Ada Leboeuf

A 38 year old middle-class Louisiana housewife and mother of four children, Ada Leboeuf was having an affair with the family doctor T. E. Dreher.

Together, Ada and her lover hired a trapper, James Beadle, to shoot dead her husband Jim Leboeuf, a power plant superintendent in Morgan City. Beadle was sentenced to life, whilst Ada Leboeuf and Dreher were both sentenced to death by hanging. While awaiting her execution Ada had a rocking chair brought into her cell, unlimited visitation rights and freshly ironed summer dresses. On the day of her execution, Ada stepped on the gallows trap door, clasped her hands in prayer and in a high pitched, trembling voice said “Don’t let me hang there too long. Don’t make me suffer any more than I have to. Oh God. Isn’t this a terrible thing? Oh God, who can do this thing? It is worse than murder itself”.

Ada Leboeuf was executed on the 1st February 1929.