The Bender family, more well known as the Bloody Benders, were a family of serial killers in Labette County, Kansas, United States, from May 1871 to December 1872. The family supposedly consisted of John Bender, his wife Kate Sr. (or Elvira), their son John Jr. and their daughter Kate Jr. Contemporary newspaper accounts reported that the Benders' neighbors claimed John Jr. and Kate were actually husband and wife, possibly via a common-law marriage.
Estimates report that the Benders killed at least a dozen travelers and perhaps as many as 20 before they were discovered. The family's fate remains unknown, with theories ranging from a lynching to an escape. Much folklore and legend surround the Benders, making it difficult to separate fact from fiction.
Background In October 1870, five families of spiritualists homesteaded in and around the township of Osage in northwestern Labette County, approximately northeast of where Cherryvale was established seven months later. One of these families was John Bender and John Bender Jr., who registered of land located adjacent to the Great Osage Trail, the only open road for traveling farther west. After a cabin, a barn with a corral, and a well were built, Elvira and Kate arrived in the fall of 1871.
The Benders divided their cabin into two rooms with a canvas wagon cover. They used the smaller room at the rear for living quarters and the front room as a "general store" where they sold dry goods. The front section also contained the kitchen and dining table, where travelers could stop for a meal or spend the night. Elvira and Kate also planted a vegetable garden and apple orchard north of the cabin.
Bender family
John Bender Sr. was around sixty years old and spoke little English; the English he did speak was guttural and usually unintelligible. According to the May 23, 1873, edition of The Emporia News, he was identified with the name William Bender. Elvira Bender was 55 years old. She allegedly spoke little English and was so unfriendly that her neighbors called her a "she-devil." John Bender Jr. was around 25 years old and handsome, with auburn hair and a moustache. He spoke English fluently with a German accent. He 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 spoke English well, with 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 by 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 were widely believed to be German immigrants. No documentation or definitive proof of their relationships to one another or where they were born has ever been found. John Bender Sr. was from either Germany, Norway, or the Netherlands, and was claimed to be a John Flickinger, although it has been proven that he was in fact not John Bender. According to contemporary newspapers, Elvira 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. Elvira was rumored to have murdered several husbands, but none of these rumors were ever proven. Kate was purportedly Elvira's fifth daughter. Some of the Benders' neighbors claimed that John Jr. and Kate were not brother and sister, but husband and wife.
According to author Lee Ralph, the Bender's origins could be traced to Germany and France, eventually arriving in the US, and in the 1870 census showing John, age 53, Mary, age 49, John, age 24 and Catherine, age 13 living in Decatur, Illinois. Said census record showed all Benders born in Germany, with the exception of Catherine who was born in France.
Contemporary descriptions From those who knew them and have written about the Benders: "The old man was a repulsive, hideous brute, without a redeeming trait, dirty, profane, and ill-tempered." "Old Mrs. Bender was a dirty old Dutch crone. Her face was a fit picture of the midnight hag that wove the spell murderous ambition about the soul of Macbeth." "Young Bender, seen when excited, recalled the grave-robbing hyena at once to mind." "'Kate proclaimed herself responsible to no one save herself.' She professed to be a medium of spiritualism and delivered lectures on that subject. In her lectures she publicly declared that murder might be a dictation for good; that in what the world might deem villainy, her soul might read bravery, nobility, and humanity. She advocated 'free love', and denounced all social regulations for the promotion of purity and the prevention of carnality, which she called 'miserable requirements of self-constituted society.' She maintained carnal relations with her brother, and boldly proclaimed her right to do so in the following words found in her lecture manuscript: 'Shall we confine ourselves to a single love, and deny our natures their proper sway? ...Even though it be a brother's passion for his own sister, I say it should not be smothered.'"
Deaths and disappearances In May 1871, the body of a man named Jones was discovered in Drum Creek with a cut throat and crushed skull. The owner of the Drum Creek claim was suspected but no action was taken. In February 1872, the bodies of two men were found with 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 innocent men under suspicion were also run out of the county by these committees.
Downfall In the winter of 1872, George Newton Longcor left Independence, Kansas, with his infant daughter Mary Ann to resettle in Iowa; they were never seen again. In the spring of 1873, Longcor's former neighbor, Dr. William Henry York, went looking for them and questioned homesteaders along the trail. York reached Fort Scott, and on March 9 began the return journey to Independence, but never arrived.
York had two brothers: Ed York living in Fort Scott and Colonel Alexander M. York, a US Civil War veteran, lawyer, and member of the Kansas State Senate from Independence. Both knew of William's travel plans and, when he failed to return, began a search 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 Benders' inn with a Mr. Johnson, explaining that his brother had gone missing and asking if they had seen him. They admitted Dr. York had stayed with them and suggested the possibility that he had run into trouble with Native 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 learning that a woman had fled the inn after Elvira Bender had threatened her with knives. Elvira allegedly could not understand English, while the younger Benders denied the claim.
When York repeated the claim, Elvira became enraged, saying 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 was let on. 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 that the Benders and a neighboring family, the Roaches, were guilty and wanted to hang them all, but York insisted that evidence must be found.According to one of the myths that have grown around the murders, after dinner, Colonel York was sitting in the front room when he noticed a gold locket under one of the beds. He opened it and was surprised to see images of his brother's wife and daughter. He slipped out and returned the next morning with the sheriff and several deputies, only to find that the Benders had fled. After a search of the Bender property, twelve mounds of earth were found among the trees and as many as 24 bodies were reported to have been found.Bloody Benders: Mass Murderers Of Kansas
Around that time, neighboring communities began to make accusations that the Osage community was responsible for the disappearances, and the Osage township arranged a meeting in the Harmony Grove schoolhouse. Seventy-five locals attended the meeting, including Colonel York and possibly both John Bender and John Bender Jr. After discussing the disappearances, including that of William York, they agreed to obtain a warrant 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 due to 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 inn they found the cabin empty of food, clothing, and possessions.
A bad odor was noticed and traced to a trap door underneath a bed, nailed shut. After opening the trap, the party found clotted blood on the floor of the empty room underneath, deep and at the top by at the bottom. They broke up the stone slab floor with sledgehammers but found no bodies, and 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 to dig under it, but no bodies were found.
They then probed the ground around the cabin with a metal rod, especially in the disturbed soil of the vegetable garden and orchard, where Dr. York's body was found later that evening, 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. The next morning, another eight bodies were found in seven of the nine suspected graves, while one was found in the well, along with several body parts. All but one had their heads bashed with a hammer and throats cut, and newspapers reported that all were "indecently mutilated". The body of a young girl was found with no injuries sufficient to cause death. It was speculated that she had been strangled or buried alive."Devilish Deeds" The Weekly Kansas Chief. (Troy, Kansas) May 15, 1873. via Library of Congress, accessed May 31, 2023.
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 hanged from a beam in the inn until unconscious, revived, interrogated, then hanged again. After the third hanging, they released him and he staggered home "as one who was drunken or deranged"."Sheriff Saves the Neck of a Man Who Murdered His Own Daughter" The Inter Ocean (Chicago, Illinois) November 18, 1896, page 12. via Montgomery County, Kansas Genealogy Trails History Group, accessed May 31, 2023.