Mystery of Lady Bluebeard

Almost since the beginning of time, there have always been stories about mystery, whether it is crime, scientific, and anything else in between. But what if the mystery story is a century old and most people never heard of it. Getting pretty interesting, huh?

Here is the mystery of Lady Bluebeard, whose real name was Belle Gunness. She was an immigrant from Norway, who came to Chicago in 1881, when she was twenty-one years old. Three years after she came to Chicago, she married her first husband. After the death of Gunness' husband, she relocated to LaPorte, Indiana, where she encountered Peter Gunness. The couple exchanged vows in April 1902. A few months later, the second husband died as a result of a sausage grinder and a jar of hot water tumbled on him.

This is not the end of this story. In fact, the mystery is just getting started! After Gunness' first and second husband passed away, she even collected insurance money that ranged in thousands of dollars.

Shortly after the death of Peter Gunness, Lady Bluebeard placed an ad in a Norwegian-language newspaper for a potential mate. The ad said, "A woman who owns a beautifully located and valuable farm in first class condition, wants a good and reliable man as partner in same. Some little cash is required and will be furnished first class security." Although this story is a century old, hearing it is giving me the creeps! This woman was pretty dangerous!

Asle Helgelien, whose brother Andrew, responded to Belle Gunness' personal ad, remained missing for approximately four months. Supposedly, his brother had cashed in a check for three thousand dollars, which was a lumpsum in 1908. The flip side to this story was that he came to LaPorte to find out that the remains of his brother were in a bunch of household waste.

According to Andi Simmons, a forensic anthropologist, she stated that it is a possibility that Lady Bluebeard killed anywhere between twenty-five and thirty-three people. The real number is very sketchy due to the authorities not searching the location in a meticulous manner.

But according to some local people, Gunness' reputation with the families of Norwegian immigrants was a wonderful foster mother. For example, Gunness took in Jennie Olsen as a seven-month-old after the death of her mother. After Olsen's father remarried, she made the decision to remain with Gunness, as she became older.

Sadly, Jennie Olsen's body was found in the 1908 fire. However, the vast majority of individuals believe that she was killed prior to 1908. According to the official account, Belle Gunness, or the Lady Bluebeard, was killed in the fire with three foster children and an unidentified woman. She was forty-eight years old.

Another part of this mystery is that Simmons' team found an old casket. That casket included body parts from two children, but the bones were not the foster children. Instead, these could be the body parts of unidentified victims that were buried in the basement and were picked up in the fire ashes.

I guess that no one will ever know what really happened during 1908 in the Chicagoland area. We know that Lady Bluebeard is not talking, and if she were, she would not tell! Maybe her spirit will tell the story!

Source:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080427/ap_on_re_us/lady_bluebeard