10. Belle Gunness was discovered to be a serial killer after she vanished
In April of 1908, the home occupied by Belle Gunness, a widow, and her three children erupted in a fire and burned to the ground. When the fire was out the police and fire investigators found the body of a woman, which though headless was presumed to be Belle, and the bodies of her three children. They also found eleven other bodies and partial remains. Investigators determined the fire to have been arson, and when they learned that Belle Gunness had emptied her bank accounts in the days preceding the fire, they realized that the headless body was not her, and that there was a serial killer on the run. By November the police had an arson suspect in custody, and a confession which revealed how Gunness had selected her victims.
Gunness was a lonely hearts killer, advertising for male companionship and after gaining the confidence of her male victims killing them for their money. The men who visited her farm never left, according to the hired hand she employed, Ray Lamphere. Gunness asked Lamphere to burn down the house after she learned that the brother of one of her earlier victims was asking questions as to his whereabouts, and intended to visit the farm to interrogate Belle. With her money in hand, Belle vanished. Lamphere was convicted of arson, but authorities believed that none of the dead expired as a result of the fire, and that Gunness had killed them prior to her departure, as part of a plot to fake her own death. Belle Gunness vanished completely, where she went, what she did, and her ultimate fate remains unknown to the present day.