Criminal Masterminds

by Anne Williams

  You, Elizabeth, are like a wild animal . . . You do not deserve to breathe the air on earth, nor to see the light of the Lord. You shall disappear from this world and shall never reappear in it again. The shadows will envelop you and you will find time to repent your bestial life. I condemn you, Lady of Csejthe, to lifelong imprisonment in your own castle.

  In 1614, four years after her room was sealed up, one of her guards discovered that Elizabeth hadn’t touched her food. When he peered through the small hatch, he noticed a haggard looking Elizabeth Bathory lying face down on the floor. The famous ‘Countess of Blood’ was dead at the age of fifty-four. During her years of confinement, Elizabeth Bathory never uttered one single word of remorse.

  Lucretia Borgia

  Lucretia Borgia was probably Italy’s most notorious female Renaissance villain with a passion for incest, murder and corruption. She was born in April 18, 1480, the illegitimate child of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia and his mistress Vanozza Catanei. The Borgias were a family of Spanish descent, which relocated to Italy at the end of the Renaissance period. Cardinal Borgia, who later became Pope Alexander IV through bribery, behaved in a very unsaintly manner, having a string of mistresses, fathering many illigetimate children and holding wild orgies in his papal residence. Lucretia and her brother, Cesare, often took part in their father’s debauched antics, and it was no secret that Lucretia had carnal relations with both men on more than one occasion.

  Vanozza Catanei came from a poor background and had been the cardinal’s mistress since 1473, an affair which spanned over ten years. She was a beautiful woman and loved the lavish lifestyle the cardinal provided for her and their four children – Cesare, Juan, Lucretia and Jofre.

  Lucretia was a beautiful baby with blue eyes and blonde hair, who completely captured her father’s heart. For the first three years of her life she lived with her mother, with regular visits from her adoring father. Vanozza was a widow at the time, but the cardinal arranged a marriage for his mistress to keep up appearances. Once she was remarried, the cardinal took all four children away and placed them under the care of his cousin, Adriana de Mila.

  Lucretia’s lifestyle changed dramatically during the next few years. Raised in the Spanish way by the Borgia family she learned a new kind of family loyalty. The young Lucretia came into frequent contact with important and influential people within the Roman society and she soon learned the art of socialising.

  When Lucretia was nine she met a young lady who would have a great influence on her. Adriana’s son, Orsino Orsini, married a fifteen-year-old girl by the name of Giulia Farnese. She was stunningly beautiful with a nature to match, and the two girls became very close friends. Lucretia looked upon Giulia as an elder sister, and the pair would spend hours dressing up and admiring themselves in the mirror. Her charmed life was to change when her father became Pope Alexander VI in 1492. Suddenly the family were in the limelight and things started to change. Adriana, Lucretia and Giulia (who by this time had been abandoned by her husband), were sent to live in a newly-built palace, Maria del Portico. The palace had a secret passage that led directly into St Peters, which meant Lucretia’s father could visit his daughter whenever he pleased. However, it also gave him access to his latest mistress – Guilia. Soon rumours were spreading throughout Rome about the Pope and his concubine, and suddenly the Borgia family obtained an unsavoury reputation.

  arranged marriage

  Despite everything that was going on around them, the three women remained close friends. Lucretia’s father started to investigate possible beneficial marriage alliances and before Lucretia’s thirteenth birthday, he had arranged and cancelled two betrothals to Spanish noblemen. Finally, when Lucretia was thirteen, he found what he considered to be the perfect match, Giovannia Sforza, Count of Pesare. The couple were married on June 12, 1493, with an arranged dowry of 31,000 ducats. Unfortunately, Lucretia’s father and brother decided they had sold her in haste and felt she could be the perfect bait to get them a foothold in the house of Aragon. Sforza was declared as being impotent and the marriage was annulled due to non consummation. Sforza felt humiliated and outraged at the blatant lies and swore revenge against the Borgia family. Despite the fact that Lucretia was genuinely in love with her husband, she dare not go against the wishes of her father and brother, but this was to be a major turning point in the reputation of Lucretia Borgia.

  The fact that Sforza had sired several illegitimate children and his first wife had died in childbirth, disputed the paper that he was forced to sign stating that he was impotent. After considerable pressure, Sforza was forced to accept the annulment, but he was so filled with bitterness and damaged pride that he hit back at the Borgia family with an accusation that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. Sforza spread the news that his marriage to Lucretia had been annulled because Pope Alexander VI wanted her for himself!

  scandal

  When Lucretia found out that her father had planned the divorce, she fled to the convent of San Sisto in Rome. Lucretia felt that divorce was a humiliating affair and she left the palace without informing any other members of her family. Her father was furious and attempted to have Lucretia removed from the convent, however, the strong will of the Mother Superior forbade it. She told the pope that his daughter needed the peace and tranquillity that the convent could provide and for once in their life father and daughter were at a stalemate.

  In February 1498, there were rumours circulating that Lucretia was pregnant. It was believed that the father was a handsome young Spaniard by the name of Pedro Calderon, who had been visiting the convent as a messenger for Lucretia’s father. Cesare Borgia was furious when he heard the news and had the young man thrown into prison. Several days later his body was found floating, face down, in the river.

  The baby from this liaison was born in secret. He was named Giovanni and was always referred to as Lucretia’s ‘little brother’. Lucretia’s father claimed the child was a product of an affair between Cesare and his mistress, but all this subterfuge did was to lead people to believe it was a child of incest. Giovanni never inherited the Borgia title and spent his life as a minor functionary in the courts of Rome. He died half a century later in relative obscurity.

  While still living in the convent, Lucretia received the devastating news that her brother, Juan, had been viciously murdered and his corpse thrown into the Tiber. The whole affair was covered up because Lucretia’s father believed it was the work of his son, Cesare, over jealousy of his sister.

  marriage number two

  In 1498, Lucretia’s father succeeded in forging an alliance with the House of Aragon and by the end of the year she was married to the seventeen-year-old nephew of the King of Naples, Alfonso, Duke of Bisceglie. The marriage was arranged in an effort to move Cesare one rung closer to his goal of marrying the King of Naples daughter, Carlotta.

  Lucretia’s second marriage turned out to be a genuine love match, but the Borgia family soon put pay to her happiness. Cesare had become jealous of his sister’s obvious affection for her husband and, on top of that political changes had meant that her marriage served no useful purpose to the Borgia family. Alfonso was attacked on the steps of St Peters on the night of July 15, 1500. He was on the brink of death, when Lucretia, with a band of trusted guards, rescued him and took him to the Borgia tower in the Vatican. She nursed him and stayed by his side for the next month, but her efforts proved to be in vain. Although Alfonso was healing well from his wounds, Lucretia was eventually tricked by Cesare into leaving his bedside, giving him a chance to have Alfonso strangled.

  Despite the fact that Lucretia was heartbroken, she once again remained loyal to her family. She left Rome, accompanied by the son she had with Alfonso. Meanwhile, Lucretia’s father and brother left her to mourn while they arranged a more profitable marriage.

  marriage number three

  The next major event in Lucretia’s life was an arranged marriage with Alfonso d’Este. The Este family were one of the most noble
and respected families in Italy and ruled over Ferrara. They were horrified at the prospect of this union as Lucretia had a dreadful reputation, and they flatly turned down the proposal. After the constant pressure from the pope and a offer of a dowry of over 200,000 ducats, which they found hard to refuse, Alfonso finally relented to the marriage.

  Although the marriage seemed doomed from the start, it survived longer than people expected. Lucretia bore Alfonso four children, but she carried on numerous affairs behind her husband’s back. One of these affairs ended in a messy scandal, when a young poet by the name of Ercole Strozzi was found gruesomely murdered. Whether Lucretia arranged for his murder, or whether it was just another fit of jealous rage by her brother, no one is really certain.

  In 1505, Lucretia became the Duchess of Ferrara after the death of her father-in-law, Duke Ercole. She quickly became the centre of court life and entertained many of the greatest poets of the time. Lucretia developed a close relationship with a humanist poet by the name of Pietro Bembo, flattered by the romantic poems be wrote about her.

  her last few years

  In August 1503, Cesare was preparing for an expedition when, in the middle of the preparations, both he and his father were taken ill with fever. It has been suggested that Cesare inadvertently poisoned his father and himself with wine laced with white arsenic that he probably intended to use on someone else. Rodrigo died as a result, at the age of seventy-seven, but Cesare, despite being desperately ill, recovered and returned to his life of ruthlessness and political intrigue.

  Lucretia died in childbirth on June 24, 1519, possibly worn out having given birth to eleven children. She was only thirty-eight years old. Her husband, despite his early indifference, had grown to love her over the years. He was so upset by her death that he fainted at her funeral and had to be carried out.

  Many feel that Lucretia Borgia’s reputation as a licentious, bloodthirsty and power-hungry woman has been grossly exaggerated by historians over the years, and that she was not nearly as black as she has been painted. Although she certainly had a love of carnal excess, whether she was ever involved in murder is questionable. It is possible that Lucretia Borgia was just a victim of her father’s and brother’s ruthless reputations.

  Belle Gunness

  In the early hours of the morning on April 28, 1908, Joe Maxon, a hired hand in the employ of Mrs Belle Gunness, woke to find his second-floor room full of smoke. He covered his mouth and opened the bedroom door, only to find the landing was engulfed in flames. He screamed out Belle’s name and those of her three children – Myrtle aged eleven, Lucy aged nine and Phillip aged five – but got no response. He quickly shut his door again and then, only wearing his underwear, he leapt out of the window. He survived the fall and managed to run into town to get help. However, by the time the old-fashioned hook and ladder arrived at the farmhouse on the outskirts of La Porte, Indiana, it had already been reduced to a pile of smouldering ruins.

  When investigators managed to get close enough to carry out a search, they found all the floors had collapsed and that there were four bodies in the cellar. One of the bodies was that of an adult woman, but it could not immediately be identified as Belle’s, because the head was missing and, in fact, was never found. The other three corpses were all children, who were lying next the woman’s body. Covering the bodies, was Belle’s pride and joy, her grand piano.

  The county sheriff, Albert Smutzer, who had been given the job of investigating the fire, realised that this was no ordinary case. It would not have been possible for the piano to be on top of the bodies if they had been asleep on the second floor at the time the fire broke out. It soon became evident that the four victims had been killed and their bodies placed in the cellar before the fire had even started, and that the fire had most probably been set to cover up the crime.

  During his investigations, Smutzer discovered that Belle had gone into town the day before to see her lawyer. She had asked him to make out a will for her, leaving everything to her children. She also told her lawyer that she had been receiving threats from her ex-handyman, Ray Lamphere, who apparently had fallen in love with Belle. He became extremely jealous if a man called at the house to court Belle and would make a scene and threaten her. Belle became frightened and fired him on February 3, 1908. Belle told her lawyer that, ‘I’m afraid he’s going to kill me and burn the house.’

  Smutzer wasted no time in arresting Lamphere, who asked ‘Did widow Gunness and the kids get out all right?’ even before the sheriff had mentioned that there had been a fire. Lamphere vehemently denied having anything to do with the fire and claimed that he wasn’t even in the vicinity at the time. However, the sheriff had a witness. A young man by the name of John Solyem, who said he had been near the Gunness farm on that morning and he had seen Lamphere running down the road just before the building burst into flames. Solyem went on to say that Lamphere had found him hiding in the bushes and that he had threatened to kill him if he didn’t leave. Lamphere was arrested and charged with four counts of arson and murder.

  Smutzer organised a thorough search of the ruins to see if they could come up with some conclusive evidence. The missing head was giving him some concern and he decided to enlist the help of some of Belle’s neighbours to see if they could identify the charred remains of the body. Two farmers and some close friends and neighbours all studied the corpse, and they were unanimous that it was definitely not the body of Belle Gunness. Detailed measurements of the corpse were compared with those on file in several dressmakers in La Porte where Belle had her clothes made, which further proved it could not possibly have been the widow who had died in the fire. When a biopsy was carried out on the internal organs of the corpse, it was found that the woman had been dead before the fire started and that the cause of death was strychnine poisoning.

  a twist in the tale

  On May 2, a man called Asle Helgelein showed up in La Porte, looking for his brother Andrew. Asle believed that his brother had met with foul play after he answered an advertisement placed in a Norwegian newspaper by Belle Gunness. Andrew had communicated with Belle for several months, after which time Belle invited him to come and stay with her in La Porte. Andrew had apparently sold his property, takeng out all his savings and arrived in La Porte with assets of approximately $3,000.

  When Asle heard nothing from his brother for several months, he became concerned and contacted Belle. She told Asle that his brother had left La Porte as the relationship had not worked out and that, as far as she knew, he had gone to Norway. Asle did not believe her story, as he knew his brother would have let him know his whereabouts, and so he decided to come to La Porte himself.

  He went to see Sheriff Smutzer on May 4, and explained the situation to him and that he suspected his brother had been killed by Belle Gunness. He asked permission from the sheriff to dig through the remains of the Gunness farm. At first the sheriff dismissed Asle’s accusations and denied his request. However, Joe Maxon came forward with a piece of information that the sheriff simply couldn’t ignore. He told the sheriff that Belle had asked him to bring wheelbarrows full of dirt to an area where she kept her pigs. Maxon said that he noticed several large indentations in the ground that had recently been covered by dirt. Belle told him that it was where she buried her household waste and asked him to level the ground with the extra dirt.

  On May 5, Sheriff Smutzer took a dozen men back to the farm and started to dig in the area pointed out by Maxon. About 120 cm (4 ft) below ground level, the sheriff’s men discovered the first body. Unfortunately for Asle, it turned out to be that of his brother Andrew. The more they dug, the more bodies and body parts they uncovered, until they eventually made the gruesome discovery of over forty men and children buried in shallow graves all around Belle’s property.

  The sheriff still had the problem of identifying the body of the woman found in the fire. He decided to enlist the help of Ira Norton, Belle’s dentist. He said that if they could find the teeth of the headless corpse,
he would have no difficulty in ascertaining whether they belonged to Belle. They hired a former miner, Louis Schultz, to build a sluice and to start sifting through all the debris. This proved to be successful, and on May 19, Schultz uncovered a piece of bridgework that contained two human teeth, some porcelain teeth and a portion of gold crown. Norton soon identified it as being a bridge that he had made for Belle Gunness, and the female body discovered in the ashes was deemed to be that of the famous widow.

  the trial

  Ray Lamphere was brought to trial in November 1908. He pleaded guilty to arson but denied murder. Lamphere’s defence was hinged on the fact that the body did not belong to Belle Gunness, and his lawyer cleverly introduced evidence that contradicted that of the dentist, Norton. He bought a local jeweller to court to testify that the gold crown on the bridge would have melted had it been in the fire, as the fierce heat had melted the gold on several watches and items of jewellery found in the cinders. Two doctors replicated the conditions of the fire by attaching a similar piece of bridgework to a human jawbone and placing it in a blacksmith’s forge. The real teeth disintegrated, the porcelain teeth came out pitted and blackened, while the gold crown did in fact melt. Joe Moxon and another man testified that they had both seen Schultz take the bridgework out of his pocket and plant it shortly before he claimed to have discovered it.