Duchess Spinelli's Crime School

applied the brakes. On account of his deafness, fifty five year old mister Cash did not hear it, and was surprised a moment later to see a solitary figure loom up out of the fog. This is a stick up, the stranger announced, sharply. Cash reached for his pocket to turn on his mechanical hearing device that would translate the man's mumble into understandable words. As he did so, something appeared suddenly in the other hand. There was a spurt of flame, a flat report, and Cash fell dead. At

the sound of the shot. Cash's pretty wife, Beatrice forty five, a waitress at the stand, said she heard a noise that sounded like a blowout, and then heard her husband cry As she recounted events before a coroner's jury. The shooting occurred on a Sunday night, actually early Monday morning. Monday was their day off and they were going to the country on a picnic leland I said, put some food in the car. All the customers were gone. I was in the rear and I heard a shot. Then

I heard Leland. He called to me twice, B B, Come quick, I'm shot. For God's sakes, call the police. Beatrice rushed in from the kitchen, but only in time to hear a door slam and a motor per way into the fog. Rushing around to the front where her husband had been storing material for a tripping their automobile, she found him in a pool of blood. True crime historian presents an Eye for an Eye, a special edition of Yesterday News, exploring the criminal justice system that its

most extreme, inflicting the death penalty. Although there's nothing funny about real life murder, if episode three hundred and sixty one were fictional, you could shelve it right next to Elmore Leonard or Karl Hyacon and the Wacky characters they create who walk in the realm of dark comedy. The downfall of this gang that couldn't shoot straight begins when one of its members decides to surrender and deliver state's evidence. When it begins to look like his days are numbered.

As it turns out he was right. I'm true crime historian Richard O. Jones, and for your astonishment and indignation, I give you Duchess Spinelli's Crime School. The Half Wit Gang of Golden Gate Avenue. April eighth, nineteen forty. Mystery shrouded the fatal shooting early today of leland S Cash, fifty five, which occurred as he was closing up a barbecue stand of which he was night manager in the San Francisco Beach District. Cash was taken to the Park

Emergency Hospital, where he died an hour later. He was in a semi coma during the entire time and did not identify his assailant. Missus Cash said her husband had made one trip to the car and was returning for the second time when he was shot down. She thought perhaps her husband, who was rather deaf, failed to hear the command of a hold up man and the bandit fired five dollars which Cash had in his wallet had not been taken. However, the shooting occurred shortly after Cash

and his wife closed up the stand at midnight. She was cleaning the kitchen. He was carrying a package of food to the car parked at the back of the building. Under the terms of their employment, the couple obtained a certain amount of foodstuffs from the barbecue stand. It was Cash, as nightly customed to carry out the packages of food

while his wife tidied up the kitchen. Apparently, a hold up man saw Cash and the packages and jumped to the conclusion that he was transferring the day's receipts to his car. That was his first error, the receipts having been placed in a safe inside the building and protected from theft by a time lock. As Cash carried his package of eggs, butter and bread to the car. According to the police theory, the hold up man accosted him, thrust a revolver at him, ordered him to put his

hands up. Cash was hard of hearing hearing, and that accounted for the next era. Police believe possibly he did not understand the robber's command. Possibly, as was his habit, he reached for his hearing apparatus to turn on the switch, and the robber, believing he was reaching for a weapon, fired. When patrolman Joseph p Engler and James Gallagher reached the scene, they found Cash sprawled on the pavement between his car and the side entrance to the barbecue stand. He had

been shot in the stomach. There were no witnesses to the shooting. Investigators found a twenty two caliber cartridge near the point where Cash was shot down. They pointed out that the fatal wound showed Cash was apparently shot by a weapon of considerably larger caliber. His wife, in describing the shot, said, quote, it was a loud report, a

very loud one unquote. July fourteenth, nineteen forty. A vigorous search for the killer instituted by the police soon brought in a suspect, but while detectives were questioning him, they received a mysterious phone call. That guy you're holding his innocent. A voice told him over the wire, if you want proof, we'll send you a bullet from the murder gun, whereupon the speaker quickly hung up. The suspect was eventually cleared, although no bullet arrived, and there the case rested in

spite of an intensive manhunt. April seventeenth, nineteen forty, Squealing in mortal terror as they felt themselves caught in a police tramp of evidence, five members of as oddly assorted a crime and murder gang as California has ever caught were doing their best in Sacramento late yesterday to talk

themselves into San Quentin's lethal gas execution chamber. Into the amazed ears of hard boiled detectives, the five, each trying fiercely to pass the buck of blame to the others, poured out in ghastly detail the story of at least two murders. One was the hold up killing of leland S Cash in front of his Ocean Beach barbecue stand in San Francisco the night of April eighth. The other was the cold blooded killing by knockout drops and dumping into the Sacramento River of one of their own gang

who was turning yalla. And on top of those murders, they were piling up a minor series of stick ups, auto thefts, drunk rollings, and assorted banditree that reads like an old fashioned dime novel. As they talked Sacramento authorities ready to blanket murder charge to be lodged against all five of them, as they implicated one another inextricably in a net of conspiracy to thieve and kill. These five

will be named in the accusation. One Missus Juanita Spinelli, fifty one year old woman from Detroit, known as the Duchess and described as the brains of the gang. Reputed mother of six although only three were identified, and reputedly the widow of one Tony Spinelle, Detroit hijacker and member of the Red Cap Gang, supposedly shot to death. Also described as one time fingerwoman in a Detroit laundry racket and said to be affiliated with the infamous Purple Gang.

Two Lorraine Dane, the Gypsy Spinelle, Missus Spinelle's nineteen year old dark beauty daughter, used by the gang as a lure in hitchhike banditry and described as the authoress of the Knockout Drop plot by which one of the gang was rubbed out. Three Mike Simeon thirty two from Detroit, the common law husband of the Duchess, described as the Duchess's lieutenant, whom she imported from Detroit to help her

wrung the crime ring here. Four Gordon Hawkins twenty one, who graduated from small time auto stealing and thievery and two years in the Ione Reformatory to membership in the Duchess gang. Five Albert Ives twenty three, with the San Francisco petty crime record, whose feared that he'd be next to be put on the spot by his gang companions led him to run to a motor patrolman with the confession that landed the gang in the toils and fished

out of the Sacramento River late yesterday. Dead was Robert Shared, another San Francisco youth who had joined the gang and who was callously done away with by the rest of them when they feared he'd run to the police to save his own skin. The Duchess was distressed during questioning and insisted she was not the head.

the call, which they had been unable to trace. Ives and the duchess also said they had planned, if the suspect was not cleared, to fire a bullet from their gun and send it to the police as definite evidence of what gun killed Cash. After ives gave details of the Cash shooting, O'Shea asked them what happened to Shared?

Ives answered, I dumped him in the river. Although three San Francisco detectives were in Sacramento to bring the quintet back for the Cash killing here, it was decided late Tuesday to let them be prosecuted first on the charge of killing Shared. Assistant District Attorney J. Francis O'shay in Sacramento pointed out, quote in the Shared case, thanks to their confessions, we have a complete case against all five of them. The San Francisco killing might not be so

easy depend on all of them. On the Shared case. We have them all, so we'll prosecute here unquote that decision was reached after the body of Shared, a spindly youth who had once been an inmate of the Sonoma Home for the Feeble Minded, had been recovered from the

river some thousand yards south of the Freeport Bridge. From that bridge, ives and others of the gang admitted to detectives in O'Shea, Shared had been dumped, drugged with knockout drops, slipped into a whiskey glass by Duchess Juanita to drown last Sunday night. Dragging operations begun yesterday morning succeeded. In the late afternoon, Shared's corpse, dressed only in swim trunks,

was dragged ashore. Quote. After the killing of Cash and San Francisco, I and Hawkins and Shared fled San Francisco. That was last Thursday. We came to Sacramento next day. The Duchess and her daughter and Simeon, along with the Duchess's two other kids, boys eight and fifteen years old, followed us. We took rooms in a West Sacramento hotel. Shared got scared and jittery. We thought he was gonna squeal, So the rest of us talked it over. How we

do it. Finally someone asked why not a picnic. Bobby was a very poor swimmer and might be enticed out over his depth. They would make a fire on the bank. Bobby dearly loved grilled hamburgers. He would have a good lunch and then his blabbing tongue and uneasy conscience would be stilled forever. The scene would be such a nice sind off for poor Bobby. So next day they all went on their outing. Finally lunching over the nice young people got into their bathing dogs. Bobby balked, saying, I

won't go in. There's a current of that river. Say do you want me to drown? The others exchanged glances. That was just what they did want, but they could hardly tell him. At a later conference, one eyed Albert suggested, another course, let me take him out for target practice. Lots of guys have accidents at target practice. Missus Spinelli gave ives a look of blasting scorn. I'm not going to have the poor lad hurt and bleeding, she said.

Then Mike Simeons suggested she could give Bob some of his favorite cocktails, and they could put a little something into the drinks, a little something called knockout drops. So this sinister cocktail party was staged the next night in the Duchess's hotel room. Missus Spinelli herself presided as the smiling hostess, and it was she who took from her purse the knockout drops she carried as part of her crime equipment. As Bobby stretched out his hand for the glass,

he smiled. He tossed off his first drink, and soon held out his glass again. Into this one went the mickey finn that was to start him on the road to painless oblivion. He tossed that one off too, and the fog started gathering in his feeble brain, gathering as a fog on that awful night when the murder was done, the murder whose memory would give his dulled senses no peace. Soon the doomed dead end kid lay back upon the pillows as the other sat waiting, waiting on their unholy

death watch. By this time, the little boys had been put to bed in the next bedroom after just two small drinks. For the Duchess later explained another of her principles of child training. I don't believe in too many cocktails for the little chaps. One or two mild whiskies are enough. They waited ten full minutes more. Then the duchess arose. It was the signal downstairs. A car shot out of the city into the country to the river.

One eyed Albert was driving. When they reached the untraveled midnight streets of the outskirts, the two men hastily and efficiently disrobed the numbed youngster, dressed him in his bathing trunks, said ives, we stripped off all of his other clothes so that when the body was found people would think he drowned while swimming. Soon they rolled out on the Fremont Bridge across the Sacramento River. Mike Simeon stepped out,

looked about. Nobody was anywhere near. They pulled the drugged boy from the tonneau, lugging him through the darkness, and flung him down down into the Royally water. There was just one last detail that was to place their victim's clothes among some bushes on the river bank, where he would have left them himself had he gone on a midnight swim. After that, the gang abandoned plans for some

service station stickups in Sacramento. They admitted they were getting scared, so they headed for Grass Valley to case some spots there and in Trucky. Eyes finally blew up. He feared, He said that he'd get the same treatment Share had. In Trucky he saw State Highway patrolman. I want a drink, he told his companions. They stopped and let him go to a bar instead. He ran to the cop, squealed,

and the gang was arrested. Yesterday's confessions under police grilling followed the killing of Cash the barbecue man was not premeditated, missus Spinelli insisted. Instead, after Simeon had cased the spot, she instructed Shared in Ives to hold up the stand but not to shoot. With some nurses training. According to Ives, the older woman instructed them just how and where to hit Cash so they'd knock him cold if he resisted. Ives confessed instead, I got nervous when Cash resisted and

I plugged him. Hawkins insisted under grilling yesterday that his with the gang was merely to steal cars for their other jobs. Quote, I stole nine in two or three weeks, but I know I'm guilty under the law for the killings, along with the rest of them. I've written my father and mother in San Francisco to give me a damn good criminal lawyer, or I'll get the gas. Probably I will anyway, Gee, I wish it was me they chucked

into the river instead of sha It unquote. While the quintet were pouring out their confessions, the Sacramento Police ballistics experts were comparing a bullet fired from a thirty eight caliber gun taken from Missus Spinelli's purse with a bullet that killed Cash and San Francisco. The tests, police said proved that the Cash death's lug was fired from Missus Spinelli's gun. Hawkins's only soft moment came when he saw the girl Lorraine, taken in to the Detective Bureau for grilling.

He cried, lay off her. She ain't done nothing. However, the girl's own mother stuck to her story that it was nineteen year old Lorraine's idea to dispose of Shared via the knockout, drops and drowning method. Missus Spinelli explained that was a fine idea. I liked young Shared, and I wanted him to die easily. She said. She first came to California in nineteen thirty seven to get away

from the vengeance of Detroit's notorious Purple Gang. Who were after her because they suspected her of being the fingerwoman for killings in the laundry racket there. Later she returned to Detroit, but came back to California last January. In San Francisco, she recruited eyes Hawkins and shared and sent

for Simeon. Since then, according to the confessions poured out yesterday, the gang admitted, besides the killings of cash and shared, the theft of nine cars for them in San Francisco, the hold up of a service station at Golden Gate and Vans Avenues in San Francisco, where they got twenty dollars, the picking up of a drunk named Miller in San Francisco, and the clean out robbery of Miller's apartment. Said one

of the detectives. They were even wearing some of Miller's clothes when they were arrested April eighteenth, nineteen forty For Albert One I, Ives whose squeal landed the bizarre duchess murder ring in police toils, his pals had worked out one of the neatest death tricks in their macabre repertoire, it was revealed yesterday as authorities moved to bring the two women and three youths to trial because they feared

Ives was going to run the cops. They were going to drug him precisely as they had drugged Robert Shared, the other gang member. They killed the silence, but they weren't going to dump Ives into the river as they

did Share it. Instead, they were going to slip the point of a very sharp, very long hatpin into the drug Lad's ear, and then with one quick thrust, they were going to drive the pin through Ives's brain quote, and that way the cops will never find out what killed him unquote, was the triumphant suggestion of fifty one

year old wan Edi Spinelli. According to the confession which the police hold from twenty one year old Gordon Hawkins, who facing prosecution with the others, is talking wide and open in a desperate effort to save himself from San Quentin's gas chamber. The new Hawkins confession, together with other grisly details of the fire Person Gang's reign of dime novel terror popped yesterday as other developments came thick and fast in the Duchess ring case.

and a wooden gun. With these, police said, Missus Spinelli taught her youthful gangsters how to properly knife a man, how to handle an opponent in any kind of fight, and how to strike adversaries quote to lay them out. First of all, the duchess explained her obvious membership in this strange criminal syndicate as involuntary. That membership merely proved

her a good and loving mother. She said, she wasn't the gang's brains and organized who could tailor as sweet a blackjack as ever addled brain and do it as serenely as another mother might knit an Afgan. She merely lived in the same apartment with them, motored with them about the countryside because she wanted to look after her daughter Lorraine. Quote that child was in love with Gordon Hawkins, so I just stayed with him to protect Lorraine unquote.

The second time, missus Spinelli explained her conduct via her motherhood, she said, of course, she told her two small boys all about the stickups. Quote. I don't believe in keeping anything from the children unquote, she explained, phrasing a new

philosophy of child guidance. The next explanation missus Spinelli offered for her association with Robert Charrard, escaped inmate of a feeble minded institution, one eyed Albert ives not too strong in the head himself, Mike Simeon, ex white slaver and convict, Gordon Hawkins, auto thief and auto mechanic. Was that they all came to her house on Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco from interest in her daughter, and she thought

them such nice young men. They cheered her maternal middle aged heart, she said, and so she entertained them, cooked them good home compounded spaghetti, mothered them brightened at the sound of their young laughter. But the State of California found that missus Spinelli was probably not so motherly as

she claimed. On the other hand, the state said she chose Cherrard, Ives and Hawkins, three young dead end kids, feeble minded aspirants to the big time crime, because they were suggestible in the brain, because what they needed was expert direction for their willing trainers. She chose them because they were young and susceptible to the charms of her daughter, Lorraine, whom she is alleged to have used as a come

on girl. The triggermen Ives and Charrard, the auto expert, Hawkins the caseman Simeon, the sultry eyed come on girl. Lorraine made a perfect organization. Pupils docile to their teacher. The duchess and missus Spinelli figured when the dollars got unpleasant or dangerous, they could be eliminated. They were cheap lives, the cannon fodder of the underworld. There were plenty more dead end kids, plenty more psychopathic cases where these discarded

and liquidated wretches came from. So the police said that the woman reasoned and in about the same breaths, she interpolated that her nickname Duchess didn't at all mean mother and director of the crime school. Instead, she said it was a nickname given her admiringly by Bobby Schirrard, the feeble minded school alumnus. You're our duchess and our treasurer, he is reported to have said, and that's my name for you. I trust you with my money, and I

think you're swell anyway. The story of the peripatetic Crime School begins for the record seven months ago when Missus Spinelli with her children left Detroit on the wings of her slogan, when one town gets too hot, there's always another one, safety lies and change of scene. Before her sudden departure, she had been the devoted and grieving widow

of a notorious bank robber, Anthony Spinelli. His life and sudden demise following a smuggling exploit on the Mexican border had convinced her that many small and fairly regular profits are better than a great, big prophet. Perhaps so, she is said to a philosophized one big crime doesn't pay so well. A small, quick crime quickly executed, turning in

quick and easy profits. Two two hold ups and three carthiffs a week at a modest average of three hundred dollars apiece add up to fifteen hundred dollars weekly, and fifteen hundred dollars weekly is seventy eight thousand dollars yearly with no income tax to pay. Three, no clever executive does the actual robbing and killing. To run your business well, you must learn to delegate, and it's more economical to use human discards directed by a master mind.

she explained. But above all, she would teach them three main techniques she had learned from her husband, the bank robber. These were how to knife a man properly, how to handle an opponent in the main divisions of fighting, and how to strike a victim as to knock him out. These were three things she taught the dead end kids in spells, between cooking them succulent spaghetti and stitching them

up the very best models in blackjacks. A blackjack, perhaps it might here be explained as a long slender, her bludgeon of steel or lead, neatly covered with velvet or leather. Police Lieutenant Michael Mitchell of San Francisco, who learned that Duchess was a former female wrestler and that she had taught her gang wrestling holds so victims of stick ups could be held by one while another did the slugging or frisking. Mitchell said she also was a knife thrower

and could pin a half dollar at fifteen paces. Her son, Joseph seventeen, subsequently declared that he had traveled with his mother and carnivals. This philosophy all phrased and the gang selected. Everyone was allotted his task. Simeon to case or look over the ground for the jobs and be sort of assistant to the president. The feeble minded Bobby Schirrard and one eyed Albert ives as triggerman, and Gordon Hawkins to

keep the changing motors in sweetly running conduct. During this period of their activities, police say the Spinelli gang admitted twelve carthffs and three service station hold ups in San Francisco, two attempted petting party stick ups in Sacramento, and rolling, or, to put it more politely, robbing several intoxicated men who were lured to their fate by gypsy. In fact, when arrested, the men were wearing clothes stolen from one of these

victim's wardrobe. These assorted ad ventures yielded, it was said, some three hundred dollars. The police further attributed about a score of San Francisco carthiffs and a dozen hold ups to them. These were alleged to have brought in approximately six hundred dollars. Then came that fateful April seventh, and the attempted stick up at the barbecue stand. One eyed Ives, according to their admissions, was the one who strode roed in out of the fog. Knowing nothing about Cash's deafness.

When the latter reached for the switch on his hearing device, Ives had assumed the night manager was reaching for a pistol, and tragedy resulted, said ives, quote, Cash shoved me and I shot as I stumbled, he just crumpled and we ran to our car and left. Gerard saw me shoot cash and decided to talk about it. I got scared and told the others we had to do away with him.

And undoubtedly, despite this shocking murder, things might still have gone on as easily as cogs dropping machinery well oiled, had the duchess known the psychological fact that in every feeble minded person flares up at times some surprising deviation from his dullness. Anyway, Gerard kept talking and talking and living and reliving murder. Say who would have tumbled that the old guy was deaf? He is asserted to have said, do you suppose he was really dead when he first fell?

How do you know when a guy is good and dead? Anyway, if you had known the old guy was just reaching for his phony ears, would you have killed him out? So it wasn't pleasant to be trapped within the close confines of a city apartment with a feeble minded boy who was having a bad time with his conscience, or a bad case of the jitters, as the crime school considered it. But the case went on getting worse till it had decided something had to be done before he

talked outside the family. Accordingly, as a first step, Swothy Mike Simone decided they should all move soon. They were domiciled at a Sacramento hotel. The first night they sent Bobby out on an errand, and then they called a conference. What was the best way to liquidate jittery conscience plague

Bobby Chirrard. First of all, Semion mentioned well known expedients of the underworld, standing a weakening ally against a garage wall and pumping at him with the guns, or pushing a stiletto into his back as he slept, or encasing him in a block of cement and dumping all in the river. The Duchess protested, I insist that poor Bobby

have a peaceful, pleasant passing. Things seemed again to prosper, But again, the one fact that the dominant head of the crime school hadn't recognized, or perhaps hadn't even heard of, was another point in the peculiar psychology of the weak minded. This time it was Albert Ives. But with him it wasn't nerves, He wasn't jittery, he wasn't bothered by qualms of conscience. His trouble was pride, pride in his work or his share of it, pride that he had graduated

into big crime. And so albert Ives, who was not too bright, started to brag. He grew unbearable. Albert Ives, skillful at the trigger, precise in his automobile getaways, willing, good natured, cooperative, was becoming a loudmouth. Yes, he too must be liquidated. But when it had been thus decided, the duchess knew that she and her pupils must move again. We will go, she said, This town is getting hot,

will be pulling out. But by some extra sensitiveness of the weak minded, perhaps albert Ives became suddenly aware would not be good for him to go on that ride. He knew the signs, he understood when once looking up quickly, he had intercepted a glance. He knew ah, he had watched that before. But albert went, and so the car,

another stolen car, was headed for the high Sierras. The two little Spinelli boys, Mike Simeon, the young girl who had seen too much too early, the dead end kids who had been three and were now only two, and one of them shortly to be no more. And the black eyed purposeful woman who liked to see all her dead lads happy, even to calm, comfortable, happy deaths. And finally the sorry cavalcade was forced to stop for gasoline. Near Grass Valley, a lunch room door was opened, looking

through to a rear door facing the woods. All at once a wild boy darted out of the automobile filling up at the pump, and dashed out into the lunch room out the rear door. He then flung and into the bushes beyond where he disappeared. Albert Ives wouldn't come out,

and so after mumbled consultations, the Queer company rode on. Then, when they were well away, Albert ran into the highway patrol station and screamed its hysterical message Sacramento, California, June fourth, nineteen forty, for the first time since it began snuffing out the lives of California's convictor murderers. San Quentin's gray

green lethal gas Chamber's shadow hung over a woman. She is fifty three year old Juanita Spinelli, called the Duchess by the Underworld gang of Youths, whom she led on a crime career that culminated in two murders. Today, the Duchess smoothed her own way into the death gas cell when she withdrew her plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, and thereby made mandatory the passing of the

death sentence Friday morning. The only possibilities that stand between the woman and death by San Quentin's cyanogen gas are two a successful appeal from her conviction or Governor Olson's commutation of the death penalty. Twice yesterday, Superior Judge Coughlin passed the death sentence on two other members of the Duchess's gang, Gordon Hawkins and Mike Simeon. Meanwhile, today the fourth member of the gang escaped the death penalty via the very route the Duchess and the other two it

turned down. Albert One I Ives was found insane by a jury in Judge Coughlin's court, the same jury which had previously convicted him of murder. After the insanity verdict, the court recessed in late afternoon, and Judge Coughlin announced he will determine ives as sentence tomorrow. June fifth, nineteen forty. Albert Ives, twenty one year old, squint eyed youth who confessed committing the two murders for which three of his

duchess gang confederates faced death, cheated San Quentin's gas chamber. Today, Superior Judge Coughlin ordered Ives, the gang's self styled triggerman, commit ded to Mendocino State Hospital for the insane. He was adjudged insane late yesterday by the same jury which a week earlier convicted the four gangsters of first degree murder in the slaying of Robert Charrard. Officials said the jury, in finding Ives insane, held he was incapable of committing

a crime under the law. Hence, should he be declared sane after a year's incarceration, he will be eligible for release. Only one legal step remained before local authorities complete their part in the case, which began with the hold up slaying of Leland Cash, san Francisco barbecue stand operator, and ended when police learned details of the Charrard slang and found his body in the Sacramento River. This was the sentencing next Friday of Juanita Spinelli, the fifty year old

duchess who directed the gang's activity. June twelfth, nineteen forty Doomed to death in the state's lethal gas chamber. Missus Juanita, the Duchess Spinelle, left today for the State Institution for Women at Tahatchipee, weeping and broken in spirit. Missus Spinelli, who once directed a Sacramento robbery murder gang, was taken to Tahachipee by special deputies of Sheriff Don Cox, where she will remain pending her automatic appeal to the State

Supreme Court. Two other members of the Duchess gang, Mike Simeon and Gordon Hawkins, are in San Quentin Prison awaiting execution. In the event the Supreme Court refuses to rescind the execution order, Missus Spinelli will be returned to San Quentin

to be executed. On June twenty seventh, Governor John E. Miles of New Mexico wired Governor Olsen that won Tony Spinelli, a resident of Clayton, New Mexico for fifteen years, has identified himself as the husband of the Duchess for the double purpose of showing that he had not been killed as a gangster and to deny his fatherhood of at least two of his children. Spinelli said that a physician in Colorado had told him in nineteen twenty six that

missus Spinelli was incapable of bearing children. Officials and Sacramento said the Spinelli assertions would have no bearing on the

case itself. Editorial, February thirteenth, nineteen forty one. In the gripping drama charged book Men at Their Worst, co authored by doctor Leo L. Stanley, chief surgeon at the San Quentin Prison, and Evelyn Wells, gifted California novelist, the famous prison physician recounts that during his twenty seven years of service he has watched more than one hundred and fifty men die on the gallows, and during the last two years he has watched nine other men go to meet

their maker in the lethal gas chamber. There is one grim experience, however, that even doctor Stanley has been spared. He has never seen a woman with the hangman's rope knotted around her neck, waiting for the plunge into eternity. He has never seen a woman caged in the lethal chamber tensely waiting for the moment of extinction. For California, in all its years of statehood, has never compelled a woman to pay the death penalty. With all our vaunted

talk of equal rights for women and equal responsibilities. We have never really meant it, apparently, at least when penalties were involved. Women have murdered and been imprisoned, but none thus far has been forced to forfeit her life for the life she has taken. That peculiarly has been a man's penalty, but now a woman. Missus Juanitas Spinelli, the so called duchess, leader of a gang of young Tufts who robbed and killed, is under sentenced to die in

San Quentin's lethal gas chamber. Horrible, Yes, of course, it's horrible. Violent death, whether it be cold blooded murder or legal execution, always is horrible. Capital punishment itself is horrible to contemplate. Some condemn it, some defendant, some condone it, and some abhor it. Should the duchess die in San Quentin's gas chamber, before she dies or receives a commutation, there will be violent argument about it a woman. Some will say that's different,

it's unthinkable. Perhaps it is. Others will say that the whole ghastly business, whether it involves man or woman, is unthinkable. Perhaps that's true too, But whatever the contention, California must either admit that it has a dual standard for murders and murderers or do what it has never done before, legally kill a woman. This is a case probably that will make Governor Olssen wonder why any man aspires to be governor. For Governor Olson must decide, while we merely

argue about it, equal rights are not. We don't envy him. June twentieth, nineteen forty one, Late last night, as Missus Juanita the Duchess Spinelli brooded in her San Quinton death cell awaiting execution. This morning, the phone jangled in Warden Clinton Duffy's home. It was Governor Olsen, hurriedly calling from

Los Angeles to grant her a thirty day reprieve. The Governor's intervention came after Superior Judge Raymond T. Coughlin of San Francisco, who presided at the Duchess's murder trial and trial Forman Lloyd H. Locke, informed him they had certain information to place before him in connection with the Cays Mike Simeon, her common law husband, and Gordon Hawkins, a member of her band, who were scheduled to have died next Friday, for their implication with the Duchess and the

murder of nineteen year old Robert Schirrard were also given thirty says. Later, Warden Duffy received a corroborating telegram from the Governor. I am issuing a thirty day reprieve in the case of Nita Spinelli. You will therefore fix the day for execution accordingly. The formal reprieve will be forwarded to your office. M. Stanley Mosk, the Governor's secretary, announced in Sacramento that the governor had acted at the urgent

request of the judge and the jury foreman quote. The information they have is of such a nature that it couldn't be ignored. The Governor will confer with them on it. I have no idea of the nature of their information. The Governor's sudden action came like a bolt out of

the blue to missus. Spinelli, who had arrived at San Quentin yesterday resigned to be the first woman ever to be executed by the state of California, muttering the usual protests of innocence and following them with the usual admission that she considered them futile. She had been placed in a death cell a few paces removed from the Apple Green gas chamber, which was to have ended her life.

At ten o'clock this morning, the Duchess, so called because of her sovereignty over a vicious little band of thieves and cutthroats, reached San Quentin after a secret, heavily guarded night long dash by motor from the women's prison to hatchepee in the prison yard. She paid her respects almost haughtily to Warden. Duffy then burst into tears as he asked if she wished to be interviewed. She refused, Then, drying her tears, she walked firmly to the death cell

and unpacked the few belongings she carried with her. Shortly after ward, and Duffy reported with considerable relief she was chatting, laughing, and even cracking jokes with a matron specially selected to stand by the death cell at this juncture. He went to her cell, emerging later with the following statement from the Duchess quote, I do not want to talk to anyone. I don't see how any statement for me can do any good now. The only thing I did was to

state that I poured the whiskey. I did this in order to save my daughter. I was a victim of a slave raider. Mike Simeon. I have made my peace with God. The only reason I would want to live is for my family in the stain against them. I hope that my daughter will straighten up and be a good mother. Please do not ask me to see anyone. If it is God's will, I will go out like

a true soldier. Unquote. She had repeatedly said that Simeon compelled her to do his bidding by threatening to put her daughter into a house of prostitution, hence the reference to slave raider her euphanism for procureur. That daughter, nineteen year old Lorraine the Gypsy, is now in a San Diego home awaiting birth of an illegitimate child. Warden Duffy had given much consideration as to what garb she was

to have worn in the gas chamber. At first he thought slacks would have been advisable for her, but later decided she would wear the same blue prison made dress in which she arrived in San Quentin, or, if she preferred, a house dress she brought with her. When Warden Duffy went to notify the Duchess, she was talking to a matron in a small, specially screened cell almost adjoining the gas chamber. She was wearing a heavy white flannel, full

sleeve nightgown. Stunned momentarily, she then dropped to her knees and grasps the cell bars and said, thank God, he has listened to my prayers. I hope he will find a way to get to the truth. Truth, and perhaps Mike will tell the truth now. Duffy asked her if she wanted to say anything for the press. Please don't ask me to see anyone, she replied, but she then prepared a statement saying, quote, I don't see where any statements for me can do me any good.

fourth gang member, nineteen year old Robert Charrard. They met to consider new evidence, purported existence of which influenced the governor late Thursday night to postpone today's scheduled execution for thirty days. After interested parties had presented their case to Mosque during a session which produced heated words, Mosque brusquely announced, I feel the governor definitely has been imposed upon because there has been no new evidence presented here which we

have not had before us all this time. Present at the conference with Mosque where Ralph T. Lewie defense counsel, who had claimed new evidence, Judge Ray T. Coughlin, trial judge, who asked the governor to grant the reprieve when informed of the new evidence and of two of the trial

jurors George P. York and John L. McGinnis. Although Louis had expressed belief that Yorck voted for the death sentence for Missus Spinelli and the belief that the governor would surely commute such sentence, Yorke denied that his verdict had been influenced by any such belief. McGinnis, who held out twenty four hours in the jury room before casting his vote with the other jurors, told Mosque he still believes the evidence was insufficient to merit the death penalty for

Missus Spinelli. Judge Coughlin left the conference with the rye assertion, I will say right now that I shall shall not intercede again in behalf of Missus Spinelli, nor will I recommend clemency for The Sacramento District Attorney's office commented. Someone is stalling, said Chief Deputy District Attorney Jay Francis. O'shay. When a defendant confessed to a crime like that, what

evidence can possibly be produced in his behalf? There is no reason whatever why Missus Spinelle should have been reprieved. Somebody is stalling. From the governor himself, no comment whatever was forthcoming it was believed that missus Spinelli will not receive another reprieve at the end of the thirty days.

June twenty first, nineteen forty one, under slightly macobb circumstances, the Duchess received yesterday, at the precise hour when she confidently expected to be filling her lungs with deadly cyanide fumes. The Duchess held audience for the press beside San Quentin's lethal gas chamber, from which she has been snatched by

an eleventh hour reprieve. The Duchess, whose realm was reputedly crime, and whose subjects were pickpockets, thieves, procureurs and cutthroats, and thrown herself on a bench outside the death cell and frisked and poised and graciously bannered prison officials as she informed her audience that her conviction of murder was all a ghastly mistake, which divine justice and the governor had

corrected just in the nick of time. But even as she uttered her thanks, the Governor's office in Sacramento was announcing that a casual examination of the facts now indicated that the reprieve, and not the conviction, was the mistake. In granting the melodramatic night before or the execution reprieve the governor had apparently been imposed upon according to his secretary.

That declaration, seemingly making it certain that the Duchess will yet become the first woman executed by the state of California, was made while she, unaware of that circumstance, was bannering with photographers, wise cracking with her matron, reaffirming her innocence, but most of all damning her consort, Mike Simeon. She was unaware, too, that her levey was occurring beside the gas chamber, which had been delicately shrouded in canvas so she might not stare at it as she sat in

the death cell. To begin with, the Duchess made it plain that she did not care to be called the duchess, or to have her nineteen year old daughter, Lorraine called the gypsy. She said, I detest nicknames. She affirmed that she was no duchess, no murderous, no female fagin, but just misunderstood maligned Miss Evelita Juanita Spinelli, a persecuted, widowed mother of three children. Her appearance at least seemed to bear her out, Wearing an unadorned house dress, clasping a

religious metal beaming behind her spectacles. This tiny, plain woman with the graying hair looked like no leader, no tutor of thieves and murderers. She had, she assured her listeners, become deeply religious and was rigidly obeying the command to forgive her enemies. But just the same she wanted to understood that Mike Simeon is as vile a creature as

ever wronged a fellow man. Mike Simeon, she asserted, was solely responsible for the ruination of her life, for the plight of her daughter, for the entire tragic chain of events which led her into the shadow of the lethal gas chamber. She blurted out. The public has never been told that Simeon served five years in Lovenworth for white slavery. The public doesn't know that he continued after his release to live off women in Detroit, to take their earnings,

and to blackmail them. Those who are trying to live down their little mistakes. He would threaten to expose them to their employers and take what they had one dollar or two dollars or five dollars. It has been said that I was madly infatuated with them. Perhaps I am to blame for that. I did say I was in love with him, but he threatened to kill me and said he would see that the children were disposed of in a very cruel way unless I did say it.

The children, she explained, are Lorraine nineteen and two sons, Joseph sixteen and Vincent ten. The boys are now in an orphanage near Sacramento. Lorraine, who is to become a mother in August, is in a place, the location of which cannot be made public, though it has been repeatedly published that she is in a home in San Diego. Who was through the children, and particularly through Lorraine missus Spinelli asserted that Simeon quote forced me to do his

bidding unquote. Simeon, who came into her life innocently enough, quote solely and purely as an emergency fourth hand in a pinuckle game unquote, immediately began laying plans to ensnare her. He discovered she said that she had innocently married a man who was part Negro. That was her first husband, Joseph Camplong, whose mother was of noble birth, so she had been told, and whose father misrepresented himself as an Indian, and Simeon used this knowledge as a club over her

to strengthen his hold. The Duchess said. Simeon then sent her daughter to sam Francisco, sent her out here to engage in the white slave traffic, and warned her not to communicate with her mother. Missus Spinelli. After ordering Simeon from her home, then discovered her daughter's whereabouts. She related with the dual purpose of fleeing Simeon and reuniting herself

with her daughter. She took the two younger children and hitchhiked to San Francisco with obvious pride, she said, through ice and snow and blizzards, when it was twenty below we made it nine days. Simeon followed her to San Francisco, she insisted, and intruded upon as fine a little household as could be found in the city. Besides her own three children, she was mothering three young men friends of Lorraine.

They were a nineteen year old Bobby Charrard, for whose murder she was convicted, twenty two year old Gordon Hawkins convicted with her, and twenty one year old Albert Ives, who became fearful of his own life fled to protection of police, disclosed the murder of Charrard, and turned state's evidence.

At the trial, he was later adjudged insane. Far from instructing these youths in the way of crime, their testimony is that she showed them how to make and use blackjacks, how to employ knives to best advantage, how to perform various tricks useful to the criminal. She set their feet along the path of righteousness, she said, and persuaded them to register at continuation school. She asserted, the records will

bear me out. Then, one night, shortly after the arrival of Simeon, Ives came into her flat, threw down a gun and said, I used it. I picked it up and smelled it, she continued, and I said, I guess you have. Where did you get it? He said, Simeon gave it to her. He said. They were riding around and tried to hold up a man at the beach, and he made a move for his pocket. We later found the poor fellow was deaf and he had to

use it. Unquote, that she insisted was her first intimation of the murder of leland s Cash, the crime which led directly to the murder of young Hirard enjoy ad free listening at the safehouse. Dubbadubbadubba dot Patreon dot com, slash true crime historian July tenth, nineteen forty one. Governor Calbert L. Olson refused comment today on how he was impressed by the last effort to save the life of Missus Juanitas Medali, who will become the first woman executed

for murder in California unless the governor intervenes. Olson had before him the transcript of a long and sordid story told him by the Duchess's son, Joseph seventeen, who pleaded with the governor for a full hour late yesterday in an effort to prevent the execution of his mother July

twenty fifth in a San Quentin prison's gas cell. The governor wouldn't say how the story influenced him, but his secretary said he didn't seem to be much impressed when Missus Spinelli was spared last June twentieth by an eleventh hour reprieve. Olson's secretaries declared, we believe the governor has been imposed upon. Joseph supported the latest story told by his gangster mother, a story she told the day of

her first scheduled execution. At the trial, missus Spinelli testified she placed knockout drops in a drink giving Robert Charrard before he was thrown in the Sacramento River. She told how the gang wanted to get rid of Cherrard for fear he would squeal about the San Francisco murder of Leland Cash, a barbecue stand attendant. The duchess now claims that Mike Simeon, her common law husband, drugged the drink. Her dress was torn, she said when Simeon forcibly took

the pills from her. Missus Spinelli said she confessed at the trial to protect quote someone I love unquote. Joseph, in supporting his mother's latest story, said that he and his brother Vincent, lay on the floor of a Sacramento hotel room the night Chirard was drugged. He said he saw his mother struggling with Simeon, and that Missus Spinelli's

dress was ripped in the scuffle. Also in the room at the time, Young Spinelli said were Cherrard, Albert Ives, triggerman of the gang, and Gordon Hawkins, frans o'sheat of the San Francisco District attorney's office discredited young Spinelli's story. Quote, the boy's been reading the papers. He never told us such a story before, and no torn dress belonging to missus Spinelli has been found unquote. Joseph talked freely to the governor and told of the life he, his sister, Lorraine,

and his brother had led with their mother. He said his earliest recollection was of his mother being a waitress and washwoman in the Texas oil fields. They moved later to Salt Lake City, where his mother ran a carnival gambling wheel and Lorraine was the snake girl in a side show. Then the scene shifted to Kilgore, Idaho, where Joseph said he believed his mother married a man named Robinson, and they lived by herding sheep for two years. The children were put in a Catholic home in Texas while

the duchess went to Mexico. Vincent was born in Mexico. The family then drifted to Corpus Christi and later to Detroit, where they met Simeon. Lorraine ran away to California. The family hitchhiked after her and found she was already acquainted with the youth who became the Spinelli gang. In all his rambling life, Joseph claimed he never heard any talk of murders or robberies. November twenty first, nineteen forty one, while the world at large feasted and was Mary, the

woman known as the Duchess, found no joy in Thanksgiving. Yesterday, the Duchess, bitter and full of curses, sat in the death cell at San Quentin Prison, preparing for her her unhappy role in the pageant of California history, preparing to walk into the lethal gas chamber at ten o'clock this morning to die and to become the first woman the

state has ever executed. There was only one infinitismal ray of hope for Ernest Spagnoli, a San Francisco attorney, will seek a stay of execution from the Appellate Court this morning, he said, on the grounds that the law requires a formal court order fixing the date of execution. The Duchess originally was scheduled to die on June twentieth, and this date was never changed. The subsequent delays have been due

to three reprieves granted by the governor. She reached the prison early yesterday after an all night ride from Tahatchepee, the women's prison where she has been confined since last June, when an eleventh hour reprieved from Governor Olson snatched her from the dismal doorway she must enter this morning at the request of Warden Clinton T. Duffy, she talked to

assembled reporters. She cursed them and reviled them, and blamed them for the refusal of Governor Olson to halt her execution once again, for them and their lives, she had terrible curses and for her executioners of today curses even more terrible, and the prediction my blood will burn holes

in their bodies. Her words, her actions, the expressions which flitted across her contorted face, lent little support to the contention of a half dozen able psychiatrists who assured Governor Olson before he abandoned her to punishment prescribed by law,

that she was is entirely insane. Before she entered the death cell to count last twenty four hours, she added more confusion and mystery to her involved personal history, confusion concerning her legal and common law marriages, the parenthood of her three children, her very name, which has been variously reported as Juanita Spinelli, and Evlita Spinelli and on prison records as ethel Lita Spinelli. Yesterday, she remarked, and my

name is not even Spinelle. Requests for her true name brought the childlike reply, that's for me to know and you to find out. She asserted that besides herself, only Governor Olsen knows her right name. Her children, a married daughter and two minor boys, insists they have never known any name but Spinelli. But her asserted husband, from whom she says she acquired that name, has recently insisted no

marriage ever took place. From curses and revilings, the duchess turned abruptly to a bid for sympathy from her listeners. She said she had been sick, very sick. I'm shot full of dope right now to keep me together until tomorrow.

What truth may be in any of her assertions of yesterday, in any of the heroic tales she has formerly told of her early hardships, her valiant efforts to rear her three children, her involvement with rich men's sons and famous doctors and infamous criminals, cannot be estimated the same psychiatrists who called her saying also called her a pathological liar.

Doubt too, must always surround the details of the crime for which she must breathe hydrocyde ianic fumes today, and for which two of her associates, Mike Simeon commonly called her lover and Gordon Hawkins, whom she described herself as the lover of her daughter, are scheduled to die next week, and so the Duchess spent a joyless Thanksgiving and will

become an unenvied figure in California history today. To the Duchess finally went the sorry distinction of being the first woman whose crimes were so foul that she had to be killed by the state. Her unique contribution to California history, a span of ninety one years in which the state never before has violated its traditional chivalry by executing a woman,

was accomplished in just ten and one half minutes. Mumbling prayers, and with snap shots of her two sons, a daughter, and a grandchild taped to her breast, The Duchess was sealed in San Quentin's gas chamber at ten fourteen and a half am. She was pronounced dead at ten twenty five.

The execution was performed before sixty six men's spectators after a nerve racking delay that had prison officials, justices of the Supreme Court and appellate courts, and the Governor's office in an uproar during the night, while the Duchess veered from outbursts to prayer to sporadic conversations with two matrons who had accompanied her from the women's prison at to Hatchepee. A San Francisco lawyer began attempts to obtain a further

stay of execution. Ernest Spagnoli went to Superior Judge Edward Butler at San Raphael for red of habeas corpus on the grounds that the original date June twentieth had never been formally changed to November twenty first. He was refused. Spagnoley acted at the behest of his ex wife, Sally Stanford, notorious nightlife figure who was known as the Woman in Red during the nineteen thirty five to thirty seven graft investigation, who summed up her efforts this way, killing that woman

won't make you any better or me any worse. The attorney resumed his attempts early in the morning by taking the same petition to the State District Court of Appeal, where it was denied by Presiding Judge Raymond Peters. Spagnoley rushed frantically to the state's Supreme Court for his final try and bumped into Attorney William Herron, who also sought a rid of habeas corpus on the grounds that execution

by gas was unconstitutional. In the expectation of such moves, developments were being closely watched by Chief Deputy Attorney General Robert W. Harrison, by Warden Clinton T. Duffy at San Quintin, and by Stanley Mosk, Governor Olson's executive secretary at Sacramento, who had a direct telephone connection with Duffy's office for more than an hour. The confusion started when the Supreme

Court writs were filed. Harrison at once tried to call Duffy, but could not reach him, as Duffy at the same time was calling the Supreme Court and was being told by Acting Chief Justice John Schenk that the writs had been denied by him and three other justices. At nine fifty two a m. Only eight minutes before the time set for the execution, Duffy turned to the Sacramento connection and formed Mosque and was told there were no new

orders from the Governor. Olson had granted the duchess three reprietsves, but finally could find no reasons for a fourth or for executive clemency, despite a barrage of last minute pleased by telegraph and telephone from all over the country. Immediately, the warden had guards marshaled the sixty six witnesses and take them to the death House, where they crowded into position. Ten o'clock came and went. Then Duffy rushed out and the guards ordered the room cleared. The call from Harrison

had finally come through. Harrison told Duffy of the ritz and the denials. More on edge by then than at any time in his prison career, the warden disclosed that the Duchess had just had another fit of incoherent ravings. Duffy said he wanted to be sure that he was not executing an insane woman. Harrison replied that all legal requirements had been fulfilled and that the execution should go ahead.

Visibly shaken, Duffy and his aides dashed back to the death house in his official car, explained the situation and

announced that the Duchess would die as scheduled. Shortly then, the condemned woman, whose death warrant gave her name as Eithel Alida Juanita Spinelli, was brought into the gas chamber to pay with her life for the deaths She decreed to Robert Schirrard nineteen, member of her own gang of robber killers, in the fear that he would blab about the murder of a barbecue stand proprietor in a hold up. A husky guard held her by each arm. She wore a green smock, hardly more green than her livid skin.

Through the green glass windows of the chamber. Both fists were clenched, and one held a crumpled handkerchief. Her eyes were wide and stilling in her ravaged, bony face. Her gray black hair gleamed dully. But this was not the duchess who minutes before had been raving and incoherent, Not the duchess of the day before, who cursed and reviled her interviewers, her captors, and especially her executioners, shouting my

blood will burn holes in your body. From some inner recesses of her spirit, she summoned up an inherent dignity. She refused to be blindfolded. She did not break. She asked for no mercy, excepting the prayer that she muttered over and over as the guards strapped her to her chair, adjusted the stethoscope, and banged shut the steel door. Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit. The first wisp of the lethal cyanide fumes cut short the words.

Her head snapped back, and she remained thus and till a guard opened a door beyond the gas chamber and said, that's all, gentlemen. The time ten fourteen and a half to ten twenty five. A little later, while guards waited for blowers to clear out the cyanide fumes so the body could be removed ward and Duffy described how the Duchess spent her last hours. She had a turkey dinner Thanksgiving evening, he said, but she refused other food except

for a Hamburger sandwich. Around midnight, he told her of Sally Stanford's efforts in her behalf, and she replied, I don't know missus Stanford, but I am grateful to her. She is a good woman. The Duchess did not sleep at all during the night, but talked with Father George o'meira, Catholic chaplain at the prison. With the two matrons who attended her, and again with Father o'meira in the morning,

about an hour before she died. It was from this religious counsel that she drew the strength to die calmly, a strange metamorphosis in the woman whose strength, when she was free, had been her iron handed domination of a band of thieves and killers. Before the Duchess died, Warden Duffy asked her if she wanted any message carried to the two men who are in San Quentin's death row.

She was indifferent. Duffy then asked Simeon and Hawkins if they wanted to tell the Duchess anything, but they spurned the offer. Two there were no messages from her children, nor any claim for her body, which was buried by the prison. It remained for missus Alice Gwynn, one of the matrons who brought the Duchess from Tahatchepee, to be her chief mourner and to pronounce her epitaph quote. I took care of her for seventeen months. There isn't much

that I can say about her. She was cheerful right up to the end, the last minute, regardless of what you think about her or what she did. She proved her point, her belief in God. She didn't even tremble. She had no last words for me. We had already said everything there was to say. She kissed me goodbye. That's all. I wish you would be just as kind

to her as you can. That was Duchess Spinelli's crime school, The Half Wit Gang of Golden Gate Avenue, called from the historic pages of the San Francisco Examiner, the Oakland Tribune, and other news papers of the era. True Crime Historian is a production of popular media. Opening theme by Nico Vitessi. Incidental music by Niko Vitessi, Chuck Wiggins and Dave SAMs. Some music and sound effects licensed from podcast music dot Com. Closing theme by Dave SAMs and Rachel Shatt, engineered by

David Hisch at Third Street Music. Media management by Sean R. Miller Jones and me I don't know, I'm True Crime Historian Richard O. Jones signing off for now.