Ep. 1: A Black Hearse Comes at Midnight

The Archer Home for Elderly People was a highly specialized business. That is, it specialized in the quick and speedy extermination of its residents. 

In the historic town of Windsor, Connecticut, there once stood a majestic Colonial house. Known as the Archer Home for Elderly People and Chronic Invalids, this house on Prospect Street was owned by a small, middle-aged woman named Amy Archer Gilligan. Mrs. Gilligan was something of a pariah in Windsor-- a town whose residents didn't appreciate an "old folk's home" in their fashionable neighborhood. They even went so far as to circulate a petition to have the Archer Home closed down. When this failed, they began writing anonymous letters to the local paper, alleging terrible abuses which resulted in the deaths of several residents per week. According to one letter, written in the spring of 1914, a black hearse visited the Archer Home every midnight to collect and spirit away the bodies.

Naturally, these accusations caught the attention of the newspaper's police reporter, Louis Thayer. But, before Thayer had a chance to begin an investigation, he was visited by Mrs. Nellie Pierce.

[sound of typewriter]

[knocking]

Thayer: "Come in".

Nellie: "I've come to report a murder at the Archer Home."

Thayer: "A murder? I take it you're a neighbor?"

Nellie: "No, I'm from Cheshire. My brother, Franklin Andrews, lived at the Archer Home. A strong, healthy man he was. Just turned 60. And yesterday, I buried him."

Thayer asked Mrs. Pierce for details, and was told that she had visited her brother just a few days earlier. He was as fit as a fiddle. But then, two days later, Amy Archer Gilligan called Mrs. Pierce to inform her that Franklin was seriously ill. When Mrs. Pierce arrived at the home the following morning, she learned that her brother had died. The doctor had attributed his death to gastric ulcers. Nellie Pierce did not buy this explanation.

Nellie: "And another thing. When I got there at 7 in the morning, his body was already gone. The undertaker had taken it during the night. At midnight, to be precise."

Thayer told the story his editor, Charles Hopkins Clark, and Clark promised Mrs. Pierce that he'd send one of his best reporters to investigate.  Aubrey Maddock paid a visit to the Archer Home later that afternoon. He introduced himself to Amy Archer Gilligan and said that his paper wanted to write an article about the home. Amy was happy to oblige, and during their conversation she told the reporter that she and her husband had opened the Archer Home for Elderly People in 1907. Mr. Archer died three years later. The home was a financial success, said Amy, explaining that she rarely agreed to a monthly rate. Instead, she preferred all the money up front, in one lump sum. She accepted new residents for payments as low as $350 and as high as $1,500. The Amy made an astonishing admission-- she told Maddock that running the home had been much easier when her second husband, Michael W. Gilligan, was alive. Gilligan, who had been one of the residents when he married Amy Archer, had taken an active role in managing her business affairs. He died the previous February.

Nellie: "It's difficult without a man around. Mr. Andrews helped me for a time. But now he's gone and I have nobody.

Maddock's ears pricked up at the mention of Franklin Andrews. As Amy gave him a tour of the home, Maddock jotted notes and kept his eyes open for clues. He asked Amy for a list of current and former residents, which Amy was happy to supply. After leaving the Archer Home, Maddock went to see Dr. Howard F. King, the physician who treated Franklin Andrews. When the reporter raised the possibility of death by poisoning, Dr. King said that was ridiculous-- he certainly would've noticed the symptoms of poisoning. He wasn't just a doctor, he pointed out, but the acting medical examiner for Windsor. 

Courant reporter Aubrey Maddock

The Archer Home had a capacity of 14 residents. According to Amy's notes, 40 of the residents had died over a period of three and a half years. But was this number high for a retirement home? Aubrey Maddock wasn't sure. He telephoned the State Old People's Home in Hartford and learned that they had accommodations for 67 residents, and the beds were always filled. Next, he asked for the number of deaths for the same 3.5-year period. The answer was 24, which worked out to be about 7 deaths per year. Maddock hung up, sharpened his pencil and did the math. He figured that the Archer Home, with 14 residents, should have averaged less than 2 deaths per year. But the average for the Archer Home was an astonishing 11 deaths per year.

Maddock immediately went to his editor with his concerns, and together they visited Chief Thomas F. Egan of the Connecticut State Police. Chief Egan was amazed at what he heard. He telephoned States Attorney Hugh M. Alcorn. After discussing the matter, Egan instructed Maddock and Clark not to publish anything about the Archer Home. If Amy Archer Gilligan had played a role in these suspicious deaths, they didn't want to tip their hand. Instead, they dispatched an elderly female private detective to Windsor-- Mrs. Zola Bennett.

Zola Bennett applied for admission, describing herself as a wealthy but friendless widow. Although the home was filled to capacity, Amy Archer Gilligan assured Zola that she could find a spot for her. By December of 1914, several more residents had died, and Zola was satisfied these deaths had been from natural causes. But then, in early December, a 71-year-old resident named Alice Gowdy died, and the undercover spinster became highly suspicious.

Alice Gowdy had fallen violently ill on Thanksgiving Day and asked Amy Archer Gilligan to summon her family physician, Dr. Emma Thompson. At first, Alice had responded well to Dr. Thompson's treatment, but then, she suddenly took a turn for the worse and died. The acting medical examiner certified the cause of Mrs. Gowdy's death as cholera morbus. Zola Bennett relayed these facts to Chief Egan, who sent Capt. Robert Hurley to question Dr. Thompson.

Captain Robert Hurley

She told Captain Hurley that she felt there was something unnatural about Alice Gowdy's death. The rigidity of her limbs and her twisted fingers and toes suggested arsenic poisoning.

On the basis of Dr. Thompson's statement, Coroner J.G. Calhoun issued a permit for an autopsy. That night, the body of Mrs. Gowdy was exhumed and portions of the organs removed. The samples were sent to Dr. Arthur Wolff in Hartford, who found, in the dead woman's stomach, far more than a lethal dose of arsenic.

Chief Egan of the Connecticut State Police launched a full-scale investigation of the Archer Home, and police detectives found what they believed was irrefutable evidence pointing to the poisoning deaths of three more residents: Charles Smith, Maude Lynch and Amy's second husband, Michael Gilligan. Coroner Calhoun issued permits for the exhumation of these three bodies, as well as the body of Franklin Andrews. Meanwhile, detectives and newspaper reporters made a systematic check of local drugstores, which were required by law to record the names of any customer purchasing poison.

At the drugstore of W.H.H. Mason they struck paydirt. Records revealed that Amy had purchased 4 ounces of arsenic as a rat poison on October 21, 1913. She purchased an additional ten ounces on February 17, 1914-- just three days before the death of Michael W. Gilligan. On May 26, 1914-- four days before the death of Franklin Andrews, she had purchased two ounces of arsenic. But investigators were not at all prepared for what they discovered next-- On June 19, 1914, Amy had purchased one whole pound of arsenic-- enough poison to kill every man, woman and child in all of Windsor. 

States Attorney Hugh Alcorn

It has been established that a lethal dose of arsenic for an adult human is about 200 milligrams, or 3 grains. One pound is the equivalent of 7000 grains. In other words, Amy Archer Gilligan possessed enough poison to snuff out the lives of over 2,300 people. Captain Robert Hurley of the Connecticut State Police knew that he had to act quickly, before the matronly, middle-aged angel of death managed to carry out the mass extermination of her remaining residents. 

Now convinced they were dealing with cold-blooded murder, authorities turned their attention to the matter of motive. Surely the motive was financial, but what was the angle? It was newspaper reporter Aubrey Maddock who came up with the answer:

"Amy Archer Gilligan seldom took residents on a monthly basis because their relatives didn't keep up with the payments. She took them for life."

"Of course!" said Chief Egan. "When one resident died, she could take in a new one and get another fee."

Amy was arrested on May 8, 1916, and taken to the Hartford County Jail. The publicity ban was lifted, and editor Charles Hopkins Clark was rewarded for his efforts when his newspaper-- the Hartford Courant-- was first on the stands, with a headline describing the Archer Home as a "murder factory" and claiming that up to 20 residents may have been poisoned by Mrs. Gilligan. Other editors followed suit and the case became an overnight media sensation.

Amy Archer Gilligan was brought to trial in Hartford in June of 1917. A court ruling forced the prosecution to charge Amy with only one of the murders, and the prosecution built its case around the poisoning death of Franklin Andrews. She was found guilty of murder in the first-degree and sentenced to death by hanging-- but a storm of protest arose over putting a woman to death. In November, Governor Holcomb intervened, granting the convicted killer a reprieve from the gallows. The case was appealed on a technicality and at her second trial Amy pleaded guilty. She was sentenced to life in prison, though in 1928, she was transferred to the Connecticut State Hospital for the Insane, where she remained until her death in April of 1962 at the age of 89.

However, in the end, Mrs. Gilligan had the last laugh. She outlived the editor and reporter, the judge, the medical examiner, the state police chief and captain and virtually everyone else who played a role in the case. And if the murderous old lady plot seems a little familiar, it's because Amy Archer Gilligan was credited as the inspiration for the classic stage play, "Arsenic and Old Lace."