonna it's it's a flammable. It's a a quilt is not gonna stop a fire You die from smoke inhalation before you die You don't die from the actual fire itself if you die in a fire usually you die from smoke inhalation

But also psychologically with psychologically with serial killers if you see A lot of times if they do that and if they hide the faces of the victims, it's almost a It is a an attempt to keep them from looking at you That the corpses in a way if you cover the face of your victim You can't see what you're doing anymore. It's been done But belganis liked looking in the faces of the victims I don't know. But then there are things that also stuff like this feels like a move To this is a practical killing. Yeah, this is practical. Yeah, if we'll get into obviously, you know, what's gonna happen here

But this this is her trying to clean shit up. This is not pleasure. Mm-hmm for me. That's my opinion. Yeah, I am I'll agree. But the strangest thing had happened while the children's bodies were largely intact The body of the woman that was assumed to be belganis was missing one very important part Hmm the body was missing its head. Okay. Now we got a problem. Where's the head Ray? I don't know. I didn't know. What are you talking about? Yeah, I've never saw it a damn thing in my life. I'm not even good at sawing wood. Oh I'm a bad farmhand. Well, yeah, and rayland fear was caught and officially arrested for arson of murder Almost immediately after the discovery of the gun's bodies. You guys got to be fucking kidding me. This is absolute You meet you are the dumbest cops I have ever seen. All I do is eat pussy

Oh, that's all I do. Really? I stole a post. All right. You didn't steal the post then did you sir? Put me in solitary confinement for being in love go ahead The raid did have an alibi for that night on the night of the gun is fire Ray had actually been having sex with a 70 year old woman named Elizabeth Smith whom Harold Schechter described as quote spindle shanked. Oh, I don't know what spindle shanked is, but very interesting very evocative If it is it is It is now I'm not gonna utter her extremely racist local nickname here

But her race since she was the daughter of former slaves played a part in how the people of La Porte ended up perceiving ray lamp fear He just liked him old man. He did that's what something I mean, that's what I think Schechter said or somebody else is it like he just liked Maternal figures he liked being taken care of you know what it was I'm gonna straight up say it's cuz I love pancakes And there's just something about a woman that's got them built in you know Yes, absolutely. Okay Although Elizabeth swore that ray was with her that night. This admission gave ray

Less credibility. Oh, no because he had admitted to having sex with an old black lady Which even though it proved he couldn't have set the fire or killed the Gunnises somehow made it more possible that he committed the crime I'm a connoisseur ananas. All right. I'm an I am an abuela liquor. I absolutely love it And I'm not ashamed of it If you want to say oh the wolf would come to the old lady's house and eat her and take on her clothes I would just make love to the old woman. All right. Let's just let's just have it out Nice wolf. Yeah, as such rays charge stuck and the trial date was set for May 11th Meanwhile an autopsy had begun on the supposed body of bell Gunnis although the head

Was still missing Even then the body was in terrible shape The left arm was burned off to the upper third of the humerus The right arm was burned off at the shoulder and the left leg was burned off at the knee They did make sure to add though that all the intestines quote appeared normal Except cooked Okay cooked intestines Haggis, but at the same time that the supposed Gunnis was being prodded in the back room of a loport doctor's office

Azel Helgeline was continuing his search for his brother Azel had gotten a hold of the loport police chief who had confirmed andrew had been seen last in loport Azel then mailed a picture of his brother to a teller at their loport bank who also confirmed he'd seen andrew And it was that same teller that mailed azel a letter on may 1st Telling azel that the gunnis place had burned to the ground and bell gunnis herself was presumed dead Oh, my this is very similar to me in a turn events of like deer Zachary Hmm. Yeah where the this the events started one place and all of a sudden you just thought all of the I mean this all just seemed fucked up to begin with oh, yeah

Find out like so the house burned down and everybody's dead This is a little fishy. Yeah. Oh, I would think so and that's when azel finally decided he'd better head out to loport himself Azel arrived two days later to find only two people still searching for the skull of the supposed gunnis Joe maxin and daniel hudson, but azel didn't really care about the skull of bell gunnis By this point azel had pretty much already surmised the bell had murdered her brother Like he'd already come to that conclusion Right, so azel asked maxin if any large holes had been dug that spring You know, but what do you mean by large? Do you mean like how big is it?

I mean I want to be like a lawyer about holes here, but like it seems like what do you mean me large? Like I think you go and put a bucket in or you mean large like you think you could put like six or seven buckets Interesting maybe six or seven buckets Oh, you're talking about the bodies No, I take them there. I take you there. Okay, and that's when maxin brought azel to the hogs The two of them started digging and they hadn't gone four feet before they found a torn burlap sack And through the tear they could see what was obviously a human neck. Whoa So they called up sheriff smutzer

And a dig of a different sort took place before the day was done The crew had recovered the body of andrew helgeline in six pieces head arms legs and torso And in one of the severed hands was a lock of bell gunnis's hair Whoa So after that the sheriff asked maxin if there were any other soft spots on the land where similar graves might be found And maxin confirmed that there were quite a few Okay

On the next whole dog produced two men a woman and bell gunnis's daughter jenny Geez so many bodies were pulled from the earth on bell gunnis's land that investigators had to turn bell's Buggy shed into a makeshift morgue. Oh my god, and as soon as word got out The gunnis farm became the hottest tourist attraction in indiana It just beat the biggest wedge of cheese and the largest thumbtack. I can't believe now. It's the gunnis farm By may 6th thousands of people had shown up to witness the excavation Pressing their faces into the wire fence that surrounded the hog lot so they can make sure to see each and every body That came out of the ground. Hmm. Yeah, this is like the old this is old school version of what happened at during john Wayne

Gacy and jeffrey dommer, right? Or it's like the excavation footage where everybody's watching the blue barrels. Yeah come out of the apartment building Yeah, except they all actually showed up on the grounds Well, they didn't have TVs back then, you know and of course the press lost their collective minds over the whole affair Printing over a million words about the bell gunnis case over the following weeks and months Building off the not so distant crimes of h.h. Holmes the chicago press speculated that bell Must have had an accomplice with the background in medicine who assisted in dismembering the bodies But bell and the supposed accomplice

According to speculation were only the final cogs in a much larger machine Which that machine was a city to farm pipeline of murder operated by chicago's more brutal crime syndicates Okay, and since people were looking into her past they noticed that bell gunness had also left a trail of dead babies from chicago To la porte. Well, you gotta know how to get home So it was also speculated that bell was a baby farmer I keep a planting them, but they'd never grow. Yeah, you're burying them. That's called burying them, ma'am See baby farms were essentially diy orphanages where the said farmer would take an unwanted child off a woman's hands For a flat fee in exchange for the whole thing being hush hush

That's what the amish tried to do with me and my sister They wanted to buy you and jackie Well, they kept saying they kept saying they wanted to bring us to the farm so we they could show us what real work was Yeah, because they were just trying to teach you what real work was ain't having it Do you think these hands could take it? No, look at how plush these hands are god. No, definitely not Well, basically a modern-day baby farmer would be the people who take kid after kid from our foster care system here in america And only give them the barest essentials if that all while taking a big check from the government every month horrible

Yeah, but some baby farmers wouldn't even do that For example, a woman in england named Amelia dire just murdered the babies as soon as they were in her possession And it said that Amelia dire murdered Hundreds. Yeah, like 400 babies. That's crazy. See the key to succeeding in life is to have no conscious I guess and it was thought that bell was possibly one of these women But no babies were found in the ground in la porte Although there were still plenty of full grown men to be found In one hole they found that bell had buried various stray bones in a wooden box and when the box was open

It was found that jellied flesh still clung to the remains There were so many bones that one person on site said this You know if all these bones belong to one person you'd have a monstrosity someone 10 or 12 feet high That's funny. That's your hot take leary. That's your hot take if it was one person it'd be a big person There'd be a lot of bones for one person. That's for sure. Oh my god That man grew up to be the great grandfather of bill engville Of course from the blue collar comedy tour However, it was eventually surmised that it was enough bones for just two people

Uh, it was just two six foot men put on top of each other Would be 12 feet high leary technically you were right. Yeah, two smooths like kissle If you get two smooths together and like put them together, I mentioned if kissle died in a thousand years from now They go and they look at his bones. They're like, oh, look at this tiny dinosaur. What an incredible tiny dinosaur Oh, maybe if I die with puff and then they'll think I'm a man dog And of course the crowd that had shown up day after day to watch the excavations went absolutely Nuts when the box came out of the ground. So they're just cheering this on like it's the super bowl. Yeah, why true crime? Uh, but one newspaper man said that right true crime now. Why is true crime the craze now?

Why is true crime so big now? I don't I don't get it. No people were so nice before They didn't have a macabre sense of humor or a macabre desire to see death One newspaper man said that right before the box was unearthed He was watching an old white bearded man pull his toddler grandchildren in a wagon toward the hog lot They were having a nice day out together. Of course. Of course. Why wouldn't the grandfather take his grandson to the hog lot? That's where he loves to go I would have loved it. Yeah, I would have had such a good time as a kid. You're like raise the bodies Raise the bodies grip would you?

Man, you should have really been taken by the Amish Just learn how to raise a bar. I mean, I don't know how to do it But as the old man approached the lot the wagon toppled over and the toddlers were thrown to the ground I mean, it just happens when you're playing with kids. Sometimes the kids fall out of the wagon Yeah, sure, but it was at that moment that a cry went through the crowd We found another body So faced with the choice between helping his grandchildren or seeing a dead body Old man said to hell with it and left the kids crying in the mud and ran to join the crowd

So timmy and timmy, I see this every day. It's time to go and see some bodies Hey timmy and tammy and tommy. How was your day with grandpa? Was it fun? Grandpa went to go look at the bones while I was covered in dirt You've aged so fast in this little ride But in the midst of the excavation Another mystery was added to the story Apparently the undertaker in charge of preparing the supposed remains of bell gunness had come to a startling conclusion Although bell was five foot seven and easily two hundred and eighty pounds

The headless conveniently unidentifiable body found in the ashes of the gunness home Was probably closer to five foot two and carried less than half the weight that bell did Oh, so bell is like with any luck. You'll think it's me. This looks just like me really does And with the discovery of the size discrepancy the theories began And essentially there were five Bell killed herself and her children Bell killed her children and someone else then removed the head of the victim and ran off Ray lamp fear killed bell and the children

Ray lamp fear assisted in the crimes and the cover-ups or finally a chicago gang murdered bell and her family after the corpse farm Was no longer useful or convenient. How did chicago just always get the raw deal by mainstream media? It must be a chicago gang in indiana It was the chicago press and also and it was only like what 40 miles from uh from la port Yeah, but 40 miles in 1906. That's like 150 miles I will say chicago kind of earned the reputation at the time. It was a violent place There was a lot of crime happening h.h. Holmes helped create the idea of a serial killer in chicago I know so they are very you could see now

Their their imaginations have gone wild Because also the connection of the farm to the madam when it used to be an old Like brothel all these weird crimes that have already happened on the ground. So it has this like history. It's so ripe Very interesting. You know for a fact there's an actor the nicolas cage of the time just been like I'll buy the property I won't buy it. I will live on this property Oh, the property uh was cursed for quite a few years afterwards. I'm sure it probably still is Except no now there's like a nice family who lives there and the mother's like, oh, yeah, my son is very haunted He sees ghosts all the time. It's so cute

When they put a motocross Like Track in the back of it. Oh, that'd be fun. Yeah. Yeah where where the body farm is they now ride dirt bikes. I love it Yeah Now it seemed to investigators that the only way to really solve the mystery was to find the head of belganis got to or failing that To find the teeth of belganis for identification purposes And the teeth idea wasn't a bad one I mean it was thought by those that believe belganis was in fact dead that the head had disintegrated or exploded from the heat

But the teeth might have survived the fucking movie scanners Do heads really explode in the heat? See bel had a fairly distinctive smile marked by two gold crowns and four porcelain teeth Reinforced by an 18 karat gold backing. So it was possible that her bridge work had survived the fire somehow. It was very distinctive so Sheriff smutzer hired a veteran prospector named louis schultz aka old Klondike

To sip through the rubble to see what he could find If there's gold in that there's rubble I'm the one to find it because they say what would you do for a clown guy? I tell you what I do. I suck a woman's feet Whoa And on the day that old Klondike showed up 16 Thousand people came to watch. Oh my god

In fact the whole day had turned into a bit of a carnival for the people of indiana because it just so happened to fall on a sunday Oh, great. We had drivers. They set up a just right after church. Just go watch See the bodies. Uh, oh, they skipped the church that day. Oh, they started showing up at sunrise. Okay. Yeah They had drivers in the port. They set up this nice little relay system For the tourists they charged a dime for the trip to the farm. Wow, but to get back That's a quarter Oh my god, the scam never ends You had vendors selling peanuts popcorn and lemonade. You had hucksters hawking 10 cent postcards

Which featured pictures of andrew helgoline's mutilated body Oh my sold out in minutes It's juicy. It's good merch. Yeah, they've always been doing true crime merch. I guess always always always always Why true crime now? Always that's my question. That's my answer is always it's always been true crime. Okay You even had a quote-unquote portly fellow selling pink ice cream and cake Right next to one of the excavated graves. I've tried all the cake. I've tried all the ice cream. Hmm. It's pretty good

Yeah, it's pretty good only days before That grave had helped the putrified remains of several men not to mention the fact that the guy was standing in the middle of a Recently active hogpen selling pink ice cream and cake. This is the first the The great great grandfather of ben of ben and jerks. Yes, indeed. Yep. What a different 72 hours makes, you know Wow people were even jumping into the graves Jumping into the grave, but they were You are just jumping it. Okay, but they were digging into the dirt They were trying to look for little bone fragments or pieces of flesh

Oh my god, one girl who was actually said to be quite handsome. She was carrying around a dead dog That she said had been killed by belganis while belganis was testing poisons Someone had just sold some girl a dead dog that he found on the farm. Look what I just got. Isn't this fun? It's a dead dog. I see that Belganis killed it with poison. Really? Isn't it cool? It's so hot right now This is the best day of my life. He's dead dog. Yeah. Oh my god. I'm gonna name it dead That's it's really sad. You were born during this time because you would have loved the movie the craft

Yeah, yeah, my name's furuza the first person to be named furuza But all of that was calm and normal compared to what happened at the makeshift morgue Now at first sheriff smutzer let people inside single file to view the piles of dismembered limbs Torsos and heads you figure what's the harm It's weird how small I had it On other people it seems big, but then when you see just kind of dismembered rolling around the ground You're like, huh, that's just like a little fucking thing. That's okay. There's a crime scene here, but that's all right But pretty soon it became apparent that just too many people had showed up

So smutzer popped a lock on the door and told the people shows over no one else is going to be allowed in in response to that several women quote clawed at the little red carriage house and stuck their fingers in the cracks and wrenched in an attempt to Pry the boards apart far enough to see inside That was what the women did the men They boosted each other to the window at the end of the structure so they could look inside But none of them lasted more than a few seconds before one of them knocked the other one down so they could get up and see Well, it's a hell of a thing to fight over. Yeah

But on that particular Sunday, nothing was found by old Klondike. Whoa, Jiminy Crick. For three days the old prospector searched through the debris and in the process found five men's watches several knives Bone fragments and a book on anatomy. Hmm. Whoa. Bill Gunn has actually did her fucking homework. Yeah And she was obsessed with watches. That was one of the weird things about really Yeah, she loved like that was her like that was the trophy that she kept in a special place that she would keep the watch Of each of her victims. Okay. I mean watches are pretty cool. That's her and Tommy Ramola. Yep It wasn't until Tuesday, May 19th that Schultz looked down in his sluice box

And saw that he'd found at the very least the teeth of bell Gunnus Now the dentist who did the work on Gunnus Dr. Ira Bell Immediately identified the bridge as his own personal work and said that Bell would have had to pull a tooth out of her own head to remove it But since the authorities thought there was no way bell Gunnus could have been capable of such savagery Wow, despite knowing she brutally murdered at least 11 men plus four of her own children It says good enough. She wouldn't have done that. She wouldn't have pulled out of her head. She's dead She's officially dead. They just have to go and fucking close that case. Mm-hmm and with that a grand jury

officially indicted Ray Lamphere for arson and the first degree murders of myrtle Lucy Phillip and bell Gunnus No, and they threw the murder of Andrew Helgeline into the mix as well just for good measures just for fun Just for funsies. Oh my I am fucking beside myself guys. I am beside myself. This is absolutely the dumbest shit This is the dumbest shit I've ever been a part of and I have been eating this norweeds woman's fucking awful salted cod For years now. It was terrible. I'll say it. Wow. Bell. I love you and I miss you. God damn it. Sounds like a guilty man to me

Now for the full story of Ray Lamphere's trial, which is a doozy and long I mean, it's a big big story. You're gonna have to go read health princess Yes, by Harold checker at the source material It's like that is a third of the book is Ray Lamphere's trial and it's fascinating and great and like all the all the different experts That they bring in is absolutely fascinating. It's really cool to see all this in action The long story short Ray Lamphere was found guilty of arson But not of any of the murders. Okay Okay, so he was

Equated of the murders. Yes, that's the big one He was acquitted of the murders, but he was still found guilty of arson. Okay, which didn't make sense to anybody Of course not. No, but that's just the way it goes in the justice system sometimes Mm-hmm and as a result he was sentenced to two years in prison But died of tuberculosis soon after ascendencing following a light hemorrhage during his trial And which blood just started gushing out of his face Oh because i'm making strawberry syrup or something. Oh, this is just I am just the unluckiest cuck in the world

Oh poor guy But the biggest question here at the end is what the fuck happened to the real belganis? Yes Now many people are loath to draw definitive conclusions about what belganis pulled off that night in april, which is fair Yes, but to us it seems fairly obvious that belganis did not die in the fire that night And instead murdered some poor girl removed the head and pulled the bridge work out of her own face to leave behind as evidence because they just hired a new like housekeeper like work woman that also disappeared so It seems

Fairly obvious that she was not this headless. So did belganis just escape to montreal? Like what happened? I don't we don't know we have no we don't know fucking idea Oh my god, and so she got away with this. Yeah Yeah, I mean we don't know or she fucking died or that was her and the well how would you get into it? Yeah, we'll get into it Yeah, yeah, I mean and quite a few people came to the same conclusion as we did I mean for months if not years belganis sightings were a fairly common occurrence throughout the country Especially the midwest but you can imagine being someone who looked like belganis They'd be like you're belganis and be like that's just really mean yeah, dude because all of the descriptions are just like troll woman

Is she on the loose how many did she kill like are you belganis me like could have done without that today? Thank you And even after rayland fear died new conspiracy theories were created around him to make the story even juicier than it already was In one theory it was ray and elizabeth smith his alibi lover who had killed the gunness family This theory was given even more credence after a skull was found in elizabeth smith's home after she died But it was soon discovered that the skull was decades old and smith had actually been using it for voodoo rituals But I think that this is more of an 1880s version of a tumblr witch Yeah

Yeah, she'd even covered the skull in names including the name of the la port police chief phil bongers bongers was named by fucking holding the mcneill And like honestly and bongers is spelled with a z bongers It sounds like but oh my god what i'm gonna become of the voicemail on a morning radio show Yeah, but elizabeth smith had actually written it as a phil phil bongers

Which could either have either been a misspelling or just a way to make a bad name worse No, I mean Honestly, she cursed a random dude named phil bongers and phil was just having a good day and then all of a sudden It started raining frogs around him. He's like my life couldn't get any worse. I got all hop on the front end of bank I got backwards feet phil bongers for poor poor arkansas phil bongers But in the coming decades plenty of people would suspect the ghost gunness in various crimes She was even put forth as a possible suspect in the infamous winenville chicken coop murders out there in los angeles in

1928 but the mo was all wrong the winenville chicken coop murders. That was all little boys. Okay But there was one case in particular in which it was at the very least plausible The perpetrator might have been bell gunness and that came in 1931 Almost 25 years after gunness had supposedly died. That's how long the memory of bell gunness lasted The theory was that bell gunness had moved to chicago where she changed her name to ester carlson and got work as a housekeeper There she laid low until the murderous urge rose once again That year her employer august lindstrom had opened up a joint account with ester in the amount of two thousand dollars And august had died with a belly full of arsenic only a week later

It was at that point that someone realized the ester was the right age and the right size and had the look Of bell gunness. Wow that x-factor And when her home was searched investigators found an old battered trunk containing among other things A photo of two girls and a boy who according to the people in the port Looked strikingly like the gunness children Although at that point the gunness children were 23 years dead Wow, wow, could you picture a child that you saw 23 years ago like fully? No, no, I

No, I barely remember what my niece looks like. Yep. They all look the same But when they took the picture to the port like everyone was like, yep, that's the gunnish kids. That's definitely them I mean, I don't know. There was less Photographs back then maybe they were maybe their brains were stronger. Well, I might maybe they could hold the picture longer in their mind Socrates actually dammed the use of Constant writing because he said our memories would fade without having to remember the stories constantly. Yeah. Yeah, I believe it. Cool Who was that you mentioned?

So crates remember that yeah Now, of course Esther denied that she was the Indiana ogres saying that she wasn't even Norwegian She was swedish. Oh, and she hadn't even she hadn't spent a day of her life in Indiana But before she even went to trial for the murder of her employer She died and the truth seemingly died with her For many years Esther Carlson was the world's best bet as to what became of bell gunness after she killed her children and burned down her own house But all that changed in 2014

That year a selbu native named newt jensen looked into Esther Carlson's backstory and found that she was without a doubt Telling the truth. She was not bell gunness Really? They just had to prove at some point that her life existed outside of bell gunness's point and they it was close though Yeah, it was hard. It was eerily close They had to run it down, but they finally found a spot where Esther Carlson was in a different place in bell gunness. Okay As to what happened to bell gunness It's possible the body found in the house was hers and the undertaker made a mistake

It's possible that ray lamb fear had a hand in the whole thing and it's possible the bell gunness just got away What is not possible is any hope that will ever find out the truth About what happened to bell gunness For better or worse bell will forever remain one of the 20th century's greatest mysteries Whoa, that is a crazy crazy story. So bell if you're alive today We'd love to interview you for our patreon series You're 152 years old

Of course, why wouldn't you be 152 years young bell? We don't want to be rude. Please call it. I actually I think my opinion right you read all of this stuff. I think That she got away with it. I think that she left. I think ray lamb fear. This is my obviously This is my estimation. I think ray lamb fear helped her I think she got away and I think she just realized if I just am just that that much more careful I continue to run my scams. Yeah, and just keep on moving. I think I don't think Um, I agree that definitely agree that bell gunness got away, but I don't think ray lamb fear had anything to do with it Yeah, I think I don't know. I don't know though. Yeah, I don't I don't know. It's just my my gut tells me that ray

just um I think ray just got was wrong place wrong time useful idiot She just saw a guy to pin the crimes on and knew that it was going to be easy He pulled the teeth out of her face, you know threw him on the ground and then left town You know, this is I don't want to have this is a bit of a spoiler alert But it reminds me of what happened at the end of them of the tv series veep Uh, yeah, I know we don't we don't I don't want to spoil it. We don't need we don't need to spoil it But it was just but I know I know what you're saying very bell

She should have been nice. She should have been nice to one person a mysterious woman She and she knows to keep her cards close to her chest. Yeah, and that's what all these ladies seem to know Everybody gets why they are better at crying See, I've kind of got a feeling that bell gunness like because if she did run off that meant that she was traveling with At least a million dollars in cash alone On the road, you know just on the roads of you know This is a woman who potentially in 1908, but she pulled her own teeth out of her mouth

True. I think there's nothing she's safer than an armored car You get three guys with guns two guys with guns one guy with a gun. She is dead in the ditch Yeah, she could have been gotten got. Yeah, she definitely could have gotten on the on the road I don't know why it's quite possible But that that's kind of that's kind of my gut feeling is that she just got gotten all of her money was stolen and You know one of the pran and that family went on To to be the waltons really and they found it in wal-mart Wal-mart, honestly, I honestly think it's true. It's gotta be something. It's very possible

One of those like purely evil barons. It's just like the chainie family. All right. There it is bell gunness What a great series that was informative interesting and uh, yeah, I guess we have we want to thank someone Yes, special thanks to research assistant Rachel shoo as always for her help on this episode Thank you so much and we want to say a big thank you to everyone who came out to see our show in oakland the fox theater That might be the most beautiful theater we have ever seen so so beautiful so pretty it was wonderful And thanks everyone who came out next week. We got a relaxed fit episode coming your way Um, and then the week afterwards We're gonna start this summer

It's already the middle of the summer summer into fall. I think we're gonna be doing some of my favorite topics We've ever done very I'm very very Fucking excited and then want to thank everyone also who came out to our show in san diego That was incredible and thanks to everyone who came out to the hollywood forever cemetery in beautiful los angeles That was a total miracle and it was awesome. So thank you all so much It was a dream come true that I did not know was a dream until we were about halfway through the show Yeah, like oh, wow. This is an important moment. I should be trying to remember this. Yeah, it was wonderful Yeah, thank you everyone so much. That was a fan. That was so much fun. Yes, and we're excited to see everyone out on the road

Here in the very very near future Um, so let's see. Is there anything else anything else we good? Uh, well, we've got a lot of shows coming up here in uh the coming months. It'll be fun. It'll be fun Yeah, our next uh mini tour we got st paul demoyne and milwaukee on the eighth ninth and tenth st paul sold out from what I hear Hey, all right But we still got tickets for uh demoyne and milwaukee. That's uh august 9th and august 10th Then the next mini tour is in atlantic city bethlehem pennsylvania and port chester new york. That is august 16th 17th and 18th there's still tickets for all those shows come on out to the atlantic city show

That's going to be a weird it'll be like a weird one on kind of on par with the hollywood forever show or like It's at a casino. It's going to be strange. Yes. It will be going to be strange And if you are in milwaukee on the 11th, i'm also going to be premiering uh hail yourself america my little documentary. Thanks to everyone who came out Uh at night hawk cinema for that on this past wednesday. That was awesome So stick around and uh and you can see me twice in milwaukee and i believe i'll be doing something in mini apples also Oh, yeah, that's awesome. That'll be cool. Moa is atlantic city. That is really cool. Is atlantic city going to be Full of gamblers or is it going to be like? I love that

That that crowd is going to be really interesting. It's going to be yes. It's going to be the the desolate souls But they're going to come to atlantic city come to come visit us in atlantic city and help take care of us Help protect us also show us atlantic city's got a heart in there. It does man. They see us back. I love it Yeah, and if you're here in the new york city area, uh, if you didn't know port chester is like 30 minutes north Yeah, port chester is very close to uh new york city. There's a lot of concerts out there Usually when ween plays around here, they play port chester. Awesome. So yeah, a lot of concerts are up from port chester So yeah, if you're in new york city, just pop on up come see us there We're in good company if we it's a good you know why the smaller market shows are actually funner

To come see too. Like if you come see one of those shows being like because we have nothing to do So we just in a city just drinking and hanging out. Yeah Come find our bullshit. Absolutely. Keep on supporting all the shows here on the last podcast network Um, I believe that's basically about it right guys. Yeah, that's pretty that's pretty much it And of course we got our uh, uk and european tour in uh, september Well, we can't wait to see all y'all then I cannot wait. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. Hail yourselves Hail satan again. Let's do a magus dilations It was legend. You can give yourself a little once. Give yourself a little magus dilation

Absolutely for all the fucking people for all the people that count on it The people that need it to get through their day like all of us. Help me. Help me. God damn it Yeah, and uh, yeah, just kill everybody. Don't uh, don't fucking everybody. Don't kill everybody. I don't even know why you're any With that I mean, maybe don't add maybe don't um, you know solicit people in the magazine and then kill them This show is made possible by listeners like you thanks to our ad sponsors You can support our shows by supporting them for more shows like the one you just listened to go to last podcast network.com