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home Benson made arrangements to have her husband buried, and did what she could to settle into the life of a single parent. It was not long, however, before she began hearing rumours that Collins was spending a lot of money.
    Although he was jobless and professed to have no money, Collins started making a number of unusually large purchases. To hide what he was doing, he made them in towns around Braymer, but he brought what he bought back on the train, and in no time what he tried to keep secret was common knowledge. When Clara heard the talk she contacted the Masons. Her husband had been a member of the local order, and his friends in the organization were alarmed enough at what they were told that they hired a Pinkerton detective to investigate. When they received his report, the Masons arranged to have Benson’s body exhumed. There was not a lot of it left. The registrar of deaths for Caldwell County, Missouri conducted the post mortem. He found that one of the dead man’s hands and one foot were completely gone, there was some but not much flesh left on his chest, and a large piece of his skull was missing. There was also evidence of a blood clot at the base of the brain and a hole through his heart. He concluded that the cause of death was a blow to the head with a blunt instrument, and that the heart was struck by a bullet fired after the victim was dead.
    With the autopsy report in hand the Masons contacted the Braymer police. They took Collins into custody and searched his room. There they found a money belt containing $1,800 in twenty dollar bills, a fortune for a young man with no income. Arrangements were made to place Collins in a cell in the nearest jail, just down the road in Kingston. Before Collins and his minders got there Collins told them he was prepared to make a deal: if he was taken back to Braymer, he would tell them everything. So they turned around, and within the hour Collins confessed to murder.
My name is William Jasper Collins and I live in Braymer, MO. I left the latter town with John Benson for the Canadian territory to take up a claim with him. Within a week after the completion of the house on the claim of John Benson, while in the house I struck him on the left side of the head with my fist, which knocked him down, and he then pulled a razor and I then drew a gun of .33-calibre and shot him. I then threw the gun away. After he had been dead an hour I poured oil about the house and set it afire. I took his money, which was under his pillow. There is some of the money in the lot taken by Constable Burnett that belongs to me which Benson paid me, but I owed him my expenses to Canada and while there. This sum is in the amount of about $200. This statement is made of my own free will and accord and without consideration of promises of any nature. [3]
    Once the confession was signed, Collins and his entourage were at once back on the highway to Kingston, and a few days later, to Calgary, Alberta. His trial got underway at a special sitting of the province’s superior court on November 27, 1913. Calgarians lined up hours before court opened, hoping to get a seat in the tiny courtroom. Despite the cool, late fall weather, the court was “crowded to suffocation.” [4] That was especially so when Collins was sentenced. Although he sat through much of his trial with his head down, arm hanging over a railing of the prisoner’s box, apparently little interested in what was going on, the accused killer paid rapt attention when the jury returned with its verdict. After the panel’s foreman announced that Collins was guilty of murdering John Benson, Collins seemed shocked. In fact, everyone in the courtroom sat in silence. The only outward sign that Collins understood the significance of what he just heard was a change in his complexion — his face turned white, and he began licking his lips.
    The trial judge was Horace Harvey, a Quaker from Ontario who three years earlier was appointed chief