Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You missed in History Class from works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. Time to
Speaker 1: Blaine and Chocolate Boarding, and today's story starts with a
Speaker 1: mystery that began to unravel in Labette County, Kansas, in
Speaker 1: the spring of eighteen seventy three. Colonel ed Yorke was
Speaker 1: searching for his brother, Dr William Yorke, who had vanished
Speaker 1: without a trace in early March of that year. So
Speaker 1: when he went missing, according to an article by David
Speaker 1: McCormick in Wild West, the doctor had been looking into
Speaker 1: another disappearance, that of a man named George Lnker and
Speaker 1: his young daughter. Dr Yorke had apparently sold Lonker a
Speaker 1: wagon and a team that had later turned up inexplicably deserted.
Speaker 1: Neither longer nor his daughter were anywhere to be found
Speaker 1: near this team and wagon. So it was while he
Speaker 1: was on his way back from i ding this team
Speaker 1: and wagon in Fort Scott, can This that Dr York disappeared.
Speaker 1: Colonel ed York did have a little bit to go
Speaker 1: off of, though. While he was looking for his brother,
Speaker 1: people had supposedly spotted Dr Yorke on his way home
Speaker 1: riding along this road. The Hostage Mission Road, and it
Speaker 1: was somewhere along that road, which connected Fort Scott with Independence, Kansas,
Speaker 1: that his trail ended, and somewhere, in fact, right around
Speaker 1: the home slash Inn that was run by a family
Speaker 1: called Benders, and interestingly several others. Anywhere from ten to
Speaker 1: twenty people had mysteriously disappeared in this general vicinity near
Speaker 1: the township of Cherry Vale during the years spanning from
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy one to eighteen seventy three, and in many cases,
Speaker 1: family members and other interested parties had traced the missing
Speaker 1: person's progress from town to town, and then, as with
Speaker 1: the case of York, their trails just vanished right around
Speaker 1: this spot. So it was clear that something was going
Speaker 1: on here in northwest Labette County and residents of the
Speaker 1: area we're pretty freaked out about it, understand as you
Speaker 1: would be. So in this episode we're going to find
Speaker 1: out what was the deal with all of these missing people,
Speaker 1: why were they disappearing, and what did that family that
Speaker 1: we mentioned, the Benders, have to do with it all.
Speaker 1: So to answer these questions, we're going to have to
Speaker 1: rewind a little bit to about eighteen seventy when the
Speaker 1: Vendor family first showed up in this area. The exact
Speaker 1: circumstances of their arrival are somewhat up for debate, as
Speaker 1: a few points in this story are according to Mike
Speaker 1: Mayo's book American Murder, they arrived in Cherry Vale and
Speaker 1: the company of a small cult of spiritualists, and if
Speaker 1: you remember from our episode on The Fox Sisters last year,
Speaker 1: spiritualists basically believe that people who have physically died continue
Speaker 1: to exist in kind of a spirit world, and that
Speaker 1: they can continue to communicate with us in the material world,
Speaker 1: usually through special people called mediums. So the rest of
Speaker 1: the spiritualist cult moved on, but the Benders stayed where
Speaker 1: they were. The area held some attraction at this time
Speaker 1: for lots of people, white settlers at least, who wanted
Speaker 1: to put down roots. The O Sage Indians who had
Speaker 1: once lived in the area had been relocated to Indian
Speaker 1: Territory in present day Oklahoma after the Civil War, and
Speaker 1: home stutterers were granted parcels of land, So when the
Speaker 1: vendors arrived, they claimed about a hundred and sixty acres
Speaker 1: of land right around the Sage Mission Road also known
Speaker 1: as the Sage Trail, which connected as we mentioned, Fort
Speaker 1: Scott to independence and was about five miles from cherry Vale,
Speaker 1: which was the nearest town. So they built a small
Speaker 1: house there, basically a cabin, right near the road, which
Speaker 1: was very well traveled, and understandably they got into the
Speaker 1: business of tourism. I guess you would say. They divided
Speaker 1: their home into two separate areas by hanging a piece
Speaker 1: of canvas as a partition, and on one side of
Speaker 1: that partition the family lived. On the other side, which
Speaker 1: was the front of the house, they ran an in
Speaker 1: slash grocery store, and it unclear whether their establishment had
Speaker 1: a specific name, but they did put a fine outside
Speaker 1: that the grocery, So if you were traveling along with
Speaker 1: heavily traveled trail, you would know the Benders was a
Speaker 1: place where you could refuel and maybe even spend the night.
Speaker 1: There were four members of the Bender family, Paul, who
Speaker 1: was also John Sr. Ma, John Jr. And Kate, and
Speaker 1: they were said to be German immigrants. So we need
Speaker 1: to tell you a little bit about all these characters
Speaker 1: because it's sort of essential to getting an idea of
Speaker 1: what's going on in the story and their interesting characters
Speaker 1: and character study. So John Bender Senior was about sixty
Speaker 1: years old, and by all accounts, he was a pretty surly,
Speaker 1: unpleasant guy. Mob Bender was said to be somewhere in
Speaker 1: the same age range as Paul, but there's still some
Speaker 1: debate over the exact number. Generally people think she was
Speaker 1: between fifty and sixty years old. She was also heavy
Speaker 1: set and bad natured and unfriendly. But maybe she was
Speaker 1: unfriendly because nobody really knew her name. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: one of the things. That she was just mom. That
Speaker 1: was one of the interesting things about the stories that
Speaker 1: there's never a name in any of the sources listed
Speaker 1: for her. She's just a mom. So John Junior, however,
Speaker 1: we do know his name, sort of at least. He
Speaker 1: was about twenty five years old, and he came off
Speaker 1: somewhat nicer than both Mom and Pop. But he apparently
Speaker 1: had a nervous giggle that went along with just about
Speaker 1: everything that came out of his mouth, So this made
Speaker 1: people believe that he was somewhat simple minded and probably
Speaker 1: adds to the creepy reputation around town too. Um. In general,
Speaker 1: these three vendors made neighbors and anyone in the general
Speaker 1: community who encountered them not really want to come around
Speaker 1: and visit too much, not go get your growthries at
Speaker 1: the vendor's place. But Kate was a different story. She
Speaker 1: was a couple of years younger than John Jr. And
Speaker 1: by most accounts, she was very attractive. She was an
Speaker 1: auburn haired beauty, and she was also outgoing and talkative.
Speaker 1: So she also had a five career that was separate
Speaker 1: from her family's grocery store. In business, she margreted herself
Speaker 1: as a healer and a spiritualist and called herself professor
Speaker 1: Miss Kate Bender, and she would travel around to different
Speaker 1: towns leading public seances and healings and spiritual performances, all
Speaker 1: according to Mayo's book, and she was quite a hit.
Speaker 1: She was. She also offered private sciences back at the
Speaker 1: Bender home so people could come there and visit her too,
Speaker 1: and that if he didn't go for groceries, maybe you
Speaker 1: would go first. Yeah, maybe you don't want groceries, but
Speaker 1: if you've seen her act and you think she's pretty cool,
Speaker 1: maybe you want to come get a private session from
Speaker 1: Kate at her house. So it was an odd family,
Speaker 1: even if you took it at face value as we've
Speaker 1: described it here. But it's also worth noting that a
Speaker 1: lot of people believed that they weren't even all related
Speaker 1: to each other. There were different sources give us sort
Speaker 1: of different scenarios on this, but some say that John
Speaker 1: Junior and Kate were actually a couple rather than brother
Speaker 1: and sister. Others say that they were half brother and sister,
Speaker 1: and that John was actually Ma's son from a previous marriage,
Speaker 1: and that his last name wasn't Bender at all, but
Speaker 1: it was actually GiB Heart. Still other sources say that
Speaker 1: all four of these people might have been completely unrelated
Speaker 1: and not mom and Pop at all. Nope, not a bit,
Speaker 1: Maybe just a clan that came together. Regardless, the foursom
Speaker 1: lived as a family in these early years of the
Speaker 1: eighteen seventies, and in general, people who lived relatively nearby
Speaker 1: and knew them, or at least knew of them, really
Speaker 1: didn't want anything to do with them at all, because,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned, they weren't very friendly. They weren't for
Speaker 1: the most part, dinner and asked how they were actually related. No,
Speaker 1: they weren't going to hang out and get to know
Speaker 1: their past, and so the Benders in their place just
Speaker 1: generally creeped a lot of people out too. I mean
Speaker 1: I think that probably their personalities had something to do
Speaker 1: with it, but people also mentioned just kind of having
Speaker 1: a bad feeling well, So because of that area of
Speaker 1: feeling about their business, they really had to rely on
Speaker 1: people who were just traveling along the stage trail, people
Speaker 1: who didn't know their reputation, and and they were pretty
Speaker 1: far from any big town, and even Cherry Vale wasn't
Speaker 1: exactly close. So according to Wayne Lee's book Deadly Days
Speaker 1: in Kansas, they really did attract a lot of visitors
Speaker 1: this way, and people who lived in the area though,
Speaker 1: probably didn't have much of an idea about what was
Speaker 1: going on with the business. So despite this this bustling
Speaker 1: business of visitors and travelers, people who lived in the
Speaker 1: area probably didn't have much of an idea about what
Speaker 1: was going on with the business, how it was running.
Speaker 1: Lee related just a few instances in which people might
Speaker 1: have gotten an inkling that weird stuff was going on
Speaker 1: at the Bender place, but no real strong suspicion. Yeah.
Speaker 1: As an example, Lee brings up a woman who was
Speaker 1: kind of thought of as the local crazy lady, and
Speaker 1: her name was Hessler. She was a spiritualism devotee and
Speaker 1: for that reason pretty drawn to Kate Bender, as you
Speaker 1: might imagine. According to Lee, one night, Hessler went over
Speaker 1: to the Bender's place wanting a seance, but Kate just
Speaker 1: wasn't in the mood to do one. But still, Hessler
Speaker 1: said things went okay until about sundown, when the family
Speaker 1: started all of a sudden acting very odd. They started
Speaker 1: drawing pictures of men on the walls and threw knives
Speaker 1: at those pictures. Then Kate told Hessler that the spirits
Speaker 1: were moving her to kill. She went towards Hessler with
Speaker 1: this weird, scary look on her face and said that
Speaker 1: the spirits were moving her to quote, kill you, kill
Speaker 1: you now, at which point Hessler ran home as fast
Speaker 1: as she could. She just got out of there. So
Speaker 1: on the face, that seems like it would be a
Speaker 1: huge morning sign and a threat to murder or something,
Speaker 1: and it would have been caused for concern when Hessler
Speaker 1: related this story to other people, especially since at this
Speaker 1: point people were already aware of some unexplained disappearances in
Speaker 1: the area. But since we already noted that Hessler was
Speaker 1: considered a local eccentric, people just wrote it off. She
Speaker 1: must have imagined this or something weird went down between
Speaker 1: two sets of weird people. Another story, though, involved a
Speaker 1: priest who was traveling along the A Stage Trail and
Speaker 1: stopping in at the Benders on a stormy night. He
Speaker 1: also ended up finding an excuse to high tail it
Speaker 1: out of the Bender's place, out of their house, but
Speaker 1: his reasons for doing so had more to do with
Speaker 1: just a general bad feeling about the situation. He's one
Speaker 1: of those people we talked about in the H. H.
Speaker 1: Holmes episode, or rather the opposite of those people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: follow your gut, right, he followed it. So even though
Speaker 1: people who were living around this area were generally alarmed
Speaker 1: about the people who were vanishing around there between eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy one and eighteen seventy three, there wasn't really any
Speaker 1: particular suspicion thrown on the Benders at this time. Basically
Speaker 1: everyone in the O Sage township was under suspicion cozy
Speaker 1: little town right until Dr York's case came up, the
Speaker 1: one that we mentioned in the intro. He disappeared somewhere
Speaker 1: along the O. Sage Trail on March nine, eighteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: and his brother ed and his subsequent search in late
Speaker 1: March early April of that year, trace Dr York's movements
Speaker 1: along the road, and according to McCormick's article, met several
Speaker 1: people along the way who said that they had seen
Speaker 1: his brother. They had seen the doctor on his trip
Speaker 1: back toward his own home. At least one person recalled
Speaker 1: that Dr York had said that he planned to stop
Speaker 1: at the benders In on the way home too. So
Speaker 1: one thing to note here, it's kind of up for
Speaker 1: debate why Dr Yorke would have stopped at the vendors
Speaker 1: in because he did live relatively nearby. McCormick suggests a
Speaker 1: couple possibilities. One was that he was just hungry wanted
Speaker 1: to stop at that grocery store. But the other possibility,
Speaker 1: and McCormick thinks that this is the more likely one,
Speaker 1: maybe while looking into the longer disappearance, he started to
Speaker 1: get suspicious of the Benders. Maybe he even confronted them
Speaker 1: about those suspicions, and that's why he was there. At
Speaker 1: any rate, Ed York decided to stop in at the
Speaker 1: benders and inquire about his brother. Makes sense, right, so
Speaker 1: the last place that was going to go. Accounts differ
Speaker 1: though on what exact lucky they told him when he
Speaker 1: got there, but Kate is said to have been really
Speaker 1: friendly in general and offered to contact the spirit world
Speaker 1: to try to help him figure out what happened to
Speaker 1: his brother. Nice off for there, But some sources also
Speaker 1: say that the Benders, perhaps specifically John Junr, suggested that
Speaker 1: Dr Yorke might have been attacked on the road by
Speaker 1: Indians or outlaws, like maybe even Jesse James. There he
Speaker 1: is again. Ultimately, it seems that they denied any possibility
Speaker 1: that Dr Yorke had come to their end for any
Speaker 1: length of time. You know, he didn't stay there, He
Speaker 1: didn't have a meal there, although he suggests that Kate
Speaker 1: told Ed York that his brother had watered his horse
Speaker 1: there and moved on. So we did. We did see him,
Speaker 1: but he didn't stick around, and that's probably why you know,
Speaker 1: we've been mentioned to you. But he wasn't here for
Speaker 1: for any length of time. So Ed didn't make that
Speaker 1: much progress at the Benders, but news of his search
Speaker 1: and his this latest disappearance seemed to be the final
Speaker 1: straw for the surrounding a stage community who was wondering
Speaker 1: who is the murderer among us? And as we mentioned,
Speaker 1: pretty much everyone in the township was under suspicion at
Speaker 1: this point, and not only were they scared, not only
Speaker 1: were they concerned, they probably didn't like people from other
Speaker 1: areas looking at them like possible suspects. So finally, the
Speaker 1: locals decided to gather for a meeting at the Harmony
Speaker 1: Grove Schoolhouse, and according to Mayo, there were about seventy
Speaker 1: five people in attendance, including the Bender men John Senior,
Speaker 1: Don Jr. And during the meeting, the group as a
Speaker 1: whole decided to search every single farm and structure in
Speaker 1: the community to just squash any possible rumor. So if
Speaker 1: there is a murderer, we'll find him. If it's not
Speaker 1: our community, we can finally tell all these people stopping by,
Speaker 1: it's not one of us. Looks elsewhere, just make sure
Speaker 1: that the culprit wasn't any one of them. And depending
Speaker 1: on what source you look at, anywhere from a couple
Speaker 1: of days to a couple of weeks after this decision,
Speaker 1: the entire Bender family just up and vanished, and according
Speaker 1: to McCormick's article, a neighbor passed by the farm noticed
Speaker 1: they were gone, but they had just really disappeared into
Speaker 1: the wind. They left all their livestock. They're unattended, without
Speaker 1: food and water, and in pretty bad shape that they
Speaker 1: hadn't made any preparations. They're just gone. And the poor
Speaker 1: treatment of those animals really riled up a lot of locals.
Speaker 1: But some suspected that something even more serious was going
Speaker 1: on here. Why has nobody seen them since we have
Speaker 1: this meeting. Why did they just suddenly up and leave?
Speaker 1: So O s Age Township trustee Leroy Dick went to
Speaker 1: check out the situation. He went over to their place
Speaker 1: and on May five, seventy three, he broke into the
Speaker 1: Bender cabin, broke the lock off their door, and went
Speaker 1: into the cellar. While in there, he noticed that there
Speaker 1: was this terrible smell, basically the odor of death. A
Speaker 1: weird trap door also that led to the kitchen, and
Speaker 1: the seller had some bloodstains around it. So Dick came
Speaker 1: back the next day with a full on search party.
Speaker 1: I think it is initially about fifty people or so,
Speaker 1: and then it grew and they had shovels and plows
Speaker 1: and stuff and tow and they didn't find any bodies
Speaker 1: in the house. I think they tried to check under
Speaker 1: the cellar floor, but they did find a couple of
Speaker 1: other weird things, like three sledge hammers and an eight
Speaker 1: day clock that concealed a knife. And Ed York, who
Speaker 1: had been searching for his brother, is said to have
Speaker 1: found a pair of eyeglasses in the house that matched
Speaker 1: his brother's glasses. So after the search of the house
Speaker 1: didn't turn up anything except these sledge hammers and these
Speaker 1: other items, they started to search the rest of the
Speaker 1: property and came up empty until Ed noticed the mounded
Speaker 1: dirt in the orchard and they realized that this must
Speaker 1: be graves and the first one that they dug up
Speaker 1: revealed the body of Dr York, Ed's brother, and the
Speaker 1: body was decomposing badly, but he could still make out
Speaker 1: the faith once they cleaned it off. The exact number
Speaker 1: of the bodies found in the property varies depending on
Speaker 1: what source you look at, but it's generally said to
Speaker 1: be anywhere from nine to twelve different people. And the
Speaker 1: people that Dr Yorke had been searching for, which was longer,
Speaker 1: and his daughter they were buried in the spot also.
Speaker 1: But the most horrifying part, at least to me, was
Speaker 1: that this little girl, who was said to be five
Speaker 1: to eight years old. They thought that she had been
Speaker 1: buried alive because she didn't have wounds that she didn't
Speaker 1: have the same wounds that the other victims had had,
Speaker 1: and she appeared to have been crushed under the weight
Speaker 1: of her dad's dead body, so she was just kind
Speaker 1: of thrown in there and the body was sort of
Speaker 1: thrown on top of her, and that was the way
Speaker 1: that she passed away. Some other unidentified this dismembered body
Speaker 1: parts were found in the area, as well as the
Speaker 1: other bodies of several men, and they were believed to
Speaker 1: be victims of the same killers. And of course those
Speaker 1: suspected killers were the Benders, because their bodies weren't found
Speaker 1: on the property anywhere, and they had obviously left in
Speaker 1: such a hurry. So it's unclear how many people they
Speaker 1: killed there in that two year span, but some estimates
Speaker 1: range over money. So most of the victims who were found,
Speaker 1: besides the little girl de Lana mentioned, appeared to have
Speaker 1: been killed in the very same way, and that's probably
Speaker 1: why most sources do agree that the Benders had this
Speaker 1: same murderous strategy. And as with a lot of other
Speaker 1: serial killer stories that we've looked at or discussed in
Speaker 1: the past, the motivation here appears to have been money,
Speaker 1: but according to Lee, the Benders in general were very
Speaker 1: careful to target non locals, and some sources even suggest
Speaker 1: that's why they placed their cabin where it was in
Speaker 1: the first place, because they knew that they have a
Speaker 1: lot of travelers passing through stopping in at their inn,
Speaker 1: and because there wasn't really another option too. Most sources
Speaker 1: also credit Kate Bender as the brains behind the operation.
Speaker 1: She chatted the travelers, maybe flirt with them, and trying
Speaker 1: to determine who was well healed enough to be worth killing.
Speaker 1: We mentioned that curtain that divided the room in their cabin.
Speaker 1: The prisoner would typically be seated with his back to
Speaker 1: it at the table in the kitchen. Ma would cook
Speaker 1: up some food while Kate did the talking kind of
Speaker 1: entertain their guests. Leaning back against the curtain as a
Speaker 1: guest often would would create sort of an outline of
Speaker 1: the visitor's head, and this was the perfect target, apparently
Speaker 1: for paw Bender to hit the person with a sledgehammer,
Speaker 1: which is how the initial blow and probably often the
Speaker 1: fatal blow, was dealt. From there, they would steal the
Speaker 1: traveler's money, partially strip them down, and especially if it
Speaker 1: were day lad outside or if they were suspecting that
Speaker 1: another traveler might be showing up soon. They would dump
Speaker 1: the victim into the cellar very quickly through that trapdoor
Speaker 1: in the kitchen that we had mentioned. The final step
Speaker 1: of these trademark kills was splitting the victim's throat, which
Speaker 1: was an act that Lee and other sources say it
Speaker 1: was typically performed by Kate, although I'm not really sure
Speaker 1: how they know that. I have to be honest, you know,
Speaker 1: how they knew it was Kate. Yeah, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: how they know that for sure, but a lot of
Speaker 1: sources say that it probably was her that did the
Speaker 1: throat slitting. In the night though when no one was around,
Speaker 1: they would take the bodies out and bury them in
Speaker 1: the orchard. And some tend to question whether or not
Speaker 1: money was always the motivator for them, because, according to McCormick,
Speaker 1: some estimates put the money they made off of the
Speaker 1: victims at about five thousand dollars, but some of their
Speaker 1: victims didn't seem to have much more than pocket change
Speaker 1: on them when they were killed. And I mean there's
Speaker 1: always a chance that they didn't know. Maybe they killed
Speaker 1: them and then found out, Oh, this guy really doesn't
Speaker 1: have any money, but they're killed today for five dollars,
Speaker 1: So that's true. But McCormick also suggests that this could
Speaker 1: have simply have been bloodlust, so that might have been
Speaker 1: part of it, and we should mention that part of
Speaker 1: the reason that York situation was different. I mean, they
Speaker 1: had been caught at all. They kind of stuck to
Speaker 1: this we're only attacking lonely travelers thing, but they didn't realize,
Speaker 1: or at least some set sources suggest that they didn't
Speaker 1: realize that York was from nearby, and the family follow
Speaker 1: up and ya out what happened, and his brother turned
Speaker 1: out to be very tenacious and searching for him, and
Speaker 1: they probably weren't expecting that. So after the bodies were found,
Speaker 1: there was this kind of madness that commenced in which
Speaker 1: everybody was pointing fingers trying to found somebody who was
Speaker 1: around to blame because the Benders, of course, we're just
Speaker 1: out of town. McCormick actually compares it to the Salem
Speaker 1: witch trials, and a neighbor of the Benders named Brockman,
Speaker 1: who was also German, was suspected of knowing something about
Speaker 1: their activities or their whereabouts. He was hanged and revived
Speaker 1: several times as people tried to get info out of him,
Speaker 1: apparently though he had nothing to tell after this torture treatment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of terrible. They would just they strung him
Speaker 1: up and they would just hang him every time they
Speaker 1: were trying to get information out of them, and then
Speaker 1: sort of let him down. He would be unconscious a
Speaker 1: couple of times. Um, really brutal. But the house, interestingly
Speaker 1: was also basically looted after this. The story was all
Speaker 1: over the papers, and thousands of people reportedly came to
Speaker 1: take what McCormick calls quote maccab souvenirs from the property. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to each his own in the souvenir department, I guess.
Speaker 1: But he notes that on June seventy three, a Kansas
Speaker 1: paper called The Headlight ran a report that said, quote,
Speaker 1: the whole of the house, accepting the heavy framing timbers
Speaker 1: on the Bender farm, and even the few trees have
Speaker 1: been carried away by the relic hunters. And then the
Speaker 1: newspaper later addressed the family's escape by saying, quote, the
Speaker 1: murders themselves are probably in the middle of China. By
Speaker 1: this time, and we'll never be heard from. Well, that's
Speaker 1: the real mystery of this story because to this day,
Speaker 1: no one knows what happened to the benders. Their wagon
Speaker 1: was found abandoned, they were sited getting on a train.
Speaker 1: Some people say that they split up. Mom and Paul
Speaker 1: went one way, Kate and John Jr. Went another. For
Speaker 1: years afterwards, as you could imagine, there were sighting, there
Speaker 1: were arrests, even a promising one in Michigan in eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine, but nothing ever stuck, nothing was ever proven.
Speaker 1: Nobody knew what had happened to the vendors. There's even
Speaker 1: a legend that they were all murdered by a vigilante
Speaker 1: group from the o s Age Township area who killed them,
Speaker 1: took their money, and never spoke of it again, basically
Speaker 1: like they had gone out right after they discovered the bodies,
Speaker 1: managed to find him kill them, and just sort of
Speaker 1: kept it to themselves. But there's no proof of this either.
Speaker 1: So the whole thing, like you said, is still a mystery.
Speaker 1: But present day Cherry Vale Museum still displays some of
Speaker 1: the memorabilia that was found, some of the stuff that
Speaker 1: didn't get taken away. Um, yeah, I think from that
Speaker 1: initial search, some of the things were preserved, so you
Speaker 1: can still kind of go and check this out, and
Speaker 1: that they have the three I think they have the
Speaker 1: sledge hammers, and maybe the eight day clock and the knife. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the three sledge hammers. Well, I guess if you do
Speaker 1: that much of brisk business, it is um. It's interesting though,
Speaker 1: even with three sledge hammers, their approach was so succinct.
Speaker 1: It's so well defined in a way compared to some
Speaker 1: of the other serial killers we've covered, Like we covered
Speaker 1: the H. H. Holmes story and on the roof or
Speaker 1: gass them in special rooms. He was very elaborate in
Speaker 1: his strategies. Holmes was, and I think they had a formula. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so having three sledgehammers maybe isn't so complex when it
Speaker 1: comes to this sort of thing. But it's also interesting
Speaker 1: to see the similarities between those stories and just how
Speaker 1: people react in these situations, you know, having a bad feeling,
Speaker 1: feeling a place's eerie. And we finally got one though,
Speaker 1: who acted on his bad feeling. We did, I mean,
Speaker 1: there was one in the home story to at least
Speaker 1: there was the relative of one of the wives who
Speaker 1: sort of got out of a bad situation and ended
Speaker 1: up not a victims didn't want to take the roof tour.
Speaker 1: Occasionally people do follow their instinct, which is a good thing.
Speaker 1: But people love these gruesome stories, Sarah. They do. We
Speaker 1: are always getting suggestions from you guys for serial killers
Speaker 1: and and other murderers, and we even got a book
Speaker 1: from one of you. We did. We got the Saga
Speaker 1: of the Bloody Benders, uh, and it is a graphic
Speaker 1: novel by Rick Geary based on the Bloody Benders story.
Speaker 1: And we got that a while back actually from listener Steve.
Speaker 1: And I have to apologize to Steve that we've only
Speaker 1: done the story now because I think he probably sent
Speaker 1: it after we did Bell Gunnis or one of the
Speaker 1: other serial killers, and we try to put a little
Speaker 1: gap between them. As much as you guys love these
Speaker 1: scary stories, sometimes we have two space amount. There's a
Speaker 1: long incubation period for certain podcast topics to lists that
Speaker 1: have been building for years and years now. Very true.
Speaker 1: But if you have any other suggestions for us, of course,
Speaker 1: we're always open to any kind of story, no matter
Speaker 1: how creepy or macaw that might be, and you can
Speaker 1: write us those suggestions at History Podcast at Discovery dot com.
Speaker 1: We're also on Facebook, and we're on Twitter and industry
Speaker 1: and if you want to learn a little bit more
Speaker 1: about people like the vendors, we do have an article
Speaker 1: called how serial Killers Work. You can search for that
Speaker 1: on our homepage at www. Dot how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is it how stuff works dot com.