Gunness Murder Trial
Waupaca Republican
GUNNESS MURDER CASE
Trial of Alleged Slayer of the Family Opens at Laporte
The opening at Laporte, Ind., of the trial of Ray Lemphere for the murder of Mrs. Belle Gunness and her three children by burning them to death in the Gunness “house of a hundred crimes” last April brought crods of farmers and their families to attend the sessions of the famous case.
While interest in the country at large is centered in such further developments as the trial my bring out concerning the amazing career of the woman who is alleged to have slain eleven human beings, inhabitants of the territory immediately adjacent to that abode of horrors, “the Brookside Farm”, are intent on the establishment of guilt or innocence for Ray Lamphere, the obscure farm hand around whose personality has been built an extraordinary structure of bitterness that involves the whole of Laporte County. As a result of the local feeling and of the wide-spread publicity given the case, 500 people had gathered near the courthouse before the doors were open for the first session.
After the first week of excitement attending the discoveries of the fifteen bodies on Mrs. Gunness’ farm, where it is believed twenty-five were murdered, attention turned to the mistress of the place and the various theories concerning her death or escape became the sole topic of discussion.
Nine persons out of ten decided that she is alive, and to this day the majority of residents think she escaped after setting fire to the home and killing her children. So it remained for the State’s Attorney to pick only jurors who believe her dead or it would be impossible to convict anyone for her murder.
The most natural conclusion is that Mrs. Gunness is dead. The body found in the ruins of the farmhouse apparently was the same length as that of Mrs. Gunness, and later a gold plate, made for Mrs. Gunness by a Laporte dentist, and found in the debris, was positively identified. Contrary to these facts, which will form the basis of the prosecution’s contention that Mrs. Guiness is dead, the defense will introduce the statement of one of the coroner’s board of physicians, which stated positively that the body found was not that of Mrs. Gunness and the remarkable coincidences that the main identifying features of the woman’s body were missing when the corpse was taken from the ruins.
The body supposed to be that of Mrs. Gunness was without head or right arm when found. The woman’s right arm alone would have formed a positive identification mark, as it was deformed.
The State opened the case with apparent confidence that the network of evidence would prove so strong as to leave no doubt in the minds of the twelve men as to the complicity of Lamphere in the “mysteries of the house of horror”, and to show that it was the woman’s former hired man who, the morning of April 28, set fire to the house in which Mrs. Gunness and the children met death.