Lore - Episode 93: A Place to Lay Your Head

Episode Date: August 20, 2018

Humans are hard-wired for trust. It’s the secret ingredient that helps us form communities, build relationships, and grow as people. But while that trust is a noble inclination, it can also get us into trouble—trouble that can sometimes turn deadly. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

He was a 34-year-old Scottish soldier, but his adventures had taken him all over South and Central America, where he'd become friends with King George Frederick Augustus of the Mosquito Coast, and this ruler had gifted him with a kingdom of his own. In the summer of 1821, Gregor McGregor traveled to England to get help. He said his kingdom was rich with resources, the rivers teamed with gold, and the soil was so fertile that farmers could bring in multiple harvests each year. It was beautiful and exotic and bigger than whales. He just needed investors to help him develop those resources and settlers to make it happen.

And people signed up. In September of 1822, seven ships left for the kingdom of Poyas. There were hundreds of settlers on board, and hundreds of thousands of pounds in McGregor's pocket. But when they arrived two months later, they found nothing that McGregor had promised them. There was no one waiting for them, no buildings, no crops, not even a port for their ships. Hundreds of settlers got off the ships and tried to make the best of it, but two-thirds of them died in the process.

Eventually, a passing ship saw the survivors and rescued them. But McGregor escaped to France. He had never been who he claimed to be, and when he got caught, he ran. Humans are idealistic. We look for the best in the people around us, and are quick to trust most of those we encounter. This is by design. We're creatures of community, after all. Isolation is something we try to avoid, aiming instead for the opposite.

We join clubs, go to concerts, and build relationships. We seem ready and willing to let down our guard. But history should serve as a warning against too much trust. Flipping through those dusty pages, we're confronted with tale after tale of people who were just a bit too trusting and the price they paid for that mistake. Because not everyone is who they appear to be. Sometimes they are much, much worse. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore.

They called them Praying Towns. They were an invention of a man named John Elliott, who was a Puritan missionary to the Native Americans in the 1640s. Elliott had seen some success in converting these original inhabitants of New England into Christians, but wanted them to have a place to start fresh. So towns were built for them. Praying Towns. It was, of course, a convenient idea.

By converting the Native Americans to Christianity and moving them off their ancestral land and into small reservation-like communities, the English settlers achieved two goals at once. They subdued their rivals without violence, and freed up valuable land that they'd been trying to get at for years. Over a dozen of these communities were set up across Massachusetts and Connecticut. But when King Philip's War broke out in 1675, most of that system just sort of fell apart. Looking back, it's easy to see how these Praying Towns became a model for things to come.

We had wanted the land, and so we took it, forcing the people who had owned it for centuries to go live in special places we'd built for them. The idea would return years later. Obviously, the colonies would grow and spread, and eventually become the foundation of a new nation, the United States of America. We matured, we expanded, and eventually fell into war with ourselves. But when the Civil War was over in 1865, we went back to expanding, and that led us west into lands that already had people living in them.

That same offer went out to the Native Americans of the West, assimilate or get out of the way. To help them, new reservations were set up to receive them. They might have been less religious than the Praying Towns of Old New England, but they served the same purpose, to remove the Native Americans so white settlers could take their land. The Osage people felt the full brunt of that policy. Out in the area they had called home for centuries, what is today Southern Kansas, the white

settlers were beginning to flood in. During the first half of the 19th century, their control over their homelands began to crumble. An 1808 treaty gave the U.S. government over 52 million acres, and another treaty in 1870 had the rest of it sold off, and the Osage moved south to Indian territory in what is now Oklahoma. The settlers immediately flooded in. One of the newly opened areas in Kansas was Lebet County, tucked down in the southeastern

corner of the state. Shortly after the removal of the Osage, a number of European families moved into the area along the Old Osage Trail. It had once been a migration trail for Buffalo, but had become one of the most commonly used passages by white settlers headed west. A lot of those early settlers were Dutch and German. They were looking for land to farm and space to raise their family, and Lebet County had all of that.

So when John and his son rode into town in 1870, they purchased 160 acres of land to call home, and another tract of land to act as a buffer. They didn't want to see their neighbors, apparently. John Sr. and John Jr. got right to work. They built a cabin just a few yards off the Osage Trail, right at the start of a wide valley which gave them commanding views in all directions. They could see travelers from a great distance, but their neighbors were out of sight, and that was just fine by John and his son.

That was October of 1870. Nearly a year later, the rest of John's family arrived by wagon. His wife and daughter had been waiting for the men to get settled, and now they could all be together again. John's wife, Elvira, and his daughter, Kate, broke ground on a large vegetable garden on the north side of the house, and even planted some apple trees there. Whether it had been their intention all along or just an idea inspired by the highway outside, they also set up the front half of their cabin as a sort of general store for travelers.

They used the canvas cover from their wagon as a curtain that divided the large one-room house and added some sleeping space off to the side for those rare times when a guest would stay with them. The back half was hidden away for their own personal use. They did slow, steady business, but not everything was idyllic. As the county slowly filled in with new settlers, the community that grew up around them began to buzz with rumors. There was something odd about John's family that rubbed everyone else the wrong way.

As the events of the coming months were about to reveal, there was a good reason why. Not everyone who checked in at their makeshift hotel checked out the following morning. There were a lot of rumors about John's family, and to be honest, it was probably their fault. When they moved there, they were one of five families to settle at the same time, and all of them were spiritualists. For some, that meant they simply believed in the main tenets of spirituality, that the spirits of the dead existed and could communicate with the living. For John's family, though, it went deeper.

His daughter, Kate, it turns out, was an amateur medium. She passed out flyers that marketed her services to the locals, a mixture of spiritual healing and what appears to be German-American powwowing, something more commonly found in Pennsylvania and Europe. She was known to sell spells, usually a script that the buyer could read aloud when they needed help. But activities like this also earned her a reputation as a witch. Once to test this local theory, a boy was said to have placed a sharp nail on Kate's

chair, causing her to cry out when she sat on it. I'm not really sure what they were trying to prove, though, because all Kate did was jump up and scream in pain. She wasn't the only member of the family with a reputation, though. Her parents were looked upon as rude and unfriendly, but there are good reasons why. Both of them spoke very little English around other people, preferring to stick with their native German. John was said to be short and stout with a full, bushy beard, making him appear to be

very unapproachable. Kate and her brother John Jr. were at the center of a number of their own rumors. Some believed they were actually married and not related at all, while others thought the John Jr. might suffer from some sort of handicap. He was known to laugh out loud when no one was speaking to him and had a personality that seemed to put other people off. Then again, that was a good description of all of them. The family just had a way of unsettling people.

The worst rumors, however, weren't about their personalities. No, it seems that a number of travelers had begun to go missing in late 1871, and people were starting to wonder. Granted, it was a dangerous area, and the 1870s was a dangerous time to be traveling out west. People went missing all the time, accidents could happen, and bandits were a common problem. But travelers on the Osage Trail had a few things in common. They were often in the middle of a very long journey.

They had families somewhere, either waiting for them at the end of the trip or back home in the eastern states, and those family members expected silence for a very long time. A lot of them also carried large amounts of cash with them because they planned to start a new life when they reached wherever they were going. By early 1873, as many as 10 people had been reported missing, and their loved ones were starting to look for them. The most prominent of those disappearances was a man named Dr. William York. Oddly, he was actually a local man from the nearby town of Independence, in fact, who

was looking into yet another missing person. York's neighbor back in Independence, a man named George Longer, had headed east with his daughter, Mary Ann, in the winter of 1872, but they never returned. York waited for months before packing his bags and heading out to see if he could find them. He went as far as Fort Scott, 70 miles northeast of his home, where his brother, Colonel Edward York, was stationed, and he told him the story. Then he left for home and vanished a short while later.

That seems to have been enough for the people of the community. In April of 1873, over 75 men from Lebat County gathered in the local schoolhouse for a meeting. They agreed that every single farm should be searched. John Sr. and John Jr. were there, although it's reported that the older man slept through most of the meeting. The search would have begun that very day if a spell of bad weather hadn't rolled into town. But when people finally did arrive to inspect John Sr.'s farm on March 28 of 1873, it wasn't

a group of locals. No, it was a dozen strangers, led by Colonel Edward York, the brother of the missing physician. He'd been following his brother's trail south from Fort Scott, and all of the clues had led them right there, to John Bender's general store. And they had questions. John Sr. told them that William York had indeed passed through, but he had done nothing more than eat a meal before leaving an hour later. He offered the men new ideas, though.

Perhaps York had been murdered by a Native American, or had been set upon by bandits. If they wanted, he told them he'd be happy to help them drag the nearby creek to see if York's body was in there. Kate offered a different option. For just $500, she would contact the spirit world and get the definitive answer for Edward York. It was a price tag worth $10,000 today, and Colonel York scoffed at it. Instead, he turned his horse around and led his men back out of town, frustrated and defeated.

But the community was still on edge. A woman had recently been chased off the Bender property by John Sr.'s wife Elvira, and they say she'd been holding a knife and a pistol when she did it. It wasn't until three days after Colonel York's visit, however, that two brothers passed by the Bender farm and discovered something that spurred the whole town into action. Their only hope was that it wasn't too late. They were just doing their job. That's what Billy Toll and his brother told the town when they reported what they found.

They'd been driving their cattle down the Osage Trail and were passing the Bender farm when Billy glanced over and noticed that the farm animals there were unfed and abandoned. Billy stopped and approached the house. But everything seemed empty, as if all life had left the structure. Peering inside, he noticed the place was in disarray. It almost looked like someone had packed up and left as quickly as possible, leaving most of their world behind. So Billy headed to town and told the trustee, who called for an immediate search party.

When they converged on the Bender farm, it looked as if the entire town had turned up. There were reportedly hundreds of neighbors and townsfolk there, all ready and willing to help search the property for evidence or clues that hinted at the truth behind all the missing people. One of the men who showed up to help that day was none other than Colonel Edward York. He and the others spread out across the farm, while others entered the house to search inside. Everything seemed normal for a long while, too. Sure, their wagon was gone, as were all of their personal belongings.

But there didn't seem to be any sign of foul play inside the house. I don't know how that changed, to be honest. Maybe someone noticed scratch marks on a particular spot on the wood floor. Perhaps one of the people heard the buzz of flies somewhere nearby. Obviously, something tipped them off. We're just not sure what that something was. But it led them to a trapped door. Beneath that door was the cabin cellar.

It was dark and wet and smelled horribly. And to a group of farmers who spent their lives slaughtering livestock and cleaning up the grass, it was a familiar smell. Rancid, rotten blood. And after bringing in a lantern and lowering someone down into the cellar, they confirmed what their noses had already told them. But there were no bodies. Yes, the dirt floor of the cellar was soaked with congealed blood.

And yes, it wouldn't have made sense for a farmer to butcher all of his animals in the cellar beneath their living space. But without any other evidence, there was still no way to prove that the blood hinted at something nefarious. As the story goes, after searching the property for a long time and coming up empty-handed, everyone took a break. Colonel York walked back over to his wagon and took a seat up top. Maybe he had some food up there or water.

But it was while he was higher up than everyone else that he glanced out toward the area of the farm where the orchard had been planted and noticed something odd. There were lumps in the soil beneath them. Long, human-sized lumps. After York pointed them out to the rest of the search party, shovels were brought in to unearth whatever lay beneath the surface. Everyone held their breath as the first mound of soil was pushed aside to reveal the face of a dead man.

No one knew who he was, but it didn't make the moment any less somber for all of them. The second body to be uncovered was William York. The Colonel spent a moment standing over his brother's corpse before returning to his wagon. A moment later, he rode off toward town. After that, nine more bodies were unearthed, bringing the total that day to 11, which included William York's missing neighbor George Lunker and his daughter Mary Ann. Each body had been stripped of all valuables, and most of them showed signs of blunt force trauma to the skull.

Most of the men agreed that the weapon had been some kind of large hammer, and all of it begged for justice. There were murderers on the run, and the people of the town wanted to find them. What they found later that day was the bender's wagon, empty and abandoned near the town of Fayer about 20 miles northwest of the farm. Oddly, there were bullet holes in the side of it, and a shotgun had been left on the seat as if it had been fired and then dropped. There was no blood, though, or any other clue that might hint at why the bender abandoned

their wagon. Had they been attacked or killed? Or had they fled? The story spread, of course. It was a tale of murder and violence, and those stories were just as popular back then as they are now. This one also had the added texture of Kate Bender's spiritualist activities and rumored witchcraft.

In fact, during the exploration of the farm, some of the men had discovered what appeared to be zodiac symbols scratched into the dirt above the graves. It was enough to get people whispering about occult activities and satanic murders. Communities began searching for the missing killers. The governor of Kansas offered a reward to anyone who could bring them in, dead or alive. The bender posters seemed to plaster the walls of every public building in the southern part of the state. But it was all in vain.

The benders, you see, would never be found. Now, I think it's fair to say that most of us want to trust the people around us. It might not be something that we actively think about all the time, but we still do it. Down the highway, standing in line at the movie theater, eating at your favorite restaurant, we trust that we will be treated in a way that's normal, safe, and expected. And trust isn't just about people. It can be an emotion we feel towards systems and objects.

We trust our mobile phones to work properly and do what we need. We trust that the garbage will get picked up each week. Trust comes to us naturally. Each of the victims was far from home. They were on a journey that took them away from friends and family and put them in a dangerous environment around the clock. No one could pull over and call for help from their wagon in 1871, at least not without shouting.

And most of the time, there was no one to hear you if you did. So stumbling upon a house that claimed to offer supplies, a hot meal, and a place to lay your head. Well, that was a welcome sight to every weary traveler who passed by. The benders knew that people needed to eat and rest, and they used that as bait to lure them into their dark, murderous web. And it worked. Newspapers across the Midwest carry the story after the bodies were discovered.

Partly, I'm sure, to see if spreading the word might help them locate the killers, but also because people are curious. Remember, this was 20 years before H.H. Holmes would build his murder castle in Chicago. The benders offered the public something most of them had never seen before. And they wanted to see it, too. Papers from the time reported that thousands of people hopped on their local train and traveled to Kansas to see the bender farm. When they were finished, they started taking pieces of the house with them as a souvenir.

Enough people did this that eventually the bender house just sort of fell apart. And that's not all that fell apart. You see, the family that history has come to remember as the bloody benders might not have actually been a family at all. There are a lot of stories, so none of this is definitive, but there's strong evidence to suggest that their name wasn't even Bender. Elvira Bender, from what I can tell, was actually Elmyra Meek. She worked her way through a number of husbands before meeting up with a man we know today

as John Sr., and it's possible that one of them had the last name of Bender. Speaking of John Sr., his last name was really Flickinger. Still German, of course, but not Bender. Kate was most likely Elmyra's real daughter, but her last name was Griffith, taken from her father. John Jr. was John Gebhardt, and there was a lot of talk about him actually being Kate's husband. Their family, it seems, was a lie, and then they vanished into the Kansas night.

It turns out that Colonel York, the brother of one of the victims, had another brother. This man, Alexander York, happened to be a Kansas state senator, and he offered a big reward for their capture. The governor eventually tripled the reward funds to increase incentive, but it still didn't work. No one was able to locate them, no matter how motivated they might have been. Putting myself in the shoes of the travelers who headed west in the early 1870s, it's easy to see why the benders were so successful at what they did.

Everyone who stopped inside their house believed they were safe, that they could trust their hosts. The benders used trust as a weapon, just as skillfully as they swung their heavy hammer and sharp knife. They used it to welcome strangers in, to give them what they needed, and then, when the moment was right, to take it all away. Nearly a century and a half later, we don't know what became of them, but we do know that they left a mark.

They ended lives, destroyed hope, and tore entire families apart. In the process, they taught us all a painful lesson that goes against every human instinct we possess. Never trust a stranger. You never know who they might really be. I hope you enjoyed learning about the bloody benders today. They're a powerful example of just how easy it is for an innocent situation to become horribly dangerous.

But not everyone who sat down at their table made their way to the dusty earth beneath their apple trees. Some people, in fact, managed to get away. Stick around after this sponsor break to hear all about it. To understand how the benders worked, you have to understand how their home was laid out. As I mentioned earlier, they used the canvas cover from their old wagon to divide their living space into two sections.

The front half was where their meager little general store was located, no more than a counter with a few essential supplies. There was also a small table and a cot in one corner. Behind the curtain was where the four of them slept, but that curtain was incredibly close to the back of one of the chairs at the table. So close that if you were to lean back, your head might brush against it and anyone standing behind it would be able to see your silhouette. It was an easy target for anyone who might be lurking in the back with a heavy hammer

to swing. Not everyone who stepped inside the bender house ended up in the pit below their kitchen though. One man, William Pickering, claimed that he was welcomed in for a meal by Kate. He guided him to the table, making conversation the entire time, and tried to seat him with his back to the curtain. Pickering noticed that the canvas was filthy and covered in stains and moved toward a different seat.

Kate was said to become irate, and she shouted at him while waving a knife around in the air. It was enough to make anyone uncomfortable, but Pickering had the courage to stand back up and exit the house. He managed to get back on his horse and ride off before the entire family chased him down. Why he didn't head straight to town to report it? Well, that's anyone's guess. Another traveler who escaped death at the hands of the benders was Catholic priest Father

Paul Ponzaleon. He claims to have left before his meal was finished because he noticed Kate whispering behind the curtain with John Sr. who held a large hammer in his hand. It's probably a good thing he did. Those hammers have a way of leaving a mark, metaphorically speaking. Fans of Neil Gaiman might be surprised by some of the details he woven to his novel American Gods. At one point in the story, the main character's shadow visits a clearing in southern Kansas

where he's told about the people who once lived there. They made human sacrifices to an old Slavic god named Chernobog, killing travelers in exchange for power. Their weapon of choice, of course, was the hammer. This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research help from Marseille Crockett and music by Chad Lawson. I make another podcast called Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities and I really think that you'd enjoy it.

It's a twice-weekly podcast that explores some of the most bizarre events, objects, and people in history. Each episode is a 10-minute bite-size collection of two short tales that show you just how unexplainable our world really is. Lore exists outside this podcast, too. There's a book series in stores around the country and online with Book 3, Dreadful Places, premiering on October 9th. There's a TV show on Amazon Prime with season 2 premiering on October 19th.

Check them both out if you want a bit more lore in your life. And you can also learn about everything going on over in one central place, The World of Lore.com slash now. And hey, if you're the social media sort of person, you can follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. When you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi.

And as always, thanks for listening.