Warning. This episode contains scenes of graphic violence that may not be suitable for all audiences.

Listener discretion is advised. You're going to be. At dawn on May 6th, 1873, Township trustee Leroy Dick stared at the Bender Cabin from his horse.

More men rode up behind him.

They converged just outside the structure. People brought shovels and flasks of coffee.

Leroy whistled and called the group to attention. He divided the volunteers into three groups. He instructed the first one to go search nearby Drum Creek.

He told the second group to tear apart the interior of the Bender's barn and dig up the ground around the structure.

He informed a third group that they were coming with him.

They were going into the cabin.

The volunteers broke formation and headed for their assigned tasks.

As soon as Leroy's group entered the cabin, the smell overwhelmed them.

The benders were gone, and they had been terrible housekeepers during their three years on the property,

but the lack of basic cleaning wasn't the problem. The worst of the smell came from a specific source.

Leroy and his crew moved to the back half of the cabin.

They threw aside the nasty canvas curtain that divided the front half from the back half, and they found the trap door in the floor

that Leroy had discovered during an earlier visit. They pulled up the trap door,

climbed down into the cellar, and tried not to vomit. Many of these men, including

Leroy, were Civil War veterans. They knew the smell of human decomposition, and they were

smelling it now. But they didn't see any bodies.

The only thing in the cellar was the seven foot piece of sandstone that was used for the floor. They needed to lift it and see what was underneath.

To do that, they would have to break the sandstone into chunks. To do that, they

would have to move the entire cabin.

They drove circular logs under the base of the small rectangular building

...