When their cellar was excavated, human remains were found in a gruesome crime scene that a reporter dubbed “hell’s half-acre.” Investigators later figured out the killers’ m.o.: after a lodger was fed and felt relaxed, one of the Benders stunned the victim with a hammer before smashing in their head and slitting their throat. After some of their guests went missing, the Benders eventually came under suspicion, and they abandoned their home in 1873 as the net was closing in. The Benders used their cabin as a general store and as lodging for travelers. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, historian Jonusas debuts with an impressive and deeply unsettling account of the Benders, a family of German immigrants who killed at least 10 people after they settled in Kansas’s Labette County in 1870.
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