LABETTE COUNTY, Kan. — Salina native, Abby Russell usually spends her time working in museums, but a trip to Labette County had her digging in the dirt.
“We’re looking at clues,” said Russell.
The ‘clues’ she and other students from the University of Kansas were looking at are related to perhaps the most infamous family from Southeast Kansas: the Benders.
“They came in late 1870 or early 1871, and were here until about April of 1873,” said Bob Miller, who now owns the property the Bender family called home.
During that time, the family is believed to have killed at least ten people traveling the Osage Trail. Their motive – robbery.
Miller has done research into the family and what happened in the time they lived near the Osage Trail, just northeast of Cherryvale, Kan.
“The father was John, the mother was Anna Maria, the son was John, Jr. and the daughter was Kate,” said Miller.
Their plan was simple: Lure travelers into their home, with the promise of food or a place to rest. Once their victims were comfortable, the family would strike. Once inside the home, the victim would be offered a seat in front of a wagon tarp hung across the one-room home. While Kate was distracting the victim with conversation, another family member, would come up from behind the victim.
“They would bash their head in with a hammer, and then slit their throat and rob them, and then bury them,” Miller says.
In 2023, a survey team from KU mapped out potential areas of interest for archaeology teams to dig in. Recently, a team returned to the site, looking for clues.
“We’re looking for evidence of the people who lived here, and since the people who lived here were also a serial killer family, we’re also looking for evidence of their victims,” says KU Assistant Teaching Professor, Dr. Lauren Norman.
Dr. Norman says those clues could be anything – from pieces of broken glass and pottery, to evidence of where buildings were on the property, like a foundation. And it will take time.
“This is at least a three-year project, and this is the first year of excavation,” Dr. Norman says.
Who were the Benders?
Not much is known about the family calling themselves the Benders. They disappeared just as they arrived – leaving little evidence about their travels. What is known is the connection they had to prominent figures in Southeast Kansas history. For example, “Little House on the Prairie” author Laura Ingalls Wilder. Miller says that story begins with a man named George Longcor, whose wife had died giving birth to their daughter.
“About a year and a half or two years later, he deiced to sell out and moved back to Iowa where his family was from. He was traveling back to Iowa in a wagon he had purchased from Dr. York.” Miller says Dr. York was a prominent physician near Independence, Kan. at the time, and the neighbor of the Ingalls family.
“He stopped at the Bender’s cabin and unfortunately, he disappeared. They ultimately found him in May of 1873, buried with his little girl, who was the only non-male who was found buried, the only child,” Miller says.
That’s not the only connection Bender has to American history. Miller says, while it is a loose connection, the Bender family also has ties to the 44th president of the United States – Barack Obama.
That story begins with a man named David Dunham, who, along with his wife and seven children, were moving to the area from Indiana to purchase property for a new home.
“They had a lot of money on them, and they stopped at the Benders to spend the night.”
Miller says an illness in the family may have ended up saving their lives.
“One of the little boys had the croup, and the mother was up all night with the sick little boy, taking care of him. A newspaper article was quoted as saying she noticed some blood stains (on a trap door in the floor of the Bender home) and a light on in the cellar and became suspicious.”
Miller says the family was able to leave the Bender home unharmed, perhaps because the mother was up all night with her sick son. And that’s where he found the connection to President Obama.
“David Dunham had a brother named Jacob Dunham. Jacob also came down from Indiana and settled in Labette county, on his way to Oklahoma where he lived and died in 1907. Several generations down from Jacob was Stanley Dunham, born in 1942 in Wichita. Stanley Dunham born in 1942 was President Obama’s mother.”
Vanished Into Thin Air
While there were several people suspected, and even arrested, there has never been definitive evidence of what became of the Benders. Miller says groups of armed men searched for the family several times, but came up empty.
Miller believes the Benders had such a large head start on law enforcement they were able to simply vanish in the American frontier. He says there have been several theories over the years, from the family working their way through what is now Oklahoma and Texas, before eventually finding themselves in Mexico; or even that the family emigrated to Germany. He tells us anything is possible, with certain exceptions.
“The one theory I don’t buy is the Benders got in a hot air balloon flew to Mexico. That’s out there, and some people believe that.”
“The Chase”
In what, for decades was a field, Russell and her fellow KU students continue to dig. She says even though it’s been 150 years since the Benders were last known to be on this property, clues may still be present. She says finding the foundation of the house, or something else indicating the exact place it stood, would be a fantastic addition to what they already know. But, in her field, there’s no such thing as a guarantee.
“There’s always a chance that we might not be looking in the right place in any kind of archaeology. Sometimes, you don’t find anything.”
And it’s the not knowing that drives her to continue digging.
“It’s that chase. It’s making a find, and is it something? Is it nothing? I like that chase, and I think archaeology is all about that chase.”
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