WINDSOR -- The Town of Windsor is marking the centennial anniversary of the Amy Archer Gilligan murder trial that ended up making national headlines.
The Windsor Historical Society will hold a program on the infamous trial June 13 at 7 p.m. The story is most commonly known for the play and movie “Arsenic and Old Lace.” The play and the movie, both comedies, but the real life version a much darker one.
Amy Archer Gilligan, opened and operated a nursing home in Windsor a century ago. The concept was a fairly new one for the times.
“Lodgers could pay anywhere form $7 to $25 a week or they had the option of paying $1,000 for life care,” Christine Ermenc, Executive Director for Windsor Historical Society, said.
The Archer home was one that eventually became the target of suspicion.
“Between 1911 and 1916, 48 people died so you can see that the death rate is really increasing,” Ermenc said. She went onto say, “There was a gentleman named Carlan Goslee. He was the obituary writer for the Hartford Courant and he had noticed the uptick in deaths coming out of the Archer home.”
The name Carlan Goslee, triggered further research for FOX61’s Kaitlin Goslee, who found out there is a direct connection on the family tree. Carlan is Kaitlin’s great uncle.
Carlan's suspicions of what was happening in the Archer home lead him to the local drug store where he discovered a log of the amount of arsenic Archer was buying from the store on a regular basis.
Those records showed she bought 10 ounces of the drug, which is said to be enough to kill 200 people, just before her second husband, Michael Gilligan, according to the Historical Society.
One of the dozens of lodgers of the Archer home who died was Franklin Andrews.
“His sister Nellie Pierce was going through his papers and found that it looked like Amy Archer Gilligan had been pressuring him for money and she was very suspicious about this,” Ermenc said.
The mounting suspicions of Archer eventual made their way into a full blown investigation in which Andrews’ body was exhumed. That’s when they found traces of arsenic in his body.
Archer faced an initial murder trial in which she was sentenced to death, but that trial was appealed. In a second trial, she was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
She served part of the time in Wethersfield Prison, but in the 1920’s she was moved to the state asylum of the time in Middletown.