Americans have always been fascinated by criminals.
Belle Gunness and the Bloody Benders were a different breed of criminal, more deadly, and harder to detect. While bank and train robbers rarely harmed their victims, Belle Gunness and the Benders took a gruesome pleasure in killing their victims before they robbed them.
The Banditti of the Prairie was a loose-knit band of thieves that came together during the 1830s and 1840s. Their field of operations covered a multi-state area, including Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Michigan, and Arkansas.
The members of the Banditti would come together to pull a raise, then disappear into the wooded banks along the area rivers. Should one of them get caught, a dozen members came forward with alibis placing them hundreds of miles away from the crime scene. In many areas, the local sheriff or judge were members of the Banditti or received payoffs. As a result, it was next to impossible to secure convictions against the criminals.
When things got too far out-of-whack, Judge Lynch, dealt out justice at the end of a rope. Then life went back to normal—for a while.
As civilization crossed the Mississippi, criminals became bolder and more daring.
The Reno Brothers pulled the first robbery of a moving train in 1866. Jesse James spent a decade perfecting the method after he robbed his first train at Adair, Iowa, in 1873.
