If the terrible story of the Bender murders was not legend enough, another tale began to circulate regarding the property upon which the Benders had once lived. Prairie Ghosts, Byways & Historic Trails Great Drives in America, Soldiers and Officers in American History, Washington-on-the-Brazos, Texas Declaring Independence, Stanley, Ks Extinct but Still Here (LOK), Black Bob Reservation in Johnson County (LOK). She advocated "free love," and denounced all social regulations for the promotion of purity and the prevention of carnality, which she called "miserable requirements of self-constituted society." It is in Morehead in Montgomery County Kansas. Elvira Bender, who also allegedly spoke little English, was 55 years old and so unfriendly that her neighbors took to calling her a "she-devil.". Finally, the men physically moved the entire cabin to the side and began to search beneath, but no bodies were found there either. A piece of land where Kansas' first known serial killers murdered at least 11 people in the 1870s is up for auction. When the visitors stopped for a meal, they were seated at a table with their backs to the large canvas separating the inn from the living quarters. Located on a main road, the Benders sold meals and supplies to travelers. After opening the trap, the party found clotted blood on the floor of the empty room underneath, 6 feet (1.8m) deep and 7 feet (2.1m) square at the top by 3 feet (0.9m) square at the bottom. The Benders are believed to have killed about a dozen people, including one child., Although stories abound, the ultimate fate of the murderous Bender family is uncertain. It also brings to mind Lester Nygards murder weapon in season one. Kate was a self-proclaimed healer and psychic, gave lectures on spiritualism, and conducted sances. The wall wherein he hid his cash is gone, and he knows with certainty that the brothers found it. He has a white man in his trunk, an informant who has helped him track Calamita to the Liberal, Kansas, area. The Benders were widely believed to be German immigrants. The body would then be buried in the garden behind the house during the night. The Bender family, more well known as the Bloody Benders, were a family of serial killers who lived and operated in Labette County, Kansas, United States, from May 1871 to December 1872. The body of a young girl was found with no injuries sufficient to cause death. Kate was the fifth child of Ma Bender and was born Eliza Griffith. The texts read "Johannah Bender. There is a lot of weird details, like the two children, Kate and John Jr Bender possibly being husband and wife, or the parents Elvira and John Sir being two nobodies who merely said they were family. Immigrating from Germany, John Bender, Sr. was 60 years old when he arrived in the area; his wife was about 55. The probing continued until midnight, with another nine suspected grave sites marked before the men were satisfied they had found them all and retired for the night. Location. betty crocker net worth 2020; vietnamese culture relationships; pastillas para dormir durante el embarazo; what does modern fit mean in men's shirts? Because some of the travelers were carrying nothing of value, it was widely speculated that the Benders killed simply for the bloody thrill of it. [2], Two men who had traveled to the inn to experience Kate Bender's psychic powers stayed for dinner, but had refused to sit at the table next to the cloth, instead preferring to eat their meal at the main shop counter. As they make their way up to the top floor, they peer in the open rooms of the other tenants. Kate Bender, who was around 23, was cultivated and attractive and spoke English well, with little accent. Rabbi has a tailor-made response for each situation, but the active reminder of reality for black Americans in 1950 definitely adds to the tension of the episode. Their murders were carried out by use of a canvas curtain that divided the house into two rooms. barry mcguigan, daughter funeral; mellon mounds kansas murders Donald's family owns successful McDonald's franchises in their home town of Phoenix, Arizona. He then cautiously looks through a window, where he sees Calamita standing over a wounded Omie, gun drawn. Seventy-five locals attended the meeting, including Colonel York and both John BenderSr. and John BenderJr. After discussing the disappearances, including that of William York, they agreed to obtain a warrant to search every homestead between Big Hill Creek and Drum Creek. THE MELLON MOUNDS. CHERRYVALE The chain of low hills known as the Bender Mounds extends in a diagonal seven miles northeast of here, islands of limestone and scrubby trees over level fields where this time of year soybeans have just been harvested. Four other bodies with crushed skulls and slit throats were also found outside the property in Drum Creek and on the surrounding prairie. They return to their room, where Rabbi informs Satchel that theyll be leaving that night as he counts his money. Legends of America founder Kathy Weiser-Alexander hams it up for Discovery Channel producers for the show Evil Kin, episode 2, season 2, The Bloody Benders, original air date August 12. The men then physically lifted the cabin and moved it to the side to dig under it, but no bodies were found. Yes it was. Cherryvale, Kansas Museum by Kathy Alexander. Resolved: Release in which this issue/RFE has been resolved. KANSAS HISTORICAL MARKER THE MELLON MOUNDS On this spot stood the Mellon Mounds, named for the infamous Mellon family, who lured unsuspecting travelers into their home, fed them and then dispatched them with a hammer. And then, in so many words, Scalia said that nothing in the Eighth Amendment requires that jurors considering "mitigating evidence" that could . Colonel York, leading a company of some 50 men, questioned every traveler along the trail and visited all the area homesteads. 2014. Near here are the Bender Mounds, named for the infamous Bender family--John, his wife, son, and daughter Kate--who settled here in 1871. the mellon mounds kansas murders Blakeslee, 75, became intrigued by Etzanoa after scholars at UC Berkeley retranslated in 2013 the often muddled Spanish accounts of their forays into what is now Kansas . 620-336-3576. 20) May 1873: Dr William York. Moyra Melons (or Moyra Mounds) is a well-endowed mature model famous for saucy poses in revealing clothing and lingerie. [citation needed], Coordinates: .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}372056N 952910W / 37.349N 95.486W / 37.349; -95.486, According to one of the myths that has grown around the murders, after dinner, Colonel York was sitting in the front room when he noticed a gold, List of fugitives from justice who disappeared, List of serial killers in the United States, "The Bloody Benders Serial Killers of Kansas", "The Bloody Benders, Kansas, ca. After last weeks sincere entry into all-out war, as well as the deaths of several key players, one might have hoped to watch the action in Kansas City escalate. Hes connected to a medical machine and has a hovering attendant with goggles on, ministering to him with a hypodermic needle. In 1937 she gave a speech at a book fair which was later transcribed and printed in the September 1978 Saturday Evening Post and in the 1988 book A Little House Sampler. The Bender artifacts were eventually given to the Cherryvale Museum, where they remain in a wall-mounted display case. Colonel York agreed that this was possible and remained for dinner. Finally, unsolved murders in Shawnee County, Kansas, can be found among these lists. After the third hanging, they released him and he staggered home "as one who was drunken or deranged. By the time a deputy from Cherryvale arrived, identification was impossible due to decomposition. are enough to drive him back into his own room, where he bars the door with a chair and falls asleep again with gun in his hand. 18701873", Sheriff Saves the Neck of a Man Who Murdered His Own Daughter, "Dr William H. York (1840-1873) - Find a Grave", "The Bloody Benders: 140-year-old crime scene still fascinates today", "Selective Omissions, or, What Laura Ingalls Wilder left out of LITTLE HOUSE", "Little House on the Prairie, serial killers, and the nature of memoir", "They Bite: Anthony Boucher's Weirder Western", "Hitchcock's Birds, Hope Diamond, Phineas Gage", "One Red Dead Redemption 2 Side Quest Is Based On An Actual Serial Killer", 1873 map of Bender claim in Osage township of Labette County, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bloody_Benders&oldid=1142480623, "The old man was a repulsive, hideous brute, without a redeeming trait, dirty, profane and ill-tempered. John Bender, Sr. was from either Germany, Norway, or the Netherlands and may have been born John Flickinger. Legend has it that the family of four gruesomely murdered at least 11 patrons, scattering the bodies throughout their property and county. Next to their room is a hospital man, an obese white man with bandages all over him and some kind of skin condition that makes him look monstrous to the passing child. "[20][21] Some have cast doubt on the story, saying that Laura would have been only 4 when her family moved away from the area, and that the Benders were exposed in 1873, two years after the Ingalls family left. Cherryvale, Kansas Museum 1) May 1871: Mr. Jones. For years, sightings of Ma Bender and Kate were reported, and in 1889, two women were extradited from Michigan on the charge. However, there were no bodies in the hole. In The Wizard of Oz, things are in black and white in Kansas and turn color after the Cyclone drops Dorothy and Toto in Oz. The next morning, another eight bodies were found in seven of the nine suspected graves, while one was found in the well, along with a number of body parts. Franks father, Jesse P. Smalley, and several men were joking with a local judge, teasing him about his missing ear. Advertisement Coins. These first few missing travelers did not raise an overall alarm in the area as it was not uncommon for men to continue their journey westward during those days. Upon further investigation, Captain James B. Though many wanted to relocate the building, it had become a controversy in Cherryvale, with locals objecting to the town being known for the Bender atrocities. Find links to our programs, locations, partners, staff members, and communications. His family was from the Cherryvale, Kansas area, and the story involves a group of men that found the Benders and were in a gunfight with them, one of whom was a judge that lost part of his ear in the gun battle. With the victim's back to the curtain, Kate would distract the guest while John Bender or his son came from behind the curtain and struck the guest on the right side of the skull with a hammer. At the site of a freshly stirred depression in the earth, they found the first body, buried head downward with its feet scarcely covered. ?," "big slaughter day, Jan eighth", and "hell departed. . Those most often reporting glowing apparitions on the property were those who came to the site in search of some long-lost souvenir of the grisly murders. He takes Satchel to a quirky (to say the least) boardinghouse, owned by feuding, deaf, elderly sisters. As they break for a Coke, Calamita arrives. Calamita notices him and shoots twice out the window. The Benders were not what they appeared. In the winter of 1872, George Newton Longcor left Independence, Kansas with his infant daughter Mary Ann to resettle in Iowa; they were never seen again. John BenderJr. was around 25 years old and handsome, with auburn hair and a mustache, and spoke English fluently with a German accent. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/washingtonhistor0014unse The CAashington Historical . Rabbi retreats to take cover behind his vehicle, and Calamita catches him with a bullet in the arm before hes in the clear, making it difficult to return fire. When friends and family began to look for them, they could trace them as far as the Big Hill Country of southeast Kansas before finding no trace of the lost traveler. I have heard my grandfather tell of this story since I was a boy and Grandpa swears that this is the real story of what happened to the Benders. Though most of us know of Dodge Citys wicked ways, the deadly gunfight of the Daltons in Coffeyville, and the many outlaws and gunfighters who spent time in the Sunflower State, few are aware of a family of mass murderers, living a supposed quiet life near the small town of Cherryvale. was harry hibbs married; waterloo central railway wedding. Carrie Nelson was beaten to death during an apparent robbery at Blue Mounds State Park in May 2001. Hell the first album from the Smiths included a song about the Moors Murderers. Ransom, the trains conductor, said that John, Jr., and Kate disembarked at Chanute and took the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad train south to the Red River country near Dennison, Texas, which was then the terminus of the railroad. A trap door, nailed shut, was discovered on the cabin floor. The owner of the Drum Creek claim was suspected, but no action was taken. One vigilante group claimed to have shot down the men and Ma Bender and burned Kate alive as the witch they believed her to be. In 1870, five families of spiritualists settled in western Labette County, about seven miles northeast of where Cherryvale would be platted a year later. And Donald Mellon is your typical doting daddy, a clean-cut family man his girls admire and adore. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. Although the elder Benders kept to themselves, Kate and her brother regularly attended Sunday school in nearby Harmony Grove. Buried in the apple orchard. On deer antler shedding, pocket gopher mounds, eagle breeding and murders of crows (that's the name of a flock of crows) What little he did speak was so guttural that it was usually unintelligible. Their attorney also produced a marriage certificate indicating that Mrs. Davis had been married in Michigan in 1872, the time when several of the murders were committed. Deputy Sheriff Dick, along with Mrs. McCann, escorted the pair to Oswego, Kansas, where seven members of a 13-member panel confirmed the identification and committed them for trial. [1][2] Although some of the victims were wealthy, others carried little of value on them, and it was surmised that the Benders had killed them simply for the sheer thrill. [7], A Kansas newspaper reported that the crowd was so incensed after finding the bodies that a friend of the Benders named Brockman, who was among the onlookers, was hanged from a beam in the inn until unconscious, revived, interrogated, then hanged again. According to a breathless Daily Mail report, nursery-school teacher Inessa Tarverdiyeva and her husband, dentist Roman Podkopayev, were behind "a six-year reign of terror including at least 30. Their story is unresolved, and remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of the old West. Though most were led to believe John and Kate were sister and brother, others said that they sometimes passed as man and wife. One of those places was the Bender Inn. melon mounds liberal kansaspython list memory allocationpython list memory allocation Discover something new every day from News, Sports, Finance, Entertainment and more! The family quickly ran away in the middle of the night never to be seen. was harry hibbs married; waterloo central railway wedding. Later, Satchel awakens to find that hes fallen asleep and doesnt know where his friend has gone. Co D 123rd Ill Infantry. Guess well have to wait to find out . Elvira allegedly could not understand English, while the younger Benders denied the claim. A self-proclaimed healer and psychic, she distributed flyers advertising her supernatural powers and her ability to cure illnesses. Subreddit for the FX original TV series, Fargo. In mid-October, Deputy Sheriff LeRoy Dick, the Osage Township trustee who had headed the search of the Bender property, arrived in Michigan and arrested the couple on October 30, following their release on the larceny charges. Last night, I listened to a story from my grandfather, Emerson Smalley, about the Benders and their supposed end. ", "Kate proclaimed herself responsible to no one save herself.". In total, 12 men "of bad repute in general" would be arrested, including Brockman. East/West is a cunningly timed bottle episode. After the Benders escape, one detective, who had closely followed all the leads, said that he had traced Gebhardt to the outlaw country along the Texas/New Mexico border, where he had found that the criminal had died of apoplexy. Props to Noah Hawley for referencing a lot of forgotten crimes, from Jane Toppan, the Kansas City Massacre, and now the Bloody Benders. Somehow, he escaped, appearing naked in the middle of the night at Jesse Smalleys doorstep. Mrs. Monroe now admitted she had married a Mr. Shearer in 1872 and claimed she had previously denied it, as she did not want the court to know that her name was Shearer at that time and that she had a conviction for manslaughter. The right knee had been wrenched from its socket, and the leg doubled up under the body. So provocative was the Bender family tale that the Bender Museum was created in Cherryvale in 1961. The men with York were convinced the Benders and a neighboring family, the Roaches, were guilty and wanted to hang them all, but York insisted that evidence must be found. My grandfather, who is approaching 80 years old, is always full of great stories, but he assured me that his father, who passed this on to him, knew what happened. HISTORICAL MARKER McCrotty, and John Geary, as well as an unidentified male and female. The diggers were astounded to find what would become known as one of Americas first mass murder burial grounds as body after body was uncovered. Near here are the Bender Mounds, named for the infamous Bender family ~~ John, his wife, son, and daughter Kate ~~ who settled here in 1871. what happened to johnny rodriguez country singervice president internal student council. No documentation or definitive proof of their relationships to one another, or where they were born, has ever been found. She learns something new about herself every time she watches an episode of Wonder Woman. While the two women were certainly criminals and liars, as their own defense attorney admitted, the charges were weak and many people doubted their identification as the Benders. She was 20 at the time of her death. Rabbi makes his way to the filling station in search of a cupcake or candy bar. [2], Testimony from people who had stayed at the Benders' inn and managed to escape before they could be killed appeared to support the presumed execution method of the Benders. Everywhere Satchel and Rabbi appear together, someone calls out the color of Satchels skin and questions their connection. One of the women would cut the victim's throat to ensure death, and the body was then dropped through the trap door. These include the 2012 murder of Quan Donnell, the 1996 murder of Michelle Hutchinson, the 2013 murder of Juan Solis, and the 2016 murder of Robert Williams, among countless others. In tonight's episode, there's a plaque at the Barton Arms, the hotel Rabbi and Satchel stay at. Premium Powerups . did phineas and ferb die in a car accident. Calcium, iron, manganese, zinc, magnesium, selenium, and copper are especially concentrated in sunflower seeds. However, as more time passed, the disappearances became more frequent, and by the spring of 1873, the region had become strife with rumors, and travelers began to avoid the trail. The lonely hills meander across what is now U.S. Highway 400, where travelers whoosh by in comfort at 65 mph. In 1967, three of the Bender hammers were gifted to the museum by the Dick family. The plaque was created for the show. After following a fresh trail of wagon tracks, a search party found that the Benders had gone to the town of nearby Thayer, some twelve miles to the north.