Throughout the day and night, she paced the eight by eight cell, one hand wrapped around the other. The sweat rolled off her palms. Her feet and mind went over the same ground again and again. “If only I hadn’t done this, or if only I was more careful,” she thought, torturing herself with what could have been. Several times, she collapsed upon her creaking bed, exhausted, her nerves shattered, nodding off for a few seconds here, a few minutes there, until she abruptly jumped to her feet once again, convinced it was a nightmare, some distant dream of horror whose origins surely must be in hell. She may have gazed out of her window, a 12″ by 12″ concrete opening framed by thick, steel bars, to stare at the rolling waves of the Hudson, watch sailboats drifting down the river or linger over a solitary fishing boat anchored off shore to catch the morning run of striped bass. Too soon, there was a rude tapping on her cell door.

The metal gate swung open and ice ran through her veins when she saw them. Into the cramped cell, four large, serious looking men entered and went about their business in a cold, deliberate manner. “Good evening Ruth,” one of them said without emotion. They shaved the back of her head, arms and upper legs. They groped, probed and examined her young body as if she were a piece of meat. She stared at her trembling hands and it was all she could do not to urinate on herself. Her heart was pounding so loud, she was convinced that it could easily be heard by anyone standing near her. “I am ready to die,” she said, “oh, my poor baby, Lorraine!”

From some faraway place, she heard the solemn prayers of Father George Murphy in the hallway, his voice bouncing off the cold, metal walls. “Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me…” the priest said. Within a few moments, she began the brief journey through the steel corridors toward the death chamber. “The Last Mile” they called it, but actually only 200 feet long. The young, stern guards offered their muscled arms for support as she dragged herself down the hallway to the barren room where she would die. She sat in the chair as the matrons fumbled with the straps. They placed a strange leather helmet on her head and then secured her firmly to the rough, wooden frame. Tears poured down her face but oddly, she didn’t imagine herself crying. She wore no underwear, just a brown, formless gown, at least two sizes too big, carelessly thrown over her body by the prison staff the night before. She stared out into the spectator gallery and saw the frightened faces of a familiar few. Suddenly, a lever was pulled outside the chamber that sent over 2,000 volts of electricity into her body, courtesy of Thomas Edison’s ingenuity decades before. And then, there was darkness.

After a short pause, a second jolt was sent coursing through the woman’s lifeless body, causing it to violently stiffen for a moment and then become flaccid. Within 30 seconds, she was dead, a smoking mass of flesh and bone that could not be moved until it cooled down. Electrocution raises the temperature of the body to around 150 degrees, too hot to touch. A doctor stepped forward from the dozens of spectators, listened briefly through a stethoscope and said “she’s gone.” The executioner, Robert G. Elliott, grandfather of three, who recorded in his own diary details of the almost 400 executions he administered, prepared for his next victim. A few yards away and out of sight, a broken and terrified man, Henry Judd Gray, waited his turn to die. Ruth’s body was hoisted onto an autopsy table a few feet away and wheeled into a room where a post mortem could start immediately. And so ended the brief and tumultuous life of Ruth Snyder, 33, wife, mother and girlfriend, convicted of murdering her husband in 1927.

An aerial view of Sing Sing prison in 1928
(CORBIS)

Six hundred and fourteen eventually died in that same room. This was Sing Sing prison, situated on the banks of the majestic Hudson River, just 30 miles north of New York City. It was one of the most prolific and feared death chambers in America, and not without cause. The state that executed the most prisoners during this era was not Texas, nor Georgia, as is commonly believed. New York performed the majority of executions in America up to 1950 and as such, was the epicenter of the death penalty in the Western world. And, up until 1972, when the Furman v. Georgia decision brought a temporary halt to executions nationwide, Sing Sing prison was responsible for nearly a third of all the women executed in the United States.

This is their story.

In 1915, Ruth Brown, 20, was employed as a secretary for Motor Boating magazine in Manhattan. Throughout her teen years, Ruth had visions of marrying money. More than anything, she wanted a wealthy businessman for a husband so she could retire to a big mansion in Long Island and bond with the idle rich. Since the only thing Ruth had going for her was her fine looks, she played up to men whenever she could. Ruth was a curvy, good-looking blonde with blue eyes and tough demeanor. Years later, after her death, she became the model for the “femme fatale” character in James M. Cain’s novel Double Indemnity.

Ruth Snyder (CORBIS)

Eager to make her dreams happen, Ruth courted and eventually married the editor of Motor Boating magazine, Albert Snyder, in 1915. Although they soon had a daughter, Lorraine, in 1918, the couple did not get along well. Albert still carried a torch for an old girlfriend who passed away and Ruth carried a torch for another kind of life. She loved traveling in the fast lane. She liked dancing; drinking and listening to the latest music that was sweeping the country, jazz. Albert was the opposite of Ruth, stoic, formal, reserved, while she was outgoing, gregarious and friendly. Often, Albert would simply stay at home taking care of Lorraine while Ruth updated her image and did the night scene in the bars of Manhattan. This arrangement continued until the summer of 1925 when she met a susceptible corset salesman named Henry Judd Gray.

Ruth and Judd Gray, 33, became a familiar sight in the local dance joints around town. But soon Ruth complained to Judd that her husband was cramping her style and she might be better off without him. Besides, she told Judd, Albert had lots of insurance. During 1926, Ruth made several attempts on Albert’s life at their home in Queens Village, according to Judd’s testimony at a later trial. But by March 20, 1927, Ruth had enough.

That night, she and Albert went to a party in Manhattan and returned to their home in the early morning hours. At about 7 a.m., Lorraine awakened and found her mother tied up on the floor and her father unconscious in his bed. The little girl ran to a neighbor, who later summoned the police. Albert was dead, his head smashed in by an unknown object. His hands were tied together and so were his feet. There was a length of wire wrapped tightly around his neck. When the neighbors tried to untie Ruth, she insisted on remaining tied up until the police responded. Ruth then told the police that soon after she and Albert arrived home, an “Italian looking man” entered the house and bashed her over the head, knocking her out. When she woke up much later, it was all she could do to make it over to Lorraine’s room and call out for help. She also told the police that her jewelry was missing. But Lorraine blurted out to the police that “Uncle Judd” was in the house the night before. When a search was made through the home, police discovered a bloody metal sash in the closet. Her jewels, which she reported stolen, were also found hidden in the mattress.

She was questioned throughout the day into the night. Then one of the detectives mentioned her boyfriend.

 “What about Judd Gray?” he said.

“Has he confessed?” Ruth asked. It was the beginning of the end. Soon she blurted out the whole plot. Albert was killed for the insurance money that totaled over $100,000, an enormous sum in 1927. But Ruth denied any hand in the actual murder. She said that Judd Gray killed him while she waited in the other room.

Cops soon located Gray hiding out in a flophouse in upstate Syracuse, New York. At first he denied any involvement. “It is ridiculous,” he said. But when he heard that Ruth blamed him for the murder, he caved in. He promptly confessed and said Ruth seduced him with her charms and egged him on to murder. He also said that she was the one who actually strangled Albert with the wire while he only held him down on the bed.

In New York City, the local newspapers, The Daily News, The Tribune, The Daily Mirror and others soon published graphic accounts of the Ruth-Gray murder plot along with plenty of photos to tell the whole sexy story. The public was fascinated with the secretary who married the boss, became a frustrated wife, who turned into a fun-loving party girl, who met a corset salesman from New Jersey who she seduced and convinced to murder her husband for cash. The lovers had secret codes for each other and big plans to spend the insurance money afterwards. Ruth frequently met Judd at the Waldorf where they rented a room for afternoon sex while her daughter Lorraine played in the lobby or on the hotel’s elevator. It was all too much for the public and they ate up every morsel. The trial, held during the spring of 1927, was a media sensation. Every day brought new revelations of the frantic life and love of a real “femme fatale” who would stop at nothing to get what she wanted, including murder. Hollywood celebrities and many politicians appeared daily at her trial. Hundreds of photos were taken of Ruth and published in the New York tabloids that competed viciously with each other for every scrap of information.

On May 9, 1927, Ruth Brown-Snyder and Henry Judd Gray were convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Over 1,500 people applied to witness her execution. At Sing Sing, executioner Robert G. Elliot, a distinguished looking gentleman who had been on the job for only a year, was upset. He had never executed a female before, but he realized the significance of the event. A few days before, he told the press, “It will be something new for me to throw the switch on a woman, and I don’t like the job” (Mustain). He went to Warden Lewis E. Lawes and demanded more money for the extra stress involved. His request was turned down. Ironically, both Elliot and Lawes were against the death penalty and spoke out against it many times during their careers. Of the Snyder execution, Elliot said, “I hope this thing ends capital punishment in New York State” (Dolan).

For months, Snyder’s lawyers appealed the verdict and fought as best they could to save their client from the death house. The press continued to report daily on her fate and still the public clamored for more. Ruth received 164 marriage proposals from her fans while she sat on Death Row. Her attorney, Edgar F. Hazelton, told reporters: “She cries continuously and bitterly in the last minute cell. She has made her peace with God and is reconciled to her fate” (Dolan). On January 12, 1928, Ruth Snyder became the first woman to die in the electric chair at Sing Sing prison in the 20th century. Just before she died, Ruth whispered these words: “Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do!” Not ten minutes later, Judd Gray met death in the same chair. Elliot described Gray in his journal in these words: “He walked to the chair unassisted and made no statement. He had taken to reading the Bible and seemed anxious to have the ordeal ended.” Elliot also remarked on the tension surrounding the execution of Snyder and Gray. “This was a very exciting night, second only to the Sacco Vanzetti night …,” he wrote under the H.J. Gray entry.

Witnesses after last respects paid to
Ruth Snyder

In the crowd of spectators, a young reporter from New York City’s Daily News was one of the official witnesses. At the moment the electric current was dispatched into Ruth’s body, he reached down and pressed the button on a camera that he had strapped to his leg hours before. The resulting photograph of Ruth strapped firmly into the chair with a mask over her head, which appeared full page on the next day’s New York Daily News, became one of the most famous in the annals of photojournalism.

It could be said that up until 1935, Eva Coo was a survivor. She worked through the Great Depression, managed to buy property, ran a successful business (even if it was a brothel), fed herself and a large staff, and even paid for her employee’s insurance policies. Of course, it was later determined that her motives for paying those premiums were other than charity. She was born Eva Currie in Haliburton, Ontario in 1894. While she was still in her teens, she moved to Toronto where she met a rail worker named William Coo. They ran away together to Canada’s western frontier and got married. The marriage lasted only a few years and Eva Coo migrated to upstate New York in 1921.

As a result of Prohibition Age, which began with the Volstead Act at precisely midnight January 16, 1920, “speak easys” began to appear all over America. Eva opened her own bar in Oneonta, a small city midway between Albany and Binghamton in Otsego County, New York. During that era, Oneonta was a bustling railroad town through which many transients passed every day to points east and west. Eva’s clientele consisted of truck drivers, railroad employees, college students and construction workers. Eva’s Place, as it was called, was a popular stopover known throughout the region. Eva herself was a boisterous, outgoing woman with a quick sense of humor who could always be counted on for a good time. She was 5′ 7″ and weighed a muscular 170 pounds. Everyone knew Eva and she knew everyone else, including politicians and police.

Eva employed a staff that consisted of several local people who worked as bartenders and kept the bar, called Little Eva’s Place, stocked with booze and supplies. One of the employees, Harry “Gimpy” Wright, 52, was a farmer whose mother had passed away in 1931. He was unable to care for himself and came to live with Eva that summer in exchange for $2,000 of his mother’s inheritance money. Harry often drank at the bar to excess and took to walking down the highway, Route 7, in an inebriated state, sometimes falling alongside the road where he had to be rescued by other patrons.

In 1933, a girl named Martha Clift, originally from Pennsylvania, went to work at Little Eva’s Place. She became a familiar sight at the bar and people noticed that she also became very friendly with Eva Coo. During the following summer, in June, 1934, Eva reported to the police that “Gimpy” was missing. He had wandered out of the bar after a bout with the bottle and hadn’t been seen or heard from since.

The police conducted a search and quickly found the body of Harry Wright, smashed up in a bad way, laying in a roadside ditch off Route 7. He was less than a half-mile from Eva’s place and it was immediately surmised that he was struck and killed by a hit and run driver who didn’t see the unlucky victim until it was too late. A local coroner examined the remains and ruled that Wright was probably killed by a hit and run driver while strolling drunk along Route 7, something that he was known to do in the past. His body was dispatched over to a local funeral parlor and prepared for burial.

In the meantime, Eva, not known for her intelligence, showed up at a Met Life Insurance Company office in Oneonta with an insurance policy on “Gimpy’s” life. The beneficiary named in the policy was Eva Coo. The claim was processed but the insurance company became suspicious and took their suspicions to the police. An autopsy was conducted on Wright and the coroner ruled the death suspicious. It was later discovered that on the night of Wright’s death, Coo and Clift were reported to be trespassing on an old farm near Crumhorn Mountain. That was enough for the sheriff’s office. Both women were arrested. While they were held at the local jail, sheriff’s deputies went to Eva’s home and, without a warrant, broke in and searched the place. Officers found dozens of insurance polices on Eva’s friends, acquaintances and employees, all naming her as the beneficiary. When confronted with the evidence, both women soon confessed. Coo said they took Wright to an old farmhouse near Crumhorn Mountain outside Oneonta and smashed his head in with a hammer. They ran over his body using a friend’s car and then threw Wright into a highway ditch where he was found. However, each woman named the other as the one who actually did the killing and would not relent.

The sheriff then took Eva and Martha to Crumhorn Mountain to clarify their statements and it was there that one of the most grotesque interrogations in the history of criminal justice began. The Sheriff exhumed the body of Harry Wright and brought it to the site where he removed it from the coffin. For the next few hours, while the women argued back and forth about who did what to whom, sheriff’s deputies carted around Wright’s corpse, placing it in various spots in front of the terrified suspects who nearly collapsed from the stench and the summer heat.

In August, 1934, the trial began in the baseball town of Cooperstown, New York. It attracted the usual media gang and entrepreneurs who sold souvenirs and memorabilia outside the county courthouse. Incredibly, Wright’s body was again exhumed during proceedings so police could check on his wounds. The trial lasted almost three weeks and quickly turned into a circus. But in the end, it took just one hour for the jury to bring in a verdict. Eva Coo was found guilty of Murder 1st degree and sentenced to death at Sing Sing. Martha Clift was found guilty of Murder 2nd degree and sentenced to 20 years.

That same day, outside the Otsego County Courthouse, a caravan of cars carrying Eva Coo, Martha Clift and a platoon of police and state troopers left for Sing Sing, about 90 miles south. Later, at the doors to the prison, the two women were allowed to say goodbye to each other. Martha was then taken to Bedford Reformatory, about thirty miles away, where she would serve out her sentence. Meanwhile, at Sing Sing, Eva was processed in the front office. After being issued a prison uniform, Eva was ushered into the same cell where Anna Antonio had spent her last days, and before her, Ruth Snyder. Eva asked the guards about Sing Sing. The matrons said it was a fair place and the warden was a fine man.

One matron said, “Do you know what they did for Mrs. Antonio?”

“Yeah,” said Eva, “burned her!” (Eggleston, p. 93). During her time on Death Row, few people visited her. Since her conviction, Eva fell out of favor with her old friends from Oneonta. Gone were the politicians, business people, judges and cops that once frequented her place. “I don’t know why my friends can’t get in to see me at Sing Sing,” she said, “I had no problem getting in!”

On June 27, 1935, after half-hearted appeals were filed by her attorneys, who often fought with each other and tried to make money from her story, Eva Coo ate her last meal. A last-second request was made to Governor Herbert Lehman to spare her life, but he refused. At 11:00 p.m. that night, she was brought into the death chamber. Two matrons, one on each side of Eva, escorted her to the chair. Her posture was erect and her shoulders pushed back. She appeared resigned but with a trace of the old bravado. She sat unassisted, her white hands gripping the ends of the chair.

“Goodbye, darlings!” she said to the matrons. Several minutes later she was dead, the 3rd woman to die at Sing Sing in the 20th century. In his journal, executioner Robert G. Elliot wrote a simple notation: “New York June 27-1935-11 P.M. 9 Amp. Eva Coo #89508-42 years” (Elliot, p. 279).

There were many people though, who were upset at the way her defense was handled. Eva’s journey through the criminal justice system was not one to be proud of according to some. Warden Lewis E. Lawes, always outspoken on death penalty issues, later said this to the press: “I don’t know if she was innocent or guilty. But I do know that she got a rotten deal all around, rotten…And I’m not defending her-she may be guilty as well, but she got a raw deal. Her trial attorneys-do you know what they did to help her lately? Know what? One of them wrote to me, saying he’d like four invitations to her execution. That’s the kind of defense she had” (Nash, 1981, p. 96).

In Haliburton, Ontario, Eva’s hometown, when her sister, Mrs. William Baker, was asked for a reaction to the execution, she told reporters that Eva “has been dead to her family for seventeen years” (New York Times, June 28, 1935). After her execution, Eva’s body was not claimed. Accordingly, she was buried in a potter’s field whose exact location is unknown and her grave has never been found.

Mary Creighton (AP)

This is a sordid story of child sex abuse, money, parental neglect and a disturbed woman who may have killed three people, including her own brother. Mary Frances Avery was born in New Jersey in 1898. She married John Creighton and had a daughter, Ruth. In 1923, Mary and John were arrested for the death of her brother, Raymond Avery, who was poisoned by a lethal dose of arsenic. Mary Frances was named as the beneficiary in his insurance policy and also inherited her brother’s trust fund. She was acquitted after a trial in Newark, New Jersey that same year. Within days after the verdict, Frances was arrested for the murder of her father-in-law. Again, after a trial, she was found not guilty. Perhaps seeing a limited future in New Jersey, Mary Frances quickly moved to Long Island, New York.

Everett Appelgate
(CORBIS)

In the small town of Baldwin, the Creightons became friends with a couple named Everett, 37 and Ada Appelgate, 34 who lived in the house next door. Everett was an investigator with the Unemployment Bureau but made little money. This was the 1930s, the height of the Great Depression in America, when money was scarce and jobs were hard to come by. In order to save money, the Appelgates moved in with the Creightons. Mary’s daughter, Ruth, now 14, and the Appelgate’s daughter, Agnes, 12, had to sleep wherever they could in the cramped house. For a time, they chose the attic, which was cold and filthy. Within a few weeks however, Ruth found her way into Everett and Ada’s bed. And soon, Everett began having sex with Ruth. But that wasn’t enough. Mary Frances joined in the arrangement; although she later claimed that she was unaware her daughter had a sexual relationship with Everett. Mary Frances also later testified she knew that Agnes, Everett’s own daughter, and Ruth were in Everett’s bed during the same night. For her own role, Mary claimed that Everett forced her into sex by threatening to reveal her murderous background to everyone.

In September, 1936, Ada Appelgate complained of being sick. She was taken to the local hospital where she was examined and sent home. Several days later, Ada died at home of unknown causes. It was suspected that it could have been pneumonia. However, tendencies of Mary’s relatives to die suddenly and without explanation reached the offices of Nassau County’s District Attorney’s office and an investigation was begun. An autopsy of Ada Appelgate showed a massive dose of arsenic, a substance that was often used in poisoning deaths in the late 19th and early 20th century.

The ubiquitous use of arsenic in murder cases has always mystified criminologists for several reasons. Arsenic has many problems associated with its use as a means of death. The foremost problem is that arsenic is easily detected at post mortem examinations, even in minute quantities. Although the human body maintains a natural level of arsenic, and this fact has been utilized as a trial defense, it is a simple procedure to measure these levels to refute that claim. It is also difficult to measure exactly how much of the drug to use since people have a different tolerance to arsenic, thereby forcing the killer to use a large amount and virtually assuring its detection later on (Smyth, p. 212). Since a large amount can be instantly discerned by the victim, the killer often resorts to chronic poisoning: using many doses of small amounts over a period of time. In almost all arsenic poisoning cases, the events follow a similar predictable pattern: sudden, unexplained death, suspicion, examination of the body, discovery of arsenic and arrest of friend or family member. This is exactly what happened in the Creighton case.

On January 12, 1936, Mary Frances Creighton and Everett Appelgate went on trial for their lives in Nassau County Criminal Court. Dr. Alexander O. Gettler, a toxicologist for the Medical Examiner’s Office for the City of New York testified that he found traces of arsenic in Ada Appelgate’s body which led him to believe that her corpse contained 11 grains of the substance. It was generally agreed that 3 grains could be considered a lethal dose (New York Times, January 18, 1936). John Creighton also took the stand and claimed no knowledge of almost anything. He said he didn’t know that his daughter and wife were having sex with Everett, he didn’t know that Ada died from arsenic and he didn’t believe his wife had anything to do with the murder. Dr. Richard H. Hoffman, a prominent New York psychiatrist testified that Mary Frances was legally sane at the time of the event. But the highlight of the trial came when Mary Frances took the stand in her own defense and instead, gave the court a performance that doomed her to the electric chair.

On January 22, she marched to the witness stand confidant of her own innocence. At first she said that she had nothing to do with Ada’s death. She told the jury that Everett put some sort of white powder in Ada’s eggnog just before her death and this happened several times. Careful not to mention Mary Frances’ prior murder trials, District Attorney Elvin Edwards pressed on. He brought up Mary’s previous statements, which were inconsistent with her testimony and said the motive for the murder was insurance money and Everett’s sexual desire for Mary’s teenage daughter. When asked if she took a glass of milk that contained arsenic to Ada, Mary Frances admitted what she had done.

“Yes, I did. Appelgate told me,” she answered.

“Knowing this, you took it to her to drink?”

“Yes” she replied.

“You stood by and watched this woman, who was your best friend, die?” the D.A. asked.

“Yes,” Mary Frances said (Times, January 24, 1936, p. 1). That was enough for the jury. Although Everett Appelgate also took the stand, his testimony was no better, admitting to the sexual relationship with Mary’s 14-year-old daughter but denying almost everything else, including a trip to a drug store where he and Mary Frances bought rat poison.

At 12:47 a.m., on January 25, 1936, a jury found Mary Frances and Everett guilty of 1st Degree Murder. A sentence of death was mandatory. Mary Frances began crying immediately, while Everett remained stoic. At sentencing, Everett Appelgate asked to make a statement. He told the court “I knew nothing and had nothing to do with the administration of arsenic poisoning, and in addition to that I have never at any time had misconduct of any character with Mrs. Creighton” (Times, January 31, 1936). Within an hour, they were on their way to Sing Sing prison and a date with death.

Everett Appelgate in jail
(CORBIS)

Over the next few months, appeals were filed on her behalf, but all failed. A date of July 16 was set for the executions. As the date approached, Mary Frances became seriously ill. She collapsed several times and her legs appeared paralyzed. She could not eat and lost a great deal of weight. A commission of five doctors was appointed to investigate her medical condition. The day before the sentence was to be carried out, the commission reported that Mary Frances was suffering from hysteria as a result of her impending death. “We find no evidence of organic disease of the central nervous system or the body as a whole” the head of the medical team reported (Times, January 15, 1936). In other words, Mary Frances was healthy enough to be executed.

On July 16, 1936 in the evening hours, Warden Lawes permitted their respective families to say goodbye to Mary and Everett. Appelgate’s father and step-mother came to visit and he was able to have a brief meeting with his son. “I said ‘Goodbye, Ev’ and he said ‘Goodbye, Pop’. That was all,” the older Appelgate related to reporters (Duncan, p. 5). John Creighton visited Mary and was allowed to embrace her and kiss her for the last time. He was never sure that Mary had killed his own mother. John broke down and wept openly. As he left, he threatened to shoot any reporter who asked him a question. In the waiting room, as reporters assembled to enter the witness room, Agnes Appelgate, 13, and Ruth Creighton, 15, the object of Everett’s sexual desires, munched on hamburgers.

At 11:00 p.m., Mary Frances Creighton, 38, was wheeled into the execution chamber at Sing Sing prison. She was wearing a pink nightgown and a black satin kimono. The back of her head was partially shaved where the electrodes were to be attached. For weeks, Mary Frances had told doctors that she was paralyzed from the waist down and could not walk. It was reported that she was actually in a coma, induced by hypodermic injection of morphine (Duncan, p. 2). She made no sounds, nor did she utter any last words. No one will ever know for sure if she was aware of the execution. Her hands were wrapped by a set of rosary beads that were given to her by the prison staff. Outside the room, professional executioner Robert G. Elliott, prepared to kill his third female. At 11:04 p.m., the deadly current was sent through her body and within moments, she was dead. With the odor of burning flesh still hanging in the air, Appelgate entered the chamber. Before he met his own death, he had this to say: “Before God, gentlemen, I’m absolutely innocent of this crime and I hope the good God will have mercy on the soul of Martin W. Littleton” (New York Daily News, July 17, 1936).

The day before she died, Mary Frances converted to the Catholic religion and was baptized by the Prison Chaplain, Father McCaffrey. She was asked if she wanted to say anything to the public. She wiped the tears from her eyes and spoke these words: “I have done many wrong things but I know God will forgive me. I was a good wife and mother and whatever I did I did for him and the children. I hope they will have a better life than I did!” (Daily News, July 17, 1936).

Helen Ray Fowler

Helen Ray Fowler was an historic figure. But it’s the kind of notoriety no one would want. She was the only black female executed in the State of New York during the 20th century. Helen was the mother of five children and lived in the village of Niagara Falls in upstate New York. She ran a boarding house, in addition to caring for her children, to make ends meet. Helen was a large woman, 5’7″ and 227 lbs. according to her prison records. During the summer of 1943, she took in a boarder named George Knight at her home on Memorial Parkway.

Knight, 27, was a drinker and often drank too much. At times, he became violent and had been arrested before by local police. On the night of October 30, 1943, George Knight and another woman were drinking in a local tavern in Niagara Falls. At the same time, Helen Fowler walked in the bar unexpectedly and saw them together. Words were exchanged by the three and soon, fists were flying. The fight spilled out into the street along with some of the other customers. Also drinking in the same bar was a gas station owner from nearby Ransomville named George William Fowler, 63, a white man and no relation to Helen. He watched the brawl and later decided to follow Helen home. When she arrived at her home on Memorial Parkway, William went inside with her, perhaps to make romantic advances. Another fight soon developed which ended with William on the floor. In the meantime, George Knight arrived and immediately broke a large vase over William’s head. He suffered a severely fractured skull and died on the floor of Helen’s home. George and Helen dumped the body in a trunk. Correctly surmising that a dead body in the house would tend to implicate them in the crime, Knight and Fowler placed the trunk in a car and drove it down to the North Grand Island Bridge, which spans the upper Niagara River. There, under cover of nightfall and within sight of Canada to the west, they dumped the trunk into the river. When the body washed up on shore, the crime shocked the residents of Ransomville who were unaccustomed to murder. After a brief investigation, police arrested the suspects.

During an interrogation by the local sheriff’s office, both Knight and Fowler admitted to the crime. Their trial was held during the week of February 12, 1944 at the Niagara County Court in Lockport, about 20 miles east of Niagara Falls. In the middle of deliberations, the jury asked for clarification on one issue. They wanted to know if a person who didn’t actually kill anyone could be found guilty of murder. Judge William Munson assured them that two persons could be found guilty of the same murder even if only one of them actually committed the offense. It was called “felony murder” under the Penal Law of the State of New York. After a five-day trial, during which there were no defense witnesses called to the stand, both were found guilty of 1st Degree Murder. Helen, who had cried throughout the trial, burst into hysterics when she heard the verdict. Knight remained passive in his seat as he had for the entire proceedings. It was the first murder trial in the county since 1938. Ironically, it was also the very first time that women had been allowed to serve as jurors in Niagara County.

On February 19, 1944, in the same county courtroom, Judge Munson sentenced both defendants to death in the electric chair at Sing Sing. Helen sobbed loudly from behind the defense table as the sentence was read. Her attorneys requested a new trial, which was immediately denied by the Judge. The prisoners were taken back to the Niagara County jail to await transfer to Ossining. On February 21, Fowler and Knight were taken by train to Sing Sing where they were sent to Death Row. The execution was set for September 4, 1944. Luckily, they received two delays and the date was eventually fixed for November 16, 1944. But for the first time this century, Robert G. Elliott, Sing Sing’s legendary executioner, wouldn’t be the one to pull the switch on a female. He died in 1939 of heart disease in Queens, N.Y. During his time in the death chamber, which spanned 13 years, he turned the dial on many notorious individuals, including Bruno Hauptmann, Sacco and Vanzetti, Ruth Snyder and Anna Antonio. It was a gruesome job. But prison officials had no trouble finding a replacement. After Elliot’s death, the prison received over 400 applications for his job.

On the night she was to sit in the electric chair, Helen was allowed to dictate a letter to Lt. Governor Hanley. In her final plea for mercy, just two hours before the scheduled execution, Helen told a tragic story. She began by saying: “I had these things on my mind at the time of the trial. I hate the disgrace of bringing these things out.” She went on to say that her daughter Ruth plotted against her. She said “Ruth was going with my husband. I have proof by Niagara Falls Police Department because of his arrest. I have a letter here to prove my husband went with one daughter.” But there was more, much more. She accused her daughter of murder. She told the Lt. Governor: “Her (her daughter’s friend) and Ruth both poisoned my husband and I to get rid of me.” Helen painted an ugly picture of a rebellious and cruel daughter who would stop at nothing to get free of a domineering mother. She said that when she was put in jail, her daughter Ruth was glad. “She said she was free for the first time in her life and intended to stay free. She also said I’d make a nice fat crackling in the chair,” Helen said. As for the murder of George Fowler, Helen claimed she was innocent and only helped move the body. “I fought hard all the time to keep my children under a roof with me. Please give me a chance to prove these things. I’ve said I’m not guilty of any murder or robbery but I did help to get the man out of the house or he’d have left him there in the trunk because he was drunk for over a week after and a couple of days before. Please have mercy on me. Please spare my life!” (Christianson, p. 84, Helen Fowler’s statement of November 16, 1944). But there was no word from the Governor’s mansion. She was doomed. Just two hours later, a despondent Helen Fowler was led into the death chamber at Sing Sing. Accompanying her through the hallway was Catholic Chaplain Bernard Martin, who prayed for her soul. She was crying uncontrollably as she sat down in the chair. At 11:04 p.m., the killer current was sent coursing through her body. Several minutes later, she was declared dead.

George Knight went next. Before he sat down for the last time, he asked the Warden to speak. “Can I talk?” he said. The warden replied that it was customary to allow the condemned to say a few last words. “I want to thank you all for being so nice to me,” Knight said simply. After his death, the guards cleaned up the chamber and shut the lights. There were no other executions scheduled for the same night. For the first time since 1906, there would be none for a full calendar year.

Before she left this world on the night of November 16, 1944, Helen wrote: “It’s a mother’s love and it’s been so much disgrace but this is the truth of why I am here. Please, I’ll live for God from now on if spared, for when children try to have your life taken just to be free, it’s a shame!” (Christianson, p. 85). Helen Fowler and George Knight were the 19th and 20th prisoners to die in Sing Sing’s electric chair that year.

The electric chair at Sing Sing
(CORBIS)

After the execution of Wiliam Kemmler in 1890, the first person legally executed by electricity died in the electric chair, George Westinghouse remarked “it could have been done better with an axe” (Cook, p. 2). Of course, Westinghouse had a reason for being critical. He and Thomas Edison were involved in an all-out battle to determine whether Edison’s DC current or Westinghouse’s AC current was safer for the American public. That battle included public electrocutions of live animals to show the dangers of their opponent’s current. But the pragmatic Edison, always the arrogant, self-righteous crusader, was not to be outdone. In response to Westinghouse’s efforts, Edison electrocuted a live elephant in New Jersey in 1889 using AC current. At stake were tens of millions of dollars in municipal contracts with America’s cities, eager to light their communities with a safe electrical current.

Over one hundred years later, the electric chair has finally become a relic of the past. Although only 10 states allow electrocution, even those states are studying other means as well. The electric chair that killed 607 men and 7 women in New York State is not at Sing Sing anymore. It was moved in 1971 and now sits unused in Greenhaven Prison in upstate New York. However, the apparatus is still maintained by prison staff in the event it should have to be used again.

But the execution of females, no matter what the means, is truly rare in America. Of the 19,200 executions in the United States since 1608, only 560 have been women, which represent less than 3% of the total. In the 20th century only 28 female executions have taken place and 25 of those were prior to 1962. Even more significant though, is the fact that since the resumption of the death penalty in 1973, female executions accounted for only .6% of the total (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org). Today there are 53 females sitting on America’s Death Row and some of those seem sure to die at the hands of the state. Their ages range from 23 to 70 years old. Some have been on Death Row for over a decade.

America’s reluctance to execute females remains strong, even in the face of a deluge of executions that took place in the 1920s and 1930s. In that twenty year period, an average of 175 men each year were executed in America’s prisons, more than at any other time in our nation’s history. But women were not treated in a similar fashion. There is a cultural objection against executing females in America that transcends even the most strident passions of capital punishment supporters. Women are thought of as mothers. And many females who become involved in crimes and violence are usually perceived to be victims of unscrupulous men: six of the seven women who met death at Sing Sing were executed along with their male partners.

Ruth Snyder, Anna Antonio, Eva Coo, Frances Creighton, Helen Fowler, Martha Beck and Ethel Rosenberg are sure to be among the last women who will ever be executed in the State of New York, once the national showcase for capital punishment. It requires a great deal of determination, effort and persistence to execute a female in America. For the officials involved in the execution process, it also requires a certain level of emotional hardness that is not easy to find. Before she died in the chair on January 12, 1928, convicted killer Ruth Snyder wrote a series of articles for the New York press in which she rued the day when she ever left her husband for booze and another man. In one of these articles, published by the same press that crucified her daily during her trial, she wrote this brief poem, which may symbolize the plight of many of these Death Row women:

“You’ve blackened and besmeared a mother,
Once a man’s plaything, a toy.
What have you gained by all you’ve said?
And has it brought you joy?
Someday, we’ll all meet together,
Happy and smiling again,
Far above this earthly span
Everlasting, in His reign.”

Beck, Martha Letters in Sing Sing Case Files. Courtesy of New York State Archives, Albany, New York.

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Sing Sing Prison Electrocutions 1891-1963 Ossining Historical Society, Ossining, New York

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