American Monsters: The Bloody Benders

0:00 Speaker 1: Warning. Kind of Murdery contains adult themes, explicit language, and descriptions of violence. It is not suitable for anyone, and we recommend you stop listening now.

0:11 Speaker 2: Language true crime with a dash of the paranormal, the garish, the strange, in the darkly comic. I'm Zevan Odelberg, host of Kind of Murdery, a podcast that's about more than just murder. It's my very own pocket dimension, home to a curated collection of bizarre and compelling stories, the unsolved, the unsettling, and the unbelievable. I cover it all just so long as it's kind of murdery. That guy was telling you the truth. He was me. I am Zevan Odelberg, and this is kind of murdery. With that and no further ado, we're gonna jump right in.

0:56 Speaker 2: Please join me right now as we uncover what truths we can and solve what mysteries we may kind of murderies. Don't look behind the curtain. Murder at the Bender Inn starts now. In eighteen sixty two, the Homestead Act opened a new chapter in American history at a time when the nation was deeply divided by Civil War. This legislation promised a fresh start for many who dared to dream. Amidst a wild landscape burgeoning with hope and transformation, settlers headed west, among them the Bender family, who laid down roots in Labette County, Oklahoma.

1:44 Speaker 2: The land they chose was not unoccupied. The Osage Indians had once called the place home before being forcibly displaced to clear the way for new settlers. The untamed landscapes of what would become Kansas Territory began to slowly change. By October eighteen seventy, a trickle of families, each carrying their hopes and secrets, ventured into the newly available lands, choosing to establish their homes and lives around seven miles from the burgeoning city of Cherryville. One of those families seeking a new chapter in the rugged frontier were the Benders.

2:16 Speaker 2: They moved onto one hundred and sixty acre property facing the well traveled Osage Trail. It was a land of promise and potential. The Benders were newcomers to the community, part of a tidal wave of humanity seeking to carve out their destiny on the American frontier. The Bender's story, like that of so many others, was set against a backdrop of national aspiration and personal endeavor, and, sadly, as I mentioned previously, forced relocation and genocide against the Native peoples. With all of this happening in the background, no one could possibly suspect that the tale of the Bender family would become an unforgettable chapter in the annals of American folklore.

2:56 Speaker 2: The Bender's property had a panoramic view of the Osage Trail, which was frequented by settlers, traders, and others seeking fortunes in the West. It was a strategic location that offered both isolation and access to a flow of potential visitors, a dual promise of solitude and opportunity. This property would soon become both home and something more sinister, though at the moment it was just another parcel in a land of endless possibilities. The patriarch and the heir, John Bender Senior and John Bender Junior, were the vanguard of their family's journey to a new life.

3:29 Speaker 2: They arrived carrying with them the scent of foreign soil, believed to have been originated from Germany. John Bender Senior was an imposing man around sixty years old. His visage etched with years of hardship. English words seldom escaped his lips, and when they did, they were weighed down by a thick, guttural accent that marked him as an outsider. His son, John Bender Junior, twenty five, and already soaked in his father's complex legacy, was an enigma of his own. He spoke English relatively well, albeit with a noticeable accent, and had a tendency to break into inexplicable laughter.

4:03 Speaker 2: This unsettling habit led the locals, who found it difficult to decipher his character, to hastily label him a half wit. In eighteen seventy one, the Bender women arrived to complete the family. Elvira, or Ma as she was known, was a woman of about fifty five years. Her English skills were rudimentary at best, and her demeanor was so stern and unapproachable that the locals, unable to pierce her tough exterior, named her the she Devil. The Bender's tapestry of personalities and mysteries seemed to invite both scrutiny and speculation, yet it was precisely the kind of family one could imagine struggling and thriving in the unforgiving American Frontier.

4:42 Speaker 2: It's crucial to understand that beneath the quirks and idiosyncrasies of each Bender family member lay the universal human desires for community, prosperity, and perhaps for redemption, or so it seemed. But could such a complex web of human needs and ambitions come without a price. Well, As the saying goes, every family has its secrets, and the Benders were no exception. The youngest member, Kate Bender, was the family's magnetic lynchpin, a woman of twenty three, possessing a slender, yet curvaceous figure that seemed sculpted to attract attention.

5:15 Speaker 2: Her eyes were always bright and calculating, and often accompanied by a coi, almost impish smile, hinting its secrets yet to be divulged. It wasn't just her physical allure that captivated people. Kate held a certain intellectual mystique. She professed herself a healer and a psychic, conducting seances and claiming curative powers for various ailments. Yet what set her apart and added a layer of societal titillation, was her vocal advocacy for free love. Not just a casual attitude toward romantic relationship, but a deep seated belief in sexual liberation and the moral bankruptcy of traditional marital constraints.

5:55 Speaker 2: This was no small thing in the societal context of the late nineteenth century, and it brought an eclectic and sometimes desperate clientele to the Bender Homestead. Their home was a deceptively inviting one, a canvas partition neatly divided the family's private quarters from a makeshift general store and dining area. Travelers weary from their jury along the arduous Osage Trail, would find solace there, or so they believed. Yet as whispers about mysterious disappearances and unexplained deaths intensified, suspicions insidiously began to gravitate toward the Bender Inn.

6:30 Speaker 2: Kate's sensually captivating presence was an intricate facade that masked the deeper complexities of the Bender Homestead. What appeared to be a sanctuary amid the stark Kansas terrain would soon force the community to question the very nature of trust itself. Gradually, the seemingly idyllic appearance of Bender Inn began to crumble, revealing a much darker narrative. Initially seen as a sanctuary for weary travelers, the establishment would soon become the episent of an unfolding horror story that gripped the region.

7:03 Speaker 2: The nightmare began in the month of May eighteen seventy one, in the remote expanse of Drum Creek, a waterway lying ominously to the southeast of the Bender estate, a man's life was shockingly extinguished. His corpse bore the hallmarks of extraordinary brutality, a skull shattered as if struck by unbridled force, and a throat that had been so deeply and malevolently slashed it bore the signature of sheer sadism. This wasn't an act of random violence or an unfortunate mishap. This was a calculated, vicious assault, a dreadful prolog to a series of events that would eventually send ripples of terror throughout the community.

7:42 Speaker 2: Then, in February of eighteen seventy two, as winter's grip began to relent, the horror metastasized. Two additional men were discovered, their lifeless bodies bearing identical Macob traits, skulls crushed with dreadful precision, and throats slashed as if part of a grim ritual. By the time the autumn leaves began to color the Kansas landscape. Later that year, people traversing the once bustling O Sage Trail found themselves enveloped in an aura of palpable dread. Word of these ghastly murders and mysterious vanishings seeped into the local consciousness, compelling travelers to seek alternate routes to avoid becoming the next grim headline.

8:23 Speaker 2: During this unsettling period, vigilante groups, fueled by a mix of desperation and feudal courage, took matters into their own hands. Their expeditions were marked by a chaotic urgency of frantic grasping for justice and a world suddenly turned upside down. Yet, despite their impassioned efforts, these amateur posses yielded little more than false arrests and the sporadic release of innocent men, failing to stem the tide of dread that had so consumed the community. The pivotal moment in this ominous tale came when George Newton longcoor known by some simply as Long, mysteriously disappeared.

9:02 Speaker 2: Longcore wasn't traveling alone. Accompanying him was his eighteen month old daughter, Mary Anne. Both were navigating the burden of recent loss. Longcour's wife had passed away, leaving him a widower with his world up ended, and Longcour made the heart wrenching decision to leave Independence, Kansas for the promise of a new life in Iowa. Tragically, neither he nor his baby daughter would reach that hoped for sanctuary. After Longcour disappeared, doctor William Henry York triggered alarm bells.

9:32 Speaker 2: Doctor York was not just some peripheral figure in Longcourt's life. York was a former neighbor and friend, and their connection was deep and meaningful. In fact, it was doctor York who had sold Longcour the horses and the wagon for his journey and exchanged that in hindsight, took on a poignant, tragic significance. The moment doctor York received news that Longcourp's horses and wagon were found unattended near Fort Scott, Kansas, he knew in his life bones that something was deeply wrong. These were not just any horses, and this was not just any wagon.

10:06 Speaker 2: They were the very animals and cart that Longcoor had acquired from him with the hopes of a new life, a new beginning their discovery shattered any remnants of normality, imbuing the quest for answers with an intensity that went beyond professional interest or community duty. For doctor York, this was personal, a heartbreaking betrayal of the camaraderie, the shared conversations, and the neighborly bonds that knit a community together. Doctor York had dined with Longcor, had laughed and mourned with him.

10:34 Speaker 2: They were men bound not just by proximity, but by the shared humanity that turns neighbors into friends. The unexplained disappearance of George Newton, Longcore and his daughter Mary Anne rattled doctor Yorke to his core, filling him with an urgency to bring clarity to a community clouded by fear and suspicion. Thus, he became a driving force in the quest to unravel the disturbing series of events along the Osage Trail, a journey that would soon reveal the sinister depths to which humanity could sink.

11:04 Speaker 2: In the spring of eighteen seventy three, with a steely resolve that was both personal and communal, Doctor York embarked on his quest to uncover the fate of George Newton and his daughter. One could sense the weight of his mission as he saddled up, eyes narrowing in on the horizon, each step of his horse, carrying with it a sense of duty. Doctor York meandered through the rugged trails, engaging with local homesteaders, eyes scanning for any sign, any shred of evidence that could bring peace to a community riddled with dread, that could bring peace to his own beating heart.

11:38 Speaker 2: He eventually arrived in Fort Scott, where his worst fears were confirmed. The horses and wagon, undeniably the same ones he had sold to Longcoorp, were found abandoned. To add a layer of heart wrenching certainty, he even identified clothes garments that once covered the bodies of longcor and his daughter as belonging to them. For doctor York, it was a moment fraught with both revelation and so sorrow, confirmation that his friend and the young child were not just missing, but had meant a more horrible end.

12:08 Speaker 2: But then, on his journey back to independence, doctor York made a faithful and ultimately tragic decision. The man who had set forth to solve a mystery would himself become enshrouded in it. He decided to stop at the Bender Inn, perhaps lured by its faux hospitality, or possibly thinking he could glean some additional clues. What we know for certain is this doctor William Henry Yorke walked into the Bender Inn, but he never ever walked out. His disappearance didn't just deepen the mystery, it personally implicated his community forever, altering the narrative of the O Sage Trail and sealing his own place in its grim chronicle.

12:47 Speaker 2: And unbeknownst to the Benders, they had tangled with a family not easily dismissed. Doctor Yorke's brothers were no ordinary men. Colonel Ed Yorke had a military background, while Alexander Muwe York was an influential figure in the political realm, serving as a member of the Kansas State Senate. Alarmed by the disappearance of their sibling, Colonel Yorke wasted no time in mobilizing a search party of seventy five men. The men scoured the countryside, and by March of eighteen seventy three, their investigative compass pointed them directly to bender In.

13:20 Speaker 2: Colonel York, armed with purpose, confronted the Benders in a chillingly casual manner. The family denied any involvement in the vanishing of doctor York. They deflected suspicion by suggesting that the physician might have encountered violence near Drum Creek. John Junior even added a layer of diversion by recounting how he himself had been shot at in the same area roughly around the time doctor York had gone missing. Colonel Yorke found himself in a precarious position. While his instincts told him something was a miss, the absence of tangible evidence tying the Benders to his brother's disappearance forced him to make a reluctant exit from their property.

13:57 Speaker 2: As he left, he couldn't help but scent that this encounter was far from over. The atmosphere was thick with tension, the kind that precedes a storm. Colonel Yorke and his search party may have left the Bender in that day, but the quest for truth had only intensified, and Colonel Yorke wasn't one to abandon a mission unfinished. As the days passed, additional damning evidence against the Benders began to accumulate. Armed with new information, Colonel Yorke returned to the bender In on April third, this time flanked by men carrying firearms.

14:30 Speaker 2: They meant business. The confrontation reached a boiling point when Colonel Yorke questioned the family about a chilling account from a woman who said she had narrowly escaped the inn after al Vira brandished knives and pistols at her. Initially, Alvira feigned ignorance, pretending as if the English language was foreigned to her. However, when Colonel Yorke persisted in his allegations, Alvira's mask shattered, suddenly bursting into fluent English. She railed against the woman's claim, accusing her of having, of all things, cursed her coffee.

15:00 Speaker 2: Losing control of her long practice pantomime, Elvira ordered Colonel Yorke and his men to leave her property at once, but the damage was done. Elvira had unwittingly revealed herself, demonstrating not only her fluency in English, but also a glimpse of her genuine, malicious temperament. This slip on Elvira's part only fortified Colonel Yorke's conviction. Although the family had forcibly expelled Colonel Yorke, and his armed crew from their homestead. He left knowing that he had peeled back another layer of deceit shrouding the Bender family.

15:33 Speaker 2: The stakes had risen, and the countdown to unmasking the chilling reality had begun. In a surprising move, perhaps sensing the net closing in, Kate Bender opted for a different tactic. She offered to utilize her purported psychic abilities to help Colonel Yorke locate his missing brother. In a tone tinged with eerie assurance, Kate invited him to come back to the end on the approaching Friday night, this time with a smaller contingent. He promised to guide him to the very spot where doctor York was buried.

16:03 Speaker 2: This offer from Kate, who had previously magnetized so many with her mystical claims, added a perplexing twist to an already tangled web of events. It was an audacious gamble, leaving Colonel York with a complex dilemma should he trust Kate's disturbing offer or interpret it as another layer of manipulation. As the Friday night meeting loomed closer, the tension was palpable, thickening the atmosphere with a mix of hope and foreboding. Around the same time that Kate offered to lend her psychic abilities to the hunt, tensions were escalating in the neighboring communities.

16:39 Speaker 2: The people were afraid and blame for the string of ominous disappearances began to be directed at Osage Township itself. To address this collective unrest and suspicion, a crucial public meeting was convened at the Harmony Grove Schoolhouse. There, in a room drenched in collective worry and suspicion, it was unanimously agreed upon search warrants would be secured to investigate every property lying between Big Hill Creek and Drum Creek. In an ironic twist, adding another layer of mystery to the unfolding drama, Colonel York, John Bender Senior, and John Bender Junior were all in attendance at this very meeting.

17:18 Speaker 2: They sat among their neighbors, those who trusted and those who doubted, all while the agreement was made to delve into the very places that might uncover the Bender's own dark secrets. The tension in the room was so palpable it verily nearly twanged like a discordant vi ainstring. A community's shared hope of finding answers was about to class dramatically with the hidden agenda of the Bender family. A mere few days after that faithful community meeting, a local resident made a chilling discovery.

17:53 Speaker 2: The animals, all of them on the Bender property, were either dead or emaciated, a bleaque sign of abandonment. Intrigued and concerned, Leroy Dick, an elected township officer, took it upon himself to investigate the unsettling scenario. What he encountered was enough to arouse immediate alarm. A feeded smell emanated from a trap door that had been securely nailed shut and was situated beneath a bed. Recognizing the ominous implications, Leroy Dick wasted no time in calling for a search party. The response was overwhelming.

18:28 Speaker 2: Hundreds of local residents, fueled by a combination of curiosity, concern, and perhaps a sense of impending justice, converged on the Bender property. They came armed not just with their collective will, but with the physical tools to unearth whatever dreadful secrets lay hidden. Shovels and pickaxes gripped firmly in hand. The atmosphere was thick with apprehension as the crowd prepared to delve into the very bowels of the bender in. The search party braced themselves as they pried open the seal trapped door, but nothing could have possibly prepared them for the grim tableau that lay beneath.

19:11 Speaker 2: It was a scene so gruesome, so saturated with horror, that had it been penned by the likes of Bromstoker Stephen King, it would likely have been dismissed as far too implausible, even for fiction. I'd like to say that it was so gruesome and horrible that it defied description, but that would be a lie. The very air seemed to thicken with the weight of unspoken atrocities, as if reality itself strained under the burden of such malevolent deeds. The scent of decay was so palpable, so three dimensional in the air that you could almost chew it.

19:51 Speaker 2: The search party, literally quaking in their boots, pried open the nailed shut trap door. It led to an empty room, where the sore of the hellish stench finally revealed its sinistered origin. Clotted blood had permeated the stone floor, seeping into the soil beneath as if the very ground had been violated. Yet surprisingly, no bodies were to be found there. The search expanded to Elvira and Kate's vegetable garden and to the apple orchard, and there the earth surrendered its horrifying secrets. Buried in a shallow grave was doctor Yorke, the first in a series of stomach churning discoveries.

20:29 Speaker 2: By the next day, of the garden and an adjacent well had yielded at least ten more bodies, accompanied by a grotesque assortment of dismembered body parts. All the victims had been subjected to the same savage ritual, a crushing blow to the skull, most likely by a hammer, followed by a cut across the throat. All except for young Mary Ann, tragically, almost unspeakably, her body showed no signs of such injuries. The implication was clear. The baby had had been buried alive fear God. As if to intensify the horror, many of the corpses had been indecently mutilated, suggesting acts of genital torture extending even beyond the moment of death.

21:13 Speaker 2: The discovery left an indelible mark on the community, not just a physical space, had been defiled, but the very fabric of trust and decency that holds a society together had been ripped and toren savagely apart. These crimes were not just violent, They were not just gruesome. They were a violation of basic human ethics, a grim testament to the depths of darkness that can reside in the human soul. Assuming the Benders had souls at all, The Bender dining table had one seat of honor, strategically positioned against a canvas room divider and directly above the ominous trap door that led to the blood soaked cellar below.

21:53 Speaker 2: When an unsuspecting guest took that seat, a hammer's blow would swiftly descend upon them from behind, the rendering them unconscious or worse. A second act of brutality swiftly followed, the slash across the throat, carried out with cold precision by one of the women. Once the guest's life had been distinguished, the corpse would be unceremoniously dropped through the trapdoor. Now, as some of you probably know, in many, if not most cultures, and in almost all fairy tales, guests, even guests who are your enemies, outside of your home are accorded the benefits and protections of hospitality.

22:32 Speaker 2: To mistreat or harm a guest is a violation of the most fundamental and universal moral rules of not just humanity, but even mythical creatures like fairies, elves, and trolls. It seems as though it was important to the Bender family that it was their objective to transgress as far and as extremely against all rules of behavior, against all moral codes, even those upheld by actual monsters from actual horror stories. There was no line that the Benders would not cross, and if a new line were created, they'd make sure to cross that line too.

23:11 Speaker 2: Back to the Bender's mo after the guest's skull had been crushed, their throat slit, and their body dropped through the trap door, the body would be stripped, and the Benders would make a decision either to bury the body in its entirety or to dismember it. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, valuables were often left on the victims, implying that the benders were not in this figuratively speaking for the money, but that rather their primary motivation was that they derived some perverse satisfaction or thrill from the very act of killing bullet holes riddled the walls of the Bender cabin, a haunting echo of desperate struggles of victims who had sensed their fate and tried in vain to fight back.

23:53 Speaker 2: The Bender family's chilling process wasn't just murder. It was an entire system, carefully thought out, an executed with a disturbing level of attention to detail. As I just mentioned, the crimes weren't driven by financial gain, but by an even darker impulse, a craving for the suffering of others. This revelation forces us to confront unsettling questions about human nature and what drives someone not just to kill, but to create an elaborate stage upon which the most depraved and I hate to use an adjective that could even be at all construed as positive, but creatively depraved impulses of the human mind can be made horrifyingly real.

24:36 Speaker 2: You've heard me say many times before how we often choose to define murderers and those who commit other awful acts as monsters to separate them from ourselves, but that, in fact, monstrosity is an almost uniquely human trait, and the Venders are an extreme example of that truth. Among the scant pieces of evidence to discovered in the abandoned Bender cabin were the tattered pages of a bible written in German. These pages revealed another layer of deception, naming John Junior as one John Gebhart.

25:11 Speaker 2: Coupled with this revelation, neighbors began to piece together the unsettling possibility that John Junior and Kate were not siblings at all, but rather a couple entwined in a dark partnership, and the lies didden in there. It appeared the Bender name itself was a fabrication. There's a grim likelihood that none of the four people in this horrific tale were actually Benders. By birth. Evidence points towards Alvira, the mother figure, being born as Elmira Mark in the rugged Adirondack Mountains.

25:42 Speaker 2: Her life story is tainted with whispers of multiple husbands and children, some of whom its rumored died of head injuries eerily similar to the Bender victims. As for John Senior, it's believed he was born as John Flickinger and immigrated from either Germany or the Netherlands. Kate Bender's true idea entity is thought to be Eliza Griffith, Alvira's fifth child, in unraveling, these aliases were forced to grapple with a web of lies so complex that it's difficult to discern where the deceit ends and the truth begins.

26:13 Speaker 2: But what is evident is that each member of this macabre ensemble had a pass they wished to escape, identities they wanted to shed, perhaps as easily as they shed the blood of their victims. And what's profoundly unsettling is the sheer depth of their deception, not just in names and relations, but in their cruel manipulation of social norms and trust, all to fulfill a sadistic lust for violence. You know what I'd like to note, and I don't have these answers, so forgive me. I don't believe that anyone has these answers.

26:45 Speaker 2: But if in fact they were not family other than Kate being Alvira's daughter, how did they all meet each other and how did they all reveal to each other? Or how did they all discover that each of them was a horrific serial killing monster with a lust for violence? I mean, how do you bring that up with a new friend. We're talking about four unrelated people who somehow all came together for the express purpose of repeatedly engaging in sadistic orgies of horrific violence. Wow, as Shakespeare would say, I suppose there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

27:24 Speaker 2: And that's true for good or ill, in this case, spectacularly ill. In the shocking aftermath of the horrors uncovered at the Bender property, influential figures wasted no time taking action. State Senator Alexander Yorke and Kansas Governor Thomas A. Osborne placed heavy bounties on the heads of the Bender family. Diligent detectives were able to follow wagon tracks, finding the family's abandoned horses near Thayer, a location just twelve miles north of the inn. The abandoned horses were concrete, real evidence, but from that juncture on discerning fact from fiction became increasingly complex.

28:01 Speaker 2: It's as if the Benders vanished into the misty pages of a Grimm's brother's dark fairy tale, leaving behind only the terror that they rot. Their disappearance shrouds them in a sort of mythological mystery, like monsters from folklore that vanish once their wicked deeds come to light. But this was no made up story. This was no Boogeyman Crampus or Freddy Krueger lessons in morality made sadistic flesh and blood to frighten and educate unruly children. No, no, no, The Benders were real, and their crimes so viscerally disturbing and horrific as to beggar the imagination of the most twisted campfire or bedtime storyteller, and their disappearance left O Sage Township and the broader Kansas Territories community grappling with the horrifying reality that evil, once unveiled, can dis pate just as quickly, leaving an everlasting impact and questions that may never find answers.

29:06 Speaker 2: The long tangled trail of the Bender family's whereabouts after their gruesome crimes has been strewn with whispers, rumors, and partial truths that baffle the imagination. While some believe that John Junior and Kate slipped away to an outlaw haven near the borderlands of Texas and New Mexico, a place where even the bravest law men feared to tread, there are others who trust the word of a detective claiming John Junior had died of apoplexy near that very border, a terminus of a life of nefarious deeds, if the detective's account holds water.

29:39 Speaker 2: On another front, stories floated around that Ma and Kate Bender had charted a course for Saint Louis, Missouri. Their ghastly legacy was so pervasive that, for years to come, any pair of women traveling in tandem were scrutinized as potential incarnations of Kate and Elvira Bender. That specter, that perpetual sense of dread in the unknow hovered over the communities they left in their wake. And let us not forget the vigilante groups, fueled by righteous indignation, who declared that they had exacted frontier justice on the Bender family, yet tellingly, not one presented the evidence required to claim the substantial cash reward offered by the state.

30:19 Speaker 2: This brings forth questions about the very fabric of human morality and justice, exposing the unnerving limits to which a society will go when law and order collapse. Efforts to bring the Benders to justice took a series of unexpected turns years after their horrifying crimes. In eighteen eighty four, an aged man was apprehended in Idaho. The particulars of his case were striking. He fit pob Bender's description and was accused of a hammer murder, early echoing the Bender's grim modus operandi. However, in a desperate bid for freedom that encapsulates the human instinct for self preservation, even among those we'd consider monstrous, perhaps especially among those as we'd consider monstrous, this man, who may have been Pobbender, tried to sever his own foot to escape custody, like a coyote chewing through its own pod to escape a hunter's steel trap.

31:12 Speaker 2: This maybe Popbender had strong animal instincts, but his gruesome escape attempt had catastrophic results, both for him and for the pursuit of justice. He bled out almost immediately and died before any positive identification could be made. The opportunity for closure so tantalizingly close, was snatched away, leaving only a cascade of what ifs and could have been. Now we fast forward to eighteen eighty nine, where another uncanny episode unfolded in Michigan. A mother daughter duo named Almira that's pretty close to Elvira and her daughter Sarah Elizabeth found themselves arrested for larceny.

31:55 Speaker 2: Soon whispers grew louder that they were, in fact the notorious Elvira and Kate Bender. They were brought to Kansas for identification. A panel convened from Labette County, but they could come to no definite conclusion. Were they the Benders? Could these possibly be the women whose acts had spilled so much innocent blood? The panel could not agree. Doubt that ever present shroud that cloud's justice led to Elmira and Sarah Elizabeth's release, and they were sent back to Michigan, their true identities still a lingering mystery.

32:28 Speaker 2: These incidents highlight the complexity and limitations of both human memory and identification, casting a shadow over our yearning for justice and closure. In the end, the Bender family, whether by fate or design, seemed to escape the firm grasp of retribution, of vengeance, of justice, of any real punishment or reckoning, leaving a community forever haunted by that absence of closure. Again, it was as if they were the magical monsters from a Grim's Face fairytale, their final chapters unsettlingly unwritten.

33:03 Speaker 2: By the way, I don't know if any of you have read the actual original Grim's fairy tales. I did as a kid. They are super gruesome and violent compared to what we know in pop culture in the US. I'll give you one example and then we'll get back to the story here. In the original snow White, the evil Queen is captured and taken to snow White and Prince Charming's wedding, where as punishment for her horrible behavior her attempts to murder snow White, a pair of copper slippers is taken with tongs shoved into white hot coals in the fireplace at the wedding reception.

33:44 Speaker 2: And then once the copper slippers are white hot, they are forced onto the evil Queen's feet and she is made to dance in them for the amusement of the assembled crowd at snow White's wedding reception. That is how the original story of snow White ends. So when I keep saying that the Benders are like characters from Grimm's fairy Tales, they are. They're like characters from the real Grimm's fairy Tales, not the sanitized Disney versions. So while the elusive Benders appeared to evade the firm grip of justice, their sinister web of criminality did not go entirely unpunished.

34:23 Speaker 2: In an ironic twist, a total of twelve men faced legal repercussions not for murder, but as accessories to the Bender's reign of terror. These men were implicated for aiding and a betting in the disposal of stolen goods, a series of crimes that, while less grim than murder, reveals how the tendency of criminal activity often entangles more than just the primary perpetrators. Among those charged was Mitt Cherry, a member of the vigilante committee tasked with upholding law and order. Cherry's own misdeeds came to light in an act of audacious betrayal.

34:56 Speaker 2: He had forged a letter to the wife of one of the victim, leading her to believe that her husband had reached his destination safely. Cherry, lying on behalf of the benders, concealing the true fate of one of their murder victims, was a revelation that further unraveled the social fabric of a community already in tatters, forcing them to question even those figures who were, at least on the surface, entrusted with the community's protection. This set of charges against members of the various vigilante groups that were supposedly in pursuit of the Benders, as well as the ensuing investigations, point to a broader, deeply unsettling reality that evil does not ever operate in a vacuum.

35:39 Speaker 2: It all too often finds willing accomplices, people who, while not directly participating in the horror, play a role in perpetuating it. This is a concept that the German American philosopher and historian Hanna Errant referred to as the banality of evil. While these men may not have wielded the hammer or slit the throats of innocent travels, their actions facilitated a climate in which such crimes could persist. It serves as a cautionary tale about the blurred lines of morality, forcing us to ponder the many shades of complicity in the face of unrestrained wickedness.

36:14 Speaker 2: The grim Taiale of the Benders evolved into a dark chapter of American folklore, drawing throngs of tourists and souvenir hunters to what was once a secluded homestead. The property, now stripped bare, bears the scars of human curiosity. Even the bricks that once made up the cellar and the stones that formed the well have been taken. It's as if the collective psyche wanted to possess fragments of this horrible story, almost as relics of human malice. Objects purported to be from the Bender estate, like hammers now displayed at the Cherryvale Museum and a blood stained knife held by the Kansas Historical Society, serve as chilling artifacts and reminders of the Bender family and the unspeakable atrocities they committed in an e tradition that lingers like a persistent shadow.

37:02 Speaker 2: Even today, traveling mothers and daughters in Kansas might still hear themselves jokingly compared to Ma and Kate Bender. The joke is both a nod to history and a testament to the undying narrative of the Benders, who have been elevated to a status akin to mythical figures, almost like ghoulish, murdering cryptids or representations of murderous femininity, such as arise in other cultures, for example Mexico's Lolrna or Japan's kuchisaki Ona. But unlike those legends, Ma and Kate Bender were very real creatures of flesh and blood and murder and the lighthearted teasing calling two women traveling together and older and a younger Ma and Kate Bender veils a somber truth that the Bender's story has been so deeply ingrained in the local and national consciousness precisely because it disturbs us.

37:54 Speaker 2: It holds up a mirror to the potential for evil that lies at the periphery of human nature, at once fascinating and repellent. The tourism, the continued fascination with the Bender property and the objects associated with it. Heck, even this podcast are a testament to our collective struggle to comprehend the incomprehensible. It's as though touching a piece of dark history brings us closer to understanding the human capacity for cruelty, and therein lies the paradox in our quest to understand evil.

38:27 Speaker 2: We grant it a form of immortality. As we've just discussed, the Bender women in particular, achieved an enduring notoriety, becoming etched in the annals of history as figures of abject horror, their deeds too grotesque to be forgotten and too mysterious to be fully understood, And of course those two qualities are what make them so fascinating as well. The tale of the Bloody Benders has seeped into the very fabric of American storytelling, inspiring countless renditions that capture both the imagination and tre Among these fictional adaptations stands the account of renowned Prairie writer Laura Ingalls Wilder.

39:06 Speaker 2: In her annotated autobiography Pioneer Girl. She speculated on the dark fate of the Bender family, insinuating that her own father, Paw Ingles, had joined a vigilante hunt to bring them to justice. While historical accuracy concerning the ingles proximity to the Benders is contested, Wilder's narrative accentuates the blend of fact and fiction that has enveloped the family's notorious exploits. It's a tale so unnerving that even stalwarts of Americana like Wilder couldn't resist delving into its dark implications, and this storytelling tradition persists today in the present, expanding its tendrils into various forms of media.

39:45 Speaker 2: The popular TV show Supernatural craft that an episode featuring a family of serial killers named the Benders, a hat tip to the haunting realities of the real life family. Video games have also paid homage in Red Dead Redemption two main care are eerily modeled after John Junior and Kate Bender. In fact, there's another example that hits even closer to home for me personally. I'm sure some of you have seen the Colt hit horror movie Cabin in the Woods starring Fran Kranz. Well, those of you who have been listening to kind of Murdery for a while now know that Fran is a close friend of mine and he's been a guest on the show several times, So if you haven't heard his episode, check them out.

40:25 Speaker 2: Anyway, Fran stars and Cabin in the Woods alongside Chris Hamsworth and Jesse Williams. And if you've seen it, and if you haven't, this isn't really a spoiler, so I'm just going to continue. But Cabin in the Woods features a family of redneck torture zombies named the Buckners, and, as fandom dot com puts it, quote, except for the undead paranormal aspect, the Buckners are almost completely identical to the historical Buddy Benders, a family of serial killers who owned an inn and a small general store in the Bette County, Kansas and murdered several between eighteen seventy one and eighteen seventy three.

41:03 Speaker 2: These artistic adaptations of the real life venders serve a dual purpose. On the one hand, they leverage the macob fascination the public has with the actual venders, commercializing it into digestible pieces of entertainment, and you could argue that that's what I'm doing right now with this podcast episode. But on a more profound level, they underline our collective need to process the chilling aspects of human nature, to frame them within the context of stories we can manage, analyze, and ultimately distance ourselves from.

41:35 Speaker 2: And yet the more we transform these dark chapters of history into folklore and fiction, the more indelible they become, like blood red inkstains on the pages of our cultural memory. I'm Zevan Odelberg, and this has been kind of murdery

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