On the afternoon of July 7, 1914, Mrs. John W. Nelms of Atlanta, Georgia eagerly tore open the envelope bearing a San Francisco postmark. Although the handwriting on the envelope was unfamiliar, she presumed the letter was from her son Marshall, who’d recently moved to California for his health. It wasn’t. Instead, the typewritten note bore the signature of her daughter, Eloise Nelms Dennis, and its contents sent her scrambling for the police. Eloise claimed she’d killed her sister Beatrice, and that she was in San Francisco to kill Marshall, after which she would take her own life.
After insisting that Marshall be warned via telegram, Mrs. Nelms told the police everything she knew. Eloise had been divorced a year ago in Reno, and she suspected her daughter of being in love with her divorce attorney, Victor Innes, who’d visited her in Atlanta and professed to be unmarried. Eloise was the mother of a little boy, and both Eloise and Beatrice were active women. After her divorce Eloise had served as postmistress at East Point, Georgia, and Beatrice was a successful investor. The sisters had been en route to Houston to look into some potential land acquisitions that Beatrice thought might suit her growing real estate portfolio. Eloise had left Atlanta on June 10, and met up with Beatrice on June 13 in New Orleans. Mrs. Nelms had received a telegram on June 14, confirming their safe arrival in New Orleans, another a week later, signed “E and B” and advising her they were in Houston, and then one final dispatch on the June 28, to tell their mother that they were back in New Orleans, but planning on travelling further west, and asking her to send a skirt Beatrice particularly liked to the San Antonio post office, care of Margaret Mims. Mrs. Nelms knew little else.
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