The Bloody Benders: Horror in the Old West

The Bloody Benders were a family of serial killers who owned an inn and small general store in Labette County of southeastern Kansas from 1871 to 1873. The family consisted of John Bender, his wife Mrs. Bender (later referred to as Kate, Sr., since no one knew her given name), son John, Jr., and daughter Kate. While Bender mythology holds that John and Kate were brother and sister, contemporary newspapers reported that several of the Benders' neighbors have stated that they claimed to be married, possibly a common law marriage. They are believed to have killed about a dozen travelers before their crimes were discovered and the family fled, with their fate uncertain. Much folklore and legend surrounds the Benders, making it difficult to separate fact from fiction. Background Following the American Civil War, the United States government moved the Osage Indians from Labette County, Kansas to a new Indian Territory located in what would eventually be Oklahoma. The newly-vacant land was then made available to homesteaders. In October 1870, five families of spiritualists settled in and around Osage township of western Labette County, approximately 7 mi (11 km) northeast of where Cherryvale would be established seven months later. One of the families was John Bender Sr. and John Bender Jr. who registered 160 acres (65 ha) of land located adjacent the Great Osage Trail, which was then the only open road for traveling further west. After building a cabin, a barn with corral and a well, in the fall of 1871, Kate (Ma) Bender and her daughter Kate arrived and the cabin was divided into two rooms by a canvas wagon-cover. The Benders used the smaller room at the rear for living quarters, while the front room was converted into a "general store" where a few dry goods were sold. The front section also contained their kitchen and dining table, where travelers could stop for a meal or even spend the night. Ma and Kate Bender also planted a 2 acres (0.81 ha) vegetable garden and apple tree orchard north of the cabin. Bender family John (Pa) Bender Sr. was around sixty years old and spoke very little English. When he did speak it, it was so guttural that it was usually unintelligible. Ma Bender, who also allegedly spoke very little English, was 55 years of age and was so unfriendly that her neighbors took to calling her a "she-devil". John Bender Jr. was around 25 years old, handsome with auburn hair and mustache and spoke English fluently, but with a German accent. John was prone to laughing aimlessly, which led many to consider him a "half-wit". Kate Bender, who was around 23, was cultivated and attractive and she spoke English well with very little accent. A self-proclaimed healer and psychic, she distributed flyers advertising her supernatural powers and her ability to cure illnesses. She also conducted séances and gave lectures on spiritualism, for which she gained notoriety for advocating free love. Kate's popularity became a large attraction for the Benders' inn. Although the elder Benders kept to themselves, Kate and her brother regularly attended Sunday school in nearby Harmony Grove. The Benders' inn was a simple one room house divided into living quarters and the kitchen and store area. The Benders were widely believed to be German immigrants; only the male Benders, however, were born overseas and they were not actually a family. No documentation or definitive proof of their relationships to one another or where they were born has ever been found. Pa Bender was from either Germany or Holland and is believed by some to have been born John Flickinger (unproven). According to contemporary newspapers, Ma Bender was born Almira Hill Mark, (often misreported as "Meik") in the Adirondack Mountains, she married Simon Mark with whom she claimed to have had 12 children. Later she married William Stephen Griffith and was known as Mrs. Almira Griffith. Mrs. Griffith was suspected of murdering several husbands but none of these rumors were ever proven. Almira's fifth daughter, Sarah Eliza Mark, later married and was known as Sarah Eliza Davis. Based on an inscription in a Bible recovered from the Bender home, it was believed that John Jr. was born John Gebhardt although no other proof of his identity exists. Some of the Benders' neighbours claimed that John and Kate were not brother and sister, but actually husband and wife. Deaths and disappearances In May 1871, the body of a man named Jones, who had had his skull crushed and his throat cut, was discovered in Drum Creek. The owner of the Drum Creek claim was suspected but no action was taken. In February 1872, the bodies of two men were found who had the same injuries as Jones. By 1873, reports of missing people who had passed through the area had become so common that travelers began to avoid the trail. The area was already widely known for horse thieves and villains and vigilance committees often "arrested" some for the disappearances, only for them to be later released by the authorities. Many honest men under suspicion were also run out of the country by these committees. Downfall In the winter of 1872, George Newton Longcor and his infant daughter, Mary Ann, left Independence, Kansas, to resettle in Iowa, but were never seen again. In the spring of 1873, a neighbor, Dr. William Henry York went looking for them and questioned homesteaders along the trail. He reached Fort Scott, Kansas, and on March 9 began the return journey to Independence but never arrived home. Dr. York had two brothers, Colonel Ed York living in Fort Scott, and Alexander M. York, a member of the Kansas State Senate from Independence who, in November 1872, had been instrumental in exposing United States Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy for corruption in seeking re-election through the bribing of state legislators in return for their votes. Both knew of his travel plans and when he failed to return home an all out search began for the missing doctor. Colonel York, leading a company of some fifty men, questioned every traveler along the trail and visited all the area homesteads. On March 28, 1873, Colonel York arrived at the Bender inn with a Mr. Johnson, explaining to the Benders that his brother had gone missing and asked if they had seen him. They admitted Dr. York had stayed with them and suggested the possibility that he had run into trouble with Indians. Colonel York agreed that this was possible and remained for dinner. On April 3, Colonel York returned to the inn with armed men after being informed that a woman had fled from the inn after being threatened with knives by Ma Bender. Ma allegedly could not understand English while the younger Benders denied the claim. When York repeated the claim, Ma became enraged and said the woman was a witch who had cursed her coffee and ordered the men to leave her house, revealing for the first time that "her sense of the English language" was much better than had been thought. Before York left, Kate asked him to return alone the following Friday night, and she would use her clairvoyant abilities to help him find his brother. The men with York were convinced the Benders and a neighboring family, the Roaches, were guilty and wanted to hang them all but York insisted that evidence must be found. Around the same time, neighboring communities began to make accusations that the Osage community was responsible for the disappearances and a meeting was arranged by the Osage township in the Harmony Grove schoolhouse. The meeting was attended by seventy-five locals, including Colonel York and both Pa and John Bender. After discussing the disappearances including that of William York, the prominent doctor for whom a search had recently been completed, it was agreed that a search warrant would be obtained to search every homestead between Big Hill Creek and Drum Creek.Despite York's strong suspicions regarding the Benders since his visit several weeks earlier, no one had watched them and it was not noticed for several days that they had fled. Three days after the township meeting, Billy Tole was driving cattle past the Bender property when he noticed that the inn was abandoned and the farm animals were unfed. Tole reported the fact to the township trustee, but because of inclement weather, several days lapsed before the abandonment could be investigated. The township trustee called for volunteers and several hundred turned out to form a search party that included Colonel York. When the party arrived at the Bender inn they found the cabin empty of food, clothing, and personal possessions. A bad odor was noticed and traced to a trap door underneath a bed, nailed shut. After opening the trap, the empty room beneath, 6 feet (1.8 m) deep and 7 feet (2.1 m) square at the top by 3 feet (0.91 m) square at the bottom, was found to have clotted blood on the floor. The stone slab floor was broken up with sledgehammers but no bodies were found and it was determined that the smell was from blood that had soaked into the soil. The men then physically lifted the cabin and moved it to the side so they could dig under it but no bodies were found. They then began to probe the ground around the cabin with a metal rod, especially in the disturbed soil of the vegetable garden and orchard where the first body was found later that evening, that of Dr. York, buried face down with his feet barely below the surface. The probing continued until midnight with another nine suspected grave sites marked before the men were satisfied they had found them all and retired for the night. Digging resumed the following morning with another eight bodies being found in seven of the nine suspected graves while another was found in the well, along with a number of body parts. All but one had had their heads bashed with a hammer and their throats cut, and it was reported in newspapers that all had been "indecently mutilated." The body of a young girl was found with no injuries sufficient to cause death and it was speculated that she had been strangled or buried alive. A Kansas newspaper reported that the crowd was so incensed after finding the bodies, that a friend of the Benders named Brockman, who was among the onlookers, was hung from a beam in the Bender inn until unconscious, revived and interrogated as to what he knew then hanged again. After the third hanging, they released him and he staggered home "as one who was drunken or deranged."[8] A Roman Catholic prayer book was found in the house with notes inside written in German, which were later translated. The text read "Johannah Bender. Born July 30, 1848" and "John Gebhardt came to America on July 1 18xx." Word of the murders spread quickly and more than three thousand people, including reporters from as far away as New York and Chicago visited the site. The Bender cabin was destroyed by souvenir hunters who took everything, including the bricks that lined the cellar and the stones lining the well. State Senator Alexander York, offered a $1,000 reward for the Bender family's arrest. On May 17, Kansas Governor Thomas A. Osborn offered a $2,000 reward for the apprehension of all four. Arrests Several weeks after the discovery of the bodies, Addison Roach and his son-in-law, William Buxton, were arrested as accessories. In total twelve men "of bad repute in general" would be arrested including Brockman. All had been involved in disposing of the victims' stolen goods with Mit Cherry, a member of the vigilance committee, implicated for forging a letter from one of the victims, informing the man's wife that he had arrived safely at his destination in Illinois. Brockman would be arrested again twenty-three years later for the rape and murder of his own 18-year-old daughter. Killing method It is conjectured that when a guest would stay at the Benders' bed and breakfast inn, the hosts would give the guest a seat of honor at the table which was positioned over a trap door that led into the cellar. With the victim's back to the curtain Kate would distract the guest, while John Bender or his son would come from behind the curtain and strike the guest on the right side of the skull with a hammer. The victim's throat was then cut by one of the women to ensure his death. The body was then dropped through the trap door. Once in the cellar, the body would be stripped and later buried somewhere on the property, often in the orchard. More than a dozen bullet holes were found in the roof and sides of the room and the media speculated that some of the victims had attempted to fight back after being hit with the hammer. Escape Detectives following wagon tracks discovered the Benders' wagon, abandoned with a starving team of horses with one of the mares lame, just outside the city limits of Thayer, 12 mi (19 km) north of the inn. It was confirmed that in Thayer the family bought tickets on the Leavenworth, Lawrence & Galveston Railroad for Humboldt. At Chanute, John Jr. and Kate left the train and caught the MK&T train south to the terminus in Red River County near Denison, Texas. From there they traveled to an outlaw colony thought to be in the border region between Texas and New Mexico. They were not pursued as lawmen following outlaws into this region often never returned. One detective did claim later that he had traced the pair to the border where he had found that John Jr. had died of apoplexy. Ma and Pa Bender did not leave the train at Humboldt, but instead continued north to Kansas City where it is believed they purchased tickets for St. Louis, Missouri. Several groups of vigilantes were formed to search for the Benders. Many stories say that one vigilante group actually caught the Benders and shot all of them but Kate, whom they burned alive. Another group claimed they had caught the Benders and lynched them before throwing their bodies into the Verdigris River. Yet another claimed to have killed the Benders during a gunfight and buried their bodies on the prairie. However, no one ever claimed the $3,000 (2009: $53,000) reward. The story of their escape spread, and the search continued on and off for the next fifty years. Often, groups of two traveling women were accused of being Kate Bender and her mother. In 1884, it was reported that John Flickinger had committed suicide in Lake Michigan.[4] Also in 1884 an elderly man matching Pa Benders description was arrested in Montana for a murder committed near Salmon, Idaho where the victim had been killed by a hammer blow to the head. A message requesting positive identification was sent to Cherryvale but the suspect severed his foot to escape his leg irons and bled to death. By the time a deputy from Cherryvale arrived, identification was impossible due to decomposition. Despite the lack of identification, the man's skull was displayed as that of "Pa Bender" in a Salmon saloon until prohibition forced its closure in 1920 and the skull disappeared. Whether or not John Flickinger was really John Bender is unknown. Arrests On October 31, 1889, it was reported that a Mrs Almira Monroe (aka Mrs. Almira Griffith) and Mrs Sarah Eliza Davis had been arrested in Niles, Michigan (often misreported as Detroit) several weeks earlier for larceny. They were released after being found not guilty but were then immediately re-arrested for the Bender murders. According to the Pittsburgh Dispatch, the daughter of one of the Benders' victims, Mrs Frances E. McCann, had reported the pair to authorities in early October after tracking them down. Mrs. McCann's story came from dreams that she had about her father's murder which she discussed with Sarah Eliza. Their identities were later confirmed by two Osage township witnesses from a tintype photograph. In mid October, Deputy Sherriff LeRoy Dick, the Osage Township Trustee who had headed the search of the Bender property, arrived in Michigan and arrested the couple on October 30, following their release on the larceny charges. Mrs Monroe resisted, declaring that she would not be taken alive but was subdued by local deputies. Mrs Davis claimed that Mrs Monroe was Ma Bender but that she herself was not Kate but her sister Sara; she later signed an affidavit to that effect while Monroe continued to deny the identification and in turn accused Sarah Eliza of being the real Kate Bender. Deputy Sherriff Dick, along with Mrs McCann, escorted the pair to Oswego, Kansas where seven members of a 13-member panel confirmed the identification and committed them for trial. Another of Mrs Monroe's daughters, Mary Gardei, later provided an affidavit claiming that her mother (then Almira Shearer), under the name of Almira Marks, was actually serving two years in the Detroit House of Corrections in 1872 for the manslaughter of her daughter-in-law, Emily Mark. Records of the incarceration back up this affidavit. At her hearing, Mrs Monroe denied any knowledge of Shearer or the manslaughter charge and remained incarcerated with her daughter. Originally scheduled for February 1890, the trial was held over to May. Mrs. Monroe now admitted she had married a Mr Shearer in 1872 and claimed she had previously denied it as she did not want the court to know that her name was Shearer at that time and that she had a conviction for manslaughter. Their attorney also produced a marriage certificate indicating that Mrs Davis had been married in Michigan in 1872, the time when several of the murders were committed. Eyewitness testimony was given that Mrs Monroe was Ma Bender. Judge Calvin dismissed Mary Gardei's affidavit as she was a "chip off the old block" however, he found that other affidavits supporting Gardei's were sufficient proof that the women could never be convicted and he discharged them both. The affidavits and other papers are missing from the file in LaBette County so further examination is impossible. A number of researchers question the ready acceptance of the affidavit's authenticity and suggest that the county was unwilling to accept the expense of boarding the two women for an extended period. While the two women were certainly criminals and liars, as their own defense attorney admitted, the charges were weak and many people doubted their identification as the Benders Submit News/Videos/Links | Discuss article | Article Link | More Unsolved and Unexplained Mysteries