There are many legends surrounding the colonization of the American midwest. A lot of these legends are rooted in fiction rather than fact. This legend has a healthy dose of both fact and fiction. This is the legend of the Bloody Benders.
The Bender family were immigrants to the US, though there are no official records of the Benders’ origins. Some say Germany, others say the Netherlands. The family consisted of 60-year-old John Bender Sr, who spoke little to no English, and had a very heavy German accent; his wife, 55-year-old Elvira Bender, who also spoke heavily accented English; their son, 25-year-old John Bender Jr, who spoke fluent English, with a slight German accent; and, their 23-year-old daughter Kate Bender, who spoke the best English with no accent at all.
In the fall of 1871, Johns Sr. and Jr. laid claim and registered 160 acres of land adjacent to the Great Osage Trail in Kansas. At the time, it was the only open road that allowed for travel to the west. The two men built a cabin, which was divided into two rooms by a canvas wagon-cover. They also built a barn with corral, and installed a well.
The cabin consisted of living quarters at the back, and the front acted as a general store where the family sold dry goods, a kitchen, and a space to allow travellers to rest, relax, take in a meal, and spend the night. It soon became known as the Bender Inn.
Once the property was built and established, Elvira and Kate joined the rest of their family. They planted a vegetable garden and an apple orchard near the cabin, which provided sustenance for the meals they offered travellers, as well as fresh produce to sell in their store.
They were considered a very strange family in their small homestead community of Labette County, Kansas. The elder John and his wife were said to be extremely unfriendly and gruff, one neighbour even called Elvira a ‘she-devil’. The younger John was considered charming and handsome, but was often found to be smiling and laughing to himself. Many of the neighbours called him a ‘half-wit’, but tolerated his eccentricities – he was easier to deal with than his parents.
The star of the Bender Inn was Kate. She was young, beautiful, charming, and very friendly. Many of the newly established homesteads in the area considered themselves spiritualists, but Kate took things a little bit farther. She claimed to be a ‘healer’. She often advertised her services and supernatural powers, claiming she could cure illnesses. She “also conducted séances, and gave lectures on spiritualism, for which she gained notoriety for advocating free love”. Kate was what really drew travellers to the Bender Inn.
However, the family weren’t exactly who they said they were, according to rumours.
Apparently, Elvira Bender wasn’t who she said she was. It was claimed that she was born Almira Hill Mark in the Adirondack Mountains. It was also claimed that she married multiple times, and had up to as many as 12 children. Rumours of her murdering several of her husbands followed her around, though they’ve mostly been unproven. It is also claimed that Kate is Elvira’s 5th daughter, and she was born under a different name. There were also rumours that Kate and John Jr weren’t siblings at all, but husband and wife. Again, most of these rumours were left unproven, but they do add a lot of colour to the Bender legend.
These rumours didn’t seem to make it to their neighbours before strange things began occurring around the Bender Inn.
Between 1871 and 1873, a handful of men were found with their skulls crushed and their throats slit in Drum Creek. The owner was known to be ‘suspicious’, but no action was ever taken due to lack of evidence. However, by 1873, the area had so many reports of missing persons passing through the area that many began to avoid the trail all together.
Things seemed to take a turn in the spring of 1873. George Newton Longcor and his infant daughter Mary Ann were last seen leaving Independence, Kansas in the winter of 1872. They were resettling in Iowa. No one heard from them after their departure.
Concerned about not hearing from his friend, Dr. William Henry York decided to go looking for the Longcor family. He took the trail that Longcor would have taken, and questioned homesteaders along the way.
On March 9th he sent word from Fort Scott that he intended to return home to Independence. He never made it home.
Dr. York had last been seen by his brother, Colonel Ed York, who lived and worked at Fort Scott. He’d sent word to their other brother, Alexander M. York, a member of the Kansas State Senate who lived in Independence, that he was returning home.
When neither brother heard from Dr. York again, they started an all-out search for him. Colonel York enlisted a group of many men, and questioned everyone he came across about his missing brother. He also visited every homestead in the area.
On March 28th, 1873, Colonel York, in the company of another man, made it to the Bender Inn. He told them about the situation at hand and asked them if they’d seen his brother. The Benders admitted that they’d seen him, but weren’t all that helpful. They told him that if his brother had gone missing, it’s possible he ran into some trouble after he’d left their inn. Colonel York believed them. For a time.
After he left the inn, he ran into a peculiar woman with a story to tell. She informed him that the Benders weren’t what they appeared to be. She told him about the rumours, and she also told him about her own experience. She told them that Elvira had threatened her with knives, and knew far more English than she claimed. The woman had fled, and the Benders threatened to kill her if she ever returned.
Colonel York went back to the Bender Inn and levelled these accusations at the family. Elvira became absolutely enraged. She yelled and screamed that the woman was lying; that she was a witch and had cursed their goods in their store. Colonel York had had enough.
As he made to leave, Kate “asked him to return alone the following Friday night, and she would use her clairvoyant abilities to help him find his brother”. Colonel York smelled foul. He most certainly did not return.
The men in his search party wanted to round up the family and hang them then and there, convinced they were up to no good. Colonel York wanted hard evidence of wrongdoing, but highly suspected that something sinister was going on in and around the Bender Inn.
At the same time, the news of all the disappearances was upsetting all the neighbouring communities, especially with Colonel York looking for his missing brother. The Osage township arranged a meeting at the Harmony Grove schoolhouse. It was attended by Colonel York, and 75 locals, which included the men of the Bender family.
During the meeting, it was decided that a search warrant would be issued in order to search every single homestead between Big Hill Creek and Drum Creek.
Colonel York wanted the Bender Inn to be the first place searched. For several weeks, he’d expressed his suspicions about the Bender family. For several weeks, no one really listened. No one had their eyes on the Bender Inn after it was declared that systematic searches would take place.
A few days later, a neighbour who was driving cattle noticed that the property wasn’t looking well. Many animals were roaming around unfed, and the garden and orchard weren’t being tended to. The Bender Inn had been abandoned.
Though it was reported, nothing could be done for several days due to inclement weather. When a search party, including Colonel York, finally made it out to the Bender Inn, “they found the cabin empty of food, clothing, and personal possessions”. A foul odor was also noticed.
Following the trail of the odor, the search party found a trap door hidden in the cabin. Ominously, the door had been nailed shut. The party pried the door open and found a small basement cavern. It was clotted with blood.
Breaking the floor down, the search party found nothing. It was determined that the smell was coming from the blood in the floor that had seeped down and soaked into the soil.
Convinced that something nefarious was happening, the party decided to keep searching. They physically lifted the cabin, and moved it to the side. They dug under where the cabin had stood, but again found nothing. The search had to be expanded.
The party began searching the grounds near the cabin, expanding towards the vegetable garden and the orchard. They found some upturned earth and inspected it further. What they found was the body of Dr. York “buried face down with his feet barely below the surface”.
The search party continued going around, probing the grounds further. As it was approaching midnight, the party decided to take up the rest of the search in the morning. They’d already marked several areas they believed to be graves.
In the 7 areas marked, a number of bodies were found. One was also found in the well. Some say 8 total bodies were found, others say 10, and others still say the number was closer to 15. What is known is that a number of bodies and discarded body parts were found on the Bender property. The final estimate is that the Benders may have been responsible for up to 21 murders.
Quickly, the word got out about The Bloody Benders. Soon, Labette County was overrun with reporters and tourists alike. The cabin was destroyed, ‘souvenir’ hunters clamouring for a piece of the bloody homestead. But as news was spreading, the County had a major problem – The Benders were gone, and they had multiple murders on the property.
It was believed that the Benders initially planned to steal from the guests who stayed at their inn (if this sounds familiar, you can read all about a similar legend here). They surmised that Kate would lure weary travellers in, make them sit at the table, with their backs to the canvas. From there, another member of the family would bash their head in with a hammer through the canvas, and then trigger the trap door. Someone else would slit their throats in the cellar in order to make sure they were dead. Then, the family would loot them for goods and valuables.
It was apparent that some of the travellers who fell victim to the Benders were quite wealthy. Others clearly were not. The Benders were opportunists. They killed both for money, and for thrill.
Many witness accounts corroborated these assumptions. A man named William Pickering stated to the authorities that he felt uneasy when he came across the Bender Inn. He didn’t want to sit near the canvas, and when he said so, Kate threatened him with a knife. Thankfully, he managed to flee before any harm came to him.
Two other men stated that Kate became very aggressive toward them when they, too, refused to sit near the canvas. As she yelled at them, two men jumped from behind the canvas. The men felt uneasy and promptly left.
It was heavily implied that Kate was the mastermind behind the serial killings. She was certainly the most social, and most outgoing member of the family. She could woo people, and entice them to stay at their inn. She procured the victims, and the rest of her family conducted the murders and pillaging.
With all the evidence at hand, investigators now had an arduous task on their hands – they had to find the Bloody Benders.
Investigators followed wagon tracks that led away from the homestead, and made a grim discovery. They found the Bender family wagon abandoned. The horses attached were near death and starving. It was apparent that the Benders had been gone for days. The wagon was found near the city limits of Thayer, Kansas.
Witnesses who were interviewed managed to positively identify the Bender family as having passed through. They told investigators that they’d bought train tickets on the Leavenworth, Lawrence, & Glaveston Railroad for Humboldt.
Following that lead, investigators then discovered that the two Bender siblings left the train and caught the MK&T train. They were headed south, towards Denison, Texas. From there, it was rumoured that the siblings travelled to a border region between Texas and New Mexico. This was considered outlaw country, and the investigators decided not to pursue them. It was known that “lawmen following outlaws into this region often never returned”.
After this, the trail of the Benders ran cold, though there are an abundance of rumours.
This is where fact and fiction clash – and there are no known answers.
One rumour claimed that John Jr – who was actually a man named John Gebhardt – died at the outlaw colony of apoplexy. Another claimed that John Sr and Elvira did not leave the train with their children, but kept going north to Kansas City. From there, rumour stated that they caught a different train for St. Louis, Missouri.
For decades after their escape, vigilantes, detectives, investigators, and many others kept up the search for the Bloody Benders.
But there was one huge, glaring problem – how do you find anyone when you don’t know their real identity?
The only lead they had were Elvira and Kate – the only two who were likely blood related. Somehow, it was discovered by investigators that Elvira was actually Almira Mark, and Kate was her daughter Eliza Griffith. As previously stated, Almira had married multiple times. It was rumoured that many of her husbands were found dead with mysterious head wounds.
Over the years, a mother-daughter pair were often seen travelling through the US. Many suspect them of being the women Benders. These claims have never been substantiated.
John Bender Sr was rumoured to be a man named John Flickinger. He immigrated to the US in the early 1800s either from Germany or the Netherlands – explaining his heavy accent. So, at least that part of the Bender history may have been correct.
It’s unknown how these four people found each other, and decided to commit murder on their homestead. But they did. And terrible things happened.
It was reported that in 1884, someone by the name of John Flickinger committed suicide in Lake Michigan.
Another rumour stated that a man was arrested in Montana for murder. This man fit the description of John Bender Sr. A message was sent to the authorities in Kansas, requesting someone be sent for identification. Before the investigator got there, the man had severed his foot to try and escape his ankle shackled, and bled to death in his cell. By the time the investigator got to Montana, the body was too badly decomposed for identification. It is heavily implied that this man was one of the Bloody Benders.
A few years later, in 1889, two women – named Almira and Sarah Elizabeth – were arrested for larceny in Michigan. They were accused of being Elvira and Kate Bender. At the time, many women who were travelling in pairs and appeared to be mother and daughter were arrested, accused, and released. Investigators didn’t want to pass up the chance of apprehending an infamous Bender.
The two women were transported to Kansas for identification. Despite the similarities – and the uncanny names – the panel meant to confirm their identity provided inconsistent results. The women were released.
As of 2019, it has been 146 years since the Bloody Benders reigned terror over Labette County, Kansas. While their horrendous acts of homicidal violence are rooted in fact, what happened after they fled is nothing but rumour and conjecture.
Were the two women arrested in 1889 the Bender women? Did Flickinger commit suicide in a lake? Was he arrested in Montana? Did Gebhardt die in an outlaw colony? We will never know.
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Sources:
How The “Bloody Benders” Made Murder the Family Business – Wyatt Redd – All That’s Interesting
The Bloody Benders: America’s First Family of Serial Killers – Nile Cappello – Crime Reads
The Bloody Benders, America’s First Serial Killer Family – Miss Cellania – Mental Floss
Bloody Benders Wikipedia page