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Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 1: written about them, Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker, DTK. Every
Speaker 1: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 1: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 1: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 5: Good evening. At a remote little inn, not far from
Speaker 5: the Kansas homestead of Laura Ingalls Wilder lived the Bender family.
Speaker 5: These pioneers welcomed unwary visitors with jack rabbit stew and
Speaker 5: a sledge hammer to the skull. In time, their apple
Speaker 5: orchard gave up its secrets, a burial ground for their
Speaker 5: mutilated victims, each stripped of their possessions. The devilish enterprise
Speaker 5: on Hell's half Acre would earn the Bloody Benders an
Speaker 5: undying place in the annals of American infamy. But it
Speaker 5: was the mysterious fate of eldest daughter Kate that would
Speaker 5: make them the stuff of mythic campfire prairie tales. Slaughterhouse
Speaker 5: on the Prairie is part of Bloodlands, a chilling collection
Speaker 5: of short, addictive historical narratives from best selling true crime
Speaker 5: master Harold Scheckter, spanning a century in our nation's murderous past.
Speaker 5: Scheckter resurrects nearly forgotten tales of madmen and thrill killers
Speaker 5: that dominated the most sensational headlines of their day. The
Speaker 5: book they were featuring this evening is Little slaughter House
Speaker 5: on the Prairie Bloodlands Collection, with my special guest, journalists
Speaker 5: and author and historian Harold Schechter. Welcome back to the program,
Speaker 5: and thank you very much again for coming back to
Speaker 5: the program for this interview.
Speaker 6: Well, happy to be here as oeas Dan. Thank you
Speaker 6: for inviting me.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. And let's get to a little
Speaker 5: bit about this Bloodlands collection before we get into Little
Speaker 5: Slaughterhouse on the Prairie. Tell us like this a little
Speaker 5: bit more about this collection.
Speaker 6: Well, it's part of this new series called Amazon Original Stories.
Speaker 6: And each entry, each story and blood Lands, there are
Speaker 6: six of them altogether. Each one isn't meant to be
Speaker 6: read in one sitting a couple of hours. They run
Speaker 6: about forty or fifty pages, although they're only available as ebooks,
Speaker 6: and they span, as you mentioned in your introduction, about
Speaker 6: one hundred years of American criminal history. The first one
Speaker 6: is called The Pirate. It's about an eighteen sixties mass
Speaker 6: murderer named Albert Hicks, who killed the entire crew and
Speaker 6: captain on bought an oyster sloop in the early nineteen
Speaker 6: in the mid nineteen in the excuse me in the
Speaker 6: eighteen sixties. And then there's Little Slaughterhouse on the Prairie,
Speaker 6: which is set in Kansas in the early eighteen seventies,
Speaker 6: as you mentioned about the bloody Bender family. The third
Speaker 6: one is about a remember all of them. One of
Speaker 6: them is about this sex crime panic that gripped the
Speaker 6: country in the nineteen thirties. There was a hand full
Speaker 6: of very gruesome, sensational pad opheliac murders that happened in
Speaker 6: New York and one very horrific one in Los Angeles.
Speaker 6: And this fuel this UH, I guess what sociologists call
Speaker 6: a moral panic, which was also partly fed by Jack
Speaker 6: or Hoover. This UH and and and again the tabloids
Speaker 6: played a great role in creating this nationwide hysteria that
Speaker 6: the country was overrun, you know, with what they call
Speaker 6: these sex degenerates. Then there's one about UH, an African
Speaker 6: American serial murderer who is known as the Brickslayer, who
Speaker 6: would sneak into bedrooms of women and murder them with
Speaker 6: a brick. He was the model for the character of
Speaker 6: Bigger Thomas in Richard Wright's classic book Native Son. Then
Speaker 6: there's one on Howard Unrouped, the first modern mass murderer
Speaker 6: in American history, this World War Two veteran who shot
Speaker 6: to death a dozen of his neighbors in Camden, New Jersey,
Speaker 6: in nineteen forty nine. And then the last one is
Speaker 6: about Charles Schmidt, the so called Pied Piper of Tucson,
Speaker 6: who is kind of a pre Charlie Manson kind of
Speaker 6: character in the mid nineteen sixties. So those six stories together,
Speaker 6: and each one is a separate kindle, single comprise the
Speaker 6: Bloodland's collection. And again they're only available as on Kendle.
Speaker 6: They can be purchased individually or being.
Speaker 5: Well, that sounds very very interesting, incredible stories. Let's get
Speaker 5: to this incredible story, Little Slaughterhouse on the Prairie. You
Speaker 5: open this up with the right in the beginning, talk
Speaker 5: about the inspiration to this, and we just mentioned that
Speaker 5: a little bit about Charles Ingalls Wilder, and this is
Speaker 5: the story of Little House on the Prayer as everybody knows,
Speaker 5: sow that on television, and you say that this is
Speaker 5: the this is the story of these people moving to
Speaker 5: big Woods of the Big Woods of Wisconsin. Charles Ingalls,
Speaker 5: pioneering spirit, packed his wife and small children into a
Speaker 5: covered wagon and headed west for the Indian territory of
Speaker 5: southeast Kansas. Why the play on the little play on words,
Speaker 5: little Slaughterhouse on the prairie? Why is it inspired by
Speaker 5: this little house on the prairie? What about this story?
Speaker 5: Why is little House on the prairie involved in this story?
Speaker 5: Little Slaughterhouse on the prairie?
Speaker 6: Right? Well? Uh, Later in life, after you know, she
Speaker 6: had achieved a great yal of celebrity, Laura Inga Wilders
Speaker 6: published a magazine article talking about all the stuff she
Speaker 6: had left out of her Little House on the Prairie books. Uh,
Speaker 6: you know, and she you know, she discussed how, you know,
Speaker 6: there are all these all these events that she felt
Speaker 6: were not suitable for children. You know that she actually
Speaker 6: heard about her witness families, you know, freezing to death
Speaker 6: in these blizzards and in cases of infidet marital infidelity,
Speaker 6: and you know, excusing various acts of violence. In the
Speaker 6: course of the article, she mentioned that her family had
Speaker 6: actually had a couple of encounters with the venders. Uh.
Speaker 6: And she also uh described, you know, a memory she
Speaker 6: had of her father having gone off and you know,
Speaker 6: in return one day and revealed that he had been
Speaker 6: part of the posse that had pursued and hunted down
Speaker 6: the Benders, although he supposedly, you know, refused to tell
Speaker 6: her specifically what had happened, but she had the distinct
Speaker 6: impression that her father, again as part of this posse,
Speaker 6: he had taken part in, you know, running down the
Speaker 6: Benders and lynching them. So, you know, for a long time,
Speaker 6: you know, people who you know were interested in Wilder
Speaker 6: and her life, you know, just took this, you know,
Speaker 6: as a matter of course. But later scholars have determined
Speaker 6: that in fact, the Wilders had left Kansas the before
Speaker 6: the Benders had set up their murder tavern. So you know,
Speaker 6: this was a case of you know, which happens very
Speaker 6: often obviously as one grows older, you know, some some
Speaker 6: flawed embellished memory.
Speaker 5: Right, And very interesting is what she does write in
Speaker 5: that book, as well as saying that her father was
Speaker 5: part of this posseum we're getting ahead of ourselves with
Speaker 5: the story, but also that there was a couple of
Speaker 5: encounters where these the Benders had this tavern, and they
Speaker 5: came to on their on their way to their destination,
Speaker 5: they came to the tavern, but they didn't have the money.
Speaker 5: She said to stop at the tavern, so to avoid
Speaker 5: what would have happened certainly to all those other people.
Speaker 5: And that was part of the other facts that were
Speaker 5: part of her book, weren't it.
Speaker 6: Yes, that is part of it. But again that actually
Speaker 6: would not have apparently been possible because in fact, you know,
Speaker 6: there are dates in Kansas don't quite overlap. So so yeah,
Speaker 6: I mean kind of interesting, you know, the way in
Speaker 6: which one can you know, Revise once passed and become
Speaker 6: absolutely convinced that these things happened, when in fact they didn't.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Absolutely. You say, during Wilder's childhood that Bender Tavern
Speaker 5: came to be known as the Devil's in the Devil's Kitchen,
Speaker 5: Hell's half Acre. And then now you say, just recently
Speaker 5: historians have branded at Little slaughter House on the prairie.
Speaker 5: You talk about there was the I guess surprising amount
Speaker 5: of murders. Are plenty of murders in the region that
Speaker 5: was sparsely populated, And it's how you mentioned notorious cities
Speaker 5: like Dodge City, and then another city. I hadn't heard
Speaker 5: of Newton. This is years after the Civil War. And
Speaker 5: you say this county organized in eighteen sixty seven. How
Speaker 5: was it that there was a you talk about the
Speaker 5: treaty with the Ossasian Nation. How was it that people
Speaker 5: were coming to this area in fair amount of numbers?
Speaker 5: What was it that drove them to this area?
Speaker 6: Well, well, I mean in eighteen sixty two, you know,
Speaker 6: the government passed the Homestead Act, so you know, well
Speaker 6: this was after the United States, after the O Sage Nation,
Speaker 6: you know, ceeded this great tract of their land to
Speaker 6: the government. You know, I mean, I guess most of
Speaker 6: us are, you know, familiar with the sort of history
Speaker 6: of you know, the way the US government dealt with
Speaker 6: Native Americans. You know, they were constantly entering into these treaties,
Speaker 6: you know, taking over the land, you know, promising the
Speaker 6: Indian cit you know, they would be able to continue
Speaker 6: to reside on these large reservations in perpetuity. And then
Speaker 6: you know, the more white settler showed up, the more
Speaker 6: of the Indian land was appropriated. But in any case,
Speaker 6: in eighteen sixty two, you know, the government passed the
Speaker 6: Homestead Act, which offered one hundred and sixty acres of
Speaker 6: what was then public land. You know, to any settler
Speaker 6: who came and worked it for five and lived on
Speaker 6: it and worked it for five years. So you know
Speaker 6: that obviously attracted a great deal of pioneers to the area.
Speaker 5: You talk about. In eighteen seventy two individuals stopped in
Speaker 5: front of the trading post. You say, run, you're write
Speaker 5: that run by Rudolph Brockman and his partner August Earn.
Speaker 5: And this is in the southeast corner of the state,
Speaker 5: not far from Cherryvale. And he described the driver as
Speaker 5: a slim young man mid to late twenties, and just
Speaker 5: his nature, his behavior seemed like people might categorize him
Speaker 5: as a simpleton. And there was an older man sitting
Speaker 5: beside him. And you say, it's not even sure whether
Speaker 5: that's it was his son or maybe a step son.
Speaker 5: But what was it that they were they stopped in
Speaker 5: front of this in front of this shop here? What
Speaker 5: was it that they had in common? You say that
Speaker 5: they were Brockmen and this person had something in common
Speaker 5: and that he decided to they were both help him out.
Speaker 6: They were supposed to. They were you know what they
Speaker 6: called back then Hollanders, uh, you know, which basically meant
Speaker 6: that they were German in origin. You know, there's a
Speaker 6: lot of mystery that surrounds the origins and really even
Speaker 6: the relationship among you know, the various members of the
Speaker 6: so called Bender family. So yeah, there was old man Bender, uh.
Speaker 6: And then you know this younger man who, again we
Speaker 6: don't entirely know, I mean, you know, often described as
Speaker 6: his son, sometimes a step son. You know, there are
Speaker 6: various accounts that claim, you know, that they there was
Speaker 6: no familiar relationship between them at all. But but in general,
Speaker 6: you know, the you know, the consensus seems to be
Speaker 6: that he was, you know, he was the son of
Speaker 6: old men Bender, you know, John Junior, right, And they
Speaker 6: had showed up, you know, like other settlers to the region,
Speaker 6: you know, to claim this land and to settle on it.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about right away, they got some wood
Speaker 5: from neighboring town and they built a small little place,
Speaker 5: you say, sixteen by twenty four so it's a small building,
Speaker 5: and it's just the two of them that seem to
Speaker 5: have built this building. And then they sent for the
Speaker 5: women you described, they wrote They built a sixteen by
Speaker 5: twenty four foot building and It was constructed over a
Speaker 5: shallow cellar about seven foot deep, and then they got
Speaker 5: a huge slab of sandstone seven foot by three inch thick,
Speaker 5: and that that served as the cellar floor. And then
Speaker 5: they've had a crude trap door that they built as well.
Speaker 5: And later they dug a well, built a rough sod stable,
Speaker 5: and assembled a corn crib, which I'm not sure what
Speaker 5: that is, and a corral intends for livestock. So they
Speaker 5: set up what kind of business you talk about a tavern,
Speaker 5: but describe, as you do in the book, what really
Speaker 5: this looked like in was and functioned as.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, you know, photographs actually still exist of the
Speaker 6: vendor quote unquote tavern. Yeah, but it was basically this
Speaker 6: one room shack and they strung up this partition which
Speaker 6: is sometimes again described as canvas at other times, you know,
Speaker 6: another kind of light fabric. But in the front part
Speaker 6: of it they create they built a rough counter and
Speaker 6: created this very rudimentary kind of grocery store. You know,
Speaker 6: they hung up a misspelled sign in front of the
Speaker 6: cabin advertising it as a grocery shop. That the cabin,
Speaker 6: by the way, you know, was built right by this
Speaker 6: what was called the o Sage Trail, which was but
Speaker 6: it was the main thoroughfare between you know, two of
Speaker 6: the major towns in that area. So they deliberately constructed
Speaker 6: this residents, you know, where travelers would pass close by. Uh,
Speaker 6: and they stocked it, you know, the few meager provisions
Speaker 6: for travelers, but they would also offer food and lodgings
Speaker 6: two weary travelers. Uh and uh. They used the you're
Speaker 6: part of the shack as the kind of again very
Speaker 6: very crude restaurant. You know, they had a table set
Speaker 6: up with some benches and so on, and then a
Speaker 6: couple of mattresses on the floor where all the benders slept.
Speaker 6: And then a few want to just spend the night there,
Speaker 6: you know, you can join them on the floor in
Speaker 6: another mattress.
Speaker 5: You write in the book that soon after or in
Speaker 5: eighteen seventy one, But anyways, that two women arrived, and
Speaker 5: one was mob Bender and the other one was as
Speaker 5: you write, likely her daughter, twenty three year old Kate.
Speaker 5: And you had even some question as whether what Alvira
Speaker 5: it was Ivira or Kate sr. But anyway, we called
Speaker 5: her the mob Bender or as you say, sometimes called
Speaker 5: the old Hag. Yes, and so and both you say,
Speaker 5: both the kids, John Junior it was supposed to be
Speaker 5: a little bit simple and Kate were products of a
Speaker 5: previous marriage that she had. And now you talk about
Speaker 5: you talk about the four of them setting up this tavern.
Speaker 5: Very interesting and we alluded to in the introduction that
Speaker 5: Kate's role in this little enterprise here. So what does
Speaker 5: Kate end up publicizing herself as in terms of some
Speaker 5: of the skills and talents that she has.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, Kate, you know, supposedly with some kind
Speaker 6: of medium who would conduct spiritualistic seances. It's a little again,
Speaker 6: you know, so many as you know, as with all
Speaker 6: notorious serial killers, particularly going back that far, all these
Speaker 6: myths and legends have grown up about her. But we
Speaker 6: do know for sure she uh, you know that she
Speaker 6: advertised herself as a healer because business cards still exist. Actually,
Speaker 6: you know that she would circulate professor Miss Kate Bender
Speaker 6: can heal all sorts of diseases, can cure blindness, fits, deafness,
Speaker 6: and et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, she was, you know,
Speaker 6: set herself up as this kind of quack physician. But
Speaker 6: her main role well, I don't know how far ahead
Speaker 6: of the story you want to get. But you know,
Speaker 6: her main role in terms of the family enterprise was
Speaker 6: apparently too distract unwary travelers who were eating, you know,
Speaker 6: at the Bender in, you know, while her husband, while
Speaker 6: her father and brother dispatched them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you talk about we'll get into the details right
Speaker 5: away with an example and a couple examples. Of course,
Speaker 5: you talk about some people were lucky enough to survive
Speaker 5: the lender experience. And so in eighteen seventy one, you say,
Speaker 5: for a few weeks, Katie took a job. Kate took
Speaker 5: a job as a waitress in the Cherryville Hotel, and
Speaker 5: she met Julie Hassler, a professed clairvoyant who shared her
Speaker 5: enthusiasm for telling fortunes and talking to spirits. And sometime
Speaker 5: that spring, you right that Julie visited the Bender Place
Speaker 5: after Kate invited her. And immediately you say, Julie was
Speaker 5: struck by the squalor of this little shanty, but also
Speaker 5: the credible foul stench wafting up from the floorboard, she said,
Speaker 5: and the blue bottle flies. You talk about a seance.
Speaker 5: What happens in this seance that makes her change her
Speaker 5: mind about her friend?
Speaker 6: Well, according to her testimony, and again let me emphasize,
Speaker 6: you know that her testimony came after the Vendor atrocities
Speaker 6: were uncovered. So what does always have to you know,
Speaker 6: question its validity because it is always the case when
Speaker 6: horrible crimes are discovered in some community in the past,
Speaker 6: that people come forward to testify. You know that they
Speaker 6: had come close to being killed themselves by these monsters.
Speaker 6: But according to Julie's testimony, you know, they were they
Speaker 6: were beginning the seance and she closed her eyes and
Speaker 6: holding Kate's hands to some of up these spirits, and
Speaker 6: suddenly she was overcome with, as she described it, a
Speaker 6: terrible feeling. And when she opened her eyes, she saw
Speaker 6: the old hag, Mob Bender and John Bender and Pob
Speaker 6: Bender suddenly approaching her. Uh and Pob Bender had an
Speaker 6: axe in his hand. And you know, Julie basically said
Speaker 6: she had to her to the bathroom and got out
Speaker 6: of bear and fled. So yeah, so that was her,
Speaker 6: you know, that was her experience. Again, maybe happened, maybe
Speaker 6: did happened. You know, there is some reason to doubt it, namely,
Speaker 6: you know, the Bender's basically who chose victims. You know
Speaker 6: that they were planning to rob and so on and
Speaker 6: so forth, and that I don't know if that was
Speaker 6: the case with you know, with Julie, but but anyway,
Speaker 6: that was her story.
Speaker 5: You say that. About a month later, and this is
Speaker 5: May eighteen seventy one, two boys find a man's decomposing
Speaker 5: body in a body in a water hole just below
Speaker 5: a creek. And this is identified as William Jones, a
Speaker 5: stonemason who had gone missing on his way to independence,
Speaker 5: which is the long this route that we talked about,
Speaker 5: and he was supposed to file a claim on some
Speaker 5: land in the next county. As we find with all
Speaker 5: of these cases, but this is the first one that
Speaker 5: authority see, that people see, what is the state of
Speaker 5: the person's physical body, The things that would come to
Speaker 5: known as that that signature of this killer.
Speaker 6: Well, they all had, you know, their their skulls splashed in,
Speaker 6: the back of their skulls splashed in, and their throats
Speaker 6: were cut from year to year. I mean, you know,
Speaker 6: the throats of the vendor victims were gashed so severely
Speaker 6: that you know, the heads were barely attached to the
Speaker 6: bodies anymore in some of the cases.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, Now you say too that whatever money was
Speaker 5: there was gone as well, and the police were searching
Speaker 5: the site. They didn't find any solid clues, but they
Speaker 5: did find a set of wheel tracks on the sandy
Speaker 5: bank made my wagon whose rear axle was wider than
Speaker 5: the front. So that's the only thing they had, very
Speaker 5: very little anyway. And then you go ahead to January seventh,
Speaker 5: eighteen seventy two, and missus Leroy Dick, and you just
Speaker 5: say that she saw the old man and his son.
Speaker 5: They lived about four miles southeast of the Dick's place
Speaker 5: of the home. But she said it was odd because
Speaker 5: the two men were heading away from their home towards
Speaker 5: the open prairie. Why would that be odd to her?
Speaker 5: And what does that develop into?
Speaker 6: Well, it was odd because there was a snowstorm going on,
Speaker 6: and you know, there would have been no particular reason
Speaker 6: why they were heading into the open prairie as opposed
Speaker 6: to heading back home as quickly as possible. You know,
Speaker 6: when she mentioned it to her husband, Leroy, you know,
Speaker 6: he basically said, well, you know, maybe they were just
Speaker 6: lost in the snow. But then when the spring fall
Speaker 6: came a couple of more the bodies of two war
Speaker 6: men were discovered out on the prairie basically in the
Speaker 6: direction that the two bendermen were headed when Missus Dick
Speaker 6: spotted them. And those two men, like the previous victim,
Speaker 6: had been murdered, you know, with their their skulls had
Speaker 6: been crushed and their throated throats had been slit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And we talked about the William Jones, the stonemason,
Speaker 5: had gone missing. He was found in that thaw. And
Speaker 5: you say, during the following year, at least nine men
Speaker 5: traveling by themselves through Labette County went missing. And you're
Speaker 5: write then in newspapers throughout the state, Southeast Kansas was
Speaker 5: earning a reputation as a perilous place for a loan traveler.
Speaker 5: And then you say, within a month Osage Township Trustee
Speaker 5: Leroy Dick again we just mentioned him, received six letters
Speaker 5: from relatives looking for men lost heading in the direction
Speaker 5: of Labette County. And you say some of those men
Speaker 5: were thought to have been carrying substantial sums of money,
Speaker 5: especially for that time. You were saying William Crotton McCrate
Speaker 5: twenty six hundred dollars again reportedly another man, John.
Speaker 6: Greery two thousand, six hundred dollars.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, absolutely, yeah, And then you had another one,
Speaker 5: John Greery, believed to be carrying two thousand dollars, Johnny
Speaker 5: Boyle nineteen hundred. And then he just had another man,
Speaker 5: Benjamin Brown. He only had fifty dollars, but he had
Speaker 5: a handsome wagon drawn by a well matched Ima Surrell horses,
Speaker 5: so a valuable he still had valuables. So yeah, and
Speaker 5: you also talked about too that even one of the
Speaker 5: men was this Jack Henry Mackenzie was a distant relative
Speaker 5: relative of Leroy Dick's wife. So with all these reports,
Speaker 5: what do authorities do? And you do introduce a person
Speaker 5: named doctor William.
Speaker 6: Yorke mm hmm, Well, I mean York was another victim.
Speaker 6: I mean York, Doctor William York ended up, you know,
Speaker 6: being the victim that kind of led ultimately to the
Speaker 6: uncovery of the Bend atrocities. But yeah, I mean, uh,
Speaker 6: the you know, the townspeople of Labet or or you know,
Speaker 6: the residents of Labette County, you know be you know,
Speaker 6: because the area was starting to get, you know, such
Speaker 6: a terrible reputation, they at some point held a meeting
Speaker 6: and you know, decided that they were going to make
Speaker 6: a concerted effort to try to track down you know
Speaker 6: whoever was portraying these crimes. But yeah, So.
Speaker 5: You talk about a man named George Longquorps, and you
Speaker 5: say his wife died in childbirth and he decided to
Speaker 5: leave Kansas with his infant girl and returned to his
Speaker 5: parents' home in Iowa. He needed a suitable vehicle for
Speaker 5: the trip, and he struck a deal for a wagon
Speaker 5: with his friend and family physician, doctor William Yorke, as
Speaker 5: we introduced, and he set up for Iowa in late
Speaker 5: February eighteen seventy three. He said, the two of them
Speaker 5: made it as far as Coffeeville, went a blizzard hit
Speaker 5: and the pair took shelter at the home of a
Speaker 5: neighborly widow and the widow was the last person, you
Speaker 5: say to see George and his daughter alive. M you
Speaker 5: say that you're right that it was. It was doctor
Speaker 5: York who discovered long Corepse belongings when he left his
Speaker 5: home to visit the near Independence to visit his brother
Speaker 5: in Fort Scott. And once he was in the town,
Speaker 5: how did he discover this wagon? What was it? Did he?
Speaker 5: You say this? He heard stories about the wagon and
Speaker 5: the team abandoned in nearby wood. What did he find
Speaker 5: and what did he deduce from from that discovery?
Speaker 6: Well, again, long Cores and his daughter long Corps had
Speaker 6: traded for you know, this wagon and this this team
Speaker 6: uh with Dr York and you know, and and and
Speaker 6: set out presumably for Iowa. UH and then just and disappeared.
Speaker 6: And the townspeople found this abandoned wagon and brought it
Speaker 6: into town. And then just by Happenstance York himself, you know,
Speaker 6: happened to be traveling, you know, when traveling to see
Speaker 6: his brother uh and stopped off of this town and
Speaker 6: you know, saw this wagon that had been abandondn't realize
Speaker 6: that was the wagon that long Core had purchased from him,
Speaker 6: you know. There other than the fact that he was
Speaker 6: very bewildered by this fact, you know, we don't know
Speaker 6: much more about how he reacted to it. But then
Speaker 6: he continued on his way, and then he disappeared. And
Speaker 6: it was when William York disappeared that his brother, Colonel
Speaker 6: Alexander York, he was a very very prominent figure uh
Speaker 6: in the area U if he was a senator actually,
Speaker 6: you know, set out fund to find out what had
Speaker 6: become of his brother. And that, of course, ultimately led
Speaker 6: to the uncovery of the Bender atrocities.
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Speaker 5: to hire Now, Harold, we talked about the Colonel Alexander
Speaker 5: am Byork, brother to doctor William Yorke. You say in
Speaker 5: you're writing your book, He's not a man to be
Speaker 5: trifled with. He practiced law in eighteen sixty one before
Speaker 5: enlisting as a private with the ninety second Illinois Volunteers
Speaker 5: in eighteen sixty three. Three he rose to colonel and
Speaker 5: several years of law practice and he established a newspaper.
Speaker 5: So this person is looking for to avenge his brother's death,
Speaker 5: to look into what he hears about rumors, what may
Speaker 5: have happened, How does it happen that, How does it
Speaker 5: happen to this?
Speaker 6: I mean at that point, he was not so much
Speaker 6: looking to avenge his brother's death, since he wasn't sure
Speaker 6: that his brother was dead, but yes, but he was
Speaker 6: certainly trying to discover what had become of his brother,
Speaker 6: who had just banished. So he assembled a search party
Speaker 6: and they began to retrace his brother's route, which ultimately
Speaker 6: led to the Bender tavern Uh. And when they arrived
Speaker 6: there they spoke to They encountered John Junior, who verified
Speaker 6: that a man matching doctor York's description had stopped by
Speaker 6: there sometime earlier, about a week earlier or so, and
Speaker 6: then written off, And John Junior speculated that maybe York
Speaker 6: had been waylaid and murdered by a gang of gang
Speaker 6: of outlaws who you know, who were sort of camped
Speaker 6: out with some nearby spot and John led the posse
Speaker 6: uh to the place of the ambush, the alleged ambush,
Speaker 6: and uh, you know, of course it didn't find anything, so,
Speaker 6: you know, York and his posse wrote off. And it
Speaker 6: was shortly thereafter that a large group of men from O.
Speaker 6: S h township you know, call this meeting uh and
Speaker 6: agreed that they were going to serve every homestead in
Speaker 6: the vicinity UH to see if they could somehow, you know,
Speaker 6: turn up evidence that one of the local residents was
Speaker 6: responsible for this series of murders that was casting such
Speaker 6: a you know, such a blight on the name of
Speaker 6: the whole the whole county.
Speaker 5: Mm hmm. You right, though, that was very haunting, is it.
Speaker 5: When he went for the fruitless Sir with John Junior,
Speaker 5: they returned to the Bender home and never greeted there
Speaker 5: by Kate, and accounts were again that York knew of
Speaker 5: Kate's psychic abilities and proposed that she used them to
Speaker 5: locate missing brother. And she said she went into a trance,
Speaker 5: and she said spirits were reluctant to assist. There's too
Speaker 5: many unbelievers around. And she told York told him to
Speaker 5: return the next day, but on one condition. What what
Speaker 5: did she say that one condition was? And what did
Speaker 5: he do in response to that?
Speaker 6: Well, the condition was that he'd come by himself. But
Speaker 6: you know, but York did not take her up on
Speaker 6: that invitation, and by implication, saved his own life.
Speaker 5: Sure. Sure, you talk about a week later after this meeting,
Speaker 5: and and at that meeting is well, the two Bender
Speaker 5: men are at that meeting and they leave, apparently board
Speaker 5: their wagon and they leave. About a week later, a
Speaker 5: man named Charles Nelson, a resident of Fayir, Kansas, about
Speaker 5: ten miles north of where the Benders are Bender's home is,
Speaker 5: was passing through a ravine outside the town. He found
Speaker 5: a dilapidated wagon abandoned with two half starved horses. And
Speaker 5: you say, the editor of the Fair Headlight, a newspaper,
Speaker 5: examined the wagon. What did they find in that wagon.
Speaker 5: It was very interesting.
Speaker 6: Well, they found the Benders, the misspelled sign that the
Speaker 6: Benders had hung up on their shack advertising it as
Speaker 6: a grocery.
Speaker 5: Yes, and.
Speaker 6: You know the wagon also was notable because again it
Speaker 6: was constructed very oddly, you know, with the rear axles
Speaker 6: wider axle wider than the front axle. In other words,
Speaker 6: you know, it was the wagon whose wheels matched the
Speaker 6: tracks that had been found earlier at the location where
Speaker 6: one of the first victims had been found. But you
Speaker 6: know what was the interesting thing about that meeting, Clearly
Speaker 6: Ah pob Ender and John you know, realized it was
Speaker 6: time to high talent out of there because you know
Speaker 6: this all the all the male residents of the county.
Speaker 6: You know, we're eventually going to descend upon their farm
Speaker 6: and you know, discover the horrible truth about what was
Speaker 6: going on there.
Speaker 5: Yes, you're right that it takes three weeks after that
Speaker 5: wagon is found and the neighbor, Silas Tolls, notices that
Speaker 5: the Bender's farm looks unoccupied. He sees the cattle and
Speaker 5: hogs and horses are all wandering around. He found the
Speaker 5: house deserted and the horse and wagon gone. And he
Speaker 5: found a star of calf So Tolls contacts Leroy Dick,
Speaker 5: the town trustee, who sent word to Colonel York. So
Speaker 5: you talk about Colonel and a large party of men
Speaker 5: I think fifteen arrive at the border at the Bender place.
Speaker 5: Tell us what they they find.
Speaker 6: Well, they find evidence that the place had been vacated
Speaker 6: in a hurry. They find a number of hammers, including
Speaker 6: a very large six pound hammer. They find a German
Speaker 6: bible with these inscriptions on the inside cover, including one
Speaker 6: enigmatic entry slog day slagh Day. And what they also
Speaker 6: discover is this the place was just pervaded. You know,
Speaker 6: it's incredibly fetid odor. And they trace that odor to
Speaker 6: this trapdoor in which they lifted in the stentia rows.
Speaker 6: It was so foul, you know, that it drove them
Speaker 6: in outside. So they actually managed to lift up and
Speaker 6: move the entire shack and uh, you know, and take
Speaker 6: up the floor. And they discovered this little cellar with
Speaker 6: a stone slab on the bottom which was you know,
Speaker 6: just coated with clotted gore, which was the source of
Speaker 6: the stench. And they got a sledge hammer and shattered
Speaker 6: the slab and the earth underneath it was just saturated
Speaker 6: with dried blood.
Speaker 5: The you talk about the the amount of bodies that
Speaker 5: they find there and the excavation that they that they undertake.
Speaker 5: And right after this, right after they you say that
Speaker 5: one every part too is the colonel recognizes his brother
Speaker 5: and his head is cut ear to ear, you say,
Speaker 5: his throat, his ear to ear, His head falls off
Speaker 5: from is separated from his body when his brother's searching
Speaker 5: through that this horrorful scene you talk about. Immediately after this, though,
Speaker 5: they're looking for somebody to prosecute, and oddly they look
Speaker 5: at Rudolph Brockman, the trading post proprietor.
Speaker 6: Why is this the backtrack from it? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 6: after discovering you know, all this again, you know, this
Speaker 6: blood drenched cellar beneath the floor of the shack, they
Speaker 6: start looking over the property and your climbs a tree
Speaker 6: and he spots what appeared to be a grave in
Speaker 6: this nearby apple orchard. So who you know, the men
Speaker 6: go over there, did this makeshift grave up and discover
Speaker 6: the you know, the remains of York's brother, William new York.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 6: And then you know, in a short order they excavate
Speaker 6: the graves you know of about ten or eleven other victims,
Speaker 6: including that of George Longcore, who had been thrown into
Speaker 6: the grave with his infant daughter. Uh and the infant
Speaker 6: daughter there was evidence that the infant daughter had been
Speaker 6: had been buried alive with her father. So yeah, obviously
Speaker 6: the men are appalled, horrified, in rage, and they turn
Speaker 6: on uh Rudolph Brockman, you know, partly or largely because
Speaker 6: you know, he liked the Benders, was German. He was
Speaker 6: the first person who had encountered the Benders when the
Speaker 6: Benders first arrived, known had given him some you know,
Speaker 6: advice and assistance. So their immediate you know, the Posse's again,
Speaker 6: you know, it was this inflamed mob, you know, reacting
Speaker 6: the way mobs often do, and you know, they immediately
Speaker 6: turned on Brockman and strung him up and then you know,
Speaker 6: until he was almost dead and then cut him down.
Speaker 6: They basically, you know, were trying to torture a confession
Speaker 6: out of him, and of course he had nothing to confess, so.
Speaker 5: You do write that. It's very interesting though that twenty
Speaker 5: three years later, however, he was convicted of first to
Speaker 5: be murdered torture of his sixteen year old daughter.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah, well, it's one of the horrible eyes. But yes,
Speaker 6: but at the time, you know, he was certainly, you know,
Speaker 6: innocent of anything to do with the benders, so you know,
Speaker 6: but it was, you know, an example of again in
Speaker 6: this mob mentality, which sadly often overtakes large groups of
Speaker 6: people under those kinds of circumstances.
Speaker 5: You you write about another close neighbor, the other adjoining neighbor,
Speaker 5: Thomas Tayak. He was said to be a frequent visitor
Speaker 5: to the vendor home. He was also tortured in the
Speaker 5: same way with the rope lowering and stringing him up
Speaker 5: a few times to try to choke a confession out
Speaker 5: of them. And they eventually let both of these men
Speaker 5: go when they didn't get a confession anywhere. Now you
Speaker 5: you talk about it, you have an excavated grave photo
Speaker 5: here in your book as well. I just thought I
Speaker 5: mentioned too that you do have some excellent photos included
Speaker 5: in this in this book as well. Of the time
Speaker 5: eighteen seventy three and other dates. There was no eyewitnesses,
Speaker 5: but the chroniclers of the time, you say, the newspapers
Speaker 5: grabbed this story and was a sensation. What was the
Speaker 5: scenario that you say that chroniclers came up with on
Speaker 5: how these people preyed on these lone travelers.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, basically, the traveler would be invited to
Speaker 6: take a meal at this table, which was kind of
Speaker 6: sort of like a picnic table kind of thing, and
Speaker 6: he would be facing his back would be to this
Speaker 6: canvas partition with his head very close to it, presumably
Speaker 6: Kate who would distract him and entertain him and beguile
Speaker 6: him while he ate. Meanwhile, on the other side of
Speaker 6: the petition, Popbender and or John Bender you know, would
Speaker 6: come up with one of these hammers, and when the
Speaker 6: unwary traveler would lean his head back, they would smash
Speaker 6: his skull through the partition. And then again, nobody knows
Speaker 6: for sure, you know, they would either some people thought
Speaker 6: they would then dump him down into the cellar finish
Speaker 6: him off by slitting his throat. Other people speculated that
Speaker 6: they would just you know, tilt him back and slit
Speaker 6: his throat and just the blood would run down into
Speaker 6: the cellar and then they would wrap him up and
Speaker 6: you know, when it got dark, bury him in the
Speaker 6: apple orchard. So but one way or another, it seemed,
Speaker 6: you know, there was from you know, from the stains
Speaker 6: that they found on the cloth or canvas partition. You know,
Speaker 6: it seemed it seemed pretty certain that that's that's how
Speaker 6: they would murder these people. You know, they would be
Speaker 6: sitting there having a meal and one of the venders
Speaker 6: men would come up with a hammer and smash their skulls.
Speaker 5: Was there talk of any other mutilation?
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, when they you know that, you know, and
Speaker 6: again exactly why or you know this this was done
Speaker 6: to some of the bodies, But when they dug up
Speaker 6: some of the bodies, it seemed clear that some of
Speaker 6: the men had been castrated. Wow.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Now with the newspaper reports and you say, this
Speaker 5: instantly became a sensation. And not only were the graphic
Speaker 5: details reiterated over and old again, but rumors turn into
Speaker 5: I guess well received rumors and became facts in certain
Speaker 5: people's minds. So this story took on a life of
Speaker 5: its own in terms of the rumors becoming facts and
Speaker 5: very interesting what happened to the home itself with it
Speaker 5: becoming you say, an instant tourist attraction. I thought it
Speaker 5: was almost unbelievable. What happens to the building itself, the farm?
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, you know, it is and it isn't unbelievable
Speaker 6: in the sense that, you know, when you research these
Speaker 6: crimes as I've done. You know the book that I
Speaker 6: came out with, which I think I was on the
Speaker 6: program with you to discuss Hell's Princess about Bell Gunnis, Yeah,
Speaker 6: you know, which was you know, a very sensational case
Speaker 6: that happened about I guess thirty years after the bender.
Speaker 6: You know, you see the same thing, and you see
Speaker 6: this very very frequently. You know, there are some very
Speaker 6: notorious cases. There's something called the Red Barn murder in England.
Speaker 6: We're seeing the same thing. You know. These sites become
Speaker 6: instant tourist attractions. They attract thousands and thousands of curiosity seekers,
Speaker 6: you know, who immediately come, you know, by whatever means
Speaker 6: they can get there. I mean, you know, they have
Speaker 6: excursion trains and so on and so forth, and these
Speaker 6: become you know, there's a very very festive, carnivalized atmosphere.
Speaker 6: You know, hundreds of thousands really of curiosity seekers just
Speaker 6: immediately arrive on the site and start scavenging, you know,
Speaker 6: for all kinds of souvenirs. You know what people now
Speaker 6: call murder abelia. You know, basically you know, dismantling the shack,
Speaker 6: you know, taking every scrap of wood as a souvenir,
Speaker 6: you know, anything they can find, you know, clumps of
Speaker 6: you know, clumps of dirt and grass from the grave sites.
Speaker 6: You know, there's just this, you know, powerful human desire,
Speaker 6: you know, to somehow acquire these evil relics from these
Speaker 6: infamous murder sites. You know that that again, you know,
Speaker 6: we say it's unbelievable, but the fact it's all too
Speaker 6: believable because it just happens all the time. You know,
Speaker 6: when the crimes of ed Gean who were uncovered, you know,
Speaker 6: local residents in Plainfield, Wisconsin, it burned down his house
Speaker 6: because they knew, you know, it was going to attract
Speaker 6: all of these ghoulish souvenir hunters. Anything happened, you know,
Speaker 6: with Jeffrey Dahmer's place in Milwaukee. You know, if if
Speaker 6: if the place isn't torn down by the authorities, it's
Speaker 6: just going to attract people who're coming, you know, get
Speaker 6: a little get a little uh, you know, piece of memorabilia.
Speaker 6: So sure.
Speaker 5: You write about and we mentioned the posse that was
Speaker 5: organized by Colonel York and some of his important men,
Speaker 5: but also that there was three other we'll say, very
Speaker 5: official posses that went after these men despite the head
Speaker 5: start that you say that the Benders had probably a
Speaker 5: week or so, and there was some other official lawman
Speaker 5: and also other amateur sleuths that joined in on this.
Speaker 5: There was a considerable reward. But there is of course,
Speaker 5: nobody apprehends these people. But there are stories, and there
Speaker 5: are many stories about accounts of what really happened in
Speaker 5: terms of vigilante groups. Tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 6: Well, again, you know, a lot of mystery still surrounds
Speaker 6: the Bender case, as for example, you know it does
Speaker 6: with the Beliganus case. You know, nobody knows what happened
Speaker 6: to them. They're all kinds. There's various stories you know
Speaker 6: that different posses. You know, there are people again you know,
Speaker 6: Louring the Wilder, you know, who somehow claimed to have
Speaker 6: direct knowledge that you know, that the Vendors were hunted
Speaker 6: down by one posse or another and had lynched. You know,
Speaker 6: then there are other stories that they escaped and you
Speaker 6: know is often the case with notorious killers who somehow
Speaker 6: managed to evade the law. You know, there are these
Speaker 6: different sightings of the Benders in Kate Bender. You know,
Speaker 6: for decades really the fact, you know, there were stories
Speaker 6: when Belle Gunnis's crimes were uncovered, and you know, this
Speaker 6: is thirty years after the Bender crimes. You know, there
Speaker 6: were newspaper stories that bell Gunnis was Kate Bender. So yeah,
Speaker 6: I mean, again, that's kind of typical in these cases.
Speaker 6: You know, there were stories that they had escaped and
Speaker 6: were living in France and then well, yeah, so, but
Speaker 6: nobody knows for sure.
Speaker 5: You have this, but many stories were that they were
Speaker 5: that they met their their rightful end at the hand
Speaker 5: of the gil Anti Posse, and some horrendous things were
Speaker 5: but at least they were shot dead. In a lot
Speaker 5: of the accounts, it was very similar that they were
Speaker 5: just eliminated. They were shot dead. There was varying reports
Speaker 5: that maybe somebody attacked them or wanted to attack them.
Speaker 5: They had One of the stories was, of course Kate
Speaker 5: was armed with a knife and was slashing at them,
Speaker 5: and even had one story where Colonel Yorke somehow had
Speaker 5: Kate gave her the ability to escape while the others
Speaker 5: were killed, and then she went on to live in Canada.
Speaker 5: You include an incredible story in here that so this
Speaker 5: story does not end. Includes a person named Francis McCann,
Speaker 5: and you say she had a terrible dream and she
Speaker 5: told her washerwoman, Sarah Davis about this dream at a
Speaker 5: little bit about this dream and what happens as a result.
Speaker 6: Yeah, totally bizarre story. It was I guess around eighteen
Speaker 6: the mid eighteen eighties, eighteen eighty six or so, which
Speaker 6: was more than a decade after the uncovery of the
Speaker 6: Bender atrocities. Yeah, so this woman had a terrible This woman,
Speaker 6: Francis McCann, who was living in Kansas, suddenly had a
Speaker 6: dream that she heard a scream in the cellar and
Speaker 6: ran down and saw a guy with his throat cut.
Speaker 6: And she mentioned this to this widowed washer woman named
Speaker 6: Sarah Davis, who did laundry for her. And Sarah Davis said,
Speaker 6: that was no dream, you know, that actually happened to
Speaker 6: you when you were a child, And just this wild, wild,
Speaker 6: wild story, claiming that missus McCann's mother, Elizabeth was her,
Speaker 6: that is the washer woman's sister, and that that the
Speaker 6: mother Elizabeth, you know, had married this guy, John Sandford,
Speaker 6: and that Elizabeth's other sister Rose. It's such a bizarre story.
Speaker 6: I don't even all the details, had fallen in love
Speaker 6: with him, and that the washer woman's other sister Rose
Speaker 6: and their mother, Almirah, had conspired to murder missus McCann's
Speaker 6: father in the basement. Anyway, totally bizarre story. But somehow
Speaker 6: missus McCann became convinced that the washerwoman, Sarah and her
Speaker 6: mother were actually Kate and Ma Bender, and she managed
Speaker 6: to persuade the authorities and other people, including Leroy Dick,
Speaker 6: whose name has come up a number of times in
Speaker 6: our discussion, that these two women were in fact and
Speaker 6: Kate Bender. And anyway, through you know, this completely bizarre,
Speaker 6: baroque way, these two women ended up getting arrested and
Speaker 6: put on trial. Anyway, they were able to ultimately prove
Speaker 6: definitively that they could not possibly have been the Benders,
Speaker 6: mainly because they were both in I mean, they were
Speaker 6: shady characters, had many many runnings with a law. But
Speaker 6: their defense attorneys were able to provide documentation that they
Speaker 6: were both actually in prison at the time the Benders
Speaker 6: were perpetrating their crimes. So but but again, it was
Speaker 6: you know, kind of a striking example, you know, of
Speaker 6: the way in which the Bender stories kept this grip
Speaker 6: on the popular imagination and the way in which you know,
Speaker 6: for years and years and years there continued to be
Speaker 6: the sightings of the Benders.
Speaker 5: Now, as you say, there's so many the legend has it,
Speaker 5: there's so many names for the Devil's Kitchen, the Devil's In,
Speaker 5: and the little slaughterhouse on the prairie. Again, incredible story. Refuting,
Speaker 5: of course Laura Ingalls Wilder's tale of course that she
Speaker 5: was and her family had an encounter with the Benders.
Speaker 5: But as you say, as you're right, there's so many
Speaker 5: accounts of so many people that wanted to be associated
Speaker 5: with this crime, either with a piece of a souvenir,
Speaker 5: a piece of wood, anything from that entire building was
Speaker 5: you say, entirely carted away, every single stone and piece
Speaker 5: of wood. But also that people wanted to be associated
Speaker 5: with being a near victim, close to encounter, or people
Speaker 5: that wanted to claim that they were actually there, or
Speaker 5: they knew firsthand of people that were involved in the
Speaker 5: posse that took revenge for those murders.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, you know, I mean again that's very very
Speaker 6: very common phenomenon. You know, I've in my researches into
Speaker 6: various crimes. I'm always coming across that. You know, when
Speaker 6: ed Gean's crimes were discovered in nineteen fifty seven, you know,
Speaker 6: he had all these people, you know, come forward to
Speaker 6: claim that, you know, ed Gean had offered them, you know,
Speaker 6: packages of venison, which they then realized, you know, we're
Speaker 6: probably human flesh. When the crimes of H. H. Holmes
Speaker 6: were uncovered, you know, there are all these people claiming,
Speaker 6: you know, that they had checked into his so called
Speaker 6: murder hotel, you know, and barely escaped with their lives.
Speaker 6: You know. When Bell Gunnis's crimes were discovered, people came forth,
Speaker 6: you know, claiming that they had stopped off at her
Speaker 6: farmhouse and had close calls with so you know, it's
Speaker 6: hard to you know, some of these people are just
Speaker 6: kind of publicity hounds who want to get their names
Speaker 6: in the newspapers, you know, and others, you know, just
Speaker 6: have very overheated imaginations and I think really convinced themselves somehow,
Speaker 6: you know, that these things really happened. But it's not
Speaker 6: at all unusual. In fact, on the contrary, you can
Speaker 6: almost count on something like that happening, you know, when
Speaker 6: a crime like this is uncovered.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's an amazing somebody.
Speaker 6: I just met somebody by the way, you know, a
Speaker 6: couple of weeks ago, you know, who claim that Jeffrey
Speaker 6: Dahmer asked him out on it or claimed that he
Speaker 6: knew somebody a cousin or whatever, you know, And this
Speaker 6: person claimed that Jeffrey Dahmer had once asked him out
Speaker 6: on a date. You know, I mean, could be true,
Speaker 6: but you know, my own experience with these matters convinces
Speaker 6: me that probably didn't really happen.
Speaker 5: But yeah, absolutely, it's a strange phenomena that we think
Speaker 5: is we've probably discussed this before that we think it's
Speaker 5: a modern phenomena, but it isn't. And the kind of
Speaker 5: behavior that people might find disgusting now in terms of
Speaker 5: behavior memorabilia sites and people buying you know, art and
Speaker 5: mementos from serial killers, is that that pales in comparison
Speaker 5: to what the kind of behavior people exhibited in the past.
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, there were you know, people would
Speaker 6: when Burke and Hair, you know, the notorious British body snatchers.
Speaker 6: I guess I can remember which one was executed, one
Speaker 6: of whom I think Burke was executed. Anyway, which everyone
Speaker 6: was executed. You know, somehow parts of his skin were
Speaker 6: flayed off and made into tobacco pouches, you know, which
Speaker 6: was old to people. You know, people would I myself,
Speaker 6: you know, have seen among the bizarre collections of some
Speaker 6: of the people that I have encountered in the course
Speaker 6: of my career as a true crime writer and researcher.
Speaker 6: You know, who have you know, like preserve you know,
Speaker 6: fingers from executed criminals. So you know, the the the
Speaker 6: the urge to collect ghoulish mementoes and souvenirs of you know,
Speaker 6: these sensational crimes. You know, there's I mean, that's that's
Speaker 6: really an age old human phenomenon. Well look, I mean
Speaker 6: it's not that different, you know from Aboriginal tribes keeping
Speaker 6: shrunken heads or whatever you know of their you know,
Speaker 6: of their enemies. You know, human beings have always kept
Speaker 6: again google chuvenirs of horrible crimes.
Speaker 5: So yeah, not so surprising. Yeah, And even just the
Speaker 5: hair on the victims of the Benders, the victims of
Speaker 5: the Benders, apparently or supposedly that hair was cut and
Speaker 5: and it was a real coup for somebody to get
Speaker 5: a few curls from the baby of Oh yeah, man,
Speaker 5: it was in the Baby, so yeah, very interesting. I
Speaker 5: want to thank you very much, Harold Scheckde for coming
Speaker 5: on and talking about Little Slier House on the Prairie
Speaker 5: and part of the Bloodlands collection. For those people that
Speaker 5: might want to take a look at your other work,
Speaker 5: give us your website and Facebook age if you could please.
Speaker 6: Uh, well, Harold Shuckter dot com. Uh, my facebook page.
Speaker 6: That's a really good question. You know. I know I
Speaker 6: have a Facebook page, but I never know on it.
Speaker 5: It's actually that's a hard question.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but you know, I guess the best. You know,
Speaker 6: I guess. Uh. Googling my name is always a way
Speaker 6: that one can discover more about me and my work.
Speaker 5: So absolutely, I want to thank you very much Harold
Speaker 5: for coming on. Hope to talk to you again real soon.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much for this interview. You have a
Speaker 5: great night.
Speaker 6: Thanks, good night. Thank you Dan. It's always a pleasure,
Speaker 6: always
Speaker 5: A pleasure, Harold, thank you, good night.