Eva Dugan

Born in 1878, Eva Dugan trekked to Alaska during the Klondike gold rush and became a cabaret singer.

She subsequently moved to Pima County, Arizona, where she worked as a housekeeper for a chicken rancher named Andrew J. Mathis. Shortly after her employment was terminated, Mathis disappeared, along with some of his possessions. The police discovered Dugan had a father in California and a daughter in White Plains, had been married five times and all of her husbands had mysteriously disappeared. She was subsequently arrested in White Plains when a postal clerk, alerted by the police, intercepted a postcard from her father in California. She was extradited back to Arizona and tried and convicted for the murder of Andrew J. Mathias.

Dugan was executed on the 21st February 1930 by hanging at the state prison in Florence. The execution was botched, which resulted in her decapitation. This in turn influenced the state of Arizona to replace hanging with the lethal gas chamber.