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~~Lord Larehip~~ · 11-09-2013, 12:12 PM

The townspeople held a meeting (which John and Junior reportedly attended). The plan was that all the farms and businesses in the area would be thoroughly searched and particular attention would be paid to the Bender property. The Benders realized the game was over and split town. Bad weather postponed the search party giving the Benders several days head start. By the time, a search party got to the Bender property, the family was long gone and the place deserted. Areas in the orchard appeared to have excavated and looked splotchy and so the party began digging. The Kansas City Times describes what they discovered:

“[They] groped over these splotches and held up a handful to the light. The ooze smeared itself over their palms and dribbled through their fingers. It was blood-thick, fetid, clammy, sticking blood—that they had found groping there in the void.”

To their horror, they disinterred 11 bodies including Dr. York and a woman as well as that of a young girl. Unlike the others, her skull was not bashed in nor was her throat slit. She had been savaged but not enough to kill her which leads us to the unsavory conclusion that the Benders had sealed the girl’s fate by tossing her beaten body next to the mutilated corpse of her father, George Loncher (or Lochner), and simply buried her alive. The Kansas City Times described the state of her corpse: “The little girl was probably eight years of age. And had long, sunny hair, and some traces of beauty on a countenance that was not yet entirely disfigured by decay. One arm was broken. The breastbone had been driven in. The right knee had been wrenched from its socket and the leg doubled up under the body. Nothing like this sickening series of crimes had ever been recorded in the whole history of the country.” Soon the whole nation was engrossed and repulsed by the crimes of the “Bloody Benders.”

The Bender property being searched and so begins the legend of the Bloody Benders from a sketch in Harper’s Weekly. This burial ground became known as “Hell’s Half-Acre.”

Actual photograph of graves on Hell’s Half-Acre. The photographer blackened the graves with ink to make them more apparent. The Wayside is visible on the far left. Many today insist this area is haunted by the ghosts of the victims as well as by Kate.

Inside the cabin, they discovered the hammers and the trap-door. When they opened it, the stench that arose from the pit was indescribably foul. Nothing from a fictional horror movie could have been more wild or horrific. Especially when we think of Kate descending into the pit to slit the throat of a victim since the stench did not seem to bother her at all demonstrating a shocking dissociation from normal human reactions.

In the search to track down America’s first known serial killers, the background of the Bender family was investigated. They were really not a family at all. John Bender’s real name was John Flickinger and was from either Germany or Holland. John Jr. was really John Gebhardt. Ma Bender’s real name was Almira Meik and was born in the Adirondacks. Only Ma and Kate were related being mother and daughter. Ma married as a teen to George Griffith with whom she had 12 children, Kate being the fifth. George allegedly died from a hammer blow to the head. Ma Bender married several more times but apparently murdered every husband and even three of her own children to keep them from talking. Kate’s name was actually Eliza Griffith and apparently married at a point and called herself Sara Eliza Davis. What happened to her husband is not known but to suppose she murdered him just as Ma murdered all her husbands is certainly not improbable. Again, the Benders demonstrate that the closest families are those individuals who share a mindset not a gene set.

The Bender Museum is an exact replica of the Wayside as it appeared to travelers and Kate’s clients. The original cabin was thoroughly dismantled by souvenir hunters.

Three of the actual hammers used to dispatch their victims were donated to the museum.

But what happened to the Benders? That’s the most disquieting aspect of the whole story. No one knows what happened to the Benders. They were never brought to justice. They had slipped out of town under cover of darkness. The common belief was that Ma and Pa Bender went to St. Louis while Junior and Kate went to live with some outlaw colony somewhere near the Mexican border along Texas or New Mexico. Sometime in 1889, two women in Detroit (one source says Illinois) were accused of being Ma and Kate Bender and were arrested and extradited to Kansas. They were kept incarcerated while authorities investigated them. They were eventually released due to lack of evidence. I know nothing else about these ladies. We can only surmise that they must have told people they were the Bender women. This, of course, does not mean that they were as they might have been trying to seek publicity. People have made the craziest false confessions over the centuries and so something is required more than their bare word. I have no idea what became of them. We can suppose they returned to Detroit but whether they remained there is unknown. When and where they died as well as their true identities remain mysteries. Whatever the case, the Bender men dropped out of sight entirely and were never seen nor heard from again. Did they return to Germany or go live quietly somewhere inside or the United States? One story has it that John Bender committed suicide in 1884 near Lake Michigan. Another story has it that he was murdered by the Bender women for swindling them. If there is any truth to these stories, then it would appear that the Benders settled in Michigan.

Marker erected near US 169.

To this very day, the mounds in the distance near Cherryvale are called the Bender Mounds.

The Benders were America’s first murderous family--America's first serial killers--but certainly not the first in the world. There is the story of Christie-Cleek from 14th century Scotland. There was a famine in the 1340s when a butcher named Andrew Christie joined a scavenging party at the foothills of the Grampians. One of the men died and Christie butchered the body and served it to the rest of the starving party who developed a taste for human flesh. The party, led by Christie, became a murderous band of cannibals waylaying travelers on horseback in the Grampians. Christie would use a long pole with a crook at the end—known as a “cleke”—to pull travelers from their horses then traveler and horse were eaten. About 30 such unfortunates met their fate in the Grampians. An armed contingent from Perth was sent to the Grampians and they killed off the gang except that Christie escaped and was rumored to have reentered the respectable life and lived out the rest of his days under another name. The story bears some resemblance to the story of the Anatolian butcher that killed three boys and sold their flesh as pork during a famine. St. Nicholas then brought the boys back to life.

Three centuries later, Alexander “Sawney” Bean made his appearance in Scottish lore. He had no taste for honest work, married a nasty woman and together they lived in Bannane Cave for 25 years and raised a family there. Eventually, through incest, the family swelled to 48 individuals who only left the cave at night to attack and kill isolated wayfarers. The bodies were brought back, dismembered, pickled and eaten. Sometimes innards would be found washed up on the beaches by locals. The disappearances grew alarming but no one knew of the degenerate family of cannibals in Bannane Cave. In fact, no one believed that human beings could inhabit such a dwelling which flooded at high tide. Innocent persons were often accused and executed for killings and disappearances but that did stop the crime spree. But when the murderers attacked a couple traveling home, another group of travelers came upon the scene and the Beans fled. Now James VI of Scotland (later to be crowned James I of England) assembled a 400-man posse and the Beans were tracked down to Bannane Cave which they found littered with hundreds of bones teeth. The Beans where were captured alive. The men were drawn and quartered in front of the women and children who were then burned alive. One legend has it that a daughter had left he clan and lived in the town where she planted a “hairy tree” but when the Beans were captured, her identity somehow leaked out and the townspeople lynched her from a bough of the hairy tree.

But then the Benders weren’t cannibals…or were they? We don’t have their confessions or accounts to pore over so we don’t know what went on at the Wayside when the Benders were by themselves. While robbery seemed to be the motive, the truth is, the Benders didn’t get much. About $4600 in cash and jewelry, a few horses and saddles and a wagon. Many of the people they killed owned very little. They seemed to have killed them for the sheer pleasure of killing. Moreover, there were others missing in that general area who did not turn up in Hell’s Half-Acre but are believed to have been waylaid by the Benders. These were itinerant bums for the most part from which the Benders could expect nothing. All told, the Benders killed at least 20 people but probably more and maybe even a lot more. So what happened to them? We have to wonder if one of the weird subjects Kate like to discuss with lodgers and clients at the Wayside was cannibalism and its moral ramifications. What kind of food did she fix? Probably stews mostly. And what kind of meat might gone into the stews that they served to their guests?

While these stories are legend and likely not true and probably influenced one another, both probably spring from a a single source which is true but now forgotten. While the stories sound too wild, when we get bonafied reports of murderous families, the details also sound too wild to be true but they are true nonetheless. The Bender story sounds like a legend—murderous family, insatiable for blood, flee and are never seen again—and yet it definitely happened. Similarly, more modern stories such as Charles Ng and Leonard Lake who killed mainly women after turning them into sex slaves but also killed their husbands and their children and even their infants without the slightest hesitation or remorse. Their compound was full of bones and tissue buried in the dirt. Then, of course, there is Jeffery Dahmer who killed and ate men and boys in his apartment while nobody did anything until it all became too much to ignore. The real stories do not sound much different from the legends and so we can surmise the legends have a basis in fact and that murderous and cannibalistic families have existed amongst us for a very long time and will continue to exist amongst us for as long as the human race continues.

11-09-2013, 12:12 PM	#2 (permalink)
~~Lord Larehip~~ Account Disabled Join Date: Jun 2013 Posts: 899	The townspeople held a meeting (which John and Junior reportedly attended). The plan was that all the farms and businesses in the area would be thoroughly searched and particular attention would be paid to the Bender property. The Benders realized the game was over and split town. Bad weather postponed the search party giving the Benders several days head start. By the time, a search party got to the Bender property, the family was long gone and the place deserted. Areas in the orchard appeared to have excavated and looked splotchy and so the party began digging. The Kansas City Times describes what they discovered: “[They] groped over these splotches and held up a handful to the light. The ooze smeared itself over their palms and dribbled through their fingers. It was blood-thick, fetid, clammy, sticking blood—that they had found groping there in the void.” To their horror, they disinterred 11 bodies including Dr. York and a woman as well as that of a young girl. Unlike the others, her skull was not bashed in nor was her throat slit. She had been savaged but not enough to kill her which leads us to the unsavory conclusion that the Benders had sealed the girl’s fate by tossing her beaten body next to the mutilated corpse of her father, George Loncher (or Lochner), and simply buried her alive. The Kansas City Times described the state of her corpse: “The little girl was probably eight years of age. And had long, sunny hair, and some traces of beauty on a countenance that was not yet entirely disfigured by decay. One arm was broken. The breastbone had been driven in. The right knee had been wrenched from its socket and the leg doubled up under the body. Nothing like this sickening series of crimes had ever been recorded in the whole history of the country.” Soon the whole nation was engrossed and repulsed by the crimes of the “Bloody Benders.” The Bender property being searched and so begins the legend of the Bloody Benders from a sketch in Harper’s Weekly. This burial ground became known as “Hell’s Half-Acre.” Actual photograph of graves on Hell’s Half-Acre. The photographer blackened the graves with ink to make them more apparent. The Wayside is visible on the far left. Many today insist this area is haunted by the ghosts of the victims as well as by Kate. Inside the cabin, they discovered the hammers and the trap-door. When they opened it, the stench that arose from the pit was indescribably foul. Nothing from a fictional horror movie could have been more wild or horrific. Especially when we think of Kate descending into the pit to slit the throat of a victim since the stench did not seem to bother her at all demonstrating a shocking dissociation from normal human reactions. In the search to track down America’s first known serial killers, the background of the Bender family was investigated. They were really not a family at all. John Bender’s real name was John Flickinger and was from either Germany or Holland. John Jr. was really John Gebhardt. Ma Bender’s real name was Almira Meik and was born in the Adirondacks. Only Ma and Kate were related being mother and daughter. Ma married as a teen to George Griffith with whom she had 12 children, Kate being the fifth. George allegedly died from a hammer blow to the head. Ma Bender married several more times but apparently murdered every husband and even three of her own children to keep them from talking. Kate’s name was actually Eliza Griffith and apparently married at a point and called herself Sara Eliza Davis. What happened to her husband is not known but to suppose she murdered him just as Ma murdered all her husbands is certainly not improbable. Again, the Benders demonstrate that the closest families are those individuals who share a mindset not a gene set. The Bender Museum is an exact replica of the Wayside as it appeared to travelers and Kate’s clients. The original cabin was thoroughly dismantled by souvenir hunters. Three of the actual hammers used to dispatch their victims were donated to the museum. But what happened to the Benders? That’s the most disquieting aspect of the whole story. No one knows what happened to the Benders. They were never brought to justice. They had slipped out of town under cover of darkness. The common belief was that Ma and Pa Bender went to St. Louis while Junior and Kate went to live with some outlaw colony somewhere near the Mexican border along Texas or New Mexico. Sometime in 1889, two women in Detroit (one source says Illinois) were accused of being Ma and Kate Bender and were arrested and extradited to Kansas. They were kept incarcerated while authorities investigated them. They were eventually released due to lack of evidence. I know nothing else about these ladies. We can only surmise that they must have told people they were the Bender women. This, of course, does not mean that they were as they might have been trying to seek publicity. People have made the craziest false confessions over the centuries and so something is required more than their bare word. I have no idea what became of them. We can suppose they returned to Detroit but whether they remained there is unknown. When and where they died as well as their true identities remain mysteries. Whatever the case, the Bender men dropped out of sight entirely and were never seen nor heard from again. Did they return to Germany or go live quietly somewhere inside or the United States? One story has it that John Bender committed suicide in 1884 near Lake Michigan. Another story has it that he was murdered by the Bender women for swindling them. If there is any truth to these stories, then it would appear that the Benders settled in Michigan. Marker erected near US 169. To this very day, the mounds in the distance near Cherryvale are called the Bender Mounds. The Benders were America’s first murderous family--America's first serial killers--but certainly not the first in the world. There is the story of Christie-Cleek from 14th century Scotland. There was a famine in the 1340s when a butcher named Andrew Christie joined a scavenging party at the foothills of the Grampians. One of the men died and Christie butchered the body and served it to the rest of the starving party who developed a taste for human flesh. The party, led by Christie, became a murderous band of cannibals waylaying travelers on horseback in the Grampians. Christie would use a long pole with a crook at the end—known as a “cleke”—to pull travelers from their horses then traveler and horse were eaten. About 30 such unfortunates met their fate in the Grampians. An armed contingent from Perth was sent to the Grampians and they killed off the gang except that Christie escaped and was rumored to have reentered the respectable life and lived out the rest of his days under another name. The story bears some resemblance to the story of the Anatolian butcher that killed three boys and sold their flesh as pork during a famine. St. Nicholas then brought the boys back to life. Three centuries later, Alexander “Sawney” Bean made his appearance in Scottish lore. He had no taste for honest work, married a nasty woman and together they lived in Bannane Cave for 25 years and raised a family there. Eventually, through incest, the family swelled to 48 individuals who only left the cave at night to attack and kill isolated wayfarers. The bodies were brought back, dismembered, pickled and eaten. Sometimes innards would be found washed up on the beaches by locals. The disappearances grew alarming but no one knew of the degenerate family of cannibals in Bannane Cave. In fact, no one believed that human beings could inhabit such a dwelling which flooded at high tide. Innocent persons were often accused and executed for killings and disappearances but that did stop the crime spree. But when the murderers attacked a couple traveling home, another group of travelers came upon the scene and the Beans fled. Now James VI of Scotland (later to be crowned James I of England) assembled a 400-man posse and the Beans were tracked down to Bannane Cave which they found littered with hundreds of bones teeth. The Beans where were captured alive. The men were drawn and quartered in front of the women and children who were then burned alive. One legend has it that a daughter had left he clan and lived in the town where she planted a “hairy tree” but when the Beans were captured, her identity somehow leaked out and the townspeople lynched her from a bough of the hairy tree. But then the Benders weren’t cannibals…or were they? We don’t have their confessions or accounts to pore over so we don’t know what went on at the Wayside when the Benders were by themselves. While robbery seemed to be the motive, the truth is, the Benders didn’t get much. About $4600 in cash and jewelry, a few horses and saddles and a wagon. Many of the people they killed owned very little. They seemed to have killed them for the sheer pleasure of killing. Moreover, there were others missing in that general area who did not turn up in Hell’s Half-Acre but are believed to have been waylaid by the Benders. These were itinerant bums for the most part from which the Benders could expect nothing. All told, the Benders killed at least 20 people but probably more and maybe even a lot more. So what happened to them? We have to wonder if one of the weird subjects Kate like to discuss with lodgers and clients at the Wayside was cannibalism and its moral ramifications. What kind of food did she fix? Probably stews mostly. And what kind of meat might gone into the stews that they served to their guests? While these stories are legend and likely not true and probably influenced one another, both probably spring from a a single source which is true but now forgotten. While the stories sound too wild, when we get bonafied reports of murderous families, the details also sound too wild to be true but they are true nonetheless. The Bender story sounds like a legend—murderous family, insatiable for blood, flee and are never seen again—and yet it definitely happened. Similarly, more modern stories such as Charles Ng and Leonard Lake who killed mainly women after turning them into sex slaves but also killed their husbands and their children and even their infants without the slightest hesitation or remorse. Their compound was full of bones and tissue buried in the dirt. Then, of course, there is Jeffery Dahmer who killed and ate men and boys in his apartment while nobody did anything until it all became too much to ignore. The real stories do not sound much different from the legends and so we can surmise the legends have a basis in fact and that murderous and cannibalistic families have existed amongst us for a very long time and will continue to exist amongst us for as long as the human race continues.