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The Tale of the Bloody Benders · Stuff You Should Know

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