Eva Dugan (1878 – February 21, 1930) was a convicted murderer whose execution by

hanging Hanging is the suspension of a person by a noose or ligature around the neck.Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. Hanging as method of execution is unknown, as method of suicide from 1325. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' states that hanging i ...

at the

state prison This is a list of U.S. state prisons (2010) (not including federal prisons or county jails in the United States or prisons in U.S. territories): * Alabama * Alaska * Arizona * Arkansas * California * Colorado * Connecticut * Delaware * Flori ...

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...

, resulted in her

decapitation Decapitation or beheading is the total separation of the head from the body. Such an injury is invariably fatal to humans and most other animals, since it deprives the brain of oxygenated blood, while all other organs are deprived of the i ...

and influenced the state of

to replace hanging with the lethal gas chamber as a method of

execution Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the State (polity), state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to ...

Early life

Born in

Salisbury, Missouri Salisbury is a city in Chariton County, Missouri, United States. The population was 1,563 at the 2020 census. History The land where Salisbury is now located was first owned by Prior Bibo, a veteran of the War of 1812, in the late 1820s. A tra ...

, in 1878. Dugan later married and had two children (a son and a daughter) but her husband abandoned the family, leaving them destitute. Dugan relocated to

Juneau The City and Borough of Juneau, more commonly known simply as Juneau ( ; tli, Dzánti K'ihéeni ), is the capital city of the state of Alaska. Located in the Gastineau Channel and the Alaskan panhandle, it is a unified municipality and the se ...

Territory of Alaska The Territory of Alaska or Alaska Territory was an organized incorporated territory of the United States from August 24, 1912, until Alaska was granted statehood on January 3, 1959. The territory was previously Russian America, 1784–1867; the ...

, after trekking north during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896–1899 and became a

cabaret Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment featuring music, song, dance, recitation, or drama. The performance venue might be a pub, a casino, a hotel, a restaurant, or a nightclub with a stage for performances. The audience, often dining or d ...

singer and worked as a prostitute to support herself and her children. Many years later, she moved to

Pima County, Arizona Pima County ( ) is a county in the south central region of the U.S. state of Arizona. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,043,433, making it Arizona's second-most populous county. The county seat is Tucson, where most of the population ...

, where she worked for an elderly chicken rancher, Andrew J. Mathis, as a housekeeper.

Crime

Dugan became a live-in housekeeper of Andrew J. Mathis, wealthy owner of a chicken ranch. Very quickly the employer/employee relationship became cantankerous. The two often bickered with each other because Mathis hated Dugan's cooking and wasn't satisfied with her work and Mathis was demanding, abrasive and difficult to get along with. Mathis fired Dugan and told her to leave his property by morning. The next morning, January 23, 1927 Mathis disappeared, as did some of his possessions, his

Dodge Dodge is an American brand of automobiles and a division of Stellantis, based in Auburn Hills, Michigan. Dodge vehicles have historically included performance cars, and for much of its existence Dodge was Chrysler's mid-priced brand above P ...

coupe A coupe or coupé (, ) is a passenger car with a sloping or truncated rear roofline and two doors. The term ''coupé'' was first applied to horse-drawn carriages for two passengers without rear-facing seats. It comes from the French past parti ...

automobile, and his cash box. Neighbors reported that Dugan had tried to sell some of his possessions before she disappeared as well. Florence-Second Pinal County Courthose-1891-2

Florence-Second Pinal County Courthose-1891-2

The police discovered Dugan had a father in

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

and a daughter in White Plains,

New York State New York, officially the State of New York, is a state in the Northeastern United States. It is often called New York State to distinguish it from its largest city, New York City. With a total area of , New York is the 27th-largest U.S. stat ...

. Though Dugan refused to give information about the identity of either of her children, police only found her daughter, leaving the identity of her son a secret. She had been married five times, and all of her husbands had disappeared. She sold the Dodge coupe for $600 in

Kansas City The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more ...

Missouri Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...

. She was arrested in White Plains when a postal clerk, alerted by the police, intercepted a postcard to her from her father in California. She was extradited to Arizona to face automobile theft charges. Convicted, she was imprisoned.

Trial

Nine months later in October of the same year, a camper found Mathis's decomposed remains on his ranch. Dugan was tried for murder in a short trial based mostly on

circumstantial evidence Circumstantial evidence is evidence that relies on an inference to connect it to a conclusion of fact—such as a fingerprint at the scene of a crime. By contrast, direct evidence supports the truth of an assertion directly—i.e., without need ...

. During her testimony, Dugan said that Mathis believed that she had poisoned his breakfast food, but she claimed that he ate rotten meat in the form of a rabbit that had

boil A boil, also called a furuncle, is a deep folliculitis, which is an infection of the hair follicle. It is most commonly caused by infection by the bacterium ''Staphylococcus aureus'', resulting in a painful swollen area on the skin caused by an ...

s on it. Dugan also admitted that she had sex with Mathis on a weekly basis and performed

prostitution Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in Sex work, sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, n ...

at the ranch. According to her, if Mathis "saw any of the men on the street

Tucson , "(at the) base of the black ill , nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town" , image_map = , mapsize = 260px , map_caption = Interactive map ...

] that he thought was all right he would call them off and tell them to come on out to the house." She would perform sex acts for three dollars and give Mathis fifty cents from each transaction. Dugan claimed that "Jack", a teenage boy who had come to the ranch for work, had accidentally killed Mathis with a retaliatory punch after Mathis beat him for refusing to milk a cow. According to her, Jack came to the house to tell her what he had done, and she and Jack both attempted to revive Mathis with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation after removing his false teeth. When that failed to revive him, they loaded the body into the coupe, and Jack drove it out alone to dump it and came back at five o'clock in the morning. The prosecution proved to the jury's satisfaction that Dugan had murdered Mathis with an

axe An axe ( sometimes ax in American English; see spelling differences) is an implement that has been used for millennia to shape, split and cut wood, to harvest timber, as a weapon, and as a ceremonial or heraldic symbol. The axe has many for ...

. After her conviction, in her

final statement A person's last words, their final articulated words stated prior to death or as death approaches, are often recorded because of the decedent's fame, but sometimes because of interest in the statement itself. (People dying of illness are frequen ...

, she told the jurors, "Well, I'll die with my boots on, an' in full health. An' that's more'n most of you old coots'll be able to boast on." She remained defiant to the end.

Imprisonment

Florence-Pinal County Historic Society & Museum – 4

To pay for her own coffin, Dugan gave interviews to the press for $1.00 each and sold embroidered handkerchiefs that she knit while she was imprisoned. She also made for her hanging a silk, beaded "jazz dress", but later relented and wore a cheap dress as she was worried that her silk wrapper "might get mussed". She remained so upbeat that ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'' magazine called her "Cheerful Eva" in a March 3, 1930, story about her execution.

Execution

The day before the hanging, there were rumors she planned to kill herself first. Her cell was searched, and a bottle of raw

ammonia Ammonia is an inorganic compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula . A stable binary hydride, and the simplest pnictogen hydride, ammonia is a colourless gas with a distinct pungent smell. Biologically, it is a common nitrogenous was ...

and three razor blades hidden in a dress were confiscated. Dugan's appeal for clemency on the grounds of mental illness was denied, and she was taken to the gallows at 5 a.m. on February 21, 1930. She was the first woman to be executed by the state, and it was the first execution in Arizona history that allowed women to be witnesses. According to a newspaper account, Dugan was composed as she mounted the gallows. She told the guards, "Don't hold my arms so tight, the people will think I'm afraid." She swayed slightly when the noose was put around her neck and shook her head in the negative when she was asked if she had any final words. The trap was sprung at 5:11. At the end of the drop, the

snap Snap or SNAP may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Snap'', the original release title for the 2013 film ''Enter the Dangerous Mind'' *''Snap'' (TV series), a CITV programme * ''The Stanly News and Press'', a newspaper in Albemarle, North Carol ...

of the rope

decapitated Decapitation or beheading is the total separation of the head from the body. Such an injury is invariably fatal to humans and most other animals, since it deprives the brain of oxygenated blood, while all other organs are deprived of the au ...

her and sent her head rolling to a stop at the feet of the spectators. Her heart continued to pump blood out of her severed neck, spurting blood for several minutes after the decapitation. The grisly scene caused five witnesses (two women and three men) to faint. Dugan was one of the last persons to be hanged by Arizona. There were only three more hangings: Refugio Macias on March 7, 1930, Herbert Young on August 21, 1931, and Earl Gardner on July 12, 1936. The gallows were replaced in Arizona by the

gas chamber A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or other animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. Poisonous agents used include hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide. Histor ...

in 1934 and

lethal injection Lethal injection is the practice of injecting one or more drugs into a person (typically a barbiturate, paralytic, and potassium solution) for the express purpose of causing rapid death. The main application for this procedure is capital puni ...

in 1993. Dugan is the only woman ever executed by Arizona.

References

External links

1930: Eva Dugan
her head jerked clean off, Executed Today
The Botched Execution of Eva Dugan, 1930 – HistoricalCrimeDetective.com

Deadly Hero: The High Society Murder that Created Hysteria in the Heartland
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dugan, Eva 1878 births 1930 deaths 1927 murders in the United States 20th-century executions by Arizona 20th-century executions of American people American female murderers American people executed for murder American robbers Axe murder Deaths by decapitation Executed American women People executed by Arizona by hanging People from Chariton County, Missouri People from Pima County, Arizona Suspected serial killers Stabbing attacks in the United States