'Hell's Half-Acre' Review: Murder on the Prairie
By: Tom Nolan (WSJ)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
'In the history of the American West," writes Susan Jonusas, "few historical figures have captured the public imagination like the outlaw. . . . The word itself evokes nonconformity, the promise of freedom, the choice to carve out your own path against the status quo." Even such homicidal renegades as Jesse James and Billy the Kid are covered in a flattering haze. But the family of four known as the "Bloody Benders," the subjects of Ms. Jonusas's "Hell's Half-Acre," committed crimes so vile that they resist glamorization.
This strange foursome had settled in Labette County, in southeast Kansas, by 1871. The area, Ms. Jonusas writes, was "a haven for those on the run from the law or seeking to make a living outside it." Taking advantage of the Homestead Act, the Bender ensemble staked a land claim and built a cabin offering "GROCRYS" and a night's rest to travelers on the plain.
Gruff, 60-something “Pa” Bender spoke little and wore “a perpetual look of contempt.” Scowling “Ma” Bender sputtered in a German dialect that few could comprehend. Young John Gebhardt frequently quoted Scripture and had an odd, persistent laugh that many found disconcerting. Kate Bender claimed to be John’s younger sister, but the two acted more like husband and wife. (Were they perhaps incestuous half-siblings?) Kate, flirtatious with men and sympathetic to women, advocated “free love,” advertised as a spiritualist and held séances to help bereaved neighbors contact deceased loved ones.
Some intuitive visitors fled the squalid Bender place in terror. Others were never seen again alive. The first victim officially attributed to the Bender family was James Feerick, an Irish immigrant and railroad man who left his wife and son in Baxter Springs, Kan., to buy land for a family home. “Somewhere along the Osage Mission Trail,” Ms. Jonusas writes, “he had stopped for shelter and the prairie had swallowed him up.” It would be a year and a half before his body was discovered at the Bender place, another year before it was identified.
Another Bender victim was William Jones, traveling with $250 to pay off his homestead debt. Head smashed, throat cut, he was thrown in a creek, where two boys found him. Then there was Henry McKenzie, a Civil War hero from Indiana who wore an expensive chinchilla coat as he set forth to visit his sister in Independence, Kan. He also vanished on the trail.
Ms. Jonusas, a first-time author, traveled “all over America” to research these events: visiting historical-society archives, combing through boxes of government records, scrolling through century-and-a-half-old newspapers, examining the testimony of long-dead lawmen and outlaws. Her efforts bring the frontier setting into sharp focus. Southeast Kansas was suffering an epidemic of fatal violence against travelers. Most citizens thought roaming gangs of horse thieves were to blame. When Benjamin Brown left his family to purchase a land claim and failed to return, his wife took the stagecoach in an unsuccessful search for him. “On her way home she stopped at the Bender cabin for supper [and] stayed the night, unaware that her hosts were the last people to see Brown alive.”
Even jaded Kansans were shocked by the disappearance and presumed murders of widower George Longcor and his 18-month-old daughter Mary Ann, last seen en route by horse-drawn wagon to Iowa. Longcor’s mutilated corpse—“his throat slit so deeply that the head fell at an unusual angle”—was later found in a grave in the Bender orchard. At its feet was the body of Mary Ann, “still wearing her dress and mittens,” indicating that the child was perhaps buried alive.
The official death toll of “the Bloody Benders” would be 11, but it’s plausible to think that they killed a good many more. At last, the family murdered someone of such territorial prominence—a “beloved” local doctor named William York—that a vigorous investigation was launched. An 1873 raid on the Bender property led to the discovery of numerous bodies, though the Benders themselves had fled when they sensed the authorities were closing in. Thus ends the book’s first act, the family gone without a trace. But the diligent Ms. Jonusas discovered several further leads in official archives and correspondence, enough to transform “Hell’s Half-Acre,” at this halfway point, from a gothic popular history into a Wild West chase full of extraordinary developments.
Disguised, the author concludes, the Benders made their way into Texas, where fellow outlaws gave them shelter and new criminal opportunities. Various parties in Kansas—victims’ relatives, self-interested locals, professional sleuths—launched their own searches, and the state’s governor offered a $2,000 reward for the family’s capture. But the fugitives would remain elusive. Nearly two decades after the family absconded, a self-styled psychic healer in Niles, Mich., said that she had found Kate and Ma Bender in the persons of a woman named Sarah Davis and her mother, Almira.
The women were arrested and brought for trial to Kansas, where a number of locals who had known the Bender women claimed to recognize them. Yet the case fell apart in court, and the charges were dismissed. Ms. Jonusas’s research leads her to posit “the very real possibility” that the Bender foursome eventually moved into New Mexico Territory and Colorado. “Whether the Benders perished at the hands of the Texas Rangers, tried their hand at prospecting in Arizona, or moved between settlements in Colorado,” their ultimate fate remains unknown.
Susan Jonusas’s debut, rich in historical perspective and graced by novelistic touches, grips the reader from first to last. “The Benders live on because the story of their crimes does not have an ending, and unsolved mysteries have the greatest afterlife,” she writes. “The family themselves are ghosts in their own narrative, patched together through the voices of those who knew them, those who lost loved ones to their crimes, and those who continue to tell stories passed down through generations.” With the appearance of “Hell’s Half-Acre,” we probably know as much about this murderous clan as we ever will.
Mr. Nolan reviews crime fiction for the Journal.
Tags
Who is online
433 visitors
Obviously "evil" people have always been among us. Such a quiet place to have so many bloody murders.
The book is
Hell's Half-Acre: The Untold Story of the Benders, a Serial Killer Family on the American Frontier
By Susan Jonusas
Viking