Latest / Justice For / Belle Gunness

Transcript

Belle Gunness · Justice For

• justice for: When someone brings up serial killers, ninety-nine percent of the time people think of the seventies and eighties Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, BTK, the Golden State Killer. Yep. But here's the thing serial killers didn't suddenly appear in the nineteen seventies. They've been around for centuries. The difference is that before modern forensic science, investigative technology, and widespread media coverage, these cases were far less documented, and many of the people responsible were just never identified. Jack the Ripper is probably one of the few names from that earlier era that most people will recognize. Yes. But long before serial killers became a household names, there was a woman in Indiana whose name would eventually become synonymous with one of the most notorious murder mysteries in American history. And her name was Belle Gunnis. An Indiana lamb. Yep. Dior man. Welcome back to Justice 4. We are your hosts. I'm Jackie. And I'm Sam. So Today I'm taking y'all back to the early 1900s in Laporte, Indiana, where Belle Gunnis would lure men to her farm and then kill them. Although it's been suspected that Belle had a history of murder long before she moved to Laporte, and possibly an even bigger mystery is what actually happened to Belle Gunnis and where is she? But before we get into all of that, it's shameless plug time. Period. Like always, I promise this will be quick, but probably not painless. Not with us. Okay, so this is like our first episode back since our live. That we actually recorded. Yes. This is our first time recording back since we did the live. Yes. and we were right. It was amazing. It was awesome. but only a few of you showed up in costumes. Yeah. Like, I mean Courtney, Connor, cat dog. Our winners, amazing. Our winners, amazing. And we loved Our Little Witches. Yes. And We had Toyster, we had Jesse and Woody, or two Jessies, or Jesse and Woody. I don't know which way that went. Personally, one of my favorites was the one who was like, I'm a serial killer. Can't you tell? I just blend in. And I had two people dress up as me, which is awesome. That made me feel so Abby. Alicia was so cute with the the ribbons. Yes, her tensile in her hair. That was so cute. Yes. and we hope you all enjoyed Steve being a hoe. He's such a hoe. He's laying in my car right now, still dressed as a hoe. my gosh. He is on the ultimate walk of shame. his leg also fell off, you guys. His leg dig fell off. We need we need to brunch it out. What did you just say? I stroked. We do need to perform surgery on Steve. He went a little too hard as a hoe. Look, if you're gonna be a hoe, you gotta be a smart hoe, okay? Yes. man. Anyway. We do have holiday merch up. we would show you a a sweater, but it's all the way over there and I'm ported right now. So in our next episode I'll grab it and pull it up here for you. So I can literally pull pictures here. look, here we go. Ta-da. So But also really quick, going back to the live show, if you have pictures that you've took or videos or whatever and you haven't sent it to us, please send it to us because I wanna see it. I wanna relive it. Yes, we just read some of your comment cards and we love it. So we're so glad we had so many new faces there. There's a lot of new faces. my gosh. And so many people who once again I love the people who just show up to these events and have no idea there's a live podcast happening. y'all are always my favorite. And yeah, so and I hope you enjoyed our activity books that we have for you. We have one over there and it was so fucking cute. And the people who colored for us, keep doing it. Send us pictures. Yes. We hope you guys enjoyed. And if you want an activity book, hit us up. We got some for sale. Yeah, we do. Yeah. Alright, are you ready to get into this? No. No. Y'all, I'm so excited about this. This is this is a really cool case. I she show okay. For how early it is, she showed me so many pictures. There's so many pictures, and there's so many more than what I am including in this episode and on our social medias. So go check that out. Cause there's a lot. All I know is I'm confused. Okay, well you are. I mean, with the intro, that kind of helps a little bit. And I'm very okay. You guys know I'm a man hater. If you know me, you know I'm a man hater. I hate men. So I love a female serial killer. That sounds really bad. I mean I was like, as I was writing this, I was like, this is gonna be great for Sam's man hater era. Alright, so who is Belle Gunnis? Yeah. Belle Gunnis was born Brynhild Paulsdadder Sorseth Sorseth in Selbu, Norway. What the fuck did you just say to me? Brynhild Paulsdatter Sorseth was born in Selbu, Norway on November eleventh, eighteen fifty nine. Hell yeah. She was the youngest of eight children. Her family lived as tenants on a small farm owned by the Sorsseth family. In eighteen eighty one, at the age of twenty one, Brynhild left Norway and settled in Chicago, where her sister Nellie had immigrated to a few years prior. Pause. You said the family lived there in eighteen one. they lived there in eighteen sixty through eighteen eighty one is when Brynhild died. So in nineteen one is when she left. No, she left in eighteen eighty one at the age of twenty one. Eighty one. I'm sorry. Okay. We're good. and so she actually moved in with her sister, Nellie, and her husband. and that's where she lived. Hell yeah. She when she immigrated, she changed her name to Bella Peterson and worked for a time as a servant girl before she got a job at a butcher shop cutting up animal carcasses. so Belle was at least five foot seven and weighed about two hundred and nine to two hundred and forty nine pounds at this time. Wow. And was Big old burly physically strong girl in appearance. Hell yeah. All right. Bell had also done a lot of farm work before coming to America, so this type of job was not out of the ordinary for Belle. Yeah. And she lived on a farm, it makes sense. Yes. Okay. In eighteen eighty four, Belle got married to Mads Sorensen from Dramen, Norway. Okay. Bells and Mads bought a home in Chicago, which unfortunately burned down. Bummer. But there was a silver lining. The insurance money they received was enough for them to purchase a confectionery store at the corner of Grand Avenue and Elizabeth Street in Chicago. Hell yeah. Eventually the business mysteriously caught fire, and with the money from the fire insurance, they bought a new home in Austin, Illinois. Okay. Belle and Mads weren't able to have children of their own, so they fostered, and over the next few years they fostered a total of five children. Unfortunately, in eighteen ninety six, one of their foster daughters, Carolyn, died of colitis, and two years later, in eighteen ninety eight, their foster son Alex also died from colitis. The fuck is colitis. Colitis is basically what we consider I B D now. It is an inflammation of your colon and an infection and with little kids and get really dehydrated. And back in the day. Yes. Got it. Colitis was actually kind of a com it was just one of the one on but like honestly, the amount of things that we have actual like yoga I'm amazed at the medical height we are at at this time. We have autopsies, we have Yeah, that's yeah, it it's it's in depth. So I think it's safe to say that Bell had an obsession with insurance policies. yeah, that I'm Because both children were insured. So Mads and Bell collected an unknown amount after each child's death. Even though the amount is unknown, it's said to have been a large amount for each child. Plus you know kids? Yeah. Plus you know we have two fires that burn down buildings and we have one van collected insurance. Yes. Yeah. So Bell then told Mads that his life insurance policy was too small and that he needed to take out a larger one, which he did. And on july thirtieth, nineteen hundred, the old life insurance policy was due to expire and the new life insurance policy went into effect with one day of overlap where they were both active. fuck. So coincidentally the same day Mads came home with a headache and Belle gave him some quinine powder for the pain, and she later checked on him and just found him dead. Mad's cause of death was determined to be cerebral hemorrhage. And that very same day, Belle collected money from both expiring the bike expiring life insurance policy and the one that infect that day, and it totaled about five thousand dollars. God damn And y'all it's the it's the nineteen hundreds, so you know the gossip is fire. Hell yeah. All about the tawn. The neighbors were getting suspicious of these deaths. And long before Mad's death, there was gossip that Bell had poisoned the children. Even though they fostered these children, there is a lot of gossip about Belle never being pregnant. Which I think is really funny because they they fostered the children. Wow. How could she have these foster kids without being pregnant? Blows my mind. With suspicion of Belle growing in the town, Belle decided to take the five thousand dollars she got from Mad's life insurance and buy a farm in LaPorte, Indiana. And in November of nineteen one, Belle and her three foster daughters, Ginny, Myrtle, and Lucy, moved to Laporte, Indiana. Okay. April 1st, 1902. Belle married Peter Gunnis, who was widowed with two young daughters, and the three of them moved into the farm with Belle and her three daughters. Jesus Christ, whole Brady bunch up in this bitch. Unfortunately, the following week, while Peter was out of the house, his infant daughter died of unknown causes while in Belle's care. What the fuck? Hold on. Let's count how many we have so far. Four? Yeah. God, I did that math way faster than I ever thought I would. Put your hand back up though. god. Because then eight months later, Peter tragically died due to a skull injury. Bell explained that Peter was reaching for his shoes, and while he was reaching for shoes, a meat grinder fell on top of his head, and it knocked over some boiling water, scolding the back of his neck. and basically his his skull was smashed in and he died. So the district coroner was a little suspicious of this story, and so he convened the coroner's jury on the suspicion of murder, but nothing came out of the case and Bell collected three thousand dollars in life insurance money after Peter's death. The fuck is going on? Okay. Soon after Peter's death, Belle began submitting ads to three weekly Norwegian language newspapers throughout the Midwest. These ads were asking for a good and reliable man to become a partner in her farm. Her ad read Personal. A Calmley widow who owns a large farm in one of the finest districts of Laporte. County, Indiana. Desires to make the acquaintance of a gentleman equally well provided with a view of joining fortunes. No replies by letter are considered unless the sender is willing to follow the answer with a personal visit. Just the fact that she ends a personal ad with no trifling ass hoes. it is unknown how many men actually corresponded with Belle. But there were many men who could not resist the invitations to come to LaPort to visit Belle and her farm. During her correspondence with these men, Belle said she would make life as happy as possible and they could come and stay forever. She told them all the same thing, sell everything you own, bring only cash, sew it into your undergarments for safekeeping. And yeah, keep this between us. AKA don't tell anybody you're talking to or coming here. Traveling ass hell. Mm hmm. I can't believe this. One of her ads was answered by a Wisconsin farmhand, Henry Gerholt. After traveling to La Porte, Henry wrote to his family saying that he liked the farm. He was in good health, and he requested that they send him some potato seats. Period. When they failed to hear from him after that, the family contacted Belle, and she told them Henry had gone off with horse traders to Chicago. Bell kept his trunk and fur coat and money, of course. John Moe of Minnesota answered Bell's ad in nineteen six after they had corresponded for several months. John traveled to La Porte and withdrew a large amount of cash, although no one ever saw John again. A carpenter who did occasional work for Bell observed that John's trunk remained in her house along with more than a dozen other trunks, some he recognized and some he didn't. Belle hired many farmhands to help out to help her out over the years. After all, running a farm and managing what would be four children, but it's actually three children because after Peter died, yeah and the the younger yeah baby died, one of the relatives came and got the older daughter and was like Bah period Deuces, I'm taking you out should have asked about that. you know, 'cause managing four children. Yeah. Three to four children at this point because she ends up getting a little boy. And then Jenny is in her teen years. So just to get the So Jenny moved on with her life. Well, Jenny is still on the farm, but we're gonna talk more about Jenny later. And so the younger ones are gonna be Myrtle, Lucy, and Philip. Got it. Okay. Okay. Jenny is now her own person and not a foster child. she is a foster child. She we'll talk about her more, but just to clarify she's on the farm. We've got three or four kids running around. She needs some help. Got it. And there's also a lot of farm equipment. She has cows. She has pigs. There's a whole thing, all right? Andy, and in August of nineteen seven, Belle hired Ray Lanfear as a farmhand. And Ray had other ideas and he hoped to marry Belle and become a partner on the farm. They were actually some lovers in the beginning. Okay. We had a little we had little little sneaky links happening, okay. But as the months went on, the chances of him actually becoming Belle's partner and all this was slim. It was kinda like he was just a hookup for her. Hell yeah, I get your biscuits, girl. Because more and more men were coming to the farm, answering these ads. So Ray was just there for the in-between. Yeah. And in January 1908, Andrew, Heglin came to visit Belle in response to one of her ads. And during Andrew's stay at the farm, Ray became extremely jealous of Andrew. And about two weeks into his stay with Belle, Andrew had money sent from his bank account in South Dakota to the first national bank in La Port. Andrew and Belle went to cash the check, and although the bank and Andrew suggested Belle keep some of the money in the bank for safety, Belle insisted on taking it all in cash. and she did. And then Andrew disappeared the next day. hell yeah. Okay. What Bell didn't know was that Andrew only planned a visit for a couple weeks. So when he did not return home to South Dakota, Andrew's brother, Oshley Oshley. Oshley. Oshley. I don't know why that's so hard for me to say. I don't know. It's spelled A-S-L-E. Yeah. Oshley. So after he did not return home, Oshley became concerned. And after finding letters to Andrew from Bell, Oshley wrote to Bell and the bank asking about Andrew. And the bank? And the bank. Because he had requested money from South Dakota to that bank. Hold up. So Andrew was just trying to come down and get his dick wet? Well, and had like to check it out and to try to flin but to come down and check out and to see if it was and then to go back and get all this stuff and come back. You know what I And the bank confirmed that Andrew had been there and Belle had told him that Andrew had left town. Mm-hmm. Okay. And who knows if it was j Ray's jealousy or maybe it was getting suspicious of what Belle was doing. But either way, Belle didn't like it and she fired Ray in February of nineteen eight. Mm-hmm. Then had him arrested four times for trespassing. by the way, each time he had to pay a fine of between one to five dollars. Wow. Yeah. She immediately hired Joe Maxon as her new farmhand. Oshley was still waiting, was still writing to Belle and inquiring about his brother Andrew. He was not letting this go. Good. After Belle fired Ray, she began spreading rumors around town that he was harassing her, he wouldn't leave her alone, and that she was scared. Belle was so scared she even met with her attorney to make a will for herself. Just in case something happened to her. So in this will, she put everything to her children and if something happened to her children before her or whatever, the money would go to a Norwegian orphanage. Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, it turns out that that something that she was planning for happened the very next morning. April twenty eighth, nineteen eight, at four AM, Joe Maxim woke up to the smell of smoke and tried to wake Belle and her children because the house was literally on fire. Joe couldn't seem to wake them. So he rushed out of the house to the barn, grabbed his horse, and rode into town to get the sheriff and the fire department to come out to put the fire out. Listen, I know what you're gonna ask. Why didn't he just carry them out the house? It's children and well Bell probably could have been a little bit harder. My mind instantly went to the British are coming. Sorry. That's probably what it looked like. I'm not gonna lie, that's probably what it looked like. so I was like I don't know why he didn't just carry the kids out. that makes sense. And then go get the fire department, 'cause I don't know if he could really carry Belle out 'cause at this point she almost like three hundred pounds and she a big girl, yeah. but I d I don't have an answer to that. It was literally never brought up as to why he didn't try to carry people out of the house. He just ran to go get help. I don't know, panic situations. Yes. Later in the afternoon, after the fire was completely put out, in the ruins of the basement, th the bodies of three children and the body of a headless woman were discovered. The remains of the house were sifted through, but the woman's head was never found. It was assumed that this was Belle and her three children, but we'll circle back to that in a moment. Because of his troubled past with Belle, Raylan Fear was arrested that same day for arson and murder. When he was arrested, he was wearing John Mose overcoat and Henry Geralt's watch. Then Andrew's brother showed up and he was like, Hey guys, something is definitely going on here. I haven't heard from my brother, and I don't think he left, like Belle was saying. And after not finding any signs of his brother in the ruins of the fire, because they let him and Joe Maxson sift through the fire to look for anything. That's crazy. Joe Maxon and Ash Oshley began digging on the farm in an area where Joe and Belle had buried garbage back in March. This is like April twenty eighth, okay. Unfortunately, they discovered the body of Andrew in a gunny sack. Oshley was absolutely devastated over the discovery. Also a gunny sap is a burlap bag. Thank you. J yeah, in case you were wondering. I was. Andrew was recognizable. still. I mean, saw the picture. Yeah. How was that recognizable? Well, you also have to think that's like black and white in an old camera. Like in person it was probably a lot different. His face was literally still there. Yeah. There are pictures. Immediately the Laporte County Sheriff, Albert Smutzer, put together a crew and continued to dig for several days and discovered at least thirteen bodies that had been buried in Bell's farm. During this time, thousands of people throughout the country had come to watch the digging for bodies on the Gunnis Farm. And we're gonna get back to that in a moment. Okay. First, I want to tell you about the second body that was discovered. It was the body of Ginny Olson. The Belle's oldest foster child. She was actually found on her eighteenth birthday. But she went missing when she was seventeen. So Jenny had been in Belle's care since she was just an infant due to her mother passing away. when her mother passed away, her father was he was a maritime sailor. That's how it kept getting described. He was out on at sea. Jenny was the youngest of four siblings. So when he came back after his wife had died, he knew Peter and Belle. Okay. Or not Peter and Bell. Mads and Belle or Peter and one of the two. Okay. And He asked them to foster Jinny. Okay. At one point in Ginny's life she had the opportunity to go back and live with her biological family. Mm-hmm. And she chose to stay with Belle. She considered Belle her mother. She'd been with her since she was like one. Yeah. Jenny disappeared in September of 1906. Bell had told everyone that a professor came and took Ginny to California for school. Emile, a carpenter, who I'm not sure lived on the farm or just stayed there occasionally. Anyway, he and Jenny had a little something something going on. Okay. And he actually called her his his first sweetheart, his first love. Yeah. Anyway, Jinny actually confided in him that she didn't want to go away to California. And Emil tried to see Jinny the morning she was due to leave, but Belle told him that Ginny had been up all night and she was tired, so she was still sleeping. And to just go off to work, and he did. When Emil returned later that day, Ginny was already gone. No one in town or around the farm had seen this professor or seen Ginny live leave. Emil asked Belle for Ginny's new address so he could write her. And Bell told him to give her the letters and she will mail them to Ginny for him. But when Ginny never wrote back, Male became even more suspicious of the entire story. Eventually he left the area for New Mexico, n never knowing what happened to Ginny. That is, until the news of what was found at the Gunnis Farm spread all over the country. Jenny was actually recognizable when she was found. She was issued a death certificate, which was kind of odd and rare to like immediately be like that. Yeah. It was like it was made a very large point that she immediately had a death certificate and was noticeable. Like her hair was still attached. Is that the first that picture you showed me with the hair? And but she had disappeared a year and a half earlier. Interesting. Right? the areas where Belle buried trash along the hogpins and other areas of the farm created what police described as slump depressions. Okay. Upon inspection of the farm, it was discovered that there were dozens of such slump depressions all over the farm. And further digging and investigating yielded multiple burlap sacks containing torsos and hands, arms hacked from the shoulders down, masses of human bone wrapped in loose flesh. And I'm sorry for this, and I quote that dripped like jelly. yeah. Each of those depression spots were graves. And each grave were multiple victims found in separate bags. The bodies had been butchered in the same manner. The body decapitated, the arms removed at the shoulders, the legs severed at the knees, blunt trauma and gashes characterized the skulls that were found had been separated from the bodies. Almost as if you were to butcher an animal. Huh. Which Belle was she worked trained in. Yeah. After finding the parts of five bodies on the first day and an additional six on the second, some in shallow graves under the original hogpin, others near an outhouse or a lake, the digs continued for days, and it had been said that after the second day, police stopped counting the numbers of bodies that they were discovered. Why would you stop counting? We need to know. Because they just kept finding more and more body parts. It is believed that 14 victims were found on the farm, but some sources put Bell's total number of victims around 30 to 40. God dang it. Including her first two husbands, her two foster children, Caroline and Alex, whose deaths could have been poisoning rather than colitis, a suspicion that some had when the children initially passed, but it couldn't be proven back then. That is until autopsies were performed, and it was determined that Belle had drugged her victims before bludgeoning them with a hammer. All of them? All the victims they found all had hammer marks in their skull, so she would drug them to make them drowsy, and as soon as they were getting drowsy, she would bludgeon them to make sure. Jesus Christ. So her poisoning the children and her first husband could be a very likely possibility. Belle also packed the body parts in the bags with lime. so that it would stay more preserved until she could bury them. Which is why there was multiple in each grave. And that's why some of them Which is why some heads and bodies were more preserved than others. So I'm gonna say the ones that weren't more recognizable got buried quickly. And the ones that were more recognizable had been preserved to wait for a trash burial day as to not bring attention to her burying all the time. Yep. Which is the other reason why we're not sure how many. That makes sense. So let's go back to the thousands of people showing up at the farm to watch them dig for bodies. Okay. I would like to take this moment to point out to everyone who says true crime is a new weird craze. Nah. No. It's always been in interest of people. And I'm talking people from all over the country showed up. The coroner set up a makeshift morgue in the barn on the property so that he could lay the body parts out and try to make sense of what they were finding. At some point, someone had the idea to allow people to walk through the morgue to see the skulls and other body parts close up and in person. For example, here are some skulls on display in an Arminhammer crate. I would check out the pictures on our website and social media because it's absolutely wild. Yeah. Yeah. Also, if you and I were alive back then, we would have been So like listen, I'm talking kids rode their bikes. Hell yeah. The drive leading up to the farm and the surrounding road was just lined with horse drawn carriages and there were even some horseless carriages. Cars. AKA and automobile, if you will. Since they were just coming around, the automobiles. huh. It wasn't too common to see one. So when the sheriff showed up in his own red personal horseless carriage, it was the buzz of the town. How could a sheriff afford that on his salary? I'm just saying. They even had to add more cars to the railways that traveled to Laporte to accommodate the influx of people coming to La Porte suddenly. Huh. It estimated that ten to fifteen thousand people had arrived within a week of the discovery at the Gunnis farm. Eventually they held an auction at the farm, selling off Bell's things, and things went for double or triple what normal items would go. A shovel that normally would have sold for twenty five cents back then went for two dollars and fifteen cents. God damn. Right? Because that's the one she used to bury the bodies with. It was truly a circus. I don't know how they found as much evidence as they did. Yeah. With everybody just walking everywhere. So let's go back to the bodies found in the rubble of the house. Obviously the children were identified as Bell's children. Five year old Philip Gunnis, nine-year-old Lucy Gunnis, and eleven-year-old Myrtle Gunnis. They were actually identified? Yes. Okay. The adult woman was assumed to be Belle because she was wearing three rings. A diamond ring from her first husband and two gold bands that had Peter's and his first wife's like initials in them or something. So like But she wore them. I wonder if they were like reused. Yeah. I was just thinking it was like Peter's ring just based off the photo. Yes. Also found in the rubble was didn't hold up. Also, I would fucking lose my shit if my husband gave me. A ring with him and his ex-wife's initials on it. Fuck that. Hell The diamond ring didn't have that, just one of the gold bands. I don't give a fuck. Also found in the rubble was dental bridge work containing two natural canine teeth, porcelain teeth replacement teeth, and gold dental work. The local dentist confirmed that that was the work he did on Belle Gunnis. And Belle was officially declared dead with along with her three children. Wait. There was dental records? this dentist had made this false set of teeth in there and they found the false teeth. And he found the teeth. They found the teeth and the rubble and he confirmed it. Off. However, it wasn't attached to a head. It wasn't. However, Dr. Harry Long of Laporte, who had known Belle personally, stated unequivocally on May ninth that the body was not hers. It weighed approximately a hundred and sixty pounds against Belle's three hundred and twenty five or more. But was nearly five inches shorter. Had well formed and rounded arms unlike Bell's, and most tellingly had a carefully manicured nails, something Belle was not known to do. And I quote, It is not that of Mrs. Gunnis, he said, I am sure of that. End quote. I guarantee you said it just like that. I know. No explanation was ever given for what happened to her head, or what could have happened to her head, which led to an even bigger mystery. Did Belle actually die in the fire or did she escape? The sheriff blamed a Chicago American reporter for inventing this escape story, which only grew when reported sightings of Belle in the Chicago area continued long after she was declared dead. Okay. These sightings and theories of Belle fleeing before she could be caught really helped out Ray's defense when his trial began in November of 1908. Prosecutors believed Ray had been Belle's accomplice. Their theory was that Bell murdered Andrew. Ray assisted her, and the two eventually fell out. Ray set house set fire to the farmhouse, killing Belle and her three children. The prosecution also had witnesses who testified about Ray's jealousy and his statements concerning Andrew. Mm-hmm. However, there is a significant problem with the prosecution's case. They had to establish that the woman who died in the fire was actually Belle. Yeah. And that was something the defense intended to challenge. So remember the dental bridge work that was found that we just talked about? Yep, yep, yep, yep. And the dentist identified it and he testified at trial and he said, Yep, I did that. That's the work. It's hers, right? Hmm. Well, one of the arguments that the defense had was the effects of fire on dental materials. Y'all, it is 1908, and we are doing fire experiments for trial. Like, what? Hell yeah. Hell yeah. so according to later accounts of the trial, a local drawer testified that the damage intense heat had caused to the other gold objects didn't match the dental work. So they were conducted experiments involving similar dental bridge work and a human jawbone. And these experiments raised questions about whether the recovered dental work could have survived the fire in that condition. Yeah. Because it it looked like perfectly fine. Yeah. Then the defense called witnesses who allegedly claimed they had seen the dental bridge work in possession of Louis Klondike Schultz. Who the fuck is that? He's the gold painter from Colorado. He came out to sift through the rubble to help them find things. Klondike. Yeah, his his nickname was Klondike. Lewis Klondike Schultz. You know what? Hell yeah. I love it. and so there was witnesses who had allegedly seen Lewis with this the bridge work in his possession before the discovery. One claimed to have seen him take it out of his pocket prior to claiming he found it in the rubble. The implication was that the evidence might have been planted. The defense was not simply arguing that the dentist was mistaken, they were challenging the reliability of the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the dental evidence. Yeah. Several witnesses reportedly claimed to have seen a woman resembling Belle after April twenty eighth. One particularly important account involved a woman wearing a black veil. Other witnesses testified about seeing a woman with Belle in the weeks leading up to the fire, although identifying her conclusively was really difficult, and this woman hadn't been seen since. Okay. I'm curious if that woman also fit the size description of the woman found in the fire. Yeah. You know what I mean? The defense wanted the jury to consider whether Belle had staged her own death and escaped. Mm-hmm. If Belle was alive, the prosecution's theory that Ray murdered her in the fire became considerably more difficult to establish. Honestly, this was a ten out of ten strategy for Ray's defense. cause on November twenty-sixth, nineteen eight, the jury returned its verdict and Ray was found guilty of arson. But not guilty of murder for the deaths of Bell and her three children. Which is wild because he got that murder charge. Like, if the bodies were found in there, he was gonna get the murder charge added on. He had just been arrested for the fire at first. Okay. Right? Can we even prove that he did the fire? Like actually? They were the jury was pretty convinced he set the fire. All right, man. I mean we literally just went over what fire evidence was in the nineties and or in the two thousands. It's true we did. Yeah, that's crazy. The jury determined that the prosecution had established that he was responsible for setting the fire, but did not find him guilty of the murder charge. I I'm gonna say that a lot of Bell's stories around town and raised jealousy and all of that went into play here. Yeah. He was sentenced to an indeterminate term of two to twenty one years in the Indiana Indiana State Prison at Michigan City. Okay. And he was taken there the following day. Ray maintained his innocence from the very beginning that he did not set the fire and that he did not kill Belle Gunnis and her children. However, he was very adamant that it was in fact Belle found in the rubble of the house. Well that last part only lasted until his trial was over, and then he switched that part up. Mm. Okay. Well, you know, 'cause he He heard the evidence and was like What? Yeah. So after trial, Ray made a series of confessions about Belle and her way of life, if you would like to call it that. Ray stated that Belle had placed advertisements seeking male companionship, only to rob and murder the men who responded, and subsequently visited her on the farm. Ray said that Belle asked him to burn down the farmhouse with her children inside. He also asserted that the body, thought to be Bell's, was in fact a murder victim, chosen and planted to mislead investigators. The brother of one victim Andrew. Yep. Warned Bell that he might arrive at the farm shortly to investigate his brother's disappearance. According to Ray, this impending visit motivated Belle to destroy her house, fake her own death, and flee. Hmm. This confession was given to a journalist, which is the reason the sheriff blames the media for the ridiculous story about Belle escaping. Okay. But there were also rumors and gossip That the sheriff was being paid by Belle to keep quiet so she could continue to lure the farm and rob them. how else is he gonna get a red automobile? Just say? Yeah. And normally I wouldn't believe such conspiracy theories. Except the sheriff was driving a new horseless carriage. I'm ingenious. And they were right, just how could they f how could he afford that? How could he? I love nineteen hundreds gossip. God, I was so good. This is why everyone loves Bridgerton so much. Right? It all makes sense. After Bell's crimes came to light, the Gunnis Farm became a tourist attraction. And I mean that literally. Spectators came from across the country to see the mass graves. They even set up concessions and sold souvenirs. You know what? Hell yeah. I really want to know what a souvenir look like. Like I really do. Okay. I survived Bell. Do you have any thoughts before I get into a fund DNA thing that happened in more recent years? I have a small little thought. I wonder if maybe 'cause you know how they were letting them into the mortuary thing. The morgue? That yeah. I wonder if they were charging people to go into it and that's also how the sheriff could have been getting money. I don't know. Just a thought. That's the only thought. also another side note is is the money all right, so that life insurance policy. Go to the kids, right? But if something happened to the kids when it happened to her, it would go to orphanage. The orphanage. The orphanage went, we don't want her blood money. Did they? Period. Straight up rejected it. Hell yeah. Right? Hell yeah. Okay. Anything else? Like Well then where the hell did that money go? I forget what was said. What it was done with. There's actually a really great documentary done on this. It is you can watch it on Plex. It's a free streaming app. but it's called the Gunnis Mystery. Mystery. Yeah, the Gunness Mystery. it's really good. I have a lot of the info in it, but there's things that's expanded on, and there's more pictures and like Jenny's Jenny's parents are expanded on a little bit more and other stuff. I would definitely recommend it. It's only 40 minutes. Hell yeah. But it's it's really cool. Yeah. It's it's so cool. Hell yeah. It goes more into her background in Norway and other stuff like that that I didn't really put in here, but just go give it a little watch. I'll put it in the link. I'll I'll link it below. So this is really cool. In two thousand seven, nearly a hundred years after the farmhouse fire, a team of forensic researchers decided to revisit the question that had haunted the Bell Gunnis case for generations. Was the headless woman found in the basement actually Belle? Mm-hmm. Led by researcher Andrea Simmons, she actually did this as a thesis paper. yeah. And decided like her whole thesis paper was on this and actually convinced people to get a team together and be able to ex like exhume these graves. Yes. So the team exhumed the remains believed to belong to Bell and attempted something investigators in 1908 could have only dreamed of DNA testing. Mm-hmm. But they needed something to compare the remains against. And that's when they came up with an unusual idea. They had actually located original letters Bell had sent to men she had met through a matrimonial advertisement, right? So licking it? Some of the envelopes were still sealed, and researchers hoped they could recover DNA from the saliva Bell had left behind when she licked the adhesive. But researchers weren't relying on the envelopes alone. They also explored another possibility, comparing the remains with the DNA from Bell's older sister, Nellie Larson, who was buried in California. Because the two women shared the same mother, researchers hoped they could compare their mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down through the maternal line. Yeah. A match could potentially establish whether the remains belonged to someone from the maternal family. Yeah. The investigation uncovered another surprise though. When researchers examined the coffins, they found partial remains of two children mixed in with the adult woman's bones. That discovery prompted a second excavation in May of 2008, when researchers returned to exhibit the graves of Belle's three children. Unfortunately though, The DNA testing failed to provide a conclusive identification. I'm so excited. The century old envelope samples did not yield enough usable genetic material to establish a match, and the investigation never definitively established the identity of the adult remains. Bummer. Over a century after Belle Gunnis supposedly died in that farmhouse fire, we are still left with the same question investigators had in nineteen eight. Is Belle Gunnis buried in that grave? Or had one of America's most notorious female serial killers actually managed to disappear? What do you think? In my heart of hearts, I believe she was not in that grave. I don't think she was in that house. No, I think she I think she fucking did. I think she was gone. Yeah. But my thing is is I wanna know. Now I wanna research nineteen nine, nineteen ten. Where else was this happening? Yeah was there other places? Because she didn't stop. No, there's no issue. She didn't stop. Especially since she was super after insurance. Where's our genealogy people at? I need I need our genealogy people to get on there and f and and work this. She doesn't have any children. She doesn't have any kids. That was the other thing that this Andrea wanted to do was she wanted to determine if Belle ever actually had kids. That's fair. Didn't her sister have children though? And that gave And they they probably went on. Why can't we go off of That unless they're still working on it, I would be I'd be willing to bet they're still working on it, but that's as much as we have now. That's crazy shit. Yeah, in my heart of hearts, sh that was not her. No, not at all. I don't I don't think that was her at all. I think that was planned so well with the will and all of it. Especially since there were sightings of her in Chicago afterwards as well. Yeah. And she's a big girl. That's what I'm saying. she ain't this tiny little dainty thing that can just blend in. She's a big girl. Yeah. That's the thing, is like back in the day, being a bigger person like that was very Very I it's And think about and she had them all bringing cash. She wasn't keeping her money in the bank. So think about how much money she probably had with her. Yeah, she was carrying cash everywhere. And go back to what Joe said. He couldn't wake them up. I think they were dead. Well, obviously she's headless without a head. So she was which is also weird. How how was he trying to wake somebody up with no head? Or maybe he was trying to wake Belle. obviously it was Belle he was trying to wake up, but I don't know how that worked out for her. I don't know. I think that. They were placed okay, here's what I'm thinking. I don't think Ray had any. It was four AM. Mm-hmm. He couldn't see her. Yeah. They didn't have lights, girl. They didn't have electricity. Unless he had a candle but the house is on fire, so we're not lighting a candle. We're not making more fire to Yeah. I can see how he's shaking a body that doesn't have a head and he's not aware. Yeah. So here's what I think it is. I think the kids and this other woman were already dead. I genuinely believe that. And I think she purposely took the head with her. stashed it somewhere, who knows. And left her teeth behind and Uh-huh. Or no, cause she there was the report of Klondike taking it out of his pocket. Yeah, I think he left it with somebody. I think she paid him to be like, I need you to go. But Klondike came from Denver. He was brought in. So I think she was working with somebody. Either the sheriff I think it was the sheriff. I think she was working with the sheriff. So especially if on the Because we're not investigating the professor, all these men are coming in town and leaving. Yeah. And like no one's questioning it. Okay, all the time. They probably were questioning it to the sheriff. Yeah. But he was like, was getting paid or he was getting some Hello Yum yum. You know what I'm saying? So okay. Anyway, I think they were already dead. She was planning this. She was dipping either she some maybe she paid Ray to light the house on fire and was like, Come find me in Chicago or wherever the fuck and he got caught before then. And she knew that. And then she knew no one was gonna believe him. Yeah. I also don't think she intended them to go digging either. Yeah, that too. But you know what? So Ashley. What a good brother. Get it. Get it. What bro. I genuinely believe that she had already planned all of this, already set. She like, today's the day, it's happening. And either she l set the fire and fucking dipped or she had Ray do it and she was already gone. That's yeah that's what I genuinely believe happened. Yeah. I'm with you on that. I I agree with all that. I just I thought this was just a really intriguing case because of how much investigating and autopsies we had. yeah, they found traces of poisons in the stomachs of some of the victims. Yeah, that's like that's a like the in depth toxicology and all the thing that we are doing in nineteen eight and to have cerebral hemorrhaging. Not that wasn't a post thing. That was legitimately in it. Like I said earlier, there's an entire exhibit in LaPort, Indiana on Belle Gunnis and her crimes. And actually, this museum has raised money to get headstones for all the victims, as well as Belle and her children. Because they were all buried without headstones. Including Belle. Interesting. They were like marked great. Like they had like markers, but there wasn't any headstones or anything official. Like I'm surprised they paid to get her one. Well, it was she was buried with the children. So you s remember the picture of the plots that I showed, how all the plots were out? They paid for the headstones. Yeah. When the headstones were placed, they actually had descendants of the victims and like Peter and Mads. And they came to the ceremony. And they actually like I have pictures of like Peter's descendants laying a wreath on his headstone. And then there's also unidentified victims of Bells. And I showed you that one. And there was a headstone erected that's for the unidentified victims of Bell on the hundredth anniversary of the tragedy. And I just think it's really cool that like they're all those victims were buried in that grave. And it's just basically like I just really love that they're they were honored. Yes. In that, even though their families and others don't know, you know. Yeah. So I just think that's really cool. definitely check out I'll have the museum linked down here and everything. Another I never wanted to go back to Indiana, but I would go for this. I do. I really want to go for this museum. the or I don't have a picture of the original farmhouse on her farm because that there's never been a picture of it. This photographer came and took all these pictures during this whole time. He was a Laporte photographer, and so that's why we have so many of these pictures. But for some reason there is no actual picture to this day of that house. We have all the other pictures in the farm. it makes sense there was no reason to take a picture of this place before it burned out. So what we have is the burned rubble of it. but also if you look on the map of the farms, if you look at it, it's all family names. That's how it's all marked out. And I was like, that's so cool. That's how it used to be all like divided out. Yeah, that's why names were such a huge thing. Yeah, so definitely check out their website. Another cool thing is if you scroll down underneath learning about bugging us, and I didn't have time, I discovered this days before I recorded. You can order a fifty-six page report that includes all the autopsies, the investigative notes, everything. I still want to order this just to look at it because I'm like, what? I can have copies of an autopsy from 1908. Yeah, that's pretty cool. So yeah, lots of fun. I love history episodes. You guys know that. My fingerprinting episode, all that the DNA one, the twin DNA one. That was fucking wild. Yeah. So still got me fucked up over that. Yeah, jury, let us know what you think. Do you think Bell is a Belle lived and made a whole new life somewhere? Have you heard of this before? And how many victims do you actually think Belle had? Bro. I don't know. That's fucking wild. Especially if she did survive. How many more were there after that? Did she change up her method? Did she figure out that was too obvious? Did we like switch it up? I don't know. I wonder if she did switch it up, because I feel like if that pattern is so well known all over the country at this point. Yeah. I feel yeah. Yeah. If you guys wanna go on a side quest and take a field trip to Indiana for this museum, I'm down. Just let us know. Yeah. I'm so down. But yeah, that's that's my episode Hell yeah. What an interesting episode. What a fun episode. I told you I had a fun one. Hell yeah. Yeah. So you're welcome for your history lesson on a Tuesday. Hope you guys are ready for next week, 'cause we're doing the episode that I hated. It took her forever to write this episode, and I'm so glad that we finally get it. I it I it's better now. I'm I'm much happier now. But it's gonna be a long one. So y'all need to get ready for next week. All right. Yeah? Yeah, make sure you're followed and liked everywhere at Justice For Podcasts, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, Apple. check out our Christmas merch, our holiday merch. Check out, throw a case submission in there. We have gotten some recent ones. We have. we are going through those. by the way, yes, we do want to have drinks with you. We'll hit you up. Please. and yeah, so we will I'm gonna seal your line. We're gonna see you next week with an all new episode. What do I do? What do I do? no. Okay stop killing each other. Lock your damn doors. Stop leaving your fucking friends. We'll see you guys next week in a new episode. Okay. Love you. Bye. You took your line back. I'm sorry. I don't know what I'm doing.