Indian American Couple Originally From Kerala and 4-year-old Twin Boys Found Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide

An Indian American couple and their four-year-old twins were found dead at their$2.1 million home in San Mateo, California, in an apparent murder-suicide. Anand Sujith Henry, 37, reportedly shot his wife, Alice Benziger, 38, and their four-year-old twin boys — Noah and Neithan — before turning the gun on himself. 

The couple was found on Feb. 12 with gunshot wounds beside a 9mm pistol and a loaded magazine in the bathroom, according to San Mateo Police Department. The boys were found inside a bedroom. Police went to to the home after receiving an unspecified call from someone concerned about the family’s well-being and whereabouts, The Daily News reported. Officers told the publication that hey knocked on the door but no-one responded, so they entered via an unlocked window. 

According to the New Indian Express, the incident occurred a day after Benziger’s mother, who had been staying with the family, left for India on Feb. 11.

Henry, a former software engineer at Meta and Google, and Benziger, a data science manager at Zillow, had purchased their home for $2.1 million two years ago. Originally from, Kerala, they were living in the U.S. for the past nine years. They relocated to the Bay Area from New Jersey. Henry worked at Meta for a year and a half, after a nearly eight-year stint at Google’s office in Sunnyvale.

Neighbors told NBC Bay Area that the couple had lived in the home for more than four years and that they were friendly. They would often walk together in the neighborhood and seemed like a happy family, according to news reports. A neighbor said he would see the husband and the wife just taking a walk while she was pregnant. 

The couple had filed for a divorce in 2016, years before the twins were born. But it didn’t materialize, news reports said. 

After leaving his post at Meta this past June, Henry founded  his own AI company Logits, which specializes in providing enterprises with the means to privately train and serve Generative AI models for specific business needs. The company website is currently defunct. 

Before moving to their home in San Mateo, he family lived in at least four apartments across San Francisco. Authorities disclosed that they had responded to calls at the residence on multiple occasions since the family’s relocation, but the nature of those calls has not been revealed. No suicide note was found at the scene, adding to the mystery surrounding this incident.

According to the New Indian Express, Henry’s father, Dr G. Henry was the former principal of Fatima Mata National College in Kerala. Family members told the daily that both Henry and Benziger were alumni of TKM Engineering College, and both attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Both their LinkedIn pages show a year of higher education in Singapore. 

Benziger’s profile shows she studied Computational Finance at Nanyang Technological University Singapore, while Henry’s page just mentions the Singapore Management University, without mentioning the specific course he studied or the degree he received. Benziger also has a Master’s in data science at the University of San Francisco, her LinkedIn profile shows. She has worked at Dictionary.com, and Change.org, before assuming her senior role at Zillow six years ago.

Earlier this month, an Indian American family of three were found dead inside their home in Dover, Massachusetts. Rakesh Kamal, 57, shot dead his 54-year-old wife, Teena, and 18-year-old daughter Arianna before turning the gun on himself inside their $5 million mansion, in the affluent town located about 15 miles outside of Boston.

Before that in October 2023, four members of an Indian American family, including two young children, were found dead in their home in Plainsboro, New Jersey. Tej Pratap Singh, 43, killed his wife, Sonal Parihar, 42, and their two children — a 10-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl — before killing himself. 

(Photos, Anand Sujith Henry and Alice Benziger Facebook accounts)