Latest / Best of: Features / The last woman executed in California was the mother-in-law from hell

Transcript

The last woman executed in California was the mother-in-law from hell · Best of: Features

• 0:05
  The last woman executed in California was the mother-in-law from Hell. Written
• 0:10
  by Katie Dowd. This article is being read by an automated voice
• 0:15
  generated by Everlet. The woman in the hospital bed didn't seem like
• 0:20
  a threat to Nurse Olga Kupchuk. She'd been admitted in november nineteen
• 0:25
  fifty seven for an overdose of sleeping pills, an apparent suicide attempt
• 0:29
  after her adult son said he was moving out of their Santa
• 0:32
  Barbara home. The fifty three year old housewife was catatonic over the
• 0:36
  situation, but if Olga thought It
• 0:38
  was strange, it didn't dampen a growing crush on her patient's son.
• 0:42
  As Olga cared for the woman, her eyes kept falling on Frank
• 0:45
  Duncan. After his mother
• 0:47
  was discharged, Frank asked Olga on a date. It wasn't until later
• 0:52
  that Olga may have wondered how Elizabeth Ann Duncan viewed those early
• 0:55
  interactions, and when exactly it was that Elizabeth decided Olga had to
• 1:00
  die. Your mother tried to get me to kidnap your wife. Few
• 1:05
  mothers in the annals of history have been as compulsively, disturbingly obsessed
• 1:09
  with their sons as Elizabeth Duncan. Born Hazel Nye, her aliases are
• 1:13
  impossible to keep up with, due to the fact she married at
• 1:16
  least ten, and possibly up to twenty times. Those marriages produced at
• 1:20
  least four children, including Frank, born in nineteen twenty nine in Southern
• 1:24
  California. Despite the fact Elizabeth had a teen daughter who died tragically
• 1:29
  of a cerebral hemorrhage, Elizabeth had no problem telling people that Frank’s
• 1:34
  always, was her favorite child. Wherever Frank went, his mother followed. When
• 1:39
  he started law school at Hastings, in San Francisco, Elizabeth moved in
• 1:43
  with him. But she wasn't single. In an eight year span she
• 1:46
  married and divorced five different men. Most were close to Frank age
• 1:51
  a twenty four year old man who filed for divorce when she
• 1:54
  refused to leave her son and live with him, a typewriter salesman
• 1:57
  who was fifteen years Elizabeth's junior and, most unsettlingly, a law school
• 2:02
  classmate of Frank's. That marriage was annulled when Elizabeth refused to have
• 2:06
  sex until Frank graduated. History has not recorded her rationale for that
• 2:10
  particular demand. Despite Elizabeth's full time employment as a brideslash diversee, she
• 2:16
  had another part time gig. In nineteen fifty three an undercover San
• 2:20
  Francisco police officer entered a massage parlor run by Elizabeth at ten
• 2:24
  zero eight Sutter Street. He was asked, quite unsubly, if he wanted
• 2:28
  a massage or a girl. Elizabeth, then in her forties, was shared
• 2:32
  with running a brothel. The next year Frank graduated law school and
• 2:36
  moved back to Southern California to begin his career. His mother, surprise,
• 2:41
  went with him. But cracks were starting to show in their cohabitation.
• 2:44
  Frank was now a full grown adult, and he was going on
• 2:47
  regular dates. This, no doubt, introduced tension into the relationship, and he
• 2:52
  began threatening to leave their shared home. In response to one such
• 2:56
  threat in November nineteen fifty seven, Elizabeth took too many sleeping pills,
• 3:01
  landing her in the Santa Barbara hospital where twenty nine year old
• 3:04
  nurse Olga Kupchik worked. Olga had recently moved from Canada in search
• 3:08
  of sunny weather and better job opportunities, and when she met a
• 3:12
  young attorney named Frank Duncan, it seemed she had found love, too.
• 3:16
  Frank had never been this serious with a woman before, and it
• 3:19
  sent Elizabeth into a tizzy. When Frank told her that he planned
• 3:23
  to marry Olga, Elizabeth, who had no leg to stand on when
• 3:26
  it came to quickie weddings, ordered him to tell her before they
• 3:30
  got married. But I saw Olga the next day, and we just
• 3:34
  decided to go ahead. Frank would later testify in court. There was
• 3:38
  a reason for their impulsive decision. After just a few months of
• 3:41
  dating, Olga was pregnant. Knowing that Mommy Dearest was going to lose
• 3:45
  her proverbial marbles, Frank asked the county clerk to hide their marriage
• 3:49
  certificate. At the time all marriage certificates were reported in the local
• 3:54
  newspaper, so hiding it would give Frank at least a few days
• 3:58
  to break the news to his mother. Although they county clerk played
• 4:01
  ball, it didn't matter. That night Frank didn't come home. Elizabeth immediately
• 4:06
  rang up the hospital where Olga worked and asked if the nurse
• 4:09
  was in. A cheerful co worker told the woman that Olga was
• 4:12
  off on her honeymoon. Elizabeth saw red, and she’d started planning. First,
• 4:17
  Elizabeth tried being a holy terror. She called Frank's office and hospital
• 4:22
  constantly. She showed up at the couple's home and pounded on the
• 4:25
  door until they ordered her to leave. She bought a gun and
• 4:28
  told Frank she intended to kill herself with it. Two months after
• 4:32
  the couple got married, Olga offered a man one hundred dollars to
• 4:36
  come with her to the county courthouse to annul a marriage. She
• 4:39
  said he would play the part of her son Frank Duncan, and
• 4:42
  she stand in for Olga Duncan. The man, understandably, asked why then
• 4:46
  couple couldn't come themselves. Olga said her important lawyer's son was too
• 4:50
  busy. As for Olga, to hell with that bitch, Elizabeth allegedly said.
• 4:55
  They ruse worked, and the separation was granted. This, however, only served
• 4:59
  to piss off Frank even further. He felt like a human yo
• 5:03
  yo, he said, constantly, going back and forth, trying to keep both
• 5:06
  happy. But there was no making Elizabeth happy. With the now visibly
• 5:10
  pregnant Olga still very much in the picture, she escalated. Her plan
• 5:14
  was not a sophisticated one. Frank was the
• 5:17
  working as a criminal defence attorney, and Elizabeth saw his clients as
• 5:20
  a stream of possible crooks. She began approaching some of them, asking
• 5:25
  if they would get rid of a young nurse for cash. At
• 5:28
  least one of the people she approached tattled to Frank. The woman,
• 5:32
  working as a car hop at a local restaurant called the Blue
• 5:35
  Onion, demanded to know if his mother’s was crazy. Your mother tried
• 5:39
  to get me to kidnap your wife, the outraged carhop told him.
• 5:43
  If Frank thought it was a serious threat, he didn't show it.
• 5:47
  Although the carhop had turned her down, Elizabeth found two men who
• 5:50
  didn't twenty five year old Augustine Baldonado and twenty year old Luis
• 5:54
  Moya. She offered them six thousand dollars to kill Olga, and they
• 5:59
  had no scruples about agreeing to the deal. The last few weeks
• 6:02
  of Olga's life must have been terrifying. She was almost seven months
• 6:06
  pregnant and being harassed relentlessly by her mother in law. Her husband
• 6:10
  was around only sporadically, and seemed more on his mother's side than
• 6:14
  hers. At a breaking point, Olga was contemplating divorce. The last night
• 6:19
  of Olga's life, november seventeenth, nineteen fifty eight, she had a few
• 6:23
  nurse friends over at her apartment on eleven fourteen Garden Street in
• 6:27
  Santa Barbara. They left around eleven PM, and they apartment complex went
• 6:31
  quiet. Not long after, Moya knocked on Olga's door. He explained to
• 6:35
  her that her husband was downstairs drunk in a car, and he
• 6:38
  needed her help to get him inside. Olga went with Moya to
• 6:42
  the car, where Baldonado was hiding in the back seat. Baldonado struck
• 6:46
  her on the head with a pistol, and Moya sped off into
• 6:49
  the night, eventually pulling over on the side of Highway one hundred
• 6:52
  and fifty near the Casitas Dam. The men had planned to shoot
• 6:56
  the pregnant woman dead, but in the struggle the gun was damaged.
• 6:59
  So they came up with a horrific backup plan. The took turns
• 7:03
  strangling her, one man putting her in a headlock while the other
• 7:06
  dug a shallow grave with his hands. Once Olga stopped breathing, they
• 7:11
  rolled her into the grave, obscured from the road by a ravine
• 7:14
  and heavy brush. The next morning, Olga's co workers were alarmed when
• 7:18
  she didn't appear for work. They went to her apartment and found
• 7:21
  the door wide open. Her passport, luggage, and purse were all inside.
• 7:26
  A search began, and it was obvious to detectives that something very,
• 7:30
  very strange was going on with Olga mother in law. Witnesses emerged
• 7:34
  who'd either been approached directly by Elizabeth, or were privy to her
• 7:38
  offers to kidnap, harm, or kill Olga. Police, arrested Moya and Baldondado,
• 7:42
  and the pair pointed fingers at Elizabeth Duncan. Once in custody, Baldonado
• 7:48
  agreed to lead police to the spot where they'd buried the body.
• 7:51
  Olga was still in the quilted robe she'd left her home in.
• 7:54
  Her knees were drawn up, the way a child sleeps on a
• 7:56
  cold night, a Santa Barbara news press reporter wrote. When the case
• 8:01
  went to trial, the defence made the mistake of allowing Elizabeth to
• 8:04
  testify. Her demeanor was off putting, swinging between anger and inappropriate cheeriness.
• 8:10
  She generally appeared to be enjoying her chance to tell her own
• 8:14
  story. The news press reported. She admitted she'd have been in hysterics
• 8:18
  over the marriage, but insisted she never threatened to harm her daughter
• 8:21
  in law. She did, however, say that she fought with Olga over
• 8:25
  the fact she had premarital sex with Frank, quite the moral high
• 8:29
  ground from a woman who once ran a brothel. In front of
• 8:32
  police, Elizabeth sighed that her favourite son didn't know much about women,
• 8:36
  and that may be my fault. The jury took less than five
• 8:40
  hours to return a guilty verdict. A few days later, Duncan, Moya,
• 8:43
  and Baldonado were all sentenced to death in San Quentin’s gas chamber.
• 8:47
  Frank, who had stood by his mother's side the entire time, was
• 8:50
  outraged. It was horribly unfair, he told reporters. There is no question
• 8:55
  that political ambition is involved in this. He accused the lead prosecutor
• 9:00
  of trying to climb to a higher position over the body of
• 9:03
  my mother. The body of his deceased wife and unborn child went
• 9:07
  unmentioned. In fact, despite promises to a funeral home that he would
• 9:11
  claim Olga's ashes and pay for the bill, Frank reportedly never did.
• 9:15
  Months after Olga died, her brother finally came to Ventura to arrange
• 9:18
  for her ashes to be taken home to Canada. The best mother
• 9:23
  a son could have.
• 9:24
  Whereas now appeals can take decades, in the nineteen sixties, the wheels
• 9:28
  of justice turned much faster. By august nineteen sixty two, the trio
• 9:33
  of killers had exhausted their final appeals. Duncan requested steak for her
• 9:37
  last meal, although she was thoroughly convinced it was not, in fact,
• 9:41
  her final dinner. San Quintin's warden found her unruffled, convinced that Frank
• 9:45
  would save her. But the hours ticked by and no call for
• 9:49
  clemency came through on the prison phone line. On the morning of
• 9:52
  august eighth, nineteen sixty two, the warden escorted Elizabeth Ann Duncan to
• 9:56
  San Quintin's gas chamber. Before she went into the green metal hull,
• 10:00
  she calmly turned to him and said, I am innocent. Where is
• 10:04
  Frank? She was strapped into a chair. Below her was a vat
• 10:07
  of acid. At ten oh four AM, cyanide pellets were dropped into
• 10:11
  the acid, unleashing a fatal cloud of fumes. Eight minutes later she
• 10:15
  was dead. Frank, who was still at a San Francisco courthouse, fighting
• 10:18
  for a last second appeal, was beside himself. He called her the
• 10:22
  best mother a son could have. Astonishingly, the work of the San
• 10:26
  Quentin executioners wasn't finished. A few hours later, Moya then twenty three
• 10:31
  and Baldonado twenty eight were taken to the gas chamber. After being
• 10:34
  strapped in, Baldonado joked to a guard, Be sure to close the
• 10:38
  door when you leave. Seated side by side, they were killed simultaneously.
• 10:43
  Since that day, California has never executed another woman, and they've never
• 10:47
  killed three people in the same day again. California's death penalty is
• 10:51
  currently on an indefinite moratorium. It's been twenty years since the state's
• 10:55
  last execution. A mystery remains regarding the whereabouts of Elizabeth's body. According
• 11:01
  to newspaper reports at the time, Frank claimed his mother's remains, but
• 11:05
  some genealogy websites have her final resting place as the San Quentin
• 11:09
  Cemetery. San Quentin's own records, however, don't list her among its permanent
• 11:14
  residents. Wherever she lies, Frank Duncan is likely the only person who
• 11:18
  knows for sure. Frank went on to marry again. When he was
• 11:22
  fighting for his mother's life, he was on his second marriage, this
• 11:25
  time to a fellow attorney. Their marriage ended in nineteen sixty six.
• 11:29
  She cited his hostility toward house guests as one of the reasons
• 11:33
  for their divorce. She did still retain him as her lawyer in
• 11:36
  a personal injury suit, though. Frank continued to practice law until twenty
• 11:40
  twenty three, when he was disbarred in his nineties. Although Elizabeth Ann
• 11:45
  Duncan was a household name for a time, Olga Kupchak and her
• 11:49
  unborn baby have largely been forgotten. From newspaper accounts after her death,
• 11:53
  it's clear that in her thirty short years she made countless friends
• 11:57
  among the nursing community. Her family, far away in Canada, loved and
• 12:01
  missed her deeply, and, despite her tumultuous marriage, she was still looking
• 12:05
  forward to what her future held. Life is short, she wrote to
• 12:09
  a friend, shortly before her murder, and I want to enjoy the
• 12:13
  rest of it.