Berdella was apprehended on April 4, 1988, after a victim he had been torturing for a week jumped naked from the second story of his house and escaped. By the time, he had abducted and tortured at least six young men, and the Kansas City Police Department suspected him in two other disappearances. Berdella had detailed torture logs and large numbers of Polaroid pictures he had taken of his victims. Volumes of pictures were recovered by the Kansas City Police Department, and remain in their possession. He claimed that he was trying to “help” some of his victims by giving them antibiotics after torturing them. He tried to gouge one of his victim’s eyes out “to see what would happen”. He buried one victim’s skull in his backyard, and put the dismembdered bodies out for the weekly trash pickup. The bodies were never recovered but left in the landfill.
A few months before the arrest was made, Berdella was offered a ride home from a bar by people who noticed he was too intoxicated to drive. On the way back, Berdella allegedly told stories about young men he’d had abducted and tortured in the previous months. It was not taken seriously at that time considering his advanced state of intoxication.
Berdella was enrolled in the Kansas City Art Institute from 1967 to 1969. During this time he was convicted but received a suspended sentence for selling amphetamines. He was later arrested for possession of LSD and marijuana, but the charges were dropped for lack of evidence. In 1969 he bouoght the house at 4315 Charlotte, which would be the scene of the crimes. He worked as a chef and eventually opened Bob’s Bizarre Bazaar, a novelty shop that catered to occult-type tastes.
The CHERRYVALE Bender Museum
The Cherryvale Bender Museum opened in May 1961. The museum building was an authentic reconstruction of the clapboard Bender homestead located along the bleak, isolated countryside of the Osage Mission trail during 1871-1873. The museum was located 2-blocks from US Highway 169 in Cherryvale seven miles southwest from the original 1871 Bender southeast Kansas frontier “store and inn”. The following black and white pictures are from the promotional postcards that were sold to help preserve and maintain the museum.
Kate Bender placed posters like this throughout the county advertising cures for “all sorts of Diseases, Blindness, Fits, Deafness, and all such Diseases. Also Deaf and Dumbness”. This circular is dated June 18, 1872.
When a lone traveler approached the house, buxom Kate would station herself at the roadside in front of the inn and as the unsuspecting individual drew nigh she would accost him pleasantly. She would inquire in her friendly manner where he was going. If it was near evening, she would assure him that it would be impossible for him to reach his destination before nightfall and propose that he should remain over night with them. Most travelers graciously accepted the hospitable. Cherryvale’s most infamous and least desirable early-day residents were careful to select only travelers who had no relations in or connection with any southeast Kansas families for their beastly crimes. As most of the travelers were going to a new and far-away country to settle, it was an easy matter to cover their disappearance. Mails and other communications at that time were uncertain and infrequent. The Bender family lived for a time, undisturbed and with apparent placidity, in the ghastly setting they had created, and surrounded by the decaying bodies of their victims. But the butchering clan used extremely bad judgment with the disappearance of a widely-known, Independence physician named Dr. William York.
After the family had disappeared, the above knife was found stored inside a clock at the Bender Inn kitchen and sleeping area.
Three of the Bloody Bender’s hammers use to claim their victim’s life are on display behind bullet-proof glass in the Cherryvale Museum. One of the hammers is a 6-poung collier’s hammer, another an Alaskan shoe hammer and the third a common small hammer. The weapons are the only remaining artifacts publicly displayed from the inside of the Bender homestead. LeRoy Dick, fearing the excitement of so many irresponsible spectators prowling about, and to avoid the loss of valuable evidence, officially took charge at the Bender murdering farm, ordered nothing be removed from inside the inn, and personally supervised the search within the shack that followed. He removed several items including the three hammers to his home, to be held until called for by the legal authorities. In a notarized document dated April 25, 1967, Cornelius P. Dick stated “These items were never called for. Thus these hammers came into the possession of the Dick family. Since that time, these hammers have never left the possession of our family. I well remember seeing them about our place frequently. I occasionally used them for the purpose of cracking hickory nuts. At one time my father took them to the state Historical Society at Topeka with the intention of presenting them to the Society, but owing to some of the formalities connected with the transfer, my father felt that he was being imposed upon, and brought the hammers back with him to his home. After my father’s death in April, 1939, after full discussion with family members and heirs, it was agreed these hammers should be presented to the Cherryvale Museum, and I was to see that this was done.”
The following day after finding Dr. York’s shallow grave, people from all over the region gathered at the Bender property as a search for more bodies was in progress. Julius Pleetz, an Independence photographer, reveals the large crowd of on-lookers who came to the lonely Bender Inn northeast of Cherryvale to witness the scene of the brutal crimes committed by the now known Bender family. The photo shows several men wearing Civil War-era hats, which was appropriate at that time. The photographer took the liberty to enhance some of the graves and background with an ink etching. The Bender Inn is visible in background at far left with the tiny barn to the right of the inn.
On May 7, 1873, a search party descended onto the Bender’s deserted homestead with spades, shovels and plows. After the cabin was lifted and moved aside, a search was made under the house, but nothing was found. The search was about to be called off when Dr. William York’s brother, Colonel Ed York, from his buggy noticed the outline of a body’s depression in the small orchard. Digging began and tragically Dr. York’s body was found buried, head downward, feet scarcely covered. His skull had been smashed from behind with a hammer and his throat had been cut. Harper’s Weekly, June 7, 1873, published the above sketch made from one of the photographs by Mr. Gamble of Parsons.
For several road-weary travelers the Bender Inn was the end of the road.
This 1873 photograph shows the infamous Bender Inn the day after the grave digging began. Local residents pose in front of the tiny inn where souvenir hunters have already started to remove wood siding on all four sides. The inn served as a general store and a wayside inn during the winter of 1871 to the spring of 1873. The Benders provided travelers with provisions, a meal to eat, a place to sleep–and a place to die. Measuring 16 feet by 24 feet, it was not large or fancy, not for a grocery store and an inn. The only paint on the structure was a crude sign over the front door simply stating “GROCERIES.” At the time of this photograph, the crude sign has already become a souvenir. The inn faced the Osage Mission-Fort Scott Road. In early May, 1873, the Bender family quickly fled from their homestead leaving behind ten, to be discovered, graves. News soon spread about the “Bloody Benders” deadly deeds. Soon hundreds of sight-seers and curious relic-seekers flocked to the farm carrying away every last remnant of the building, taking the stones that lined the cellar walls and even chopping the corral fence into splinters for souvenirs. By 1886, the Inn was reduced to nothing more than an empty hole that had once been the cellar.