SPEAKER_01 0:44

Welcome to the Femme Fatal, a true friend podcast with an astrology twist. I'm your host, Stacey Dotson. Each week I'll be joined by a guest host because this femme fatale prefers not to work alone. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Femme Fatal. And today I'm being joined by my friend Karen, who you probably remember from the premier episode of The Femme Fatal. Hi, Karen.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Hi. How's it going? Oh, it's good. It's good. This has been a fun one to research. So we're talking about Katie Bender, who is part of the family called, I don't know, there's lots of names, but the Bloody Benders is one of my favorites. Yeah, I like the Bloody Benders. I found her because I was just on vacation in Utah, and at one of the park information stores, they had this book that was called The Bedside Book of Bad Girls: Outlaw Women of the American West. And I was like, oh, there's gonna be someone fun in here. And I haven't even finished it. This is just the first one in the book. Ah. So you've got many more. And I also love that her chapter, it's her and another person, but their chapter is called Harpy's Most Horrible. So Katie Bender, we don't know her date of birth. So that's gonna be interesting to see what you do with the astrology because we don't even really know her year of birth. So that kind of throws like Chinese astrology out the window as well. Yeah. She is speculated to have been born in 1849 or 1850. However, there's new information that I'll talk about at the end that might have her being born in 1846.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Oh wow, that much. I had to be creative, so I'll let you uh judge what I do when that part comes.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

And in reading the new information, while it sounds great, it seems a little skeptical that it's the same person. Yeah. And apparently Bender was a very common German name, kind of like Smith. Okay. So, you know, having another Kate or Katie Bender or Catherine Bender is seems like there's probably several.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

Okay, well, let's jump on in. So, Katie Bender, like I said, she was part of the Bender family who were supposedly from Germany. You had Ma and Pa who barely spoke any English, while John Jr. and Kate spoke very good English, but with a slight accent. I also found different names for all of them, but I don't want to go into all of that. There's a lot of speculation about them. That, you know, Kate and John were maybe siblings, or maybe they were married. It's a lot. There's not a lot of really good records.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Yeah, it's from a long time ago, and it was the Midwest, and from what I understand, they're lower-income farm family, right? Yeah. Homesteaders. Homesteaders, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

So the story begins in the 1870s, Kansas. It started with the Homestead Act of 1862, which I'm sort of familiar, but not. So I looked it up so I can kind of explain what that was. So the Homestead Act was signed into law by Lincoln, and it granted 160 acres to anyone over the age of 21 or the head of the household. And it didn't have to be men, which is interesting. It could have been a woman, it could have been a foreigner as long as they planned to become a citizen. And they would have to pay a small fee around $10. They had to live on the land, build a house, and plant crops, and maintain the crops for five years. And once those five years were over, they could pay another small fee and get the deed. And then they owned the land outright. So that's the Homestead Act.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Can you imagine, though, just someone in this day and age, like 160 acres? That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

I mean, honestly, I was thinking, oh, all these public lands that they just like signed out of law, does that mean we can go and homestead on them and take them over? Oh, yeah, let's do that. But you know, the unfortunate thing about all of this is it took the land away from Native Americans. Oh. Because it was all Native American lands. And, you know, this particular spot was the Osage Indians. So there was a group of five families of spiritualists, which they don't really explain what that is, but I it's some sort of probably gypsy-ish, or they were into psychics and all that kind of stuff. So they moved out to this Labette County in Kansas to a specifically a town called Cherry Vale. John Sr., who was Paw Bender, and John Jr., they moved out first. And then the women came and joined them once they made the land habitable. So Pa was gruff and difficult to understand. John Jr. was handsome but walked around talking to himself and was therefore suspected to be, quote, a little slow. Ma had a temper and kept her husband and son in line, but never seemed to direct her anger at Kate. And Ma also claimed to be a psychic medium. And as I said before, they seem to have immigrated from Germany. The consensus, again, being Kate was actually the daughter of Ma, but they don't know if she and Junior were brother and sister or if they were married. And I'll get into that a little bit later. Okay. Kate was the one who received the most attention. Kate was beautiful. Some places describe her as having red hair and hazel eyes, but I've also seen descriptions of her as having dark hair and hazel eyes. But in any case, she was known to be, quote, a looker. She would travel. She would take her show on the road, and she would call herself a professor of spirituality. She claimed to be a medium. She claimed to be able to heal people and supposedly had the gift of second sight, which meant she could predict the future. People would come all around. Besides the fact that she was supposedly good looking, they wanted her psychic abilities. Yes. So I want to read this quote because I found this was really interesting, that she seemed to have some really forward thinking, especially for remember, this is 1870. Right. Forward-thinking ideas. Kate proclaimed herself responsible to no one save herself. She professed to be a medium of spiritualism and delivered lectures on that subject. In her lectures, she publicly declared that murder might be a dictation for good, that in the world might deem villainy, her soul might read bravery, nobility, and humanity. She advocated free love and denounced all social regulations for the promotion of purity and the prevention of carnality, which she called miserable requirements of a self-constituted society. She maintained carnal relations with her brother and boldly proclaimed her right to do so in the following words found in her lecture manuscript. Shall we confine ourselves to a single love and deny our natures their proper sway? Even though it be a brother's passion for his own sister? I say it should not be smothered. Oh God. So that's where the were they brother and sister? Or were they actually married? I hope they were married and not brother and sister. I hope so too. That's so gross. But anyway, this kind of like, you know, I say she was like an early feminist. Yeah. And hippie. And hippie. An early hippie feminist. Which obviously probably did not bode very well for, you know, Kansas at the time. I would imagine. Okay, so I mentioned there were five families of spiritalists that moved out. Two of them didn't make it. But the Benders seemed to prosper. They had an enviable garden, an orchard with more than 50 trees, an inn and a grocery store. So they would provide meals, a bed, grain for livestock to travelers along what was then called the Osage Trail, and then became Osage Road. In the store, they sold ammunition, canned goods, dried fruit, jerky, and tobacco, among other necessities. I read somewhere they also sold the goods of people that they murdered. So now I'll set up the murders. You know, they call this an inn. They never really say where the beds are for the travelers, but they say it was a it was a two-room house. It was divided in half with a like a canvas curtain. Yeah. And the front half was the store and the kitchen and like the kitchen table where they would serve meals. And so a traveler would come in for a meal. Kate would serve them. She'd be the only one around. She would serve them the meal, sit them down so that their back was to the canvas, and then kind of feel them out and see if they were like worth robbing or do they have any money, first of all? Yeah. And would they be missed? And at the time there were a lot of people that were traveling through here that did cash business, like buying cattle or land or things like that. Yeah. Or also people who would be traveling for months at a time. Once she would suss them out and figure out that they were what they were looking for, she would signal. And the men who were behind the canvas curtain would beat the person over the head with hammers. And then Kate would slit their throat. And then they would rob the body. They had like a trapdoor in the kitchen that they say had like a leather handle on it or something. I don't know why that's important. But they would uh, you know, throw the body down into the cellar. And then at night they would go and bury the body in the orchard, which is interesting. So these bodies are basically feeding the trees in the orchard. Yeah, fertilizer. That's what I was thinking. And then they're serving the fruit, you know, like apple pies or whatever to the people that are traveling. Oh. So obviously, that area, you know, it was wide open space. It wasn't uncommon for people to go missing. All kinds of things could get you. You know, there could be Indian attacks, there could be accidents, there could be bad weather, whatever. You know, people go missing all the time. But it did start to get a lot more common. So people started to take notice. And it all came to a head when they chose the wrong mark, basically. This doctor William York in the spring of 1983. I mean 1983. 1873. When Wham was all the rage. In the spring of 1873, he set off looking for his friend, George Lonker, who had taken his seven-year-old daughter to go visit relatives in Iowa and vanished without a trace. So Dr. York was retracing their steps and ended up at the inn, where he was, of course, subsequently murdered.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

His brother was a senator. Well, he was a colonel and a senator. So he decided to go looking for him. So that's what I mean. They chose the wrong person. And they knew that he stopped at the Bender Inn. But the Bender said, Oh yeah, he came for a meal and then he went on. They ended up having a town meeting that even like Paul Bender attended, and all the townspeople were on board with helping search for this Dr. York. There's some accounts that say even Kate Bender joined and said she would use her psychic abilities to try and like locate him. Right. But they were searching, and then, you know, I don't know, they don't say how long it took to search all these areas. But eventually the search party gets to the Bender Inn, which is now deserted, completely deserted. Like they left like in the middle of the night. Like food still on the stove, drinks still in the cups, you know, all that, like literally just left in the middle of the night. And that's when they saw the trapdoor, which had been nailed shut. So they pried it open, and I guess there was just an awful stench coming out of there. Yeah, I would imagine. They found dried blood and like blood soaked into the earth. They say it was like 18 months of them like killing people. And there's different numbers. They say it was at least 12. Some say it was 21. So there was a lot of people they killed in the span of a year and a half. Right. They thought maybe they were buried in the cellar, so they dug that up first. And then they didn't find any. So then people noticed out in the orchard, hey, there's this soft earth around the trees. So they started digging that up, and that's when they started finding the bodies. And so they said like the men would go out with like a pole hitting the earth, like trying to find soft spots. And wherever they found a soft spot, they would dig. And that's where they would find bodies. You know, they did find the George Lochner and his daughter, who was like seven years old. Oh. And they found Dr. York. They were able to identify them. And supposedly there was another child as well. And they say that one or both of them were buried alive, which is awful. That is awful. Yeah. Awful. But also, I was thinking it kind of makes me wonder like maybe she didn't want to actually kill the children. It seems worse though, to bury them alive. It does. It's way worse. There was at least one and then maybe two. And then they found body parts too. That's why they don't know exactly how many people. They found at least 12 bodies, and then they found body parts that didn't match the bodies. So that's why they don't know how many for sure. Yeah. So also they disappeared. There were rumors afterwards of sightings of them. Supposedly they split up. You know, the parents went one way, the kids went another. There's one account that says a posse actually caught up with them, shot Ma Paw, and Jr. and buried Kate upside down, still alive. Ooh. Well, this story inspires justice. It's just that story.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

That's a story. Yeah, probably not true.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

When they searched the cabin, they found a shoe hammer, a claw hammer, and a sledgehammer that appeared to match indentations in some of the skulls. They were given to the Bender Museum, because apparently they had a museum for these people. Is it still around? No. So they were displayed in from 67 to 78 when the site was acquired for a fire station. So now it's a fire station. They tried to relocate it, but everyone basically were ejecting. Like, why do you have a museum to these people? Yeah. And then they also found a knife with a four-inch taper blade that they suspect is what Kate used to slit their throats. That was donated to the Kansas Museum of History by Dr. York's wife, but it's not on display. Apparently, it still has bloodstains on it, but it can be seen upon request. Which seems crazy.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

That is crazy.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

So that is their story. And then I just wanted to tell you a little bit about like the new stuff that I found that had that new date of birth. It basically says, We found Katie Bender and she's buried near Doc Holiday. Wow. So it's Linwood Cemetery in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. But this is where I think, because they say she's buried next to her husband, Joseph Bender, but everything else says John. Her. And I know they're close, but I'm like, they basically kind of say that, you know, well, she was married to a blacksmith and a this and that and whatever. And I'm like, well, it sounds like it could be a different person.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

I would imagine that's not the case.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

Yeah. There's no records. So it's all speculation. But, you know, I mean, if it is her, she lived out the rest of her life in Colorado. She had like she had a tavern and ended up actually being a really good person, which also doesn't really square with this other person. Like, why would you all of a sudden turn around and become altruistic and or philanthropic and you know, like it's not in her nature.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Her nature was murder.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Yeah, it doesn't it doesn't seem right. Because then there was another, you know, there were sightings of her all over the place. So we don't know. There was another grave that said she died in 1910, but ultimately we have no idea what happened. Now, before you get to your astrology and your pop culture, I just wanted to tell you some of the headlines on the internet. So one of them is Cape Bender, the Bloody Bender's Homestead of Horrors. That's from the Library of Congress. And then there's the Kansas Murderess from the Kalamazoo Public Library. And then Dinner with Death. Cape Bender Murder and Mayhem on the Kansas Prairie.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

I just wanted to read those because I thought they were fun. What would you think would be a good name for the episode? What did you call her? The Kansas Murderess?

SPEAKER_00 19:10

The Murder and Mayhem on the Kansas Prairie. Yeah, the Kansas Murderess. That sounds good. Yeah. Kansas Murderess from the Kalamazoo Public Library. Those are great headlines. They were all kind of fun. I was like, oh, they can't stick to one, but at least they're all very creative. They are very creative.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

You're right. But when you mentioned her, you text me, I was like, I'd never heard of her before. So I went down a deep dive, and it just makes me wonder why, because there's so many things out there based on the Bender story. So I had nothing to do yesterday. So I watched them all. No, I did watch them all. But the one that matches is a film made in 2016 called Bender. I found it on YouTube and it has the MGM logo and everything at the beginning, but then it was never released or anything like that. It's very slow. It's told from the perspective of the brother that went looking for Dr. Thomas, right? His name was Thomas. So it's kind of told, he narrates that, shows that story, how his brother became a doctor and why he went looking for those people, and then how he stops at the Bender Inn and you know disappears. And so it is really pretty literal to what you just said. And it's really slow, but you know, it keeps true to the story. It does do a little like makes her look like she wants romance and she doesn't feel like she's met anyone that sees her for who she is. So you know, Hollywood always has to add that sappy love story part. Exactly. And then there's a short film called Hell's Half Acre, and it's about 30 minutes, and it actually like has won awards on the independent film trail. And it's pretty good. It's like an old horror movie. It really doesn't have anything to do with the story, but it's based on the farm and strangers being murdered there. It's a cool little horror thing. A few TV series have done episodes based on Bender plots. One of them was Supernatural. The show Supernatural did an episode called The Bender. And it was in the first season. And it isn't a direct retelling, but are you familiar with Supernatural? Two main characters are Sam and Dean. One gets taken as put in a cage on a farm land, and it's a dad and his two sons and a little girl named Kate, or supposed to be Kate, and they hunt people for sport on their land. So it that episode is uh based on sort. Of it's called The Benders. And then there's a show called The Librarians. Which I love. You like that dude, right? Uh Christian Kane. Christian Kane, yes. This was also in their first season, and it was called And the Heart of Darkness. And it takes a different approach. It's about like a mystical house that travels, and Kate actually lives in this house. And she's alive, but she's like a spirit alive, if you will. And so I liked that episode a lot. I like the supernatural episode too.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

I wonder, do you remember there was this movie called Motel Hell in the 80s? Yes, I do remember that movie. I don't think I ever watched it because I wasn't a fan of horror. But I know the lead woman was the woman from Porkies. Wasn't that a family and a I, you know, I don't know. I wonder if they base that on these people. I wonder. Was Motel Hell the Cannibals?

SPEAKER_01 23:02

Oh, or the cannibals? I can't remember. I feel like I saw it, but then I don't. So then there's I went and found it's a show from the 60s, early 60s, called The Big Valley. And it had Lee Majors and it had uh young Linda Evans. Well, I mean, they were all young back then, but yeah, Linda Evans, young, and it is a Western. And there was an episode called Lady Killer. And I have to tell you, my God, like just it was cringy the way times have changed. The first scene, it's two guys walking and they're talking about. He goes, like, well, when I married her, she was so thin she could sit on a quarter and you could still see silver. He goes, now she gains weight by eating her fingernails. It's like it's so bad. So disrespectful. Like, and there's one scene where Lee Majors, I guess, is one of the main characters, and him and a couple of other people are like, they're the wealthy people of town. And so they show someone trying to hand him a drink, and he's all like, oh, I had a lot of that last night. And then a good-looking lady, you know, comes and puts her hand on me, goes, and too much of that, too. I was like, oh my God, this is so bad. But anyway, they go and look for a guy who sells steers, right? And he had disappeared. And yes, he had gone to the Bender Inn, right? And Kate is portrayed as this beautiful woman, and they're all like into her. But again, they do the whole same thing at the end about want to turn it into a romance. She just wanted to be loved. Well, there's that. One other thing was I don't play video games, but for people that play video games, Red Dead Redemption 2. The side mission called Aberdeen Pig Farm is supposed to be based on the Benders. So, huh. And then there's a little house on the prairie connection. Uh, the Ingalls family, Laura Ingalls, Wilder's family lived in southeastern Kansas around the same time the Bloody Benders were active. Laura later wrote that her father, Charles Ingalls, attended community meetings where people discuss whether to drive the Benders out before their crimes were discovered. And then historians debate some of the details, but you know, that's a crazy eerie connection, right? So yeah. Okay. Have you seen anything?

SPEAKER_00 25:31

Well, I want to go back and watch Librarians because I don't remember it was so long ago I don't remember that specific episode.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

Yeah, it was good. I never watched The Librarians, but they have a new one coming out, right? Oh, do they? Yeah, they're remaking it.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

Well, there's movies first with Noah Wiley. Uh-huh. So there's like three movies, I think, with Noah Wiley, and then they made this TV show. Which Noah Wiley ends up coming in and guest starring in several of the episodes. Huh. Okay. Yeah. You know, the library is like this magical place where, you know, they solve mysteries through history and yeah. I was gonna say the reason we probably don't know about not only her, but a lot of these women is because women are the ones that watch this stuff. You know, it's like we want to be scared. And so we're watching women being killed by men. Because it's this thing in us. So I think that's why this is more like an empowering. This is a woman killing men. So men don't want to make those movies.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

No, but that's why I made this podcast. Yeah. I'm like, like he says, you know, anything he can do, she can do worse.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

That's why I bought that book. It's a whole book on women. So who knows what other gems I'm gonna find in there. I get many episodes from you out of that book, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Okay, well, again, so you brought up, yeah, no birth date. So, you know, normally I would have something to tell you guys, but all I could do really was try something different with numerology, something fun to explore. So, okay, numerology assigns numerical values to letters, and one of the oldest and most widely used systems is called the Pythagorean system, named after the ancient Greek mathematician Pythagoras. Each letter of the alphabet is assigned a number from one to nine, and those numbers are added together to reveal different aspects of a person's personality. Now, since we don't know Kate's real name, we're calculating the numerology on the base of Kate Bender. That's the name history remembers, right? So the first number is the destiny number, also called the expression number, and it's calculated using every letter in the full name. It's said to represent a person's natural talents and the energy they project into the world. The name Kate Bender comes out to a four. In numerology, four is the number of structure, stability, home, and strong foundations. It's dependable, practical, and grounded. And honestly, that couldn't be more ironic. The bloody benders used the safety and comfort of their home as their perfect disguise. Travelers saw a welcoming farmhouse and a family offering food and lodging. Instead, that became a trap. And that very symbolism of the number four was turned completely upside down. Now, next is the soul urge number, which is calculated using only the vowels and a person's name. That number is said to reveal someone's inner desires, motivations, and what drives them from beneath the surface. Now, for Kate Bender, that number is seven. Seven is one of numerology's most mythical numbers. It's associated with spirituality, hidden knowledge, intuition, mystery, and the search for deeper truths. That's pretty right on when you consider that Kate reportedly presented herself as a psychic and a spiritual healer, holding seances and claiming to communicate with the dead. Whether she genuinely believed those claims or simply used them to gain people's trust, it's a remarkably fitting number for the legends surrounding her. And then finally, we have the personality number, which is calculated using only the consonants. This represents how people tend to perceive you when they first meet you, kind of like the rising sign in astrology. And Kate Bender's personality number is a six. Six is often called the caregiver. It's warm, nurturing, welcoming, and protective. People with strong six energy are often seen as trustworthy and compassionate. And, you know, that's exactly the image the Benders appeared to project. They welcomed weary travelers into their home, offered them meals, conversation, and a place to rest. And unfortunately, those first impressions couldn't have been more misleading.

SPEAKER_00 30:03

They didn't kill everyone. They only killed the people who wouldn't be missed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:09

Except for the the wrong one that they finally got busted for.

SPEAKER_00 30:13

Except for the one wrong one. But they were welcoming to these other people. So okay, well, there you go. That's pretty good for not having like any information. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

One other thing I did, and we have the estimate that you said late 1840s, early 1850s, right? That falls right around there.

SPEAKER_00 30:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:37

And so with astrology, one thing we can say is that she probably belonged to the generation with a Neptune in Pisces. And Neptune is the planet of dreams, illusions, spirituality, intuition, and sometimes deception. Pisces is the sign most associated with mysticism and the unseen. And Kate lived during the height of the American spiritualist movement when seances, mediums, and communicating with spirits had become incredibly popular. So while we can't say 100% sure, you know, like that all these things are true, I feel like we could kind of, you know, it kind of is a coincidence.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

It kind of matches. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:22

Yeah. So that was fun. Yeah, it was. I can't wait to hear about more frontier women. So uh yeah. Thanks for joining me. She was interesting. I had fun uh watching all the stuff and everything like that.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

That was fun. Great job with the astrology on nothing. Yes. Okay, have a great day.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

Bye. Bye. The Femme Fatal, created and hosted by Stacey Dodson, produced by Mark Williams, music by Marcia Yingling, Chad Chane, and Greg Loicano.