Belle Gunness: America's Most Ruthless Female Killer
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 พ.ย. 2024
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You to append your video to say "as of 2022 the worst female murderer" the USA is constantly out doing itself, every year is more violent than the previous one.
I want to hear off-script Simon's take on this on the Casual Criminalist.
My man, there is a guy who is constantly harassing you for doing Georges Calin
Care enough to do an episode ?
Now we need an extended version on CasCrim with Simon's tangents. As I like to say, come for the Crime stay for the tangents.
The moving photo of Belle Gunness was so creepy! I was not expecting her eyes to start blinking.
Same here. I have read about the case and seen the photos in the video, and it creeped me out, too. Somebody should stop playing around with their newly acquired skills in photo manipulation.
Wow... I actually thought I was hallucinating. Not fun at all for someone who have had problems with that before. Was afraid I had to start medication again :(
When the second picture didn't move I thought I was having a acid flashback.
Glad I wasn’t the only one! Thought I was seeing things 😬
When is that?
Such a disturbing case. And yeah, I think she faked her own death and escaped. There’s too much evidence that the body found was NOT hers.
Imagine how many more people she killed if she did fake her death...
According to some sources, "Prior to the fire, Belle had withdrawn all of her money from the bank. In 1931, a woman named Esther Carlson was arrested in Los Angeles after poisoning a Norwegian-American man for money. Some people who knew Belle claimed that they recognized Esther as her-but she died while waiting to go to trial."
Certainly appears that way! I wonder what her will said! To whom would she feed all her belongings? Very interesting.
She easily could've pulled teeth as well leaving them behind in the house. Who knows really, if she did fake it she's long dead now.
So true!
It’s crazy how much easier it was to get away with disappearing even just a few decades ago, much less when it was not unusual to not be heard from again.
Like Simon says, "The past was the worst!"
@@dlo111 ...unless you happen to be trying to get away from a stalker, of course.
3:15 - Chapter 1 - Early years
6:00 - Chapter 2 - Fires, deaths and insurances policies
9:55 - Chapter 3 - The lady bluebeard
12:25 - Chapter 4 - Fire at the farm
15:30 - Chapter 5 - The horror farm of belle gunness
- Chapter 6 -
Legend
Official Legend.
I was born in LaPorte and went to the county museum to check out their exhibit on her last year. They have a skull from a victim on display. Apparently the guy that made a documentary on her found it in a filing cabinet after it was misplaced 70 years before, and they haven't really tried to figure out who he was, they just know she tossed the head down the latrine. They have pictures of victims they had dug up as wall paper, along with part of the building they initially stacked the bodies of the victims in as they were excavated. You can buy copies of the autopsy reports for some of the victims. I spoke with the man there and he told me about how many people were probably paid off so she could escape, including the dentist. A university tried to do DNA tests but none worked because of how old the samples were. There have been some good books written on her, and at least one documentary. I believe they're making another one right now, as well as a drama for the big screen. Definitely a fascinating case and quite scandalous, you could easily turn this into a 2 or 3 hour long episode.
I wonder if they could be compared to 23 and me and things like that.
Remember hearing about her growing up there and it was always the most fascinating thing at the museum.
I’m from there as well but I haven’t been to the museum in so long since I was a kid so I don’t really remember that much, so I definitely have to go back when I have a chance
I used to live in Selbu where Belle was originally from! Used to love taking walks and fishing by the Selbu lake during the summers, but I've been to the former farmstead where she grew up. It's a place called Størsetgjerdet (old spelling Størsetjare) in Innbygda, there's not much left of the farm, just a clearing in the woods and a fenced in plaque that reads:
"Brynhild P. Størseth"
"(Belle Gunness)"
"Homestead/fødested"
The history of Norway and the old social order might not be well known outside of Norway so I'll elaborate a little because it's relevant to Belle's story.
After the plague obliterated the population during the middle ages land became plentiful and a new social order arose where only the rich upper class owned land and had the right to vote. The old order was done away with near the end of the 1800s but was still in place during Belle's lifetime. The Størset family were poor folk who didn't own land, and her father Paul was the "husmann" of Størsetjare. Størsetjare was a "husmannsplass", a type of farm where a worker would sign a work contract with the land owner essentially renting the land and working it on the behalf of the land owner in exchange for pay in the form of food, money and a portion of the yield for a given year.
The people who owned a lot of land were known as "storbønder" and if they had far more land than they could work by themselves they would rent it out to commoners who would become "leilendinger". There wasn't much social mobility in the old order, and poor people could only afford to rent land that was difficult to work meaning a lot of them became subsistence farmers. Størsetjare is no longer farmed today because it's located in steep, hilly terrain on the westerly side of the valley. There was no good source of running water in the immediate vicinity of the farmstead, and the plot was situated such that it didn't get enough sunlight to produce an abundant surplus. Like so many of Belle's generation she emigrated to the U.S. because there was no real future for her back home.
One wonders what would have happened had she stayed in Norway, as just a few years after she left there was quite a bit of social upheaval and reordering within Norwegian society that ensured that more people could prosper.
Thank you for putting her into a detailed, intriguing social context. I was reminded of the tensions, struggles, and outright violence that surrounded a young Ned Kelly as he grew to adulthood in a rural Victoria plagued with unending strife between Protestants and Catholics, accusations of horse rustling, and visceral disdain held by small farmers toward the police and the ‘ squatocracy ‘ ( holders of very large properties )..
I am currently down the street from her farm.
Thanks for taking the time to write all that out! Very interesting.
Fascinating info, thank you
Dudes, look up her love letters. It’s some chilling stuff. One ends, “come prepared to stay forever.” I wish he would have read one.
-"This crime is so horrific we have to convict someone for said crime, even if we have to convict an innocent person, as long as we have punished someone for the crime and can declare that the crime is solved, even though doing so allows the true murderer to run free and likely commit more murders and other criminal acts."
-What the hell is wrong with people? Especially in law enforcement and justice systems? This is not how crimes are solved. To conclude a criminal investigation in this manner is a crime in of itself, and those responsible should be charged, tried and convicted of such criminal acts.
Soviet style policing... Just blame anybody - the public must still believe in the socialist utopia.
I suspect Ray Lamphere was guilty of being male and a convenient scapegoat to avoid blaming a woman for the murders she obviously committed.
@@joshstanton267 "When I shoehorn in capitalist propaganda under acts committed just as often by American police."
It's the mentality of people with power. Job security depends on looking like you have all the answers.
Everything you said is correct. I am shaking my head. Many people are satisfied with this, it shows even those who claims to care about justice are just as evil. Murdering a person with one own hands or using the state are both the same evil.
AYO! Never thought I'd see my home county on this channel. One of my 4th grade teachers, Mr. Bruce Johnson, has spent years researching and looking in to her case, and we learned a whole lot about Belle as 10 year olds
Wow! But also, as a ten year old, you know that this was wrong... It's a sort of 'denial of childhod' issue.. Although, tbf, kids are gory!
So many videos on this channel about Indiana 🤦♂️
Imagine giving women a device that lets them get away with any inconvenience and then selling it on the home shopping channel, how many kids would go missing?...
This is my home town too!!! I was taught about her in middle school too. Back when the museum was at the courthouse.
I was born in LaPorte and have lived in Portage forever and didn't hear about her until a couple years ago. I went to the county museum and talked to the guy that found a victim's skull in a filing cabinet in the museum after it had been pulled out of the latrine and then forgotten about. He was telling me about how many officials were in on it or paid off. Someone contacted me about an upcoming documentary they were working on last year. It's a very interesting case.
I'm convinced ma man Simon is enslaved in a basement somewhere and forced to make videos for all these different channels. These videos are too good and plentiful to have any other explaination.
Simon is the dictionary definition of the term "Workhorse".
He and his team are doing superb jobs
One of the running jokes on his Brain Blaze channel is that it's the writer who is chained in the basement.
he's also hung like a horse (his wife stated in a public appearance..)
If she did stage her own death and left for an unknown location, then I can't see her just stopping with the murders. Somewhere her trail of victims continues until she met her own death.
I used to buy into the myth of serial killers having terrible experiences in their younger years. I have since realised that billions of people have had bad childhoods and yet the majority don't become murderers.
There's a difference between direct causation and being a risk factor. We can argue that having a bad childhood presents an increased risk of developing behaviour as this. We can't say it's the only cause but there is a pattern.
the abuse often comes along with either underdevelopement or damage to the prefrontalcortex. this combination is a driving factor to many serial killers. the others tend to be just straight up psychopaths like ted bundy.
Ed gene childhood was no sunshine
it's definitely not a myth. you gotta understand that we're all different to one another and we all deal and react differently to traumatic events... and some people are, unfortunately, more prone to become violent and have other issues if they grow up in a toxic environment. trauma can seriously impact an individual. also before someone say something stupid, what I'm saying is not to justify anything those people do. it's more to try to at least understand why one would do such things.
Yes I can attest to that point that's why when I raised my kids I always told them that I wanted to do the exact opposite of my parents raised me lol and now both of them are in college. I took the terrible things that happened to me and made them into something to learn from instead of a excuse to do those terrible things to other people
That creeped me out when the 'photo' moved and blinked.
Yeah I had to do a double take lol.
Yeah that was creepy
Holy crap! I thought I was the only one that saw that..
I remember a somewhat similar story in which someone researching their genealogy ran into a dead end at a great, great grandfather who had married a woman named Euphemia Barber and died shortly after, leaving her most of his fortune and his own children from a previous marriage very little. On a genealogical website, she posted an inquiry regarding this woman. As the replies came in, a very disturbing picture was formed: many, many people had a Euphemia Barber in their family tree as well, almost always with the same story; a wealthy widower gets married to Miss Barber and dies shortly after of some sort of gastrointestinal sickness, the widow Euphemia collects the inheritance and moves far away, ending all contact with the husbands family... And so, a hundred and fifty + years after her reign of murder, Euphemia Barber is finally exposed as the serial killer she was!
Omg. You *had* to have that animated picture of her, didn't you? I didn't expect it to start looking at me and blinking. That was HORRIFYING
18:57 Holy uncanny valley. Did anyone actually ask for the technology to animate old photos? Jen must have been having a little too much fun with Deep Nostalgia.
Fans of Harry Potter?
There are genealogy sites that can do that by uploading any photo.
I recommend you cover Dietrich Eckart, hitler’s mentor and the man hitler called the spiritual founder of nazism
Thank you for making me think I was loosing it when you showed the moving portrait of Belle!!
Awesome as always!
Love from the USA.
Future Video suggestion -
Eamon DeValera (1882-1975) - prominent political leader in 20th century Ireland who, after the Irish war of independence from 1919 to 1921, was in the public eye for over forty years from 1922 until his death were he served as head of government (Taoiseach) and head of state (president). He was nearly executed in the Easter Rising in 1916 and was key in putting into place the new constitution on 1937. A very prominent figure in Irish history.
An interesting choice. Hopefully, any video will report on how he went to the German Embassy in 1945 to pay his condolences on the death of Adolf Hitler. He paid his condolences after the Nazi death camps and the Holocaust had been made public. De Valera was a bigot whose policies kept Ireland in poverty and beholden to the Roman Catholic Church.
Your docs kept me company while commuting from LA to San Francisco when I was making that drive twice a week. I especially love your video on Augustus. You and your team do great works.
Comely: "Pleasant to look at; attractive (typically used of a woman)." Belle in name only. For whom the Belle tolls more like. That being said I wouldn't have argued with this sick witch.
Who did she make her will out to... That's her new identity
She made it out to her children and, if they were to die before her, to an orphanage/school in Chicago
I nearly passed out when the picture moved 💀
Hi Simon,
You should make one for the New Sri Lankan President, he contested for the Presidency for the first time in 1999 and have lost many elections since. Finally yesterday after 20+ years he became the president! He’s not someone that’s loved by the public of Sri Lanka including myself, but I feel his life story would make an excellent biography story.
Yikes - brilliant if utterly terrifying video! Thanks to the team for this one and of course the sublime presentation!
Humbly requesting George Carlin. A comedian and satirist who oftentimes hit the nail more than just on the head; and whose bits were infinitely more than just satire. The guy was a comedian, satirist, begrudged philosopher, and even the narrative voice of Thomas the Train.
That man was so a head of his time, such wit was amazingly awesome.
@@heathermason9311 absolutely! He’d be a worthy subject for Simon to cover.
Seeing your comment for the late great Carlin every biographics upload is like an anti depressant (Hopefully well get that video soon!)
I humbly second the motion. 😄😄
Yes please George Carlin. Very interesting man.
Last podcast on the left covered her too, definitely recommend taking a listen
she killed her own husband for a little over 150k. SMH what a horrible woman.
My dad worked in LaPort. He pointed out the housing development that now exists over her farm. A local brewery even had a Belle Guisses porter
It was Backroad Brewery, and it was called the Belle Gunness Stout.
I have this on the 2nd monitor and I just happened to look over at 10:00 and I nearly screamed when I saw the photo animated.
Nice work.
Thank you for doing an episode based in my hometown. I love all your channels. Funny to hear Laporte, Indiana on your channel. Now we've made the big time. Thank you so much ❤️❤️
They covered another killer from LaPorte on the podcast Small Town Murder and briefly mentioned her. It's weird hearing somewhere so familiar in a podcast/TH-cam video.
I know this is BIOGRAPHICS but I'd love to see a Geographics about Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic, the cathedral made of bones.
He did it 3 years ago on Today I Found Out
@@sandybarnes887 thank you I checked it out.
@@guyincognito2851 you are most welcome. I'm happy I could help. I hope you enjoy them. 🙃
I grew up about 30 minutes from Laporte, IN and I hadn't heard of this until now.
The big question that wasn't answered: who was the beneficiary of her will?
My thoughts exactly! Follow the money 💰
Pretty sure it was an orphanage for Norwegian kids or something like that but they rejected the donation after hearing what she had done
Does anyone know why the guy was fighting and kicked her in the stomach when she lost the baby? Like how far along was she? Was it obvious she was pregnant? I'm just wondering it's unacceptable either way even if she weren't pregnant but fight a pregnant woman just makes him that much more of a horrible person and then kicking a pregnant woman in the belly when she is clearly pregnant is a whole other level of disgusting human! I was just trying to figure out if it was the father of the unborn child, or her boyfriend but not the father or if he was put up to it by the father, his family or maybe her family or if he was just some random disgusting person!?? I've heard this story and watched lots of different things on it but I either can't remember that part or everything else/ most or all the other stories I've seen/heard on her started once she came over here to America and everything started... Does anyone know?
I always find it interesting the differences between male and female serial killers. And how financial reasons is the main go to for female serial killers. And how they do it close to home more often too. Just interesting.
Women select partners based on income. And youre surprised they kill over money? The most important thing to women is money.
This is true, it's biological and meant to provide for her children
@@thevoicestoldmetoagain4627 Yep and men think with their wieners so male serial killers always kill because of that.
Sounds like a great horror/thriller movie kinda like Silence of the Lambs with a nice cliff hanger ending, I know I would watch it.
"Thought to dig *one* of the soft mounds that were scattered all over the property" I... Yeah, again, farm hands being better investigators than the police. The past REALLY WAS the absolute worst.
So I am connected to this in a small small way. My grandma Betty lived on the Gunness family land. My great grandfather worked for them and was allowed to live on the land. Grandma used to run around the property. I of course grew up in LaPorte County my entire life till 10 years ago and I remember going to the small museum inside of the county courthouse and seeing the whole exhibit on them.
Holy crap, I was born in Valparaiso Indiana. My dad and sisters were born in La Porte Indiana
I was born in LaPorte and I'm disappointed that I hadn't heard about her until recently. Now I have a Belle Gunness fridge magnet from the historical society😂
I grew up not far from Laporte. I'd never heard this story before. Thanks again.
I legit got scared at 10:00 when the picture starting blinking and moving
Same
Likewise!
Whoa, Simon, the addition of the creepy animated pic kinda freaked me out. I'd like to see the conclusion of this one on Decoding the Unknown, lol.
This was a good video. I have a few suggestions for future videos:
1. Arizona Senator John McCain
2. Confederate President Jefferson Davis
3. Minnesota Governor Jesse "The Body" Ventura
Wow, she was literally the female Robert Pickton. Just don't trust anybody who owns a pig farm, is what I'm saying.
I learned that from an episode of Criminal Minds! Turns out pigs will eat almost anything...
we have some evidence that shows that she went to Belarus and that her killings didn't stop.
After that she went progressively eastward still killing along the way but disappeared near Kazakstan.
Turns out she has family over there and was planning to meet up with them.
According to her family however she never did arrive though she got very close to the area where they lived.
We are unsure whether her extended family knew about the killings.
Hopefully someone who was close to the victims she had caught up with her.
And to this day, Laporte high school athletics are known as the "slicers"
Simon please do one on American comedian George Carlin please and more romans too
Yes.
I absolutely love Biographics and it’s content. It’s sooo good and very entertaining.
I mostly watch the Casual Criminalist and whenever I watch other channels I miss your tangents. Love the info and your delivery, just missing the random asides. 🥰
This woman was absolutely terrifying. :-/
Make a video of Shinzo Abe
If I ever create an online dating profile I’m definitely going to include the line, “triflers need not apply.” Bonus if someone gets creeped out discovering it was said in the personal ad of a serial killer 👀😅
Her eyes blinking and head shifting in the pictures of her really freaked me out at first.
Talk about one of the first 'American Psychos'
2:00 that guys face just says, "You think I did what?!?!"
According to the book I read about her, back in those times women were thought to not be able to murder anyone. I also remember that it was thought she was seen in California. It is thought she pulled a few of her teeth out to make it look like she died.
I heard of an eerily similar story in South Africa where a woman killed so many close relatives to get insurance payouts. Not everyone we see is normal
Dude, I am DYING waiting for that video on Caracalla! The Year of the Five Emperors feels like ages ago.
Also, love the Amin, you planning to spotlight any other African dictators like Mobutu or Bokassa?
Hey Simon idk if you’ll read this but could you possibly do a biografic on Yasuke the black samurai? Or a biografic on Yamato Takeru the 12th emperor of Japan?
Did he not unite the rival provinces of Kyushu, following a string of battles with various samurai clans in the late 1500s?
Simon always killing it! Work fact boy work!
Being from LaPorte, this is a HUGE story in our little town.
This is part of why you can't trust people who say only cities are dangerous. Lots of little towns have smaller stories like this, all over rural America.
18:58 OMG WHEN SHE BLINKED
The start of this sounds like a casual criminalist episode
I love all of Simon's channels. My only complaint is, that I am 80 yrs. old amd cannot hear as fast as he can talk. Gotta watch 2-3 times to get it all.
If you can press the "settings" cog (or wheel) in the top right of the screen (if you are using a cell phone or tablet anyway) you will see a choice called "playback speed", if you select this you can slow down (or speed up) the audio. This should help to follow at a pace better suited to you.
I’m so sack deep into this channel right now I think I have some of Simons dinner on my tip. But I just don’t wanna pull it out and know for sure, just keep the playlist rolling on ya know. The dude is great!
The animation is awesome for the photo! You should do that to all these people we have no motion picture of … imagine HH Holmes winking 😉 at you 😱
And they talk of Aileen Wuornos and her 7 victims! This Norwegian “jente” was far worse, a real monster.
My Great Grandfather was a cop on this case.
Wasn't there some case in California where a women had pictures of children with her that looked quite similar to the ones of Belle Gunness?
there's no way you could have kept pigs from eating the supposedly dozens of sets of feet, hands & decapitated heads. in fact pigs have been used in the illicit disposal of bodies, esp when secrecy is needed. it doesn't make sense; it brings the rest of the contemporary account into question imo.
OMG... was anyone else creeped out by the photo of Belle looking around?
Yes
Hey Simon, how were you able to get the face to move? Is it a video or what?
As someone born in Rochester, Indiana, I'm just glad someone is talking about my birth state outside of sports, classic professional wrestling, and Michael Jackson.
This is one of my favorite sites. You should have a Roku channel.
This story also reminds me of the Bender murder farm,another one where the suspects disappeared into time.
I want a biography of :
Huxley (author of Brave New World)
Ray Bradbury (author of Fahrenheit 451)
Yevgeny Zamyatin (author of We)
H.G Well (author of modern utopia)
She has the gunnes world record for most female kills in the family
Please look into Madam Delphine Simon, and thanks for the videos
Did no one notice the discrepancy of Bel moving to the states in 1891 and meeting a man several years late whom she married in 1884?! Or were y'all dipping your nachos in source at the time???
Which one of Simon's many, many, many channels did I click on??!??
Thank you for a great narrative - I keep comming back :-D
Good video 👍
My family used to own several plots of land around selbu, we live an hour north in a place called Åsen. i grew up hearing stories told from way back about how the place was in those days, an ancestor of mine wrote about her in a memo in a letter. The whole place seems cold about talking of her in any way at all.
I think Gunnes faked her death and escaped scott free to kill another day. I feel a netflix series coming
I live here in LaPorte...approximately 10 minutes from the Gunness homestead. She is our town's Notorious claim to "fame" .
Humbly requesting richard p feynman physicist, bongo player, safe cracker and the best teacher of physics to have ever lived
Ok am I stoned or is that photo of Belle blinking?
She’s a real life Ms. Trunchbull
Home town finally know for something!! Still like driving past the old farm!
Had you never heard about this growing up there?
10:01 freaked me out when she started blinking!
I have never heard of her. This is a really interesting and crazy case. I wonder what really happened to her. Seemed like she had a pretty normal up bringing but we'll never know why.
Will you ever put the bio back on podcast forms ? Cause it WAS AMAZING saved me from being bored on a 14 hour late over
Brilliant as always. Thank you. Have you done a video on Fyodor DOSTOYEVSKY?
Ah….the good ole days ! No iPhones no internet no electrical grids , no cars , no airplanes no interstates no TVs no microwaves no fingerprints and no forensic pathologists!!!!!💀🤡💀🤡💀🤡
I wish this was a full casual criminalist episode
Sad thing is she might have got away with it there's evidence that she went on and lived a full life and there's also evidence that the sheriff killed her because he knew he couldn't convict her
Thats a great story that needs research to be fully told!
If you like doing criminals could you do an episode on Joseph phrizel or alreal castro just an idea .