What is known is simpler.

Jennie disappeared.

Belle offered a distant explanation.

Jennie's remains were later found on Belle's property.

The Farm Opens

By early May, the excavation had become enormous.

Reporters arrived.

Photographers arrived.

Authorities.

Relatives of missing men.

Curious residents.

Eventually tourists.

The scene was macabre even by the standards of the era.

Men in suits and hats gathered around open pits.

Bodies and body parts were removed from the soil.

The farmhouse ruin stood nearby.

Newspaper correspondents transmitted increasingly sensational stories across the country.

Special trains reportedly carried sightseers into La Porte.

Thousands came to see the place newspapers were calling a murder farm. (Wikimedia Commons)

The property became spectacle.

Vendors reportedly sold refreshments.

Souvenirs circulated.

People stood close to places where human beings had been buried in secret only days before.

This is one of the strangest parts of the story.

A crime scene became a tourist destination almost immediately.

Modern investigators would seal such a property.

Restrict access.

Establish evidence grids.

Document each grave precisely.

In 1908, recovery methods were far less controlled.

People moved through the area.

Remains were sometimes mixed.

Identification became difficult.

A century later, forensic researchers examining the case would criticize the original recovery process for exactly this reason. (ScienceDaily)

The mystery grew partly because the crime scene itself was never handled according to modern forensic standards.

How Many Bodies?

The answer remains uncertain.

At least eleven additional sets of remains are commonly reported as having been recovered after the fire, and some sources count twelve or more depending on how fragmented remains were grouped. (WBEZ)

Some were identified.

Many were not.

One of the problems was dismemberment.

Another was decomposition.

Another was the crude nature of excavation.

And then there were the reports of men who had visited Belle but whose remains were never conclusively matched to anything found.

This created the much larger estimates.

Twenty victims.

Twenty-five.

Thirty.

Forty.

Those numbers entered legend.

But they should not be treated with the same certainty as the identified bodies.

The strongest historical statement is that Belle Gunness was linked to numerous deaths and that multiple human remains were found buried on her La Porte property.

The exact total remains unresolved.

That uncertainty almost makes the farm more disturbing.

Investigators found many bodies.

And still could not say with confidence that they had found everyone.

How Were They Killed?

The dead could not provide easy answers.

But investigators and later accounts began constructing a likely method.

Belle's suitors often arrived with money.

They stayed at the farm.

Then they vanished.

Ray Lamphere later became the source of some of the most vivid descriptions of how Belle allegedly killed them.

According to confession accounts published after his death, he claimed Belle sometimes drugged victims before striking them or otherwise killing them, then dismembered the bodies and buried the remains on the property. (Atlas Obscura)

But this evidence requires caution.

Lamphere's statements were published later.

Different versions circulated.

He had reasons to minimize his own role.

And because Belle was either dead or gone, she could not be questioned.

So the exact mechanics of every killing cannot be reconstructed with confidence.

What is clear is that the remains themselves showed extensive dismemberment.

Whatever the precise method of murder, someone on that property repeatedly reduced human bodies into pieces that could be hidden in shallow graves.

The Hogs

The hog pen became part of the legend.

Belle kept pigs.

The remains of multiple victims were found near the pen.

Later stories claimed she sometimes fed victims to the hogs.

That possibility became one of the most repeated pieces of Belle Gunness folklore.

But the evidence for exactly how often, or whether, this happened is less firm than popular retellings suggest.

Bodies were certainly buried near the hog area.

The location was useful.

A farm naturally contains disturbed earth.

Animals create smells.

Waste is moved.

A woman digging near a pig pen would attract far less attention than someone digging repeated holes beside a suburban home.

The farm itself gave privacy.

Distance.

Noise.

Tools.

Outbuildings.

Animals.

And acres of soil.

It was an environment where disappearance could be made to look ordinary.

Why Money Matters

The financial pattern is one of the strongest threads running through the case.

Men were encouraged to bring money.

Some liquidated assets.

Some withdrew bank funds after reaching Indiana.

Then they vanished.

Belle's earlier husbands died under circumstances that left her with insurance payments.

Again and again, death seemed to produce money.

That does not mean every death connected to Belle was murder.

But once multiple suitors were found buried on her land, financial gain became difficult to ignore as a likely motive.

Belle did not need wealthy industrialists.

She needed men with savings.

Men who could bring several hundred or several thousand dollars.

At a time when a farm laborer's annual income could be only a fraction of those amounts, one visiting suitor could represent a significant financial reward.

The system was brutally efficient.

Advertisement.

Letters.

Promise of marriage.

Bring money.

Arrive alone.

Disappear.

Then another advertisement.

Andrew Was Different

Andrew Helgelien may have been the man who finally brought the system down.

Not because he resisted Belle.

He disappeared like the others.

But because his family did not accept the disappearance.

His brother Asle kept asking questions.

That persistence created pressure Belle had not faced before.

Asle knew about the money.

He knew about the relationship.

He had correspondence.

He was prepared to travel to Indiana.

Belle could lie in a letter.

It was harder to lie once the brother stood on the farm.

And this is why the timing of the fire has fascinated historians for more than a century.

Belle knew scrutiny was approaching.

Then she signed her will.

Then the house burned.

The sequence is undisputed.

The meaning is not. (La Porte County History)

Was Belle genuinely afraid that Lamphere would kill her?

Did Lamphere burn the house out of revenge?

Did Belle arrange the fire to fake her death before Asle arrived?

Did Lamphere help her?

Did he kill her?

Or did both parties participate in parts of the plan before turning on one another?

There has never been a universally accepted answer.

The Woman Without a Head

Everything comes back to that adult female body.

If it was Belle, then she died on April 28, 1908.

If it was not Belle, then the entire fire may have been a staged escape.

The absence of the head mattered because the head contained the easiest identifying evidence.