Legends of the Old West - FRONTIER TRAGEDY Ep. 5 | Bloody Benders, Part 1

Episode Date: November 1, 2023

In 1870, a “family” called the Benders moves to Labette County in southern Kansas. There are four people in the group, but no one in the area fully understands the relationship between them. They build a small cabin near a well-used trail and offer the space as an inn for travelers. Before long, strange activities and criminal acts are reported at the Bender cabin. And then, travelers go missing. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial. For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. On YouTube, subscribe to LEGENDS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage. To purchase an ad on this show please reach out: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On October 16, 1937, author Laura Ingalls Wilder gave a speech at a book fair in Detroit. It was a month before the publication of her fourth book for children. She talked about part of her childhood in Labette County, Kansas. Specifically, she spoke of an incident that happened when she was little. The incident most definitely did not make it into her books about her family's little house on the prairie. She said, in 1873, the Ingalls family lived in Independence, Kansas. One night, a neighbor rode up to her family's log cabin. Her neighbor and her father, called Pa, spoke in hushed and hurried tones. Then, Pa took his rifle down from its place above the door. He told Ma Ingalls that there was a problem in the nearby town of Cherryvale. He and the neighbor were going to

ride out there and join a vigilante group. They were on the hunt for a family of killers named Bender. The Benders were a family of four. They'd moved to Cherryvale in 1870. They owned an inn and a store on a well-traveled trail. And they'd killed at least 11 people, maybe as many as 20. The day before Pa Ingalls rode out, a group of men had made a sickening discovery on the Bender property. They found bodies buried in the family's apple orchard. They found a cellar under the family cabin that seemed to have a gruesome purpose. The victims in the shallow graves had suffered extreme levels of blunt force trauma before a knife was employed. Oddly enough, they may have been the lucky ones. One victim, the youngest, seemed to have suffered a worse fate.

ones. One victim, the youngest, seemed to have suffered a worse fate. As the scope of the Bender family crimes was uncovered, they were linked to several more victims who had been found on other properties. It was quite a story to tell at a book festival. And, as it turned out, Laura Ingalls Wilder's memory was faulty, or she transposed some of the truth into her own story to sell more books. The Bender family was real. Their ghastly crimes were definitely real, and they did live in southern Kansas in the early 1870s. But the Ingalls family only lived on the Kansas prairie for two years. They moved back to Wisconsin in 1871, two years before search parties tried to bring the Benders to justice in 1873. So, Pa Ingalls never rode with a posse to catch the Benders, but lots of other men did.

There was chaos in Labette County, Kansas, as people struggled to understand the strange family. Violence on the plains was an everyday fact of life, but not violence like this. This was something different. There were so many unanswered questions, and many of them remain unanswered to this day. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer.

In this season, we're bringing you the disturbing stories of the Donner Party and the Bender family, a murderous clan who were known as the Bloody Benders. This is Episode 5, The Bloody Benders, Part 1 of 2, Traveler Beware. When Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, it spurred years of bloodshed before the Civil War broke out. For the first time, settlers in new states could choose whether or not they wanted their state to support slavery. Almost immediately, guerrilla warfare erupted between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in years of events that became known as Bleeding Kansas. Then, in 1861, Civil War engulfed the nation, but it didn't stop the business of the nation. In May of 1862, Congress

passed the Homestead Act. The act allowed any citizen of the United States who was over the age of 21 and the head of a family to settle on 160 acres of land. They just had to improve it and stay on it for five years, and it was theirs. At the time, the war prevented most people from taking advantage of the new law, but when the Civil War ended, the nation resumed its obsession with westward expansion. Railroads opened up the Great Plains and the West. Native American tribes were slowly but steadily forced onto reservations, and in the process, all the land in Kansas was opened for white settlement. The Bender family was one of the first to take advantage of the open land. The Benders arrived in Labette County in October of 1870. They came

by way of the increasingly popular Osage Trail, which led down through the southeast corner of the state. The county was sparsely populated, though the next county over, Montgomery County, had some decent-sized towns. The most well-known was Coffeyville, which would secure its place in the history of the American West 22 years in the future, thanks to the Dalton

gang. As the Bender wagon rolled through the county, people noticed that it looked peculiar, with its back wheels wider than the front. The people in the wagon were definitely from some other part of the country. Beside the wagon was a tiny, mangy dog that yapped and nipped at the horses. As most incoming settlers did in those days, the two people in the wagon made their first stop at Labette's trading post. The owners of the trading post were Edward Earn and Rudolph Brockman. They watched as two men got out of the wagon. Earn and Brockman thought the men were as peculiar as their wagon.

The younger appeared to be about 25 years old. He was tall and slender, with auburn hair and a mustache. He could have been called good-looking, except for the fact that his eyes were pinched slightly too close together. He introduced himself to Brockman as John Gephard. When Brockman heard the young man's German accent, he replied in his native German tongue.

The more they talked, the more Brockman and Earn thought Gephardt might be what was called in those days simple or half-witted. He punctuated his sentences with a nervous laugh at all the wrong times. He introduced the other man in the wagon as John Bender. Bender seemed to be about 60 years old. His arms were short, and he didn't really speak so much as grunt. Neither of the newcomers mentioned how they were related, if at all. Both Earn and Brockman felt an immediate distrust of the strange travelers.

At least that's what they told people later. But at this early meeting, their shared German heritage eased the way for conversation. Gephardt and Bender asked where they could get some land. The next day, Earn took the two men to see some available tracks on the windswept prairie. Pa Bender, as he came to be called, picked out 160 acres. He chose well. The spot was just inside the border of Labette County and about 11 miles from the city of Independence, Kansas. It was a natural stop for people riding between Independence and a Catholic mission about 35 miles away called Osage Mission,

which is now the town of St. Paul, Kansas. John Gephard chose a piece of land that bordered paw benders, and they wasted no time getting to work. As a podcast network, our first priority has always been audio and the stories we're able to share with you. But we also sell merch, and organizing that was made both possible and easy with Shopify. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell and grow at every stage of your business. From the launch your online shop stage, all the way to the did we just hit a million orders stage. Whether you're selling scented soap or offering outdoor outfits,

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Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers. Shopify has allowed us to share something tangible with the podcast community we've built here, selling our beanies, sweatshirts, and mugs to fans of our shows without taking up too much time from all the other work we do to bring you even more great content. And it's not just us. Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. Shopify is also the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across 175 countries. Because businesses that grow, grow with Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash realm, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash r-e-a-l-m now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. shopify.com slash realm. By sundown, Gebhard and Bender were marking out the dimensions of a cabin.

Over the next few days, they built a rough stable and a corral. That part of Kansas was known for its sandstone, so it wasn't unusual that they purchased a slab of it from a neighbor. They hauled it back to the Bender's land and dug a pit six feet deep. They hauled it back to the bender's land and dug a pit six feet deep. They dragged the slab down into the pit and used the sandstone as a floor of the hole. They dragged the slab down into the pit and used the sandstone as the floor of the hole. Most people would have thought the pit with the sandstone floor was just a cellar that would be used for storing food,

which was common for pioneers on the plains. It would be used for storage, but not for storing canned goods or dried fruits and vegetables. By Christmas, the two men had finished a 16 by 24 foot structure on the ground above the cellar. It was modest, but it was neat and symmetrical, with a nine-foot-high ceiling. The front door opened onto the trail, which ran in front of the house. When the outside of the building was finished, they divided the inside into two parts with a canvas curtain. It's hard to imagine by today's standards, but it would serve many functions. The front half was planned as a kitchen, a dining area, and a general store. The back was planned as sleeping quarters.

Then, they advertised themselves as an inn and grocery. Sometime between Christmas and the new year of 1871, Sometime between Christmas and the new year of 1871, Gebhard and Pa Bender left their new home for the 100-mile trip north to Ottawa, Kansas. When they returned, they had two women in tow. The older of the two seemed to be about 50 years old. She was heavyset and wore a scowl on her face. She was unfriendly and wouldn't say hello to neighbors.

Some thought her first name might have been Elvira. Whatever it was, she appeared to be married to Pa Bender, so people quickly began calling her Ma Bender. The younger woman was a very different story. Her name was Kate. She was about 25 and described as very good- looking. She had dark hair with auburn highlights. She was a fast talker and smiled a lot, which immediately attracted a lot of men in town. The problem was they didn't know how to act on the attraction. No one really understood the relationship between the four newcomers. People in the area collectively called them all members of the Bender family, but were they really? It seemed certain that Ma and Kate were mother and daughter, and the older woman accompanied Kate everywhere.

All four spoke German, and Ma and Pa seemed to have known each other for a long time, which suggested they were husband and wife or something close to it. But Kate and John Gebhard were a different matter. They presented themselves to townspeople as brother and sister. But while some thought they looked a little alike, others didn't think they did at all. John and Kate could have been married, but that didn't seem likely either. John was awkward and standoffish, but Kate chatted with everyone she met. The bottom line was, no one understood the dynamic, and none of the Benders seemed to have explained it. So, in the early spring of 1871, the four people who would be known as the Bender family were established in the two-room cabin on Pa Bender's land.

established in the two-room cabin on Pa Bender's land. Kate and Ma Bender spent the better part of the spring planting an apple orchard north of the cabin. They seemed like they were trying to put down roots and be part of the community. Because of this seeming friendliness, Edward Earn, co-owner of the Labette Trading Post, decided to have his fiancee and her mother stay with the Benders. The two women were en route

from Germany to join Earn in a new life on the Kansas prairie. The experience of the two women at the Bender house was the first real sign of trouble, and it only got worse from there. Like so many other immigrants, Earn's fiancé and mother-in-law sold most of their belongings before leaving Germany. They brought only their most prized possessions and a lot of money. They had cashier's checks totaling about $3,200. They packed their precious jewelry and some amount of money into a small metal box, and Earn installed them at the Bender cabin. One warm spring day, the Benders suggested the two women go with them on a walk to see some of the property. It never occurred to the

women to ask why John Gebhardt stayed behind. Ma and Pa Bender and Kate steered the women all around the outer vicinity of their property and then beyond. It was flat, so it was easy to walk. Even still, early in the walk, Ma Bender bent over and started loudly coughing and wheezing. To the two guests, it seemed like a performance, as did Pa's concern for her. He took her by the arm, and they headed back to the house. Kate, on the other hand, didn't seem concerned about her mother at all. She ignored Ma Bender altogether and asked the women to help her look for Indian artifacts. It was a popular pastime on the plains.

Native Americans had only recently left, and their belongings and tools were still scattered all over the place. The newcomers enjoyed the adventure and collected a few items that they planned to store in the metal box with their jewelry and money. But when they got back to the cabin, the box was gone. The mother-in-law furiously confronted Kate. She and her daughter thought they now understood the purpose of the adventure. The benders had robbed them and there were simply not enough people around the cabin in general for there to be any other thief. They searched high and low for the box and Kate made a good show of searching with them,

but the metal box was gone. The two women stopped searching and started packing. There was no point in arguing, but they certainly didn't want to stay there anymore. But night was falling, and they had no means to get to Earn's household. Then John Gephard suddenly appeared and said it must have been horse thieves who stole the box, and he would take them to a safer place. He prodded them to pile their belongings into his wagon. They did, figuring he was going to take them to Earn's homestead. They were all the more shocked when he simply dumped them at the homestead of a stranger with no explanation. them at the homestead of a stranger with no explanation. The next morning, Earn appeared at the Bender cabin. He was enraged. He had collected the women and heard about the theft. Now, he pointed a revolver at Kate and then swung it toward Paul Bender. He demanded his fiancée's money.

Kate immediately put on an act. She repeated the explanation. It must have been horse thieves who broke into the cabin while they were walking. Unfortunately for Earn, he was outnumbered. Two long-haul wagon drivers had arrived at the cabin before him and they were eating a meal. They pulled out their own guns and forced Earn to back off. Earn realized he'd been foolish. He should have gone to the authorities before confronting the benders and accusing them without any proof. Angry but defeated, Earn left.

The following Sunday, Kate made sure to tell everyone in church how bad she felt for his family. Earn reported the event to the man who passed for law and order in Labette County. His name was Leroy Dick, and his position was called Township Trustee. He was a kind of one-man band who performed all sorts of duties, including law enforcement. He agreed there was no evidence that the Benders stole the money, and he couldn't rule out the possibility of horse thieves. But Leroy did find Kate's behavior strange, as though she was overcompensating for something. To cover all his bases, he notified the German consul in St. Louis that the cashier's checks had been stolen. Then he filed the event away in his memory,

had been stolen. Then he filed the event away in his memory, until another strange incident happened two years later. Kate and the Bender clan had a whole new racket. The two towns of decent size that were closest to the Bender cabin were Independence and Cherryvale. size that were closest to the Bender cabin were Independence and Cherryvale. The Bender's little way station on the trail in the area was a barely presentable stopover point. Beyond building the cabin, with its canvas curtain wall between the front room and the back room, and planting some apple trees, the Benders didn't do much to make the place feel homey. They didn't stock many items for their little store, and they were terrible housekeepers. People who stayed there reported a constant layer of grime and a whirring of flies inside. Besides the apple trees, the family turned over a lot of soil on their property, but they never really planted anything, and the place smelled bad, seemingly all the time.

The pattern of strange behavior went to a new level when Kate Bender took out advertisements in the local newspaper that claimed she was a healer. She could heal all sorts of diseases and cure blindness and seizures. She was also a spiritualist, referring to the popular religious movement of the time. She claimed she could communicate with the dead and would be happy to do so for a price. If customers didn't have any money, she accepted valuable items as payment. In Kate's capacity as a self-proclaimed doctor and spiritualist, she met Julia Hessler. doctor and spiritualist, she met Julia Hessler. Kate met Julia at church. Julia had been suffering from some unnamed ailment for a long time and hoped Kate could help. Julia had no money, so she gave Kate her side saddle.

Kate tried some sort of treatment to justify the price of the saddle, but unfortunately, the details about the treatment are lacking, as are the details about the ailment itself. Weeks went by, and Julia didn't see any improvement. She demanded that Kate give her saddle back, but Kate assured her that she was simply impatient. Then, Kate recommended that Julia come spend the night. The Bender family would conduct a seance and see if that would help whatever the situation was. So, a few nights later, Julia took a stagecoach to the Bender cabin.

When she got there, she was surprised by the filthy conditions. Kate sat alone at the dining room table. Her face was lit by candlelight, and she reassured Julia that by keeping it to just the two of them, non-believers would not infect the seance. She also made sure that Julia sat across from her, with her back to the canvas curtain.

Julia was nauseated by the foul smell in the cabin, but she didn't want to offend Kate, so she tried to ignore it and to ignore the flies buzzing around. The women closed their eyes and clasped hands. Kate began to speak gibberish. Eventually, Julia couldn't help herself. She opened her eyes. John Gephardt and Ma and Pa Bender stood behind Kate in the halo of candlelight. They were all staring at Julia, and Julia was instantly scared. Thinking quickly, Julia leaned forward and told Kate that she had to go relieve herself. Kate didn't respond, but simply stayed in her fake trance.

Carefully, Julia slipped out from behind the table and moved toward the door. She tried to smile and awkwardly exit the cabin. Then, a glint of light caught her eye. Pawbender had something sharp and metallic in his hand. When Kate made a move toward Julia, Julia dashed out of the cabin. As she ran across the dark prairie, a gunshot missed her. Instinct forced her to drop to the ground, and she heard a rustling in the tall grass behind her, followed by another gunshot. She crawled on her hands and knees. Sneaking a look back, she saw a lamp coming toward her in the darkness, and she heard John Gebhard laughing. She knew she had no choice but to just run as fast as she could. At dawn,

she made it to the cabin of a neighbor who took her into safety. Julia Hessler told people she was convinced the Benders planned to kill her. Some believed her, some didn't. No one else had been there to see what happened, so the matter was dropped. But Julia wasn't the only one. An older woman had a similar experience during an alleged seance at the Bender home. Kate screamed gibberish and then told the woman the spirits were commanding her to kill the old woman. The woman managed to get away, leaving her valuable shawl behind. She was thought of as an eccentric, so no one believed her story of being in danger. And then the stories got lost in the course of expanding settlements on the prairie. New people moved to the area, new buildings went up, local governments were formed,

and elections were held. And the beginning of 1872 brought one of the worst blizzards in recent memory. Stories of strange experiences during attempts to contact the dead were overshadowed by bigger things. Until the dead bodies started turning up. Sources differ on exactly how many corpses turned up in and around Labette County in 1872, and exactly what year they were killed, but several say that the bodies of two men emerged during the spring thaw. In one horrible instance, a party of relic hunters who were looking for Native American artifacts came upon a campsite that had been ransacked by wild animals that were scavenging for food.

In the mess, the group noticed what seemed to be human body parts. When they lifted a pile of hay, there was what appeared to be a torso. Nearby, animals had scattered the remains of what would later be identified as a man who had been killed by blunt force trauma to the head. Whatever the exact number of occurrences, by the end of the year, Labette Township trustee Leroy Dick started to receive letters from concerned family members. Their loved ones had passed through Labette County and were never seen again. In the fall of 1872, a man from Osage Mission set out on foot going south. He planned to buy some land in Labette County. He had $1,900 in his pocket. He never came back, and he never contacted anyone again. He was a bachelor,

and so he was gone a long time before anyone started asking around. The same went for Benjamin Brown from Howard County, Kansas, who was known to have $2,600 on his person, and William McCrotty, who disappeared along with an unknown amount of money, but definitely an entire team of horses. There were at least three more. People were scared, but Leroy was reluctant to acknowledge a pattern. People disappeared all the time on the prairie. Some died of natural causes.

And because their identities weren't clear in a time long before driver's licenses, passports, and dental records, there was simply no way to notify family. Some people left their wives or husbands and didn't want to be found. Others simply moved on to greener pastures. Leroy figured missing people, like these young men, were none of his business. And if horse thieves were responsible for the disappearances or the dead bodies, Leroy thought they had probably moved on already. He replied to each letter individually, but he didn't sound an alarm, even when his wife's cousin, Henry McKenzie, went missing. McKenzie stayed at Leroy's house in early November 1872. He was on his way from Indiana to Independence to visit his sister.

Leroy thought Mackenzie was obnoxious, but the kids loved him. Leroy also thought Mackenzie dressed way too flashy and should settle down and start his own family. But then Leroy reminded himself to mind his own business. In spite of how Mackenzie dressed, he had little money to his name. When he left Leroy's house, he only had 40 cents in his pocket, and that was a loan from a friend. He never made it to Independence, but like so many others, it took a while to know that he never arrived at his destination. Mackenzie was a decorated Civil War veteran. He was tall, athletic, and a good fighter.

He could take care of himself. But by the end of 1872, concern was growing from multiple sources. There was no news from Henry McKenzie in Independence. The body of John Phipps was found on the snowy prairie south of Cherryvale. The $300 that his family knew he was carrying was gone. And worst of all were the disappearances of George Longcore and his young daughter. George lived seven miles south of independence, and his wife had died giving birth to his now 18-month-old daughter, Mary Ann. He had raised Mary Ann alone thus far,

but his wife's parents in Iowa desperately wanted to take over. George's neighbors, William and Mary York, thought it was a good idea. They had helped George during the past year and a half, but they had four children of their own. And so, after Christmas, George Longcore bundled Mary Ann into a wagon and left for Iowa. In a pattern that surely sounds familiar by now, they never made it. When George's neighbor, William York, became suspicious and went looking for answers, his search set off a chain reaction that led a posse to the Bender cabin

and to the discovery of the gruesome crimes that still resonate today. Next time on Legends of the Old West, William York begins the hunt, and then another disappearance pushes the search into overdrive. Terrible things are discovered on the Bender property, and all the suspicious pieces start to fit together. But that doesn't mean there will be justice.

That's next week on the end of the Bloody Bender story here on Legends of the Old West. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week to receive new episodes. Thank you. blackbarrelmedia.com. This series was researched and written by Julia Bricklin. Original music by Rob Valliere. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Check out our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, for more details and join us on social media. We're at Old West Podcast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And all our episodes are available on YouTube. Just search for Legends of the Old West Podcast.

Thanks for listening.