The Story of the “Bloody Benders,” the Serial-Killing Family That Terrorized the Wild West—Then Disappeared – By Colin Dickey (Slate) / March 16, 2022
This was just the kind of crime the frontier made possible.
On Oct. 22, 1889, a strange trial got underway in the town of Niles, Michigan. A woman, Almira Monroe, had accused her adult daughter Sarah Eliza Davis of larceny, specifically of having stolen a frying pan, some pewter plates, and a pair of infant stockings. The courtroom was packed as the trial began, abuzz with rumor and speculation, crowded with curious onlookers. But hardly anyone was interested in the charges of theft. Most people there believed that Davis and Monroe were concealing a much more sordid past. As the trial unfolded, the courtroom—and soon the nation—had become convinced that finally, after almost two decades, Ma and Kate Bender had at last been found.
The Bender family come straight from a Cormac McCarthy novel: They materialized seemingly out of nowhere, committed horrific and immeasurable acts of brutal violence, and then seemed to simply vanish. Nationally notorious, their deeds intertwined with the founding narratives of the American West—a place where Anglo settlers saw a future rich with possibility, with few strictures related to class, family background, or law to hinder them. Having plundered this land from its original inhabitants, the American government turned it over to thousands of poor immigrants who sought to make their names and fortune on stolen land. Some people found the American dream. Some people found poverty. And at least 11 people, probably more, found death at the hands of the Bender family.
As expertly told in Susan Jonusas’ new book, Hell’s Half-Acre: The Untold Story of the Benders, a Serial Killer Family on the American Frontier, the saga of the Benders began in October of 1870, when two men who identified themselves as John Gebhardt and John Bender arrived in Osage Township, in the southeast corner of Kansas.* They seemed related, either through blood or marriage, though neither man ever elaborated on this. They divulged nothing of their past. The older man spoke very little and mostly in German; Gebhardt talked incessantly, making it clear that they were looking for a claim. (As per the Homestead Act, any federally surveyed plot of land was available to settlers willing to live on it and develop it; these plots were called “claims.”) The Benders built a small, one-room cabin along a creek in Labette County, the two men having been joined by John Bender’s wife, Ma Bender, and their daughter, Kate. For a few years their home operated as a waystation for travelers on this sparse, desolate stretch of land; in addition, Kate advertised herself as a spirit medium, offering services both as a spiritual healer, and as someone who could contact the dead. As was popular among some spiritualists of the day, Kate also professed a belief in free love.
