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March
23, 1860 - Ann Bilansky (white, aged 34) went to the gallows in
Minnesota for the arsenic poisoning of her husband, Stanislaus - the
only female executed in this state. The hanging was carried out in
nominal privacy although people got onto every vantage point to see
the proceedings. They didn't see a great deal as Ann died with "hardly
a struggle" according to contemporary reports.
Ann Bilansky
(Mary Ann Evards Wright) ((c. 1820 Fayetteville, North
Carolina – March 23, 1860 Saint Paul, Minnesota)
was a murderer who administered poison to her husband, Stanislaus
Bilansky, killing him within a few days.
Mrs. Bilansky was
tired of her husband and was in love with her nephew, John Walker. She
put arsenic in Stanislaus's soup. She had told her friend, Lucinda
Kilpatrick, who mentioned to her husband that Ann had probably killed
her husband. Mr. Kilpatrick went to the police who dug up the corpse
and found arsenic in the body.
Ann Bilansky was
arrested and sentenced to hang. She was executed on March 23, 1860,
the only woman ever to be executed in Minnesota state history.
Further reading
Trenerry, Walter N.
(1962). Murder in Minnesota: A Collection of True Cases.
Minnesota Historical Society. pp. 25–41.
Bessler, John D., Legacy of Violence: Lynch
Mobs and Executions in Minnesota, University of Minnesota Press,
2003. Chapter 3: "The Execution of Ann Bilansky."
Reference
Look For the Woman
by Jay Robert Nash. M. Evans and Company, Inc. ISBN 0871313367
