Belle Gunness had vanished, and unlike her victims, no trace of her was ever found.
For many years after, sightings of Belle in towns and cities throughout the United States were reported. For more than twenty years, Sheriff Smutzer received on average of two sightings a month from all over the United States. Some believed she escaped to Norway. Belle became part of the United States’ criminal folklore.
There was little of Belle's death that was conclusively determined. Perhaps she had been murdered, perhaps she might have committed suicide, or maybe she died years later of natural causes. On record, her death is listed as April of 1908, the last time she was seen alive.
In Los Angeles in 1931, an elderly woman was arrested for murdering a man for financial gain. She was named Esther Carlson. She died before her trial began. Two residents of Laporte who had been well acquainted with Belle Gunness recognized Esther Carlson’s photograph in a newspaper and claimed it was Belle Gunness. A trunk found in the room of Esther Carlson contained photographs of children who bore a likeness to Belle's children.
In 2007, the woman’s body with the missing head was exhumed by forensic anthropologists in an effort to learn her true identity with DNA testing. It was hoped that a letter discovered in Belle’s house would have a big enough DNA sample for forensic teams to be able to compare it to the remains of the body. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Efforts to clear up the mystery of Belle Gunness continued.
A verse later emerged which captured the character of the horrific Belle Gunness.
Verse 1:
The Gunness farmhouse ruins (foreground) after the fire
Andrew Helgelein
Asle Helgelein, Andrew's brother
Men dig in the cellar of the Gunness home
Louis Schultz panning for Belle's teeth
The head of one of Belle Gunness' victims
Asle made sure Andrew had a proper burial at a cemetery in LaPorte.
TILLIE KLIMEK
Otillie Gburek was born in Poland in 1876. She immigrated to the United States with her parents as a baby. They settled in the polish area of Chicago. In Chicago, she became known as, “Tillie.” In 1890, Tillie married her first husband John Mitkiewicz. In 1914, after twenty-four years of marriage, he died after a short illness. Tillie had predicted his death to her neighbors. She said that she had seen it in her dreams and even predicted the exact day. Tillie received $1,000 in an insurance payout. The death certificate listed the cause of death as heart trouble.
Not long after John’s death in 1921, she married a second husband, John Huszkakski. Shortly after the marriage, he died. He left Tillie $1,200 cash, and she received a $730 insurance payout. Tillie had predicted his death in her dreams and yet again it came true.
She then took up with John Guszkowaki, a boyfriend who jilted her, and he died. Her third husband was Frank Kupzsyk. Within six months of the marriage, the pattern of Tillie predicting his death was repeated. However, in this case, she would also taunt Frank with comments such as, "You'll be dying soon” and by sitting at his bedside knitting her mourning hat. She also requested the landlady’s permission to store a coffin that she had picked up for a bargain. When he died, she received a $1000 payout from the insurance company. Following his death, Tillie would lament her wretched dreams and dismal luck to her neighbors.
The “bad luck,” however, did nothing to prevent Tillie from marrying again. This time the unfortunate man was Joseph Klimek. A couple of months after the wedding, Tillie visited a store to purchase black fabric for her funeral dress. The kindly clerk offered his sympathy and asked when Joseph had died. Tillie casually replied, “Oh not yet, but in ten days he will.” However, fortunately, his life was saved.
When her fourth husband Joseph became ill, his relatives insisted that he be taken to a hospital. Doctors almost immediately suspected arsenic poisoning and subsequent tests confirmed it. An arrest warrant was issued for Tillie. The arresting officer testified later that she had remarked to him, “The next one I want to cook a dinner for is you."
Tillie’s house Chicago; Come for dinner
As the police began investigating Tillie’s past, a sinister tale unwound. According to her neighbors, she was psychic. They said she had an extraordinary ability to foretell the future. They told of how she had predicted the death of a local dog that annoyed Tillie with its incessant barking and how she had predicted the deaths of all her husbands. The police also learned that a few other relatives of Tillie’s, as well as neighbors, had suddenly died. A couple of neighbors and relatives reported to the police how they had become seriously ill after eating at Tillie’s house. By the time the police had finished investigating, they had a list of twenty-two suspected victims, many of them were still suffering from various complaints such as partial paralysis and heart problems (both symptoms of arsenic poisoning), and fourteen of them had died. Nurses at the hospital where husband number four, Joseph Klimek, was being treated, reported that Tillie had said to them, "If Joseph causes you any bother, smack him on the head with a block of wood!"
The newspapers of the day noted that Tillie was neither charming nor beautiful, that she was a rather “squat" woman. Tillie, at the time of her arrest, was mother to thirteen children, some of whom she was suspected of murdering.
Joseph remained in the hospital for many months. He had become crippled by the arsenic and only slowly recovered the use of his legs. As he lay in his hospital bed, his hatred for Tillie grew daily, giving him the fight to get well to exact his revenge on her in court. He complained to the nurses about Tillie insisting he increase his life insurance policy and that when he did, he became ill.
At the trial, the Illinois State’s Attorney asked for the death penalty, even though no other woman had ever been executed in Illinois before. “I’ll help send her there,” Joseph Klimek was quoted as saying. Tillie’s husband, Joseph Klimek, was the state’s main prosecution witness. John Sturmer, a son of Tillie’s who had been poisoned but survived, was another in a long line of prosecution witnesses.
The jury convicted Tillie of murder. Tillie was sentenced to life in prison in 1923 with the special stipulation that she was not allowed to cook for other prisoners. On November 20, 1936, Tillie died in prison.
Frank Kupzsyk
ELLEN ETHERIDGE
Ellen Etheridge nee Walker was born in 1922 to a good and solid religious family. Her father was the Reverend John Walker of Matagorda County. As Ellen grew older, she looked forward to having a similar family for herself.
When Ellen was twenty-two years old, she was extremely flattered to gain the attention of a good looking, older, widowed, Texan, millionaire rancher, J.D. Etheridge. And when JD proposed marriage to her, she felt herself to be very fortunate. When they married in the spring of 1912, Ellen was convinced that JD loved and admired her as much as she loved and adored him.
Ellen’s dreams and happiness, however, fell quickly apart. Her husband had eight children from his first marriage that all closely resembled their dead mother in looks, and her husband adored and doted on his children.
It soon dawned on Ellen that it wasn’t her he was interested in and that he had married her as he wanted a housekeeper for his large Bosque County home, a cook, and a body to warm his lonely bed. Ellen felt sorely neglected, as all his affection was spent on his children. Her pangs of jealousy of the children turned to hatred.
It occurred to her that if she was to rid the house of the children, JD might give her his love and affection. In the month of June 1913, Ellen, gave two of the children some arsenic mixed in their food. They died horrible painful deaths. She repeated the process on two more of the children on October 2nd.
These two deaths immediately raised suspicion and autopsies on the bodies were ordered. Arsenic was discovered, and Ellen was arrested. Once in custody and under questioning, Ellen confessed her crimes and was after her trial sentenced to life imprisonment at the newly built Goree state farm for women. The prison had separate buildin
gs for White and African-American women. Hispanic and White women worked in the garment factory, and the Black women worked on the land.
Ellen was a model prisoner during her long confinement, always hoping for a pardon that she might die a free woman. After many years, she was given the privilege of being allowed to roam the farm and woods without a guard. At nightfall, she returned to be locked behind the bars. In her spare time, she made lace and sold it to the public to earn enough money to have her body sent home if she should die in prison.
AMY ARCHER-GILLIGAN
Amy Duggan Archer-Gilligan, née Duggan, was born in October 1868 in Litchfield, Connecticut. Amy was the eighth child born to James Duggan and Mary Kennedy.
In 1897, Amy married James Archer and in December of 1897, they had a daughter Mary. In 1904, the Archers opened a boarding house, “Sister Amy's Nursing Home for the Elderly", in Newington, Connecticut. They soon built up a reputation as genteel caregivers for the area’s wealthy elderly providing nurturing tonics and nutritional meals, despite neither Amy nor James having any medical qualifications. It was an era when there were no regulations governing nursing homes.
The home was so successful that, within six years, they upgraded to a larger property in nearby Windsor. Shortly after the move in 1910, James Archer died. His death certificate issued by the local coroner, Dr. King, said the cause of death was kidney disease. A few weeks before James’s death, Amy had insured his life, and the day after James funeral, at which she cried profusely and was comforted by Dr. King, she visited the insurance office.
Amy’s care home rates were considered exceptionally reasonable. She would charge $7 per week or a one-time upfront fee of $1,500 for lifetime care. However for Amy’s home, with only fourteen paid beds, to remain profitable, she realized that she needed a constant supply of fresh patients.
Between 1907 and 1910, twelve of Amy’s patients had died. Given the ages of the patients, four deaths per year were not considered suspicious. However, after James’s death, that number began to rise significantly.
The increase in deaths in the summer of 1911 was partly attributed to the unprecedented heat wave that hit the northeastern United States. More than 3,000 deaths had been attributed to this natural disaster. Yet even after the heat wave had finished, the elderly patients in Amy’s home continued to die. Dr. King attributed each death to old age.
In 1913, Amy met and married a rich widower, Michael Gilligan. Soon after the wedding, he changed his will leaving his entire estate to Amy. On the 20th of February in 1914, Michael died after eating one of Amy’s special nutritional dinners. Dr. King gave the cause of death as “natural causes”.
Many of Amy’s patients had no relatives to keep an eye out for them, but one resident, Franklin Andrews, an apparently healthy man, had a sister, Nellie Pierce, who regularly visited him. When he died unexpectedly on May 29, 1914, Nellie became suspicious. The cause of her brother’s death, according to Dr. King was a gastric ulcer. Going through her brother’s papers, Nellie noted that Franklin had just signed an agreement allowing Amy to withdraw a large amount of money. Nellie began watching the obituary column in the local paper and began to feel evermore alarmed by the number of deaths occurring at the home.
Nellie, as her suspicions grew, went to the district attorney’s office and reported her findings. The District Attorney checked the death certificates and seemed satisfied that everything was in order.
Nellie then went to see a journalist at the Hartford Courant and relayed her suspicions to him. He promised to investigate.
The reporter discovered that there had been forty-eight deaths at the home over a five-year period and that shortly before each death, the elderly patient had signed over to Amy large sums of money. Dr. Howard King had signed the death certificates in each case as due to natural causes. The journalist, by consulting with other physicians around Connecticut, learned that an average death toll in a small establishment as Amy’s would be eight to ten over a five-year period, not forty-eight.
The reporter wrote up his story on May 9, 1916, and entitled it “The Murder Factory”.
The story forced the police to investigate. Armed with a search warrant, they raided “Sister Amy's Nursing Home for the Elderly”. In the clinic’s storerooms, the police found large amounts of bottled arsenic. Amy explained that they were to keep the rats under control. The police did not believe her and requested the local judge for permission to exhume some of the patient’s bodies as well as that of Amy’s last husband, Michael Gilligan. Altogether, five bodies were exhumed, and all were found to have died either by arsenic or strychnine poisoning.
Amy Archer-Gilligan
Amy was arrested and charged with five counts of murder. Her trial took place in Hartford, Connecticut in June of 1917. Amy pleaded not guilty. On June 18, 1917, a jury found her guilty. The judge sentenced her to death. Amy appealed and was granted a new trial in 1919 in which she pleaded insanity. Amy’s daughter, Mary, testified that her mother was a morphine addict. In this trial, the jury found Amy guilty of second-degree murder, and she was sentenced to life imprisonment.
It soon became obvious to prison authorities by Amy’s behavior that she was insane, and she was moved to an insane asylum. She died in 1928, at the age of 59 at the Connecticut state insane asylum.
LYDA CATHERINE AMBROSE
Lyda Catherine Ambrose was born in 1891and not much more is known about Lyda until 1917 when she lived in Keytesville, Missouri. Here, she was engaged to a young man who took out a $2,500 life insurance policy in the name of his future bride. Before the marriage took place, the young man died from excruciating stomach pains.
Her dead fiancée’s brother was devastated, and Lyda consoled him and within a few days they were married. After the marriage, he took out a $2,500 life insurance policy. Within three months, he too died of "stomach trouble."
Lyda then moved on to Twin Falls, Idaho and found work as a waitress. The owner of the restaurant fell for her, and they were soon married.
Shortly after their wedding on June the 10th, 1918, the unfortunate man died from "stomach ulcers." He had obviously died sooner than Lyda had expected as he had not yet signed his life insurance documents. Therefore, she was unable to collect the money.
Yet, a few months later, Lyda was on to her next husband who died only three months after their wedding. This time she ensured the papers were signed correctly, and she received $10,000 for her late husband's premature death.
Lyda, not seeming to enjoy being unmarried for long, in October of 1920 married her fourth husband. By the end of November, he was dead. Lydia received a $12,000 insurance policy check on a policy that had only been taken out on October 6th. With the money in her pocket, Lyda left Idaho and made her way to California.
The insurance company contacted the police to investigate. A search was made of Lyda’s house and a great deal of arsenic-laced flypaper was discovered. Her two most recent husband’s bodies were exhumed and toxicology tests revealed large doses of arsenic in their bodies.
The authorities located Lyda in Oakland, California where they arrested her and brought her back to Idaho. At her trial, she was found guilty of first degree murder. Lyda was sentenced to life in the state prison of Idaho.
Lyda managed to escape once from jail but was rearrested in 1932 in Kansas City. She was returned to Idaho state prison where she died of old age.
LYDIA SOUTHARD
Lydia Anna Mae Southard, née Trueblood, entered the world on October 16th 1892, in the little town of Keytesville, Missouri. In 1906, the family relocated to Twin Falls, Idaho.
Twin Falls, 1908
On March 17, 1912 when Lydia was twenty, she married Robert Dooley. In 1914, Lydia gave birth to a daughter named Lorraine. They lived on a ranch near Twin Falls with Robert’s brother Ed. In August of 1915, Ed Dooley unexpectedly died, and the cause of his death was attributed to ptomaine poisoning. Lydia had told the doctor that he had eaten salmon from a can that had been standing a
round open for some time.
Lydia and Robert received $2,000 on Ed’s life insurance policy. On October 12, 1915, Robert Dooley became ill and died. His death was attributed to typhoid fever. Lydia, through her tears, said Robert had insisted on drinking water from a cistern next to the barn. She also expressed fears to her neighbors that her daughter would, too, die of typhoid. Lydia collected $2,500 on Robert’s life insurance policy.
In June of 1917, Lydia married a man by the name of William G. McHaffle. Shortly after the wedding, Lorraine, Lydia’s three-year-old daughter, became sick and died of typhoid. Following this death, Lydia and William moved to Montana. Twelve months later on October 1st, 1918, William suddenly fell sick of what was suspected to be the flu and died. The death certificate stated the cause of death as being diphtheria and influenza. This time, much to Lydia’s fury, she could not collect the $5,000 life insurance money because William had let the policy lapse.
She Devils Around the World Page 18
