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