That should not have happened if the 1908 remains had been separated properly.
The finding confirmed that the burial process had mixed material.
Then the hoped-for DNA comparison failed because the century-old sample from correspondence was too degraded. (Wikipedia)
The mystery survived science.
Not because DNA could not answer the question in theory.
Because investigators no longer had a clean comparison sample.
Evidence had finally met technology.
Too late.
The Fire Was the Beginning, Not the End
On April 28, the people of La Porte thought they were looking at the end of Belle Gunness's life.
A farmhouse had burned.
A widow and three children were dead.
A disgruntled former employee had probably done it.
That story was sad.
Understandable.
Local.
Within days, it became something else.
A missing man's brother arrived.
Soil was disturbed.
A grave opened.
Then another.
Then another.
The farm itself became evidence that whatever had happened there had begun years before the fire.
The blaze did not destroy Belle's secret.
It exposed it.
The Final Reconstruction
April 27, 1908.
Belle Gunness goes to an attorney in La Porte.
She signs her will.
She expresses fear of former hired man Ray Lamphere, whom she has accused of threatening her and the property. (La Porte County History)
That evening Belle is at home with her three children.
Farmhand Joseph Maxson sleeps elsewhere in the house.
Before dawn on April 28, Maxson wakes to smoke.
He opens his door.
The farmhouse is burning.
He shouts.
No answer.
He escapes.
Help arrives too late.
The house collapses into the cellar.
Searchers recover four bodies.
Three are Belle's children.
The fourth is an adult woman.
The woman's head is missing.
The body appears smaller than Belle.
The head cannot be found. (Atlas Obscura)
Suspicion falls on Ray Lamphere.
Police believe the fire may be revenge.
Then Asle Helgelien reaches La Porte.
His brother Andrew had come to marry Belle.
Andrew brought thousands of dollars.
Andrew vanished.
Asle does not believe Belle's explanations.
Attention turns to disturbed soil on the farm.
Men dig.
Human remains appear.
Andrew is found.
Then other bodies.
Jennie Olson.
Unidentified men.
Additional remains near the hog pen and elsewhere.
The property becomes a massive excavation site. (JSTOR)
Investigators learn that Belle had been corresponding with men through matrimonial advertisements.
Several arrived with money.
Several disappeared.
Old deaths in Belle's family are reconsidered.
The image of Belle changes completely.
She is no longer simply the possible victim of the farmhouse fire.
Authorities believe she was responsible for multiple murders.
Meanwhile, investigators continue trying to identify the headless woman from the cellar.
Dental bridgework believed to belong to Belle is found in the ruins.
Her dentist identifies it.
The coroner officially declares Belle dead. (Atlas Obscura)
Not everyone agrees.
The corpse appears too small.
The head remains missing.
Rumors say the dental evidence may have been planted.
Ray Lamphere goes to trial.
He is convicted of arson but not murder.
He goes to prison.
He dies from tuberculosis the following year.
After his death, purported confessions and statements emerge.
Some describe Belle murdering suitors and Lamphere helping dispose of remains.
Some suggest Belle arranged for another woman's body to be used in the farmhouse fire.
The stories conflict.
No final answer emerges. (Genealogy Trails)
Sightings of Belle continue for years.
A woman arrested in California decades later is rumored to be her.
Never proven.
In 2007, forensic researchers exhume the adult remains buried as Belle Gunness.
They hope DNA will settle the case.
The coffin contains commingled child remains as well.
The original evidence handling appears even less reliable than historians had feared.
Researchers attempt DNA comparison with biological material from old correspondence.
The sample is too degraded.
The result is inconclusive. (ScienceDaily)
And so the central question survives.
Did Belle Gunness Die That Night?
More than a century later, there are still two endings.
In the first:
Belle Gunness is a serial murderer whose crimes are finally beginning to close around her.
Before authorities can expose her, Ray Lamphere attacks.
He sets fire to her home.
Belle and her three children die.
The fire unexpectedly exposes the graves of Belle's victims.
The murderer becomes a murder victim.
In the second:
Belle sees the investigation coming.
She knows Andrew Helgelien's brother will arrive.
She knows Ray Lamphere can expose her.
She prepares an escape.
Another woman becomes the body in the basement.
The head is removed.
Belle's children die in the house.
Belle disappears with money.
The farm burns.
The world declares her dead.
And one of America's most prolific suspected killers walks away.
There is evidence supporting pieces of both stories.
There is not enough surviving evidence to prove either one beyond all doubt.
That is why the Belle Gunness case has never really ended.
The Last Image
But the strongest image is not Belle disappearing into the night.
We do not know that she did.
It is not even the farmhouse burning.
It is what happened afterward.
Men standing in the dirt.
Someone notices a depression.
A shovel enters the soil.
The earth comes away.
Then fabric.
Then human remains.
Everyone stops.
They dig beside it.
Another body.
Then another.
And suddenly the entire property changes.
The hog pen is no longer a hog pen.
The garden is no longer a garden.
The farm is no longer a farm.
Every patch of soft earth becomes suspicious.
Every missing man becomes part of the investigation.
Every story Belle told is reconsidered.
And the woman everyone thought had just died in a tragic house fire becomes the central figure in one of the darkest murder investigations in American history.
The fire was supposed to erase whatever happened on that property.
Instead, it told investigators where to start digging.