1836
Van Buren County was formed in 1836 as part of the Wisconsin Territory, split off from Des Moines County.
about 0:09:30The story
Bonaparte, Iowa, is a small town of about 419 people in Van Buren County, in the far south-east corner of the state close to the Missouri and Illinois borders. Michael and Sandra Bentler lived there and owned a successful lumber yard and grain elevator business. In 1987, with 445 acres of land, they built a 4,000 square foot, five-bedroom, three-bathroom home on a bluff overlooking the Des Moines River.
Around that time his daughter Chloe was born to Kasha Pickard. In May 2003 he moved into another Quincy apartment with Nathan Allen, who asked him to leave in August over unpaid rent and a marijuana pipe. He returned to Quincy in early 2005 to live with Keith Gratz. He sold used cars at Shottenkirk and Neil Coleman in Quincy and was fired from both. He had a second daughter, Avaley, with Lexi Leslie and was trying to pay child support. A week before the murders he told Leslie that once his parents died he would inherit money and would have no more money problems.
At 3.38 a.m. on 14 October a 911 call came from the Bentler landline. Shane Bentler told the operator that her mother had told her to call and that her brother was going to do something. At 3.39 a.m. a second call came in from a cell phone registered to Sandra; the operator heard a clicking sound. Police arrived at 3.55 a.m. They found Michael dead in the doorway of the master bedroom, naked and face down, shot in the lower leg and through the eye, with facial injuries consistent with being struck with a gun. Two drops of Sandra's blood were on his back. Sandra was slumped over a chair at the other end of the hallway near the top of the stairs, shot in the right cheek and fatally in the head. Shane was in her closet, shot in the head through the telephone handset she was holding, with a wound to her right hand. Shelby was in her closet, shot in the head, with a bullet passing through her right arm into her chest. Sheena was in her bed in the basement, shot in the head and the left arm.
At 10 a.m. he left on his motorcycle. He was interviewed that afternoon and denied knowing anything, saying his mother had visited him the night before and that he had left his phone in her Chevrolet Tahoe. He was held on the traffic matters and could not raise the 1,000 dollars bail.
A .22 calibre long rifle was found in a ditch along the gravel road near the entrance to the property. Bullets and casings matched new cartons from an unlocked drawer at the base of a locked gun cabinet in the game room. Fresh tyre tracks in the north lane matched the mismatched tyres of the borrowed 1991 Ford Festiva. The drive from Quincy to the property took between 1 hour 19 minutes and 1 hour 34 minutes. He moved to suppress the clothing evidence, but the district court refused, holding that the search warrant was lawfully obtained, and the evidence was admitted.
About 2,000 people attended the funeral at the high school, and the procession ran to the cemetery. A DNA analyst testified about the blood on the socks, and an expert said the stains were impact spatter. Lexi Leslie testified about his remark that he would inherit money. On cross-examination he admitted stealing his mother's jewellery and pawning it, and stealing money and petrol from his parents. Cornell Williams and Travis Holder rebutted his account, saying that he disliked his father, predicted his father would soon be dead and that he would inherit, and that he had taken 150 dollars in change from his parents' safe.
In 2008 his parents' estate was valued at 2.8 million dollars. In August 2009 the 445-acre property was auctioned in seven tracts. The house and 28 acres sold for 225,000 dollars, and the whole property went to Amos Zimmerman of Missouri for 973,800 dollars.