When it comes to true crime, Mark Twain was right: Truth is stranger than fiction. But it’s also more dangerous, and real-life horror stories don’t only spread fear—they can also spread rumors, often making it difficult to discern fact from fabrication.

Take Lizzie Borden, who killed her parents with around 10 whacks each, instead of the 40 depicted in the morbid children’s rhyme. The real Amityville Horror was Robert DeFeo Jr., who killed his father, mother, two brothers, and two sisters in the house that would later become the focus of paranormal speculation. And while it’s unconfirmed whether the inspiration for Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Leatherface, serial killer Ed Gein, actually committed cannibalism, the items found in his house of horrors went far beyond the infamous mask of human skin.

In April, 1873 on a homestead in Labette County, Kansas, another of these stories was unfolding—one that would leave a local family with a nickname that remains infamous almost 150 years later. This is the story of the Bloody Benders, America’s first family of serial killers.

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The Benders’ story begins, like many from this time period, thanks to the Homestead Act of 1862. After the Civil War the Osage Indians were moved from their home in Labette County to Oklahoma, in order to make the Kansas Territory available to European settlers. In October 1870, five families moved to this area of Osage, settling around seven miles from where the city of Cherryvale would be established. One of these families was the Benders, who moved onto a 160-acre property facing the Osage Trail.

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The men, John Bender, Sr. and Jr., were first to arrive. Thought to be German immigrants, the elder Bender was around the age of 60 and spoke little English and with a thick accent, while the younger Bender was around 25, spoke English well but with an accent, and had a habit of laughing aimlessly that led some to label him a “half-wit.” After the men had prepared the land with a cabin and barn, the women arrived in 1871. Elvira Bender, who went by Ma, was around the age of 55, spoke little English, and was so unfriendly that neighbors dubbed her “she-devil.”

The star of the family was unarguably Kate, an attractive 23-year-old who spoke English fluently and worked a self-proclaimed healer and psychic who held seances, claimed to cure illnesses, and gave lectures on spiritualism. Though occultism wasn’t necessarily unusual at the time, Kate’s advocacy of free love earned her particular notoriety, and drew fans to the Bender property. There, the family had used canvas to split the one-room cabin into two parts—the back was kept as the living quarters, while the front was converted into a general store, kitchen, and dining table where travelers could stop for dry goods, a meal, or even a night of rest. But Bender Inn wasn’t the safe haven it pretended to be, and would soon become the focus of an inquisition into a series of mysterious disappearances and deaths in the region.

Bender Inn wasn’t the safe haven it pretended to be, and would soon become the focus of an inquisition into a series of mysterious disappearances and deaths in the region.

The bloodshed started in May 1871, when a man was found in Drum Creek, Southeast of the Bender property in what would become Montgomery County, with his skull crushed and his throat slashed. In February 1872, two more men were found with the same unique injuries. By the fall of that year, travelers had started to disappear off the Osage Trail; reports of the murdered and missing soon spread through the region, and travelers began avoiding the route. Meanwhile, Vigilante groups tried—with little success—to hold someone accountable, often arresting and then releasing innocent men.

But it was the disappearance of George Newton Longcor (also reported as “Loncher”) that set in motion the series of events that would eventually expose the truth about these mysterious disappearances and deaths. After the death of his wife, Longcor and his 18-month-old daughter Mary Ann had left Independence, Kansas for Iowa, but never made it. Soon, Dr. William Henry York—Longcor’s former neighbor, who’d sold Longcor horses and a wagon for the trip—was alerted that the team had been found abandoned near Fort Scott, Kansas.

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As such, Dr. William Henry York set out looking for Longcor and Mary Ann in spring of 1873. He questioned homesteaders along the trail as he made his way to Fort Scott, where he identified the wagon and horses as those he’d sold to Longcor and clothes found as belonging to the father and daughter. But on his way back to Independence, Dr. York made a fatal decision, stopping at the Bender Inn. Dr. York never returned.

What the Benders didn’t realize was that their latest victim came from a prominent family — Dr. York’s two brothers were Colonel Ed York and Alexander M. York, a member of the Kansas State Senate. Colonel York quickly organized a search party of 75 men who searched the area for Dr. York, and in March 1873 tracked him to the Bender Inn. In this initial meeting, the Benders denied any knowledge of Dr. York and suggested that the traveler may have met with foul play at a remote location near Drum Creek, where John, Jr. claimed to have been shot at around the same time as Dr. York disappeared. Without any proof they were involved in his brother’s disappearance, Colonel York had no choice but to leave Bender Inn.

Yet Colonel York soon found more evidence against the Benders, and returned on April 3 with armed men. There, Colonel York confronted them about a woman who claimed to have fled the Bender Inn after Elvira threatened her with knives and pistols. Though Elvira initially pretended not to understand English, she began yelling about how the woman had cursed her coffee when Colonel York repeated the accusation; Elvira then kicked the men out. But it was too late—Elvira had already revealed both her mastery of the English language, as well as her true nature.

Hoping to diffuse the situation, Kate offered to use her psychic abilities to assist Col. York in his search for his brother—she told him that if he returned that Friday night with fewer men, she would show him to Dr. York’s grave.

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Around the same time, neighboring communities began to accuse Osage of being responsible for the disappearances. To address the issue, the local township held a public meeting in the Harmony Grove schoolhouse, in which the community agreed to obtain search warrants for every property between Big Hill Creek and Drum Creek; Colonel York, John Bender, Sr., John Bender, Jr. were all in attendance.

A few days later, a local noticed that animals on the Bender property were dead or starving. Upon investigating, elected township officer Leroy Dick found that the property had been abandoned and that there was a bad odor coming from a trap door nailed shut and underneath a bed; his subsequent call for a search party turned up hundreds of locals wielding shovels and pickaxes, ready to search the Bender Inn.

What they found was a scene of such gore that, should Stephen King himself have written it as fiction, critics may have called it far-fetched.

What they found was a scene of such gore that, should Stephen King himself have written it as fiction, critics may have called it far-fetched.

Underneath the trap door was an empty room, where they found the smell coming from clotted blood had soaked through the stone floor into the soil below. Not finding any bodies, the search made its way to Elvira and Kate’s vegetable garden and apple orchard, where they would find Dr. York buried in a shallow grave. By the next day, at least ten bodies had been recovered from the garden and well, along with additional dismembered body parts. The same modus operandi—the victims were hit in the head, likely with a hammer, before having their throat slit—was evident on all bodies except that of Mary Ann, who was likely buried alive. Many of the bodies had also been “indecently mutilated,” possibly suggesting genital trauma.

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Based on the evidence and stories told by survivors of the Bender Inn, it is believed that guests were given the seat of honor at the dining table, which backed up against the canvas room divider and was positioned over the trap door to the cellar. Once their victim was sitting, one of the men would knock the visitor out with a hammer from behind; one of the women would then slit the victim’s throat to make sure they were dead. The body would then be dropped through the trap door, stripped, and later buried or dismembered. Though some victims were wearing valuables or carrying cash, a lack of targeting suggests the Benders killed for the thrill, not for the money. Around a dozen bullet holes were also found in the cabin, likely from victims who’d tried to fight back.

One of the few items found in the cabin was a Bible with notes in German, which identified John, Jr. as one John Gebhardt. This, as well as reports from neighbors, suggest that John, Jr. and Kate may have actually been a couple instead of brother and sister. In fact, it is now believed that none of the four were actually named Bender, and that only the mother and daughter were related. Elvira is thought to have been born Almira Mark in the Adirondack Mountains, and to have had multiple children and husbands—some say who died of head injuries—before she took up the Bender alias. John, Sr. was likely born John Flickinger before immigrating from either Germany or the Netherlands, and Kate Bender as Elvira’s fifth child Eliza Griffith.

In the wake of the gruesome discoveries made on the Bender property, both State Senator Alexander York and Kansas Governor Thomas A. Osborn offered substantial rewards for the apprehension of the family. Detectives followed wagon tracks to find the family’s horses, who’d been abandoned outside of Thayer, just 12 miles north of the inn. From there, it’s hard to tell what is real, and what is urban legend.

Some say that John Jr. and Kate traveled by railroad to an outlaw colony near the border of Texas and New Mexico, where law enforcement wouldn’t go. One detective even claimed to have tracked John Jr. to the border and found that he’d died of apoplexy. Meanwhile, there were reports that Ma and Pa Bender had fled towards St. Louis, Missouri. For many years after the crimes, two women traveling together would be accused of being Kate and Elvira Bender. And though several vigilante groups would claim to have caught and killed the Benders, none provided evidence or claimed the cash reward.

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In 1884, an elderly man who investigators said matched the description of Pa Bender was arrested in Idaho for a murder committed with a hammer. While waiting for more details from Kansas, the man tried to escape by severing his foot; he ended up bleeding to death, and decomposed before an identification could be made. In 1889, a mother Almira and daughter Sarah Elizabeth were arrested for larceny in Michigan and subsequently accused of being Elvira and Kate Bender. But when they were brought to Kansas, a panel from Labette County meant to confirm their identity provided inconsistent results. With significant doubt of their identity as the Benders, the women were released and sent back to Michigan.

But while the Benders themselves were likely never held accountable for the murders committed in Labette County, others were certainly punished for their crimes—twelve men in total were charged as accessories for helping dispose of the stolen goods. This included Mit Cherry, a member of the vigilante committee who it was later revealed forged a letter to a victim’s wife that made it appear as if he’d arrived safely.

As the story of the Benders spread across the country in the years following the murder spree, thousands of tourists and souvenir hunters flocked to the Bender’s former homestead, looting the property down to the bricks lining the cellar and stones lining the well. Hammers allegedly from the home have been displayed at the Cherryvale Museum, while a stained knife thought to have been taken from the Bender Inn now belongs to the Kansas Historical Society. To this day in Kansas, a traveling mother and daughter might be teased about being Ma and Kate Bender—the women, like the legend itself, immortal in their infamy.

Most of all, the story of the Bloody Benders has endured because of its their ability to inspire fictional accounts—including one by famous prairie writer Laura Ingalls Wilder, who claimed that Pa Ingalls had joined a vigilante hunt and that she’d come to her own conclusion as to what he meant when he said the family would “never be found” in her annotated autobiography, Pioneer Girl. But while there is some evidence that the Ingalls family may have encountered victim George Longcor, the Ingalls family had already left Kansas for Wisconsin by the time the Benders moved to the area. Yet she’s far from the only writer hoping to cash in on the crimes committed by this family; an episode of Supernatural featured a family of serial killers named the Benders, while two of the main characters in the video game Red Dead Redemption are modeled after John Jr. and Kate Bender.

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While the fate of the Bender family may never truly be known, the Bloody Benders live on in the legend, a real-life horror story forever ingrained into the collective memory of the Kansas plains and beyond.