The first respectable gentleman of substantial means to reply to Belle Gunness’s advertisement was Ole Lindboe of Chicago. Lindboe was a middle-aged bachelor. He arrived at La Porte with $200 in cash, a $500 diamond ring, a costly gold watch and a light and amorous heart.
Belle apparently had little trouble in relieving Lindboe of his tangible possessions. But when he asked to marry her and, as her husband, share the profits of the farm, Belle demurred.
“I can only marry you if you really love me,” Belle said. “I’ve already had a couple of unhappy experiences.”
Lindboe inquired exactly how he could prove the depth of his affection.
“Work here for me for a while,” said Belle. “If you prove worthy, I’ll marry you.”
Lindboe nodded assent. “All right. How much do you intend to pay me?”
Belle was shocked at this solecism. “Pay my fiancé?” she exclaimed. “I never heard of such a thing.”
Lindboe finally went to work for nothing. At the end of the two months he was still a bachelor and he was still unpaid. He confronted Belle, laid down an ultimatum. Either he was to be married or paid. And that very night, too.
Belle eyed him quizzically. She said, “You’ve been very patient. Tonight, I’ll settle with you in full. In the meantime, go out to the vegetable garden and dig a big hole. I want to bury the garbage later.”
Ole Lindboe dug a great big hole. In the morning, it had been filled in — and Ole Lindboe had vanished. His skeleton was dug up, and identified by his teeth, some six years later.
Belle Gunness spent no time weeping over Ole Lindboe. She wrote a letter to the farm magazine asking them to repeat the advertisement that had run before.
This brought Mr. John Moos of Elbow Lake, Minnesota, into her life. Mr. Moos, a prosperous farmer, did not come empty handed. He brought $5000 in cash along with him.
What evidence is available indicates that John Moos surrendered his capital and became Belle’s combination hired man and lover. Apparently, he was not indispensable in either capacity. Three months later he disappeared during the height of Belle’s hog butchering season.
Belle announced to her neighbors that Moos had returned to Elbow Lake, and smoothed over a new vegetable patch in her garden.
It was then that Belle Gunness met Ray Lamphere, who seemed to have signed an iron-clad contract with his guardian angel at birth. As far as Belle Gunness was concerned, he led a charmed life.
They met, not through the matrimonial advertisement, but on the street in La Porte. Lamphere was a graduate of Indiana University, and he was broke. This latter fact was not destined to win over Belle Gunness, but oddly enough, she took a liking to him.
She offered him a job on her farm and she actually paid him wages. Moreover, whatever affection Belle Gunness entertained for Lamphere was reciprocated. Lamphere was genuinely fond of Belle. He importuned her to marry him. She never did. Since they soon became lovers, the wedding would have been a technicality only and Belle was of no mind to marry a man not possessed of “substantial means.”
Lamphere was still working on the farm when Eric Anderson, a Swede and widower who had just collected his wife’s insurance, arrived on the scene carrying a copy of the farm journal, which at Belle’s instructions had just printed her luring advertisement for the third time.
Ray Lamphere resented Anderson’s presence, but Belle quickly relieved her new suitor of what cash he had brought with him and tenderly promised her hand in marriage. Lamphere, despondent, took to drink.
He frequented the town’s saloons during the time that Eric Anderson was presumably pressing his wedding suit. However, upon his return home one evening, Belle Gunness gave him to understand that things between them were as they had been before.
“What about Anderson?” asked Lamphere, amazed.
“He’s gone. He jilted me. Decided to marry a girl in Chicago, instead.”
Lamphere frowned, “How come he knows a girl in Chicago? He told me once that he’d never been in the state of Illinois.”
Belle shrugged her ample shoulders. “What’s the difference? We’ll never hear from him again. Forget it.”
Lamphere forgot it — for the moment.
Between 1903 and 1906, Belle Gunness’s matrimonial proposition was printed several times in various rural periodicals. And during that time there were half a dozen applicants for her ponderous hand. In spite of the fact that she married none of them, their presence invariably aroused Ray Lamphere’s jealousy. He never knew if he was to sleep in the main bedroom or in the cubicle off the kitchen which was assigned to the hired man.
However, Lamphere’s fear of losing his mistress to another always vanished at the same time as did his rival. If he ever wondered that Belle Gunness was busy in her smokehouse both in and out of hog butchering season, he said nothing. If he was ever curious as to what she did with the sacks of quicklime she ordered from Indianapolis, he held his peace.
The only man, apparently, to escape from Belle Gunness’s lethal embrace was George Anderson of Tarkio, Missouri. He had read Belle’s advertisement with interest. He was a widower with a neat bank account and he was lonely. He packed his bags, bought a book of travelers’ checks and took the cars to La Porte and the “charming but lonesome young widow.”
It was Belle Gunness’s first experience with travelers’ checks. When she learned that each check must be signed by Anderson she was keenly disappointed. This, obviously, complicated matters.
After serving Anderson an ample supper on the night of his arrival, she said, “You know, it would be a good idea if you signed those checks before you went to bed.”
George Anderson, by no means as naive as some of Belle’s suitors had been, lifted his eyebrows and said, “Sign them before I go to bed? For goodness sake, why?”
Belle shrugged. “Something might happen to you during the night.”
“If anything happens to me there’s no reason to endorse the checks. The money will eventually go to my heirs.” He paused, had an afterthought. “Besides, what could possibly happen to me?”
Belle shrugged her power-packed shoulders. “You never can tell. Lots of persons die in their sleep, you know.”
Anderson frowned and looked at Belle sharply. He was still frowning when he bedded down on the couch in the living room.
He was awakened in the middle of the night by a slight, shuffling sound. He opened his eyes to see Belle Gunness clad in a capacious nightgown, staring at him. In one hand she held a lighted candle. In the other, a meat cleaver.
Anderson sprang from the couch as if it was afire. He said, “What are you doing here?”
“Oh,” said Belle blandly, “I couldn’t sleep. I remembered that some of my butchering tools needed sharpening so I figured I might as well do the job now. I stopped by here to make sure that you were comfortable.”
There may have been moments in George Anderson’s life when he was more uncomfortable than he was at the moment but they did not come immediately to his mind.
He dressed with the speed of a volunteer fireman and departed La Porte forever, taking his unsigned travelers’ checks and the memory of Belle’s meat cleaver along with him.
Early in 1907 John Alden arrived at the La Porte farm via the same lovelorn route as had the others. He avoided the cleaver for two whole weeks.
At the end of that period, Belle Gunness dispatched Lamphere on an errand which guaranteed his absence for at least three hours. Then she invited Alden into her smokehouse and gave her attention to more serious matters.
Lamphere, however, did not carry out Belle’s instructions. He went instead to a La Porte tavern. He enjoyed only three glasses of beer, since the bartender refused to grant him any credit. Then Lamphere returned home.