California’s FIRST Woman Executed — Gang Queen “The Duchess” Entered the Gas Chamber in Silence 

November 21st, 1941. San Quinton State Prison, California. 65 reporters, 23 guards, one steel door. Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. The air inside that chamber was heavy with something nobody in that room had ever witnessed before and would never forget. California was about to execute a woman for the very first time in its history.

Her name was Eveita Juanita Spanelli. The streets called her the duchess. She didn’t kill a police officer. She didn’t kill a rival. She killed one of her own, a young man she had fed, sheltered, and called family. And when it was over, she left no final statement. Not a single word.

 But here is what will truly stop you cold. What investigators found and what they didn’t find in that river the night he died changed everything. Stay with me. You will want to see how this ends. Welcome to the execution archive where we break down real cases, real crimes, and real consequences. If this is your first time here, hit subscribe and turn on notifications.

 New episodes drop every week. Now, let’s get into it. Before we talk about the woman in that chamber, we need to talk about the two men who never made it out. Leland Cash ran a small barbecue stand in San Francisco. Nothing fancy, just a working man showing up every day trying to build something honest. He was deaf or severely hard of hearing, a condition he was born with and had no control over.

On the night of April 8th, 1940, Cash was at his stand, doing exactly what he always did. When two men walked in armed and barked an order at him, he didn’t respond. Not because he was brave, not because he was difficult. He simply could not hear them. He reached, maybe for his hearing aid, maybe out of instinct. That reach cost him his life.

Then there was Raymond Sherid, 19 years old. Homeless, no direction, no family structure, no safety net. He found Eveita Spanelli’s door and she offered him exactly what he needed. Food, shelter, and a sense of belonging. He trusted her completely. Court records confirm he was not killed for anything he did.

 He was killed for what she feared he might say. What happened to Raymond Sherid next is almost too dark to believe. Now, who exactly was Eve Juanita Spanelli? She was born on October 17th, 1889. Beyond that, much of her early life is buried under rumor and criminal legend. What is confirmed is where she surfaced, Detroit, and who she ran with, the Purple Gang, one of the most dangerous criminal organizations in the country at that time.

 That is where she earned the name the Duchess. Whether it was given out of respect or sharp irony, no one alive can say for certain. At some point, she fled Detroit and headed west. She resettled in San Francisco and built a very different kind of public image. A middle-aged woman running what appeared to be a home for troubled young men.

 She cooked for them. She cleaned. She gave them $10 a week. But court records tell a completely different story. That house was not a shelter. It was a crime school. She trained those young men to rob for her and kept the majority of everything they earned. FBI profiler Candace Dong later described her plainly, a stone cold psychopath who had no use for anybody other than what she could get out of them.

 Prison warden Clinton Duffy went even further. The coldest, hardest character, male or female, I have ever known. She also pulled her own daughter, Lorraine, known as Gypsy, into the operation. And her commonlaw husband, Mike Simeone, served as her most trusted lieutenant. Her personal life and her criminal life were one and the same.

 The operation did not start with murder. It started small. Gypsy Spanelli’s own daughter would target drunk men on the streets of San Francisco. She lured them into quiet, isolated spots. Then the gang moved in and robbed them. Clean, fast, routine. Each man in the crew walked away with $10 a week. Spanelli kept everything else. She controlled the money.

 She controlled the men. She controlled every decision. But small jobs were not enough. Over time, the crew graduated from street muggings to armed robberies of actual businesses. The risk grew. The stakes grew. And Spanelli’s grip on her boys grew tighter. Loyalty was not optional. Silence was not a request.

 It was a rule. On April 8th, 1940, she sent two of her crew, Albert Ives and Raymond Sherid, to rob Leland Cash’s barbecue stand. It was supposed to be another job, routine, controlled. It was not. When Cash died, everything changed. This was no longer theft. This was murder. And Spanelli knew it.

 What she did next to one of the boys she claimed to care for like a son is the kind of decision that ends careers, freedom, and lives. After the death of Leland Cash, Spanelli did not panic. She planned her inner circle was tight. Albert Ives, older, more experienced, and present the night Cash was shot.

 Mike Simeone, her common law husband and most trusted enforcer. Gordon Hawkins, a key member of the crew, who would later stand trial alongside Simeone. And then there was Raymond Sherid, 19 years old, the youngest, the most vulnerable. And in Spanelli’s assessment, the weakest link. Court records confirm her fear was specific. Shared would talk.

 The moment police got him alone in a room he would break. She was certain of it. So she made a decision. The method was deliberate. She laced whiskey with chloral hydrate, a powerful seditive, and offered it to a young man who had no reason to distrust the woman who had fed and housed him. Once he was unconscious, the gang would handle the rest.

 No weapon, no struggle. The cover story was carefully constructed. Swimming trunks, a remote bridge, a river. The plan was designed to look like an accident. She chose the Clarksburg Bridge over the Sacramento River, specifically for how far it sat from witnesses. Every detail was accounted for. Almost every detail.

We are just getting to the darkest part of this story. If you have not subscribed yet, now is a good time. Hit that button and stay with us because what happened on that bridge is something you will not see coming. April 8th, 1940, San Francisco. Evening. Albert Ives and Raymond Sherid walked into Leland Cash’s barbecue stand with weapons drawn.

 The instruction was simple. Hands up. Hand over the money. Cash did not comply. Not out of resistance. Not out of courage. He was deaf. He could not hear a single word they said. He reached. For what exactly? No one can say with certainty. The gun fired. Cash took a bullet to the stomach. He collapsed behind his own counter. Ives and Sherid ran.

 The stand that Cash had built with his own hands was now a crime scene. And this case had just crossed a line it could never come back from. Cash later died from that wound. Within days, police were canvasing the area. Witnesses had seen two young men flee the scene. The heat was rising fast. Word got back to Spanelli and she watched Sherid closely.

She could see it. The nerves, the silence, the way he carried himself. Court records confirm she made her assessment quickly. Of everyone in her circle, Sherid was the one who would break. Not Ives, not Simeone. Sherid. She invited him over, made him a drink. Nothing about it seemed unusual. She had done this countless times before.

 He sat down. He drank. The whiskey was laced with chloral hydrate. Shared never saw it coming. He lost consciousness in the home of the woman he trusted most. While he was out, the gang moved in. He was beaten, then dressed in swimming trunks, then loaded into a vehicle. They drove through the night south toward the Sacramento River.

 At the Clarksburg Bridge, they carried his body to the railing and threw him into the water below. The plan was clean. A tragic drowning. A young man found in a river. Nothing suspicious. Nothing to investigate. What they did not plan for, what Spanelli never accounted for, was an autopsy. Raymond Sherid’s body was pulled from the Sacramento River shortly after.

 And almost immediately, something felt wrong. A 19-year-old found in the water wearing swimming trunks. far from home, far from anyone who knew him. Authorities were not satisfied with the picture in front of them. They ordered an autopsy. The results ended any doubt. There was no water in Sherid’s lungs. None.

 Which meant one thing, he was already dead before his body ever hit that river. The water did not kill him. The drowning story was a lie. On top of that, the autopsy revealed clear signs of blunt force trauma. Sherid had been beaten before he was thrown off that bridge. Investigators now had two deaths, Leland Cash and Raymond Sherid. Both connected to the same criminal circle, but Spanelli showed no signs of concern, no panic, no change in behavior.

 She continued operating as though nothing had happened. Her gang members, however, were not so calm. Albert Ives was shaken. He had watched Spanelli make a cold decision about a boy she once called family. And now a very specific thought was forming in his mind. If she killed Sherrod to keep him quiet, what would stop her from doing the same to me? That thought, that single moment of fear is what eventually brought the entire operation crashing down.

 Police were now working two connected homicides at the same time. In the cash case, witnesses had seen two young men run from the barbecue stand on the night of April 8th, 1940. Descriptions were gathered. Names were not yet confirmed, but investigators were building a picture. In the Sherid case, the autopsy had already closed the door on any accident theory.

 No water in the lungs, blunt force trauma on the body. This was a homicide planned, deliberate, and staged to mislead. Then came a significant development. Spanelli and her crew had left San Francisco. Court records indicate the group moved toward Sacramento, then pushed further toward Reno. They were running. To investigators, that movement was telling.

 Innocent people do not quietly disappear across state lines. Meanwhile, ballistics work was underway. The bullet recovered from Leland Cash’s body was being examined and traced. The process took time, but every piece was being logged. Spanelli’s image complicated early efforts. A middle-aged woman running a home for young men did not fit the profile law enforcement typically pursued in cases like this.

 That assumption bought her a narrow window of time. It was not nearly enough. The operation collapsed from the inside. Albert Ives walked into a police station and told them everything, every detail, every name, every crime. He described the night Leland Cash was shot at his barbecue stand.

 He confirmed who pulled the trigger. He laid out exactly how Raymond Sherid was drugged, beaten, and thrown from the Clarksburg bridge. He described Spanelli’s full operation, the training, the robberies, the money, the control. Court records confirm his motive was simple, self-preservation. He had watched Spanelli silence Sherid without hesitation.

 He was not prepared to be next. Ives was eventually committed to Mendescino State Hospital rather than face execution. His cooperation and mental state were both taken into account. At the same time, ballistics results came back. The bullet recovered from Leland Cash’s body was matched to a gun. A gun registered directly to Eveita Spanelli.

 Physical evidence now placed her at the center of both deaths. Acting on information from frightened associates. Police tracked the gang near Truckucky, California. Spanelli, Simeone, Hawkins, and others were taken into custody. The woman who had spent years training young men to evade law enforcement was brought down by the very people she had trained.

 When the case went to court, the prosecution built its argument piece by piece. Eveita Spanelli was charged with murder specifically for her role in the killing of Raymond Sherid. The death of Leland Cash was brought in to provide context. It showed the jury exactly why Sherid had to die.

 He was a witness who could connect the gang to a killing. The evidence presented was difficult to argue against. Albert Ives had confessed and named names. The ballistics report linked the murder weapon to Spanelli directly. The autopsy confirmed Sherrod was dead before he entered the water, and multiple gang members took the stand to testify against her.

 The prosecution’s position was clear. Spanelli was not a bystander. She mixed the drink. She gave the order. She chose the bridge. On May 30th, the verdict came in. Spanelli, Simeone, and Hawkins. All three found guilty. All three sentenced to death. Appeals were filed in 1941. Every single one was denied.

 Courts reviewed the confessions, the ballistics, the autopsy findings, and the testimony and found no grounds for reversal. A public debate followed. California had never executed a woman. Some people were deeply uncomfortable with that fact, but the facts of the case were devastating. The sentence stood.

 Eveita Spanelli arrived at San Quinton State Prison as a 52-year-old woman, a mother, a grandmother, and a convicted murderer awaiting death. Governor Colulbert Olsen granted her three separate stays of execution. The original date had been set for June 1941. Each reprieve pushed the date forward. None of them changed where it was heading. Public debate grew louder.

 A San Francisco celebrity publicly pleaded for mercy. Law enforcement pushed back hard. Gender should not shield anyone from accountability for what the evidence had proven. And in a moment that became prison legend, several condemned men on death row reportedly offered to die in her place. Whether it was oldworld chivalry, genuine feeling, or something else entirely, no one can say for certain.

 Her last meal was a hamburger and turkey meat, plain, unremarkable. She stayed awake through her final night, writing letters, speaking with prison matron Alice Gwyn, who had traveled from Tahachchip Women’s Prison to be present. Before entering the chamber, Spanelli received Holy Communion, November 21st, 1941, 10:14 in the morning.

 65 reporters, 23 guards. Lastm minute legal petitions filed with the state court of appeals and the California Supreme Court. Both denied within minutes. That legal scramble delayed the execution exactly 14 minutes. She was strapped into the metal chair back to the witnesses. Beneath her green prison smok, she carried photographs, her daughter, Gypsy, her two sons, and her infant grandson.

 Her lips moved in silent prayer as the gas filled the chamber. At 10:25 in the morning, Eveita Juanita Spanelli was pronounced dead, the first woman legally executed by the state of California. One week later, November 28th, 1941, Mike Simeone and Gordon Hawkins were executed in that same chamber. Albert Ives never faced the gas chamber.

 He lived out his days committed to Mendescino State Hospital. Eveita Juanita Spanelli is buried at Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery in San Rafael, California. A quiet grave for a woman who lived anything but a quiet life. She remains one of only four women ever executed in the state of California’s history. The only woman executed before her was a woman named Wanita, lynched by a mob in Downeyville in 1851.

No last name recorded, no legal process, no trial. Her case was later dramatized on the Gang Busters radio program titled the Duchess Spanelli case. But here is the detail that stays with you. In her final moments, she prayed. She carried photographs of her children pressed against her chest.

 Those same hands had once handed Raymond Sherid a poisoned glass of whiskey. She offered belonging to boys who had nothing. Then she killed one of them to save herself. Which moment in this story hit you the hardest. Drop it in the comments. I want to read every single one. If this story moved you, please like this video and share it with someone who loves true crime.

 And if you are not subscribed yet, hit that button right now so you never miss an episode. Next week, we are diving into another case that will leave you with serious questions. You do not want to miss it. See you then.