America's First Serial Killer Family

The year is 1871 and a lonesome traveler is making  his way on horseback through the state of Kansas,   hoping to head West where he’s  heard there’s money to be made.  As he’s passing through the Great Osage Trail,  drained after days navigating wind-swept plains,   he comes across what looks like a quiet homestead.  There he meets the Bender family, an odd-looking   group of people if ever there was one. Unbeknownst to our weary traveler,   old man Bender has quite the reputation among  the few families that live in this remote area.   What do people say about him? They  call him a hideous brute, ill-tempered,   repulsive. As for Mrs. Bender, she is called  a “midnight hag” with “murderous ambition.”  Indeed, after his belly was full of  stew and his head had hit the pillow,   the traveler’s life came to an abrupt end. He  was found some days later dumped near a creek   with his throat slashed and his skull crushed. This is the story of the Bloody Benders,   America's First Serial Killer Family. Ok, so let’s go back to the beginning.  This was a time in U.S history when European  settlers were trying to make a go of it   in sometimes quite remote and  unforgiving parts of America.  The Bender family was no exception. They arrived in Osage in northwestern Labette   County in the year 1870, along with a handful  of other families. The locals didn’t exactly   welcome them with open arms, but neither did they  turn their backs to them. They were just another   bunch of folks that were going to see just how  hard it was settling in such a harsh environment.  It was just too much for some of the new  families and they packed up and left quickly,   but the Benders, the Benders were made of  tough stuff. They weren’t going anywhere.  John Bender, Sr. made a claim on some land  adjacent to the Great Osage Trail, which   would later become known as the Santa Fe Trail. It  was Native Americans who forged the trail, but it   was Europeans who would name it the Osage Trail. If a person back then wanted to move West along   an open road, then they had to pass through  this trail, and at some point come close to   the warped homestead of the Bender family. The Benders soon got their hands dirty and   built a barn, a corral, and a cabin. That cabin  had two rooms, only separated by the cloth of   a wagon cover. They made a kitchen, and they  converted part of their cabin into a general store   and a place a traveler could have a bite  to eat. On top of that, they made a small   compartment where someone could rest their  head for the night. You could call it a bed,   but it deserved to be called a butcher’s block. So, who were the Benders exactly?  Well, we know that John Bender Sr., aka, “Pa”,  could barely speak a word of English. We know   that he grunted a lot and to those who met  him he was seen as something of a brute.  They were right. Mrs. Bender, Elvira, aka,   “Ma”, was said to be equally unfriendly, and  while better than her husband, her English   wasn’t perfect. Both her and John communicated  most of the time in German. She was sometimes   called a “she-devil”, but not because of her  appearance, but because along with her daughter   she told anyone in the area that she had psychic  powers and could even communicate with the dead.  That daughter, Kate Bender, was the only  family member who was fluent in English,   and so she was very useful when it came  to writing and distributing flyers that   explained that she and her mother were  advocates of spiritualism and could   heal the sick with their supernatural powers. As for the son, John Jr., word on the street,   or should we say the trail, was that he was a  halfwit, a young man prone to sudden outbreaks   of laughter for no apparent reason. Some  sources state that the brother and sister   were not actually related, but a married couple. This is the problem with the story of the Benders,   the family was something of a mystery. There  has never been any documentation stating that   they were German immigrants, this was just taken  for granted. It may or may not have been true,   just as the rumor that Mrs. Bender had actually  come from the Adirondack Mountains in New York   state and that she’d killed previous  husbands, might not have been true.  They were a weird bunch, a family that promoted  free love and who claimed they could talk to dead   spirits. For that reason they were gossiped  about a lot. It didn’t help their reputation   when Kate Bender gave lectures on spiritualism  and during those lectures she would sometimes   say that murder might not be such a bad thing,  and might actually be a brave and noble act.  She also advocated free love, saying that  staying with one partner alone was just   the “miserable requirements of self-constituted  society.” Notably, she also once said in one of   her lectures, “Shall we confine ourselves to a  single love, and deny our natures their proper   sway?...Even though it be a brother's passion for  his own sister, I say it should not be smothered.”  As you can imagine, folks that lived near the  Benders were somewhat apprehensive about making   friends with them. You had the brute of a father,  his wicked wife; an idiot son and a daughter that   claimed she was in contact with the dead and  didn’t believe in any kind of sexual propriety.  They were outcasts, strange-sounding  pariahs living in the middle of nowhere,   and so people kept their distance. But travelers, people looking for   a new life in the American West, they knew  nothing about the Bender family. They just   wanted a place to rest their head for a night  or two and a good meal to restore their energy.  The Bender homestead was like an oasis to  these travelers, and they were only too   happy to have a place to stay, to be able to  fill their wagons with food, water, gunpowder,   booze and tobacco. Not only that, they were  reportedly entranced by Kate’s good looks   and her way with words. “Come rest,” she told  them, “I will heal you with my psychic powers.”  Healing was far from the truth. Traveling down that trail was not for the meek.   Not only could a person or a group of people  starve out there, but they needed their strength   and they needed weapons if they should come  into contact with bandits or unfriendly Native   Americans. Let’s not forget that many groups  were travelling with everything they owned.  That’s why when the young man we described  in the beginning of this story was found   with his throat slashed and his head caved  in, it wasn’t exactly a big shock to people.   Everyone knew that the trail was a treacherous  place and one could easily be set upon by a   gang who wanted what was in their wagon. In 1871, 72 and 73, people went missing,   always close to where the Benders lived. The  locals at the time grew quite worried. People   were told not to go out on the trail alone or at  night, but no one suspected that it was the Bender   family that was behind the strange disappearances. In fact, mobs at times would accuse some man down   on his luck, and proceed to chase him  out of town. They would soon discover   they’d been chasing away the wrong people. In March, 1873, a physician from Independence,   Kansas, named Dr. William York, alighted a train  in Cherryvale, a town not too far from the Osage   Trail. This guy was a person of standing,  so when he went missing it was big news.  What was he doing in the middle  of nowhere you might ask?  York had made the journey because he was  looking for two people that had gone missing.   Those two folks had been acquainted with  York, and he was determined to find them.  The friend was George Newton Longcor, and  he was accompanied by his young daughter,   Mary Ann. They’d left Independence  with the hope of resettling in Iowa,   except they didn’t get very far. They’d  found the Osage trail and later disappeared.  We know that on his quest to find his friend  and his friend’s daughter that York arrived   at a place called Fort Scott in Kansas. We know  that on March 9 he left that place, and we also   know that he never made it home from there. What the Bender family didn’t know is that   they had now bitten off more than they could chew. You see, Mr. York wasn’t just a man of standing;   his two brothers were also extremely powerful  people. One was a colonel in the military and the   other was a member of the Kansas State Senate. Those two guys were obviously upset that their   brother had vanished into thin air, a brother  that had been looking for other people that   had vanished. While the brothers at first  thought that the disappearances might have   been down to attacks by Native Americans,  they also wondered if some of those   homesteads contained something quite insidious. What they were about to discover was something way   more evil than they had bargained for, something  that would shock America for many years to come.  They got fifty guys together and  went out to visit those homesteads,   arriving along the tracks like a small army. At one point the group, led by the brother who was   a Colonel in the US Army, arrived at the Bender’s  place. He spoke to the family, well, as best he   could do since the older Benders were terrible  with English, and he was told that his brother   had stayed the night with them, but he’d left the  next day. The Benders told the Colonel that the   trail was fraught with danger and his brother  may have come across some dangerous natives.  There was just something wrong about  this family, and Colonel York grew more   suspicious when he learned that Mrs. Bender  had recently threatened someone with a knife.   We know that did indeed happen because  the newspaper clipping still exists today.  The Colonel went back, and again  asked, do you know where my brother is.   He was rather less friendly this time. Mrs. Bender was enraged that the men were back,   while Kate Bender told them she’d use her  clairvoyant skills to find the missing man.   At that point, the Colonel and his men were pretty  sure that this family were not what they claimed   to be. In fact, some of the men in the group  said that they were guilty and should be hanged.  But the Colonel needed more evidence before he  sent a family to the gallows, and they went to   talk to more people in nearby communities. Weeks passed, and then one local noticed   something strange. He passed the Bender house and  realized that the place seemed to be abandoned.   It looked like the Benders had just taken  off, leaving some of their animals behind.  That man reported what he’d seen to members of  the township, and soon the Colonel heard about the   missing family. Due to terrible weather, it took  some days to go out and search for the Benders,   but in the end a search party of  several hundred people was formed.  When they got to the Bender house they  discovered that it was pretty much empty   of clothes and provisions. All that had been  left behind was something that smelled awful,   as if a decaying body was under the floorboards. The men found a trapdoor that was bolted shut,   but they soon managed to wrestle it open.  The door led to a dark room under the house,   and there they saw blood splattered  everywhere, some of it not so old.  The group moved the cabin, and they  started digging, thinking that bodies   must be buried. Later that evening they found  Dr. York’s decomposing body. He’d been buried   in the nearby orchard. The next day they found  another eight bodies buried in shallow graves.   When they looked down the well, they found  another body, as well as various body parts.  It was a horror-show, a terrible thing to  behold. Some of the bodies had been mutilated,   while the body of a young girl didn’t seem to  have been injured at all. The group suspected   that the family had buried her alive. In all, the  Benders might have killed at many as 21 people,   although a more conservative estimate is 11. The Benders had few good friends in that area,   but suffice to say, the now growing crowd  of people weren’t too kind to folks that   had known the family. One man was hanged  just because he knew them, although the   crowd pulled him down and he survived. The media arrived at the Bender place,   coming from as far away as New York City and  Chicago. The public came from far and wide,   all wanting a look at the place where  evil had lived. Rewards were offered to   anyone who could locate the family, which in  today’s money were around $20,000 and $40,000.  Where were the Benders? Well, vigilantes wanted that reward,   with some claiming they had caught up with the  family and killed them all. Some claimed they shot   and buried them, others said they shot and threw  them in the river, but these were likely lies.   No bodies were found and no reward was given. The Benders were either very good at hiding   or they were all six feet under. The reward then went up to more   than $60,000 in today’s money, but still no  one could find them. As this was happening,   the story spread to every state. Books were  written, including one called, “The Five Fiends,   Or, The Bender Hotel Horror in Kansas.” It wasn’t easy finding this family for the simple   fact that not much was known about them. Were the  parents legally married? Were the children even   their children? Were they even called Bender? It was soon speculated that Mr. Bender was   actually named John Flickinger, and that Mrs.  Bender had likely been married several times.   Worse, her husbands always seem to end up  dead with wounds to the head. It was likely   that Kate and John Jr. were children of some of  those men, and that their real names were Eliza   Griffith and John Gebhardt. Where did they all go?  We just don’t know. Their story remains one of  the strangest unsolved mysteries in U.S history.   Maybe they were killed by an angry posse, but  if they were, no bodies were ever recovered   and no one claimed that handsome reward. They  might also have moved West, started another life,   and filled the ground with more bodies. Maybe their descendants are living next   door to you right now, just waiting  to carry on their murderous legacy.  Now you need to see this, “The Most Shocking  Unsolved Murders In The World.” Or, take a   look at this, “Doctor Intentionally  Kills Over 200 Patients (Dr. Death)”

Channel: The Infographics Show

Views: 1,047,077

Rating: 4.9405427 out of 5

Keywords: The Benders, Bloody Benders, the Bender family, Bender family, cannibals, serial killer, serial killers, evil, evil family, most evil family, the infographics show, 1871, history, serial killer family, creepy stories, true story, crime, united states, america

Id: E-T3CR_P6_E

Length: 12min 6sec (726 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 08 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/poestavern]

Yes we were! Wanna visit now?

[u/TransmogriFi]

The family that slays together, stays together.

[u/itsmeok]

Going on a Bender?

[u/resident_leeper]

Hell yea, another point for the scoreboard!!!

[u/mycatiswatchingyou]

The Bloody Benders! I did a report on them in the 5th grade. I drew a picture of the daughter hiding a bloody knife behind her back.

[u/Nap_88]

We also had btk

[u/merrileem]

That, The serial killer from Wichita, the family from In Cold Blood, maybe this place turns people crazy after awhile. We have quite the reputation here.