THE LAPORTE HORRORS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LXII, Issue 9634, 24 March 1910, Page 3

THE LAPORTE HORRORS.

The mysterious death of Mrs Gnnness, the "farm sireu" of Laporte, Indiana, lias beeu cleared up (says the New York correspondent of the Daily Mail) by a coni'essiou made on a prison deathbed the other day by Roy Lamphere, who was convicted of the murder of Mrs Gunuess aud her three children. In M*iy, H)OS, America was thrilled by the revelation of a series of horribie crimes committed on a lonely farm near Laporte, Indiana, by a handsome womau of Swedish extraction, Mrs Gunuess, who used to lure her victims by means of matrimonial advertisements to ncr house, aud there rob and despatch them. The murders first came to light through the burniug, under mysterious circumstauces, of the Guuuess farmhouse,the charred remains of Mrs Gunuess aud her three children being found in the ruins. Subsequently the police dug up the bodies of seventeen persons buried about the farm, two of the corpses proving to be those of the first aud second husbands of the murderess. Roy Lamphere, before lie died in prison the other day, confessed to the prison chaplain that he had several times helped the "siren widow" to bury her victims.

"Three times." tho dying prisoner declared, "1 purchased chloroform for Belle Gunness. Once I dug a hole in the farmyard, and helped her to bury some one, who, she said, had died suddenly in the house. She told me that the easiest way was to cover the body and say nothing about it. I did not suspect Mrs Guuness of murder, however, until one night I bored holes iv the wall of the house, aud saw her administer chloroform to a man and then hit him on the back of tiie head with a hatchet. After that Mrs Gunness gave me money on several occasious."

Lamphere added that he never intended to murder Mrs Gunuess. With a negro woman one daifc night he crept to the farmhouse and chloroformed Mrs Gunness and robbed her. In his hurry, be declared, he must have upset the lamp, for afterwards he saw the house in flame?. The negro woman whom Lamphere named in his coufessiou has been arrested.