Tender Murderers Read online

  Somewhere along the way, Jennie Olson disappeared, too. Gone to an exclusive girls' finishing school in California, Belle told the neighbors.

  Finally, in January 1908, Andrew Helgelein, a big, good-natured Swede from South Dakota, showed up in LaPorte, bringing with him $1,000 as proof of his good intentions. He and Belle had corresponded for six months, and she had even included a four-leaf clover in one of her letters, for good luck, she wrote. Helgelein had the “good luck” to disappear, like the others. But he left behind a brother, Asa, who, when he hadn't heard from Andrew for some months, wrote to Belle. Belle wrote back: Andrew had returned to the Old Country. Asa didn't buy it. Why would his brother liquidate his property and bring the money to his prospective bride, then suddenly leave her? He announced that he was coming to LaPorte to see for himself.

  On April 27, 1908, Belle visited a lawyer. A farmhand whom she had fired, Ray Lamphere, was harassing her, she said, and just in case anything happened to her, she wanted to make a will, leaving her money to her children. If they didn't survive her, the will stipulated that the money would go to the Scandinavian orphan's home.

  In the early morning hours of April 28, Belle's farmhouse burned to the ground. Found in the ashes were the burned bodies of Belle and her three children. Ray Lamphere, the disgruntled farmhand (and also Belle's sometime lover) was dragged out of bed and arrested for arson and murder, protesting all the way. LaPorte looked forward to an exciting trial and a speedy hanging.

  There was one problem: the body presumed to be Belle's was missing its head. There were no tests for DNA in those days, but even without the head, it was obvious that this corpse was much smaller and lighter than the hefty widow. The plot thickened: Asa Helgelein showed up in town, suspecting foul play in his brother's disappearance and asking permission to dig around the farm.

  Asa's suspicions proved to be dead on, as it wee, and on May 5, the first body was uncovered. It was brother Andrew, with fatal doses of arsenic and strychnine in his stomach.

  Quickly, the digging crew uncovered more bodies, including that of Belle's teenaged stepdaughter, Jennie Olson, not in the California finishing school after all. Instead she'd been finished right there in LaPorte, possibly because she had grown suspicious of Mama. All in all, at least thirteen bodies were dug up, but the final estimate was higher than that, perhaps forty, because of the numerous bone fragments found in the pigpen. Belle had been feeding her suitors to the pigs.

  Belle, posing as a loving mom, with her doomed kids

  Ray Lamphere was found guilty only of arson, because it was impossible to prove whether or not the headless corpse was Belle. He was sent to prison for two to twenty years, and died there of tuberculosis two years later, still insisting that Belle was alive somewhere.

  He wasn't the only one who believed she was alive. Sightings of Belle became as common as UFO sightings would be seventy years later. As early as April 29, 1908, a railroad conductor swore Belle had been carried onto his train on a stretcher. On April 30, a local farmer saw her drinking coffee with her best friend. Two boys saw her on April 30 too, and they recognized her face when she pulled her veil up to drink water from a pump. On July 9, a neighbor spied her walking in her orchard, heavily veiled. His daughters saw her in the woods behind the burned-out house. In 1917, a neighbor recognized her as a patient in the hospital where he worked. In 1931, it was thought that she might be a suspected murderer arrested in Los Angeles; in 1935, a brothel madame in Ohio.

  The infamous Black Widow of the heartland lives on today as a beer brewed by LaPorte's Back Road Brewery: Belle Gunness Stout. The brewery describes it as “A notorious drink that is as dark as its namesake's history! A true dark beer lover would die to try it, but it won't kill you.”

  The Ballad

  Back in the Middle Ages when most people were illiterate, ballads served as the local newspaper, or a musical CNN. Songs about the doings of kings, queens, and bandits, and the latest sensational murder were sung in the market place. Broadsides of the ballad, printed by woodcut, would be sold to the few people who could read. Everyone loves a good scandal, and the songs about murders were some of the most popular. It was centuries before these lyrics were finally written down and published in books or collections, and by then the names of their long-ago composers had long since vanished.

  The ballad tradition survived through the centuries and was brought from Europe to the new land: People living in isolated cabins in the mountains or prairies, without access to newspapers, continued to report shocking local crimes in song. Probably the most famous American murder immortalized in ballad form is “Frankie and Johnny,” the song about a woman who shot her man because “he done her wrong.” The ballad of Belle Gunness is another example.

  BELLE GUNNESS

  Belle Gunness was a lady fair,

  In Indiana State.

  She weighed about three hundred pounds,

  And that is quite some weight.

  That she was stronger than a man

  Her neighbors all did own;

  She butchered hogs right easily,

  And did it all alone.

  But hogs were just a sideline

  She indulged in now and then;

  Her favorite occupation

  Was a-butchering of men.

  There's red upon the Hoosier moon

  For Belle was strong and full of doom;

  And think of all those Norska men

  Who'll never see St.Paul again.

  Kate Bender

  The Family That Slays Together

  The Bloody Benders, America's first serial killers, were descendants of Sweeney Todd and of all the fairytale ogres that haunt children's nightmares. Looking back at their history, it's surprising that this family of German immigrants managed to get away with their crimes over a period of three years. Surely, someone must have noticed all the travelers who checked into the Benders' wayside inn but never checked out.

  Yet get away with it they did. Ma and Pa Bender appeared to be a nice old couple, and if their feeble-minded son John made folks nervous, their fears were soon lulled by the appearance of daughter Kate. Kate is reputed to have been a knockout, with a curvaceous figure and long golden hair, and she even had a reputation as a healer and psychic. She ran a small traveling spiritualist show, which she took around to the little towns around their home in Mound Valley, Kansas, and as “Professor Miss Kate Bender” gave public seances. Her advertisements promised that she could “heal disease, cure blindness, fits and deafness.”

  But that's not how the money rolled in. In 1871, the Benders had moved into a small one-room cottage located on a main road, about halfway between the small villages of Galesburg and Thayer in Neosho County, Kansas. A canvas curtain divided their single interior room into two rooms. The front room was a restaurant and inn, where weary voyagers could stop for a meal or stay for the night. The back room contained beds for the Bender family, a trap door leading to a stone-walled cellar, and a couple of sledgehammers.

  The Benders' hotel was actually a Bates Motel. One of the family–probably not mentally challenged brother John–would hang around outside and strike up conversations with passing travelers, if they were alone and if they appeared to have money. It's a long way to the next town, the Bender would say. Why not stop here to eat, even spend the night? Our rates are reasonable, and Ma Bender cooks up a good German dinner. If the guy had trouble deciding, a come-hither glance from blonde Kate probably helped.

  The unsuspecting guest would be seated with his back to the canvas curtain. In all probability, the Benders, being frugal people, didn't believe in wasting a perfectly good dinner, so the hungry guest probably never did get his food. Instead, while he innocently awaited dinner, a hand, probably John's, clutching a sledgehammer, would emerge from behind the curtain and bash in his skull. If that didnit do the job, Kate would reportedly dispatch him by slitting his throat. Then he'd be stripped of money, jewelry, and anything salable, and through the trap door and into th
e cellar he'd go, to be buried in the orchard behind the house in the dead of night.

  If passing travelers turned scarce, Kate, the “mentalist,” would add to the family income by bringing in gullible customers for private séances. Following the family scenario, she'd sit them with their backs to the canvas curtain. If her promise was to r eunite them with deceased loved ones, she kept her word. One blow from John's sledgehammer, and they joined the dead.

  Amazingly, nobody seems to have come looking for a missing son, brother, or husband, until March 1873 when Col. A. M. York showed up on the trail of his brother, who had disappeared while returning from a visit. He'd told York that he'd be stopping at the Benders' inn on his way. Had the Benders perhaps seen him?

  No, never, replied the family. Maybe he'd fallen victim to hostile Indians. But wouldn't Col. York like to spend the night?

  Their mistake was in not killing him then and there, but perhaps the Benders wanted York to feel more secure before they dispatched him, or perhaps they planned to do him in while he slept. At any rate, that night, alone in the bedroom, York saw something glittering beneath his bed. He pulled it out and held it up: it was a familiar-looking gold locket. Opening it, he saw the faces of his sister-in-law and niece inside; it was his brother's locket!

  York slipped out of the house, intending to reach the safety of the nearest town, but on his way to the road he saw lantern light glimmering in the orchard. Hiding behind bushes, he watched Pa Bender and John digging a deep hole in the ground.

  Kate Bender was reputed to be a beauty, but you'd never know it from this nineteenthcentury drawing.

  Without waiting around to see more, York fled, returning the next morning with a posse of angry villagers. But the house was empty. Perhaps realizing the jig was up when their intended victim escaped, the Benders had skipped town. The remains of at least a dozen people, including York's brother, were found beneath the ground in the orchard.

  As for the Benders, they were never seen again, although there were rumors a-plenty. Some said furious vigilantes pursued the family, found them, and lynched them. Some said they went back to Germany to carry on their gruesome trade overseas. As for their little house of horrors, by 1886, a newspaper, the Topeka Daily Capital, reported that souvenir hunters had carried off every last stick, including even the stones that lined the bloody cellar.

  Today nothing is left, except for the beautiful but deadly ghost of Kate Bender, whom locals say is doomed to walk the land forever as punishment for her crimes.

  Was Sweeney Inspiration?

  Some of the methods used by the Bender family in dispatching their victims bore a close resemblance to the methods of a certain Sweeney Todd. In the 1780s, Sweeney had a barbershop on London's Fleet Street, right next door to St. Dunstan's Church. His shop was a simple one-room affair, with a single barber chair located in the middle of the floor. But Sweeney had rigged up an ingenious device: the chair was connected to a trap door beneath it, and when Sweeney had a wealthy customer and the coast was clear, he'd pull a lever that sent customer and chair dropping through the trap door into his basement. At the same time, another barber chair would pop up to take the place of the one in the cellar, so that at no time at all was the shop without a chair.

  Meanwhile, Sweeney would run hell-bent-for-leather down to the basement. If the fall hadn't killed his victim, Sweeney would help him along into the next world by slitting his throat. Then he'd strip the corpse, taking everything valuable, and expertly carve up the body like a butcher. The human flesh would be delivered to his accomplice and lover, Mrs. Margery Lovett, who ran a meat pie shop on Bell Lane. Mrs. Lovett had a reputation for selling the best meat pies in all of London, and customers would crowd the little store when tempting odors announced a new batch was on its way from the oven.

  As for the parts that weren't worthy of pies, the bones, skin, and heads, Sweeney had discovered a tunnel and catacombs beneath the church, and there, among the burial vaults of long-dead parishioners, he distributed the grisly remains of his victims. Sweeney met his downfall when the parishioners of St. Dunstan's began to notice a foul odor coming from below. A search of the tunnels revealed the ghastly rotting remains, and bloody footprints led to Sweeney's barbershop and Mrs. Lovett's pie place. When her customers realized what she had been feeding them, they tried to lynch her then and there, but the London police managed to save her, and Sweeney, for the gallows.

  After their executions, Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett were immortalized in cheap magazines of the period, called “penny dread-fuls,” and in true crime books and plays, long before Stephen Sondheim produced his famous musical about the barber from hell and his lady accomplice. It's quite possible that old man Bender had read one of these stories, and that a light bulb of inspiration had lit up over his head: if it was a good enough living for the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, it could be good enough for the Bloody Benders.

  Ruth Snyder

  Dubious Distinctions

  Besides having the dubious distinction of being the first woman to be executed in the electric chair in New York State, Ruth Snyder also deserves the title of Most Inept Murderess. When she and her little bespectacled lover Judd Gray killed her husband for his $100,000 insurance, they failed miserably in their attempt to pin the murder on an “Italian looking” stranger, and almost immediately confessed, each blaming the other.

  Young Ruth Brown, forced by poverty at the age of thirteen to work as a telephone operator on the night shift, dreamed of becoming secretary to a rich and handsome man, marrying him, and living happily ever after. When she turned twenty her dream came true–sort of. She married her boss, Albert Snyder, the editor of Motor Boating magazine, but the happily-ever-after part didn't turn out the way she'd planned. For one thing, Albert had been engaged for ten years to a woman who had died, Jessie Guishard, and he'd never really gotten over her. One of the first things he did when they moved into their new home in Queens, New York, was to put up a picture of Jessie, explaining to his new bride that Jessie was “the finest woman I have ever met.” Then he named his new boat after her.

  Plus, Albert was boring. Ruth was young, blonde, and petty, and she had money now. She wanted to enjoy herself, dancing and partying till the wee hours. Albert, whom Ruth started calling “the old crab,” preferred to stay at home with their daughter, Lorraine.

  It had to happen: in 1925 Ruth met thirty-three-year-old Judd Gray, a quiet little guy with glasses, who worked for the Bien Jolie Corset Company. On their second date, he gave her a corset, fitting it himself behind locked doors in the privacy of his office. They started meeting for afternoon quickies at the Waldorf. Ruth would bring little Lorraine with her, and the kid would play in the lobby while her mother and Judd Gray were otherwise occupied. He called her Mommie. The tabloids would call her The Iron Widow and The Bloody Blonde. Oh, and by the way, Gr ay was married.

  During 1926, Ruth was already toying with murder, and Albert had some close calls. Judd Gray testified that Ruth had tried poisoning her husband with dichloride of mercury “when he had hiccoughs,” and had twice fed him knockout drops and turned on the gas. She even tried out sleeping powders on Gray himself, to see if they worked. But Albert stayed alive. Ruth told Gray, “I don't have any luck,” and started hinting broadly that they needed to do something more. Perhaps, she suggested, Albert “might be drowned that summer.”

  Instead, on March 20, 1927, they chloroformed him, tied him up, smashed in his head with a sash weight, and strangled him with wire. Ruth made sure that Judd Gray tied her up, too, so she could blame it on a burglary, and when her daughter fetched the neighbors, she wouldn't let them untie her. She needed the law to see her bound.

  A newspaper artist's rendition of the Snyder murder shows Albert Snyder calmly dead in his bed. In reality, with his head caved in with a sash weight, he didn't look that good.

  Their carefully woven plans unraveled almost immediately. Ruth told the police that her jewels were missing, but she'd been too greedy to a
ctually part with them, so the cops found them hidden in her mattress. They also found the bloody sash weight, a tie clip with Judd's initials, and his name in her little black book.

  And they found Judd hiding out in upstate New York. He had left a trail a mile wide, first asking directions of a cop at the bus stop, then taking a taxi into Manhattan. The taxi driver remembered him because cheapskate Judd had tipped him a whole nickel.

  Love flies out the window when the cops beat down the door, and immediately each accused the other of being the one responsible. He forced me to go along with it, insisted Ruth. I was “her love slave,” completely under her influence, swore Judd.

  Ruth, as drawn by Nell Brinkley (left) and Fay King (right)

  The trial was a media circus, and the newspapers had a field day. They printed photos of socialites shoving their way into the courtroom. Popular writer Damon Runyon covered the trial, and described Ruth: “A chilly-looking blonde with frosty eyes and one of those marble you-bet-you-will chins.” The Hearst papers had two women cartoonist/columnists, Fay King and Nell Brinkley, who took turns covering the trial, then reporting the “women's angle” in the dailies, complete with illustrations. Fay King wondered “if [Ruth Snyder's] life would have been different if bobbed hair and flapper styles had not been so becoming to her?” Sob sister Nell Brinkley reported that Ruth's “mother had come to her side–a dear old lady, as quiet as a mouse. She has rallied to her daughter's aid.” Brinkley, who was famous for the pretty girls she drew, glamorized Ruth in the portraits she did of her, but Fay King, not as kind, drew Ruth with the “marble you-bet-you-will chin” that Damon Runyon had described. After drawing Ruth until their hands got tired, King and Brinkley switched to Judd Gray's wife and the mothers of both defendants. Poor Gray was largely ignored.