America's First Serial Killer Family: The Bloody Benders

Step into the lawless frontier of 1870s Kansas, where the promise of the American dream hid something far more sinister. Along the Osage Trail, travelers seeking food, rest, and refuge unknowingly stepped into a nightmare.

In this episode of Storyteller, we uncover the chilling true story of the Bloody Benders—widely believed to be America’s first serial killer family. Operating a small homestead, inn, and general store in Labette County, the Benders lured unsuspecting victims with warm meals and a welcoming smile… before brutally murdering them and burying their bodies in a nearby orchard.

From eerie séances and manipulation to a terrifying survivor’s escape and a growing list of missing travelers, the Benders’ crimes shocked a nation. But what makes this story even more haunting? They were never caught.

Who were the Bender family, really? How did they evade justice? And what happened to them after they vanished without a trace?

This is the story of Hell’s Half Acre—where hospitality turned deadly, and one family became a legend of true crime horror that still lingers more than 150 years later.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Storyteller, where I try to find the wildest story I can each week, and Teresa hears it all for the first time. I'm Courtney. And I'm Teresa. And do I have a story for you? Ooh! Spice it up a little. Well, I am excited about this story, but I am going to warn you that it's just as aggravating as it is interesting. So buckle up. So I have a great love of stories that take place in the Old West. And as you know, if you've listened to this podcast for any amount of time, I am fascinated by true crime stories, particularly those about serial killers. And this story has bulls. So today we are headed back to the windswept treeless prairie of an 1870s Kansas. Yeah. It was so exotic.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Tell me a good Kansas story. Carry on, my wayward son. Carry on.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

That was a top tier. That was top tier. So it'll also cover how during this postfilm period, a quiet pair of men, one old, one young, bumped down the Osage Mission Trail in their rickety wagon and rested on the 160-acre plot they now called home. The property was adjacent to the Osage Trail, the only open road for traveling farther west, and they promptly built a cabin, a barn with a corral, and a well. Once the homestead was in working order, the men sent for the women and the old man's wife and daughter joined them. They all quickly realized that their close proximity to the Wigan Trail could help supplement their income. And a sign reading groceries was hung above the door. This is the first homestand. Our little farm stand? Oh my god, it is a farm stand. But worse, like so much worse. I didn't even realize that. You guys, I just opened my own farm stand, but I am not like these people promise. That's where the similarities stop. The promise of supplies brought people in, and the stunning daughter enticed them to stay for dinner. And the hammers bashed into the back of the diners' heads as they ate, made their blood pool on the rough hewn floorboards, and seep into the cellar dirt below. What the story of the Bender family and how they turned their pit stop on the Osage Trail into Hell's Half Acre, and they would be forever known as the Bloody Benders. Have you heard of them? No! I got so! Yeah, these are like the they, I mean, I'm there's other serial killers like way back when they honestly didn't have the term serial killer until the 70s, I think. 1970s, not 1870s, but these this was a family of serial killers in the middle of the 1870s. So it's pretty freaking wild. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

So it's crazy. Hey, yeah, I got a question though. Yeah. Why where did this term serial killers come from?

SPEAKER_00 3:32

Like why um I think the age, you know, FBI came up with it.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Umbers, like were murders assigned serial numbers, and then they realized that some of the murders were the same.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

I don't think so. No, the serial comes from you can only be termed a serial killer if you murder three or more people. And so, yeah, but the FBI, I mean, there were some But why did the FBI start calling them serial killers? I don't know, just because I think that like spree killing and the multiple murders was really ramping up, like in the time of, you know, Ted Bundy. And it was kind of a new thing that they could actually keep track of. I think with especially like the case we're gonna look at today when it was so far back, there's not those like communication systems and record keeping that people could really understand that one person was murdering a whole bunch of people. Like the records just weren't there. So I think that's really it came out of some of that stuff, but I'm sure there's a lot more to it. So yeah, good c good question. You're gonna have to send them before we meet, so I have a better answer for that. Sometimes I don't know until you definitely don't know. Like, how would she know what questions to ask? Uh so on a bright October morning in 1870, five families of spiritualists homesteaded in and around the township of Osage in northwestern Labette County. A county in the southeast corner of Kansas, known for its vast grasslands and clear, mirrored water that flowed in its creeks. It was approximately seven miles northeast of where Cherryville was established just seven months later. One of these families was John Bender and John Bender Jr., sometimes he's known as John Gebhart. It's we'll get into the relationships of these people because it's all very weird. And they registered 160 acres of land located adjacent to the great Osage Mission Trail, the only open road for traveling farther west. When these two rolled into a crude trading post in the area, Gebhart jumped down from the wagon and gave a goofy ass laugh that had the haggard, like grizzled men who ran the outpost looking at him as though he was a few crans short of a full box.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

Like every person, do it.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

I I don't know how to you couldn't even hear that. Come on, go. I have no idea, but I guess he was just like somebody said later that John Gebhard or John Jr. or whatever, he would just always be laughing. He is just like, I have a nervous laugh. I'm always nervous laughing, but I guess this guy can be like alone with no one around, and somebody will be away and they'll be like, what is he laughing at? He's just laughing. So it's like a nervous tick, I think. The older man, Pa Bender, as he'd become known in this area, was the complete opposite. No one ever reported as to seeing him smile in all his years, and he wore a constant look on his face, like he had something stinky on his upper lip. So two very different guys. Both men had German accents, but Pa Bender barely spoke English or just preferred to speak German. It's kind of unclear if he I think they may have been more fluent in English, but he just didn't want to talk in English.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

So I would totally do that. I'm actually surprised I don't pretend like I'm deaf sometimes. I'd wonder that one person that knows sign language. I'd be like, shit.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

I know. I'd be like, oh no. My single sign language is a new version. They just came out with that so you know. Uh so one of the men operating the outposts was Rudolf Brockman, a German immigrant. And this affiliation that he had recognized in the two men who had just come up may have been why he offered to help them get their homestead set up. This act of kindness would come back to haunt Brockman in this story. So after a cabin, a barn with a corral, and a well were built, Elvira and or Ma Bender, as she would be known, and Kate Bender arrived in the fall of 1871. Incredible names. Myra, I love it.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

The cabin was giving you the hoo. You know that remember that part of the Lion King with the hyenas, and they're like, Bufasa. Yeah, say it again. Like, ooh, say it again.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

Myra. Myra. That's so funny. So their cabinet was reminiscent of most prairie cabins. It was essentially one big room divided by an old wagon canvas from their wagon. One side of the room was a kitchen area with a table and another area where their goods for sale were. On the other side of the canvas partition, there were beds, which they would later rent out to travelers, a door to the backyard, a window, and then a trapdoor to the dirt cellar. So everything I've told you so far is facts that can be proven. But what is much less clear is what exactly the relationships between these four people were. Um, it's not debated that mom and pa were husband and wife. Like that's pretty much known, no weird stuff there. In a lot of the research, I did see that Pa Bender was probably Ma Bender's like fifth husband or something. Apparently, she was just going through them. Like a black widow. Yeah. So what do we expect? Exactly. Get it, girl. So yeah, they're married, but the younger pair have some uncertainty and rumors swirling around them and the exact nature of the relationship to this very day. Like no one really knows what the relationship between Kate and John Gebhardt or John Jr. Bender is. So during all my research, I came up John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. Max used to sing that when he was a little boy. He would we'd be like at the beach or you know, the lake, and he'd be like, Oh, gotta go to the water, and he would just like run full whack down to the beach, like singing John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. Like the Oh my, it was so funny. Oh my god. So funny. When we'd go to the lake, or if we were going to Chico, Max would just sit in the back of the truck, like wearing his goggles the entire drive.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Max, you're such a dorm.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

He's iconic. Yeah. So so yeah, there's a lot of different ideas about what these relationships were and little things about these two. So I've kind of jotted these down. So first, the idea is that John Gebhart and Kate Bender were brother and sister. Then it's John and Kate were husband and wife. Maybe they were common-law married. Um, then there's another line of thinking. What one one research thing uh website I was on just went out and said, um, their queer son John. And I was like, oh wow, okay. So some people think John might be gay, um, and Kate was just his sister, you know. Then there was a lot of rumors because of the laughing, I think, that John was kind of a half-wit, and you know, Kate and him are just half siblings, but there is a lot of like reports in the research where they say he's the last name, the gethardt last name come from. They have no idea. There's nothing about it. That's what they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

He just goes by Gephardt as opposed to Bender's.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Yeah. Yeah. And so it's like, well, is John uh Ma Bender's son from one of her various marriages and Kate's from a different marriage? You know, like it's it's unknown where and what the relationship is, but a lot of people or a lot in the research said that they have like an unnatural closeness for siblings. So if they're siblings, it sounds like maybe they were incestuous a little bit, but there's really no proof like of what their in their relationship was. It is very confusing.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

According to the Wikipedia page on the Benders, prior to materializing on the prairies of Kansas, some of the family lore can be tracked down. So John Bender Sr., Pa Bender, was around 60 years old and spoke little English. And the English he did speak was guttural and largely unintelligible. So um, according to the May 23rd, 1873 edition of the Emporian News, he was identified with the name William Bender. Elvira Bender or Ma Bender was 55 years old around this time, and she allegedly spoke a little English, English, and was so unfriendly that her neighbors called her a she-devil. John Bender Jr. or John, like, yes, Ma. So, or John Gebhart, again, no idea where the Gebhart is coming, was around 25 years old and handsome with auburn hair and a moustache. He spoke English frequently with a German accent. He was prone to laughing aimlessly, as I said, which led many to consider him, as I said a minute ago, a half-wit. Those are their words, not mine. I didn't say that.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

Uh he's an idiot. I heard it.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

Damn damn. So Kate Bender, who was, I saw some things that she was around 20 when she came to Kansas or 23, so right in those early 20s, was cultivated and attractive. And she spoke English well with like a little bit of an accent, not much. Um, she was also a self-proclaimed healer and psychic. She distributed flyers advertising her supernatural powers and her ability to cure illnesses. So um she she also conducted seances and gave lectures on spiritualism, which she gained notoriety by advocating for the free love movement, which is a crazy like position given the time period. But essentially, she just believed that a man and a woman could not be married to sleep together. And so, which is still crazy for this time period because everyone's like, marry at 13.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

So open marriage.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Yeah, she she was like, just do whatever you want. Yeah, so yeah. So the Benders were, as I've said, it's they're believed to be German immigrants. There's no documentation or definitive proof of their relationships to one another and where they were born hasn't really, it's not certain, I guess. So John Bender Sr. was from either Germany, Norway, or the Netherlands. And apparently at this time period, if you were from one of those countries, they just other people in America collectively referred to you as Dutch. So they're like, they're Dutch, whatever, you know. So I'm like, that's not that. Yeah. So according to contemporary newspapers, Elvira was born Elmira, Hill Mark, in the Adirondack Mountains, and she married Simon Mark, with whom she claimed to have had 12 children. And then she later married William Stephen Griffin. Um, Elvra was rumored to have murdered several husbands, but none of these rumors have been proven. Kate was reportedly Elvira's fifth daughter. So it's all a gray area. Like there's no real, yeah, like you can't nail down where these people even came from. So it's all I think people can kind of go back and find in censuses people matching the ages and the names of this group, but it's never really for sure. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Yeah. Um now that the all the vendors were in Kansas, their roadside home did duty as a store, restaurant, and hotel. Their house sat um a hundred yards back from the road, simple and well kept in um in an artistic oblong of painted blanks is how I and I did find a picture of it. And I was like, I guess that's it. I was like, it's just, it looks like a church, but it's like long and not, you know, it's yeah, but there's not like a sod roof. A lot of these places had sod roofs. So um yeah, uh, it was okay, I guess, for a house in the middle of nowhere. Behind it stood a stable, uh pigsty, and a railed barnyard, and close to the back stoop a well curb with a rope and bucket. Flanking all these on the right rose an unusual and grateful sight in that new bald and semi-arid country, an orchard. So apparently, uh I saw this in the apparently, if you're from Germany, they're revered as good nurserymen. Apparently, if you're German, you can grow apples, is what I got from them. Just apples? I don't know. Anything nursery. Yeah, so apparently, yeah, they they but they the benders took this idea and ran with it, and they set out 50 young fruit trees and worked, you know, the orchards tirelessly. They really were hoping it was apples, cherries, and peaches. So yeah, I'm like peaches in Kansas. So yeah. Anyways, uh, so this house is designed uh divided in two, like I said, um, by a canvas cover nailed to a row of perpendicular study. So it it made um makeshift partition. One side was the heavy table and benches behind it and around it and in the room. So when travels came through, there was room for people to sit and hang out, and they often served meals there for a fee. Um, to one side was ranged shelves and a counter with a small stock of canned goods, bolts of cloth, and simple notions. Um, although the elder benders kept to themselves, it sounds like they are both kind of buttheads. Mompa, and most were unnerved by John Gebhart because of his weird laughing, and they were like, How do you fit in in this family? Like they're like, We don't know why you're here. So he was he is it seemed harmless, you know, on the outside, but it's that seemed like Gillshouse eyes have shit to me. I mean, for real. Yes. So, but in contrast to this, Kate was a dr in direct opposition to the rest of her family. She was bubbly, she was beautiful, she was funny, she was brash, and this attracted people to her. Customers fell in easily to talk with the daughter of the house, and Kate Bender, acting as storekeeper and waitress, was bright-haired. Um, I didn't read some things that she also had auburn hair, but then some others said no. Um, yeah, she was described as a rosy girl in her early 20s. So an old Kansas in Kansas, yeah, still alive in 1930, remembered that her figure was fully and finely curved, and that her red mouth smiled and smiled.

unknown 18:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Uh he said that she would have been admired in larger and more critical communities than the old Osage Township. So he's like, her charms were being wasted out here on the Osage Trail. So, by a lot of accounts, she was possessed with a sparkling vitality and considerable intelligence. So she also was readily and saucily like she would joke with any man who glanced her away, and she was very brash about it. And grinning young admire surrounded her at all the rustic gather gatherings, whether it was in town when she was picking up supplies for their little store, at the homestead, or at one of the frequent seances that Kate held. I love that about her. So as I said, Kate Bender styled herself as a medium and a healer, and once she moved to Kansas, quickly advertised her services in case anyone wanted to talk to the dead, just in case, keys. Um, she went on speaking tours in the area to proclaim to crowds what the spirits had recently told her. Like these speaking ones would be like, No, you're not getting up here. I'm not taking questions, but I just want you guys to know what the spirits told me. I'm just a messenger. It's unknown if her.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

The spirits don't want to talk to you, talk to you. They just want to talk to you through me.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

Yes, they just want you to listen. Yeah. So, and it sounds like a lot of women at this time were kind of using this like break of spiritualism to really talk for the first time without fear of their own views. Um, there was a very popular spiritualist at this time who actually was just a, you know, a suffrage. She really wanted women's rights and women to get the vote. And she was like, I'm gonna go on a speaking tour. But she's like, I'll just say that the spirits want women's rights. And it was working really good for her. So I know I was like, a ghost told you? Okay. I'd be like, I believe her. I believe her 100%. I'd be in that crowd. Like, does she sell swag? Is there some merch here? I support her. Um, so it is unknown if her or her family actually believed at all um in anything pertaining to the spiritualist movement in their part of the world, but it is certain that they believed that they could use Kate and this spiritualism angle for criminal intent. Of course they did. So Kate would boast on her speaking tours, saying the spirits wanted to hear, wanted her to encourage those listening to allow for, as I said, she played off this other lady, women's rights, which appealed to the women in the area. And the spirits told her that she should support the idea of free love, which really appealed to the men in the area. She was like the first fucking hippie. Yes, she absolutely was. So after each speaking engagement, the attractive and interesting Kate would encourage men and women alike to follow her home so they could participate in a private seance, just for like a small price, just not a whole lot of money, whatever. Um, one person who was drawn to Kate was Cherry Vale resident Julie Hessler. And when Kate started waitressing at the Cherryville Hotel alongside Julia in the spring of 1871, um, that might be 1872. Anyways, um, Julia quickly learned that Kate was just as interested in spiritualism as she was. And when Kate invited Julia out to the bender cabin for a private seance, Julia readily agreed. She was super excited to go to the seance. So one warm spring evening, Julia hitched her ride on a stagecoach, not wanting to bring her horse for the longer journey. And when she entered the Cabin, Julia was surprised that it was just Kate there preparing the seance circle. Kate assured her that the less people, the better, as far as talking to the appearance is concerned. And Julia took her seat. She's like, all right, she seems to be the expert. I'll take her word for it. Whether it was the creepy fucking vibe given by the single burning candle in the house or the horrible smell that Julia had that had Julia fighting not to gag, she was quickly uneasy in her seat. And the cabin, the canvas curtain that divided the cabin to her back. So she's just sitting there, like, what's even behind this? And you know, there's just a lot of red flakes going off for her. Soon, and she described them as fat, hovering flies. So they were well-fed flies, were swarming around Julia and seemed to be coming from the other side of the canvas wall. And Kate noticed Julia noticing and like where these flies were coming from, and the flies themselves. And Kate quickly took her hands as if to start the seance. But when Julia's eyes met Kate's, hers were vacant and cold, like very different than the woman she had known when they worked together. So Julia's nervousness ramped up, fear spreading through her body and making her nauseous. Julia closed her eyes when the seance started, but fear made them shoot open for no real reason. And at that time, behind Kate, her whole family stood. Julia was stunned. She hadn't even heard movement, let alone Oh, that's creepy. They're so creepy. Oh my god. So Julia knew she needed to get the fuck out of the house, but how? She thought of her horse and how she really wished she had rode it and not taken the fucking stagecoach out to the bender cabin. Julia tried to smile and said she needed to relieve herself. But as she moved towards the door, Kate got up and moved towards her. And when, you know, seeing that, Julia bolted into the night and away from the bender cabin. She was so fucking freaked out. So as Julia ran for what she was sure was her life, that theory was confirmed as a shot rang out behind her. She dropped to the tall grass and crawled through it as another shot rang out in her direction. She could hear the family arguing in English and German as she desperately crawled, trying to put space between herself and the benders. And when John Gebhart finally stumbled on the place where she had flattened all the grass, she was up and running full speed into the darkness of the prairie. So she's, you know, kind of enveloped in this and she gets away. When Jack Reed exited his tent the next morning, just after sunup, he tried to warm his fingers with his breath as he looked over the prairie and saw a woman, her skirt bunched up, running full speed. So this is hours later. She's just been running all fucking night. All fucking night. Yeah, running full whack. Um, he tried to call out to her, but she ignored him. She was like, uh, and he glanced around. That's all I know. Uh-uh. No, she, you know, he glanced around and saw that she must be hell-bent towards the cabin in the distance. And Jack Reed figured she'd arrive there just in time for breakfast. So she did, she was safe. When she got back to Cherryville, she told her neighbors, anyone who listened, um, about the incident. And they all said, Oh, it just, it's more like they're a little weird. It's creepy, more than criminal, with many just saying that the brenders may be weird and jokesters, but they're not dangerous. They're like, Julia, just because you had to run through the parry in the middle of the night for your life, and they're getting shot at you. Yeah, they're like, you have the vapors, Julia, and we're gonna put you in a mental health facility if you don't talk calm down. Like a sane asylum, sorry, mental health facility would be way too nice. I didn't even know those words. There would come a day when everyone would look back on Julia's terrifying escape from the bender homestead in a very different light. So some other travelers around this time would report in Cherryville or independence their unnerving experiences at the bender cabin. But they were often met with just as you know, Julia was with replies that assured the travelers that the bender were just weird or pranksters. They're just super, they're just German. Apparently, like most of Kansas during this time was German. There was a ton of German that, like, they all went there and stuff. I was like, I didn't know that. So, but then tales of missing people started to catch the attentions of those across this county. So, you know, there was some other things starting to happen. And missing people in the sparsely populated prairie was not all that unheard of. There were dangers lurking literally everywhere, from wildlife to weather to rivers to people, you know, robbers and things like that. But recently the whispers were saying men were going missing in a more concentrated area, specifically along the Osage Trail between Independence and Lador. And guess who lived there? I'll give you one guess who lived right there. So in December of 1971, Jem James Fearick put his wife, Mary, and their young son on a train so they could make the long journey back to New York so Mary could visit her sister for Christmas. He kissed Mary goodbye and made her promise she'd write the second she got to New York. And Mary lived up to this. She wrote to her husband the second she got there. And when no reply came from James on the first letter, she wrote again and again and again. And finally, she wrote her neighbor in Howard County to see if James had made it there from Baxter Springs. Her neighbor informed her that no one had seen James since he left Baxter Springs as he traveled toward their homestead in Howard County. Fearick would have had to travel through the area where the Benders lived to reach his homestead.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

It's like the fucking Bermuda Triangle here. It is the Bermuda Triangle of Kansas. Except for it's a straight line.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

And not a triangle. It's kind of triangle-esque. Yeah. So I have a little map. I'll put it on the social media. So yeah, in February of 1872, so just two months after Fearick dropped from the map, two unidentified men were found on the prairie, just apparently tossed out there. I don't know. Um, with their throats cut and their skulls smashed in. Um in September of 1872, so you know, six months later or so, William Baldwin Jones left his little family at their homestead and went to help build the Osage County Schoolhouse. As he prepared to return home from, you know, helping build the schoolhouse. Yeah, he was very excited. When he didn't return, his widow was left to take care of their small children and no way to pay off the land loan that they had. So he just didn't turn up. And it wouldn't be, I think they found his body one month after he was murdered, but it was about a year before she saw in a different newspaper the description of who they found and was able to identify her husband. So she went a long time not knowing at all what happened to him.

SPEAKER_01 29:27

Yeah, yeah. I was gonna have to forget how much like social media and TV made the world so much smaller.

SPEAKER_00 29:34

Oh, it does. Yeah. So these people, and you know, that's really the heart of what the vendors were like, oh, this this will be so easy in Kansas, you know, in 1972, like jackpot. So um, in November of 1872, Henry Mackenzie, known as Hank to his family, and a cousin of the deputy sheriff Leroy Dick, the Osage Town Township trustee, what a title, um, was traveling to independence to see his sister along the Osage Trail. Deputy Sheriff Dick later said he found old Hank to be annoying as hell. He was always telling these really like bloating out of proportion war stories. And the kids really liked him, but yeah, Leroy Dick would be like, oh my god, you're so full of shit, you know. And so when Hank left their home and continued his travels towards independence, Sheriff Dick never wrote Family There to make sure Hank had actually made it. Like he had no idea. Um he didn't make it, just FYI. That's why he's in this story. December. Yeah, context clues, yeah. Um, December was a busy month for the Bender family, as six people would go missing as they traveled the Osage Trail and often needed to find shelter from the worsening winter weather. So, first up, Benjamin Brown left his home with $2,000 on him, which and he hoped to secure a land.

SPEAKER_01 31:03

A million dollars now, Jesus.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

$70,000 in today's money. Like that's crazy. Yeah. And this is what I don't get about Benjamin Brown's story. I read I read a book on this and you know, that did some research online. Everyone says that he left and was hoping to secure a land claim, but was denied due to lack of previous credit. But like they were selling land for like five books. So if he had $2,000 on him, why didn't they just give him some? So I don't know exactly the you know, interesting.

SPEAKER_01 31:37

Was he trying to buy the fucking state of Texas?

SPEAKER_00 31:39

I know. I'm like, what? Yeah, so yeah. So, like I said, that $2,000 would um equal roughly um uh, you know, about $70,000 in today's money. Um, so but Benjamin Brown and his money were never seen again. William McCrawdy was a tough Irishman that had fought in the Civil War when his travels took him through the town of Lador, a town that was infamous with lawlessness. And a man named Dan Gardner gave him 25 cents for dinner. Again, I know this is so long ago, but like he had money on him. But anyway, so Dan Gardner's like, hey buddy, here's 25 cents for dinner. And he's like, after you eat and you keep traveling, the bender cabin along the Osage Trail would be a great place to rest for the night. So it almost makes me wonder if maybe this Dan Gardner place is a hundred percent health. Yes, yes. We survived our shortcut. We took it to New Mexico. You're fine. TM. Yeah, so yeah, so I think that they had almost like this network of criminals that were kind of supporting them. There's some, you know, thinking about that after all of this, but I I think, and I actually think that Dan Gardner told that Benjamin Brown before him the same thing, like, hey, you should go rest here. So he's like getting kickbacks to sending people to their deaths, I think is what's happening. So McCrady had $38 on him, which would be around $1,000 in today's money. McCrady, his money and his team of horses were never seen again. So next up we have Johnny Boyle, who was traveling that same trail when he took shelter at the Bender homestead that December. Johnny would later be found in the bender's well. Yu. Drinking water out of. Oh my god. Yeah, I'm like, oh. I know idiots, probably. He was like laughing the whole time. He dumped his body in there. Right. Doofus. Yeah. Uh so yeah, so his body's dumped in there, his $10 or $269 in today's money. Um, an $850 saddle, which I think I looked at, I think that's like $10,000 in today's money, and the very nice horse he was riding were either not seen again or sold off. Um, there's a lot of rumors that John Jr. and Pa Bender were horse thieves, which was uh uh a job people had at this time, I guess. And a lot of these people that go missing were had either very nice horses or a team of horses that would make these people a shitload of money. So he was one of them. He had like a team, uh a nice horse. Um, the guy before him had a team of horses. So um, then John Phipps was also in that area um that same month, and he and his $300 were never seen again. Um, there's also three more people that month that went missing. Um, that there's a lot less known about them, but John Geary, Red Smith, and Abigail Roberts. So before the weather got really bad that month in December, George Longcorps bought a team of horses from his neighbor, William York. And he loaded his wagon with what little he had left, including his darling 18-month-old daughter, Mary Ann. Yeah. And after his wife and toddler son had died in the previous two years. So it was just George and Mary Ann now. And the mom that passed away, her family was writing a lot and being like, Why don't you come back to Iowa? You gave it the old college try on the prairie. Why don't you come back here? We can help you raise this baby, you know. Like, please come back. So George finally took him up on that. Marianne was wrapped in a rabbit fur-lined blanket and put in a basket to sleep in the I bet that thing was soft. You know, I was like, I could really go for a player rabbit. I was like, that sounds like harmed.

SPEAKER_01 35:53

I know if you can get a blanket, but if you could like at least source some and make me a blanket, I'd be down for that. Right, absolutely. Any listeners out there that happen to have any, I don't know, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

Sewing skills and skinning skills. I mean, sounds amazing. Amazing, yeah. So yeah, and Mary Ann's little head was clad in a knitted hat and her hands kept worn in knitted mittens, both a gift from William York's wife that she made sure that Mary Ann was gonna be plenty warm for her long trip back. Um, because William, there they were neighbors, and William York's wife really helped raise this baby. I mean, her mom died right after she gave birth to her. So that the my York, I guess, is kind of like the only mom this little baby is known. So um, the weather did not hold for the Longcourts, and he and Marianne had to stop frequently at houses along the trail to take shelter. George was eager to make it to Iowa, where his family and his late wife's family resided, and he carried $1,900 on him, $51,000 in today's money. How are you guys making this money? I would like to just have that on me. Um George and baby Marianne would never make it to Iowa. So William York, yeah, as I said, George's neighbor who had sold him the Team Forces, received a startling letter from George's family in Iowa saying that neither he nor the little girl had arrived. And William was a doctor in the area. People really knew who he was. He was well liked, um, he had a growing family. He still held some PTSD and guilt from not being able to save everyone he treated as a war doctor in the Civil War. So he was he was described as like a jovial man, but he had this like underlying guilt that was really sitting with him. And perhaps it was this guilt that spurred him on. But William York quickly decided he was going to set out around all of fucking Kansas to find George and Little Marianne, who was like, I can't, I'm taking a couple days off. Like, I need to find out what happened to them. York traveled along the route that the lawn corps would have taken, question, um, questioning homesteaders along the trail. York finally reached Fort Scott and on March 9th began the return journey back to independence. But he never arrived back in independence into his family. York had two brothers, Ed York, who was living in Fort Scott, and Colonel Albert.

SPEAKER_01 38:16

Are you missing like you for the other missing people?

SPEAKER_00 38:19

Yes. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 38:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:23

This is this is what catches the benders because this William York, first of all, he's a doctor. He's well known, you know, in this area. But then he's got this older brother, Colonel Alexander M. York. He was a Civil War veteran. He was a lawyer in the area, and he had been a member of the Kansas State Senate from independence. So he's he's almost like a high-profile victim. And when Ed York and Alexander York, the brothers, knew they knew of William's travel plans. And when he failed to return, they set out searching for him. Um yeah, Colonel York ended up leading a company of 50 men, questioned every traveler along the trail, and visited all the area homesteads. And it was on March 28, 1873, when York arrived at the Bender's Inn with Mr. Johnson, explaining that his brother had gone missing and was asking if they had seen him. They admitted Dr. York had stayed with them and suggested the possibility that he had run into some trouble with the Indians. Colonel York agreed that that was possible, and he did eat dinner with the Benders, which is brave. On April 3rd, Colonel York returned to the inn, the Bender's house, with armed men after learning that a woman, i.e. Julia, had fled their house after, oh, maybe this was a different woman. I'm sorry, a different woman had fled their house. Sorry, after all these women are just fleeing their house and everyone just keeps going at that. They're German, they're weird. They're like, they're just they're just weird. They're from Pennsylvania, they're kind of weird. Yeah. So I feel like what? So yeah, so this lady is saying that Elvira, Mob Bender, had threatened her with knives. Elvira allegedly could not understand English. She was like, no, what? No. While the younger vendors were like, that didn't happen. LOL, you know. And yeah, we shot at her. That's not true. We don't deal with knives. So when York repeated the claim, he was like, That's weird, because I just heard this. Ma vender became enraged, saying that the woman was a witch who had cursed her coffee.

SPEAKER_01 40:33

People take their coffee seriously. I guess so. So I don't get it, but I know that some people take their coffee seriously.

SPEAKER_00 40:40

Ma Elvira does, yeah. So, and she ordered the men to leave arouse. She was like, You get the fuck out of here. That woman was a witch, and revealing for the first time that her sense of the English language was much better than she had ever let on. So everyone's like, Oh, she can speak English. Like, we just heard her yell it a lot. So um, before York left, though, Kate asked him to return alone that following Friday night and that she would use her medium abilities to help him find his brother. The men with York were convinced that the Benders and a neighboring family, the Roaches, were guilty and wanted to hang them all right there. But York, again, he is. This seems like when politicians were maybe better dudes. Um, York is like, we're not gonna hang them. We don't have any evidence. We have to find evidence. I don't think they did it. I think they're weird, they think they're German, but I don't think that did I I just want to say that's a joke. Uh I've been to Germany, freaking love it. Just kidding, everybody.

SPEAKER_01 41:36

So but around that, so it kind of tracks.

SPEAKER_00 41:39

What's that?

SPEAKER_01 41:40

But also Nazis, so it kind of tracks.

SPEAKER_00 41:43

I mean, there's, you know, there's points for both sides. So around that time, neighboring communities began to make accusations that the Osage community was responsible for these disappearances. Um, people are like, hey, there's uh for other communities were like, hey, there's a lot of people going missing in your area, and you're not doing shit all about it. So, in you know, response to this, the Osage Township arranged a meeting at the Harmony Grove Schoolhouse. 75 locals attended the meeting, including Colonel York and both John Bender and John Gephardt. So the Benders show up. They're like, oh no, somebody's murdering people. We had never heard about it. We are frightened, just as you. Also. So after discussing the disappearances, including that of William York, they agreed to obtain a warrant to search every homestead between Big Hill Creep and Drum Creep. I know. Yeah. And there's, it seems like sometimes they really lean into the Vigilante law, and other times they're like, no, no, no, no, we gotta do it by the book. So I've seen a couple different things in this where I'm like, okay, we're just making it up as we go, I think. Yeah. So um, yeah, so there's they get a warrant to search every homestead between Big Hill Creek and Drum Creek. And Drum Creek is where quite a f at least three, I think, murder victims were found. So the Benders fall into this. So despite York's strong suspicions regarding the Benders since his visit several weeks earlier, no one had like watched them. And it was not noticed for several days that the Benders had got the fuck out of there. They left. So they go to this meeting, they're like, so we went to the town hall meeting, and that paired with like the colonel coming here. We think they might be on to us. Also, they have warts. So three days after the township meeting, Billy Toll was driving cattle past the Bender property, and he noticed that the inn was abandoned and the farm animals were unfed, like one of the cows. Apparently, she had had her calf during this time period and the calf died. And so he's like, I could smell the smell coming from their stables from the road. So he goes back, he reports it to the township trustee, which is Leroy Dick. But due to some bad weather, I mean, I think this was December, it was a couple days before everything could be investigated out there at the Bender Cabin. So the township trustee called for volunteers, and several hundred people turned up to form a search party that included Colonel Andrew York. He's still looking for his brother, and Ed York comes along too. So both of the brothers are there. When the party arrived at the bender cabin, they found it empty of food, clothing, possessions, the wagons gone, um, and a bad odor was noticed and traced to a trapdoor underneath a bed that had been nailed shut. So after opening the trapdoor, the party found clotted blood on the floor of an empty room underneath. But when they finally like got down there and dug up, and I guess these like old men who would be like, You guys are such wossies to the young kids that were down there like digging, and they would be throwing up. The old men are like, let me down there, I can do it. And I guess the old guys would get down there and be like, immediately. Yeah, it was pretty gross down there. It was so gross, but no bodies were found. So they're like, What in the hell? So they're increasingly baffled about where the bodies could be, and all involved felt they had to be there with the amount of missing men and blood-soaked earth. Like, there's some pretty good markers that a lot of blood was shed here. Where are the bodies? So, as one man in the search party like gazed over the apple orchard behind the house, he noticed some disturbed earth back there. And when he pointed this out to some other people, they all kind of gathered around and the men started probing the earth with a metal rod. And when it hit something that felt very different from dirt, and they pulled the metal rod out, and a horrible smell came out of the hole, they began digging. And yeah, Dr. William York had been found. As searchers found out through the orchard, multiple graves were found, including that Well, thank God.

SPEAKER_01 46:22

I'm not gonna lie. There were no bodies downstairs in the cellar. Right.

SPEAKER_00 46:33

I'm actually surprised they did it. It's I mean, yeah, so oh I did, I thought it was like absolutely disgusting like that. No, yeah. So one of the graves was that of George Longcore. His little angel daughter laid at his feet. Yeah, and this is rough. I can't really wish you wouldn't kill an adult, but I mean seriously, yeah, and if she's 18 months old, like my god, so Marianne, this is rough. Marianne had no signs of injury, so it has long been believed that the Benders either suffocated her or buried her alive. Yeah, I hope these guys are in the hottest chamber of hell. Like, fuck you guys. So when all the digging was done, they found eight men, one woman, and the baby, all but Marianne had died of smashing blows to the head or their cut or the throats cut, or both. Like it it seems like one was like an insurance thing. So, and it looked like that they these blows to the head had been done by a hammer. Well, during the search of the bender cabin, three hammers were found, and they are still in like um, I think Deputy Sheriff Leroy Dick had them until he passed away, and then his son took them to one of the museums in Kansas and was like, I think these are the murder weapons, and so they are on display. But there's a lot of pictures of these hammers. Everyone was like, Oh my god, what museum is that? Jesus. I know. I was like, Jesus, popping off in Kansas. So one by one, the bodies were identified, then and then some were later. The citizens of the county were incense and horrified. And that stance soon filtered out throughout America as news to of the bloody benders spread. So across America, people were just freaking out about this. Everyone wanted Justin for the known and unknown victims, but there was one problem. No one knew where the benders were, and this is the aggravating part of the story. The benders would never be found. Ever. What no one knows what happened to them.

SPEAKER_01 48:48

I hope that they went to go to someone's house and they got murdered themselves.

SPEAKER_00 48:52

My god, wouldn't that be just beautiful? Oh, that would be karmi Oh so nice. Yeah. So there was, they were able to track them for a little bit, especially immediately after they figured out that they had gone to I want to say it's Denison, Texas. Like there were reports this is really gross. Um, Ma and Pa bender were easy to track because one of their trunks, apparently, like animal covered trunks, you know, animal skin covered trucks were very popular in early years. They had kind of gone out of style. Well, Ma and Pa were still traveling with a fur-covered trunk, and the fur is from a dog. So, yeah, they were very like people were like, uh, I know exactly what fucking truck you're talking about. Because people at these train stations would be like calling them out, like people would be like, What the hell? So they were really easy to track. And mom and pa went one way, and Kate and John Gebhart went out another way. And then after like two weeks, when they weren't found out, mom and pa came and joined them in Texas. And from Texas, they were able to be tracked that they um joined an outlaw gang that roamed the Texas panhandle and into the new no New Mexico territory for a while after their escape from Kansas. The outlaw gang killed them. I and that's that's my theory. Like, they either got into the wrong group with these people, a lot of people in this outlaw gang, I will say, this doesn't help my theory, but a lot of people knew where the benders were in this outlaw gang. Like the leader knew, oh yeah, they're just back at camp. But these people would come in that were searching, these like bounty hunters that were searching for the benders. And these outlaw gangs, they'd be like, if you show us where they're at, we'll, you know, we'll take your charges off of other things that they had pending. And they'd be like, Oh yeah, I'll help you find them. And then they'd like lead them out. Yeah, yeah. They're like, these outlaws would just lead these bounty hunters like out into the desert and they'd be like, shoot, they must have left. That happened like two or three times. People were like, ah, and then other people would really track down where they were, but they're with this outlaw gang that they would write to these forts, the military forts, and be like, hey, I need military backing, or else we can't take down these benders and all the people that are with them. You know, I don't think benders are the real issue. It's all the people they're surrounding. And the military was like, No, we're not gonna do that. And so they just kind of, you know, as people are trying to, for I think about three years after all of this, people know where they are, they're trying to get them captured, but no one would help them, uh particularly the military. And so once, you know, this kind of dies out and they are gone. The trail goes completely cold and no one knows what happened to them. So for decades afterwards, efforts were made to explain what happened to them. Several persons broke into the news from time to time. They'd claim to be the benders or charging others that they were the benders, like it would crop up every so often, and it was always a big thing in the papers because it was a pretty sensational, you know, story. And so it always got readers. And um, then came the most plausible of such reports that led to an actual arrest in the autumn of 1889 of Miss Almira Griffith and her daughter, Miss Sarah Eliza Davis, in Michigan. So this lady who lived in Michigan, she was she was referred to as an eccentric. She was really weird, I guess. And uh she hired the Sarah Davis.

SPEAKER_01 52:37

Was she really weird, or was she just German?

SPEAKER_00 52:40

I don't think she was. That's a good question, though. That's a good question.

SPEAKER_01 52:48

Oh, they're German. It's fine.

SPEAKER_00 52:49

They're just her, it's fine, they're just different. So this lady hires Sarah Davis as like a a you know, a housekeeper. And immediately she's like, Sarah's kind of weird, and she's also a bitch. And I think she's Kate Bender. Like, I don't know how she made that leap really. She did come up with some story that Sarah was really sick one day, and she told her, like, hey, we killed your parents because I'm Kate Bender, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, then Sarah kind of comes out of her sickness and she's like, I have no idea what you're talking about. And she quit her job working for this lady. Well, this lady's like, I'm going to the authorities. And she must have convinced them enough because they, you know, police came calling in Michigan, interviewing the two women. And some people said that they bore a striking resemblance to Mob Ender and Kate. And when they were first interviewed by police in Michigan, the mother and daughter, who had never gotten along, apparently they were always at each other's throats, immediately turned on each other. And the mother accused the daughter of being Kate and that she did all the murdering. And then the daughter accused the mother of being mob bender and she did all the murdering. So these two women are like, okay, yeah, we are, but I didn't do it. And due to this, the women were hauled very quickly to Kansas and they were put on trial in Labette County for the murder of Dr. York. So by now that they're in Kansas, they're all like, oh fuck, like things are a little bit more um serious than we thought. They had changed their stories and said neither was of bender origin, and they had lied because, you know, these women were poor and they had feared that just the accusation of being a bender would land them a life sentence or death. So that's why they were, and also they didn't get along. So they were like, Yeah. And I was like, I guess I haven't been in that position, so I can't judge. But yeah, so yeah. But thankfully, and and there was a ton of witnesses. I mean, they tried them where the benders lived. So there were people that were able to come on the stand and be like, that isn't them. Like, oh my God, you know. So, but for every person who was like, that's not them, there was another person being like, Yeah, that's them. So eventually, their very able defense counsel, John T. James, he even went back to Michigan. He had gone all the places these women had lived, and he got affidavits for people. And he was able to bring that back to the court and convince everyone that this is a case of mistaken identity, and all charges were dropped. So these women were nowhere near, you know, Kansas during this time. Whatever they had said initially, they're cleared, and they both ran as quickly as they fucking could back to Michigan. They were like, get me out of Kansas. So uh so yeah, the story of the bloody benders is a crazy one and unnerving, as there is no answer to what happened to them or any justice to the victim. Yeah. And they, you know, these victims they died as they sat at the bender table eating their meals until one of the benders would throw back that canvas sheet and bash them over the head. And then they'd rob them and they'd bury them in the orchard. So that was their whole thing. I to think about some of the money they got off of these people. That's why there's some big gaps in these murders or that we know about. And I'm like, now why did they just sometimes, but I think it was whenever the money ran out, and for all of them to be in on it, like it's just insane. So and I think because it's unsolved and because there just wasn't justice, like it's still a popular topic, and it's 154 years later.

SPEAKER_01 56:27

So um, yeah, it's that was a crazy that that was that's like I don't know, like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, and 101 Dalmati is like all rolled into one. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 56:41

Oh my god, yeah, there's so many things. I'm just like, oh so, and you know, I had like heard of this story kind of, I don't know if I've listened to, but when I read the book on it, I was like, wow, there's a lot going on here. Like I had no idea some of the shit. I was like, I I thought they just like liked killing, like I didn't realize that they were doing it. They were making a good deal of money, you know, just not even just the money, but the items that they were stealing from people. And and what a good place to do that, the middle of fucking nowhere, Kansas. So yeah, so that is the story of Hell's Half Acre and how the Bloody Benders became America's first family of serial killers that I'm aware of. I don't know. You'll probably know. There's I was like pretty sure. So that's crazy. Yeah, very crazy. So yeah, thanks for hanging on for that one. And thank you so much for listening to Storyteller. Tell your friends and join us on Instagram at storyteller.pod, TikTok at Storyteller Pod, Facebook at Storyteller Podcasts, and be sure to like, follow, comment, and download the podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you so much for listening.

SPEAKER_01 57:55

Thank you.