The Bloody Benders

True Crime Historian

Richard O Jones

True Crime, Performing Arts, Documentary, Arts, Society & Culture

4.5 • 720 Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Roadhouse Of No Return

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Episode 40 takes a look at the legend of a Kansas family that killed at least 11 visitors to their roadhouse in the early 1870s. They aroused suspicion by choosing as a victim a well-known physician, whose family soon pulled out all stops in a search until they uncovered his body, along with 10 missing travelers, on the Bender property. The Bender Family was nowhere to be found, and never were. Sightings and even arrests were regular for many years, even into the next century, but the second act of this episode purports to tell the true story of what happened to the mass murdering hostelers.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Lawrence, Kansas, May 8, 1873.
0:11.0	The body of Dr. William Henry York was found about 10 o'clock, in a plowed field of about an acre and extent, and within 200 yards of the cabin of the Bender family.
0:23.9	The murdered man had been buried face downward in a hole about four feet deep and 18 inches wide.
0:30.2	The back of the skull was found to have been broken, and both temples crushed in, as if by blows with a shoehammer.
0:37.0	One eye had been driven from its socket,
0:39.3	and the victim's throat was cut. A shoehammer found in the house fitted the indentations in the back
0:45.2	of the head. An attempt had been made to conceal the grave by plowing over it, but the earth had been
0:51.2	thrown in so loosely that an iron ingate rod was easily thrust into the excavation.
0:57.0	The remains were not so far decomposed as to prevent their easy recognition by State Senator Edward York, the dead man's brother.
1:06.0	The stench arising from the deserted cabin led to the belief that other dead bodies were concealed beneath
1:12.1	it and it was removed from its foundations. Three bodies were found beneath the house and four graves
1:18.5	in different parts of the little field. Two of the victims were men and one a little girl. The
1:24.5	bodies of the men, like that of Dr. York, were stripped to their shirts, showing that
1:29.2	their clothing was partly an object in murdering them. A little girl had on a dress, an apron.
1:36.0	All the victims had evidently been killed by a blow in the back of the head. All had their
1:41.3	throats cut, except for the little girl. The scenes of these awful disclosures as six miles northeast of Cherryvale on a railroad claim occupied about two years ago by a family named Bender,
1:53.0	consisting of John Bender and son and his wife and her daughter, both understood to be children by former marriages.
2:01.7	The young woman, Kate Bender, claimed to be a medium and to possess wonderful powers,
2:06.7	and was the leading spirit of the family.
2:09.7	The sudden flight of the family about three weeks ago, leaving their stock behind them
2:14.3	and leaving their team at Thayer, probably excited suspicion.
2:18.3	They bought tickets at Thayer for Humboldt.
	...

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