Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 25, No. 2, August 13, 1927

LOST — October 20, near the City Hall, a memorandum book with a letter. A liberal reward will be paid if left at this office.

Then there was a letter to Bowers, which read:

Dr. J. Milton Bowers:

I only ask that you do not molest my mother. Tillie is not responsible for my acts, and I have made all reparation in my power. I likewise caution you against some of your friends, who knew Cecelia only as a husband should.

Among them are C. M. McLennan and others, whose names I cannot think of now, but you will find some more when the memorandum book is found. Farewell.

Yours,

H. Benhayon.

The third letter was addressed to the coroner and was entitled:

CONFESSION

The history of the tragedy began after my sister married Dr. Bowers.

I had reason to believe that he would leave her soon, as they always quarreled, and on one occasion she told me that she would poison him before she would permit him to leave her.

I said in jest: Have him insured—

She said all right, but Bowers objected for a long time, but finally said: If it will keep you out of mischief, all right, go ahead.

They both joined lodges, and I got the stuff ready to dispose of him, but my sister would not listen to the proposition and threatened to expose me.

After my sister got sick I felt an irresistible impulse to use the stuff on her and to finish him afterward. I would have been the administrator for my little niece, Tillie, and would then have the benefit of the insurance.

I think it was on Friday, November 24, 1885, that I took one capsule out of her pillbox and filled it with two kinds of poison.

I didn’t think that Bowers could get into any trouble, as the person who gave me the poison told me that it would leave no trace in the stomach. This person committed suicide before the trial, and as it might implicate others if I mention his name I will close the tragedy.

H. Benhayon.

P. S. — I took Dr. Bowers’s money out of his desk when my sister died.

These remarkable documents made a tremendous stir, as well they might. Everything that was brought to light concerning the young man only made the matter of these letters the more extraordinary.

Benhayon was last seen alive on Saturday night about eleven, on the streets of San Francisco, in a condition which was then thought to be that of rather extreme intoxication, but which might just as well have been that of being drugged.

He was accompanied by a man and a woman, but their faces were not seen distinctly and whoever they were they never came forward to tell what they were doing with the man nor where they were going, nor where, if anywhere, they left him alive.

On the Saturday afternoon Benhayon had been seen entirely sober and quite as usual. He had made an appointment with a dentist for the following Monday and had purchased tickets for himself and his little niece, Tillie, for the theater on Sunday night.

The most rigid search failed to show that he had ever bought poison anywhere or had seemed to know anything about poisons. If he did commit suicide, there seemed not a reason in the world for it, for, granting that his confession was true, not the slightest suspicion had attached to him.

“A Woman from San Jose”