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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Night Stalker DTK.
Speaker 5: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 5: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 5: Your Host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 2: Good Evening, January fourteenth, nineteen twenty seven. AJ mathis a wealthy,
Speaker 2: elderly chicken rancher is missing. One of the last of
Speaker 2: the Cowboy Sheriffs, Jim McDonald is convinced Aj is dead murdered,
Speaker 2: and McDonald says he knows who did it and vows
Speaker 2: to prove it on her. McDonald's leading and only suspect
Speaker 2: is a former saloon singer and prostitute Eva Duggan Short,
Speaker 2: Stocky and Plaine. Eva takes off with a younger man
Speaker 2: in AJ's Dodge Coop. They drive from Arizona to Texas
Speaker 2: before Eva makes her way to White Plains, New York.
Speaker 2: While on the run, her young friend Jack vanishes and
Speaker 2: AJ Skelton is discovered buried in a shallow grave. After
Speaker 2: she's captured, Eva proclaims her innocence, but is convicted of
Speaker 2: first degree murder and sentenced to death. Eva says if
Speaker 2: she was more attractive and a flapper, she would not
Speaker 2: have been convicted nor sentenced to death by hanging. A
Speaker 2: movement grows among people opposed to capital punishment to spare
Speaker 2: Eva's life. They fail, and Eva walks to the gallows,
Speaker 2: proclaiming her innocence. What follows changes how Arizona treats those
Speaker 2: sentenced to death for capital crimes. Never again will anyone
Speaker 2: hang for murder in Arizona Because of what happened today,
Speaker 2: Eva Duggan died. Was justice done? You decide? The book
Speaker 2: that we're featuring this evening is Kill Barry Forget, a
Speaker 2: shocking true crime story with my special guest, journalist and author,
Speaker 2: Rod Cackley. Welcome back to the program, and thank you
Speaker 2: so much for this interview. Rod Cackley.
Speaker 4: Hi, Dan, thanks a lot for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, and welcome back to the program. Yeah,
Speaker 2: let's talk about right away about Eva and Jack at
Speaker 2: Mathis Ranch. As you open the book with this.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, this is chapter one. This is time to run.
Speaker 4: Now you've got Eva Dugan, as you said, former saloon
Speaker 4: singer and when her voice ran out, too much whiskey,
Speaker 4: too many cigarettes, then she became a prostitute. And this
Speaker 4: was in the gold rush days up in the Yukon
Speaker 4: that she was doing this. But now it's January nineteen
Speaker 4: twenty seven and she's on the Mathis Ranch for their
Speaker 4: young friend Jack. Jack is a young, attractive, good looking guy,
Speaker 4: at least that's the way she describes him. They've been
Speaker 4: through a couple of tough days together and now they're
Speaker 4: ready to leave the Mathis ranch. And this is the
Speaker 4: ranch owned by that the elderly chicken rancher we talked
Speaker 4: you were speaking of before. And Eva's been drinking. Jack
Speaker 4: is wiped out, and they decide it's time to run.
Speaker 2: Now they talk about California, but they talk about also
Speaker 2: about Jackass. How long will these will people be missing?
Speaker 2: Or when will they be missing this man? And for
Speaker 2: how long? Yeah, tell us about this conversation and what
Speaker 2: they discuss in terms of the official story of where
Speaker 2: Aj Mathis went to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, See, Eva told everyone in town in this small
Speaker 4: town in Arizona. She told them that Aj had gone
Speaker 4: to California, that he had given her title to the
Speaker 4: ranch and permission to sell off the ranch and everything
Speaker 4: on the ranch, and she would take the money and
Speaker 4: go meet him in California where they would be married.
Speaker 4: That was her story, and that's what she explains to Jack,
Speaker 4: this young guy as they're getting ready to leave the ranch.
Speaker 4: Now she's cleaning the house. They wiped all the fingerprints off,
Speaker 4: so you can see where this is going, and they're
Speaker 4: ready to go. Now, as far as Jack knows, they're
Speaker 4: going to be driving to California. He and she.
Speaker 2: Now you talk about Eva Duggan and how she gets
Speaker 2: to Arizona in the first place. And you tell at
Speaker 2: that time she's forty seven years old and she had
Speaker 2: bum and rides from truckers all the way from Alaska
Speaker 2: and the Yukon. So tell us about Eva Duggan and
Speaker 2: her route to Arizona.
Speaker 4: To begin with, Eva, Yes, Dan, To begin with. Eva
Speaker 4: was born in eighteen seventy eight in Salsbury, Missouri. She
Speaker 4: married very young, and then her husband disappeared. Now, even
Speaker 4: when decided she had two kids, a boy and a girl.
Speaker 4: She takes the boy and the girl, they're very young.
Speaker 4: She takes them up to the Yukon where the gold
Speaker 4: rush is going on Klondike. She figures that she can
Speaker 4: make some money up there if not singing then doing
Speaker 4: whatever she can to survive. But she figures it has
Speaker 4: to be better than Missouri, where she was born and
Speaker 4: raised and where her husband disappeared. So she's up there
Speaker 4: and she does everything she can. In the Yukon. She
Speaker 4: becomes a bit of a celebrity of the Yukon as
Speaker 4: a saloon singer. But then as she grows older, her
Speaker 4: looks fade, her voice goes, The whiskey and cigarettes get
Speaker 4: to her, and she becomes a prostitute. But then she leaves.
Speaker 4: She gets married a couple of times too, and the husband's,
Speaker 4: believe it or not, disappear, So she actually was married
Speaker 4: four times before she wound up in Arizona. The husband
Speaker 4: disappeared each and every time. So now this is December eleventh,
Speaker 4: nineteen twenty six, and Eva is flat busted broke. She's been,
Speaker 4: as you said, Dan, hitchhiking with truckers all the way
Speaker 4: from Alaska down to Arizona, and she's been doing whatever
Speaker 4: she has to do to pay for the rides. If
Speaker 4: you understand what I mean, I'm sure you do.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 4: So she winds up in Arizona and she really has
Speaker 4: no place to go. She finds out though about this
Speaker 4: elderly chicken rancher, a guy by the name of A. J.
Speaker 4: Mathis who lives alone. They call him old man Mathis
Speaker 4: and in the country town and he's looking for a nurse,
Speaker 4: a housekeeper, so to speak. And she thinks that, well,
Speaker 4: she can do that, so she goes knocking on AJ's
Speaker 4: door and the two of them strike a friendship and
Speaker 4: a partnership.
Speaker 2: If you will, now back to January fourteenth, nineteen twenty seven.
Speaker 2: Aj is gone, seems to be vanished, but his friends
Speaker 2: and neighbors are concerned. Tell us about this confrontation of
Speaker 2: sorts with the neighbors and friends and Eva duggan Yeah,
Speaker 2: e is.
Speaker 4: What Eva starts doing is selling off all of AJ's property.
Speaker 4: She tells the neighbors that he gave her the title
Speaker 4: to the ranch and permission to sell everything on the ranch,
Speaker 4: including a cow, where she shows up at a neighbor's
Speaker 4: home with a cow to sell. Eva also shows up
Speaker 4: slightly drunk. She'd been drinking, which was not unusual for Eva.
Speaker 4: Now you have to remember or realize, nobody in this
Speaker 4: little town trusted Eva. No one liked Eva. They knew
Speaker 4: what she and AJ were doing. And you'll find out
Speaker 4: later in the book or in our discussion what they
Speaker 4: were doing. But nobody liked Eva. Now all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: AJ vanishes, and no one really cared for Aja either,
Speaker 4: to tell you the truth. But the fact is he's gone.
Speaker 4: So he becomes, you know, the gospip mill, the rumor
Speaker 4: mill takes off as to what might have happened to Aj.
Speaker 4: And like I said, no one believes Eva in her
Speaker 4: story that he went to California and that she's going
Speaker 4: to go there after she sells off all the cows
Speaker 4: and chickens and they'll get married in California. Nobody believes that.
Speaker 2: Now, these friends and neighbors and fellow ranchers, they go
Speaker 2: to talk to the newly elected sheriff, Jim McDonald, and
Speaker 2: he's just been elected to the Pima County just recently,
Speaker 2: and he's a big guy, and he has this legendary
Speaker 2: he's a courageous person by legend. What did the ranchers,
Speaker 2: What do the ranchers discuss with him? What do they
Speaker 2: tell Sheriff McDonald?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Sheriff McDonald, as you said, one of the newspapers
Speaker 4: dubbed him. They gave him the nick name of the
Speaker 4: last of the cowboy sheriffs. This guy was a cowboy.
Speaker 4: He was a miner up north. He was a sheriff
Speaker 4: up north. And his claim to fame as as sheriff
Speaker 4: was he fased down a man with a gun without
Speaker 4: firing a shot and got into surrender. It's a big
Speaker 4: tough guy. He's bigger than most of the men in town.
Speaker 4: Everybody looks up to this guy, at least enough to
Speaker 4: look him as sheriff. And they go to Jim and
Speaker 4: they say, look, this is wrong. Eva is lying. We're
Speaker 4: convinced that aj Mathis is dead, and we're convinced that
Speaker 4: she did it. We need you to prove it on her.
Speaker 4: And as you said, he just won election. This is
Speaker 4: the first time he's ever won election to anything. So
Speaker 4: he knows that not only are these suspicious neighbors, these
Speaker 4: are suspicious voters. And he's going to need these voters
Speaker 4: another year.
Speaker 2: Right, So now he goes over to the Mathis ranch.
Speaker 2: What does he find.
Speaker 4: He goes to the Mathis ranch and he finds everything's gone.
Speaker 4: Everything is gone, And so obviously that raises his suspicions too.
Speaker 4: As I said, Eva went to a neighbor and sold
Speaker 4: to cow So he knows what's going on here. But yeah,
Speaker 4: everything is gone. Everything is clean. Everything is much cleaner
Speaker 4: than you think it might be or an elderly live
Speaker 4: alone chicken rancher.
Speaker 2: He also notices that AJ's Dodge Coop is missing, and
Speaker 2: so then he goes to speak to Tucson to speak
Speaker 2: to AJ's banker. What does AJ's banker inform him about it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you're right, the coop is gone. The Dodge
Speaker 4: Coop is gone, and that's a big thing. But again,
Speaker 4: Eva said that she had permission to take that. But
Speaker 4: he goes in to talk to AJ's banker, it finds
Speaker 4: out there's been absolutely no activity on AJ's bank account.
Speaker 4: He hasn't deposited any money, and more importantly, he hasn't
Speaker 4: withdrawn any money. Now if he went to California, Jim
Speaker 4: McDonald's figures, how's he going to go to California without
Speaker 4: any money? Why would he not take money? This is
Speaker 4: nineteen twenty seven. You don't have credit cards? Then, okay,
Speaker 4: so you got to have cash. As Jim says, it's
Speaker 4: only one place. The two places he could think of
Speaker 4: where you didn't you could go and you don't have cash,
Speaker 4: One is jail and the other is the grave.
Speaker 2: So AJ's friends go to the Arizona Daily Star and
Speaker 2: speak to one of the paper's best reporters, and that's
Speaker 2: Jack Wheedcock in Tucson, right, And then they call one another.
Speaker 2: One of AJ's friends, A Matt walked her and he says,
Speaker 2: there's just no way that AJ would have done any
Speaker 2: of this stuff. Tell us what he says and others
Speaker 2: say about AJ and the possibility of him going to California.
Speaker 4: Well, the first off, they say AJ never would have
Speaker 4: gone to California because he's just too cheap to go
Speaker 4: to California. He never would have done that. And his
Speaker 4: friends say too that he never would have given the
Speaker 4: property to Eva. They say that AJ did not trust her,
Speaker 4: did not like her, and actually threw her off the ranch,
Speaker 4: which you'll find is true later in the story. And
Speaker 4: so Jim McDonald, there's just one red flag raised after another.
Speaker 4: And not only was Jim McDonald involved in this, but
Speaker 4: a new district attorney was also involved in this. Both
Speaker 4: of these guys are relatively new politicians. So they excuse me.
Speaker 4: They know the town wants this mystery to be solved.
Speaker 4: They want AJ to be found and if Eva did it,
Speaker 4: they want her to be convicted.
Speaker 2: So how do they proceed Sheriff MacDonald still wants to
Speaker 2: talk to Eva, Eva pardon me, and doesn't know where
Speaker 2: she is. He decides to go back to the ranch again.
Speaker 2: Tell us about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they went back to the ranch again looking for
Speaker 4: more evidence, and what they found, among other things, was
Speaker 4: an old ear trumpet. Now, this is one of these
Speaker 4: things you've seen, I don't know in the old movies,
Speaker 4: A giant, big old ear trumpet that be poo hard
Speaker 4: of hearing, will hold up their ears to hear better.
Speaker 4: They find it, and they find it in the oven,
Speaker 4: in the stove rather and it's been burned. You could
Speaker 4: see that somebody had tried to destroy this thing, this
Speaker 4: old ear trumpet. And they find other things, they find
Speaker 4: blood in the house, and they also so they come
Speaker 4: to think. Jim comes to think that the ear trumpet
Speaker 4: was actually a murder weapon and Aj, even though they
Speaker 4: don't have a body, he's convinced that Aj was beaten
Speaker 4: to death with the man's own ear trumpet.
Speaker 2: Now, what about the story about this young man named Jack?
Speaker 2: What did they hear about this young man named Jack?
Speaker 2: If anything?
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, one's actually seen Jack. Okay, Jack seems to
Speaker 4: be no one has seen him. They don't know much
Speaker 4: about him except those who have seen him. Though. I
Speaker 4: wonder why a guy like this, a young, attractive, muscular
Speaker 4: guy like this, would be hanging out with an old
Speaker 4: woman like Eva. They can't figure that out. You know. Again,
Speaker 4: the two of them have been seen together, and one
Speaker 4: of the times they were seen together is when they
Speaker 4: were cleaning out the dodge coop. They were washing out
Speaker 4: the dodge coop. When Jim the sheriff finds out about this,
Speaker 4: that raises his suspicions. Another notch.
Speaker 2: Now, in January seventeenth, nineteen twenty seven, Eva and Jack are,
Speaker 2: or at least Eva is spotted in Bisbee, Arizona, one
Speaker 2: hundred miles down the road from where they left, and
Speaker 2: they stay the night. What does have a Eva do
Speaker 2: in Bisbee, Arizona. She goes and sends some telegrams, doesn't she?
Speaker 4: Oh, right, that's where she sends the telegram. Yeah, she
Speaker 4: sends a telegram.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: One of the things that telegrams were very inexpensive descend.
Speaker 4: So that's how people communicated back in those days. They
Speaker 4: only cost a few pennies to send, and so she
Speaker 4: sends a telegram back to one of the neighbors, a
Speaker 4: woman named Francis Mitchell, the woman that she tried to
Speaker 4: sell the cow to, and she tells she tells in
Speaker 4: the telegram. She says, you know, she and aj are fine.
Speaker 4: They're going to get together and everything's good, and she's
Speaker 4: going to go to California. So that's where she's kind
Speaker 4: of laying her alibi, if you will, with this telegram.
Speaker 2: Now, Eva tells Jack that they need to sell the car,
Speaker 2: and so they do that, and she also wants them
Speaker 2: to write a letter and a couple of postcards, and
Speaker 2: she gives them some reasoning that he does not question whatsoever.
Speaker 2: And so that next day, after they stay in this
Speaker 2: in this town, she he buys a one way ticket
Speaker 2: to Kansas City, Kansas. And as you write, it's time
Speaker 2: to say goodbye to Jack.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're in Amarillo, Texas, she decides, She tells Jack,
Speaker 4: and he's doing whatever she wants. He's along for the ride,
Speaker 4: that's all he wants. He's just along for the ride.
Speaker 4: They're in Amarillo, Texas, and he couldn't believe they were
Speaker 4: in Texas. To tell you the truth. He thought they
Speaker 4: were driving to California. Well, no, they wind up in Amarillo, Texas.
Speaker 4: She has himself the used car. They get like six
Speaker 4: hundred dollars for that, and then she buys his ticket,
Speaker 4: as you said, to Kansas City on the train. And
Speaker 4: that's the last we see of Jack in this story.
Speaker 2: So Sheriff McDonald realizes that the key to finding Eva
Speaker 2: and this Jack character lie in finding this Dodge Coop.
Speaker 2: And despite the not being registered in Arizona, how does
Speaker 2: Sheriff McDonald proceed with trying to find this vehicle.
Speaker 4: Well, he remembers that either or I'm sorry, Aj has
Speaker 4: family in California. So he reaches out to cal Fournia
Speaker 4: state officials and finds out sure announced that card was
Speaker 4: registered in California. So after about almost three days, he's
Speaker 4: able to get the BIN number, the vehicle identification number,
Speaker 4: and the registration number. And now he's got some evidence
Speaker 4: there was some way that he can he hopes find
Speaker 4: this Dodge and if he finds the Dodge, he figures
Speaker 4: he'll find Eva.
Speaker 2: Now there's a reward. They offer one hundred dollars reward
Speaker 2: at that time, then it was increased another two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty dollars for the arrest of Eva Duggan, and
Speaker 2: so they also Sheriff McDonald goes to the post office
Speaker 2: and talks to the postmaster there. What does he find
Speaker 2: from the postmaster at the post office.
Speaker 4: He finds that Eva has been mailing postcards. And this
Speaker 4: is a way that she told Jack. Now, Jack couldn't
Speaker 4: believe she was doing this, but she was going and
Speaker 4: mailing postcards again to lay her alibi out, mailing postcards
Speaker 4: to the people of the small town in Arizona where
Speaker 4: she and aj had, you know, made a name for themselves,
Speaker 4: so to speak. And this gives him a clue, gives
Speaker 4: Jim McDonald a clue of where she might be and
Speaker 4: this is how she just he discovers that Eva has
Speaker 4: made her way to White Plains, New York, where it
Speaker 4: turns out her daughter lives.
Speaker 2: Now, you talk about the arrest, and she is apparently
Speaker 2: has a job in an insane.
Speaker 4: Asylum, right, Yeah, isn't that ironic?
Speaker 2: J CHERF. McDonald has a couple of law enforcement detectives
Speaker 2: that owe him a favor, and so they go and
Speaker 2: find Eva. Tell us about this arrest, and as you do,
Speaker 2: you talk about this interrogation in a dark, cold room
Speaker 2: with Eva.
Speaker 4: Yeah, these are New York City cops, okay, And they
Speaker 4: owe Jim a favor because they had a fugitive they
Speaker 4: were looking for who wound up in Arizona, and Jim
Speaker 4: arrested that fugitive for them and held him so they
Speaker 4: could pick him up. So they figured that, you know,
Speaker 4: they were going to do him a favor. Well, they
Speaker 4: go to the insane asylum and arrest Eva and take
Speaker 4: her back to New York City and they're whole. They're
Speaker 4: interrogating her in a cold, dark cell. Now, Remember though
Speaker 4: Eva went through all kinds of problems when she was
Speaker 4: up north, I mean the Yukon. She's a woman who
Speaker 4: made it on her own in the Yukon and the Klondyke.
Speaker 4: She's not put off by these tops at all. Even
Speaker 4: though they're tough New York City detectives. They don't crack her,
Speaker 4: and they do notify Jim that they have her, but
Speaker 4: they get absolutely nowhere with them with her.
Speaker 2: She says things like, you have no body, You've got
Speaker 2: nothing on me, You've got no body, you got no murder.
Speaker 2: So she talks like a very hardened killer in this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, somebody really needs to do a TV show on
Speaker 4: this story. I'm telling you what, this Eva is the
Speaker 4: greatest character in the world. She whispers to these cops.
Speaker 4: She says, I already told you to where the old
Speaker 4: man is. Weren't you listening? Or are you? People in
Speaker 4: New York just too goddamn dumb? Do you understand? And
Speaker 4: then she says, well, the only thing McDonald jim has
Speaker 4: on me is that I was the last one who
Speaker 4: saw A before the old guy left town. And you
Speaker 4: know what, sometime pretty soon the old man referring to AJ,
Speaker 4: will wander back home and make a fool of that
Speaker 4: cowboy sheriff.
Speaker 2: He has to take Eva back to Arizona via train,
Speaker 2: so along the way he tries to confront her with
Speaker 2: evidence that he thinks that might get her to loosen
Speaker 2: her tongue, but it doesn't, and so he resorts to
Speaker 2: what people in she refers to as a poker game bluff.
Speaker 2: What is one of the bluffs that he tries to
Speaker 2: attempt to loosen her tongue.
Speaker 4: Well, he tries to tell her that they found AJ's body,
Speaker 4: and it's a bluff. As you say, he is a
Speaker 4: total bluff now, Jim is in an interesting position. He
Speaker 4: has to buy what he called a set of city
Speaker 4: clothes before he goes to New York. I mean, this
Speaker 4: guy wore he always had a sombrero on his head.
Speaker 4: All right, this is a cowboy sheriff, There's no doubt
Speaker 4: about it. So he buys his city clothes, he goes
Speaker 4: into New York. He picks her up. They're going back
Speaker 4: on the train from New York to Arizon, and he
Speaker 4: tries to run the game on her that they already
Speaker 4: had AJ's body and if she'll confess, then it'll go
Speaker 4: easy on her.
Speaker 2: Well, what does she do? What is this bluff? And
Speaker 2: he gets to the point where she wants to see
Speaker 2: a body to believe that he has a body. So
Speaker 2: what does he do?
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, but you know what, she really she almost
Speaker 4: buies into this bluff. She almost buyes into this bluff
Speaker 4: because he tells her that they found the old man's
Speaker 4: car in white planes and she's already looking at a
Speaker 4: charge of grand larceny for stealing AJ's car. Okay, so
Speaker 4: she's looking at that. So they say okay. He says, okay,
Speaker 4: we're going to take you or she says, take me
Speaker 4: to where you find the found the body, and that
Speaker 4: of course calls his bluff because he has not found
Speaker 4: the body.
Speaker 2: And what happens is that it's not the skeleton of
Speaker 2: Aj Mathis and she laughs heartily. It's the skeleton of
Speaker 2: a horse, isn't it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, exactly, Yeah, they had bones, they found a skeleton,
Speaker 4: but yeah, it was a skeleton of a horse and
Speaker 4: not this ellington of Aj Mathis. But now they do
Speaker 4: have her on grand theft auto. So that's where you know,
Speaker 4: he knows that if he convicts her on granted, gets
Speaker 4: her convicted on grand theft auto for the theft of
Speaker 4: AJ's car, at least he'll know where she is and
Speaker 4: she won't be able to go anywhere.
Speaker 2: So in the interim she's at Florence Arizona or ends
Speaker 2: up at Florence Arizona prison prison built by prison inmates,
Speaker 2: including a death chamber. Now he knows that if she
Speaker 2: is found guilty, that he knows where she'll be for
Speaker 2: the questioning over Aj Mathis's death. So what happens at
Speaker 2: this trial for grand larceny despite the confidence of a dug.
Speaker 4: In, Yeah, she's convicted. Now Jim two knows that if
Speaker 4: she's convicted. That gives him time to find AJ's body.
Speaker 4: And that's what really this whole case depends on, is
Speaker 4: the discovery of Aj mathis dead or alive. Well. She
Speaker 4: is convicted. Ela gets convicted on this auto theft charge,
Speaker 4: so she's going to jail. She's in the Pima County
Speaker 4: jail and she's going to sit in the Pima County
Speaker 4: g for a while because she's been convicted of this.
Speaker 4: She's looking at several years in prison.
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Speaker 2: we were talking about the sentence that she received. Now
Speaker 2: McDonald and the prosecutor Kemp know where she is, and
Speaker 2: McDonald knows to continue his search for aj Mathis. Now
Speaker 2: there is an an assistant deputy that's assisting Sheriff McDonald
Speaker 2: and his name is nw Wolf. This is December eleventh,
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty seven, and this involves a machinist from Oklahoma.
Speaker 2: And nw Wolf tells Sheriff McDonald, we have some good news.
Speaker 2: We have found him. Explain the finding the discovery of
Speaker 2: aj Mathis by this machinist from Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: N W Wolf. By the way, Dan, I think it's
Speaker 4: one of the great characters in the book. I mean,
Speaker 4: this book is just filled with these cowboys who get
Speaker 4: into law enforcement. And NW Wolf is just like Jim McDonald.
Speaker 4: He didn't go up to Alaska, but he is one
Speaker 4: tough character. Now, a machinist from Oklahoma has decided that
Speaker 4: he's going to move to Arizona and he buys some
Speaker 4: right next to the old Mathis Chicken Ranch. One day
Speaker 4: he decides that he's going to build a house there.
Speaker 4: He has a couple hundred acres. He's going to build
Speaker 4: a house there. They have no house now, so what
Speaker 4: he does is he sets up a tent and while
Speaker 4: he's driving a tense steak in, he discovers their soft
Speaker 4: earth where he is driving this tent steak in. He
Speaker 4: keeps driving the tent steak in and guess what he finds.
Speaker 4: He finds the skeleton of Aj Mathis, or at least
Speaker 4: it's a human skeleton, and he rides into town and
Speaker 4: gets a hold of Deputy Nash and tells him what
Speaker 4: he's found.
Speaker 2: Now they don't know if this is Aj Mathis for sure,
Speaker 2: but there's a reporter there that seems to know, and
Speaker 2: he looks at the skeleton and sees something on the
Speaker 2: head still remaining tells him this Aj mathis.
Speaker 4: Yeah. The reporter Jack Weedock from the Daily Star, who's
Speaker 4: another real character in this book who comes in again
Speaker 4: and again. He and Jim McDonald are there at the
Speaker 4: same time, and they're looking at the skeleton and they
Speaker 4: both realize that on the skeleton skull there is a
Speaker 4: fringe of red hair, just like the fringe of red
Speaker 4: hair that Aj Mathis always had. And AJ's dentures are
Speaker 4: still in his head, so they're pretty sure that this
Speaker 4: is Aj Mathis that they.
Speaker 2: Have found December twenty second, nineteen twenty seven. They're awaiting
Speaker 2: the coroner's decision, and it is that Aj was murdered
Speaker 2: and Eva Duggan was instrumental in his death, so that
Speaker 2: sets up her being charged. She's already in custody and
Speaker 2: the murder trial. And you describe how big and important
Speaker 2: this trial was and how interesting it was. Fascinating it
Speaker 2: was for the audience, which was ninety percent women. Tell
Speaker 2: us about the murder trial, and one of the most
Speaker 2: fascinating features at this trial.
Speaker 4: Women and children dan packed the courtroom. This was high
Speaker 4: entertainment in this little town in Arizona. And you said,
Speaker 4: you're right. There was standing room only. Better than standing
Speaker 4: room only. People were out in the hallway standing watching.
Speaker 4: One of the most interesting features of this was Aj
Speaker 4: Mathis's goal. They took this skull as part of it
Speaker 4: was evidence, obviously, but they just sat it on a
Speaker 4: table in the courtroom and left it there. And this
Speaker 4: skull in its empty eye sockets were staring right at
Speaker 4: Eva Dugan the whole time during this trial.
Speaker 2: Some of the witnesses that were at this trial included
Speaker 2: someone that operated a store and she had spoken to
Speaker 2: them about Aj and him leaving the California but also
Speaker 2: that she had depicted her Jack, her partner, as her son.
Speaker 2: And another interaction with someone that was a witness at
Speaker 2: this trial was the idea that they used aliases when
Speaker 2: registering and in rented cabins, again pointing to their guilt
Speaker 2: by using aliases at all.
Speaker 4: Yeah, some of the we had. For instance, a guy
Speaker 4: by the name of Jacob Bolzer. He ran the El
Speaker 4: Paso furniture company. He said that in January twenty seven,
Speaker 4: when Aj disappeared, Eva and a young man named Jack
Speaker 4: came into his store and asked him for a fifty
Speaker 4: cent loan. That woman there, Jacob says, and pointing at Eva,
Speaker 4: told me that she needed the fifty cents so that
Speaker 4: she could get her son a driver's license. She was
Speaker 4: implying that Jack was in fact her son. And so
Speaker 4: he gave her the fifty cents and they came back.
Speaker 4: And Eva and Jack came back and repaid the fifty cents.
Speaker 4: Put a package on the counter of the guy at
Speaker 4: the furniture store and a gun was inside. She had
Speaker 4: a gun in the package, asked me if I wanted
Speaker 4: to buy it for ten dollars. I said ten dollars
Speaker 4: is too damn much for that gun. Thank you, but
Speaker 4: no thanks, That's what I told her. And so you know,
Speaker 4: this is the days when everybody had guns anywhere, so
Speaker 4: that wasn't that surprising. But they did have this gun
Speaker 4: that they wanted to get rid of for ten dollars.
Speaker 4: Then there was missus George Gainer, the manager of a
Speaker 4: tourist camp in Lowell, Arizona. She says on the morning
Speaker 4: of January twenty seven. On January seventeenth, nineteen twenty seven,
Speaker 4: Eva signed the name B. B. Jones on the register. Now,
Speaker 4: why would she signed a fictitious name unless she has
Speaker 4: something to hide? Again, that's telling the jury that you
Speaker 4: know something's going on here. So that was another sign
Speaker 4: of Eva and Jack hiding their tracks. If you will. Now,
Speaker 4: well this is going on. Eva is staring at and
Speaker 4: that skull is staring at her. She starts to cough.
Speaker 4: She begins coughing so hard that it hurts, and with
Speaker 4: every hacking bark Eva places her hand on her bosom
Speaker 4: for belief. She's not doing well. In the beginning of
Speaker 4: this trial, she was doing all right. She had a
Speaker 4: lot of continents going. But now she's not doing well
Speaker 4: at all, or at least that's the way she wants
Speaker 4: it to appear.
Speaker 2: Her attorney is Stanley Samuelson, and so on February twenty fourth,
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty eight, she makes the decision to take the
Speaker 2: stand in her own defense. So she starts on indirect
Speaker 2: examination about how she was a housekeeper and employed as
Speaker 2: a nurse and starts telling a story about how ill
Speaker 2: and how sick AJ was. Tell us what she attributed
Speaker 2: that this illness and the sickness to in the beginning
Speaker 2: of time.
Speaker 4: Well, Stanley Samuelson, her attorney is you know everything men
Speaker 4: did to Eva In this story, Stanley is a guy
Speaker 4: who just stands right beside her no matter what, knowing
Speaker 4: that she doesn't have a lot of money. He is
Speaker 4: defending her though and again it makes a name for
Speaker 4: him in Arizona. But yeah, Eva says that he had
Speaker 4: Mathis had an awful lot of medical problems and one
Speaker 4: of the big ones was broughten on by rotten meat.
Speaker 4: Eating rotten meat, she says, well, she tells it. AJ
Speaker 4: killed a rabbit that had boils on it. I showed
Speaker 4: them to him, but AJ said the rabbit would be
Speaker 4: good to eat if I cut the legs off. I
Speaker 4: told him the rabbit was only good to feed to
Speaker 4: the chicken, but he made me cook it up anyway.
Speaker 4: He ate it and he got ill, and then he
Speaker 4: was in bed all day and all night. They went
Speaker 4: into town in the hotel, and he went to see
Speaker 4: his doctor, doctor Charles Peterson, and told the doctor that
Speaker 4: he was trying or she was trying to poison him.
Speaker 4: But according to Stanley the attorney, Mathis had an awful
Speaker 4: lot of problems like deafnis extema, cramps, to name but
Speaker 4: a few, And Stanley said, my client either had duties
Speaker 4: such as giving mister Mathis hot mustard baths and foot
Speaker 4: baths to two o'clock every morning. Missus Duggan would also
Speaker 4: milk the cow, go and get the beast from the
Speaker 4: animal strange. She cared for the chickens, fixed the daily meals,
Speaker 4: and had other general housekeeper duties. But again, the big
Speaker 4: thing here is that Mathis goes into town to his
Speaker 4: doctor and accuses Eva of trying to poison him. That's
Speaker 4: going to be essential in this trial, that accusation.
Speaker 2: At the same time, Eva spins a tale of prostitution
Speaker 2: on the ranch and talks about how Aj was okay
Speaker 2: with that, except that he was jealous one time when
Speaker 2: she stepped out on him without his knowledge. This is
Speaker 2: shocking for the audience. And then she tells another story
Speaker 2: or about the lies about Aj going to California. Tell
Speaker 2: us about this bombshell revelation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she says, Now, I think with prostitution, not only
Speaker 4: did he allow it, he encouraged it, according to Eva,
Speaker 4: because he knew what the prostitution was happening at a
Speaker 4: hotel in town, and he wanted a piece of that action.
Speaker 4: According to the way Eva tells the story, but then
Speaker 4: the bombshell drops. She knows, I mean, tears are rolling
Speaker 4: down her eye, rolling down her cheeks, and she admits
Speaker 4: that the story about mathis going to California where he
Speaker 4: promised to marry her. She admitted that was a lie.
Speaker 4: The bombshell drops and Eva admits that she knew, always
Speaker 4: knew that Aj was dead, and not only dead, but
Speaker 4: she knew that he had been murdered. Of course, she
Speaker 4: didn't do it. Her friend Jack did it. That's the
Speaker 4: way that Eva told the story.
Speaker 2: Well, what he told her though, didn't include murder. It
Speaker 2: was sort of sounded like an accident. They were fighting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, they were fighting. Yeah, they were fighting at manslaughter.
Speaker 4: I guess there'd be a better term than murder, right right.
Speaker 2: Well, he had punched him in the solar plexus, he said,
Speaker 2: and because the man was so old and fragile and feeble,
Speaker 2: he died. They tried, they tried CPR, but of course
Speaker 2: it didn't work. They tried to save his life, but
Speaker 2: of course it didn't work.
Speaker 4: Right, that's the way she tells it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So they ask Eve on the stand a very
Speaker 2: important question, They say, why not call sheriff McDonald And
Speaker 2: what's her response?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Now the prosecutor wasn't putting up with her story
Speaker 4: at all, he did, he said, let me ask you again.
Speaker 4: She just did not believe that she would be believed.
Speaker 4: She didn't think that anyone in town would believe her,
Speaker 4: and she didn't stand in chance if she told the story,
Speaker 4: if she called the sheriff.
Speaker 2: So how does this story play out in court? She
Speaker 2: is cross examined. Now this is a direct examination where
Speaker 2: she gets to trot out this story without any criticism.
Speaker 2: But now it's the cross examination. Now it's Kemp and
Speaker 2: his assistant Cohen, who attack her on the stand and
Speaker 2: attack this unrealistic story.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he Kemp really goes after her. Again, this is
Speaker 4: the prosecutor, and he and Jim McDonald want to convict
Speaker 4: this woman. There's no two ways about that. He wants
Speaker 4: to get vict her, and he goes after He just
Speaker 4: rips her story up and from day one, the story
Speaker 4: about prostitution, the story about aj Encourage setting up a house,
Speaker 4: a constitution at the ranch. He attacks everything and goes
Speaker 4: after her and really goes into her credibility and attacks
Speaker 4: her credibility.
Speaker 2: Now this case is wrapped up. The prosecution makes its
Speaker 2: claim to say that there is ample evidence to say
Speaker 2: that this woman has killed aj Mathis, despite much of
Speaker 2: it being circumstantial. What happens in terms of the verdict.
Speaker 4: In the verdict, Yeah, she has found guilty. The jury
Speaker 4: goes out, came to a decision in anywhere from ninety
Speaker 4: minutes to two and a half hours of very quick jury,
Speaker 4: and they come back and make a vict her of
Speaker 4: murder and they will recommend the death sentence.
Speaker 2: What is the response from the audience, What is the
Speaker 2: response from the newspapers? What is the response from the
Speaker 2: public after this?
Speaker 4: Well, as you said in the introduction, some of the
Speaker 4: wealthier women in Arizona decide that Eva should not die,
Speaker 4: and they really launch an effort to save Eva from
Speaker 4: the news. As I entitled the chapter February thirteenth, nineteen thirty,
Speaker 4: a lot of people really don't want to see. Eva
Speaker 4: will not be the first woman to be executed by
Speaker 4: hanging in the West, but she will be one of
Speaker 4: the first in Arizona. And a lot of people are
Speaker 4: very uncomfortable with this. A woman sentenced to death by
Speaker 4: hanging in Arizona, and some people, especially these two wealthier women.
Speaker 4: Are three wealthier people, this is Ali Dickerman, among others,
Speaker 4: the two son postmaster, and two people who are considered
Speaker 4: to be pioneers in Arizona, John and his wife Willie Durham.
Speaker 4: They don't believe the death sentence would have been meted
Speaker 4: out if missus Dugan had been able to have a
Speaker 4: better attorney, if she had more money, if she had friends,
Speaker 4: And they make the point that she was convicted solely
Speaker 4: on circumstantial evidence. There was no one who saw her
Speaker 4: commit this murder. It's all circumstantial evidence, is the point
Speaker 4: that they were making. She would be the first woman
Speaker 4: executed by the state of Arizona. They believe that's wrong,
Speaker 4: and so they just signed that they will pay all
Speaker 4: expenses for her appeal, and they are will go to
Speaker 4: the governor and try to get this overturned. They will
Speaker 4: try to get a parting for her.
Speaker 2: Yes, they are adamant in trying to get her a
Speaker 2: new trial, and they are trying to drum up the
Speaker 2: idea that there's new evidence. There's something signed by this jackperson,
Speaker 2: another thing that maybe aj Mathis had written but despite
Speaker 2: his efforts of the appeal was not successful.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Right, cards and letters do start appearing, supposedly signed
Speaker 4: by Jack who admitting to the killing. But even Edith's
Speaker 4: fate is it's done. You know, they lose all the
Speaker 4: attempt to appeal, lose all of those and she is
Speaker 4: going to die. There's no two ways about it.
Speaker 2: Now. There's a bit of a there's a process to
Speaker 2: this execution as well. And as I'm mentioned earlier, that
Speaker 2: prison inmates had built this prison itself, but also had
Speaker 2: built the death chamber. So tell us a little bit
Speaker 2: about her weight for this and this death chamber.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the death chamber is the gallows and they have
Speaker 4: and ironically the inmates had built it they had one prison,
Speaker 4: an old prison. Then when they built a new prison,
Speaker 4: they put the death chamber in here the gallows and
Speaker 4: inmates had built it themselves. Now part of the process
Speaker 4: here is a legal process to get witnesses to the execution.
Speaker 4: So another of the real interesting characters. He're the warden,
Speaker 4: Lorenzo Right, He has to fill out a card. He
Speaker 4: sends out cards and letters, but mainly cards like a
Speaker 4: wedding invitation printed in a beautiful old English script, black
Speaker 4: on white, and said, pursuing to Section eleven forty nine
Speaker 4: on the Penal Code, we request your presence at the
Speaker 4: execution of missus Ema Duggan, condemned to die in Friday,
Speaker 4: February twenty one, nineteen thirty at the Arizona State Prison
Speaker 4: at five am in Florence, Arizona, signed by Lorenzo Wright, superintendent.
Speaker 4: So there's a whole legal process that has to go
Speaker 4: on with this. Because it was back in the way
Speaker 4: old days, back in the eighteen hundreds, it wasn't unusual
Speaker 4: for shareffs to arrest the suspect and hang them up
Speaker 4: right away, right in a tree outside the jail. So
Speaker 4: they put a real process into this, and they're still
Speaker 4: hoping at this point that when he's sending these cards out,
Speaker 4: they're still hoping that maybe they can get her sentence
Speaker 4: changed to a life in a mental hospital, but that
Speaker 4: fails as well.
Speaker 2: During this time that she is awaiting her sentence of
Speaker 2: death by hanging, she meets with the reporter Weedlock, the
Speaker 2: generalists Weedlock again Weedock, and also Sheriff McDonald. Yeah, are
Speaker 2: they surprised at her demeanor? What is their demeanor? During this?
Speaker 2: Facing this she.
Speaker 4: Picked up the nickname cheerful Eva. Well, she was on
Speaker 4: throw in this state prison in Florence. She is very
Speaker 4: resigned to the fact that she's going to die. She's
Speaker 4: been making little nicknacky kind of things and selling them
Speaker 4: to her fellow inmates to raise money for her coffin
Speaker 4: for her funeral expenses. And she's been knitting, or not knitting,
Speaker 4: but sewing for burial dress. So she's getting ready and
Speaker 4: she becomes quite a celebrity on death row and she's
Speaker 4: never afraid. Once her attorney Stanley gives her permission to
Speaker 4: talk to reporters, she goes off and talks to reporters
Speaker 4: and she becomes quite the character.
Speaker 2: Let's Jesus has an opportunity to stop per second for
Speaker 2: these messages.
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Speaker 2: Now, in this preparation, you say that there's so many parties,
Speaker 2: that there are people opposed to this death penalty. No
Speaker 2: woman in Arizona has been sentenced to death or has
Speaker 2: been executed. So tell us more about this march towards
Speaker 2: execution and what is done in preparation all around.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the march to execution, they take her out. They
Speaker 4: do have a final verdict in late February, and she
Speaker 4: loses her appeals and one of the worries they have
Speaker 4: though when she's back on death row is that she'll
Speaker 4: kill herself. They do not want the state of Arizona
Speaker 4: does not want her to kill herself. They want the
Speaker 4: execution to be carried out, so the ward and Lorenzo
Speaker 4: Wright in the prison's position, doctor la Love. They're out
Speaker 4: with friends at dinner. They get a call and they've
Speaker 4: found pills and chemicals that Eva could use to kill herself.
Speaker 4: Evidently they've been smuggled in by what friends that she has,
Speaker 4: and so they have that going on, and then Eva
Speaker 4: sends a telegram. Now she has a father in California
Speaker 4: that we find out later in the story. She's a
Speaker 4: few dollars short of being able to pay for the
Speaker 4: coffin and the funeral, so she sends a telegram to
Speaker 4: her father in California and she writes, have to die
Speaker 4: stop wire warden fifty dollars stop, will be buried in Florence,
Speaker 4: Stop signed Eva. That's the telegram that she sends to
Speaker 4: her father. She does not want her father or her
Speaker 4: son or daughter to be at the execution. She does
Speaker 4: not want to see any of them before she dies,
Speaker 4: so she doesn't. February twenty one, nineteen thirty, that's when
Speaker 4: she makes her final walk, the walk to the gallows.
Speaker 4: Forty newspaper men are admitted into her death cell and
Speaker 4: they stand elbow to elbow scribbling notes interviewing Eva she
Speaker 4: They find out that she appealed to the Attorney General's
Speaker 4: office trying to get a pardon. She was turned down.
Speaker 4: She says, She tells the reporters, I'm going to my
Speaker 4: maker with a clear conscience. I'm innocent of any murder,
Speaker 4: and God knows I am. But if the law says
Speaker 4: I must die, then I must die. She does have
Speaker 4: one favor to ask of the reporters, though. She asks
Speaker 4: them for a dollar each and they open their wallets.
Speaker 4: The one asks what she needs the money for now
Speaker 4: that she's going to die in a couple of hours,
Speaker 4: and she says she needs the money to finish paying
Speaker 4: for my coffin.
Speaker 2: She also wants this mysterious Jack to save her. She
Speaker 2: wants a letter to Jack. She wants it known that
Speaker 2: Jack can save her by just sending a letter and
Speaker 2: admitting tell us more about this.
Speaker 4: Yeah. She really reaches out to Jack and tries to
Speaker 4: get Jack to tell the story as she told it,
Speaker 4: if she really to the very end, She maintains that
Speaker 4: is what happened, that Jack hit aj Mathis in the stomach,
Speaker 4: and that's how he died. And because she believed she
Speaker 4: would never be treated fairly in the town or by
Speaker 4: Sheriff McDonald. That's why they buried him. She wants Jack again,
Speaker 4: the only witness to this death, to come forward and
Speaker 4: in writing tell what happened. But it doesn't happen, you know.
Speaker 2: February fifteenth, nineteen thirty, you write about the American League
Speaker 2: to Abolish Capital Punishment is still fighting to save Eva
Speaker 2: from the hangman's noose. And of course they're appealing to
Speaker 2: Governor John Phillips in a telegram and denouncing Attorney General
Speaker 2: Barry Peterson. Kay, Barry Peterson, and they're still calling for
Speaker 2: to commute Eva's death sentence. But yet, as you're write,
Speaker 2: invitations are going out in the mail for her hanging.
Speaker 2: And you had mentioned it before, but it's worth mentioning again.
Speaker 2: Tell us about these official invitations.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the official invitations are sent out because they have
Speaker 4: to get under the new state law. This is a
Speaker 4: relatively new state law. They have to have certain people
Speaker 4: in the audience, and they want to make you know.
Speaker 4: Arizona's cowboy sheriffs have a history of just hanging people
Speaker 4: suspects outside the jailhouse if they find a sturdy trigger,
Speaker 4: or even in the courthouse, they would hang people. So
Speaker 4: They want us that they make more of a process
Speaker 4: for the execution in Arizona now, and so they want
Speaker 4: people like Sheriff McDonald, They want the prosecutors to be there.
Speaker 4: They want a witnesses who will attest to the fact
Speaker 4: that this person was hung, because there were two there
Speaker 4: were cases two in Arizona before this of convicted people
Speaker 4: actually bribing their way out, handing the sheriffs to money
Speaker 4: and then just taking off.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: So they want witnesses there to confirm that Eva Duggan
Speaker 4: did die twelve reputable citizens is what.
Speaker 2: The law says. Lorenzo Right is the superintendent. So what
Speaker 2: happens on that day of the execution? How is what
Speaker 2: does Eva do in preparation? What's her demeanor that day? Us?
Speaker 4: Well, her demeanor that day she is resigned to the
Speaker 4: fact that she's going to die. That the day before,
Speaker 4: by the way, she asked the warden right, Lorenzo Right,
Speaker 4: she referred to him as Daddy Right, And she asked
Speaker 4: him what she should wear for her hanging, and the
Speaker 4: wardens said, well, don't wear a fine dress. It will
Speaker 4: be soiled. So and then she wanted to make sure
Speaker 4: that she would receive a Christian burial. All those arrangements
Speaker 4: had been made, an undertaker in Florence would claim the
Speaker 4: body and bury her in a cemetery plot that she'd
Speaker 4: already purchased. Where she gets the money for this sewing
Speaker 4: and selling beads to her fellow inmates for the past
Speaker 4: few years, and doing so, she'd raised enough money except
Speaker 4: for that fifty dollars that she asked her father for.
Speaker 4: She was ready to go. And then when their walk
Speaker 4: now is so it's February twenty one, nineteen thirty Eva's
Speaker 4: final walk, and they're taking her to the gallows, and
Speaker 4: she really has a I don't know, a cavalier attitude
Speaker 4: about this for most of the walk, and she's talking
Speaker 4: to the guard. She jokes with the guards. She tells
Speaker 4: one guard not to stare at her so much because
Speaker 4: they'll think that you like me. Don't hang into my
Speaker 4: arm that way, she tells another, They'll think I can't walk.
Speaker 4: She is Eva Duggan, so the last dying moment, and
Speaker 4: she says, we came here to this world naked and fair.
Speaker 4: Where we go from here, God only knows where those
Speaker 4: are basically her last words.
Speaker 2: So they set her up. You say that the inmates
Speaker 2: had done this. There's the executioner. He estimates the weight
Speaker 2: of the person that's going to be hanged. There is
Speaker 2: a trapdoor, so once that trap door allows her to
Speaker 2: hang down and she should be, by their calculations, be dead,
Speaker 2: very very quickly. Tell us about the actual execution, the witnesses,
Speaker 2: what they see, what do they experience at this execution?
Speaker 2: Tell us the setup first of who is the spectators
Speaker 2: at this and what do they witness?
Speaker 4: Well, as we said, there are twelve reputable citizens in
Speaker 4: the audience and in the front row, share of Jim McDonald,
Speaker 4: County Attorney Lewis Kemp, and one of Eva's favorite reporters
Speaker 4: and one of the favorite reporters of this story, Jack Weedock.
Speaker 4: They're all in the front row, sitting there watching as
Speaker 4: they walk Eva up to the trapdoor that will become
Speaker 4: her portal to heaven, hell, or somewhere in between for
Speaker 4: in a mire. Sixty seconds and five oh one. They
Speaker 4: put the noose around her neck. She sways slightly. A
Speaker 4: guard asks, have you anything to say? She shakes her head. No,
Speaker 4: She doesn't say anything, but then she looks down at
Speaker 4: the witnesses. They are close enough to see her and
Speaker 4: for her to see them, and she smiles at the witnesses.
Speaker 4: Now there are twelve reputable citizens in the front. Behind
Speaker 4: them are more members of the press. Seventy five people
Speaker 4: in all are watching Eva die. She stands on the
Speaker 4: steel trap door. And if the executioner pulls the handle
Speaker 4: and the door falls with a bang and a clang,
Speaker 4: it's loud enough that the other prisoners back in the
Speaker 4: prison can hear it. They know that one of their
Speaker 4: own has died when they hear that bang and clack. Now,
Speaker 4: as you said, they put the noose around her neck.
Speaker 4: And this is really a scientific way they would do
Speaker 4: this to hang someone. They calculate the weight, the height,
Speaker 4: and then and by that they calculate how they're going
Speaker 4: to put the noose around the neck. Somebody made a mistake.
Speaker 4: Eva goes through the door. The the rope cuts right
Speaker 4: through her neck and her head snaps off. Her head
Speaker 4: falls down right in front of the witnesses, and it
Speaker 4: just rolls with blood spewing from her neck. It rolls
Speaker 4: in front of right down to the witness's feet, and
Speaker 4: her torso crumples into the pit under the gallows like
Speaker 4: a sack of wet laundry.
Speaker 2: You say, Several men and women fall to the ground,
Speaker 2: fainting at the sight of Eva's head rolling on the
Speaker 2: floor with her half closed eyes looking up at them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, women are screaming. Many are pushing and shoving their
Speaker 4: way out of the room, hands over their mouths, choking
Speaker 4: back vomit. There is another crowd outside the room. I mean,
Speaker 4: just remember that her trial. How people packed into the
Speaker 4: trial for entertainment. This is high entertainment too. So you've
Speaker 4: got seventy five to one hundred people in this building,
Speaker 4: and the seventy five in the viewing room are trapped.
Speaker 4: They can't get out. They're looking as the torso of
Speaker 4: Eva just spewing blood everywhere. And as you said, her head,
Speaker 4: just the way that aj skull was staring at Eva
Speaker 4: during the trial, That's the way Eva skull in her
Speaker 4: head will be staring at these witnesses to her execution.
Speaker 4: So Lorenzo Wright, the warden, takes control. He just moves
Speaker 4: in there and basically says, okay, everybody, there's nothing to
Speaker 4: see here. He gradually moves the crowd out of the
Speaker 4: viewing room and leaves the prison employees behind to clean
Speaker 4: everything out or clean everything up, I should say.
Speaker 2: Now, as a result of this disastrous execution, especially with
Speaker 2: so many people wanting her to her sentence to be
Speaker 2: commuted to life, what is the reaction of this botched execution?
Speaker 4: Politicians take over the politicians in Arizona. I mean, the
Speaker 4: people are outraged. You know, the idea that a woman
Speaker 4: was executed like this. To begin with, nobody was happy
Speaker 4: with this, or very few were happy with this. Most
Speaker 4: were opposed. And now you've got her head literally cut off.
Speaker 4: She was decapitated by the nub by the news and
Speaker 4: her head just bounced down the stairs and in front
Speaker 4: of the witnesses. So movement began begins in the Arizona
Speaker 4: State legislature to do away with not capital punishment. They
Speaker 4: don't want to go that far, but they don't want
Speaker 4: hanging anymore. So they decided to go to a gas chamber.
Speaker 4: To build a gas chamber.
Speaker 2: Now, Sheriff McDonald solved this case along with other people.
Speaker 2: But as we mentioned earlier, there's an election he has
Speaker 2: to contend with, and that election comes up shortly after
Speaker 2: this execution, at least in November fifth, nineteen thirty. Now
Speaker 2: he's running for reelection. What do the voters resoundly tell him,
Speaker 2: and why.
Speaker 4: They say go away? They did not want him. The
Speaker 4: Daily Star of the Arizona Daily Stars editorial board writes
Speaker 4: that never in the history of Pima County have there
Speaker 4: been more unsolved murder cases than under the president administration
Speaker 4: of Jim McDonald the count Boy Sheriff. The editorial board
Speaker 4: rights the Contonboys Sheriff oh no one of the This
Speaker 4: is from one of the readers of the Arizona Daily Star.
Speaker 4: He says. The letter writer writes the Cowboys share must
Speaker 4: have worn out his think tank on the difficult Mathis case.
Speaker 4: People are saying that Jim spent too much time on
Speaker 4: the Mathis case, and many don't like the fact that
Speaker 4: Eva was convicted on circumstantial evidence. There are a lot
Speaker 4: of other cases that I pointed to in this book,
Speaker 4: other murders that go unsolved. There's gambling going on in Arizona,
Speaker 4: in Pima County that is being ignored, evidently by Jim
Speaker 4: McDonald and some of the other county officials. And so
Speaker 4: there really is a real backlash to this. And there
Speaker 4: was a woman, for instance, beaten to death with a
Speaker 4: small hammer. They never found the killers. So a lot
Speaker 4: of people are just unhappy with Jim McDonald and they
Speaker 4: vote him out of office.
Speaker 2: You continue with this story about the warden December twenty second,
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty and this incredible misadventure with a trusting warden.
Speaker 2: Tell us the story and why you included.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I included this because this is just another There
Speaker 4: are so many interesting characters in this book, and I
Speaker 4: wanted to bring it to a sense of closure. I
Speaker 4: guess on some of the leading characters. And another one
Speaker 4: is the warden Lorenzo. Right now, this isn't the Florence
Speaker 4: State Penitentiary. This is December twenty second, nineteen thirty. Eve
Speaker 4: is long dead right now. Raymond Stickler is a trustee.
Speaker 4: He's also a tailor and he's been putting in a
Speaker 4: new lining to Warden Lorenzo rights suit coat. He's been
Speaker 4: doing work for the warden, finishing a suit coat. Stickler
Speaker 4: says he needs to get some new material from town.
Speaker 4: He doesn't have it, so he convince his right to
Speaker 4: give him a drive and give him a ride into town.
Speaker 4: And right says, yeah, I'll give you a right into town.
Speaker 4: Let me get my son, a little boy, and we'll
Speaker 4: go into town and we'll get your your material and
Speaker 4: then you can fix my suit coat up and that'll
Speaker 4: be fine. About halfway to Florence, right is driving, Stickler
Speaker 4: is sitting right beside him. This convict pulls out a
Speaker 4: knife out of his coat and pushes the blade's tip
Speaker 4: against Wright's ribcage. Now, Lorenzo Wright is a big guy,
Speaker 4: and this prison convict, the trustee is Stiller is only
Speaker 4: five ten and weighs one hundred and forty. But that
Speaker 4: knife that really equalizes, you know, the size of the
Speaker 4: two men. So and besides the wardens little boys in
Speaker 4: the car too. So what's he gonna do? Raymond Stickler
Speaker 4: the convict that grabs the wardens gun out of his holster.
Speaker 4: So now he's got a knife and a gun, and
Speaker 4: he's got Ordon right right where he wants him. And
Speaker 4: so he but anyway, he leaves right and the boy
Speaker 4: alone and takes the car and drives into town where
Speaker 4: he has his mission. Now, the Stickler he wants to
Speaker 4: kill his father. I mean, this is some crazy people
Speaker 4: in the story. They're just like wild. Is just a
Speaker 4: wild story.
Speaker 2: What happens continued?
Speaker 4: Please, Stickler goes into a restaurant and he's got a
Speaker 4: hot car, a gun, a knife, a head start, and
Speaker 4: fifty eight dollars in cash he took out of the
Speaker 4: warden's wallet. But that won't last long, so he decides
Speaker 4: to rob a coffee shop. What else is he gonna do?
Speaker 4: Get a job, right, there's no time for that, so
Speaker 4: he goes into the cafe. He's got his gun, his knife,
Speaker 4: and he goes to He's got the register open, grabbing
Speaker 4: cash out, and all of a sudden wham, one of
Speaker 4: the cafe workers turns Hero and smashes Stickler over the
Speaker 4: head with a heavy big coffee urn boiling hot coffee.
Speaker 4: Two other cafe workers jump into the fight. They're all fighting.
Speaker 4: Then the cops show up and they start fighting. Now
Speaker 4: they hadn't heard about Warden Wright's kidnapping. They don't know.
Speaker 4: Then they do a rest Stickler, Okay, he's out numbered.
Speaker 4: They're putting the handcuffs on him. They don't realize though.
Speaker 4: The cops do not realize that the guy they're going
Speaker 4: to have in the back of their car has a
Speaker 4: gun and a knife. They didn't bother patting the guy
Speaker 4: down and he's got a knife. That knife that he
Speaker 4: had that he pulled down the warden it's in his
Speaker 4: shoe right now. So he's in the back seat and
Speaker 4: his deputy's share of Jimmy Davis is driving the patrol
Speaker 4: car with Stickler in the back. The second deputy is
Speaker 4: in warden Wright's car. The Stickler stole and the con
Speaker 4: Stickler pulls his knife out of his shoe and puts
Speaker 4: it up against the cop and they starts fighting. The
Speaker 4: cops starts punching Raymond in the head. You know, they're
Speaker 4: fighting back and forth. Finally the car excel Rate swarms
Speaker 4: into the side of the street and smashes into a
Speaker 4: telephone pole so hard the vehicle is demolished, but neither
Speaker 4: man stops fighting. Stickler and his deputy, Jimmy Davis are
Speaker 4: still fighting, you know, tooth and nail. I mean, they're
Speaker 4: going at it and felling. The second comp who's in
Speaker 4: warden Wright's car. He pulls over and the two of
Speaker 4: them together, he and the deputy Davis are able to
Speaker 4: get Stickler under control.
Speaker 2: You're right. July sixth, nineteen thirty four, there's a couple
Speaker 2: men that are going to their death sentence. They're going
Speaker 2: to be executed, but Arizona Governor G. W. P. Hunt,
Speaker 2: he was originally on their side, was on Eva Dugan's
Speaker 2: side originally about capital punishment being outlawed. When he didn't
Speaker 2: win approval for that. He was on board with the
Speaker 2: idea the switching to lethal injection to lethal gas is
Speaker 2: a method of execution. Tell us about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is a thing where they decided that hanging
Speaker 4: was just too uncivilized and it just was in humane.
Speaker 4: So Arizona Governor GWP Conten, several legislators are able to
Speaker 4: put and the voters of Arizona designed that they're going
Speaker 4: to build a gas that they're going to go to gas,
Speaker 4: a gas chamber. A headline of the Tucson Citizen newspaper
Speaker 4: promises death by gas will be painless. The person in
Speaker 4: the death chamber, the paper rights, is not aware of
Speaker 4: the presence of the gas until overcome. Death is instantaneous.
Speaker 4: They okay, you know, the voters go with that, and
Speaker 4: now we're going to have the first execution. Brothers Fred
Speaker 4: and Manuel Hernandez. They were convicted of killing Charles P. Washburn,
Speaker 4: a sixty four year old desert prospector living in a
Speaker 4: shack near Casa Grande, and they are going to be
Speaker 4: executed today. The first to be sentenced to death by
Speaker 4: gas in Arizona. They will also be the first to
Speaker 4: die in a dual execution by lethal gas. And again,
Speaker 4: I'm putting this chapter in because I want to give
Speaker 4: this I mean, this is such a big story to
Speaker 4: wrap your arms around. This story. This kind of gives
Speaker 4: a sense of closure to what happened, because even died
Speaker 4: and the way she died in closing.
Speaker 2: In this book, what we never find out about is
Speaker 2: the identity of this Jack. Jack was seen by one
Speaker 2: of these store owners when he came in and had
Speaker 2: borrowed fifty cents for a brief period of time and
Speaker 2: came back in and paid that fifty cents. But you
Speaker 2: write about at the end what happened to the mysterious Jack,
Speaker 2: and we don't know.
Speaker 4: No one knows now remember now, see I have my
Speaker 4: own theory about this. Now. What I do when I
Speaker 4: write these books, I read newspapers, the old newspapers from
Speaker 4: nineteen twenty seven, nineteen twenty eight, nineteen twenty nine, and
Speaker 4: really get into these stories. I'm you, remember Jack just
Speaker 4: disappeared when she bought the ticket. Yes, we never saw
Speaker 4: Jack again. We did see cards and letters from Jack supposedly,
Speaker 4: but we really don't know that Jack wrote those cards
Speaker 4: and letters. We have no idea what happened to Jack.
Speaker 4: Just given Evas' history disappearing husbands and the death of
Speaker 4: aj Mathis. I don't think myself that Jack Savina.
Speaker 2: And what would have happened to him, you speculate.
Speaker 4: I think she killed him. I think she killed him
Speaker 4: in Texas after they sold the car and she didn't
Speaker 4: need him anymore to drive again. That was part of
Speaker 4: the reason she had him. She needed him to drive
Speaker 4: the car. Cars in those days were not easy things
Speaker 4: to drive, like the Dodge Troop they had. It could
Speaker 4: never go uphill. It could go uphill like at ten
Speaker 4: or twenty miles an hour, and you always had to
Speaker 4: have somebody out cranking the front of it to get
Speaker 4: it going again. Driving was not an easy thing to do.
Speaker 4: Gas stations were few and far between. She needed Jack
Speaker 4: to drive, She needed a man to be with her
Speaker 4: at that point. I'm convinced that she killed Jack. Whether
Speaker 4: she poisoned him or hit him over the head, I
Speaker 4: don't know, but that's what I think happened.
Speaker 2: It does have some lend some credence to your idea
Speaker 2: because it seemed that Jack was given only so much information.
Speaker 2: He certainly wasn't a cohort in this. He wasn't privy
Speaker 2: to all the information. He wasn't an accomplice per se,
Speaker 2: from all of the evidence you provide in this book.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, that's it exactly. I you know, to begin with,
Speaker 4: there's a part of me saying the whole thing was
Speaker 4: made up. The character of Jack did not exist, but
Speaker 4: he was seen in that store, a couple of stores.
Speaker 4: He was seen enough that I do believe Jack existed,
Speaker 4: And I do believe that she needed someone to be
Speaker 4: with her to drive the car, you know, to do
Speaker 4: things that she couldn't do by herself. But I think
Speaker 4: after she got on that train, when she knew she
Speaker 4: was going to get on the train the White Planes
Speaker 4: where her daughter lived, she didn't need Jack anymore. He
Speaker 4: was just excess baggage. So that's what I think happened.
Speaker 2: Very interesting idea as well, when you earlier talk about
Speaker 2: the three or four husbands that she was married to,
Speaker 2: but they also disappeared, And when you talk about Jack disappearing,
Speaker 2: if there ever was someone that needed to disappear or
Speaker 2: Eva's story to not be challenged, it was for Jack
Speaker 2: to disappear right exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Really, if she did kill AJ, he was the
Speaker 4: only witness, and if he killed AJ again, he was
Speaker 4: the only witness to her complicity in that.
Speaker 2: Very very interesting. I want to thank you very much
Speaker 2: Rod Cackley for coming on talking about your latest kill
Speaker 2: Barry Forget Shocking True crime story. For those that might
Speaker 2: want to check out your other work, you have a
Speaker 2: website and you do any social media. Tell us about that.
Speaker 4: I do a little bit of Facebook, but the best
Speaker 4: way to get me is Rodcackley dot com. I have
Speaker 4: a website there.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Rod Cackley, Kill Barry Forget Shocking
Speaker 2: True Crime Story. It's been a fascinating interview. Thank you
Speaker 2: so much, Rod Cackley, and goodnight,