Thank you for retyping this document. After reading it, I have some questions on matters that affect its credibility.
What was the original language - Polish?
What is the language of the document?
Who is the author of "Letter to Christians"?
Is it Mr. Stanley or someone else?
Who is Mr. Stanley?
If it is not Stanley who wrote the letter, how did the writer get to possess Stanley's letter?
Who were Stanley's parents?
What was the direct connection of his parents to Russell, such that they would have had access to the information about attempts to poison him?
The letter mentions three attempts at poisoning Russell. How would his parents have known about each of these attempts?
If these attempts were public knowledge among the brethren at the time, why is that there is no record shortly after his death of any suspicion that he might have been murdered?
If the attempts were not public knowledge, how were Stanley's parents privy to such knowledge?
The letter mentions attempts on Russell's life in 1907, 1910, and 1911. Were these attempts by poisoning, or some other method?
The July 1916 Watch Tower does mention a convention that month in Newport, R.I.
Menta Sturgeon does mention a public meeting in Fall River the day before Russell's last trip.
The letter lists the destinations of the train. The towns are mentioned by Menta Sturgeon, except for San Diego, which was mentioned in the Watchtower. The letter does not mention the towns intended for visiting between Los Angeles and Brooklyn - Topeka, Tulsa, and Lincoln.
The crucial incident in the letter is when the author claimed the final poisoning occurred. Yet here the letter is not certain whether it occurred in Dallas or Galveston. Menta Sturgeon stated that the meal was at the Hotel Galvez, but does not mention the city. Sturgeon said that there nine brethren there. The author of this letter could have gotten this information from Sturgeon's account.
How does the author know that Russell was poisoned there? Were his parents part of the nine brethren that poisoned him? Were they part of the plot? What evidence is there?
The author does not know the identity of the murderer(s).
Yet if the author does not know their identity, how does he know that "they plotted against him" and "organized a plot", and "persuaded him to take a trip"?
The letter stated that "The official doctor in Penhadle issued the certificate of death." Menta Sturgeon's account does not state this doctor issued the death certificate, but a reader might infer it from the account. "Penhadle" should be spelled "Penhandle." There are other spelling errors, and I don't know whether they were in the original letter or not. The letter lists possible murder suspects. There are two names that should not have even made the list: Morton and John Edgar. They did not even live in the United States, and John Edgar had been dead for several years.
My take on this: there might have been a rumor of poisoning that Stanley's parents had heard many years ago, and retold it to Stanley. Could it be that his parents had heard that Russell suffered at times from "food poisoning"? Russell suffered from indigestion constantly. This rumor could have been aided by all the secret political maneuvering that occurred short after Russell's death. Stanley then could have added the facts mentioned in Sturgeon's account of Russell's last days, and gotten a list of brethren at that time.
I do not find any evidence of poisoning.
I would be interested in seeing the rest of this letter about the divorce. Perhaps there is information that would show that the author or parents had intimate knowledge of the Russells.
Steve