After a seven year disappearance, the Torrey family of Somers, Wisconsin, want Benjamin B. Torrey declared legally dead. The request reopens the case of the missing young man.
Revives Old Case
An old Kenosha mystery is to be revived within a few days when the heirs of the late Roscoe Torrey, formerly well known in the town of Somers, will file an application with the county judge to have Benjamin B. Torrey, one of the heirs to the estate, declared “legally dead”. Benjamin B. Torrey has been missing from the county for many years and it was seven years ago that the last word was received from him. Perkins C. Torrey, the executor of the estate is planning to wind up his work and he will second the request to have the man declared, legally dead.
The disappearance of Ben Torrey has been one of the mysteries that caused no end of interest in this county. The young man was widely known in the town of Somers and in fact, in all parts of the county before he went west to take up the work of a buyer of timber lands. He had been successful in his business and when he was last heard of he was stopping at a little mountain inn in Montana.
The last word received from him more than seven years ago was a letter to his mother, now deceased. In the letter the missing man stated that he was going into the mountains on the following day to purchase timber lands. Nothing was ever heard from him after this time.
Letters sent to the inn where he was stopping were returned unopened and not withstanding the fact that his brother spent a great deal of time and money in attempting to find some trace of the missing man nothing was ever found. It is supposed that Torrey went out into the mountains and that he was either killed by the mountaineers, or that he fell in with a band of Indians who robbed and murdered him.
All effort to have the matter investigated by the Montana authorities failed to bring any satisfactory result. It is probable that the fate of Torrey will never be discovered.
As he was one of the six heirs of the estate he had quite a little property left to him, and this has been in the hands of the executor awaiting the discovery of some trace of the whereabouts of the missing man. The property that was left as his portion of the estate will be divided among the five other children of the father.
There are several similar cases of missing heirs in the business of the County Court, but this is the only case in which application is to be made to have the heir legally declared dead.
One of the famous cases was the heir to the portion of the estate of the late William Lynch. John Lynch has been missing from home for nearly twenty years, and it has been nearly fifteen years since he was heard from. A small amount of the large estate of William Lynch was left for the missing man and it is now in the hands of the executor of the estate. It is pretty certain that Lynch died years ago, but the members of the family have shown no desire to have the matter cleared up by erasing his name from the list of heirs under the will of his deceased father.
Source: The Telegraph-courier (Kenosha, Wis.), August 29, 1907.
