Deadly hosts: Family robbed and murdered at least 11 at their small southeast Kansas inn

The Topeka Capital-Journal ^ | August 25, 2013 | Tim Hrenchir

[Timber Rattler]

Kate Bender loved to flirt.

The beautiful young woman smiled and batted her eyes at male travelers who stopped during the early 1870s at the tiny inn where she lived in southeast Kansas.

But those travelers were flirting with death.

Kate and the inn's other keepers -- thought to be her father, mother and brother -- would rob and murder at least 11 people.

Often, as a lone visitor sat at a dinner table with his back to a canvas curtain, a Bender man behind the curtain would use a hammer to bash the visitor's skull.

The Benders would slash the victim's throat, take his money, open a trap door in the floor and dump the body into a pit, to be removed and buried later.

[CrazyIvan]

There actually was a Bates Motel in Southern Illinois that I used to drive by. Gone now. I wonder what happened to the sign.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

They wouldn't get away with this in Wathena...

[Nepeta]

This is reminiscent of a bizarre Japanese movie entitled "The Happiness of the Katakuris." It's a hybrid of comedy, horror, and musical.

The Katakuri family buys an obscure inn, but the guests keep dropping dead and bodies must be hidden quickly lest the inn acquire a bad reputation...

Highly, highly recommended.