The Guinness Book of World Records has in twelve editions listed BelleGunness under the category "Most Prolific Murderers." She earned the epithet theLady Bluebeard because she is believed to have killed as many as twenty spouses. Shesettled on a farm on the outskirts of LaPorte, Indiana, in 1901. Over the next sevenyears it is believed that she killed a husband, children, and an indeterminatenumber of would-be suitors who answered her matrimonial advertisements. Throughsymbolic analysis of the folk art about the murderess -- anecdotes, personal-experience stories, legends, ballads, and plays and skits -- Langloisdiscovers an integrated symbol system through which the community comes to variousand contradictory conclusions about the deviant woman, deviancy in general, andsocial changes.