During the mid 19th century, Kansas had already received national attention for its violence.
The term “Bleeding Kansas” refers to John Brown and others in the state’s territorial period. Then there were William Quantrill’s brutal attacks along the Kansas-Missouri border during the Civil War. But one of the most chilling Kansas stories centers on a family in Labette County who, in the early 1870s, murdered over and over … and were never caught.
“The story of the Bloody Benders has remained part of our macabre side of culture and history in Kansas, I guess, because it is an unsolved mystery,” said Deb Goodrich, author, historian and associate producer of a new movie-in-the-making about the Bender family of southeast Kansas. Through the decades, they have become known as the Bloody Benders.
“It’s one of those incidents that was horrific, and certainly out of the norm,” Goodrich said.
“Hell’s Half Acre” tells the story of the German-American family whose members sledge-hammered, chopped, and robbed travelers along the Osage Trail.
The movie is being adapted from a 2015 historical fiction book by Nic Nicastro. Nicastro is directing the film, and crews were at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve filming scenes over the past month.
It’s expected to be released next year.
To be honest, the Benders – Ma, Pa, and their two adult children – Kate and John may not have been blood relatives, but other people’s blood brought them together.
“We just know so little about the real Benders,” Goodrich said. “But what it looked like form the outside was a mother, father and their adult children, who were a boy and a girl, and they lived down by Cherryvale, out on the prairie.”
The Benders had a house that was a along the road, Goodrich said. They welcomed visitors. Travelers would stop, get a meal and water, feed their horse ad rest.
It was common for the times. Nothing about the Bender house appeared unusual or out-of-the-ordinary, at first glance.
And therein lies some of the mystery.
Nicastro talks about Bender family dynamics. So, few historical elements remain of the Benders, it is hard to tell after all this time -- what’s fact or fiction.
In “Hell’s Half Acre,” Ma Bender is out in the gold mines of Colorado. She meets Pa Bender on a train coming to Kansas and together they incorporate two other people into their “family” by the time they arrive in southeast Kansas.
Nicastro said that although many 21st century people are fascinated by this true crime story – most Kansans may not be all that familiar with it.
The movie may change that.
“People are fascinated by the extremes of human nature,” he said. “They (the Benders) were outsiders. They weren’t from Labette County, Ks.”
But that was typical in the early 1870s when families were homesteading their own versions of American dreams. The Benders lived in Labette County from 1871 to 1873. It is believed they killed between at least a dozen to maybe as many as 20 travelers, according to Wikipedia.
From there, Goodrich describes what would happen historically for visitors stopping in at the Bender cabin.
“So, in the Bender cabin, there was a quilt hanging to divide the rooms … and while the unsuspecting passerby sat there enjoying his meal and probably looking at pretty Kate Bender across the table from him, one of the men struck him from behind with a hammer, and they would rob the person and then apparently bury the bodies under their grape vines,” Goodrich said in describing the crimes.
The Benders’ “business” was lucrative until they became suspects in the disappearances of so many locals, Goodrich said.
Make no mistake, blood is spilled.
“A gentleman went missing, and his brother was an Army officer, and he comes to look for him and that’s when he doesn’t accept the explanation,” Goodrich said. “A posse is formed and when they go back for the Benders, they’re gone and they disappeared into history. Nobody knows what happened to them.”
The Benders’ house near Cherryvale was razed. And more than 150 years after they disappeared, no traces of the family remain.
And that … may be the most unsettling story of all.