Cheerful Eva

In the execution chamber of the State Prison at Florence, Ariz., hangs a row of 16 pictures of murderers executed there. Around each picture is looped the noose in which the criminal died. Last week prison attendants added a 17th picture and a 17th rope, thereby memorializing the picture of Mrs. Eva Dugan, 52, first woman executed in Arizona.*

Once Mrs. Dugan was a cabaret entertainer in Juneau, Alaska. In 1927 she was a housekeeper for an aged rancher at Tucson, Ariz. Apparently hoping to get his property, she murdered him, buried his body in a shallow grave, fled in his automobile. She was accused of murder only after she had spent a year in a New York prison for stealing the car.

Resigned, cheerful in prison, she made friends with attendants, embroidered herself a silk shroud. All night before her execution she played whist with friends, stopped at midnight to make them some oyster stew. At dawn she marched off, unsupported, between two guards. She bantered with newsmen, posed for photographers, shook hands with the warden, kissed the guards, walked firmly up the steps to the gallows. Death was instantaneous, for the jerk of the noose cut off her head.

*Total U. S. legal executions of women: New York State, 8; Pennsylvania, 9; all other States, 10.

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