The Family Inn on the Kansas Prairie Where Travelers Disappeared: The Bloody Benders

In the spring of 1873, a crowd of men stood in an orchard on the Kansas prairie, pushing long iron rods into the soft ground.

They were looking for a missing doctor.

Behind them stood an empty cabin. A small inn and store, on a busy trail, run by a family of four who had disappeared a few days earlier, leaving their animals to starve.

Inside the cabin, under a trapdoor, was a pit that smelled of blood.

That evening, the rods found something. Then the next morning, they found more.

The family who ran that inn have been called America's first serial killer family. They were never caught. And to this day, nobody knows for certain who they really were, or where they went.

They were known as the Bloody Benders.

The Osage Trail

In the years after the Civil War, settlers poured into Kansas. Land was cheap. Trails and new railroads crisscrossed the prairie.

In southeast Kansas, in Labette County, one of the main routes west was a trail along the old Great Osage Trail. Travelers on horseback and in wagons passed through constantly. Farmers. Traders. Veterans. Families moving west.

In October 1870, a group of five families who practiced spiritualism, the belief that the living can communicate with the dead, settled together in Osage Township, in the northwest part of the county.

One of those families was the Benders.

The family

There were four of them. Or at least, four people who presented themselves as a family.

John Bender Sr. was around sixty. He spoke very little English, with a heavy accent. He was said to be from Germany, though some said Norway or the Netherlands.

Elvira, often called Ma Bender, was in her fifties. Neighbors described her as unfriendly and spoke of her as a "she-devil."

John Bender Jr. was about twenty-five. He was handsome, with auburn hair and a mustache. He spoke English with a German accent. He had a habit of laughing for no reason, and some neighbors thought he was slow.

And then there was Kate. About twenty-three. She spoke polished English. She was attractive and outgoing. And she advertised herself as a healer and a psychic. She handed out flyers. She held séances and gave lectures on spiritualism. She became something of a local attraction.

Here is the strange part. There is no documentation that confirms these four people were actually related to each other, or where they came from. Some neighbors believed that John Jr. and Kate were not brother and sister at all, but husband and wife.

The inn

The two John Benders claimed a homestead of a hundred and sixty acres right beside the trail. They built a small cabin, a barn and a well. Elvira and Kate joined them in 1871.

The cabin was a single room, divided in two by a large canvas wagon cover hung from the ceiling.

The front half was a little general store, selling dry goods and supplies to travelers. There was also a kitchen and a table, where travelers could pay for a meal, or stay the night.

The back half, behind the canvas, was the family's living space.

North of the cabin was a garden and an apple orchard.

For travelers on a long, lonely trail, it was a welcome stop. A meal. A bed. And a pretty young woman who could read your fortune.

People go missing

Starting around 1871, travelers began to disappear along that stretch of the trail.

In May 1871, a man was found dead in a nearby creek with his skull crushed and his throat cut. In early 1872, two more men were found on the prairie with similar injuries.

Others simply never arrived where they were going. A man named Ben Brown, carrying more than two thousand dollars. A Civil War veteran named W.F. McCrotty. A man named Henry McKenzie. A man named Johnny Boyle, who was riding a valuable horse.

In the winter of 1872, a man named George Longcor left the town of Independence, Kansas, with his young daughter, Mary Ann, heading for Iowa. They never arrived.

People noticed. But the prairie was big and lawless, and people disappeared all the time.

Dr. York

In March 1873, that changed.

Dr. William Henry York, a Civil War veteran, left the town of Fort Scott, heading home to Independence. He never arrived.

His brother was Colonel Alexander York. A Civil War colonel, a lawyer, and a Kansas state senator. He was a powerful man. And he went looking for his brother.

On March 28, he and a companion stopped at the Bender inn. The Benders admitted that Dr. York had stayed with them. They suggested he might have been killed by Native Americans. Colonel York stayed for dinner, and left.

A few days later, he came back. Armed. This time, Ma Bender, who usually pretended to speak almost no English, suddenly spoke it perfectly well, and angrily ordered him out.

And Kate invited Colonel York to come back alone, that Friday night, so she could use her psychic powers to help him find his brother.

The meeting

The disappearances had become impossible to ignore.

Local residents met at the schoolhouse in Harmony Grove. About seventy-five people attended. The group agreed to get a warrant to search every homestead in the area, from Big Hill Creek to Drum Creek.

A few days later, a neighbor named Billy Tole passed the Bender inn and noticed something wrong. The place was deserted. The animals were starving in their pens.

The Benders were gone.

The orchard

The township trustee, LeRoy Dick, gathered several hundred volunteers. Colonel York was among them.

They found the cabin stripped of food, clothes and possessions. But there was a terrible smell. They traced it to a trapdoor, hidden under a bed and nailed shut. Beneath it was a cellar, and the floor of that cellar was soaked with clotted blood.

They found no bodies in the cellar. So they went outside, to the orchard and garden, and started probing the soft ground with metal rods.

That evening, they found Dr. William York. He had been buried face down, close to the surface.

The next morning, they found more. Eight bodies in seven graves in the orchard. One more in the well. And body parts that seemed to belong to others.

Most had their skulls crushed and their throats cut.

Among them were George Longcor and his little daughter, Mary Ann, buried together.

The method

Investigators pieced together how they believed the murders happened. It is important to say this was never proven in court, because nobody was ever tried. But the evidence pointed strongly to it.

A traveler would sit at the dinner table, with his back to the canvas curtain. Kate, or another family member, would keep him talking and distracted. And one of the Bender men, standing behind the curtain, would strike him on the head with a hammer.

Then they would cut his throat, drop the body through the trapdoor into the cellar, take his money and belongings, and later bury him in the orchard.

Three hammers were later recovered from the site. One, a heavy sledgehammer, appeared to match the injuries on the victims' skulls. Those hammers are still on display today in the museum in nearby Cherryvale, Kansas.

The escape

So where did the Benders go?

Detectives found the family's wagon abandoned near the town of Thayer, about twelve miles north. The horses were starving.

From there, investigators traced them to the railroad. The family had bought tickets north. According to the investigation, John Jr. and Kate got off at one stop and headed south toward Texas. John Sr. and Elvira continued on to Kansas City.

After that, the trail went cold.

The governor of Kansas offered a reward. So did Colonel York. Together, the rewards came to three thousand dollars. They were never claimed.

The rumors

For decades, there were stories.

Some said a posse caught the Benders and killed them on the prairie, and swore each other to secrecy. In some versions, they were shot. In others, they were thrown into a river. None of these stories was ever proven.

There were sightings all over the country. Pairs of women traveling together were sometimes accused of being Kate and her mother.

In 1889, two women were arrested in Michigan and brought back to Kansas, accused of being Elvira and Kate Bender. Witnesses from the area identified them from a photograph. But at the hearing, evidence was presented that one of the women had been married in Michigan in 1872, at a time when Kate Bender was in Kansas. The judge released them both.

The Benders were never found.

What we still don't know

Today, there is nothing left of the Bender inn. Souvenir hunters took it apart within weeks of the discovery, down to the bricks of the cellar and the stones of the well. A historical marker stands at a rest area north of Cherryvale.

The total number of victims is unknown. At least a dozen, possibly many more.

And the biggest questions remain. Who were the Benders, really? Were they even a family? Did a secret posse find them? Or did they ride a train out of Kansas and live out their lives somewhere under other names?

What do you think happened to the Benders?