Who Killed Henry Benhayon in 1887? The Strange Case of the Phosphorescent Bride

In 1887, a man named Henry Benhayon died in San Francisco. He was found in a room that someone else had rented recently. Discovered with Benhayon’s body were a partially consumed flask of whisky that was dosed with sulphuric acid, a bottle of chloroform, a bottle of potassium cyanide, and three copies of a suicide note that appeared to have been written and signed by the dead man. One copy was addressed to the coroner, another to the press, and the third to Henry Benhayon’s brother-in-law, Dr. J. Milton Bowers.

Dr. Bowers was in prison, awaiting his punishment of death by hanging. He had been convicted the year before of murdering his wife Cecelia (Cecelia Bowers was Henry Benhayon’s sister). Henry Benhayon had testified strongly against Dr. Bowers in his trial for Cecelia’s murder.

Suicide or murder?

Benhanyon’s suicide note said that he had planned to kill Dr. Bowers, but his sister had learned of his plot and threatened to expose him. So he had killed her instead to keep her silent. The note said that Dr. Bowers was innocent of her murder.

The police didn’t buy the suicide theory. For one thing, the bottle of cyanide was tightly corked (death from potassium cyanide poisoning is rapid). For another thing, some friends said the suicide note was not written in Benhayon’s hand (though there was disagreement over this). And he hadn’t rented the room himself.

San Francisco in 1880.

If Benhayon was murdered, then the prime suspect should have been Dr. J. Milton Bowers, who Benhayon had helped convict in his recent trial. It wasn’t just a marginal conviction; Bowers was a confirmed sleazebag. He had been married three times, had taken out large insurance policies on each of his wives, and each time the wife had died shortly afterwards, the last time with enough evidence to convict Bowers of poisoning her (it helped that her body was pumped so full of phosphorus that it glowed in the dark – more on that soon).

The problem was that Bowers was in prison, so even if he killed Cecelia, he could not have killed Henry Benhayon.

Yet the faked suicide notes, if they were faked, were tailored to help Bowers. Did he have someone else kill Benhayon? If so, who?

Who was Dr. Bowers?

J. Milton Bowers was born in Baltimore in 1843. As a young man, he studied in Germany, then served in the Civil War, helping to treat soldiers at a hospital in Washington, DC. In about 1865, Bowers became a physician after graduating from the Electric Medical College in Chicago. His specialty was women’s health (really).

Maybe the Electric Medical College taught him a thing or two about glowing brides. He married his first wife, Fannie Hammet, in Chicago and she died soon after. Bowers then moved to New York and married a patient, Theresa Shirk. The two moved to San Francisco, where she died. Less than six months later, Bowers married Cecelia Benhayon Levy. Within a few years, after having her life insured just like the other two, Cecelia became bloated, sick, and began to suffer great pains. Mr. Bowers was said to have been so devoted that he slept on a cot in the same room as his wife, consistently administering medicines and doing his best to keep her family away until she died.

Cecelia Bowers

An unknown man, possibly her brother Henry Benhayon, gave the coroner a tip that Cecelia had died under mysterious circumstances. (He later testified that he had seen a strange whiteness around Cecelia’s mouth when she became ill.) When the coroner arrived, Dr. Bowers had already signed a death certificate and explained that his wife had died from an abscess of the liver. He did not want an investigation, telling the coroner the funeral was scheduled for the next day so any investigation would need to be complete by then.

Six physicians performed an autopsy and found that she had not died of an abscessed liver. Furthermore, based upon their observations, they suspected phosphorus poisoning. Her stomach was removed and found to contain phosphorus.

In fact, her body had been pumped so full of phosphorus that the body and stomach glowed in the dark.

J. Milton Bowers was arrested for his wife’s murder. His trial in ‘The Case of the Phosphorescent Bride’ lasted for several weeks, at that time the longest in San Francisco’s history. Ultimately, he was convicted and sentenced to hang. He was awaiting that fate when Benhayon died, either by suicide or murder.

So who rented the Room?

If Dr. J. Milton Bowers could not have killed his brother-in-law, who did? The police looked next at who had rented the room where Benhayon was found. It had been rented by a man named Thomas Dimmig. There’s no “n” in Dimmig, but “Dimming” might have been a fitting name. Dimmig told police that he’d rented the room for his liaisons with a married woman from out of town.

Then things got more interesting. Dimmig was married to Theresa Farrell, who worked as a housemaid for Dr. Bowers. Farrell was said to have been a very beautiful woman. Further investigation revealed that she’d also had an affair with Bowers, who was known to have had relationships with various women while married. In fact, there was testimony at his trial that he had proposed to another woman before his wife’s death, and that he had courted his most recent wife before his previous wife’s death.

Did two women convince Dimmig to kill Benhayon?

During Bowers’ time in prison, he had two very frequent visitors who often arrived together, Theresa Farrell and Charlotte Zeissing. Both had worked for Dr. Bowers, Farrell as a housekeeper and Zeissing as a nurse. And it turned out that Zeissing lived just a few steps away from the room where the body of Henry Benhayon had been found.

The police built a case against Dimmig. He had tried to purchase cyanide at several pharmacies in the city, finally obtaining some. Also, Dimmig had received an odd letter via the Western Perfumery, which purportedly was sent from Benhayon, but it seemed suspicious and probably concocted. During the investigation and prosecution, Dimmig acted quite dim-witted, which was either an act or a reality.

Dimmig was put on trial for murder. The jury deadlocked, not able to agree on a verdict, and he was sent back to jail to await another trial. During this time, the State Supreme Court ordered a new trial for Dr. Bowers, given the additional evidence of the suicide note from Banhayon that declared Bowers’ innocence.

Four years of trials resulted in nothing

At Dimmig’s second trial, he was acquitted of the murder of Benhayon. And given the conflicting evidence in the case, the district attorney concluded that he could not obtain a conviction against Bowers for the murder of his wife, so the charges against Dr. Bowers were dismissed.

Bowers and Dimmig both walked free. Dr. Bowers’ reputation was ruined in San Francisco, where a popular song called The Phosphorescent Bride was performed in local theaters for many years. Bowers set up shop in San Jose, opening his medical practice again. And he married again for the fourth time, this time to one of his patients, Mary Bird.

Surprisingly, his wife outlived him. And no one was convicted of either of the two possible murders.

References:
https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SFC19040308.2.129
http://www.historicalcrimedetective.com/ccca/dr-milton-bowers-wife-killer/
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-s-weirdest-murder-case-6036288.php
https://www.amazon.com/Murder-Bay-Historic-Homicide-Francisco/dp/1884995462
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/J-Milton-Bowers-phosphorescent-bride-sf-murder-10150017.php

Glowing women photos are public domain from Pixabay. Others are historical photos or newspaper pictures from the time. Gravestone from findagrave.com