Mary Frances Creighton was tried for murder twice, twelve years apart, and the two outcomes were opposite. In New Jersey in 1923 she and her husband were tried on a murder charge and acquitted. In New York in 1935 she and a family friend, Everett C. Appelgate, were charged with the murder of his wife, Ada Appelgate, and both were convicted. The New York Court of Appeals upheld both convictions in May 1936, and both defendants were executed at Sing Sing Prison on July 16, 1936.
The two outcomes need to be kept apart. Only one of them is a conviction. The 1923 trial ended in an acquittal, and no court found her responsible for any death before 1935. Little of the 1923 case is on record.
A reference dictionary of women's biography gives Mary Frances Creighton's birthdate as July 29, 1899, and her birthplace as Rahway, New Jersey. She married John Creighton; by the time of the 1935 case the Court of Appeals described the couple as about 36 years old, married for 17 years, with two children, a daughter of 15 and a son of 12. Her husband worked in the Nassau County engineer's office. The family lived in a small bungalow in Baldwin, a community on the south shore of Long Island.
Her schooling and any work before her marriage are not on record. At the time of her conviction, the University at Albany's archival entry describes her as a 36-year-old housewife in Baldwin.
The 1923 proceeding is known mostly through how it came up in 1935. The Court of Appeals, describing the evidence at the Nassau County trial, refers to "the trial of Mr. and Mrs. Creighton for murder in New Jersey" and records that, in a question put to her at the later trial, she and her husband were "tried in Jersey and acquitted on that charge." She answered, "We were." The trial judge in New York told the jury that "the proof here is that she was acquitted," and the court recorded that the evidence of the earlier case could be considered only as it bore on her knowledge and her credibility, with no inference drawn about guilt on the New Jersey charge.
Two reference sources name the earlier deaths. The University at Albany's archival description of the 1936 executions, which cites Dorothy Kilgallen's book Murder One, says she had previously been tried in New Jersey for the deaths of her brother and of her mother-in-law. The Dictionary of Women Worldwide, as published on Encyclopedia.com, says she and her husband were charged with the murder of her younger brother and with the murder of her mother-in-law and that both were acquitted. The two entries agree that the New Jersey outcome was acquittal. The dates of the deaths, the court and the verdict wording are not on record, and neither is whether the 1923 proceedings covered one death in one trial or both. Neither earlier death is a conviction; each was a charge on which she was found not guilty.
The Appelgates and the Creightons met through the American Legion. The court records that John Creighton and Everett Appelgate became acquainted in 1928. Appelgate was also about 36. He had married Ada in July 1920, and they had a daughter, 13 in 1935. He had served in the United States forces from October 1918, had lost a bid for Nassau County commander of the Legion in the summer of 1935, and worked as an investigator for a county veterans' relief bureau.
Until November 17, 1934, the Appelgates lived with Ada's father. After disagreements there, the Creightons took them in at the Baldwin bungalow, and the two couples and their children lived together from then until the death. The two households divided the expenses. Ada, the court noted, had been in good health, and had consulted a doctor only about her weight.
The arrangement was not peaceful. In March 1935 a series of anonymous letters reached the house, threatening the Appelgates, disparaging them and telling them to leave. Appelgate gave some of them to the police, and nothing in the record shows that anything came of it. Asked about the letters during the investigation, Mary Creighton at first denied knowing anything about them. At the trial she admitted that she had written them, saying her aim was to push her husband into making the Appelgates leave.
Other testimony showed more friction. Her husband described a quarrel with Ada around Labor Day 1935 over the letters; Ada answered that she would reveal something that would put him where he belonged. A friend of Appelgate's testified that Mary Creighton had asked him to help her get the Appelgates out of the house. Appelgate's brother testified that in July 1935 she had said she would like to be rid of Ada and that there was another way to deal with her. The Court of Appeals recorded these statements as part of the evidence at trial.
Ada Appelgate became ill on September 18, 1935. She was admitted to a hospital on September 21 and was home again, in bed, on September 25 after a doctor said she could eat ordinary food. She died on Friday, September 27, 1935; the court records that she was pronounced dead at 8:30 that morning.
The doctor who attended her declined at first to certify the death without an autopsy. Appelgate refused to allow one, and the doctor issued a death certificate anyway. A few days later, at the District Attorney's office, Appelgate again refused, and was eventually persuaded to consent. The autopsy established the cause of death, which the prosecution charged as murder.
The sequence was investigated in the days after the death. Appelgate was questioned at length on Sunday, September 29. He told prosecutors he had no idea who had caused his wife's death and denied any attachment to Mary Creighton. He said he had learned of her past from friends and later from her husband, who told him that the Creightons had been indicted in 1923 and cleared.
Mary Creighton gave four recorded statements to prosecutors in October 1935. They conflict, and the differences became central at trial.
On October 8 she said that Appelgate had supplied what was used and told her what to do and to keep quiet. On October 9 she gave a sworn question-and-answer statement to an assistant district attorney, Strohson. In it she took responsibility herself, said she did not think Appelgate had known, and said her earlier statement was false and had been made because of how Appelgate had treated her. On October 10 and 11 she sent handwritten statements to the assistant district attorney, again placing the responsibility on Appelgate.
The Court of Appeals found that these statements were made voluntarily, in the presence of doctors, with no claim of force or fear. At trial the judge instructed the jury that each defendant's statements could be used only against the person who made them.
Creighton and Appelgate were indicted for murder in the first degree and tried together in Nassau County. The dates of the trial, the name of the trial judge and the date of the verdicts are not on record.
The prosecution's case on motive concerned Appelgate: he had spoken of marrying again, and the court reasoned that he might want his wife gone and might fear what she could reveal. The court also treated Creighton's anonymous letters and her remarks to the friend and to Appelgate's brother as bearing on her.
At trial Creighton testified against Appelgate. She said that he had directed her actions, that she knew nothing of the danger involved, and that she had not given anything to Ada herself. She said her sworn statement of October 9, in which she had cleared him, was false and that her mind had "snapped." She explained her earlier silence by saying that Appelgate had threatened to expose "the trouble we had in 1923" if she ever mentioned it. That is the point at which the New Jersey case entered the New York trial. Her own counsel brought out that she and her husband had been tried in New Jersey and acquitted. On cross-examination, the prosecution showed that in July 1935 she had written to Appelgate's brother offering to sell her story of the New Jersey case to a magazine, which the Court of Appeals considered relevant to her claim that she lived in fear of Appelgate's threat.
Appelgate testified that he had not known that anything harmful had been given to his wife. He admitted refusing the autopsy until he was persuaded, and he acknowledged the conversation about remarrying. He said he knew of the New Jersey matter and had confronted her husband with it.
Both defendants were convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death. The date of the sentence is not on record.
Both defendants appealed. On May 26, 1936, the New York Court of Appeals, in People v. Creighton, 271 N.Y. 263, 2 N.E.2d 650, affirmed both convictions. Chief Judge Crane wrote the opinion, and Judges Lehman, O'Brien, Hubbs, Crouch, Loughran and Finch concurred; no judge dissented.
The court held that Creighton's guilt was proved beyond a reasonable doubt, and that the jury was justified in convicting Appelgate on his motive and conduct. It treated Creighton as an accomplice as a matter of law, which meant that her testimony alone could not convict Appelgate, and it found that the trial judge had correctly told the jury that her account needed corroboration. It held that the cross-examination about the New Jersey trial and about her offer to sell her story was competent, that the limits the trial judge placed on the New Jersey evidence were proper, and that the use of each confession only against its maker was correct. After reviewing the evidence and the rulings, the court found no reason to disturb the verdicts.
Mary Frances Creighton and Everett Appelgate were executed at Sing Sing Prison on July 16, 1936, according to the University at Albany's archival entries for each of them and to the Dictionary of Women Worldwide. The entries record the same date for both.
What the courts established is narrow. A New York jury convicted Mary Frances Creighton and Everett C. Appelgate of murder in the first degree for the death of Ada Appelgate on September 27, 1935, and the Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions. Each was executed in July 1936.
Several points are not established. Which deaths were charged in New Jersey, and whether in one trial or two, is stated differently by the reference entries and is not settled by the 1936 opinion, which mentions one murder charge and one trial. The date and details of the New Jersey verdicts are not on record. Her testimony that Appelgate directed events and her earlier sworn statement that he did not know conflict directly, and the courts did not resolve which was true as a finding about him; they found only that the jury could convict him on the evidence of motive and conduct. The university entries also give the date of the death as September 25, where the court gives September 27.
The 1923 acquittals are not convictions, and they establish nothing about any earlier death. The New York trial judge told the jury the same.
July 29, 1899: Mary Frances Creighton is born in Rahway, New Jersey, according to the Dictionary of Women Worldwide.
July 1920: Everett C. Appelgate marries Ada.
1923: She and her husband are tried in New Jersey on a murder charge and acquitted.
1928: John Creighton and Appelgate meet through the American Legion.
November 17, 1934: The Appelgates move into the Creighton home in Baldwin, New York.
March 1935: Anonymous letters reach the household.
July 1935: Creighton writes to Appelgate's brother offering to sell a story about the New Jersey case to a magazine.
September 18, 1935: Ada Appelgate becomes ill.
September 27, 1935: Ada Appelgate dies.
September 29, 1935: Appelgate is questioned at length by the District Attorney.
October 8 to 11, 1935: Creighton gives four statements to prosecutors.
May 26, 1936: The New York Court of Appeals affirms both convictions.
July 16, 1936: Creighton and Appelgate are executed at Sing Sing Prison.