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Speaker 5: Are now listening to True Murder, The most Shocking Killers
Speaker 5: in True Crime History and the authors that have written
Speaker 5: about him Geesy Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK. Every week
Speaker 5: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host
Speaker 5: journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 4: Good Evening, a suspense filled tale of murder on the
Speaker 4: American frontier, shedding new light on a family of serial
Speaker 4: killers in Kansas whose horrifying crimes gripped the attention of
Speaker 4: a nation still reeling from war. In eighteen seventy three,
Speaker 4: the people of Lobette County, Kansas made a grizzly discovery
Speaker 4: buried by trailside cabin beneath an orchard of young apple trees,
Speaker 4: where the remains of countless bodies. Below the cabin itself
Speaker 4: was a cellar stained with blood. The Benders, the family
Speaker 4: of four who once resided on the property, were nowhere
Speaker 4: to be found. Discovery sent the local community and national
Speaker 4: newspapers into a frenzy that continued for decades, sparking an
Speaker 4: epic manhunt for the Venders. The idea that a family
Speaker 4: of seemingly respectable homesteaders, one among the thousands relocating farther
Speaker 4: west in search of land and opportunity after the Civil War,
Speaker 4: were capable of operating a human slaughter pen appalled and
Speaker 4: fascinated a nation. But who the Benders really were, why
Speaker 4: they committed such a vicious killing spree, and whether justice
Speaker 4: ever caught up to them is a mystery that remains
Speaker 4: unsolved to this day. Set against the backdrop of post
Speaker 4: Bellum America, Hell's Half Acre explores the environment capable of
Speaker 4: allowing such horrors to take place. Drawing on extensive original
Speaker 4: art kybo material Susan Jonasis introduces us to a fascinating
Speaker 4: cast of characters, many of whom have been previously missing
Speaker 4: from the story. Among them are the families of the victims,
Speaker 4: the hapless detectives who lost the trail, and the fugitives
Speaker 4: that help the murderers escape. Hell's half Acre is a
Speaker 4: journey into the turbulent heart of nineteenth century America, a
Speaker 4: place where moderny stalks across the landscape, violently displacing existing
Speaker 4: populations and building new ones. It is a world where
Speaker 4: folklore can quickly become fact and an entire family of
Speaker 4: criminals can slip through a community's fingers, only to reappear
Speaker 4: in the most unexpected of places. The book that we're
Speaker 4: featuring this evening is Hell's Half Acre, The Untold Story
Speaker 4: of the Benders, a serial killer family on the American Frontier,
Speaker 4: with my special guests, historian and author Susan Jonasis. Welcome
Speaker 4: to the program, and thank you very much for this interview.
Speaker 2: Susan Jonasis, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, and congratulations on this incredible book.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: It's been a really exciting time to be able to
Speaker 3: talk to people about a story that I've been interested
Speaker 3: in for so long.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, you were a historian, as I mentioned in the introduction,
Speaker 4: specializing in crime and culture in the nineteenth and twentieth century.
Speaker 4: A large part of your studies focused on the treatment
Speaker 4: of the female criminal during the nineteenth century. How and
Speaker 4: when did you learn about the story about the Bender family.
Speaker 3: So, I actually first came across the story of the
Speaker 3: Bender family in a book that I picked up from
Speaker 3: a thrift store. It's like a big coffee table book
Speaker 3: from the early nineties about famous crimes that had happened
Speaker 3: over the years, and there's obviously lots and lots of
Speaker 3: different crimes in there, but this particular story of the
Speaker 3: Bloody Benders as they're sort of more colloquially known, which
Speaker 3: is really stuck out to me because it was so
Speaker 3: different from everything else in the book. There was this
Speaker 3: young woman at the center of it, there was this
Speaker 3: mystery about where the family went, and there was quite
Speaker 3: a like specific set of facts that existed. They kind
Speaker 3: of focused just around eighteen seventy three, and I just
Speaker 3: kept coming back to it. I kind of look for
Speaker 3: other things on the vendors where I could find it,
Speaker 3: and eventually, after I finished my masters, I thought, you
Speaker 3: know what I feel like, now I'm equipped to actually
Speaker 3: kind of dig in and find out about a bit
Speaker 3: more about this.
Speaker 4: Now, you say you started with nineteenth century newspapers, and
Speaker 4: there was inherent problems with that, but also you started
Speaker 4: with the Kansas Historical Society state archives. So just tell
Speaker 4: us briefly how you underwent this investigation and to gather
Speaker 4: this new information about the Bender family.
Speaker 3: So when I started, like you said, I started with
Speaker 3: the newspapers because that was kind of the most readily
Speaker 3: available source to me as well because obviously I live
Speaker 3: in the UK, but I also knew that I'd never
Speaker 3: be able to write the book without visiting the Kansas
Speaker 3: State Archives, and I had kind of a general idea
Speaker 3: of the kind of structure of the story, but also
Speaker 3: what was missing from it. So there was next to
Speaker 3: no information on the victims. We didn't really have any
Speaker 3: kind of first hand accounts written by people involved in
Speaker 3: the case at that point. And then so I went
Speaker 3: to the archives and I systematically worked through the boxes
Speaker 3: of governor's correspondents that they have from about eighteen seventy
Speaker 3: right up until kind of nineteen twenty, and there's still
Speaker 3: correspondence about the vendors.
Speaker 2: But in that.
Speaker 3: Specific period from eighteen seventy to kind of eighteen eighty,
Speaker 3: there's all these letters written by law enforcement, written by detectives,
Speaker 3: written by local people who are looking for family members
Speaker 3: or community members, and then written by the family of
Speaker 3: William Yorke, who obviously end up really pushing the search
Speaker 3: for the venders that ultimately leads to the discovery.
Speaker 2: Of the murders.
Speaker 3: And it was amazing to finally be able to have
Speaker 3: the voices and to start filling in those gaps that
Speaker 3: had existed for so long and working out just exactly
Speaker 3: when townspeople started to be concerned about people missing in
Speaker 3: the area, how close detective actually got to the family,
Speaker 3: and then kind of the bureaucratic elements that actually stood
Speaker 3: in the way of that. And then on top of that,
Speaker 3: there's an amazing account written by a widow of one
Speaker 3: of the victims, by Mary York that she wrote in
Speaker 3: eighteen seventy five because she was very fed up with
Speaker 3: all the attention kind of being on the venders themselves
Speaker 3: and not on her family and the families of the
Speaker 3: other victims. And that was a really important account as well,
Speaker 3: because it felt like it gave the story just added
Speaker 3: emotional weight.
Speaker 4: Let's go to the benders and when they appear in
Speaker 4: Osage Township and also in this area between Fort Scott
Speaker 4: and Independent and in this place called Labette County. So
Speaker 4: tell us it's the southeast corner of Kansas. But tell
Speaker 4: us about the vendors coming to this little neck of
Speaker 4: the woods in Kansas in eighteen sixty seven or eighteen ninety.
Speaker 2: Pardon me, was there eighteen seventy Oh.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, eighteen seventy.
Speaker 3: So the venders sort of appeer as lots of people
Speaker 3: did at this point in time on the frontier. They's
Speaker 3: just turned up looking to take advantage of the Homestead
Speaker 3: Act and set up farmland essentially where if they worked
Speaker 3: it for five years they could bed buy it it
Speaker 3: would be theirs. And so the men arrived first just
Speaker 3: before Christmas, and they built this cabin on the Osage
Speaker 3: Mission Trail, which was a trail that took was joining
Speaker 3: all the new settlements in the area together, so lots
Speaker 3: of people traveled on it, but there were also portions
Speaker 3: of the road which were very desolate, which was where
Speaker 3: the vendors chose to build their cabin. Reasons that then
Speaker 3: became obvious. And then the women joined them kind of
Speaker 3: in early eighteen seventy one, and they set up a
Speaker 3: grocery store and marketed themselves as kind of an inn
Speaker 3: where people could stock up on goods or spend the night.
Speaker 3: They were the older couple, so mar and Pa, who
Speaker 3: we know really next to nothing about. They didn't interact
Speaker 3: that much with the community. Marv didn't really speak English.
Speaker 3: And then you have the younger couple, which kind of
Speaker 3: most accounts tend to focus on. You've got Kate Bender,
Speaker 3: who's a young woman in her late teens early twenties.
Speaker 3: There's lots of debate over how attractive she was, but
Speaker 3: she was certainly initially charismatic enough for lots of people
Speaker 3: to be interested in her and to visit the cabin.
Speaker 3: And then you've got John Gebhart, who was in his
Speaker 3: late twenties and was not as popular as Kate because
Speaker 3: a lot of people thought that there was something a
Speaker 3: bit off with him, but not necessarily nefarious. So you
Speaker 3: have this little group of people who are presenting themselves
Speaker 3: as a nuclear family and as kind of youthful people
Speaker 3: in the community. And you've got then Kate as well,
Speaker 3: who travels about offering to heal people because she's a
Speaker 3: spiritualist and believes that she essentially has magical powers that
Speaker 3: allow her to speak to the dead and treat people's illnesses.
Speaker 4: You would introduce Leroy Dick, who is Leroy Dick in
Speaker 4: this community.
Speaker 3: So Leroy Dick at that point in time was the
Speaker 3: township trustee, So that's someone who looks after all the
Speaker 3: burgeoning communities in the area. He ran a Sunday school
Speaker 3: at Harmony Grove, which was really the hub of Labette
Speaker 3: County's community at that point in time, it was his
Speaker 3: job to kind of make sure that the community were
Speaker 3: supporting each other, but also to deal with problems between
Speaker 3: neighbors and that sort of thing. And he becomes a
Speaker 3: really integral part of the story because he sort of
Speaker 3: ignores the disappearances for a while and writes them off
Speaker 3: as just issues with living on the front here, which
Speaker 3: to an extent was fair enough. And then as more
Speaker 3: people start to disappear, his own cousin disappears, it then
Speaker 3: becomes kind of obvious that something else is going on,
Speaker 3: and he continues to be very invested in apprehending the
Speaker 3: Venders right up until eighteen eighty nine, when he is
Speaker 3: heavily involved in the arrest of two women he thinks
Speaker 3: are the perpetrators.
Speaker 4: You introduce another character, Rudolph Brockman. Tell us who he
Speaker 4: is and the behavior at the grocery at this stop
Speaker 4: for tourists, what, as you write early on, what is
Speaker 4: the experience of people were connected to Rudolph Brockman and
Speaker 4: people recommended to stay at this place that the venders
Speaker 4: are operating.
Speaker 3: So Rudolph Brockman ran a kind of similar, I guess
Speaker 3: establishment to the Benders that existed before they arrived in
Speaker 3: the area, so you could stop at Brockman's or you
Speaker 3: could stop at the Benders to pick up on goods,
Speaker 3: and early on, Rudolph Brockman sort of recommends people to
Speaker 3: stay with the Benders while they're looking for places in
Speaker 3: the area. But then there's a particular event where some
Speaker 3: female relatives stay with the Benders. They go for a walk,
Speaker 3: they come back, some of their items are missing. They
Speaker 3: start to accuse the Benders of stealing them, and the
Speaker 3: Venders kind of whisk them away to another person's house
Speaker 3: and say, oh, no, there's just horse thieves in the area.
Speaker 3: It couldn't possibly be us. And so Rudolph Brockman develops
Speaker 3: this kind of unfortunate association with the Benders, which ultimately
Speaker 3: because he's also German and they're obviously German, so at
Speaker 3: the time the crimes are discovered, he becomes a real
Speaker 3: focus point for the community and they actually try to
Speaker 3: hang him as an accomplice, but he thankfully manages to
Speaker 3: survive that experience.
Speaker 4: Let's get back to the Venders and how it slowly
Speaker 4: is revealed that this family is up to much more
Speaker 4: nefarious things than what they purport to be, so tell
Speaker 4: us how this unravels and what it leads to the
Speaker 4: characters looking for retribution.
Speaker 3: So the essentially, over the three year period that the
Speaker 3: vendors are living in Labette County, at least, and I
Speaker 3: say at least because I feel personally that there were
Speaker 3: potentially more, but at least eleven confirmed people were murdered
Speaker 3: by the family. That's sort of a slow drip feed.
Speaker 3: At first, a couple of unidentified bodies turn up on
Speaker 3: the prairie. There's a man called William Jones who's found
Speaker 3: in a creek by two boys, and he's got very
Speaker 3: distinctive head wounds, his temples have been bashed in, and
Speaker 3: his throat's been slit. And he's then identified by his
Speaker 3: wife and she says that he was traveling in the
Speaker 3: area trying to land claim. And then in the autumn
Speaker 3: of eighteen seventy two, five men disappear in very quick succession,
Speaker 3: including a man called George Longka and his little eighteen
Speaker 3: month old daughter, mary Anne, and their neighbors of a
Speaker 3: man called William York and William York. When he gets
Speaker 3: wor that George and mary Anne haven't arrived at their
Speaker 3: intended destination. He sort of having known about other disappearances
Speaker 3: in the area things something's really not right, and decides
Speaker 3: that he's going to set out to look for them.
Speaker 2: And then he disappears.
Speaker 3: And he is the brother of a man called Alexander York,
Speaker 3: who at that point in time was a kind of
Speaker 3: infamous Canson celebrity. He'd been involved in exposing corruption in
Speaker 3: the Kansas Senate, but in doing so he'd also completely
Speaker 3: destroyed his own political career, and the newspapers were very
Speaker 3: interested in him at the time, and the family also
Speaker 3: had a lot more money, so they organized this big
Speaker 3: search for William. And there's also an amazing letter written
Speaker 3: by a man who lived in a settlement called the Door,
Speaker 3: which was getting a lot of blame for crime in
Speaker 3: the area, and he writes to the state and he says,
Speaker 3: we need help, and we need help now. And that
Speaker 3: was one of the sources that I was really pleased
Speaker 3: to find because it was such a clear cry for
Speaker 3: assistance and the fact that they'd essentially been ignored until
Speaker 3: somebody more prominent had disappeared. But yeah, ultimately the vendors
Speaker 3: interact with Alexander York. They then feel that they can't
Speaker 3: kind of maintain this veneer anymore, and they flee in
Speaker 3: the middle of the night. And then about a month later,
Speaker 3: neighbor of theirs discovers that the farm is abandoned, and
Speaker 3: the kind of discovery of the bodies in the orchard
Speaker 3: goes from that.
Speaker 4: You talk about the discovery by one of the neighbors
Speaker 4: comes by and here's some whining from an animal. So
Speaker 4: then goes to the where the animal might be, and
Speaker 4: smells are obviously a dead caf. But you write about
Speaker 4: either this person or another person have an experience in
Speaker 4: the Civil War that was fairly recent, and they recognize
Speaker 4: the smell of human death. So tell us about this
Speaker 4: recognition who does this? And the introduction of the Tall brothers.
Speaker 3: So the man who discovers that the farm is abandoned
Speaker 3: is a young man called Billy Toll, and he initially
Speaker 3: thinks that the people who have been causing the disappearances
Speaker 3: in the area have potentially taken the venders as well,
Speaker 3: that the benders themselves might be victims of foul play.
Speaker 3: So he goes to Harmony Grove Schoolhouse where he tells
Speaker 3: Lee Roy Dick, who's obviously the trustee, that the vendors
Speaker 3: have abandoned their farm, that it looks like it's been
Speaker 3: abandoned for a long time, and that they left in
Speaker 3: a hurry.
Speaker 2: And then Lee Roy.
Speaker 3: Dick, who is and most of the men actually involved
Speaker 3: in the discovery of the bodies, and a lot of
Speaker 3: the men on the frontier as well are veterans of
Speaker 3: the Civil War, so they have kind of a passing
Speaker 3: knowledge or very kind of grim experience of what it
Speaker 3: means to be around kind of dead, decomposing bodies. But
Speaker 3: Leroy Dick visits the site on his own and he
Speaker 3: immediately recognizes this smell of human decomposition, and he becomes
Speaker 3: frustrated because he can't work out exactly where it's coming from,
Speaker 3: and there's no clear kind of indication on the property
Speaker 3: except this seller that's below the cabin. And he then
Speaker 3: organizes this big search and which includes the Toll brothers
Speaker 3: and also people like Maurice Sparks or the local men
Speaker 3: in the era who've previously been at a meeting discussing
Speaker 3: what should be done about the disappearances. They all turn
Speaker 3: up and they dig and they dig and they dig,
Speaker 3: and then eventually in the orchard in next to cabin
Speaker 3: is where they find the bodies of the missing people.
Speaker 4: Now, what is the response you talk about the media
Speaker 4: at that time, What is the media's response, and what
Speaker 4: is law enforcement's response? What do they do?
Speaker 3: So the response from the media I found absolutely fascinating just.
Speaker 2: In terms of how immediate it was.
Speaker 3: So the day after William York's body has found, his
Speaker 3: body is the first to be found, and his younger
Speaker 3: brother Ed is there as well as a detective when
Speaker 3: it happens, and the following day it's kind of front
Speaker 3: page news in the local newspapers, and then sort of
Speaker 3: three days later, it's front page news across the nation.
Speaker 3: It's in the New York Times and newspapers like that,
Speaker 3: and there's kind of a weird tabloid elation that's such
Speaker 3: an insane, awful and also completely out of the blue
Speaker 3: crime has been committed. There hadn't really been a crime
Speaker 3: committed like this before. The fact that a young woman
Speaker 3: was involved in the crime and that the crime involved
Speaker 3: the child being killed kind of catapulted it into infamy overnight.
Speaker 3: And they really latched onto this idea of the family
Speaker 3: being spiritualists as well, and they talked a lot about
Speaker 3: how Kate had, you know, like other friends in the
Speaker 3: era who practiced spiritualism, and maybe they were also complicit
Speaker 3: in the murders. And there were lots of bunk arrests,
Speaker 3: i'd say, in the immediate aftermath, just because law enforcement
Speaker 3: had essentially ignored disappearances for so long, and the scale
Speaker 3: of the tragedy is revealed, and they panic and arrest
Speaker 3: a bunch of James Roach's family, who's the man who
Speaker 3: wrote the letter appealing to them for help in the
Speaker 3: first place, which they ignored, And those men are eventually released,
Speaker 3: but they're kind of arrested as a knee jerk reaction,
Speaker 3: just I think because it's such an awful crime for
Speaker 3: the community to have to deal with. There's an embarrassment
Speaker 3: that the perpetrators have gone, that they've been gone for
Speaker 3: a month and nobody realized. So law enforcement kind of
Speaker 3: make a rash series of arrest and it's really Alexander
Speaker 3: Yorke and his friend Colonel Peckham and a group of
Speaker 3: private detectives who end up being hired by the Governor
Speaker 3: of Kansas to go out after the vendors. After that
Speaker 3: initial kind of space to the arrest.
Speaker 4: You talk about Alexander York. But you also talk about
Speaker 4: the detective and Detective Beers who became a reinvented himself
Speaker 4: as a private investigator, but is involved in this case heavily.
Speaker 4: And you mentioned Colonel Peckham. But Alexander Yorke felt, as
Speaker 4: you write, incredible amount of guilt. He felt that he
Speaker 4: had let this family get away, and so he was
Speaker 4: really adamant about the search and this manhunter the Venders.
Speaker 4: So tell us about Governor Osborne's rule in this and
Speaker 4: how this group of people help bent on vengeance, go
Speaker 4: about trying to hunt this family down in.
Speaker 3: The direct aftermath, although it does take him a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks, which I thought was surprising. But Governor Osborne
Speaker 3: issues a proclamation offering a two thousand dollars reward, and
Speaker 3: at that point in time, the maximum reward you could
Speaker 3: offer was five hundred dollars per person. So it's the
Speaker 3: maximum reward. It's posted everywhere, it appears in all the newspapers,
Speaker 3: and he enters into quite an intense correspondence with Colonel Peckham,
Speaker 3: essentially because Peckham is needing funds for the search, and
Speaker 3: there's a lot of anger in the press that the
Speaker 3: reward is only two thousand dollars. Lots of people think
Speaker 3: it should be much higher because it's also obviously only
Speaker 3: payable on delivery of the venders, which means that in
Speaker 3: order to go after them you would need a good
Speaker 3: amount of money. Any It's not like you can go
Speaker 3: after them just one person. They're obviously for at least
Speaker 3: four criminals we now know, with various very violent, very
Speaker 3: dangerous associates within a wider network. And the search is
Speaker 3: kind of immediately hampered by Governor Osborne's reluctance essentially to
Speaker 3: release funds. I thought this was a really interesting element
Speaker 3: of the case because he really has to be persuaded,
Speaker 3: whereas I would have thought you'd release as much money
Speaker 3: as you could to catch these people, because not only
Speaker 3: you know, do they need to be brought to justice,
Speaker 3: but then you could say you were the governor who'd brought.
Speaker 2: The venders down.
Speaker 3: But so the Beers and Peckham are kind of given
Speaker 3: a small amount of money to go down to and
Speaker 3: they trace the vendors down to Texas. A man comes
Speaker 3: up from Dennison and says, hang on a minute, I
Speaker 3: think the venders were staying in kind of the yard
Speaker 3: across from my hotel. I think they've gone further out west.
Speaker 3: And one of the really interesting things when I was
Speaker 3: researching the book was that there was a misconception that
Speaker 3: the authorities didn't know where they'd gone, but they did
Speaker 3: kind of right up until at least the winter of
Speaker 3: eighteen seventy four. And then another source comes along much
Speaker 3: later who tells them exactly where they were up until
Speaker 3: about eighteen seventy seven. But they detectives were there. They
Speaker 3: were in the area. You know, they were using local guides,
Speaker 3: they were going out to the camps that the venders
Speaker 3: were using. They knew various sheriffs in that area of
Speaker 3: Texas knew where the venders were and would purposely help
Speaker 3: them move because the relationship between the text and authorities
Speaker 3: and the Kansas authorities was not very good. And I
Speaker 3: just thought that was really interesting. There's a great quote
Speaker 3: in the newspaper where it says that detective Beers does
Speaker 3: as good a job as the old woman Bender does
Speaker 3: it keeping tavern, and the press really felt that they
Speaker 3: just weren't brave enough or well equipped enough to be
Speaker 3: able to bring them.
Speaker 4: In right now. You also talk about the discovery of
Speaker 4: Missouri Bill and Frank McPherson, two brothers, Bill and Frank McPherson.
Speaker 4: Tell us who they end up being, what information they
Speaker 4: find out from authorities find out about these two.
Speaker 3: So Bill and Frank McPherson, Well William and Frank McPherson
Speaker 3: grew up as part of a family that ultimately went
Speaker 3: on to become very wealthy in Missouri. But then at
Speaker 3: the time the Bender murders were committed, they were living.
Speaker 2: In Southeast Kansas.
Speaker 3: Frank McPherson is in my mind, probably the most explicitly
Speaker 3: violent criminal in the book. He has a massive I
Speaker 3: guess you'd call it rap she they shortly before the
Speaker 3: Bender crimes, they discovered the newspapers report that he's beaten.
Speaker 2: A baker to death with a baking weight, and he
Speaker 2: kind of cuts a huge way of violence across the
Speaker 2: American frontier right up into the early twentieth century. His brother,
Speaker 2: Missouri Bill, as he's known, kind of on the frontier,
Speaker 2: he runs.
Speaker 3: A cattle thieving racket. So he has a network of
Speaker 3: horse thieves essentially who sometimes masquerades cowboys, and they're stealing livestock,
Speaker 3: they're robbing people, and then they're sort of riding out
Speaker 3: either further west or up into Colorado to fence the
Speaker 3: stolen goods. And in the letters written by Detective Beers
Speaker 3: in eighteen seventy three, he references Missouri Bill and essentially
Speaker 3: says that they were set up by Bill, who had
Speaker 3: promised to take them to the Benders because he knew
Speaker 3: where they were, and then had abandoned them on the
Speaker 3: open frontier and given the Benders time to escape. And
Speaker 3: then in eighteen seventy nine, a prisoner called Samuel Merrick
Speaker 3: writes a whole series of statements fur the Detroit House
Speaker 3: of Correction where he talks about how Missouri Bill and
Speaker 3: Frank were directly involved with helping the vendors escape and
Speaker 3: in helping them travel further out west and deliberately misleading
Speaker 3: the authorities. And that was a real kind of breakthrough
Speaker 3: moment for me, because we'd always known that the venders
Speaker 3: must have had accomplices. The newspapers referenced this at the time.
Speaker 3: It was kind of a widely held belief, but it
Speaker 3: was really great to be able to actually put these
Speaker 3: faces names to faces in terms of like who they
Speaker 3: were actually working with.
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Speaker 4: about the discovery of the role that Frank McPherson and
Speaker 4: his brother, Missouri Bill had in this particular case. First
Speaker 4: Frank misleading the detective and one of the York brothers
Speaker 4: or the York brothers into thinking that he would cooperate
Speaker 4: with them, and then them realizing them being duped by
Speaker 4: this said person. Now, what happens with Samuel Merrick and
Speaker 4: the information that eventually the superintendent of the jail listens
Speaker 4: to and then he acts and responds to that information
Speaker 4: and shares it. Tell us a little bit about that
Speaker 4: and the continued manhunt.
Speaker 3: So, Samuel Merrick is a man who was arrested in
Speaker 3: eighteen seventy seven for stealing horses from an indigenous person
Speaker 3: and in the process of trying to escape from authorities
Speaker 3: in Indian Territory. He also shoots at one of the
Speaker 3: men trying to arrest him, so that puts another charge
Speaker 3: on top of his pre existing charges. He is then
Speaker 3: sent to the Detroit House Correction to serve his term,
Speaker 3: and while he's there, he starts to talk to Joseph Nicholson,
Speaker 3: who's the superintendent of the prison, about the time that
Speaker 3: he spent on the open Frontier with the Bender family,
Speaker 3: and Samuel Merrick was another one of those major breakthrough sources,
Speaker 3: and I actually couldn't believe how much information he had
Speaker 3: on the family. And he has this amazing writing style,
Speaker 3: this almost kind of Hemingway esque because he's not like
Speaker 3: very literate, just because I guess of his upbringing and
Speaker 3: his lifestyle there was still.
Speaker 2: A lot of illiteracy on the frontier.
Speaker 3: But his sentences are very kind of short to the point,
Speaker 3: and he writes out a whole long statement. Well there's
Speaker 3: a series of them, because Nicholson writes to the Governor
Speaker 3: of Kansas and says, I think there's a man here
Speaker 3: who knows where the vendors are. And if he doesn't
Speaker 3: know where they are, he can certainly help us find them,
Speaker 3: and the governor repeatedly goes back and says.
Speaker 2: We need more information. I want to write to Alexander York.
Speaker 2: I want to check some of this.
Speaker 3: And Merrick provides accounts of who the family was staying with,
Speaker 3: the location of the cabin, the exact location of various
Speaker 3: campsites they were at, the number of people at the campsites,
Speaker 3: the way that they traveled, what kind of weapons they
Speaker 3: were carrying with them, who they were fraternizing with, the.
Speaker 2: Roots the people could take to potentially find them.
Speaker 3: And when you look at his letters compared to the
Speaker 3: letters that the detectives were writing back in eighteen seventy three,
Speaker 3: so many of the details just matched up perfectly. They
Speaker 3: talk about the Bender. Thomas biz talks about tracing the
Speaker 3: Benders to a place called Mud Creek, which is like
Speaker 3: just across the border from Texas into Indian Territory. Samuel
Speaker 3: Merrick references this all the altercations that the detectives discussed
Speaker 3: with Missouri Bill happened kind of around the Little Witch
Speaker 3: Attire and Henrietta. Samuel Merrick writes about this as well,
Speaker 3: and Merrick also had a lot to say about the
Speaker 3: way that Kate behaved on the open frontire. She really
Speaker 3: she liked the kind of idea of being an outdoor,
Speaker 3: but she didn't really like the lifestyle she's constantly complaining.
Speaker 3: He gives a really good idea of the way that
Speaker 3: the family also interacted with each other. But for me,
Speaker 3: the detail that kind of really cinched Merrick's account was
Speaker 3: in December of eighteen seventy four, a man called James
Speaker 3: Sullivan goes out after the Benders.
Speaker 2: He makes a deal with Missouri Bill, who.
Speaker 3: Says, oh, yeah, sure, I'll take you out there, and
Speaker 3: kind of by don't we all know how that goes?
Speaker 3: And he told Alexander York that he wanted to do this.
Speaker 3: And we know that Sullivan met with Bill because he
Speaker 3: writes these letters at the governor and then he just disappears.
Speaker 3: He never comes back from Texas, and the last person
Speaker 3: he's seen with is Missouri Bill and Samuel Merrick in
Speaker 3: his account, writes that in December of eighteen seventy four,
Speaker 3: a man called Sullivan came out looking for the Benders,
Speaker 3: and that John geb Haart actually went into a general
Speaker 3: store that he was in to look at him and
Speaker 3: then came out and said, Oh, I'm not worried about him,
Speaker 3: and I just thought that the detail included in that
Speaker 3: was absolutely amazing. And the superintendent of the prison passes
Speaker 3: this on to the governor, who passes it on to
Speaker 3: Alexander York, and York writes this letter.
Speaker 2: Saying, I completely believe this man.
Speaker 3: All these details match up. I remember James Sullivan, I
Speaker 3: remember that he never changed back. And the really interesting
Speaker 3: thing is that event nothing's done about it. So Samuel
Speaker 3: Merrick offers to go after the venders himself or to
Speaker 3: lead people out there, but the superintendent has also written
Speaker 3: to the Pinkerton Detective Agency, who obviously big infamous power
Speaker 3: at that point in time, and they write back to
Speaker 3: him saying, oh, no, the Vendors are dead, but we're
Speaker 3: not going to elaborate on it, and it sort of
Speaker 3: just gets left there, which is one of the most
Speaker 3: frustrating elements I think, is that you get all this
Speaker 3: information from Samuel Merrick and then it's not acted on,
Speaker 3: and then.
Speaker 2: He just sort of disappears.
Speaker 3: So that element of the book I was like when
Speaker 3: I first started, I had no idea that there'd be
Speaker 3: that level of kind of original material out there that
Speaker 3: could build on the story.
Speaker 4: You write that in eighteen eighty nine it seemed that
Speaker 4: and this is ten years after Merrick's release from prison,
Speaker 4: and you say, and then he walked into obscurity. In
Speaker 4: eighteen eighty nine in Lebette County, the word was with
Speaker 4: the bender women had been located. And you introduce her character,
Speaker 4: Francis McCann. So let's talk about this location supposedly of
Speaker 4: Ma and her daughter Kate.
Speaker 3: I say, Francis McCann is a fascinating character. She's a
Speaker 3: woman who grew up as an orphan and at this
Speaker 3: point in time she has a husband and children, and
Speaker 3: she becomes she hires a woman to help her with
Speaker 3: her laundry and housework, and she becomes convinced that this
Speaker 3: woman is hate bender who has returned from the open
Speaker 3: frontier because she just can't stand life out there anymore.
Speaker 3: And Francis McCann gives this very long winded, kind of
Speaker 3: weird account where she explains that she knows this because
Speaker 3: of a dream that she had, and then there are
Speaker 3: kind of other more sensible accounts I guess she'd say,
Speaker 3: which say that maybe this woman whose name is Sarah Davis,
Speaker 3: had a fever and was delirious and admitted to the
Speaker 3: crimes kind of when she was in the fever, but
Speaker 3: however it happened. Francis McCann immediately starts writing to the
Speaker 3: county officials in La Bette saying I found Kate and
Speaker 3: then proceeds essentially to stalk Sarah Davis and who goes
Speaker 3: back to Niles, Michigan, where she lives with her mother, Almirah.
Speaker 3: And they just about kind of fit the general description
Speaker 3: of the Bender women, so incredibly poor working class women
Speaker 3: from very kind of difficult backgrounds. The town doesn't really
Speaker 3: like them anyway. They start turning on each other and
Speaker 3: accusing each other of being the Bender Women, and eventually
Speaker 3: Leroy Dick is called in and he says, oh, I
Speaker 3: don't believe that, and then he sees a picture of them,
Speaker 3: and he supposedly says, that's them, that's the Bender Women.
Speaker 3: So ultimately it transpires that he goes to Michigan, he
Speaker 3: brings the women back, and the Labette County have this
Speaker 3: whole kind of pre hearing where they decide whether or
Speaker 3: not these women are the venders.
Speaker 4: Yes, tell us about that? Do you say? The trial
Speaker 4: really for larceny is really about to determine whether these
Speaker 4: are the Bender Women, and it's a circus, so tell
Speaker 4: us a little bit about this.
Speaker 3: Yes, so there's a trial in Michigan where Sarah, the daughter,
Speaker 3: is on trial for stealing from her mother, Almirah, and
Speaker 3: the kind of circumstances of how this child comes about
Speaker 3: are potentially entrapment. But however that happened. They get up
Speaker 3: on the stand, they're obviously very nervous, quite stressed out
Speaker 3: about the whole thing, so they start accusing each other
Speaker 3: of being a Bender women, and this prompts a lot
Speaker 3: of press interest and eventually Labett County officials, who are
Speaker 3: not really that convinced at this point in time, think, oh, well,
Speaker 3: we'll just bring them down. Kind of what harm can
Speaker 3: it do to have people have a look at them.
Speaker 3: And Francis McCann at this point is also really gunning
Speaker 3: for the LaVette County authorities and writing lots of letters
Speaker 3: to them and to the Governor of Kansas saying these
Speaker 3: are definitely the Bender Women. I think they're responsible for
Speaker 3: murdering my father. Which is a very kind of complicated
Speaker 3: side story, but at this it's really interesting because there's
Speaker 3: a massive debate about what.
Speaker 2: The Bender women actually looked like. Nobody can seem to
Speaker 2: quite remember.
Speaker 3: Lots of people identify Sarah and Almira as Kate and Mark.
Speaker 3: Some of them say, I think that's Kate, but I
Speaker 3: don't think that's Mark. Some of them say the other thing.
Speaker 3: Some of them are very honest and get up on
Speaker 3: the stand and say, I just don't know.
Speaker 2: Too much time has passed.
Speaker 3: There are also several witnesses who get up on the
Speaker 3: stand who probably never even met the original Bender women
Speaker 3: and claim that these women are the Venders. And these
Speaker 3: witnesses are kind of all loosely connected or directly related
Speaker 3: to Leroy Dick, and this eventually kind of they at
Speaker 3: the try at the pre hearing, it's decided they will
Speaker 3: stand trial for the Bender crimes, and then there's this
Speaker 3: interim period where their lawyer does a very good job
Speaker 3: and kind of travels around to all the different places
Speaker 3: where they claim to have lived at points in time.
Speaker 3: He finds medical records, he finds marriage certificates. He also
Speaker 3: finds prison records for Almira, who was actually in prison
Speaker 3: for performing an abortion at the time that most of
Speaker 3: the Vendor crimes were committed. And these women are eventually
Speaker 3: let go. That Leroy Dick and Francis McCann maintained that
Speaker 3: these documents were forged, that Kate was having an affair
Speaker 3: with the lawyer and that's why he kind of helped them.
Speaker 3: But it is my belief that these were just kind
Speaker 3: of very poor, uneducated women whose tempers and kind of
Speaker 3: general demeanor got them into what could have been a
Speaker 3: lot a lot of trouble, but ultimately that they didn't
Speaker 3: really have anything to do with the crimes themselves.
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Speaker 4: What's fascinating is this trial that where you say seven
Speaker 4: out of sixteen positively identify, they're absolutely sure that these
Speaker 4: are the Bender women, and yet it seems like the
Speaker 4: courtroom is swayed when certain people testify. Certainly when you
Speaker 4: talk about Maurice Sparks saying that one of them had
Speaker 4: a Kate had a scar below her left eye, and
Speaker 4: then in the courtroom you say it went silent when
Speaker 4: he identified that there was a scar under her left eye.
Speaker 4: So there was this seeming compelling eyewitness testimony back and forth.
Speaker 4: Seven out of sixteen identifying her. That's almost split. So
Speaker 4: you say that they were eventually released. What happens after
Speaker 4: that as a result, So.
Speaker 3: The women Almira and Sarah. Almira lives a very long time,
Speaker 3: but she ultimately dives in a poorhouse. Sarah threatens Leroy
Speaker 3: Dick with legal action and also tells the press that
Speaker 3: Francis McCann is in prison in Michigan for bringing false
Speaker 3: charges against her. This is not true. Francis never goes
Speaker 3: to prison for that. But Sarah eventually dies in a
Speaker 3: horrible fire related accident. So both those women I think
Speaker 3: just led really awful, difficult lives. But the people of
Speaker 3: Labette who did not think that these women were the
Speaker 3: Benders were extremely frustrated because they felt that ultimately there
Speaker 3: could never be another effective trial because so many people had,
Speaker 3: you know, identified one way or the other, that if
Speaker 3: you had positively identified them as the venders, you could
Speaker 3: never get up on the standard another trial and say, actually,
Speaker 3: I think I made a mistake last time. I think
Speaker 3: these people are the Venders. So there was a great
Speaker 3: deal of kind of anguish that a lot of money
Speaker 3: had been spent on the trial. These women were obviously
Speaker 3: kept in jail for a short period of time, and
Speaker 3: then they were moved to a local the community's house
Speaker 3: because Sarah at the time had a little baby and
Speaker 3: people didn't really like of her in the courthouse, sorry,
Speaker 3: in the jail house with the child. But then there
Speaker 3: were people who also curious and felt like the Bender
Speaker 3: women had escaped and that it was a completely disaster.
Speaker 3: And you've also then got this kind of sub faction
Speaker 3: of people who think that the vendors were killed by
Speaker 3: a mob in the immediate aftermath of their crimes. This
Speaker 3: is kind of bolstered by the fact that none of
Speaker 3: the York family appeared at this trial, even though obviously
Speaker 3: they were very they were key players in what unfolded
Speaker 3: in the county, and Alexander York sort of makes a
Speaker 3: vague statement where he says, well, I hope it's them,
Speaker 3: but you.
Speaker 2: Know, it's probably not.
Speaker 3: And I think there was just a frustration that maybe
Speaker 3: closure was really it seemed plausible, and then it just
Speaker 3: got lost in this insane circus.
Speaker 4: You write about Francis McCann demanding to see the evidence,
Speaker 4: and then once she saw it, then she returned back
Speaker 4: to her home in McPherson, Kansas. There was a nineteen
Speaker 4: ten deathbed confession with a Katha Pilos, I believe, but
Speaker 4: it didn't amount to anything. As you write, you mentioned
Speaker 4: Laura Ingalls Wilder claiming that there was some connection with
Speaker 4: her family to this story. But very interestingly a nineteen
Speaker 4: eleven interview with Alexander York, what did he say to
Speaker 4: the accusation that, as you mentioned, so many people believing
Speaker 4: in so much press talk about that the York family
Speaker 4: had been involved in retribution over the son or the
Speaker 4: death of their family member.
Speaker 3: He was always really angry and upset about that he
Speaker 3: kind of hated that accusation. He hated the fact that
Speaker 3: people thought that his family were capable of behaving in
Speaker 3: that way. He was obviously a man who carried a
Speaker 3: great deal of guilt, I think, and maybe wished that
Speaker 3: he had been involved in something like that. But he
Speaker 3: was also a man who believed that everything like justice
Speaker 3: should be thought through the legal channels. He was a
Speaker 3: lawyer for an extended period of time, and I think
Speaker 3: he also shared that sense that a lot of victims'
Speaker 3: families do, which was that the vendors continued to overshadow
Speaker 3: the kind of deep horror that their crimes obviously inflicted
Speaker 3: on victims victims' families, and.
Speaker 2: That that you know, they're the.
Speaker 3: Legacy as opposed to the people who they murdered. And
Speaker 3: he had threatened on several occasions, I think, to bring
Speaker 3: lawsuits against people who had claimed that he and ED
Speaker 3: were involved in it, or that he and ED were
Speaker 3: involved with a larger group of law enforcement who.
Speaker 2: Quietly dispatched the venders.
Speaker 3: And he offers a reward of like proof if people
Speaker 3: you know come forward and speak up about what they know.
Speaker 3: And obviously, if that never happens, all these anonymous sources
Speaker 3: write in about being a part of this vigilance committee
Speaker 3: or knowing people who were, and that's obviously what Laura.
Speaker 2: Ingalls Wilder plays on.
Speaker 3: She kind of hints that maybe her father was involved
Speaker 3: in the group of men who hunted down the vendors,
Speaker 3: But that turns out to be a fabrication that was
Speaker 3: largely encouraged by her.
Speaker 2: Daughter, who thought it would help her sell more books.
Speaker 2: But I thought it.
Speaker 3: Was really sad that after Alexander dies, lots of his
Speaker 3: obituaries lift him as the man who killed the Benders,
Speaker 3: despite the fact that he had vehemently protested this his
Speaker 3: whole life. That they talk about, you know, his illustrious
Speaker 3: political career and his importance in the local communities. But
Speaker 3: a lot of the papers just say, you know, secret
Speaker 3: of Bender mystery dies with Alexander York and he.
Speaker 2: Would have hated that.
Speaker 4: You also write that he thought that there was someone
Speaker 4: to blame, primarily for the Benders getting away. Who did
Speaker 4: he blame? And yeah, who did he blame?
Speaker 2: So he blamed the detectives essentially.
Speaker 3: He thought that they were incompetent, and he thought that
Speaker 3: the relationship between Texas and Kansas wasn't good enough.
Speaker 2: The Texas Rangers and the Texas.
Speaker 3: Military repeatedly refused to go after the Venders. They sort
Speaker 3: of had bigger fish to fry with the various wars
Speaker 3: that were going on in that territory. But he ultimately
Speaker 3: felt that detectives over the year had either purposefully misled
Speaker 3: him or were just incompetent for whatever reason, that they
Speaker 3: were kind of fame hungry and not so much interested
Speaker 3: in actually catching the Benders as producing a story about
Speaker 3: how they might have actually caught the Benders. And you
Speaker 3: see this with Thomas Beers in the I think the
Speaker 3: early nineteen hundreds. He says that, you know, he knows
Speaker 3: where the Benders are, that they're watching him and he's
Speaker 3: watching them, and that he, you know, chased them all
Speaker 3: over Texas, which to an extent, you know, you have,
Speaker 3: he did up to a point, but kind of not
Speaker 3: to the level that he then professes to have done.
Speaker 2: And there's kind of all this.
Speaker 3: Every time there's a new death Deathbow confession, he pops
Speaker 3: up to say, oh, no, I know where they are,
Speaker 3: and he ultimately kind of weaved this big narrative lightly
Speaker 3: Roy Dick does later in his life where they sort
Speaker 3: of repair the maybe wrongs that they've done in the
Speaker 3: reality of the situation and paint them over with that
Speaker 3: kind of glossy frontist storytelling.
Speaker 4: I found it interesting too when they accused Yorke of
Speaker 4: killing the Benders and he said it would have been
Speaker 4: a laudable act at the time, however, and he said
Speaker 4: that the gang that he read the Benders ran with
Speaker 4: likely killed the Venders.
Speaker 2: Are that interesting, Yeah, So I actually agree with that.
Speaker 3: I think that I always had it very interesting that
Speaker 3: there was not a group of men kind of separate
Speaker 3: from law enforcement who went after the Venders, or there
Speaker 3: wasn't a un like a businessman who had enough money
Speaker 3: to spend on it, because it seemed like such an
Speaker 3: easy way essentially to make a name for yourself on
Speaker 3: the frontier, to go after these people living in very difficult,
Speaker 3: dangerous conditions when they were on the run. But it
Speaker 3: wouldn't have been impossible, I don't think, to get them.
Speaker 3: And I subscribed to the belief that they were probably
Speaker 3: killed on the open frontier, potentially by the military or
Speaker 3: by indigenous people they were trading with. I think that
Speaker 3: probably the younger and the older couple separated and you
Speaker 3: see people like Frank McPherson pop up in Colorado kind
Speaker 3: of around the mining towns. So it's also totally plausible
Speaker 3: that Kate and John went up there. And there is
Speaker 3: a theory that they went up there and then opened
Speaker 3: an inn, and that there's some there's a grave of
Speaker 3: a Katie Bender up in Colorado, which some people believe
Speaker 3: is the Kate Bender, but I don't think her personality
Speaker 3: quite lines up because she was a major philanthropist, and
Speaker 3: I just feel like Kate and John especially probably wouldn't
Speaker 3: have ever left a.
Speaker 2: Life of crime behind.
Speaker 3: But I do think that the people they kind of
Speaker 3: fell foul of probably didn't necessarily know who they were,
Speaker 3: which is why we don't hear kind of a big
Speaker 3: press announcement that's like we finally caught the vendors and
Speaker 3: they were here and they did this.
Speaker 4: You're right that likely or not likely from your investigation,
Speaker 4: that they traveled with this gang, stayed in lots of times,
Speaker 4: not in the area too long, and then because of
Speaker 4: the Indian country and the conditions in that area, people
Speaker 4: didn't ask questions and they weren't recognized, and so that
Speaker 4: they had sort of a life a fugitive for a
Speaker 4: few years. Anyway, there's a.
Speaker 3: Real transience, I think, to life out West at this
Speaker 3: point in time, especially in the Texas Panhandel area, because
Speaker 3: you've got conflicts like the Red River Walk going on
Speaker 3: between the US military and the planes Native Americans. But
Speaker 3: you've also got the kind of real boom of the
Speaker 3: Capital Drive, So there's that hundreds of thousands of capple
Speaker 3: moving through, there's cowboys, there's all the kind of attached
Speaker 3: industries you know, like dry goods, people, fur traders. Buffalo
Speaker 3: hunting is a massive part of the economy in that
Speaker 3: part of the country at that point in time. Samuel
Speaker 3: Merrick says that the vendors often disguise themselves as buffalo
Speaker 3: hunters because groups of people did just move around the
Speaker 3: open frontier. Kate often wears men's clothes, so it's not
Speaker 3: immediately obvious you know that there's a.
Speaker 2: Woman traveling with the group.
Speaker 3: And then in Indian Territory, you've got a kind of
Speaker 3: legal system that makes it very easy for white outlaws
Speaker 3: to go unbothered because in the area, the legal authority
Speaker 3: belongs to tribal courts, but tribal courts can't take action
Speaker 3: against white outlaws, outlaws or settlers. So that's why Indian
Speaker 3: Territory and kind of acts as a bridge between Kansas
Speaker 3: and Texas and Colorado, and you see lots of people
Speaker 3: breaking the law in that area just because they can.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. You talk about in the epilogue the Mount Hope Cemetery, Independence, Kansas,
Speaker 4: October twenty nineteen, you and your partner at the Grave
Speaker 4: of William York tell us about Cherryvale and the legacy
Speaker 4: of the vendors, as you say, is still much alive.
Speaker 3: Yes, So we obviously spent some time in the state
Speaker 3: archives into Peaka, and then we drove down to the southeast,
Speaker 3: so we stopped at Fort Scott and then we stayed
Speaker 3: in Independence because again, it was really important for me
Speaker 3: to feel the landscape, because the well that these people
Speaker 3: are living and is such an important part of what
Speaker 3: facilitates the action of the story. And you can't really
Speaker 3: write about what that landscape is like, I don't think
Speaker 3: unless you've seen it, especially if you grew up in
Speaker 3: the London suburbs, which I obviously did. But it was
Speaker 3: really interesting being in the area because in Cherryville, especially
Speaker 3: like they have a vendor room in their historical museum,
Speaker 3: and it's an amazing little museum, and the town is
Speaker 3: obviously so much more than just those crimes. The Louise
Speaker 3: Brooks is from Cherryville. You know, they had an amazing
Speaker 3: railway system, but that is what people visit the area for,
Speaker 3: because that's obviously kind of the most evocative, quote unquote
Speaker 3: exciting part of the area's history, and the town has
Speaker 3: a kind of long storied relationship with how it engages
Speaker 3: with the crimes. At one point they have a replica
Speaker 3: cabin which has lots of visitors, makes quite a lot
Speaker 3: of money, but a lot of the community tear upset
Speaker 3: about it because they feel it's impoor taste. And obviously
Speaker 3: some of the victims relatives still live in the area,
Speaker 3: so that's the very kind of intense thing to have
Speaker 3: on your doorstep. But also it is an important part
Speaker 3: of the area's history and it's very much alive in
Speaker 3: the folk or of the air. You know, when we
Speaker 3: were there, people were very keen to talk to us
Speaker 3: about why we were there, and they'd kind of offer
Speaker 3: up theories about what they thought had happened to the benders.
Speaker 3: They'd recommend books, and when we were trying to locate
Speaker 3: exactly kind of well roughly where the land that the
Speaker 3: Bender cabin was on. We pulled over and asked someone,
Speaker 3: and he knew exactly what we were talking about, you know.
Speaker 3: He said, oh, where their murders happened, you know, and
Speaker 3: pointed us up the road and then told us not
Speaker 3: to trespas So it is still and even in Lawrence, Kansas,
Speaker 3: when we talked about why we were visiting, you know,
Speaker 3: people knew about it. People had kind of old family
Speaker 3: store worries about the Venders. And actually, since the books
Speaker 3: come out, lots of people have got in contact with
Speaker 3: me and said, oh, I remember my grandma telling me
Speaker 3: this about, you know, like her grandma, And that's been
Speaker 3: really interesting, Like it's still so much a part of
Speaker 3: folk or on the American frontier.
Speaker 4: You're right in the end of your book that the
Speaker 4: Benders live on and the story of the Venders live
Speaker 4: on because their crimes were what why does it live on?
Speaker 4: You think so predominantly.
Speaker 2: I think there's a couple of reasons. Really.
Speaker 3: I think the biggest and perhaps the most obvious one
Speaker 3: is that they were just never thought. We don't know
Speaker 3: exactly what happened to them. I mean, all the way
Speaker 3: through my research, I was thinking, you know, am I
Speaker 3: going to find the miracle piece of evidence, you know
Speaker 3: that's a picture or a confirmable account or a grave
Speaker 3: site or something like that, you know, perhaps where the
Speaker 3: family had been dumped, if they had been hunted down.
Speaker 2: But I just don't think we will ever know now.
Speaker 3: And you know, there are so many other questions within
Speaker 3: that as well, like how many victims did they really have?
Speaker 3: Who exactly in the family was doing the killing, because
Speaker 3: obviously the newspapers go between they say it was John,
Speaker 3: it was Kate, you know, it was par And I
Speaker 3: think it's such incredible, frightening and just fascinating story. I mean,
Speaker 3: and there's enough gaps in it still that people can
Speaker 3: kind of plug them with their most lurid imaginings. And
Speaker 3: I think also the role of Kate. I mean, she's
Speaker 3: such a kind of powerful central figure in this family,
Speaker 3: and there hadn't there just hadn't been a crime like
Speaker 3: that before, and she becomes this kind of benchmark of
Speaker 3: what it means to be a female murderer. People like
Speaker 3: Bill Dennis are compared to her when those crimes are discovered,
Speaker 3: because obviously a kind of similar situation with the isolated farmhouse.
Speaker 3: And I think it's just so unusual, this idea of
Speaker 3: a family of serial killers, and we see it time
Speaker 3: and time again in pop culture as well. I mean,
Speaker 3: you've got things like the Texas chainsaw massacre, you know,
Speaker 3: which certainly has a whiff of something vendery about it,
Speaker 3: I think, and it's just such a perversion of what
Speaker 3: life on the frontier was supposed to be at that
Speaker 3: point in time. You know, like, do you had this
Speaker 3: idea of this maybe nuclear family. You've got the farm,
Speaker 3: you've got your children, you've got the community, and you're
Speaker 3: helping each other and maybe it's difficult, but ultimately you thrive.
Speaker 3: And then the idea that one of these families is
Speaker 3: secretly killing people who come through the area is just
Speaker 3: I think too interesting to ever be lost to history.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, congratulations to bringing all of these new characters that
Speaker 4: you've found in your investigation in this book and adding
Speaker 4: a whole new dimension to this story through this extraordinary book.
Speaker 4: I want to thank you very much for coming on
Speaker 4: Susan Jonass and talking about Hell's half Acre, The Untold
Speaker 4: story of the Benders, a serial killer family on the
Speaker 4: American frontier. For those people that might want to take
Speaker 4: a look at this other than Amazon and everywhere where,
Speaker 4: they might take a look at this book. Is there
Speaker 4: a website or a Facebook page they might also take.
Speaker 3: A look at There is not, but you can follow
Speaker 3: me on Twitter if you just type in my name
Speaker 3: and my surname, that will come up. And I love
Speaker 3: hearing from people as well, like if you have a
Speaker 3: kind of weird family story about the Venders, or you
Speaker 3: just remember driving through there as a child, like I'd
Speaker 3: love to hear about Chez.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, Susan jonass Hell's half Acre, the
Speaker 4: untold story of the Benders, a serial killer family on
Speaker 4: the American frontier. It has been fascinating. Thank you so much, Susan,
Speaker 4: and you have a great evening.
Speaker 2: Good night. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 4: Good night,