Came across this interesting post on five people who went too far to make some money, theres one about a place where people mutilate their body parts I have skipped that one out its not as interesting as the others.

Its quite morbid but its good to know what happens when the thirst cannot be quenched and greed takes over the needs, it also reminds me of today's capitalist world. But enough of that lets get down to the contenders who made it into cracked's list of the 6 most horrifying ways anyone ever got rich.

Lets start with the first contender Belle Gunness who emigrated from Norway to the USA in 1881 where she got married and set up a unsuccessful candy store. A year later it burned to the ground fortunately it was insured and she used the money to buy a house in Austin. The Austin house burnt down in 1898, some more insurance money. In 1900 her husband who had just taken two insurance policies died.

Using that money Belle bought a farm at La Porte, Indiana. Soon after she moved in, the boat and carriage house caught fire. In 1902 Belle's second husband died when a large sausage grinding machine accidentally fell on him. Then she decided to twist it up a notch and set an advertisement to a Norwegian language paper looking for a spouse. The next two years a number of men turned up, took life insurance policies and vanished.

26 years later on April 28, 1908, the police found four bodies in the basement of her farm that was burnt down, one adult and three children. Its believed that the adult was suppose to be Belle, but they could not identify the body because the head was missing. This made the authorities suspicious, after digging up Belle's back yard, they found the remains of 12 bodies and numerous body parts although they never found Belle's head.

This ones not as bad as the others, Marcus Licinius Crassus who still ranked in the top 10 List of most wealthy historical figures in the world. Marcus has been credited with creating the first fire brigade although he dint put out the fires for the people.

He would go to a burning house and offer the people money to buy their house as it was burning, fearing the loss of having nothing the people accepted Ceassus's ridiculously low offer. He would then put out the fire, repair the damages and sell the house for huge amounts of profit.

If that was bad its only getting worse so you should hit the back button now if you don't like Belle and Marcus, cause Hare and Burke started making their bucks by selling dead bodies for medical studies. Since the demand for corpses were high it was a popular crime that was generally overlooked by the authorities.

The duo made their first sum when a tenant in Hare's lodge died and they sold the body to Edinburgh Medical College for seven pounds. Soon enough the duo decided it was easier to kill people than digging graves or just waiting for them to die.

So they along with their wives ended up killing sixteen people. Their scheme came to an end when a tenant found a dead body under a bed and alerted the police.

Hare was spared in exchange for testimony against Burke who was hanged in 1829 and his body was given to medical students to dissect.

We now move on to the next rich man, H.H. Holmes, he graduated in medicine from the University of Michigan in 1884. It seems he had a charming personality was handsome, friendly and not to forget an insatiable desire to get rich. So Holmes moved to Chicago in search of fortune in the late 1880, he worked in a drugstore that he took over after killing his boss.

He then expanded by building a large hotel with airtight vaults, a labyrinth with secret chambers, trap doors, sliding walls, hidden laboratories and torture rooms. The guests would be used as guinea pigs where he would experiment on the limitation of the human body. Once a guest died, Holmes would take the corpse to the basement, strip off the flesh and craft them into skeleton models to sell at medical schools.

When the number of guests at his hotel dropped Holmes moved to Philadelphia, murdered his business partner and his three children. In his own words. "I proceeded to burn him alive by saturating his clothing and his face with benzene and igniting it with a match. So horrible was this torture that in writing of it I have been tempted to attribute his death to some humane means-not with a wish to spare myself, but because I fear that it will not be believed that one could be so heartless and depraved."

He made his last sum of money by selling his confession to the Philadelphia Inquirer for $10,000.

The last one on this list is Dr. Marcel Petiot who lived in Nazi operated France. He moved to Paris where he started practicing with claims of being an intern at a mental hospital. The truth, he was a patient there, during the Holocaust the Nazis were hunting for Jews, but Petiot offered them an escape from france for a staggering 25,000 Francs.

The fugitives would come to Petiot who would tell them that they needed to be inoculated before they were sent to Argentina. Two years later the police arrived at Petiot's burning three story house hey found a large heap of quicklime mixed with human remains.

A pit dug in the stable, full of quicklime and corpses in various stages of decomposition. A soundproof octagonal chamber with wall-mounted shackles and a peephole in its door. On the staircase leading to the basement, police found a sack containing a headless corpse, missing its organs.

Petiot had accumulated over 200 million Francs as most of the Jews would come to him with their life savings as they were going to escape the country.