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Transcript

SYSK’s Fall True Crime Playlist: The Tale of the Bloody Benders · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: This mind boggling episode is an old timey true crimey.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: It concerns one of the worst families to ever set
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: up shop in Kansas, which is really saying something. In
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: the early eighteen seventies, the Bender family surreptitious killings pree
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: carried out in their own home no less, resulted in
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: the murders of at least twenty one people which are
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: in the family, the nicknamed the Bloody Benders. This episode
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: will knock your socks off, assuming they're still on your
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: feet after the other episode so far. Welcome to Stuff
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: here too, So this is Stuff you Should Know. The
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Murder Family edition.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Halloween right around the corner.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: I've always liked to think of you, me and Jerry
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: as a kind of murder family.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: As in, you and I and Jerry. Right. We always
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: have to correct that because people think you're talking about
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: you and your wife, right, Okay, yes, you me kamma
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: you kamma me kamma No.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: No, I mean me, my wife, Umi and Jerry. I've
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: always thought of this as just you know, I'm kidding.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I miss what you said though.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: You thought of this as what a murder murder family?
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, in the kindest possible way.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Exactly, exactly. No, we're no murder family. And after everybody
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: learns about the Bloody Benders, they'll be like, yeah, Josh
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: and Chuck and Jerry are no murder family, and we
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: wouldn't want to be either, because it turns out murder
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: families are not so great.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Chuck, right, And can we shout out a listener who
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: submitted this topic? Oh yeah, definitely, that's I feel like
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: that's happening more and more like a lot.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: As our world gets smaller, our listeners are reminding us
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: that it is quite large. And we got this one
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: from a Canson.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Oh that's very appropriate.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Is that how you say it?
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: I think it's Kanzinia Knight.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Okay, Kenzinia Knight named Star White. And apparently Starr was
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: traveling with the family through Kansas and saw signs in
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: Montgomery County for the Benders, the Bloody Benders and things
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: commemorating this and said, I'm a Kenzania Knight and I
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: had no idea that this was a thing. I got
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: to learn more about this, So we're doing one. You know,
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: we like to keep it spooky in October where we
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: can for sure, and there's nothing spookier than a serial
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: killing family.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Interestingly, too, this past I think March, what I'm taking
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: to be is one of the definitive books on the
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Benders came out. It's called Hell's half Acre and it
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: is by an author.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: Named named a drum roll.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Named Susan Joe Nosis. That's how I'm going with her
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: last name. But it came out in March called Hell'shead Figure,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: and it does look pretty awesome, so I figured that
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: had to do with this, But no, it's just completely
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: off the cuff from a listener from Kansas.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Huh, just driving through.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Great name too, by the way, Star White, what a
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: great name. It's almost like star wipe.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: No one, do you like it? It's your favorite transition?
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: I do know a bender actually, but this is I
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: don't think there's any relation.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's not entirely clear that that was even
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: their names too, so we should tell a good point.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: We're talking about a family that lived in Kansas in
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: the eighteen seventies at a time when Kansas was like
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: the front Tier, maybe even beyond the front Tier. The
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Trail of Tears had happened by this time. So the
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: O Sage people who had lived there previously have been
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: forced off their land and moved further west to Oklahoma,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: and the federal government said, come anybody, all you criminals,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: you unsavory characters, people escaping your past, come and settle
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: here in Kansas. It's like Australia, but in the center
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: of the United States. That's right.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Did you do bad things back east? Just pick up
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: your bags and head west.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: That's precisely right. And so a lot of them stopped
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: in Kansas. Again, this was the frontier, but people were
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: still going west too. So as we'll find out, this family,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: the Bender family, kind of put up a claim or
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: set down a claim. They did something with a claim.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: I'm not quite up on my old prospect or terminology.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: They claimed something, yeah, on this road that kind of
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: kept leading west, and they set up a tavern in
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: for people to stop in, which is neither here nor
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: there quite yet, but I just kind of wanted to
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: foreshadow that there's going to be a tavern coming in
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: the future.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: That's right, And that's probably a generous term for what
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: they set up. Yeah, it was a pretty remote well,
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: I guess, you know, not to make too many Kansas jokes,
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: but it was a pretty remote part of Kansas and
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: southeastern Kansas in eighteen seventy. It was not cherry Bell yet,
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: but it would eventually become cherry Vale, right. And at
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: first the two gentlemen arrived John benderr. He was around
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: sixty years old. People called him Pa. He didn't talk
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: a lot. When he did talk, it was mostly in German.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: And then he was with a younger guy in his twenties.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: And you know, we're going to say things like identified
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: as his son or you know, may or may not
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: have been the daughter. Like this is because of a
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: lot of things, partially just you know, a lot of
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: record keeping back then wasn't super solid, especially when it
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: turns out you may be using aliases and you may
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: be faking that you're a family or you may actually
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: be a family. Like no one really knows for sure
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: the facts of this, but John Bender Junior was with him,
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: and he also occasionally went by an alias put a
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: pin in this one named John Gebhart, Chris Gebhart. He's
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: a comedian, he's great.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: But apparently John Gephart or John Bender Junior, was a
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: bit of a comedium's himself, but from some reports, he
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: was his own audience and no one else was. So
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: to put it in another way, he apparently laughed at stuff
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: like inappropriately, like Doctor Hibbert, and also at times when
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: exactly that was a great John Bender Junior impression, by
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: the way, but at times where people were like, this
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: guy ain't quite right. And he also talked a lot,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: so he was kind of an odd fixture as well,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: as we'll find out the whole family was.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he had a German accent, but did speak fluent English,
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: and some people think he may have been intellectually disabled
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: looking at kind of some of the things that happen,
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: it seems like I don't know about clear, but you know,
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: at a time in eighteen seventy, they wouldn't have been
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: categorizing people as such anyway, you.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: Know, no for sure, but from the articles of the time,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: that's what I'm going from now on. They nobody said
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: anything even remotely like that. I saw it on one,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: I think a Crime Reads article, and that was about it.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: I just got the impression that was really kind of
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: weird and almost like a Jethro Clampet type. That's who
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: he reminds me of.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Okay, so what they built on their one hundred and
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: sixty acres was you called it a tavern. I call
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: it just a big room, kind of like a bunk
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: of a bunk house. Maybe they called it. Or Olivia,
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: who helped us with this, called it a foothouse. But
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: it was sixteen feet wide twenty four feet long. So
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: what they eventually did was they would put up a
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: canvas sheet kind of splitting it into They lived in
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: the back, and then they called you know, they called
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: it an inn. You called it a tavern. It was
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: really just a room with some can goods and supplies
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: and I think a couple of beds, sort of like
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: a bunk house. It was not fancy at all.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: No, but I'm guessing like as you were passing through
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Kansas then and maybe even today, it was pretty appealing.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: You think, well, I mean it was better than sleeping
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: out on the open prairie with the bedroll, right. You know,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: there was a hot meal. You know, they probably had tobacco,
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: and yeah, I mean it was better than nothing. And
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: I think I get the impression also one of the
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: things that made it better than nothing was the daughter
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: who I say, we meet right now. Her name was Kate,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: and she showed up after this this tavern, this house
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: had been built.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: That's right. The two ladies were sent for after everything
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: was done, and it was Ma Bender who everyone just
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: sort of assumed was the wife and the matriarch of
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: the family. She went by Elvira sometimes. She was maybe
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: in her fifties and led on like she didn't speak
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: any if very little, if any English at all, but.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: I had like a terrible temper. She was widely reputed
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: from anybody that met her that she was just a
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: terrible cuss of a person from when I gather.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, in fact, I think she may have been the
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: one sort of leading this whole charge that we'll get to.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: I've seen both. I've seen her or I've seen Kate
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: and Kate. Kate was the daughter. She was in her twenties.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: But I think more than anything, she kind of attracted
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: passers by with flyers advertising her mediumship like she was
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: into spiritualism and free love apparently too.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: And who knows what that means. In eighteen seventies Kansas,
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: she's shown a little ankle I don't know, like, I
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: have no idea what free love means in that context,
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: but it was unusual at least and got attention. Some
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: people thought she may have been the daughter. Other people
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: thought that they presented she and John Junior as a couple.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: So it was just sort of one of those things.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: It's loose out there in eighteen seventies Kansas, right.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: So one other thing I read, Chuck that Livia didn't
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: quite hit on was that this family, they weren't like
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: exactly act, you know, fading into the woodwork or the
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: prairie like. They were well known in their little community,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: mainly because there were only like eight or ten other
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: settlements around them at the time, but also because I
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: think they were the only ones running a tavern and
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: they had an orchard That will factor in later, but
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: apparently their cherries and apples and peaches were like really
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: prized out there at the time. So they were part
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: of the community, but they were known to be weird
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: and maw in particular, which you just kind of avoided
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: her as best as you could.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: Right. So they have this thing set up. It's on
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: the edge of the Great Osage Trail, which is, like
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: you mentioned, earlier, where a lot of people continued westward
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: and it was a good place to have a little
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: bunk house that, you know, sold a few things. What's
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: the word, I'm looking for.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: A general store, Ali's, bargain houses.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Rations, Oh okay, yeah, selling rations and things like that.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: They sell rations at Ali's.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: What is Ali's.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: It's like a deep discount liquid or like if you
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: stole a truck, you just drive it over there and
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: they'll buy everything and then turn around and sell it.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: I don't think they actually do that, but it's the
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: appearance of that kind of thing.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we should be clear, like, I've never heard of Ali's,
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: so I'm innocent of this.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: You should go wander around one. You'd be like, okay,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: I gotcha. Here's an oriental rug. Here's some off brand
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: bleach on the next stile. Like it's just just that, yes,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, it's like that places all over the place,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: in every strip mall, in every city, in every in
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: every country in the world.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: It may be one of those things. It's so ubiquitous.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: I've just never noticed it. Yeah, right under my nose.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: It's possible, all right. So they set up an Ali's
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: right there on the grade o Sage Trail and maybe
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: this is a good place to take our first break.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, I wasn't expecting that. Let me see. Okay, that
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: sounds good, okay, chuck. So one of the things that
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: made the Benders made us call the Benders of murder
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: families that they started murdering people pretty shortly after they
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: set up this homestead along the Osage Trail. And one
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: of the things about Kansas at the time was it
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: was really really violent, not just in the wars against
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: the Native Americans. There there were also pro slavery and
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: anti slavery factions that committed atrocities against one another. The
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Civil War eyebrid kind of broke out thanks to Kansas
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: struggling which kind of state it was going to be.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: So it was a really violent place. And it was
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: with that kind of violent backdrop that a family could
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: just kill a bunch of travelers without anyone really taking notice.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Because it was also just the kind of place where
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: people just went missing. It just happened. It was a
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: really dangerous place to travel. So when it happened, it
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: didn't exactly like set off the media and search parties
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: didn't usually come out for people.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, However, when they start turning up in regular
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: order around town, then you've got a problem. And that's
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: what happened. In May of eighteen seventy one, the body
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: of a man was found in local Drum Creek there's
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: the southeast of the Bender's house. And this is very
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: key here. He'd been brained, he had his skull bashed
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: in and had his throat cut, which, as you will see,
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: becomes the recurring mo of this family.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Yep. Two more men were found shortly after, I think
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: a few months later. A few months after that, another
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: body was found all in the creek, and apparently they
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: all had that same kind of mortal wound or that
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: combination of injuries. And one of the bodies was identified
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: as a man named William Jones, and he had been
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: carrying known to have been carrying about two hundred and
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: fifty dollars, which at the time was like a lot
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: of money to today six close to it, okay, And
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: he was going to pay off his mortgage for his homestead,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: which is something people did at that time too. It's
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: another thing that made it dangerous. A lot of people
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: were walking around with a lot of cash because they
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: were going to buy land payoff mortgages do god knows what,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: and there weren't banks, so they were traveling with cash
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: and this guy was exactly that. And there was a
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: farmer whose land he was found on that was initially
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: accused but they were like, I don't think it was him,
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: so he got off but I'm sure he was like
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: wait what what? No, it wasn't me.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And the way he got off to was kind
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: of frustrating as a like a crime enthusiast reader, because
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: they investigated it and they found that the wagon that
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: dropped him had a very distinctive track, that one of
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: the back wheels was off center, and I kept waiting
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: for that to come back as like, remember that wagon,
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: that's what eventually led to the killers. But spoiler alert,
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: that does not happen. So don't put a pin in it.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: Take the pin out of that.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just take throw that pin away, break in two.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: So the thing about I think one of the reasons
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: why people started getting hot under the collar about these
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: murders too, is that this area got a really bad
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: reputation really fast. Like it was like you avoid the
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: spot as best you can, like maybe go out of
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: your way to avoid this area. On the Osage Trail
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: because people just wind up missing there and that kind
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: of got people aware of like the whole, the whole
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: problem that the area was facing, but they didn't know
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: who it was, and they certainly hadn't centered on the benders.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: The benders just had a reputation as being odd and
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: possibly a little maybe violently unusual, but not murderers by
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: any stretch. They just weren't suspected for a really long time.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Violently unusual. Yeah, what a reputation.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's pretty serious.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Here's another story too that you do need to get
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: that pen out, put it back together, that you Josh
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: told you to break an eye. Sorry everybody, and put
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: a pin in this story because this was chronologically speaking.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: February eighteen seventy three, a woman who didn't really have
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: any money apparently stopped at the home, asked to rest,
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: asked for some food, fell asleep on a bed in
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: the back, and then when she woke up, there was
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: mo bender and she pointed to a table covered in
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: pistols and knives and said, there, your supper's ready. So
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: this lady somehow apparently manages to stay composed and not
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: like react with alarm.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Like waking up fiddlesticks.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, and said I just need to step outside
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: for a minute to do something. Just apparently made a
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: private excuse, is what the Kansas City Time said. Yeah,
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: and and ran and took off, running barefoot, basically, you know,
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: in her sleeping clothes, ran for a couple of miles
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: to find help. And it's hard to parse together what
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: this sentence from the Times even means, but I'm taking
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: it to mean that it didn't. Really, it still didn't
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: set off alarm bells for this family.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: It didn't. And that, by the way, is a classic
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: example of being violently unusual. Right, Okay, you know, if
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: you're violently unusual, you have the kind of house that
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: people run two miles away from in their bare feet.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, where guns and knives are presented as supper.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Exactly, right. So this is just kind of going along.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: The benders are homing along doing the murdering thing. People
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: don't really suspect them, but the area's got a bad reputation.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: But there was a series of murders, actually a combo
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: won two punch of murders that finally led to their
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: discovery as a murder family. And the first thing started
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: with the guy named George Newton long Core, who left Independence, Kansas,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: which was just to the west of Cherry Vale along
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: the O Sage Trail, and he was on his way
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: to Iowa, so he would have passed through Cherry Vale
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: along with his eighteen month old daughter, Mary Anne, and
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: he never made it to Iowa. And that caught the
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: attention of another man, a physician named William Yorke, who
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: was his neighbor and was concerned enough that he started
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: traveling around inquiring about him to see if he could
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: figure out what happened to George and his daughter mary Anne.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Good neighbor, Yeah, really good neighbor, like to do
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: such a thing to take this trip. So starts investigating,
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: finds out that the horror wagon team was abandoned near
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: Fort Scott, Kansas and in the spring. I mean, I
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: think that's what led him to go out there. So
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: he's out there in the spring, he gets to Fort Scott,
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: all that stuff is still there. Basically all of their
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: stuff had been abandoned. They were nowhere to be found.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: So he's like, something is going on. I need to
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: go back to Independence. And then he disappears.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that really caught the attention to people because
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: it turned out doctor William York. And if I said
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: Edward the first time, please forgive me. His name was William,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: and he was a doctor, and he was a York,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: and there were two other Yorks. He had a brother
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: named Edward who was neither here nor there, but he
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: had a really important brother named Alexander York who was
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: a colonel from the Civil War and also a Kansas senator.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: So they had murdered the brother of a Kansas senator
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: who was known to be out looking around the area
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: of Cherryvale for somebody else who had gone missing. And
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: that really got people's antenna.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, big time, enough to wear They got a search party,
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: Colonel Alexander. I think that about seventy five men set
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: off and they were, you know, they were scouring around.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: They were They basically kind of figured out at one
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: point that they definitely went by the Bender's house. So
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: let's go by and talk to these people, see what's
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: going on when they do this mob Bender you know,
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: claims to not speak English, which seems like her main jam.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: Her big joke besides, here's your supper of guns and knives?
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: Was I also don't speak English, Kate Young Kate says,
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: I don't know anything about this guy, and then John
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: Junior said, hey, listen, I was shot at when I
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: was out there at Drum Creek where all these bodies
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: have been found, and I can take you out there,
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: and like, maybe the people that shot at me killed
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: your friends as well.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and again, just imagine just throw Clampet saying this
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: and taking people out to look at a place where
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: he claims to have been shot at. Right, Just that
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: bit so so, but he's also just kooky. You know.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Did you watch The Beverly Hillbillies? I did, like a lot.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I watched it a lot.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: So do you remember the time or the period? I
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: guess it was a phase where Jethrow ended up becoming
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: like a movie producer in Hollywood.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was got a little weird later
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: in that show.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: It really did get weird. So it's not clear whether
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: this is that Hollywood producer of Jethrow or the original
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: mountaineer son of Jethrow. Either way, it works pretty good,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: but he takes Alexander and the search party out there.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: I guess he gave enough of an explanation and was
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: you know, pointing out different spots well enough that they're
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: like either they believed him or they just didn't really care,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: and they kind of headed on basically.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean he showed bullet holes in a tree,
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: or not holes, but bullet markings, which you know Kansas
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: in the eighteen seventies, about half the tree said bullets
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: in them. So that doesn't prove anything, but like you said,
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: it was enough at least to sniff him slightly off
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: the case, at least temporarily. But they came back a
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: few days later said, listen, we heard about this lady
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: over the past few days who came here and I
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: don't want to really start anything, but she said that
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: you said, here's your supper, and it.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: Was guns and knis there's something about a pistol supper
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: or something like.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: That, and that's weird. She ran away barefoot for two miles
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: and no one made a big deal out of it,
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: But now we kind of want to know. This is
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: where mob Bender all of a sudden starts speaking English.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: Apparently the quote is she flew into a violent passion
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: and went off saying, you know that that lady was
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: a witch and she has you know, cursed Kate's coffee
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: that she was going to drink, and if she ever
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: comes back here, I'm going to kill her. We got
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: her out of here. She was a witch.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Yes, she converted Kate's coffee into that mushroom coffee, and
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: now Kate refuses to drink it.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: What's mushroom coffee?
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: It's exactly what it sounds like, exactly doesn't actually have coffee.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: No, oh, it's made out of mushrooms.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you should try it sometimes just to say
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: you tried it.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: Now. That's what on those survival shows. They get like
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: roots and twigs and boil that stuff down. They're like,
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: here's my morning coffee.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Coffee.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: Have fun with that.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: So they so again still like they were kind of like, Okay,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: this family's really weird, but we don't really have anything
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: on them. But it was enough that Alexander York kind
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: of stuck around town and they held a meeting with
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: basically the whole town that Pa and John Junior even attended,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: and they said, hey, this place has a bad reputation.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Something's going on. These two people at the very least
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: have been have turned up missing. We need to just
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: search everyone's homestead and apparently very brassly. At least one
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: neighbor said, I've got nothing to hide, search my homestead,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: and Pa said the same thing. He said, I don't either,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: You guys search my homestead. And so I guess they
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: kind of did a slow motion search, because it was
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: at least a week I saw, if not a couple
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: of weeks before they finally made it out to search
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: the Bender's place. And when they showed up, they realized
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: very quickly that the Benders weren't there and probably hadn't
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: been there since the night of that meeting.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, when they realized, they told people to come search
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: their house. You said, what my favorite part about Kate's
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: jam is that they asked her to do the seance
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: to like give some more information, like, well, if you're
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: so good at that, and she said, now, it's like
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: it's it's daytime. There's too many people around, Like, have
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: you ever seen a seance? She's like, why don't you
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: come back tomorrow night, just the two of you and
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: we'll do one. And they were like, no, thank you, right,
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: I think I'll take the zero in that one.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I'm saying, doctor, Colonel. No, Colonel, Alexander
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: York was a sharp dudeasically.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but the townspeople weren't sharp enough to go. I
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: don't know if they were searching other places. I know
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: there was a weather issue, but like you said, by
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: the time they got there, they were Gonzo's. They left there.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: They took a train because they found their horse and
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: wagon and even their dog just on a public street
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: near the train station. And they got the heck out
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: of Dodge, well not out of Dodge, out of what
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: would become Cherryvale.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Very close, very close. So the volunteers were like, well,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: I guess since they left, we can just go ahead
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: and go on in. And apparently they found very quickly
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: that there was a trap door in the floor. And
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: when they opened the trap door, I guess a lot
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: of them gagged because it smelled like decaying human remains.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: And even though they looked in there and there weren't
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: actual bodies, there was so much blood and gore in
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: this cellar rotting that it was enough to make a
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: person gag even without a full body decomposing. There.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: It's a great place for our second break. Oh okay,
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: the height of suspense.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Let's do it.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: We'll be back and talk about what was making that
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: smell right after this. All right, So they have a
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: stone cellar under the house covered in blood and stinks
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: like dead bodies even though there's no dead bodies. And
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: we said we were going to get to the bottom
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: of the smell. The bottom of it is there were
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: dead bodies in there previously. Yeah, so they had this
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: pretty easy.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: They had the trap set up, the trap door set up,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: so it led to a hole in the cellar, and
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: then there was a like a way outer I guess,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: a way in from the foundation and they would kill people,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: put them in the trap door through the trap door
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: to the cellar, and they'd retrieved them at night when
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: there weren't prying eyes around.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty good system they had going. They started searching around.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: They did eventually find bodies. They found William Yorke's body
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: buried in the orchard. They found a Lonker's body buried
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: along with young Mary Anne, who the two gentlemen had
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: the head wounds in the throat wounds. Maryanne, I've seen
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: variously was either suffocated or suffocated from being buried alive
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: man but not brained in throat slit at least tragic
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: either way, of course, sure, but very very sad case.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: Eventually they would go on to find about a dozen
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: bodies and were eventually implicated in as many as twenty
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: one murders.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they found it. Yeah, I saw eleven I think,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: including Mary Anne. A bunch of them were in the orchard.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: They looked around the property and realized that there were
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: a bunch of depressions in the orchard, and they're like,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: I wonder if those are graves, And they turned up
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: people in the graves. They found somebody in the well,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: and then yeah, when you add them together with all
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: the people dumped in Drum Creek, I guess it comes
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: to about twenty one. And they developed this theory of
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: what had happened, in part based on some people who
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: had narrowly escaped with their lives and hadn't realized it
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: until after the Benders became national news. But that curtain
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: that they had dividing the tavern, the Olie's bargain bin
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: from the rest of the house was right behind the
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: seat where they would have travelers and guests sit when
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: they were eating a meal.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, And they would have them sit there, and
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: you know, from the other side it would you know.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: They would be silhouetted by the candlelight so they could
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: see clearly where they were, and then Paw or John
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: Junior would either use like the butt of an axe
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: or a hammer to brain them. They would put them
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: in the cellar and rob them and then slit their throat.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: And that's how it was sort of a I don't
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: know the fact, like, all right, let's go ahead and
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: tell the stories about the other guys. Because after this
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: came out, people started coming forward, like you said, a
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: guy named mister Wetzel said, hey, wait a minute. They
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: tried to get me to sit right by that curtain
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: and I wouldn't sit by the curtain, and mob Bender
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: got really mad about that, and so we got the
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: heck out of there. And then another guy named William
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: Pickering said, yeah, I didn't want to sit by that
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: curtain because it was dirty and gross, and I took
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: a different seat and they got in a big fight
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: and Kate came at me with a knife. So I
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: don't know why they just didn't come up behind them
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: and brain them like the Maybe the felt the curtain
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: offered some sort of cover. It just seems very like stubborn.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, like they had to follow procedure or else the person.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like allowed you have to sit there. I'm like, well,
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: you can't murder a guy in another chair.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Well I don't. Yeah, I don't think it would have
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: been as easy to come up behind him from the
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: from the curtain, you know what I'm saying.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: Maybe it sounds a little I mean, I guess they
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: got away with it for a little while, so but
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: I don't know, it sounds a little amateurish.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: Sure, or they were such professionals they just stuck to
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: the script and if the script deviated it, they didn't
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: take chances. And there's there's actually a good suggestion of
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: why they didn't take chances, because there were later discovered
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: in the house bullet holes in the walls and in
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: the door frames, and that was taken to be from
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: people who had tried to fight back when they realized
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: what was going on. But I guess they had ultimately
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: been unsuccessful, because nobody escaped that house saying they had
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: shot at everyone because they tried to brain them, you know.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: Or maybe it was just supper.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: I guess sol pistol suffer, You're right.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: Who knows? So the story gets out becomes, you know,
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: for the eighteen seventies, becomes a pretty big media storm
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: whatever that looked like back then, and that people, you know,
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: it became like a bit of a tourist stop. Like people.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: It sounds like people essentially showed up there and kind
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: of looted the place. Over time, we're just kind of,
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: you know, breaking up pieces of the cellar and breaking
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: up the bed frame and kind of just taking whatever
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: they wanted with them.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And one of the reasons it became such a
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: media frenzy is they were the first serial killers in
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: America that America ever produced, at least as far as
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: the media could tell. A decade later, Austin would have
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: what's frequently referred to as the first serial killer in
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: America with the Servant Girl Annihilator, which is pre uh.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: I don't even know if I want to do a
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: podcast on that.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: No, I don't know that name alone. It's like, yeah,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: that's all right.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: That stopped me called. I mean, this was ten years
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: before Jack the Ripper even right exactly.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: And HH Holmes, who's also often referred to as America's
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: first serial killer, he wasn't until the eighteen thirties or
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: eighteen nineties, so he was like a good twenty years on.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: So it was a big deal. So not only do
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: we have America's first serial killer, we had America's first
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: dark tourists show up at their house and take everything
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: they possibly could as a memento. But one of the
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: things that happened about this being such a huge media
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: sensation is that, like the country was following this and
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: everyone was basically looking for the Benders because don't forget,
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: they'd vanished. No one knew which way they went. All
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: they knew was that somewhere not too far off, they'd
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: ridden their wagon to that train station, and the train
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: ticket person had said, yeah, those four people definitely bought tickets,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: but I can't tell you where. Yeah, And they said,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: they said, you can tell us, so I'm a doctor. Right.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: They did arrest twelve men. This sounds a little bit like, hey,
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: we've got to kind of do something. So they arrest
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: these guys who they alleged maybe were involved as far
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: as receiving stolen goods, because they never really found a
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: super clear motive. I mean, it seemed like a lot
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: of them may have had like traveling money, or like
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: the guy who had the two hundred and fifty bucks,
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: which was a lot of money at the time, but
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: it was never like one hundred percent established, like their
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: motive was just to rob people. But they implicated these
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: twelve guys as guys who may have helped them move
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: stolen items and money and stuff like that. And apparently
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: one of the guys was a member of a vigilanti
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: committee who tried to get on to help lead the
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: investigation with Colonel Yorke, but was denied and rejected, and
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: I think that kind of hurt his feelings. And I
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: think what it came down to was these guys, they
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: were known as the regulators, these vigilanties. They were throat cutters.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: They would cut people's throat instead of like bringing them
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: back to face trial. And then they just sort of
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: tied it to these people because of the throat cutting.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and a lot of pretty innocent a lot of
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: well a lot of innocent people died as a result.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: So these people were bad dudes. But I saw that
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: it was more than just the throat cutting, that there
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: was a way that they would particularly leave bodies like you.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: They would put the right hand against the right breast
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: and the left hand down like just by their side.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: Like a pledge of allegiance.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: Almost, but you're you're like as if you don't know
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: which side of your chest to put your hand and
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: you got it wrong, kind of like that. And apparently
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: they found a lot of the bodies in the orchard
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: at the Bender's place posed like this basically almost like
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: this was this is the sign, like this is what
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: this gang did. So I don't think they were like
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: in the gang, but it's possible that gang of vigilantes
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: were fencing this stuff for them, and that they were
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: at least tangentially related.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: You know, sure, it's possible. Sure, when it comes down
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: to who these people really were, we're not exactly sure.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: There's been a lot of modern investigation about who they were,
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: and they think that Ma was a woman named Almira
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: Meek and was from upstate New York near the Adirondack Mountains,
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: so not German at all. There were some pretty sketchy accounts,
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: not super well researched, that said she had been married
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: before and that her husbands had all met violent deaths
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: from head wounds. So, you know, I don't know if
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: that's just the internet running with something, or if that's true.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: Apparently, out of all of the four, the Ma and
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: Kate seemed to have actually been related, although I don't
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: know how. I didn't see how did.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: You like how they were related?
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: No? No, no, like they were supposed to be mother
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: and daughter. But how did how did that ever get
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: turned up? Like? Where was that? How was that ever defined?
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: I think just people doing like modern research on lineage
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: and stuff like that. Okay, because they think they turned
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: up her original name too, that Ma was married to
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: a man named Griffith, and that Kate was really Eliza Griffith.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: John Senior apparently was John Flickinger and was either from
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: Germany or the Netherlands. And then John Junior apparently israel
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: name was the alias that he was using that I
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: said to put up in in John Gerhart.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: And now you can take that pin out and break
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: in half and throw it away.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So if he was using his real name as
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: an alias, then I'm not sure what was going on
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: with John Jr.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: No, No, he's a Jettro type, don't forget. So there
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: were people who are like, oh, we've seen the benders.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: Who saw the benders here, they went this way, they
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: went that away for years and years and years. It
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: was like like people would would report on their whereabouts,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: and it's unclear to this day whether people did or
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: didn't know where they went. I saw there was one
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: kind of article I guess from the time that was
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: basically like, yeah, everybody knows where they are and there's
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: just nothing anyone can do. They made it to another
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: state and everybody just kind of leaves everybody else alone
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: out there. Other people have always reported like, no, they
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: have no idea where they went. They just kind of
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: vanished in the thin air. And then there were reports
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: that were usually incorrect, that they'd either been captured or
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: that they'd been killed, or there was one report that
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: Pod died by suicide in Lake Michigan in eighteen eighty four.
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: Right Another one said John Junior and Kate went to
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: New Mexico like sort of Texas New Mexico border and
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: John died of a stroke. Some people said that vigilantes
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: got them and they burned Kate alive and shot and
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: killed the other ones and buried him in the prairies,
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: but no one ever claimed the substantial reward, you know,
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: close to seventy grand today, So it seems like none
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: of these stories were probably true, or maybe who knows,
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: maybe one of them was. It's just no way to know.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: So Laura Ingalls Wilder actually had a family story that
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: I read that her daughter basically said, hey, you should
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: weave this into our family story. So it's almost certainly
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: not true. That she and her family, on their way
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: to homestead passed by the Bender's tavern, but they didn't
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: have enough money to go in for food or to
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: stay there, but they settled in a close enough area
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: that after the Benders were found out her father, there
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: was a knock on her family's door and her father
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: was summoned outside with his gun and he didn't come
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: back till morning. But that anytime you ever asked him
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: about the Benders, he would say, they'll never be found again.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: Right again, this isn't true. And one of the other
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: things that really undermines the Vigilanti theories again, seventy thousand
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: and today's dollars was offered as a reward. Somebody from
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: that group of Vigilanes would have stepped up and taken it,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: or even if they didn't, how could a group of
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: vigilanes keep that secret for all that time? That it's
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: still to this day, never came out because that would
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: be something to boast about that you were among the
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: group of vigilanes that caught and killed the bloody benders,
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: you know. Sure, So I think the vigilane thing is get.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: A book deal at the very least for sure these days.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: I think it's the kind of thing where a lot
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: of Kansas Citianites know about it. You know, they celebrated
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: Bender Days for a while. They had a replica at
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: Cherry Vale at one point of the Bendor House. More recently,
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: in fact, just a couple of years ago, a gentleman
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: named Bob Miller, who was a financial advisor from Independence
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: and a historian and who knows maybe a bit of
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: a murder junkie, bought the land and basically said, like, Hey,
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: the people that own this land never did anything with it.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: They never searched for the location of the murder sites
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: or the house, and I want to do that. I
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: want to like have like professional expert investigations done on
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: the property. I don't know if he plans to put
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: up like a Lizzie boardenhouse or something, but he wants
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: to get to the bottom of what he can, at.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: Least right Yeah, he said he's going to try to
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: get with UK or K state. I don't remember which
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: one to do, like ground penetrating surveys, But I don't
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: know what his endgame is either. But it's pretty neat
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: that he bought it, And one of the reasons why
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: he's feeling good about finding something is the family that
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: he bought it from owned the land for like the
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: last sixty five previous years, and they showed zero interest
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: whatsoever in finding the actual site, and they just turned
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: it all into crop land. So there's a good chance
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: that there's something like the foundation, maybe even that gastro
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: seller the well that the one guy was found in
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: remnants of the orchard. Who knows, there could be plenty
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: of stuff left there. I don't know if they're gonna
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: I believe they exhumed all of the bodies that they found,
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: but that's not to say that they found everybody.
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, absolutely. There was a movie made in
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: twenty sixteen called Bender that does not look great. Did
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: you see the trailer?
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: I know, I didn't. I just saw. Livia quoted a
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: user from IMDb that said it had some of the
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: worst acting I've ever seen.
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: What was the trailer like uh not, I mean, it
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: didn't look great. I read some other reviews that said
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: it was okay, but it wasn't like U super murdery
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: or super scary, so it kind of fell too much
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: toward like historical drama.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: They talked a lot about like raising in harvesting grain.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: Maybe I don't know, but there was a thing that
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: in Red Dead Redemption two that is funny because I
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: kind of forgot about this. I played that game a
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: couple of years ago, and there's a pig farm where
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: your character shows up and there's a creepy old lady
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: and a creepy old man and they're like trying to
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: get you to stay for dinner. And apparently it's modeled
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: after this, and you don't really know, and you know,
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: when you're in those games, you don't know quite what
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: to do, Like I feel like I should leave. It's
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: kind of like real life. But they offer you libations,
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: and you need libations. So if you just I don't
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: all right, If you want to play this game and
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: you haven't, it's pretty old, don't listen to this part.
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: But if you don't care, like most people, don't drink
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: the drink because as soon as you drink the drink,
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: the screen goes woozy, and you wake up the next day,
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: and I'm not sure that good things happened overnight.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: Okay, but you're not dead.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: Huh, you're not dead.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: That's not very bendery, No, it's not.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: I think they were inspired by the Vendors a little bit,
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: but I don't know supposedly.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: Also, I've never read American Gods, the Neil game and book.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: Have you? Have you read any of his stuff?
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: Never have.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: I've read some of his short stories and they're amazing,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: so I'm surprised I've never read his novels. But in
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: American Gods, one of the characters is a Slavic god
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: named Zunborg, so that I'm going with. And every time
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: the Benders killed somebody, he gained strength from their sacrifice,
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: which is a pretty neat little take on the whole thing.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: You know, because we're so like we have the blinders
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: on here on Earth, we don't even realize this murder
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: family is actually contributing to the well being of a
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: Slavic god.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: I thought you were going to say, whenever they killed someone,
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: they would yell Zunberg.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Well they did that. Too, but that was never captured
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: in the articles from the time, Chuck, which, by the way,
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: if you're like I need to know more about the
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: bloody Benders, and I will not have it filtered through history.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: I need the original stuff. There's a website called Genealogytrails
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: dot com and if you search that and Bender Family
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: and your favorite search engine, it will bring up the
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: crime related news articles from the time about the Bender family.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: And it's awesome because it has a bunch of other details.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: But also it's got like that old timey nineteenth century
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: you know, crime reporting too write It's just worth reading,
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: for sure.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: It's always fun.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: You got anything else about the Benders?
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: Nothing else?
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: Well, that said about the Benders for now everybody. And
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: since Chuck said nothing else, that means it's time for
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: a listener. Man.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: Hey, guys, stumbled across you in the summer of twenty
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: twenty when I was employed as a USPS Rural Carrier associate,
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: not a rural juror. I heard it.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: Wait wait, now, I need to know what was that.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: I can't remember what that's.
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: From thirty Rock.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: I still can't place it, but I'll think about it
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: and I'll say Eureka later.
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: Okay, well, what's funny is after we talked a little
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: bit about thirty Rock on our Sitcoms episode and Emily
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: went out of town for a week and I barreled
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: through season one of thirty Rock while she was gone,
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: and it was so good.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just really do it again.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: What a show god. Alec Baldwin Yeah, and Tracy Morgan Yeah.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: And don't forget Liz Lemon.
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: She was great. But uh oh boy, Baldwin and Tracy
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: Morgan just slavey on the show. I mean, everyone on
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: that show was really funny.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Tracy Morgan's best quote was somebody offered him cash
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: who's and he said, I'm glad you said that, because
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: I thought it was a bowl of baby penises.
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: His other a good one that I got was you're
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: talking about how they go together, like peanut butter, and
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: he said, or like chicken and the chicken container.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: That's pretty good. So.
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: Rural Juror though, was the movie that Jane Krakowski was in,
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: and the joke is she goes Rure Duror and like,
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: no one knows what the title of the movie. He is,
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: but it had gone so long they couldn't really ask her, uh,
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: what the name of the movie was.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: I don't.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'm gonna keep watching it. She's so funny too, however, okay,
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: all right, back to the email. I have heard a
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: podcasts before, but never gave it much thought until a
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: friend insisted started to listen to some and they got
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: to the point of stuff you should Know, where I'd
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: talk to some much about y'all. My husband finally came
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: and said, who the Hecker Josh and Chuck, and when
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: you're going to introduce me to your new friends? But
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: now the show is our go to for family road trips.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: Awesome.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: One neat thing I wanted to write about, though, was
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: my last dental appointment in February. I decided to bring
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: along earbuds so I could listen to y'all while getting
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: some feelings done. I asked the dentist and the assistant
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: if it would be okay to listen to the podcast
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: while they work, and the dentist said it was okay,
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: but asked me what I was going to listen to first.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: I told her it was stuff you should Know and
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: how much I enjoyed it. And I was listening to
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: the Chowchilla Bus kidnapping episode. My dentist lit up and
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: told me how awesome that episode was. Her assistant had
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: never heard of the show, but the dentist was happily
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: talking about your show so much that my entire visit
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: I didn't get to listen to the episode because I
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: was half chatting to my dentist about stuff. You should know.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: Thank you for saving me while I was delivering people's mail,
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: and for keeping company during my commutes with love from
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: the Land of ten Thousand Lakes. That is Tanya Vanderpool
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: from Texas. Ten thousand Lakes, Texas has like two lakes.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: What is that Minnesota? Minnesota?
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right, a thousand lakes.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's gotta be Michigan. No, Minnesota, Yeah, it's Minnesota
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: for sure. She really didn't say, you're not toying with me.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, I'm saying I'm not toying
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: with you, but I'm also on the verge of saying
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: so many things that are wrong about lakes and states
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: that I'm just stopping.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: That's fine, that's fine, But can you imagine the audacity
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: of just signing off with the Land of ten Thousand
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: Lakes and not putting in parentheses. What state you're talking about?
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: I mean, I like my email's Chuck of the Peach State.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, well that is pretty audacious. Chuck, it's violently unusual.
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: What was the person's name again, Minnesota?
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: You're in fine form today, aren't you. You're being playful.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: I'm kidding. It was Tanya Vanderpool.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, thanks a lot, Tanya. We appreciate that, and we're
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: glad we can keep you company and that we made
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: your dentist's appointment so special. If you want to get
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: in touch with us like Tanya did and tell us
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: about your dental visits, why not, You can send it
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: in an email to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.