Bender family

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The Bender Family , also known as The Kansas Bloody Benders or just Bloody Benders , was a group of four who made wealthy travelers from 1871 to 1873 in the woods on the Osage Trail near the towns of Cherryvale and Independence in Labette County in southeast Kansas killed and plundered.

history

The gang consisted of the 60-year-old John Bender, his wife and their 27-year-old son John junior and their 24-year-old daughter Kate - at least according to their own information, as well as on the profile of May 17, 1873. However, there are doubts as to whether the four people were actually all in the alleged relationship to one another.

The Benders ran an inn and a general store in a one-room log cabin . If a potential victim appeared while selling groceries, Kate would flirt with them and persuade them to stay to eat. The guest was placed with his back to the curtain dividing the room and while John or John junior was eating, he was killed with a blacksmith's hammer.

Most recently, in early March 1873, the well-known doctor William H. York disappeared after visiting his brother, who was stationed as an officer at Fort Scott . While searching for his brother, Colonel York met two other travelers who had become suspicious of the Benders' hut and had left with their revolvers drawn. On May 5, 1873, he and a group of volunteers left for the Benders' hut. A trap door with traces of blood was discovered in the hut, and eleven graves in the orchard containing the remains of nine men, a young woman and a little girl. The family had already fled when the squad arrived, their relatives said at first. It was not until 1908 that one of the men said that the Benders had still been found and lynched . They were punished so " horribly " that afterwards everyone involved swore never to talk about it. In 1911, another party independently confirmed this statement. However, these bodies were never found.

Victim

  • 1869: Joe Sowers was found with a shattered skull and his throat cut, but it is not certain whether he was a victim of the Benders.
  • May 1871: Mr. Jones. His body was found in Drum Creek with a shattered skull and his throat cut.
  • Winter 1871/1872: Two unknown men were found on the prairie in February 1872 with their skulls smashed and throats cut.
  • 1872: Ben Brown. From Howard County, Kansas. $ 2,600 (adjusted for inflation today $ 56,040) was stolen from him. It was buried in the orchard.
  • 1872: WF McCrotty. Co D 123. Infantry Ill. $ 38 (2009: $ 672) and a cart with horses missing.
  • December 1872: Henry McKenzie. After moving from Hamilton County, Indiana, $ 36 (2009: $ 637) and his horses were gone.
  • December 1872: Johnny Boyle. From Howard County, Kansas. $ 10 (2009: $ 177), a broodmare with a saddle and $ 850 (2009: $ 14,875) were missing. He was also found with the Benders.
  • December 1872: George Newton Longcor and his 18 month old daughter, Mary Ann. The newspapers of the time reported that his name was either "George W. Longcor" or "George Loncher". According to the 1870 Census, George and his wife Mary Jane were neighbors of Charles Ingalls in Independence, Kansas, while his wife's parents lived two houses away. Following the deaths of his young son Robert in May 1871 and his 21-year-old wife Mary Jane (née Gilmore) several months after the birth of Mary Ann, George was likely to return to the home of his parents, Anthony and Mary (Hughes) Longcor , murdered in Lee County, Iowa. In preparation for his return to Iowa, George had some horses from his neighbor, Dr. William Henry York, who was later murdered while searching for George. Both were civil war veterans. $ 1900 (2009: $ 33,600) was missing. The daughter was believed to have been buried alive, but this could not be proven. Her body was unharmed and she was fully clothed, including gloves and headgear. Both had been buried together in the apple orchard.
  • May 1873: Dr. William York. $ 2000 (2009: $ 35,000) was missing. He was buried in the apple orchard.
  • John Greary. Buried in the apple orchard
  • Unidentified male, was buried in the apple orchard
  • Unidentified female person was buried in the apple orchard
  • Different parts of the body that could not have come from a single victim, but probably belonged to at least three other victims.
  • 1873: The search found the bodies of four other unidentified men in Drum Creek and the surrounding area. All four of them had their skulls shattered and their throats cut. One man could be Jack Bogart, whose horse was bought by a friend of the Benders after he went missing in 1872.

reception

  • The Bender family is the subject of a 1999 western novel by Ken Hodgson , The Hell Benders
  • In Michael Newton's novel Massacre Trail (2009), the Benders are hunted down by Marshal Jack Slade.
  • In the novel "Cottonwood" (2004) by Scott Phillips, the plot essentially revolves around Kate Bender.
  • Jim Thompson takes the Bender family as a role model for the mass murderers Ethel and Anne Anderson in his novel King Blood , as he cites in an inserted author's comment.
  • In one episode of the series "The Quest" (season 2, episode 8 "The haunted house") reference is made to Katie Bender, she is the black heart of the house.
  • In the video game Red Dead Redemption 2 by the game developer Rockstar Games, a murderous couple named Aberdeen appear, who have strong parallels to the Bender family.

literature

  • Peter and Julia Murakami: Lexicon of Serial Killers. 450 case studies of a pathological type of killing . 7th edition, Ullstein Taschenbuch, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-548-35935-3 (main source)
  • Gerhard Kreuter: Katie Bender: The almost true story of a medium , King of Fools-Verlag, 2006, ISBN 3-938664-09-6

English:

  • Edith Connelley Ross: The Bloody Benders , Kansas State Historical Society, 1928
  • Ken Hodgson: The Hell Benders , Pinnacle Books, 2001, ISBN 0-7860-1392-3
  • Phyllis De LA Garza: Death for Dinner ; The Benders of (Old) Kansas, Talei Pub. 2003, ISBN 0-9631772-9-X
  • Diana Lambdin Meyer: Myths and Mysteries of Kansas , True Stories of the Unsolved and Unexplained, Globe Pequot, 2012, ISBN 978-0-7627-6446-4
  • Troy Tayler: Hell Hath No Fury : (Book Two) The Murderois Medium , Katie Bender & Her "Bloody" Family of Killers. (2012, Kindle Edition)
  • Troy Tayler: Fear the Reaper: America's Rural Mysteries, Hauntings and Horrors (2014, Kindle Edition)
  • Nicholas Nicastro: Hell's Half-Acre , CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016, a novella, ISBN 1-5390-4867-5

filming

  • Kate Bender in Stories of the Century in Series 2, Episode 4, with "Railway Detective Matt Clark" (Cast: Jim Davis as 'Matt Clark', Veda Ann Borg as 'Kate Bender' and Kay E. Kuter as 'John Bender' ). First broadcast on January 23, 1955
  • In 2016 the film "BENDER" started

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kate Bender in Kansaspedia
  2. ↑ Omaha daily bee. (Omaha / Neb.), August 02, 1908, Image 8 Bender Story discredited - Bender story refuted.
  3. ^ The Topeka State journal. (Topeka, Kan.), August 05, 1911, Image 11 … A Story of the Benders' Killing . - One report which has been widely credited and never actually disproved was from the dying statement of a man who formerly lived in Montgomery county. He asserted that he was the last survivor of a vigilance committee which followed the Benders, killed them and burned their bodies on the Verdigris river near the line of Oklahoma, a few day after ther flight. Apparent confirmations of this report have come from various sources in subsequent years but it has never been well established. The vigilantes had promised one another that they would never disclose their participation in the revenge which was wrecked on the family.
  4. ↑ The Salt Lake herald. (Salt Lake City / Utah), January 07, 1883, Image 8, BONES OF THE BENDERS “… They pushed rapidly ahead, and the four men came up with the fugitives four miles from the Grand River and there without further ceremony the Benders met the retribution due their crimea. They were all shot to death, and the bones of old man Bender, his wife, John and Kate lie there in an hole dug in the ground , where the remain at this day. "
  5. ↑ St. Paul daily globe. (Saint Paul, Minn.), February 17, 1888, Image 5 STORY OF A DYING MAN - John said the bodies of the Benders could be found, if anyone choose to look for them, in the old unused well some 300 yards northwest of the bender house. That's where they were put.
  6. ↑ Amador ledger. (Jackson, Amador County, Calif.), May 25, 1906, Image 5 The recent failure to locate the bodies of the notorious Bender family in an abandoned well on their former farm, near Cherryvale, Kan. brings out a statement from JP Morgan a wealthy Indian Territory ranchman, to the effect that the entire Bender family was wiped out by cowboys in "No Man's Land" shortly after their disappearance from Kansas. ... That with the exception of Old John Bender, the others met death bravely, but that he confessed and traveled in the dust, asking that he be not killed; Kate Bender fought like a tiger and had to be shot, the supposition being that the others were hanged; that she cursed the old man for his confession and for being a coward.
  7. ^ Railway detective Matt Clark , at IMDb
  8. ^ Filmmakers to make Old West thriller 'The Bender Claim' in Kansas
  9. ↑ Bloody Benders: Crews finishing film on murderous innkeepers
  10. ^ Director John Alexander at IMDB
  11. ^ Filming wraps up for movie about Bender family
  12. ↑ First pictures from the film
  13. ↑ Evil Kin Seasons 2 on Amazon video
  14. ^ The Cabin in the Woods
  15. ↑ BENDER in the IMDb database, Trailer BENDER , Movie Review
  16. ^ After an extensive search of courthouse and census records, newspaper articles and biographies at the local Frontier Historical Society, we learn that John Joseph Bender was born in Malsch bei Wiesloch, Baden, Germany, in 1843. He moved to the US at the age of 21, settling in St. Louis, Missouri, where he worked as a blacksmith. Four years later, in 1868, he married Catherine Christiana Miller, who had emigrated while still a child with her family from Weinsberg, Baden, Germany. In her Colorado autobiography, Katie stated her father, George C. Miller, had served in the Missouri Home Guard during the Civil War and worked in the "grain business."
  17. ↑ GLA Karlsruhe, page 86 (file image 82), top left, first entry N ° 25
  18. ↑ Find A Grave: Grave of Joseph P. Bender in Colorado († November 3, 1888)
  19. ↑ Originally broadcast on August 12, 2014 Investigation Discovery US Tödliche Kinship