Ada Gustafson

Ada Gustafson is Bessie Denker’s distant cousin and the observant farmworker whose suspicions bring Bessie’s hidden crimes into the open. Elderly, physically vigorous, and without another place to live, Ada enters the Denker household as a dependent and earns her keep through hard work. Her attention to what happens around her turns the household’s ordinary explanations of death into a case for investigation. Bessie eventually kills her, but the murder does not erase what Ada has noticed: Ada’s accusations lead officials to investigate, and her death becomes the charge on which Bessie is tried and executed.

Identity and Place in the Household

At the time she enters the Denker family’s life, Ada is in her late sixties. The family record refers to her as Old Ada, but her age does not make her passive: she is described as spry and strong, and she takes on a broad range of work. She cooks, scrubs, cares for Bessie’s four children, and works in the fields alongside August Denker and the other men. She has sought shelter with her distant cousin because she has nowhere else to go; her place in the household is therefore both familial and precarious, sustained by the labor she provides.

Ada is also connected to Christine through the children’s shared household. As an adult, Christine remembers Ada only dimly and recalls that the children did not like her. She remembers Ada’s dog, Spot, who snapped at the children, though they eventually made friends with him; the dog never made friends with Peter. The recollection is fragmentary rather than affectionate, but it gives Ada a place in Christine’s childhood before the family history becomes a revelation about Christine’s own survival.

Watchfulness and Suspicion

The account of Ada’s role emphasizes her shrewdness and powers of observation. She watches Bessie over time, following her with her eyes and quietly forming an impression rather than immediately making an accusation. The narrative presents this sustained attention as the quality that makes Ada Bessie’s eventual obstacle. Her importance lies not in formal authority but in her refusal to stop noticing the inconsistencies around her.

After August’s death, Ada begins voicing her doubts to people in the countryside. She rejects the explanation that he died of a congestive chill and questions the earlier death of Grandfather Denker as well. She also connects these losses with stories about Bessie’s earlier life, observing that misfortune seemed to begin when Bessie took an interest in someone. Ada’s reasoning gathers separate deaths and prior rumors into a pattern; what had appeared to neighbors as an isolated family tragedy becomes, through her account, grounds for suspicion.

At first, the neighbors treat Ada’s claims with amusement and disbelief. She nevertheless takes the matter to the sheriff and proposes that August’s body be exhumed. Her intervention moves the suspicion from local talk into official action. When Bessie refuses permission, the county obtains a court order and proceeds with the exhumation. That decision marks a reversal: Bessie, who has maintained the public appearance of a bereaved widow, is confronted by an investigation she cannot control.

Bessie’s Counteraccusation and Ada’s Death

Once the exhumation threatens to expose the poisoning, Bessie abandons the careful management that had protected her. She claims that the deaths were indeed caused by poisoning but accuses Ada of committing the crimes. Bessie also says that Ada had threatened her and her children, presenting herself as someone who had stayed silent out of fear. The narrative identifies this as a defensive fabrication: Bessie is trying to redirect suspicion and prepare a story that could make Ada appear responsible if anything happened to the household.

That night, Bessie kills Ada and all of her children except Christine. She then attempts to make the scene support her accusation. She dresses Ada in her own clothes and places her wedding ring on Ada’s finger, hoping authorities will mistake Ada’s body for Bessie’s and conclude that Ada was the killer. Bessie disguises herself in her husband’s clothes and leaves the burning farmhouse with Ada’s head concealed in a newspaper parcel. Her plan fails: the disguise does not mislead investigators, and police catch her the next morning in the waiting room at Kansas City Union Station. When officers open the parcel, they identify the remains as Ada’s.

Consequences and Narrative Significance

Ada’s death is the crime for which Bessie is tried and eventually executed; the account notes that the Denker murders would have been more difficult to prove. The distinction gives Ada’s role a decisive legal consequence. Her observations first prompt the inquiry, and the attempt to use her as a scapegoat produces the evidence around which Bessie’s case turns. Although Ada cannot testify after her death, her earlier warning to the sheriff has already set the investigation in motion.

The account leaves some details unresolved, especially why Bessie spared Christine. One reported story says Ada loved Christine more than the other children and sent her to a neighboring farmhouse for the night, but the narrator says that story has no supporting facts. Other explanations attribute Christine’s survival to Bessie’s calculation: perhaps she believed the child too young to testify, or intended to keep her as an asset for a future escape. Ada’s connection to Christine thus sits at the edge of a larger uncertainty rather than resolving it. For the reader, Ada is both the perceptive witness who recognizes a pattern and the person Bessie tries to erase in order to conceal it; the failed substitution of Ada for Bessie makes the consequences of her vigilance impossible to hide.