The Gunness Farm / The Letters
For sixteen months, from August 1906 to December 1907, Belle Gunness wrote to a reluctant bachelor farmer in South Dakota. He kept every one. His brother found them after he vanished. They are the only place you can hear her voice, and almost every one is about money.
Andrew Helgelien answered Belle's advertisement in the summer of 1906. Most men who answered were on a train within weeks. Andrew wasn't. He was cautious, slow to sell, slow to travel, and so Belle wrote, and wrote, and wrote. The letters were in Norwegian, and by the account of the woman who translated them for the 1908 trial, badly written: "extremely faulty and evidently the work of an ignorant person." A modern translator who checked her work agreed.
What survives in print are translated excerpts entered at Ray Lamphere's trial and the eleven originals a LaPorte reporter tracked down decades later. The passages below are the ones historians consider genuine. Nothing here is invented, and the famous one that was invented is at the bottom.
The first letter. Belle acknowledges Andrew's reply to her advertisement and begins the correspondence that will run for sixteen months. The full text of this letter has not been published; its date is known from the court record.
First of roughly 80 letters, by Asle Helgelien's count.
Through the autumn of 1906 the letters warm up. By November she has moved from courtship to logistics.
"My dear friend, have all the money changed into bills, into as large a denomination as possible, and sew them real good, first on the inside of your underwear and put a thin piece of cloth under, so it would not be noticed and sew it good."
"Do not say one word about it to anyone, not even your nearest relative."
Translated for the Lamphere trial, 1908. The instruction to sew cash into his underclothes appears, in some form, in nearly every surviving letter.
"Do not send any cash money through the bank. Banks cannot be trusted nowadays."
Widely reported in the 1908 press from the trial exhibits. A bank draft leaves a record; cash sewn into underwear does not.
"Probably we will have many other secrets, do you not think?"
From the trial exhibits. The men were always told to tell no one where they were going.
"I do not think you will leave me after you have first come here; that I am sure of."
Among the eleven originals located by Ted Hartzell, formerly of the LaPorte Herald-Argus. Read it twice.
Andrew ignored most of it. He didn't sell everything. He didn't sew bills into his clothes. He let his bank send a draft to LaPorte instead. It made no difference.
The last letter in the record. Andrew's trip is finally arranged. He will leave Aberdeen after Christmas.
Last known letter. Andrew arrived in LaPorte on January 2, 1908 and was last seen on January 14.
Andrew was seen in LaPorte with Belle at the First National Bank, cashing a draft for about $2,900. After January 14 he wasn't seen at all. When Asle Helgelien wrote to ask after his brother, Belle replied that Andrew had gone to Norway. Asle had read all eighty letters by then. He came to LaPorte in May, talked the sheriff into digging in the hog lot, and found Andrew four feet down. He was the first body out of the ground.
Asle Helgelien is the reason anyone knows what happened on McClung Road. Without him, the fire is an arson case and Belle Gunness is a dead widow.
"To the Dearest Friend in the World: No woman in the world is happier than I am. I know that you are now to come to me and be my own. My heart beats in wild rapture for you, My Andrew, I love you. Come prepared to stay forever."
This is the letter quoted on almost every Belle Gunness page on the internet. It isn't hers. Lillian de la Torre, researching The Truth About Belle Gunness (1955), traced it to reporters covering the Lamphere trial who couldn't get the real letters and wrote one. The date gives it away: on January 13, 1908, Andrew had already been in LaPorte for eleven days. She had no reason to write to South Dakota. He was in her house.
The real letters are duller and far worse. No rapture. Just a woman, in broken Norwegian, patiently explaining to a stranger how to carry his life savings so no one would notice.
Sources: Ted Hartzell, "Belle Gunness' Poisonous Pen," HistoryNet, on the eleven original letters and the 1908 trial translations; Lillian de la Torre, The Truth About Belle Gunness (1955); contemporary trial coverage, 1908. The LaPorte County Historical Society Museum holds an original letter.
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