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