1930: Eva Dugan, her head jerked clean off
February 21st, 2011 Headsman
On this date in 1930, Eva Dugan was badly hanged.
A former Alaskan cabaret performer, Dugan relocated to warmer climes, took a job keeping house for a reclusive, wealthy rancher.
After he axed her position, she axed the rancher, ransacked his home, stole his car, and fled to New York.
A mysterious teenage accessory, “Jack”, was never found. Eva was picked up and extradited after the missing rancher’s remains turned up in a shallow grave.
The grizzled former frontierswoman — she followed the Klondike gold rush in her youth — took her fate nonchalantly.
“Wal, I’ll die with my boots on, an’ in full health,” she scolded her jurors. “An’ that’s more’n most of you old coots’ll be able to boast on.”
Eva Dugan’s health may have been full — though she bid unsuccessfully for clemency claiming mental illness — but her body was halved.
At 5 a.m. this date, wearing a homemade silk shroud, a composed Dugan mounted the gallows at the state prison in Florence.
Her death was instantaneous, for the rope, when it snapped at the end of the drop, severed her head from her body.
Five witnesses, two women, fainted. Altogether there were five women in the chamber at the time of the execution. It was the first time in the history of Arizona that an execution was witnessed by women.
Thanks in part to this ghastly scene, Arizona in 1934 replaced the gallows with the western states’ hot new killing technology, the gas chamber … leaving Dugan the last female client of that state’s hangman.
(Another woman, Ruth Judd, narrowly missed swiping Dugan’s distinction; Judd’s hanging sentence was commuted for insanity just days short of her scheduled 1933 hanging.)
Also on this date
- 1946: Cristino Garcia, Spanish Republican and French Resistance hero
- 1934: Augusto Cesar Sandino, national hero
- 1951: Charlie Gifford, politician-killer
- 1942: Mykhailo and Olena Teliha, Ukrainian artists
- 1803: Edward Marcus Despard, a patriot without a nation
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Arizona,Botched Executions,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Execution,Hanged,History,Milestones,Murder,Pelf,USA,Women
February 21st, 2011 at 6:27 am
In other words a kind of execution was substituted with a more painful one in order not to trouble the delicate sensibilities of people who were there to see someone die anyway.
October 20th, 2011 at 5:16 pm
If you have anymore info. on Eva Dugan, please send it to dugan272@gmail.com This is my Husband’s Great-Great -Great Grandma
March 12th, 2012 at 6:53 pm
When it comes to execution she got a head start……her head was a cut above the rest?…I’m here all week folks
February 11th, 2013 at 5:59 pm
[...] According to Headsman from “ExecutedToday.com”, this was the last female to be executed in Arizona. Read more here. [...]
April 30th, 2013 at 8:54 am
I wouldn’t want to admit that this monster was related to me
April 30th, 2013 at 6:33 pm
Why not? It’s no reflection on that woman’s husband. We all have a few skeletons rattling in our family closets. And it’s an item of minor historical interest.
April 30th, 2013 at 10:13 pm
SHE WAS DEFFO INNOCENT
May 1st, 2013 at 2:00 am
And you base that on….what?
May 4th, 2013 at 1:14 am
Let’s hope that Jodi Arias is the NEXT prisoner on Death Row!
May 6th, 2013 at 1:36 pm
Waiting on the Jody Arias verdict — hmmmmm…I wonder if Eva’s jury was smarter than Jody’s? Time will tell!
May 6th, 2013 at 2:58 pm
I am also waiting on the Jodi Arias Verdict;
Justice for Travis
May 7th, 2013 at 3:49 pm
They just compared this woman to Jodi Arias today on HLN while waiting for the Jodi Arias verdict. LOL
May 7th, 2013 at 8:52 pm
After thirteen plus hours still no verdict. Wait another day. I am not a proponent of capital punishment, even in monstrous cases like Jodi’s. I expect she’ll deservedly be convicted and when she is, I’ll be quite satisfied with the punishment of life in prison without any possibility of parole.
May 9th, 2013 at 7:00 pm
you maybe satisfied….but no apology, no remorse….execute her!!!!
May 21st, 2013 at 11:13 am
For the jack ass saying i would not say i was related. You really need to grow up. That is part of family history. That does not define who we are. please leave you jackass comments to you self
May 24th, 2013 at 10:56 am
very well said Tashua, has no reflect on your family