Not Only Was Belle Gunness America's First Female Serial Killer, But She Just Had To Live In Indiana
By Tori Jane|Published January 29, 2021
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Tori Jane
Author
Tori Jane is a storm chaser, writer, photographer, and the village idiot - in that order. When she's not out and about dancing with the meanest storms on planet Earth for funsies she can be found wandering, shooting landscapes, writing, editing photos, and otherwise up to no good. Legend has it that she can also be occasionally spotted typing up short bios in the third person, but those rumors are unsubstantiated.
Brynhild P. Størseth was born in Norway in 1859 to a stone-mason and his wife. Her parents had eight children; she was the youngest. An older sister, likely named Nellie, emigrated to the United States in the early 1880s. Brynhild would follow her lead by emigrating as well – and then, people would begin disappearing. To better fit in with her new home, she changed her name to something a little more American: Belle. She was, unfortunately, far from a Midwestern belle. She settled in Indiana, and so began her spree of several dozen murders.
In 1884, Belle married a man by the name of Mads A. Sorenson. The two would go on to have several children, though it's debated as to whether they were foster children or biological children.
The pair worked at a shop of their own which, like their farmhouse, burned to the ground some short years later. They claimed insurance money for both losses, and got it.
Sorenson died of "heart failure" some time later, coincidentally (or not) on the one day in which his two separate life insurance policies overlapped.
Belle collected the equivalent of over $200,000 modern dollars for the loss of her husband. Strangely, she never seemed terribly upset about it. It is also believed that she likely poisoned two of her children with Mads and collected the insurance money for them as well.
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Her next husband would be a man by the name of Peter Gunness, whose name Belle would carry until her eventual disappearance.
Shortly after they married, Peter's young daughter from a previous relationship died mysteriously. Of course, Peter eventually followed, and although his family was highly suspicious of his wife, she was never investigated.
Belle began placing lonely hearts ads in local newspapers. Time after time, wealthy suitors would show up at her farm...but they never seemed to leave.
Belle would request that they come to call with specific amounts of money on their persons; it may have been claimed this was to "prove their worth." After about three years of seemingly endless potential partners who seemed to disappear from the face of the earth, family members of some of the missing men began to grow suspicious.
In 1908, Belle Gunness's farm burned down as suspicions of her activities mounted. Four charred skeletons were found among the ruins, thought to be Belle and her foster children. Strangely, though, Belle's skeleton was missing its skull.
Following the fire, the property was excavated, and to the horror of the workmen, more than 40 sets of human remains were found buried around the grounds. Still more were found in the depths of the pig pen, suggesting that Belle had used pigs to dispose of many victims. The only person left who could answer for her was her handyman, who was arrested and charged with murder and arson in May 1908.
He was found not guilty of murder, but guilty of arson. He went to prison, and from there, he began talking.
He told anyone who would listen, including investigators, the truth about Belle Gunness. He also explained the headless skeleton found at the scene of the farm fire: it wasn't her. At 6 feet tall and 200+ pounds, she knew she was a sizeable woman - so she merely found a victim of similar build and used their bones as her own. She took the head with her when she left town so that it could never be used to prove the skeleton was not, in fact, her.
And so that was that. Belle Gunness was gone, and nobody knew where she had gone. She was never seen or heard from again, and to this day, it is unclear what became of her after she left La Porte. Her victims came from Indiana and many surrounding states, particularly Illinois. Gunness had likely realized that killing men from out of state meant that it was much, much less likely that they would ever be identified, or even suspected of being in Indiana at all. She was cold, calculating, and purely malicious.
Who is the creepiest Indiana killer you can think of? Tell us about them in the comments.
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