Even the young farm hand who was sentenced for the fire, while insisting that he was innocent, said her had fallen in love with Belle. Her letters to lonely Norwegian men from all over the country drew them to cash out their stocks, sell farms, leave their families, and want to marry her even after seeing her. Even in her fifties and nearly 300 pounds, with what is described as a 'frog face', she possessed a strong seductive quality, noted by surviving paramours, that allowed her to lure men to their deaths. It's strange that her name isn't as known as her fellow male psychopaths. When it looked like she was about to be found out, her house burned to the ground, along with her children and a conveniently headless female body, leading to decades of speculation as to whether or not she had actually died in the fire (blamed on a disgruntled ex-employee) or set it herself and escaped. Show More record holder as the most prolific female serial killer in America.

The only definitive book on this notorious case and the first to reveal previously unknown information about its subject, Harold Schechter's gripping, suspenseful narrative has all the elements of a classic mystery-and all the gruesome twists of a nightmare. Hell's Princess is a riveting account of one of the most sensational killing sprees in the annals of American crime: the shocking series of murders committed by the woman who came to be known as Lady Bluebeard. When their bodies were dug up, they hadn't merely been poisoned, like victims of other female killers. Between 19, she lured a succession of unsuspecting victims to her Indiana 'murder farm.' Some were hired hands. She was the rarest of female psychopaths, a woman who engaged in wholesale slaughter, partly out of greed but mostly for the sheer joy of it. 'A deeply researched and morbidly fascinating chronicle of one of America's most notorious female killers.' - The New York Times Book ReviewAn Amazon Charts bestseller.In the pantheon of serial killers, Belle Gunness stands alone.

Hell's Princess by Harold Schechter