The Bloody Benders
—Chrissie
Listen here: www.spreaker.com/user/bqn1/hwts155
The land comprising what is now the state of Kansas became part of the United States in 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase. It was first designated as part of “Indian Territory,” land that the United States government claimed would have minimal settlement by American colonists and was available to tribes who had been pushed out of their homelands by European occupation of the eastern part of North America. This status was reinforced by the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which moved tribal resettlement from a voluntary act to a compulsory one, aided by the US Army. The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act established the federal territory of Kansas, removing it from “Indian Territory,” though it was still home to many Native Americans.
Statehood came in 1861. It was not until after the Civil War, however, that Americans began to flood into this territory, backed by the Homestead Act of 1862, which allowed people to claim up to 160 acres for a (relatively) small fee and the time and labor to make it productive within five years. This opportunity brought not only those who sought the land, but who would act as suppliers for everyday needs. People opened stores, hotels, saloons, and brothels along the most-commonly used routes throughout the west, and often did better overall than those who sought to farm. Homesteading was a difficult and dangerous business; people were injured and killed in farming accidents and fights with other settlers (both tribal and not) over ownership of the land. The further out they went, the less opportunity people had to send letters to family and friends assuring them of their welfare, and so a person could be missing or dead for a very long time before anyone knew.
This is where the Bender family comes in. I’ll start by saying “family” is not necessarily true—we do not know for sure they were all related, though most descriptions present them as an older couple, John and Kate (sometimes Elvira), with their two adult children, also John and Kate. Some accounts say that Kate was their daughter and the younger John her husband; some accounts claim that they were both siblings and lovers, though this seems to add an unnecessary extra ick factor to an already terrible story. The elder John made a homestead claim in 1870 along a heavily travelled area. They built a cabin, which was split into two rooms by a curtain. They also built in a cellar, a not at all surprising addition in an area with a great potential for tornadoes. In the front of the house, they ran a small store and an inn. Building from accounts of those who escaped and evidence from the bodies recovered, when the Benders decided to kill a traveler, the person was seated with their back to the dividing curtain and engaged in conversation with Kate while another member of the family snuck up behind and hit them over the head with a hammer. The victim would then be dropped into the basement via a trap door where their throat would be slit. After taking anything of value, the body was buried somewhere on the homestead.
Between May 1871 and February 1872 three bodies with major head wounds were found in the nearby area and are now assumed to have been the work of the Benders. There were likely more victims during that time, indicated by reports of people being warned away from passing through the area. The first people for whom we have a contemporary record of their disappearance are George Longcor and his young daughter, Mary Ann, in the spring of 1873. They were travelling to visit family in Iowa and so their disappearance was noticed quickly. A friend, Dr. William York, set out to look for them and soon after also disappeared. His disappearance prompted investigation by his brothers, Edward and Alexander, the latter of whom was a veteran of the Civil War, holding the rank of Colonel, and a Kansas state senator. When they asked after their brother at the Benders’ Inn, they were told he had been there but did not know where he’d gone afterward. Suspicious after hearing stories of the Benders, Alexander returned with an armed retinue a few days later, on 3 April. When asked about the stories, the Benders denied any knowledge and demanded that York leave. He was sure of the Benders’ guilt, but needed more evidence. He and Edward discussed the issue with the government of the township, who agreed that all of the homesteads in the area should be searched, and so they arranged for a warrant to be issued. While this was being organized, the Benders themselves disappeared. A group of searchers who entered the house followed a foul odor to the trap door, now nailed shut. It was so bad, they expected to find bodies, but determined it came from all of the blood soaked into the floor. A search of the property revealed nine potential graves, the most recent and most shallow containing the body of Dr. York. Eight other bodies were found in these graves, including those of the Longcors. A body was also found in the well, and body parts that could not be matched with each other were found there and in some of the graves. All of the bodies but one had broken skulls and slit throats; the exception, Mary Ann Longcor, appeared to have been either suffocated or buried alive with her father’s corpse.
The Benders were never found. We know they did buy train tickets but were not followed. They may have traveled to Texas, where one report claims John Jr. died of a stroke near the border with Mexico. A man who may have been the elder John was arrested in Montana on murder charges (one possible connection being that the victim was killed by a hammer blow to the head), but he was not tried because he bled to death while cutting off his foot to escape leg irons. Vigilante groups sought the Benders in the weeks following the discoveries on their property, and some claimed they found and killed them, but none of their stories can be confirmed. One such story that is certainly untrue is the one told in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s memoir Pioneer Girl. This work was used as a basis for the Little House novels, but was not published on its own until recently when an annotated edition was produced by the South Dakota Historical Society. The story is recounted as something two- or three-year-old Laura overheard when her father, was asked to help with an investigation of “something terrible at the Benders’“[1] As she tells it, Charles Ingalls was a member of a vigilante group that killed Kate Bender. Wilder told the story at the Detroit Bookfair in 1937, including that she remembered stopping at the Benders’ Inn “on our way to the Little House…I saw Kate Bender standing in the doorway.”[2] The timing is off, though: the Ingalls travelled into Kansas in 1869, a little over a year before the Benders took on the homestead. It is possible, however, that they passed by the Benders’ on their way out of Kansas in 1871 and it is this which Laura remembered. Either way, Charles Ingalls could not have been involved in any vigilante action against the Benders. The Ingalls returned to Wisconsin in May 1871 and remained there until their move to Minnesota in February 1874. This part of the story was likely added by Laura’s daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, who helped her mother put together the manuscripts for Pioneer Girl and the later novels. Lane was more willing to fictionalize than her mother, and the first instance of the story being included is in Lane’s handwriting in a typewritten copy of the Pioneer Girl manuscript. Wilder historian and Pioneer Girl editor and annotator Pamela Smith Hill thinks this may have been an attempt by Lane to add something sensational to the manuscript in hopes of it selling.[3]
We do not know how many people fell victim to the Benders. The body parts found alongside the ten bodies in 1873 indicate a greater number of murders, and those ten do not include the three men found a year earlier. The people who owned the land through most of the twentieth century did not want to have any investigation done, but it was sold in 2021. The new owner bought it in part so that it could be investigated. He has expressed a desire to work with local universities and archaeologists in hopes of gaining more information about them and, perhaps, using DNA to identify some of their victims.
[1] Pamela Smith Hill, ed. Pioneer Girl. (Pierre, SD: South Dakota Historical Society Press, 2014), 17.
[2] Hill, 354-355
[3] Hill, 354.