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openly. That was the case with Marie Louis Cloutier and Achille Grondin, and Marie Beaulne and Philibert Lefebvre, four early-twentieth-century lovers who made no effort to hide their illicit romances. In fact, the longer the affairs lasted, the more they were accepted by residents of the small Quebec villages in which the two couples lived. Although no one in southwestern Alberta tolerated the murder of John Benson by William Jasper Collins, he, like the Quebec lovers, would almost certainly have escaped the hangman had he only exercised a little discretion after the fact.
    William Jasper Collins: Too Much Money
    In the opening decade of the twentieth century few lawyers around Braymer, Missouri, prospered more than John Benson. Although over the years he acquired property, considerable wealth, and a young wife and child, he yearned for something more. What he wanted was the experience of homesteading on the Canadian prairies. Before that happened, however, he took on one more client, a teenager charged with sexually assaulting his sister. In the days Benson spent preparing for trial he got to know William Jasper Collins well, and for some reason grew attached to the young man. After he obtained an acquittal, Benson became Collins’s benefactor and employer. So it was that when the lawyer filed a homestead claim near the tiny Alberta community of Cereal, he brought Collins with him. Over the next eight months Benson sold his land holdings in Braymer, and on April 4, 1913, he and Collins set off for western Canada. Three weeks later they finished building a barn and a small house, and Benson wrote home, asking his wife to meet him in Saskatoon.
    Clara Benson left Missouri on May 3, and when she reached Saskatoon she checked into the King Edward Hotel. Almost immediately she was handed a pair of telegrams, informing her of the death of John Benson. She promptly left for Kindersley, Saskatchewan, to collect the body of her husband. There she saw Collins in a hotel hallway. She rushed to him. “Oh, Jasper, tell me how it all happened.” [1] And he did. Not for one moment did it occur to her that he was lying.
    Collins told her that he was about a mile from the house watering horses when he heard a loud sound, like a shot. He finished with the animals, and then headed back. He arrived to find the shack on fire, and promptly rushed to the nearest neighbour. By the time he got back to the small dwelling, it was completely destroyed. In the ruins he found what was left of Benson. It was his opinion, said Collins, that Benson must have tried to put gasoline in the oil stove, and thereby caused the explosion. [2]
    When she met Collins at Kindersley, Benson asked him if any money was found in the ruins of the burned shack. She thought it a little strange when he told her there was none, since her husband wore a money belt, and when he left Braymer it contained somewhere between $3,500 and $4,000. Thinking perhaps John might have deposited his savings in a bank, she asked Collins if he ever saw her husband put anything under his pillow at night — perhaps a bank book? He said he did not notice anything because Benson always slept with a coat over his head.
    After she met Collins, Clara Benson and the young man quickly left for Cereal, where she made inquiries into the circumstances surrounding the fire and death. She was told that both the police and the local coroner were notified in the aftermath of her husband’s death, and a wire was sent to Braymer, advising friends of the dead lawyer what happened. Because there was no reason to think anything was amiss, no inquest was held. The widow discovered nothing to make her suspect that what everyone was calling an accident was really a murder, so she and Collins headed back to Saskatoon. There she purchased a ticket home for herself and the body of her husband. When Collins told her he did not have enough money to buy one for himself, she bought his as well. As soon as she arrived