Murderous Families

The Bloody Bender Killers

THE FOLLOWING STORY IS TAKEN FROM TRUE TALES OF MURDER AND MAYHEM VOLUME #1 BY GUY HADLEIGH - Available now on Amazon 📱Digital: $3.99 🎧Audio: $9.99

On March 9, 1873 Dr. William York left Fort Scott on horseback for his home in Independence, Kansas. He never arrived there. Nearly three weeks later, a local newspaper gave a brief account of his mysterious disappearance, and the story was quickly picked up by other newspapers in the state. There was considerable speculation that he might have been murdered, as it was known that he had been carrying a large sum of money, and a posse was formed to find him.

The posse was led by his brother, Colonel A. York, who followed the trail; it was said, “with the tenacity of an Indian and the devotion of a saint". Rivers were dragged, possible spots for an ambush were thoroughly searched, and the route Dr. York must have travelled was taken from town to town. There were no signs anywhere to show how he had met his death or even that he had been murdered. He was traced as far as Cherry Valley in Labette County, about 50 miles from the south line of the state, and no farther. There, the trail ended.

Cherry Valley, in 1873 was a small railroad town. About two miles south of it was a modest frame house where travellers could buy a meal or a drink. It stood about 100 yards back from the Osage Trail, which ran east and west in front of it. Over the door was a sign marked “Grocery”. The single room, which was all the house had, was divided into two by a curtain. One half served as a store and eating place, and the other half as a living-room and bedroom for the Bender family who owned it. The house was sparsely furnished with two beds and some pieces of furniture.

Steel eyes

The Benders had moved into the house in March 1871. John Bender, who was about 60 years old, and his son John Jr., aged 27, were large, coarse-looking men. The daughter, Kate, or Katie, was 25. Mrs. Bender was described in an early newspaper account as 42 “with iron grey hair, ragged at the ends, and thin over her temples. Her eyes were steel-grey and hard.".

On April 3, 1873, some of the people rode out to the Benders’ home and asked if they had seen or heard anything about the missing Dr. York. The family said that they were ignorant of his whereabouts. A few days later, however, another bunch of men rode out and asked the same questions. The Benders, believing that they were under suspicion, hastily abandoned their store and fled.

Their disappearance was discovered by a horseman riding in from the prairie, who galloped into town and soon returned with the posse.

Terrible smell

A terrible smell permeated the house, which was where the posse started to search. Rods and levers were pushed into every crack and hollow to see if the flooring was loose or hollow, but both it and the walls seemed solid. It was only when the beds were moved that the men saw a slight depression in the floor, which turned out to be, on closer examination, a trap door.

Beneath it was a small pit about five feet in diameter and six feet deep. The bottom and sides looked damp. One of the men climbed into the pit and probed the bottom with a rod to see if anything was hidden. He could find nothing, but as he climbed out, he saw that his hands, where he had been groping the ooze, were covered with blood. This was the source of the mysterious smell.

The search moved to the back of the house, where there was a half-acre orchard.

“Boys, I see graves yonder in the orchard!” called Colonel York.

Heavy metal rods were then driven into the ground. As they were withdrawn, it was seen that they were matted with hair and putrefying flesh. Shovels were used to carefully scrape away the soil, and within a few minutes, the first body had been uncovered. It had been buried on its face, and some of the flesh had dropped away from the legs. It was only covered by a shirt that was torn in places and thick with damp and decay.

As soon as it was disinterred, it was laid on its back, and Colonel York numbly identified the body as that of his brother. The rear of his head had been smashed in. The skull had been driven into the brain, and to make quite sure that the victim was dead; his throat had been cut right through to the spine.

By nightfall, seven more bodies had been found. Five graves contained only a single body. But buried in the sixth were a man and a little girl. Some corpses were in the last stages of decomposition, but others were not so far gone that they could not be identified.

Among those subsequently identified were two men from Cedarville who, on different dates, had apparently stopped off at the Benders’ for a meal. One had been contesting a land case in Independence, and the other was a horse trader who, because of decomposition, could only be recognized by his silver rings.

A third man had been missing since December 5, 1872. He had been travelling to Independence to live there. His sister could only identify him by his clothing. The fourth and fifth victims were Mr. Longcor and his 18-month-old daughter. His wife had recently died, and he was leaving for Iowa. The sixth and seventh bodies were the unidentified remains of two men.

In every case, the skull had been smashed in from behind, and the throat of the victim had been cut. The only exception was the Longcor child, who had been suffocated. As there were no marks on her body, it was assumed that she had been thrown alive into the grave, and her father's body dropped on top of her.

Badly mutilated

But the horrifying discoveries were not at an end. The remains of a second child victim were found the next day. This time it was the body of a small girl of about eight. She had been so badly mutilated that her sex and age could only be guessed at. After she had been exhumed, someone cut off her golden hair and wove it into a wreath. Her breast bone had been driven in, her right knee wrenched from its socket, and the leg doubled up under the body.

In the search party was a grocery store owner named Brockman, who had been a partner of the Benders for two years. He was a close friend of theirs and, like them, German. He was immediately suspected of being an accomplice. To make him confess, a rope was thrown over a beam, and he was strung up.

According to an eyewitness, his eyes were starting out of his head, and he was nearly dead when he was cut down. “Confess! Confess!’’ the crowd screamed. Brockman swore that he was innocent, and again he was jerked to his feet, his face convulsing.

Once more, he was let down and revived. This time, he did not appear to understand what was wanted. It was an eerie sight. "The yelling crowd, the mutilated and butchered dead, the flickering and swirling torches spluttering in the night wind, the stern set faces of his executioners...”

For the third time, he was hoisted aloft, and this time he was only released when he was unconscious. Gradually, he revived and was permitted to stagger away, his innocence accepted.

After this, several rewards were offered for the capture of the Benders; particularly Kate, who was generally credited with being “the leading spirit of her murderous family". But descriptions of her were wildly conflicting.

One was that she was a “large, masculine, red-faced woman”, and another was that “her hair was a dark, rich auburn. She had deep, greyish-blue, or dark-grey, eyes. She was over medium height, some five feet, six, or seven inches tall, slender, well-formed, voluptuous, fair skin, white as milk, with a rose complexion.

“She was good-looking, a remarkably handsome woman, rather bold and striking in appearance, with a tigerish grace and animal attraction, which but few men could resist.

“She was a fluent talker, gifted with fine conversationalist powers, but she did not display any educational advantages of a high order. She used good English with very little, if any, German accent.”

Apart from her rapacious greed for money and the ruthless manner in which she achieved it, she had longings to be a great lecturer. She had an inflated reputation as a medium and gave talks in the nearby towns on spiritualism.

Certainly she fascinated men, including her father's old partner, Brockman, who was very much in love with her and who thought that she was going to marry him. She encouraged his belief but postponed their marriage until Easter Sunday, 1873 when, so she said, the planets would be in the right conjunction for them.

Meanwhile, she milked him of money and jewellery and possibly persuaded him to be an accessory to the Bender murders, although this was never more than a suspicion. Certainly, he was brutal enough. Later on, his daughter died of the treatment she received from him, and Brockman was indicted for her death.

A more bizarre sexual relationship is the incestuous one she enjoyed with her brother John. According to one of the many lynching stories, Kate confessed that she and her brother had been living together as man and wife and that they both had gonorrhoea. If true, this would explain Brockman's fights on several occasions with John Bender over his sister, when he accused the younger man of being his “rival”.

Clearly, whatever the truth, Kate was an attraction when the Benders opened for business. As their store was on the outskirts of town, they must have needed someone—or something—to pull the customers in. Otherwise, why should travellers have stopped there when they had just started their journey or had only two short miles to go to the end of their trip?

To stimulate business, Kate served meals while her mother cooked. The food was placed on a table close to the dividing curtain so that, when the traveller was sitting down, the back of his head could be clearly seen from the other side.

As he was eating, one of the Bender men would come up behind the curtain. Then, when the victim’s head was pressed against the curtain, he would strike at the base of the skull with a heavy stone breaker’s hammer and crush in the skull.

As travellers were constantly coming to the house, it was necessary to get the body quickly out of sight, and it was hastily dropped into the pit. According to legend, it was Katie Bender herself who leaped in after them and cut the victims’ throats. Later, when it was dark, the bodies were buried in the orchard.

Stories of travellers who realized how close they came to being “planted” in the Bender orchard substantiated the known facts. One man, believing Katie’s inflated claims as a healer, rode out to the Bender store with a friend to see if she could cure his neuralgia.

After examining him, Katie said that she thought that she could. As it was dinner time, she invited them both to stay for a meal and seated them close to the curtain. Both men had noticed the hard scrutiny they received from the Bender men but dismissed it as nothing more than curiosity.

Depiction of the Bloody Benders (Image generated via Midjourney)

When they sat down to eat, the two male benders disappeared. For some reason, the two travellers could only put down to “intuition”, they got up from the table and took their meal over to the counter to eat.

Until then, Katie Bender had been charming and affable to them. But now she began to abuse them and call them names. This added to the men's growing suspicions, and they hastily left the store. They saw, with some relief, two wagons going by on the trail and hitched lifts. Later, they were ashamed of their frightened behaviour and thought that they must have exaggerated the whole incident.

More melodramatic stories flourished of Katie Bender stalking her victims and of her efforts to get behind them. According to one tale, a gust of wind blew up her apron to show the hidden hand beneath it gripping a large knife!

In two years, the Benders earned themselves $5000, plus money they got from the sale of the victim’s wagons and horses and the pieces of jewellery, such as rings and watches, that they had worn. It was said that they had accomplices to help them dispose of the goods, including such “innocents” as the young men who came courting Katie Bender.

Another account stated that Brockman was their accomplice. The loot was allegedly disposed of, in part at least, through his store without arousing suspicion. Some goods were certainly disposed of by the Benders themselves, and late in April 1873 John Bender was noted to have sold a watch, some clothing, two mules, a shotgun, and some pistols.

Lynch mob

In spite of the possessive and vigilante committees that scoured the countryside for the Benders and the state and private rewards that were offered for their capture, they were never officially caught. The wagon in which they had escaped was found abandoned and bullet-ridden, as if they had been apprehended and put to death by a lynch mob. This seems to be the fate accepted by most people.

Despite this, stories persisted of the Benders, particularly of Kate, and of how she ended her days as a white-haired old lady, a whore, or a society queen. According to another and contradictory account, a band of Gypsies saw the Benders lynched by a posse of armed men. Equally colourful is the version that, after the family had been killed, their bodies were split open to stop them from swelling up and floating to the surface of the river into which they were thrown.

The exact truth was never established. Unlike other lynch mobs, the men who wreaked vengeance on the Benders dare not boast openly of what they had done. The several thousand dollars that the Benders had made from their killings disappeared along with them.

In 1884, in an attempt to end the conjecture, Dr. York’s family offered $2000 for proof that the Benders were dead. But the reward was never claimed. So the legends continued. One had it that an ear of red-colored corn found growing on the Benders’ land was stained from the blood of the victims they buried there.

A more realistic reminder of the inhuman savagery of the bloody Benders can be seen today in the Bender Museum in Cherry Valley. It is a wreath of woven, golden hair taken from the body of the little girl who, most probably, was befriended by Kate and then brutally murdered by her when her back was turned.

THE FOLLOWING STORY IS TAKEN FROM TRUE TALES OF MURDER AND MAYHEM VOLUME #1 BY GUY HADLEIGH - Available now on Amazon 📱Digital: $3.99 🎧Audio: $9.99