The Bloody Benders REDUX

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Warning this episode contains
detailsthat some listeners may find disturbing.
Welcome to a Study of Strange.
I'm Michael May.Today's episode a little bit different.
I am rereleasingone of my favorite episodes to record,
listen to, and research, and that is,of course, The Bloody Benders.
And I learned a lot about the storythat I didn't know
before I went into researching this.

(00:22):
Originally this was a two parter,but today it's been cut together
as one very long episode.But all worth it.
I have a special guest,the wonderful John Keating, and before
I get into the bloody benders, hereit is the end of 2024 holiday season.
Everybody's busy,so I'm doing a rerelease.
I'm gonna have a short episode next week,
but I wanted to reiterateI'm very excited about 2025 coming up

(00:44):
because I have more timeto devote to a study of strange.
So we're going to have some deep dives,some thrilling episodes coming out,
and make sure to hit that subscribe buttonso you don't miss it all.
All right, enough rambling. Here we go.
1873 Labette County, Kansas
A small one room home has been abandoned

(01:06):
and almost a dozen deadbodies are found buried nearby,
all of them victims of a family of killers
known nowadays as the Bloody Benders.
The benders have become the stuffof legend.
Their heinous acts became fodderfor newspapers
and tabloids,not just at the time, but through today.

(01:26):
As you can imagine,it can be tough to sift
through all the rumors, conjectures,and folklore that came about.
But even the stories that might be falsedon't hold up to what we know to be true.
These serial killers were pure evil,
and the worst part of their taleis that they got away.
This is a study of strange.

(02:07):
Hi. Welcome to the show, everybody.
I'm Michael Mae, and joining meis the one, the only John M Keating.
I do a John.
Hello. I'm good, I'm good.
How are you? Yeah,I didn't play any of you that way.
That's why I have to use my middleinitials. Yes. Right.
John m John f so,
John, you're a an actor and acting teacherand acting coach with G.

(02:28):
Charles Wright Studios in Los Angeles.
And you I've told you,
I hopefully
I didn't make you feel uncomfortablewhen I was like,
I want to finda good murder mystery for you.
Oh, no, no, no, no.
It's just funny,I that I became, like, the czar of murder.
Yeah, I know, I know.
Now, John is ais a big fan of like, Columbo
and a lot of old noir movies and stufflike I am as well.

(02:49):
So I've been waiting around,
wanting to find some sort of unsolvedmurder mystery to have you on,
just because I thought it would be funto kind of
look at it from a detective point of view.
This is a little different than I hoped,but I was like, I think John
John might enjoy this one.
It's a crazy. Oh, I definitely do.This is great.
Yeah.
So it's todaywe are talking about the bloody benders,

(03:10):
who killed between 11and 23 people in southern Kansas,
depending on what sourcesyou read in the 1870s.
And this was a huge national story linelike press was huge.
About this at the time when it happened.
So it is not an uncommon story.
It is very, very popular.
There's been documentaries,there's even been some scripted movies.

(03:32):
But yeah, it's full of strangenessbecause the family disappeared.
It's a family of serial killersand they all disappeared.
No one caught them.
And there's a lot of fanciful reportsabout the benders
and what happened afterwards.
And todaywe're going to talk about some of those.
And also what I think
what I think most likely happenedbecause there actually are more reports

(03:52):
than a lot of the articles outthere would have you believe.
So that we do knowmore facts about the benders after
they were found out to be killersthan, is commonly talked about.
Before we begin, just real quick, pleasemake sure to subscribe, rate and review.
Also, I put out a new,
a new seriesfor my Patreon listeners and supporters.
So check that out through a websitestudy of Strange.

(04:14):
Jacob.
Thank you for waiting on that, John.
You did a good job as I did that.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah,getting a business out of the way.
Gotta get businessdone. Gotta get it done.
So let me ask for a quick John.
Had you heard of the bloody bendersbefore?
I asked you about it? Not.
Not to this extent.
I feel like I may have heard, like,of that

(04:38):
kind of genre of the familyserial killers, you know, and so I,
I may have heard something about that,but not them specifically like that.
Yeah. Yeah.
And you mentioned that. Crazy.
Yeah.
And right before we started rolling,
you mentioned that it's very muchlike Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Yeah, totally. It is. It really is.
There might be some influenceon some of those types of stories.

(04:59):
It's a crazy one.There's a lot to go over.
So this might be a two parter.
So I kind of organized it.
However, you never knowwe might get to it quick.
Who knows?
But it's most likely a two parter.
So one of the things I'm going to posit
as kind of a theory to think about overthese two episodes is that I don't think
The Benders killed people exactlythe way that all the stories describe.

(05:24):
Like there's this very famous, whichyou probably looked at when you just.
Yeah, sort of looked it up about themsneaking up behind somebody
with the canvas in front of themand hitting them on the head,
and then cutting on the throat.Yeah, with the hammer.
Some of that is I think it's partly true,but I don't think that's actually
how they killed all their victims,for reasons that I'll get into.
Yeah.

(05:45):
And I'm going to start with a,
a certain part of the storyand then kind of go backwards.
This is like a littlea little prelude or a teaser if you will.
So on May 6th, 1873,
in Labette County, Kansas, a group of menprobably
dozens of them, are searchingfor the missing doctor, William York.

(06:09):
Can they arrive at a cabin which is righton the main trail, the Osage
Mission Trail,which is an old Native American trail,
and it became kind of like the main
highway in the area of the timein this part of Kansas.
And Leroy Dick, a local officialwho is in charge of the search for Doctor
York, has been told that there's a cabinthat is abandoned in empty,

(06:30):
and it is home to the Bender family,what people call the benders.
And apparently this family left itabandoned recently for reasons unknown.
And Billy Toll of farmhand,who told Leroy Dick
about the desertion of this cabin,is there with the party to search
and they suspectthe benders might be involved

(06:50):
with some nefarious murdering
activity in the area.
So they decide to search thisabandoned cabin.
And I'm going to quote from my main sourcetoday.
It's a book from Suzanne Jonas.
It's called Half Hell's Half AcreThe Untold Story of the benders,
a serial killer familyon the American frontier.
So here's a here'sa little quote from the story.

(07:12):
Inside a
single room is divided by the canvassheet from a wagon.
Dick yanks the makeshift curtain asideand is engulfed in a cloud of stills.
It settles to reveal a sparsely furnishedliving space, inhabited by insects
that retreat into the crevicesat the fall of heavy boots.
The cabin has been empty for some time,but it is clear that the occupants left

(07:33):
quickly, taking only the essentials neededfor travel toward the back of the room.
The scent of decay is stronger.
A Bible with a cracked spine liesdiscarded near the straw mattress,
pulled aside to reveal a trapped door ora trap door is the proper English of that.
Instead of trapped door graspingthe leather strap nailed to the wood
is a handle.

(07:53):
Dick throws the door openand the smell leaks into the cabin.
It sticks to the throatsof the search party beneath them in a dark
void, opens Silas, Tall, Billy'solder brother, volunteers to descend.
He is a rancherand used to the smell of animal carcasses,
but down in the cellarhe struggles to breathe.
The floor is a slab of sandstonereddened by unnatural stains.

(08:14):
When Silas crouchesto investigate further,
he finds that soilsurrounding the slab is damp.
Hoisting himself from the pit,he tells the group
that they will have to move the cabinto gain better access to the cellar,
that there is definitely something buriedbeneath the slab
and that thank you for bearing with mewith that long little section there, John.
But I just like I like the setupthat they find this abandoned cabin

(08:37):
and there's terrible smells and blood.
Oh, yeah. It's the opening of a movie.
I mean, it is. Absolutely.
Yeah. It's beautiful. Yeah, yeah.
And the, we're going to have to.
There's something buried underthe slab is such an ominous sentence.
Yes, indeed.
And this is a tale.
This tale is grotesque.

(08:58):
It is macabre and it's weird and
people are still trying to understand ittoday, including us today.
So, yeah, let's start
at the beginning of this crazinessthat led to that moment of searching.
This goes back, I think, three years.
I think it's 1870 Kansas at the time,in 1870.
It's a rugged place.

(09:19):
And I don't just mean the landscape,I mean culturally to during the Civil War,
just before this,there were the Bushwhackers,
primarily in Missouri,but they would fight in Kansas a lot.
They were pro-slavery.
Then there's a J.
Hawkers,which if you know you're Kansas sports.
Everybody, you know. Damn totally. Yeah.
And they were abolitionist
and they were primarily in Kansas,and they got caught up in all the fighting

(09:41):
after the war, after all of thisbrutal, brutal fighting.
Now these people arethere's a lot of them are still around.
They're living amongst each other.
There's a lot of emotions.
People in America are generally moving outand migrating west at this point
through Missouri and Kansas and Oklahomaand all these kind of places.
And there's a lot of thieves and robbers
and murderers and con men,and they're all trying to survive.

(10:05):
Also, in the decades leading up to this,there is famously, the Trail of Tears,
where Native Americans
were shipped out of their homesand sent to the Oklahoma Territory.
And that is on the border of southernKansas, where our story takes place today.
And outlaws exploited the proximity
of this border to escape,whether it's like stealing stuff and then
hightail it down into Indian territoryto get away

(10:27):
from any potential, law enforcement.
Now, all that said,homesteading is going on.
So people are there are allowed or able
to purchase for very little moneya large plot of land.
And if they cultivate it and build on it
for a certain period of time,they get to keep the land forever.
It's theirs.
This is a huge part of the westwardexpansion of the United States history.

(10:48):
So on an October morning in 1870,two men arrived
at the Osage Township in southern Kansas.
And this is near today,where the town of Cherry Vale is.
I think it was setup, actually, during this story.
And there was a little cabin here,which was a trading post, and two men
ran the trading posts and their nameswere Edward, Ern and Rudolf Brockman.

(11:11):
And they're sitting outside,apparently hanging out.
And these two, these two men show upon a carriage and one is in his 20s.
And he introduced himselfas John Gephardt.
And the older man was around 60,and he was John Bender.
And the assumption isthat the two men were related,
but no one actually seems to have inquiredabout their relationship,

(11:33):
whether they were related by blood,by marriage.
No one knows.
Even still, to this day, no one knows.
Now, Gephardt, in common tellings,is referred to as John Bender Jr.
And there's a lot of claimssaying that they didn't find out
his name was Gephardtuntil after the murders were discovered.
That doesn't actually seem to be true.
He actually introduced himselfas John Gephardt at the time.

(11:55):
He also seems to have introduced himselfas John Bender to some people.
So it's it's just really strange, thesethis family now.
And there's a lot of that comingup. Oh, yeah.
Oh yeah.
There's, there's still it'sthere's a hole through both parts.
There's a lot of these things.
In the second part,when I get into the press
that that happened immediatelyafter the descriptions of people are all

(12:17):
over the place. Yeah.
So they boththese guys had German accents.
John Bender, as I refer to him, the PA,as they call him sometimes,
he had a very thick German accent andapparently could not really speak English.
And he was also incredibly unfriendlyand brutish and mean.
A lot of the descriptionscall him very hairy, like,

(12:38):
I imagine, a big bruteBigfoot sort of creature.
A lot of.
Suit, if you will. Yeah. Thereyou go. Yeah.
Definitely had a hair suit.
This guy is ahe is a walking hair suit, for sure.
And John Gephardt was kind of skinny.
He had, like, a narrow face.
Apparently his eyes were, like, tooclose together.
And he had this really annoying laughwhere he would be like.

(13:01):
Oh, yes.
Except he had a German accent.
So it's a terrible impression. But,
they sound like they sound likethe side characters in a Disney movie.
Are they totally okay?
Like or like Pirates of the Caribbean?
Yeah, they're the two.
The two Mackenzie Crook and the other guy.
Pirates that are, like, not the main ones.
You got to have, like, the skinny oneand the chubby one. The one in the,

(13:24):
like 101 Dalmatians.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
They absolutely are.
And they allegedly were moving in
from Pennsylvania,which actually does make sense
because we don't know
if they really didmove in from Pennsylvania, but
if they're German, Pennsylvania, Dutch,even my ancestors were Pennsylvania Dutch.
They immigrated into Pennsylvania.
So it actually makes sense.
They may have been from Pennsylvania.

(13:45):
And so, earned the gentlemanand showed these two German guys around
to the various plots that might bethey might be interested in in town.
And they picked one outthat was perfect for travelers
because it's literally right on the OsageMission Trail.
So it's right on the highway of its time.
But it it was sort of sunk in lowbetween some mounds and hills

(14:09):
that are still there today,where people can't really see the cabin.
There's there's some privacy
and the otherwisesort of flat, sparse Kansas terrain.
Kansas. Yeah. Yeah.Not known for its hilly.
No, no.
Not it known more for its tornadoes and,
taking people up inside of tornadoes.
Now, what I didn't know until researchingis that John Bender?

(14:32):
He is the one that purchased the plot.
It was 160 acres that the cabin was on.
And Gephardt actually purchasedhis own plot, which was kind of nearby.
It was a narrow strip that was a bitI think it had more trees and stuff on it.
They never he never built anything on it.
He never did anything with the land.
So some people suspect
that it was for more privacy in the area,which I totally buy now.

(14:55):
When the man got the land, they kind ofquickly paced out the cabin in the ground.
They literally took their feetand like drew a line.
It was like,here's the cabin where they're at.
They use sticksto kind of draw things out,
and then they built their own cabinbecause that's what
that's what men did back then.
John, what do we do with our livesnow? We were podcasting.

(15:16):
I am I am not a man like they
went back I can't yeah I mean I don't evenI don't know, like people make bread.
I don't know how they sleep I just diet.
Yeah, yeah. Bread is hard.I've actually tried to make bread.
It is not easy is it. Yeah.It was doing all that.
So they built a 16 by 24 cabin,with nine foot ceilings.

(15:36):
There was a door at each end.
Some storiessay there's only a front door,
but there actually was a frontand a back door.
There was a what is alwayscalled a trapdoor to the basement.
It's not a trapdoor,it's just a little thing you lift up.
It's like it's a hatch.
They did cover it and hide it,but it's not a trapdoor.
And they built the cabin really quicklybecause winter is a common
when they're when they're moving in.

(15:56):
In 1870,
over the period of, of months after that,they planted an orchard behind the house.
They also built sort of a stablelike corral for, for animals right there.
They also dug a well.
And allegedly, when they first moved, Dan
Gebhart would make moneyby taking stolen horses across the border.
I don't know,I don't know how to confirm that.

(16:18):
That's just one of those storiesthat comes up with tales of the time.
And the men nailed a sign out frontthat said groceries,
but they spilled groceries. Groceries.
I mean, you know, English may not betheir first language, so make sense?
And so, yeah, they planned to sell somegoods to make some money along the trail.

(16:41):
Now, apparently John Bender
was when they opened up shopand they started having customers,
you know, stop on their travelsto buy things.
John Bender was,
unfriendly.
There's much worse ways to describe it.
He was a very unfriendly dude,and sometimes, like, wouldn't
even help potential customers.

(17:01):
And he also didn't speak English, whichdoesn't help, but he never really tried.
In March of 1871,
the Bender boys were joinedby the lady folk Kate Bender or Katie,
sometimes, in her early 20s,and Ma Bender.
She's sometimes referred to as Elmiraor Elvira Bender.
I will explain that in part two.

(17:23):
No one actually knows her name.
It was. They just refer to it. Ma.
No one actually knows her real name.
And that is the truth.
The book I read, my main source.
This is the only place I ever saw this.
It says that they came from Ottawa.
The women, which I was like, can I canI get more information on that?
And there wasn't itjust that they came from Ottawa.
And I was like, that's weird,because the guys came from Pennsylvania.

(17:45):
The women are coming from Ottawa.
I don't know, itjust it's a very interesting detail.
I wish I knew more about his.
That might explain some of why the vendorsare the way they are is we don't know.
We don't know whythey were as crazy as they are.
So, Ma Bender, similar to PA Bender, spokevery little English, very heavy accent.
She did know more English than she let on,but she didn't know it very well.

(18:08):
And she was considered a she devil iswhat a lot of people called her.
She was also just as unfriendly as the
the hair suit man known as PA Bender.
And Kate
or Katie, I'll probably refer to as Kate,but she went by both.
She did have a little bit of a Germanaccent, apparently,

(18:28):
but she spoke very good English.
Not as much of a German accentas the other guy.
And Kate came with mom, right?That's right. Yeah.
They came together.
Not born of Ma and PA vendor, right?
No. People.
People assume that if they are related,
she's most likely Ma's daughter.
But again, no one knows.
No one knows if this entire familyis a real family at all.

(18:50):
No one.We have no confirmations of any of that.
And it is interesting that they're German,but coming through Ottawa.
Right? Right.
Because it is an Ottawa primarily, I wouldimagine, French speaking at the time.
I don't know enoughabout Canada, but I think so.
Now around the time
that the that Kate and Ma showed up,they started kind of running their,

(19:11):
their business model they landed on,which is accepting guests at the cabin
not just for groceries,but also to make a warm meal,
give people a place
to sleep out of the elements for the nightbecause you have all these travelers.
There are no motels at the time,so you just stop at someone's house
to stay the night.There's no like, guest room.
This is all one big roomseparated by that canvas sheet.

(19:31):
So it's probably a chair.
Or you put your saddle on the ground
with a blanket,and that's that's where you sleep.
And that's primarilyhow the vendors tried to make money.
Now, the word about town
is that Ma and PA did not socialize
like they would stay at the houseand do chores around the house.
They would every now and then go into townor a township to buy supplies.

(19:55):
But they didn't really talk to people.
And again,they were really terrible at socializing.
They were not good people.
And so Kate and
John, it was up to themto kind of socialize in town.
And they did.
They went to church.
They went to Sunday school, Kate
worked at a hotel and eventuallya couple other jobs as well.
So they were more well knownamongst the town

(20:17):
folk at the time,and they were considered much nicer.
But there are periods of timewhere they're oddities.
They're they're eccentric.
Cities would come across to the localsand rub them the wrong way, like Kate
was apparently a healer and a spiritualistand would hold seances
and admit that cheek or not admit,but suggest that she could heal all sorts
of abnormal abnormalitiesand she would push people

(20:40):
a little too hardfor that kind of business.
She was an aggressive car salesman,and John again had that irritating.
Not you, John,but John Gephardt had the irritating laugh
that made people think that he might bestupid, like there might be some
sort of mental disability.
At the time,
I think oneof the quotes from a source back then is

(21:01):
calling him a halfwit, which definitelysounds like a 19th century.
That's what passes as a mental health.
Yeah, I know, since back then.
Yeah, early 19th century indeed.
So here'swhere something strange begins to happen.
And who is the the guy that showedthe Bender boys around for claims,

(21:21):
he was bought out of his business,out of the trading post.
And so he took that money that he earned,and he sent it overseas to pay
for his fiancee and her mother to moveto the States, I think, from Germany.
So they're making the trek over.
And when you travel
and make big moves back,then everything you own comes with you.

(21:44):
There's no
there's no Fedex, there'sno storage facilities, there's no banks.
Well, there are banks,but they're not everywhere
and they're not very accessible.
So I'll just buy a couch when I get there.
Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Everything so.
So everything's coming with them.
And Ern
set it up so that they could
stay at the Bender cabinwhen they arrive to town for a little bit.
So they arrive to town,they're staying with the benders,

(22:06):
and one day the entire Bender familysuggest to the fiance that her mother
we should go on a long walk.
And they were like,oh, that sounds lovely.
So they all go out to walk.
And the two older benders at onepoint are like,
we're not feeling well or we're old.
And they came up with some excuse.
They turned around and left the younger,the younger group to keep walking.

(22:27):
And when the younger groupmade it back to the cabin,
a jewelry box was gone,
as well as all their cashier's checks.
I don't know how much moneythe cashier's checks added up to,
but it had to be, again,probably everything they had.
Yeah, and they were goneand nothing else is gone, by the way.
Those are the things that are gone.

(22:48):
So the the family immediately blamesthe vendors.
They think they've been hadand they've had a,
they've been stolen from by the vendors.
And so they're very upset about it.
And John Gebhart is like, the horse thief.
It's horse states that happens aroundthese parts are horses.
You shouldn't stay here.
It's too dangerousbecause they might still be around.
So he takes
the ladies to some other family nearbyand has them stay somewhere else.

(23:10):
Ern, of course, finds out about this.
He actually threatensthe vendors, shows up at the cabin
with a gun and holds it to the vendorsand is like
I demand to have the jewelry boxand the checks given to me.
I know you have them.
They declined.
They play dumb and stupid and like,we don't know what you're talking about.
It's so sad.
And he realizes wisely, he can't really doanything because there's no evidence.

(23:31):
So he threatened them,didn't get anything out of it.
So that's all he could do.But it's gone away. And he's left,
by 1871,in this same year, this is all happening,
the the cabin became what we all know itto be
from all the tales,because it didn't always look the same.
They obviously planted the orchard,which was growing.

(23:52):
They may not have evenhad the canvas separator right away.
That may have taken a timebefore they did that.
And very famously,there is this white canvas that hung
in the middle of the cabin to separatethe living quarters for all the benders,
all of them in one little spot,and the front area for cooking, eating.
There's a table that had two benches.

(24:12):
It's always in pictures.
They always draw chairs, but it actuallyapparently it's two benches
and one side faced the doorwith the canvas right behind it.
And that's very importantfor the story. Yes.
And one thing I don't knowhow important this is for the story,
but I love these kind of inconsistencieswhen you research things.
Apparently the canvas,according to one account, was not white.

(24:35):
It was a red calico curtainand not a white canvas.
And this is where I like to say onthe show, both can be true.
It's not like, oh, we proved it wrong.
They might have switched it out at onepoint, you know, or maybe they rotated it.
Maybe they cleaned them.
There are lots of white.One gets dirty everywhere.
Oh yeah.
There are reportsthat it's like stained red.

(24:58):
And I think those are reportsare from all the press articles
that came outthat are mostly making up stories
that like because some people are like,oh, stained with blood.
And I'm like itthat would just scare away customers.
I don't think they just leftblood on the canvas.
Yeah.
So here I have some dinner and sitright by the blood stained.
Yeah.
Put your head right there by the bloodmark.

(25:19):
Yeah, it doesn't make sense.
Which is one of my theories of whyI don't think they were attacked
the way everybodythinks they were attacked.
However, apparently they were very dirty.
Like, there's a lot of commentson, like, dirty dishes and bugs
and stuff like that.
I got a lot of negative Yelp reviews.
Yes. Oh, yes.
The Yelp reviews are getting breakfast.
Not good.

(25:40):
But this will be reflectedin my Yelp reviews.
And the vendors didn't carebecause there's no other business nearby
that does the same thing.So they're like, yeah.
They leave a bad Yelp reviews.
We don't care.
Kate was also she was very interested
in her spiritualism practice,her business of healing.
That's I think she would have much ratherjust been telling fortunes

(26:01):
and telling peopleshe can cure blindness, then kill people.
That's my own assumption.
She did market and advertiseher services all around the area,
so I actually, I'm going to read onebecause it's fun.
So it says Professor Miss Katie Bendercan heal all sorts of diseases, can cure
blindness, deafness and all such diseasesare also deaf and dumbness.

(26:24):
Residents 14 miles east of independence,on the road from Independence
to Osage Mission, one and one half milessoutheast of Nora Head Station.
Katie Bender June 18th, 1872.
Yeah, I love that stuff.
I love that I love Fitz. Fitz.
Yeah, that covers so many things.Oh, absolutely.

(26:44):
Yeah.
Now, spiritualismI'm not going to go into.
But people can listen to my William Mumler
seriesto learn a little bit more about it.
Spiritualism is a huge belief.
Religion at the time where people saidthey could talk to dead people.
And Katie is not the only spiritualistin the area.
It was very, very prominent,including one story

(27:06):
from a woman named Julia Hesslerwho was a friendly medium.
She would hold seances around the areawith Kate Bender sometimes,
and one night Kate invited Juliato come to the cabin for a seance.
This is where I first seen comes and John,you excited?
I'm very excited. Okay.
So scene one.

(27:28):
Who do you care who you read?
Which part do you want to really know?
Let me pull it up here again. It.
So it's the first scene.
That is.
I am open to whatever casting decisions
let's have you do.
Let's have you do, Julia.

(27:49):
Okay, great.
Yeah.
And I'm I'm not going to tryto do a German accent because I will
I will be terrible for Kate.
All right, so here we go.
So it's a brisk
night, and Julia Hesterknocks on the door of the Bender cabin.

(28:09):
Kate Bender opens the door and gesturesfor Julia to enter.
Julia notices
a small fire in a stove and two candleslit on a table in the center of the room.
A dirty canvas hangs behind the table,separating the room in two.
Good evening Kate.
Thank you for inviting me. Sit, sit.
Julia begins to sit down and one of thebench on one of the benches at the table.

(28:31):
Not there.
Sit facing the door.
It's much more comfortable.
All right.
Julia takes a seat with her backagainst the canvas.
I'm very excited you've come.
Let's get started.
Kate blows out the candles in the room,which was already barely
lit, is now exceptionally dark,except for bits of light from the stove
casting strange shadows across the walls.

(28:51):
Close your eyes.
Where's the rest of your family?
They don't partake in seances.
Kate reaches for Julia's hands.
Now close your eyes.
Kate closes her eyes and Julia beginsto close hers, but a swarming flies swoops
across her face and she pulls a handaway from Kate's, the spot at it.

(29:11):
Come now. It's just a net.
Kate grabs Julia's hands againand they both close their eyes.
Those from the spirit world.
We wish to communicate.
Spirits we offer ourselves as vessels.
Julia notices a creaking sound.
She tries to ignore it.
Kate beginsto make a strange humming sound home.

(29:33):
Julia.
Here's another creakand opens her eyes behind Kate,
lit by the faint flickers of fire.
From the stove standsMa PA and John Gephardt.
They are staring silently at Julia.
Oh. Julia pulls her hands away from Kate.
Don't worry about them. Stay focused.
Kate tries to grab Julia's hands.

(29:53):
I have to excuse myself.
Sorry. The outhouse. I have to use the.
When nature calls.
I'll be right back.
Julia stands and swiftly manages to skatearound the bend, her family and exit.
As she does so, she begins to runPorbandar, grabs a rifle and aims at it.
Julia.
But she's hard to track in the dark night
as she runs,Paul fires the gun into the air.

(30:14):
As Julia disappears into the fields,
John Gebhart giggleswhile Kate Bender slaps PA on the iron.
I'm unhappy with how the night played out.
You should probably do a John get partgiggle to give your best take.
See that perfect, perfect.
Nailed it.
So yes.
That is our that.

(30:34):
It was our first scene.
There'd be another one in part two.
Yeah.
So this isthis is a is a story that I read
in, again, my primary sourcefor the evening
that I was just a little fascinated byis it really paints
a picture of whatthe Bender family was like.
And we don't knowif they were planning to kill her
that night, but it's definitely suspectthat they grabbed a rifle.

(30:57):
You know? Well, yeah, exactly.
And and that they were just therestaring at her.
Yeah. Yeah.
Eyes were supposed to be closed. Yes.
Now, one thing I will say, this is not away to defend the benders by any means.
So hopefullyit doesn't come across that way.
But this story,I don't think people knew this story
until after the benders were discoveredto have been murderers.

(31:19):
So it's not like she ran to townand was like,
oh my God, that family, they were tryingto shoot me. It was really weird.
They tricked me into coming.
It could be some sort of embellishment.
However she was, Juliet was known to be,you know, doing seances with Kate.
So it does.
There is some validity to this story.
It could have been like one of those.

(31:39):
One of those I was there story.
Yeah. Oh, yes. Absolutely.
You know, like, oh she's just been therefor the Sands but.
Oh no. Then they tried to kill me too,but I got away.
Yeah, yeah.
And God,there's a lot of those even today.
So there is a little side tangent.
But when, when I research I, I hatecomments on videos and articles and stuff,

(32:00):
but I findwhen I'm doing these stories, it's
actually really helpful to read throughbecause every now
and then someone will be like,oh, did you see this link?
Or oh, I actually read that, you know,
like you'll find more informationthat you're not going to normally find.
And still to this dayon, I think there's some on Reddit,
there's some on some YouTube documentariesI watch about them.
There are people that's like, oh,my grandfather told me a story

(32:21):
about his grandfather that went downand shot the benders and like,
there's so many of those talesand it's like, it's a lot of these.
I knew them,
and we will cover more of those in part
two, actually, because there's quitea number. It's really fascinating.
So I, I'm not
sure when the Bender familyactually started killing.
It could have been right awayand we just don't know.

(32:43):
But I do think it most likelybecause of when people started to be found
or go missing,I do think it may be late 1871.
And we do have some detailsof victims of the benders.
Not everybody, but I will cover someof them today, starting with late 1871,
right around the holiday season,like like today when we're recording this.

(33:04):
Oh. That's creepy.
A gentleman named James Feyerick
and his wife, Mary
had a young son, and Mary and the son.
We're going to govisit family in New York.
And James was going to stay behindand build the family home
in this area of Kansas.
And so Mary and the son, they departfor New York for a number of months,

(33:25):
because back then,when you left, you left for a long period.
We're just going out. Yeah, yeah,
yeah.
And so the plan was, yeah, build,build the home.
So when they return months later,there is a home for them to live in.
So as soon as they leave, James sets off
along the Osage Mission trail.
And it's likely he was carrying most,

(33:46):
if not all, of the family's moneyat the time.
And Mary and her son arrive in New Yorkand they write
a letter back, back to Kansas,and they never get a response.
Now, at some point in time,I don't know how long, but after she's
not getting any responses from James,she gets a letter from a family friend
from the area in Kansasthat say they have not seen or heard

(34:07):
from James since he left along the trail.
Now, right around this time as well.
This is when Kate beginskind of working in town.
She's doing her spiritualism stuff.
She's doing her senses and
people are starting to say that negativeYelp reviews saying it's starting
to pass around like the the Bender familyhas now been there for about a year.

(34:31):
There's a lot of tales of them eithertreating people poorly, treating guest
poorly, mine poor being just really
terrible people, and Kate would be dirty.
Kate would be like very flirtatiousto men one minute and then
days or minutes latershe would be complete
180 and be really rude to themand standoffish.

(34:51):
And I wanted to say thisjust because I'm trying to paint
the picture of their personalitiesbecause they are so strange.
Hence a study of strange.
Now, there are a lot of these sort
of anecdotal thingsabout their personalities are rumors.
Again, it's the oh, I knew them.
I solved the thing when happened.
That'swhere a lot of these come from, however,

(35:12):
because they're all similar,I think that we can actually be like,
yeah, Kate was probably very flirtatiousone minute and then really rude the next.
John probably was superweird, and manpower
probably really unfriendlybecause everybody says that.
So there's just a there's a commonalityto all these stories.
So there's also a tale from the same book

(35:33):
that I wanted to share, just because,again, it's very interesting and scary.
A priest named Leoni,I think that's how you say
that, was traveling in the areaand he was raising money for a mission.
And so he stopped at the cabinbecause that's where he was told,
you can get a warm meal and stufflike that.
And Kate got really excitedwhen she asked him

(35:55):
what he was doing, and he explained he'sraising money for a mission.
And the priest noticedafter he started telling his story
that the men who were in the cabinsuddenly disappeared.
He never heard them leave.
He didn't know where they go,where they went, excuse me?
And he asked Kate like, oh, where?
Where, you know, you'rewhere are the guys?
And she gave some sort of like, vagueanswer and she was making him coffee.

(36:18):
And apparentlyshe was acting really bizarre.
And she's like glancing around the room,her eyes are darting around, and she's
putting a lot of focus onto the secondhalf of the room behind the canvas,
and it just rubs the priest the wrong way.
And when she sat down with his coffee,he jumped up and made an excuse and left.
And part of what makes thisreally dramatic is there was a huge storm.

(36:38):
That's why he stopped.
There was to get out of this huge storm,
and now he ran off into the stormto get away from the vineyards.
So that's another interesting story.
In October of 1872,
a dead body was found by two kids
in a river called a Drum Creek,and the body
had a blunt force trauma to the headand also a neck wound like a cut.

(37:02):
And it was assumed by authoritiesthat the body was there about six days,
and the body was lateridentified as a man named William Jones,
and he was traveling the OsageMission Trail for work, and his wife
claimsthat he had hundreds of dollars on him.
Locals thought that the guy that owned
the land that his body was found onmust have done it.

(37:24):
This is very like investigating the 1870s.
Oh, it's your land.
You did it. Yeah.
And this guy was named R.M. Bennett.
And he was actually arrestedfor this murder.
And he noticed he was Columbo ING himselfthat there is this interesting,
track left
by a wagon that went
that was near where the bodywould have been dumped in the creek.

(37:46):
And the track of the wagon meant likeone of the wheels was jutted out.
And he was like, look at all my wagons.
I don't know how many he had.
Maybe he only had one, but it was like,look at my wagon or more.
I don't have any wagonsthat have wheels like that.
And so they looked at him and were like,okay, yeah, you're right.
And we have no other evidence.
So you're free to go.

(38:07):
So luckily he was not.
It's kind of like the early versionof like, the tire treads.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's the exact same thing.Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The benders,I will point out, were not suspects.
They were not suspects
for any of these murdersor disappearances for quite a while.
And that is becauselife was tough like that.

(38:27):
It it's a place where a lot of peopleare going missing for sometimes
just very natural reasons.
But again, there's other thievesand robbers and murderers and con men.
There's also rightacross the border into Oklahoma Territory.
It's all where the Native American tribesare, and they,
rightly so, don't always get alongwith the westward
expansion of white peoplemoving through the area.

(38:50):
So there are, you know, some,some violent interactions that can happen.
So a man named Benjamin Browncame through the area and he traded horses
with somebody at the door,another nearby town or settlement.
And then he disappeared.
His wife actually went looking for him,knowing
no one else is going to look for the guy.So I've got to go do it, too.
And she actually stayed

(39:11):
the night at the Bender cabinalong her search for her husband,
which is just super scary now that we knowthat she didn't know that that you know.
Yeah, exactly.
A man named William McCarty,who was a war veteran, disappeared
on his way to a land office.
He stopped at the Bender cabin.
It's assumedbecause right before he disappeared,

(39:32):
he talked to a guy and said,where can I stop to get some food?
And they said, oh, go to the Bender cabin.
That was the last person to ever see himalive.
Around Christmas.
This would be of 1872.
A man's body was found which had beenpractically eaten entirely by wild hogs.
He was able to be identifiedbecause of his clothing.
He was a guy named John Phipps,and his family said

(39:55):
he also was traveling with a lot of money.
So you'll notice here that some people hadbeen found, dumped the guy in the creek.
And now Phipps.
And this is all about to change.
And I think it's about to change
because word is getting aroundthat there's dead bodies being found,
and that makes people suspiciousof a lot of things.

(40:16):
So especially since that
and the last people to see themwas the vendor cabinet vendor.
Yeah. Exactly.
So I think the vendors,they are both incredibly stupid
and try to do something a little smarter,which is we're not going to dump bodies.
We should bury everybodyfor a little more privacy.
I mean, they got 168 acres.

(40:37):
You might as well.
Yes, you got it.
You got to land. Use some of it. Yeah.
So the the saddest storyis the one that happens next.
And that's a gentleman named George Long,or his name is misspelled
or spelled different waysand different articles and things.
But I think that'sjust the product of the time.
And not everybody knew how to spell it.
He was traveling to Iowain December of 1872.

(41:02):
Now he and his wife, Mary Jane,they had a daughter
who was 18 months oldat the time, named Mary Ann,
and the mother had actually passed awaydue to complications of childbirth.
So George Long, poor,unsure of how to raise a daughter
on his own, befriendsa doctor, William York
and Doctor William York has a family.

(41:25):
Mary and his daughtergets along with the family.
So the York family actually helpstake care of this little girl
until one day the the step, not step.
In-laws.
George Law of course
in-laws actually write to him are like,look, Marianne should come live with us.
We're family if we need.
If you need help with her,send her up to us.

(41:46):
And he agrees to do that.
So he actually buys, a carriage
from DoctorYork and travels through Kansas,
where he lives along the Osage Missiontrail with his 18 month old daughter.
And they never make it to Iowa.
Now, a couple days after

(42:07):
he left, a man named John Hanley stoppedby the Bender cabin with a colleague.
They were just looking to warm up.
I don't think they were planningto stay the night.
And the bender seemed uninterestedin having a guest at the time,
like they were really standoffishand he wanted to light a fire and
and they were like, no. And he's like,well, I'll buy the firewood.
And they're like, no.
And so it's suggested that they were being

(42:30):
really kind of rudeand wanting him to leave,
probably because they still had GeorgeLong called in his daughter's body,
maybe even in the cabin.Maybe in the cellar. Sure.
So that's the.
Way to deal with it.
This is the first step
towards the benders being found out.
So they they should not have
they should not have donewhat they should have done,

(42:51):
which is just a terrible comment becausethey shouldn't have done any of this.
John, what am I saying?They should not have done any of this.
So months
later, after law Court goes missing,a doctor, William York, his buddy,
the person who helped raise his daughterfor a period of time.
He had been a Civil War vet.
He was a bit of a hero in the Civil War.

(43:11):
He had also been a prisoner of warduring the Civil War,
which is just the stories I've heard aboutthat are just pure hell
and he went to visit his brother
Alexander York,because George Lung Core is missing.
And Doctor William York wasn't surewhat to do and wanted some help.
And not only had York
not received word that Lung Corehad made it to his family in Iowa,

(43:34):
but there was a wagon was also foundand that was crashed
and something obviouslyit had been abandoned or something.
And it had
a wardrobe, clothing
from a manand a probably an 18 month old girl.
So William York went to see the wagonwherever it was
found and was like,oh shit, that's my wagon.

(43:55):
That's the one.
He sold George Long Horse,so he knew something happened to him.
So he went to his brother.
Like I said, AlexanderAlexander is a former
Kansas state senator, very recently,Kansas state senator at the time.
He was very well-respected, very powerful,very interesting guy in Kansas,
knew how to push a lot of buttons,get a lot of things done.

(44:18):
And there's a story about himthat I have to share just because it
it kind of showshow kind of interesting and cool he is.
So he was no longer a state senatorbecause he accepted a bribe,
but he accepted a bribe to provethat another senator was paying bribes.
So he kind of like,threw away his own career

(44:38):
as a senator just to get the other guyout of the Senate.
So, yeah, he trickedhe tricked a guy by accepting a bribe,
and he actually went to the Senate floorand showed proof that he accepted a bribe.
He's like,I accepted a bribe. Here's the proof.
It came from that man
that senator there,that scumbag who we all know is a scumbag.
So they had to kick them both out of theSenate and actually was pretty amazing.

(45:00):
Like,yeah, stand up for your principles. Yeah.
It's like I'm actually runningwhere your mouth is.
Absolutely.
So I want you
I want to read part of his speechon the Senate floor because it's so cool.
And also, I just love the language backthen that people use.
Oh, sure. So here you go.
This is AlexanderYork on the state Senate floor.
I know that there are many presentwho may feel disposed to impugn my motives

(45:22):
in this matterand decry the manner of my unearthing
the deep and damning rascalitywhich has eaten like a plague spot
into the fairname of this glorious young state.
I am conscious that standing here,as I do a self convicted bribe taker,
I take upon myself vicariouslythe odium that has made the name of Kansas

(45:44):
and Kansas politicsa hissing and byword throughout the land.
Yes. So he is.
He's not a senator anymore.
But people love him for what he did.
He of course,he is both feared and respected.
And William tells tells his brotherAlexander
that he's going to actually go searchfor for George long for himself,

(46:06):
and he's going to start by travelingthe same path that Langhorne traveled
and so he gets in is probably horseand buggy or carriage of some kind,
and he heads on down the OsageMission trail,
and he soon to went missing.
And his brother Alexander gets worried

(46:27):
that that now Doctor William York,his brother, is missing.
He never showed up.
So Alexander is like,something's going on in that area.
So I need to figure this out.
And there's somebody I trust.
My other brother,the youngest brother, Edward York.
He calls in Ed and says, get a detective,get a team together.
We got to go find out what happenedto our brother, Detective William York.

(46:51):
And in certain respects,
they did find out what happened to DoctorWilliam York.
He two met the bloody benders.
And that is where we're going to endpart one.
John, is with the
the hunt for whatever happened to DoctorWilliam York.
And next week we're going to concludethe story of the bloody benders,

(47:14):
what investigators found,what they didn't, and the details
of the benders escape from Kansasand into the, I don't know, infamy.
Are they. Inside much? Yeah.
And they're like,it's like folklore or legend.
Yeah, absolutely.
It definitely is.
And out now I'm thinking about Infamousand The Three Amigos in famous.
In these hidden babies.

(47:36):
Yeah. So, yeah.
Doctor William York
to to surmise, his disappearance leadsto the downfall of the benders directly
because the York York Burrows
are on the case and it is not pretty.
And we're going to get
kind of more macabre in parttwo, is we find out all the details of the
crazy bloody benders

(47:57):
picking up in the 1870s, near
the end of the bloody bendersreign of terror in Labette County, Kansas.
Things in this mystery are about to get.
Messy in.
More ways than one.
The rest of this tale is like an abstractpainting.
The details.
The meaning is in the eye of the beholder.

(48:19):
It provokes imagination
and just might be a great wayto study the human psyche.
Or I'm just trying to find
meaning in these crazyfreaking bloody benders.
This is a study of strange.

(48:58):
Welcome to the show.
Welcome back.
I'm Michael May, and todayI'm still joined by John M Keating,
who is with me on this strange
tale of the bloody Bender family.
The weeks fly by.
It feels like just five minutesago, doesn't it?
Does it?
I think more like a minute and a half.

(49:18):
Off with the last week's like like.
So thank you everybody for your supportof the show and listening to the show.
And I am always having an amazing timedoing this.
And the best thing to do to supportis just to subscribe, rate and review
and check out our website,a study of strange.com
for Patreon and episodes and anything elseyou might be interested in.
So I'm going to we're going to jumpright into it.

(49:40):
We're going continuing the storyright away.
Where we left off is the benders.
A family, maybe notfamily, are leaving a trail of bad
first impressions aroundLabette County, Texas.
That is,that it might be the best thing, right?
Yeah.
I leave leave a bad first.
A bad, badfirst impressions everywhere and.
Analyze where you find it. Yeah.

(50:03):
And they a many, manya traveler are going missing in the area.
And some dead bodieshave been found that no one is.
No one is casting suspicion on the bendersquite yet.
We're in like 1872 ish, though.
I have jumped around a time a little bit.
And John, you actually pointed out areally good thing that I'll clarify here.
At the beginning,
John was like, I don't knowif you actually said how they kill people.

(50:25):
So very good point.
The the common story of the bendersis that there.
And please listen to part oneso you can catch some of these details
if you haven't already.
But there's a canvas in the cabinthat separates the front room,
which is where there were some goodsthat they would sell a table to eat at,
where people could stay the nightand the back area
with a couple of straw mattresseswhere the Bender family would live.

(50:49):
And the canvas.
It was right up against one of the chairsor benches at the table.
It was the seat of honor at that.
Yes, it's the.
Seat of honor is. A great way to it.
Name that. Yes. Yeah.
And again folklore here is that they wouldit usually you hear it
as Kate would seduce or flirtor makes people come down

(51:09):
and she would get them to sit withtheir head right up against the canvas.
And as they're relaxed and unassumingor being fed food and getting comfortable,
someone would sneak up behind themon the other side of the canvas
with a hammer, and Wakeham,hit them on the head.
And then immediatelyit's said a lot of times as well
that Kate, because a lot of themhad their throats cut.
Kate would then cut their throat

(51:31):
and they might be dumped into the cellarto bleed out and die, or they might.
Just be trapped under. The trapdoor.
They make it sound.
Some of the reports make it sound likeit was like a mechanical,
like a drop opened and like, like,Sweeney Todd.
Yeah, yeah, it's.
I even saw a movie where there's.
There is a door rightunderneath the table.
So they would move the tableand then just dump the body.

(51:51):
It's like, no,it was in the back under a mattress.
And it's not a trapdoor.
It's just a, like, you know, thing.
Yeah. Sorry.
There's an interesting thing
about about the puttingthe head next to the canvas that might,
lend a lot of credibility to the.
This is how they did it.
That was a commonly used,used technique in carnivals

(52:12):
where they would have, like the wrestlerchallenge someone from the audience.
Yeah.
And they would, you know,
they would have someone that knewhow to wrestle,
that knew how to hurt people, basically.
And, you know,there was always the drunk people,
oh, I can take and blah, blah, blah.
And you had to lastso many minutes with the person.
But if the person was too good and got
the better of the wrestlerso they didn't lose money.

(52:34):
Yeah, there was alwayssomeone behind the curtain.
The blackjack with like, a flapjack.
And the wrestler would maneuver
the other person, the personfrom the crowd towards the curtain.
Boom. And he whack them with thatand knock them out.
And then they.
That is.So there is there is precedent for.

(52:55):
That's interesting. Yes. Yeah.
That's really interesting.
Oh wow. John. Yeah.
That was an old old like becausebecause that's where like pro wrestling
evolved out of was the carnivals like thatand because of that you know.
Yeah. Yeah. That brings and that's.
I was going to say thatactually brings up an interesting theory
because we don't know the benders pastbefore they showed up.

(53:17):
And no.
And there was a lot of like germ,
like there was a lot of carnival stuffin that air in that.
Yeah.
Area of the country.
Yeah, yeah. At those times. Absolutely.
Oh, cool. That is awesome.
So, yeah. So we will get into that.
Some of some of my owntheorizing about the benders deals
with that, that canvas and that method of,of killing people as well.

(53:39):
So we're going to get to
that towards the end of this,which is already that is that is cool.
That is a really good, really good thatso where we left off, Doctor William
York was searching for his missing friendGeorge Lancashire and Lancashire,
his 18 month old daughterand then Doctor York went missing.
And his brotherAlexander, the former state senator,

(53:59):
gets another York brother, Edward,
to come and help search for what happenedto their missing brother, Doctor York.
Now, EdwardYork was a bit of a wannabe cowboy.
He was brash.
This is all my own description of him.
This is nobody else saying this.
He's brash, cocky.
He definitely cared for his brothersand wanted to find out what happened to

(54:20):
to Doctor York.
But he definitely seems a bit
kind of like triggerhappy again, just a figure of speech.
And I mean, he was shooting people,but he seems a bit trigger happy
and he becomes the family'smain guy on the ground investigating.
And they get a group of peopleformed around the town and townships
to help look.
And they were actually able to traceDoctor York's movements

(54:42):
pretty clearly, because Doctor Yorkwas looking for his missing friend.
So he was talking to everybody.
So when, when the group searching for himis now going around,
like, have you seen a doctor, WilliamYork? People are like, yeah,
he was here asking me about thisGeorge Long career fella.
So there is athey were able to trace where he went,
who we talked to, even a house he stayedat for the night, not the benders.

(55:04):
And they heard a story about
a guy named James Roach in La Dore,Kansas.
James Roach was a hotel owner.
And Roach was worried when he heard thatthe York brothers were out
looking for their missing brother,that they would come to him
and suspect him because apparently
James Roach was a suspectand a lot of strange disappearance

(55:25):
cases or thieveryor other strange rumors about town.
People thought Roach was behind itand had like a gang of
not vigilantes, a gang of thievesor whoever that, like, worked for him.
So when the York brothers
showed up in his town, he was like,oh shit, they're coming for me.
So sure enough, young Ed EdYork shows up at the hotel

(55:47):
and threatens Roach, and I think he even,like, pulled a gun on him.
And it's like yelling and threatening himand blaming him for the disappearance
and other disappearancesand all this kind of stuff.
Thankfully, Alexander was there.
The former senator,
who seemed to be the he was the headon the shoulders of this group.
He he comes things downand he ended up questioning James Roach

(56:08):
and determinedthat Roach had nothing to do with it.
And so so that was Roachgot very lucky because there is
there's always a chance for mob justicein these parts at that time.
Oh, 100%. Yeah.
And also too, if he was, which I'msure he was doing a lot of shady stuff,
he doesn't want the heat.
Yeah, he doesn't want the heat.
And this is this is why I really wantto know more about James Roach.

(56:30):
If anybody knows anything about this guyemailed me a study of stranger gmail.com.
Because it's so interesting,
because what I'm reading,I'm focused on the benders,
so I'm not going down like thatrabbit hole.
But he he was worried.
Everybody suspected him
for all sorts of stuff,which I'm like, why, why, why are people.
Suspecting you for all this?
He obviously was doing some shit.
And then he wrote to the governorfor help with law enforcement,

(56:53):
which is interestingbecause if he isn't shady stuff,
but he was like, we need more law.
Like, I'm scared. I'mtired of being a suspect in everything.
Please send law enforcementto help out in the area.
So it's just an interesting little,little anecdote there.
Or maybe he was just a little weirdand everybody was just like he was an easy
go to. Yeah.
Absolutely nothing.
You know.
Now, a local guy named Thomas Beerswho, as far as I can tell, did not

(57:16):
have any training for being a detectiveor law enforcement officer.
But he became a private detective,
and he was one of the main investigatorson the case.
And another local officialI mentioned in part one, Leroy
Dick, becomes a partof this group of investigators as well,
because he is sort of like a cityor county or township official.
He carries some some,

(57:40):
he wasn't
like a law enforcement officer,but he carries some authority around town.
And Leroy Dick,
I'll mention this real,real quick to Leroy Dick
is actually a very importanthistorical figure
when it comes to the vendors,because a lot of the stories
we have about them or informationcome from Leroy Dick.
And the decades after the benderswere found out and disappeared,

(58:03):
he was interviewed a lot.
I think he may have even writtena book or two.
And he he definitely embellished
his role in things as one does, I guess.
But he did play an important rolein sort of a lot of the details
we know about the bendersbeing shared down through the generations.
Now, as an example of what Leroy Dickbrought to the case, he's

(58:25):
actually the first person to connectthe benders as persons of interest,
not suspects yet, but persons of interest.
This comes up because as the searchfor New York is happening,
Leroy Dick remembers the theft charges,which I mentioned in part
one with the two ladies that moved infrom Germany and the jewelry box
and the cashier's checks went missing.

(58:46):
LeroyDick was told at the time about that,
but there was nothing he could dobecause there was no evidence they took it
so he couldn't put out, you know,a vigilante group together or whatever
they called him
at the time to go out andand actually investigate a posse, a posse.
And so he remembers this.
He shares this information with the Yorks.
And Ed York actually knewwho Kate Bender was because he had seen

(59:08):
her advertised easements for her.
Like, I can cure Blindness and Dumbwitness and whatever else she was at this.
Don't forget the Fitz. Don't forget Fitz.
And Ed actually was like that.
That all seems like hooey,
but he remembered the nameand was able to piece that together.
So this group wisely.
And I'mjust going to give Alexander the credit.
But it's an assumption

(59:29):
they decide to go visit the benders,but they're not going to go being like,
they don't want the bendersto think that they're persons of interest.
So they decide to go by the bendersto stock up on supplies.
And also they'relooking for their brother.
So they are going to ask about him justbecause he probably went down the trail.
But they're not going to give any sort of

(59:50):
inklingthat they may be thinking of the benders.
And that is where our next scene comes in.
John.
So yeah, we're we're going to doa dramatization here of what happened
between the York boys and their group
investigating this and the benders.
And a lot of this is actually takenfrom accounts from the York brothers.

(01:00:11):
So some of this language is takenright from them.
So that's fun.
All right. You ready?
Yes. Which who am I doing?
Oh, that. Is a good question.
I don't want to just dive in.
Let's see who is who's.
Maybe Alexander.
Yeah. Okay, I'll do that. It's Andrew.
You do? Kate and Gephardt.Yeah, I'll do Kate and Gephardt.
Okay. Oh,that means I have to do my laugh.
All right. You laugh. Yeah, yeah.

(01:00:34):
All right, here we go.
So it's the Bender cabinone day, and Alexander Yorke,
his younger brother, had Detective Beersand others right up to the cabin.
They open the front door and walk insidethemselves to get out of a light rain.
Inside the cabin, they find John Gephardtsitting and reading a Bible.
He introduces himself but doesn't attemptto help the alleged customers.

(01:00:54):
Suddenly, Kate appearsfrom behind the canvas curtain.
Can I help you?
Beg your pardon?
You, Miss Kate Bender? Yes. Kate. Nuts.
I'm Alexander Yorke.
I'm sure you've heard
that, my dear brother, Doctor WilliamYorke, went missing around these parts.
We're looking for any cluesabout what may have happened to him.
Yes, of course.

(01:01:14):
He stopped here for groceries.
Like I wish you would find outif he is alive or dead.
He was a very nice man.
I cannot imagine the distress.
Yes, it has caused distress for not justour family, but everyone who knew him.
He left here without worryand only only spoke to him a few minutes.
Isn't that right, John?
That's right.

(01:01:37):
It's a big mystery.
I wish you well in your search.
I got shot at near where they foundthe dead body in Drum Creek.
I could show you if you'd like.
Kate Gibbs. Gephardt. That was Gephardt.
If could tell Kate Gibbs Gephardt a lookthat says, what the hell are you doing?
Then she smiles at Alexander.
Yes, I suppose that could be helpful.
Gephardt jumps up and leads

(01:01:57):
the men out of the cabin, but Kate stopsAlexander and whispers to him,
if you come back alone without your men,I will have an answer about your brother.
You're aware of my gifts? Yes.
Come next week.
Alone.
Alexander politely smiles
and walks outside to his men.

(01:02:18):
Don't.
I wouldn't do it, Alexander.
I wouldn't go. Back.
No, no.
Anytimesomeone specifies a loan that much?
Yes, indeed.
So the brothers
left with Gephardt.
Apparently they were really annoyedwith them when they went to go to the area
where they found the dead bodyby the creek.

(01:02:40):
Apparently, they were just seems logical.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
And the, the whole group,
I don't know if the whole group,but they definitely,
definitely the Yorke brothersbecause they were the ones that actually
had the most influence of this group.
But they suspected the bendersthat like that meeting was like, yeah,

(01:03:00):
yeah, something's going on here.
That almost confirmed it for them. Yeah.
So they decide to come up with a planagain.
I think Alexander's in charge of this.
I think he wisely thinks this through.
He decides that they should
basically come up with a meeting.
And I don't know if he decides it,but I know he's part of the thinking.

(01:03:20):
We can't just show up and claimthat they killed all these people,
or especially Doctor York.
So we got to do something toto kind of catch them.
So this ruse is createdwhere there's going to be a town meeting
about elections, apparently,but they are going to bring up topics of
all the missing people, all the thievery,all the missing people in the area.
And they're going to put forward a motionto search

(01:03:42):
all the cabins in the area,not just the benders.
It's not about them.They're not suspected.
But we got to search all the cabinsto figure this out.
And Alexander helpedmake this even more formal.
He actually put together a petitionto the governor for help to catch
all these bandits, because they're tryingto make it sound like it's not a family.
It's a bunch of bandits out there. Well,you don't. Want to scare them off.

(01:04:05):
No. Exactly.
And keep them in thereand. Yeah, absolutely.
So the governor actually signsthis thing to give 500
bucks per head of bandit cut.
And so that makes it more official.
Now legend has it, and I believe it,because it seems to be mentioned a lot
that at least Parr and
John Gephardt were at this town meeting.

(01:04:26):
So they're hearing thisand they're aware of the searches.
And the binder is actually seethe writing on the walls
and they decide to get the heckout of Dodge, so to speak.
So there's a lot of
guessing legendand other nonsense in regards
to what happens nextwith the binder specifically.
But we actually know more than I everrealized reading about this story.

(01:04:48):
So on April 4th, 1873,the benders went to a train station
and sayer a settlementnot too far from them,
but like farther away from other trainstations.
The best that I can tell on your way,
Paul Bender got into an argumentwith a ticket agent.
They, you know,so they're standing out already
and leaving their mark and impressionswith two people.
And they got tickets to Humboldt, andthen they got two different connections.

(01:05:10):
So some of them are going to go into Texas
and others are going to go into Missouri.
They left.They are at 9:03 p.m. that night.
Ma and PA were the onesthat were going to continue to Missouri.
John Gephardtand Kate would go into Texas.
They all had a layover stop
because I don't think you say layoverwith trains.
Yeah, yeah.

(01:05:31):
They all stop now.
Stop for a little while in Chanute,where they were seen actually
having breakfast at a hotel near the trainstation, and Chanute is interesting
because it's actually north of Labette,where their cabin was in Labette,
but then they're also nowKate and John are now going to go south,
so they're going to cut back through.
And I was actually trying to figure outlike where the train routes

(01:05:52):
were at the time. And I could not.
So I don't I don't know if they did thatbecause they had to
then connect to go southor if they did that
just to hopefully put people off the trainlike backtrack.
Right? Yeah.
So I don't know if they thought itthrough that much or not.
It kind of depends on the routesand the trains at the time.
And I just could not find enoughinformation.
So Kaden Gephardt eventually

(01:06:12):
make their way to Denison, Texas,which is known as an area
where a lot of people headed to the west,the American West, or into Mexico, stop.
And it is near the North Texas border,sort of outside of Dallas.
So May comes around.
That was in April.
So almost a month goes by.
And a farmhand named Billy Toll,

(01:06:35):
who I mentioned in in part one, the scene
I kind of read from the book in partone talks about Billy Toll.
He's a farmhand, and he's rounding upcattle that got out during a storm,
and his route took them on the paththat led to the Bender cabin,
and he wasn't planning to stop there.
It was a plan to talk to him,but he heard an animal
like what sounded like a lame animalmaking noise, and he noticed

(01:06:57):
that no one was coming out of the cabinto help the animal.
So he went over to the to the corral.
There's a little stablesthey had built in the Bender property
and found a pig that was like dyingand hungry, and he fed the pig.
And then inside the stables,it was smelled really bad.
It was due to the putrid smell,and it's hard to say.

(01:07:18):
And full of flies.
And there was a dead calf in there.
The stands out to Billy Toll is likesomething or something isn't right here.
So he heads over to the cabin,
knocks on the door.
The door opensand it is devoid of life except for flies,
and it also had a very similar smellto the dead calf

(01:07:38):
from the stablealso coming from the cabin.
So Billy told hi tales that out of therehe doesn't like go searching.
He doesn't,you know, start touching everything.
He leaves.
But he tells everybodythat the benders are gone and they left
and there's dead animalsand some smells bad in the cabin.
Like there were some real estate agents
on the trailthat he, like, stopped and told.

(01:08:00):
And they even went by the cabinthemselves and looked and
and soby the time he kind of makes it into town,
Leroy Dick,the city official, has already heard
that Billy Tuttle was found outthe benders aren't there.
Apparently,because word spreads fast even without.
A faster than you can move. Yeah.
And so Leroy Dick gets informationthat the vendors
must have abandoned the cab to the cabin.

(01:08:21):
So Dick gets the York brothers,the group, together.
They head out the next dayto the Bender cabin.
And you all can listen to part one,my little summation
of when they show up to the cabinand they go out in the basement
and they smell something,and they're like,
we're going to have to move the cabinto search the cellar,
and there's probably a dead bodyunder there.
So they they have to move the cabin,literally move the whole cabin.

(01:08:42):
And they have to break apart
the stone flooringthat was put into like the little cellar.
And they think there's a dead bodyunder here.
There has to bebecause there's blood in the soil.
There's blood on the stone.
And while they're moving the cabinand doing this initial search,
Leroy Dickfound three hammers of differing sizes
all underneath thestove, which is very strange.

(01:09:06):
Someone also found a knife
in hidden in a clock,which is also very strange.
The following day,there's an abandoned wagon that was found,
and it turns out that it was the Benderwagon.
So people are know that athe benders are in the cabin.
There's a wagon abandoned nearby.

(01:09:27):
They got out of here beforewe had a chance to actually catch them
doing what they likely did tomissing people, or at least Doctor York.
And if you know anything about humannature, John,
the entertainment at the time, there'sno there's no YouTube back then.
There's no TikTok.
If you hear there's likely been murdersat a cabin, you're going to you're going

(01:09:48):
to get rid of whatever you're doing thatday and go on down there to check it out.
That's a night out. Yeah. That's yeah.
Get the kids, gather up, get the kids.
And they do.
There's Kate, there's photosof the property and there are children
because that is human nature.
And people start showing up to search.
Luckily, they're still searching.
So I think people show up just to see,
but then they're like, oh, volunteer,you need help digging.

(01:10:09):
So like, people volunteerand they help to to search it out
and they decide it is Leroy Dick.
That's what I was.
Leroy Dick decided to divideeverybody buddy up into three teams.
So one team is going to go search John,get parts, land down the road,
sort of narrow strip.
One team is going to search the groundunderneath the stone in the cellar.
One team is going to excavatethe like stable corral area.

(01:10:33):
And they're doing that.
And there's bad smells.
Billy Tallapparently threw up when he was digging
in like the cellar area,because the smell of it.
Nobody, though, is found.
No one findsany bodies, just blood and stuff.
And I think it's Ed York
who may have been the first personto notice that the soil in the orchard,

(01:10:54):
some of it's disturbed,some of it's like loose soil.
So they take a rod and they decidethey're going to jam
it in the groundwherever there's loose soil.
And if it hits something,
that's where they're goingto, dig to see if there's a body.
So sure enough,they hit something right away.
When they do this and they start digging,and about four feet down,
the first person they find that dayis Doctor William York is is dead because.

(01:11:17):
He was the most recent.
It was the most recent. Yeah.
And there's a claim, I don't know if it'strue that his head was cut entirely off.
I don't know if that's true.
There definitely was a cut on his throatand also blunt force trauma to the head,
which matches the other bodiesthat have been found prior to this.
And all the theoriesabout how they killed people.

(01:11:38):
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(01:12:43):
Yeah.
Now, allegedly, the size of the woundmatches one of the hammers
that they found those hammersdo you can actually go visit to this day
they're in the Cherry Vale HistoricalSociety Museum in Cherry Vale, Kansas.
They are still there, as well as the knifethat they found as well.
That may have been a knife.
They used to get people.
So yeah, check that out.

(01:13:03):
Everybody.
I said that like I actually do suggestchecking that out if you're in the area.
I said that like likehow crazy would you be to check that out?
I mean. That's a no no. Check that out.
I was in Kansas.I was checking absolutely.
But there were more graves,at least five that they could see.
They found a man named Henry McKenzie,William McCarty, Benjamin Brown,

(01:13:24):
and then GeorgeLong Core and his 18 month old daughter.
They were kind ofshe was buried at his feet.
The suspicion with the daughteris that she was buried alive.
Oh, now, seven total bodies were uncoveredfrom the orchard.
One in the well.
A guy named Jimmy JohnnyBoyle was found in the well sometime.
He's credited in articles as John Geary.

(01:13:47):
Regardless, they found a poor soul in the.
Well,
a doctor was on site, doctor cables.
And he's the one that actually came upwith this M.O., this modus operandi
for the benders,
the stuff that has become folkloreand legend of the canvas and everything.
I actually don't think he.
He mentioned the canvas that justsome people think of that he more said

(01:14:10):
someone would sneak up behind the person,
hit him, probably hit him multiple times.
It's not like one hit.
It's hit him multiple times.
And they would also sometimescut the neck as well.
So it's a brutal, brutal death.
This is not a clean act by any means.
Now this law has grown with time.

(01:14:32):
People say Kate is behind it.
She's the brains.
She would cut the neckand PA would hit him on the head.
We don't know that there is nothing.
There's no evidence
anywhere that suggests Kate did one thing,someone else did another.
The only evidence ispeople would go to the cabin
and they would die under these methods.
We don't know where they were sitting.

(01:14:52):
We don't know who did what.
Could have been all.
We don't know.
So here's here's my question.
While we're on this. Murder.
Modus operandi process,whatever you want to call it, John.
So I mentionedin part one of my theorizing
is that the common story of the person'shead being against the canvas.
I actually don't think that's true.

(01:15:14):
Your your comment about the, the,
the wrestlers and stuffactually makes me kind of.
Yeah.
And the carnivalactually gives me more question.
It makes me question my own.It was a practice.
It was it was definitely a practiceto knock someone out that way.
Yeah.
Well here's my here's my issue with itbecause it actually does make sense
because it helps hide you.

(01:15:34):
I know it hides sound really.
But it definitely you can definitelysneak up to somebody like that. But
if you're hitting somebody on the head,there's likely going to be blood.
And I just don't thinkyou want to stain the canvas
that's now been hanging in your cabinfor three years.
When you're trying to convinceother people to stop

(01:15:54):
and have lunch or dinneror stay the night,
I just I don't think that's a movethat anybody would do.
Even a dirt dirty family like this also.
Was what I wondered, too, though, was
was the intent of the hammerto kill them or to knock them out?
I think it's probably to knock them outbecause everybody else okay.

(01:16:14):
Yeah. But doesn't. So.
Yeah.
So so so that could be a case of wherethere wasn't blood.
Yeah.
From the head wound.
But I just you can't control that.
But maybe they don't. They didn't care.Maybe they weren't trying to control it.
Yeah yeah yeahI'm sure I'm sure this canvas,
if it was white was not like,you know, perfect for pristine.

(01:16:36):
Really? Yeah. That's a good point.That's a good point.
It's probably brown and faded and again.
Right. And it's very dimly lit in there.Yeah.
And one person did sayit was a red curtain at one point.
So maybe. Right.
Which would be more sense.Yeah that would be that. Yeah.
And but my other, my other thought on it,the reason I question that is don't you.
Also you may cut it open.

(01:16:56):
You may tear itby doing that all these times.
But maybe it wasn't the same canvas.
Oh yeah. Every time. Yeah.
All right. Fine.
It had a supply.
If they were.
They should have gotten into the canvasbusiness. That's what they should have.
That was the move.
That was the move they may have,but that was fine.
Yeah.
Yes, indeed.

(01:17:17):
But I was giggling all the timewith all that money.
That's a that the.
Canvas money man.
He would leave townfrom time to time to do stuff.
That's probably what he was doing.
Yeah, exactly. He was in the canvas game.
No, but those are my issues with thatcommon theory that, like,
they're hitting people through the canvasis I worry about blood.
I worry about ripping it.

(01:17:37):
And it's like, you don't have to have thatto sneak up to somebody.
Becauseespecially if somebody is getting relaxed
or having a cup of coffee,they're out of the rain.
They're chilling and chatting with Johnand Kate.
Not my pogswere apparently just not very social,
but it's like you get comfortable,you just walk up behind somebody
and smack him on the head.
So you know, and if they're readyand they're prepared and they communicate,

(01:17:59):
they're a team,a good team of serial killers,
and they're practicedand yes, skilled at what they're doing.
They have a they have a process.
They have a process down,
but here's, here's a
John, here's a little tale of human nature
that is, shows how terrible we are.
We arewe're just we're we're all horrible. Yeah.

(01:18:21):
And there are laws to helpsort of mitigate mob
rule and mob law, and it can be a lot.
It could be a big problem.
And something happenedwhen all these people were
were digging up these bodiesand searching the land.
Is that a neighbor, the nearest neighborand another German immigrant,
a guy named Rudolph Brockman, was aroundthere as well

(01:18:43):
because everybody from from the areashanging out at the old Bender place.
Yeah. What else is there?
And so people are like,oh my God, look at the benders.
Did they're terrible people.
Hey, RudolphBrockman is kind of nice to the benders.
And he's also German, so he was in on it.
So that's all they needed to hang Brockmanin the rafters of the cabin.

(01:19:05):
So they hang Brockman,and right before he's about to die,
they cut him down,and they tell him he needs to confess.
Confess to his sins, confessthat he helped the benders.
He killed all these people.
He didn't confess because he didn'thave anything to do with it.
So they hang him again.
And this time he passes outand they actually pronounce him dead.
Cut him downlater, though, he actually wakes up.
He did not die,

(01:19:26):
so he wakes up.
He was only mostly did.He was mostly dead.
And he he just gets out of there.
And the story is that he kind of got upand stumbled, is probably delirious
and just walks in at this point.
It's the night time,
and he stumbles on his wayback down the trail, back to his place.
And from what I can tell,no one even helped him.
No one helped him up. Nothing.

(01:19:48):
And that is just such a horrendous story.
But that's part so like it'sso of the time and all of the time.
Yeah, I could see it happening nowin certain areas.
It's just.
Yeah, that, that, that whole you're guiltyby association, you know, you get him,
everyone get them. And you see it.I mean look we don't change.

(01:20:09):
We're humans. We don't change.You still see it today.
We just have we just have certain thingsin place to help stop that. But.
But those kind of thingscan and do happen.
And the reason this story is importantis a just because it is interesting.
It is interesting to to look at humannature and human behavior.
But also people immediately suspectedthat the benders had accomplices.

(01:20:29):
And when I first read that, I was like,I don't think so.
They're killing all these people.
I think that's just too riskyto have people know.
And then I was like, oh, wait,but they have to sell everything they get.
Like they had to sell horses,
sell carriages,like whatever people are leaving behind.
So they, they very wellmight have had accomplices,
but I think in hocking goods,I don't think in.

(01:20:51):
A complex sense. Yeah.They needed a fence.
And there are storiesthat John Gephardt would leave and leave
for long periods of time,like he would be gone for days or weeks.
He wasn't just running into townfor for supplies.
So I think John would take stuff
and had people or accomplices or fences,
whatever you want to call them, to be ableto sell goods and other places.

(01:21:13):
And again, they are not far from
the Oklahoma Territory at the timewhere people could kind of disappear.
So it's just a thought, because I do thinkit is important to think about that.
Maybe this roach guy had something to do.
Yeah. Maybe. Roach. Yeah.
Well, there are
there are some peoplewe're going to talk about
very shortly herewhen they were on the lam
that could have been associatedwith them selling goods.

(01:21:36):
I wrote down this little note.
So Bonnie and Clyde, they're famous afterthey were were shot in the in the Ford.
And it came through townand they were towing the car.
People would come up and cut hair offBonnie and cut pieces of clothing off
Clyde and get bloody bulletsand glass from the car and
just mobs of people taking stuff.

(01:21:58):
And, and it is so McCabeand we think of it as very weird,
but people did that.
And the same thing happenswith the Bender cabin.
As soon as this stuff happens,they start finding bodies.
People are taking sex.
So there is stuff out therethat is from people
stealing stuff from the Bender cabinand even the pictures.
There are pictures from the search

(01:22:18):
and you'll see,like paneling is missing from the cabin.
That'snot because the cabin had holes in it.
People had already taken wood panelingoff the cabin to keep as keepsakes.
Yeah. Very interesting.
Very interesting indeed.
And also you get con men,especially back then too, because then
as soon as people are taking stuff,you get people showing up and it's like,
I have a fork.
This was a binder's fork.And it's like they just

(01:22:39):
brought it from homeand they're selling it to tourists.
And along those lines to the trains
started having more rides into the areabecause a tourist.
So they opened it up for more touriststo come by and see the Bender property.
Press picks this up.
They're starting to share stories,and they're not confirming anything.
They're writing, they're taking.

(01:23:00):
They're finding other news articles andusing that to confirm their news stories.
Sure, yeah.
Word spreads, legend grows super fast.
And within monthsthis is a national story line.
This is also where you start to get thewe talked about it
may have been in part oneor in the early part of this part,
but the description of the bendersis never the same.

(01:23:22):
Right? Right.
There's a famous yeah. Sorry. Go ahead.
I was I say
I've seen some that were like, you know,the father was very ugly or the wolf.
Yeah. My bender was very ugly.
Yeah. Not you know.
And Kate only thought of herself and,
like, oh, somehow, like the these,this mysterious family
that people barely didn'teven know existed.

(01:23:44):
Everybody knew the intricaciesof their personalities.
And. Yes.
And it's true, because like I saidin the in part one, PA was known to be
a hairy dude, had a big beard viathe famous wood engraving of the family.
He's cleanly shaven.
And Kate, people say she's fat.
The other people say she's beautifuland skinny,
and other people say she had blond hairand others say brown hair.

(01:24:06):
And so it's likeall these different descriptions
and unfortunately,because of the time they lived in,
we don't have any confirmed photographsof any of them.
We actually don't knowwhat they looked like.
We don't. We have no we have no idea.
We can piece together some generalities,but we do not know what they looked like.
And that's even from people in townthat knew them.
And we know they knew them, and eventhey will describe them differently.

(01:24:29):
Yeah.
So the persistent thought was thatKate was the brains behind the operation.
This starts becoming
more of a universality in the storyat the time when all the press is writing,
they say that she's the onethat would seduce people and get them in.
And she came up with the plan to hit themon the head and then cut the throat.
We don't have any confirmationof any of that.
It's like we don't know how they operated.

(01:24:50):
We don't know if she was the brainsbehind the operation.
She was definitely more socialand friendly sometimes to people in town,
but that doesn't mean thatshe was the brains behind the operation.
But this is where all those stories start.
Is all these newspapersjust making stuff up just to.
It was clickbait of the time.
Yes. Everything was based on rumors and.

(01:25:11):
Yep. Yeah. Assumptions. Exactly.
And so Alexander Yorke, at this time,
he again, he's ex-senator,very powerful in Kansas.
He actually issues warrants or tries toI think he runs for district attorney
so he can issue warrants because again,there's thoughts that there's accomplices.

(01:25:31):
So he wants to arrest people and they do.
They actually arrest a lot of people.
Luckilynone of those people ever go to trial.
There's not enough evidence for anything,but they definitely are like guilty
by association.And they're just arresting people.
Now on the lam.
If you remember, the benders separatedwhen I went to Missouri.

(01:25:52):
Kate and John Gephardt went south.
And we know
actually some of the movementsat this time.
The younger two bought carriages,they bought guns.
Kate began wearing men's clothing to hideas they went through Indian Territory
in present day Oklahoma.
They were also seen using a ferry,by a guy named Benjamin

(01:26:13):
Kolbert or Coal Bear.
Probably probably relatedto Stephen Colbert, I would imagine.
Yeah, probably. Probably. Yeah.
And that was the guy that operatedthe ferry and in Denison, Texas,
where they eventuallysettled down for a bit.
This is where Mob Hallactually circled around and joined up.
So they had a plan to meet up in Denison,and they in fact did.
And they decide to make a planto keep moving.

(01:26:35):
They got to move aroundthis is still before
they had found the abandoned cabin.
So the benders have a head start.
So they've already separatedand met up in this time.
And they meet up with a man namedFrank McPherson.
And Frank is a criminal,and he likely knew the benders
from potentiallylike hocking stolen goods.

(01:26:58):
Maybe how he knew them. Right.
I we do not know if he knewthe benders killed people.
We just think he's he's another criminaland they're fugitives
and he's always a fugitive,so they're going to help each other out.
Meanwhile, it's like a TV show.
Meanwhile, back in LA County.
Out at the ranch.

(01:27:18):
Back at the ranch, Alexander, her,detective.
Beers, Leroy. Dick.
All these people are are starting to piecetogether happenings of the benders
after they find the cabinand it doesn't take long for them
to actually find the informationabout them taking the trains
and heading out of town today.
They did good old fashioned detective workon their legs, on their horses

(01:27:40):
going around talking to peopleand find the evidence that they
they got on these, these specific trains,they went on these specific routes.
There are witnesses.
It's, having breakfast,all that kind of stuff.
So they're doing a good jobof hunting them down.
But again, they're a month behind
and a month behind in those daysis a very long time.
The governor of Kansas starts,
announcing rewardsas much as he can legally do.

(01:28:02):
He starts offering rewards on the vendors.
And there's really interesting.
You can actually read the announcementlike the proclamations from the governors.
Those are still online.And the really interesting,
including the descriptions of
the benders is, again, no one'scalling them by the right information.
Right? Right.
Like, as an example, Mrs.

(01:28:22):
Bender is called 50 years of age.
Rather heavyset, blue eyes, brown hair.
German speaks broken English, but like,there's so many different descriptions.
Amazing.
So the benders make it toa place called Red River station,
which is a frontier town.
And this is after they were in Denison,
and they found out that no one reallycared that they were fugitives there.

(01:28:42):
No one asks any questions.
It's the frontier town.No one. No one wants.
No, no, no. Yeah. Exact.
No one asks questions there. Yeah.
And John Gephardt apparently doesn'teven hide the that they're benders
like he even introduces themas benders in one of the stores in town.
And they end up meeting up with a guynamed Missouri Bill,

(01:29:04):
and he's Frank McPherson'sbrother, says William McPherson.
But he goes by Missouri Bill and Missouri.
Bill is very influential in the region.
He he even found outthrough his connections
that there were detectives in the areasearching for the benders.
So Bill decides to help the benders.
He goes into townto meet up with the detectives

(01:29:24):
because he's the well-to-do man in townthat knows everybody,
so they come to him for questionsand he kind of plays along.
It's like, oh, let me let me see whatI can find out for you, Mr.
Detectives.
I will ask around and seeif anybody knows anything,
even though he knows exactly wherethe benders camp are camping out nearby.
So he puts them off the scent.
This is also

(01:29:45):
around a period of time where they.
Because they're constantly moving.
So it's actually kind of hardto think about their travels at this time.
But they're constantly moving.
They travel up the Wichita River
and they stay with a cousin ofof the McPherson's named Floyd Slip.
I keep wanting to call him Floyd Shrimp,but it's Floyd Slip,
and a man named Sam.
Emeric, who was also kind of an outlawand moving around.

(01:30:09):
He also stayed there at the same time.
The benders were there.So he got to know them.
And a lot of the detailswe have about the benders
because of this guy, Sam, Maryand the search for the vendors.
This is a period of time, I think it'sSam Merrick runs into the benders.
I think over a period of
two, two and a half years, like it's 1875,the last time he sees them.
And it was 1873 when they left.

(01:30:31):
So this is taking a lot of time,investigations, time.
Add those things together. Money.
Gotta have money.
But it's taking so long that it's startingto wear down the resources
to investigate the benders.
And even Alexander York,who was putting a lot of his own strength
and might behind the investigation,tells beers and Dick

(01:30:53):
and everybody else investigating,it's time to stop.
So the investigationdies down a little bit.
However, there was a
very close call and IT detectivesreally missed out on a thing.
And it's a great scenethat I could see in a movie.
So in a placeright outside of Henrietta, Texas,
a detective was in townlooking for the benders,

(01:31:15):
and they actually tracked him again, doing
a very good job of Detective ING backthen.
Tracks him to this area. He's in town.
Bill McPherson again gets wordthat there's a detective in town,
so he does the same thingwhere he's going to go and lie
and say he's going to helpand doesn't really do anything.
John Gephardt is like,I want to see this detective.
So excuse me. Wait, let me do that better.

(01:31:37):
John Gephardt says,I want to see this detective. He.
Gotta gotta.
Keep it authentic to my. Impression.Yeah, yeah, yeah, I gotta give it. Yeah.
So John Gephardt goes into town, meets upwith Bill McPherson,
and McPherson is like,what the hell are you doing?
The detective is, I just talk to him.
He's rightover there in the general store.

(01:31:58):
And John Gephardt is like,I'm gonna go talk to him.
So JohnGephardt goes into the general store
and stands right behind the detectiveas the detective is, like, in line
buying stuff because Gephardt is like,he's not going to recognize me.
I'm alone. He'slooking for a group of people.
He's not going to know what I look like.
So sure enough, Benderwas right behind the detective,

(01:32:18):
and I think they even conversedand talked.
And the detective had no clue. No clue?
And how did you get that?
They could have gotten him right thenand there and they didn't.
So Sam Merrick, who again kept
running into the benders because they'rein the same circles of fugitives.
He last time he saw them was at a campfurther west in 1875.
And Merrick was soon arrested.

(01:32:40):
And I got he was arrested,I want to say, in the Midwest,
I didn't write down where he was arrested,but it wasn't out West.
He was arrested somewhere else.
And investigators realizedhe saw the benders, and he actually starts
divulging most of the information we haveabout where they went, how they went.
Bill McPherson, Frank McPherson,all this kind of stuff.
Because it's thought that, Merrick knew

(01:33:03):
they were fugitives,but he himself was an outlaw.
It's not that he didn't knowthey killed everybody.
He wasn't aware of it.
So the suspicion there, becauseall of his stories actually make sense.
It's not just an outlaw being like,oh, you cut me.
I'll make up storiesabout other fugitives.
All of them really make sense.
According to other witness testimony,things they learned from the McPherson's.
And it might be because he found outthey killed all these, these people.

(01:33:26):
And he was like, wait, you know, alittle bit of morals, I have it.
Sure. You don't do that?That's what that's too far.
They've gone too far. Yeah.
And they're just robbing everything. Yeah.
And that's an assumption.
But but I think it's a goodassumption. So we'll see.
And that's when the benders disappeared.
There are many, many stories that I'mnot going to waste everybody's time

(01:33:47):
with, of the benders being other places,because they're likely all fake.
Everybody's great greatgrandfather has a story about the benders.
There's there's people that claim to bethe benders that were in Nebraska.
There's a report of a woman
dying in Californiathat confessed to being Kate Bender.
And the most famous storythat I will mention,

(01:34:08):
because it actually ties to a lot of whatwe think we know about the benders
is a woman named Francis McCann.
She had, I think she lived in Kansas.
She had a housekeeper,a woman that helped her around the house
named Sarah Elizabeth Davis, and SarahElizabeth Davis was a single mother.
And one night, Frances McCann.
And I'm butchering this tale a little bit,just for time's sake.

(01:34:29):
But she had a dreamthat connected in her dream, connected
the woman at her house,Sarah Davis, to Kate Bender.
And then she had a conversationwith Sarah and claims
that Sarah admitted or provedthat she actually was Kate Bender.
So Sarah finds outthis woman thinks she's Kate Bender.
She leaves town.

(01:34:49):
She goes and lives with her motherin Michigan.
A miss Elmira Monroe Elmira Monroe
is where people think mob benders nameis Elmira or Elvira.
Just sometimes swapped. Yeah.
This woman, I'll say it up frontbefore I share the story.
She's not.She's not my bender. She's she's not.
I explain why I said okay,
but it is interestingbecause a lot of times you've read

(01:35:11):
articles or stuff when you're researchingthis, like, mob bender Elmira.
That's what her name was.
And it's like, no, no, no, that's not it.
So anyway,
this this story is an episode on it.
So the Cliff notes version is, Frances
McCann gets people that support her theorythat these are the benders.
They go to Michigan, they arrest

(01:35:34):
Sarah Davis and her mom, and eachone begins to blame the other one.
Or say, the other one is Ma Benderand Kate Bender.
So both these women are like,yeah, that's that.
No, that's a mob bender. I'm not Kate,but that's wrong. But a little.
Below their sign in their sonan affidavit. They're doing everything.
They also,I think, share a jail cell for a lot of.
Stuff, too.
Just so, so awkward.

(01:35:57):
And they get shipped down to Kansasand they're put on trial
for being the benders.
And it gets even more bonkersbecause Leroy Dick says that has to be
a mob bender.
Other witnessesthat knew the benders are like,
no, that's definitely not the benders.
Other ones are like,oh, that's definitely the benders.
Everybody's disagreeing.
However, for the most part, most witnessesclaim that they are not the benders.

(01:36:22):
Even Kate's personal doctorWho who helped Kate.
With.
Doctor things is like, no, I know Kate.
That's not that's not Kate.
Oh, by the way, this is about ten yearsafter they disappeared.
Yeah. During the trials.Just super bizarre.
They both claimedthat they're not the benders.
They were like,we never said we were the benders.
After a period of time, it's like, wait,but you did.

(01:36:43):
You were each saying you were the vendors.You didn't say you were the better.
Yeah, the other one was.
And it turns out Elmira Monroe was marriedto a guy named John Flickinger,
who had passed away at this point.
And people start to assumethat John Flickinger was poor.
Bender.
That's where, again, when you researchthis, people call Paul Bender.
John Flickinger. It's not not his name.
That was Elmira monroe's husband.

(01:37:05):
So there ended up there's not
enough evidence to convict themas the benders their let go.
Also, they were American.
Both of them weren't born in the States.
Neither one had a German accent,and both of them spoke English fluently.
And we know that Ma barely spoke English.
Right.
So they were not the benders.
So, yeah, it's just an interesting storyand a nice example of how

(01:37:28):
a lot of craziness goes on about whois the benders and what happened to them.
Frank McPherson,who helped them on the lam.
The benders was finally arrestedin New Mexico.
He could have been stayingwith the benders as he kept progressing
west over the years, because he definitelywas part of their their movements.
Thomas Beers,one of the detectives, claimed in 1901

(01:37:51):
to still be watching the benders closely,
so he thought they were still out thereand he was keeping an eye on them.
And then the famousstory about the benders
is that in 1937, Laura
IngallsWilder from little House on the Prairie,
she claimed that she stopped at the Bender

(01:38:11):
cabin as a kid and that her father, PA,was part of a posse
that hunted them down and claimedthat no one would ever find the benders.
And this is this still comes up in like,chats and stuff
where people are like, oh my God,the little house on the prairie.
They were there with the benders.
It's likely this story is not true at all.

(01:38:32):
It is Laura's.
Laura's sister convinced her apparently,to tell this
as a storyto help kind of publicize things.
The the history of when the Ingalls
were or when the family excuse me,when that family was in
Kansasdoes not match up with the benders at all.
So it is likely a very, veryfake story that just gets

(01:38:55):
played around in folklore.
So that is the end of the tale, becausethey just disappear after all that.
That kind of wraps it up again.
My my only new theory on this,because there's no way
to know what happened to them.
I think theymy personal thought is they died.
I just think, you know, life is tough.
They're criminals. Right?

(01:39:16):
Right. Someone's going to.She die. Already?
They weren't.
They weren't super young.
No, no.
Especially mine.
Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, I think I think they died,I honestly do, I think they did.
Became like boogeyman.
Yeah.
And I think just from the nature of livingout there and also they piss people off.

(01:39:36):
They piss people off all the time.
So it's like you're out.
You're hanging out with outlaws.
You'reyou're not hanging out with good people.
Like, no, no. Yeah, yeah.
I could easily even see one of thembecause it was a national story line
piecing it together of like, wait,did you really kill at least 11 people?
And you know,who knows what they would have said?

(01:39:57):
And then just having someonetake Western justice out on them.
So I do not think they survived.
I don't I do not think any of the rumorsof Kate Bender being found in California,
New York or wherever else.
I think that's all hooeyand just part of legend.
But yeah.
What are your thoughts?Do you have any thoughts, John?
I, I there is one one accountthat I thought was really interesting

(01:40:19):
where, it said, the 12 men,that were arrested
and, all had been involvedin disposing of the victim's stolen goods
with McSherry,a member of the vigilance committee
implicated for forging a letterfor one of the victims.
Yeah, informing the man's wife thathe arrived safely in destination Illinois.
Yeah,I thought that was really interesting,

(01:40:39):
because it sounds like
maybe some of they didn'tget rid of all of the stolen stuff.
Oh, yeah. Definitely.I mean, they could have.
They probably had a lot of iton the property. Yeah.
Well property,I think they took a lot with them
because they didwhen they were on the lam,
they bought carriages and guns and clothesand all this kind of stuff.
So they definitely took somewith either trade or sell

(01:41:00):
to be able to finance theirtheir journey out of Kansas.
If I remember
correctly, with that storythat happened early on, not the
the arresting the guy, but they found outthat he forged the letter that was like
really early in their in their processof killing multiple people,
which is really terriblevigilance committees, by the way,

(01:41:22):
that was the typical way that they did
law enforcement at that time,because there wasn't a lot of law.
It was a massive mob,and they would just get people to get,
but they would do it under the guiseof like some sort of official capacity,
like city officials,like they were deputized.
They were deputized like you're deputizedas a vigilance committee.
And historically, okay,because I read a lot of accounts even

(01:41:42):
unrelated to the benders, but just stuffhappening in the area at the time,
they would just arrest anybody like, oh,that guy looks funny.
Let's arrest.
Well, as you saw from the neighbor.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Joe, the. Bracket they hung twice. Yeah.
My my big thought on this was
I don't think they hit peoplethrough the canvas,
but I have to say, I can give youa lot of credit, because now I'm.

(01:42:05):
I'm really second guessing that.
I just do worry about, like,tearing it open and whatever, and.
Well, well, it also depends onwhat they mean by canvas.
Was it a sheet? It was, thick.
And you know what I mean?
Like, it'stypically referred to as a wagon cover.
So it would have been thick.It would have been a thick.
So that's very thick andand leather usually.

(01:42:25):
Oh right. Oh that's interesting. Yeah.
That's a good point. Stretch leather.Or it could be.
Yeah.
And it's as much as people sayit's the hammers.
Like that's one of those historicala not fallacy because they weren't
very well might have used hammersbut it maybe they did have a slapjack.
Maybe they did have somethinglike that. Yeah.
But to hit somebody on the head
that wouldn't have necessarilygushed blood

(01:42:46):
just to knock them outand then come around the corner
and start hitting them on the headto kill them
because they try to kill them fast,you know?
So it's like, just knock them out andthen start whacking them with a hammer.
Or just knock them out and just cut thethroat. Yeah, yeah. You know,
and it is and,and a couple of the things I read, too
said thatnot all of the victims were rich.
No, no, they didn't have any money.

(01:43:07):
Some of them didn't have any money.
They were they either were doing itfor the pure thrill of it,
or they would mistaken.
They would be like,oh, this guy's got to have money.
Oh, sure. Yeah,yeah, that, that kind of thing.
But that's part of the motivation ofthis is they
aren't they're not uniqueserial killers by any means.
But they're not you know,they're they're not a Jack the Ripper.

(01:43:28):
They're not a Dahmer.
They wereI think they were primarily doing this for
it was their business model.
You know, like,I guess here's the business plan.
You know, you do this.
But they did it so
often over a period of few yearsbecause they, they know for a fact.
Is it?
I think it's 11, if I remember correctly,
11 victims that they were almost 100%sure they killed. Yes.

(01:43:51):
But it's like they don't know quiteif that.
Why? Yeah,I've seen it actually up to 2020.
Yeah. It's 2023 is what you read a lot.
But they, there's they're not confirmedbut I think they're.
Not quite sure exactly.But I definitely think it's more than 11.
Yeah I think it's more than the 1011.
Because you did have those bodiesthat they initially found

(01:44:12):
dumped in the creekand the other one half eaten by hogs.
Right.
And it's like there might be other ones.
It's it's a sparse area at the time.
There could be other bodiesdumped, other places they never found.
And which also lends credence to you.
It's probably a lot easier to disappearback there.
Oh yes. Oh yes.
100 especially split up. Yeah.
And that's also part of the reasonthey may have targeted southern Kansas.

(01:44:36):
As I've said before, in these,these episodes,
you can disappear into Indian territoryjust directly south
and, and where there's even less law andthere's less people looking for you. So,
I, they
strategized, they strategizedhow they were going to kill people,
they strategizedwhere they were going to live.
And we don't know anything about wherethey came from or where they went.

(01:44:59):
And that is sort of part of the mystery,the lingering
mystery and part of the
the kind of thrill of thinking aboutthe bloody benders is we have no idea
who they were or where they went,and they may not have even been.
Benders like thatmay not have been anybody's real name.
So it is.
It's a bizarre,bizarre tale of just pure evil.

(01:45:23):
Just pure evil.
Yeah.
And, and also I will mention this,I have reached out to the gentleman
who now owns the propertythat the Bender cabin was on.
I have not heard back yet.
So if you are. Listening to this.
If you're listening to thisand you know him, please pass on a message
that I would love to talk to you about.
I have emailed the guy I found him.

(01:45:43):
He actually wants peoplethat know what they're doing to come out
and like, do sonarand actually like search the property
because it's been farmland.
It's been farmland,I think ever since after the benders.
So no one's done a properkind of big excavation of the property,
but just that general area
where the orchard was,I think is all they did back then.

(01:46:04):
So there may be more.
There may
be more, more bodies to be foundthat are still there.
And I think that's a really interestingcause and something
if people do that for a living,if you have that kind of technology
and you want to help out
and you think it's, you know,an interesting thing to be part of,
you can email me a study of strangergmail.com and I'll try to put you through

(01:46:24):
or just find him. He's online.
I don't have his informationin front of me,
but he has not hidhis information out there.
And I do hopeif you're listening, contact me.
I'd love to have you on the showand interview you about your plans
and interests. With the Bender property.
So. Yeah, there it is, John.
That's the is the story. Of the deadis such a weird story.

(01:46:45):
It is? Yeah.
And like you said,I think the weirdest part to me is the.
I can kind of not understand, but I get,like you said, is the business model.
Yeah. This is what we do.
Yeah.
We getwe get travelers and we steal their money.
And this is how we make money.
But just likethat, no one knows where they came from.
The weirdness of the two womencoming from Ottawa.

(01:47:07):
Yeah.
And the other two guys coming from.
From Pennsylvania.
And then they just disappear.
Yeah.
Never really existed,never really exist. And.
Yeah,so much legend and conjecture that class.
Yeah.
Like, it's so hard to figure it out nowbecause so much of the stories we have
are embellishedor made up or whatever, so.
Well, you know,that's there's human nature as well.

(01:47:30):
Yeah.
We're talking about earlier.
Yeah. It's, you know, when there's gaps.
Yeah.Our human nature is to fill them. Yeah.
You know. Always we always make itso we're all storytellers.
Even if we think about a story today.
We always try to make everythingmake sense.
Absolutely.
Well,thank you so much, John, for being on
and doing two parts of the bloody benderswith me.
Yeah, thanks for having me.This was a blast. Yeah, it's super fun.

(01:47:51):
And also, your wife Amber, was on my manin the latrine episode,
which I think is the weirdest storyI ever.
While it's so strange.
So everybody check out that episode.
It's so strange that I startedto feel uncomfortable in the episode
with Amber because I'm like, this is justthis is this is a dude in a septic tank.
And I didn't know I was.

(01:48:11):
I thought it was like,yeah, but I mean, just the just the,
you know, how why was he there?
Was he forced in there?
Why was his shoe missing?
Yeah, just like just really.
How did the shoe get in the toilet bowl?
Yeah.
It's just so many, so many I wouldI love it.
That's intriguing.
And I know.
I was going to say listeners,I think that's a

(01:48:32):
that's a nice promo for that episode.
The man under thethe train. It's a few episodes ago.
Check it out.
Yes. Thank you.
Do want to tell everybodywhere to find you again and, Oh, sure.
Yeah.
You can find me, on I'm on Twitter,at GKids.
For as long as Twitteris still a thing and, and like,
it seems to be out of the way out
now, on Instagram under the same thingis probably a better way to find me.

(01:48:56):
Or you can find my website,John M Keating dot
John M Keating acting.com and,
and I, hope you guys will check out
my movie that I co-wroteand that I'm in called concessionaires,
most guides about the last daysof a single screen movie theater.
It's on iTunes and Amazon for rent,and I think it's on to be in Plex as well.

(01:49:18):
If you don't mind watching with ads,I think you watch it with ads.
So what is a movie theater
I've heard rumors for?
I've heard strange stories about that.
I know, yeah.
That's how you leave the house now.
Yeah, it's. It is it it's.
Cool.
Well, thank you very much, John,for being on. I really. Enjoy.

(01:49:40):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
And I'll talk to you soon.
Okay.
And that concludes our two partsof the Bloody Benders.
These have been two of my favoriteepisodes to research and record.
If you enjoy this type of content, pleasemake sure to subscribe, rate and review.
You can also check out informationShownotes
links to our Patreon programwhere we'd love to see you on our website!

(01:50:03):
A study of strange
email me ideas, questions, links,
anything you wantto a study of strange at gmail.com.
And if you haven't been listeningto a recent episode, you know I'm slowly
compiling personal stories of UFOs.
If you have seen a UFO,
if you know somebody that has, please,I want to hear from you.
Reach out a study of strange at gmail.com.

(01:50:27):
Check out John M Keating's work.
Information will be in the show notes.
Links to his movie concessionairesmust die, which is truly excellent.
Check that outand visit our sponsors as well.
And that'll doit. Thank you and good night.

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