In the history of the American West, few historical figures have captured the public imagination like the outlaw. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the exploits of Jesse James, Pearl Starr, Billy the Kid, and numerous others filled newspapers and spilled over into dime novels. Their legacy continues to this day, cemented by Hollywood’s technicolor Westerns and the grittier reimaginings of more recent years. In these stories, outlaws who cut a swath of violence across the high plains are struck down by the hand of justice. Alternatively, if the narrative suits, they are permitted a last-minute escape or tragic end defending others, perhaps against crooked lawmen or a greedy railroad tycoon. The outlaw, like its more law-abiding relative, the cowboy, is one of the most universally recognizable figures in American history. The word itself evokes nonconformity, the promise of freedom, the choice to carve out your own path against the status quo. It’s a much beloved part of country music, a stock character whose reach spans nearly all genres. But it is also a central part of the mythologization of the West, a colonial narrative that obscures the reality of life on the frontier, sacrificing the more unpalatable history in favor of the overarching theme of progress.
The foundation for this narrative was laid over several centuries but came fully into being in the second half of the 1800s as America grappled with its identity in the aftermath of the Civil War. Stories of outlaws, gunslingers, Indians, sex workers—known colloquially as soiled doves— regulators, gamblers, prospectors, and pioneers entertained children and adults alike, solidifying their place in the fabric of the nation. A gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, exploded onto the newspapers and garnered those involved a notoriety that Wyatt Earp, a law enforcement officer at the scene, succeeded in transforming into celebrity later in his life. In 1883, Belle Starr, a wily female outlaw who harbored bandits at her ranch in Indian Territory, finally stood trial for horse thievery and found herself in a Detroit prison. The same year, William Cody, more recognizable by his nickname Buffalo Bill, founded Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. The touring attraction of actors, dancers, and popular frontier figures re-creating famous events from frontier history was a roaring success. Several rival productions emerged, but none could boast a cast list that included sharpshooter Annie Oakley, Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull, and frontierswoman Calamity Jane. Buffalo Bill took his show all over the world. It was a glittering spectacle of gunpowder and horsemanship fundamental in shaping the international perception of the West and America as a whole at a time when the young country was still finding its place on the global stage. But it was also a PR stunt that allowed Americans to believe in a world that did not really exist—one where people did not stray into unknown moral territory or ask difficult questions about the state of the country.
if the wild west shows presented a romanticized vision of the frontier, the numerous publications focused on the period’s nastier individuals sought to capitalize on humanity’s long-standing fascination with villains. A book entitled History, Romance and Philosophy of Great American Crimes and Criminals of the Various Eras of Our Country promised readers 161 “superb engravings of the celebrated criminals.” In its pages lurk familiar and unfamiliar faces. Some, like Cullen Baker—an unpredictable outlaw with ties to the Ku Klux Klan—barely made it out of the nineteenth century, their crimes too unpalatable for even the more lurid writers. Others, like Jesse James, became staples of cinema and literature for decades, reinvented as folk heroes despite their violent behavior and unwavering support for the Confederacy. Then there are the Benders—the “Kansas fiends,” a family of murderers whose crimes sent the newspapers and the nation into a frenzy. Their case is a stark reminder that buried beneath the myth of the outlaw are very real criminals whose violence left an indelible imprint on communities across the frontier.
i first came across the story of the Bender family in a large, ghoulish book entitled More Infamous Crimes That Shocked the World. The book was from a local thrift shop, its blood red cover held together by decades-old tape. Within its pages, a chapter called “The Bloody Benders” introduced me to the family who committed a series of murders in southeast Kansas that caught the attention of the entire United States. At the heart of the case was Kate Bender, an enigmatic young woman whose involvement in the crimes catapulted them into notoriety. I was fascinated by her role in the story, having focused a large part of my studies on the treatment of the female criminal during the nineteenth century. Aligned with my work on criminal history is an enduring interest in America, imbued in me by my grandma, whose photo albums packed with images of the West enthralled me as a child. More Infamous Crimes presented me with a case that drew these existing interests together, but the chapter on the murders was vague and offered virtually no details about the victims or the historical context of the crimes. Tantalizingly, it also revealed what came to be the defining feature of the Bender murders: the culprits had simply disappeared.
Since the discovery of their crimes nearly 150 ago, the Benders have rarely left the newspapers. For decades they served as the benchmark in human cruelty and notorious serial killers H. H. Holmes and Belle Gunness would both find themselves compared with the Benders. When Hollywood turned its attention to Westerns during the 1940s, a reporter for the St. Louis Globe Democrat offered up the story of the Benders as an “obvious possibility” for dramatic interpretation. During the 1950s, lavishly illustrated articles that paid little attention to the known facts of the case appeared in the Brooklyn Daily and The Odessa American. Even Laura Ingalls Wilder, celebrated author of the Little House on the Prairie series, enthralled audiences with a claim that her family had a connection to the case.
in more recent years the Benders have appeared sporadically as the focus of true crime podcasts, blog posts, and top ten lists— where they routinely secure the top spot above other murderous families. I read and listened to most of these, but none ventured far beyond the year 1873, when the crimes were first discovered, elements were missing, and I wanted to know what they were. My own research began with the most readily available source on the Bender murders—the thousands of words printed in newspapers in the direct aftermath of the crimes. But nineteenth-century newspapers can be unreliable, as proven by the wild variations in the number of victims attributed to the Benders, with some claiming the number as high as 150. Along with embellished figures come misspelled names, seemingly random locations, and widely varied physical descriptions of the Benders themselves. The newspaper reports also suffer from another significant problem as sources: they are full of the age-old impulse to exaggerate in the name of a good story and better sales. In spite of these hazards, the basics of the case as reported remain largely consistent—a family of four committed a series of murders, then fled the state upon realizing it was only a matter of time before their atrocities were discovered. The newspapers alone were not enough to get the full story, but their role in immortalizing and popularizing the Bender murders is undeniable. As such, they lend their words to the section titles and chapters of this book, though they are not the heart of its history.
At the Kansas Historical Society State Archives are a wealth of primary sources dated from the months before the Benders fled Kansas right up until the late twentieth century, and it is these materials that I relied on to reconstruct what actually happened. Some resemble documents you might find in cases today, such as official government correspondence. Others fill in the details between the broad strokes of the story—expense sheets filled with telegrams, wagon hire fees, and train fares to places that are now little more than ghost towns. All have been instrumental in the process of separating fact from fiction and in determining the day by day unfolding of events in this book.
The later archival sources, written many years and decades after the murders, provide an important role in understanding the continuing impact of the crimes on the community. They include personal recollections written by those who knew the Benders, those with friends or relatives with knowledge of the family, and people who have been exposed to the rich vein of folklore surrounding the crimes that still exists today. I approached these with caution, as many come from accounts collected by journalist Beverley Baumer for the Kansas State Centenary in 1961, and people’s memories fade with time and successive retellings. Among those who contributed to this collection were Lucille Newland and George C. Cunningham, both of whom recount their father’s experiences with the Benders—Newland in an interview with Baumer herself, and Cunningham in a short article. Theirs are typical of such recollections, informed partly by the firsthand experience of their relatives, partly by local knowledge of the crimes.
One of the more complicated examples of later sources is The Bender Hills Mystery, a serialized account of the crimes written by Jean McEwen from interviews with Leroy Dick, the township trustee at the time of the murders. McEwen was a pseudonym used by Jean Bailey, a local resident who had written poems and magazine stories in between raising her three children. Published over the course of 1934 in The Parsons Sun, the account places Dick at the center of events, couching his interview in evocative prose and presenting verifiable facts alongside information that is provably false. Dick’s role in the lead up to and discovery of the crimes in 1873 is well documented and, as such, appears throughout the first part of this book. But his claim that he hunted the Benders across the high plains in the direct aftermath of the crimes is almost certainly fictitious.
He makes no appearance in the correspondence between the detectives sent after the family and the governor of Kansas, nor in any of the expenses filed by those involved in the search. Dick also professes to know the true fate of the Benders, something which Jean McEwen makes no effort to question, despite his theory having been largely proven wrong several decades before the piece appeared.
It is always necessary to look at sources in conjunction with one another, to understand who they were created by and for what purpose, to place them on the sliding scale of reliability. Sources such as The Bender Hills Mystery are most useful in providing us with local voices through which we have access to the events on an emotional level. My work with the archival material, combined with sources such as transcripts from various United States District Courts and Federal and State Census data is what allowed me to break new ground in my research and open the story up beyond its previous boundaries.
Theories about the fate of the Bender family have circulated for nearly 150 years. At first glance, and even after quite a lot of digging, there appeared to be no tangible information about where they might have gone beyond ill-informed speculation in the newspapers. Victims’ families moved on and few were willing to share their thoughts on the fate of the Benders with the newspapers. Kansas authorities appeared hapless at best; the reward money offered for the family futile. Detectives followed increasingly wild leads and considered possibilities that seemed far-fetched even for reporters. The search continued into the twilight of the nineteenth century when new characters found themselves caught up in the community’s desperate search for closure. But as I made my way through hundreds of letters written to the authorities about the Benders, a very different picture about their fate began to emerge. It became clear that far more was known about the movements of the family than was ever divulged to the general public, and the detectives were not quite as incompetent as they seemed. Caught up in the allure of an unsolved mystery, I tracked the Benders as far as these new leads allowed me.
Real life does not always follow a smooth dramatic path and the story of the Bender murders is no exception. When I began writing, I knew that constructing a narrative out of such a wide variety of sources would be a challenging task. But in drawing the materials together and weighing the evidence concerning their reliability available to me, I was able to build a narrative firmly rooted in the verifiable facts of the case. I also knew that it was important not to lose the more atmospheric elements of the story, as part of the enduring fascination with the Bender murders comes from the location in which they took place. To convey the peculiar terror which the Benders inflicted on their victims and the community, I collected a series of different and often bizarre accounts of time spent at the Bender cabin. These experiences, which form the early part of this book, appear across multiple, separate sources. Where appropriate, descriptions of the landscape, wildlife, and weather have been informed by the time I spent in Kansas. Alongside this are several firsthand accounts of life in frontier Kansas written by homesteaders in the aftermath of the Civil War.
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From HELL’S HALF-ACRE by Susan Jonusas, published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2022 by Susan Jonusas.
