The silence surrounding the farm was deafening, especially on that
cold December day in 1910. Even in the winter, farmhouse chores kept residents
in Johnson County, Ks. busy with livestock to feed and projects to tend to.
But something just wasn’t right at the Bernhardt farm near
Tomahawk Creek. The rolling hills couldn’t conceal what was hidden for much
longer. Earl Gray, rural mail carrier for Oxford Township, scratched his head
when letters remained from his previous visits in the mailbox near the winding
road to the house at current-day 119th and Roe.
As his concern mounted when the mail spilled out of its box,
Earl went down the road to where two men, George Knoche and Grover Holmes were
spotted earlier working on some repairs on a culvert. Earl stopped to speak to
the men, his concern for the whereabouts of the family growing.
Emeline Bernhardt, a 78 year-old widow, and her bachelor
son, 49 year-old George, were known in the neighborhood as being quite
different than other rural farmers. Emeline was a widow herself
when she married her second husband, George’s father, Joseph- and he was 17
years her senior.
Emeline and Joseph’s rocky relationship came to a head when
she filed for divorce in 1904 after just shy of 50 years of marriage. She claimed
that her 89 year-old husband had deserted her in 1880 and was absent for 15
years before he returned. She was left to raise her children, including George
and an invalid daughter. . . until his return.
The divorce was never finalized, because Joe Bernhardt
passed away before the papers could be signed. This left George and his mom
with 80 acres and a successful farm. George was known in their section of the
county as being a hard man to deal with, his personality being quite
overbearing and brash. And Emeline? Emeline had her own quirks. J.W. Wallace,
who knew the Berhardt’s for 20 years, claimed in a sworn deposition, “They were
peculiar people.”
There is no doubt that Earl Gray was aware of the oddities
of the Bernhardt’s. Regardless, mail remaining untouched in the outskirts of
Johnson County was strange. Very strange – especially in a small community
where everyone seemed to know everyone else’s business.
Earl rode up to the two men working in the culvert and described the strangeness he saw at the Bernhardt farm. “Mail’s
pilin’ up over there,” Earl proclaimed as he pointed in the direction a half
mile up the road.
Without much hesitation, the three approached the road
leading to the two-story farm home. In the distance, the men could hear a
whining in the quiet. As they approached the barn, two dogs chained tried to
stand but their weakness from lack of food knocked them to the ground. They
whimpered in hunger, eager for relief from their starvation.
The horse they heard from a distance whinnying continued through
the walls of the locked stable nearby. It appeared as if the Bernhardt’s had
just vanished into thin air, leaving the animals and farm unattended. Suspicion
mounted within the three men as the crept up to the lock on the stable and
broke it.
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| Photo courtesy of Don Wright Designs |
They could certainly sense that something was awry. The hay thrown on the floor in a way that no farmer would bed his
animals.
As the horse excited from their entrance, his hooves
loosened some of the straw within the small space. The three men’s faces turned white
as a ghost when they saw what was hidden beneath the hay in the stall. Earl
kicked the hay a little more to reveal blood-soaked clothing and the shoulder
of one very, very dead man.
Although unrecognizable to most, the assumption from the
postman was that the battered and broken-in face was none other than George
Bernhardt.
They didn’t need to get closer in order to know this was a
murder. Shocked and full of terror, they stumbled backward, slipping on the
frozen ground as they turned away. Their boots kicked more horror
into full-force when the hay parted and revealed a second body next to George’s
corpse.
“It must be his mother,” Earl surmised, shaken and in
disbelief as they quickly backed out of the barn and down the lane away from
the farm.
Oh, but there was much more terror masked beneath the ground
cover.
The three men ran to the nearest telephone at a neighboring
farm and called Olathe. Sheriff John S. Steed sprang into action. A murder in Johnson County? Even when
the population was 3% of the population today with just over 18,000 people living in
the entire county, one murder- let
alone two- was extremely uncommon.
To put that into perspective. . . more people today live
within the city limits of Prairie Village (6.2 square miles) than lived in all of
the county (480 square miles).
 |
| Photo courtesy of Caro Wallis |
45 minutes later as dusk settled into the skyline, the
sheriff, County Attorney C.B. Little, and Coroner D.E. Bronson arrived at the
foot of the long drive leading up to the Bernhardt farm. Word undoubtedly
spread like wildfire; awe-stricken farmers were waiting on the side of the
county road eager to take a peek at the horror hidden under the hay.
Unlike today’s police investigations, “securing the scene”
wasn’t yet in practice in most jurisdictions. Even as the officials from Olathe
arrived, the crowd of farmers followed without any hassle from them; Sheriff
Steed led all the onlookers up the drive.
Sheriff Steed shoved the hay aside from the victim thought
to have originally been Mrs. Emeline Bernhardt, and there was quite the
surprise burrowed underneath.
“This ain’t a woman!”
The red-stained clothes were clearly those of a man, and as the shrieks of surprise subsided, the investigators leaned in for a closer look. The face was distorted; an ax had been used to mutilate the corpse well-past the death stage.
“Is that the boy, Tom Morgan!?” exclaimed one of the
neighbors present.
Sure enough, the second victim of this horrifying scene was
17 year-old Rosedale, Ks. resident, Thomas H. Morgan. He recently had been
hired by the Bernhardt’s.
They rummaged around the stable, and the crowd of spectators
gasped when a third body of a man, also unrecognizable due to his gory
injuries, was uncovered right next to the other two. The coroner reached into
his saturated pocket and pulled out papers that suggested this man in his 40s
was a man named Glenn Cotner.
“Hey, that’s William Graves! He was hired on by the family,”
one of the farmers argued.
Three victims of an ax murder, lightly covered up with hay
in the freezing temperatures, had been uncovered in a rural community
unprepared for what came next.
Where was 78 year-old Emeline Bernhardt?
Even as the last light sunk into the horizon, the men
continued their search of the area in haste. The party advanced on the looming
two-story farmhouse. The final search on December 10th, 1910 was
done by the light of lanterns.
Some searched the lower level while others descended the
creaking staircase to the bedrooms above. Near a narrow stairway leading to an
attic in a small closet, the decaying, bludgeoned body of Mrs. Bernhardt was
found.
A clock weight was found covered in blood within close
proximity to this murder, most likely the murder weapon used to continuously
mutilate the elderly woman.
The body, before photos or a proper crime investigation was
launched, was carried outside and laid next to the other three victims.
 |
| Olathe Mirror front page headline from Dec. 15, 1910 |
The 1910 quadruple murder of the Bernhardt’s and two hired
hands shook the community and the nation. Several hasty arrests of possible
suspects followed for months, yet no killer was ever officially charged with
this heinous crime. Emeline’s daughter from her first marriage, Nancy Mason,
added $500 to the reward money in hopes that someone would come forward and justice
served.
She never did get her day.
**************************************
24 years earlier in 1886, a baby boy named Albert “Bert” Dudley
was born to parents Barnett Dudley and Alice Parish near Freeman, Cass Co., Mo.
Barnett and Alice were married a year earlier and went on to have two more
children, Thurman and Elise.
Something just must not have been stable on the home front
with the Dudley clan; Barnett struggled to keep steady employment. After having
three children, Alice passed away in 1897, leaving her children motherless.
Bert, only 11 years old, was left with his siblings in the care of his maternal
grandmother, Candace Parish.
Their dad, in the simplest of terms, wasn’t exactly
“present.”
Little in general is known about Bert’s childhood, but he
seems to leave Cass Co. as a young man. He bounced his way around farms
throughout Kansas working as a hired hand. He never stayed anywhere too long- probably because he was
up to no good.
By May 1907, Bert’s dad Barnett got hitched to 26 year-old Verdancia
“Verdie” Sexton in Harrisonville, Mo. She was 20 years younger than Barnett,
and her stepson Bert was only 5 years older than she.
 |
| Harrisonville, Missouri in the early 1900s |
It’s hard to determine what would have gone wrong in Bert’s
life to assist his slip into darkness. Some people are born with a twist of
evil within them, while others are raised that way.
While Barnett married younger, Bert seems to have preferred the
older ladies. Bert was only 21 at the time he decided to get married to Laura
Huehn, a 38-year-old divorcee with two young children living in Junction City,
Kansas. Bert’s new life as a husband certainly didn’t slow his lust for illegal
activities.
Laura may have regretted her decision to marry Bert; in
January 1909, Bert was arrested for beating his wife. We have to consider the
lack of support for victims of domestic violence during this time period. In 1910,
the U. S. Supreme Court ruled in Thompson vs. Thompson that a wife had no cause
for action on an assault and battery charge against her husband because this
"would open the doors of the courts to accusations of all sorts of one
spouse against the other."
Considering this court case was after this arrest of Bert, it’s probably safe to say this abuse had
to have been pretty ruthless.
 |
| Junction City Daily Union, March 15, 1910 |
A year later in March 1910, Bert was working as a delivery man for a grocery store in Junction City; he was arrested for bootlegging… and got away.
There is a theme developing here.
Bert was transient; even though he was married, he was
clearly moving from place to place, working odd jobs and committing crimes
right and left. He would float in and out of Freeman, Mo., picking up work here
and there.
In December 1910, on the cusp of the quadruple murders of
Emeline and George Bernhardt and two farm hands at current-day 119th
and Roe, Bert’s location from research of documents is unknown. He
isn’t listed with his wife in Junction City, and he was known to bounce around
the Kansas side of the state line to pick up work as a farm hand.
Trust me, this comes into play soon.
 |
| Early Harveyville, Ks. where Bert Dudley took 16 year-old Amanda Lander |
By the end of December 1912, the Dudley family found
themselves in a few sticky situations that were plastered across the headlines
in the Midwest. Just a week before the two-year anniversary of the gruesome
murders at the Bernhardt farm, good ole’ Bert was up to his hair-raising ways.
After Bert was released from jail again, he returned to Lyon Co., Ks. Laura, his wife,
was left abandoned 70 miles away in Junction City. Maybe Bert was getting a
little lonely, because the 26 year-old lured the naïve 16 year-old Amanda
Lander off her father’s farm in Miller, Ks. They raced to Harveyville in a
buggy and a quick affair ensued.
When Bert was finished with her a few days later, he
returned to his job as a farm hand. Embarrassed and unsure of what to do,
Amanda hid in shame as her family started to look for her. Once she was found,
she confessed to the affair and Bert was quickly arrested on December 4th,
1912. It is said when he faced the sobbing Amanda in court, he completely
denied the affair and talked negatively of her.
Meanwhile back in Kansas City, Mo. at Holmes Park, Bert’s
father was up to no good. As Bert awaited his final sentence in Lyon Co.,
Barnett Dudley was about to wreak havoc on the small community of Holmes Park.
The small railroad town was quite far south of Kansas City at the time and
would have sat just south of Bannister Road in between I-49 and I-435 off Marion
Park Drive. The town itself has been completely erased.
But in 1912, this small community was known to have its fair
share of problems. The Kansas City Star wrote,
“The district has been likened to that of the mountains of Kentucky or
Tennessee. It is rough, hilly, and the roads are mere paths through the tangle
of shrubbery and forests. The inhabitants are clannish, poor, and hold their
grudges long. And their passions are easily aroused.”
This proved to be quite true for 51-year-old Barnett Dudley
and his 31 year-old wife, Verdie. A son named Charles, a half-brother to Bert,
was born to the couple in 1910. Around that time, Barnett took off and left his
wife in Holmes Park with her brother, Duffy Sexton. Court records suggest that
Barnett deserted her and mistreated their son. As with many small communities,
the neighbors took sides and feelings became bitter.
Barnett had a jealous side to him, a fact probably spurred
from their significant age difference. Barnett believed a neighborhood boy, an 18-year-old
named Charlie McGhee was starting to “pay attention” to his wife.
On December 10th, most likely aware of his son,
Bert’s new home at the Lyon Co. jail, Barnett suggested to his brother-in-law,
Duffy a game of cards with neighbors. Meeting at Mr. Large’s house, Barnett,
Duffy, young Charlie McGhee and his mother gathered for the hands to be dealt. A
bottle of whiskey was passed around courtesy of Barnett and the men anxiously
indulged.
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| An artist's sketch of Barnett Dudley, featured in the Kansas City Star December 11, 1912 |
He hastily turned toward the table and drew the pistol hidden
in his pocket. The action happened so fast that the poker party couldn’t even
react quickly; he pointed the trigger first at Charlie McGhee’s mother but it
misfired. As the men began to rise from the table, the trigger was aimed at
young Charlie’s face. As the gun’s barrel released, a fire echoed throughout
the small community and the bullet struck the young man behind the ear.
He crumbled to the floor and died an hour later.
Duffy Sexton had leaped from his chair to try to get out of
the line of fire, but Barnett turned the gun on his brother-in-law and shot his
left arm. His arm was shattered, but he survived.
The screams resonated throughout Holmes Park as Barnett
Dudley dashed out of the home on foot. He last tried to shoot a young child
playing in the front yard just five feet from his aim, but the defective
cartridge failed to load. The child, thankfully, was spared of Dudley’s wrath.
Barnett ran a mile north on foot to edge of Swope Park.
Standing at the San Francisco Railroad crossing near present-day 71 highway and
Blue River Rd., Barnett got the attention of the flagman on duty inside of a
shanty house.
His gun was concealed inside his pocket. As the man came out
to see what the noise was about, Barnett asked, “Why don’t you flag me?”
 |
| A photo depicting the early job of a flagman on the railroad crossings |
“You didn’t ring your bell,” the flagman hesitatingly
replied.
Barnett shuffled within his pocket and produced the pistol,
swaying in delirium. “Well, I will ring it then.”
With that, Barnett Dudley shot himself in the forehead in
the middle of the tracks.
This murder-suicide ironically happened two years to the day when the Bernhardt quadruple
murders were discovered eight miles away in Johnson County, Ks.
And there Bert was, locked up in Lyon County, Kansas
awaiting his sentence for rape. Just a few weeks later, the judge threw the
book at Bert and sentenced him to five to 21 years. On Christmas Eve 1912, Bert
was escorted into his new full-time residence of the Hutchinson Reformatory
Prison to serve out his sentence.
Merry Christmas, Bert.
While in prison, Bert’s wife filed for divorce and it was
granted.
The reformatory system of Hutchinson Prison at the time
included an eight-hour workday followed by two hours of school at night. They
hoped to develop upstanding citizens that could return to society and be
productive.
 |
| Today's view of the Kansas State Industrial Reformatory (KSIR), founded in 1885. Known since 1990 as Hutchinson Correctional Facility |
Maybe like today the prisons were crowded and they needed
more room. Maybe Bert Dudley had won the guards over with good behavior.
 |
| Hutchinson Daily News headline January 29, 1915 |
To no surprise, Bert didn’t stay free for long. After his
release, Bert returned as a farmhand in Missouri, sometimes working in the
Freeman, Mo. area where his grandmother still lived. He was arrested again in
Missouri and was placed in the county jail. Before he could be returned to
Kansas for parole violation, Bert was able to escape prison yet again.
In January 1915, he was back in jail, and the mugshot sent
out by the Kansas prison confirmed to Missouri that they had Bert Dudley in
their custody. And how did Bert land in the county jail this time? He was there
for white slavery- a term used at the time to describe human sex trafficking of
Caucasian women.
Yep.
This time Bert was sent off to Lansing to serve the rest of
his sentence due to his parole violation. But just over a year later, Bert
filed in the office of the governor of Kansas an application for pardon or
parole.
 |
| Kansas Governor Arthur Capper, in office at the time of Bert Dudley's pardon |
And wait for it…. Wait for it….
He was granted parole. By the governor.
Unbelievable.
In March 1916, Bert Dudley was a free man. And this free man
needed work.
Harvest season was upon the farmers of Johnson County, Ks.
and Bert knew work would be easy to find. 55 year-old Henry Muller, a
Wisconsin-born transport to the Stillwell area was in need of labor on his
rented farm. He and his 43 year-old wife, Gertrude were childless yet happy in
their 13 year marriage.
 |
| Gertrude Muller with her mother (sitting) and Henry Muller |
On August 22, 1916, a young man claiming to be Henry Muller
rode up with grain to a grain elevator in Bucyrus, Ks. about six miles
southwest of the Muller farm. After this young man pocketed the cash from the
sale of grain, the elevator operator became suspicious of the man’s actions. Isn’t the farmer Muller much older? he
wondered as he watched the young man drive away.
Wary of the man’s demeanor, the grain operator telephoned
P.K. Hendrix, a Stilwell banker and former sheriff of Johnson County to confess
his doubts of this recent transaction. Active Johnson Co. Sheriff E.G. Carroll
was then contacted. They found Bert Dudley in Stilwell at a boarding house.
 |
| Original Warrant for the arrest of Bert Dudley Courtesy of Johnson County Archives |
Sheriff E.G. Carroll searched the farm on that hot August
day. As the wind died down and the landscape stilled to silence, a sharp, pungent
odor crossed in front of his senses.
It was the recognizable scent of death.
They followed the dreadful aroma to an old, unused storm
cellar. The door was shut, but the aroma resonating from inside required it to
be gingerly opened. As the light of day struck and shadowed the contents inside
the small space, the sheriff gasped.
The mutilated bodies of Henry and Gertrude Muller rested
inside, covered by hay and straw.
Covered by hay? That sounds familiar.
The face of Mr. Muller was also smashed with what was
thought to be an axe, as was also Mrs. Muller. Her hair had been pulled out by
the roots from the blunt trauma she had faced in her final moments.
The sheriff immediately returned to arrest Bert Dudley for
the murders of the Muller’s, as he was positively identified as the man who
went to Bucyrus to sell the stolen grain.
 |
| An early photo of Henry Muller Published in the Olathe Mirror |
He later states he went to the house. When Mrs. Muller asked
where her husband was, he shot her. He confessed to hitching both of their
bodies up to a horse and dragging them a quarter mile before leaving them in
the cellar.
Old habits for Mr. Dudley.
Bert Dudley showed no emotion while giving his lengthy
confession. Once his cell was locked the night of his confession, he was said
to have “dropped to sleep immediately.”
Bert shacked up with prisoner Fred Sickler. He was in for
hog stealing and won Dudley’s trust. While time stood still inside the dark and
damp jail cell, Dudley relayed Sickler stories that would, in fact, make most
of us sick.
Dudley showed a spirit of a bravado after his confession. He
was talkative. . . and Sickler listened.
According to his cellmate, Bert learned some valuable
lessons from earlier crimes he had committed. “I suppose this Muller affair
would blow over for I kept the mail box empty. I made no mistake this time, as
we did in the Bernhardt murder in letting the mail accumulate and the alarm was
given by the rural carrier,” Fred Sickler recounted.
 |
| Photo courtesy of Duane Hallock |
So when he went to the Muller’s farm and killed them, he was
sure to remove the mail from the mail box to ensure there was no suspicion. He
was said to have lived in their home for three days after this heinous crime.
The jailhouse informant also declared some more of Dudley’s
thinking when he talked openly of the murder charge against the Muller’s. He
boasted that he wouldn’t be put to death, as Kansas had no death penalty.
Sickler stated that Dudley told him “he would be paroled by the governor for
good behavior in about ten years.”
Well, Dudley had good reason to believe that his good
behavior would erase his wrongdoings and set him free yet again.
Sickler stated that Dudley warned him that after he was
paroled he would come back “and cut the throat out of all those who testified
against him.”
The trial of Bert Dudley lasted one very short day. The jury
found him guilty of the murder of both Henry Muller and his wife, Gertrude. As
his life sentence was read the next day, people present at the hearing noted
that he just cockily smirked and chewed his gum.
The last night that Bert Dudley would spend in the downtown
Olathe jail was September 20, 1916 before he was transported- yet again- to
Lansing State Penitentiary.
Just after midnight on September 21st, 1916, a
mob arrived outside the Olathe jail. Sheriff E.G. Carroll lived with his wife
inside the jail and was awakened by the nearing commotion caused by the 60 men
assembled. The sheriff watched in horror as the mob broke down the door and
entered. He fired a warning shot to try to dismantle the mob, yet they
continued without much fear from his gun. As he raised his gun for his second
fire, the sheriff was overtaken and held down by the men on a mission.
It was clear to the sheriff what they were after. They
wanted Dudley dead.
Unable to find the keys to the cell that held Bert Dudley,
the mob broke down the door. For possibly the first time, Bert cowered,
terrified in the corner, completely cognizant of what their intention truly
was.
This was vigilante justice.
 |
| Original coroner's report of Bert Dudley's death Courtesy of the Johnson County Archives |
They threw him in the back of an automobile and left
downtown Olathe and drove east on Park St. Ironically, the mob turned their
motorcade down aptly-named Dudley Road (now current-day Ridgeview at
approximately Wabash) a mile east of town and stopped in the dead still of the
summer night. The mob marched toward the nearest electrical pole and threw the
rope attached to the noose around Bert’s neck.
With a garish pull by part of the party assembled, Bert
Dudley was hoisted into the air, hanging from the noose. He grabbed at the rope
burning his neck as he gasped for air. His legs kicked in defiance, his body
contorting in pain.
But that wasn’t enough for the mob. Several drew their guns
and aimed with aid from the idled automobiles’ headlights. Gunfire crackled and
engulfed the cicada’s summer night’s song. As his legs stilled and his bloodied
body relaxed in death, the mob disappeared into the darkness of the country
road.
 |
| Photo circa 1994 of a barn on a neighboring farm to the west of the Bernhardt's on the north side of 119th St. to the west of Roe. |
The body of Bert Dudley was found a few hours later and
taken to undertakers in Olathe. They pulled 12 bullets from his body. His brother, Thurman and sister, Elise were
contacted in Cass County, Mo. but both declined to come and claim the body.
Thus, Bert was buried at Potter’s Field in Olathe in a fittingly unmarked and
forgotten location.
The lynching of Bert Dudley was the last in the entire state
of Kansas and the only one on record for Johnson County.
So, is Dudley responsible for the quadruple homicide at the
Bernhardt’s?
If you take the word of the jailhouse informant, then yes.
And if you noticed the similarities of the crimes, then it’s plausible. If you
consider the fact that neighbors of the Bernhardt’s claim that Bert Dudley had
also been employed by the Bernhardt’s months before the murders, then it’s an
even higher probability. When I reason that I cannot find Bert Dudley in jail
or anywhere else during the time period of December 1910 when these crimes
occurred, then I reason that with the preponderance of the evidence that he
was, in fact, responsible for the murders at the Bernhardt farm at 119th
and Roe.
The review by the Kansas City Star of a recent book released suggests that the Bernhardt farm stood "near 135th Street on the Kansas side of the state line. . . Their internet searches reveal the farm sat close to train tracks that still curve from Kansas into Martin City."
I am sure this book included hundreds of hours of research well past the Internet as this quote suggests.
My research doesn’t just include “internet searches” but ample time and research with my friends at the Johnson County Archives in Olathe. The good stuff is in primary documentation. And the Bernhardt farm is clearly at 119th and Roe- the house would have stood near McDonalds and their land extended both north and south of that location. It’s not on 135th St. as the article mentions.
My research doesn’t just include “internet searches” but ample time and research with my friends at the Johnson County Archives in Olathe. The good stuff is in primary documentation. And the Bernhardt farm is clearly at 119th and Roe- the house would have stood near McDonalds and their land extended both north and south of that location. It’s not on 135th St. as the article mentions.
The profile of their mass serial killer includes that he
would kill near railroad tracks. The railroad tracks at Martin City are over
five miles away.
Regardless, Bert Dudley’s dreadful finale on Earth as the “victim”
of the final lynching in Kansas still doesn’t balance the horror of his crimes
I could find that he committed. He was a wife beater, human sex trafficker, a
rapist- and a murderer of many.
And he was the son of a murderer.
Bert Dudley shut the doors on the barns and cellars; he
lightly covering the remains of life lost with hay. He continuously disappeared
into the darkness, ran from the law and worked the system until he was brought
to light by the skeptical eye of a grain elevator operator. Bert Dudley had
reason to be arrogant, as his head swelled with the next chance to abscond the
law.
He got away with so much. But he was never equipped for the
mob that overtook him in Olathe and dealt him his final justice. The last to
face terror was that of Bert Dudley; his eyes widened in fear as his hands yanked
at the noose smothering him. The last thing he saw were those men as they
raised their guns and fired flashes of light into that summer night.
*Want to see a really cool short video about the lynching of Bert Dudley? Watch the video here!
*Want to see a really cool short video about the lynching of Bert Dudley? Watch the video here!
