Volume 15 , Issue 33

The Cherryvale Horror of 1873

In The Wichita City Eagle, 15 May 1873, page 2, we found the headline: "The Cherryvale Horror!" It was a den of thieves and murderers with eleven bodies in all found near Osage Mission, on the prairie of Kansas, April, 1873.

Eight dead bodies, including one child a year and a half old, were found around the house of the Bender family, in Labette county, on the 8th. the family had deserted the premises about two weeks before. Five of the parties have been identified.

Back then the readers of the Eagle would remember an item published, giving an account of Dr. York, of Montgomery county, being missing, and as it was supposed murdered, and of the after fact that several men had been missing from the locality where he was last seen. The governor of Kansas offered a reward for the detection of the murderers, and the week before his body, together with several others, was unearthed. The excitement was still at a fever heat, but up to that sunday morning last no more bodies had been found, although one hundred men were diligently searching. There had been several arrests made of families and individuals. Nothing had been heard of the Bender family, in whose yard and house the bodies were found. The Kansas City Times contained a lengthy detailed account of the fiendish and sickening disclosures, obtained from a reliable person just from the scene of the crime.

This was extracted from the Times' report: "William Bender, the eldest of the brothers, had a wife who was a spiritualist. The balance of the Benders called her a medium, the neighbors a she devil. She was forty-two with iron-gray hair, ragged at the ends and thin over the temples. Her eyes were steel=gray and hard. The light that came from them was sinister and forbidding. She had not a single prepossessing feature. Her form, angular and tall, seemed to lift itself up when the spiritual influence took possession of it, and to become not only gigantic in height, but supernatural as well. At times she dealt in incantations and toiling of herbs and roots that had charms and spells about them. Her will was indomitable. All the household feared her, dreaded her, obeyed her, and, as the sequel proves, did the devil's work for her beyond all the atrocious devil's work ever done in Kansas.

"The visit of the Cherryvale party alarmed the Benders. William Bender, now that the terrible secrets have come to light, and now that the shallow graves have given up their ghostly and mutilated occupants, can be remembered as having acted very strangely. Twice he had come into Cherryvale and had been noticed, upon the occasion of each visit, to loiter upon the outside of crowds, seemingly having no business, but eagerly intent all the time in listening to everything that was said.

"Time went slowly by, and man riding in one day from the prairies saw no smoke arising from Bender's chimney. The windows were down, the doors were closed, there was no sign of life anywhere. These evidences of emigration did not even interest him. So absolute was the stupor over the disappearance of Dr York that an awakening had to depend upon an absolute discovery. This man, however, in riding by a pen to the left of the house saw a dead calf in the lot, and upon further investigation and with the practical eyes of a practical farmer used to guessing the weight of live stock upon the hoof, he knew that the calf had died of starvation."

[In the diagram: A=House, B=stable, C=garden, D=York's Grave, E= Unknown graves, F= double grave, G=graves not yet opened.]

Then the truth came, as an overflow comes often to a Kansas creek, all of a sudden and overwhelming. Such a death suggested flight, flight meant guilt, and the nature of the guilt was surely murder. He galloped into Cherryvale and related what he had seen. The town aroused itself. A party was organized instantly and set out for the Bender mansion. Then it was remembered that about two weeks before this, somewhere near the 24th of April, William Bender had sold to some person either in or near Cherryvale a watch, some clothing of a fine character, two mules, and perhaps a shotgun or two and some pistols. How did he come by them? If the dead could speak the question might be readily answered.

The party from Cherryvale arrived at the house (A) which is marked in the diagram as located directly upon the Osage Mission road, having the outhouse (B) in the rear and to the south of it.

In the rear, as they reported, was a garden. This was not examined. The front room of the hues was next carefully searched, every crack and crevice being minutely looked into, and subjected to the application of rods and levers to see if the floor 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 close examination, revealed a trap door upon hinges. This was immediately lifted up, and in the gloom a pit outlined itself, forbidden, 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 and come up front he bottom or 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 dripped 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 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, ©. After boring, or prodding, as it were, for nearly an hour, the rod was riven 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 a work, and in a few moments a corpse was uncovered. It had been burned upon its face. The flesh had dropped away front his 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 was again put in requisition, until six more graves marked (E) were discovered, fie of which contained each a corpse, and the sixth, that in the second row, (E) containing two, an old man a and a little girl. Some were in the last stages of decomposition, and others,not as 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 crown 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 had been spent in every direction with descriptions of the Benders, and it was not thought possible that they could escape.

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 to 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 done 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 cremes had ever been recorded in the whole history of the county. People for hundreds of miles were flocking into Cherryvale, and enormous rewards were to be offered for the arrest of the murderers. It was supposed that they had been following their horrible work for years. Plunder was 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 drink of water. While halting for either he was dealt the blow which killed him in an instant. Every one 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. G. McCarthey had also 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-rendering. 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 was increasing hourly. Some suspected parties will be arrested to night. 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 was aroused, and the good name of the state was enlisted in the determination to secure the murders if they had to be followed to the ends of the earth. The scene at the graves surpasses everything in horror that could possibly be imagined.

Those Murderers

In another place we give an account of the murders committed at Cherryvale by the Bender family and others, as is supposed. Several parties had been arrested, but the Benders had not been heard from. Three more graves were discovered on Tuesday. Over there thousand people were on the ground, and a special train had just arrived with seven cars filled with people.

There were intense excitement all over the county, and a firm determination to ferret out the parties engaged in the murders. It is understood that large rewards will be offered by the county and state for the arrest of the assassins.

Nearly all the bodies of the dead were terribly mutilated. It is reported, but uncertain, that the little girl was thrown alive into the grave with her father, as no marks of violence were found on her body. Taken all in all there were few parallels in history so dark and foul. It is to be earnestly hoped that the rewards will be sufficiently large to insure the capture of every fiend who may have had a hand in this bloody, fiendish work.

The Cherryvale Horror

The Emporia News, 16 May 1873, out of Emporia, Kansas, reported on page 2, concerning "The Cherryvale Horror," that the latest accounts were three more bodies had been discovered, victims of the Bender murderers, fourteen in all. The Benders had been traced to St. Louis, and it was believed they had gone to Germany.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

---