October 16, 2025 • 29 mins
On a routine excursion, the Benders are ambushed. Guns are drawn. Is it a robbery, or something far more sinister? The couple are certain they’re about to be kidnapped. In the aftermath, they ramp up security at their jungle compound, hiring a former police chief to protect them. Fearing for their safety, the couple retreat further and further from the outside world.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
So look, there's another little road down here. Do you
think there's a bridge down there? In two thousand and one,
a year after they arrived in Costa Rica to live
in their four story round house in the middle of
the jungle, John and Anne Bender went to see doctor
Rosemary Bradley.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hi is Rosemary there?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Uh huh, I'm a kidding to get here all right.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
My producer Poppy and I are retracing their journey.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
You have to cross the river over a bridge.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
It was a spring afternoon in late April. John and
Ann set off in the car, heading for the outskirts
of pere Zeladon. They had no idea what was about
to unfold. That the old life John had left behind
in America was about to collide with his new life
in Costa Rica, and the utopia they'd carefully constructured around
(01:00):
them would be shattered. It would lead to Anne and John,
who shared a battle with mental illness, to fear for
their lives. Their acute need for privacy had already made
them unpopular in the valley. Now paranoia would take hold.
They would retreat further and further into the jungle and isolation,
(01:24):
and they would ramp up their security their lavish home
high on the hill would become a fortress. The Benders
its prisoners from Exactly Right Media and iHeart Podcasts produced
(01:48):
by Blanchard House. This is Hell in Heaven. I'm Becky Milligan.
(02:14):
Chapter three, The Ambush. We arrive at Rosemary's.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Did you get all right?
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Well, we're outside a big sort of green gate. Just
go across, you'll just come across.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Rosemary appears a few minutes later, husband in toe Oh.
They take us through the gate and a little further
down a small road and at the bottom is a
fast flowing river with large boulders. The only way to
get to their house is across a narrow, rusty hanging bridge,
which bounces and creeks as we walk across. It's slatted
(02:58):
so that if you misstep, you'd go straight through into
the river below. This was where the Benders came that
afternoon back in two thousand and one, an afternoon that
would change them both safe on the other side and
up through their lush gardens, we come to their house.
It's surrounded by trees with views of the valley. Fantastic.
Speaker 5 (03:21):
Yeah, that's called the India Door.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Mila.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Rosemary points to the dramatic mountain range the sleeping Indian.
She says, the peaks form a distinct profile of a
woman lying down as though asleep.
Speaker 5 (03:35):
If you look at her, she's pregnant. See that's her nose,
that's her chin, that's her her breast, and then there's
her pregnant belly.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
She overlooks your house.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
They have an airy, spacious outdoor area with a concrete floor,
corrugated roof and wire fencing. For Rosemary is seventy one
with alert, intelligent eyes. She's a scientist, a soil microbiologist
to be precise. Her partner Marco is Costa Rican. Rosemary
(04:13):
is originally from the UK.
Speaker 5 (04:16):
I came to Costa Rica in nineteen eighty nine and
found this beautiful close to build a house.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Back in two thousand and one, she ran a business
selling her unique mixture of native seeds.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
One was a grass and one was a leging.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
The idea was that if you planted them, they would
grow to provide an eco friendly, nutritious diet for cattle.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
To substitute the imported maize and soybeans.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
And also to nurture the soil and prevent erosion. Because
the legume in particular has long roots. It was at
the time a revolutionary idea and one the Benders were
interested in. It's growing in her garden.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
And then goes down there, and then it digs down
into the soil. In fact, you can see where it goes.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
There's one for example.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Oh yes, I see, goes deep down and keeps the
soil in place. Back in two thousand and one, Rosemary
was busy. People would come from across the country to
buy her unique blend. Lots of people bought our seeds,
and one of them was John Bender. It was Rosemary's
(05:34):
produce which had brought the Benders on a rare trip
away from their home. Their dream house was being built
on top of a hill and close to the ocean.
The slow unraveling of that dream was a few years off.
For now, their concerns were very practical soil erosion.
Speaker 5 (05:51):
You often see that, and that part of the coast
is that houses are being built on very steep slopes
and some of them are at just falling down the hillside.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
I mean, it's crazy what.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
People do where they build their houses. They must have
known about us through the grapevine.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Right here.
Speaker 5 (06:10):
Everybody finds out about what's going on through just talk,
talk talk. Everybody talks a lot.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
On that afternoon in April two thousand and one, around
three o'clock, the Benders arrived and parked on a quiet
country road on the outskirts of the town near Rosemary's house.
They crossed over the bridge to meet Rosemary in her laboratory.
Rosemary remembers the couple clearly, and she noticed was badly
affected by limes disease. Remember, Anne wasn't being treated by
(06:41):
a conventional doctor for her condition. John was trying to
fix her himself by using plants in the jungle.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
And she limped a lot.
Speaker 5 (06:50):
She used a walking stick because of the lime disease.
But she had a very pretty face. She's kind of shy, timid,
whereas he was so I would say, deep deep voice, Yeah, yeah,
A nice guy.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
I mean you. He was good looking too. I was
fascinated by I've been fascinated.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Rosemary and Marco were excited to meet people who took
a real interest in their business and what they were
trying to do. For Rosemary, that was pretty rare.
Speaker 5 (07:19):
We'd tried to make friends with them, you know, we
invited them around and stuff, but they didn't.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
They didn't, they didn't want to.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
They weren't offended. In fact, Rosemary sympathized. She hadn't found
it easy to run a business in Costa Rica, trying
to do something new, something different. Sometimes it was hard.
She'd had her own dreams of a flourishing global seed business.
It wasn't to be these days. She and Marco found
themselves very hard up.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
I think you can get quite paranoid here as a
foreigner and feel that everybody's against you, and just live
your own little private life. And I think that's what
they were doing. You create your own bubble. I mean,
we've done that here.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
So the Benders and Rosemary had a lot to talk about.
Speaker 5 (08:05):
They were very interested in these seeds of this forage
peanut and how they were produced and so on.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
John and Ann bought some of Rosemary's seed, and while
Rosemary prepared their order, they went back over the bridge
to their car.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Presumably it was to get the money.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Then, Rosemary froze, tell me what you heard.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
All I heard was a shot.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
At this point in our interview, Marco leaps to his
feet and starts gesticulating towards the bridge. He remembers very
clearly what happened.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
Next handle Undia Komalas.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
It was three in the afternoon. He says he'd been
working at home and he'd heard the phone ring. It
was the intercom from the external gate across the bridge.
It was Anne's voice shouting and screaming, help, help, help, vamos.
Speaker 5 (09:12):
He says, see maemos, come come.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Let's go, and moves quickly to the bridge. We try
and keep up. He wants to show us what happened next.
Speaker 5 (09:22):
In situ, he went running ahead because they were saying help, help,
they're kidnapping us.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
He shows us how fast he went across that rickety
bridge after hearing the gunshot. It's not easy at speed.
The whole structure feels pretty dangerous. Rosemary was close behind him.
Marco takes us to the front drive, and, slightly breathless,
he describes the scene which confronted him. The moment he
came through the gate, a y is pick up Blanco.
(09:55):
He points to the road. There was a white pickup
truck blocking the drive. He turns and points to the
gate there. He says Anne was there standing by the
intercom Bosomundo. John was furious and now Rosemary picks up
the story.
Speaker 6 (10:14):
John was a.
Speaker 5 (10:15):
Huge guy, right, he'd he he.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Got really angry.
Speaker 5 (10:21):
He raised his voice, and they don't like that.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
They don't like that. If you're if you just if
you live in.
Speaker 5 (10:27):
Costa Rica, you must never lose your temper. That is
a very important rule.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Rosemary and Marco's staff, who were in the roadside office,
were also terrified. They'd seen everything. A vehicle screeched to
a stop, blocking the drive, boxing in the Bender's car,
and armed men jumping out waving guns in the air.
What did they tell you that happened? That staff member
saw one of the armed men shoot at the ground
(10:55):
near John. The gun shot. Rosemary and Marco had heard
back at the house and said later she thought it
was a kidnapping. He fired the gun between John's legs
and held it up to John's head and was terrified.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
So that was what was scary about it.
Speaker 5 (11:14):
They thought they were being attacked by robber and they
were going to be robbed.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
That's what they thought.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
And John and Anne were in a bad way.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
They were trembling, they were terrified.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Once Rosemary and Marco had taken in the scene, they
suddenly recognized one of the armed men. It was someone
they knew. These weren't robbers at all, but law.
Speaker 5 (11:36):
Enforcement, and then we found it was a friend about
us right who'd actually.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Fired the shots.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Rosemary reassured John that they weren't being kidnapped.
Speaker 5 (11:49):
We were just trying to calm him down, if I
remember correctly, that it was okay, that it was just
a matter of documents.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
They tried to find out precisely what the problem was,
what had the benders done wrong. The police wouldn't tell them,
but they did want to see the couple's ID. John
and Ann were having problems understanding the police officers. Their
Spanish wasn't that good, so Rosemary said she would go
with John to the police station and helped translate, while
(12:23):
Marco would go with Anne back to their house to
pick up the passports. Rosemary and Marco were used to
hearing gunshots and shooting around the place. John and Ann
would have been two kidnappings, and vigilante groups are quite
common where Rosemary lives. In fact, there was a banner
stretched above the road when we arrived, a picture of
(12:44):
a rat, a symbol for a criminal crossed out, and
a message that vigilante groups are operating in the area.
The sign read trapped rat lynched rat. The banner itself
had more than a dozen holes made by gunshots. Rosemary
told us there'd been a recent killing a few doors down.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
Just a couple of weeks ago, driving a motorbike up here,
one of these delivery guys with a pizza.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
They attacked him.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
And there's two guys who lived just across the road,
and the police don't do anything about it.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Marco and Ann went to get the couple's passports. They
arrived to meet John and Rosemary at the station, ready
to sit down with police.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
They were there for hours.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Rosemary and Marco didn't understand what it was all about.
They would find out later. They eventually left John and
Ann to it, but Marco did notice something which he
thought was odd about their documents. John and Ann's passports
were from Grenada. That's a notorious tax evasion hub. There's
(13:53):
no inheritance well for or capital gains tax. Apparently the
passports had aroused the police's interest. John's father, Paul, says
that he was worried about his son's decision to give
up US citizenship and move his fortune abroad.
Speaker 7 (14:08):
I guess the one thing that bothered me about what
he was doing when he started thinking about moving offshore
and not living in the United States, and I said,
why are you doing that? And he said to avoid
taxes and stuff, and that I did not like. Did
you tell him, yeah, I told.
Speaker 6 (14:28):
Hi, didn't.
Speaker 7 (14:31):
But he did that, and that was disturbing for Paul.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Using tax havens like this giving up your passport went
against the spirit of the law he had committed his
life to upholding as a legal scholar and expert. He
was also worried about his son not having the protection
that a US citizen is entitled to. But it wasn't
all about passports. There was another reason for the police
(14:58):
pulling John and Anne in, one which would fuel John's
suspicions and convince him that his enemies were after him.
A few days later, Rosemary called Anne to find out
if they were okay. They were fine. John and Ann
were kept at the police station until late and released
the same day, But that wasn't the end of the matter.
(15:22):
Far from it. The police operation had deeply upset John
and Anne. John couldn't shake the feeling that people were
after him, that he and Anne were vulnerable. As Valdo,
their head of staff, remembers him being completely traumatized. John
(15:46):
decided that they needed more protection. Jose Pizzaro, former chief
of Costa Rica's police force, a popular guy who better
known across Costa Rica as El Toro the Bull. He's
a solidly built man with a broad smile, and well
(16:08):
known for being a friendly guy. He tells me so
friendly and liked that if people saw him walking down
the street, they would call out El Toro. Josey agreed
to meet John at his house or Acayanne. He'd had
(16:28):
enough years in the police force to recognize trauma. He
knew instantly how threatened they felt. John told him that
it had changed his life. He was especially worried about
and safety.
Speaker 6 (16:41):
He says.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
He thought their house was beautiful but isolated, so his
priority was to make it secure. John told him he
wanted him to set up an entire security system. Jose
brought in more armed guards, secured the entire five thousand
and acre property, and became their personal bodyguard. A bond
(17:05):
of trust developed very quickly between us. He says they
were very special people. Jose tells us that John had
his own nickname for his new head of security, Colonel.
When Jose went to town with Anne. He tells us
that John would call out Earn, you suppose you take
(17:27):
good care of my wife, Colonel. It's the only reason
I'm relaxed, because she's with you. Jose told us that
John and Ann's extreme reaction to the arrest was not
only down to the way it was carried out. Of course,
if they believed they were being kidnapped, it would be
extremely frightening. John confided in Jose that he suspected that
(17:50):
the police operation was a cover for something more sinister.
The questions about their passports were a ruse. John felt
there was something very strange going on, Jose tells us
Jose agreed there was something which suggested this was far
from a routine check on the couple's papers, and he
(18:12):
knew the police officers. These were police officers attached to
the Special Investigations Unit, in an unmarked car and in
plain clothes. The strength used was so unnecessary, Jose told us.
John disclosed something else to Jose which he believed backed
(18:32):
up his hunt that people were after him and Anne.
When they were at the police station, there was another man,
a lawyer who he didn't know, who served him papers
which means John was being notified of a lawsuit against him. John,
Jose told us, was being sued by a former associate
who claimed that he was owed millions of dollars by John.
(18:56):
The stakes were extremely high. Were the police acting on
behalf of someone else, was someone after John? Was there
a threat of kidnap and abduction? Or were these the
rantings of a man in shock. Jose says that the
way the police went about the arrest was strange. This
(19:20):
was totally out of line. That wasn't the proper protocol,
Jose says. John sued the police in the end, and
they were all fired. Jose did look into whether there
had been a kidnapping plot to get him out of
the country, or maybe extortion or blackmail. I personally never
found any evidence of that, Jose says, but it wasn't
(19:42):
an extensive investigation. Jose was more focused on setting up
the security around John and Ann and their property. After all,
Jose's job was to protect them. John's theory is that
people on the ground had been hired to kidnap him
or abduct him, might appear implausible, especially as Jose had
(20:06):
looked into it and found nothing. Perhaps it was a
symptom of living in extreme isolation with a wife whose
health was going downhill, and John was slowly and steadily
detaching from reality. But then we came across a witness
who suggested just the opposite, that John may have had
(20:26):
every reason to be paranoid, testimony which throws a completely
different light on what happened that afternoon at Rosemary's seed farm.
We were given the man's number and told to ring him.
We had no other information. The man who we're calling, Michael,
was quite elusive at first, but I eventually got through.
(20:48):
He didn't want his voice used, so we're using an
actor for his side of the conversation. My audio is
from the original call. Yes, Oh Hi, My name's Becky Milligan.
My colleagues and I work for a podcast company and
we're doing the story about John Bender. First up, I
(21:11):
asked Michael to explain what he does for a living.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
So what would you call yourself? What would how would
you describe your job?
Speaker 4 (21:19):
We're not related to military at all. Really interesting.
Speaker 6 (21:22):
Basically, I don't like the term.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
I don't like the term. What do you call it?
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Mercy?
Speaker 4 (21:33):
Correct? I don't like that term, but basically that's what
it Is.
Speaker 6 (21:38):
I worked for different governments in the add least for
many years. I worked for the US, that worked for
the Israelis, I worked for Spain, and I.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
Was basically a private contractor.
Speaker 6 (21:50):
So wherever the army can't go in or won't go
in or whatever, they usually said nice so when they
had a potential intro been a person in particular.
Speaker 4 (22:01):
For whatever reason, obviously.
Speaker 6 (22:03):
It was all related to terrorism and all that, then
we would go in and expect that person and hand
them over to the party that was contracting us.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
Are you involved in this sort of work still?
Speaker 6 (22:15):
I retired in two thousand and eight, but I still
have some clients in Central America.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
It sounds like a pretty dark and murky world. I
wondered what he was asked to do when it came
to John Bender.
Speaker 6 (22:29):
I was contracted by a third party to kind of
intercept mister Bender and send him to the States.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
So we'd worked on.
Speaker 6 (22:38):
Intelligence to get mister Bender's whereabouts, and what we did
we mounted an intervention to kind of capture him.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
The problem was that when he turned up, it seemed
he wasn't the only person interested in John Bender. Why
did you all get there at once?
Speaker 4 (22:52):
I don't know.
Speaker 6 (22:54):
I don't know if it was a flug or if
it was coincidence or what happened exactly, But that day
we actually bumped into local law enforce that kind of
equivalent of the FBI Costagla.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
We heard Rosemary and Marco's version of events. This is
how Michael says it played out on the ground.
Speaker 6 (23:12):
Everybody kind of got to the location where we had
decided to intercept mister Vender, and they didn't know who
we were either, so it was it was kind of
pretty intense for a few minutes.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
I was going to get.
Speaker 6 (23:25):
Paid when I got mister Vender, right, so if I
didn't get mister Bender, then I wasn't going to get paid.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
I wasn't there to play a round.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Michael, realizing that his mission might now be scuffered, contacted
the contractor, who, by the way, he wouldn't name, and
there was a back and forth.
Speaker 6 (23:46):
And at the end of the let's say twenty minutes
half an hour of the intervention, I was told to
pull back and not intervene.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
The contractor said he'd get his money anyway.
Speaker 6 (23:57):
This was not foreseene and therefore not my missigue or
my problem. But if they told me you got it
bring him to us.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
Then I don't know.
Speaker 6 (24:05):
I mean, we were ready for that, but up to up.
Speaker 4 (24:09):
To the point. So anyway, very very very very very.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Intense, I asked Michael if he'd been told why his
employer had asked him to abduct John Bender.
Speaker 6 (24:22):
The person that gave us the contract was apparently very
interested in getting mister Bender back to him somehow, so
I guess he was either involved with mister Bender or
mister Bender owning something, because it was quite obvious that
we were.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
Going to intercept mister Bender.
Speaker 6 (24:39):
And get him out of the country back to these people.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
Sorry, I just want to get this straight to my head.
So were you on your rown?
Speaker 4 (24:49):
No? No, I had three people with it.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Oh you had three people too. Do you remember it
quite well, very clearly. Do you know when you were
asked to do this? They did they give you a
reason why? Or I mean, did you know why they
wanted him? And you know, because it's sort of basically,
for want of a better word, sort of kidnapping him
and sort of bundling him out into America.
Speaker 6 (25:13):
I suppose I don't know what their intention, but they
were there for him, and they were there you.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Wouldn't have arrested him, would you? You would have just
sort of what would you have done?
Speaker 6 (25:28):
Well away, I guess we can we can discuss that
when you hear I was going to be told where
to bring him and they were going to fly him out.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
He said he'd meet us in Costa Rica. He stood
us up. We made another date again, he didn't show,
so I left him a voice message. It's Becky Year,
just checking if everything's okay. I've been waiting at the
front desk, will be around all day, so just give
(26:03):
us a ring or message and let me know.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
All right, cheers by.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
We asked Rosemary whether she had seen another car at
the scene. She had no recollection of one. The staff
who'd witnessed what had happened didn't want to talk, so
we can't be sure that Michael was really there. We
have no way of standing up his story for now.
We did speak to someone who did confirm that they
(26:29):
had hired an investigator on the ground, but they wouldn't
go on the record, and we don't know if that
investigator was Michael. Knowing what had happened only a year
or so after they'd moved to Costa Rica makes more
sense of all those armed guards and the barbed wire
fencing around their property. They were a couple who didn't
(26:50):
just protect their privacy. They were terrified because they believed
that people were after them. And those papers that were
filed at the police station we investigate in the next episode.
Was the passport tissue a ruse for the police hired
by a creditor to serve him? And who hired Michael
(27:11):
the same people or another interested party? Just who is
actly had John pissed off? And were they working together
to bring him back to the US. Next time, it's
a real change of scene. We head to the streets
of Philadelphia to the nineteen eighties in search of a
(27:32):
young John to find out who he really is. Is
that what he believed himself to be? A sort of
genius of sorts?
Speaker 6 (27:40):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (27:41):
Absolutely, absolutely, he knew it.
Speaker 6 (27:43):
There was not a question about it.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
We would be together and he'd say, you know, it's
just talking to this guy.
Speaker 5 (27:49):
He's like a.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Famous math professor at Harvard. But can you believe what
an idiot this guy is?
Speaker 6 (27:56):
He was on another level.
Speaker 7 (27:58):
And when it came to the big money and you're
in that game where you're playing for high stakes, but
there was no mister nice guy.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Just who was this guy who amassed a six hundred
million dollar fortune and believed he could cure his wife's
serious illness and who someone wanted to kidnap? You've been
(28:33):
listening to Helen Heaven from Exactly Right Media and iHeart Podcasts,
produced by Blanchard House, hosted, written and produced by me
Becky Milligan. The producer and co writer is Poppy Damon.
Music is by Daniel Lloyd Evans, Louis Nankmnell and Toby Matthamon.
The sound recordistant head of Sound and Music is Daniel
(28:56):
Lloyd Evans. The lead sound designer is Vulcan Kiselton. The
artwork is by Vanessa Lilac for Exactly Right Media. The
executive producers are Karen Kilgarreth, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer,
with consulting producer Lilly Ladderwig and associate producer Jay Elias.
(29:17):
The creative director of Blanchard House is Rosy Pye. The
executive producer and Head of Content at Blanchard House is
Lawrence Griselle. Listen to Helen Heaven on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts
So look, there's another little road down here. Do you
think there's a bridge down there? In two thousand and one,
a year after they arrived in Costa Rica to live
in their four story round house in the middle of
the jungle, John and Anne Bender went to see doctor
Rosemary Bradley.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hi is Rosemary there?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Uh huh, I'm a kidding to get here all right.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
My producer Poppy and I are retracing their journey.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
You have to cross the river over a bridge.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
It was a spring afternoon in late April. John and
Ann set off in the car, heading for the outskirts
of pere Zeladon. They had no idea what was about
to unfold. That the old life John had left behind
in America was about to collide with his new life
in Costa Rica, and the utopia they'd carefully constructured around
(01:00):
them would be shattered. It would lead to Anne and John,
who shared a battle with mental illness, to fear for
their lives. Their acute need for privacy had already made
them unpopular in the valley. Now paranoia would take hold.
They would retreat further and further into the jungle and isolation,
(01:24):
and they would ramp up their security their lavish home
high on the hill would become a fortress. The Benders
its prisoners from Exactly Right Media and iHeart Podcasts produced
(01:48):
by Blanchard House. This is Hell in Heaven. I'm Becky Milligan.
(02:14):
Chapter three, The Ambush. We arrive at Rosemary's.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Did you get all right?
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Well, we're outside a big sort of green gate. Just
go across, you'll just come across.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Rosemary appears a few minutes later, husband in toe Oh.
They take us through the gate and a little further
down a small road and at the bottom is a
fast flowing river with large boulders. The only way to
get to their house is across a narrow, rusty hanging bridge,
which bounces and creeks as we walk across. It's slatted
(02:58):
so that if you misstep, you'd go straight through into
the river below. This was where the Benders came that
afternoon back in two thousand and one, an afternoon that
would change them both safe on the other side and
up through their lush gardens, we come to their house.
It's surrounded by trees with views of the valley. Fantastic.
Speaker 5 (03:21):
Yeah, that's called the India Door.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Mila.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Rosemary points to the dramatic mountain range the sleeping Indian.
She says, the peaks form a distinct profile of a
woman lying down as though asleep.
Speaker 5 (03:35):
If you look at her, she's pregnant. See that's her nose,
that's her chin, that's her her breast, and then there's
her pregnant belly.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
She overlooks your house.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
They have an airy, spacious outdoor area with a concrete floor,
corrugated roof and wire fencing. For Rosemary is seventy one
with alert, intelligent eyes. She's a scientist, a soil microbiologist
to be precise. Her partner Marco is Costa Rican. Rosemary
(04:13):
is originally from the UK.
Speaker 5 (04:16):
I came to Costa Rica in nineteen eighty nine and
found this beautiful close to build a house.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Back in two thousand and one, she ran a business
selling her unique mixture of native seeds.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
One was a grass and one was a leging.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
The idea was that if you planted them, they would
grow to provide an eco friendly, nutritious diet for cattle.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
To substitute the imported maize and soybeans.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
And also to nurture the soil and prevent erosion. Because
the legume in particular has long roots. It was at
the time a revolutionary idea and one the Benders were
interested in. It's growing in her garden.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
And then goes down there, and then it digs down
into the soil. In fact, you can see where it goes.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
There's one for example.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Oh yes, I see, goes deep down and keeps the
soil in place. Back in two thousand and one, Rosemary
was busy. People would come from across the country to
buy her unique blend. Lots of people bought our seeds,
and one of them was John Bender. It was Rosemary's
(05:34):
produce which had brought the Benders on a rare trip
away from their home. Their dream house was being built
on top of a hill and close to the ocean.
The slow unraveling of that dream was a few years off.
For now, their concerns were very practical soil erosion.
Speaker 5 (05:51):
You often see that, and that part of the coast
is that houses are being built on very steep slopes
and some of them are at just falling down the hillside.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
I mean, it's crazy what.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
People do where they build their houses. They must have
known about us through the grapevine.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Right here.
Speaker 5 (06:10):
Everybody finds out about what's going on through just talk,
talk talk. Everybody talks a lot.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
On that afternoon in April two thousand and one, around
three o'clock, the Benders arrived and parked on a quiet
country road on the outskirts of the town near Rosemary's house.
They crossed over the bridge to meet Rosemary in her laboratory.
Rosemary remembers the couple clearly, and she noticed was badly
affected by limes disease. Remember, Anne wasn't being treated by
(06:41):
a conventional doctor for her condition. John was trying to
fix her himself by using plants in the jungle.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
And she limped a lot.
Speaker 5 (06:50):
She used a walking stick because of the lime disease.
But she had a very pretty face. She's kind of shy, timid,
whereas he was so I would say, deep deep voice, Yeah, yeah,
A nice guy.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
I mean you. He was good looking too. I was
fascinated by I've been fascinated.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Rosemary and Marco were excited to meet people who took
a real interest in their business and what they were
trying to do. For Rosemary, that was pretty rare.
Speaker 5 (07:19):
We'd tried to make friends with them, you know, we
invited them around and stuff, but they didn't.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
They didn't, they didn't want to.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
They weren't offended. In fact, Rosemary sympathized. She hadn't found
it easy to run a business in Costa Rica, trying
to do something new, something different. Sometimes it was hard.
She'd had her own dreams of a flourishing global seed business.
It wasn't to be these days. She and Marco found
themselves very hard up.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
I think you can get quite paranoid here as a
foreigner and feel that everybody's against you, and just live
your own little private life. And I think that's what
they were doing. You create your own bubble. I mean,
we've done that here.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
So the Benders and Rosemary had a lot to talk about.
Speaker 5 (08:05):
They were very interested in these seeds of this forage
peanut and how they were produced and so on.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
John and Ann bought some of Rosemary's seed, and while
Rosemary prepared their order, they went back over the bridge
to their car.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Presumably it was to get the money.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Then, Rosemary froze, tell me what you heard.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
All I heard was a shot.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
At this point in our interview, Marco leaps to his
feet and starts gesticulating towards the bridge. He remembers very
clearly what happened.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
Next handle Undia Komalas.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
It was three in the afternoon. He says he'd been
working at home and he'd heard the phone ring. It
was the intercom from the external gate across the bridge.
It was Anne's voice shouting and screaming, help, help, help, vamos.
Speaker 5 (09:12):
He says, see maemos, come come.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Let's go, and moves quickly to the bridge. We try
and keep up. He wants to show us what happened next.
Speaker 5 (09:22):
In situ, he went running ahead because they were saying help, help,
they're kidnapping us.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
He shows us how fast he went across that rickety
bridge after hearing the gunshot. It's not easy at speed.
The whole structure feels pretty dangerous. Rosemary was close behind him.
Marco takes us to the front drive, and, slightly breathless,
he describes the scene which confronted him. The moment he
came through the gate, a y is pick up Blanco.
(09:55):
He points to the road. There was a white pickup
truck blocking the drive. He turns and points to the
gate there. He says Anne was there standing by the
intercom Bosomundo. John was furious and now Rosemary picks up
the story.
Speaker 6 (10:14):
John was a.
Speaker 5 (10:15):
Huge guy, right, he'd he he.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Got really angry.
Speaker 5 (10:21):
He raised his voice, and they don't like that.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
They don't like that. If you're if you just if
you live in.
Speaker 5 (10:27):
Costa Rica, you must never lose your temper. That is
a very important rule.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Rosemary and Marco's staff, who were in the roadside office,
were also terrified. They'd seen everything. A vehicle screeched to
a stop, blocking the drive, boxing in the Bender's car,
and armed men jumping out waving guns in the air.
What did they tell you that happened? That staff member
saw one of the armed men shoot at the ground
(10:55):
near John. The gun shot. Rosemary and Marco had heard
back at the house and said later she thought it
was a kidnapping. He fired the gun between John's legs
and held it up to John's head and was terrified.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
So that was what was scary about it.
Speaker 5 (11:14):
They thought they were being attacked by robber and they
were going to be robbed.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
That's what they thought.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
And John and Anne were in a bad way.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
They were trembling, they were terrified.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Once Rosemary and Marco had taken in the scene, they
suddenly recognized one of the armed men. It was someone
they knew. These weren't robbers at all, but law.
Speaker 5 (11:36):
Enforcement, and then we found it was a friend about
us right who'd actually.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Fired the shots.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Rosemary reassured John that they weren't being kidnapped.
Speaker 5 (11:49):
We were just trying to calm him down, if I
remember correctly, that it was okay, that it was just
a matter of documents.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
They tried to find out precisely what the problem was,
what had the benders done wrong. The police wouldn't tell them,
but they did want to see the couple's ID. John
and Ann were having problems understanding the police officers. Their
Spanish wasn't that good, so Rosemary said she would go
with John to the police station and helped translate, while
(12:23):
Marco would go with Anne back to their house to
pick up the passports. Rosemary and Marco were used to
hearing gunshots and shooting around the place. John and Ann
would have been two kidnappings, and vigilante groups are quite
common where Rosemary lives. In fact, there was a banner
stretched above the road when we arrived, a picture of
(12:44):
a rat, a symbol for a criminal crossed out, and
a message that vigilante groups are operating in the area.
The sign read trapped rat lynched rat. The banner itself
had more than a dozen holes made by gunshots. Rosemary
told us there'd been a recent killing a few doors down.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
Just a couple of weeks ago, driving a motorbike up here,
one of these delivery guys with a pizza.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
They attacked him.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
And there's two guys who lived just across the road,
and the police don't do anything about it.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Marco and Ann went to get the couple's passports. They
arrived to meet John and Rosemary at the station, ready
to sit down with police.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
They were there for hours.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Rosemary and Marco didn't understand what it was all about.
They would find out later. They eventually left John and
Ann to it, but Marco did notice something which he
thought was odd about their documents. John and Ann's passports
were from Grenada. That's a notorious tax evasion hub. There's
(13:53):
no inheritance well for or capital gains tax. Apparently the
passports had aroused the police's interest. John's father, Paul, says
that he was worried about his son's decision to give
up US citizenship and move his fortune abroad.
Speaker 7 (14:08):
I guess the one thing that bothered me about what
he was doing when he started thinking about moving offshore
and not living in the United States, and I said,
why are you doing that? And he said to avoid
taxes and stuff, and that I did not like. Did
you tell him, yeah, I told.
Speaker 6 (14:28):
Hi, didn't.
Speaker 7 (14:31):
But he did that, and that was disturbing for Paul.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Using tax havens like this giving up your passport went
against the spirit of the law he had committed his
life to upholding as a legal scholar and expert. He
was also worried about his son not having the protection
that a US citizen is entitled to. But it wasn't
all about passports. There was another reason for the police
(14:58):
pulling John and Anne in, one which would fuel John's
suspicions and convince him that his enemies were after him.
A few days later, Rosemary called Anne to find out
if they were okay. They were fine. John and Ann
were kept at the police station until late and released
the same day, But that wasn't the end of the matter.
(15:22):
Far from it. The police operation had deeply upset John
and Anne. John couldn't shake the feeling that people were
after him, that he and Anne were vulnerable. As Valdo,
their head of staff, remembers him being completely traumatized. John
(15:46):
decided that they needed more protection. Jose Pizzaro, former chief
of Costa Rica's police force, a popular guy who better
known across Costa Rica as El Toro the Bull. He's
a solidly built man with a broad smile, and well
(16:08):
known for being a friendly guy. He tells me so
friendly and liked that if people saw him walking down
the street, they would call out El Toro. Josey agreed
to meet John at his house or Acayanne. He'd had
(16:28):
enough years in the police force to recognize trauma. He
knew instantly how threatened they felt. John told him that
it had changed his life. He was especially worried about
and safety.
Speaker 6 (16:41):
He says.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
He thought their house was beautiful but isolated, so his
priority was to make it secure. John told him he
wanted him to set up an entire security system. Jose
brought in more armed guards, secured the entire five thousand
and acre property, and became their personal bodyguard. A bond
(17:05):
of trust developed very quickly between us. He says they
were very special people. Jose tells us that John had
his own nickname for his new head of security, Colonel.
When Jose went to town with Anne. He tells us
that John would call out Earn, you suppose you take
(17:27):
good care of my wife, Colonel. It's the only reason
I'm relaxed, because she's with you. Jose told us that
John and Ann's extreme reaction to the arrest was not
only down to the way it was carried out. Of course,
if they believed they were being kidnapped, it would be
extremely frightening. John confided in Jose that he suspected that
(17:50):
the police operation was a cover for something more sinister.
The questions about their passports were a ruse. John felt
there was something very strange going on, Jose tells us
Jose agreed there was something which suggested this was far
from a routine check on the couple's papers, and he
(18:12):
knew the police officers. These were police officers attached to
the Special Investigations Unit, in an unmarked car and in
plain clothes. The strength used was so unnecessary, Jose told us.
John disclosed something else to Jose which he believed backed
(18:32):
up his hunt that people were after him and Anne.
When they were at the police station, there was another man,
a lawyer who he didn't know, who served him papers
which means John was being notified of a lawsuit against him. John,
Jose told us, was being sued by a former associate
who claimed that he was owed millions of dollars by John.
(18:56):
The stakes were extremely high. Were the police acting on
behalf of someone else, was someone after John? Was there
a threat of kidnap and abduction? Or were these the
rantings of a man in shock. Jose says that the
way the police went about the arrest was strange. This
(19:20):
was totally out of line. That wasn't the proper protocol,
Jose says. John sued the police in the end, and
they were all fired. Jose did look into whether there
had been a kidnapping plot to get him out of
the country, or maybe extortion or blackmail. I personally never
found any evidence of that, Jose says, but it wasn't
(19:42):
an extensive investigation. Jose was more focused on setting up
the security around John and Ann and their property. After all,
Jose's job was to protect them. John's theory is that
people on the ground had been hired to kidnap him
or abduct him, might appear implausible, especially as Jose had
(20:06):
looked into it and found nothing. Perhaps it was a
symptom of living in extreme isolation with a wife whose
health was going downhill, and John was slowly and steadily
detaching from reality. But then we came across a witness
who suggested just the opposite, that John may have had
(20:26):
every reason to be paranoid, testimony which throws a completely
different light on what happened that afternoon at Rosemary's seed farm.
We were given the man's number and told to ring him.
We had no other information. The man who we're calling, Michael,
was quite elusive at first, but I eventually got through.
(20:48):
He didn't want his voice used, so we're using an
actor for his side of the conversation. My audio is
from the original call. Yes, Oh Hi, My name's Becky Milligan.
My colleagues and I work for a podcast company and
we're doing the story about John Bender. First up, I
(21:11):
asked Michael to explain what he does for a living.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
So what would you call yourself? What would how would
you describe your job?
Speaker 4 (21:19):
We're not related to military at all. Really interesting.
Speaker 6 (21:22):
Basically, I don't like the term.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
I don't like the term. What do you call it?
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Mercy?
Speaker 4 (21:33):
Correct? I don't like that term, but basically that's what
it Is.
Speaker 6 (21:38):
I worked for different governments in the add least for
many years. I worked for the US, that worked for
the Israelis, I worked for Spain, and I.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
Was basically a private contractor.
Speaker 6 (21:50):
So wherever the army can't go in or won't go
in or whatever, they usually said nice so when they
had a potential intro been a person in particular.
Speaker 4 (22:01):
For whatever reason, obviously.
Speaker 6 (22:03):
It was all related to terrorism and all that, then
we would go in and expect that person and hand
them over to the party that was contracting us.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
Are you involved in this sort of work still?
Speaker 6 (22:15):
I retired in two thousand and eight, but I still
have some clients in Central America.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
It sounds like a pretty dark and murky world. I
wondered what he was asked to do when it came
to John Bender.
Speaker 6 (22:29):
I was contracted by a third party to kind of
intercept mister Bender and send him to the States.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
So we'd worked on.
Speaker 6 (22:38):
Intelligence to get mister Bender's whereabouts, and what we did
we mounted an intervention to kind of capture him.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
The problem was that when he turned up, it seemed
he wasn't the only person interested in John Bender. Why
did you all get there at once?
Speaker 4 (22:52):
I don't know.
Speaker 6 (22:54):
I don't know if it was a flug or if
it was coincidence or what happened exactly, But that day
we actually bumped into local law enforce that kind of
equivalent of the FBI Costagla.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
We heard Rosemary and Marco's version of events. This is
how Michael says it played out on the ground.
Speaker 6 (23:12):
Everybody kind of got to the location where we had
decided to intercept mister Vender, and they didn't know who
we were either, so it was it was kind of
pretty intense for a few minutes.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
I was going to get.
Speaker 6 (23:25):
Paid when I got mister Vender, right, so if I
didn't get mister Bender, then I wasn't going to get paid.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
I wasn't there to play a round.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Michael, realizing that his mission might now be scuffered, contacted
the contractor, who, by the way, he wouldn't name, and
there was a back and forth.
Speaker 6 (23:46):
And at the end of the let's say twenty minutes
half an hour of the intervention, I was told to
pull back and not intervene.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
The contractor said he'd get his money anyway.
Speaker 6 (23:57):
This was not foreseene and therefore not my missigue or
my problem. But if they told me you got it
bring him to us.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
Then I don't know.
Speaker 6 (24:05):
I mean, we were ready for that, but up to up.
Speaker 4 (24:09):
To the point. So anyway, very very very very very.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Intense, I asked Michael if he'd been told why his
employer had asked him to abduct John Bender.
Speaker 6 (24:22):
The person that gave us the contract was apparently very
interested in getting mister Bender back to him somehow, so
I guess he was either involved with mister Bender or
mister Bender owning something, because it was quite obvious that
we were.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
Going to intercept mister Bender.
Speaker 6 (24:39):
And get him out of the country back to these people.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
Sorry, I just want to get this straight to my head.
So were you on your rown?
Speaker 4 (24:49):
No? No, I had three people with it.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Oh you had three people too. Do you remember it
quite well, very clearly. Do you know when you were
asked to do this? They did they give you a
reason why? Or I mean, did you know why they
wanted him? And you know, because it's sort of basically,
for want of a better word, sort of kidnapping him
and sort of bundling him out into America.
Speaker 6 (25:13):
I suppose I don't know what their intention, but they
were there for him, and they were there you.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Wouldn't have arrested him, would you? You would have just
sort of what would you have done?
Speaker 6 (25:28):
Well away, I guess we can we can discuss that
when you hear I was going to be told where
to bring him and they were going to fly him out.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
He said he'd meet us in Costa Rica. He stood
us up. We made another date again, he didn't show,
so I left him a voice message. It's Becky Year,
just checking if everything's okay. I've been waiting at the
front desk, will be around all day, so just give
(26:03):
us a ring or message and let me know.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
All right, cheers by.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
We asked Rosemary whether she had seen another car at
the scene. She had no recollection of one. The staff
who'd witnessed what had happened didn't want to talk, so
we can't be sure that Michael was really there. We
have no way of standing up his story for now.
We did speak to someone who did confirm that they
(26:29):
had hired an investigator on the ground, but they wouldn't
go on the record, and we don't know if that
investigator was Michael. Knowing what had happened only a year
or so after they'd moved to Costa Rica makes more
sense of all those armed guards and the barbed wire
fencing around their property. They were a couple who didn't
(26:50):
just protect their privacy. They were terrified because they believed
that people were after them. And those papers that were
filed at the police station we investigate in the next episode.
Was the passport tissue a ruse for the police hired
by a creditor to serve him? And who hired Michael
(27:11):
the same people or another interested party? Just who is
actly had John pissed off? And were they working together
to bring him back to the US. Next time, it's
a real change of scene. We head to the streets
of Philadelphia to the nineteen eighties in search of a
(27:32):
young John to find out who he really is. Is
that what he believed himself to be? A sort of
genius of sorts?
Speaker 6 (27:40):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (27:41):
Absolutely, absolutely, he knew it.
Speaker 6 (27:43):
There was not a question about it.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
We would be together and he'd say, you know, it's
just talking to this guy.
Speaker 5 (27:49):
He's like a.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Famous math professor at Harvard. But can you believe what
an idiot this guy is?
Speaker 6 (27:56):
He was on another level.
Speaker 7 (27:58):
And when it came to the big money and you're
in that game where you're playing for high stakes, but
there was no mister nice guy.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Just who was this guy who amassed a six hundred
million dollar fortune and believed he could cure his wife's
serious illness and who someone wanted to kidnap? You've been
(28:33):
listening to Helen Heaven from Exactly Right Media and iHeart Podcasts,
produced by Blanchard House, hosted, written and produced by me
Becky Milligan. The producer and co writer is Poppy Damon.
Music is by Daniel Lloyd Evans, Louis Nankmnell and Toby Matthamon.
The sound recordistant head of Sound and Music is Daniel
(28:56):
Lloyd Evans. The lead sound designer is Vulcan Kiselton. The
artwork is by Vanessa Lilac for Exactly Right Media. The
executive producers are Karen Kilgarreth, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer,
with consulting producer Lilly Ladderwig and associate producer Jay Elias.
(29:17):
The creative director of Blanchard House is Rosy Pye. The
executive producer and Head of Content at Blanchard House is
Lawrence Griselle. Listen to Helen Heaven on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts
Hosts And Creators
Emma Jane Kirby
Becky Milligan
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