Amy Archer-Gilligan ran a home for elderly lodgers in Windsor, Connecticut, in the years before the First World War. Residents paid by the week, or paid a single sum in return for care for the rest of their lives. Between 1907 and 1916, sixty of them died there, forty-eight in the last five years of that span. A newspaper correspondent, a dead man's sister and the editors of the Hartford Courant pressed the authorities to look closer, and in May 1916 she was arrested.
She was charged with five murders by arsenic. In June 1917 a jury convicted her of the first-degree murder of one lodger, Franklin Andrews, and she was sentenced to hang. In April 1918 the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors held that the trial judge had wrongly let the jury hear evidence of other poisonings, and the case went back for a second trial. At the retrial in 1919 she was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. She was later declared insane and spent the rest of her life in the state hospital at Middletown, where she died in 1962. The other deaths at her home were never tried to a final judgment. They remain attributed to her by prosecutors, by the press of the time and by later historians, not proven in court.
The case is best known today through a comedy. The playwright Joseph Kesselring followed it and turned it into Arsenic and Old Lace, which became a long Broadway run and a Frank Capra film.
She was born Amy Duggan in Milton, Connecticut. Her parents were James and Mary Kennedy Duggan, and she was the eighth of their ten children, according to the Windsor Historical Society. The year of her birth is recorded differently. Connecticut History, the online encyclopedia published by Connecticut Humanities, gives 1873. The Windsor Historical Society gives 1868.
Mental illness touched her family before her own case began. One of her brothers was admitted to the Connecticut General Hospital for the Insane in Middletown in 1902, and a sister was listed as a patient there in the 1930 census, the Windsor Historical Society found.
She married James Archer in 1896 or 1897; the two historical accounts differ by a year. The couple had one child, a daughter, who was twelve when her father died in 1910.
By about 1901 the Archers were living in the Newington house of an elderly widower who had hired them as live-in caretakers, giving them room and board for looking after him. He died in 1904. The Archers then rented the house from his heirs and kept caring for elderly boarders there as a small nursing home, according to the Windsor Historical Society. In 1907 the family sold the house, and the Archers moved on.
In 1907 the Archers used their savings to buy a house in Windsor and opened it as a home for elderly people and chronic invalids. A private home of this kind was still a fairly new idea at the time, FOX61 reported in a piece on the case.
The terms were simple. Lodgers paid between $7 and $25 a week. They could instead pay $1,000 once, in return for care for life, and many of them chose that option, the Windsor Historical Society said. Connecticut History adds that some residents or their families signed over insurance policies in exchange for lifetime care.
There were early disputes. In 1909 the family of an elderly woman from West Hartford sued over the care she had received at the home; the case was settled for $5,000, which the Windsor Historical Society estimated at about $133,000 in 2018 dollars. In 1911 Amy Archer wrote to the town tax collector to dispute a bill for back taxes, asking only, as she put it, to be dealt with honestly.
To her neighbors she was a respectable figure. She took part in Windsor's civic life and gave a stained glass window to a local church, Connecticut History records. The Windsor Historical Society, introducing a 2017 program on the case, described her as a petite, churchgoing widow with a teenage daughter. Her daughter, who was musical, attended a private girls' school in Windsor as a day student; tuition and fees for the 1912 to 1913 year came to $410, plus $50 for piano lessons.
The couple ran the home together until James Archer died in 1910. Connecticut History gives the cause as kidney failure.
In late 1913 she married Michael Gilligan. On the marriage license she gave an age younger than her own, according to the Windsor Historical Society. He died in February 1914, about three months after the wedding, at 56. His death certificate gave valvular heart disease as the main cause and an acute bilious attack as a secondary cause. His will left his whole estate, worth more than $4,000, to his new wife, and his family objected to it.
Gilligan's death was later one of the five charged against her. At her 1917 trial, the state offered evidence that he had died of arsenic poisoning, and that there had been financial dealings between him and his wife that gave her a motive, according to the Supreme Court's 1918 opinion. Because that evidence was ruled improperly admitted, and because she was never tried for his death, no court made a final finding about it.
The numbers were what first drew attention. Between 1907 and 1916, sixty residents died at the home. Twelve of those deaths came from 1907 to 1910. Forty-eight came from 1911 to 1916, according to the Windsor Historical Society. Over the same 1911 to 1916 period, a large home for the elderly in Hartford recorded about the same number of deaths, though it housed about seven times as many people.
Residents and townspeople also noticed how much arsenic she bought. According to Connecticut History, people in Windsor said she seemed to buy unusually large quantities of it, and she told them it was for rats. The Windsor Historical Society says she gave rats and bedbugs as her reasons, and that one of her largest purchases came shortly before Michael Gilligan's death.
Franklin Andrews was 60 and had been living at the home as a lodger. In May 1914 he was active and, by every outward sign, well. Connecticut History says he had been working on the lawn the day before he died; the Windsor Historical Society says he collapsed while painting a fence and died two days later. The death certificate gave the cause as a gastric ulcer.
His sister went through his papers after his death. She found letters in which the owner of the home pressed him for money, the Windsor Historical Society says, and Connecticut History says she found records of a $500 loan from him to Archer-Gilligan. FOX61 described the papers as showing that he had been pressured for money. She took her concerns to the state's attorney and to the Hartford Courant. The district attorney showed little interest at first, according to Connecticut History.
The Supreme Court's 1918 opinion lists the evidence the state later put forward about the last days of Andrews's life, as summarized in the defense brief: secrecy about the $500 loan; plans to take in new residents, a couple named Gowdy, with promises and false statements made to them; a purchase of arsenic four days before his death, with a false reason given for it; delays in calling the doctor; false statements to the doctor and others about the nature of his illness; an unreasonable failure to tell his relatives; and what the brief called unseemly haste in arranging his burial.
The case was broken open by journalists. Carlan Goslee, who wrote for the Hartford Courant, noticed the rising number of deaths at the home. FOX61 called him an obituary writer; the Windsor Historical Society calls him a correspondent. He checked drugstore poison registers and found that Archer-Gilligan had bought arsenic regularly, citing rats and bedbugs.
The Courant's editor, Clifford Sherman, then opened an investigation, according to the Windsor Historical Society. The paper reviewed Windsor's death certificates for the home and compared them with the records of the much larger Hartford home. A state police investigation followed, and several former residents were exhumed and examined. FOX61 reported that Andrews's body was among them and that arsenic was found in it.
In its report on the centennial of the trial, FOX61 noted that one of its own reporters, Kaitlin Goslee, had learned that Carlan Goslee was her great uncle.
Amy Archer-Gilligan was arrested on May 8, 1916, and charged with murdering Franklin Andrews and other residents of the home, the Windsor Historical Society says. The Courant described her home as a "murder factory," a label Connecticut History records and which stayed with the case.
She was indicted for five murders. A prosecutor said she had probably killed as many as two dozen people, Connecticut Public Radio reported in 2015, and the Connecticut Mirror wrote in 2011 that she had been suspected of killing as many as two dozen. None of those other deaths came to a final judgment in court.
She did not speak publicly about the accusations. She never testified at either of her trials and never gave an interview, the researcher Ron Robillard told Connecticut Public Radio, which made her own account of events hard to recover.
Her first trial began in June 1917 and lasted about four weeks. The state tried her for the murder of Franklin Andrews. To show that his death was no accident, prosecutors were allowed to put in evidence that three other people connected with the home had also died of arsenic: Michael Gilligan and two residents the court record names only as Smith and Gowdy. Two of those deaths came before Andrews's and one after, according to the 1918 opinion. The state also called a druggist, whose testimony covered her arsenic purchases, including purchases tied to the other deaths, and it presented expert testimony on the poisoning.
Connecticut History says that bodies were exhumed and that arsenic was found in more than two dozen former residents. That figure is larger than the number of deaths actually charged, and it is not given in the court record.
The defense contested how arsenic came to be in the bodies at all. Connecticut had banned arsenic-based embalming fluids in 1908, the Windsor Historical Society notes, and the science of the day could not reliably tell whether arsenic in a body came from poisoning or from embalming. Some undertakers were still using arsenic illegally, and that became a key defense argument.
The jury deliberated for about four hours and found her guilty of first-degree murder, Connecticut History says. She was sentenced to hang.
She appealed to the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors, the state's highest court. On April 30, 1918, in State v. Gilligan, the court found error in the way the trial had been run. Justice Beach wrote the opinion.
The central question was the evidence of the Gilligan, Smith and Gowdy deaths. The state had offered it to show intent, to rule out accident or mistake, and to rule out suicide. The court explained that evidence of other, unconnected crimes is not excluded because it proves nothing; it is excluded because it tends to prejudice a jury against the accused. Such evidence can be used to rebut a claim of accident only when the act charged is itself open to an innocent explanation.
That was not the situation here, the court held. The state's other evidence about Andrews's death already pointed so strongly away from accident that the jury could not have accepted the state's case and still thought the poisoning accidental. Admitting proof of similar but unconnected poisonings on top of that was, in the court's words, an abuse of discretion; its only practical effect would be to prejudice the accused. The suicide theory fared no better. Suicide is a voluntary act, the court observed, and nothing showed that Andrews had suspected the other deaths. The part of the trial judge's charge that told the jurors they could weigh the other poisonings was therefore erroneous, and so was the admission of evidence of her financial dealings with Smith and Gilligan and of the druggist's testimony about purchases unconnected with Andrews.
The court found no error in the rest of the charge. Connecticut History describes the result as an overturning on a technicality. The conviction and death sentence were set aside, and she faced a second trial.
The second trial, which followed the reversal of the Andrews conviction, opened in June 1919. Her defense raised insanity, according to the Windsor Historical Society.
The accounts differ on how it ended. Connecticut History and the Connecticut Mirror say she pleaded guilty, to a reduced charge of second-degree murder. The Windsor Historical Society says she was found guilty of second-degree murder, and FOX61 also said she was found guilty. Every account agrees on the result: a conviction for second-degree murder and a sentence of life imprisonment. The Connecticut Supreme Court, describing the case in 2015, referred to her conviction for second-degree murder for the arsenic poisoning of a resident of her nursing home.
That second-degree murder conviction is the only one recorded against her.
She began her sentence at the state prison in Wethersfield. In 1924 she was declared insane and transferred to the Connecticut General Hospital for the Insane in Middletown, the same hospital where her brother had been admitted more than two decades earlier, according to the Windsor Historical Society. The hospital is now Connecticut Valley Hospital.
She remained a patient there for the rest of her life and died in Middletown in 1962. Connecticut History gives her age at death as 89.
Little is known about her years in the hospital. The superintendent of the hospital wrote to her daughter about her treatment; the Connecticut Supreme Court noted in 2015 that about four such letters survive among her records. The records themselves became the subject of a court fight nearly a century after her trial.
Ron Robillard, an East Hartford newspaper editor writing a book about the case, asked the state for her records from the hospital. As the Connecticut Mirror reported in 2011, he was told at different times that the records had been destroyed, that they were locked in a vault, and then that they were missing and presumed destroyed. His formal request covered any records about her from 1924 through 1962.
The Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services released some records and withheld others. Robillard complained to the state Freedom of Information Commission, which examined the withheld papers in private. It ruled that her psychiatric records were confidential but that her physical and dental examination records should be released, citing a legitimate public interest. The department argued that every one of her medical records was protected, and that public curiosity about a famous case did not make them a matter of public concern, Connecticut Public Radio reported.
The case reached the Connecticut Supreme Court, which heard argument on January 14, 2015. On September 22, 2015, in an opinion by Justice Eveleigh, the court held that the department had standing to appeal and that her medical and dental records counted as psychiatric records exempt from disclosure under the state's psychiatrist and patient privilege law. It reversed the lower court's judgment. The commission had argued that she had been dead since 1962 and left no surviving relative; the court's ruling kept the records closed regardless.
The case changed how Connecticut regulated homes for the elderly. In 1917, the year of her first trial, a bill was introduced in the legislature to require the licensing of what it called old folks homes, with inspections and annual reports of deaths to the State Board of Charities, the Windsor Historical Society records.
Joseph Kesselring, a New York writer, read about the case as a boy, according to the Windsor Historical Society, and later went to Connecticut to research it. He turned it into a comedy, Arsenic and Old Lace, which is only loosely based on the Windsor case. Connecticut History dates its Broadway run from 1939 to 1944; the Windsor Historical Society says it opened in 1941 and ran for three years. Frank Capra's film version, starring Cary Grant, was released in 1944.
FOX61, reporting on the town's centennial of the trial, put the contrast simply: the play and the film were comedies, but the real events were far darker. In June 2017 the Windsor Historical Society held a program on the trial with Robillard, who examined the court case, its unusual procedural history and the forensic evidence.
How many people died at her hands is not known. The only death for which she was convicted is Franklin Andrews's. She was charged in five deaths, and at the first trial prosecutors offered evidence of three others: her husband Michael Gilligan, and residents named Smith and Gowdy. The Supreme Court of Errors ruled that this evidence should not have gone to the jury, and no court ever reached a final judgment on those deaths. A prosecutor's estimate of up to two dozen victims was reported by Connecticut Public Radio, and Connecticut History says arsenic was found in more than two dozen former residents. These are attributions, not findings of a court.
The high death rate at the home is a matter of record, but the death rate alone does not show how any individual resident died. The home was set up to take in elderly people and chronic invalids.
The arsenic evidence itself was contested at trial. The defense argued that arsenic found in exhumed bodies might have come from embalming fluid rather than poison, since some undertakers were said to be using arsenic after the 1908 ban.
Her birth year is given as 1873 by Connecticut History and as 1868 by the Windsor Historical Society. Her marriage to James Archer is dated 1896 by one and 1897 by the other.
Whether the 1919 conviction came from a plea or a jury's verdict is reported both ways. The sentence of life imprisonment is not in dispute.
The cause of James Archer's death in 1910 is given by Connecticut History as kidney failure. Whether his death or Michael Gilligan's was a homicide was never decided by any court.
1868 or 1873: Amy Duggan is born in Milton, Connecticut (sources differ on the year).
1896 or 1897: She marries James Archer.
About 1901: The Archers become live-in caretakers for an elderly widower in Newington.
1902: Her brother is admitted to the state hospital for the insane in Middletown.
1904: The widower dies; the Archers rent the house and take in elderly boarders.
1907: The house is sold. The Archers buy a house in Windsor and open a home for elderly people and chronic invalids.
1909: A West Hartford family sues over a relative's care at the home; the case settles for $5,000.
1910: James Archer dies.
Late 1913: She marries Michael Gilligan.
February 1914: Michael Gilligan dies, about three months after the wedding.
May 1914: Franklin Andrews, 60, dies at the home; the death certificate gives a gastric ulcer. His sister finds papers about money he had given or lent the owner.
1914 to 1916: Courant correspondent Carlan Goslee and editor Clifford Sherman look into the death rate and arsenic purchases; a state police investigation and exhumations follow.
May 8, 1916: She is arrested and charged with murder.
June 1917: Her trial for the murder of Franklin Andrews begins. After about four weeks, a jury convicts her of first-degree murder; she is sentenced to hang.
1917: A bill to license and inspect homes for the elderly is introduced in the legislature.
April 30, 1918: The Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors finds error in State v. Gilligan.
June 1919: At her retrial she is convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
1924: Declared insane, she is moved from Wethersfield state prison to the state hospital in Middletown.
1941: Arsenic and Old Lace opens on Broadway (Windsor Historical Society; Connecticut History dates the run from 1939).
1944: The Broadway run ends and Frank Capra's film is released.
1962: She dies at the state hospital in Middletown.
January 14, 2015: The Connecticut Supreme Court hears argument in the dispute over her hospital records.
September 22, 2015: The court holds her hospital records exempt from disclosure.
June 13, 2017: The Windsor Historical Society holds a program on the trial for its centennial.