CHERRYVALE — “Look, it’s farmland for crying out loud,” said Cherryvale native and museum board member Don Richardson. “That’s all. There’s nothing out there.”
Or is there?
Richardson was referring to “Tract 9,” a plot of 162 acres northeast of Cherryvale that, according to auctioneer Brent Wellings, was sold for agricultural use Tuesday.
The ground went for around $418,932 at the auction in Parsons, the price you’d expect for similar properties in the region.
It was “sold for about what it was worth,” added Wellings, and despite a few out-of-state inquiries, its backstory had neither a positive nor a negative impact on the price that was achieved at the sale.
But what a bloody story it is.
This acreage was once home to the notorious Bender family, and therefore witness to one of the most grisly series of murders in the state’s and the country’s history.
Multiple people were buried on the property, and others nearby.
Although nothing remains above ground of the Bender farm, Richardson added “I’ve always said that I would not be the least bit surprised to find that there’s more bodies there.”
He and other members of the Cherryvale Historical Society hope that the buyer for the property — as yet undisclosed — will donate an acre of ground to their museum for tourism purposes.
BETWEEN 1872 and 1873, John, Elvira, John Jr. and Kate Bender lured at least a dozen hapless pioneers to their cabin along the Great Osage Trail that housed an inn and a general store, sometimes to spend the night, sometimes to buy a meal or supplies.
Thanks to someone lurking behind a nearby curtain, though, travelers got more than they bargained for.
After being seduced by the young and beautiful Kate, the weary soul would be bashed in the skull with a hammer, then dumped unceremoniously through a trap-door into a hidden basement pit beneath the cabin.
According to Richardson, stories linger about “how [young people] played in the pit [where the cabin stood] when they were kids, because it was still there in the 20s and 30s.”
While unconscious, victims were robbed and had their throats slit, then finally buried on the Bender farm, many in the apple orchard.
