Voting Station

Belle Gunness

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Murderer

The Resume

    (November 11, 1859- )
    Born in Selbu, Norway
    Nicknamed 'the Lady Bluebeard'
    Possibly died in 1908. Or 1931. Or neither.
    Birth name was Brynhild Paulsdatter Storseth
    Owned a farm in LaPorte, Indiana
    Killed at least 40 people, mostly suitors answering lonely hearts ads
    Her farm burnt down (April 28, 1908), after which she disappeared

Why she might be annoying:

    Her two husbands and several of her children died under suspicious circumstances (and while heavily insured).
    After being widowed for the second time, she corresponded with suitors who would visit her farm, bringing money to help pay her mortgage, then disappear.
    Shortly after the brother of one of her victims began asking questions concerning his whereabouts, her farm burned down.
    In the charred remains were the bodies of her three children and the headless body of a woman.
    Since the corpse weighed a good fifty pounds less than Gunness (and since an autopsy found that the woman had died from strychnine poisoning), it was believed that Gunness had tried to fake her death.
    Police digging at the Gunness farm uncovered remains of forty people.
    Esther Carlson, who was arrested in California in 1931 for poisoning a man for insurance but died before the trial, was tentatively identified as Gunness from photos by two people who had known her.

Why she might not be annoying:

    When she lived in Norway, she was impregnated by the son of a rich family. He avoided a shotgun wedding by assaulting her, kicking her the stomach, causing her to have a miscarriage.
    To make her faked death more convincing, she had removed her dental bridge and planted it with the bodies.
    During the 20 years after her disappearance, the LaPorte sheriff's department received an average of two reports a month of Belle Gunness sightings.
    The 1950s novel, play and cult film 'The Bad Seed' were inspired by her crimes.

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 20 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 18 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 8 Votes: 25.00% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 42 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 13 Votes: 53.85% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 66 Votes: 59.09% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 68 Votes: 57.35% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 32 Votes: 56.25% Annoying
    In 2012, Out of 20 Votes: 65.00% Annoying
    In 2011, Out of 49 Votes: 83.67% Annoying
    In 2010, Out of 176 Votes: 67.05% Annoying