The Gunness Farm / Sightings
For more than twenty years after the fire, Sheriff Smutzer got about two letters a month from people who had spotted her. Here are the ones that made it into the record, from a neighbor's orchard in July 1908 to a Los Angeles jail in 1931.
Hutson said he saw Belle and a man walking in the farm orchard, then on the road by the hog pen. When he approached, they fled. His daughters Evaline and Eldora said they saw her in a buggy with a man on McClung Road the same month.
Daniel Hutson, neighbor
The boys said a heavily veiled woman lifted her veils to drink at the cemetery pump, and that the face was Belle's.
Two local boys
Lamphere reportedly said he drove Belle to Stillwell, about nine miles from LaPorte, and saw her onto a train for Chicago the morning of the fire.
Ray Lamphere, by his later account
A woman passing below the cell window resembled Belle. Lamphere: 'She's about the size of my old gal.' He told Myers, 'I know where Belle is. And she's not far from here.'
Harry Myers, Lamphere's cellmate
Chicago was where Belle had lived, where the train from Stillwell went, and where the most sightings came from. Sheriff Smutzer received about two reports a month for twenty years, many from Chicago.
Dozens of reports
Repeated reports placed her in New York, in one version running a house on the Atlantic coast.
Letters to LaPorte
Among the cities where acquaintances and amateur detectives claimed to have spotted her.
Letters to LaPorte
A 1931 report had her alive in a Mississippi town, owning a good deal of property and living as a respected local figure.
Newspaper report
Esther Carlson, 61, was arrested for poisoning August Lindstrom, a Norwegian-American, for his money. Two former LaPorte residents saw her photographs and swore she was Belle. No record of Carlson exists before 1908. She died May 6, 1931, before trial.
LAPD arrest of Esther Carlson
Some in LaPorte and in Norway believed she went home. No Norwegian record of her return has been found.
Local belief
Belle Gunness was the most famous woman in America in May 1908, and her description, a heavy-set, middle-aged Norwegian woman, fit a great many people in the upper Midwest. Most of these reports are worth nothing on their own. The ones from McClung Road in July 1908 are different: three members of one family and two boys, within days of each other, within a mile of the farm, all describing a veiled woman with a man. The sheriff dismissed them. He had already declared her dead.
If you have a family story about seeing Belle, or a relative who swore they did, send it in. We'll add it to the map.
Sources: contemporary reports compiled in Murderpedia and Legends of America; the LaPorte County Historical Society; Lillian de la Torre, The Truth About Belle Gunness (1955). Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors.
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