Walnut Valley Times Article, May 16, 1873

[W. Gray]

Walnut Valley Times, (El Dorado), May 16, 1873.

In the rear, as we have said, was a garden. This, at first, was not examined. The front room of the house was next carefully searched, every crack and crevice being minutely looked into, and subjected to the application of rods and leavers to see if the flooring was either hollow or loose. Nothing came of it all. No blood spots appeared. The floor was solid, the walls were solid. If there were dead men about, they were not in the front room. Then came the back room. The beds were removed.

In his flight the elder Bender had left everything untouched. Not even the doors were locked, though such had been the reputation of the she devil that the premises stood as safe from intrusion as if protected by a devil in reality. After the beds had been removed, one of the party noticed a slight depression in the floor, which, upon closer examination, revealed a trap door upon hinges. This was immediately lifted up, and in the gloom a pit outlined itself, forbidding, cavernous, unknown. Lights were procured, and some of the men descended. They found themselves in an abyss shaped like a well, some six feet deep, and about five feet in diameter. Here and there little damp places could be seen as if water had come up from the bottom or had been poured down from above.

They groped about over these splotches and held up a handful to the light. The ooze smeared itself over their palms and dribbled through their fingers. It was blood thick, fetid, clammy, sticking, blood that they had found groping there in the void the blood perhaps, of some poor, belated traveler who had laid himself down to dream of home and kindred, and who had died while dreaming of his loved ones.

The party had provided themselves with a long, sharp rod of iron, which they drove into the ground in every direction at the bottom of the pit, but nothing further rewarded the search, and they came away to examine the garden in the rear of the house, marked in the diagram (C). After boring, or prodding, as it were, for nearly an hour, the rod was driven down into the spot marked (D), and when it was withdrawn, something that looked like matter adhered to the point. Shovels were set at once to work, and in a few moments a corpse was uncovered. It had been buried upon its face. The flesh had dropped away from the legs. There was no coffin, no winding sheet, no preparation for the grave, nothing upon the body but an old shirt, torn in places and thick with damp and decay. The corpse was tenderly disinterred and laid upon its back in the full light of the soft April sun.

One look of horror into the ghastly face, festering and swollen, and a dozen voices cried out in terror: "MY GOD IT IS DR. YORK!" And it was. He had been buried in a shallow hole, with scarcely two feet of dirt over him.
Had he been murdered, and how? They examined him closely. Upon the back of the head and to the left and obliquely from his right ear, a terrible blow had been given with a hammer. The skull had been driven into the brain, and from the battered and broken crevices a dull stream of blood had oozed, plastering his hair with a kind of clammy paste and running down upon his shoulders. Strong men turned away from the sickening sight with a shudder. Others wept. Some even had to leave the garden and remain away from the shambles of the butchers.

It seemed as if the winds carried the tidings to Cherryvale. In an hour all the town was at the scene of the discovery. A coffin was procured for Dr. York's body, and his brother, utterly overwhelmed, sat by the ghastly remains as one upon whom the hand of death had been laid. He could not be comforted.

But the horrible work was not yet completed. The iron rod again put in requisition, until six more graves marked (E) were discovered, five of which contained each a corpse, and the sixth, that in the second row, (E), containing two, an old man and a little girl. Some were in the last stages of decomposition, and others, not so far gone, might have been identified if any among the crowd had known them in life. The scene was horrible beyond description. The daylight fled from the prairies, but the search went on with unabated vigor.

A fascination impossible to define held the spectators to the spot. The spirit of murder was there, and it kept them in spite of the night and the horror of the surroundings. The crowd increased instead of diminishing. Coffins were provided for all, and again was the search renewed. It was past midnight when our informant left, but three more graves (marked G) had been discovered, each supposed to contain a corpse, although they had not been opened.

The whole country is aroused. Couriers and telegrams have been sent in every direction with descriptions of the Benders, and it is not thought possible that they can escape. With the crowd at the grave was a man called Brockman, who was supposed to know something about the murders. Furious men laid hold upon him at once and strung him up to a beam in the house. His contortions were fearful. His eyes started from their sockets, and a livid hue came to his face that was appalling. Death was in reach of him when he was cut down.
"Confess! Confess!" they yelled, but he said nothing. Again he was jerked from his feet, and again was the strong body convulsed with the death throes.

Again resuscitated, he once more refused to open his mouth. He did not appear to understand what was wanted of him. The yelling crowd, the mutilated and butchered dead, the flickering and swirling torches splattering in the night wind, the stern, set faces of his executioners, all, all passed before him as a dreadful phantasmagoria which dazed him and then struck him speechless. For the third time they swung him up, and then his heart could not be felt to beat, and there was no pulse at the wrists. "He is dead," they said. But he was not dead. The night air revived him at last, and he was permitted to stagger away in the darkness, as one who was drunken or deranged.

Six butchered human beings were brought forth from their bloody graves, and three others are to be uncovered. It is thought that more graves will yet be discovered. The pit under the trap door was made to receive the body when first struck down by the murderer's hammer. All the skulls were crushed in, and all at nearly the same place. One of the corpses was so horribly mutilated as to make the sex even a matter of doubt.

The little girl was probably eight years of age, and had long, sunny hair, and some traces of beauty on a countenance that was not yet entirely disfigured by decay. One arm was broken. The breast bone had been driven in. The right knee had been wrenched from its socket and the leg doubled up under the body. Nothing like this sickening series of crimes had ever been recorded in the whole history of the country. People for hundreds of miles are flocking into Cherryvale, and enormous rewards are to be offered for the arrest of the murderers. It is supposed that they have been following their horrible work for years. Plunder is the accepted cause. Dr. York, it is said, had a large sum of money on his person, and that he stopped at the house either to feed his horse or get a drink of water. While halting for either, he was dealt the blow which killed him in an instant. Everyone who knew him liked him.

Seven more bodies have been taken up, besides that of Dr. York, with three graves yet untouched. H. Longchos and child, eighteen months old, was identified by his father-in-law. The body of W. F. McCarthy has already been identified. He was born in 1843, and served during the war in company D, 123d Illinois volunteer infantry. Some men from Howard County identified the body of D. Brown. He had a silver ring on the little finger of his left hand, with the initials of his name engraved thereon. The body of John Geary was identified by his wife from Howard County, whose terrible grief over the mutilated remains of her husband was heart-rending. All had been killed by blows on the back of the head with a hammer.

The throats of all had been cut except that of the little girl. The whole ground will be dug up to find more graves. The excitement is increasing hourly. Some suspected parties will be arrested tonight. I will return to the scene of the murder tomorrow, and will send a full account of everything new that is developed.

The whole country is aroused, and the good name of the State is enlisted in the determination to secure the murderers if they have to be followed to the ends of the earth. The scene at the graves surpasses everything in horror that could possibly be imagined.




[A number of suspected Benders were arrested in other states and some were brought to Labette County but all were eventually released.

However, none of the Bender's were ever found.

In addition to Geary, Benjamin Brown was another victim from Howard County.

Laura Ingalls Wilder said in later years that she had been a guest at the Bender Inn.

Last year KAKE TV reported that a movie company was to begin filming a movie about the Bender Murders.]