Henry Delactnack Debosnys (c. 1836 – April 27, 1883) was a man who was hanged for murder of his third wife, Elizabeth Wells.

During his stay in Essex, he was regarded as a vagabond who idled around the area until compelled by hunger to undertake manual labor.

She was a local widow with four daughters who owned a small farm in Essex, New York which she had inherited from her first husband, along with a sum of money.

Betsy was eventually discovered murdered, with two bullet wounds in her skull and a deep cut across her neck.

[5] He was arrested August 1, 1882 in Essex, New York after local farmers had seen him acting suspiciously in the woods and returned to the location later and found the body of Betsy Wells.

[5] His trial began on March 6, 1883, took two days and the jury deliberated for eight minutes before returning a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree.

His skull and the noose he was hanged with are on display in the Adirondack History Center Museum in Elizabethtown, New York.

Every pair of lines ends with a same symbol (which is expected in a simple poem), suggesting a substitution cipher with polygraphic elements.

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.