"Come Into My Parlor"said the spider to the fly. Brynhild Paulsdatter Storseth was born in 1858 or 1859 (many dates are in slight disagreement) in Selbu, Norway, and immigrated to America in 1886. By 1893 she had Americanized her name to Belle and had married Mads Sorenson in Chicago. They soon established a confectionary store, but, unfortunately, the business never turned a profit until it burned down and an insurance claim was paid. The Chicago area house they bought with part of the insurance money also soon burned down! (Is Belle getting ideas?)
Poor Mads died suddenly of convulsions in 1900 and Belle was the recipient of $3,000 from a reluctant life insurance company. (Two of their insured infant children had earlier died in infancy.) Belle was off and running! On April 1, 1902, Peter Gunness became Belle's second husband and they moved to a farm at the edge of LaPorte, Indiana. One week later, Peter’s infant daughter who resided with them died suddenly of colitis (same symptoms as strychnine poisoning.) A horrible accident happened not long after when Peter died from the blow of a falling coffee grinder in the kitchen (or a sausage stuffer in a shed.) The life insurance money must have seemed manna from heaven to a poor widow! (Although the sheriff at the time thought Peter had been murdered and Jenny Olsen, a niece that also resided with Belle, had told classmates that Aunt Belle had hit him on the head with a meat cleaver, no charges were filed.)
"Widow, with mortgaged farm, seeks marriage. Triflers need not apply." So read, in part, the personal ads that Belle began placing in newspapers. Supplicants were told to bring their money with them. Many young men were seen riding in Belle’s carriage on Sunday afternoons, but none seemed to appear again. When Jenny began voicing her suspicions, Belle let the news spread that the child was now in a school in California.
Andrew Helgelien was the last known suitor to appear at Belle's doorstep. He had answered her personal ad and she had responded thusly: "My heart beats in wild rapture for you. Come prepared to stay forever." Andy withdrew his life savings from his bank in South Dakota, arrived in LaPorte, and did, indeed, stay forever.
Fire completely destroyed the farmhouse in the early hours in April, 1908. Although the bedrooms were all upstairs, the bodies of three young people and a headless adult woman were discovered under a grand piano in the basement.
Clothier records at shops in LaPorte showed that Belle was at least 5'8" and well over 200 (some say 280) pounds but the headless female body under the piano would have been 5'3" and weighing 150 pounds had she had her head. Jenny? Two farmhands, one later arrested for arson and murder, testified that Belle ordered extra dirt to be dumped here and there in the yard and hog pen. One testified that when Belle was too tired to bury her victims at night she simply fed their parts to the hogs. The fire/crime scene became the entertainment of the day. Families brought picnic lunches so they could watch the uncovering of bodies and body parts. The official count of murdered people ranged from 20 to more than 40. To this day, no one knows how Belle escaped. She had emptied her sizeable bank account and simply disappeared! Have you seen her? NOTE: This is a true story that I condensed. Last summer Andrew Helgelien's relatives from Norway came to LaPorte and held a memorial service at his grave site here in town. I didn't include a picture of his face looking out of his grave when he was unearthed! A forensic science student from some college has been working for a year to see if a body in California might be Belle! Loads of info on the internet if readers put "Belle Gunness" in a search engine. My town's claim to fame.
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