Amy Archer-Gilligan

What the record shows

Amy Archer-Gilligan was the operator of a home for elderly and infirm people in Windsor, Connecticut, who was convicted of murdering one of its residents, Franklin R. Andrews, by arsenic poisoning in 1914. She was indicted on five counts of murder by poison, but was tried only on the Andrews count. A Hartford jury convicted her of first-degree murder in 1917 and she was sentenced to hang; after the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors ordered a new trial, she was convicted of second-degree murder in 1919 and sentenced to life imprisonment. She was later moved from prison to the state psychiatric hospital in Middletown, where she died in 1962.

Born Amy Duggan in Milton, Connecticut, on October 31, 1873, according to the Wikipedia article, she married James Archer in the late 1890s. Around 1901 the couple became live-in caretakers for John Seymour, a Newington widower, and after his death in 1904 they continued taking in elderly boarders at the house. In 1907 they moved to Windsor and opened the Archer Home, which took paying residents. James Archer died in 1910; Connecticut History, a project of CT Humanities, records the cause as kidney failure. In 1913 Amy married Michael Gilligan, a widower, who died about three months later, in February 1914.

Deaths at the home were unusually frequent. Connecticut History reports that 60 residents died there between 1907 and 1916, 48 of them in the last five years. Andrews, a resident who appeared healthy and had been working outdoors, died after falling ill at the end of May 1914. His sister, Nellie Pierce, found papers showing he had given Archer-Gilligan money, including a 500 dollar loan. When the district attorney showed little interest, she went to the Hartford Courant, which on May 9, 1916, published the first of several articles calling the home a murder factory. A police investigation followed. According to the Wikipedia article, bodies were exhumed and local merchants testified that she had bought large quantities of arsenic, saying it was for rats.

The indictment charged five counts of first-degree murder by poison, four by arsenic and one by strychnine, according to the 1918 Connecticut Supreme Court opinion in State v. Gilligan. Prosecutors elected to proceed on the Andrews count alone. At trial in the Hartford County Superior Court in June 1917, the State introduced evidence that three other people connected with the home had died of arsenic poisoning in 1914: Michael Gilligan in February, a resident named Smith in April and a Mrs. Gowdy in December. The jury convicted her and she was sentenced to death. On April 30, 1918, the Supreme Court of Errors found that this evidence of other deaths had been wrongly admitted, because the State's other proof had already largely excluded accident or mistake, and ordered a new trial.

The second trial took place in 1919. Accounts of how it ended differ. Connecticut History says that in June 1919 she pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of second-degree murder; the Wikipedia article says she raised an insanity defense, that her daughter Mary testified about her morphine use, and that the jury again found her guilty. The Connecticut Supreme Court, in a 2015 opinion, describes the outcome as a conviction for second-degree murder. She received a life sentence and was held at the state prison in Wethersfield.

In 1924 she was reported to the governor as insane and transferred to the Connecticut State Hospital in Middletown, now Connecticut Valley Hospital, where she remained for about 38 years until her death on April 23, 1962. She never testified at either trial, Connecticut Public Radio reported in 2015. The number of people she killed has never been established. She was charged in five deaths and convicted in one; Connecticut History says arsenic was found in more than two dozen former residents, and author Ron Robillard told Connecticut Public Radio that the prosecutor of the day believed she had probably killed up to two dozen people.

The case is widely cited as an inspiration for the 1939 play Arsenic and Old Lace and the 1944 film adaptation. Her records remained in dispute decades after her death: when Robillard sought her hospital files, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled on September 22, 2015, that her medical and dental records from the psychiatric hospital were exempt from disclosure under the state's psychiatrist-patient privilege.