Odysseus Abroad: Labette County, Kansas

Parsons - Independence - Cherryvale - Ladore - Oswego - The Benders - Big Brutus

Bender Mounds, Labette Kansas

With interest to gain more insights on the mind spinning transformation of the state over the past two centuries, we spent a long weekend in Southeast Kansas mid January 2023. The last few ice ages had dumped a fine layer of minerals over the region supporting thriving grasslands which fed roaming herds of buffalo and deer and for thousands of years in equilibrium with the native hunter gatherer tribes, the Osage, Kansa and Missouri. That equilibrium was brought to an abrupt halt in the mid 19th century with the arrival of well armed Europeans whose principles were extraction rather than equilibrium and lived by the spoils of war. Within a few decades the buffalo population were decimated and the natives removed to allow western expansion. For the next century the immigrants to Kansas thrived in the Southeast on high technology agriculture, oil production, natural gas extraction, zinc and coal mining, railroad arbitrage, munitions manufacture, plus a bit of drug dealing and murder, all under a strong veil of Christianity and a major leaning toward the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln which was so shaped by the fight for Kansas as a free state. A few gay flags in the towns we would visit provide some evidence of progress and tolerance, but they were neutralized with "F....the current president" signs and even a confederate flag in the countryside. Just six generations since the settling of Kansas has seen enormous development and change, which we witnessed on our visit. We rented a house in Parsons, a small two bedroom house from the 1940's painted an optimistic mid century light green, dated but in good condition, with an ancient GE electric stove modeled more like the dashboard of a classic car than a kitchen appliance. Tucked in a modest neighborhood not far from the main street, it was the type of house where one could disappear from the world, perhaps for someone on the witness protection program. Southeast Kansas even has it's own moniker, "SEK" which shows up on business names and other references. Having recently read "Hell's Half Acre" by Susan Jonusas: The Untold Story of the Benders, a Serial Killer Family on the American Frontier, we were interesting in exploring the locations in Labette, Kansas, so I'll start there.

The Benders

SEK is probably best known for the infamous Bender murders which plagued travelers on the Osage trail between Osage Mission and Independence in the early 1870's. In the all too frequent history of mass murders, this set of at least eleven stands out for a few reasons; unusual to have been executed by a family of four in full cooperation, carried out for profit using a brutal but standardized method of murder and, even with significant national attention, they got away. The name Bender was shortening for Fassbender, or cooper in German. John Snr and Ma Bender were immigrants from Germany, known to be cranky, speaking little English, they didn't fit the profile of people who would be naturally drawn to run a small inn on the trail. John Snr arrived in 1870 with his son in law, John Gebhardt, staking claim to 160 acres under the Homestead Act between Drum Creek and Big Hill Creek along the Osage trail. The Osage natives had lived in the area, but had since been moved to Oklahoma. Twenty Confederate soldiers had entered the area in 1863 raiding and recruiting, but the Osage tracked along Drum Creek, killing all but two that got away. With the natives cleared from Kansas, the land was free for the taking on condition that the new owner would make it productive in a number of years. After digging a cellar, they built a small cabin 16x24 ft before Ma Bender and her daughter Kate arrived. Kate and John Gebhardt spoke English well and were much more engaging than the parents, although John G would laugh like a half wit regularly, or talk incessantly, possibly a nervous disorder induced by the violence or fear of being caught or that which led him to be an ideal partner in crime with the Benders in the first place. Kate pawned herself as a (quack) spiritual healer which was common during that time, and was the most engaging, often seen as the brains of the operation, but at a minimum an attraction for bypassers, some of whom were victims. The term "Inn" is misleading, but being located mid way between Independence and Osage Mission, 15 miles each side, which was a typical day traveled by foot or wagon, it was an ideal place for travelers to stop welcomed by the sign "Grocrys" and promise or a warm meal. After dinner at the sparse table in front of the cabin "juicy" guests which the prospect of carrying some money or valuables would be entertained by Kate while likely one of the Johns would line up a sharp hammer blow through the canvas sheet guided by the shadow outline of the victim, then (the same John, or possible the other John) a follow-up blow in the temple would shock the victim, followed by a slit of the throat and jugular vein by one of the Bender women before being dropped through a trap door into the cellar for the shocked and helpless victim to bleed to death. Inspection of the victims later confirmed the consistency of their method. Almost a century later a traveler reported an almost identical legendary murder Inn from the border region of Austria and Germany replete with the canvass and hammer. There is no telling whether there is a link, but what is clear is that the Benders murders must have been practiced murders elsewhere before their arrival in Kansas, because their method was so sure and effective.

Their neighbors and townspeople though the Bender clan were weird, but nothing led them to suspect them of murder, even as over ten people disappeared in the area. They were weird, which likely gave them more cover - like it would have been too obvious that laughing John Jnr, grumpy John Snr, witchy Grandma and attractive spiritualist Kate who could talk to the dead could have been accountable. The Benders always inquired from where their guests hailed so they could assess whether it worth the risk, they would not bother locals, but those from further away.

George Newton Longcor, a homesteader west of Independence (apparently neighbor of Charles Ingalls of House & Prairie at one time) had lost his wife and son, he bought a horse and cart from a Dr. York to return to Iowa to leave the girl with family there. They stayed over at the Bender Inn and got the treatment, the 18 month old reported by autopsy on recovery to have been buried alive. Dr. York went in search of the disappeared Longcors a few weeks later and himself became victim of the Benders. That was their downfall, as York was well known and brother Alexander in the state senate was relentless in pursuit of the perpetrators, rounding up a team of 75 men on horseback to search the area along with his brother, Ed. They narrowed in the doctor's last sighting to the area of the Bender claim and interviewed the family, but with no explicit link of evidence, they rode on, not taking Kate up on her offer to find the doctor with her clairvoyant skills. Alexander was racked with guilt for the rest of his life for not investigating more thoroughly. Fort Roach, or Ladore Kansas was founded by James Roach about ten miles east of the Bender claim and although a little off the Osage Trail, it became the focus of harboring those who were responsible for the disappearances. Roach ran an bar and inn, presiding over the town known for it's hard drinking rough characters and outlaws. One evening in 1870 a group of drunk outlaws came to his bar for whiskey which he refused. They beat him up, took two barmaids for rape and left town. Well armed townspeople went in pursuit, catching five of the men in the countryside, hanging them on the spot. While the Yorks were searching for their brother, Roach gathered townspeople together to address the figure out what to do about the disappearances and resolved to do a search of all the homesteads along the trail in area. There was little access to state or federal police authorities in the early homesteading years, so local people had to take the law into their own hands, often forming "vigilance" groups for security.

It was all too late for the Benders fled the area after being spooked by the York brothers visit, abandoning their horse and wagon near Thayer Kansas, before taking a train to Chanute where they stayed overnight at a hotel before continuing on to Humboldt, from where the caught an interstate train south to Denison Texas, which was beyond the frontier in Indian country. The Benders may have hoped the abandoned wagon would result in their family being added to the long list of disappeared, but the starving animals on their farm caught attention and the property was searched. Finding the cellar drenched in blood, they searched the grounds, pushing rods into the ground until they identified the signs of a decaying body. Eleven bodies were unearthed, including Longcor's young baby girl. York sent a detective south to Denison and although he traced the family down, lacked funds and capacity to track them to capture. A haven for outlaws, the Benders fell in with criminals, like Frank McPherson, who had fled after murdering a man in Parsons. The Benders were never brought to justice and likely lived out their lives in Texas, or perished under Indian raids. Cash and goods stolen from the eleven people found would have amounted to $250,000 in today's money. For all they stole, the showed no sighs of opulence and seemed to be broke when traced in Texas. There is no telling how many more people they robbed and murdered beyond those found, but one must suspect there were more victims. The new owner of the property may find more, or others may have been scattered to the creeks.

Many people suspected there must have been collaboration with neighbors to hawk and move stolen property. Rulolph Brockman, a German speaking neighbor on the adjacent claim was accused by a mob of complicity. They tried to hang him from the rafters of the Bender cabin three times, but he survived, all the time protesting his innocence - they finally gave up. In a strange turn of events, Brockman was convicted of the murder of his own daughter in 1896 and sentenced to death. She actually died of gangrene due to neglect, having been banished to live in the barn under inhumane conditions. A petition for lenience was supported and he died of natural causes in February 1918, which may well have been from the Spanish flu which was raging through the country at the time.

There is nothing remaining today of the Bender cabin and marks on the earth. So popular and nationally renowned were the events that an army of souvenir hunters came and dismantled anything of note on the property, including the cabin, the cellar, stables, and orchard. The property has been farmed over for the past century, but recently sold to a buyer with interest in doing further investigations on the subterrain based on modern scanning technologies, but the land is private and the location not known. Arriving in the area we departed the main roads for 26000 Road east overlooking the "Bender Mounds" and the plains below on which the family setup their murder for money machinery. Turning south on Douglas Road we crossed one of the sharper mounds which shows up in background of photos from 1873. With a little further research on reported distances from various landmarks and also on perspective of the mound landmarks from old photos, I was able to locate within a few hundred feet the location, which we visited one cool sunny afternoon, entering over an unpaved ungraded road requiring four wheel drive. Standing on the still plains with the mounds as background I thought of the tumultuous wave of history which washed over Southeast Kansas in the past two centuries. Twelve thousand years after the ice age, during which the fertile grassy plains was home to sparse herds and a few hunter gatherers were a period of tranquility, the agricultural and industrial revolutions arrived together transforming the lands and in the midst, bringing along all the European societal problems, including the Benders whose legend still fascinated the world.

Few artifacts survived, but the murder weapons, three hammers, were found in the cabin and are on display in the museum at Cherryvale. Bender's Kitchen, a diner in Parsons was the only name reference we found remaining, but a number of the people involved are buried in cemeteries nearby which we visited. W.F. McCrotty, a veteran of the civil war was robbed of $38 and murdered by the Benders in 1872 is buried in the Antieta Circle No 2 at Oakwood Parsons Cemetery. Rudolph Brockman is buried in Harmony Grove Cemetery, along side the Dienst family, also neighbors of the Benders. Dr William York is buried in the Cemetery at Independence. We also visited Ladore Kansas, a bare crossroads at Meade and 20th Road - nothing remains from the 1870's when Roach ran a n Inn and bar there, most having moved to Parsons when the railroad came there, Levi Parsons being president of the Katy Railroad there at that time. The only remaining reference of the town I found in a new article reporting the lynching of five outlaws there in the spring of 1870. Charles Lynch had imprisoned British loyalists on behalf of the Patriots during the American revolution without formal authority and petitioned the congress thereafter for exoneration of guilt for extrajudicial punishment imposed by him, which became the Lynch Law, which would be used extensively against African Americans and was only corrected by congress in 2022 with the Emmett Till Antilynching Act. Following the civil war as the frontier expanded, without federal or state police present, Lynchings became commonly used by local townsfolks, mainly for controlling outlaws. In the fall of 1982 the Dalton Gang, four brothers who had been on the side of the law, but switched to bank robbery, rode into Coffeyville Kansas on horseback with the ambitious aim to rob two banks in parallel. Emmet Dalton and a brother were successful with one bank, but the other was derailed by a brave and intelligent bank teller who deceived the robbers by claiming the bank door had a 45 minute time lock for which they would have to wait to access the money. Word got around town in minutes that the banks were being robbed. These were the days before the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the people knew that money was theirs, so they armed themselves for a shootout. A hardware shop across the street from the delayed bank robbery handed out guns and ammunitions to the public. Soon they began firing and chasing the Daltons as they tried to get to their getaway horses, incidentally left in an alleyway due to road construction which was going on in town. They were all shot multiple times, only Emmet survived. It was normal for frontiers people to take the law into their own hands and usually Alcohol was involved, as in the case for Ladore and within ten years Kansas would vote in prohibition.

Manchester Guardian, May 26 1870

Graves of William York, Rudolph Brockman & W.R.McCrotty

Ladore, Kansas

Harmony Grove Cemetery, near Bender claim

Near site of Bender Inn on Osage Trail

Inspecting Cellar after Bender house was moved

Graves of victims in Bender orchard

Kate Bender

Bender Inn, Labette Kansas

Bender graves (distinctive pointed mound background locates site)

Bender cabin day of grave digging

Rudolf Brockman (arrested 1896)

Labette, Kansas

While investigating what to see in Labette Country I came across Big Brutus, one of the largest electric shovel in the world designed to strip overburden materials to access coal for strip-mining. Fascinated with everything mechanical and historic we visited the Big Brutus Museum near the town of West Mineral Kansas on a cool sunny day. Built in 1962 for mm$6.5, officially names a Bucyrus Erie model 1850B, weighing 5000 tons, it can shovel 90 m3 or 150 tons and move at 0.35KMH an dis referred to a "He" by the museum curator. There are four main coal regions in the US: Appalachia, Powder River Basin, Western and Interior, covering Kansas to Ohio and Illinois. It has been only 200 years since coal exceeded biomass (wood mainly) as a fuel of the industrial revolution. By 1900 coal became king of industry, and within tow generations, by 1960 it was being outpaced by oil, gas and other energy sources. Coal is cheap and today it still accounts for 20% of global energy use, but faces pressure to decline mainly due to it's high CO2 footprint. Furthermore, governments started requiring coal miners to reclaim the lands strip mined, which added expense. Not only does coal release more CO2 than natural gas per unit of energy, the power generation technology for coal is a third less efficient at producing energy to the grid, so natural gas emits less than half the greenhouse gas that coal emits. Coal has peaked and will be displaced by renewable (wind and solar) over time, but for a slight reversal due to gas constrained related the Russia's war in Ukraine. Mining has stopped completely in Kansas and the area of Southeast Kansas is strewn with wildlife areas which formed from the remains of unreclaimed mines, forming many lakes, wetlands and nature areas. Besides Big Brutus the museum houses a large drag line operated by the Wilkinson Coal Company and many other mining related machines. In 2010 a man died having fallen off the high boom of Big Brutus - he was setting up for a base jump. Nearby the town of West Mineral is a shadow of it's former self, having declined in population by 90% over the last century. "F.... Biden" reads an informative sign of the views of residents prominent near the center to town - the irony of rural poverty supporting tax cuts for the very wealthy at their expense. A few miles east of here the historic Route 66 ran from Chicago to California across the Rainbow Bridge which still stands today, but the route is gone as with the old wagon trails.

Rural poverty is common in modern America, but it seemed unusually prevalent as we toured Southeast Kansas which is surprising in view of the large extraction of wealth and resources from the region. Before arrival of Europeans in Kansas, the state product was grasslands which fed natural herds and maintained hunter gathering natives. The last century and half has brought high intensity agriculture "on steroids" fed artificially by supplemental Ammonia, Phosphorous and Potassium, plus industrial irrigation. Large corporate farms were by capital markets and direct payment and other subsidies. Huge wealth is being generated in Southeast Kansas, but does not seem to be shared across the communities. Oil was developed in Pennsylvania in the 1960s and spread to Kansas soon after the European and by the 1890's oil was bring produced in Neodesha, Kansas, just 10 miles from the Bender claim. In 1906 an oil refinery was built in Coffeyville, which has been expanded over the years to a capacity of over 100 thousand barrels a day. In 1998 I was sent by my company to assist a new fertilizer plant there - most Ammonia based fertilizer today is produced with Natural Gas as a feedstock, but Farmland Industries installed a Gasification facility which would use (waste) petroleum coke from their oil refinery as feedstock, thus making it a very profitable and wealth producing asset for the community. Oil and Gas has been a mainstay in Southeast Kansas every, as evident by the thousands of oil pumps we witnessed scattered across the farmlands, still pumping oil and producing huge wealth. Coal mining has stopped now, but has historically produced large wealth as did lead and zinc deposits in Cherokee County near Baxter Springs. Rail roads have cross-crossed the area for over a century as a fulcrum center connecting the entire USA, with large rail yards in Parsons and many other areas in Southeast Kansas, also providing employment. A little southeast of Parsons Kansas stands the massive Great Plains Industrial Park covering I estimate 20 square miles employing 18,000 people on a typical day across a wide range of industries. The park is a reuse of the government run Kansas Army Ammunition Plant established during world war two and decommissioned in 2009. Unfortunately the facility is restricted, so we could not tour around, but upon exploring the small town of Labette, just south of the industrial park and mired in poverty, we again had to wonder why all the wealth generated in Southeast Kansas does not seem to be showing up in the lives of local communities. There are many examples in Kansas where the opposite is true, for example Humboldt and Marion which we had visited earlier and with consistent majority voting Republican party since the civil war, one wonders what value they get for their political vote and the party has changed 180 degrees since the days of Lincoln.

The first white settler in the area was John Matthews, who setup as a trader and blacksmith serving the Osage native tribe who had a demand for European technologies in guns, tools and horsemanship. He brought slaves with him and they dug a well, or more accurately formed a well upon a spring which the Osage had used historically. Matthews was a confederate from Kentucky and tried to persuade the natives to their cause, which some did against their interests. He was killed by Union troops in 1861 and his well still stands in a park in Oswego we visited - they should change the name from a confederate to the native chieftain of the area at the time, Little White Hair (Pawhuska). The town population has been surprisingly resilient staying plus or minus 2000 for a century and a half, when so many rural areas have declined. Downtown Oswego looked a little neglected, but interesting and deserted on this New Years holiday. A wonderful derelict 1950's movie theater now served as the Ball & Claw Antique Auction. A model T Ford and other antique cars stood in the workshop on Commercial Street, along with an antique motorcycle workshop next door. Oswego also claims notables like Candy Loving, a playboy bunny, along with leaders in government and education as it's townspeople. An impressive public park stand on the north side overlooking the Neosho River.

The rail yard at Cherryvale was idle and the museum closed for the winter, so we missed the exhibit on the Benders there, a historic sign near the 169 highway being the only reference to the events. The motel was closed down and all the doors were open swinging in the wind, revealing rooms strewn with furniture and debris, being taken back by nature. Over in Independence we toured the history museum, a large collection of local artifacts and interests, including an original homesteaders cabin, displays on Langdon for President, 50 barbed wire patents, Technology on the plains, and rooms of life on the prairie, including The Benders and also The Little House on the Prairie. Laura Ingalls Wilder was only two years of age when her father Charles Ingalls landed a claim southwest of Independence in 1869 and lived there for two years, leaving in 1871 for Wisconsin at the age of four. She had clear memories of their time there which went into the novel, which was a popular television series during my youth. Apparently the claim was in Indian Territory, so Ingalls had no legal right to it, inducing him to move back north, but they had many adventures during the time there, including interaction with the Osage natives.

Among the towns of Southeast Kansas, Parsons, Independence, Coffeyville, one has a 4% chance of being victim of a crime and 1% chance of violent crime annually, ranking the most dangerous towns in Kansas. To be fair, Kansas is a safer than most states, people are friendly and not threatening, but there is clearly an opportunity to address crime and rural poverty. Alfred Langdon made a fortune in the oil industry of Southeast Kansas out of Independence and became Republican Governor of the state in the 1930's, running for President in 1936, losing by a large margin. He was a liberal Republican, recognizing the need for for the New Deal, but was also concerned on freedom for business. From Lincoln to Langdon to Trump, over six generations have witnessed remarkable change in policy and effect of the party, which seems disconnected to the needs of the rural areas we visited.

Departing Labette County we followed country roads north to stop in Saint Paul along the Neosho River. This was Osage Native territory in early 19th century when George Catlin ventures up the Missouri River to paint and assess the native tribes in the 1830's. A lawyer turned painter who tired of city life, he traveled extensively in Indian territory, painting their life and taking notes which would show up in a book "Breath of Life". Of the Osage he wrote "there are few men at their full growth, who are less than six feet in stature, an very many of them six and a half, and others seven feet". He went on to describe how physically fit and wholesome were the men and women, which he attributed to their adherence to nose breathing. A decade later, Osage Mission was a Catholic mission setup in Neosho County, Kansas in 1847 between the Neosho and Verdigris rivers to convert and subdue the Osage Indians. How arrogant were the religious Europeans then to break the strength of Native ways and replace it with disease, vice, degradation and disrespect for nature. The Osage were eventually moved to Oklahoma in 1870 to make way for European settlers under the homestead act and the mission changed focus to the settlers. Osage Mission and Saint Paul became a key stopping point along the Osage Trail.

Our last stop on the way home was Fort Scott, Kansas, one of a series of army posts setup to control the frontier between settled lands and Indian territory, which operated between 1842-1855. A fine fort was built, a set of buildings most of which still stand today. A town built up around the fort and the buildings auctioned off to townsfolks when the fort was disbanded. Approaching the civil war there were two hotels on the site located just across the main square, The West Hotel which was for slavery supporters and The Free State Hotel (on ease side), for anti-slavery supporters and needless to say, tensions often broke out between the two. The Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854 allowed these states and the west to decide by popular vote whether to be slave states or free states. While abolitionists like John Brown were driven by the rights of fellow mankind enslaved in the south and potentially the west, many more, including Lincoln, were also driven to block the wealthy power of slaveholders to eliminate opportunity for the common man, of any race, to benefit from western expansion. Allowing slavery in Kansas would result in wealth being concentrated with the capitalized slaveholders, rather than being distributed across all common men. This tension drove the passions of Bleeding Kansas and

Abraham Lincoln said in 1855 about the act "I look at the Kansas-Nebraska act not as a law, but as violence from the beginning. It was conceived in violence, is maintained in violence and is being executed in violence". Each side tried to pack the state to swing the vote in their favor and violence ensued in Bleeding Kansas. James Montgomery, a free state leader attacked the West Hotel and later came to free his associate, Benjamin Rice, during which John Little, a slaver, was killed during a shootout. Kansas eventually entered the Union as a free state on January 29, 1861, but tensions continued throughout the civil war. Fort Scott continued to grow after the army left and today retains an active downtown, more dominated by antiques than regular commerce. A grand imposing building along main street hosed the Scottish Rite, a freemason organization built upon principles of integrity, justice, toleration, civic service and devotion to god and country.