Spirit of the age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1845-1913, 1908-05-09

Laporte, Ind.-Four more bodies
have been disinterred from the barn
yard adjoining the home of Mrs. Belle
Guinness, the former Chicago woman,
who with her three children, it is be-
lieved met a fiery death in the burn
ing of her house a week ago.
Nine bodies have now been recovered
from the crude burial place, mile
from Laporte, where wholesale slaugh-
ter of human life apparently has been
conducted for years. The toll OF the
dead attributed to Mrs. Guinness and
her accomplices, if such there were,
has now reached IA.
A possible solution Of the mystery
has developed in evidence tending to
show that the bodies were shipped to
Laporte, probably from Chicago.
Draymen tell of carting trunks and
boxes to the Guinness home.
1t has also been learned that two
trunks consigned to "MSs. Belle Gun
ness, Laporte, Ind.," are held in an ex-
press Office in Chicago. Assistance of
the Chicago police nj unrayelling the
puzzle was sought at once.
The best clue which has yet been
found came to light Immediately folI
lowing the discovery of the three
bodies. John A. Welker, liveryman,
and Leo Wade, his employe told of
having carted heavy trunks to the Gun
ness farm in the summer and autumn
of 1906. Clyde Sturgis, employed by
Foster 6 De Garmo, another livery
concern, remembered that he took two
similar trunks to the place about year
ago. In addition, several heavy boxes,
marked variously potatoes" and wall
paper" were carted to the house at
different times.
Wade asserted that his experience in
taking the trunks to Mrs Guinness was
unpleasant.
"She wouldn't let Welker and me in
to the house with some of the trunks"
he said. I'VE put one on the front
porch Another, at her orders, we car
ried to the house after dark. There
was no light in the house and she did
not strike one when we entered with
dark rooms into a third and opened
another door. But told Welker had
had enough, and we dropped the trunk
in the third room and left"
Sturgis said the trunks were old and
heavy and strongly corded
Mrs. Guinness told me to carry them
into the cellarway of the house.
started to uncord them for her, but
she told me to leave them alone and
mind my own business, so got out"
If these contained dismembered
corpses, disposal of the bodies at the
farm would have been comparatively
simple. Joseph Maxson, man-of-all-
work at the Guinness place since last
February; Roy Lamphere, the prison
er in the case, and Fred Brickman, a
neighbor, have told of digging trenches
in the barnyard at Mrs. Guinness di-
rections. Mrs. Guinness was woman
of great physical strength and those
who knew her assert that to drag 200
pounds across yard would have been
comparatively easy for her. A dray-
man who delivered furniture to the
house when Mrs. Guinness first moved
there in 1900 recalled that she aided
him in carrying several heavy pieces
of furniture up a stairway.
"She could lug weight ais well as
most men have worked WITH" he de-
.clared. The people of Laporte and
the officers of the law are amazed at
the results of the days revelations.
The search into the depths Of the
hillside is expected to yield more
startling discoveries that will mark
the case as one of the most atrocious
crimes of the age.
That Mrs. Guinness has not fed and
| that the body found in the fire with
her three children was her own, is the
belief of Coroner Mack and Prosecut-
ing Attorney Smith. They had had
some doubt, but now say that the story
told by Joseph Maxon, her former hired
man, indicates that the modern Du-
crezia Borgia was driven desperate and
hopeless by the fear that her murder
Gus record was to be exposed.