The human race has a morbid fascination with hereditary degeneration that runs through generations of a family especially entire clans. A clan comprises many families who all claim to have descended from a common ancestor be it man or woman. There are many stories and movies concerning such an ancestor being a witch or a devil-worshiper or a cannibal and there is a whole branch of the clan in the backwoods somewhere that still carries this tradition on. In the rural areas of America, where incest is often disturbingly common, this fascination involves mentally and physically deformed family members that are supposed to be human but are so hopelessly inbred that they are now monsters. Such movies as
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
The People Under the Stairs,
Mother’s Day,
The Hills Have Eyes and countless TV horror programs deal with degenerate families who see other humans as prey or playthings to be used, abused—sometimes sexually—and then killed and dismembered. Sometimes their victims are eaten and other times their body parts are used for experiments, incantations or simply décor. The plots are thickened when the victims are taken in by a handsome young man or beautiful young woman of great charm whom the victims see as someone they can trust. These beautiful ones, of course, turn out to be members of the clan who came out looking as extraordinarily attractive as their family members are deformed and hideous. But inside, they are every bit as twisted and contemptuous if not more so towards anyone outside the clan and use their charms strictly to procure more victims.
But where do these stories come from? Do they have basis in fact? And why do they fascinate and yet repel us so? While we might think of a family as people who descend from the same bio-genetic source, I can think of myriad examples where such individuals hated and even killed another. People who do not kill each other are people who share the same beliefs, mores and mindset. Two like-minded strangers bond closer than siblings who are of an opposed mindset. A family then is a group of people united by a shared mindset. They even refer to theselves in familial terms such as Manson’s Family and the notoriously racist killers calling themselves Bruder Schweigen or Silent Brotherhood. Mindset defines the family and it does not matter what that mindset is.
I remember once reading a book about the secrets of Britain's royal family when I came across "the Monster." In England, as with royal families the world over, there was a lot of incest. The nobles believed their blood was superior to that of commoners and so weddings were arranged so as to keep the blood "pure" and this often resulted in incest and hence some kings were born crazy or deformed or both. In one case, a royal child was born in England that was so hideous that it was hidden from all public knowledge and kept in the Tower of London. It was simply called "the Monster." Supposedly, it was huge and powerful, covered with hair, had no neck but a huge mouth and beady, shiny brown eyes with no whites in them. It was no more intelligent than an infant and had to be kept chained in place. Like any baby, it could not speak but cried and bellowed but its shrieks were as loud and feral sounding as an animal's. It was fed only gruel with a huge wooden spoon and it ate prodigious amounts of it. When a young prince or duke or earl came of age, he was taken to the Tower to the room of the Monster where his familial relationship to it was explained to him as he gazed upon it. Then a huge bowl of gruel was brought in, he was handed the shovel-like spoon and instructed to feed it, wipe its mouth while it spit up and belched or vomited. Then after it evacuated into its enormous diaper, he had to remove it, clean the Monster and apply a new diaper. The experience was said to be so horrendous that one young earl--a jolly boy--was so traumatized by his encounter that he never smiled again. This was, of course, an unsubstantiated tale.
Shortly after the Civil War, the Osage tribe of Kansas were removed from their ancestral lands to open them for white settlement. Perhaps what followed was something of a payback for this perfidy. Sometime around late 1870, a small family of German immigrants claimed a 160-acre plot of this newly “liberated” land and built a cabin there in Labette County in Osage Township (now Cherryvale). The Bender family consisted of four people: John Bender, his wife Marli, their son John Jr. and their daughter Kate. They turned the cabin into an inn and general store they called the Wayside which sat along the Osage Trail. The Benders partitioned the cabin with a canvas curtain to mark off their private quarters. The front area was dining room for boarders. There many a weary traveler would seek lodgings for the night.
The Wayside a.k.a. the Bender Inn
Kate fancied herself a psychic and healer who claimed she could communicate with the dead. This coupled with her extraordinary good looks with a slight German accent caused men to become enamored with her and she used this to her advantage. She was described as having the grace of a tigress and an irresistible smile. She billed herself as “Prof. Miss Katie Bender” and held séances and healings in nearby towns.
Katy Bender (?)
John and Marli were more hermit-like rarely leaving their property and talking little with outsiders. Both were rather ugly and spoke with guttural accents so heavy that people had difficulty understanding them. Sixty-year-old John stood a gaunt six-feet tall and the hard-faced 55-year-old Marli was reputed to be both an herbalist witch and a medium and no one doubted her. She was so sinister-looking and unfriendly that the locals referred to her as “she-devil.” The townspeople generally avoided both her and “Old Beetle-Browed John” as her coarse-faced husband was called. Junior (25) and Kate (23) were more normal-looking, spoke better English and possessed better social skills although Junior had a tendency to laugh quite often at strange and inappropriate times causing people to believe him dull-witted, which he may have been for all I know.
Ma Bender
Ol' Beetle-Browed John
John, Jr.
Whenever a traveler stopped at the Wayside, he was often enticed to do so by Kate who stood out front and smiled at him flirtatiously. Kate would then lead him inside and use her allure to keep him occupied while the others went through the man’s saddlebags and any other belongings he may have been carrying. If he was ascertained to be “wealthy” (meaning if he had anything on him at all worth taking), he was seated at a table in the inn. His back was to the canvas curtain that divided the room in two. Often, he was up against the curtain so that his outline could be seen through it on the other side. Kate would cook up a meal while making conversation. According to witnesses, she would talk about bizarre subjects—anything from occultism to free love to justifiable homicide. On the other side of the curtain, Beetle-Brow John or Junior would be waiting holding a sledgehammer. Being able to clearly see the victim’s outline, one of them would heft the hammer and deal the unsuspecting wayfarer a quick, savage deathblow to the top of his head usually busting the skull open. The victim would be quickly dragged back behind the curtain and stripped by all four Benders. Anything of value found—money, jewelry—was kept. Expensive clothing was also kept. Behind the curtain was a trapdoor over a pit which one of the Benders would open. The victim would then be dumped down into the pit. Later, Kate would enter the pit and slit the victim’s throat ear-to-ear even though he was already dead or very nearly so (there is some difference of opinion whether Kate slit their throats before they were dumped or after or maybe sometimes one
or the other). Then the body would be removed from the pit at night and buried in what is variously described as the family’s orchard or garden. Kate often held séances, healings and psychic consultations at the Wayside and would sit a wealthy patron against the curtain. Some of them were never seen again.
Not all of them died, one man who showed up for a séance could not be induced to stay seated against the canvas. Something about the spot unnerved him that he found sitting there intolerable. Even when Kate angrily demanded that he stay put, he could not induce himself to sit there for very long and fancied that he heard whispers from beyond the grave coming from behind the canvas at which point he jumped up and ran out of the Wayside. Another man, William Pickering, refused to sit against the canvas because he was thoroughly disgusted by the stains on it which so angered Kate that she drew a knife (no doubt the same one she used to slit her victims’ throats) and threatened him. Pickering fled the Wayside. In another instance, an itinerant Catholic priest was in the Wayside and caught a glimpse of the either John or Junior hiding a large hammer and became frightened. He got up and said he needed to check on his horse about something, walked quickly out of the inn and promptly jumped on his horse and galloped off as fast as he could go.
A woodcut depicting how the Benders committed their crimes at the Wayside.
The undoing of the Benders came when Dr. William York visited the Wayside on May 4, 1873 to see Kate. He had spent some time there during his journey out West and had told his brother that he planned to stop off there again. That was the last time anyone saw or heard from Dr. York and York’s brother—Colonel A. M. York at Fort Scott—knew exactly where to check. Colonel York came to the Wayside to inquire of his brother’s whereabouts. The Benders claimed they had not seen the good doctor and suggested that Indians had probably got a hold of him. This seemed reasonable to Colonel York but when word got around to the townspeople, the Bender explanation did not seem reasonable at all. There was something very weird about that family. Too many people had disappeared and often the last place they were known to have been was the Wayside.