Ma Duncan hired two local men to kill her son, Frank’s wife, who was 7 months pregnant. >> the morning of August the 8th, 1962. The place is San Quentin State Prison, California. A woman walks toward the gas chamber. Her name is Elizabeth Ann Duncan. The [clears throat] world calls her Ma Duncan. She does not cry.

 She does not beg. She looks around one last time and asks a simple question. Where is Frank? Frank is her son. Frank is also her lawyer, and Frank is nowhere to be found. Court records show something strange. During the investigation, Frank used his position as a lawyer to get his own mother’s bail cut down. Then he disappeared.

 Her final words are simple. I am innocent. But two men have already told police a very different story. They say Elizabeth paid them $6,000. Their target was Frank’s new wife, a pregnant nurse named Olga. What drove a mother to do this will leave you questioning everything you think you know about a mother’s love.

 Welcome back to the channel. If this is your first time here, hit subscribe now. Stay until the end because the final twist involving her son will shock you. Her name was Olga Kupchik. She was born to Ukrainian immigrant parents. Her family had fled hard times in Eastern Europe and built a new life in Manitoba, Canada.

 Olga grew up with that same strength her parents carried. She trained as a registered nurse. Colleagues described her as warm. They called her dedicated. She was the kind of person who showed up for her patients every single day. Olga eventually moved south to Santa Barbara, California. She wanted a quiet life, a dignified life far from the hardships her parents had known. Then one day, everything changed.

A woman named Elizabeth Duncan was admitted to Cottage Hospital after a serious overdose. Olga was assigned to care for her. Elizabeth’s son, Frank, sat by his mother’s bedside almost every day. That is where Frank and Olga met. Both of them were around 30 years old. Both were steady and serious. A quiet connection formed in the middle of a family crisis.

They began dating. When Olga discovered she was pregnant, Frank made a decision. He married her on June the 20th, 1958. But peace did not follow. One month later, Elizabeth found out about the marriage. And according to Olga’s own letters to her father, Elizabeth reacted like a woman possessed.

 She threatened to kill them both. She tore up Frank’s birth certificate. She tore up his baby pictures. Olga’s short life with Frank had barely begun. It was already falling apart. Her name was Elizabeth Ann Duncan. But that was not the name she was born with. She came into the world as Hazel Lucille Sinclair Nigh on April the 16th, 1904 in Kansas City, Missouri.

 To the outside world, she looked like a devoted mother. Loving, protective, Frank’s biggest supporter. But court records tell a very different story. Under oath, Elizabeth admitted to being married 10 times. She had been arrested once for running a brothel in San Francisco. She had also been charged with passing bad checks. She had four children in total.

 Her daughter, Patricia, died at just 15 years old. Frank was the one child she loved above all others. In court, she admitted this herself. There were no limits to that love. No boundaries. When Frank first talked about moving out on his own, Elizabeth swallowed a bottle of pills rather than face life without him.

And when his marriage to Olga became real, Elizabeth did not go looking for a counselor. She did not go looking for a lawyer. She started showing up at Olga’s job. She started banging on Olga’s apartment door. Witnesses described her as explosive, multiple confrontations. It began the very night Frank and Olga got married, and it never stopped.

 And that harassment was only the beginning of what she was willing to do. The harassment did not stop. It got worse. Elizabeth kept showing up at Olga’s apartment. She kept showing up at her workplace. Olga was forced to change addresses more than once just to get away from her. But Elizabeth wanted more than distance.

 She wanted the marriage gone completely. Court records show she found a man named Ralph Wintersteen, one of Frank’s own clients. She convinced him to pose as Frank in court. She herself posed as Olga. Together, the two of them obtained an illegal annulment of the marriage without Olga or Frank ever knowing. But even that was not enough.

 Elizabeth began looking for someone to hurt Olga directly. She approached a young woman working at a drive-in and offered her $500. The plan was chilling. Throw acid on Olga’s face. Wrap her body in a blanket soaked in chloroform. Leave her in the mountains. She went back to Ralph Wintersteen, the same man from the annulment scheme, and asked him to kill Olga, too.

 She approached another woman with an offer of $1,500 for the same task. At least five people heard Elizabeth talk openly about killing her daughter-in-law. Not one of them warned Olga. One woman did try to warn Frank. She told him simply, “Your mother is crazy.” But she never told him exactly what his mother had asked her to do. The warnings were there.

 Olga never heard a single one. Elizabeth needed someone willing to do the actual killing. That connection came through her son’s own work. Frank was representing a man on a stolen property charge. That man’s wife ran a bar in Santa Barbara. As a favor to Frank, she agreed to introduce Elizabeth to two men who might help.

 Their names were Augustine Baldonado and Luis Moya. Baldonado was 25. Moya was only 20. Both men had criminal records. Neither of them had ever killed anyone before. On November the 13th, 1958, the deal was made inside that bar. Baldonado and Moya agreed to kill Olga for $6,000. The plan was simple but sloppy from the start.

 They would lure Olga away from her apartment, drive her to Mexico, and make sure she disappeared there. The weapon they chose was a pistol. It was not bought through any careful planning. It was not tested. It was simply what they had on hand. Court records confirmed that the bar owner’s wife later admitted the group met inside her establishment just 4 days before the murder.

At least one more witness was placed at that same meeting. Multiple people now knew what was coming, and still nobody went to the police. Nobody went to Olga. Why do you think nobody stepped in to stop this? Drop your theory in the comments below. And if you have not subscribed yet, now is a good time because what happens next is impossible to believe.

The night of November the 17th, 1958, started like any other night on Garden Street. Olga was in her second floor apartment. Her purse sat on the table. Her wallet was inside it. Her baby’s clothes were folded neatly on a shelf waiting for a child who had not yet been born. She had no reason to think anything was wrong. Then came the knock.

Augustine Baldonado and Luis Moya arrived at her building late that night. They had a story ready. They told Olga that Frank was drunk. They said he needed her help. It was a lie built to work on her. They knew she still cared about her husband. They knew she would come. Olga walked downstairs. She trusted them.

 She walked out into the night and moved toward the car. The moment she got close, Moya raised a pistol and struck her. She lost consciousness. The two men loaded her into the car and drove. They headed away from Santa Barbara toward a quiet, empty stretch of road near Casitas Pass. It was dark. It was remote. Nobody was around.

 When they arrived, Baldonado got out and began digging a shallow grave with his bare hands. But Olga was not finished fighting. She woke up. And according to both men’s later confessions, she fought back hard. A woman 7 months pregnant, alone in the dark, fighting two grown men with everything she had left. Moya raised the pistol again and struck her a second time.

 He hit her so many times and with such force that the gun broke apart in his hands. Shooting her was no longer possible. So they strangled her instead. In the early hours of November the 18th, the two men took turns until she stopped moving. They placed her in the shallow grave and covered her with a few inches of dirt. But what the coroner discovered next would haunt the courtroom for years to come.

The next morning, Olga did not show up for work. Her colleagues noticed right away. Her landlady grew worried. When people finally checked her apartment, they found it exactly as she had left it. Her purse was still on the table. Her wallet was still inside. Her baby’s clothes were still folded waiting. Nothing had been taken.

 Nothing had been disturbed. Olga was simply gone. As news of her disappearance began to spread, Elizabeth Duncan positioned herself as a worried family member. She claimed to know nothing. She showed no sign of what she had actually done. Behind the scenes, there was a problem. Elizabeth had only given Maldonado and Moya $360.

That was far short of the $6,000 she had promised. The two men who had just committed murder were still waiting on payment that would never fully come. Meanwhile, far away in Benito, Manitoba, Olga’s father, Elias Kuzych, learned that his daughter was missing. He did not wait for more news. He packed his things and began the long journey to California hoping to find her.

 He had no idea what he was about to walk into. At first, this was only a missing person case. There was no body. There was no confirmed crime. Police had very little to work with. Then investigators found something strange. Elizabeth had used a fraudulent annulment to try to erase her son’s marriage on paper.

 She had posed as Olga. She had used Ralph Wintersteen to pose as Frank. That discovery shifted suspicion directly onto her. Elizabeth was arrested. Frank, using his position as a lawyer, moved quickly. He got his mother’s bail reduced from $50,000 down to just $5,000. Once that reduction was granted, Frank disappeared. He went into hiding.

Investigators could not reach him. This left one man in an impossible position. Elias Kuzych had traveled all the way from Manitoba hoping to bring his daughter home. But American law required her husband’s consent before her remains could be released, and her husband, Frank, was nowhere to be found. Elias had no choice.

 He had to wait with no answers, no body, and no son-in-law willing to face him. Weeks passed with no answers. Then, in December of 1958, the case broke wide open. Ventura authorities arrested Luis Moya for a parole violation. Around the same time, they arrested Augustine Maldonado for failing to pay child support. Neither man was charged with murder.

 Not yet, but they were now in custody, and that changed everything. On December the 21st, 1958, Maldonado broke down and told investigators the truth. He was not confessing out of guilt. He was angry. Elizabeth had promised him and Moya $6,000 for the killing. She had only handed over 360. He had committed murder, and he had barely been paid for it.

 That fury is what cracked the case wide open. Maldonado did not stop at words. He led police directly to the shallow grave near Casitas Pass, the same spot where he and Moya had buried Olga weeks earlier. Then, on Christmas night, Luis Moya gave his own confession. He told the full story to a street preacher. That confession reached investigators soon after.

Two confessions, one body, and one name mentioned again and again, Elizabeth Duncan. His confession would send the case into a courtroom battle nobody expected. The trial began on February the 24th, 1959 in Ventura County, the same place where Olga’s body had been found. On the stand, Elizabeth held her position.

 She claimed Moya and Maldonado were trying to blackmail her. She denied every part of their story, even as both men described the killing in detail. Her defense team included her own son, Frank, along with attorney S. Ward Sullivan. They argued a different theory entirely. They claimed Olga had been the victim of a ransom plot, not a murder-for-hire.

The jury did not buy it. Prosecutor Roy Gustafson built a case that was hard to argue against. He brought forward Maldonado and Moya, who testified directly against her. He introduced evidence of her 10 marriages, her history of writing bad checks, and years of fraud. None of that directly proved murder. But combined with the direct testimony of the two men she hired, it painted a clear picture for the jury.

 The jury deliberated for 4 hours and 51 minutes. On March the 16th, 1959, they returned their verdict, guilty. Four days later, Elizabeth Ann Duncan was sentenced to death. Frank, along with attorney Burt M. Henson and two other lawyers, filed appeal after appeal. Every single one was denied. The case eventually reached Governor Pat Brown, a man who personally opposed the death penalty.

 Even he could not ignore the weight of the evidence against her. He allowed the execution to proceed. Elizabeth spent more than 3 years on death row at San Quentin State Prison. Through every one of those months, she insisted she was innocent. Every appeal was filed. Every appeal was denied. Every request for clemency was rejected.

Frank did not stop fighting, either. Court records show he pursued every remaining legal option on her behalf, right up until the final minutes before her execution. On the morning of August the 8th, 1962, Elizabeth sat down for her last meal. She ate steak and salad, then she was walked to the gas chamber.

 Witnesses described her as composed, dignified. She did not tremble. She did not break down. Her final words were simple, “I am innocent.” Then she looked around and asked, “Where is Frank?” He was not there. Elizabeth Ann Duncan was 58 years old when the chamber sealed behind her. She was the first of three people executed that day.

Augustine Baldonado followed, then Louise Moya. Three people, same chamber, same morning. It became the last triple execution in California history. Baldonado was buried at a memorial park in Ventura. Moya’s body was donated to a university medical school. Elizabeth’s final resting place has never been confirmed.

Her son claimed her body and sent it to a funeral home in San Francisco, but no public record shows where she was actually buried. To this day, nobody knows where Elizabeth Ann Duncan rests. Frank Duncan continued practicing law for decades after his mother’s execution. He outlived her by more than 60 years.

Then, in September of 2023, the state of California disbarred him. He was in his 90s. Olga’s unborn child never received a name in any public record. That child came and went without a trace before the world ever knew them. Elizabeth Ann Duncan spent her life trying to hold on to her son. In the end, she lost everything trying to keep him, and she lost him anyway.

Which moment in this story hit you the hardest? Drop it in the comments below. I read every single one. If you have not subscribed yet, hit that button now and turn on notifications. The next case is already in production and you will not want to miss it.