With the exception of McKenzie, York and the Lonchers who were buried in Independence, none of the other bodies were claimed and they were reburied at the base of a mound 1 mi (1.6 km) south-east of the Benders orchard.
The search of the cabin resulted in the recovery of three hammers that had been used as murder weapons. These hammers were given to the Bender museum in 1967 by the son of LeRoy Dick, the Osage Township Trustee who headed the search of the Bender property. The hammers were displayed at the Bender Museum in Cherryvale, Kansas from 1967 to 1978 when the site was acquired for a fire station. When attempts were made to relocate the museum it became a point of controversy with locals objecting to the town being known for the Bender murders. The Bender artifacts were eventually given to the Cherryvale Museum.
Detectives following wagon tracks discovered the Benders’ wagon, abandoned with a starving team of horses with one of the mares lame, just outside the city limits of Thayer, 12 mi (19 km) north of the inn. It was confirmed that in Thayer the family bought tickets on the Leavenworth, Lawrence & Galveston Railroad for Humboldt. At Chanute, John Jr. and Kate left the train and caught the MK&T train south to the terminus in Red River County near Dennison, Texas. From there they traveled to an outlaw colony thought to be in the border region between Texas and New Mexico. They were not pursued as lawmen following outlaws into this region often never returned. One detective did claim later that he had traced the pair to the border where he had found that John Jr. had died of apoplexy. Ma and Pa Bender did not leave the train at Humboldt, but instead continued north to Kansas City where it is believed they purchased tickets for St. Louis, Missour.
Several groups of vigilantes were formed to search for the Benders. Many stories say that one vigilante group actually caught the Benders and shot all of them but Kate, whom they burned alive. Another group claimed they had caught the Benders and lynched them before throwing their bodies into the Verdigris River. Yet another claimed to have killed the Benders during a gunfight and buried their bodies on the prairie. However, no one ever claimed the $3,000 (2009: $53,000) reward.
The story of their escape spread, and the search continued on and off for the next fifty years. Often, groups of two traveling women were accused of being Kate Bender and her mother.
In 1884, it was reported that John Flickinger had committed suicide in Lake Michigan. Also in 1884 an elderly man matching Pa Benders description was arrested in Montana for a murder where the victim had been killed by a hammer blow to the head committed near Salmon, Idaho. A message requesting positive identification was sent to Cherryvale but the suspect severed his foot to escape his leg irons and bled to death. By the time a deputy from Cherryvale arrived, identification was impossible due to decomposition. Despite the lack of identification, the man’s skull was displayed as that of “Pa Bender” in a Salmon saloon until prohibition forced its closure in 1920 and the skull disappeared.
On October 31, 1889 it was reported that a Mrs Almira Monroe and Mrs Sarah Eliza Davis had been arrested in Niles, Michigan (often misreported as Detroit) several weeks earlier for larceny. They were released after being found not guilty but were then immediately re-arrested for the Bender murders. According to the Pittsburgh Dispatch, the daughter of one of the Benders victims Mrs Frances E. McCaun, had reported the pair to authorities in early October after tracking them down. Their identities were later confirmed by two Osage township witnesses from a tintype photograph. In mid October, Deputy Sherriff LeRoy Dick, the Osage Township Trustee who had headed the search of the Bender property, arrived in Michigan and arrested the couple on October 30 following their release on the larceny charges. Mrs Monroe resisted, declaring that she would not be taken alive but was subdued by local deputies. Mrs Davis admitted that Mrs Monroe was Ma Bender but claimed that she herself was not Kate but her sister Sarah, she later signed an affidavit to that effect while Monroe continued to deny the identification. Deputy Sherriff Dick, along with Mrs McCaun, escorted the pair to Oswego, Kansas where seven members of a 13 member panel confirmed the identification and committed them for trial. Originally scheduled for February 1890, the trial was held over to May and the county subsequently dropped the charges and released both after their attorney produced a marriage certificate indicating that Mrs Davis had been married in Michigan in 1872, the time when several of the murders were committed. A number of researchers question the ready acceptance of the certificates authenticity and suggest that the county was unwilling to accept the expense of boarding the two women for an extended period.
In the winter of 1872, following the funeral of his wife, George Loncher and his daughter left Independence to resettle in Iowa, but were never seen again. In the spring of 1873, a neighbor, Dr William York went looking for them, questioning homesteads along the trail. He reached Fort Scott and on March 9 began the return journey to Independence but never arrived home. Dr York had two brothers, Colonel Ed York living in Fort Scott, and Kansas State Senator Alexander M. York who lived in Independence. State Senator Alexander M. York had been instrumental (in November 1872) in exposing United States Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy of corruption in seeking re-election by bribing state legisilators (who then elected U. S. Senators) for their votes. Both knew of his travel plans and when he failed to return home an all out search began for the missing doctor. Colonel York, leading a company of some 50 men, questioned every traveler along the trail and visited all the area homesteads. On March 28, 1873, Colonel York arrived at the Bender inn with a Mr Johnson, explaining to the Benders that his brother had gone missing and asked if they had seen him. They admitted Dr York had stayed with them and suggested the possibility that he had run into trouble with Native Americans after leaving. Colonel York agreed that this was possible and remained for dinner. On April 3, Colonel York returned to the inn with armed men after being informed that a woman had fled from the inn after being threatened with knives by Ma Bender. Ma allegedly could not understand English while the younger Benders denied the claim. When York repeated the claim, Ma became enraged and said the woman was a witch who had cursed her coffee and ordered the men to leave her house, revealing for the first time that “her sense of the English language” was much better than had been thought. Before York left Kate asked him to return alone the following Friday night and she would use her clairvoyant abilities to help him find his brother. The men with York were convinced the Benders, and a neighboring family the Roaches, were guilty and wanted to hang them all but York insisted that evidence must be found.
Around the same time, neighboring communities began to make accusations that the Osage community was responsible for the disappearances and a meeting was arranged by the Osage township in the Harmony Grove schoolhouse. The meeting was attended by 75 locals, including Colonel York and both Pa and John Bender. After discussing the disappearances including that of William York who was a prominent doctor for whom a search had recently been completed, it was agreed that a search warrant would be obtained to search every homestead between Big Hill Creek and Drum Creek. Despite York’s strong suspicions regarding the Benders since his visit several weeks earlier, no one had watched them and it was not noticed for several days that they had fled.
Three days after the township meeting, Billy Tole was driving cattle past the Bender property when he noticed that the Inn was abandoned and the farm animals were unfed. Tole reported the fact to the Township Trustee, but due to bad weather it was several days before the abandonment could be investigated. The Township Trustee called for volunteers and several hundred turned out to form a search party that included Dr York’s brother, Colonel York. When the party arrived at the Bender inn they found the cabin empty of food, clothing and personal possessions. A bad odor was noticed and traced to a trap door underneath a bed, nailed shut. After opening the trap, the empty room beneath, 6 feet (1.8 m) deep and 7 feet (2.1 m) square at the top by 3 feet (0.91 m) square at the bottom, was found to have clotted blood on the floor. The stone slab floor was broken up with sledgehammers but no bodies were found and it was determined that the smell was from blood that had soaked into the soil. The men then physically lifted the cabin and moved it to the side so they could dig under it but no bodies were found. They then began to probe the ground around the cabin with a metal rod, especially in the disturbed soil of the vegetable garden and orchard where the first body was found later that evening, that of Dr York, buried face downwards with his feet barely below the surface. The probing continued until midnight with another nine suspected grave sites marked before the men were satisfied they had found them all and retired for the night. Digging resumed the following morning with another eight bodies being found in seven of the nine suspected graves while another was found in the well, along with a number of body parts. All but one had had their heads bashed with a hammer and their throats cut, and it was reported in newspapers that all had been “indecently mutilated.” The body of a young girl was found with no injuries sufficient to cause death and it was speculated that she had been strangled or buried alive. A Kansas newspaper reported that the crowd was so incensed after finding the bodies, that a friend of the Benders named Brockman, who was among the onlookers, was hung from a beam in the Bender inn until unconscious, revived and interrogated as to what he knew then hung again. After the third hanging, they released him and he staggered home “as one who was drunken or deranged.” A Catholic prayer book was found in the house with notes inside written in German, which were later translated. The text read “Johannah Bender. Born July 30, 1848” and “John Gebhardt came to America on July 1 18xx.”
Word of the murders spread quickly and more than 3,000 people, including reporters from as far away as New York and Chicago visited the site. The Bender cabin was destroyed by souvenir hunters who took everything, including the bricks that lined the cellar and the stones lining the well.
One of Dr York’s brothers, Kansas Senator Alexander York, offered a $1,000 reward for the Bender family’s arrest. On May 17, Governor Thomas A. Osborn offered a $2,000 reward for the apprehension of all four.
Several weeks after the discovery of the bodies, Addison Roach and his son in law William Buxton were arrested as accessories. In total 12 men “of bad repute in general” would be arrested including Brockman. All had been involved in disposing of the victims’ stolen goods with Mit Cherry, a member of the vigilance committee, implicated for forging a letter from one of the victims, informing the man’s wife that he had arrived safely at his destination in Illinois. Brockman would be arrested again 23 years later, for the rape and murder of his 18 year old daughter.
It was speculated that if a guest appeared to be wealthy, the Benders would give him a seat of honor at the table which was positioned over a trap door that led down into the cellar, with his back to the curtain. Kate would distract the guest, while John Bender or his son would come from behind the curtain and strike the guest on the right hand side of the skull with a hammer. The victim’s throat was then cut by one of the women to ensure his death. The body was then dropped through the trap door. Once in the cellar, the body would be stripped and later buried somewhere on the property, often in the orchard. More than a dozen bullet holes were found in the roof and sides of the room and the media speculated that some of the victims had attempted to fight back after being hit with the hammer.
In May 1871, the body of a man named Jones, who had had his skull crusted and his throat cut, was discovered in Drum Creek. The owner of the Drum Creek claim was suspected by no action was taken. In February 1872, the bodies of two men were found who had the same injuries as Jones. By 1873, reports of missing people who had passed through the area had became so common that travelers began to avoid the trail. The area was already widely known for horse thieves and “villains” and vigilance committees often “arrested” some for the disappearances, only for them to be later released by the authorities. Many “honest” men under suspicion were also run out of the country by these committees.
Following the American Civil War, the United States government moved the Osage Indians from Labette County to a new Indian Territory located in what would eventually be Oklahoma. The “vacant” land was then made available to homesteaders. In October 1870, five families of spiritualists settled in western Labette County, around 7 mi northeast of where Cherryvale would be established seven months later and 17 mi from Independence. One of the families was John Bender Sr. and John Bender Jr. who registered 160 acres of land located adjacent the Great Osage Trail, which was the only open road fro travelling further west. After building a cabin, a barn with corral and a well, in the fall of 1871, Kate (Ma) Bender and her daughter Kate arrived and the cabin was divided into two rooms by a canvas wagon-cover. The Benders used the smaller room at the rear for living quarters, while the front room was converted into a “general store” and inn. Ma and Kate Bender also planted a 2 acres vegetable garden and apple tree orchard north of the cabin.
John (Pa) Bender Sr. was around sixty years old and spoke very little English. When he did speak it, it was so guttural that it was usually unintelligible. Ma Bender, who also allegedly spoke very little English, was 42 years of age and was so unfriendsly that her neighbors took to calling her a “she-devil”. Shortly before the Benders fled, it was discovered that Ma spoke English fluently. John Bender Jr. was around 25 years old, handsome with auburn hair and moustache and spoke English fluently, but with a German accent. John was prone to laughing aimlessly, which led many to consider him a half-wit. Kate Bender, who was around 23, was cultivated and attractive and she spoke English well with very little accent. A self-proclaimed healer and psychic, she distributed flyers advertising her supernatural powers and her ability to cure illnesses. he also conducted seances and gave lectures on spirtualism, for which she gained notoriety for advocating free love. Kate’s popularity became a large attraction for the Benders’ inn. Although the elder Benders kept to themselves, Kate and her brother regularly attended Sunday school in nearby Harmony Grove.
The Benders were widely believed to be German immigrants; only the male Benders, however, were born overseas and they were not actually a family. Pa Bender was from either Germany or Holland and had been born John Flickinger. Ma Bender was born Almira Meik in the Adirondack Mountains and had married George Griffith, with whom she had 12 children. Ma allegedly married several times, each time following the death of her previous husband from head injuries. Kate was the fifth child of Ma Bender and was born as Eliza Griffith. Following her marriage, Eliza went by the name of Sara Eliza Davis. It is believed that John Jr. was born John Gebhardt. Some of the Benders’ neighbors claimed that John and Kate were not brother and sister, but actually husband and wife.
With a much more striking personality than other members of the Bender family, Kate, about twenty, was the inspiration of the crimes, the tireless one, the killer! She was the one who took the butcher knife and sliced their victim’s throat from ear to ear.
Kate was about 5 feet 6, slender and buxom. She held herself proudly erect, head high. She had flashing, alert deep hazel eyes. Her hair was her crowning glory. It was a deep auburn, coppery in the shadows, flashing red-gold, glinting in the sunlight, a sleek, silken crest. Her lips were red, very red and pouting. It was a mouth to disturb the dreams of the young men who saw her. The men of her time, chary of description and cautious of praise, called her “a mighty good looker”. Others often described her as “Beautiful, voluptuous with tigerish grace” or “strikingly beautiful, but satanic”. She had a great desire for notoriety, longed to become a great lecturer, and she possessed an insatiable craving to gain wealth, money and position. With her, any means justified the end to fulfill this desire.
Kate was the only family member to cultivate social skills. She spoke good English, her slight German accent only added charm to her speech. She was affable and glib in talking with any stranger who took her fancy. She laughed a great deal, she moved quickly, a vivid and colorful addition to the community.She occasionally attended a little church, sang, and knelt to pray with the congregation of hard-working, sober, tired men and women. Doubtless to say she stopped in the little entry to laugh and flirt, with the sunlight falling through the dusty window on her flaming hair. Kate often attended “meetin’s” at the Harmony Grove Schoolhouse (later renamed Carpenter School), attended the Christmas exercises there, and took singing lessons held by Leroy F. Dick. Mr. Dick, the Township Trustee, lived 4-miles southeast of the Benders and saw all of the family members at their house several times and knew them well. She as an excellent horseback rider and she danced well.
Young Kate worked for a spell as a waitress at a hotel in the newly incorporated Cherryvale, but soon realized it was more profitable to give lectures on spiritualism and to conduct séances.In her lectures she boldly advocated free love and pleaded justification for murder. She often distributed advertising circulars throughout the counties proclaiming her abilities. She soon gained notoriety as a self-proclaimed magnetic healer and spiritualist. Many stated she had supernatural powers of one kind or another, being able to not only cure diseases and maladies, but locate lost articles. She understood astrology and numerology, read palms, told fortunes by means of sticks-and-buttons, and work spells against evil women, all for a generous donation. She also sold infallible luck charms and love-potions. It is difficult to believe this beautiful and talented young woman, instead of using her love charms, used her knife.
She was the fifth child of Almira Griffith (Ma Bender) named Eliza, became alias “Kate”, and upon a later marriage, Sara Eliza Davis.
John Bender, Jr., perhaps twenty-five, was tall and slim, with a ruddy complexion and auburn-haired. He was rather handsome in an awkward, country-boy style. His eyes, gray with a brownish tint, were set close together, and so wide-opened as to give the effect of a stare. Young John wore a moustache with no whiskers. He acted like any other country boy, but had a habit of laughing aimlessly at almost everything he said. Many described his mannerisms as that of a half-wit, mannerisms which may have been a disguise for a most clever nature. He spoke English fluently with a strong German accent. He watched and listened constantly.
Like Kate, young John was more inclined to sociability than either of the elder Benders. The two younger Benders sometimes attended a local Sunday school at nearby Harmony Grove and became accepted in the community. It is believe that John Bender, Jr. became part of the family because of Kate. He and his alledged “sister Kate”, had an on going relationship. Whenever she had a baby, they just knock it in the head. One bizarre murder just seemed to lead to another murder as the group became known as the Kansas “Bloody Benders.”
Hon. William Wright and S.S. Peterson, deputy United States marshals, two of the searching party, followed the Bender trail to Thayer after the gruesome discovery of the ten bodies. By dispatch or telegraph, they learned the young Benders had left the train at Humboldt, Kansas, a small town about 20-miles north on the M. K. & T. railway. That railroad ran south from Humboldt to Vinita, Indian Territory (Oklahoma). Some authorities believe that Kate and John, Jr. stole some horses in Cherokee Nation and then traveled on into the badlands of Texas or Mexico, where they joined up with the bands of desperados supplying them with essentials. This outlaw district had never been surveyed at that time to determine if it was situated in the United States or Mexico. There was also the question whether Mexico or the Texas Rangers had jurisdiction there. Later, one detective who followed this lead traced John, Jr. until he died of apoplexy in outlaw country.
While robbery was undoubtedly a motive, it is to be remembered that the Benders, true to their depraved creed, killed for the morbid gratification and excitement, to satisfy a blood-thirsty desire and for the joy of the evil deed.
His real name was John Gebhardt.
Mrs. John Bender, fifty-five, like her husband, was slow-moving, a stolid German folk with a decided accent. She was stooped and heavy set, so much so that she looked almost unhealthy. Ma Bender had iron gray hair, ragged at the ends and thin over the temples. Her heavy-lidded eyes were steel-gray (blue) and hard. The light that came from them was sinister and forbidding. She was very unfriendly with a vicious disposition. and her neighbors called her a she-devil. “If we thought Mr. Bender was an ugly cuss, she’s no improvement.” She was very healthy and her physical form seemed to lift itself up when the spiritual influences took possession of it. She become not only gigantic in height, but supernatural as well.
Like Kate, she was a spiritualist or medium. At times she dealt in incarnations and the boiling of herbs and roots that had charms and spells about them. Her will was indomitable. The men of the household feared her, dreaded her, obeyed her, and did the devil’s work for her, beyond all the atrocious devil’s work ever done in Kansas. She spoke broken English as well as German, but was not talkative.
Ma Bender, born Almira Meik in the Adirondaks, was actually Almira Griffith, who married George Griffith when she was barely a teen-ager and bore him a dozen children. George dropped dead one day when youngest was born. According to the records, he had “a bad place on his head”, like the dent of a hammer. Ma Bender had several husbands, is said to have murdered at least 3 of her older children so they could not testify against her about the deaths of her husbands..
The four Bender family sketches presented in this photo section are from Ma and Kate’s defense lawyer John Towner James’ 1913 book The Benders in Kansas. They are the only known source for true Bender likeness while they lived in southeast Kansas. The sketches lean toward the more genteel side of the Benders as Attorney James would like all to believe.
John Bender, Sr., or “Pa” or Old Man Bender as he was sometimes called, was sixty years of age. He had the frame of a giant, broad shoulders, gnarled hands set on powerful arms, big boned with an enormous strength. He would have stood over six feet in height, had it not been for his habitual stoop. Pa had a ruddy complexion, a heavy jaw, high cheek bones and a low forehead. His eyes were black and piercing, set deeply under huge bushy brows which earned him the nickname of “old beetle-browed John”. His sandy hair was rather long, and his face swarthly bearded. All accounts given of John Sr.’s appearance while he lived in the Cherryvale area compared him to a “gorilla” and talked about him being “a wild, woolly man” as shown in the above right tinplate print. The sketch above left shows John, Sr. as a respectable looking clean-shaven middle aged man. It is from Lawyer John T. James’ 1913 book he wrote after defending Ma and Kate in the 1889-1890 trail in Owsego, Kansas.
Old Man Bender had a sullen expression and “Never looked a feller in the eye.” He talked little when strangers were about and only spoke in German. Ocassionally he greeted locals along the Osage Trail. He understood English, but only spoke English with two or three vulgar expletives. He and his raw-boned wife, were thought to have been immigrants from Germany but they spoke with such guttural accents that no one could be certain.
John Flickinger, his real name, is the only Bender of the four whose end is certain. He supposely committed suicide in 1884 in Lake Michigan shortly after Ma and Kate caught up with him. Other accounts believe that Ma and/or Kate murdered him. It was rumored that he had fled Cherryvale with all the cash and valuables they had taken from their victims.
A family of serial killers who owned a small general store and inn in Osage township, Labette Country, Kansas from 1872 to 1873. The inn was a dingy place called the Wayside Inn. The alleged family consisted of John Bender, his wife Kate, son John Jr. and daughter Kate. While most people believe John and Kate were brother and sister, the two were know to have had a more intimate relationship and some people said that they claimed to be man and wife.