Bloody Benders - Downfall

Downfall

In the winter of 1872, George Newton Longcor and his infant daughter, Mary Ann, left Independence, Kansas, to resettle in Iowa, but were never seen again. In the spring of 1873, a neighbor, Dr. William Henry York went looking for them and questioned homesteaders along the trail. He reached Fort Scott, Kansas, and on March 9 began the return journey to Independence but never arrived home. Dr. York had two brothers, Colonel Ed York living in Fort Scott, and Alexander M. York, a member of the Kansas State Senate from Independence who, in November 1872, had been instrumental in exposing United States Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy for corruption in seeking re-election through the bribing of state legislators in return for their votes. Both knew of his travel plans and when he failed to return home an all out search began for the missing doctor. Colonel York, leading a company of some fifty men, questioned every traveler along the trail and visited all the area homesteads. On March 28, 1873, Colonel York arrived at the Bender inn with a Mr. Johnson, explaining to the Benders that his brother had gone missing and asked if they had seen him. They admitted Dr. York had stayed with them and suggested the possibility that he had run into trouble with Indians. Colonel York agreed that this was possible and remained for dinner. On April 3, Colonel York returned to the inn with armed men after being informed that a woman had fled from the inn after being threatened with knives by Ma Bender. Ma allegedly could not understand English while the younger Benders denied the claim. When York repeated the claim, Ma became enraged and said the woman was a witch who had cursed her coffee and ordered the men to leave her house, revealing for the first time that "her sense of the English language" was much better than had been thought. Before York left, Kate asked him to return alone the following Friday night, and she would use her clairvoyant abilities to help him find his brother. The men with York were convinced the Benders and a neighboring family, the Roaches, were guilty and wanted to hang them all but York insisted that evidence must be found.

Around the same time, neighboring communities began to make accusations that the Osage community was responsible for the disappearances and a meeting was arranged by the Osage township in the Harmony Grove schoolhouse. The meeting was attended by seventy-five locals, including Colonel York and both Pa and John Bender. After discussing the disappearances including that of William York, the prominent doctor for whom a search had recently been completed, it was agreed that a search warrant would be obtained to search every homestead between Big Hill Creek and Drum Creek. Despite York's strong suspicions regarding the Benders since his visit several weeks earlier, no one had watched them and it was not noticed for several days that they had fled.

Three days after the township meeting, Billy Tole was driving cattle past the Bender property when he noticed that the inn was abandoned and the farm animals were unfed. Tole reported the fact to the township trustee, but because of inclement weather, several days lapsed before the abandonment could be investigated. The township trustee called for volunteers and several hundred turned out to form a search party that included Colonel York. When the party arrived at the Bender inn they found the cabin empty of food, clothing, and personal possessions. A bad odor was noticed and traced to a trap door underneath a bed, nailed shut. After opening the trap, the empty room beneath, 6 feet (1.8 m) deep and 7 feet (2.1 m) square at the top by 3 feet (0.91 m) square at the bottom, was found to have clotted blood on the floor. The stone slab floor was broken up with sledgehammers but no bodies were found and it was determined that the smell was from blood that had soaked into the soil. The men then physically lifted the cabin and moved it to the side so they could dig under it but no bodies were found. They then began to probe the ground around the cabin with a metal rod, especially in the disturbed soil of the vegetable garden and orchard where the first body was found later that evening, that of Dr. York, buried face down with his feet barely below the surface. The probing continued until midnight with another nine suspected grave sites marked before the men were satisfied they had found them all and retired for the night. Digging resumed the following morning with another eight bodies being found in seven of the nine suspected graves while another was found in the well, along with a number of body parts. All but one had had their heads bashed with a hammer and their throats cut, and it was reported in newspapers that all had been "indecently mutilated." The body of a young girl was found with no injuries sufficient to cause death and it was speculated that she had been strangled or buried alive.

A Kansas newspaper reported that the crowd was so incensed after finding the bodies, that a friend of the Benders named Brockman, who was among the onlookers, was hung from a beam in the Bender inn until unconscious, revived and interrogated as to what he knew then hanged again. After the third hanging, they released him and he staggered home "as one who was drunken or deranged." A Roman Catholic prayer book was found in the house with notes inside written in German, which were later translated. The text read "Johannah Bender. Born July 30, 1848" and "John Gebhardt came to America on July 1 18xx."

Word of the murders spread quickly and more than three thousand people, including reporters from as far away as New York and Chicago visited the site. The Bender cabin was destroyed by souvenir hunters who took everything, including the bricks that lined the cellar and the stones lining the well.

State Senator Alexander York, offered a $1,000 reward for the Bender family's arrest. On May 17, Kansas Governor Thomas A. Osborn offered a $2,000 reward for the apprehension of all four.