Serial Killers And Family Trees

We share how to research suspected ties between family history and serial killers, balancing DNA with records and community context.

Check out: 
killer.cloud

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Chapters

• 0:00 Holiday Setup Turns Dark
• 1:29 Was Your Ancestor A Serial Killer
• 2:55 The Bloody Benders Of Kansas
• 5:35 Disappearance And Early Forensics Limits
• 6:56 America’s Serial Killer Statistics
• 9:10 Debunking The XYY “Killer” Chromosome
• 11:12 DNA, Limits, And Folklore
• 12:36 Victims, Families, And Impact
• 14:10 Female Serial Killers And LaLaurie
• 16:30 Coping With Inhumanity In Research
• 18:12 County Changes, Laws, And DNA
• 19:41 Key Research Tools And Records

Transcript

Holiday Setup Turns Dark

John 0:00

Ladies and gentlemen from the depths of Flyover Country in the Heartland of America, the Kansas City on the other side of the mighty mow. Welcome to Hittin the Bricks with Kathleen, the Do It Yourself Genealogy podcast with your questions and her answers. I am John, your humble hubby host, and today we'll be celebrating the upcoming holidays with a lively discussion on serial killers. Wait, what? So let's start hitting the bricks.

Kathleen 0:27

Okay, John. We have a really exciting podcast to do. It's December, it's holiday season, so we want to bring our listeners joy.

John 0:36

Okay, and so how are we gonna do that?

Kathleen 0:38

We're gonna talk about December-born serial killers. Serial killers? But they were born in December. That should make them a little happy. It's holiday.

John 0:49

So uh serial killers like John Shivington. Shivington was uh did the Sand Creek massacre. You know, Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, and they killed 10 to 15,000 Native Americans. Uh are these the serial killers we're talking about?

Kathleen 1:05

Nope, these are not the serial killers we're talking about.

John 1:08

Okay. What about the so the what about the 36,000 captains of slave ships over the Middle Passage that uh, you know, two million African enslaved people were killed?

Was Your Ancestor A Serial Killer

Kathleen 1:20

Those aren't the serial killers we're talking about either. Hmm. Okay's a lot of serial killers in America. We lead the pack around the world. So we really are talking about today was your ancestor a serial killer, or was your ancestor a victim of a serial killer? And how do you research that?

John 1:42

I don't know. I would assume that at least one of my ancestors was a serial killer.

Kathleen 1:46

And yet you're here. And yet I'm here. I was working on a project not long ago, and then our friend Angie calls me. Angie Redesky. So Angela decided to ask me about the Bender serial killers in Kansas.

John 2:04

Okay.

Kathleen 2:05

And I knew quite a bit about them from my childhood. I've heard stories about them because they're from near Coffeville, Kansas.

John 2:13

Oh, see, I've never heard anything about the uh Benders at growing up on the East Coast.

Kathleen 2:18

So the Bloody Benders were from uh Cherry Vale, Kansas. If people researched it, it would probably say LeBec County. But LeBec County became Montgomery County that same time frame. That's where my family's from in Coffeyville.

John 2:35

So so the first connection has been made to your family and the Benders. Got it?

Kathleen 2:40

No, there's no connection at all except location. Okay. But thanks. Thanks for that.

John 2:46

Just making sure. Okay.

The Bloody Benders Of Kansas

Kathleen 2:48

These serial killers, the Benders, was a full family that totally disappeared. They never got caught, which is the story of early America. So remember the serial killers, Sean? That term did not become a term until the 20th centuries. And they didn't realize that this is what was going on.

John 3:08

So who didn't know what was going on?

Kathleen 3:11

No one knew that the Benders were killing. People were disappearing. In LeBette County. Okay, LeBec County. The Benders showed up in LeBec County and they had a farm home and people were crossing trying to go west, right? As people were going west, people started disappearing in LeBec County.

John 3:31

Okay.

Kathleen 3:32

Finally, the citizens of LeBec County, of Cherryville, they started questioning and they decided after the benders left town, maybe we should check that particular farmhouse property. And when they checked that farmhouse property, they started finding body parts.

John 3:53

Okay.

Kathleen 3:54

But no one knew what happened to the benders. No one in town really knew them. They just disappeared, and they're not even sure that was their last name.

John 4:02

Okay, so that's creepy.

Kathleen 4:05

So well, we never know who lives amongst us. I mean, that's just some real Stephen King stuff there, where uh Well, there was a search party, and the search party started finding crushed skulls and slit throats and these dead people.

John 4:24

But they moved on to another place. They were never caught.

Kathleen 4:28

That is correct. Not uncommon for that time frame.

John 4:32

Okay.

Kathleen 4:33

Because people were just moving west side mass.

John 4:36

They blend right in. They went to the next town and set up shop again.

Kathleen 4:40

So there's no sightings, there's no arrests, there's nothing but rumors, right? And there's bodies. There are a lot of bodies. They've taken different DNA tests. They can't confirm any biological children or descendants. There's no graves, there's no good samples of the DNA, or the ones that that were tested has no matches as of yet. But it's possible the family, it seemed like the whole family knew what was going on. At least that is what is suspected. Now there's a lot of people who talks about the Benders, and I just like talking about it because Angie brought it up in that area, Cherry Vale, is in Montgomery County, Kansas now.

Disappearance And Early Forensics Limits

John 5:18

So after they after they had their little murder spree, and then they moved on. So they could have just hooked up with another group of travelers headed further west. So maybe they went to Colorado or California and set up shop there.

Kathleen 5:35

Well, it's possible. We don't know because we don't even know their last name really. They're they know and identified them. It's not like they had, you know, fingerprints and passports in the 1870s. So what we do know about America, however, is that in America's history, we have serial killers in all 50 states.

John 5:55

Well, if you don't have a serial killer, it's kind of like a town without a McDonald's, isn't it?

Kathleen 6:02

And that would be horrible, wouldn't it? So, John, if you're researching your family and you think you have a tie to a serial killer, a great website to start with is killer.cloud. Has a total of 651 serial killers. 327 of those are from the USA. The second ranked one is the UK, and it has 62 serial killers. And they're in second place.

John 6:32

They're in second place, the so the closest to us. We have 327, they have 62. Well, okay, but wait a minute, wait a minute. I mean, the United Kingdom is so much smaller than the United States. That's not really fair.

America’s Serial Killer Statistics

Kathleen 6:45

Let me put it better in perspective with you. Out of 651 serial killers that are cataloged, the United States has 327 of them. The rest of the world equals what we have.

John 7:00

Yeah, you know, and this is this is my problem with America always having to carry the rest of the world in so many things. It's just Oh wow.

Kathleen 7:10

Yes, that is where you would go with that.

John 7:13

That we have to do so much of the legwork.

Kathleen 7:15

The best thing is that they have the statistics, and under the statistics, it will tell you serial killers by gender, serial killers by year, and by month. So that's what made me think, well, let's do December.

John 7:31

Because December always puts you in the mood of uh murdering people. What is it? All that holiday traffic, or it's the it's the Christmas carols on November 26th.

Kathleen 7:40

Oh, didn't they start them in October? I have no idea.

John 7:44

I am amazed at this site. I am absolutely amazed that they have birth category. And just so we get just so we cover this, it's the oldest child, folks. It's the old uh the the older ones are the ones you need to watch out for.

Kathleen 7:57

There's also an interesting statistic on there about the XYY DNA.

John 8:03

Oh, okay.

Kathleen 8:04

It's been debunked, but they decided that it was called the serial killer DNA at one point.

John 8:11

Oh, so they kept it up there showing that there are four true that fall into that and 77 false.

Kathleen 8:17

That is correct. You see it there, I guess. So normally a man has an X and a Y chromosome, and a woman has a XX. Right. The XYY chromosome, also called Jacob syndrome, they decided that Jacob's syndrome was inherently a criminal syndrome that caused violence, like a serial killer named Richard Speaks. Okay. So this criminal chromosome was debunked, but there are 1% of prisoners do have it.

John 8:50

So they at least address that, which is very cool.

Debunking The XYY “Killer” Chromosome

Kathleen 8:52

Yes. And the DNA is one of the ways we find serial killers, right? Or if your ancestor was a cereal killer, do you match up to them? Do you not? So this is one of the ways we do find them, but DNA is not foolproof in this case because, like the Benders, we had no DNA that matched. So we can't always rely on DNA, but we also have family folklore. One of the more recent ones was John Floyd Thomas. And John Floyd Thomas is still living. He's 80 some years old right now. He's our oldest serial killer. And uh he started in about 1957, and his final arrest was 2009. They led him out of prison at one point, and he returned to serial killing, and then they finally gave him two life sentences. So he is still alive.

John 9:46

Dedicated.

Kathleen 9:46

He's a very dedicated okay.

John 9:48

So the th this is so um, this is so far removed from my reality. It's a conversation piece more than anything else. But I guess you really do have to take a minute and understand that there are actual families and people who are affected.

Kathleen 10:03

I have two clients that were attached to serial killers.

John 10:08

Their family was uh killed by serial killers?

Kathleen 10:10

Their family was yes, their family was killed by serial killers. And one actually I did for a TV show that never aired. Right. And so I always found this to be a fascinating topic, but I had more of the victim side, except I had one case where their ancestor was the serial killer.

John 10:34

Wow, that's interesting.

Kathleen 10:35

Yes, it's a lot of fun.

John 10:37

Yeah, I and and again, it's one of those things that I think we look at it as an oddity, but I don't know that that's even necessarily appropriate when you have 327 serial killers in your country. If it's an oddity, it's a more pathology. I want to start questioning what's wrong in America.

Kathleen 10:59

So I want to make sure we we also remind our listeners that thus the number of serial killers. Each serial killer killed two or more people.

DNA, Limits, And Folklore

John 11:10

Is that what it has to be? It has to be two or more?

Kathleen 11:13

That's what it's defined as now. That again is a more recent definition. The older ones seem to get away with a lot more, like five, ten, fifteen, without being called a serial killer, but they are serial killers. Well, they weren't called serial killers. That's not what they called. They just gave them names like you know, the Southland Strangler or I don't think I want to do the podcast any.

John 11:36

I think I'm just shocked. I think I just hit my limit on um Already.

Kathleen 11:40

Okay, so John, if you go to the section on the website to view statistics and gr scroll down, right? Under the bullying questions, it tells you the different tools that serial killers use. Torture, they robbed you, they bound you, they drank blood. So these are literally categorized.

John 12:01

Oh yeah. You know, I didn't want to go here.

Kathleen 12:05

Why not?

John 12:06

Just you probably don't. I mean, it's the holiday season, so and that's the reason to go.

Kathleen 12:13

So, John, this is the best part about this podcast. I'm doing it as much for you as our listeners.

John 12:19

I'm not interested. Seriously. Seriously.

Kathleen 12:25

Okay, so let's talk about female serial killers.

John 12:28

Oh, God, I can only imagine.

Victims, Families, And Impact

Kathleen 12:30

So the Benders actually had a wife. So we know that women were into it. Then there's this woman named Polly Bartlett of Wyoming, kind of like Kansas, about the time that was a territory still. She was the first serial killer of Wyoming. She must be someone. And it was a woman. Well, we are powerful.

John 12:52

It just seems to me, even though we have so many, but really did they impact so many lives that we would be looking for them in genealogy?

Kathleen 12:59

Because they they impacted full communities. So the answer to that is yes. And let for example, Delphine LaLaurie, she was from New Orleans. And again, I'm not talking about women. She was a wealthy socialite in the 1830s. She tortured and killed enslaved people in her attic. So let's say I'm doing research and I'm an African American and I realize that my ancestor was enslaved by this woman. When I'm doing my research, I need to not only test, of course, my DNA to see if I can find more information on my ancestry, but I also am curious about the laws at that time. So that's very important for us as a genealogist. We need to know what happened to these people. Well, you're not going to keep track of it, but when they found all the bodies, what you have in front of you is the newspapers and maybe folklore.

Female Serial Killers And LaLaurie

John 13:59

So I have a tidbit for you. Okay. Uh there was a show called American Horror Story, and they did, I think, an entire season on Delphine LaLaurie. It was really well done. It was horrific, of course. It was a horror story. Uh, she was portrayed by Kathy Bates, your favorite.

Kathleen 14:19

Oh wow. What was the name of the movie or the show?

John 14:21

It's called American Horror Story.

Kathleen 14:23

I want to talk about the tools for the genealogist or the family historian who wants to prove or they might suspect for some reason they're researching this information in their community.

John 14:36

Yeah. So yeah, this is what happens when you don't let women drive. You know, this is the problem when you stick them in corsets and say, stay home.

Kathleen 14:46

Hey, she was bored. I mean, we're making very much light of this, but it did happen in our history.

John 14:52

And I don't know what else you do, but honestly, I don't know what else you do with the uh the travesty that is so much of uh history, uh, the inhumanity that you run across all the time. It's almost how do you even cope with the level of inhumanity that so many of our genealogical stories walk right through the middle of?

Kathleen 15:14

Well, I tell the researcher, and I really had to work with the interns on this look at it as facts, don't look at it as a travesty, or don't look at it any more than another event in history that needs to be told. Because it is history. If if we go too far emotionally with it, we don't want to tell it. And that means our history is gone.

John 15:36

Yeah, I think you speak the truth and shame the devil. No, you don't get to hide that stuff. I mean, I think that a lot of people do hide it. I think that's a problem and why it's so persistent. We don't talk about it enough.

Kathleen 15:48

So you're with me that December is a joyful month to talk about serial killers.

John 15:53

Absolutely.

Coping With Inhumanity In Research

Kathleen 15:54

So I've already mentioned these different scenarios, and we know that we have to, in our first case of Cherry Vale, where it changed counties. As a researcher, you definitely need to know the state, the county, and the community that their ancestors were in, because you have to broaden your research if you suspect your ancestor was a serial killer or a victim of one. We also know that we need to know the laws of the time because it might explain why you have nothing else on this family line. And we know that DNA can help. Not all the time, though, but it can help. We also know, John, that killer.cloud is my favorite website to go to, but I have a few other places I want people to go to. Okay.

John 16:44

What are they?

Kathleen 16:44

One is the Library of Congress. It talks about early American serial killers. It has a whole section in it. You can get records, you can get some of the documents, the investigations. It's absolutely fascinating. Of course, our online databases, newspapers are going to tell it most and best in the communities. And this is how it affects all of our ancestors. It's like, what were our ancestors thinking? What were they doing while this serial killer was running around? You also have court and corner inquests. They do great work in especially in history on these mass murders. And so they might find all these bodies within a mile of each other in the woods close to someone's house, as we did with the Benders. Those write-ups are excellent. And it might identify your ancestor by name, or it might identify them only by description, especially if a head was cut off.

John 17:42

Okay.

Kathleen 17:43

I love penitentiary records, John. Just like our example with a more recent one, John Floyd Thomas, who's still alive, these penitentiary records are excellent. The court records, the court transcripts tell us more about our ancestors who were not a direct link to the person who was deceased or the person who did the crime, but they were a witness and they went to court to talk about it.

County Changes, Laws, And DNA

John 18:11

So people in penitentiaries that might have been called the witness who their cellmate confessed.

Kathleen 18:17

It could be that also. But we also have our court records where they had a trial and they bring in your community. Not just the police officers, but maybe the next door neighbors. And then I think that sums up the tools. It did affect more than just the victims. It affected the whole community because these were their neighbors. These were the people that they crossed the country with. These are the people that they knew from the local Mart. And so because of this, they were also the witnesses. So if there was a serial killer in your community, you still want to research those court records.

John 18:55

Sure, yeah, I would imagine so. That's a tidy little package.

Kathleen 18:59

Do you have any other questions?

John 19:01

No.

Kathleen 19:02

I think I covered all of my notes that I wanted to cover. And I think the listeners will have enough to get started in their community. And there's great resources that we could put on our show notes. And I'll also write a blog on it.

Key Research Tools And Records

John 19:16

Fala la la la la la la. Well, congratulations, you made it to the end of another episode. Thanks so much for staying. Thanks to Chewy Chewbacca Brandt for his unwavering lack of interest in anything we're doing. A heartfelt thank you to all of our listeners for your thoughtful questions and continued support. From everyone at Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen and Tracing Ancestors, we wish you a wonderful close to 2025 and a new year filled with health, safety, and kindness. The theme song for Hittin' the Bricks was written and performed by Tony Fisknuckle and the Psycho Killers. Qu'est-ce que sais. Watch for their next appearance at The Road to Nowhere. Do you have a genealogical question for Kathleen? Drop us a line at hitting the bricks at gmail.com and Let us know.