This week in 1935

“If I have to die, I will die innocent. I never killed Harry Wright or anyone else.”

— Eva Coo, convicted of murder, electric chair, New York.
Executed June 27, 1935

Coo, proprietor of a “speakeasy brothel,” was sent to the electric chair for the murder of Harry Wright, a handicapped man she had employed as a handyman. News reports from the era painted Coo as a ghoulish figure who mistreated Wright, burned down his dead mother’s house for insurance money, and then tried to collect an insurance policy on Wright. She became the fifth woman to die in New York’s electric chair.