The Bloody Benders archeological dig carried out by Kansas students

LABETTE COUNTY, Kan. (KOAM) - Kansas University Students have initiated a weeklong archeological dig on a property suspected to have played host to the notorious Bloody Bender family.

The 160-acre property located just outside Parsons, Kansas is owned by Independence, Kansas resident Bob Miller. Miller bought the property at auction back in 2020 and has since been on a mission to discover the secrets hidden beneath the soil.

Miller reached out to the Anthropology Department at Kansas University to help document the land and the material that could be discovered. The response came in the form of a survey performed by the university in the summer of 2023. The survey pointed out anomalies on the property inconsistent with the rest of the land.

"I bought it for this reason here, KU has been wonderful to work with. They had the talent and the people and the context to uncover the mysteries that we're trying to seek," said Miller.

A year later Kansas students led by Anthropology professor Lauren Norman are beginning an excavation of the abnormal sights.

"The material that we're finding is actually things that were in the past. It's not somebody telling somebody that this is what happened in the past. And so we're hoping to take those objects and tell a story from them and tell a story that's then now based in the reality of what was happening," said Norman.

The excavation began on Monday, May 20 and will resume until Monday May 27.

Norman says that she hopes to continue to bring students out to the location for the next several years. The university has another survey of the property planned for the month of June.

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