The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1873-05-16
THE BENDER BUTCHERIEs.
The Most Diabolicsl Grimes Of the Nine
teenth Century-Unearthing the Bodies
OF the Victims-An Eyewitness De-
seribes the siclxeniiig Sceness

| DuDptu lull Vi 10 uuOlu-
ton become current enough in these
days, when crime, if not more frequent,
is, ut least, more frequently known in
all its brutal, horrid, stupidity self-betray-
ing details but one feels the utter ex-
adequacy of this and every similar in
preston as descriptive of the recent
terrible disclosures in the adjoining
county of Labette. Telegraphic notice
has reached you before now of the dis
appearance, in the middle of last March,
of DR.. William M. York, brother of Col
York, of Pomeroy notoriety, and of the
facts that caused the words " disappear
ance" and murder" to become synon-
yms, namely three or four Others hav-
ing disappeared during the past fall and
winter, in that region, in an equally
mysterious manner. The finding of his
body and those of eight others has de-
veloped history of butchery before
whose appalling details one is simply
wordless.
Yesterday / went out to the scene of
the murders place distant IL miles
and found several hundred persons al
ready there, some of whom had spent
the night, and even women-of apparent
refinement, for whom that blood-drench-
ed spot seemed to have morbid fascina-
ton. The farm, or "claim, as it is
called here, is beautiful piece of "sec-
ond bottom" land, undulating gently
upward from the house, crouching in n
green basin thus affording an early
view of any approaching wayfarer.
The house and claim were owned and
occupied by a German family named
Bender, said to have moved here year
ago from Hyde Park, one of your own
beautiful suburbs. A young apple
orchard lies at one side of the house,
and this orchard, twice plowed this
spring, and looking a cheering exponent
of human thrift, smiling prophecy of
plenty, hld under its notwithstanding
lap eight bloody corpses. They were
buried in an irregular line from east to
west, and each beside an infant tree so
pruned as to show the murderers how to
avoid digging a second time into grave.
DR.. York's body was found first, and
found by his own (younger) BROTHER
he and the detective, Beers, being en-
gagged in probing the ground with point
ed iron rods. When the news reached
Independence, large party visited the
place, and soon unearthed four other
corpses, in various stages of decompo-
sition, but all bearing marks of the same
fatal hammer Ga shoemaker's tool, or,
rather, hammers, for there were two,
small and large ; and sometimes one,
sometimes the other, and in one or two
instances both had been used in crush
ing the skulls of the victims.
The house was tolerable one for the
country hereabout, being of frame, and
containing in one corner petty gro
Gerry, while across the center Of the one
large room was drawn n curtain about
breast high, and near this curtain had
always stood the table where the unsus-
pecting traveller was given n seat with
his back to the fatal blind, and in the
floor, beside his chair, small trap-door
on hinges. Everything was here just as
the wretches had left it in their guilty
flight three weeks ago (they fled imme-
diately after the visit of the sheriff with
Coils. York and Peckham on their search
for DIR. York;. Here lay the miserable
stock of groceries, strewn about and
trodden into the filthy floor; here were
still the murderous hammers whose
disks fitted only too well into the piteous
wounds of the putrefying bodies now
lying in the yard, covered with rude
deal-boXes.
I had heard before how the victims
had been stunned by blow from behind
the curtain, and the bodies then dropped
through the trap into pit below, where
they were finished by having their necks
cut through to the bone, and where they
remained until night enabled the slaugh-
terers to hide them more securely, and,
as they fondly hoped, permanently; but
not until n hundred furious men had
wrenched the house from the spot on
which it stood, not until the misty light
of n sullen day had been thrown full
into that CORY pit, revealing the awful
deliberateness of preparation, the full
purpose and prospect of the future in
definite extension of such crime, did q
perfect panorama of that nameless Hor-
ror unroll itself before me. For many
were on the ground yesterday who told
me they had passed and repassed along
that road, had fed their horses and eaten
their lunch Mt that house, and they agree
III all the details of the customs of seat
ing and serving travellers there.
A picture rose like a dreary night
mare, and showed me poor Longcore
sitting there with his head against that
curtain, which was indeed the curtain of
Futurity for him; showed me the
stealthy hand uplifted from behind,
armed with hammer, and descending
with mortal force on the unsuspecting
head showed me the paralyzed terror
of the little daughter in the moment
before another murderer (or murderess,
for you know there were two women en-
gagged in the work. seized the childish
throat and put out fear and life together;
then the trap-door lifted up, the bodies
dropped in, so that, if another passenger
came, or neighbor called, they could
sit and chat without unpleasantness.
If the days were long while such pale
corpses lay bleeding under the floor
those two women and two men worked
and walked upon, one knows not. It is
already a dislocation of ones faculties
to conceive at all such beings rs these,
and quite impossible to imagine remorse
in death of moral sense that would
make remorse an incongruity. But night
comes after every day, long or short,
and then a hole is dug under the apple
tree, the father stripped of his outer
clothing and put in, the poor little girl
| was thrown uDOn his holy (eoma CON