Murder With Friends: Bloody Benders

In Membership, Murder With Friends - On Demand by Gigi Manukyan38 Comments

Grace Baldridge and Amir Nikoui discuss the “Bloody Benders”- a family of murderers during the Westward Expansion. Family members Ma, Pa, John Jr., and Kate Bender owned a small general store and a methodical way of killing settlers. During a time of Manifest Destiny, the family were Spiritualists-with Kate being a self-proclaimed medium.

Comments

    1. I am glad to see this show, and I will watch every one of them BUT the seeming obligation to run creepy music each and every time a B-roll is run is worse than a laugh track and very distracting. Please consider not running that mood music … I’ve come to dread it.

  4. Agree with Deb-n-NCAL, you can see references to this story everywhere in American entertainment media BUT, as Deb mentioned, the references are nearly never by name so it is easy for an old school gal like me not in Hollywood to grow up never having heard of this story till now.

    Yeah, those post Civil War years were ridiculous, it wasn’t just the uncontrollable west either. Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall were corrupting New York City with tentacles expanding into Washington D.C. in those same years. They got Tweed right around the time the Benders took it on the lam. I think lots of people saw the widespread lack of regulations and extreme corruption as a window of opportunity (1860s-80s), cut short by the Spanish American War and the wars and technology that followed.

    The media is still missing in this episode so I ended up finding whatever I could on other sites to look at while Grace and the co-producer talked.

  5. Could be worthwhile to send an email to TYT support.

    Meanwhile, as an old-schooler who worked in Hollywood back in the day, must point out that the Bloody Benders were a staple story source for old TV shows and movies. Any TV series set in the western frontier that ran long enough, had a Bloody Benders episode. Not calling them by that name, but using the plot line of a family that runs an inn which way-lays travelers. Often, exactly using the “sit here in the seat of honor” with the canvas backdrop behind the victim, hammering skull from behind the clothe, etc.

    The Big Valley put a twist in their Bloody Benders episode (titled “Ladykiller”) where the family’s young daughter fell in love with Nick Barkley and ultimately turned on her family to defend him.

    In the movie HOW THE WEST WAS WON Walter Brennan played the head of the evil family, and James Stewart was the victim.

    The list could go on forever. The Benders provided Hollywood with a lot of fodder.

  6. Does anyone at TYT read these comments? Some of these are ten days old and the media STILL hasn’t been fixed. Frustrating. Just how and who are we suppksed to contact about this sort of thing?

  10. Well, since it seems other people have mentioned Dr.H.H. Holmes; I am going to request Countess BThory, who is another one of my favorites!

  13. You could do the Snowtown murders also called the bodies in barrels murders where 12 people were murdered. Three men were found guilty of committing the murders .

    Snowtown is in South Australia, Australia

  17. I think Paul Bernardo & Carla Homulka would make a good episode. I love that this is a show, it’s my favorite new thing.

    1. Oh yeah… Paul Bernardo & Karla Homolka. I remember hearing about them during the 80s or 90s?? I think they were in Canada. They were really creepy… they were a newly married couple and their first victim was her fifteen year old sister. Yuck. They were really crazy and looked like the kids next door.

  19. I think you should do an episode on Jack the Ripper, especially since a lot of people don’t agree that is has been solved. However, I do like watching stuff like this episode, which is a story I’d never heard about even though I’m really interested in this kind of stuff.

    I always wanted to either be a detective or a scientist. The science won me over in the end (though I did spend a few years working at the sheriff’s office), but I still like watching/reading about true crime type stuff.

    Love the show. Grace is a great host, and I’m glad she has her own show. Looking forward to more episodes!

  20. Great show – needs some definite work on the graphics and not just this episode with the unavailable media. The other episodes have not great graphics either, especially the little pop up ladies where the words aren’t in the right spot/legable.

  22. Amazing show. Keeping it 100% I don’t know if I can watch it (I will still listen) with the picture of John Wayne Gacy in that clown makeup in the background. The Ted Bundy one is fine, but I don’t particularly love clowns lol. Put some of the Deadly Nightingales up because yeah murder chicks are horribly bad-ass too. Great job guys!!!

  23. How about doing a show on the Villisca murders that took place in 1912? An entire household, including 6 children, were murdered in one night. The crime remains unsolved.

  26. Love this new show! True crime stories fascinate me! HH Holmes, Jack the Ripper, ya gotta cover these!

  27. Great episode! :) This is definitely one of my new favorite shows so thank you so much TYT for making it possible! So I would be interested in you all covering the Lizzie Borden axe murders. I also agree with the comment above, perhaps one of the most iconic serial killers of all time was H.H. Holmes and his “murder castle” where he lured in fair-goers at the 1893 World Fair in Chicago. Still so shockingly disturbing to this day, gives me the heebie-jeebies big time!

  29. H. H. Holmes! You gotta cover that grisly bastard. America’s first media frenzy on a serial killer, kidnapping, and trial. Not to mention that it all went down around the 1893 World Fair in Chicago.

  30. FUCK YOU IMIR! Don’t try to kill the mystery with bullshit. Jack the Ripper is not solved by DNA evidence.
    “In September 2014, Edwards announced with great fanfare – and a book to sell – that he had DNA evidence that ‘Jack’ was actually Aaron Kosminski.

    Kosminski was one of the prime suspects of the day, and his incarceration coincided with the conclusion of the murderers in London’s Whitechapel accredited to the Ripper.

    Edwards had purchased a piece of cloth found next to Catherine Eddowes, one of the Ripper’s five ‘canonical’ victims (some claim Jack was responsible for 11 deaths in total), with the suspicion that the cloth had in fact been placed there by the Ripper himself, a clue as to where he would next kill.

    Edwards enlisted Dr Louhelainen, a historical crime-scene expert, to examine the piece of cloth. Lo and behold, Dr Louhelainen found more than just blood on the cloth – he says he also discovered semen.

    The semen was found to have identifiable DNA, and by mapping it, a picture emerged of a dark-haired man of Russian Jewish ethnicity – a decent description of Kosminski, who was a Polish Jewish immigrant.”

    All this proves is Kosminski was a customer whose cum was cleaned up by a cloth this woman had.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2432987/Jack-Ripper-Queen-Victorias-surgeon-Sir-John-Williams-claims-book-written-victims-descendant.html

    It’s clear Jack the Ripper worked for Queen Victoria and his purpose was to murder the child of Albert Victor the whore he knocked up and her whore friends.

    Read From Hell by Alan Moore. Jack the Ripper could easily be the most interesting serial killer as his motivations were maintaining the patriarchy.

  31. 12 to 21 people? AMATEUR HOUR! Chris Kyle killed 160 people by himself and the crew of the Enola Gay easily got 90,000 people. Now those are true slayers and they were never brought to justice. . .well. . .Chris Kyle was ;)

  33. WE LOVE MURDER WITH FRIENDS SO MUCH!!!! THANK YOU LOVELIES!!!! Btw, we excuse the few technical glitches completely because the content is so great overall!!!! <3<3<3

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