On a quiet April morning in 1908, smoke rose from a farmhouse outside La Porte, Indiana. By nightfall, the ruins had revealed something far darker than an accidental blaze. Among the ashes were the remains of a woman and three children, and beneath the soil in a nearby pig pen, investigators began to unearth bodies wrapped in burlap sacks.
The discovery would turn Belle Gunness, a formidable widow known for luring men through lonely-hearts ads, into one of America’s most chilling legends. Her story unfolded just as real photo postcards were transforming the way Americans saw their world. Soon, even her crimes were captured, printed, and mailed.
A Murderess in the Age of Postcards
Belle Gunness was born Brynhild Paulsdatter Størseth on November 11, 1859, in Selbu, Norway, the youngest of eight children. She grew up working on nearby farms to save money for passage to America. In 1881, she immigrated to the United States, changing her name to Bella (later to Belle) as she passed through Castle Garden in New York. Settling in Chicago, she found work as a domestic servant and later in a butcher shop, spending long hours cutting carcasses — a skill that would later lend a grim precision to her crimes.
Large, strong, and intimidating by the standards of her day, Belle exuded a kind of physical authority that unnerved some and impressed others. In 1884, she married fellow Norwegian immigrant Mads Sorensen. Together they ran a small confectionery business that mysteriously burned down, allowing the couple to collect an insurance payment. Soon after, two of their children died suddenly, presumably of acute colitis, a diagnosis that in hindsight may have masked poisoning.
The Making of a Killer
When Mads died in 1900, on the only day his two life insurance policies overlapped, Belle collected another payout and used the funds to buy a farm near La Porte, Indiana. There, she married a local butcher, Peter Gunness. Within a week, his infant daughter died in Belle’s care, and eight months later Peter himself was killed in a bizarre alleged accident involving a meat grinder. Once again, Belle claimed insurance money and public sympathy.
Afterward, she began placing matrimonial ads seeking “a good and true man of means” to share her prosperous farm. Dozens of hopeful suitors answered her letters, arriving in La Porte with savings and dreams of a new life. Few ever left.
Gunness’s methods were chillingly calculated. She persuaded men to liquidate their assets, bring cash, and trust in her promise of marriage. Once they arrived, she poisoned them, dismembered their bodies, and buried the remains around her property. When the fire that destroyed her farmhouse in 1908 exposed the mass graves, officials estimated she had collected at least $3,000 per victim. This was a fortune at the time and the equivalent of well over $100,000 each in today’s dollars.
The Fire and the Mystery
The blaze that revealed her crimes also created her greatest mystery. The headless female body found in the ruins was initially labeled Belle Gunness, but its size didn’t match hers, and dental evidence later discovered in the ashes raised more questions than answers. Her jilted lover and hired hand, Ray Lamphere, confessed to setting the fire but claimed Belle had staged her death and fled with a stash of cash. Later DNA testing on the remains proved inconclusive, leaving her fate suspended between folklore and fact.
A chemist examining the bodies of the children found traces of strychnine, confirming that they had been given a lethal dose of rat poison before the blaze. Witnesses say the night before the fire, Belle purchased cakes, a toy train, and two gallons of kerosene. She returned home, served her children supper, and the house went dark for the night. By morning, only the foundation and ashes remained. What happened inside those final hours has never been proven, but the evidence of poison left little doubt that Belle planned the tragedy in advance. Whether Belle actually died with them or escaped remains one of the most enduring mysteries in American crime history.
Murder Becomes a Spectacle
The timing of the Gunness murders aligned perfectly with America’s postcard craze from roughly 1900 to 1915. Real photo postcards (RPPCs), printed directly from negatives, were fast, personal, and inexpensive to produce. In a matter of days, photographers were selling RPPCs featuring the “Gunness Murder Farm.” They depicted crowds milling through muddy fields, scorched timbers, and men carrying remains to waiting wagons. What we might call exploitation today was, in 1908, both news and souvenir.
The Murder Farm quickly became a tourist attraction. Newspapers reported that the Lake Erie & Western Railroad arranged special excursion trains from Chicago and Indianapolis so thousands could see the site firsthand. By one estimate, as many as 20,000 people descended on La Porte one Sunday to watch as investigators exhumed remains. Vendors sold popcorn, ice cream, and postcards, turning a horror scene into a spectacle of morbid curiosity.
Morbid Curiosity
For collectors, these cards sit at the macabre crossroads of true crime and visual history. Original Belle Gunness RPPCs are scarce, often found in museum collections or long-held private albums, and condition, clarity, and captioning drive their value. Cards with clearly written titles or dramatic crowd scenes tend to command the highest prices. At the date of this writing, documented sales show RPPCs have sold for as much as $260 and litho-printed postcards for as much as $150. Their appeal spans multiple niches: early photography, crime ephemera, Midwestern history, and the darker side of the Golden Age postcard.
The Legend That Wouldn’t Die
Belle Gunness has become a kind of American folk villain – part serial killer, part ghost story. Locals still debate sightings and rumors, and every few years her name resurfaces in documentaries, novels, or podcasts. Yet for postcard enthusiasts, the most haunting trace of her legend isn’t a gravestone or confession. It’s the stark images that ordinary people once bought, mailed, and tucked away, proof that even horror found its place in the mailstream of early 20th-century America. Belle’s postcards remind us that photography and print could allow a killer to live in infamy, and that the early postcard industry reflected not only the beauty of the world but its darkest curiosities as well.
Sources:
- A&E. (n.d.). Belle Gunness: The early 20th-century female serial killer you probably haven’t heard of. A&E Television Networks. https://www.aetv.com/articles/belle-gunness-the-early-20th-century-female-serial-killer-you-probably-h avent-heard-of
- Hannaford, V. (2024, April 23). Belle Gunness: “Lady Bluebeard,” the Indiana farm widow who murdered for profit. People Magazine. https://people.com/belle-gunness-lady-bluebeard-indiana-farm-widow-murderer-11827704
- La Porte County Historical Society Museum. (n.d.). Belle Gunness exhibit. https://laportecountyhistory.org/exhibits/belle-gunness/
- Mental Floss. (2018, May 5). The bizarre case of Belle Gunness, America’s Lady Bluebeard. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/562322/belle-gunness-murders
- PBS. (2024). Death on the farm: How Belle Gunness amassed a fortune by luring men to her farm and chopping them to pieces. American Experience. https://www.pbs.org/video/death-on-the-farm-how-belle-gunness-amassed-a-fortune-by-luring-men-toher-farm-and-chopping-them-to-pieces-l6avan/
- Schweitzer, A. (2021). The murderess as spectacle: Media, gender, and crime in the progressive era. Cornell University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501757136-019
- Strange Remains. (2014, May 18). A nightmare at Murder Farm: The story of one of America’s most prolific serial killers. https://strangeremains.com/2014/05/18/a-nightmare-at-murder-farm-the-story-of-one-of-americas-most-prolific-serial-killers/
- WorthPoint. (n.d.). Belle Gunness – postcard and ephemera listings. https://www.worthpoint.com/inventory/search?query=belle+gunness&categories=books-paper-magazines