Contemporary newspaper accounts reported that the Benders' neighbors claimed John Jr. and Kate were actually husband and wife, possibly via a common-law marriage.

In October 1870, five families of spiritualists homesteaded in and around the township of Osage in northwestern Labette County, approximately 7 mi (11 km) northeast of where Cherryvale was established seven months later.

From those who knew them and have written about the Benders:[6] In May 1871, the body of a man named Jones was discovered in Drum Creek with a cut throat and crushed skull.

[7] In the winter of 1872, George Newton Longcor left Independence, Kansas with his infant daughter Mary Ann to resettle in Iowa; they were never seen again.

Colonel York, leading a company of some fifty men, questioned every traveler along the trail and visited all the area homesteads.

[7] When York repeated the claim, Elvira became enraged, saying the woman was a witch who had cursed her coffee and ordered the men to leave her house, revealing for the first time that "her sense of the English language" was much better than was let on.

Before York left, Kate asked him to return alone the following Friday night, and she would use her clairvoyant abilities to help him find his brother.

Seventy-five locals attended the meeting, including Colonel York and possibly both John Bender and John Bender Jr. After discussing the disappearances, including that of William York, they agreed to obtain a warrant to search every homestead between Big Hill Creek and Drum Creek.

[7] Three days after the township meeting, Billy Tole was driving cattle past the Bender property when he noticed that the inn was abandoned and the farm animals were unfed.

Tole reported the fact to the township trustee, but due to inclement weather, several days lapsed before the abandonment could be investigated.

The township trustee called for volunteers, and several hundred turned out to form a search party that included Colonel York.

They broke up the stone slab floor with sledgehammers but found no bodies, and determined that the smell was from blood that had soaked into the soil.

[9] They then probed the ground around the cabin with a metal rod, especially in the disturbed soil of the vegetable garden and orchard, where Dr. York's body was found later that evening, buried face down with his feet barely below the surface.

The probing continued until midnight, with another nine suspected grave sites marked before the men were satisfied they had found them all and retired for the night.

[9] Word of the murders spread quickly, and more than 3,000 people, including reporters from as far away as New York City and Chicago, visited the site.

William Pickering said that when he had refused to sit near the wagon cloth because of the stains on it, Kate Bender had threatened him with a knife, whereupon he fled the premises.

A Catholic priest, Father Paul Ponziglione claimed to have seen one of the Bender men concealing a large hammer, at which point he became uncomfortable and quickly departed, making the excuse that he needed to tend to his horse.

[11] Two men who had traveled to the inn to experience Kate Bender's psychic powers stayed for dinner but refused to sit at the table next to the cloth, instead preferring to eat their meal at the main shop counter.

[3] The elder Benders did not leave the train at Humboldt, but instead continued north to Kansas City, where it is believed they purchased tickets for St. Louis, Missouri.

[4] Also in 1884, an elderly man matching John Bender Sr.'s description was arrested in Montana for a murder committed near Salmon, Idaho, where the victim had been killed by a hammer blow to the head.

A message requesting positive identification was sent to Cherryvale, but the suspect severed his foot to escape his leg irons and bled to death.

According to the Pittsburgh Dispatch, the daughter of one of the Benders' victims, Mrs. Frances E. McCann, had reported the pair to authorities in early October after tracking them down.

In mid-October, Deputy Sheriff LeRoy Dick, the Osage Township trustee who had headed the search of the Bender property, arrived in Michigan and arrested the couple on October 30, following their release on the larceny charges.

Deputy Sheriff Dick, along with Mrs. McCann, escorted the pair to Oswego, Kansas, where seven members of a 13-member panel confirmed the identification and committed them for trial.

Their attorney also produced a marriage certificate indicating that Mrs. Davis had been married in Michigan in 1872, the time when several of the murders were committed.

While the two women were certainly criminals and liars, as their defense attorney admitted, the charges were weak and many people doubted their identification as the Benders.

[1][3] A knife with a four-inch tapered blade was reportedly found hidden in a mantel clock in the Bender house by Colonel York.

In 1923 it was donated to the Kansas Museum of History by York's wife but is not on display; still bearing reddish-brown stains on the blade, it can be seen upon request.

The man further elaborated that all the stories of the latter's capture were made up, supposedly by a group of confederates, who had also helped the Benders dispose of the murdered victims' horses and wagons.

She said her father joined in a vigilante hunt for the killers and when he spoke of later searches for them she recalled, "At such times Pa always said in a strange tone of finality, 'They will never be found'.