They seemed like
normal young men,
the Benton brothers

church going, charitable,
and affable

they fooled everyone
when it was discovered

they earned their living
secretly

digging up the dead
illegally obtaining
cadavers

for doctors and
medical schools
in the 1800s

but after 10 years
their employment
ended

when the father
of a deceased daughter
whose body they dug up
and sold to a medical
college

shot them both dead

Bob Boyd

This poem is fictional. As I was thinking about which way it would turn out, it occurred to me that a relative of one of the people whose body the grave robbers had desecrated, could seek lethal revenge.