San Mateo police ID parents, twins in suspected murder-suicide at home

The San Mateo County coroner’s office has released the identities of the victims of a suspected murder-suicide in a quiet San Mateo neighborhood this week.

The family members found dead in their home were Anand Henry, 37, his wife Alice Benziger, 38, and their 4-year-old twin sons, Noah and Nathan, spokespersons said. The family moved into the home in 2020, according to public records.

Police were dispatched to the home at 4100 Alameda de las Pulgas on Monday morning after receiving a welfare check request, a spokesperson said. Police did not say who requested the welfare check.

Officers entered the home through an unlocked window and found the bodies. They found no sign of forced entry.

Investigators found the man and woman deceased in the bathroom, both from gunshot wounds. The twins were found in a bedroom. Their cause of death remained under investigation Thursday.

Police investigators also found a 9mm pistol and a loaded magazine in the bathroom. Officials told neighbors that there was no danger to the public, as they were confident that the person responsible was located within the home.

According to LinkedIn, Benziger worked for Zillow as a data science manager. The company did not respond to a request for comment. Henry, an engineer who had worked for Meta and Google, most recently cofounded an artificial intelligence company called Logits.

Joyce Millman, a former San Mateo resident who sold the home to the couple in 2020, said she never met the pair in person but remembered their offer letter, which detailed that they had been in a relationship for a long time and were new parents to twin boys. The letter included pictures of the twins, then less than a year old.

In the months after the pair moved in, Benziger sent a number of concerned emails to Millman that mostly had to do with safety, Millman recalled. One of the first things the pair did was upgrade the security system and install a backyard camera, Millman said.

Benziger seemed especially frightened by the presence of mountain lions after one was caught on their camera. Mountain lions do, on rare occasions, visit parts of San Mateo, including around the Sugarloaf neighborhood where the couple was living, Millman said.

But the emails kept coming even months after they moved in, Millman said, noting that Benziger seemed unduly nervous about the threat of someone breaking in, particularly for how safe the neighborhood was.

“The irony of it now just breaks my heart,” said Millman. “She was so focused on the dangers outside.”

Millman, who now lives in Seattle, said the first reports she read about the case didn’t note the block, or address — only the Sugarloaf neighborhood. But for some inexplicable reason, she said, she had a feeling that it was them.

“I got a bad feeling, and I don’t know why,” she said. “Maybe it’s from the exchanges I had with her, and the extreme focus that she had … but something was off.”