SYSK’s Fall True Crime Playlist: The Tale of the Bloody Benders

Long before we knew what serial killers were, a family in remote Kansas was disposing of victims at their family farm. Listen in to the Tale of the Bloody Benders if you dare! See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:40Josh Clark?

  This mind-boggling episode is old-timey, true-crimey. It concerns one of the worst families to ever set up shop in Kansas, which is really saying something. In the early 1870s, the Bender family's surreptitious killing spree, carried out in their own home no less, resulted in the murders of at least 21 people, which are in the family that nicknamed the Bloody Benders. This episode will knock your socks off, assuming they're still on your feet after the other episodes so far.

• 2:12Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:21Josh Clark?

  Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. So this is Stuff You Should Know, the murder family edition.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, Halloween, right around the corner.

• 2:34Josh Clark?

  I've always liked to think of you, me and Jerry as a kind of murder family.

• 2:40Speaker 03

  As in you and I and Jerry, right? We always have to correct that because people think you're talking about you, me, your wife.

• 2:46Josh Clark?

  That's right, okay. Yes.

• 2:48Speaker 03

  You, me, comma, you, comma, me, comma.

• 2:51Josh Clark?

  No, no, I mean me, my wife, you, me and Jerry. I've always thought of us as...

• 2:55Speaker 03

  Oh, just so soon?

• 2:56Josh Clark?

  No, I'm kidding.

• 2:58Speaker 03

  I missed what you said though. You thought of us as what? A murder family?

• 3:00Josh Clark?

  A murder family, yeah.

• 3:02Speaker 03

  Sure, in the kindest possible way.

• 3:04Josh Clark?

  Exactly, exactly. No, we're no murder family and after everybody learns about the Bloody Benders, they'll be like, yeah, Josh and Chuck and Jerry are no murder family. And we wouldn't want to be either because it turns out murder families are not so great, Chuck.

• 3:21Speaker 03

  Right, and can we shout out a listener who submitted this topic?

• 3:24Josh Clark?

  Oh yeah, definitely.

• 3:25Speaker 03

  That's, I feel like that's happening more and more lately.

• 3:27Josh Clark?

  A lot, yeah.

• 3:29Speaker 03

  As our world gets smaller, our listeners are reminding us that it is quite large. And we got this one from a Kansan.

• 3:36Josh Clark?

  Oh, that's very appropriate.

• 3:38Speaker 03

  Is that how you say it, Kansan?

• 3:39Josh Clark?

  I think it's Kansanianite.

• 3:41Speaker 03

  Okay, Kansanianite. Name's Star White. And apparently Star was traveling with the family through Kansas and saw signs in Montgomery County for the Benders, the Bloody Benders, and things commemorating this and said, "I'm a Kansan, a Kansanianite, and I had no idea that this was a thing. I gotta learn more about this." So we're doing one, you know, we like to keep it spooky in October where we can.

• 4:10Josh Clark?

  Sure, for sure.

• 4:12Speaker 03

  And there's nothing spookier than a serial killing family.

• 4:15Josh Clark?

  Interestingly too, this past, I think, March, what I'm taking to be is one of the definitive books on the Benders came out. It's called Hell's Half Acre and it is by an author... Named. Named a drum roll. Named Susan Jo Nussus. That's how I'm going with her last name, but it came out in March called Hell's High Faker. And it does look pretty awesome. So I figured that had to do with this, but no, it's just completely off the cuff from a listener from Kansas, huh? Just driving through. Great name too, by the way, Star White. What a great name. It's almost like Star Wipe.

• 4:57Josh Clark?

  No wonder you like it. It's your favorite transition. That's right. I do know a Bender actually, but this is, I don't think there's any relation. Yeah, because it's not entirely clear that that was even their names too. So we should tell everybody. We're talking about a family that lived in Kansas in the 1870s at a time when Kansas was like the frontier, maybe even, maybe even beyond the frontier. The Trail of Tears had happened by this time. So the Osage people who had lived there previously have been forced off their land and moved further west to Oklahoma. And the federal government said, come, anybody, are you criminals, you unsavory characters, people escaping your past? Come and settle here in Kansas.

• 5:40Josh Clark?

  It's like Australia, but in the center of the United States. That's right. Did you do bad things back east? Just pick up your bags and head west. That's precisely right. And so a lot of them stopped in Kansas. Again, this was the frontier, but people were still going west too. So as we'll find out, this, this family, the Bender family kind of put up a claim or set down a claim. They did something with the claim. I'm not, not quite up on my like old prospector terminology. They claimed something. Yeah. On this road that kind of kept leading west and they, they set up a tavern and inn for people to stop in, which is neither here nor there quite yet, but I just kind of wanted to foreshadow that there's going to be a tavern coming in the future.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  That's right. And that's probably a generous term for what they set up.

• 6:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  Uh, it was a pretty remote, well, I guess, you know, not to make too many Kansas jokes, but uh, it was a pretty remote part of Kansas and southeastern Kansas in 1870. Uh, it was not Cherryvale yet, but it would eventually become Cherryvale.

• 6:40Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 6:40Speaker 03

  And at first, the two, uh, gentlemen arrived, John Bender Senior. He was around 60 years old. Uh, people called him Pa. He didn't talk a lot. Uh, when he did talk, it was mostly in German. Uh, and then he was with a younger guy in his twenties. And, you know, we're going to say things like identified as his son, or, you know, may or may not have been the daughter. Like, this is because of a lot of things, uh, partially just, you know, a lot of record keeping back then wasn't super solid. Uh, especially when it turns out you may be using aliases and you may be faking that you're a family, or you may actually be a family. Like, no one really knows for sure, uh, the facts of this.

• 7:22Speaker 03

  But, uh, John Bender Jr. Was with him, uh, and he also occasionally went by an alias. Put a pin in this one, name, uh, John Gebhardt.

• 7:32Josh Clark?

  Chris Gebhardt.

• 7:35Speaker 03

  Now, he's a comedian. He's great.

• 7:37Josh Clark?

  Uh, but apparently John Gebhardt or John Bender Jr. Um, was a bit of a comedian himself. But from some reports, he was his own audience and no one else was. So to put it another way, he apparently laughed at stuff like inappropriately, like Dr. Hibbert. Um, and also at times when, exactly. Uh, that was a great John Bender Jr. Impression, by the way. But, um, at times where people were like, this, this guy ain't quite right. And he also talked a lot. So he was kind of an odd fixture as well, as we'll find out the whole family was.

• 8:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, he had a German accent, but did speak fluent English. Uh, and some people think he may have been intellectually disabled. Um, looking at kind of some of the things that happened, it seems like. Uh, I don't know about clear, but you know, at a time in 1870, they wouldn't have been categorizing people as such anyway, you know?

• 8:34Josh Clark?

  No, for sure, but from the, the articles of the time, that's what I'm going with from now on. They, they, they, nobody said anything even remotely like that. I saw it on one, I think like Crime Reads article and that was about it. I just got the, the impression that he was really kind of weird and almost like a Jethro Clampett type. That's who he reminds me of.

• 8:57Speaker 03

  Okay. Uh, so what they built, uh, on their 160 acres was, uh, you called it a tavern. I call it just a big room, kind of like a bunk, a bunk house, maybe. They call it a, or Livia, who helped us with this, called it a foot house. Uh, but it was 16 feet wide, 24 feet long. So what they eventually did was they would, uh, put up a canvas sheet, kind of splitting it in two. They lived in the back and then they called, you know, they called it an inn. Uh, you called it a tavern. It was really just a room with some canned goods and supplies and I think a couple of beds, uh, sort of like a bunk house. It was not fancy at all.

• 9:36Josh Clark?

  No, but I'm guessing like as you were passing through Kansas back then, and maybe even today, it was pretty appealing.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  You think?

• 9:46Josh Clark?

  Well, I mean, it was better than sleeping out on the open prairie with the bedroll, right? You know, there was a hot meal, you know, they probably had tobacco and yeah, I mean, it was better than nothing. And I think, I get the impression also, one of the things that made it better than nothing was, um, the daughter who I say we meet right now, her name was Kate and she showed up after this, this tavern, this house had been built.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  That's right. Uh, the two ladies were sent for after everything was done and it was Ma Bender, uh, who everyone just sort of assumed was the wife and the, uh, the matriarch of the family. Uh, she went by Elvira sometimes. Uh, she was maybe in her 50s and

• 10:26Speaker 03

  Let on like she didn't speak any if, very little, if any, English at all.

• 10:31Josh Clark?

  But had like a terrible temper. She was widely reputed about, from anybody that met her, that she was just a terrible cuss of a person, from what I gather.

• 10:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, in fact, I think she may have been the one sort of leading this whole charge that we'll get to.

• 10:46Josh Clark?

  I've seen both. I've seen her or I've seen Kate. And Kate, Kate was the daughter. She was in her twenties. But I think more than anything, she kind of attracted passersby with flyers advertising her mediumship. Like she was into spiritualism and free love, apparently, too.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  And who knows what that means in 1870s Kansas.

• 11:09Josh Clark?

  She was showing a little ankle.

• 11:11Speaker 03

  I don't know. Like, I have no idea what free love means in that context, but it was unusual, at least, and got attention. Some people thought she may have been the daughter. Other people thought that they presented she and John Jr. as a couple. So it was just sort of one of those things. It's, it's, it's loose out there in 1870s Kansas.

• 11:32Josh Clark?

  Right. So one other thing I read, Chuck, that Livy didn't quite hit on was that this family, they, they weren't like exactly, you know, fading into the woodwork or the prairie. Like, they were well-known in their little community, mainly because there were only like eight or 10 other settlements around them at the time. But also because I think they were the only ones running a tavern. And they had an orchard that will factor in later. But apparently their cherries and apples and peaches were like really prized out there at the time. So they were part of the community, but they were known to be weird and Ma in particular, which you just kind of avoided her as best as you could.

• 12:09Speaker 03

  Right. So they had this thing set up. It's on the edge of the great Osage Trail, which is, like you mentioned earlier, where a lot of people continued westward. And it was a good place to have a little bunk house that, that, you know, sold a few things. What's the word I'm looking for?

• 12:25Josh Clark?

  A general store.

• 12:27Speaker 03

  No.

• 12:29Josh Clark?

  Ollie's Bargain House.

• 12:30Speaker 03

  Rations.

• 12:31Josh Clark?

  Oh, okay.

• 12:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, selling rations and things like that.

• 12:34Josh Clark?

  They sell rations at Ollie's?

• 12:37Speaker 03

  What is Ollies?

• 12:38Josh Clark?

  It's like a deep discount liquid area. Like if you stole a truck, you just drive it over there and they'll buy everything and then turn around and sell it. I don't think they actually do that, but it's the appearance of that kind of thing.

• 12:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, we should be clear. We're not alleging. I look, I've never heard of Ollies, so I'm innocent of this.

• 12:56Josh Clark?

  You should go wander around one. You'd be like, ah, okay, I got you. Here's an oriental rug. Here's some off-brand bleach on the next aisle. Like, it's just that.

• 13:05Speaker 03

  Really?

• 13:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's like that very.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  Where are these places?

• 13:08Josh Clark?

  All over the place. In every strip mall, in every city, in every, in every country in the world.

• 13:16Speaker 03

  It may be one of those things that's so ubiquitous, I've just never noticed it.

• 13:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think so.

• 13:20Speaker 03

  Like, right under my nose.

• 13:21Josh Clark?

  It's possible.

• 13:22Speaker 03

  All right, so they set up an Ollies right there on the Great Osage Trail. And maybe this is a good place to take our first break.

• 13:28Josh Clark?

  Oh, I wasn't expecting that. Let me see. Okay, that sounds good.

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• 17:17Josh Clark?

  Okay Chuck, so one of the things that made the Benders, made us call the Benders a murder family is that they started murdering people pretty shortly after they set up this homestead along the Osage Trail. And one of the things about Kansas at the time was it was really, really violent. Not just in the wars against the Native Americans there, there were also pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions that committed atrocities against one another. The Civil War, I bred, kind of broke out thanks to Kansas, struggling which kind of state it was going to be. So it was a really violent place. And it was with that

• 17:59Josh Clark?

  kind of violent backdrop that a family could just kill a bunch of travelers without anyone really taking notice. Because it was also just the kind of place where people just went missing. It just happened. It was a really dangerous place to travel. So when it happened, it didn't exactly like set off the media and search parties didn't usually come out for people.

• 18:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. However, when they start turning up in regular order around town, then you've got a problem. And that's what happened.

• 18:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 18:31Speaker 03

  In May of 1871, the body of a man was found in local Drum Creek. This is southeast of the Bender's house. And this is very key here. He had his, he'd been brained, he had his skull bashed in, and had his throat cut, which as you will see, becomes the recurring MO of this family.

• 18:52Josh Clark?

  Yep. Two more men were found shortly after, I think a few months later. A few months after that, another body was found, all in the creek. And apparently, they all had that same kind of mortal wound, or that combination of injuries. And one of the bodies was identified as a man named William Jones. And he had been carrying, known to have been carrying about $250. The time was like a lot of money to today.

• 19:22Speaker 03

  Six grand, close to it.

• 19:23Josh Clark?

  Okay, and he was going to pay off his mortgage for his homestead, which is something people did at that time, too. It's another thing that made it dangerous. A lot of people were walking around with a lot of cash because they were going to buy land, pay off mortgages, do god knows what, and there weren't banks, so they were traveling with cash. And this guy was exactly that. And there was a farmer whose land he was found on that was initially accused, but they were like, I don't think it was him. So he got off, but I'm sure he was like, wait, what, what? No, it wasn't me.

• 19:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, and the way he got off too was kind of frustrating as a, like a crime enthusiast reader, because they investigated it and they found that the wagon that dropped him had a very distinctive track, that one of the back wheels was off center. And I kept waiting for that to come back. It's like, remember that wagon? That's what eventually led to the killers, but spoiler alert, that does not happen.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  So don't put a pin in it. Take the pin out of that.

• 20:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, just take, throw that pin away. Break it in two. So the, the, the thing about, I think one of the reasons why people started getting hot under the collar about these murders too, is that this area got a really bad reputation really fast. Like it was like, you avoid the spot as best you can, like maybe go out of your way to avoid this area on the Osage Trail, because people just wind up missing there. And that kind of got people aware of like the whole, the whole problem that the area was facing, but they didn't know who it was. And they certainly hadn't centered on the benders. The benders just had a reputation as being odd and possibly a little,

• 21:04Josh Clark?

  maybe violently unusual, but not murderers by any stretch. They just weren't suspected for a really long time.

• 21:12Speaker 03

  Violently unusual.

• 21:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 21:15Speaker 03

  What a reputation.

• 21:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's pretty serious.

• 21:19Speaker 03

  Uh, here's another story too, that you do need to get that pen out, put it back together that you, Josh told you to break in half.

• 21:24Josh Clark?

  I'm sorry, everybody.

• 21:25Speaker 03

  And put a pin in this story because this was, uh, chronologically speaking, February 1873. Uh, a woman who didn't really have any money, apparently stopped at the home, asked to rest, asked for some food, uh, fell asleep on a bed in the back. And then when she woke up, there was a mob bender and she pointed to a table covered in pistols and knives and said, there, your supper's ready. So this lady somehow apparently manages to stay composed and not like react with alarm.

• 22:02Josh Clark?

  She goes, oh.

• 22:03Speaker 03

  Like waking up.

• 22:04Josh Clark?

  Fiddlesticks.

• 22:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. And said, I just need to step outside for a minute to, to do something. Just apparently made a private excuse is what the, uh, Kansas City Times said.

• 22:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 22:15Speaker 03

  And, um, and ran and took off running barefoot, basically, you know, in her sleeping clothes, ran for a couple of miles to find help. And it's hard to parse together what this sentence from the Times even means, but I'm taking it to mean that it didn't really, it still didn't set off alarm bells for this family.

• 22:33Josh Clark?

  It didn't. And that, by the way, is a classic example of being violently unusual.

• 22:38Speaker 03

  Right.

• 22:39Josh Clark?

  Okay. You know, they were just like, if you're violently unusual, you have the kind of house that people run two miles away from in their bare feet.

• 22:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, where guns and knives are presented as supper.

• 22:50Josh Clark?

  Exactly. Right? So this is just kind of going along. The, the benders are humming along, doing their murdering thing. People don't really suspect them, but the area's got a bad reputation. But there was a, a series of murders, actually a combo, one, two punch of murders that finally led to their discovery as a murder family. And the first thing started with a guy named George Newton Longcor, who, um, left Independence, Kansas, which was just to the west of Cherryvale along the Osage Trail. And he was on his way to Iowa, so he would have passed. Passed through Cherryvale, along with his 18 month old daughter, Mary Ann. And he never made it to Iowa and that caught the attention of another man, a physician named William York,

• 23:36Josh Clark?

  who was his neighbor and was concerned enough that he started traveling around inquiring about him to see if he could figure out what happened to George and his daughter, Mary Ann.

• 23:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, good neighbor.

• 23:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah, really good neighbor.

• 23:47Speaker 03

  Like to do such a thing to take this trip. So starts investigating, finds out that the, the horse and wagon team was abandoned near Fort Scott, Kansas. And in the spring, I mean, I think that's what led him to go out there. So he's out there in the spring. He gets to Fort Scott. All that stuff is still there. Basically, all of their stuff had been abandoned. They were nowhere to be found. So he's like, something is going on. I need to go back to Independence and then he disappears.

• 24:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And that really caught the attention of people because it turned out Dr. William York. And if I said Edward the first time, please forgive me. His name was William and he was a doctor and he was a York. And there were two other Yorks. He had a brother named Edward, who was neither here nor there. But he had a really important brother named Alexander York, who was a Colonel from the Civil War and also a Kansas Senator. So they, they had murdered the brother of a Kansas Senator who was known to be out looking around the area of Cherryvale for somebody else who had gone missing. And that really got people's antenna up.

• 24:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, big time. Enough to where they got a search party. Colonel Alexander, I think about 75 men set off. And they were, you know, they were scouring around. They were, they basically kind of figured out at one point that they definitely went by the Bender's house. So let's go by and talk to these people, see what's going on. When they do this, Ma Bender, you know, claims to not speak English, which seems like her, her main jam, her big joke besides here's your supper of guns and knives. Was, I also don't speak English. Kate, young Kate says, I don't know anything about this guy. And then John Jr. said, hey, listen, I was shot at when I was out there at Drum Creek, where all these bodies have been found.

• 25:38Speaker 03

  And I can take you out there and like, maybe the people that shot at me killed your friends as well.

• 25:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And again, just imagine Jethro Clampett saying this and taking people out to look at a place where he claims to have been shot at, right? I just, I love that bit. So, um, so, but he's also just kooky, you know? Did you watch the Beverly Hillbillies?

• 26:03Speaker 03

  I did.

• 26:03Josh Clark?

  Like, a lot?

• 26:05Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, yeah. I watched it a lot.

• 26:07Josh Clark?

  So do you remember the time or the period, I guess it was a phase where Jethro ended up becoming like a movie producer in Hollywood?

• 26:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, things got a little weird later in that show.

• 26:18Josh Clark?

  It really did get weird. So it's not clear whether this is that Hollywood producer of Jethro or the original mountaineer son of Jethro. Either way, it works pretty good. But he takes Alexander and the search party out there. I guess he gave enough of an explanation and was, you know, pointing out different spots well enough that they're like, either they believed him or they just didn't really care. And they kind of headed on, basically.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, he showed bullet holes in a tree, or not holes, but bullet markings, uh, which, you know, Kansas in the 1870s, about half the trees had bullets in them.

• 26:53Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 26:54Speaker 03

  So that doesn't prove anything. But like you said, it was enough at least to sniff them slightly off the case, uh, at least temporarily. Um, but they came back a few days later, said, listen, we heard about this lady over the past few days who came here, and I don't want to really start anything, but she said that you-

• 27:16Speaker 03

  Said, here's your supper and it was guns and knives.

• 27:19Josh Clark?

  There was something about a pistol supper or something like that?

• 27:23Speaker 03

  That's weird. She ran away barefoot for two miles and no one made a big deal out of it. But now we kind of want to know, this is where Ma Bender, all of a sudden starts speaking English. Apparently the quote is, she flew into a violent passion and went off saying, you know, that that lady was a witch. And she has, you know, cursed Kate's coffee and that she was gonna drink. And if she ever comes back here, I'm gonna kill her. We got her out of here. She was a witch.

• 27:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah, she converted Kate's coffee into that mushroom coffee and now Kate refuses to drink it.

• 27:58Speaker 03

  What's mushroom coffee?

• 28:00Josh Clark?

  It's exactly what it sounds like, except it doesn't actually have coffee. No.

• 28:05Speaker 03

  Oh, it's made out of mushrooms?

• 28:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Uh, yeah, you should try it sometime just to say you tried it.

• 28:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's what, uh, on those survival shows, they get like roots and twigs and boil that stuff down. They're like, here's my morning coffee.

• 28:18Josh Clark?

  Coffee.

• 28:19Speaker 03

  Have fun with that.

• 28:20Josh Clark?

  So, um, so they, so again, still like, they were kind of like, okay, this family's really weird, but we don't really have anything on them. But it was enough that, um, Alexander York kind of stuck around town and they held a meeting.

• 28:36Josh Clark?

  With, for basically the whole town that, um, Pa and John Jr. even attended. And they said, hey, this place has a bad reputation. Something's going on. These two people at the very least have been, have turned up missing. We need to just search everyone's homestead. And apparently very brassily, uh, at least one neighbor said, I've got nothing to hide. Search my homestead. And Pa said the same thing. He said, I don't either. You guys search my homestead. And so I guess they kind of did a slow motion search because it was at least a week I saw, if not a couple of weeks before they finally made it out to search the Bender's place. And when they showed up, they realized very quickly that the Benders weren't there and probably hadn't been there since the night of that, uh, meeting.

• 29:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. When they realized they told people to come search their house.

• 29:24Josh Clark?

  You said what?

• 29:26Speaker 03

  My favorite part about Kate's jam is that they asked her to do the séance to like, give some more information, like, well, if you're so good at that. And she said, no, it's like, it's, it's daytime. There's too many people around. Like, have you ever seen a séance? She was like, why don't you come back tomorrow night, just the two of you, and we'll do one. And they were like, no, thank you.

• 29:45Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 29:46Speaker 03

  I think I'll take the zero on that one.

• 29:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Dr. Colonel, no, Colonel Alexander York was a sharp dude, basically.

• 29:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, but the townspeople weren't sharp enough to go, I don't know if they were searching other places. I know there was a weather issue. But like you said, by the time they got there, they were gonzos. They left their, they took a train because they found their horse and wagon and even their dog, just on a public street near the train station. And they, they got the heck out of Dodge. Well, not out of Dodge, out of what would become Cherryvale.

• 30:21Josh Clark?

  Very close, very close. So the volunteers were like, well, I guess since they left, we can just go ahead and go on in. And apparently they found very quickly that there was a trap door in the floor. And when they opened the trap door, I guess a lot of them gagged because it smelled like decaying human remains. And even though they looked in there and there weren't actual bodies, there was so much blood and gore in this cellar, rotting, that it was enough to make a person gag, even without a full body decomposing there.

• 30:53Speaker 03

  I think it's a great place for our second break.

• 30:56Josh Clark?

  Oh, okay. Great.

• 30:57Speaker 03

  The height of suspense.

• 30:58Josh Clark?

  Let's do it.

• 31:00Speaker 03

  We'll be back and talk about what was making that smell right after this.

• 31:18Speaker 03

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• 31:36Speaker 04

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• 31:37Josh Clark?

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• 32:22Josh Clark?

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• 32:39Speaker 04

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• 32:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, plus, everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen, so you can give luxury-quality pieces without the luxury price tag.

• 33:07Speaker 04

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• 33:44Speaker 03

  All right, so they have a stone cellar under the house, covered in blood and stinks like dead bodies, even though there's no dead bodies. And we said we were gonna get to the bottom of the smell. The bottom of it is, there were dead bodies in there previously.

• 34:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so they had this-

• 34:01Speaker 03

  It was pretty easy.

• 34:02Josh Clark?

  They had the trap set up, the trap door set up, so it led to a hole in the cellar, and then there was a way out, or I guess a way in, from the foundation. And they would kill people, put them in the trap door, through the trap door to the cellar, and then retrieve them at night when there weren't prying eyes around.

• 34:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, pretty good system they had going. They started searching around, they did eventually find bodies. They found William York's body buried in the orchard. They found Longke's body buried, along with young Mary Ann, who, the two gentlemen had the head wounds and the throat wounds. Mary Ann, I've seen variously, was either suffocated, or suffocated from being buried alive.

• 34:49Josh Clark?

  Man.

• 34:50Speaker 03

  But not brained and throat slit, at least. Tragic either way, of course.

• 34:55Josh Clark?

  Sure, sure.

• 34:57Speaker 03

  But very, very sad case. Eventually, they would go on to find about a dozen bodies, and were eventually implicated in as many as 21 murders.

• 35:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they found, yeah, I saw 11, I think, including Mary Ann. A bunch of them were in the orchard. They looked around the property and realized that there were a bunch of depressions in the orchard, and they're like, I wonder if those are graves. And they turned up people in the graves, they found somebody in the well. And then, yeah, when you add them together with all the people dumped in Drum Creek, I guess it comes to about 21. And they developed this theory of what had happened, in part based on some people who had narrowly escaped with their lives and hadn't realized it until after the benders became national news. But that curtain that they had dividing the tavern,

• 35:49Josh Clark?

  the Ollies bargain bin, from the rest of the house, was right behind the seat where they would have travelers and guests sit when they were eating a meal, right?

• 36:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they would have them sit there and, you know, from the other side, it would, you know, they would be silhouetted by the candlelight so they could see clearly where they were. And then Pa or John Jr. would either use like the butt of an axe or a hammer to brain them. They would put them in the cellar and rob them and then slit their throat. And that's how it was sort of a,

• 36:29Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 36:31Speaker 03

  The fact like, all right, let's go ahead and tell the stories about the other guys because after this came out, people started coming forward. Like you said, a guy named Mr. Wetzel said, hey, wait a minute. They tried to get me to sit right by that curtain and I wouldn't sit by the curtain. And Ma Bender got really mad about that. And so we got the heck out of there. And then another guy named William Pickering said, yeah, I didn't want to sit by that curtain because it was dirty and gross. And I took a different seat and they got in a big fight and Kate came at me with a knife. So I don't know why they just didn't come up behind them and brain them like the, maybe they felt the curtain offered some sort of cover. It just seems very like stubborn.

• 37:12Josh Clark?

  Oh, like they had to follow procedure or else the person is allowed to live.

• 37:15Speaker 03

  You have to sit there. I'm like, well, you can't murder a guy in another chair.

• 37:20Josh Clark?

  Well, I, I know. Yeah, I don't think it would have been as easy to come up behind them from the, from the curtain. You know what I'm saying?

• 37:26Speaker 03

  Maybe it sounds a little,

• 37:29Speaker 03

  I mean, I guess they got away with it for a little while. So, but it, I don't know. It sounds a little amateurish.

• 37:34Josh Clark?

  Sure. Or they were such professionals. They just stuck to the script and if the script deviated, they didn't take chances. And there's, there's actually a good suggestion of why they didn't take chances because there were later discovered in the house, bullet holes in the walls and in the door frames. And that was taken to be from people who had tried to fight back when they realized what was going on. But I guess they had ultimately been unsuccessful because nobody escaped that house saying they had shot at everyone because they tried to brain them, you know?

• 38:04Speaker 03

  Or maybe it was just supper.

• 38:06Josh Clark?

  I guess so, pistol, pistol suffer, you're right.

• 38:10Speaker 03

  Who knows? So, the story gets out, becomes, you know, for the 1870s, becomes a pretty big media storm, whatever that looked like back then. And people, you know, it became like a bit of a tourist stop. Like people, it sounds like people essentially showed up there and kind of looted the place over time. We're just kind of, you know, breaking up pieces of the cellar and breaking up the bed frame and kind of just taking whatever they wanted with them.

• 38:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And one of the reasons it became such a media frenzy is they were the first serial killers in America, that America ever produced, at least as far as the media could tell. A decade later, Austin would have what's frequently referred to as the first serial killer in America, with the servant girl annihilator.

• 38:56Speaker 03

  This was pre, I don't even know if I want to do a podcast on that.

• 39:02Josh Clark?

  No, I don't, no, that name alone, it's like, nah, that's all right.

• 39:05Speaker 03

  That stopped me cold. I mean, this was 10 years before Jack the Ripper even.

• 39:09Josh Clark?

  Right, exactly. And H.H. Holmes, who's also often referred to as America's first serial killer, he wasn't until the 1830s or 1890s. So, he was like a good 20 years on. So, it was a big deal. So, not only did we have America's first serial killer, we had America's first dark tourists show up at their house and take everything they possibly could as a memento. But one of the things that happened about this being such a huge media sensation is that, like, the country was following this and everyone was basically looking for the benders. Because don't forget, they'd vanished. No one knew which way they went. All they knew is that somewhere not too far off, they'd ridden their wagon to that train station

• 39:51Josh Clark?

  and the train ticket person had said, yeah, those four people definitely bought tickets, but I can't tell you where.

• 39:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 39:59Josh Clark?

  They said, you can tell us, I'm a doctor.

• 40:04Speaker 03

  They did arrest 12 men. This sounds a little bit like, hey, we've got to kind of do something. So they arrested these guys who they alleged maybe were involved as far as receiving stolen goods because they never really found a super clear motive. I mean, it seems like a lot of them may have had like traveling money or like the guy who had the 250 bucks, which was a lot of money at the time. But it was never like 100% established, like their motive was just to rob people. But they implicated these 12 guys, these guys who may have helped them move stolen items and money and stuff like that. And apparently, one of the guys was a member of a vigilante committee who tried to get

• 40:49Speaker 03

  on to help lead the investigation with Colonel York, but was denied and rejected. And I think that kind of hurt his feelings. And I think what it came down to was these guys, they were known as the regulators, these vigilantes. They were throat cutters. They would cut people's throat instead of like bringing them back to face trial. And then they just sort of tied it to these people because of the throat cutting.

• 41:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and a lot of innocent, a lot of, well, a lot of innocent people died as a result. So these people were bad dudes. But I saw that it was more than just the throat cutting, that there was a way that they would particularly leave bodies. Like you, they would put the right hand against the right breast and the left hand down, like just by their side.

• 41:31Speaker 03

  Like a pledge of allegiance?

• 41:33Josh Clark?

  Almost, but you're like, as if you don't know which side of your chest to put your hand and you got it wrong, kind of like that.

• 41:40Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 41:41Josh Clark?

  And apparently, they found a lot of the bodies in the orchard at the Bender's place posed like this, basically, almost like this was, this is the sign, like this is what this gang did. So I don't think they were like in the gang, but it's possible that gang of vigilantes were fencing this stuff for them and that they were at least tangentially related, you know?

• 42:03Speaker 03

  Sure, it's possible.

• 42:04Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 42:05Speaker 03

  When it comes down to who these people really were, we're not exactly sure. There's been a lot of modern investigation about who they were, and they think that Ma was a woman named Almira Meek and was from upstate New York, near the Adirondack Mountains, so not German at all. There were some pretty sketchy accounts, not super well researched, that said she had been married before and that her husbands had all met violent deaths from head wounds. So, you know, I don't know if that's just the internet running with something or if that's true.

• 42:44Josh Clark?

  Apparently, out of all of the four, the Ma and Kate seemed to have actually been related, although I don't know how. I didn't see how, did you?

• 42:57Speaker 03

  Like how they were related?

• 42:58Josh Clark?

  No, no, no. Like, they were supposed to be mother and daughter, but how did, how did that ever get turned up? Like, where, where was that? How was that ever defined?

• 43:05Speaker 03

  I think just people doing like, modern research on lineage and stuff like that.

• 43:11Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 43:11Speaker 03

  Because I think they turned up her original name, too, that Ma was married to a man named Griffith and that Kate was really Eliza Griffith.

• 43:20Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 43:20Speaker 03

  John Senior, apparently, was John Flickinger and was either from Germany or the Netherlands. And then John Junior, apparently, his real name was the alias that he was using that I said to put a pin in, John Gerhardt.

• 43:36Josh Clark?

  And now you can take that pin out and break it in half and throw it away.

• 43:40Speaker 03

  Yeah. So if he was using his real name as an alias, then I'm not sure what was going on with John Junior.

• 43:46Josh Clark?

  No, no, he was a Jethro type, don't forget. So, the, the, the, there were people who were like, oh, we've seen the benders. We saw the benders here. They went this way. They went that way. For years and years and years, it was like, like, people would, would report on their whereabouts. And it's unclear to this day whether people did or didn't know where they went. I saw there was one, like, kind of article, I guess, from the time that was basically like, yeah, everybody knows where they are. And there's just nothing anyone can do. They made it to another state and everybody just kind of leaves everybody else alone out there. Other people have always reported like, no, they have no idea where they went. They just kind of vanished into thin air. And then

• 44:30Josh Clark?

  there were reports that were usually incorrect, that they'd either been captured or that they'd been killed. Or there was one report that Pa died by suicide in Lake Michigan in 1884.

• 44:43Speaker 03

  Right. Another one said John Jr. And Kate went to New Mexico, like sort of Texas, New Mexico border, and John died of a stroke. Some people said that vigilantes got them and they burned Kate alive and shot and killed the other ones, buried them in the prairies, but no one ever claimed the pretty substantial reward, you know, close to 70 grand today. So it seems like none of these stories were probably true, or maybe, who knows, maybe one of them was, there's just no way to know.

• 45:17Josh Clark?

  So Laura Ingalls Wilder actually had a family story that I read that her daughter basically said, hey, you should weave this into our family story. So it's almost certainly not true that she and her family on their way to Homestead passed by the Bender's Tavern, but they didn't have enough money to go in for food or to stay there. But they settled in a close enough area that after the Bender's were found out, her father, there was a knock on her family's door and her father was summoned outside with his gun and he didn't come back till morning. But that anytime you ever asked him about the Bender's, he would say they're, they'll never be found again. Again, this isn't true. And one of the other things that

• 45:59Josh Clark?

  really undermines the vigilante theory is again, 70,000 in today's dollars was offered as a reward. Somebody from that group of vigilantes would have stepped up and taken it. Or even if they didn't, how could a group of vigilantes keep that secret for all that time that it's still to this day never came up? Because that would be something to boast about, that you were among the, the group of vigilantes that caught and killed the bloody Bender's, you know?

• 46:25Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 46:26Josh Clark?

  So I think the vigilante thing is.

• 46:29Speaker 03

  Get a book deal at the very least.

• 46:31Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 46:33Speaker 03

  These days, I think it's the kind of thing where a lot of Kansas Indianites know about it. You know, they're, they celebrated Bender Days for a while. They had a replica at Cherryvale at one point of the Bender House. More recently, in fact, just a couple of years ago, a gentleman named Bob Miller, who was a, is a financial advisor from Independence and a historian. And who knows, maybe a bit of a murder junkie bought the land and basically said like, "Hey, the people that own this land never did anything with it. They never searched for the location of the murder sites or the house. And I want to do that. I want to like have

• 47:17Speaker 03

  like professional expert investigations done on the property."

• 47:22Speaker 03

  I don't know if he plans to like, put up like a Lizzie Borden house or something.

• 47:27Speaker 03

  But he wants to get to the bottom of what he can at least.

• 47:30Josh Clark?

  Right, yeah. He said he's gonna try to get with UK or K-State, I don't remember which one, to do like ground penetrating surveys. But I don't know what his end game is either. But it's pretty neat that he bought it. And one of the reasons why he's feeling good about finding something is the family that he bought it from owned the land for like the last 65 previous years. And they showed zero interest whatsoever in finding the actual site. And they just turned it all into cropland. So there's a good chance that there's something like the foundation, maybe even that gasless cellar, the well that the one guy was found in, remnants of the orchard, who knows? There could be plenty of stuff left there. I don't know if they're gonna, I believe they exhumed all of the bodies that they found, but that's not to say that they found every body, you know?

• 48:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. There was a movie made in 2016 called Bender that does not look great. Did you see the trailer?

• 48:25Josh Clark?

  No, I didn't. I just saw, Livia quoted a user from IMDb that said it had some of the worst acting I've ever seen. What was the trailer like?

• 48:37Speaker 03

  Not, I mean, it didn't look great. I read some other reviews that said it was okay. But it wasn't like, uh, super murdery or super scary. So it kind of fell too much toward like historical drama.

• 48:50Josh Clark?

  They talked a lot about like raising and harvesting grain?

• 48:54Speaker 03

  Maybe. I don't know. But um, there was a thing that in Red Dead Redemption 2 that is funny because I kind of forgot about this. I played that game a couple of years ago and um,

• 49:07Speaker 03

  There's a pig farm where your character shows up and there's a creepy old lady and a creepy old man and they're like trying to get you to stay for dinner.

• 49:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 49:19Speaker 03

  And apparently it's modeled after this and you don't really know and you know, when you're in those games, you don't know quite what to do. Like, I feel like I should leave. It's kind of like real life.

• 49:28Josh Clark?

  Uh huh.

• 49:29Speaker 03

  You'll like, uh, but they offer you libations and you need libations.

• 49:32Josh Clark?

  Uh huh.

• 49:33Speaker 03

  So if you just, I don't, all right. If you, if you want to play this game and you haven't, it's pretty old. Don't listen to this part.

• 49:39Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 49:39Speaker 03

  But if you don't care, like most people, uh, don't drink the drink because as soon as you drink the drink, the screen goes woozy and you wake up the next day and I'm not sure that good things happened overnight.

• 49:51Josh Clark?

  Okay, but you're not dead, huh?

• 49:53Speaker 03

  You're not dead.

• 49:54Josh Clark?

  That's not very Bendery.

• 49:56Speaker 03

  No, it's not. I think they were inspired by the Benders a little bit, but I don't know.

• 50:01Josh Clark?

  Supposedly also, um, I've never read American Gods, the Neil Gaiman book. Have you? Have you read any of his stuff?

• 50:07Speaker 03

  Never have.

• 50:08Josh Clark?

  I've read some of his short stories and they're amazing. So I'm surprised I've never read his novels, but in American Gods, um, one of the characters is a Slavic god named Zern Bog. That's what I'm going with. And every time the Benders killed somebody, he gained strength from their sacrifice, which is a pretty neat little take on the whole thing, you know, cause we're so like, we have the blinders on here on earth. We don't even realize this murder family is actually contributing to the well-being of a Slavic god.

• 50:38Speaker 03

  I thought you were gonna say whenever they killed someone, they would yell, Zernberg.

• 50:42Josh Clark?

  That's right. Well, they did that too, but, um, that was never captured in the articles from the time Chuck, which by the way, if you're like, I need to know more about the bloody Benders and I will not have it filtered through history. I need the original stuff. There's a website called genealogytrails.com and if you search that and Bender family in your favorite search engine, it will bring up the crime-related news articles from the time about the Bender family. And it's awesome because it has a bunch of other details, but also it's got like that old timey 19th century, you know, crime reporting too.

• 51:15Speaker 03

  Right.

• 51:16Josh Clark?

  It's just worth reading for sure.

• 51:17Speaker 03

  It's always fun.

• 51:18Josh Clark?

  You got anything else about the Benders?

• 51:21Speaker 03

  Nothing else.

• 51:22Josh Clark?

  Well, that's it about the Benders for now, everybody. Uh, and since Chuck said nothing else, that means it's time for listener mail.

• 51:32Speaker 03

  Hey guys, stumbled across you in the summer of 2020 when I was employed as a USPS rural carrier associate.

• 51:41Speaker 03

  Not a rural juror.

• 51:44Speaker 03

  I heard a podcast-

• 51:44Josh Clark?

  Wait, wait, no, I need to know. What was that? I can't remember what that's from.

• 51:49Speaker 03

  30 Rock.

• 51:50Josh Clark?

  I still can't place it, but I'll think about it and I'll say Eureka later, okay?

• 51:54Speaker 03

  Well, what's funny is after, we talked a little bit about 30 Rock on our sitcoms episode, and Emily went out of town for a week and I barreled through season one of 30 Rock while she was gone and it was so good-

• 52:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it was really good.

• 52:09Speaker 03

  -to do it again. What a show. God, Alec Baldwin-

• 52:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 52:13Speaker 03

  -and Tracy Morgan.

• 52:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and don't forget Liz Lemon.

• 52:17Speaker 03

  She was great, but, uh, oh boy, Baldwin and Tracy Morgan just slayed me on that show. I mean, everyone on that show was really funny.

• 52:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, Tracy Morgan's best quote was, um, somebody offered him cashews and he said, "I'm glad you said that, because I thought it was a bowl of baby penises."

• 52:34Speaker 03

  His other good one that I got was, uh, he was talking about how they go together like peanut butter and he said, "We're like chicken in the chicken container."

• 52:45Josh Clark?

  That's pretty good.

• 52:47Speaker 03

  So, Rural Juror though was the movie that Jane Krakowski was in and the joke is she goes, "Rur juror" and like no one knows what the title of the movie is. But it had gone so long, they couldn't really ask her, uh, what the name of the movie was.

• 53:02Josh Clark?

  I don't remember.

• 53:03Speaker 03

  I mean, I'm gonna keep watching it. She's so funny too, I love her.

• 53:06Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 53:06Speaker 03

  Uh, all right, back to the email. Uh, "I have heard a podcast before, but never gave it much thought until a friend insisted, uh, start to listen to some. And it got to the point in Stuff You Should Know where I'd talk so much about y'all, my husband finally came and said, 'Who the heck are Josh and Chuck and when are you going to introduce me to your new friends?' Uh, but now the show is our go-to for family road trips."

• 53:29Josh Clark?

  Awesome.

• 53:30Speaker 03

  Uh, "One neat thing I wanted to write about though was my last dental appointment in February. I decided to bring along earbuds so I could listen to y'all while getting some fillings done. Asked the dentist and, uh, the assistant if it would be okay to listen to the podcast while they work and the dentist said it was okay, but asked me what I was gonna listen to first." I told her it was Stuff You Should Know and how much I enjoyed it. And I was listening to the Chow Chilla bus kidnapping episode. My dentist lit up and told me how awesome that episode was. Her assistant had never heard of the show, but the dentist was happily talking about your show so much that my entire visit, I didn't get to listen to the episode because I was half chatting to my dentist about Stuff You Should Know.

• 54:12Josh Clark?

  That's awesome.

• 54:14Speaker 03

  Thank you for saving me while I was delivering people's mail and for keeping me company during my commutes. With love from the land of 10,000 lakes, that is Tanya Vanderpool.

• 54:25Josh Clark?

  From Texas.

• 54:28Speaker 03

  10,000 lakes. Texas has like two lakes.

• 54:30Josh Clark?

  What is that, Minnesota? Minnesota?

• 54:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, right?

• 54:36Josh Clark?

  10,000 lakes, yeah.

• 54:37Speaker 03

  It's gotta be. Michigan?

• 54:39Josh Clark?

  No.

• 54:40Speaker 03

  Minnesota?

• 54:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's Minnesota for sure. She really didn't say, you're not toying with me?

• 54:46Speaker 03

  I don't know. I mean, I'm saying, I'm not toying with you, but I'm also on the verge of saying so many things that are wrong about lakes and states that I'm just stopping.

• 54:55Josh Clark?

  That's fine, that's fine. But can you imagine the audacity of just signing off with the land of 10,000 lakes and not putting in parentheses what state you're talking about?

• 55:05Speaker 03

  I mean, I saw in all my emails Chuck of the Peach State.

• 55:09Josh Clark?

  Okay, well, that is pretty audacious Chuck. It's violently unusual.

• 55:15Josh Clark?

  What was the person's name again?

• 55:17Speaker 03

  Minnesota.

• 55:20Josh Clark?

  You're in fine form today, aren't you? You're being playful.

• 55:23Speaker 03

  I'm kidding. It was Tanya Vanderpool.

• 55:25Josh Clark?

  Okay, thanks a lot, Tanya. We appreciate that and we're glad we can keep you company and that we made your dentist's appointment so special. If you want to get in touch with us like Tanya did and tell us about your dental visits, why not? You can send it in an email to [email protected].

• 55:46Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, MyHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 56:01Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 56:32Speaker 05

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• 57:17Speaker 05

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• 57:34Speaker 06

  Hello?

• 57:34Speaker 07

  Hey, it's me, your wallet.

• 57:37Speaker 06

  Oh, hey.

• 57:37Speaker 07

  I was just wondering if we could maybe take it easy this week?

• 57:41Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 57:42Speaker 07

  Really?

• 57:42Speaker 06

  Yep, I'm shopping at Food Lion.

• 57:44Speaker 07

  Wait, you mean low prices?

• 57:46Speaker 06

  And MVP savings.

• 57:48Speaker 07

  Oh, you do care.

• 57:50Speaker 06

  Obviously.

• 57:51Speaker 07

  Okay, I feel better.

• 57:52Speaker 06

  Good, now let's go get some snacks.

• 57:56Speaker 08

  At Food Lion, low prices and MVP savings make it easier to shop for what you need without spending more than you have to. When your wallet needs a little TLC, head to your local Food Lion or shop at foodlion.com. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.