The story of Norwegian-American farmer Belle Gunness, known as the “Black Widow,” shocked the United States in the early twentieth century and later turned into legend. In May 1908, Asle Heggelien arrived in La Porte, Indiana, searching for his brother Andrew, who had answered a wealthy widow’s marriage advertisement and then vanished.
The sheriff told him that only days earlier a fire had broken out on Belle’s farm. The owner, as people believed at the time, and her three children had died. But the case immediately raised doubts: the house had likely been set on fire, the woman had been poisoned before death, and the body found in the ruins had been decapitated.
When Asle noticed a silage pit at the edge of the property with a foul smell, police began digging and uncovered the remains of men, women, and children. Investigators later concluded that Belle met men through newspaper ads, invited them to the farm, killed them, and hid their bodies.
Soon, a pathologist said the decapitated body found after the fire most likely did not belong to Belle: it weighed at least 20 kilograms less than she did. That strengthened suspicions that the farm owner had staged her own death.
Police also established that Gunness, born Brynhild Paulsdatter Storset, was born in 1859 in Norway, later emigrated to the United States, changed her name, and repeatedly collected insurance payments after relatives died and buildings burned. Her husband Mads Sorenson died, as did two children, followed by her second husband Peter Gunness and his younger daughter.
After the fire, investigators found the remains of her adopted daughter Jennie Olsen, whom Belle had told neighbors was studying elsewhere. One man who answered her advertisements, John Anderson, survived and later said he sensed danger during the night and quietly fled the widow’s house.
By the time he gave his account, police believed at least 15 murders had been proven, while the remains of more than 40 people were found in the silage pit. Belle’s farmhand Ray Lamphere was convicted of arson. Before dying in 1909, he reportedly told a prison priest that he had helped conceal the crimes, while Belle herself had likely escaped alive. She was never found.