The Bender family is not part of any American Wild West legend . Their story is as real as the bloody crimes they committed. The story of this family begins in 1870 when John Gebhardt and John Bender came to Osage Township in far southeastern Kansas to claim a parcel, which was land that the United States government granted to anyone who wanted to settle on it. her and work her for her benefit.
No one knew anything about the men's past, but they saw no danger in them. The Benders built a small one-room cabin next to a creek in Labette County. They were joined by John Bender's wife, Ma Bender , and her daughter, Kate.
For some time his house served as a way station for travelers passing through that lonely territory. At the same time, Ma Bender was getting some money from her supposed mediumship skills From her. This allowed her to offer services as a spiritual healer and as someone who could contact the dead.
At first no one noticed that after the arrival of the Benders, many people began to disappear. However, since it was an abandoned territory and close to the border, people could disappear without being missed for a long time.
The first suspicions
William York , brother of Kansas politician Alexander York , disappeared in March 1873. As happens when a relative of someone important disappears, an immediate mobilization began to find his whereabouts.
A search party led by Alexander York interviewed the Benders at their cabin on April 4 of that year. His strange and hostile character caught his attention , but York found no evidence to make him suspect them. After they left, Kate offered her mediumship services to York to help him find William.
That night York and Leroy Dick , the town manager, decided to search every cabin in town, to find out more about the Benders.
Encounter with horror
When authorities returned to the Benders' cabin, they found the family had left. But this was not the worst, but what they found in the basement : in the midst of a terrible stench they found a mass of decomposing human remains ; more bodies were discovered buried in the orchard and another corpse, never identified, in its well. In total, 11 bodies were recovered.
News of the Bender crimes spread like wildfire.
It drew the attention of the press at the time that it was not a single murderer, but rather an entire family conspiring to murder innocent people. It was also outrageous that a woman like Kate, who helped her clients through her mediumship skills, would be part of this museum of horrors.
Justice began to follow the clues to find the family of murderers that the press dubbed "Bloody Benders".
Eyewitnesses reported seeing the runaways escape by train: Mom and Dad to Missouri, and Kate and John to Texas. The latter were spotted in Denison, Texas, before meeting up with the older couple at Red River Station.
From there the family moved west to Indian Territory . There they settled, according to locals who regularly reported their whereabouts. The territory chosen by the Benders served as a refuge, since thieves, robbers, criminals and gunmen lived nearby, so justice preferred to stay away.
In this way, the Benders were never captured and their crimes are an indelible part of the black chronicle of the United States.
