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Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Ind. Law - Zionsville attorney/forensic anthropologist studies LaPorte's 1908 "Lady Bluebeard"
A long story in today's Chicago Tribune by Kristen Kridel is headlined "A century-old mystery: Did serial killer fake her death? Through DNA analysis, Indiana forensic anthropologists hope to determine if 'Lady Bluebeard' really died in fire on her farm." Some quotes:
For a hundred years, people have doubted whether a zinc-lined casket in a Forest Park cemetery really entombed the body of one of America's worst female serial killers.It definitely doesn't today.
The headless skeleton that long occupied the deteriorating coffin now rests in an Indianapolis laboratory, where researchers hope to finally solve a lingering mystery.
Did Belle Gunness, a La Porte, Ind., murderess known for killing Norwegian bachelors, stage her own death in 1908 by soaking her farmhouse with kerosene and burning it to the ground?
Suspicion that Gunness escaped the small town started to fester not long after the townspeople discovered at least 11 dismembered bodies buried on her farm.
Since then, the legend has grown that the woman buried in Gunness' grave was much too small to be her.
A group of University of Indianapolis students worked first with shovels, then with chopsticks and paintbrushes, to exhume the body from Forest Home Cemetery.
Experts want to compare the DNA in the bones with saliva on the envelopes of love letters the killer sent to a victim. The century-old envelope flaps remain sealed because the recipient used a letter opener.
Andrea Simmons, a Zionsville, Ind., attorney who went back to school to study forensic anthropology, saw her master's thesis as an opportunity to find the truth about the "Lady Bluebeard" who historians believe murdered at least 25 to 30 people.
"I can do a lot more than just tell the story yet again," Simmons said. "No one had taken a scientific look."
Simmons, 47, is hoping to get the results by April 28, the 100th anniversary of the house fire that led to the discovery of several bodies, identified then as Gunness and her young children.
With her professor, a board-certified forensic anthropologist, Simmons and her team exhumed Gunness' supposed skeleton in November. She was buried next to her first husband, whom she had lived with in Chicago.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on February 12, 2008 04:37 PM
Posted to Indiana Law