Belle Gunness Serial Murder Is a Thankfully

Belle Gunness

Serial murder is a thankfully rare occurrence, but not rare enough. Per the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) organization and categorization standards, in order to be classified as a serial killer, a person must have committed at least three homicides over a period of time. There are many different types of serial killers; those that kill for profit and those that kill for sexual gratification. Among the rarest of serial killers is the female serial murderer. Only three percent of all serial killers are female and those that choose to commit these crimes do so most often have financial gain as a motive. One of the most notorious female serial killers of all time was Belle Gunness who murdered not only a large number of affluent male suitors, but very likely also killed her own children and an unknown woman in order to fake her own death and escape unpunished by the American judicial system.

Belle Gunness was born in Selbu, Norway in 1859 and then immigrated to the United States sometime in 1881 (Gibson 2010,-page 35). Three years later, Gunness married Mads Sorenson and they opened a confectionary store. The store mysteriously burned down and Gunness was able to collect an insurance payout. On July 30, 1900 Belle's husband passed away, supposedly from an enlarged heart. July 30 was the sole day in which one life insurance policy was still active as it was about to lapse and a new one began. Although the family of Mads Sorenson were all highly suspicious no autopsy was performed. There is also speculation that during the marriage, Gunness may have given birth and subsequently murdered two of her four children.

Following her husband's demise, Belle Gunness moved to La Porte, Indiana where she married widower Peter Gunness. One week after the wedding, Peter's infant daughter died. By the end of the year Gunness himself had died, having according to Belle had a sausage grinder fall off of a shelf and onto his head, killing him instantly (Gibson 2010,-page 38). An adopted daughter, Jennie Olson also disappeared at that time. Gunness claimed that Jennie had gone off to school; her body was later discovered buried on the La Porte farm grounds.

Over the next few years, Belle Gunness began posting advertisements in Norwegian American newspapers where she professed to be a widow of means who was looking for a man of substance who was interested in marriage. Between 1903 and 1908, an estimated thirty or forty people went missing who had told relatives that they were going to see a widow in La Porte, Indiana. After the events became public knowledge, investigators uncovered more than half a dozen bodies buried on the grounds as well as rings, wallets, and identification for dozens of others, mostly middle-aged men (Gibson 2010,-page 42). It has been postulated that some of the bodies had been ground up and fed to the animals on the farm which would explain the absence of their bodies.

On April 28, 1908, the Gunness farm was found to be on fire and the bodies of all the Gunness children as well as a headless body of a woman were found in the ashes of the home. The head was never recovered. At first, it was believed that the decapitated body was that of Gunness, but after the fact investigators into the case couldn't help but note that the body was altogether of a different type than Gunness. Whereas Belle was a large woman who was nearly six feet tall and weighed more than two hundred pounds, this body was thinner and shorter (Gibson 2010,-page 39). Even taking into account the shrink factor from the fire and the loss of the head, the physical disparity was unaccounted for. An autopsy was conducted and the stomach of the woman was found to contain strychnine.