On the Exhumation of Indiana Serial Killer Belle Gunness: New Questions Arise

LaPorte/Indianapolis,Indiana--The
more digging in the case of Belle Gunness, the more questions there are. In a piece that I wrote on the matter way back in November 16th , I commented that there appears to be a human skull in the photo to the right. That might be because there is one, but everyone's an expert (I'm not) and an anthropologist (ditto). From November 16th's comment from someone who wandered into the store:

Anonymous said...

Where do you see a skull in the photo? Most of the light-colored areas are the zinc which lined the casket. Sorry. No skull.

Mrithi

And yet there is a skull in the Gunness plot in Forest Park, Illinois photo [click-to-enlarge]. It's never easy to admit when one's wrong, but this isn't one of those moments. In late-February, the Post-Tribune did a piece that--lo-and-behold--there were bones of children found in the grave of Belle Gunness, along with the expected find of an adult-skeleton minus a skull. Yet, there it is, and in other photos--what could be a child's skull above the adult-skeleton. The forensic team even found another human skull at the former location of the Gunness farm:

But [University of Indianapolis lead researcher Andrea] Simmons, who speaks about the case Saturday at the Memorial Opera House in Valparaiso, has found a problem. The deeper the case gets, the more questions arise. Why were the bones of children found in her casket? Whose skull was found on the property? "We're finding every time we investigate something, it opens up a whole new question," Simmons said. ("Cracking the Belle Gunness Mystery," The Post-Tribune, 02.28.2008)

And that's how investigations like this play-out. It's possible that there will be no answers, it being 100 years since the Gunness farm burned-to-the-ground as a mob of authorities and vigilantes rushed to the residence to arrest the portly serial killer, the black widow of LaPorte. It was 1908.

In case you don't know, the charred-corpse identified as that of Gunness was found in the remains of the cellar of the ruined farmhouse...without a head. Ever since that time it has been a source of wild speculations, namely that she got-away and started a life elsewhere. One good theory has the "Lady Bluebeard" chopping-off the head of a female maid, and there is evidence to support this. There are a good number of theories, which isn't that hard to believe. A century ago, people didn't have social security cards and photo identification was a rarity outside of passports, criminal and military records, and the like. Gunness lured her widower victims to her farm through Norwegian-language newspapers in the big cities, the myspace or facebook directories of the ass-end of the Victorian-era.

Some individuals were social ghosts in 1908, and the "Wild West" was just ending. Back then, it was easier to be someone else, a strange echo of today's phenomena of "identity-theft." Forget being ripped-off. Someone could murder you, take everything you owned, and simply vanish becoming you or someone else. 100-years-ago, it was far more widespread, and vice and labor, criminal and social violence were rampant. If Gunness recalls anything-at-all, it's the danger of almost no regulations in our society. It's a reminder of what a lawless society looks like, and what can happen when nobody is looking.

So here's what we have kids: an additional-skull found on the original site of the Gunness farm, and the bones of children in the grave of the serial killer along with what appears to be a headless skeletal-corpse, presumably that of the killer or a luckless ringer.

http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/2007/11/theyve-dug-up-indiana-serial-killer.html

http://laportecountyhistory.org/

http://laportecountyhistory.org/belleg1.htm

They've Dug-Up Indiana Serial Killer, Belle Gunness

Forest Park, Illinois/Laporte, Indiana--I'm about 10-15 miles from the location of the Gunness farm, the site on McClung Road where as many as 40 murders by the infamous Belle Gunness took place. Gunness was a hulking, ugly Norwegian immigrant woman who placed ads in big city papers (nearly all Norwegian-language, so as to attract others of her ethnicity) to lure rich widowers to her home to be dispatched.

She sometimes took-out insurance policies on the men--often widowers--if they didn't have much to steal, and murdered them with poison in their coffee or tea. After that, she dismembered some of their bodies with an ax. Legend has it that the men flocked to her like flies to honey, which is strange since she was incredibly ugly.

Why the disinterment last week? A farm hand who was jailed after the 1908 fire at the Gunness farm contended that the murderer got away. After that, there were the obligatory sightings, but no solid-proof of his assertion.

With current DNA technology, we're probably going to find-out. There are a few letters known to have been sent by Gunness to some parties that has traces of her DNA on them, and are going to be matched with the now disinterred-corpse. All that's left are the bones, naturally, but there's going to be some DNA left in either the teeth, or within some of the other bones. There has been a legend attached to the story: that the corpse found in the burning embers of the farm house weighed too little to be her, and that it was headless.

In addition, there is a story that one of Gunness's domestics went missing at that time, and that someone's head was found in a cornfield nearby the ruins. What does it mean? What's the veracity of this legend? From the above image, it appears that the corpse in Gunness's grave has a skull. Sometimes the truth about the "Black widow," the "Lady Bluebeard" isn't so sexy, considering her girth and dour appearance. It should be of no surprise that there are women who kill. There's more than corn in Indiana.

http://laportecountyhistory.org/
http://laportecountyhistory.org/belleg1.htm