In the spring of 1873, a Kansas state senator named Colonel Alexander York rode up to a dingy wayside inn on the Great Osage Trail, determined to find out what had happened to his brother. Dr. William Henry York had passed through the area weeks earlier while searching for a missing friend, and no one had seen him since. The family that ran the inn—the Benders—told the colonel that his brother had stayed with them for a night and then left the next morning, perhaps attacked somewhere along the trail.
That seemed plausible enough. But local settlers had already begun whispering about the strange family who lived there, and those whispers were about to unravel one of the most grisly murder sprees in the American West. The Benders were not a typical pioneer family. John Bender Sr.
, a coarse and brutish man around sixty years old, had arrived in Osage Township in 1870 with his supposed wife, Alvira, his son John Jr. , and his daughter Kate. Alvira, who preferred to be called Ma, was in her early forties, and many locals privately doubted the two were married at all, suspecting they were actually siblings. The family claimed German or Dutch origins, but their backgrounds remained murky.
John Sr. barely spoke English, while Ma pretended to understand little of the language, even though it was obvious she understood more than she let on. It was John Jr. , twenty-five, and Kate, twenty-three, who did the talking, and they were fluent enough to handle the family’s business.
That business was the Wayside Inn, a small, drab establishment built on the family’s homestead along the Osage Trail. The cabin was split in two: one half served as the family’s cramped living quarters, and the other was converted into a general store and inn for travelers. It was not much—poor accommodations, shared rooms, and rough conditions—but it offered shelter for anyone crossing the prairie. By the end of 1871, the Benders had also built a barn, planted a vegetable garden, and enclosed land for an orchard.
The family kept to themselves, and John Sr. made a poor impression on everyone he met. Travelers described him as a brute, a repulsive man with no trace of civility. Kate, on the other hand, was outgoing and attractive.
She claimed to be a healer and a spiritualist who could communicate with the dead, and she conducted séances for anyone who cared to listen. When word spread that she advocated free love, her reputation grew, and the Wayside Inn became a well-known stop for men traveling the trail. They came for the company, not the comfort. But the guests who stayed at the Wayside were not always seen again.
In the early summer of 1871, the body of a man named Mr. Jones was discovered in Drum Creek, not far from the inn. There was no clear indication who had killed him, though the owner of Drum Creek was suspected because of proximity. A few months later, two more bodies were found out on the prairie near Osage Township, both with their throats cut and their skulls crushed by a blunt object—the same fate that had befallen Jones.
The trail had long been known as a place where travelers might meet horse thieves or villains, but by 1873, the number of missing people who had passed through the area had become so alarming that many began to avoid it entirely. Vigilance committees formed but did little good; they regularly arrested innocent men, and those who could not clear their names were run out of the county. It took time before investigators realized the victims had all stayed at the Wayside Inn. The pattern of the murders was systematic.
Guests were seated in a small room next to a canvas wall that separated the inn from the family’s living quarters. As Kate distracted the traveler with conversation, John Sr. or John Jr. would step out from behind the wall and strike the unsuspecting visitor with a heavy hammer, probably a sledgehammer.
Then Kate or Ma would check that the victim was dead and finish the job if necessary. Travelers who appeared to have money or horses were the most likely targets. Their bodies were dropped through a trapdoor into a cellar, where they were stored until the family could dispose of them—some dumped on the prairie, some thrown into Drum Creek, and later, buried in the orchard. The murders continued through 1872 and 1873.
Ben Brown from Howard County, Kansas, was carrying a large sum of money when he was killed and buried in the orchard. W. F. McCrotty arrived in 1872 with a wagon and a team of horses, which the family knew were valuable; he never left.
In December 1872, a man named George Lonergan visited the inn with his infant daughter, planning to relocate from Independence, Kansas, to Iowa. He was carrying around nineteen hundred dollars. Both he and his daughter disappeared, and it was later discovered that the girl had been buried alive. Around the same time, a man named Johnny Boyle was killed, most likely for his horse and saddle, and his body was also thrown down the Benders’ well.
By 1873, the family had killed at least a dozen travelers, perhaps more. The killing that finally brought them down was that of George Lonergan. His friend, Dr. William Henry York, had not heard from him and decided to follow the same route through Kansas to find out what had happened.
Dr. York passed through the Osage Township region in mid-March 1873 and was never seen again. His disappearance prompted a full-scale search, led by his prominent brothers. Colonel Alexander York arrived at the Wayside Inn on March 28, 1873.
The Benders confirmed Dr. York had stayed for the night but left the next day, speculating that he might have been attacked by someone on the trail. The colonel was willing to consider that possibility and went to investigate. By then, many local residents had grown deeply suspicious of the Bender family, and they brought their concerns to the search party.
One woman claimed that Ma Bender had chased her with a knife when she tried to visit the inn. On April 3, Colonel York returned to the Wayside and confronted the family. They denied all accusations. Ma became enraged and told the colonel that the woman who accused her was a witch who had cursed her coffee, then ordered him and his men to leave her house.
In doing so, she revealed that she spoke far more English than she had ever let on. The men with Colonel York were convinced of the Benders’ guilt and wanted to arrest them and search the property, but the colonel insisted that evidence had to be found first. Before he left, Kate asked him to return alone the following Friday, claiming she could use her clairvoyant abilities to find his brother. Meanwhile, neighboring communities began openly blaming Osage Township for the disappearances.
To maintain order, Colonel York convened a public meeting at the schoolhouse, attended by seventy-five locals, including John Bender Sr. and John Jr. It was agreed that a search warrant would be obtained for every homestead between Big Hill Creek and Drum Creek. Before that could happen, the Benders fled.
On April 7, a local farmer named Billy Tall was driving cattle past the Bender property when he noticed the inn was abandoned and the farm animals had not been fed. He reported it to the town trustee, who called for volunteers to search the property, though bad weather delayed the search for several days. When Colonel York led the search party to the Bender residence, they found the cabin empty and the family gone in a hurry. A search of the property revealed blood residue in the cellar and freshly dug holes in the orchard.
When the men began to dig, they uncovered what looked like a graveyard of the Benders’ former guests—including the body of Colonel York’s brother. Inside the house, they found several hammers, including a sledgehammer. In the days that followed, the truth about the Benders began to emerge. A prayer book and other evidence revealed that John Bender Sr.
was actually named John Flickinger, his supposed son was John Gebhardt, Ma Bender was Almira Mcgriffis, and Kate—who investigators believed was actually Ma’s daughter—was really named Eliza. But whoever they were, they had escaped. Their wagon was found outside the town of Thayer, about twelve miles away, and further investigation showed they had headed southwest by train and other means. The younger Benders went to Texas and possibly on to New Mexico, while John Sr.
and Ma took a different route to Missouri. Within weeks, Colonel York and the governor of Kansas offered cash rewards of one thousand and two thousand dollars for their capture, but the trail had gone cold. In the years that followed, the Bloody Benders, as they became known, were the subject of countless supposed sightings across the country. None of them ever led to an arrest, and the rewards went unclaimed.
Vigilante posses formed on rumored sightings but found only innocent victims—people arrested or, in a few tragic cases, killed on the mistaken belief that they were members of the missing family. John Gebhardt disappeared into outlaw territory in West Texas and was never officially seen again. It is unclear whether Kate was with him or later rejoined her mother in Michigan. Many believed John Sr.
drowned himself in Lake Michigan in 1884, by which time he would have been in his mid-seventies. In that same year, an elderly man matching Ma Bender’s description was arrested in Montana for a murder in Idaho, the victim killed by a hammer blow to the head. Authorities in Cherryvale, Kansas, were asked to send someone to identify the suspect, but the accused man severed his own foot in an escape attempt and bled to death before identification was possible. In 1889, a mother and daughter arrested for larceny in Michigan were accused of being Alvira and Kate Bender.
Some witnesses who had known the Benders in the early 1870s believed the pair were indeed them, but the evidence was vague, the judge found no case to answer, and both were discharged. All four Bloody Benders escaped justice for the murders committed at the Wayside Inn in the early 1870s, where they killed more than a dozen travelers. Their story became a piece of American folklore, told in books, television shows, and films throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and their infamy has never faded.
