Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader (32 page)

In April 1902, Belle married a local butcher named Peter Gunness and became Belle Gunness. One week later, Peter Gunness’s infant daughter died while left alone with Belle…and yet another insurance policy was collected on. Just eight months after that, Peter Gunness was dead: He was found in his shed with his skull crushed. Belle, who was 5’8”, weighed well over 200 pounds, and was known to be very strong, told the police that a meat grinder had fallen from a high shelf and landed on her husband’s head. The coroner said otherwise, ruling the cause of death to be murder. On top of that, a witness claimed to have overheard Belle’s 14-year-old daughter, Jennie, saying to a classmate, “My mama killed my papa. She hit him with a meat cleaver and he died.”

Belle and Jennie were brought before a coroner’s jury and questioned. Jennie denied making the statement; Belle denied killing her husband. The jury found Belle innocent—and she collected another $3,000 in life insurance money. And she was just getting started.

Not long after Peter Gunness’s death, Belle started putting ads in newspapers around the Midwest. One read:

The ads worked, and suitors began to show up at the farm with visions of “joining fortunes” in mind. John Moo arrived from Minnesota in late 1902 with his life savings of $1,000 in hand. He stayed at the farm for about a week…and disappeared. Over the years several more met the same fate: Henry Gurholdt from Wisconsin, who had brought $1,500; Ole B. Budsburg, also from
Wisconsin, who brought the deed to his property, worth thousands, and was last seen in a La Porte bank in April 1907; and Andrew Hegelein, from South Dakota, also last seen in the bank, in January 1908.

Andrew Hegelein turned out to be the last of the disappearing suitors, because a few weeks after his disappearance, his brother, A.K. Hegelein, wrote to Gunness to inquire about him. She replied that he’d gone to Norway. Hegelein didn’t believe her—and threatened to come to La Porte to find out what had happened to him.

We said at the start of the story that when the Gunness home burnt to the ground, killing the three children and, presumably, Belle Gunness, former employee Ray Lamphere was arrested. The reason: Lamphere had been hired in 1907 and, by all accounts, had fallen in love with Gunness. The seemingly constant coming and going of suitors enraged him, and he and Gunness fought about it. In February 1908, around the time of Hegelein’s disappearance, Gunness fired Lamphere. Not only that—she went to the local sheriff and told him that Lamphere was making threats against her. The day before the house fire, she went to a lawyer and made out a will, telling the lawyer that Lamphere had threatened to kill her and her children…and to burn her house down. Under the circumstances, the sheriff
had
to arrest Lamphere—but the focus of the investigation would soon turn elsewhere.

Lamphere denied any involvement with either the arson or the murders. Few people believed him…but there were serious questions about the body of Belle Gunness. Doctors who inspected the remains said they belonged to a woman about 5’3” (they had to account for the missing head, of course) who weighed about 150 pounds. Gunness was much larger than that. And several neighbors who knew Gunness well viewed the remains—and said it wasn’t her. Then A. K. Hegelein showed up looking for his brother. He told the police his story and insisted that a search be made of Gunness’s property. The search began on May 3. Two days later, five bodies, carefully dismembered and wrapped in oilcloth, were discovered buried around the farm.

The first body was determined to be that of Gunness’s daughter Jennie, who, according to Belle, had been in school in California since 1906. The second body was Andrew Hegelein. The third was an unidentified man; the fourth and fifth were unidentified eight-year-old girls.

Neighbors told investigators that they had often seen Gunness digging in her hog pen, so they dug up that area—and found body after body after body. Included in the group: suitors John Moo, Ole Budsburg, and Henry Gurhold. In the end the remains of more than 25 bodies (some reports say as many as 49) were found, many of them unidentifiable.

Belle Gunness had obviously lured the men to her farm and killed them for their money. People in La Porte began to believe that if she could do that, she could fake her own death, and that the body found after the fire was yet another of her victims. It was beginning to look like A. K. Hegelein’s threat to come look for his brother made Gunness panic and come up with her bloody plan. But then a problem arose: On May 16 a part of a jawbone and a section of dentures were found in the ruins of the house. Gunness’s dentist, Ira Norton, inspected them—and said the dental work on the teeth belonged to Belle Gunness.

After a long investigation the body of the woman in the fire was officially declared to be that of Belle Gunness, and was buried as such. Ray Lamphere was tried for arson and murder—but because of all the lingering questions surrounding the case, he was convicted only of arson. He received a 20-year prison sentence and died less than a year later of tuberculosis. While in prison he reportedly confessed to a prison minister that he had helped Gunness bury some of her victims—and that the woman in the basement was
not
her. Gunness had hired a woman from Chicago as a housekeeper just days before the fire, he said, and drugged her, killed her, decapitated her, dressed her in Belle’s clothes, and put her in the basement. He helped Gunness start the fire, he said, and was then supposed to escape with her, but she double-crossed him and left on her own. However, none of his story could be substantiated.

People reported seeing Belle Gunness at dozens of locations across the U.S. over the following decades. None of those sightings were ever confirmed. Then, in 1931, a woman named Esther Carlson was arrested for the poisoning murder of her husband in Los Angeles…and she reportedly looked a lot like Belle Gunness. Carlson died awaiting trial, but some La Porte residents made the trip to the Los Angeles morgue and viewed the body. They said that they believed it was Gunness.

In 2008 Andrea Simmons, an attorney and graduate student at the University of Indianapolis in Indiana, led a team of forensic biologists to the graveyard where Belle Gunness was buried. With permission from Gunness’s descendants, they dug up the grave with the intent of extracting DNA from the corpse and comparing it to the DNA of living relatives. Results were hoped for by April 28, 2008, the 100th anniversary of the fire at the Gunness farm, but they were, unfortunately, inconclusive. Attempts are ongoing, and someday, possibly soon, the mystery of Belle Gunness, one of the most diabolical serial killers in history, might finally be solved.

• In 1849 a man named William Thompson would walk up to strangers in New York City and, after making friends with them, ask, “Have you confidence in me to trust me with your watch until tomorrow?” If they said yes, Thompson would gratefully borrow the watch…and then keep it. When he was caught, the prosecutors referred to him as a “confidence man.” That didn’t fit on headlines, so newspapers shortened it to “con man.”

• Another trickster in 1840s New York was Alec Hoag. He used prostitutes to lure men into hotel rooms. When the men’s clothes were on the floor, Hoag lifted money from the pockets via a hole in the wall. He was known for his ability to stay one step ahead of the police…and brag about it all over the city. The nickname the cops gave to Hoag survives as a slang term used to describe an intelligent, cocky person: “smart alec.”

1)
Don’t use any part of your name, your spouse’s name, your parents’ names, your children’s names, or your pets’ names. Don’t use any part of your phone number, Social Security number, birthdate, driver’s license number, address, or a pattern (like “12456”). Don’t use any of them reversed or doubled, either. Don’t use anything that would be easy to guess by someone watching you type. Never write it down or share it with anyone.

2)
Use upper- and lower-case letters, plus numbers and symbols (if the site allows symbols). Use a mnemonic device, with abbreviations that include multiple words. Example: Uj$t#1w0rx (“Uncle John says this one works.”)

3)
Change it every three months.

1)
Make sure the engines of both cars are turned off. As an extra precaution, engage the emergency brakes too.

2)
Open the hoods of both cars and remove the plastic protective caps on the battery connections.

3)
After you’ve untangled the jumper cables from your trunk, clamp the red cable onto the positive (+) connection of the dead battery.

4)
Clamp the other end of the red cable to the positive (+) connection of the working car.

5)
Clamp the black cable to the negative (–) connection on the working car.

6)
Do
not
attach the other black end to the dead battery. Instead, “ground” it by clamping it to the metal frame of the car.

7)
Start the engine of the working car and gently rev the engine.

8)
After about 30 seconds, turn the key on the dead car.

9)
Once both cars are running, remove the cables in reverse order: the grounded black clamp first, then the other black clamp, the red on the car that provided the jump, and the last red clamp.

1)
Place an egg in a pot.

2)
Run cold water into the pot, enough to cover the eggs.

3)
Bring the water to a boil on the stove.

4)
Once it reaches boiling, turn the burner down so that the water is simmering.

5)
For soft-boiled eggs, remove them after they’ve simmered for three minutes. For hard-boiled, remove after 10 minutes.

1)
It doesn’t have to be long—that’s why you use a small card. Always handwrite it.

2)
Start with a direct “Thank you.”

3)
Add a few sentences that put acceptance of the gift on a personal level to show that you really like it: why you like the gift, what it means to you, and what you plan to do with it.

4)
Finish this section by tying the gift—and your relationship with the person—into a larger context, like a stated goal. For example, “I hope our families can spend more time together.”

5)
Reiterate your thanks.

6)
End with “Love” or “Sincerely” and your name.

1)
Touch the meat with your fingertip.

2)
Compare it to the meatiest part of your hand, on your palm right under the thumb. If the meat feels like that, it’s rare.

3)
Touch your index finger to the thumb of the same hand, forming an “O.” Press the meaty part of your palm right under the thumb again. If the steak feels like this, it’s medium-rare.

4)
Touch your middle finger to the thumb of the same hand, again forming an “O,” and touch that same place under your thumb. If your steak feels like that, it’s medium.

5)
Touch your ring finger to your thumb, and poke the meaty part of your palm again. That’s medium-well.

6)
Touch your pinky to your thumb. If the steak feels like that, it’s well-done.