CRIME HUNTER: Black Widow's death design for daughter's love rival
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The coroner ruled clogged arteries as the likely cause of death for heavyweight Ada Applegate.
Tipping the scales at 250 pounds, Ada was chronically unhealthy and bedridden much of the time at her Long Island bungalow.
When she died on Sept. 27, 1935, her hen-pecked husband Everett was at her bedside as she met her maker. A small tragedy in the cosmos, right? Wrong.
At Ada’s funeral four days after her demise, cops rushed in and stopped the proceedings. They seized the large corpse and left, with detectives suspecting there was more to her death.
In many homicide investigations (see Forensic Files), detectives usually zero in on the husband, wife, sister, brother, daughter, son, boyfriend … and in the matter of poor Ada, that’s just what they did, but it wasn’t Everett.
Mary Frances Creighton lived with Ada and her husband on Long Island.
The tip came from a disgruntled bread deliveryman who the crabby Mary often stiffed.
But cops had received a bundle of yellowing newspaper clips that told a sordid tale. The oldest clipping was from 1923.
It seems Mary had been charged with murder in the death of her 18-year-old brother, Ray. An autopsy revealed he died of arsenic poisoning. Mary would benefit financially from his passing but she was acquitted.
Her mother-in-law also met an untimely demise, courtesy of a dollop of arsenic. It was a strong circumstantial case and there were other mysterious deaths connected to Mary. But once again, she walked.
Now, in the Great Depression year of 1935, cops were taking another look at the death of Ada Applegate. To no one’s surprise, the medical examiner found arsenic.
But the story would take a particularly stomach-churning turn after Mary folded during interrogation and confessed.
Mary told detectives that she, her husband John, and two children had moved from New Jersey to Long Island. It seems the suspected killer’s notoriety had hung over their heads and they wanted a fresh start.
Everett Applegate and John Creighton had met at the American Legion. Both men were veterans of the First World War and they were both broke.
But Everett had an idea: The Creighton family would move into the apartment in the Applegate home. For Everett — who friends called Appy — it was a no-brainer. There was also the bonus of 16-year-old Ruth Creighton whom he had started bedding.
Later, Mary admitted she had caught the couple engaged in carnal capers. Like a lot of devoted moms, she feared Ruth would get knocked up. If she bumped off Ada, her daughter could marry Appy.
Investigators didn’t see things that way and arrested Everett for statutory rape. He happily confessed to the sex charge.
He did not anticipate Mary slamming a torpedo into the good ship Everett. She told detectives that her daughter’s illicit lover had loaded up Ada’s egg nog with an arsenic-laced concoction called Rough on Rats.
Even though Mary was singing like a canary, she kept changing her story. She told cops she was having sex with Everett, then she wasn’t, how Ada was poisoned also shifted.
On Jan. 9, 1936, Mary and Everett went on trial for capital murder in Long Island. Newspaper coverage was wall-to-wall and around the clock.
Court and the newsmen heard as Mary told of Ruth’s “improper” amorous antics with the unlikely Don Juan. Sometimes, they would even have sex in the room while his daughter was there.
On the witness stand, Mary Creighton broke down and confessed all. She knew Everett made the deadly arsenic cocktail and she would make sure Ada drank it.
Beckoning in the background of the proceedings was Old Sparky, New York State’s famed electric chair that was humming with death up the river at Sing Sing Prison.
While the judge initially didn’t allow Mary’s previous homicidal antics introduced into the proceedings, he changed his mind after Everett’s lawyer revealed she had offered to sell her story about the Jersey slayings to a true crime magazine.
But Appy turned out to be a lousy saviour for himself. He testified about a threesome with his wife and young Ruth romping naked together in the marital bed.
“I only had sex with Ruth once when Ada was in the bed,” Everett told the court, shattering his lawyer’s gambit to paint him as a sexual deviant but not a killer.
Both Mary and Everett were convicted and sentenced to die in the electric chair.
“That verdict will never stand up on appeal,” Appy told the New York Daily News. “Stick around, I’m going home soon.”
He was wrong.
Hard-hearted Mary Frances Creighton’s mental faculties imploded on death row. And when it came time for her to die on July 19, 1936, she had to be wheeled into the death chamber.
Moments later, Appy told the gathered ghouls: “Gentlemen. I want to say something. Before God, gentlemen, I’m absolutely innocent of this crime and I hope the good God will have mercy on the soul of Martin W. Littleton.”
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