In the first week of May 1873, men from the country around Cherryvale, Kansas, broke into an empty cabin on the road from Osage Mission to Independence. The family who had kept a small store and inn there, known to their neighbors as the Benders, had not been seen for weeks, and their livestock had been left to starve. Under a trap door in the floor the searchers found a pit with blood in the soil. In the orchard they found graves. The first body they lifted was that of Dr. William H. York, a physician from Independence whose brothers had been searching the road for him since March.
By the end of the search the Kansas Historical Society's count, repeated in its encyclopedia entries, was eleven bodies in the garden. The state's highway marker near the site said the family was "believed to have killed about a dozen people, including one child." Newspapers at the time gave figures from eight to fourteen. The four Benders were never found. The governor of Kansas offered a reward, detectives followed them south toward Texas, and for decades people claimed to have seen them, caught them or killed them. None of those claims was proved, no court ever heard the case against them, and the deaths are attributed to the family rather than legally proven against any of them.
Southeast Kansas was newly open to settlement in 1870. The Homestead Act of 1862 let settlers claim 160 acres, and the Osage lands of the region were being opened to them, as the Library of Congress and Humanities Kansas both describe. The Benders arrived about the end of 1870. Frank Blackmar's Kansas encyclopedia of 1912 says a family of four moved into Osage Township in Labette County at about that time. The Kansas Historical Society's account of the Bender knife, a museum object, says the two men came first: John Bender Sr. and John Bender Jr. took up a claim, built a one-room timber cabin over a stone cellar reached by a trap door, and then sent for the two women. HistoryNet's account puts the cabin on a 160-acre claim on the Osage Mission road between Independence and Fort Scott, and says the inn and store opened in the front of the cabin in 1871.
The cabin stood near the Montgomery County line. Contemporary reports placed it about six miles north or northeast of Cherryvale; one 1873 report, carried by the Emporia News from the Kansas City Times, put it two miles south of the town, which was a mistake. A canvas cloth divided the cabin into two rooms, according to the Kansas Historical Society. The front room held a table, a stove and the groceries the family sold; the back held beds and the trap door. Blackmar describes a sign reading "Groceries," and a small stock of tobacco, crackers, sardines, candy, powder and shot. Travelers could buy a meal and stay the night.
Who the four people were is still not settled. The 1873 Kansas papers described two men and two women. An Emporia News report of May 23, 1873, copied from the Thayer Head Light, gave the older man's age as over sixty and the older woman's as about fifty-five, and called the daughter, Kate, about twenty-three. In 1910 the San Francisco police captain Thomas Duke, writing from old reports, gave their ages as sixty-three, about sixty, twenty-seven and twenty-four. The family was described as German, and the Wichita Eagle in 1889 said they came from Alsace, but the Library of Congress notes that their nationality was reported inconsistently. The Kansas Historical Society calls the older woman Kate, like her daughter; Smithsonian Magazine, in 2020, called the parents John and Kate and the children John and Kate as well. Contemporary and later accounts also call the father William.
Even the family relationships are in doubt. The first report of the discovery to reach Emporia, taken from the Lawrence Tribune of May 7, 1873, called the young woman who claimed to be a medium the younger man's wife, not his sister. HistoryNet's account says some sources describe the younger pair as married, others say John Jr. was Ma Bender's son by an earlier marriage named Gebhardt, and some say none of them was related. Smithsonian Magazine noted that some researchers have questioned whether they were a family at all. In 1889 a woman being held as Kate Bender told a Niles, Michigan, reporter that the man known as old Bender was really named Flickinger. That claim was never tested.
Kate Bender was the member of the family the neighbors remembered. The Kansas Historical Society says she was the only one of the four with social skills, that she claimed a gift of second sight and spiritualism, and that she handed out circulars around the county advertising her powers. Duke reprinted the gist of those notices: she called herself a "Professor" and said she could heal disease, blindness, fits and deafness. The Wichita Eagle in 1889 said John Jr. peddled her "oil for rheumatism" and her handbills. An Emporia News report of May 1873 said a neighbor, a woman who called herself a magnetic healer, had attended two "circles" at the Bender house the summer before. The same reports described the parents as dull and seldom speaking, and the older man as thin, with his head usually bowed.
From 1871 the district had a growing list of travelers who never reached home. The Kansas Historical Society says that between 1871 and early 1873 at least eleven people were last traced to the Cherryvale area. Because the district had horse thieves and vigilance committees, suspicion fell first on others, and HistoryNet describes neighbors turning on one another.
The victims came from the farms and small towns of the new country. Little was reported about most of them.
George Longcor (the name is also printed Loncher, Lochner, Loucher and, in one garbled newspaper copy, Langhorne) lived near Independence. He had buried his wife in 1872, Duke wrote, and was about to leave for Iowa with his small daughter. The Kansas Historical Society says father and daughter vanished on the road to Iowa, and that their wagon later turned up near Fort Scott. HistoryNet says the team, which Dr. York had sold to Longcor, was found deserted in the winter of 1872. The girl's age is uncertain: the Thayer Head Light, as copied in May 1873, and Duke gave it as about eighteen months, while the Kansas City Times report, Blackmar and HistoryNet put her at about seven or eight.
Henry F. McKenzie was twenty-nine and an Indiana veteran of the Civil War, according to the Thayer Head Light. He had come to Kansas to look for land, and was last seen in November 1872 on the road toward Independence. Duke said he came from Hamilton County, Indiana, and that his sister, a Mrs. Thompson, identified his clothing. HistoryNet says he was a cousin of the wife of LeRoy Dick, the Osage Township trustee, and that he was on his way to his sister's home in Independence.
W. F. McCrotty was identified by people who had known him in Kansas and Illinois, and by a tattoo on his arm that gave his name and the year 1843, according to the Head Light. Duke said he came from Cedarville and had business before the land office at Independence. Ben Brown of Cedar Vale, in Howard County, had been dead about six months when he was found, the Head Light said; he had been going home from Osage Mission, where he had tried to borrow money. Duke wrote that Brown was identified by a silver ring he had once shown to a man he traded horses with. HistoryNet names John Greary among the dead and says a man named Johnny Boyle was found in an old well; Blackmar gives Boyle's first name as William, and the Head Light described the man in the well as small and unidentified. Several more remains were never identified.
Two men who did not die on the claim were linked to the family by later writers. Duke and the Wichita Eagle described a newcomer named Jones whose body was found in Drum Creek. The Eagle said in 1889 that it could not be proved he had been killed. Duke wrote that wagon tracks near the creek, made by a wheel that wobbled, were afterward matched to the Benders' wagon; that story was not reported in 1873.
Dr. William H. York was the disappearance that could not be ignored. He was a physician of Independence and a brother of Alexander M. York, a state senator. In early 1873 he went looking for George Longcor, the man to whom he had sold a team. Blackmar says he started from Onion Creek in Montgomery County in late February and went as far as Fort Scott. On March 9, 1873, he left Fort Scott on horseback for home, and he never arrived. Duke wrote that he was comfortably off and was carrying a good deal of money, so his friends ruled out the idea that he had left of his own will. "Every one who knew him liked him," said the Kansas City Times report copied in the Emporia News.
His brothers searched the road. The Lawrence Tribune said his trail was followed to the neighborhood of Cherryvale, "where all further trace was lost." The Library of Congress names Senator Alexander York as the brother who retraced the doctor's route, and HistoryNet says another brother, Ed York, searched with him. Some accounts call Alexander York a colonel. Blackmar says that early in April "Col. A. M. York" led about fifty citizens on the search; the Kansas Historical Society says Alexander and Edward York traced the doctor to the Bender inn, where the family admitted that he had stopped and then gone on.
HistoryNet describes a visit by the York brothers in late March or early April. Kate offered to consult the spirits about the missing man, and John Jr. told a story of having been waylaid himself and led them to the place where he said it happened. Duke wrote that a search party asked about Dr. York on April 3, 1873, and that another party came with the same questions days later. Blackmar says Kate, claiming to be clairvoyant, put off the Yorks' request for help.
The district then met. HistoryNet says residents gathered at the Harmony Grove schoolhouse on April 8, 1873, for the annual school board election, and that the meeting turned to the missing men and a call to search every farm. It says both Bender men were present. Blackmar dates a Harmony Grove meeting to about March 10 and says the Benders kept silent while other settlers offered to have their own land searched. The two accounts may describe different meetings; the date is uncertain.
The Benders left soon after. Blackmar says they drove to Thayer by night, bought tickets for Humboldt and took the northbound train at five in the morning. The Lawrence Tribune reported in May 1873 that their team was found at Thayer, where the town constable took charge of it after it had stood there unclaimed for two or three days. The Kansas Historical Society says a ticket agent at Thayer reported selling tickets to four people who fitted their descriptions. The Kansas City Times report said that around April 21 the elder Bender sold a watch, clothing, two mules and guns to people near Cherryvale, though the source names him William and may be mistaken. When exactly they went is not certain. The Lawrence Tribune said the family left about three weeks before the bodies were found. HistoryNet says the claim was found deserted about two weeks after the school meeting.
A neighbor passing the claim noticed that the stock had not been fed or watered and that a calf had died, according to HistoryNet, which names him as Billy Tole. On May 5, 1873, HistoryNet says, the township trustee, LeRoy Dick, broke the padlock on the door. The house was mostly in order, Blackmar wrote; little was missing except clothing and bedding. The Kansas Historical Society lists three hammers, a knife, a German Bible and a clock with a compartment for jewelry among the things left behind. HistoryNet says Dick also found Kate's printed notices.
Under the bed in the back room the searchers found a trap door. The Kansas City Times report described the pit below as about six feet deep, with stained earth. The men moved the cabin and dug under it but found no bodies there. On May 6 they turned to the orchard and garden, which had been plowed. Searchers probed the soft ground with an iron rod, according to the Wichita Eagle's 1889 retelling. The first grave held Dr. York. The Lawrence Tribune said he was found face down, stripped of everything except a piece of halter, and recognized at once; HistoryNet says his brother Ed identified him, and found the doctor's mended spectacles in the house. The Tribune said part of the spectacles turned up in the clock case.
More graves followed. The Kansas City Times report described six more graves opened that night and three more marked, one holding a man and a little girl buried together. These were George Longcor and his daughter, the Kansas Historical Society says. By the time the search ended, the Thayer Head Light listed eight bodies and expected more. Blackmar counted Dr. York and seven others: the Longcors, a man named Boyle, McCrotty, Brown, McKenzie and one man never identified. HistoryNet says at least nine more victims were recovered from the orchard after York. The Emporia News reported on May 16 that three more bodies had been found, "fourteen in all." The Kansas Historical Society settles on eleven, and its account of the knife gives a range of eight to eleven.
The reconstruction of what had happened in the cabin came from the room itself and from neighbors' stories. The Kansas Historical Society says a guest was seated on a bench beside the canvas, with his back to it, and attacked from behind; the body was then put through the trap door and robbed. Duke wrote that the table was placed so that a guest sat with his back to the cloth.
Most of the victims carried little. The Wichita Eagle wrote in 1889 that the plunder was small and that one man had only twenty-five cents. HistoryNet puts the total taken at about $5,000 and says at least three of the dead had little more than pocket change; Blackmar gives about $4,600, two teams and wagons, a pony and a saddle. HistoryNet adds that McCrotty was reported to have carried $2,600 and Greary $2,000.
The discovery drew huge crowds. The Wichita Eagle in 1889 recalled about 1,500 people on the ground by noon of the next day. The Emporia News, on May 23, 1873, reported an estimate of 3,000 visitors on one Sunday and called it too high, citing another observer who put the number at 1,500. Someone nailed up a sign claiming the empty land as a homestead. Relic hunters carried away the cabin and the stable piece by piece, HistoryNet says, and the Thayer Head Light reported thousands of visitors.
The crowd went after the Benders' neighbors. A German neighbor who had lived near the family, R. B., was seized by the crowd, a rope was put around his neck, and he was told to confess. The Kansas City Times report said he was cut down when he appeared dead and survived; Duke and the 1889 Wichita Eagle said he was hanged three times before officials stopped it. He swore he knew nothing. He was never charged with any crime. A couple from the neighborhood who had attended Kate's spiritualist circles was arrested and taken to Thayer, Parsons and Oswego, the Head Light reported, and "several arrests" were made in the neighborhood. HistoryNet says a preacher from Parsons was held for a time. No trial of any of them over the Bender deaths was reported.
Rewards were posted. HistoryNet says Ed York offered $1,000 for information leading to the family's arrest, and that Governor Thomas A. Osborn offered $2,000 in mid-May 1873. The Library of America's notes on Edmund Pearson's 1926 essay say Pearson took his descriptions of the four from the governor's handbills. The Library of Congress gives the state's reward as $5,000. Humanities Kansas says the $2,000 reward was never claimed.
The trail went cold quickly. The Emporia News reported on May 16, 1873, that the Benders had been traced to St. Louis and were thought to have gone to Germany. HistoryNet gives the account that came to be accepted: the four took the train from Thayer to Humboldt, where John Jr. and Kate turned south and the parents went on to St. Louis. Marshal Jim Snoddy, Colonel C. J. Peckham and Henry Beers, a detective, followed the trail. A trunk like the Benders' turned up at Vinita in the Indian Territory. A boardinghouse keeper at Denison, Texas, reported a tall young German railroad worker and his wife. Peckham and Beers followed that lead about 200 miles west of Denison and then to El Paso and into the Chihuahua Desert, where they gave up. Blackmar wrote that detectives believed the pair had passed through Texas and New Mexico. The Thayer Head Light, on June 25, 1873, thought the killers were "probably in the middle of China by this time."
Reports of arrests began at once. A Wichita City Eagle item of May 29, 1873, said one of the family had been arrested at Dubuque, Iowa. HistoryNet says the San Antonio Daily Express reported on July 7, 1873, that the two Bender women were under arrest at Winterset, Iowa. Nothing came of either. Blackmar wrote that many people were arrested elsewhere as the Benders and brought to Labette County, and that none of them resembled the wanted four.
In August 1880, the Library of Congress says, a man and a woman said to be the elder Benders were arrested in Nebraska and were reported to have confessed. By August 10 the general view was that they were impostors, and the Chicago Daily Tribune reported their discharge on August 11, 1880.
The most serious of the later cases came in 1889. Two women were arrested at Niles, Michigan, in a larceny case, according to the Parsons Daily Journal. The older was A. M., known also by the name Griffith, and the younger was her daughter, S. E. D. They were never tried, and the identification was never proved. The charge that they were Ma and Kate Bender came from a woman who said her father had been killed at the Bender claim, according to the Red Cloud Chief and the Wichita Eagle. LeRoy Dick, by then a deputy sheriff of Labette County, brought them from Niles to Kansas.
The younger woman made statements against her mother. A Sedalia, Missouri, dispatch printed in the Red Cloud Chief on November 8, 1889, said Dick reported that the two quarreled when left alone and blamed each other. In an interview with a Niles reporter, reprinted in the Parsons Daily Journal, S. E. D. said her mother had told her she went to Kansas late in 1869 with a team. She also said the old man known as Bender had killed John and Kate in a dispute over money, and that she was inclined to believe it.
The Wichita Eagle doubted the case from the start. Its long article of November 26, 1889, argued that the woman who brought the charge, the officers and the few witnesses who identified the prisoners were probably mistaken. By early December the two women were in the Labette County jail at Oswego, awaiting trial, according to the Sedalia Weekly Bazoo. The Bazoo reported that the older woman said she had lived at Bay Port, Michigan, during 1873 and 1874, under another married name, and that a sheriff who checked her story had concluded she was not the woman wanted. The Library of Congress says that by December 1889 evidence placed the women in Michigan at the time of the killings.
They were released without trial. Blackmar's encyclopedia says that on a writ of habeas corpus the court found they were not the Benders and set them free. HistoryNet says a judge released them after a few months for lack of evidence, and that Dick remained convinced to the end that they were the right women. No court ever decided who they were.
Almost everything said about the Benders after May 1873 is unproven.
That vigilantes killed them. The Wichita Eagle's 1889 headline said the real Benders were "undoubtedly killed by Kansas vigilantes," and its article repeated a story that a posse had overtaken the family west of the Verdigris River, where both women were killed in a fight. The article named no one and gave no evidence. In 1880 the Lancaster Daily Intelligencer printed a man's claim that he had seen the Benders executed in 1873, and in September 1880 The Post, of Middleburg, Pennsylvania, printed an unsigned letter from a man who said he had helped hang them, according to the Library of Congress. In 1910 the police chief of Cherryvale told Duke that a vigilance committee had found the old man's wagon by the road, riddled with bullets, and the police chief of Independence said he believed the family never escaped and that some members of the committee were still alive and would not talk. None of these accounts was supported by remains or a court finding.
That they escaped. The accepted trail, as HistoryNet gives it, ends in the desert beyond El Paso. In 1908 the Independence Tribune printed a former train conductor's claim that the Benders had ridden to Kansas City and then gone to Europe, HistoryNet says. The Library of America notes that Laura Ingalls Wilder later recalled that her father joined a search for the Benders and said they "will never be found," but her family had left Kansas before the Benders' inn opened, so her account cannot be relied on.
That Kate lived on. Rumors that old women who died in various places were Kate Bender ran for decades. The Library of Congress cites denials printed in the Billings Gazette in 1904, the San Francisco Call in 1910 and the Idaho Republican in 1920.
That the Michigan women were Ma and Kate. The women arrested in 1889 were released and never tried.
That all four were a family. The relationships were questioned from the first week, and the names they used may not have been their own.
How many died. The count has never been fixed. Eleven bodies is the Kansas Historical Society's figure; "about a dozen" is the marker's. Contemporary papers ranged from eight to fourteen, and HistoryNet notes estimates of more than twenty, which include remains found away from the claim. Duke wrote in 1910 that the body of a second child was found the day after the first graves were opened; that was not reported in 1873.
The Bender case became one of the best known in Kansas history. Harper's Weekly ran illustrations in June 1873, and the Library of Congress says the Wichita City Eagle printed a plan of the cabin and gave the place names such as "Devil's Kitchen" and "Hell's Half Acre." The Kansas Historical Society holds a knife that Elizabeth York, wife of Edward York, gave to the state museum; she said her husband took it from the inn on the day his brother's body was found. Whether it belonged to the Benders or to a victim is not known. HistoryNet says LeRoy Dick kept the three hammers, and that the Cherryvale Museum displays the hammers and other objects; a Bender museum in Cherryvale ran from 1961 to 1978.
The Kansas State Historical Society and the state transportation department put up a highway marker near Cherryvale. The Historical Marker Database records its text, which ended by saying the family's fate remained uncertain, and reports that the marker has since been removed. Humanities Kansas said in 2022 that the sign's original wording had been updated.
In February 2020 the land that included the old Bender claim was offered at auction as one tract in a group of fifteen properties, Smithsonian Magazine reported. The auction company listed it as 162 acres of cropland with a view of Drum Creek, and its auction manager said he was "pretty confident" the ground had never been searched for more remains. The exact sites of the cabin and garden are not known. In October 2022, for the 150th anniversary, Pittsburg State University hosted a panel on the case that included the Cherryvale Museum and the current owner of the property, according to Humanities Kansas.
Writers have kept returning to the case. Edmund Pearson's essay "Hell Benders, or The Story of a Wayside Tavern" appeared in 1926 and was reprinted by the Library of America. Fern Morrow Wood published The Benders: Keepers of the Devil's Inn in 1992, and Susan Jonusas, a British writer, published Hell's Half-Acre in 2022; Library Journal said Jonusas argued that the authorities did trace the family to the Texas frontier but could not raise enough force to take them. The Kansas Historical Society's own summary is plain: no one has proven what happened to Kate Bender and her family.
1862: the Homestead Act allows settlers to claim 160 acres.
About late 1870: the Benders settle in Osage Township, Labette County, Kansas, on the road from Osage Mission to Independence.
1871: the store and inn open in the front of the cabin.
1871 to early 1873: travelers disappear on the road; at least eleven are later traced to the Cherryvale area.
Winter 1872: George Longcor and his daughter, bound for Iowa, disappear; their team is found deserted.
November to December 1872: Henry F. McKenzie is last seen on the road toward Independence.
March 9, 1873: Dr. William H. York leaves Fort Scott for Independence and disappears.
Late March to early April 1873: the York brothers and search parties question the Benders.
April 3, 1873: a search party asks the Benders about Dr. York (Duke).
April 8, 1873: the Harmony Grove school meeting discusses the disappearances (HistoryNet; Blackmar dates a meeting to about March 10).
April 1873: the Benders leave by train from Thayer; their team is found abandoned there.
May 5, 1873: township trustee LeRoy Dick opens the empty house.
May 6, 1873: Dr. York's body is found in the orchard; more graves follow.
May 1873: Governor Thomas A. Osborn offers a $2,000 reward; crowds strip the cabin; a German neighbor is hanged by a mob and survives.
June 1873: detectives follow the trail into Texas and toward El Paso, then give up.
July 1873: reported arrests of the Bender women in Iowa come to nothing.
August 1880: a couple arrested in Nebraska as the elder Benders is discharged.
Late 1889: two women are arrested at Niles, Michigan, and taken to Oswego, Kansas, as Ma and Kate Bender.
December 1889 to 1890: the women are released on habeas corpus; they are never tried.
1961 to 1978: a Bender museum operates in Cherryvale.
February 2020: the land including the old claim goes to auction.
October 2022: a 150th-anniversary panel is held at Pittsburg State University.