0:00

After Dark Listeners, we need you to vote

0:02

for us for the Listeners' Choice Award at

0:05

this year's British Podcast

0:07

Awards. You can do

0:09

that simply by going

0:11

to the website, britishpodcastawards.com/voting

0:13

and voting for After

0:15

Dark. And lads, this is

0:17

important. Don't forget to confirm your vote or it

0:19

doesn't count. And we wouldn't want that now, would

0:21

we? It's

0:25

that time of the year. Your

0:27

vacation is coming up. You

0:29

can already hear the beach waves, feel

0:32

the warm breeze, Lacks.

0:34

Think about work. You really really

0:36

wanted all the work out while

0:38

you're away. monday.com gives you an

0:40

the team that peace of mind

0:42

when all work is on one

0:44

platform and every once. In a think

0:47

things just flow wherever you are. Tapped

0:49

the banner to go to monday.com. Hey,

0:58

parents. Greenlight is here to take

1:00

one big thing off your to-do list, teaching your

1:02

kids about money. With the

1:04

Greenlight debit card and money app of their

1:07

own, kids and teens learn to earn, save,

1:09

and invest. You can send money instantly, set

1:11

flexible controls, and get real-time notifications of your

1:13

kids' money activity. Set up chores and put

1:16

allowance on autopilot to reward them for their

1:18

hard work. Then, learn about the world of

1:20

money together. Get one month free when you

1:22

sign up at greenlight.com. It's

1:33

December 1872, and

1:35

we join a blacksmith, Mr. George

1:37

Longcore, as he rides north

1:39

across the western frontier of the United

1:41

States, drawn in a wagon

1:44

by a team of horses. He's

1:46

cold. The temperature has

1:48

been stubbornly icy since he set

1:50

out from his homestead, seven

1:53

miles north of Independence, Kansas.

1:56

Beside him, nestled deep in a

1:59

fur-lined wickerbasket, his

2:01

18-month-old baby sniffles in her

2:03

sleep. He mutters

2:05

to himself, wondering for the

2:08

hundredth time if this is the right thing

2:10

to do. He lambasts

2:12

himself for leaving the journey so late

2:14

in the season. It's

2:17

freezing now, but still

2:19

this is the best thing for little Mary

2:21

Anne. She'll thrive with

2:23

her grandparents in Iowa. There

2:25

she'll have other children to grow with

2:28

and her mother's love, something he

2:31

cannot offer her. He

2:33

longs for the warmth of a fire, some

2:36

hot food perhaps, and a

2:38

break from the open road, and

2:41

either side of it the shadows that

2:44

fall away to the vast expanse of

2:46

the American Midwest. He

2:48

must remain alert, for

2:50

there are all kinds of dangers lurking

2:53

on these frontier trails. He

2:56

vows that the next time he sees an

2:58

opportunity for rest he will take it, an

3:01

inn perhaps, or

3:03

a friendly roadside cabin. Hello

3:23

and welcome to After Dark. I'm Anthony.

3:25

And I'm Maddie. And today we are

3:27

journeying into the

3:37

late 19th century and the American

3:39

frontier to examine the dark case

3:41

of a serial killing family who

3:44

were never brought to justice. Joining

3:47

us we have the author of

3:49

Hell's Half Acre, the untold story

3:51

of the Benders, a serial killer

3:53

family on the American frontier, Susan

3:55

Johnosus. But before we get

3:57

started I should warn you this

3:59

story contains detail. of Murder and

4:01

Infanticide, Susan. Thank you for joining

4:04

us. I'm so interested

4:06

to hear more details about this because it's

4:08

one of the things that comes up more

4:11

and more in our DMs and on emails that,

4:13

what about the bloody benders? What about the bloody

4:15

benders? And I have to admit, I didn't

4:18

know much about this at all.

4:20

So it's incredible to have you on telling us about

4:22

it. So before we get started,

4:24

I was just wondering, because

4:26

one of the fascinating things about this for

4:29

me is, the place.

4:32

So could you, for listeners who don't necessarily know,

4:34

and me too, because I don't, could

4:36

you give us a picture of where we were

4:39

set during this story about what's too unfold?

4:41

Because I feel like that

4:43

sense of frontier is really key to

4:45

this history, right? Yeah, I

4:47

mean, I think the setting of this particular

4:49

case was something that really drew me to

4:51

it as well. I think it's

4:53

quite an alien landscape for us coming from

4:56

the UK. And when

4:58

I was over there, I was like,

5:00

gosh, it's just so, so vast. And

5:02

that obviously plays a big role

5:04

in kind of what unfolds in the story. So

5:07

these murders, they happen in

5:09

Southeast Kansas in 1870. And

5:13

this is a time where kind of the nation's

5:16

obviously still really in the aftermath

5:18

of the Civil War. There's a lot of

5:20

transition. There's a lot of people moving around.

5:23

You've got displacement of indigenous people.

5:26

You've got freed people settling

5:28

in lots of places in the Midwest

5:30

and stuff like that. And then you've

5:32

got people who are both from the

5:35

East Coast and from Europe coming into

5:37

these spaces to take advantage of the

5:39

Homestead Act, where they can

5:41

pay an $18 claimant fee for 160 acres

5:43

of land. And

5:45

if in five years they can prove that they

5:47

have used the land well, they then get to

5:49

keep it. So in this

5:52

space, you have young men, you have

5:54

Civil War veterans, you have big families,

5:56

small families, you have people who were

5:58

working on the railroad. and

6:01

you have kind of big towns, small

6:03

towns, towns that are there for like

6:05

a couple of months and then they'll

6:07

move the entire town you know a

6:10

hundred miles south to accommodate the railroad

6:13

and on top of all of that

6:15

you've kind of just got the vastness

6:17

of the prairie in this particular state

6:19

in Kansas and you've got Indian territory

6:21

just beneath where there's all this forest

6:24

and then you've got you know human

6:26

dangers but also very much weather dangers

6:28

so you've got thunderstorms, you've got ice,

6:31

you've got blistering heat, you've got prairie

6:33

fire so the land

6:35

itself really becomes kind of an extra

6:37

character in this narrative. You've set such

6:39

a compelling scene there Susan but let's

6:41

talk a little bit more about the

6:43

human threat in this

6:45

landscape. Am I right in thinking that by the 1870s

6:48

people who are traveling along

6:50

the Osage Trail, along this

6:53

landscape looking for somewhere to settle,

6:55

they're already avoiding some of the

6:57

main routes through it aren't they

7:00

and there are stories of disappearances

7:02

of travelers looking for home. Absolutely

7:05

so you've got a

7:07

main town called Fort Scott which has been

7:09

there a while it's very much established it's

7:12

kind of the center of business in the

7:14

region and then you've got this the Osage

7:16

Trail which takes you from Fort Scott to

7:18

Independence which is kind of the next growing

7:20

town. You've got a town

7:22

slightly to the north called Ladore which

7:25

is a railroad town and has

7:27

this real reputation as basically being

7:29

like rough and tumble, lawless, it's

7:32

full of bandits who come

7:34

in from the open frontier and

7:36

attack and rob townspeople and

7:39

lots of people do go missing in

7:41

this area at this time and there's

7:43

a newspaper later that will say that

7:46

attributing them to the bandits

7:48

is quite a charitable way of getting rid of them

7:51

as well as the unseen threat that

7:54

they don't know about. Every day they're dealing

7:56

with highway robbers, they're dealing with

7:58

each other, people are killing each

8:00

other in land disputes, people are

8:02

just getting into bar fights, all

8:04

those kind of classic Wild West

8:06

tropes. So we heard

8:08

at the beginning in the opening narrative

8:11

about George and his little baby Mary

8:13

Anne and they go missing, as I'm

8:15

sure listeners have already guessed, whilst

8:18

travelling west in early, I think

8:20

it's late 1872 into early 73 in that cold winter. Is

8:22

that the first

8:26

time that people start to get

8:28

suspicious of these disappearances? So

8:31

prior to that there have been some bodies

8:33

which have turned up on the open prairie

8:35

and some boys they find the body of

8:37

a man called William Jones in a creek

8:40

in that area and this kind

8:42

of disturbs the local community because

8:44

he's got very distinctive wounds so

8:46

he's been bludgeoned and has had

8:48

his throat cut and he's

8:50

found wearing a lot of clothes

8:52

but there's no valuables on him and in

8:56

1871 the husband of

8:58

a railroad worker goes missing while his

9:00

wife is in New York and his

9:02

name is James Ferrick and

9:05

she's really concerned about him but you

9:07

know when she tries to look for him people

9:10

in that area kind of like oh well people

9:12

disappear all the time but it is

9:14

around this kind of the winter of 1872 where

9:19

a lot of people go missing a very quick succession

9:21

and people in the area are

9:23

starting to be like well you

9:25

know this isn't great maybe something's

9:28

going on but there are also

9:30

people who don't have very long-standing

9:32

ties in the community so

9:35

there is still that thing of like oh well

9:37

maybe they've just decided to go somewhere else. What

9:40

is it then Susan about

9:42

George and Mary specifically that

9:45

draws a little bit of different attention

9:47

what are the connections that they have

9:50

perhaps or is it a case that

9:52

there's a baby involved what is it

9:54

about those two people in particular that

9:57

causes a little bit of attention to

9:59

get more deliberately focused on these disappearances.

10:02

So George and Mary are actually neighbours

10:04

to a man and his family called

10:07

Dr. William York, and he lives with

10:09

his wife Mary York and their next

10:11

door, and they've kind of had a

10:13

reasonable amount of interactions together, these two

10:15

families. And William York is actually the

10:17

man who sells George Longker the wagon

10:20

that he's travelling in. And

10:22

William York knows that George is taking

10:24

Mary Anne and they're going to Iowa,

10:27

and he's expecting to hear from Mary

10:29

Anne's grandparents that they've arrived. And travelling

10:31

this time, it takes a long time,

10:34

it's very dependent, lots could go wrong,

10:36

things can take much longer than you

10:38

would expect. But then by spring, William

10:41

still hasn't heard that they've arrived, and

10:43

he eventually receives a letter from Mary

10:46

Anne's grandparents saying, well, they never got

10:48

here, and they definitely should be here

10:50

now. And so it's that

10:52

kind of like community connection that then

10:54

prompts William York to be like, well,

10:57

I know this man, I know what he's like, I

10:59

know what he wanted for his little girl, if

11:02

he's not there, something's gone wrong. It's

11:05

remarkable as well that it's almost

11:07

by chance that they are able

11:09

to communicate in that way. And obviously, as you say,

11:11

so many people who are killed in this landscape or

11:13

who meet their deaths in mysterious

11:16

ways don't have those connections. And

11:18

so there is no follow-up, there

11:20

are no questions asked, and they're not investigated in

11:22

the same way. So

11:24

how is it that

11:27

the name of the Bender's family becomes

11:29

embroiled in this case? Who is it

11:31

who sort of casts the first aspersion,

11:33

the first stone in their direction? Well,

11:36

the Benders as a group are quite

11:38

interesting in this community because they've kind

11:40

of been there from, there's lots

11:43

of towns growing in this area, and the Benders have been there

11:45

since 1870. So

11:47

they're comprised of an older couple in their

11:49

sort of fifties, sixties, who we only really

11:51

know is Marnpar. And then

11:54

we've got this younger pair, I will say,

11:56

because we're not exactly sure if they were

11:58

married or siblings or... what was

12:00

going on, but they're called Kate and John.

12:03

And Kate, she's about 24, and

12:06

the younger couple have made a big effort

12:08

to kind of ingratiate themselves in the community.

12:11

And Kate is very well known in

12:13

the area. And she's kind of a

12:16

controversial figure. She's a big into spiritualism.

12:19

She keeps offering to like

12:21

cure townspeople using essentially like

12:24

magnetic healing, psychic powers. Some

12:27

people really like her. Some people find

12:29

her to be a bit of a

12:31

nightmare, but the whole family are known

12:33

for running this cabin on the trail

12:35

where it's like a single room divided

12:37

by a curtain. And they're one

12:39

of the few places that you can stop on

12:42

this particular route. And nobody

12:45

at any point really

12:47

suspects the benders of being

12:49

anything other than a bit

12:51

stupid, essentially. They're kind of

12:53

viewed as maybe a bit simple. They

12:56

don't, like their beliefs are a

12:58

bit strange. Kate's popular with

13:00

men, but less popular with women. So there's

13:03

a lot of just friction in the community.

13:05

And they're never raised as

13:08

suspects, I think purely because it

13:11

just didn't occur to the community that the

13:13

call was kind of coming from inside the

13:16

house. I mean, these are people

13:18

who are used to being attacked by people they

13:21

have no connection with on the open road.

13:23

The idea that a group within the community

13:25

would be systematically killing

13:28

people on the side

13:30

of the road in a house is

13:32

just not anything that would have occurred

13:34

to them. And William, after

13:36

he goes missing, his brother while they're looking

13:38

for him, he actually stops at the bender

13:40

cabin because that's kind of one of the

13:42

few places William would have stopped in that

13:45

area. And he has a conversation with them

13:47

and he comes away. And

13:50

he says, basically, these

13:52

people are too stupid to have committed a

13:54

crime like this. And then

13:57

that evening, the benders are like, wow.

14:00

actually maybe it is getting a bit hot,

14:02

you know, we've had people in the cabin

14:04

now and they flee, but it takes a

14:06

whole month for people to

14:08

notice that they've gone and then even

14:10

when they've gone, the community think, oh,

14:12

well, they must have fallen victim to

14:15

these criminals as well. It takes such

14:17

a long time for the penny to kind

14:19

of drop. Like I said a minute

14:21

ago, I just don't think it would ever have occurred

14:23

to them that like people would have killed people they

14:25

knew, essentially. Hey folks, since

14:28

you're a fan of history, you

14:42

clearly want to understand how we've ended

14:44

up with the world that we have. Well, I'd

14:47

like to tell you about my show. It's called

14:49

Dan Snow's History here. And on that show, you

14:51

get a daily dose of history and the stories

14:53

that really explain just about everything that's ever happened.

14:56

If you want to know the origin stories of the cities

14:58

we inhabit, what's in our kitchen

15:00

cupboards, why you've always been drawn to

15:02

dictators, the deep history that explains what's going

15:04

on, for example, in the Middle East, why we've got you

15:06

covered. And if you'd rather be

15:08

regaled with dramatic tales of powerful empires, we

15:10

do that too. Get a little bit smarter

15:13

every day with Dan Snow's History here, wherever

15:15

you get your podcasts. To save

15:17

power, I'm going to talk super fast to finish before a flex alert

15:19

starts. All we have to do is use less power during a flex

15:21

alert to help keep the lights on. I can't stop talking this fast.

15:23

Why not? Nobody needs

15:25

to unplug the fridge. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Or drink

15:27

two gallons of ice coffee. The power

15:29

is ours with flex alerts. I

15:33

have a secret. I wore the wrong foundation

15:35

for years. Then I

15:37

discovered Il Macchiaj. Their AI powered quiz

15:39

makes it so easy to find a

15:41

perfect match, customized for your unique skin

15:43

tone, undertone and coverage needs. With 600,000

15:45

five star reviews and

15:48

50 shades of flawless natural coverage, this foundation

15:50

is going viral for a reason. And with

15:52

Try Before You Buy, you can try your

15:54

full size at home for 14 days. Take

15:58

the quiz at ilmacchiaj.com. So

16:15

there's this search that's instigated, and as you

16:17

say, there's William York, just to

16:20

recap, he's the neighbour of the man and

16:22

the little baby who go missing at the

16:24

beginning of this story. And

16:26

he goes to the cabin and he disappears.

16:29

And then his brother is sent

16:32

out to search for him as well, and comes

16:34

across the family and they come

16:36

across to this brother as

16:39

being not necessarily capable of committing these

16:41

crimes. So we have this scene sort

16:43

of set, and then the family,

16:45

the benders, disappear,

16:47

don't they? They disappear from the

16:50

house and the cabin that they're living in

16:52

by the road. And the search

16:55

party that then comes across

16:57

the empty house and is drawn to

16:59

this strange scene discovers

17:02

something pretty gruesome. The

17:09

benders cabin is less than 10 feet

17:11

from the trail, with a stable and

17:14

a vegetable garden off to one

17:16

side, nearby to which apple trees

17:18

threaten plump spring blossoms. The

17:21

house itself is one story tall,

17:24

unremarkable, though pretty enough, except

17:28

for the strange smell that

17:30

surrounds it. It

17:33

catches in the noses of the 75

17:36

man search party that draws near now. Veterans

17:39

of the civil war, they

17:41

recognise the smell of death. They

17:44

split off, some to the stable,

17:46

where inside, unfed animals,

17:48

bray, miserable and starving in

17:51

their stalls. The

17:53

sound has already alerted neighbours to the

17:55

apparent, somewhat sudden disappearance

17:57

of the family who farmed the streets.

18:01

The rest of the party enter the single room

18:03

of the cabin. As they

18:05

push back the door, they're greeted with a

18:07

sparse and grimy scene. There

18:10

are few furnishings, though what's left is covered

18:12

in a thick layer of dirt. The

18:16

smell is stronger in here, almost

18:18

overwhelming, and the men glance at

18:21

each other. Could this be the

18:23

place they've been looking for? And

18:25

what exactly might they

18:27

be about to discover? This

18:29

is kind of what I've been

18:31

waiting for. As

18:36

soon as Susan mentioned the

18:38

cabin, it feels like a

18:41

location that really draws you in. I don't know,

18:43

maybe that's just me, maybe that's just the kind

18:45

of macabre sensibility that I have around these things.

18:48

But in that landscape, this cabin,

18:50

only because we know what we know now,

18:53

but it feels like a beacon for

18:55

where this story might unfold. And now the narrative

18:57

is taking us there and it's taking us inside

18:59

this cabin. And it's really getting a sense of

19:02

what it was like in there, what it smelled

19:04

like in there. But once they're

19:06

inside, once this search party were inside,

19:08

I believe, Susan, that the main area

19:11

of concentration in great

19:13

after dark tradition is a trapdoor.

19:16

Yeah, so the cabin, like you said,

19:18

is such an evocative image, I think.

19:22

So many people in this community have actually been

19:24

in that cabin at various points as well. And

19:26

I think that's really interesting, this idea that they

19:28

were then coming into it. Because

19:30

everybody thought the vendors were a bit

19:32

unhygienic anyway, but then coming

19:35

into this space and being like, oh

19:37

my gosh, what is that on

19:40

the canvas petition between the

19:42

spaces? Like kind of what's going on here?

19:45

And yeah, so one of the things they find,

19:47

they're kind of trying to work out the exact

19:49

source of this smell. And

19:52

they find a trapdoor and they

19:54

open the trapdoor and beneath it is a cellar.

19:56

And one of the men goes down and the

19:58

cello is open. smell is

20:00

terrible and it's like, it's rained

20:02

for weeks, so the ground is

20:05

really waterlogged, so you've got that

20:07

on top of this kind of

20:09

fetid decomposition smell. And he's

20:11

down there and there are these big stone slabs

20:14

that the benders have put to form the base

20:16

of the cellar. And

20:18

he puts his finger down in the gap

20:21

and brings it up and it's not

20:23

quite just mud. And

20:26

they're like, well, we can't excavate this

20:28

properly with the cabin on top. So

20:30

then they build this amazing contraption where

20:32

they kind of lift the whole cabin

20:34

off the ground and move it slightly

20:37

away so that the cellar itself is

20:39

just exposed to the air, which obviously

20:41

helps with the smell as well. And

20:44

then a bunch of men get down there and

20:46

they're all, you know, they're covering their faces because

20:48

the smell is so bad and they pull up

20:51

the slabs and they're digging beneath the slabs. And

20:53

the smell is still there, but they

20:55

can't find it. You know, they

20:57

don't come across any remains or anything like that.

21:00

And they basically then become aware that like,

21:02

well, probably now there are remains

21:04

on the property, we just have

21:06

to try and find them. And that

21:09

search for the exact location of them

21:11

then kind of takes

21:13

over the rest of the day. But

21:15

they ultimately come to this conclusion that

21:17

whatever was going on, there

21:20

was excessive violence against other

21:22

people taking place beneath this

21:24

cabin. So what you're saying Susan

21:27

is that these attacks on people have happened

21:29

potentially in the cellar, but the bodies themselves

21:31

aren't in there. So where are they? Where

21:33

do they find the bodies? Because surely they

21:35

are, as you say, on the property they

21:37

are nearby. Yeah, so I

21:40

think this particular element of this case

21:42

is why it has endured so much

21:44

in American folklore. So basically, you know,

21:46

the search party are there, it's reaching

21:48

the end of the day. They're kind

21:50

of looking at what they've got around

21:52

them, the garden, the apple orchard, all

21:54

of this kind of stuff. And then

21:56

one of the men is looking at

21:58

the orchard and he notices that essentially

22:00

the soil is laying in a way

22:02

that it wouldn't be naturally just with

22:04

the trees. And so they

22:06

go over and they take a ramrod

22:09

out of a rifle and they kind

22:11

of lower the rod into

22:13

the ground and they pull it up and

22:15

as soon as it comes out, out

22:18

comes the smell of decomposition and they're

22:20

like, right, okay. And then actually the

22:22

first body that they dig up from

22:24

this apple orchard is William York and

22:27

his younger brother Ed is on scene

22:30

as well as the private detective they've

22:32

hired to kind of investigate and

22:35

he's like, oh, that's William. And then

22:37

they look at the rest of the

22:39

orchard and they notice that there are

22:41

a lot more kind of divots in

22:43

the ground. There's something so

22:45

insidious about these bodies being placed into

22:47

the orchard and presumably, you know, they're

22:49

feeding the trees and the fruit that

22:51

maybe this family has been giving out

22:53

to people and selling or at least

22:55

consuming themselves, if not using that

22:57

to make potions and treatments, you

23:00

know, you say that they're sort of

23:02

treating the local community to some medical

23:04

degree. What about the little baby

23:06

Mary Ann who we heard about at the start?

23:08

Is she amongst the dead there? They

23:10

gradually start digging up all these

23:12

bodies and the whole process of

23:14

this immediately becomes hampered by the

23:16

fact that word gets out to

23:18

the local community and hundreds

23:21

of people start coming in on horses,

23:24

on wagons, on foot because, you

23:26

know, this is like the biggest thing that's happened

23:28

in this area since the war. And

23:31

so while they're excavating these bodies,

23:33

they're also dealing with photographers and

23:35

journalists and there are these amazing

23:37

pictures taken of the crime scene

23:39

where you've got like children in

23:41

little bonnets kind of standing outside

23:43

the cabin and then people

23:45

standing with coffins in the background. But

23:48

during one of these excavations, they're

23:50

digging in the ground and they

23:52

find George Longker in his grave

23:55

and then they pull him out

23:57

and Mary Ann is in there as well. And

24:00

this is kind of... the

24:02

rest of the victims are all kind of young

24:04

men. And it's obviously like

24:06

hugely distressing for the community, but this

24:09

specific murder catapults

24:12

these crimes into a national and

24:14

international story because her body is

24:16

in the grave and she's still

24:18

wearing her mittens and it's not

24:20

entirely clear, you know, whether

24:22

she was murdered before she was put in the grave

24:24

or whether she was just put in there with her

24:27

dad and then buried. And so

24:29

that element is obviously hugely

24:31

distressing and very emotional for everybody

24:33

on scene and ultimately is what

24:35

kind of whips the crowd there

24:38

into such a frenzy that

24:40

they try and hang another member

24:42

of the community who they assume

24:44

was complicit in the crimes because he

24:47

was also German and

24:49

he's rescued by a member

24:51

of local law enforcement. But the emotional

24:53

intensity of that whole kind of 48

24:56

hours I think really culminates in that

24:58

specific event. And it's a

25:00

really interesting moment in terms of the

25:03

technology that is available to people who

25:05

are documenting the crime scene and investigating.

25:07

You speak about there there being a

25:09

private detective involved in this case, there's

25:12

a contraption built to remove the cabin, these

25:14

are real serious technological advancements. And then of

25:17

course you've got the photographs of the crime

25:19

scene and then also the sort of the

25:22

macabre social aspect as well going on.

25:24

Do you see this crime, this

25:26

particular case, as sitting within a development

25:29

of true crime narrative in America? How

25:31

does it fit into other cases at

25:33

the time and that sort of development

25:35

of documentation? I think

25:37

that's a really good question because I

25:40

was thinking about this actually before recording

25:42

and how this is kind of the

25:44

last like really rural crime before we

25:46

start hitting very famous serial killers like

25:48

H.H. Holmes and Bell Dennis and that

25:50

kind of like much more

25:53

high profile serial killer that people in

25:55

the UK have also heard of. As

25:57

I'm sure you guys crime

26:00

has been just such a focal

26:02

point of interest for hundreds and

26:04

hundreds and hundreds of years. But

26:06

I think this specific crime scene,

26:09

the story around it becomes so big that

26:11

the local train company put on special trains

26:13

to take you out to the cabin that

26:15

stop halfway along their normal route so you

26:17

can get off and then people pay to

26:19

get in wagons to go and see the

26:21

scene. And then there are

26:24

people there selling postcards of

26:26

the crime scenes taken the day before. Obviously

26:28

we're really missing, we don't

26:31

have photos of the benders themselves or

26:33

anything like that. We only have photos

26:35

of what they left behind. And I

26:37

think because we have photos like that,

26:40

it really just like, and

26:42

it sounds like a funny thing to say,

26:44

but it really cemented them as real in

26:46

the public imagination. They didn't

26:49

disappear into folklore, which

26:51

you see with earlier crimes. Because there

26:53

are certainly crimes kind of

26:56

similar to this that happened

26:58

earlier on in the frontier, but we don't really

27:00

have the tangible evidence that we have with this

27:02

case. Also, I mean, this

27:04

particular part of Kansas was famous for

27:06

its newspapers during this period. Kind of

27:08

every town had a newspaper. They were

27:10

a big part of the community. And

27:12

so you get all these

27:14

different newspapers bickering with each other about

27:17

why the crimes happened and who was

27:19

actually involved. But it means that we

27:21

have a very solid record

27:23

of what was unfolding literally day by

27:25

day, hour by hour. One

27:27

of the things that's striking me here,

27:30

Susan, and you alluded to it already

27:32

in this talk of frenzy around the

27:34

crime scene where the local people have

27:36

come in and there's anger and outrage

27:38

understandably. So what has happened

27:40

to the benders? I would imagine people

27:42

are now going to want to try

27:45

and find these people to try

27:47

and get to grips with what has happened here

27:49

and enact some form of justice. Is there any,

27:51

I presume, there's some kind of a search mounted?

27:54

Yeah. So interestingly, in the

27:56

direct aftermath of the crimes,

27:59

people are still... Obviously, they have

28:01

no real idea where the benders went,

28:03

but the focus of Alexander York and

28:06

law enforcement actually turns back to that

28:08

town I mentioned earlier, Ladore, and they

28:11

arrest basically everybody in that town

28:13

connected to a man called James

28:16

Roach, who's a local salon

28:18

owner. And there's no evidence

28:20

for this arrest other than the fact that

28:22

this town and this man have kind of

28:24

a dodgy reputation. And at

28:26

the same time, these arrests are happening. A

28:29

pair of men who ultimately

28:31

end up joining up with the benders

28:34

are busy escaping Kansas, and

28:36

the benders themselves are on their way out of

28:38

Kansas. And so this kind of mass arrest of

28:40

these people with nothing to do with the case

28:43

actually results in this lag between

28:46

discovering the crimes and going after the

28:48

benders themselves. The benders have this very

28:50

distinctive piece of luggage, like a trunk,

28:52

but it's covered in dog hide. So

28:56

it's very, you know, like ruff

28:58

and furry and just not something that everybody had.

29:01

And they're able to track down the route the

29:03

benders took out of Kansas on the train by

29:06

asking people if they had interacted

29:08

with or seen this particular trunk,

29:10

which I think is a fascinating

29:12

detail. But it does take a

29:15

while for the kind of outrage to

29:18

manifest into an actual

29:20

practical search. And

29:22

there's a huge reward that's offered to find

29:25

the benders, isn't there? Is that

29:27

unusual for the time? It seems like a lot of money.

29:29

Yeah. So the reward for the

29:31

benders is $2,000, which I think today is

29:33

something like £45,000, something like

29:36

that. It's like a big amount of

29:38

money. And it's the highest that the governor of

29:40

Kansas could legally offer. And

29:42

actually, before William York

29:44

had been found at the cabin, the

29:46

community drew up a big petition asking

29:48

the governor for help searching

29:50

for these missing people. And he

29:53

had then offered a reward of $500 for information

29:55

relating to the disappearance of

29:58

William York. And then obviously, when they

30:00

decide the family are guilty, it's $500

30:03

a head, so cumulatively, it's $2,000.

30:07

And the reward itself is interesting,

30:09

that document, because it's basically the

30:12

best description we have of the

30:14

family physically, whereas the paper, you

30:16

can't decide whether Kate was attractive

30:18

or not, or how old anybody

30:20

was, or anything like that. The

30:22

actual, essentially, wanted poster provides very

30:24

detailed descriptions of them. We

30:27

have an idea. Well, I

30:29

suppose, spoiler alert, they are

30:31

not found in this hunt, but

30:34

we do eventually get a bit

30:36

of an insight into what may have happened.

30:38

However, there seem to be competing theories, as

30:41

is natural in these things, when justice is

30:43

not enacted. People start to fill in the

30:45

blanks for themselves, because we like to tell

30:47

ourselves stories, and we like to round out

30:50

a narrative, just to help us come to

30:52

some sort of resolution with the benders, as

30:55

they escape justice. Is there something you can

30:57

tell us about the different theories that were

30:59

going around, and if there's one that you

31:01

think is most likely? Yeah, so one of

31:03

the things that I discovered in my research

31:05

was that even though the press and the

31:07

general public were like, oh, nobody has any

31:09

idea where the benders were, the reality was

31:11

that they did know where they were. Up

31:14

until about 1975, they had tried repeatedly to

31:16

send people out there to

31:19

get them, but due to bureaucratic

31:22

issues, the benders had then escaped. Basically,

31:24

what the benders did is they went

31:26

down through Indian Territory into Texas, and

31:29

then they went all along the

31:31

top of Texas and up into the

31:33

panhandle, and they were hiding in a

31:35

place called the Caprock Escarpment, which is

31:38

a very dense riddle

31:40

of beautiful orange canyons and all

31:42

of this stuff that then leads

31:44

onto the high plains. And

31:47

at the time they were there, the

31:49

Red River Wall was going on between

31:51

the US military and members of the

31:53

indigenous population, and so it was

31:55

kind of the perfect place for them to just

31:58

hide themselves away. down in

32:00

this area. And it was

32:02

too difficult for, for example, the private

32:04

detective to get out there. And

32:07

when they tried to ask Texas

32:09

authorities, the Texas Rangers, the military

32:11

for help, bringing them back, they

32:13

just weren't really interested. It was

32:15

kind of considered to be a

32:17

problem that Kansas was responsible for

32:19

sorting out. But then after

32:21

that, we don't know where they

32:23

went. But I was really surprised

32:26

to see in my research at the

32:28

Kansas State Archives, all these like expense

32:30

sheets from the private detectives saying I

32:32

was here, I saw them here, I

32:34

saw them here, and all this different

32:37

correspondence and being like, okay, so there

32:39

was a very practical, frustrating reason why

32:41

they weren't able to get them. The

32:43

people of Kansas themselves, kind of the

32:45

general public, tends to fall

32:47

into the category of like, they

32:50

escaped and then came back in 1889 with this

32:52

other trial that

32:55

happens, or that they

32:57

were lynched by the York

32:59

family on their way out of Kansas.

33:02

Am I right in thinking there's

33:04

a deathbed confession to We Love

33:07

a Deathbed Confession? Yeah, so there's

33:09

actually kind of a bunch of

33:11

deathbed confessions. Lots of different people

33:13

kind of from 1880s

33:15

onwards confessed to being Mar Bender

33:17

or Parbender or Cape Bender. Cape

33:20

Bender is obviously the big, for

33:22

lack of a better word, star of this

33:25

particular story. And there's

33:27

a woman in California who

33:29

does this big detailed deathbed

33:31

confession, which is very, it's

33:33

written up in all this

33:35

like, florid, evocative language. And

33:38

I think the thing with this case

33:40

is that so many of the details were reported

33:42

in the press, that it was

33:44

very easy for someone 50 years

33:46

later to be like, oh yes, I'm Cape

33:49

Bender. And here's all the

33:51

details I know about the case. And I

33:53

mean, you're still at a period where basically

33:55

like, people just love a good yarn. And

33:57

the benders are so much, I mean, they

33:59

appear in newspapers in the 1950s, in the 1960s,

34:03

these like huge pictorial kind

34:06

of articles about them where none of the

34:08

details are right. But the story,

34:10

you know, the vague kind of outline of the

34:12

story is there. When I was

34:14

in Kansas, a lot of the people I

34:16

spoke to, they're very much ascribed to this

34:18

idea that they were hunted down and killed

34:20

by members of the community. And

34:22

that the search was kind of like an

34:25

illusion to cover the fact out that that

34:27

had been done. I struggle with

34:29

that because I don't think, I mean, if you

34:31

were the person to kill the benders, you'd

34:34

be pretty vocal about it, I think. And I

34:36

don't think anyone would blame you either. And

34:39

there's so many different accounts of how that might

34:41

have happened that I just think

34:44

maybe not. Susan, can you

34:46

give us a sense to

34:48

wrap up what brought you to

34:50

this story? Because it's had such

34:52

a life of its own in the press really

34:55

from the moment it was first discovered

34:57

through the decades and centuries since. And

35:00

it's, as you say, a very well-known story

35:02

in America, in Kansas in particular. So

35:05

what drew you to it? Why did you want to

35:07

tell it in your own words? Why was that important

35:09

to you? So I kind

35:12

of came across the benders and I'm always

35:14

on the lookout for like, for lack of a

35:16

better word, kind of ghoulish memorabilia. I've always been

35:19

that way since I was very young. And

35:21

I found in a charity shop here, this great

35:23

big book called More Infamous Crimes. And it's from

35:25

like the 90s. It's like held

35:27

together with tape. And in this

35:30

book were a couple of pages on

35:32

the benders and it was great big

35:34

crime scene photographs and then newspaper

35:36

illustration of Parr Bender and information about the

35:38

case. And of all the kind of crimes

35:41

in that book, that one just

35:43

really stuck with me because it was

35:45

so unlike anything I'd come across before.

35:48

And then over the years, they're kind of always

35:50

in the back of my head. I

35:52

was always thinking about the benders and like what

35:54

actually happened to them the

35:56

information that was available was

35:58

very restricted. to kind of 1870 to 1873. And

36:03

I started to think like, well, where

36:05

are the primary sources? Like my investigative

36:07

historian brain was like, this was such

36:09

a big case. There just must be

36:12

more about this out there.

36:14

There must be evidence, you

36:16

know, in archive somewhere of kind of what was going

36:18

on. And eventually I like

36:20

did my masters. And that was kind

36:22

of about the movement of the criminal

36:24

in visual culture in 19th

36:27

century America and how you

36:29

might track someone during that period. And

36:32

I just thought, you know what? I

36:34

really want to write this because I really

36:36

want to find what I know is

36:38

probably out there. And in my mind, I was kind

36:40

of like, maybe I will find out what happened to

36:43

the vendors. But actually when I

36:45

was writing the book, there's so many amazing stories

36:47

from just all the different people in the community.

36:50

Like we talked about earlier, the landscape,

36:52

the time period, all of that. And

36:54

it's just so interesting to me. The

36:57

trail left behind by these people and

36:59

then also having to piece them together

37:02

through other people as well. Cause we obviously, like

37:04

I said, we don't have anything from them. So

37:07

our perception of the vendors comes

37:09

exclusively from members of

37:11

that community and stuff like that. And I

37:13

mean, when I got to the archives in

37:16

Kansas and I just found just, I mean,

37:18

thousands of letters related to this case from

37:20

the period, I was like, oh

37:22

my goodness, this is so exciting. Yeah,

37:25

exactly. And then kind of like, you

37:27

know, piecing all those together and working

37:29

out what was sort of useless and

37:31

what was true and what corroborated each

37:34

other. And yeah, so. Before we go,

37:36

Susan, I just was wondering if

37:38

you could sum up in, I don't know,

37:40

let's say two sentences. Why were

37:42

the vendors killing? What was the motive here?

37:45

I firmly believe that the vendors

37:48

were killing because they were essentially

37:50

horse thieves. So a lot of

37:52

the men who go missing, they've got horses

37:54

on them. Some of them are very distinctive

37:56

horses. William York is described as being on

37:59

a very beautiful. in particular, and

38:01

horses during this period on the frontier,

38:04

they're a real form of currency. Like, they're

38:06

very important to day-to-day life. A good horse

38:08

is, you know, worth its weight in gold.

38:11

And the benders are provably connected

38:13

to this network of horse thieves

38:15

who were kind of moving them

38:18

up through the panhandle into Colorado.

38:20

Because the murders have such

38:22

a distinct modus operandi, there's

38:24

definitely an argument in there that somebody

38:27

in the family was maybe more of

38:29

a serial killer in the way that

38:31

we would view someone like

38:33

H.H. Holmes and was doing it

38:35

because they enjoyed it. But I

38:37

think without knowing the dynamics exactly of that,

38:39

we have to go with the fact that

38:41

they were essentially killing for material reasons. Susan,

38:44

it's been absolutely fascinating to speak to you. Thank

38:46

you so much. And thank you for listening to

38:48

this episode of After Dark. You

38:51

can listen to us wherever you go, podcasts.

38:53

And indeed you can leave us a five-star

38:55

review there, which we'd love to see. If

38:57

you have a suggestion for a

39:00

topic that you would like covered on

39:02

the show, then email us at afterdark

39:04

at historyhit.com. That's afterdark at historyhit.com. Welcome

39:08

to another round of drawing board or Miro board. Today

39:19

we discuss technical diagramming with systems

39:22

architect, Maya. Let's go. First

39:24

question, you've spent 10 hours slogging over

39:26

a sequence diagram that should have taken five.

39:29

Drawing board or Miro board? Drawing board.

39:31

And if I'm being honest, Miro would probably

39:33

cut that time down by half, you know,

39:35

with its AI tools and ready-to-go templates. Next,

39:38

your diagrams become so bulky, it's more

39:40

complex than the solar system. But all

39:42

it takes is a few clicks and?

39:44

It's Miro. I've used those technical shape packs

39:46

way too many times. Now, the

39:48

final question, everyone's brought in, but you have

39:51

to make all these tasks all the way

39:53

over in Jira. But wait, it's done. Miro,

39:56

easy with its two-way Jira sync.

39:58

Easy to plot dependencies. Everyone always

40:00

knows what's up. And she's done it!

40:02

For a limited time, visit miro.com/Diagram

40:05

Now and get a free business

40:07

plan trial to unlock even more

40:09

features like advanced shapes, dependency mapping,

40:11

and two-way jira syncing. Get started

40:14

today at miro.com/Diagram Now. Summer is

40:16

supposed to be an opportunity to slow down.

40:18

But when you look at your kids, you

40:20

can't help but notice that your kids are

40:22

growing up fast. Help them build independence as

40:24

they grow with Greenlight. Greenlight is a debit

40:27

card and money app for families where parents

40:29

can keep an eye on kids' money habits

40:31

while kids learn how to save, invest, and

40:33

spend wisely. It's the easy, convenient way to

40:35

raise financially smart kids. Get your first month

40:38

free when you sign up at greenlight.com/ podcast.