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"A Heartless and Cold Blooded Affair": The Sage of Wife Murderer Henry Debosnys

Updated: Sep 26

April 27, 1882.

            For Essex County Sheriff Rollin L. Jenkins only one item stood out on his day’s schedule—a hanging.

            What led to this event?

            Henry Debosnys murdered his wife.

            At best Debosnys could be described as an intriguing fellow.

            The pieced together story goes like this according to testimony of numerous witnesses.

Newspaper sketch of Henry Debosyns


            On Monday, July 31, 1882, Henry Debosnys and his wife of one month, Betsy Wells, started from their Essex house in a horse and wagon. Their destination was Port Henry, where Debosnys stated he planned to meet his ‘supposed’ father who planned on purchasing a house in the village. The ‘father’ had recently arrived in the country.

            Several people saw the pair drive by; William Blinn, haying a field with help from neighboring farmer, Allen Talbot and his wife Martha Talbot.

            The couple stayed in Sprague’s Hotel in Port Henry that night. No home was purchased. No ‘father’ appeared, but Debosnys continued to weave a fictional story. He even lied his way out of paying his livery bill.

            The next day the couple headed home duplicating the route they made on Monday. This time they added a brief stop in Westport to purchase some cheese and crackers for a picnic lunch. Once again they encountered Blinn and Talbot while the pair still hayed the same field. This time the two farmers heard the couple arguing.

            After they departed Talbot rode to his farm for a hay rake and noticed a man skulking in the woods by the road looking suspicious. He recognized the man as Debosnys. He then observed further along Debosnys’s wagon next to the road. Returning to the Blinn farm Talbot spotted Debosnys driving up the road—alone. Talbot hid in the barn and as soon as Debosnys passed and disappeared out of sight, found Blinn and explained what he witnessed.

            Apparently, while breaking for lunch the couple continued their quarrel over money Wells supposedly had hoarded away. Debosnys, in a fit of rage, pulled out a revolver and shot his wife, twice in the head. The two shots failed to kill her immediately so the husband slit her throat with a knife, slicing the carotid artery. He moved the corpse into the woods, did a makeshift job of covering the body and departed the scene.

Being suspicious, Blinn and Talbot started a search of the area and found signs of a struggle, drops of blood and then a pool of blood soaking into the ground. They then detected a trail made by an object being dragged into the woods. The pair followed it about seventy-five feet and quickly discovered Betsy’s remains under a cover of leaves. They notified the Essex village constable John Chamberlain by telegraph from Whallonsburg and pointed the finger of guilt directly at Henry Debosnys. The constable rushed to the crime scene and spread the word of the murder in the village.

           Five hours Debosnys was apprehended at the Essex Post Office by Peter Mulvey, the Essex deputy constable, and Charles Hoskins.. He surrendered without a struggle. A search of his person and the wagon tied outside found two pistols, one with two empty chambers, a bloody knife and articles of his wife’s clothing and jewelry. He was taken to Elizabethtown and tossed into a cell at the county jail.

           As for Betsy, following an autopsy, her body was turned over the family. Just two days after the murder, the Wells family arranged a funeral in the Essex Episcopal Church with the burial following next to her first husband John in the Essex (Briar Hill) Cemetery. The funeral and burial received no press coverage.

Grave marker of Betsy Wells and her first husband John


On August 4 in Essex, District Attorney Rollin Kellogg, coroner C.M. Pease and others conducted an inquest. They decided to charge Debosnys with murder and keep him incarcerated in the Essex County jail.

Who was this Henry Debosnys? A charlatan might be a good descriptive noun.

He provided an autobiographical sketch starting with his birth in Portugal on May 16, 1836. Over the next forty-six years, he packed in many life experiences. These are examples: moved to France, fought in the Crimean War, served in the Italian War in 1859, travelled to China and then to Mexico, by 1863 had arrived in the United States where he enlisted in the army and fought at Gettysburg with Pennsylvania troops where he was twice wounded. The list goes on and on. According to the editor of the of the Elizabethtown Post and Gazette, George Brown, who had the opportunity to interview Debosnys, he was “conversant in with six languages, reads and writes five fluently.”

It turned out Betsy Wells was his third wife. Apparently his earlier wives both died under suspicious circumstances, one actually starved to death.

One thing is certain; Debosnys had arrived in Essex in early May 1882. On June 8 he married Betsy Wells, a widow of almost twelve years who husband had been killed in a mining accident in 1870. The nuptials raised the eyebrows of the locals for the marriage occurred after an acquaintance of one month.


Debosyns drawing memorializing his dead wife


Of course, this entire life story could simply be fiction as there existed no fact checking abilities. No Debosnys could be found in the Pennsylvania Civil War military records, so it was possible he used an alias. He actually confessed to changing his name in 1871.

On December 12 the Grand Jury convened and indicted Debosnys for murder. The jurors set the date for his trial for Tuesday, March 6.

That Tuesday Judge Judson S. Landon called the court to order at 10:45 a.m. and commenced jury selection. From a pool of thirty potential men in the pool, twelve were selected and agreed upon by both the prosecution and defense attorneys. By 2 p.m. the task was completed and after a short recess the prosecution commenced their opening arguments. Jurors hailed from as far away as Minerva, Crown Point, Schroon and Chesterfield.

Essex County District Attorney Rowland C. Kellogg assisted by Marcus D. Grover of Port Henry set the stage of the crime and the role of the defendant. The defense team of retired district attorney Arod K. Dudley of Elizabethtown and Royal Corbin of Plattsburgh listened intently. Both lawyers had been appointed by the court.

Over the next day and a half nineteen witnesses took the stand. The prosecution’s case against Debosnys was solid. Even the defense admitted he had murdered his wife, but asked for a lesser charge of second degree murder which would not mean the death penalty.


Area map introduced as trial evidence


Debosnys did take the stand in his own defense. Those present in the courtroom strained to hear his testimony and people described it as “incoherent and almost inaudible.” He blamed his actions on the whiskey that was in his wagon and recalled nothing of his actions. Unfortunately for Debosnys, two witnesses were recalled and stated he showed no sign of intoxication and was “perfectly sober.”

After the lawyers for the prosecution and defense concluded their arguments, Judge Landon provided the jury with instructions and sent them off to deliberate a verdict. The jury departed at 60:1 p.m. and in less than ten minutes notified the court they made a decision.

The verdict was simple and to the point: MURDER IN THE FIRST DEGREE.

           The sentence; death by hanging on Friday, April 27 between the hours of ten and two.

Sheriff Rollin Jenkins had no experience with hangings. In fact, the upcoming execution was slated to be Essex County’s second hanging; the first was James Bishop in 1843.

           To gain some knowledge, Jenkins traveled to Windsor State Prison in Vermont and witnessed the hanging of Emeline Meaker, the first woman to be executed in the state. She, with the assistance of her son, had murdered her husband’s nine-year-old niece Alice with strychnine in April 1880 and hanged on March 30, 1883.

            Upon his return the sheriff commenced building a gallows in the county jail yard with assistance from Augustus F. Woodruff. When completed it featured a platform 6 by 8 feet with a trapdoor 3.5 feet long by 21 inches wide. It stood 8.5 feet off the ground. The cross beam that held the rope was 16 feet off the ground. A 3-foot railing surrounded the platform on three sides.

            After finishing the structure, Jenkins tested the gallows with a 200-pound bag of sand and everything worked without a hitch.

            On April 27, 1883 at 11:50 a.m. Debosnys was led to the gallows wearing a brand-new suit of clothes. Ropes bound his arms and wrists. A crowd of approximately seventy-five had assembled in the jail yard. All carried signed passes to gain entrance. Another 2,000 people gathered outside where there could view the top of Debosnys’s head as he stood on the platform

            Because of the case’s notoriety, the local paper, the Elizabethtown Post & Gazette, delayed publication by one day so they could report on the execution.

Debosnys walked up the steps and upon reaching the platform had his legs tied, the noose adjusted around his neck and a black cap drawn over his head. All was ready. Jenkins triggered the trapdoor at 11:52 a.m. and the body fell downward “hurled into eternity.” Twelve minutes later Drs. Lawrence J. Dailey of Elizabethtown and Melville H. Turner of Crown Point declared Henry Debosnys dead and the crowd dispersed. After thirty minutes the body was removed and placed in a “crude” coffin.


Piece of rope from hanging


With the body gone, the outside crowd was permitted to enter the jail yard and view the gallows.

As for the corpse, a wagon transported it to Westport.

            Why Westport?

            In a further bit of morbidity, Debosyns’s notoriety did not conclude with the hanging. He had agreed to sell his body to Dr. Edgar W. Pattison of Westport for $15 which he used for the suit he wore to the gallows.

            After the hanging, Dr. Pattison gained custody of the corpse. He boiled all the flesh off the skeleton, removed the organs and wired the bones together.

            Eventually Pattison donated the skeleton to the Westport School and for a number of years students used it for studies, but it ended up being damaged by some pranksters and buried. Legend has it the bones were buried in a local cemetery.

            That is, all but the skull. That ended up at the Adirondack History Center in 1982 where it is displayed in a glass case along with a piece of the rope used in the hanging plus a ticket used by one of the spectators and examples of Henry’s writings and drawings.


The skull of Henry Debosyns

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