True Crime Campfire - Venus Flytrap: Ye Olde Bad Bitch Belle Gunness, Pt 1

Episode Date: April 16, 2021

Margaret Atwood wrote, “When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.” I think that rings true. To many, the thought of the past evokes nostalgia. Some might look at a black and white photo of a poodle skirted girl sharing a milkshake with her beau and they might yearn for a simple time, but they’re missing the “whites only” sign just out of frame. Human history is filled with just as much strife and injustice as we see on the news today. The killer we’re discussing today is a reminder that brutality is not a modern problem, it’s a human one. Sources:Hell's Princess by Harold SchechterFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]: https://shop.spreadshirt.com/true-crime-campfire/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Margaret Atwood wrote, When we think of the past, it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that. I think that rings true. To many, the thought of the past evokes nostalgia. Some might look at a black and white photo of a poodle-skirted girl sharing a milkshake with their bow, and they might yearn for a simple time. But they're missing the whites-only sign just out of frame. Human history is filled with just as much strife and injustice as we see on the news today. The killer we're discussing today is a reminder that brutality is not a modern problem. It's

a human one. This is Venus Flytrap, ye old bad bitch Bell Gunnus. So, campers, the story of the infamous Hell's Bell begins in Norway, specifically Selbu, a tiny little village on the coast in 1859. Yes. We're coming at you with a ye-oldy bad bitch this time, y'all. Get excited. Belle Gunnus was born Brunhild Paul's daughter, one of seven kids born to Paul Peterson and Barrett Oldsdaughter, because everybody had eight million offspring back then. Free labor, you know, for the farm or whatnot. Her dad, who was a stone mason, supplemented his income with a small farm, but they still had to receive government assistance. It was a rough life. And being poor, definitely shaped Brinhild's view of money and how. much she wanted it, by which I mean with the fire of a thousand, thousand sons.

It was the beginning of a lifetime of clawing after wealth, no matter what she had to do to get it. As a kid, Brynhild was required to do the typical farm chores, caring for the animals, collecting water, helping with the harvest. One other chores she had to do was collect twigs for the fire because the family couldn't afford to buy firewood. Neighbors called her Snirkwistpala, which translates to Paul's Twig daughter. According to Harold Schechter, this was an incredibly rude name, but I'm sure we're missing something in translation because it's just a fact, right? Right. If my parents had mean neighbors, they'd call me like, Dad's Podcast daughter or something. Yeah. Oh, that stings, right? I think these people were just shitty at bullying, which really seems kind of on brand for Norway.

Like, we have family in Norway, and they're like the sweetest people in the world. Yeah. So, I don't know, it just generally seems like kind of. of a chill place, despite the fact that they have made some seriously dark TV shows about murder. Anywho, when she was 14, Brinhild was confirmed by the town's Lutheran Church, and somehow managed not to burst into flames the moment the Holy Water touched her forehead. The pastor there was impressed by her intelligence, said he could only say the same about half the girls he'd confirmed, because, you know, our feminine brains are overwhelmed when we see too many words in one place.

Now, as with any serial killer, there is a lot of mythology about Bell slash Brunhild's time in Norway. After her death, a newspaper there published an article that said she was, quote, remembered as being a very bad human being, capricious and very malicious. She had unpretty habits, always in the mood for dirty tricks, talked little and was a liar already as a child. As a grown-up, she was little respected and was a scum of society. Damn, son, they came for her neck, did not let up, which is interesting because it's kind of the opposite of the coverage that we tend to get now, where neighbors and co-workers are always shaking their heads like, he seemed so normal. He was a nice guy, you know, kept to himself. I never saw a murder nobody or nothing. Yeah, I'd actually like to see more of this. Like, if anyone I know becomes a murderer, I'm going to go on the news like, uh, yeah, that dude was a fucking freak. This doesn't. doesn't surprise me at all. I actually reported him to the feds years ago, but they said he hadn't

done anything wrong, so. Absolutely. I'm going to be like, oh yeah, that guy, I totally called it. You can just tell by looking at him, that dude has a freezer full of heads in his basement. And by the way, if you just report all your neighbors, then just on the off chance that one of them sometimes, like, ends up in the news as a serial killer, you're like a genius. Yeah, absolutely. It's the law of large numbers. One of your neighbors has heads. in their freezer right now. I know exactly who it is in our neighborhood, too. It's pretty clear that the article in question features some untrue editorializing.

In part, I think, in an effort to separate Belle from her fatherland. Like, who, Belle? Nah, man, she doesn't even go here. Another rumor says that Brinhild got in the family way, my courtesy of a wealthy landowner. He wasn't ready for the birthday. burden of fatherhood, so he lured her to the woods and proceeded to beat her so badly she miscarried the baby. Another story says he kicked her in the stomach at a dance. And interestingly enough, pure coincidence, I'm sure, a few weeks later, the guy came down with a bad case of the

arsenics and died. I think there's ample reason to write this one off, though. For one thing, it goes against what we understand about Bell's early crimes. Most of them were motivated by greed, not vengeance or pleasure. Also, it makes no sense that she would immediately de-escalate to more petty crimes from straight-up revenge murder. Yeah, I totally agree with that. You don't usually go backwards, you know, it's an amping up to murder, and you don't usually start that and then go backwards.

So I think it's just mythology, like you said. People love to embellish these stories, which is funny because the truth is bad enough already, right? Yeah, I think the rumors of her childhood and young adult years are greatly exaggerated. There's no actual proof that, aside from poverty, her childhood was anything but average. Once she reached adulthood, though, oh, boy. It was time for her to make her fortune, or more likely for a woman at the time, get hitched to her fortune. Her sister, Olina, who was 10 years older, was already married and living in the U.S.,

and she invited Brinhild to move in with her and her family. So in 1881, Brinhild moved to the States. Like most immigrants, she changed her name to better assimilate with American culture. Her sister had done the same thing when she moved there, changing her name from Olina to Nelly. So Brinhild Paul's daughter became Bella Peterson, which really drives home the curse of the Peterson's. It does, right? Like, okay, we've got Scott Peterson, Michael Peterson, Drew Peterson, and now Bella Peterson. Peter's sons must be stopped, y'all.

It's a curse on humanity. Peter's sons. She was still unmarried, so Bella had to go to work as a maid. All good, except... See, Bella had expensive tastes. Champagne taste on a natty-bow budget, as they say. And she hated being a maid. She felt like it was beneath her.

So she started working on the best way to get out of it. She set her sights on Mau Edge. And in 1884, she was successful. She married a department store employee named Mads Dittley Sorensen, which is just delightful. Mads, Dittley, Sorensen. Everybody called him the dits. I'm just kidding, I just made that up. Mads was a good guy.

By all accounts, he was kind and well-liked, but Bella didn't seem to care much about that. Her sister Nellie later said, My sister was insane on the subject of money. She would do anything to get it. she never seemed to care for a man for his own self, only for the money and luxury he was able to give her. In fact, the nicest thing she could ever conjure up to say about Mads was, quote, he gave me a nice house. Wow. What a beautiful story. It brings a tear to my eye every time. These quotes, by the way, are all from Harold Schechter's phenomenal book, Hell's Princess,

which was our main source for this case. If you want to learn more, give it a read. It's awesome. So for about a decade, Mads and Bella's marriage was pretty uneventful. There was one problem, though. Bella was obsessed with having children, but unfortunately it seemed like she was unable to do so. She often volunteered at Sunday schools and orphanages. Nellie said almost every Norwegian Sunday school child in Chicago knew her for her kindness. Not only that, but if a kid needed a home, Bella would offer to give him one. Her desire to be a mother was second only to her greed and almost as destructive.

and it was the primary reason for the breakdown of her closest family tie. Her sister Nellie had a four-year-old daughter named Olga, and Bella was determined to take her for herself. Nellie, who obviously hadn't picked up on Bella's creepy obsession with the kid, would let Olga stay with Bella and Mads for like six weeks or more at a time, and apparently Bella just took that as an invitation. She basically just asked her sister, yo, can I just like have her? And, of course, Deli was like, no, that's my daughter. What the hell?

And Bella, you know, she took this with total grace and a plumb. Yeah, just kidding. She freaked the fuck out. And this weird fight over little Olga ended up being the nail in the coffin for the sister's relationship. Nellie said, after that, she rarely even spoke to Bella. And I don't blame her, because good God, like, what the hell made her think her sister would just give her one of her children? Like, that is some next-level entitlement, which I think is a red flag and a little bit of foreshadowing for what's going to come later. Because that degree of entitlement where you think you can just take somebody's kid, that's unusual, right? So in 1891, with her maternal fire still burning, Bella found the perfect opportunity in the form of a dying woman.

This poor lady was a neighbor of Bella's in the Norwegian community in Chicago, and while she was on her deathbed, Bella convinced this woman. to give her custody of her eight-month-old daughter, Jenny. Now, you may be asking, where was this kid's father? Well, between letting somebody else raise his child and having to do it himself, seems like he found himself favoring the former. Yeah, I know, father of the year, right? Way to step up, man. Give him a mug.

Mm-hmm. So everything was peachy keen for a while. But then, the bio-dad got married again. So suddenly, now he had to be a mug. a new babysitter, and he tried to get the little girl back. He even went so far as to take Bella to court, but the court said, nah, bro, the kid's in good hands, and granted her full permanent custody, which is really kind of astonishing to me. I mean, this was the kid's biological father, but, I mean, I guess we're talking about a very different time. Right. And the thing was,

the court's finding was true. Everybody said that Bella just doaded on Jenny, spoiled a run. In 1894, Mads and Bella bought a candy store with the meeker savings they'd managed to squirrel away. It pretty much failed immediately. And about a year after the doors opened, Bella and Jenny, who was three at the time, were alone in the store when a fire broke out. Carrying Jenny, Bella ran into the street yelling, fire, fire! While neighbors tried calling the fire department. Unfortunately, though, the store was completely destroyed. Bella told first responders that a lamp had exploded and started the fire.

But strangely, the investigators didn't find any evidence of shattered glass or broken lamp at the scene. Hmm. As luck would have it, the property and contents were fully insured. And despite evidence that Bella was lying through her teeth, the insurance company paid up. Because before about 1950, claims adjusters accepted pinky swears as binding contracts. Man, it must have been a crack team. they had at that insurance company, right? Like, did they think that, like, broken lamps could just vaporize in the flames?

Apparently. And after they cashed the check, Mads and Bella sold the store. This is a big moment because it's the first time we know of that Bella committed a crime. And she jumped right to fucking arson. Yep. Go big or go home, I guess. But arson does fit into the pattern of a financially motivated serial killer, which I believe Bella was. She put her three-year-old in danger for financial gain. It doesn't usually get much colder

than that. I mean, it can and it will, but not usually. The late 1890s were a busy time for Bella and Mads. Between 1896 and 1898, they had four more children. Damn. It's not clear whether they were biological children or adopted, but Bella was in her late 30s at the time, and was previously unable to conceive. Is it possible that she had two sets of Irish twins? Maybe. But I don't think it's likely. Yeah, me neither.

The children's names were Caroline, Myrtle, Axel, and Lucy. I'm sorry, Axel? Like Axel Rose? All right, carry on. It was Axle Rose. You've seen him, right? He looks about 200 years old. That's a good burn.

Unfortunately, little Caroline died at five months old, and Axel at three months. There goes my joke, shit. Their deaths were ruled natural, not surprising at a time when every one out of a hundred births resulted in death. But in Hell's princess, Harold Schechter suggests that these may actually have been Bell's first victims. Their deaths certainly had the hallmarks of poisoning, so it's a strong possibility. One afternoon in early October 1897, a guest knocked on Mads and Bella's door. He introduced himself as Angus Ralston, owner of the Yukon Mining and Trading Company. He said the company was worth $3.5 million.

That's $11 million in today's money. And he claimed he owned mines in New Mexico and had other lucrative businesses in Alaska. So this Angus Ralston, also one hell of a name, by the way, was going door-to-door, looking for minors, like you do. Bella, presumably with cartoon dollar signs in her eyes, encouraged Mads to sign on. The contract Angus gave him stipulated that Mads would sign on for a year starting in April. He'd be paid the same salary as the other miners. The contract didn't mention a specific number, but I'm sure that was just an oversight and not at all in a attempt to screw him over, right? And he'd get 2,800 company shares and a quarter of the proceeds

from any mines he discovered. Good old Angus also agreed to pay Bell $35 a week, since Mads would be in Alaska for the year and wouldn't be able to support them while he was gone. In today's money, that was Mad Bank. It'd be like getting about $1,100 a week, plus the money that Mads would be stocking away up in Alaska. Nice. Now, I know what you're thinking. Sounds too good to be true, right? Yeah. God, you're all so cynical. Oh. Y'all need to learn to trust people. You know, not every random dude who shows up at your door offering to give you a dream job

and pay your significant other while they're at it is a scammer. Geez. Except that, of course, it was absolutely a scam. Mads and Bella had to give Angus Ralston money up front to cover, allegedly, the cost of tools and supplies. And we are not talking about a small amount of money. They had to give Angus a promissory. note for $700, over $20,000 in today's money, and put up their house as collateral. Okay, here's a tip.

Campers, if you have to pay the company that hired you any money at all, you're getting scammed. Like outside of work clothes or shoes or something, if you have to pay them directly just for the privilege of being hired, shut it down. But Mads, bless his heart, signed the contract in late October, which gave him about six months to prepare for hashtag goldmine life. Life with a why, so you know it's real. Obviously. So he started getting his affairs in order,

but after a couple months with no contact from Angus or Yukon mining and trading, Mads and Bella started getting belatedly a little suspic. So they reached out to a lawyer who did some digging and found out that, shocker of shockers, old Angus Ralston had lied about his company's resources. He was Flatbrook. Not only that, his company didn't even have any mines, not in Alaska or anywhere else. The company was just a shell, a scam to separate people like poor old Mads from their money.

And it gets worse. Angus had sold Mads and Bella's $700 promissory note to a realtor. And that meant that in a couple of years when the note came due, Bella and Mads would be on the hook to this guy. And if they couldn't pay, he could take their house. Yikes. Fortunately, though, Mads and Bella sued and won. So they got back the deed to their house and got the promissory note nullified and, you know, lesson learned, right? So what we learn, don't trust random dudes with names like the rakish near-dwells from one of those Scottish Highlands romance novels you find at the checkout counter at Walgreens, okay? I love those books.

They're hilarious. Me too. Whenever we find one in like the book aisle at Kroger or whatever, we like to just regroup. random parts out loud in the store. You know those books? They always have like a picture of some buff-looking dude and a kilt and no shirt, you know, with some gorgeous, flowy, red-haired girl

clinging to their manly chests. Maybe the silhouette of a lonely bagpiper in the distance. And they have titles like, Taming the Highland Bride. That's actually a real one. I shit you know. And I have to say, as a woman fortunate enough to have married a Highland Scotsman,

I can tell you, campers, I am living the dream. Hang on. You have red hair. I think I'm gaining some insight. I think I'm gaining some insight into your marriage here. Rout row. I've said too much. Oh, man.

That's hilarious. Also, can we just like take a second and think about how badly I want to be a fly on the wall when Belle, motherfucking gunness, realizes she's been scammed. Oh, yeah. Oh, I know. I would give anything. Oh, boy, if she could have found him, that dude dodged a bullet, right? He's lucky. That's the only thing that happened is that he got sued.

Jesus Christ. In April of 1900, another fire broke out, this time in Mazz and Bella's home. Insurance paperwork indicated that it was caused by a broken furnace. Luckily, the house was okay, but a lot of their stuff got damaged. The insurance company paid out $650, but it wouldn't be long until tragedy and Lady Luck would strike them again. On July 30th, Bella summoned two doctors to the house. They arrived to find Mads, fully dressed, and lying on top of his made-up bed, dead. Bella said he'd been suffering from a bad cold, so she'd put him to bed and given him some quiet eye to help with a headache. When she went to check on him a little bit later, he was dead.

One of the doctors, Dr. J.C. Miller, knew Mads and Bella. In fact, he'd boarded with them for a while. He thought that maybe the pharmacist accidentally switched the quinine powder with morphine, so he asked Bella if she had the paper that the powder came in so he could check. But, oh, man, shoot, wouldn't you know it? She'd already thrown it away. Oh, dang, what a shame. Both doctors would eventually rule that Mad's cause of death was a cranial hemorrhage.

One person in particular seemed to benefit quite a bit for Mad's death. He had a life insurance policy worth $2,000 that was set to expire on June 30th, and he'd been intending to let it expire so he could replace it with a $3,000 policy that would go into effect the same day. Both policies named Bella as the beneficiary. Bella, who could now claim the title of world's luckiest widow, was able to collect on both the $2,000 and $3,000 policies, which totals up to $150,000 in today's money. Damn. Mads was so considerate to die on the exact day that both policies would pay out, don't you think?

So considerate. So the widow Sorensen was finally. finally in possession of the kind of riches she'd always dreamt of. In November of 1901, Bella used her new fortune to buy a beautiful house on 42 acres in Leport, Indiana. It was really an impressive place. Sat up on a hill right outside of town. Very dramatic. And here's a bizarre little fun fact, campers. The house's previous owner was Maddie Altic, who was the Leport's most infamous woman until Bella superseded her. Yeah, Maddie was a madam, who was allegedly murdered by her sister, a competing madam.

Man, that is some late 1800s Kardashian drama right there. You know, you cannot make this shit up. So, there's no way that house isn't haunted, is there? Oh, hell no, uh-uh. Anyway, it was here in LaPorte that Bella started going by Bell. Previously, Bell and Mads had taken in a border named Peter Gunniss, a stockyard worker in Chicago. He lived with them until he decided to move closer to his brother in Minneapolis, Minnesota. One writer who'd met him said he was a, quote, fine-looking blonde Viking of a man with clear blue eyes and a pointed yellow beard.

In short, Peter Gunnis was a haughty with a body, and historians and true crime buffs love talking about what an unmatched couple they were. Yeah, we actually want to take a second and talk a bit about Bell's appearance because every source we found makes her out to be this hulking monstrosity and talks about how weird it was that Peter would marry someone like her. Everybody makes her sound like an ugly, giant, unlovable troll, like Lady Shrek's ugly or cousin, basically. And I really don't think that's a fair. way to depict her. First of all, she was 5-8, which is hardly an Amazon. And second of all,

the most famous picture of her, which is a portrait of her and her kids, was taken when she was 43. Now, I realize I too am 43. So I'm going to tread lightly here, but in the late 1800s, early 1900s, people did some hard living, okay? 43 looked a little bit different than than it does now. 43 was probably more like 73 today. Right. So she might look a little bit rougher in that picture. But in her wedding portrait, which was taken before her wedding to match, she just looks like a normal woman, you know? And I don't think

an unattractive one, honestly, in that picture. And I mean, also, marriage at the time was more about convenience a lot of the time than romance. I mean, Peter Gunniss was at least partly motivated by the land that she owned, not just because he was warm for her form, you know? But I'm

just saying, it's entirely possible that he was warm for it, like at least not ice cold anyway. I'm not bad. Right. I take issue with the way she's portrayed for a couple of reasons. One, it's not accurate and I am a slut for accuracy. And two, I grew up being a large, strong woman. And that kind of rhetoric hurts. I've been called a troll or an ochre or manish by bullies. That shit hurt. It deeply affected the way I viewed myself for many, many years and sometimes still does. Can I have their like addresses? Because I just want to talk. I promise I won't do anything rash.

No, I need you for this podcast. Do not. All right. Something we try to do at True Crime Campfire is to judge people by their actions, not their appearances. Are we always successful? Of course not. But you can dunk on Bell Gunnis without taking shots at the way she looked. This bitch has 14 confirmed kills, probably more.

more. She literally, provably, purred while having sex. She was an awful mother. Her solution to most problems was either murder or arson, so there's plenty to dunk on. And I think it's important to remember that when you take pot shots at people who deserve it, you may be hitting innocent bystanders. Yeah, that's true. And I can tell you're on a roll here, KT, but let's not just gloss over that purring thing, okay? Because we're going to come back to that later. Oh, I promise we will, campers. it reminds me of the people that go on rants about how they don't find Ted Bundy attractive. Like, you don't have to think the dude is hot, but you also need to acknowledge that charisma can go a long way. Yeah, and that you weren't there.

Right. You know, a picture doesn't really tell you a lot about a person's attractiveness in my experience. But, anyhow, we digress. Back to hottie-McHoddy Pants, Peter Gunness. After he moved out of Mads and Bella's house, he'd gone to Minneapolis where he got married and had two kids. and sadly his wife died giving birth to the second one. Poor Peter was devastated. So he was in a vulnerable place emotionally

when a few months after Mads died, Bell took the time to visit him in Minnesota and told him all about her expensive new place. And in the spring of 1902, Peter and Bell got married. And campers, five days later, Peter's seven-month-old baby daughter died. And the doctors said it was edema of the lungs, and babies most definitely died a lot back then.

But the timing seems a bit suspicious to me, and as you'll soon see, children had a habit of dying around Bill. So I think, and Katie, I know you agree, there's a good chance she murdered Peter's little girl. Oh, yes. Why would she do that? Well, maybe the baby was too stark a reminder of Peter's dead wife, whom he'd adored and was still grieving for.

Maybe he was giving the baby a little more attention than he was given her. Maybe she just wanted him more vulnerable So she could swoop in and be the ministering angel We don't know for sure But we are side eye in the hell out of that death And then on December 16th Eight months after the wedding Bell and Peter's neighbor

Swan Nicholson and his son Albert Woke up to a booming knock on the door at 3 a.m. You know that's nothing good, right? No And it was Bell's adopted 12-year-old daughter Jenny In a panic and holding on to a fireiron when she'd been using to bang on the door and saying, Mama wants she to come up.

Papa's burned himself. So they bundled up, followed Jenny back to the Gunnus farm, and there in the kitchen, they found Bell screaming incoherently while Peter lay face down on the floor in a pool of his own blood. Swan Nicholson knelt down, tried to feel for a pulse,

tried to get Peter to talk to him, but he wasn't responding. So he sent his son Albert running to town to get a doctor. The doctor, who coincidentally enough, was also the county coroner, was a guy named Bo Bo Bo Bo Bo. Bo Bo Bo Bo. Okay, I'm just saying this case in the weird names, man. Oh, totally. Bo Bo Bole. So when Dr. Bull examined Peter, he could tell right away he was dead. The body was already in full rigor mortis. Precise time of death is always hard to determine even today. But Dr. Bull's educated guess was that Peter had been dead for at least an hour. hour, maybe more. Upon further examination of the body, he saw a nasty wound on the back of

Peter's head, quote, caked in blood. The nose was broken, too. Dr. Bull's first suspicion was that Peter was murdered. He noticed that Bell was bordering on hysteria, but he still tried to get the story from her. Through tears, she told him that Peter had gone to the kitchen to grab his shoes from next to the stove, which, Toasty Shoes, hell yeah. Hell yeah. And as he leaned down, a meat grinder from the shelf above the stove fell and struck him in the head. And if that wasn't bad enough, as it was falling, the grinder knocked over a bowl of hot brine on the stove, which also fell on top of Peter scalding his neck.

Holy shit, it's like an evil Rube Goldberg contraption. Right? Peter was seemingly okay after all this, though, and was able to go back to bed, telling Bell he was fine. But hours later, she found him on the floor. Now, pretty much everyone thought this story was bullshit. Neighbor guy's swan's son, Albert, was immediately like, uh, dad, I think Mr. Gunniss was murdered. And we love this. Swan told him to keep his damn mouth shut, quote, or there might be trouble for Mrs. Gunniss, which really shows that Swan had his priorities in order, right? Like, yeah, our neighbor may have brutally murdered our husband, but God forbid we make waves about it.

It's so weird. It's so weird. We're not sure how old Albert was at the time, but regardless, it's never too early or too late to teach your kid that snitches get stitches. That's some grade A high quality dad wisdom there. As for Dr. Bull, he knew right away that it was murder, but he had to try to stay neutral because he had to do the autopsies. still. So for the moment, he, quote, reserved judgment. Meanwhile, the local media had no such reservations. The next day, the headlines read, Crime of high degree, with commentators saying,

murder is running rampant in Laporte County. There were two other high-profile murders in the news at the time. One had happened during a bank robbery, and the other was the murder of a local grocery store owner. That one was never solved. There was also another unsolved case where a girl named Matilda Baker died from eating arsenic-laced chocolates that somebody sent her anonymously. And then, a young man named George Shear, quote, suddenly became demented and tried to kill his mother with a carving knife. Now, campers, I'd like to point out that people are always watching the news saying,

The world wasn't violent before TV and video games and rap music corrupted our youth. Well, actually, Susan, People have been murdering fiends since before the dawn of time. Also, Kendrick Lamar has a Pulitzer, so sit your bland ass down. Right. Human beings have been violent ass baskets for literally as long as we've existed on Earth. Okay? Just realize that.

So, needless to say, the people of Laporte were a bit on edge. And when they did the autopsy on Peter Gunniss, Dr. Boland his assistant were immediately struck by the inconsistencies in Bill's story. First of all, there were no burns on his body. Remember, she said a bowl of hot brine had scalded him? Now, why would she lie about this? I don't know, maybe to explain why she didn't notice the blood on him. It wasn't bright, but she did it. Then, they noticed that the nose was broken so severely

that it must have been struck multiple times. And the head wound was so bad that there was no way Bell wouldn't have noticed it when he told her he was heading off to bed. Yeah, this is one of the grossest details, but his nose was bent flat against his face. So it would have been noticed, from space, probably. That is nasty. Yeah.

So their finding was that Peter had died from, quote, shock and pressure caused by fracture and hemorrhage. And that wound on the back of his head was not consistent with a meat grinder fallen on him either. It was consistent with blunt force trauma, a beating with some kind of object. All of this confirmed his suspicions. Peter Gunness had been murdered. So Dr. Boll called for an inquest. And on December 18, 1902, a jury was called to the Gunnest Farm for the inquest, to the very room where Peter died, which is super dark. Dr. Boll did the interrogation himself.

When she recounted the night of Peter's death, Bell changed several details. First of all, now she claimed that the boiling hot brine wasn't actually boiling. It was warm enough to burn, but not badly. She said she'd just treated him with Vaseline and liniment, trying to explain him. I assume why his body didn't have a burn wound. Dr. Bold then asked her if she saw the wound on the back of Peter's head when she was treating him. She acknowledged that she had, but said it wasn't a bad wound. It was bleeding a little bit, but it had mostly stopped.

She was basically like, he didn't tell me it was that bad, like it's his fault. And as she recounted treating his burns, she said, he was afraid he was going to lose some of his hair on account of that burning, and he was complaining terribly, which really strikes me. It's like she's testifying about her. husband's death, like two days earlier, and it sounds like she has zero empathy. God, he just would not shut up about his horrible burn. Ugh.

Nice, Belle. Real nice. So Peter had headed off to bed to lie down, she said, and a little while later, he came downstairs saying, Mama, Mama, my head. I don't know what's the matter with my head. And, oh, Mama, I guess I'm going to die. She said she sat with him for a couple of hours before she sent for the neighbors, and that he wasn't dead until the doctor arrived.

She told the jury she had no idea how exactly he'd knocked the brine onto himself. She had no idea how he'd broken his nose, and she hadn't heard anybody coming to the house. Just, uh, basically. And when Dr. Boll asked her if her marriage had been a happy one, the woman who two days earlier had been sobbing hysterically over her dead husband's body, shrugged and said, as far as I know. Wow. I don't even know what that means.

Bell's adopted daughter Jenny also testified and basically repeated her mom's story, even the parts she'd slept through. Dr. Bull asked her if Belle had coached her, and Jenny denied it. She said they hadn't talked at all. But that didn't explain how she knew about stuff that it allegedly happened while she was upstairs in bed. Neighbor Swan Nicholson was next. He told the jury that he had no inkling that Bell may have heard her husband.

He said that Peter and Bell were one of those schmoopy newlywed couples. He said, they'd be like a couple of children, and the same as the day they were married. But at the same time, he said he barely even knew the gunnesses. He said, we had so little dealing with her, we were up there. My wife was up there once last winter, but I wasn't up there but once. Looks like Swan lived and died by Snitches get stitches. Dr. Bull restated his suspicions. The meat grinder wasn't heavy enough to cause a skull fracture, and Bell supposed

sat and tended to Peter for over two hours and never asked him how he dumped hot water all over himself? Where were the burns? His nose would have been bleeding and broken, but she didn't notice? The jury didn't agree. They said, after having examined the body and heard the evidence, we so find that the deceased came to his death by accidental falling of the auger part of a sausage mill, falling from the heating shelf of a cook stove in his kitchen and striking on back of the head. The impact of said auger part of sausage mill, causing fracture of skull and intercranial hemorrhage resulting in death. Jurors would later say that it was Swan's testimony that tipped their opinions into Bell's favor. So I see we have a prototype version of Casey Anthony's jury.

Absolutely. For Bell Gunniss, the message was loud and clear. She could literally get away with murder. But Bell's other neighbors were not having it. They almost universally hated her. There are several accounts of her run-ins with them. One neighbor was furious that Bell's cows would roam onto his land in graze. He warned her that he was going to start charging her rent, and he did. The next time it happened, he penned her cows in and demanded that she pay him a dollar. Bell wasn't about to take that kind of guff lying down, and when she saw her neighbor's cows grazing on the roadside, she herded them into her field.

She demanded a dollar in exchange for their return. When the neighbor pointed out that she was the one that put the cows in the field in the first place and went to open the gate, Belle told little Jenny to go get her revolver. And Jenny did as she was told. Bell, cool as a fridge full of cucumbers, leveled it right at her neighbor and said,

Don't touch that gate. Jeez, Louise. And unsurprisingly, he did eventually give her that dollar, you know, rather than get shot in the face. This is the third time that Belle has used Jenny as her little minion, and it's so creepy. Female serial killers are always doing the shit. They view their children as extensions of themselves,

and they manipulate them into committing crimes on their behalf. Yeah, when they're not murdering them. Right. Got to be good for something. So this wasn't the only livestock-related drama that Belle got into with her neighbors. Bell's pigs tended to wander over to swan, snitches get stitches, Nicholson's cornfield, and Nicholson would have to herd the pigs back over to Bell's property. Bitch, build a fence.

Who's a hell lest her animals just wander around? Like, I'm a city slicker. And even I know that's bad manners, you know? Right. So, anyway, one day he'd had enough, and he put the pigs in his pig pen and took his horse and buggy to town to report Bell to the local constabulary. So, okay, that he'll rat on her for. Like, what is this guy's deal? Swan, my man, your moral compass is all out of whack.

So the police forced Bell to pay $11, which is pretty steep. That's like $300 and some in today's cash. One dollar for each of Bell's pigs on Nicholson's property. and Bill was apoplectic. She saw Swan's wife at the market and confronted her and she was like, that's all Mr. Nicholson has been trying to do all these years is get my money. Well, now he's got it. I don't want nothing more to do with any of you. So this statement hit me wrong when I first read it. Like either she's deeply paranoid about money, which considering her past is not too absurd, or she has reason to think Nicholson wanted her money. Remember, his testimony is the one that led to her being exonerated for Peter's

murder. Was he trying to shake her down, or was this her guilty mind drawing conclusions? I think she probably did think he was trying to shake her down. I doubt he actually was, but her reaction, I think, could very much be consciousness of guilt. So it's interesting. Bell's neighbors also thought it was strange that she took on the farm chores herself after Peter died. One person said that it wasn't uncommon for her to go to the local livestock auction, buy a 200-pound hog, lifted into her wagon by herself and drive off. This is a weird statement looking back through modern lenses. I mean, I know a bunch of ladies that could deadlift 200 pounds,

so I'm kind of side-eye on her neighbors here. Yeah, I see a lady lifting 200 pounds, and I'm impressed and maybe trying to figure out how to give her my number, not starting rumors about her. But regardless, I can kind of see people that expect women to be barefoot and chained to the stove might be surprised that a lady is capable of lifting. that much, but also, shut up. Yeah, I have no doubt you could lift a 200-pound hog into a wagon, KT.

I couldn't, but I could, I might be able to manage a hundred-pound one as long as it was cooperative, you know, and not trying to, like, eat my face off. She was a farm lady, big deal, you know. At any rate, her neighbors would soon have more to discuss around the proverbial water cooler. In early 1903, a midwife was called to the Gunnest farm only to find a 43-year-old Bell Gunniss holding a bathed and dressed little boy that Bell named Philip. That same morning, a neighbor named Catherine saw Jenny Gunniss, who told her that Bell had, quote, gotten a little baby boy.

Gotten. Huh. So Catherine went over to see if the widow Gunniss needed any help, you know, thinking she'd just birthed a baby, but when she got to the farm, Belle was out in the yard, just doing laundry. And Catherine was shocked and said, Belle, you know, you should be in bed. but Belle brushed her off saying Ah, in the old country, they never go to bed after they get a baby.

Ugh, you know, there's nothing worse than a sanctum on me. Am I right? Um, it's cute that you got an epidural, but I had a natural waterbirth where my cat acted as my dula because I wanted to welcome the baby in a soothing

environment, not hooked on Big Pharma's poison already. Oh my God. I don't even have kids in that shit gets my blood up. Shut up, Kaylee. No one cares how you bore your baby. Just talk to me when I'd have inside jokes with it. So, the town rumor mill promptly went into overdrive.

Not only was Bell pretty old to be having a kid and not missing a beat, but they also noticed that the baby was awfully big to be a newborn. So they came to the conclusion that the baby must have been adopted, but nobody knew like from whom or how. And disturbingly, nobody knows where this kid came from to the baby. this day. Like, she just suddenly had this baby boy. Despite all the strange happenings around the widow Gunniss, life in LaPort continued as it always had, but not everyone was content to forget the allegations.

Peter Gunniss's brother Gust was absolutely shaken by his brother's death, and he was far from convinced that it was an accident. He felt it in his gut that Bell had killed Peter. Even worse, he kept thinking about Peter's baby. who had died just a few days after the wedding. He was convinced that Bell had murdered both Peter and the baby, and now she had a hostage in the form of five-year-old Swanhild Gunness, Peter's oldest daughter. It was a sickening thought.

Furthering his concern was the fact that Peter had a life insurance policy that named Swanhild as the beneficiary in the event of his death. He wanted to make sure that Swanhild was Hale and Hardy and got the $2,500 she was. owed. So Gus, being a god-dam hero, traveled from Minneapolis to Leport to check on his niece. Swanhild seemed to be treated well by Belle and her step-siblings, and she looked happy. When he asked her about the life insurance policy, Bell told him that Peter signed it over to a mining company to be converted into stock. She said, if the stock ever amounts to anything,

Swanhild would be a rich girl. Gus was unhappy, but, But he said, okay, well, can I see the stock certificates? And I know this is going to shock you. Bell said, no. Couldn't lay hands on him right then. So, so sorry. How weird is it, by the way, that she used pieces of a con she fell for her to try to trick him? It's bizarre.

It's like an AI learning to speak or something. So fucking creepy. Like, she was learning to be a better liar. And she probably figured that, like, if the shit hit the fan, and she could blame it on that Angus Ralston guy. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. But Bell did have a proposition for Gust. Boring on the full force of her infamous charm, she asked,

Would you like to stay here and help me with my farm? I can only assume that as she finished that sentence, a peal of thunder rang out, and a mysterious masked man struck a sharp cord on an organ. Gus, who apparently had a decent rate, system on him, didn't take her up on the offer. He later said she gave him a look that sent chills up his back, said, I didn't like her eyes. Gus did stay for almost a week, but felt a looming sense of doom hanging over him like Damocles' sword, just waiting to drop and impale him.

So finally, without warning and exuding true final girl energy all the while, Gus scooped up Swanhild and left in the middle of the night. The missing life insurance money was a small price to pay for his and his niece's lives. Damn, good for him. You know, we should all be lucky enough to have an uncle Gus. Right? By now, Bell's farm had grown so much that she couldn't keep up with all the work herself. So she took out a help-wanted ad in the Scandinavian, a Norwegian language newspaper. 30-year-old Olaf Lindboe responded in February of 1904. Bell hired him. And soon, witnesses noticed that Olaf and the widow Gunna seemed close, always canoodling.

So the general consensus was that they were engaged. But then one afternoon, the port local Chris Christopherson bumped into Bell, and she told him that Olaf, that good-for-nothing lay about, had just up and abandoned her, right in the middle of an important job. Could Chris come over and help out? And when Chris pressed her about where Olaf had gone, Bell told him he'd gone to the world's fair in St. Louis and was looking to buy some land there. But then later, she told her neighbor Swan that he'd gone back to Norway to see the new king crowned.

For God's sake, Belle, do you not understand that people in small towns talk to each other? Is it really that hard to keep a story straight? Like, why change the story? Okay, I'm going to try. Let me try. Whitney, my favorite color is blue. Got it? Mm-hmm. Okay, take your headphones off real quick. All right.

Okay, she did. campers my favorite color is purple fuck damn it damn it can i put my headphones back on now yes you got it finally olaf's father who hadn't heard from his son in months reached out to bell and to him she said olaf had traveled west to seek his fortune the victorian jack carrowack that was our boy olaf and by april of nineteen o five bell had hired somebody new on the farm a guy named hemmed Henry Gerholt seemed to like his new digs. He told his mother that the Gunnest Farm was one of the nicest places in the neighborhood. And Bell was great. She treated him like a member of the family. It wasn't meant to last, though, because by August of that year, Bell was once again knocking on

Chris Christopherson's door, asking him to come help out with the oat harvest. And when Chris was like, sure, but where's Henry? Bell said he'd just up and quit, with no warning. Said he was too sick to work and just took a few things and went off to Chicago. He left his trunk and some of his clothes behind. That's how fast he skedaddled out of there. For the moment, this satisfied Chris, but later that year, he spotted Bell wearing a nice fur coat that he knew had belonged to Henry Gerholt. Chicago was not exactly known for its balmy winters, so if he'd gone there, wouldn't he have made sure to take his nice coat? He asked Bell about it, but she just kind of brushed him aside. in September of 1905, Norwegian language newspapers all across the Midwest started posting an advertisement that read wanted, a woman who owns a beautifully located and valuable farm in first-class condition, wants a good and reliable man as partner and same. Some little cash is required and will be furnished first-class security. Now, obviously, this was catnip, because the local postman said Bell got anywhere between one and ten letters every day.

Damn. The first limb to the slaughter was a man named George Barry from Tuscola, Illinois. George gathered up his life savings about $1,500, which is $40K today, and headed to Leport. He told his friends he was going, quote, for a job and possibly marriage, which I love. It's like so unapologetically practical, you know. George never came back again, and he was followed shortly by Christian Hilfkin of Dover, Wisconsin, who brought with him $2,000. 60K today. Christian's friends never heard from him again.

Next came Emil Tell of Osage, Kansas, who quit his job and took two grand with him to Laporte. An Iola-Wisconsin native, 50-year-old Ole Budsburg sold his farm and headed off with the proceeds, telling his grown sons he was going to Indiana to get married. In December, a Minnesota man named John Moe withdrew $1,000 and told the teller he was heading off to La Port, Indiana.

Are you getting dizzy yet? This woman was unbelievable. And note the time frame there. That ad went out in September. And the last one I told you about was December of the same year. Bonkers. A 19-year-old farmhand who worked for Belle later gave testimony about her gentleman callers. He said there was a different one almost every week, showing up with trunks and big smiles.

Bell introduced them as cousins, and apparently she had cousins. from all over the country. The cousins stayed with Mrs. Gunniss in her bedroom, the farmhand said, and she made sure to keep them away from the children. Smart, you know, no sense in letting the kids get all attached to your murder victims. It's kind of like how you don't let your kids name the farm animals, you know, just make them sad when the poor things have to be slaughtered. Yeah, my farming cousin introduced me to her goats once.

She was like, this is peanut butter. This is Oreo, and this is dinner. Yeah, it was a tough day for me, lots of life lessons. Oh, I love ghosts. I know, me too. The farmhand said that these guys never stayed longer than about a week, and that every one of them seemed to disappear into thin air. None of them said goodbye, and all of them left their trunks.

Oh, come on. There were about 15 trunks in total in the bedroom. Bell used a store. George. Y'all, Bell's official confirmed kill count is 14. Those are the ones we know about and we're able to identify. I don't believe that includes any of the children's deaths that we've discussed. But if this witness's testimony is accurate, that means she'd killed 15 men by the middle of 1906 in addition to the two previous murders of Peter and Mads. And she's not even done yet. This bitch had a murder assembly line. She really did. Like she was a murder machine, like a murder powerhouse.

The murdery energizer bunny. She reminds me a lot of H.H. Holmes, actually. He also had a very efficient M.O. The only difference is that he built a hotel to streamline his murders. And Bell just used Lonely Hearts ads. She's the epitome of Work Smart or Not Hard. And this is bonkers. A local laborer later recalled that in the summer of 1906, Belle asked him to dig some rubbish pits for her. And she was very particular about the dimensions. She wanted them six feet long,

three feet wide, and four feet deep. I feel like any time someone asks for a six-foot-long pit to be dug, Clippy the murder paper clip should pop up. up saying, looks like you've been tricked into digging a grave, pal. Do you need help contacting the local authorities? I love Clippy the murder paper. He's the best. I cannot get enough with those clipy jokes. In the fall of 1906, Jenny, Bell's oldest daughter, an unwitting accomplice, turned 16. Now, if you recall, this was the kid that Bell had adopted from the dying woman years earlier in Chicago. She was a beautiful girl, so of course, she had plenty of suitors. Shortly after her 16th birthday, Jenny told one of these guys, John Widener, that her mom was making her go to college

in Los Angeles, so she'd have to leave the next week, she said, but she made John promise to come over the next Sunday so she could say goodbye. John kept his promise, hiring a buggy in the middle of a snowstorm to get there. So romantic. But when he knocked on the door to the Gunna's farm, Bell told him Jenny had already left the previous Wednesday. Yeah, I'm sure she was fine. Nothing suspicious there, right? Poor John kept his fire lit for Jenny, though. He wrote to the address she'd given him in California over and over again, but he never heard back. And about six months later, he ran into Bell and asked after Jenny. He said, I've heard nothing back from your daughter. And Bell just laughed. She said, oh, that's all right.

I heard you'd gotten married and wrote to tell her. John was dumbstruck. He told her. He told her, it was his brother who'd gotten married, not him, and he asked her if she'd please write to Jenny to let her know that he was still very much single and still asking after her. And Belle said, sure, sure, well do. But John never heard from Jenny again. Now, of course, I know it's not going to surprise you to hear that, in reality, Jenny never left the Gunas homestead alive. Why did she have to die? Was she starting to put two and two together about Mommy Dearest crimes? Maybe Belle was worried she would let something slip to one of her suitors.

Or maybe she was just so obsessed with owning Jenny that she couldn't bear to let her live on her own. Jenny was becoming a young woman. She'd want to get married soon. My suspicion is Belle killed her because she was growing into a beautiful young woman of marriageable age and Belle didn't want the competition. We can't be sure, of course, but we do know that she murdered this poor kid who she'd taken care of and by all accounts

doted on most of her life and if she could murder her own adopted child there is nothing on earth that this woman couldn't do campers you know the drill by now our serial killers get two parts and that was the first half of a wild one right

you know we'll have part two for you next week but for now lock your doors light your lights and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire and we want to send a shout out to a few of our newest patrons thank you so much to Suzanne, Nick, Nat, Keisha, and Allison.

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