While I’m on the subject of mystery stories (see yesterday’s post), there’s a true one that I hadn’t ever heard of until recently that almost defies imagination, even generations later. But that’s what true mystery stories do, isn’t it.
The story of a female immigrant serial killer/mass murderer, born in Norway but made in America, was a hideous and irreconcilable tale of horror and crime in the 19th Century and remains one today. Belle Gunness, who is believed to have killed all of her own children, two husbands and a handful of suitors, not to mention an accomplice or two of her own along the way–possibly executing as many as forty people in her lengthy crime spree–is surprisingly little known nowadays. I fear that this may be because we have so many other hideous and oversized monstrosities and real-life mystery stories handy to horrify and mesmerize us that many likely get pushed out of memory by the current ugly news. Undoubtedly the advent of World War I‘s dreadful specter was a factor in overshadowing a single murderer’s story rather immediately on its discovery.
All the same, once I knew of it, I found the woman a compellingly repellant subject for another mystery story illustration, being a subject worthy of an Edgar Allan Poe style drama or, yes, a true-crime cinematic epic. Though it was one of those news stories that ‘rocked the nation’ when uncovered a hundred years ago, the tale of Belle Gunness is relatively obscure nowadays. There have been a few generally tepid and mostly heavily fictionalized stories, books and movies based on the horrors wrought by this one woman’s apparent sociopathy and the trail of blood left in its wake, but it’s remarkable to me that such a grim, terrible story is scarcely known on a wider scale anymore.
Frightening, dark, and perhaps an indictment of the worst of human nature in general, yes–but I think perhaps part of the reason I find mystery stories so gripping is because I think they remind us–again in that somewhat ‘safe’ and detached format of past-history or fiction–that brilliance and the abyss are constantly in conflict in the human heart and only by understanding this and being willing to examine it in ourselves can we have a chance of rising to beauty and shunning the grotesque urges that we might have–and, if we’re truly fortunate, catching up the would-be wrongdoer in humane and forgiving and healing arms before she can ever fall so far. That’s my hopeful fiction, and I’m sticking to it.
La Belle Dame sans Merci of the prairies, Belle Gunness. What fearful horrors shaped this woman’s inner darkness?
Today, I present Belle Gunness, a truly fallen woman and black widow whose mystery may never be fully unraveled, for your contemplation. May we never see her like again.
Art-Colored Glasses 
Oooooh, Creepy. I kind of want to know more about it, but not really!
Well, there *is* more information–and plenty of speculation–online, as well as the aforementioned books. If one dares to explore them!
Wow, very horrific, to say the least, and I haven’t heard of her, either…Ted Bundy rings a bell, though, along with other nick names throughout the past decades…
What’s quite amazing to me altogether is not only that people can *do* such things, but that ‘private’ killers are clearly not utter singularities either–as witness various murderous emperors, dukes, politicians and regimes through history. It makes me all the gladder that these are still able to be considered anomalies in general!!!
Just a few corrections: There is no evidence she killed any “lawmen.” Northwest Indiana is not part of the “prairie.” Her victim count was probably closer to 30, but that still makes her the most prolific female killer in U.S. history. There are many exaggerations and superstitions associated with the case, but the true facts are horrific enough. She needs no embellishment.
You’re absolutely right, Andrea! No exaggerations necessary when we talk about such people. I will correct my autopilot misstatement about lawmen being among the killed, of course. I think I got to rambling and went awry altogether there. And I suspect you are correct that she, however wildly prolific, did not actually kill more than, or perhaps as many as, 30; there were suspicions, investigations and allegations that added up to 40 or more at the time, which is not the same as proof by any stretch.
Meanwhile, I do stick by my ‘prairie’ description. While Indiana is not part of the Great Plains or generally considered part of the prairies of the central US in typical terms, northwestern IN (including LaPorte and its county) *was*, in fact, still part of the extant tallgrass prairies in the 19th century, according to my research. But beyond that, and knowing that there are various lowland/flat regions of the continent classified as different kinds of prairie that stretch literally from coast to coast, I was speaking from my own experience of the generic sense of ‘prairie’ as large, mostly open expanses of flat or rolling countryside, i.e., the farmlands of the area, something I found particularly striking when I lived in northern Illinois in my youth and rode around the area with my parents, after having lived in the hilly/mountainous western side of Washington state. So, not either a technical reference or one to the Great Plains, but a personal generalization. 🙂
Thanks for your kind corrections! I shall edit!
Kathryn
I’ve never heard of her and, frankly, now know too much. I cannot help but wonder what happens in an individual’s mind that allows for mass murder, including one’s own children. “Horrific” only begins to describe it.
A true psychopath, from the sound of it. Sometimes these real-life monsters make reading a Stephen King or Poe thing feel like it’s cheering me up just because I can go to bed knowing the ugliness was invented!
Appropos to this the month of Old Hallows, perhaps; or is this just entirely too gruesome to recall ever at any time of the year???
I’m personally too weenie to be truly Halloween-y! 😉 Yes, let’s just relegate this woman to the annals of history.