Amy Archer-Gilligan

Amy Archer-Gilligan was a serial killer active in Windsor, Connecticut during the 1910s.

Background
Very little is known of Archer-Gilligan's early years. She was born Amy E. Duggan in October 1873, in Milton, Connecticut. Her parents had ten children, of which she was the eighth. In 1897, Archer-Gilligan married her first husband, James Archer, and they had a daughter named Mary J. Archer on December of that year. In 1901, the couple became live-in caretakers to an elderly widower named John Seymour. Seymour lived in Windsor, Connecticut, while his sole remaining relatives were in California. After Seymour died in 1904, his heirs rented the house to the Archers and allowed them to turn it into a boarding house for the elderly, named "Sister Amy's Boarding Home for the Elderly." However, Seymour's family decided to sell the house in 1907. Using their own savings, the Archers purchased another house in the same locality. They established their new business there, known as the "Archer Home for the Elderly and the Infirm."

Murders, Arrest and Incarceration
James Archer died in 1910, only a few weeks after Amy took a life insurance policy on him. His death was attributed to Bright's disease, a catch-all term used at the time for several unrelated kidney conditions. Amy continued to manage the retirement home alone for three years, when she married Michael W. Gilligan, a widower who had shown repeatedly interest in investing on her business. Only three months later, on February 20, 1914, Gilligan died from what was determined to be a severe indigestion. A will written during their brief marriage dictated that all of Gilligan's possessions should go to his wife, the newly widowed Amy Archer-Gilligan, and none to Gilligan's four adult sons from his previous marriage. This will was revised after Archer-Gilligan's conviction, and determined to have been forged by her.

Mortality also increased dramatically among the residents of the nursing home after James Archer's death. While only twelve people died from 1907 to 1910, forty-eigth did between 1911 and 1916. Among the deceased was Franklin R. Andrews, a healthy sixty-one year-old man who was seen gardening in the nursing home just a few hours before he died. Andrews's death was attributed to a gastric ulcer, but his siblings were suspicious, and they became moreso after they learned from Andrews's past correspondece that Archer-Gilligan had been pressuring him for money. It was later found that many other nursing home's dead residents had passed away after donating a large sum to Archer-Gilligan. Nellie Pierce, a sister of Andrews, shared her suspicions with the local district attorney, but he ignored her. She then took her story to the newspaper The Hartford Courant, which run it as a story titled Murder Factory for several numbers. The police exhumed the bodies of Archer, Gilligan and three former tenants, all of which tested positive for either arsenic or strychnine. Drugstore employees also declared that they had sold large quantities of arsenic to Archer-Gilligan or her tenants acting in her name, supposedly to kill rats in the nursing home.

Archer-Gilligan was arrested and tried for five murders, but four of the charges were dropped before sentencing. On June 18, 1917 she was found guilty of the remaining charge, Andrews's murder, and was sentenced to death. However, Archer-Gilligan appealed and was granted a retiral in 1919, where she pleaded insanity. She was found guilty again, but this time she was sentenced only to life in prison. In 1924 she was declared temporarily insane and was transferred to the Connecticut Hospital for the Insane in Middletown. She remained interned there until her death in 1962, due to natural causes. Archer Gillian's crimes were the direct inspiration of the Brewster Sisters in the 1939 black comedic play, Arsenic and Old Lace.

Modus Operandi
Archer-Gilligan killed for profit. She would purchase life insurance policies on her victims, convince them to include her in their will, or fake their wills to name her as beneficiary. Afterward, she would lace their meals with arsenic or strychnine, and hope that their deaths were attributed to old age and other natural causes. As her murders increased in frequency, she began to target younger and healthier people, leading to her eventual discovery and arrest. Ironically, she reduced some of the suspicion cast upon herself by sometimes sending her would-be victims to the drug store to purchase the poison themselves.

Known Victims

 * 1910: James Archer
 * 1911: Hilton Griffith, 81
 * 1912: Fifteen unnamed people
 * 1914:
 * February 20: Michael Gilligan, 58
 * May 29: Franklin R. Andrews, 61
 * December 3: Alice Gowdy
 * 1916: Maud Lynch, 33

On Criminal Minds
Archer-Gilligan was mentioned in The Uncanny Valley (as "Amy Archer"), as an example of female "Angel of Death"-type killers, who don't discriminate victims according to their sex or physical attributes.