8. The Great Jupiter: The Prosecution Continues

On Monday, November 16, Ray Lamphere walked into court to face the second week of his trial for murdering his mistress by arson. A day’s respite had done him good. He entered smiling and confident. By this time he was used to the buzz of whispered comment and the pitying feminine glances that followed him to his place. He nodded affably to friends in the crowd.

The courtroom was jammed to the doors. Standees crowded the aisles and were pressed in thick along the walls. Such a thing had never been known before; but as long as there was an inch of room, said the authorities, no one would be barred from the trial. Jacob Tag, bailiff, was detailed to keep order in the crowd. Intent only on listening, they gave him no trouble.

Smith and Sutherland, for the state, and Worden and Weir, for the defense, entered separately and took their places. Reporters from all over poised their pencils. Mrs. Frances Flynn returned to the stand.

Unfolding his lanky length from the prosecution table, Ralph N. Smith put a few brief questions, reminding the jury that Mrs. Flynn recognized the rings, knew Mrs. Gunness well, and thought the body was hers.

When he sat down, Worden arose with a complete change of battle plan in mind. He had used the medical witnesses to suggest doubts about the body’s identity. He would use Mrs. Gunness’ neighbor to turn sympathy against Mrs. Gunness. Through her he chose to bring into the courtroom a pitiful little ghost, a shy small wraith with spun-gold hair and trusting blue eyes—Jennie Olson, who after two years in the ground came back in mute accusation against the woman who mothered her, and fought to keep her, and destroyed her.

Many in the courtroom remembered Jennie vividly. More than one of the boys she had known could still hear the tinkle of her ladylike little tunes on the old Gunness piano. Her schoolteachers recalled how gently she had mothered the smaller children. Neighbors remembered seeing her driving the cows, barefoot in the lush summer meadows, or sitting in the shade, deep in a book. Wirt Worden called her before them now as he asked quietly:

Q. Now, Mrs. Flynn, you say you visited the farm frequently until Jennie left. Did you know that Jennie was going away?

A. Yes, sir. Mrs. Gunness told me so. I visited Mrs. Gunness the night before Jennie was to go. She showed me the elaborate wardrobe she had prepared for Jennie. There was a beautiful new cloak that came from Chicago. Mrs. Gunness said she paid fifty dollars for it. There were silk waists and skirts. Mrs. Gunness was sewing on one then in order to have it ready for next day. I never saw Jennie again.

A wave of renewed pity for the doomed girl swept the courtroom. Worden was satisfied to leave it at that.

Jared Drollinger, a grizzled juror from a farm out Wills way, was on pins and needles. Overnight a particular point had been revolving in his head, and this friend of Mrs. Gunness’ was the very person to settle it for him. He was on his feet with his long beard bristling almost before Worden had finished with Mrs. Flynn.

“Mr. Drollinger?”

“Your Honor, I would like to ask Mrs. Flynn how she knows about Mrs. Gunness’ weight.”

“She was weighed two years ago,” replied Mrs. Flynn.

“What exactly did she weigh?”

“Two hundred and eighty pounds.”

Mr. Drollinger gave the prosecution table a sharp look as he sat down. “How’s that for shrinkage?” it seemed to say. Not all the jury had joined Mr. Smith’s team.

The next witness was a tantalizer. She was Mrs. Ray Turner, a bright young Norwegian girl. Mr. Smith handed her a packet of letters.

Q. Mrs. Turner, will you identify these letters?

A. They are letters which I translated from Norwegian into English.

Q. By whom are they signed?

A. Bella Gunness.

Q. To whom are they addressed?

A. Asle Helgelien.

A ripple of interest ran through the courtroom. What had the 280-pound charmer written to her victim’s brother? Ray Lamphere eyed the little bundle of envelopes uneasily. What had the woman said? Had she mentioned him? Eager curiosity focused on the papers in Mrs. Turner’s hand as everybody got ready to hear them read out.

The prosecution chose to keep everyone on tenterhooks. Mrs. Turner stood down. She was followed on the stand by a smattering of purely formal evidence. The letters lay on the table whetting curiosity. It was nearly noon before the bailiff called:

“Asle Helgelien!”

Necks craned for a look at the determined brother who had come all the way from South Dakota to La Porte to find what the Sheriff wouldn’t look for. Asle was still stringy and shabby, he still had his singing Norwegian accent, but there was a new dignity in his bearing.

It was part of Prosecutor Smith’s case that Ray was an accomplice in the murder of Andrew Helgelien, and that it was over Andrew’s money that he and his mistress fell out. He began to elicit from Asle the story of Andrew. Amid intense sympathy focused upon the witness, Smith commenced:

Q. Did you have a brother, Mr. Helgelien?

A. Ja, Andrew K. Helgelien.

Q. Where did your brother live?

A. Rock County, Minnesota, and in 1880 he went to South Dakota. In 1883 he went to Wisconsin to work in a pinery until 1893.

Everybody in court knew this was a polite fiction. Andrew had not been in Wisconsin; he had been in jail. He did ten years in the federal penitentiary at Stillwater, Minnesota, after having had the bad judgment to rob a post office. The federal jail record had been used to check the identity of the body Asle found in the hog lot. No wonder Asle had been quick to worry when his wayward younger brother disappeared again. Mr. Smith led him forward:

Q. And then, Mr. Helgelien?

A. Then he returned to South Dakota, where he lived on the farm next to mine until January first of this year. Then he left home. He arranged for my hired man to take care of his stock, and said that he would be home in a week surely. He and I were on good, friendly terms. When I heard nothing from him in nine or ten days, I began to worry about him. The hired man found letters in his house, written by Mrs. Gunness, urging him to come to La Porte and marry her. The first of these letters was dated 1906, and she wrote every week right up until my brother left. When I had read these letters, I became very uneasy.

Q. Did you then write a letter to Mrs. Gunness?

A. I asked the hired man to write to her.

Q. Did she reply?

A. She replied immediately.

Q. Is this the letter she sent you, Mr. Helgelien?

Every eye fixed on the envelope, and every ear sharpened to hear the letter read out. But the prosecutor was still holding back his climax. Asle Helgelien identified the letter. The prosecutor put it back on the table unopened as he asked:

Q. Did you reply to this letter from Mrs. Gunness?

A. Yes, I was still suspicious, and I wanted to draw her out. She replied to my letter, and later she wrote a third time.

Q. Are these the letters you received from Mrs. Gunness, Mr. Helgelien?

A. Yes.

The prosecutor laid down the letters. The crowd sighed with disappointment as the court rose for the luncheon recess. As Ray Lamphere left the courtroom, his burning eyes over his shoulder lingered on the little packet of envelopes. What story would the letters tell?

Dead silence fell on the packed courtroom when finally Prosecutor Smith drew the first letter from its envelope:

La Porte, March 27, 1908

Mr. Asle K. Helgelien:

I have your recent letter in which you wish to know where your brother Andrew keeps himself. Well that is just what I would like to know.

He came here about the middle of January. When he left here he said he wanted to find his brother who kept a gambling room in Aberdeen. He thought he was in Chicago or New York or possibly had gone to Norway. He wanted to spend some time at the farm with us when he returned. When he was in Chicago, he said, he would be there so short a time that I needn’t write. I have neither seen nor heard from him since then. I saw a man who said he had gone back to South Dakota. I will close now with friendly greeting.

BELLA GUNNESS

Thus wrote Mrs. Gunness to Andrew’s brother, about the time of the spring thaw, sitting at her dining table within sight of the fresh hole into which she had just put the pieces of Andrew.

Soon she wrote again, according to Mrs. Turner’s translation:

La Porte, Ind., April 11, 1908

Mr. A. K. Helgelien:

Your letter I have received some days ago, but haven’t been able to answer in regard to your brother Andrew. I have tried every which way to find some trace of him. The man who told me he is in South Dakota is named Lamphere, who worked for me for a while. He said he had heard it from some one he knew in Mansfield. I knew right away it was a lie.

This sounded like another of Belle’s plausible lies. Probably only two people in the courtroom knew that it happened to be the truth that Mrs. Gunness was using for her dishonest purposes. The two were Ray Lamphere and Wirt Worden.

Soon after Andrew disappeared, Ray had thought up a muddleheaded scheme of cloudy purpose. He cooked up a letter saying that Andrew was back home again, and then got it mailed by a friend in Mansfield. The look of superior contempt that Mrs. Gunness gave him at sight of the letter, Ray had told Wirt Worden, convinced him all the more that something had gone very wrong with Andrew. The letter itself was at the time of the trial actually in Worden’s possession. Its existence helped to convince Worden that his client had had no positive knowledge of Andrew’s fate; but it wasn’t legal evidence, and there was no use in protruding it in a court of law.

The prosecutor’s sharp voice was reading on:

But this Lamphere began to find so many wrong things to talk about until at last they took and arrested him and they had three doctors to examine him and see if he was all right. They found him not quite crazy enough to put in a hospital. But perfectly sane he is not. He is now out under bonds and is going to have a trial next week. Therefore, there is no foundation to the stories Lamphere told. Others have told me that Lamphere was jealous of Andrew and for that reason troubled me this way.

Had “crazy Lamphere” murdered his rival? At home in South Dakota, Asle Helgelien must have asked himself this question. Now, as he sat in the witness chair, with his sad, quiet eyes fixed on the defendant, Asle must have been still asking himself whether the jealous hired man had not helped with his brother’s murder. That thought was in every mind as the letter continued:

The reason he was looking for his brother, Andrew told me, was that both of them left Aberdeen the same day, and there was some trouble with a man they had found dead there. He said that he had not talked to his brother about it, but had heard it from others and when his brother left home Andrew probably thought this was the reason and that is why he wanted to know if his brother went to Norway alone. Now this is what Andrew told me, and I believe it to be the truth.

It was a lie. Andrew had told Mrs. Gunness no such thing—but Ray had. Ray thought it up to get Andrew in trouble with the police, and the police had already checked it and found out it was untrue, as evidence was soon to prove. Ray shifted uneasily in his place at the defense table as he heard his own invention come back thus used by Mrs. Gunness to deceive her correspondent. The letter went on:

Andrew did not say anything to me in regard to the farm or creatures, but I think it would be best for you to sell the farm and creatures as soon as you can and come here in May.

When Andrew comes up there again, which he will no doubt some time, be sure and do not tell him that I told you this or do net tell it to others either. He probably will not like it.

I must now do the best I can here and so we must hope that all will come out all right. I think it is only this half-crazed Lamphere who has started it all, but there is hardly anything to do about it.

Andrew was not very well when he was up here. He had caught a bad cold up there and on his way, so he had quite a cold, but I do not think it anything to talk about. He is otherwise well and strong and I hope nothing has happened to him.

Well, I have done the best I could and given you all the enlightenment I can and if you wish again to write I will gladly answer your respectable letter.

Heartiest regards;

BELLA GUNNESS

If Andrew had not been done away with by “half-crazed Lamphere,” had he fled to Norway because of a murder mix-up? Had his cold gone into pneumonia and carried him off on his journey? Mrs. Gunness had managed to raise many possibilities. She had even made a bold bid for Asle, enriched with the proceeds of Andrew’s possessions.

“This letter,” said Asle on the witness stand, “made me more anxious about my brother than before. I hurried to reply, and received a letter back dated April twenty-four, 1908.”

Mr. Smith proceeded to read out that third and last letter, written by the murderess four days before the fire that brought all her plotting to an end:

Mr. A. K. Helgelien:

Your welcome letter I have received, for which I thank you. It is a wonder to me, as well as for you, as to where Andrew keeps himself. I cannot remember the accurate date he left La Porte, but it was either January 15 or 16. My little daughter, fourteen years old, took him to the street car station.

Two or three days afterwards I had a letter from him in Chicago, saying that he had hunted for his brother, but didn’t find him, and that the next day he would look around the “Board of Trade” and see how it was, also to get some track of his brother. If he could not find him, be would go to New York and find out if he had gone to Norway. If such was the case, I think he would go to Norway too.

This is all that I can tell, and I haven’t his letter. I got the letter in the morning and read it and laid it in the china closet in the kitchen and went to milk and when I came back the letter was gone.

That Lamphere was here and he has probably taken it, but part of the letter was found in the barn door one evening when he was around. I send it to you. I recognize Andrew’s writing and I think you do top. I have had it in my pocketbook so long that it is about worn out. We found it the first of this month, and Lamphere he did not know anything about Andrew’s trouble, but he has lately found so much to trouble us with. He has begun all over again. He is in jail just now.

You spoke of sending me money with which to discover what has become of Andrew. If I thought this would be of any use, still I could not go and do the inquiring, so it would be useless for you to send any.

I assure you I will do all I can if you will take a trip down here to see what you can do in this case. I will be glad to see you. I don’t know what we could do to find him, and I don’t understand what keeps him away so long unless, as you say, he has gotten into some trouble and does not want any of us to know about it.

It was that fear, of course, that weighed on the heart of the former bank robber’s brother as heavily as the thought of murder. To dispel that fear as well as all others, he had to go to La Porte. Worden understood that Mrs. Gunness had been told to expect Asle about May 1.

In this last letter Mrs. Gunness enclosed that scrap of Andrew’s handwriting, referring to it as if she had been treasuring it for love of the writer.

I must now close for this time. Be very careful with this part of the letter I am sending you and send it back to me in your next letter, if you please. Heartiest regards from us all,

BELLA GUNNESS

Now the prosecutor picked up from the table the dog-eared little scrap of paper that Mrs. Gunness had sent to Asle Helgelien. No wonder it was about worn out. No wonder Mrs. Gunness could only send a selected scrap without date or signature, with an elaborate lie to account for its fragmentary state. Andrew Helgelien must have written it in the spring of 1907; by the spring of 1908 he was under the mud in the hog lot.

The sympathetic attention in the courtroom sharpened. The little scrap of a love letter brought the big bluff Norwegian into the courtroom to speak out in his own voice.

“My very best friend,” wrote Andrew Helgelien to the woman who killed him, “I am well and the spring is here, as the snow is going fast. My critters, most of them, slept outside yesterday and tonight without cover. The cows who have calves, I have them inside, also those who expect to calve soon. I am happy every time I write you. I think I can come to you in the month of May.”

It was this kindly, simple man whom the ruthless mistress of the hog lot had plundered and killed. The crowd listened in silent sympathy as Asle went on to tell how he had come to La Porte, and dug with his own hands, and found and recognized that dreadfully altered head. When you have loved your brother, and been with him every day for fifteen years, in spite of death and dissolution, you know him.

Asle had known of the finding of the other bodies, “and I believe,” he added as people gasped, “that there are still fifty more dead men buried on the place!”

The loudest gasp and the richest rustle came from a showy group of ladies and gentlemen seated together in a flutter of ostrich plumes and glittering pompadours. A lacy handkerchief touched the corner of a mascara-dark eye; a long white hand went theatrically to a broad white brow as the actors and actresses from Hall’s Theatre reacted appropriately to this real-life drama they had come to observe.

They were to open that night in Rip van Winkle. The round-faced young-old fellow was Thomas Jefferson, the star. Turn about was fair play. Manager Hall had already invited the jury to be his guests at the show that evening, and with the Judge’s blessing the jury had accepted.

Harry N. Darling, the Argus editor, having press passes, went along too.

The play and the trial got rather mixed up in his mind, and Rip’s eternal game of bowls making thunder in the Catskills turned up rather confusedly in Mr. Darling’s next editorial comment on the trial:

The progress of the Lamphere trial suggests a thunder storm. The elements got to work a week ago, and a steady downpour of rain, punctuated by a few peals of thunder, some loud, some almost inaudible, together with a correspondingly small number of flashes of lightning, has been in order ever since.

Prosecutor Smith is now playing the part of the great Jupiter who rolls the balls down the bowling alleys of the heavens. He started off with a rush Thursday afternoon, and in his opening statement scored a clean “strike.” Since then several “spares” have been recorded to his credit, but withal it will be necessary to land several more “strikes” to anywhere near approach a 300 score.

There’ll be another sharp peal of thunder any minute.

On Tuesday morning, November 17, lawyers and audience, Judge and jury, bailiffs and defendant came back to a death-cold courtroom. Ray Lamphere’s teeth began to chatter. Even the Judge’s broad frame draped in broadcloth began to shiver. He told the bailiff to hire an extra stoker and load the furnace better, and everybody went away to a warmer place until the stoking had produced its effect. When finally they had all come back again, Prosecutor Smith began to launch a quick new succession of thunderbolts.

Last week the prosecution had brought five medical men into court to prove that Belle Gunness had died in the fire. This week Mr. Smith was proving, by adducing motive, means, and opportunity, that Ray Lamphere killed her.

The victim herself, in her letters to Asle Helgelien, had already been called into court to testify that Lamphere was crazy and dangerous. Now Prosecutor Smith began to call Lamphere’s friends to the stand.

Ray’s friends were a motley crew—farmers, hired men, bartenders, a hackie, a brewery-wagon driver, a whore. One by one, avoiding Ray’s eyes, they told on him. Ray sat sullen, with downcast gaze. Wirt Worden, looking slightly contemptuous, let them pass without much cross-examination. Once he tried to get Ray’s cousin to put on the record the precarious health of Ray’s grieving mother; but the prosecution objected, and the Judge stopped him.

When the whore flounced to the stand in a rustle of petticoats, a pretty woman made no prettier by rats in her pompadour and paint on her face, Worden merely asked her where she had been living and what she did there, and she soon bounced down again with her red cheeks redder, while scandalized matrons sniffed. A bank clerk and a justice of the peace, called next, barely restored the odor of respectability.

Among them, these state’s witnesses painted a vivid picture of Ray’s goings-on during the last months before the fire. Between December and April, Smith would contend, Mrs. Gunness paramour turned against her. Watching the woman jealously, Ray Lamphere came to share with her some guilty knowledge that both terrified him and gave him a hold over her. When she paid him off, he bragged about it. When she fought back in the courts, he threatened to get even with her.

Did he get even with her by burning her up in her house? That was the question before the jury.

Ray’s friend William Slater knew a lot of Ray’s secrets, for Ray liked to brag to him. The prosecutor questioned him like any old gossip:

Q. Did you hear the defendant talk about Mrs. Gunness?

A. Yes, sir. He came to work for me sometime in February. We slept together, and he would talk about her.

Q. What did he say, Mr. Slater?

A. He said she had promised to marry him, that he had two witnesses in the barn who heard her promise.

Q. What do you know about Lamphere’s relations with Belle Gunness?

A. What?

Q. Did he tell you that he slept with Mrs. Gunness?

A. No.

The prosecutor stared. He knew that Ray had been sleeping with Belle, and bragging about it, and the newspapers had been playing it up. Was this witness turning hostile?

Q. He didn’t say he slept with her?

A. No. He said she slept with him.

The courtroom exploded into mirth. Judge Richter had to hammer loudly for order. The witness felt he had to explain the distinction: “He said she often came to his door in the evening, knocked softly, and stayed in his room until daybreak.”

It was time to hustle the nubile virgins out of the courtroom before they heard more, and worse. The mammas did well to remove their daughters, because soon Peter Colson was on the stand. Peter had been Belle’s farm hand, and her lover, in 1903. He was called to the stand to report some of Ray’s talk; but when cross-examined by Wirt Worden, he somehow started talking about Belle Gunness instead. A slow, sincere Norwegian, he wrinkled his forehead and tried to make himself and the world understand how Mrs. Gunness seduced him in spite of himself.

“She said for us to go West and get a farm and raise cattle and ship to Chicago. She wanted me to marry her. Then there was a sort of love affair.

“I loved Mrs. Gunness in spite of myself. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help it. She caressed and purred like a cat, and then I couldn’t resist her. She was soft and gentle in her ways. I never saw such a woman.”

Ray Lamphere’s haunted eyes burned on the witness, with who knows what memories behind them. Men and women alike listened avidly. In the front row a gum-chewing girl froze with her mouth open. A visiting clergyman looked at the eager women among the spectators, and scowled. Colson went on staring bewildered into the past:

“All the time that I was giving in to her, there was something about her that seemed to be pulling me away. She, made me love her, and she scared me at the same time. I was suspicious of what she was after.

“Then one day she called me down, and that ended me on it. One of the horses was lame, and I took a piece of old shirt to tie up the foot, and when she saw it she called me down pretty sharp. I told her I would buy a couple of shirts if she would not say anything.

“I kept doing the chores, but I stayed in town. She talked better, and I asked her for my money. She was angry. She asked me what I would do with the money if I got it. She said I should stay a while. I said I would if she would pay me my money on the spot. She fumbled and fussed around and delayed things until it was very late. Then she asked me to go upstairs to bed. She said I should have a good rest, because my nerves seemed to be all unstrung. She said I would feel better in the morning. I was afraid to stay there. I went and slept at a neighbor’s.

“Another thing that turned me against her, she treated Jennie Olson very badly, and I didn’t like that. One time Jennie was trying to carry a heavy pail of water. I wanted to carry it for her, but she begged me not to. She said if she didn’t carry it herself Mrs. Gunness would tear her to pieces.”

Had Ray Lamphere felt the same kind of misgivings and the same half-hypnotic fascination? The crowd stared from Ray to Peter and back again as the testimony proceeded.

The story was carried forward to the coming of Andrew Helgelien, when the prosecution put the bank cashier, Frank J. Pitner, on the stand. He told how Mrs. Gunness appeared at the bank on January 6 with a big man wearing a gray fur coat that hung below his knees. She introduced her companion as Mr. Helgelien.

Mr. Helgelien wanted to draw his money, all of it, out of a South Dakota bank. He was willing to wait till the money came, but Mrs. Gunness was in a hurry. She argued and urged, but no cash was forthcoming, and at last they went away moneyless.

On January 11, the South Dakota bank paid up. It was January 14, however, before the pair came in to collect.

“Well, Mr. Helgelien,” said the cashier banteringly, “you don’t seem in as great a hurry for your money now as you were a week ago.”

“I been sick,” said Helgelien.

“Ja,” said Mrs. Gunness, “I been taking care of him.”

Everybody who heard about this interchange wondered whether Belle had been taking care of him by poisoning his meals. In point of fact, however, this was highly unlikely. Until Andrew had collected his cash, he had not served his purpose.

The bank cashier was unwilling to hand out any cash. So soon after the panic of 1907, cash was hard to get. He wanted to credit the money to its owner instead.

“Well, that will be all right,” said Helgelien. “I don’t need all that money right away.”

“Draw it in cash!” said Mrs. Gunness at his elbow, and Helgelien good-naturedly consented.

“What are you going to do with all that money?” asked Mr. Pitner.

“None of your business!” snapped Belle.

Pitner produced the cash. It was Andrew’s death warrant. He went away with Belle. That was the last Mr. Pitner saw of him. Later, however, he saw the gray fur coat. Lamphere was wearing it.

Later still there were inquiries from South Dakota. Mr. Pitner questioned Mrs. Gunness, and she said Helgelien had left by streetcar to go down East, and he might go to Norway. She showed him the scrap of Andrew’s letter.

What had really become of Andrew Helgelien? The prosecution contended that Ray Lamphere knew, because he had had a hand in it. John Rye, the brewery-wagon driver, was called to tell the story of the night of January 14.

“He was going to make some kind of a horse deal in Michigan City. I went with him. We left La Porte in the snow, driving a cutter with a fast horse, and got there about six-thirty. We put up the horse at the livery barn, and came back on the eight-o’clock car on the interurban. At the powerhouse switch Lamphere got off, saying, ‘I am going to get off and go over and see what the old woman is doing.’

“He agreed to meet me later in the evening at Charlie Smith’s saloon, but he didn’t come. I didn’t see him again till the next forenoon. He said he got a brace and bit and bored a hole up through the floor to hear what they were saying.”

Babbling to William Slater in the dark, Ray had told a lurid version of what they were saying. They were discussing a plan to give Ray poison, and wondering how much would do the business.

“He’s got a dog,” said Helgelien. “Why don’t you try it on his dog?”

It was highly unlikely that Mrs. Gunness ever breathed a word about poison to her prospective victim. Wirt Worden, however, knew that Ray had been apprehensive that she might poison him, and when his dog disappeared, Ray became convinced that she had been trying a dose on the poor creature. He told a friend that if he died suddenly, there must surely be an autopsy to look for poison. The friend’s advice was to stay away from Mrs. Gunness; but that Ray was unable to do. After a week the dog came back, which made Ray feel better, because he was much attached to the shaggy old bitch; but he couldn’t leave Mrs. Gunness alone.

What had Ray really seen and heard that night? Was it the murder of Helgelien? Did he thereupon come forward to assist in packaging the body? The state would say so; but no evidence to that effect was produced.

Whatever Lamphere saw that night, he thought it gave him a hold on the woman. He muttered darkly in saloons that there was money coming to him from Mrs. Gunness, and she had better pay him or else.

“I know something about the old woman, and she has to come my way,” Lamphere told Slater. He added vaingloriously: “The big Swede that was at the farm, I drew a gun on him and made him leave. He left his clothes. Mrs. Gunness begged me to give him time to get his clothes, but I chased him away. His clothes are still there.…”

“Pete,” muttered Ray darkly to Colson one day in the Maple City Saloon, “what do you think of that woman?”

Colson laughed in his face.

“I think,” he said, “that she is too damn sharp for you! You’ll never get ahead of her.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lamphere, cursing. “She’ll pay me the money she owes me, or I’ll make her get down on her knees to me. That man that was there in winter from the West, I drove him away, and she got down on me for that. And I know something else about her—” Lamphere broke off.

“What do you know?”

Lamphere clamped his mouth shut on his glass.

For all his talk about money, Worden never saw any in Ray’s possession. He did have John Moo’s silver watch. He went into the saloon one day and pawned it for two dollars. Later on, said the bartender, he got hold of two dollars somewhere and came back and redeemed the watch.

“How are you getting along with your sweetheart out at the farm?” asked the bartender.

“She is having me pinched all the time, and damned if I ain’t getting tired of it! If she don’t leave me alone, I’ll send her over the road to the penitentiary that quick!” snarled Lamphere with a snap of his fingers.

Belle Gunness was a dangerous woman to blackmail. Her counterstroke in taking Ray to court was bold to the point of foolhardiness, but she got away with it.

Justice S. E. Grover took the stand and gave an account of this extraordinary litigation. The Justice was a big, jolly man who seemed about to burst into a Homeric quake of laughter; but the tale he had to tell was no longer so very funny as it had seemed when Worden had laughed himself home from Stillwell.

On March 12, the record ran, Ray Lamphere was hauled up for trespass, admitted his guilt, and paid a one-dollar fine. On March 24, again accused of trespass, he appeared with his lawyer and denied the charge. Worden got the case put off, and finally got it transferred to Stillwell court. Later the Stillwell justice would add his impression of the complainant. Mrs. Gunness had a broad smile on her face the whole time she was giving evidence, like somebody putting over something. She put it over, for at Stillwell Ray was fined again.

Mrs. Gunness’ trickiest move was to question Ray’s sanity. If he was found insane, then it didn’t matter what he accused her of. In December, 1907, she complained, he betrayed insanity by saying things that she knew to be both false and unreasonable. What things he said exactly she did not state, but it was easy now to see that they must have been things about vanished husbands and vanishing suitors.

“He comes to my house,” the complaint went on, “every night at all times of night, commits misdemeanors; was fined for the same but continues it. He gets intoxicated.”

They gave her a printed list of adjectives, and she checked off that the man who had been her lover was “silent, quiet, melancholy, seclusive, dull, profane, filthy, intemperate, sleepless, criminal.”

Three doctors examined Ray, and dissented:

“We find patient quiet, clean, and neat. He is slightly nervous. His memory is good for recent and remote events. Speech is intelligent and coherent. Ray Lamphere is not insane.”

Defeated in this attempt, Mrs. Gunness had tried a new legal dodge. She went into court saying that she had cause to fear that Ray Lamphere would injure her property and herself, and asking that he be put under bonds to keep the peace. This proceeding took place on Saturday, April 25, just two days before the fire.

Belle Gunness and her daughter Myrtle told Justice Grover that Ray was back at his prowling. On Sunday night they spotted him by the pig pen, and hurried out to chase him away. They were within fifteen feet of him when he coolly cut the wire fence, pulled out the fence post, and carried it away. On Tuesday night there he was again, standing by the hog lot in the dark. Mrs. Gunness wanted him kept away from the hog lot. Everybody in court, now, could see why.

In spite of Belle and Myrtle, Wirt Worden produced an alibi, and Ray got off.

Now, however, that court action told heavily against Worden’s client.

Mrs. Gunness had said on oath that she feared Lamphere would harm her. Somebody had harmed her. It must be Lamphere, mustn’t it? Again Belle Gunness had been called into court to testify against the defendant.

Worden was too canny to cross-examine either justice about what had gone on in court. He chose to cross-question a bystander instead, Ray’s friend John Wheatbrook. The result was a rather remarkable example of shrewd cross-examination.

Q. Did you pay a fine for Lamphere, Mr. Wheatbrook?

A. Yes, sir. I paid his fine of $19.10 at a trial at Stillwell justice court.

Q. Do you remember my asking Mrs. Gunness, in the trial at Stillwell, if it was not a fact that her first husband was killed by poisoning?

“Object!” shouted Mr. Smith. “It is quite immaterial what my friend Mr. Worden asked Mrs. Gunness at Stillwell.”

“It is material,” insisted Worden. “My idea in asking is that we are attempting to show Mrs. Gunness’ frame of mind, and that these questions affected her, convincing her that the attorney knew of her former experiences and thus furnishing a motive for flight or suicide.”

“The witness may answer,” ruled Judge Richter.

The witness answered, “Yes, sir,” and Worden went on with the questioning:

Q. Do you remember that I asked whether Mrs. Gunness collected insurance on Sorenson?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. And do you remember, Mr. Wheatbrook, that I asked whether the life of Peter Gunness was insured?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Do you remember that I asked if the sausage-grinder that killed Peter Gunness was not held in the hand of Mrs. Gunness?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Do you remember that I asked whether Jennie Olson was ever coming back again?

A. Yes, sir.

By this curious inverted process, Wirt Worden was able to testify for his client without taking the stand. Mrs. Gunness had not answered any of these questions, since her attorney, Mr. Smith, had instructed her not to; but the answers did not matter. It was the series of questions, the defense would contend, that frightened her. Added to inquiries from the Lindboe family, from Jennie’s people, and from Asle Helgelien, and capped by Asle’s announced intention of coming himself on May 1, it was enough, in Worden’s view, to drive her to a sudden escape, either by flight or by suicide.

One way or another, the prosecution witnesses showed, things came to a head on Monday, April 27. On that afternoon, said Wheatbrook, he had been going into town with a load of wood. Ray Lamphere, who had been picking mushrooms, decided to ride along and sell them in town. There the two men went their separate ways, and Wheatbrook did not see Lamphere again until after the fire.

Other people saw Lamphere drifting around town that Monday afternoon. He peddled the mushrooms at the saloon and then drank up the proceeds. Later a grocer’s clerk saw him.

The grocer was waiting on Mrs. Gunness. She wanted a large quantity of groceries, some candy, and some kerosene. She had forgotten to bring the can, so the proprietor rummaged around and found one. She had him put in two gallons.

“After she had been in the store about fifteen minutes,” said the clerk, “Ray Lamphere walked in. He bought a five-cent plug of chewing tobacco. He stared constantly at Mrs. Gunness, but neither one said a word. In my opinion they were bitter enemies.”

“Object!” cried Wirt Worden. “We object to this as a conclusion of the witness.”

The grocery clerk was admonished to stick to the facts and keep his conclusions to himself. He went on:

“Lamphere went out and stood on the sidewalk and watched Mrs. Gunness as she untied her horse and drove away. She had tears in her eyes.”

Mrs. Gunness was never again seen on the streets of La Porte. Only one man saw her again before her fate was obscured in a blaze of flames—her hired man, Joe Maxson, the man who got out of the fire. Interest became intense when, late on Tuesday afternoon, the next prosecution witness was called:

“Joseph Maxson!”