She also wanted him to bring money.

According to historical sources, Andrew eventually came to Indiana with roughly $3,000, a substantial amount at the time. (Wikimedia Commons)

Then he disappeared.

Belle had an explanation.

There was almost always an explanation.

But Andrew had a brother.

Asle Helgelien.

And Asle was not satisfied.

He knew about the correspondence.

He knew Andrew had traveled to meet Belle.

He knew Andrew had brought money.

Then the letters from his brother stopped.

Asle wrote to Belle.

Her answers did not reassure him.

Eventually he decided to go to Indiana himself.

This was the development Belle could not easily control.

A missing man from another state could remain an isolated mystery.

A determined brother arriving at the farm was something else.

Asle could ask questions.

He could speak with neighbors.

He could search.

He could compare Belle's answers with what others had seen.

And Belle knew he was coming.

According to the La Porte County Historical Society, the timing is one of the central mysteries of the case.

On April 27, 1908, Belle went to her attorney and executed her will.

On April 28, her house burned down. (La Porte County History)

Then Asle arrived.

The Fire

Joseph Maxson was the hired man who had replaced Ray Lamphere.

He had not worked at the farm long.

On the night of April 27, Belle and her children were in the house.

Maxson went to bed upstairs.

In the early hours of April 28, smoke woke him.

He opened his door and found the house already engulfed.

Accounts say he shouted for Belle and the children but received no answer.

With escape routes blocked by flames, he eventually jumped from a second-story window and survived. (JSTOR)

By the time help reached the property, the house was essentially gone.

Searchers entered the ruins.

In the cellar they discovered the bodies.

Belle's children were there.

The remains were identified as Lucy and Myrtle Sorenson and Belle's young son Philip Gunness. Sources commonly give their ages as roughly nine, eleven and five, though early reporting occasionally varied. (Atlas Obscura)

Beside them was the adult woman.

No head.

This was extraordinary for several reasons.

Fire can destroy a body.

Structures collapse.

Heavy beams fall.

But a completely missing head raised immediate questions.

Where was it?

If the body truly belonged to Belle, why could nobody find the skull?

Searchers sifted the ruins.

Nothing.

Even more troubling was the apparent size difference.

Belle was known as a large woman.

The corpse seemed much smaller.

One examination described the body as several inches shorter and roughly fifty pounds lighter than expected. (Wikipedia)

That did not automatically mean the body was someone else.

Bodies change in fire.

Measurement after severe burning is imprecise.

The missing head complicated height estimates.

But the discrepancy was enough to create doubt immediately.

Had Belle died?

Or had Belle placed another woman's body in the house?

Ray Lamphere

Police already had a convenient suspect.

Ray Lamphere.

Lamphere had once worked for Belle.

The relationship between the two appears to have become personal as well as professional.

Later accounts describe him as an occasional lover.

Eventually they fell out.

Belle fired him.

Their conflict escalated.

She accused him of harassing her.

She also reportedly told others that he had threatened to kill her and burn her house. (Wikipedia)

So when her farmhouse burned exactly the way she had warned it might, police looked for Lamphere.

He was arrested.

At that point, the working theory was straightforward.

A jealous former employee had set fire to Belle Gunness's home.

Belle and her children were dead.

Lamphere was responsible.

It was a tragic domestic revenge case.

That theory lasted only until people started digging.

The Brother Who Would Not Leave

Asle Helgelien came to La Porte looking for Andrew.

The farmhouse fire did not satisfy him.

If anything, it made him more suspicious.

His brother had come here.

His brother had brought money.

His brother had vanished.

Now the woman at the center of that disappearance was supposedly dead in a fire.

Asle wanted answers before the opportunity disappeared forever.

He spoke with people connected to the farm.

He learned more about Belle's behavior.

And crucially, he became interested in parts of the property where the soil looked disturbed.

According to later accounts, Asle and men working around the farm noticed depressions in the ground.

Soft spots.

Places where soil had settled.

Anyone familiar with burial can understand why this matters.

When organic material decomposes beneath earth, the soil above can collapse gradually.

A flat patch of ground can become a shallow depression.

Investigators began digging.

The first discoveries changed the meaning of the entire farm. (JSTOR)

They found human remains.

Not one body.

More.

Parts of bodies.

Some wrapped or packed.

Some dismembered.

And among the remains was a man Asle could identify.

Andrew.

His brother had never left Belle's farm.

He had been buried there.

Andrew Comes Out of the Ground

The discovery of Andrew Helgelien destroyed the image of Belle as merely a victim of arson.

If Andrew had been murdered and buried on her property months earlier, then either Belle had been living above a secret grave she knew nothing about or she was involved.

The second explanation quickly became more believable.

The remains were badly mutilated.

Contemporary reports describe Andrew's body as dismembered.

Other graves were nearby.

Once one was opened, the property seemed to surrender bodies everywhere. (Papers Past)

Investigators widened the search.

They probed soil.

They dug near the hog pen.

They searched garden areas.

More remains surfaced.

Human bones.

Skulls.

Limbs.

Torso sections.

Burlap or gunny sacks containing decomposed remains.

What had looked like an ordinary Indiana farm was turning into one of the most disturbing crime scenes in the country's history.

Jennie Olson

One set of remains carried a particularly painful meaning.

Jennie Olson had lived with Belle.

Accounts describe her as Belle's foster or adopted daughter.

Then Jennie disappeared.

Belle had told people that the girl had gone to California for school.

That explanation had apparently been accepted.

After the farm excavation began, remains identified as Jennie's were found on the property. (Atlas Obscura)

She had never gone to school in California.

She had apparently never left the farm alive.

That discovery changed how investigators interpreted Belle's relationships with people closest to her.

This was not simply a widow preying on strange men who answered advertisements.

Someone within her own household had also ended up buried in the earth.

And because Jennie may have seen or suspected what happened to Belle's visitors, later writers have speculated that she was killed because she knew too much.

That motive is plausible, but it was never proved in court.