Bessie Denker

Bessie Denker, born Bessie Schober, is presented as a methodical killer whose ambition survives childhood suspicion, family loss, and eventual exposure. Her history reaches Christine through a criminal case file and an account of Bessie’s crimes, turning what first seems to be an obscure name into a devastating revelation about Christine’s own family. Bessie’s story is at once a record of calculated violence and a portrait of someone who treats people as obstacles or assets in a private scheme.

Identity and Early History

Bessie was born in Iowa in 1882, the eldest child of Heinz and Mamie Schober, whose mother was a Gustafson. The account follows her from childhood, when two younger siblings died. At seven, Bessie mistakenly spread arsenic on her younger brother’s bread and butter, believing it to be sugar; he died from the dose. Her younger sister later drowned after falling into a well while helping Bessie draw water. The narration distinguishes these childhood deaths from later suspicion: the brother’s death is described as accidental, while the circumstances of the girl’s drowning are left uncertain.

A further suspicion attaches to Bessie when she was eleven. Her grandfather Gustafson was shot while resting on the back porch, and Bessie had been alone with him. Neighbors later recalled the death, but no one knew who had caused it, and the quiet, wide-eyed child was not suspected at the time. The account does not resolve the case; instead, it places this uncertain episode beside the later crimes, allowing the reader to see how Bessie’s childhood becomes part of the record assembled after her prosecution.

The Criminal Portrait and the Family Estate

Christine first encounters Bessie in a folder among Reginald Tasker’s case materials, under the title The Unparalleled Bessie Denker. The account’s writer, Madison Cravatte, introduces her through a deliberately comic, admiring catalogue of famous murderers, then names Bessie as his unrivaled favorite. His extravagant praise is not a neutral judgment: it makes the criminal history unsettlingly entertaining, even as its subject’s lack of remorse and calculated conduct emerge. Christine reacts with distaste and sets the folders aside, but later resumes reading the Denker case after Rhoda is asleep.

Bessie’s marriage to August Denker brings her into possession of the property she had won for him. Once settled there, August changes: he begins giving orders and pursuing impractical plans that threaten to dissipate the estate. Bessie had not intended to remove him so soon, but she regards the threatened fortune as the culmination of her work. She gives him arsenic in buttermilk and takes possession of the Denker money. The account describes her settling into the role of a grieving but courageous widow, while presenting no sign that she regarded herself as morally guilty. In her apparent self-conception, she is a shrewd businesswoman whose unusual trade and foresight set her above others.

Ada Gustafson and Bessie’s Exposure

Ada Gustafson, Bessie’s poor relation, comes to live at the farm late in the history of the Denker family. An older woman with no other place to go, she earns her keep through cooking, cleaning, nursing Bessie’s four children, and farm work. Ada is observant and says nothing for a time, but watches Bessie closely and forms suspicions. She eventually speaks aloud about the deaths surrounding the family, including August’s, and the earlier stories about Bessie’s childhood. It is Ada’s accusations—not a prosecution for the other Denker murders, which would have been harder to prove—that lead to Bessie’s trial and execution.

When officials seek permission to exhume August’s body, Bessie first refuses. After a court order allows the exhumation, she panics and tries to redirect suspicion toward Ada, claiming that Ada had poisoned August and Grandfather Denker and had threatened Bessie and the children. That night, Bessie kills Ada and all her children except Christine. She dresses Ada in her own clothes and wedding ring, apparently hoping authorities will mistake Ada’s body for hers and conclude that Ada committed the murders. Bessie then puts on her husband’s clothes, sets fire to the farmhouse, and escapes with Ada’s head wrapped in a newspaper parcel. Her disguise fails: police capture her the next morning in the waiting room at Kansas City Union Station, where the parcel is discovered.

Christine’s Survival and Narrative Significance

Christine’s survival is certain, but the reason Bessie spared her is not. One reported story holds that Ada loved Christine more than the other children and had sent her to a neighboring farmhouse for the night; the account explicitly notes that this version lacks supporting facts. Richard Bravo instead believes Bessie considered Christine too young to understand the crimes or testify against her. Alice Olcott Flowers proposes a different explanation: Bessie expected to escape and start again, preserving Christine as an asset for that future. These competing accounts leave Bessie’s motive unresolved while exposing the cold calculation that the record attributes to her.

Christine’s reading gives Bessie’s criminal history a second consequence beyond the trial itself. The name that struck Christine as strangely familiar becomes tied to the family she barely remembers, and the case history supplies the connection that changes her understanding of her identity. Bessie is therefore not only the subject of a notorious criminal portrait. Her story also forms the buried past from which Christine’s present emerges: a record assembled from uncertain childhood episodes, established murders, an observant relative’s suspicions, and the daughter Bessie left alive.