The World's Most Evil Psychopaths: Horrifying True-Life Cases Read Online Free PDF Page B

township decided that all farms in the area would be searched for evidence. Three days later, a local farmer noticed the Bender livestock roaming, obviously in need of nourishment. Further investigation revealed that the inn had been abandoned; nearly all possessions had been removed. The cabin itself contained a foul stench that was later found to be emanating from a trapdoor in the floor, beneath which was a pool of clotted blood.
    Excavation of the apple orchard next to the cabin revealed ten bodies, including that of York. The doctor had been bludgeoned from behind and had had his throat cut. Eight other victims had been killed in the same manner; the sole exception was an 18-month-old girl who appeared to have been buried alive beneath her father’s naked corpse. Dismembered parts of other victims were also found buried on the property. It was impossible to tell with any certainty exactly how many people the Bloody Benders had claimed.
    The Benders were never seen again. They appeared to simply vanish into the Kansas landscape, leaving questions that have been answered by little more than speculation and fancy.
    Among the more likely of the stories concerns the Bender daughter. Remembered as a voluptuous beauty, Kate, it is claimed, was one of the reasons travellers found the inn such an attractive place to spend the night. Some stories tell of her performing throughout the region as ‘Professor Miss Kate Bender’, a psychic medium. Others depict her as a spiritualist who would perform a seance during which the unlucky traveller would be struck on the head through the canvas curtain dividing the cabin.
    In fact, the canvas that divided the cabin in two always plays a role in the Bender legend. Although no one saw the family in action and lived to tell about it, their routine is described without variation. First, the unsuspecting guest would be struck through the curtain. The victim would then be dragged into the other half of the cabin, where he would be stripped of clothing and valuables. In the final step, the unlucky traveller would be thrown down the trapdoor to the cellar, where his throat would be cut.
    The legends concerning the Bender clan extend as far as their respective fates. Several posses were formed to pursue the murderous family, including one that numbered among its members Charles Ingalls, father of Little House on the Prairie author Laura Ingalls Wilder. In her memoirs, Wilder writes of her belief that her father’s posse caught the Benders and dealt with them in a manner typical of the American frontier. A number of different posses claimed that they had brought the Benders to justice, leaving open the intriguing possibility that several innocent people were killed by what amounted to little more than lynch mobs.
    Dead babies
    It has been said that John Bender Sr ran off with all the money stolen from the victims, leaving the rest of the family penniless. One version of the legend has it that he committed suicide in Lake Michigan shortly after having been confronted by Ma and Kate.
    A particularly gruesome story asserts that Kate and John Jr were not sister and brother; rather that they were lovers. According to this version of the Bender legend, the two had many babies together, each of which they disposed of with a hammer to the head. These killings presumably gave the couple practice for future dealings with those travelling the Osage Trail. It has been said that they fled first by train, then by horse into either Texas or Mexico, where John Jr died of a haemorrhage.
    In his 1913 book The Benders of Kansas, Minnesota defence attorney John Towner James maintains that in 1889 Ma and Kate were captured in Michigan and brought to Kansas. According to James, the two women were to be tried for York’s murder, but were let go when the trial date was postponed from February 1890 to May 1890. The story here is that the county didn’t want the expense of lodging the prisoners for three extra