Bloody Benders

Family of serial killers who operated an inn in Labette County, Kansas, in the early 1870s. They killed over a dozen travelers who stopped for a meal or the night, robbing them and burying their bodies on their land. Their crimes were discovered when a widespread search was conducted in the area, ending at the Bender farm.

Since the formation of the union, nothing of so foul and revolting a nature has occurred as the murders committed by the Bender family, in Kansas… – June 6, 1873.

     
May 17, 1873, a proclamation was issued:

Whereas, several atrocious murders have been recently committed in Labette County, Kansas, under circumstances which fasten, beyond doubt, the commissions of these crimes upon a family known as the “Bender family” consisting of:

And, whereas, said persons are at large, and fugitives from justice. Now, therefore, I, Thomas A. Osborn, governor of the state of Kansas, in pursuance to law, do hereby offer a reward of five hundred dollars for the apprehension and delivery, to the sheriff of Labette county, Kansas, of each of the above persons named.

     
The reward was never collected.

Although not included in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s handwritten Pioneer Girl manuscript, Rose Wilder Lane included the story in the versions she typed and submitted to agents George Bye and Carl Brandt. After having Charles Ingalls tell the Bender story quite familiar to Little House fans and researchers, the manuscripts continue:

I was a woman grown before I ever spoke to Pa about the Benders. He used to listen when other men told about the roadhouse Kate Bender kept between Independence Kansas and Indian territory, and the travelers who were murdered there. The roadhouse was curtained across to make two rooms, and when a man sat eating, on a bench against the curtain, one of the Benders would come stealthily behind the curtain and kill him by a blow on the head with the blunt end of an ax. All that country was so far beyond the reach of postal service that no one was troubled when no word came back from men who went into it.

He only said, “We thought you were too little to understand.” As for what became of the Benders, he would not answer. He said, “Don’t worry. They’ll never find Kate Bender anywhere…” -manuscript submitted to George Bye, pages 10-11

     
The hunt for the Bender family was two years after the Ingallses had left Kansas and returned to Wisconsin, so is it even remotely possible that the family ever came in contact with them, or even knew about them? Turns out it’s possible. They may have encountered the family on the way into Indian Territory, not going out of it. The map shows the location of the Ingallses’ cabin in relation to the Bender farm. It’s hard to imagine Pa passing by the Benders on his way to Independence, or even if he went to Oswego, known to have better prices than Independence. But if the family read newspaper reports about the victims after they had return to Wisconsin, they may have identified their near neighbors in Montgomery County, George Longcor, his wife and son, and another neighbor, Dr. York. Longcor’s wife’s family–the Gilmours– also lived nearby. Longcor’s son died after the Ingallses were in the area, and his wife gave birth to a daughter in 1871, dying soon after. Longcor and the young daughter (often reported as being 8 years old, not 18 months old) were killed by the Benders, with young Mary Ann most likely having been buried alive. Dr. York went looking for Longcor and was also killed; his body was identified by his brother.

The Bender story is all over the internet and in newspaper stories (such as THIS ONE from a South Dakota paper in 1889). There are also numerous books and online articles about the crimes, and Laura included the Bender story in her Detroit book speech. Rose Wilder Lane apparently told a variation of the tale over and over; in May 1936, her short story, “The Dreadful House,” was published in Country Gentleman magazine. In this tale, the murdering family is the “Bendons.” Their house is beside a river, and murdered victims are often tossed through a trap door in the wall, to the water below. Rose’s friend, Norma Lee Browning, also wrote a similar short story which she tried to have published, but with no success. After Roger Lea MacBride also failed to find a publisher for one of Rose’s versions, he printed it in booklet form as FACES AT THE WINDOW. MacBride noted in the margin of a rejection letter from one publisher – who had stated that Rose Wilder Lane had not been a well known figure in American Literature so such a manuscript would have limited sales potential – “My God, who is this dimwit?” The tale can also be found in A LITTLE HOUSE SAMPLER (1988), edited by William T. Anderson.

It’s interesting to note that what Browning proposed was not merely the publication of Rose’s “Bender Story,” but an entire volume to be titled Rose Wilder Lane’s Spirit World, containing a dozen or more stories as told to Browning by Lane between 1937 and Rose’s death in 1968. These “spirit stories” would not offer any “scientific research, investigation, or confirmation of life after death,” but would be “ghost stories” as told by Rose and always received with “wide-eyed wonder” by her audience. According to Norma Lee, Rose didn’t believe in ghosts, and she was said to have always felt a little foolish telling the stories, which is why she never wrote them out for publication herself.

Even so, Rose used to consult her Ouija board about stories she was writing. In one letter to Norma Lee, Rose recounted how the Ouija board had even once written a poem for her, a poem which had been ordered by an editor of McCall’s magazine. Is this the poem?
     

“To the Unknown” – by Rose Wilder Lane

Where are you wandering? By what windy hollow
Did I miss your footprints in the morning dew?
Where have you gone that I may never follow
Down all the world’s bewildering ways to you?
All men but you are empty faces
All my life without you, empty hours.
There is no rest for me in quiet places,
There is no honey in the flowers.
Where are you wandering? Shall my seeking never
Disclose your unseen face, hidden and apart?
Still I must search for you, lonely forever,
Hearing your silent voice always in my heart.

From my old blog, dated September 8, 2008:

As we have the average morbid taste for reading about crime, we read Enter Murderers by Edward Hale Bierstadt, and found it satisfactory except for the omission of the Bender family… They are, on the whole, the most memorable of all American specialists in homicide, to our mind… May Lamberton Becker says they were too sordid; but it’s their technique that strikes our imagination… They used to induce their victims to sit down to dinner in a tent and then one of the Benders – there were a log of them, so the temporary absence of one was not noticed – went around outside the tent with a mallet… You can easily figure out the subsequent proceedings… – Oakland (California) Tribune, October 14, 1934

“Rose Wilder Lane writes to correct us on the habits of the celebrated Bender family… Someone else also gave us the facts, but we lost the letter.

“‘I beg your pardon,’ she says, ‘the Bender family did not commit their murders in a tent. Or at least did not earn their deserved reputation in that way. Kate Bender lived in an ordinary house of the times, midway between Independence, Kan., and my grandfather’s log cabin on the Verdigris in Indian Territory. My grandfather often stopped there, but though he had a good team, a wagon and (on the return trip) a load of supplies amply justifying his murder, he never could afford to buy a meal from the Benders, but frugally ate by his own campfire.

“‘The Bender house, completely conventional, had a canvas curtain across the middle dividing sleeping and living quarters. A bench stood against this curtain, and a table before the bench. Prosperous travelers who could afford to pay for Kate Bender’s good home cooking sat on the bench to eat it… My grandfather was one of the volunteer posse that pursued the fleeing Benders. Darkly, he said little about what happened… The ultimate fate of the Bender family is usually reported as shrouded in mystery… But there really was no tent. Kate Bender was the dominant force in that family, and was there ever a woman who could live in a tent if she could help it?'” – January 6, 1935

Rose finished working on her mother’s High Prairie manuscript in June 1934. Little House on the Prairie was released prior to the holiday season the following year.

From my pioneergirl Facebook page, dated September 5, 2023: (click image at right to open biggie view)

🔨 THE BLOODY BENDERS — Even though the Ingallses weren’t living in Kansas when the Bender atrocities were discovered and investigated, the Benders will always be a part of Wilder lore. At least three people who lived near the Ingallses’ cabin were among the victims, and Laura and Rose linked the Charles Ingalls family to the Bender story in newspaper articles, Laura’s Detroit Book Week speech, and by including the story in the Bye and Brandt versions of Pioneer Girl.

The Benders have been in the news the past year or so because the quarter section where the Benders lived in Labette County was purchased by someone interested in the history of the land and the Benders’ story (and fate). There’s been archaeological work done at the site and are at least two books in the works.

The landowner, Bob Miller, was interviewed on the “Wrong Kind of Podcast” a couple of weeks ago, and although a few things said are incorrect, it’s definitely worth a listen: CLICK HERE

This is over a year old, but “Faces of the Forgotten” visited the Bender site with the new owner, so if you haven’t been to the area or to the Cherryvale Museum (which has the Bender hammers and other artifacts), this is a great video: CLICK HERE

The Parsons Sun has some recent Bender news online: CLICK HERE

If you’re traveling to any of the upcoming LH events in the area, you might want to drive by the Bender site or call to see if the Cherryvale Museum can accommodate you:

Reminder: the former Bender land is privately owned. Please do not trespass; you can see it from the road just fine.

From my pioneergirl Facebook page, dated September 30, 2024: (click image at right to open biggie view)

This past weekend, I watched the live stream of the Kansas Bloody Benders forum held in Parsons, Kansas, and one thing bothered me. The current owner of the Bender site plus a couple of the other presenters kept talking about HOMESTEADS and the HOMESTEAD ACT OF 1862 and rules about HOMESTEADING in connection with the Benders and their neighbors – how Civil War veterans could subtract time served from their 5 year residency requirement for HOMESTEADS.

Yes, there were homesteads in Kansas, and yes, former Union soldiers could do that when filing under the Homestead Act (but former Confederate soldiers couldn’t file on homesteads at all). Nobody you’ll ever read about in Labette County in connection with the Benders homesteaded there.

The “Bloody Bender” site – the NE 1/4 Sec. 13, T.31S, R.17E, 6th P.M. – was part of the Osage Ceded Lands. Most of Labette County was Osage Ceded Lands; some of the southernmost sections in Range 35 were part of the Cherokee Strip, and there were a few Cherokee treaty sections in Township 21.

Even if you look at only how the township that included the Bender site (31-17) was disposed of, you can’t make a blanket statement about how the land was acquired by settlers other than to say there were no homesteads. 😀 (1) the eastern boundary of the Osage Diminished Reserve ran through township, so (2) part of the township was part of the Osage Ceded Lands and part was the Osage Diminished Reserve; and (3) part of the township was in Montgomery County and part of the township was in Labette County. And to complicate matters more, (4) all of Labette County was claimed by the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad for disposal, and (5) alternate sections plus some contiguous sections were also claimed by the Leavenworth, Lawrence & Galveston Railroad for disposal. (6) There were also school sections that were sold by the state.

The tract of land known as the Osage Ceded Lands in Kansas was described in a January 1867 treaty with the Osage. It was authorized by the federal government to be sold at $1.25 per acre cash after survey, with some preemption stipulations applying, such as you couldn’t purchase more than 160 acres. After survey expenses were paid, the balance went to the Indian Educational fund.

The Osage Ceded Lands had been claimed earlier, however, by two railroads under an act of Congress dated March 1863 and another act of Congress passed in July 1866. The grant to the MKT (previously the Union Pacific, southern branch) included all of Neosho and Labette County. The LL&G was granted alternate odd sections for ten miles on each side of the railroad plus odd sections for twenty miles further out, then the MKT grant was adjusted to be the alternate odd sections for ten miles plus it had the right to chose sections that were between 10 and 20 miles from the railroad. That’s really simplifying it and I probably got some of that wrong, but it was a big overlapping mess of land grants going on, meaning the railroads – not the federal government – had the rights to sell the land.

Then Congress passed a joint resolution in April 1869, throwing the Osage Ceded Lands open to legal settlement for two years, both odd and even sections, at $1.25 per acre with no more than 160 acres purchased by an individual. So some people bought land from the government at $1.25 per acre, and both railroads had agents on the ground selling land at whatever they decided to charge for it, which averaged $8.15 per acre.

The tract books record the 1869-1871 government sales, but the railroads kept track of their own sales, and those records are nowhere to be found. The tract book does reference numbered lists beside 1871 MKT sales and patent dates that aren’t part of the BLM records. The government cancelled their sales but nobody asked for or got their money back and people still pretty much lived on the land they thought they paid for, whether purchased through one of the railroads or the government. The courts then took over to decide who owned the Osage Ceded Lands, meaning who had a right to sell it.

This is when the Benders entered the scene.

The image above shows the swath of MKT lands on a map of Kansas behind a portion of the LL&G lands checkerboarded across the portion of Labette County shown. Note that the Bender Inn site on the NE 13 is LL&G land, but E 12 to the north – where Old Man Bender’s son is linked to – is not. Did the Benders purchase from the railroad, intend to purchase from the railroad but never did, or did they (more likely) simply take advantage of the confusion of who-owns-what and set up house-keeping and people-killing?

The year after the Bender atrocities were discovered and the family disappeared, the courts decided. Patents issued to the railroads were declared null and void, and the land was restored to the Government as trustees for the Osage. In 1876, Congress again enacted a law that the Osage Ceded Land would be sold at the government price of $1.25 per acre, with settlers who had already established themselves on the land granted first privilege of buying the land they occupied.

The tract book records this flurry of purchases in 1877 and subsequent years, and in many cases, also the date the purchaser said they first settled on the land. Yes, there are claim files for these purchases that you can order for $50 each from the National Archives. Cherokee Strip quarter sections sold for $1.00 to $2.50 per acre, and there were a few Cherokee treaty sections that were sold for $1.00 to $5.00 per acre in Township 21. School sections were sold for their appraised price at a minimum of $3.00 per acre. There are also later railroad grants.

Not a single acre in the Osage Ceded Lands was ever a homestead.

Map of LL&G railroad lands HERE.

Kansas map showing MKT railroad lands HERE.

     

Bender family see also Dr. William H. York