He arrived at a most inauspicious moment. He strode into the smokehouse just as Belle had laid the corpse of John Alden on a chopping block and was honing the edge of the cleaver. She turned red.
Lamphere’s face turned gray. It was doubtless true that he had suspected dirty work was going on. But actually to see his mistress calmly readying to chop up a suitor was something else.
“My God,” he said, “what are you doing?”
“I’m cutting him up,” said Belle coolly. “The quicklime will work better that way. Then I’m going to bury him in the vegetable garden.”
“You mean,” gasped the horrified Lamphere, “that you murdered him?”
“Self-defense,” said burly Belle. “He tried to trick me. Goodness knows what sort of girl he thought I was. I’ve never been so insulted in my life.”
Lamphere, through either desperate love or desperate fear of his own life, kept his mouth shut.
Shortly after John Alden had been run through the sausage grinder, Ole Budsberg, powerful, blond painter, brought himself and $200 in cash to La Porte. He was, in a short time, relieved of both his wallet and his life. The vegetable garden was growing in size.
The last suitor of record to pay court to Belle Gunness was one Andrew C. Helgelin of Aberdeen, South Dakota. He had replied to Belle’s provocative advertisement and had received, in return, a burning love letter.
Helgelin withdrew some money from the bank, packed his clothes and headed for Indiana. He only lived a week but he proved to be the biggest bonanza of all.
For some reason or other he failed to observe that Belle Gunness in no wise resembled the “charming widow” who had written of herself for publication. He was immediately smitten. He was all for an instantaneous marriage, but the obese object of his affection wasn’t having any. What sort of girl did he think she was?
When Belle requested her customary proof of genuine love, Andrew Helgelin daringly slapped his wallet on the table and offered her the entire contents. Since this obviously did not move the 230-pound bulk of his beloved, he vowed that he would get in touch with his bank back in Aberdeen, instructing them to convert his securities to cash and wire the funds to Belle.
This struck Belle as a capital idea. It took exactly a week to complete the transaction. And in exactly a week, Belle invited Helgelin on an inspection tour of her modern smokehouse. He did so, and finished the trip in the adjacent vegetable garden.
Back in South Dakota, Alex Helgelin, brother to Andrew, became worried. He knew Belle’s address, since Andrew had told him where he was going. He communicated with Belle, asking, anxiously, for news of his brother. This disconcerted Belle no whit. She answered promptly. Andrew, she wrote, left the farm a week after his arrival. She loved him and was as interested as Alex in his whereabouts. She suggested that Alex come at once to La Porte, bringing an adequate amount of cash with him. They would use the money to search for the missing Andrew. She was certain that with some cash she could bring the brothers together.
Alex, however, never made the trip.
At this period, in early April of 1908, Belle Gunness’s position became shaky for the first time. She heard from a sheriff's deputy that Ray Lamphere, while drunk, had told a group of fellow drinkers that if anything ever happened to him at the farm, they were to request the sheriff to investigate. He had hinted darkly at horrendous doings at Belle’s place.
Belle Gunness’s reaction was characteristic. She didn’t defend herself. She attacked.
Vowing that she had never been so insulted in all her life, she showed up at the county courthouse and announced that Lamphere had threatened her life on several occasions. She swore out a warrant for his arrest. However, after a private session with him in his cell, during which no one knows what compromise was reached, Belle withdrew the charge and Lamphere was freed.
But Belle remained uneasy. Perhaps, the little racket of running gentlemen possessed of substantial means through the sausage grinder was petering out. Perhaps, the time had come for a “twenty-three, skiddo,” which in those days meant to take it on the lam.
Late in the evening of April 27th, 1908, the Gunness farm was suddenly ablaze. No one gave the alarm until it was too late, and the buildings were burned to the ground.
On the following morning, the charred ruins were carefully searched. Four blackened bodies were found. One was that of a woman. The other three were bodies of children — two girls and a boy. The inference was obvious. Belle Gunness and her three children had been destroyed by the flames. Moreover, there was a natural suspect for the sheriff — Ray Lamphere, who curiously enough had not slept at the farm that night. Too, it was a matter of record at the courthouse that Belle had sworn he had often threatened her life.
Ray Lamphere was arrested, tossed in jail and charged with murder, arson and everything else that the prosecutor was able to think of at the moment. The charred corpses were sent to the morgue. There, the coroner, who Belle Gunness rightly had considered a most suspicious man, viewed them. He conceded that the smaller bodies were those of Belle’s adopted children.
He announced flatly that the adult corpse was not that of Belle Gunness.
“It was three inches shorter,” he stated. “It is eighty pounds lighter, Belle Gunness was possessed of good, sound teeth. This cadaver is wearing an ill-fitting plate.”
By this time Ray Lamphere, in order to demonstrate his own innocence, was talking like a radio announcer trying to beat the clock. He told the sheriff of the death of John Alden and of the mysterious disappearance of Belle’s other suitors. The sheriff promptly armed his deputies with shovels and sent them out to the farm.
By dusk they had dug up the remains of what were twelve recognizable skeletons. In addition, they had discovered four cartons full of miscellaneous bones. Helgelin and John Anderson had not entirely decomposed, thus they were identifiable.
Further examination by the coroner revealed that the children had not died by fire. They had been neatly cracked on the skull before the blaze had started. It was evident now that Belle had committed murder and arson to hide her own tracks. Exactly where she had obtained the woman’s body which she hoped would be taken for her own was never known.
That isn’t all which was never known. The State of Indiana offered a large reward for her apprehension. Every police headquarters in the United States was notified. But Belle made her 230 pounds hard to find. During the years the search spread into Australia, Canada, England, Europe, both Americas and Africa. But no one ever wittingly laid an eye on Belle Gunness.
If “Madame Murder” — Belle Gunness — still lives, she will be about 80 years old. Most officials are inclined to believe that she is dead, that she died quietly and respectfully in a feather bed — not while being run through a sausage machine.
Harlan Ellison
It is an honor to present this expose by the one and only Harlan Ellison. I was a teen when I first read Ellison’s Gentleman Junkie and Other Stories of the Hung-Up Generation, his remarkable collection of stories from the 1950s and 1960s. Most of the subjects were far from my dreary suburban diet of “Brady Bunch” reruns, but his voice spoke to me, awakened something in me. For the first time I was aware of the presence of the author in the creation of a literary text. I’ve often returned to his books over the years — Gentleman Junkie; I Have No Mouth & Must Scream; No Doors, No Windows; Angry Candy. Now a better, wisely mature reader, I’ve come to appreciate even more his remarkable gifts: his ability to mix and match genres, to turn on a dime from comedy to tragedy, the land mines he sets up, unforeseen till it’s too late. And I am not alone in my belief that Ellison has singularly revolutionized the detective story, brought both its content and form into the modern age. It is asking a lot of Ellison to be able to instill a minor historical-criminal footnote like “Mystery Man Lucks and His Missing Bucks” with this kind of power. Maybe too much. But even here, very early in Ellison’s career, when he was writing as Ellis Hart, one hears his sly wit and unique voice, as he brings to life the death of con man Al Lucks.