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Amy Gilligan (1901-1914) ran a private nursing home in Windsor, Connecticut, and married and killed 5 elderly men. She also convinced 9 elderly women to name her in their wills before poisoning them too. That last victim’s family demanded an autopsy which showed clear signs of poisoning, and Amy spent the rest of her life in prison.
Gilligan, Amy Born in 1869, little is known of Amy Gilligan’s life before 1901, when she opened a „home“ for the elderly in Windsor, Connecticut. Over the next thirteen years, she married five of her elderly patients, insuring each new husband heavily before poisoning them in turn. At least four female patients met similar fates, after changing their wills to make Gilligan their beneficiary. The final victim, Mrs. Amy Hosmer, was dispatched in November 1914, her family calling for an autopsy which revealed traces of poison. Other exhumations followed, with similar result, and Gilligan was promptly arrested. Sentenced to life on conviction of murder, she was later removed to a state asylum, where she died in 1928. Michael Newton – An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers – Hunting Humans
„Sister“ Amy Duggan Archer-Gilligan (1868–1962) was a Windsor, Connecticut nursing home proprietor and serial killer who systematically murdered at least five people by poison; one was her second husband, Michael Gilligan, and the rest were residents of her nursing home. It is possible that she was involved in more deaths; authorities found 48 deaths total from her nursing homes.
Childhood and Marriage Amy E. Duggan was born in October 1868 to James Duggan and Mary Kennedy in Milton (a suburb of Litchfield), Connecticut, the eighth of ten children. She was taught at the Milton school and went to the New Britain Normal school in 1890. Amy married James Archer in 1897. A daughter, Mary J. Archer, was born in December 1897. The Archers got their first job as caretakers in 1901. They were hired to take care of John Seymour, an elderly widower, and settled in his home at Newington, Connecticut. Seymour died in 1904. His heirs turned the residence into a boarding house for the elderly. The Archers were allowed to stay. They provided care for the elderly for a fee and in turn paid rent to Seymour’s family. They ran the house under the name of „Sister Amy’s Nursing Home for the Elderly“. In 1907, Seymour’s heirs decided to sell the house. The Archers moved to Windsor, Connecticut and used their savings to purchase a residence of their own. They soon converted it into their own business, the Archer Home for the Elderly and Infirm. James Archer died in 1910 of apparently natural causes. The official cause of death was Bright’s disease, a generic term for kidney diseases. Amy had taken out an insurance policy on him a few weeks before his death, so she was able to continue running the Archer Home.
In 1913, Amy married her second husband, Michael W. Gilligan, a widower with 4 adult sons. He was reportedly wealthy and interested in both Amy and in investing in the Archer Home. Michael died 20 Feb 1914. The official cause of death was „acute bilious attack“, in other words „severe indigestion“. Archer-Gilligan was once again financially secure: In their short marriage her new husband had drawn up a will, leaving her all his estate.
Killlings and capture Between 1907 and 1917, there were 60 deaths in the Archer Home. Relatives of her clients had grown suspicious as they tallied the large numbers of its residents dying. Only 12 had died between 1907 and 1910. 48 had died between 1911 and 1916. Among them was Franklin R. Andrews, an apparently healthy man. On the morning of May 29, 1914, Andrews was doing some gardening in the Archer house. His health suddenly collapsed within a day. He was dead by the evening. The official cause of death was gastric ulcer. His sister Nellie Pierce inherited his personal papers. She soon noted occasions where Archer-Gilligan was pressing Andrews for money. Archer-Gilligan’s clients showed a pattern of dying not long after giving their caretaker large sums of money. As the deaths continued, Pierce reported her suspicions to the local district attorney. He mostly ignored her. Pierce then took her story to The Hartford Courant, a newspaper. On May 9, 1916, the first of several articles on the „Murder Factory“ was published. A few months later, the police started seriously investigating the case. The investigation took almost a year to complete, but the results were interesting. The bodies of Gilligan, Andrews, and three other boarders were exhumed. All five had died of poisoning, either by arsenic or strychnine. Local merchants were able to testify that Archer-Gilligan had been purchasing large quantities of arsenic, supposedly to „kill rats“. A look into Gilligan’s will helped establish it was actually a forgery, written in Amy’s handwritting.
Trials Archer-Gilligan was arrested and tried for murder, originally on five counts; ultimately, her lawyer managed to get the charges reduced to a single count (Franklin R. Andrews). On June 18, 1917, a jury found her guilty, and she was sentenced to death. Archer-Gilligan appealed and was granted a new trial in 1919. She pleaded insanity, while Mary Archer testified that her mother was addicted to morphine. Archer-Gilligan was nonetheless found guilty of second degree murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Death In 1924, Archer-Gilligan was declared temporarily insane and was transferred to Connecticut Hospital for the Insane in Middletown, where she remained until her death on 23 April 1962.
Publicity The case attracted wide publicity at the time, and has been cited as an inspiration for the play and later film, Arsenic and Old Lace. Some have also claimed that hers was the first for-profit nursing home in the United States. Wikipedia.org
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