by Sarah A. Peterson-Camacho

You can read part 1 here, and part 2.

Spring 1906, Stockton, CA

Emma Theresa Cole Barrett Williams McVicar LeDoux was promptly charged with the premeditated, first-degree murder of one Albert Newton McVicar, and she pleaded not guilty to the charge.

Held without bail in the turret-crowned castle of a San Joaquin County Jail, the lovely, young, two-time widow welcomed a regular visitor in the loyal, widowed form of her mother, Mary Ann Head, who routinely smuggled morphine to her incarcerated oldest daughter, as Emma had struggled with a secret addiction for years.

The murder trial was set for Tuesday, May 22, 1906, in the palatial San Joaquin County Courthouse—to be presided over by the Honorable William B. Nutter, with District Attorney Charles Norton and Assistant D.A. George McNoble for the prosecution, and attorneys Charles H. Crocker, Charles H. Fairall, and Hubert R. McNoble (the assistant D.A.’s oldest brother) for the defense.

But then came the fiery havoc wrought by the 7.9 magnitude earthquake on the morning of Wednesday, April 18, which leveled 80% of San Francisco, and claimed over 3,000 lives. The natural disaster and its devastation wiped the papers clean of Mrs. LeDoux’s attractive visage, replacing it with another, more pressing catastrophe.

And as the Bay Area commenced with rescue and recovery, the attorneys on both sides of the case consulted and plotted strategies for the now-delayed murder trial. But it would begin only two weeks after its original start date—Tuesday, June 5, 1906.

“Mrs. LeDoux was dressed entirely in black,” reported The Stockton Evening and Sunday Record that Tuesday, June 5, “except for a white silk ribbon about her throat, and a small white rose in her hat. For a few moments, she stood looking demurely downward while Attorney Charles Crocker arranged a chair for her at the left of himself and Attorney C.H. Fairall. A minute later, Mrs. LeDoux’s mother, Mrs. Mary Head of Sutter Creek, came in and took a seat at the left hand of her daughter.”

For the next two weeks, the prosecution and the defense maneuvered back and forth with expert and witness testimony (and with defense attorney Hubert McNoble resigning early on, due to a conflict of interest in the wake of his younger brother George’s joining of the prosecution).

And Emma LeDoux maintained a cool and serene exterior, even as Professor Roy R. Rogers directly refuted her earlier admission that carbolic acid had killed McVicar—by informing the jury that no trace of carbolic acid had been found in the deceased. Morphine—enough to kill all twelve of the jurors—had been the true culprit.

In fact, Mrs. LeDoux and her mother even presented an undisturbed united front when the motive was ultimately revealed by the prosecution.

“Going to the motive of the murder, the prosecution got in a number of letters this morning which Mrs. LeDoux had written to Eugene LeDoux, after her marriage to McVicar and before the bigamous marriage to LeDoux,” The Stockton Evening Mail revealed on Monday, June 18. “These letters were replete with endearing terms and declarations of undying love…

“The letters all went in under persistent objections on the part of the defense…on the ground that the evidence was illegally secured by the prosecution.”

Love letters penned after Emma’s marriage to Eugene LeDoux proved even more tender—and more telling. “She wrote that she loved him and him only, and hoped soon to be with him ‘never to part,’” continued the Evening Mail. “At the end was ‘love and xxxx’, the cross marks supposed to mean kisses…

“During the reading of the letters to the jury, the defendant kept her eyes down…She deigned to look at the letters only when questioned by her attorneys about them…In all [the letters], the writer expressed an enduring love for LeDoux, and assured him that the time would come when she would be his forever.”

But that time would never come.

The next few days delivered the next few nails in the metaphorical coffin that was Emma LeDoux’s defense. Her former fiancé Joseph E. Healy—on whom she had tried to pin the murder—recounted his entire story for the court and presented the proof of his airtight alibi. And yet she never revealed her true accomplice.

But finally, as the trial neared its finish line at the end of the second week, the LeDoux woman’s icy façade began to crack. “The defendant appeared to be in a bad way yesterday afternoon,” noted The Stockton Evening and Sunday Record on Wednesday, June 20. “When her mother fainted in court, the defendant appeared to become hysterical, and all afternoon she seemed on the point of collapse.

“This morning her attorneys, after a conference with her, decided that it would be best not to place her on the stand.”

And then came the final witness of the whole trial. “Her mother, Mrs. Head, was the last witness for the defense,” The Sacramento Star divulged. “She appeared on the verge of collapse. She said that her daughter had been using morphine for over four years, and used it in the Stockton jail.

“She said that the murdered man, McVicar, was at her home last July [of 1905], the month before Emma married Eugene LeDoux, and told her he had divorced Mrs. LeDoux—but would marry her again, and treat her right, if she would come back to him.

“The Sheriff’s deputies testified that Mrs. LeDoux had no morphine in jail so far as they knew,” concluded the Star. “The case will go to the jury in a few hours.”

“The prosecution did everything imaginable to blacken the already soiled reputation of the defendant. A parade of witnesses who had known Emma over the years portrayed her as a naughty girl, a troubled teenager, an unreliable employee, a faithless wife, and a conniving widow.

“The result was a portrait of a woman who led a careless life, moving from one thing to another with little thought of what she was doing, or what the consequences would be. She seemed to marry and remarry almost on impulse, without always going through the inconvenience of divorce” (Adams 133-34).

And after the attorneys on both sides had each delivered their closing arguments, the twelve men of the jury deliberated for a mere six hours, returning to the court with a unanimous verdict of guilty on Saturday, June 23, 1906. Then Emma Therese Cole Barrett Williams McVicar LeDoux had the dubious honor of being the first woman sentenced to death in the state of California. The date of execution was set for Friday, October 19, 1906.

“It is claimed that Emma LeDoux is the first woman condemned to hang in California,” clarified The Stockton Evening and Sunday Record two days after sentencing. “A woman was lynched in this State, in early days, for murder, but no woman has ever been legally executed in this State.”

Not so pressing an issue, however, was the Case of the Missing Morphine. Despite the Sheriff’s claims “that the woman has had no morphine in jail—and that she is not a morphine user…yesterday the woman told Sheriff Sibley that she had a quarter of a grain of that drug, but would not tell the Sheriff where it was.

“Mrs. LeDoux has been removed from the large quarters in the jail that she occupied before her conviction,” the Evening and Sunday Record continued, “and has been placed in a dark, solitary cell…The only light she has comes to her through a barred window eight by sixteen inches.”

But after just 24 hours spent in solitary, the condemned woman broke. “Mrs. Emma LeDoux, convicted of the murder of A.N. McVicar, this morning turned over to her attorney…six quarter-grain tablets of morphine, at his request,” revealed The Fresno Morning Republican only a day later, “and he in turn gave it to the Sheriff’s office—with the exception of a quarter grain, which fell on the cement floor of the jail and broke…

“She said it was the morphine which kept her up during the trial.” For once, the pretty little liar had told the truth.

Appeals kept Emma Theresa Cole Barrett Williams McVicar LeDoux alive well past her October execution date, and by 1910, she had won a retrial (ironically, also the year her former fiancé Joseph Healy, 39, died the same day as his brother Thomas, 40, also a plumber, both under mysterious circumstances). However, to avoid another date with death, she chose to plead guilty, which commuted her sentence to life in prison.

Four years later, “Emma filed an application for executive clemency on October 22, 1914,” notes true crime author J’aime Rubio. “In the section that asked if she had any children, Emma had answered ‘yes’.

“In fact, the document shows that Emma stated that she had ‘twin sons, 11 years old, living in Oregon’…the calculations of the boys’ birth dates would have meant that the children could have either been [second husband] William S. Williams’ sons, or even [third husband Albert] McVicar’s…[however] Emma never stated who the father of the children was, nor did this information come up when she filed for clemency again in 1917, and later again in 1921.”

And while repeatedly denied clemency, Mrs. LeDoux would eventually be granted parole for inadvertently throwing caution to the wind. “In 1919, Emma LeDoux saved the life of a jail matron who was being beaten by other inmates…she impulsively threw herself into the fray, and protected the matron against her assailants. This act of impromptu heroism apparently exerted a powerful influence on the parole board. On July 30, 1920, Emma walked out of San Quentin, into the protective custody of her sister in Lodi” (Adams 138-39).

And then, after over a decade of staying out of the papers, her fourth husband Eugene LeDoux “filed suit for an annulment of his marriage,” The Long Beach Telegram revealed on Wednesday, February 25, 1920, which begged the question—if Emma had still been legally married to third husband Albert McVicar at the time of his murder, wouldn’t that render her marriage to LeDoux not legally binding? Why would her fourth husband even need to legally secure a divorce if said marriage had already been proven invalid?

Because it never had been proven invalid. Because Emma had actually been telling the truth all along—she really had secured a divorce from Albert McVicar. And when he had visited her mother in July of 1905, and found out that she was engaged to be married again, he begged his ex-wife for another chance.

But the divorced widow had fallen madly in love for possibly the first time in her life, so she went ahead and followed her heart—marrying one Eugene LeDoux in Woodland, California, on Saturday, August 26, 1905. McVicar, however, would not accept this, claiming that she was still legally his wife.

It is my sincere belief that the newlyweds plotted her ex-husband’s demise—his constant harassment was more than either of them could bear at this point—and then carried through with their murderous plan. They would ship his body in a trunk back to their home base of Jackson, where they would dismember McVicar’s corpse with the small saw and meat cleaver later found in Emma’s suitcase. And then the lovebirds would bury the remains on the LeDoux property by the dingy light of that mud-spattered buggy lamp.

But, terrified of being caught with the corpse in the trunk, the LeDouxs failed to get the cadaverous piece of luggage checked in and labeled with a destination, fleeing without it in their haste—leaving the unchecked Saratoga steamer trunk to be sniffed out by the extremely sensitive nose of baggageman Nick Vizelich at the Stockton train depot.

Then the killer couple wound up parting ways forever—he back to Jackson, sans corpse, and she to San Francisco, to drum up her Plan B in the form of ex Joseph Healy. And Emma took the fall for both herself and Eugene LeDoux, loving him too much to give him up to the Stockton authorities as her partner in crime.

And Eugene, for his part, stood silently by as his wife took a metaphorical bullet for him, as she was accused of bigamy and murder, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for a crime that he himself had taken part in—that he, as well, deserved punishment for.

By the time the LeDouxs’ divorce was finalized in November of 1921, Emma was back in the slammer at San Quentin, for violating her parole— “drinking and carousing, driving her car dangerously, seducing young men, and generally being a pest to her guardian and the community” (Adams 139). But she was out on parole again by 1924, for being a model prisoner.

And now that she was legally a free agent once again, the former Mrs. LeDoux wasted no time getting hitched a fifth time—this time to a well-off, widowed Napa Valley rancher named Frederick A. Crackbon in December of 1925. She had beaten her latest ex-husband Eugene LeDoux to the altar, though he remarried less than a year later in 1926.

Fate allowed the Crackbons several peaceful, happy years, before Emma’s fifth and final husband died of a stroke in 1929. But had she been responsible for his seemingly natural death? We will never truly know, but even if she had, Emma would not benefit from it—Fred Crackbon’s wealth had long ago been entailed to not just his grown children, but also to one of his still-living brothers.

At loose ends once again, the now-destitute Mrs. Crackbon fell in with her last love, an ex-convict by the name of Albert R. Thomspon (whom she never married, thankfully for him). And it wasn’t long before the two wily fifty-somethings were living it up like a middle-aged Bonnie and Clyde.

“‘Mercy’ will be sought by Mrs. Emma LeDoux Crackbon, 57—central figure in a trunk murder mystery of 25 years ago—and her companion, Albert R. Thompson, 52, ex-convict, both of whom are involved in a series of bad checks and forgeries in Berkeley,” noted The Oakland Tribune of Tuesday, February 3, 1931. “Concern for her aged mother, Mrs. Mary Cole, 74—now declared to be dying in Oakland, and from whom news of her daughter’s latest plight is being kept—today occupied Mrs. Crackbon more than the fact that she will probably return to San Quentin for life as a result of violating her parole, granted six years ago.

“When arrested, Thompson—also known as George Miller—and Mrs. Crackbon were residing together in Oakland, after living at various places in Berkeley…Both had diverted a large part of their funds to drinking parties, according to the police.”

And it seemed that the merry widow was still in the habit of throwing her former paramours under the proverbial bus—this time by feigning cluelessness about her lover’s criminal past, when it was painfully obvious that the two had been operating as cohorts in crime.

“Ignorance of Thompson’s career as a forger was expressed by Mrs. Crackbon,” the Tribune continued, “who first met the former dairy worker when he was a ranger on the Arizona border—before [she was] sentenced to a life term in San Quentin.”

Emma Theresa Cole Barrett Williams McVicar LeDoux Crackbon did indeed return to San Quentin later in 1931, but two years later, she “was transferred to the new women’s prison in Tehachapi, where she was once again a model prisoner. She continued, year after year, to file her carefully argued petitions for release, in an increasingly shaky hand.

“But the parole board had wearied of her continual transgressions on the outside, and ruled that both she and society were better off with Emma in confinement” (Adams 139).

The infamous Mrs. LeDoux—in all likelihood, a bona fide serial killer—would never be free again. Her remaining days would be lived out uneventfully behind bars at the California Institution for Women in the desert enclave of Tehachapi, California—built in 1932, and mentioned in many a 1940s film noir, most notably The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Double Indemnity (1944).

She would die of ovarian cancer on Sunday, July 6, 1941, at the age of 65. She had outlived her victims—second husband William S. Williams and third husband Albert N. McVicar—by 39 and 35 years, respectively. And the one who got away—with her heart, with divorce, with murder—one Eugene LeDoux, would outlive her by another two years, dying in late 1943 at the age of 70.

Questions remain well over a century later. Was Emma LeDoux a cold-blooded killer? Most definitely. She helped beat and poison her ex-husband, then assisted in stuffing him, still alive, into a Saratoga steamer trunk.

But was her victim, one Albert Newton McVicar, as innocent as he was made out to be in both the murder trial and the press? Probably not. This was a man who had carried on an open affair with a married woman; bided his time until she dispatched her husband for the insurance money; waited a measly three months before marrying her himself; and then gladly joined her in spending said insurance money. Squandering all that dough on a failed business venture—and then continually harassing his ex and her new husband—just proved to be the LeDouxs’ breaking point.

But did he deserve to be beaten, poisoned, and stuffed inside a Saratoga steamer trunk? Of course not.

And finally, did the duplicitous Mrs. LeDoux have an accomplice? Most certainly, and his name was Eugene “Jean” LeDoux, and he got away with cold-blooded murder.

So, in a way, you could say that Emma Theresa Cole Barrett Williams McVicar LeDoux just followed her heart…and killed for love.

Works Cited
“Yolo County Marriage Licenses.” The Sacramento Bee, Saturday, September 2, 1905, p. 6.
“Mrs. Emma LeDoux Pleads Not Guilty.” The Santa Barbara Morning Press, Tuesday, April 17, 1906, p. 1.
“Mrs. LeDoux Case Delayed.” The Fresno Morning Republican, Friday, May 11, 1906, p. 1.
“Emma LeDoux is Placed on Trial for Her Life.” The Stockton Evening and Sunday Record, Tuesday, June 5, 1906, p. 8.
“Clandestine Letters of Love Written by Mrs. LeDoux.” The Stockton Evening Mail, Monday, June 18, 1906, p. 1.
“Says Daughter is Dope Fiend.” The Sacramento Star, Wednesday, June 20, 1906, p. 1.
“Arguing for a Woman’s Life.” The Stockton Evening and Sunday Record, Wednesday, June 20, 1906, p. 8.
“Jury Finds Her Guilty; Recommends No Mercy.” The Oakland Tribune, Sunday, June 24, 1906, p. 1.
“Emma LeDoux in Dark Rear Cell.” The Stockton Evening and Sunday Record, Monday, June 25, 1906, p. 8.
“Mrs. LeDoux Gives Up Morphine.” The Fresno Morning Republican, Tuesday, June 26, 1906, p. 7.
“Obituaries—Healy.” The San Francisco Call and Post, Tuesday, June 28, 1910, p. 5.
“Divorced from Condemned Wife.” The Long Beach Telegram, Wednesday, Feb. 25, 1920, p. 1.
“Judgments Docketed.” The Sacramento Union, Sunday, November 13, 1921, p. 18.
“Woman Facing Return to Cell for Life to Ask for Mercy.” The Oakland Tribune, Tuesday, February 3, 1931, p. 18.
Adams, Charles F. Murder by the Bay: Historic Homicide In and About the City of San Francisco. Sanger, California: Word Dancer Press, 2005. Pp. 120-139.
Rubio, J’aime. Stories of the Forgotten: Infamous, Famous & Unremembered. CreateSpace, 2016. Ch. 18.
Dowd, Katie. “The Trunk Murderess: The Forgotten Tale of California’s First Black Widow Killer.” SFGate, July 10, 2020. https://www.sfgate.com/sfhistory/article/emma-ledoux-murder-case-trial-death-penalty-13008192.php
Ruhstaller, Tod. “Little Trunk of Horrors.” Soundings Journal, August 26, 2020. https://soundingsmag.net/2020/08/26/little-trunk-of-horrors

All photos provided by the author unless otherwise stated.

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Sarah A. Peterson-Camachois a library assistant with Fresno County Library, with a Bachelor’s in English and a Bachelor’s in Journalism from California State University, Fresno. In her free time, she makes soap and jewelry that she sells at Fresno-area craft fairs. She has written for The Clovis Roundup and the Central California Paranormal Investigators (CCPI) Newsletter.