On the morning of October 14, 2006, five members of the Bentler family were found fatally shot at their rural Bonaparte, Iowa, home. Victims were 53-year-old Michael J. Bentler, his 47-year-old wife Sandra, and their daughters Sheena, 17, Shelby, 15, and Shayné, 14. A 911 call from the house at 3:38 a.m. captured Shayné saying her brother was going to do something and Sandra begging Please Shawn don’t just before a gunshot and the line going dead.

Authorities focused on the couple’s 22-year-old son Shawn Bentler, who lived in Quincy, Illinois. He was arrested in Quincy on an unrelated paraphernalia warrant the same day and charged in Iowa the next day with five counts of first-degree murder. Prosecutors said a motive was access to the family’s estate, estimated at about $2.8 million; Michael Bentler owned a local elevator and lumber company. At trial in May 2007, the 911 recording and physical evidence including two small drops of Sandra Bentler’s blood on the socks Shawn wore when arrested were central to the case. He was convicted on May 24, 2007, and received five consecutive life sentences on June 19, 2007, with the judge ordering Sandra’s count to run consecutively because of the merciless nature of her killing.

Did anyone in the Bonaparte or Quincy area know the Bentler family or have information about tensions in the household prior to October 2006?