Eva Dugan (1878 – February 21, 1930) was a convicted murderer whose execution by hanging in Florence

 Eva Dugan (1878 – February 21, 1930) was a convicted murderer whose execution by hanging in Florence, Arizona, resulted in her decapitation and influenced the state of Arizona to replace hanging with the lethal gas chamber as a method of execution.

Dugan was born in Salisbury, Missouri, in 1878. She married and had two children (a son and a daughter) but her husband abandoned the family, leaving them destitute. Dugan relocated to Juneau Territory of Alaska, after trekking north during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896–1899 and became a cabaret singer and worked as a prostitute to support herself and her children. Many years later, she moved to Pima County, Arizona where she worked as a housekeeper for an elderly chicken rancher, Andrew J. Mathis.

Very quickly the employer/employee relationship became cantankerous. The two often bickered with each other because Mathis hated Dugan's cooking and wasn't satisfied with her work and Mathis was demanding, abrasive and difficult to get along with. Mathis fired Dugan and told her to leave his property by morning. The next morning, January 27, 1927, Mathis disappeared, as did some of his possessions, including his Dodge coupe automobile, and his cash box. Neighbors reported that Dugan had tried to sell some of his possessions before she disappeared as well.

The police discovered Dugan had a father in California and a daughter in White Plains, New York. Though Dugan refused to give information about the identity of either of her children, police only found her daughter, leaving the identity of her son a secret. She had been married five times, and all of her husbands had disappeared. She had sold the Dodge coupe for $6,000 in Kansas City, Missouri. She was arrested in White Plains when a postal clerk, alerted by the police, intercepted a postcard to her from her father in California. She was extradited to Arizona to face automobile theft charges. Convicted, she was imprisoned.

Nine months later in October of the same year, a camper found Mathis's decomposed remains on his ranch. Dugan was tried for murder in a short trial based mostly on circumstantial evidence. The prosecution proved to the jury's satisfaction that Dugan had murdered Mathis with an axe. After her conviction, in her final statement, she told the jurors, "Well, I'll die with my boots on, an' in full health. An' that's more'n most of you old coots'll be able to boast on." She remained defiant to the end.

Dugan's appeal for clemency on the grounds of mental illness was denied, and she was taken to the gallows at 5 a.m. on February 21, 1930. She was the first woman to be executed by the state, and it was the first execution in Arizona history that allowed women to be witnesses.

According to a newspaper account, Dugan was composed as she mounted the gallows. She told the guards, "Don't hold my arms so tight, the people will think I'm afraid." She swayed slightly when the noose was put around her neck and shook her head in the negative when she was asked if she had any final words.

The trap was sprung at 5:11. At the end of the drop, the snap of the rope decapitated her and sent her head rolling to a stop at the feet of the spectators. Her heart continued to pump blood out of her severed neck, spurting blood for several minutes after the decapitation. The grisly scene caused five witnesses (two women and three men) to faint. Dugan was one of the last persons to be hanged by Arizona.

The gallows were replaced in Arizona by the 

gas chamber in 1934, and lethal injection in 1993.

Photo: Inmate mugshot of American murderer Eva Dugan, on the date of execution, by the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, 21 February 1930.