Mary Frances Creighton (July 29, 1899 – July 16, 1936), was a housewife, who along with Everett Applegate, a 36-year-old former American Legion official, was executed in Sing Sing Prison's
electric chair
An electric chair is a device used to execute an individual by electrocution. When used, the condemned person is strapped to a specially built wooden chair and electrocuted through electrodes fastened on the head and leg. This execution method, ...
, Old Sparky, for the poisoning of Applegate's wife, Ada, in Baldwin, New York on September 27, 1935. She had passed out before the execution, and was executed in an unconscious state.
While living in
Greenwood Publishing Group
Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. (GPG), also known as ABC-Clio/Greenwood (stylized ABC-CLIO/Greenwood), is an educational and academic publisher (middle school through university level) which is today part of ABC-Clio. Established in 1967 as Gr ...
, 2008. . Accessed July 26, 2019. "Of all of the women executed in New York during the twentieth century, Mary Frances Creighton received the least sympathy from the public -- and this may be deservedly so.... Frances moved to Newark when she was fifteen, and finished her education in public schools."
Creighton claimed to have poisoned Ada Applegate so that her fifteen-year-old daughter, Ruth, who she had been pimping out to Everett Applegate, could legally marry Everett. After Creighton's arrest for the murder of Ada Applegate, she repeatedly confessed to and denied killing both mother in-law, Anna, and her younger brother, Raymond.