The annual memorial lecture is sponsored by the Friends of the Leonard H. Axe Library to honor the memory of Gene DeGruson, a Southeast Kansas scholar, writer, editor, and pioneering archivist and curator of Special Collections at Axe Library, who passed away in 1997.
Kansas historians will gather this week to host "The Bender Family Crimes: 150 Years Later". Steve Cox, the current curator of the Special Collections & University Archives at Pitt State, says it's difficult to discern fact from friction when speaking about the Bender family.
"You look back at the original newspaper articles after the discovery, and this was national news. Some say they came here from St. Louis. Some said some Chicago. Some say from Michigan. So right from the beginning, there's just a lot of inconsistencies and questions."
The Bender Family Crimes: 150 Years Later panel is open to the public and will begin at 7 p.m. in the basement of the Axe library at Pittsburg State this Thursday.
