Juanita Spinelli
Juanita Spinelli | |
---|---|
![]() The Duchess: first woman executed in San Quentin's gas chamber.[1] | |
Born | (1889-10-17)October 17, 1889 Kentucky, U.S. |
Died | November 21, 1941(1941-11-21) (aged 52) San Quentin State Prison, San Quentin, California, U.S. |
Cause of death | Execution by gas chamber |
Criminal status | Executed |
Conviction(s) | First degree murder |
Criminal penalty | Death |
Evelita Juanita Spinelli (October 17, 1889 – November 21, 1941)[2] nicknamed The Duchess,[3] was the first woman to be executed by the state of California.[3] She was a gangster and ex-wrestler.
Criminal history
FBI profiler Candice DeLong described Spinelli as a "stone cold psychopath who had no use for anybody, other than what she could get out of them."(Deadly Women, season 4, episode 2). Spinelli, who came to San Francisco after fleeing the so-called Purple Gang she ran with in Detroit, the city she would get the name "the duchess" from, would regularly take Young, delinquent, homeless men into her house in San Francisco.[4] She would cook and clean for them and train them to be professional criminals.[3] The men received a ten-dollar weekly allowance, with Spinelli receiving the lion's share of their ill-gotten gains. Her daughter Lorraine, known as "Gypsy", regularly used a honey trap to snare drunken men, who were consequently mugged.[citation needed]
Two of Spinelli's protégés, Albert Ives and Robert Sherrod, killed Leland Cash during a robbery in San Francisco (when he reached into his pocket to turn up his hearing aid, Ives assumed he was reaching for a gun and shot Cash in the stomach).[citation needed] Fearing Sherrod would confess to the police, Spinelli gave him whiskey that she had laced with chloral hydrate. The gang then beat him up while he was unconscious. To make his death appear accidental, they threw him off the Clarksburg bridge on the Sacramento River, just south of Sacramento, wearing only swimming trunks. However, the autopsy showed there was no water in his lungs. Fearing for his own survival, Ives escaped and confessed to the police and was committed to Mendocino State Hospital for life.[citation needed] Spinelli was consequently arrested. Her gang members testified against her at her trial.[5]
She was described by Clinton Duffy, the warden at San Quentin State Prison, as "the coldest, hardest character, male or female, I have ever known, a homely, scrawny, nearsighted, sharp-featured scarecrow. ... The Duchess was a hag, evil as a witch, horrible to look at, impossible to like."[6]
Execution
Spinelli was executed on November 21, 1941, at the age of 52, in the gas chamber at San Quentin.[7][8]
In popular culture
Her story was dramatized on TV in the Gang Busters episode, "The Duchess Spinelli Case".[9]
References
- ^ "The Duchess: first woman executed in San Quentin's gas chamber". Horror History .net. November 21, 2017. Retrieved May 22, 2018.
- ^ "Spinelli, Evelita Juanita (1889–1941)". Highbeam. Archived from the original on August 8, 2014.
- ^ a b c Keraghosian, Greg (July 6, 2020). "Juanita 'The Duchess' Spinelli: The first woman legally executed in Calif. ran an SF crime school". SFGATE. Retrieved December 19, 2021.
- ^ . July 27, 2024 https://www.sfgate.com/sfhistory/article/Juanita-The-Duchess-Spinelli-The-first-woman-15382511.php.
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(help) - ^ [dead link] "Outlaws". Deadly Women. Season 4. Episode 4E2. August 19, 2010.
- ^ Chawkins, Steve (November 26, 2001). "Reluctance to Execute Women May Save Mother Who Killed 3 Sons". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved June 8, 2014.
- ^ "WOMAN EXECUTED IN GAS CHAMBER; Gang-Leading Grandmother, 52, First of Sex Legally Put to Death in California". The New York Times. November 22, 1941. Retrieved June 8, 2014.
- ^ Roderick, Kevin (March 28, 1990). "Last Steps and Last Words on Death Row". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved June 8, 2014.
- ^ "The Duchess Spinelli Case". IMDb.