DNA may solve 1908 serial killing case

CHICAGO, Oct. 8 (UPI) -- The century-old mystery about the fate of Indiana serial killer Belle Gunness may be solved by DNA evidence from one of her descendants, officials say.

A unidentified Norwegian woman who claims to share an unbroken lineage to Gunness has provided a DNA sample to compare with DNA taken from a headless skeleton buried in Gunness' Forest Park, Ill., grave, The Chicago Tribune reported Wednesday.

The woman provided the sample to Andrea Simmons, a University of Indianapolis graduate student, whose investigation into Belle Gunness was documented in a film shown in Norway, the newspaper said.

Officials say Gunness, who owned a farm in LaPorte, Ind., at the turn of the 20th century, lured at least 12 Norwegian immigrant men to her farm with promises of marriage but instead robbed and killed them, disposing of their bodies in a hog pen. Her farmhouse burned in 1908, with the charred remains of a headless woman found in the basement along with the bodies of three children Gunness was raising.

Speculation surfaced almost immediately that Gunness substituted the body of another women for her own in a staged accident, the Tribune said.