mojo
05-02-2008, 07:25 PM
Was she the worlds most prolific female serial killer?
news.yahoo.com (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080427/ap_on_re_us/lady_bluebeard;_ylt=AriXIksW7lfEsYm5KAqRAepH2ocA).
Suspicious after a bank said his brother, Andrew, had cashed a $3,000 check — a large sum in 1908 — the South Dakota farmer came to LaPorte and discovered his brother's remains in a pit of household waste.
A century later, modern forensic scientists hope to solve once and for all what appears to have been a web of multiple murders, deceit, sex and money orchestrated by a woman dubbed Lady Bluebeard, after the fairy tale character who killed multiple wives and left their bodies in his castle.
Many locals believed Gunness staged her death in a farmhouse fire, 100 years ago Monday, before Asle Helgelien's arrival to cover up years spent poisoning and dismembering more than two dozen people.
Belle Gunness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_Gunness)
Belle Sorenson Gunness (born as Brynhild Paulsdatter Størseth, November 11, 1859, Selbu, Norway- April 28, 1908 La Porte[1], Indiana, United States) was one of America's most profligate known female serial killers.
At 5'8" ft tall[1] and over 200 lb (91 kg), she was a physically strong Norwegian-born woman. She may have killed both of her husbands and all of her children (on different occasions), but she is known to have killed most of her suitors, boyfriends, and her two daughters, Myrtle and Lucy. Her apparent motives involved collecting life insurance benefits. Reports estimate that she killed more than twenty people over several decades—some claim more than one hundred—and possibly got away with it.
Lamphere had stated to the Reverend Schell and to a fellow convict, Harry Meyers, shortly before his death, that he had not murdered anyone, but that he had helped Belle bury many of her victims. She had her lethal system down to precise procedures. When a victim arrived, Belle made him comfortable, charming him and cooking a large meal. She then drugged his coffee and when the man was in a stupor, she split his head with a meat chopper. Sometimes she would simply wait for the suitor to go to bed and then enter the bedroom by candlelight and chloroform her sleeping victim. A powerful woman, Belle would then carry the body to the basement, place it on a table, and dissect it. She then bundled the remains and buried these in the hog pen and the grounds about the house. Belle had become an expert at dissection, thanks to instruction she had received from her second husband, the butcher Peter Gunness. To save time, she sometimes poisoned her victims' coffee with strychnine. She also varied her disposal methods, sometimes dumping the corpse into the hog-scalding vat and covering the remains with quicklime. Lamphere even stated that if Belle was overly tired after murdering one of her victims, she merely chopped up the remains and, in the middle of the night, stepped into her hog pen and fed the remains to the hogs.
The handyman also cleared up the mysterious question of the headless female corpse found in the smoking ruins of Belle's home. This woman had been lured from Chicago by Belle on the pretence of hiring her as a housekeeper only days before Belle decided to make her permanent escape from La Porte. Belle, according to Lamphere, had drugged the woman, then bashed in her head and decapitated the body, taking the head, which had weights tied to it, to a swamp where she threw it into deep water. Then she chloroformed her children, smothered them to death, and dragged their small bodies, along with the headless corpse, to the basement.
Never heard of her before, cold hearted bitch by the sound of things.
mojo
news.yahoo.com (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080427/ap_on_re_us/lady_bluebeard;_ylt=AriXIksW7lfEsYm5KAqRAepH2ocA).
Suspicious after a bank said his brother, Andrew, had cashed a $3,000 check — a large sum in 1908 — the South Dakota farmer came to LaPorte and discovered his brother's remains in a pit of household waste.
A century later, modern forensic scientists hope to solve once and for all what appears to have been a web of multiple murders, deceit, sex and money orchestrated by a woman dubbed Lady Bluebeard, after the fairy tale character who killed multiple wives and left their bodies in his castle.
Many locals believed Gunness staged her death in a farmhouse fire, 100 years ago Monday, before Asle Helgelien's arrival to cover up years spent poisoning and dismembering more than two dozen people.
Belle Gunness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_Gunness)
Belle Sorenson Gunness (born as Brynhild Paulsdatter Størseth, November 11, 1859, Selbu, Norway- April 28, 1908 La Porte[1], Indiana, United States) was one of America's most profligate known female serial killers.
At 5'8" ft tall[1] and over 200 lb (91 kg), she was a physically strong Norwegian-born woman. She may have killed both of her husbands and all of her children (on different occasions), but she is known to have killed most of her suitors, boyfriends, and her two daughters, Myrtle and Lucy. Her apparent motives involved collecting life insurance benefits. Reports estimate that she killed more than twenty people over several decades—some claim more than one hundred—and possibly got away with it.
Lamphere had stated to the Reverend Schell and to a fellow convict, Harry Meyers, shortly before his death, that he had not murdered anyone, but that he had helped Belle bury many of her victims. She had her lethal system down to precise procedures. When a victim arrived, Belle made him comfortable, charming him and cooking a large meal. She then drugged his coffee and when the man was in a stupor, she split his head with a meat chopper. Sometimes she would simply wait for the suitor to go to bed and then enter the bedroom by candlelight and chloroform her sleeping victim. A powerful woman, Belle would then carry the body to the basement, place it on a table, and dissect it. She then bundled the remains and buried these in the hog pen and the grounds about the house. Belle had become an expert at dissection, thanks to instruction she had received from her second husband, the butcher Peter Gunness. To save time, she sometimes poisoned her victims' coffee with strychnine. She also varied her disposal methods, sometimes dumping the corpse into the hog-scalding vat and covering the remains with quicklime. Lamphere even stated that if Belle was overly tired after murdering one of her victims, she merely chopped up the remains and, in the middle of the night, stepped into her hog pen and fed the remains to the hogs.
The handyman also cleared up the mysterious question of the headless female corpse found in the smoking ruins of Belle's home. This woman had been lured from Chicago by Belle on the pretence of hiring her as a housekeeper only days before Belle decided to make her permanent escape from La Porte. Belle, according to Lamphere, had drugged the woman, then bashed in her head and decapitated the body, taking the head, which had weights tied to it, to a swamp where she threw it into deep water. Then she chloroformed her children, smothered them to death, and dragged their small bodies, along with the headless corpse, to the basement.
Never heard of her before, cold hearted bitch by the sound of things.
mojo