Henry Debosnys

Henry Delactnack Debosnys (c. 1836 – April 27, 1883) was a man who was hanged for murder of his third wife, Elizabeth Wells. His true background remains unknown. Debosnys had two previous wives who died under suspicious circumstances. During his incarceration in the Adirondack Mountains, he wrote poems, prose, and cryptograms in different languages. He left behind enciphered documents that have never been decrypted.

Identity Henry Debosnys was a mysterious figure whose true identity remains obscure. According to his autobiography, he was born in Lisbon, Portugal.

He divulged various details of his life story in different interviews and writings, but their veracity is doubtful. He made extravagant claims, such as participating in the North Pole Expedition under McClure from February 1848 to October 1850, and volunteering for several wars, such as the Crimean War, the Italian War of 1859 and the Franco-Prussian War. He had sold his body in advance to a local doctor for $15 and it was found to be covered in tattoos which were never specifically described. His skull and the noose he was hanged with are on display in the Adirondack History Center Museum in Elizabethtown, New York.

Debosnys' ciphers

Debosnys left enciphered documents, that have never been decrypted, using a cryptographic script (or scripts) and/or pictograms. Henry entrusted most of his works to a female visitor during his incarceration. Her granddaughter later donated them to the Adirondack History Museum in Elizabethtown, where they are still preserved. Additional materials from other sources were acquired by the same museum as recently as 1991.

Among his manuscripts, one stands out as it is an encrypted poem. Every pair of lines ends with a same symbol (which is expected in a simple poem), suggesting a substitution cipher with polygraphic elements. Debosnys claimed that his cipher was widely used in Europe, and some resemblances have been noted between his writings and masonic ciphers, such as the Copiale cipher and the Folger Manuscript. On the reverse side of the paper containing the poem, a Greek translation is provided. However, the original language of the ciphertext is uncertain, as it could be English, French, Latin, Spanish, or Portuguese, all of which Debosnys was fluent in.