AMY ARCHER GILLIGAN: A SISTERS GREED

On a cool October day in the year 1868 in Milton, a suburb of Litchfield, Connecticut, James Duggan and Mary Kennedy welcomed their eighth child Amy into their humble two-story home on SawMill Road. Milton was a simple quiet town where over the years Amy grew into a bright loving child. When not attending school, she was home helping care for her nine siblings, one of which became an invalid due to a fall from a second floor window of their home. Amy learned to be a caretaker at a young age, which would ultimately influence many of her future decisions. At this point no one, not even Amy herself, could have imagined the mystery and madness that would soon become her sinister life.

In the year 1897, at the age of 29, the 5’3” brunette met and married her first husband James Archer and became Amy Duggan Archer. In December of the same year, James and Amy became the proud parents of daughter Mary J. Archer. Soon after Mary’s birth the Archers’ needed to find a way to make a living while at the same time being available to care for their daughter. John Seymour, an elderly widower who resided in Newington, Connecticut was in dire need of a full time caretaker and after meeting Amy agreed to hire her. In 1904 Seymour passed away and his heirs decided upon turning his home into a boarding house for the elderly. James, Amy, and daughter Mary agreed to live in the deceased Seymour’s home and provide care to the residents for a fee and in turn paid rent to Seymours family. The boarding house was named after Amy, who had ironically been labeled by the community as “Sister Amy”, due to her nurturing demeanor. “Sister Amy’s Nursing Home for the Elderly” is where the Archers would live and work for the next three years. In the year 1907 Seymour’s heirs, after great contemplation, concluded to sell the home leaving the Archers without income or a place to live.

James and Amy quickly made the decision to move to a new town and start a new life in Windsor, Connecticut. It is here that they would find and purchase the perfect home to live and convert into Amy’s second business, the “Archer Home for the Elderly and Infirm”. Soon after the move things began to take a turn for the worse and several of Amy’s patients began to die without any signs other than that of death caused by old age. In 1910,Mr.James Archer became severely ill and succumbed to Bright’s disease, otherwise known as kidney disease. A few weeks before his death Amy had conveniently taken out an insurance policy on James, and was able to continue running the nursing home with this money.  After James’ death patients began to die at an almost predictable rate but the town coroner, a good friend of the deceased James Archer, did not at the time suspect any foul play and declared that the patients had died of natural causes.

Three short years later Amy would begin an ongoing romantic relationship with a very wealthy widower of four sons, Michael W. Gilligan. Mr. Gilligan became enchanted with her and devoted himself completely to Amy through marriage. As though Amy had cast a spell on Michae,l he immediately invested his time and finances into Amy’s nursing home business. On February 20, 1914 Michael W. Gilligan suddenly and unexpectedly died. Autopsy reports stated Gilligans cause of death was “severe indigestion”. Years later, during Amy’s trial, a local business, W.H Mason’s would reveal in their registry of poisons that Amy had made a purchase of 10 oz. of arsenic on the second week of February. In March 1914, Amy cleverly put in a claim at the court for $1,500 alongside several other businesses looking to divide Gilligans $4,500 worth of assets. It just so happens that within the very short time that was their marriage, Mr. Gilligan had left all of his estate to Amy in his final will. This will would later be seen as suspicious, and after being looked into declared as a forgery, written in Amy’s own handwriting.

On the night of January 6, 1914 even before her second husband’s death, Amy silently sits in her dimly lit bedroom beside the window and writes an urgent letter to one of her residents, Franklin R. Andrews. In her letter, Amy presses Andrews for money, which she would do several times according to Andrews’ sister Nellie Pierce who would inherit his personal files after his unexpected passing. For Amy Archer Gilligan, a routine part of her business was to request $1,000 from her patients for “life care”, but this did not satisfy her greed and yearning for money. On the morning of May 29, 1914, Andrews was quietly gardening outside of the Archer home and suddenly collapsed. By evening, Andrews was pronounced dead, his cause of death would be announced and recorded as “gastric ulcer”. Nellie, Franklin’s sister became immediately suspicious at her brothers death seeing how Andrews was ordinarily a very healthy man. On June 11, Alice and Loren Gowdy also signed a life contract with Archer for $1,000. The day of December 3, Alice Gowdy is found dead in the Archer home. Soon after, another victim, Maud Lynch is found dead in the home at age 33.

Pierce, no longer able to ignore her suspicions and insistent that that there was something unnerving occurring at the Archer house, made a trip to the local district attorney’s office and pleaded with the attorney Hugh Alcorn, who thought little to nothing of her reports and dismissed them altogether. Pierce was now desperate and reported the strange deaths to the “Hartford Courant” newspaper. On May 9, 1916, the first of several articles titled, “The Murder Factory” was published. Within months the police were investigating Pierce’s reports with earnest intent. Clifford Sherman, the managing editor of the paper hired Aubrey Maddock, a reporter who meticulously searched through nearly 5 years of death certificates. Maddocks findings were shocking. From 1907 to 1910 there were twelve deaths in the Archer home. From the years 1911 to 1916 there was an even larger amount, 48 total deaths. In the ten years that the Archer home was in business there were 60 known and filed deaths. An astonishing number compared to that of other nursing homes and care facilities.

The local police investigation took nearly a year but after exhuming the bodies of Michael W. Gilligan, Franklin R. Andrews, and three others who had died in the home, it was reported that they had all died in the same manner. They were each poisoned to death with arsenic or strychnine. During the investigation local merchants told the police that Archer had indeed purchased large amounts of arsenic. Amy told the merchants it was for “killing rats”. One of the two drug stores in town revealed to reporters that Amy had purchased two pounds of arsenic, an astounding amount given the fact that a fatal dose for an adult human being is only two to three grains which is equal to about 0.0091429 of an ounce.

Finally in 1917 Amy was arrested and tried on five counts of murder, which her lawyer somehow successfully reduced to a single charge for the murder of Franklin R. Andrews. Autopsy papers stated that there was enough arsenic in Andrews body to kill several men. Residents of Windsor were in disbelief at Archers arrest and trial. According to one account Archer never kept the money she received from her patients, but instead donated it to a local church for an altar fund. On June 18, 1917 Amy Archer Gilligan was found guilty by a jury and sentenced to death. Archer appealed this action and was granted a new trial in 1919. During  the final trial her daughter Mary Archer approached the stand, and after taking oath stated that her mother had been a morphine addict for several years prior. Nonetheless the jury still established that Archer was in fact guilty of second degree murder and she was sentenced to life imprisonment.

On July 1, 1924 after seven years of existing with the horrific memories and details of her murders, Amy was declared insane and transferred to the “Connecticut Hospital for the Insane” in Middletown, Connecticut. Amy remained in the asylum for the next thirty-eight years until her final days and death on April 23, 1962, where completely isolated and deranged, she perished due to natural causes.