Widow Lured Lonely Men to Farm, Butchered Them for Money, and then Vanished After Deaths of Her Children By Christina Coulter

For lonely bachelors in early 1900s America, a matrimonial ad from a prosperous Indiana widow seemed like the chance of a lifetime.

“Comely widow who owns a large farm in one of the finest districts in La Porte County, Indiana, desires to make the acquaintance of a gentleman equally well provided, with view of joining fortunes,” read one of Belle Gunness’ personal ads, published in Scandinavian-language newspapers across the Midwest — including the Minneapolis Tidende, a popular Norwegian paper of the era.

Decades before the internet, Gunness exploited men’s loneliness — luring them to her hog farm with the promise of romance and sending many to a shallow grave beneath the Indiana soil.

Imposing at nearly 6 feet tall and weighing between 250 and 300 lbs., per Vice, Gunness was raised as a sharecropper’s daughter in Norway and was no stranger to hard labor. “In spite of that, and judging from existing photographs, her evident unattractiveness, she was able to exert some sexual hold on a lot of her victims,” said Harold Schechter, a professor emeritus at Queens College and the author of Hell’s Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness: Butcher of Men, in Vice.

Born Brynhild Paulsdatter Størseth in rural Norway in 1859, Belle Gunness immigrated to the United States as a young woman, settling in La Porte, Ind., per PBS coverage. She soon gained a reputation as a practical, hard-working farm owner, but tragedy and death seemed to follow wherever she went.

She was also a mother — raising three children on her farm, where neighbors said she worked from dawn until dusk, according to A&E.

Belle’s first husband, Mads Sorenson, died suddenly in 1900, on the very day that two of his life-insurance policies briefly overlapped, according to PBS. No autopsy was conducted, and relatives later told authorities his symptoms resembled poisoning by strychnine, a powerful and deadly toxin.

Two years later, she married Peter Gunness, who was found dead in December 1902 from a blow to the head. Belle told investigators a meat grinder had fallen from a shelf, per A&E, but a coroner described the death as suspicious during an inquest. Around the same time, a baby from Peter’s previous marriage died of scalding while in Belle’s care, per History.com.

Both deaths were ruled accidental — and Belle collected the insurance money each time.

The widowed Gunness began placing personal ads in Midwestern newspapers aimed at Norwegian immigrants, seeking well-off bachelors and promising both companionship and a share in her prosperous farm.

Her correspondence with these men was meticulous — and Belle set the terms.

“Sell everything you own. Bring only cash,” one pitch went, PBS reported. Investigators later estimated she took about $3,000 per victim on average — roughly $100,000 today.

The ads reached men in places like Chicago and Minneapolis, many of whom packed up their savings and boarded trains to Indiana, dreaming of a new life.

They were never seen again.

Most historians believe Gunness would first poison her suitors, then finish them with an ax or by bludgeoning — afterward dismembering the corpses and burying what remained.

An investigation began on April 28, 1908, when a fire destroyed Gunness’ farmhouse, killing her children. In the days before the blaze, she made out a will and bought kerosene, according to Science Daily. In the charred ruins, authorities found the bodies of the three children and a decapitated woman, per PBS.

Though the woman was initially assumed to be Gunness herself, suspicions quickly arose — the adult body was much smaller than Belle’s, and many locals doubted she had truly perished.

Several days after the fire, relatives of missing men arrived at the farm, searching for answers, according to History.com. Among them was Asle Helgelien, whose brother Andrew had vanished after visiting Gunness. Helgelien’s questions — and his discovery of his brother’s personal effects — led authorities to begin digging on the property.

As the earth was turned, investigators discovered burlap-wrapped remains — bodies hacked apart and buried in shallow pits across the hog lot and garden, per History.com and Science Daily.

“Discovering that there was this graveyard on the property of this Midwestern Indiana farm woman containing the dismembered remains of dozens of victims was a very sensational crime,” Schechter told A&E.

Schechter estimates Gunness murdered at least 14 people, and possibly as many as two dozen — some accounts place the number of victims as high as 40, according to Science Daily.

“It’s not just the number,” Andrea Simmons, a lawyer and former Army JAG who led a forensic review of Gunness’ case in 2008, later told the outlet. “[Police] never even made a good attempt to count the bodies.”

In the frenzy, per Science Daily, bones were put on view at the farm, and other artifacts later wre brought on tours with the Ringling Brothers show.

Supposed sightings of Gunness were reported from Los Angeles to Chicago, fueling persistent rumors that she had faked her death and disappeared, per the Chicago Tribune and History.com.

“She became this phantom that was haunting the public imagination … this specter of death,” Schechter told A&E. The legend only grew as time passed, with some believing she lived under a new name for years.

In 2008, a forensic team exhumed the decapitated body found nearly 100 years earlier on Gunness’ farm — as part of Simmons’ review — and attempted DNA comparison with letters she had mailed,

But, per Science Daily, the results were inconclusive due to degraded samples.

Belle Gunness was never definitively found, and her true death toll remains unknown. More than a century later, the final fate of La Porte’s “Lady Bluebeard” — so nicknamed after the folktale Bluebeard, a wife-killing nobleman — remains one of America’s most enduring mysteries.