In a haunting new documentary exposé, the full, unvarnished stories of the 12 women executed by the electric chair in the United States have been laid bare, revealing a chilling tapestry of crime, desperation, injustice, and state-sanctioned death that spanned nearly six decades from 1899 to 1957. The video transcript, obtained exclusively by this newsroom, details each case in chronological order, from the first spark that killed Martha Place at Sing Sing to the final jolt that ended Rhonda Bell Martin in Alabama. These are not just statistics; they are human beings whose last meals, final words, and the circumstances that led them to the chair are now being scrutinized with fresh urgency as the nation debates capital punishment.
The first woman to ever face the electric chair was Martha Place, executed on March 20, 1899, at Sing Sing Prison in New York. She had murdered her 18-year-old stepdaughter Ida with acid and a pillow, then attacked her husband William with an axe. Witnesses described her as composed, almost resigned, as she entered the chamber.
She left no final statement. Her silence spoke volumes about the new weapon the state had built, a machine that worked exactly as designed. The execution was a warning shot, but it also opened a grim chapter in American penology.
Just ten years later, Mary Farmer became the second woman to die by electrocution. On Halloween 1907, she had forged documents to steal land from her neighbor Sarah Brennan, then killed Sarah with an axe and hid her body in a trunk. When the fraud unraveled, Mary and her husband James were both sentenced to death.
But on death row, Mary wrote a confession clearing James entirely. On March 29, 1909, at Auburn Prison, she walked to the chair holding a crucifix, murmuring a prayer. Three jolts of over 1,800 volts were needed to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 her.
Her final act was one of mercy toward the husband she had nearly destroyed.
The third case is perhaps the most tragic. Virginia Christian was only 17 years old when Virginia executed her on August 16, 1912, one day after her birthday.
She had been a laundress for a wealthy white woman, Ida Bellwood, who frequently beat her. After Ida accused her of stealing a locket and a skirt, a fight erupted. Virginia struck Ida with a broom handle and forced a towel into her mouth to silence her screams.
Ida suffocated. An all-white, all-male jury deliberated for just 23 minutes before convicting Virginia of first-degree murder. Her mother, paralyzed, begged the governor for mercy.
It did not work. Virginia remains the only female juvenile ever put to death by electric chair in American history, and the only woman Virginia has ever executed by that method.
Ruth Snyder’s case became a media sensation.
A homemaker in Queens, she conspired with her lover Judd Gray to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 her husband Albert for life insurance. On March 20, 1927, they beat him to death in his bed and staged a burglary. The staging fell apart quickly.
At trial, they blamed each other. Both were convicted. On January 12, 1928, Ruth was executed at Sing Sing, ten minutes before Judd.
A hidden camera strapped to a reporter’s ankle captured the exact moment 2,000 volts tore through her body. That photograph ran on the front page of the New York Daily News the next morning, becoming one of the most infamous images in American criminal history.
Irene Schroeder earned the nickname “The Blonde Bandit” after she shot and killed a Pennsylvania highway patrolman during a robbery on December 27, 1929.
Her six-year-old son Donnie was in the backseat and witnessed the entire event. At trial, the boy testified against his own mother. Irene tried to claim she was someone else, but the jury did not believe her.
On February 23, 1931, she became the first woman executed in Pennsylvania’s electric chair. Her final words were to Donnie: “I am going to die, my boy, but I am not afraid. Be a good boy, and don’t be afraid.”
Minutes later, her lover Glenn Dague followed her to the same chair.
Anna Antonio weighed only 85 pounds when she was strapped into the chair at Sing Sing on August 9, 1934. She had hired two men to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 her abusive husband Salvatore for his life insurance.
In her final weeks, she stopped eating, dropping 15 pounds. She cried out, “I have already died enough for a million men.” On the day of her execution, which fell on her daughter’s birthday, she embraced the prison matron, kissed her cheek, and recited a Catholic prayer before the current flowed.
The two hired men were executed immediately after her in the same chair.
Eva Coo ran a speakeasy and brothel called Little Eva’s in Oneonta, New York. She saw a vulnerable, disabled man named Harry Wright as a payout waiting to happen.
She took out multiple life insurance policies on him, then recruited an employee to help 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 him. On June 14, 1934, they drove Harry to an isolated road, struck him with a wooden mallet, and ran him over with a rented car. The body was exhumed twice as investigators pieced together the crime.
Eva was convicted and executed on June 27, 1935, at Sing Sing. She was the fifth woman to die in that chamber.
Tony Jo Henry robbed a stranger to fund a jailbreak for her lover, “Cowboy” Henry, who was serving 50 years for murder.
On February 14, 1940, she and an accomplice accepted a ride from salesman Joseph Callaway. The robbery turned into murder when Callaway was shot and left dead on a Louisiana highway. Tony Jo was arrested after confessing to her aunt.
After three trials, she was sentenced to death. On November 28, 1942, she walked into the basement of the Calcasieu Parish Courthouse wearing a plain black dress and a colorful scarf over her shaved head. She smiled at reporters, declined a final statement, and was executed by Louisiana’s portable electric chair.
She remains the only woman ever executed by electrocution in the state’s history.
Lena Baker’s case is a stark example of racial injustice. A black domestic worker in Cuthbert, Georgia, she was employed by a white man named Ernest Knight who repeatedly assaulted her and held her against her will.
On April 30, 1944, he locked her inside his gristmill. When she tried to leave, he grabbed an iron bar. In the struggle, she grabbed his gun and shot him in the head.
She immediately confessed, believing the truth would protect her. Her trial lasted less than a day; an all-white, all-male jury deliberated for just 30 minutes before convicting her. On March 5, 1945, she was executed at Georgia’s Reidsville State Prison.
Her final words: “What I done, I did in self-defense or I would have been killed myself. Where I was, I could not overcome it. I am ready to meet my God.”
She remains the only woman ever executed by Georgia’s electric chair. In 2005, the state granted her a full posthumous pardon, acknowledging a “grievous error.”
Ethel Rosenberg was executed alongside her husband Julius on June 19, 1953, at Sing Sing, convicted of conspiring to pass American nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union.
She remains the only woman ever executed by the United States government for a crime other than murder. Evidence of her actual involvement was murky; much of the case rested on testimony from her own brother, who later admitted he lied under pressure. The government hoped Julius would break and name other spies to save his wife.
He did not. Julius died after three jolts; Ethel required five shocks before doctors pronounced her dead. Witnesses described smoke rising from her body.
They left behind two young sons who spent decades trying to clear her name. Decades later, even a Soviet engineer admitted the intelligence she died for had barely mattered.
The final woman on the list is Rhonda Bell Martin, a waitress in Montgomery, Alabama, who poisoned six members of her own family over nearly two decades, including her mother, three of her children, and two of her five husbands.
She used rat poison slipped into food. Her fifth husband survived but was left paralyzed. In March 1956, she confessed to nearly all of it.
On October 11, 1957, she was executed in Alabama’s electric chair, clutching a Bible and reciting the 23rd Psalm. She declined a final statement. She remains the last woman ever executed in Alabama’s electric chair, closing out an era that began with Martha Place 58 years earlier.
These 12 women, spanning 58 years, represent a spectrum of human experience: some were cold-blooded killers, some were victims of 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮 and systemic failure, and at least one was executed for a crime she committed in self-defense. Their crimes ranged from poison and gunfire to forged deeds and hired killers. All of them sat in the same chair, waiting for the same current, bound together by a machine that was supposed to deliver justice but often delivered only finality.
But there is a 13th case, one that has not yet been fully told in this series. A woman whose execution became so controversial, so contested, that even the officials who carried it out still argue about whether it should have happened at all. Her case would go on to change the national conversation around capital punishment forever.
This newsroom will continue to follow this story as more details emerge. Subscribe and turn on notifications because you will not want to miss the next installment.