Horrors on the Homestead

In this week's episode Kate and Paul travel back to 1871 Kansas where a family goes missing out in the settled plains of the Old West. After a few possibly related crime scenes are discovered, the scope of the case grows and grows. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried Bones.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hey Paul, Hey Kate, how are you today.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
I'm doing really well. Happy Halloween you too. We're a
couple of days off, but we start. I've said this before,
we start so early, and I know you said, you
guys throw up some stuff in that you're very anti
climatic about Halloween. You're sort of like, yah, you know,
we'll answer the door and give the kids some treats,
and that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
There's aspects of Halloween that I could most certainly really
get into, you know, but just really have never taken
of the effort.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
So I have kind of an odd internal debate that
I have with myself every Halloween for a couple of
years in a row. Tell me what you think about
this for a few years in a row. These are
not our neighbors, but they're on a major road. It's
a family that lives on the kind of a major
road that go It's near a grocery store and across
the street from like a Stoke homb place. A lot

(01:52):
of kids travel along it. For the last few years,
this family, as many families do, they decorate the outside
of the house for Halloween. But they've done something interesting,
which is they've sort of put up a reenactment of
a scene that was from maybe like a Friday the
thirteenth or Halloween, which you know is what I grew

(02:12):
up with. I mean, I'm a Halloween fan. I don't
like horror movies, but you know, I had seen the original.
But it is that scene that you and I have
actually talked about in True Detective, which is the screaming
woman who's sort of flailing on the ground and you know,
the killer coming after her, and they had made this
scene and so it is a mannequin dole kind of

(02:35):
thing that looks terrified and is screaming and then an
axe murderer coming after her, And there were all sorts
of complaints because it scares little kids. I mean, this
is down the street from an elementary school. But it's
also a legitimate part of Halloween. It's from the generation
acts people you know who grew up with that. But

(02:57):
I mean it's also kind of been the True Detective
realm too, which is kind of gross. I don't know
if Halloween aged that well. Young people having sex and
then being murdered is kind of the way I summarize
a lot of those stories. So what do you think
about that? I mean, it's it's Halloween, but and you
should be festive. But at the same time, little kids
are crying and you know, but don't you have a

(03:17):
right to put up whatever you want as long as
it's not offensive.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Well, I guess you know. First, I've I've never seen
the movie Halloween, you know, so I can just envision, though,
exactly what you're talking about. And you know, to clarify
when you when you say you know, out of True
Detective you're talking about the true detective magazines, right magazines,
And you know, for for somebody who's worked the cases

(03:41):
I've worked. You know, those true detective magazines are characterized
as poorn for the sexual sadist because they literally get
off seeing women in such compromised positions, screaming, the man
holding a knife up against her, she's bound in some way,
you know, all these various permutations, and you know, on

(04:04):
one level it I can understand the Halloween costume. It's
in fun. You know, people kind of gravitate towards the
spooky and the ghoulish, and so I think I'm torn
about something like that, you know, because of this location.
Maybe this type of setup would be something that should

(04:27):
be a little bit more hidden from playing view, you know.
And I've seen some of these pretty extensive Halloween displays
for you know, trick or treaters, and people will have
like a fairly you know, tame display up front that
the little kids can walk through, and then there there'll

(04:48):
be a source of candy right there, and then there's
also a secondary location for the adults to go into,
and there's a sign that basically is saying graphic pass
this point. I think doing something like that maybe is
I don't want to use the term responsible because I
don't want anybody listening to think I'm.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
A fuddy daddy heavily involved.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
Yeah, that I'm just being a fuddy daddy, But I
just think it's also you take a look at who
typically is out and about on Halloween night, and you
are dealing with five and seven year olds. Yeah, you're right,
you know, And there's reasons why we don't want young
children to have this type of imagery. But I also
don't want to, you know, go well, don't have fun either,

(05:30):
because everybody has, you know, has different experiences that they
want to have on Halloween. So you know, I'm kind
of torn. But I think, yeah, maybe keeping something that's
that's that graphic a little bit more out of playing
view maybe a better way to do it.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
Mm hm. And you know, it's interesting because you know,
there was a lot of outrage, which I understood, but
there's so many horrible what I would say are fun
but that are a violent imagery for Halloween out there.
But it is all fake stuff. It is like ghouls
and goblins and the headless horseman holding his own head,
which I love, by the way, Like there's all that

(06:08):
kind of stuff that legitimately will scare you but it's
not real. It's you know, supernatural. That scene depicting some
mass murderer going after a woman that was realistic. I mean,
it didn't look like real people to me, but it
was depicting a scene that was definitely out of a
slasher film. Having a six year old see that would
be pretty awful. And the neighbors who did it really

(06:30):
were pissed. I mean, there's only that's the only way
I can describe it from the backlash, and they put
up a in dramatic fashion. They put up like a sheet,
like maybe several bed sheets and covered the scene from
the streets, and then they had spray painted essentially the
name of our neighborhood censored by the name of the neighborhood.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
Oh yeah, I just.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
Thought, okay, so it was dramatic, you know.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
Yeah, yeah, it's I know, it's hard to I can
see where people would really polarize with something like that. Yeah,
where I was living in California, there's this one couple
that did this amazing dexter scene in the garage where
literally it's dexter standing over a saran wrapped body and
there's blood everywhere and everything like that. But it was

(07:20):
tucked back into the garage itself, you know, so you
could see as a parent walking your kids, you know,
you're going, well, I'm not taking them in there.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
So yeah, yeah, absolutely, So I mean I think if
I had little kids, i'd be kind of offended too,
for sure. But then I look back and I go,
I love that kind of movie. But then I thought, yeah,
but it just didn't age well, especially when you and I.
I was just telling my class this today about the
true crime Detective and you telling me that, you know,
some of the most well known serial killers were found
with these magazines and what that really means. And so yeah,

(07:55):
I mean, you know, that's the part of Halloween that
I think can be really touchy for people. No, for sure,
So you know, let's scare the shit out of little kids,
but in a different way maybe right now, save the
horror films for later. And this was up for several
weeks before Halloween even started, so of course, yeah, you know,
they were milking it for sure. But then hopefully nobody's

(08:17):
offended by my pal back here, the one who's desperately
still hoping that Victorian chairs are comfortable, which they aren't.
So if you see me shifting around. If you've ever
noticed me shift around in this chair, probably about three
quarters through basically every episode we've ever done. It's because
my left butt cheek has fallen asleep because the chair

(08:40):
needs to be somehow updated. But yeah, I feel bad.
I see why the Victorians could be so uptight.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
Well, you know, when I was having a lot of
pain in my left hip, I was using one of
those to me it looks like like a hemorrhoid pillow.
You know, just saw it was softer and that would
avoid some of the pain versus. Now my hip is better,
so you know, I don't have to have that hemoroy
pillow underneath me anymore.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
I can't believe we were talking about this. We went
from from Jason and Michael Myers to hemorrhoy pillars. That
was a good transmission. Well, I promised you a spookier story,
and we're gonna have spooky stories here because this is
a lot of missing people and we're trying to sort
out who's responsible on what is happening where. This is

(09:28):
also a spooky time period eighteen seventies in the Midwest.
I don't know if that's a spooky area for you,
but I am scared of vast open spaces. Also, I'm
scared of the countryside and the best open spaces. What
am I not scared? I guess by the ocean. And
so this is this is the Midwest in the eighteen seventies,
and it's a little bit of a Halloween story.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
All right, Well, I'm looking forward to it.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Okay, let's set the scene. We are in eighteen seventy three,
it's May sixth, and we are outside of a wooden
cabin on the front tier. This part of the frontier
is fourteen miles east of Independence in Kansas and a
half a mile south east of a couple of places
that I've never even heard of before. And so we

(10:11):
are in what they would say then was Indian Territory,
which is a very treacherous place. And it's not because
of those oceage Native Americans, but rather all of these
criminals and fugitives that have run from the East coast
out to you know, the frontier to escape justice. So
already we're in kind of a lawless area to begin with,

(10:33):
and we're at this cabin and we have a really
it's a small space, and the reason is because on
the frontier prairies. The lumber is really scarce, and so
everything was, you know, very small. When I was in
Cape Cod a couple of months ago with my family,
we stayed in an eighteenth century home and my kids

(10:56):
kept saying, to the seilings are so low. And I
and you and I had discussed this before, where you know,
I thought, oh, maybe the men were a shorter stature
back then, and I know that that can happen. But
I had a listener emailed man. What she said makes sense,
which is just the lack of resources meant that they
were not going to make tall ceilings in the seventeen
hundreds potentially, and so you know, they made them just

(11:17):
tall enough. So anyway, this is a small cabin. The
family that lives there squeezes into about four hundred square
feet and they're using half of the cabin as a storefront,
which is pretty interesting. So they took a canvas wagon
cover and divided the space into two different rooms. And

(11:38):
I'll tell you about the family in a bit, because
they're in trouble. They're missing, and you know, the cabin,
the front part of the cabin, just to give us
some context, like I said, is a general store and
what The kind of business they built was just, you know,
something that was very profitable in this time because you
have so many people who are just pushing west, literally

(11:59):
pushing wet, and so you have all of these homesteaders
and frontiersmen who needed to buy supplies and provisions, and
they want tobacco and they can get all of it
from this particular store. And it's on the what's called
the Osage Trail, and they could also grab dinner there

(12:19):
if they wanted to. So a remote space and I
wanted to show it to you, and so there are
quite a few for eighteen seventy one. There are a
decent amount of photos for this story, and so this
might be a good time to just show you because
we do have a missing family. How remote we're talking
about here. So the first photo and the second photo
only check it out and you could see this is

(12:42):
the cabin. First one's a you know, kind of a
closer up shot so you can kind of just see
the size, and these are locals who are around the
cabin because it does turn into a pretty bad crime scene.
And then you'll see the second one, which is a
sketch and a depiction. I just wanted you see the
wideness of what we're talking about.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
You know, this cabin looks like it's just on open planes.
You know, if there's any vegetation, it's looks like it's
you know, weeds and grass. Yeah, no trees anywhere in sight. Really,
the cabin itself, you know, this is a you know,
it's a single story, gable roof. I mean, it's hard

(13:19):
to call it a house. It's tiny. I'm shocked about that.
How many different products that they are selling out of this,
But yeah, no, it is definitely remote, and it looks
like you can see in any direction all the way
to the horizon. There's no hills, nothing that's really blocking it.

(13:40):
And then the you know, the sketch just shows the
cabin with maybe a few other structures and then horses
and various you know people, I'm assuming you know that
are you know along this what is o Sage Trail,
you know, passing through So you know immediately, you know,
of course remoteness is is signific and then the transient

(14:02):
nature of the population at this location, you know, because
people are just constantly flowing along the trail.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yeah, and so for me, when I think about the
dust bowl, that will happen decades later. This shows why
it would happen. Yeah, you know, with no vegetation, dry dirt,
drought conditions, massive winds coming in and creating like a
cyclone effect. Nothing in this scene feels grounded to me,

(14:31):
you know, I mean just like, oh, gust of wind
could knock over this whole little homestead here.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
Well, and I look at this and if I were,
you know, somebody that was looking for a place to live,
it wouldn't be here, right.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
Yeah, So I'm glad that Allison are crack researcher on
this one found the photos because I had pictured off
a trail just rows of trees and kind of in
a forested area at places where people could sneak around
and jump the family and stuff. And no, there's nowhere
to hide with this. You know, they are literally coming
down almost like a desert stopping. And there's a sign

(15:08):
that's not there anymore that say groceries. So when you're
talking about being vulnerable, as this family would be, you know,
you're in this open space. You are advertising that you
have items that are valuable, and maybe you have some guns,
but with enough people if they show up, if you've
got a gang of criminals show up here. This family's

(15:30):
wiped out almost instantly. There's four people living here, So
there's Elvira, and you've got John Senior, and then Kate
and John Junior, and those are their adult children. So
you've got four people in let's just say two hundred
square feet, which this cottage is, you know, a little

(15:52):
less than two hundred square feet, and then you've got
the storefront. I don't know how much the storefront is,
but man, this is isn't ironic all of that space
and because of a lack of lumber, they have to
make this little tiny house. They're the only ones around
for miles and miles and miles.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
Yeah, and there's also no services. Do you think about it?
Do you know something happens to this family? Where's law
enforcement coming from? How far away is law enforcement or
any neighbors really to be able to help out the people.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
Who come across this, You know they're alarmed. Because again
we always come back to the I always use the
same example of the woman who left the laundry out
overnight and it rained and she didn't bother to come
pick it up. Something's happened to that woman. I mean,
that's how we know. And in this time period, people
were very alarmed because they had cattle roaming loose all

(16:46):
over the property. I didn't see it, but there's apparently
some kind of fencing that's up, okay, you know, to
keep the cattle in. They do have cattle. It looks
like they've been unfed for at least several days and
without vegetation. I assume it's grain that they had to buy,
so you know, these are starving cattle. And so that's

(17:07):
what makes this really alarming for neighbors. They said that
the cabin had either the people had been taken or
they had left very quickly. There's half eaten food and
mugs of coffee on the table still okay. There's pots
and pans that are on the stove like they had
been cooking. Utensils are scattered all over the floor. There
are insects everywhere. There's clothing all over the place, furniture's overturned.

(17:32):
That grocery sign has been pulled down. And this is
bad news, I think for this family in this remote area,
when you're surrounded by hostility all over the place.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah, so you know, the disruption to the inside, that's
where I'm wondering is this the result of ransacking somebody's
in there looking for something? Was there combat? Was there
a fight? You know, some of that attributed to, you know,
maybe the family resisting being abducted, if that's what happened,
with the cattle being unfed for several days. Once the

(18:07):
discoverers get there, I mean, the trail is cold at
this point, you know, because it happened several days prior.

Speaker 1 (18:17):
And you have to think, I don't know how popular
this trail is, but you have to be a good
planner to follow along this trail because it could be
hundreds of miles before you see one of these like
we talked about way stations, you know, in one of
our other stories, where you know it's predictable. It's like
seeing the gas in ten miles sign up on the highway.
So you have to know what you're doing if there

(18:39):
are people coming in and attacking this family that's really vulnerable.
There are two adult children I had mentioned, and by
adult I mean twenties, you know, very early twenties. And
I don't know who's armed there or not, But like
I said, it just didn't seem like it would be
a stretch to have even a few people be able
to come, and I don't know what the motivation is

(18:59):
to take them or if they've been killed, and they're
very different places. I guess we don't know yet. I
just have to kind of give you some more information.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
Well, also with the you know, the family itself, but
also the storefront, there needs to be a regular delivery
of product, you know, so that's also somebody that is
going to be flowing through here. You know, how far
away are they from the nearest town? Are they going
someplace to get to restock their store, or is somebody

(19:30):
actually you know drive, you know, using a horse drawn
wagon to do deliveries.

Speaker 1 (19:37):
Well, it says fourteen miles east of Independence, but there
are half a mile southeast of Moorhead Station in Lubbott County, Okay.
So there are half a mile from something that has
a name, but where they are doesn't really have a name.
It's sort of like Indian territory, quote unquote is what
I see. So that's how remote they are. But again,

(19:58):
you know, o in spaces like that, there's almost like
where where are you going to run? But they obviously
have been able to build a business. But I will
say that this area has really spooked to people for
a long time. Along this trail, there have been quite
a few people who have gone missing. And I don't
mean specifically right in this area. You know where the

(20:20):
cabin is, but it's just been people who have said,
I'm going to go on the Osage Trail. We've talked
about this before. You know, it is not unusual. It's
like going out to see It's not unusual to not
see a loved one for weeks or even months at
a time when they are pushing west and trying to
find new territory and everything is brand new and they

(20:42):
don't know what's around the corner. So it wouldn't have
been unusual for somebody to go missing for a while
and then they pop right back up.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
Yeap, I could see that. And I can also see
where this is a built in victim pool if you will,
for people that you know, whether you want to say
they have financial motive, you know robbers, you know they'll
start picking off people as they're going along this trail.
Wouldn't be surprised if you have, you know, predators that

(21:11):
are sexually assaulting and killing. You know, some of these travelers,
predators go to where the praise at and here you
have prey that are just in many ways going to
be helpless. They might be armed, but everybody was armed
back back in this day.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
Now we have a little bit of a jumpy timeline,
but I think you can keep up with me here. Okay,
about I would say a month earlier, this is where
they start thinking about the different disappearance and discoveries in
this area that could be tied to the missing family.
So about a month earlier, there is a wagon found

(21:49):
and a starving team of horses, one of which was lame.
This wagon had been found about twelve miles north toward
they er. There were no bodies found, but this was suspicious.
People in this area, certainly in the Frontier, would not
abandon a wagon and certainly perfectly good horses. So they
assumed that somebody had been taken. And we're still trying

(22:13):
to figure out who owns that wagon. But you know,
that was over two years starting in seventy one. This
was sort of the similar circumstances to what has happened before.
So a few days before that wagon was discovered, there
are a pair of brothers who are concerned about their
missing brother and they are actually well known. So Colonel

(22:35):
Alexander York and his brother Ed York had traced the
disappearance of their brother along this trail. He was named
doctor William York. They knew that he had stopped at
the house, he had eaten a meal there, he had
watered his horse, he bought some provisions, and then he

(22:56):
took off and no one had seen or heard from
him since. And then, of course we can't ask the
family because the family's not there either. His brothers and
his pregnant wife and his three children are in a
neighboring county, and they're very nervous because they don't know
what happened, but they do know that, you know, he
had ridden away after spotting the loose cattle. The people

(23:18):
on the prairie had assembled like a search party that
had been led by a guy named Sergeant Leroy Dick,
who was a Civil War veteran, and he was a
township officer, which is about as close as a you know,
to a sheriff as you're going to get. He divided
the party into three groups. One group explored the stables
of this family, so this would be John and Elvira's stables,

(23:41):
kind of where the cattle and the horses would have been.
And then another group patrols spill out and drum creeks
on the land. And then a third group, which includes
the sergeant, searches the cabin. So you've got these three
groups working kind of at the same time. So the
group with the cabin reports this. They find a dozen

(24:01):
bullet holes that have speckled the roof in the sides
of the cabin, so somebody has shot. You know, there
are dozens of a dozen bullet holes there. And they
find a bloodstained knife with a four inch tapered blade,
and it was in the mantle clock, so you know

(24:24):
the clock that's sitting on the mantle, and it sounds really,
really chaotic. So you've got, you know, guns and knives
at a minimum here and wedged behind the grocery counter
is a horse bridle and at York, who is the
brother of doctor William Yorke, says that was his brother's
horse bridle. Now, I mean, I didn't know that horse

(24:46):
bridles could be that distinct. I don't see anything about
initials or anything. But at York, who happens to be there, says,
this is my brother's bridle, and it's behind the counter
of the grocery.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
So doctor William York his horse bridle is actually fa
somewhat hidden inside of this cabin, like somebody's trying to
tuck it away. Yep.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
And then you've got the bloody knife that's inside the
mantle clock. And then you've got bullet holes, a dozen
bullet holes in the roof and the sides of the cabin.
And then here's where things get kind of a graphic
to me. There's a bad odor that pervades the room,
and the searcher's sergeant Dick says, it's really particularly coming

(25:27):
from a trapdoor, which is concealed by a straw mattress.
Trapdoor is not unusual, of course, especially in you know,
it would be for the Midwest in the eighteen hundreds,
and people would store stuff down there. Blah blah. You know,
this is not anything odd. So they move the mattress
and the search party prize open the door, and this

(25:48):
is an awful stench that they all recognize is death.
The joists beneath the trap door are stained with what
appears to be blood. The door reveals a small cellar room.
It is six feet deep seven feet square to the
top and three feet square at the bottom. I don't
even know what math that is. That's enough for a body, right,

(26:10):
the six feet part for sure?

Speaker 2 (26:12):
Oh yeah, no for multiple bodies.

Speaker 1 (26:15):
So without ventilation they can't, I mean, nobody's going in
that cellar because it's disgusting and smelly. It's too strong,
and they're vomiting. So they set up a pulley system
and they place the cabin on log rollers and tie
it to a horse and pull the structure aside. I
mean ingenuity. It's like the It's like the cop with

(26:36):
the magnets on a string try to fish out a
weapon in a river.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
It's like the FBI collecting the unibimber's cabin.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
I mean, so they shove this little cabin to the
side using these horses, even with the breeze. The rants
at air leads two men to vomit, and you know,
I know, you've dealt with a lot of dead bodies
and a lot of different, you know, stages of decomposition.
My first real, real experience was when I went to

(27:06):
the quote unquote body farm at Texas State University to
you know, interview the head of the forensic anthropology program
there and He took me to the outside area where
the bodies were buried and doing research, and he said,
you know, I know this is weird, but it's like
we solve crimes here, you know, we teach people forensics here.
And there were students testing the temperature of the bodies

(27:29):
based on how deep they were buried. There were bodies
that had cages on them because the people had requested
that they didn't want, you know, vultures or deer or
anybody to have access except for the bugs and stuff.
And they were building a small house in which they
were going to put a body in to show a
law enforcement agency, a federal and I can't remember who

(27:51):
was the FBI or who it was what it would
be like if you burned down a house with a
body inside. And so they were doing real work. But
you know, it was a hundred and three degrees and
I was walking around and even exposed, it was so
distinctive I couldn't even He said, oh, you're going to
get used to it. I did not get used to it,
I can tell you that, but you know, it was

(28:13):
a good learning experience. But it is a distinctive smell,
especially when there's decomposition there.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
You know, it definitely is. I mean it's something that
I immediately recognize. And I've been on scenes that are really
really bad in terms of the decomp and the circumstances,
or even at the morgue. You know, I would say
the worst and I'm not going to get I mean,
it's not graphic. It's just that we had to zoom

(28:40):
up a homicide victim that had been found floating in
the Sacramento River delta and his head and hands had
been cut off, and then he had been weighed down
in the water, but he was literally bobbing at the
surface and he had been buried, I don't know for
ten plus years at least, and his body was buried
below the water table in the ground, and so he

(29:03):
continued to soak in water while he was in the ground.
So he was exhumed. And I remember driving to work
that morning and I was blocks away from where my
office was, which was just above the morgue, and I
could start smelling him that far away. Oh my god,
it was and it was it was powerful, you know now,

(29:24):
I mean the smell is is something that you just
I mean, you get used to. You have to deal
with it. You know, I always laugh if you watch
Silence of the Lambs and you have Jodie Foster Clarice
Starling going into where there's this you know body that
they've recovered, and her and her you know, coworkers are
putting you know, Vic's vapor rub underneath their nostrils, and

(29:45):
it was just like, oh, nope, nope, not going to
do it. You and and quite frankly, you'll be ridiculed.
You're showing weakness. There's a certain aspect to where you
just have to suck it up and deal.

Speaker 1 (29:59):
You know, I'm going to tell what you could expect,
which is clouded bloodstains in the cellar floor. And there's
a narrow passageway that leads under where the house had
been into the backyard, vegetable garden and apple orchard. So
you know, you've got these places where bodies can be.
They had, you know, have this awful smell, but no

(30:20):
bodies when they pulled out the house. But they now
see this passageway that goes to the orchard and the
vegetable garden. So now are we I mean, where do
you stand with this? It's a big mystery and you
probably don't even have enough information, But you've got a
missing family, a wagon that's been abandon a month earlier.
There's all kinds of pieces.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
You see.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
This is why our Halloween, this is what our Hellen
Special gets us into.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
Well, I think that you know, first just from the
crime seed of the house, you've got these, you know,
twenty bullet holes in the roof and the side of
the cabin. You know, I'm kind of curious. Are those
bullet holes all being shot from within the cab been
going out? Are they being shot from outside the cabin
going in? Or do you have a combination of both,

(31:04):
Like maybe you have a gunfight going on with the
fenders on the outside of the cabin and you have
the family trying to ward them off. But obviously they
have at least a dead body that some of the
blood and who knows if there's decomf fluid soaks down
from let's say the trapdoor area onto the choice and

(31:24):
then that body was in this little cellar room for
a period of time, decomposed one hundred and three degrees outside,
you know, very warm area, so probably you know, started
to bloat and and give off the decomp smell fairly quickly.
And then somebody came back and moved that body, you know,

(31:45):
so that what they're smelling is the remnants, you know,
the decomposing you know, fluids that are still in the
cellar room, but the body isn't there. You now, why
would somebody feel compelled to do that? So that's you know,
one of the questions. And then the other thing is
is this connection to the missing doctor William Yorke and

(32:07):
the horse bridle, So that would suggest that there is
a connection between those two.

Speaker 1 (32:13):
Cases also kind of once we get deeper into this,
I don't think anybody would be surprised about a trapdoor.
I certainly don't think anybody would be surprised about a
passageway leading from you know, the basement area storage area
to an orchard or a garden, because that's just the
way these were built in some ways. You know, It's
obviously it's an easy passage where you can kind of

(32:33):
just shove you know, food down, and you're not holding
things all over the place. These were practical people, so
and you know they were raising animals and farming and
all of that kind of stuff. So don't be suspicious
of that if you were in any way, No, not
at all so Ed York is, I mean, this is
so unfortunate. He's searching for his brother and they go

(32:54):
over to the apple orchard. We've had stories about, you know,
things happening in apple orchards before. And he has a
metal wagon rod and he's probing the earth and it
hits something just a few feet below the surface. There's
a body and it does turn out to be doctor
William York, who's buried in this orchard. And I mean,

(33:15):
how awful for his brother to find him there. Here's
the condition. Doctor York was buried face down, he was
only wearing his underwear. The back of his head was
smashed in, his throat had been slashed ear to ear.
And when the search party exhumes the body he sees
what he says is clearly, you know, a death by

(33:37):
blood force trauma, although my guess is that the slashing
from ear to ear could have just as easily done it.
The investigator finds some hammers and they are beneath the
cabin stove. And I wanted you to see the hammers.
So there's a shoehammer. I had never seen one three
inch claw hammer. I've seen one, and a handmade five

(33:58):
and a half pound sledge hammer sounds petrifying.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
I'm looking at it, so I'm what I'm looking at
is what appears to be a glass display cabinet, so
I'm assuming this is like a museum somewhere. And then
you have these three hammers that are inside a blue box,
and they're mounted in this blue box. And you know
these hammers, you know, i'd say, there's a small, medium,

(34:23):
and large one. You know, you see the on the
left hand side, you see a small hammer with a
very you know, narrow face and short claws. And then
on the right side you see a medium sized hammer
that has a very large face and then just a

(34:44):
single claw, if you will. And then in between those
two hammers is the one I'm gonna say as large,
which is a you know, short handled sledge hammer. And
all three of these weapons are capable of inflicting pretty
significant damage to a person, with of course the sledge

(35:07):
hammer being able to inflict the most damage just due
to its sheer size and weight.

Speaker 1 (35:12):
I went down a pretty weird rabbit hole thinking about
these three hammers and what were the I mean, I'm
sure I'm not the only one who thinks like this,
but like, what would inflict the most damage versus what's
the easiest to use and conceal. You know, is it
like the small pointing hammer which could really pierce, or
is it the blunt of this sledgehammer. And then I said,

(35:34):
Halloween needs to be away with sooner rather than later
for me thinking bad thoughts here.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
No, But you know, let's say on doctor Yorke's skull.
You know, if these hammers had been used, there's some
distinctive features of each of these hammers. So you might,
let's say all three had been used on the back
of his head, but there's also blows on other parts
of his head. You might be able to tie I
select wounds and skull fractures to each of these hammers.

Speaker 1 (36:04):
Well from your mouth to someone's ear. That's what they did.
So there was a round wound on the back of
doctor Yorke's head, and they said it matched perfectly to
the shoehammer, okay, which was the medium one that you
had mentioned, so you know, as a very round head.
The search party loads doctor York into a coffin, then

(36:26):
puts them on the wagon and the searchers are talking.
And this is where the experience that you and I
have talked about over and over again, people who know
the area, and especially people who know the history of
the area, who have been there a long time. You know,
like the case of the serial killer who was caught
because someone in Canada recognized, you know, a crime that

(36:49):
sounded very similar to what happened in I think it
was Vermont. You know, this one guy made the connection,
a judge made the connection, and so that's kind of
what happens here. So the surge party is standing around
and one of them says, Okay, this reminds me of
the wagon that no one believes is some innocent wagon
with perfectly good horses that has been abandoned. But they said,

(37:13):
this is even weirder. So in May of eighteen seventy one,
so this is two years earlier, two little boys discovered
the body of a guy named William Jones in Drum Creek,
which is around this property, and they said that there
were distinctive wagon wheel tracks that had been found near
the body. One of the back wheels was they said,

(37:37):
dished the wrong way. And then they concluded why, which
is that it had been carrying a load that was
way too heavy and the load had been shifted and
it kind of twisted the wheel again historical context, That's
not something I would have thought of. And so they said,
they've got this distinctive track, we know exactly what caused it,
but no luck, they couldn't find who it was. Again
they're on this remote trail in the middle of nowhere.

(38:00):
Then we've got about let's say, seven months later, no
longer than that February of eighteen seventy two, after the
snow thawed around Drum Creek where William Jones was found,
the body of a guy named John Philps was found.
But they weren't getting a ton of forensic if you

(38:20):
could even call it that information, because wild Hoggs had
mutilated his remains, so it was difficult to figure out
the cause of death. But I guess it could have
been suicide or starvation, but they didn't know. But his father,
of course, was convinced that he was murdered. But no
one's connecting it to the cabin. They're just these are
people who are found on These two guys were found

(38:40):
on the property, so so far, Now what do you think.
Now we're talking about you know, doctor Yorke, and then
you're talking about William Jones, you know, in Drum Creek,
which is very close by, and then you've got this guy,
John Phipps. But they're spread out, they're years.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
Apart, and this is just where what is what is
the I guess the typical pattern of crime or deaths
in this particular area. So because that's that's critical for
an investigator to go, Okay, hold on, I remember these
cases from two years ago, you know, but I imagine,

(39:17):
you know, in the wild West or in this period
of time, there's probably a lot of accidental deaths. There's exposure,
you know, deaths. Somebody's out there working in the field
and isn't hydrating and ends up dying. So it's hard
to say that there's anything conclusive about these two bodies,
you know, William Jones and John Philps to say that

(39:39):
it's related. I think William Jones is interesting just from
the what appears to be the presence of awake and
that they're convinced is somehow related to his death. And
you fast forward to two years and then you have
doctor William Yorke, and then you have the family Elvira
John and their two adult children who are just missing.

(40:01):
And then doctor york Is found literally buried on their property. Yeah,
so I think it's possible that you have And I'm
just going to use the term predator very loosely. I'm
not connotating that I'm dealing with a sexually motivated predator,
but I think it suggests that you have somebody who
is preying on people in this area over the course

(40:24):
of several years potentially. And then what is that person's motive.
You know, doctor William york has found it just in
his underwear. Well, is that because there's a sexual aspect
to this or is that because the offender needed a
change of clothes for one reason or another and took
those or utilized Now I mean I was going to say,

(40:46):
you know, is this a way to further control doctor
Yorke by rendering him an essence naked outside of his underwear.
I think that's less likely. I think the offender possibly
just needed his clothes, maybe to dress up in something
else than what he'd been seen in previously. But even
though it's a male victim, it doesn't eliminate the possibility

(41:10):
that there's a sexual motive. So right now, I think
I'm wide open. I just think it does sound like
somebody is preying on people in this area, and they
took over the commandeer to the cabin. Seems like they
had doctor Yorke with them when they did comment deer
that cabin, and chances are the family is dead and

(41:31):
buried either in the same apple orchard or somewhere else.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
So I messed up one date, okay, so and let
me just and it actually I don't think is going
to make a difference, but the body count is different.
So in May of eighteen seventy one, that's when they
find William Jones, and that's the weird wagon tracks, and
that's in Drum Creek. Then in February of eighteen seventy two,
the snow had started to thaw and they found two

(42:01):
more unidentified bodies. It just says on the prairie, but
they mean off this trail, So in this area enough
where they go, okay, they can call this an area.
They're all men. Then in December of that same year
you have John Phipps. He was the one who was
attacked by the wall at wild Hogs. We don't know
his cause of death. I could say the three men,

(42:23):
so that is William Jones plus the two identified men.
Their bodies were intact, and the same thing that happened
to doctor Yorke happened to them. Hads bashed, probably by
a hammer, throats cut. So now you've got all of
these bodies.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
Here and in their state address. Do you have any
information as to that.

Speaker 1 (42:41):
No, it's not. They're fully dressed. It's not the same situation.
And you know, you've got York where the house is,
where that orchard is, and these people, these other three
people are there, but they're not directly you know, where
the cabin is. So we have all of the searchers
talking about it, and in the meantime they're also searching
the stable. Now we're back in eighteen seventy three at

(43:04):
the homestead that's you know, this family is gone. The
wagon and the team of horses are gone in the
stable that normally would have been there. I will tell
you it turns out that the wagon that had been
abandoned was their wagon, the family's wagon. So John and
Elvira's wagon is the one that looked like, you know,
it had been totally abandoned, and that was found about

(43:27):
a month ago.

Speaker 2 (43:27):
So now you're dealing with a month long trail that's
gone cold, or a trail of the offenders that's been
cold for a month. So they end up interacting, abducting
doctor Yorke. They kill him, and we don't know if
he was killed on the property or if he had

(43:49):
been killed and transported to this property. And that's possible
that he was the one that was put down in
the cellar room and that his body was moved out
to the orchard and buried. But it's also possible, you know,
you could have had one or more of the family
members killed and put down there and then their bodies
were moved. The fact that you have the decomp smell
now a month later, I can't say that those bodies

(44:11):
were down there for any period of time and decomposed
and then moved. It's possible they were just put down
there and then maybe later a day later or two,
you know, they're moved out and then the fluids from
their wounds is what's causing this horrific smell.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
Yeah, they in the stable, they find the family's one
of the family's calves, well it's the only thing they
find really and it's dead, starved to death in the pen.
So the family, it looks like, has been gone for
a solid month from April, and so you know again
that matches the wagon there is for you know, soil
around that over the last couple of months has been moved.

(44:49):
And the men start looking around the prairie where this
property is and they start to see indentations in the earth.
But they're scared because it's night time and there's a
serial killer around here. So the next day they don't
do anything about it. And then the next day that
come out and Colonel Yorke, I mean, bless that guy,

(45:09):
even though his brother has been found. He says, I'm
going to help. So he comes back out and they
find at least seven more victims in shallow graves in
that apple orchard. Now comes the weird part. This was
pretty weird all the way up, but this is the
weird one. And now this is your criminal profiling part.
Some of the victims have been mutilated, their penises were

(45:31):
cut off. One victim is found wedged six feet down
in an upright position in a well. Other bodies were dismembered.
Then they don't know the number of victims because they
are able to match all of these body parts together,
but they think it is somewhere between eleven and twenty

(45:53):
people on this property. And if you look at your
photo packet, you will see them discovering the graves and
just how deep these poor people had to dig.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
Yeah, you know, typically when bodies are buried, you usually
see the term shallow grave because it's hard to dig
down deep. Most offenders think, oh, I'm gonna, you know,
put them six feet underground. And then when they start
doing the digging process, it's a lot of manual labor.
They start getting into that hard packed dirt. The deeper

(46:25):
they get and it takes a long time and they
start panicking and they speed things up, or you know,
maybe a witness drives by. So here obviously this one
photo which appears to be behind the cabin.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
Boy, you see how open that is. It's another preview
of look at that. I mean, there's nothing there, there's
nothing out there.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
So but obviously they they had to dig down. I mean,
you have a man standing in this open pit, and
you know that pit goes up to his elbow. It
was almost chest height. You know, who knows how tall
he is. I'm going to assume he's my height, you know.
So that's that's down a ways. You know, that's down
four to five feet. And then this other photo. Not

(47:12):
sure what I'm looking at. So there's a photo which
shows a crowd standing in the backdrop there appears to
be a wooden what I've described as a casket with
the crowd.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
I think these are bodies that are covered up. Maybe
I don't think those are holes. I think those are bodies.
You know, Sorry about nineteenth century photos.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
It's all seven of these that the family's not included
in these seven bodies.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
They aren't sure because of the they haven't found heads. Necessarily,
they can't come up with the right figure. You know,
they're saying between eleven and twenty because there are no
There aren't eleven heads or twenty heads. Okay, some of
the stuff is missing, of course, you know, they could
have left it out and animals could have taken We
don't know. There is one unusual part of this besides,
of course, the penis is being lopped off on some

(47:56):
of these people.

Speaker 2 (47:57):
I'll comment on that.

Speaker 1 (47:59):
So this is not the new But the guy found
in the well was so badly mutilated that the cause
of his death couldn't be established. But everybody else had
died by hammer, and then their throats were cut and
they were all robbed. And you know, these are young
husbands and fathers who were looking to establish a homestead.
They were looking for property. So there is one victim

(48:21):
that doesn't fit this profile, and it's a little girl.
It's a child, and she's a daughter of one of
the victims. They did not do anything. Whoever did this
didn't do anything that could be seen to this girl.
So there's no mutilation or anything like that. But there's
dirt under her fingernails. So I didn't know if either
she was buried alive or maybe you know, came when

(48:42):
she was being dragged. But I don't know.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
Yeah, you know, I'm not sure you can even draw
a conclusion. Just I think bearing a dead body, there's
a chance that you're going to, you know, have dirty
underneath the fingernails. There appears to at least be a
financial motive. As part of the offender committee in these crimes. Now,

(49:07):
i'd be interested in seeing the specific types of mutilation
to the bodies, but penis is being cut off. Now
I start going into Okay, you're dealing with potentially a
sexual predator, and this predator's preferred victim are what appear
to be adult men. And it's very possible that this

(49:31):
type of mutilation and the penis is being cut off.
It is very reminiscent of a serial killer out of
the Los Angeles area known as Randy Kraft out of
Orange County and who targeted you know, like marines and stuff,
and he would typically drug them, but I mean he
would you know, cut their penises off, stuff it down

(49:53):
their throats, you know, do all sorts of genital mutilation
as well as other types of torture. There's sexual sadistic
aspect that's happening. Now I'm starting to kind of gravitate
towards you have an offender that is taking advantage of
these men that have isolated themselves and we still have

(50:16):
the family to deal with somehow taking control and I
don't know how many offenders. You know, this could be
more than one person acting in concert. And then you
know the mutilation, is that torture to get these men
to talk about where their valuables are or something like that.
I mean, that's a possibility, and even the cutting of
the penises off could potentially be along those lines that

(50:39):
it's more of an mo base to accomplish the crime
versus a fantasy aspect. It's just that it's really, you know,
starting to sound like the offender or offenders are going, well,
we can make money off of these men. Nobody will
ever know where they're at, and potentially sexually interact with
these men, kill them, kill them the same way, you know,

(51:02):
crush their heads in and cut their throat and you know,
stick them in graves.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
But where is this person living? I mean, there's nothing
out there except this cabin. What is he doing just
sort of waiting behind a hill for days and days
to find these people who are wandering down this trail.
These aren't locals. These are people who are you know,
wandering through How would that even work?

Speaker 2 (51:23):
I mean, I don't think we can eliminate John Senior
or John Junior as being the offenders. They could be
living in the cabin selling products out of the store
and one of them's going out, or both of them
are going out and killing men and they're bearing them
on their own property. You know. Right now, I think
the family still the fact that they're missing and haven't
been found. I think that's that's kind of compelling in

(51:46):
terms of Okay, what is going on with this family?

Speaker 1 (51:49):
Well, let me tell you what's going on with this family?

Speaker 2 (51:51):
Right here?

Speaker 1 (51:51):
It goes Yeah, So you know, this is why I
love working with someone who doesn't know about his story
cases most of the time. I mean, I was grateful
you had heard of the Limberg case. What's going on
is this family is they're very famous, and I wonder
how many of the listeners and viewers had guessed this,
you know part way through. They're very famous because they

(52:13):
are called the Bloody Benders. Have you heard of this
case before? No?

Speaker 2 (52:18):
A Benders? Is that their last name? Uh? Huh oh?

Speaker 1 (52:21):
Okay, John and Elvira And it's the whole family that
does this and they are some of in the eighteen hundreds,
probably the most well known in America serial killers because
of what they did. So the reason that this area
was so creepy is because all of the people around
were creeped out by the Benders. And it is a

(52:44):
very kind of weird, complicated family. But I'm going to
try to streamline it. Okay, they're from Germany. They settled
in this county three years earlier. And so you've got
John Senior and Alvirah they are five and sixty and
they had very very thick accents. Now I've actually heard

(53:06):
people describe them as almost guttural, like they didn't actually
speak any kind of a language whatsoever. But you know,
we have some great sources that are on the show,
notes that are from books and actually an author that
I interviewed who tried to kind of seuss out what
was going on with this family. So they've got a
son that is thirty, John Junior, and Kate who is twenty.

(53:30):
We don't know if Kate and John were actually related
to John and Alvira, and we don't know if they're
related to each other because they seem more like a
couple than John and Kate, you know, a brother and sister.
And so it all creeps people out. And then when
these folks start going missing, then it really gets scary.
And then when the Benders go missing, people are scared

(53:53):
of where are the Benders. I think at this point,
no one feels like they're the ones who are murdered.
They feel like they thought maybe the Jiggs up and
they took off. So had you heard of this A family,
I mean, a Manson family doesn't count a family of
killers who draw people into their place and kill them
with a hammer and drop them down to the trap door,

(54:17):
store their bodies, and then drag them to the orchard
or different places at night and bury them. I mean,
Happy Halloween, Paul.

Speaker 2 (54:23):
Yeah, no, this one, this is a good one. I
am familiar with either male female couples that are victimizing
or males who have partnered up this family. So John
Senior and Elvira are truly a married couple, right, Yeah, Okay,

(54:44):
so that would be like some of these male female
predators you know that have that are truly in a
relationship and then they go out and kill. And there's
various different types of personality aspects to each couple as
to you know, maybe the male's dominant and the female
is just following along, and sometimes the female is more involved.

(55:08):
And I think there's one couple in Britain, you know,
where she really seems to be the one that's driving,
you know, the criminal activity. Now, the younger pair, John
Junior and Kate, if they're truly related or not, even
if even if they are true siblings, brothers, sister, you know,
they could be an incestuous relationship. Yeah, And I would

(55:30):
not put that, you know, outside of the realm of
possibilities with this family this all four of them could
be interacting sexually with each other. But you know, you know,
I've never heard of a you know, like a foursome
like this that I can think of, So that's that's
fascinating to me. And then of course I'm kind of
curious in terms of who's doing what to which victim.

(55:54):
That would be part of evaluating this, you know, the
psychology of these offenders. You could see where you could have,
you know, a woman in distress on the side of
a trail and a guy, you know, horse drawn wagon
pulling over trying to get you know, say do you
need help? And then the family ambush is that guy,

(56:17):
you know, So it's very easy, you know, for for
working in concert to be able to do that. Anyways,
I think that's right now. I think that's sort of
off the top of my head some of my thoughts.
But there is the financial aspect, but they're deviant, right, Yeah,
there is a pathology going on with this foursome, and

(56:40):
there is a sexual aspect to these crimes. I'm absolutely
convinced of that.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
I'll tell you, you know, Kate is clearly the draw.
I mean, provisions are a draw for some of these people.
But Kate is the draw. There's a photo of her,
it's the very last photo you have. She is described
as mesmerizing. She's tall, she's a redhead. She's a clairvoyant.
She has ads in newspapers that say she can cure

(57:07):
blindness fits which are you know, seizures, basically deafness and
all such diseases. And so the theory goes that she
would sort of draw these men in and that behind
a curtain would hide the two men yep, the you know,
the brother or whatever and the father. That they would

(57:29):
have hammers. They would beat the guy, drop them down
into the floor, well, beat him to death, and then
strip him and then drop them under the attic, and
then after nightfall would take them to the orchard and
bury them. I don't know anything about who mulated who,
but I will tell you Kate has a pretty awful reputation.
She had threatened a lot of people in town with

(57:49):
a knife, probably the knife that was hidden in the
mantle clock. The men had been known to conceal hammers
in their clothes. So you know, I told you she's
a clairvoyant. But also they were Catholic, and the sergeant
I held this from you. Sorry, you know, police do it.

Speaker 2 (58:04):
It's called a hold back.

Speaker 1 (58:05):
Yes, yeah, this is my whole bag that Sergeant Dick
uncovered something hidden. It's a Catholic prayer book and it
was hidden in the cabin. The notes in German were
this quote big slaughter Day, January eighth, and then the
phrase hell departed. I don't know what that means. They
took off It looks like in April. Yeah, and see

(58:25):
these are we don't know when people were murdered. It's
just when they were discovered. Sure, who knows when they
were murdered. Yeah, So there you go. What do you
think of all that?

Speaker 2 (58:33):
The idea that or sort of the sort of the
generic sequence that the two men you know, jumped the
guy bashed his head in, cut the throat, stripped him
and then dumped them down into the cellar, that that's
all that's happening. I don't buy that at all yet.
Obviously there's dismemberment going on. They've got bodies that are
missing heads, you've got penises being cut off. You know,

(58:56):
one or both men are probably getting so I'm sort
of having sexual interactions with these male bodies, whether they're
dead or alive, who knows, and I wouldn't put it
outside the possibility that the two women may be participating
sexually with these victims in some level. So now I
guess my question is is were the benders ever found No,

(59:20):
you're kidding.

Speaker 1 (59:22):
That's why this is such a like a well known
story for those of us who geek out on eighteen
hundredth crime. So this is what they do. They track
down a partner of theirs who is a German immigrant
and had worked with the Benders on getting supplies, and
that was about it. He said, I have no where
the idea where they are. They hang this poor guy

(59:43):
from a beam until he's unconscious. They wake him up,
interrogate him. He denies any you know, any involvement at all,
hang him again. They just keep going back and it's
like waterboarding or something is awful. He doesn't know anything
about it. What they do, let me tell you what
they do. No happened. The family leaves in April. They
take the horses in this wagon. I'm presuming the reason

(01:00:05):
they abandoned the wagon the grocery sign that everybody knew
was that that story is in their wagon. So I
don't know if they were going to re establish somewhere
else or what they were going to do. But there
was a mention of a lame horse connected to the wagon.
I think the horse went lame. They realized that they
weren't going to be able to do anything. They abandoned everything,
but they still stuck together, which I thought was interesting.

(01:00:25):
They end up hiking and they go to a place
called Cherry Vale, and then they caught a train and
they went on to Leavenworth and they are eating breakfast.
Last scene confirmed sighting eating breakfast at a hotel in
a part of Kansas not far from Leavenworth. And then

(01:00:47):
they split up, and that is it. There have been sightings,
there have been people who were arrested and spent jail time,
but it turned out it was definitely not them. That
there was thought that there were two women, an older
one and a younger one who could have been Kate
and Elvira, but it just didn't the timelines didn't match up.
They just couldn't. The math wasn't mathing. They couldn't make

(01:01:08):
it work. And so you know, when John Senior and
Alvira left, it sounds like they went to Saint Louis.
John Junior and Kate went south to the Missouri, Kansas
and Texas Railroad and they went to Dennis in Texas,
right here in Texas, and then they went to the border.

(01:01:29):
The rumor is that John Junior died of a stroke
shortly after that, so he was in his thirties. You know.
Two women were put on trial, but the cases were
dismissed and there were sightings for the next twenty years.
There was a guy in Colorado in nineteen oh one
who claims he had married Kate Bender. The next year
he's murdered. Seems imrandive for her, I mean. And then

(01:01:51):
there's a California woman in nineteen ten that claims that
she is Kate Bender on her deathbed, but again circumstances
her family is like, now, she was never in Kansas.
We can prove that. I mean, the vendors were there
for three years. They started doing this shortly after they
arrived in eighteen seventy, and then that was it. The
crimes fade into Kansas, you know history. That's why you

(01:02:14):
have that case with the three hammers, because it's on
display in a museum. There's museums dedicated to this family.
So since twenty twenty four, the University of Kansas has
been formally excavating the site. They're looking for more information
because it was never fully excavated more bodies. They had

(01:02:34):
never found any bodies officially after that. Yeah, I guess
they're looking for more bodies.

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
Sure, so we'll see.

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
I mean, this is just going to add to this
is like a Jack the Ripper. That's the lore. And
I know maybe a lot of people hadn't heard of it,
but this was the scariest family, you know, that I
had heard of. And so sometimes I do hear over
and over again people claiming I've done a boo where
I've written an article about, you know, the first serial killer.
The Hart brothers were likely the earliest killers. They were

(01:03:00):
in the seventeen hundreds, and they were in the American
Revolutionary warren't raping and murdering people. But of course we
know there were serial killers working for thousands of years
that we don't know about.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
Yeah, they were just attributed to being werewolves or vampires.
Is kind of going into the Halloween thing.

Speaker 1 (01:03:16):
Right, Yeah, it's very spooky. But the idea that you
have this kind of collusion with a family and I
don't know what the motive was. I mean, we've talked
about the sexual component and the weird quote and the clairvoyance.
It's maddening when you like crime history to have a
family like the Bloody Benders and not understand not just

(01:03:38):
what their motives were, but also where the hell did
they go? So it's a Halloween mystery.

Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
Yeah, I'm looking at the photo of the three hammers
and I'm kind of curious to see what else they
got out of the Bendor house because I'm looking at
these three hammers, going, well, you know what the Bender
family was. They were touching those, yeah, hammer handles a
fair amount. You know. Can we get some good DNA
that's representative of one of the one of the Benders

(01:04:06):
and do genealogy and see if any offspring, any descendants
pop up anywhere, or do they have any clothing items
that the Benders wore out of the out of the cabin,
you know that we might be able to go after,
or a hair brush, you know what all did they collect?

Speaker 1 (01:04:23):
We have the knife?

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
You have the knife, you know, and I'm assuming it's
just like the you know, the the working end of
the hammer as a weapon is going to be mostly
coming back to victims and imagine that the knife blade
is going to be coming back to a victim, but
you know, the handle possibly could. It's just that these
things have probably been handled by so many people, you know,

(01:04:45):
before being put into a display case. But I don't know,
you know, I'm just trying to It kind of galls
me that they just disappeared and we know who they are,
and it's like, well, let's let's track them down.

Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:58):
Oh, you're showing me the knife a.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
Couple of knives that they have in there.

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
You know, that knife is just showing dripped blood on
the on the blade and the handle is looking unstained.
I mean, it looks like a smaller lot. It's like
a pairing knife in a way.

Speaker 1 (01:05:13):
Yeah, it's a pairing knife.

Speaker 2 (01:05:14):
You know, this isn't something that's it doesn't look like
it was used to stab or cut a throat. It
had some blood, you know, drip on it, and you know,
most certainly that blood could possibly be I mean, it
could be from one of the benders who got cut yep,
you know, in a battle with the with the victims.

(01:05:35):
It could be an unknown victims blood stain that today
we might be able to identify who that person is.

Speaker 1 (01:05:41):
I mean, I would be down for working on a
case like this. That would be amazing. This case is
so just you know, it's mesmerizing for so many people.
It's weird to say that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:50):
You know, I kinda I like to go on the hunt,
and this is going on a hunt.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
Right, Yeah, I mean, this is a this is an
enduring mystery, certainly in the Midwest, and people have asked
me about the case, and I just thought, Okay, finally,
I'm just fine, we'll sick pole on it and see
what happens.

Speaker 2 (01:06:06):
Well, I just you know, you mentioned that, you know,
one of the bodies found was a little girl, and
she hadn't been I mean, there was no obvious cause
of death. She hadn't been mutilated, right, I mean I
think I initially presumed that she was a daughter of
one of the adult male victims. Is it possible she's
related to the benders.

Speaker 1 (01:06:24):
Well, they identify her as a victims. Her name was
Mary and long car and her dad was one of
the male victims.

Speaker 2 (01:06:34):
One of the male So she just happened to be
with dad when they abducted him, you know, as they're
excavating this property. I would think that there's a chance
that they may have either aborted remains or actual infant
bodies that were product of conception between these four people,

(01:06:57):
because I think they're you know, this type of psychology,
the type of pathology. All four of them could be
having sex with each other. Yeah, so you know who knows,
and it's possible that's these women Kate or Elvira had
conceived either from John Senior or John Junior or both
and you know killed the kids.

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
Well with that pole holes, that is less spooky and
more disgusting. Thank you appreciate that. Well, Listen, I wanted
to give you the one of the weirder cases that
we have, and I'm relieved. I almost kicked myself when
I sent you the photo of the case with the hammers,
because it says the benders and I thought, oh my god,
this poll some kind of weird thing happened.

Speaker 2 (01:07:38):
My eyes just tunnel visioned on the hammers. I didn't
even read what it said.

Speaker 1 (01:07:43):
I hated when you revealed that you knew the Miranda case.
I was thinking, oh, no, well, I don't want them
to know about Miranda. But this is good. I'm glad
I got you.

Speaker 2 (01:07:52):
Anybody involved, you know, anybody who's been through the police
academy knows about the Miranda case.

Speaker 1 (01:07:57):
I know. Okay, well, I'm glad I got you with
the benders. Okay, next week, probably not a murderous family,
but I welcome those stories because I do think the
dynamic is so interesting. I just would like them caught
next time, so we'll I'll work on that for the
next case.

Speaker 2 (01:08:13):
All right, sounds good. Thanks once again, Kate, Thank.

Speaker 1 (01:08:16):
You, Paul. Happy Halloween. This has been an exactly right
production for.

Speaker 2 (01:08:24):
Our sources and show notes go to Exactlyrightmedia dot com
slash Buried Bones sources.

Speaker 1 (01:08:29):
Our senior producer is Alexis Emrosi.

Speaker 2 (01:08:32):
Research by Alison Truble and Kate Winkler Dawson.

Speaker 1 (01:08:35):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.

Speaker 2 (01:08:37):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.

Speaker 1 (01:08:40):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

Speaker 2 (01:08:42):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark and Danielle Kramer.

Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
buried Bones Pod.

Speaker 2 (01:08:52):
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder and the race to decode the
criminal mind, is available now, and.

Speaker 1 (01:08:59):
Paul's best say hauling memoir Unmasked My Life Solving America's
Cold Cases is also available now.

Speaker 2 (01:09:05):
Listen to Baried Bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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