This week in 1934

“I don’t care what you do to me. I am not afraid to die. I have nothing on my conscience. I never killed any one.”

— Anna Antonio, convicted of conspiracy to murder, electric chair, New York.
Executed August 9, 1934

Antonio, age twenty-eight, claimed it was fear rather than money that motivated her. A diminutive woman, weighing approximately one hundred pounds, Antonio had been married to a large, violent drug dealer who she claimed had abused her and caused the early death of one of their four children. Her apparent lack of grief did not help her case.

When the governor refused to commute her sentence, she said, “It looks as if they’ve all turned me down. God alone can help me. I’m not thinking of myself so much. I’m thinking what it will mean to the future of my children. Nobody can know how terrible it is to be here except someone who has been through it.”