No woman in America had ever been executed in an electric chair until that night. Outside, a violent winter storm battered the prison walls. Snow slammed against the windows as 12 witnesses sat in complete silence, waiting for the moment history was about to be made. Then the chamber doors opened. She walked in slowly, leaning on the warden’s arm.

 Her face was pale, her eyes were closed, and she was wearing a black dress she had sewn herself. She had made it for her next court hearing. Instead, she was wearing it to her execution. A man stood waiting at the lever. 1,760 volts of electricity sat ready to be released. The room was completely still. The woman was strapped into the chair, the electrodes were fastened, and just before the lever was pulled, she whispered four words that made almost everyone in that room cry.

 Then the current surged and the woman who had once been described as nothing more than an ordinary seamstress, housekeeper, and wife  became the first woman in American history to die in the electric chair. But how did she get there? How did an ordinary woman end up condemned to death? And what really happened inside that Brooklyn home? This is Redmark Files, where we cover the true crime cases that shocked the nation and changed history forever.

 If you are new here, hit that like button and subscribe to this channel right now. This case did not just end one life. It made American legal history. We are taking you through everything from birth to execution. Stay with us. Before we get to the crime, you need to know who was lost. Her name was Ida Place.

 She was the only daughter of William W. Place, a widowerower who lived at 598 Hancock Street in Brooklyn, New York. At the time of her death, Ida was 18 years old. William raised Ida on his own after losing his wife. Just the two of them in that Brooklyn home. By all accounts, they were close, deeply close.

 Ida was loyal to her father in a way that only children who have been through loss truly understand. Where William went, Ida stood by him. When arguments broke out in the house, Ida took her father’s side. Every time, William was also an amateur photographer, a hobby he practiced at home. Because of that, photographic acid was regularly stored inside the house.

That detail would become important, very important. In 1893, William hired a housekeeper. Her name was Martha. By the end of that same year, William had married her. Just like that, Ida went from living alone with her father to sharing a home with a woman she had never chosen. Court records and press coverage from the 1898 trial described Ida as a growing young woman, increasingly pretty, full of life.

 The New York Times noted it plainly. As the child grew into a pretty young woman and became more and more of a contrast to her, her hatred began to take active form, that hatred belonged to Martha, and it had been building for years. Ida had no idea what was waiting for her. On the morning of February 7th, 1898, she was 18 years old. she would not see 19.

What happened to Ida that morning was not a crime of sudden madness. Court records suggest Martha had been heading toward this for years and almost no one stopped her. Now let us talk about Martha. Her full name was Martha Maddie Garrettson. She was born on September 18th, 1849 in Readington Township, New Jersey.

 Her parents were Ellen born Wyoff and Isaac Vn Garrettson. She grew up in Milstone, New Jersey in a working-class household and later trained as a dress maker to support herself. Her life took a difficult turn when she was 23 years old. A moving sleigh struck her directly in the head. Her own brother later stated that she never fully recovered.

 He believed the accident left her mentally unstable. That claim would resurface years later in a courtroom. Martha married a man named Wesley Savakul. Together, they had one son, Ross Savakool. But when Ross was only 3 years old, Wesley walked out. He abandoned the family entirely and later died, leaving Martha completely alone with a child she could not afford to raise.

 Unable to support Ross, Martha gave him up for adoption to the Ashenbach family of Newark, New Jersey, who had recently lost a son of their own. They renamed the boy William. Martha lost her only child, not to death, but to poverty. She relocated to Brooklyn and found work as a domestic housekeeper. In 1893, she took a position in the home of a widowerower named William W.

 Place at 598 Hancock Street. By the end of that year, she had married him. People who knew Martha at the time described her as plain, sharp featured, and reserved. The press later would describe her far less kindly. But here is the detail that changes everything. Before the murder ever happened, William Place had already contacted police because Martha had directly threatened to kill Ida.

 That report existed. It was filed and nothing was done. A police report, a direct threat against a child’s life. And yet Ida place remained in that house. What happened next should have been prevented. From the moment Martha moved into 598 Hancock Street as William’s wife, the atmosphere in that home began to change. It did not happen overnight.

It built slowly, quietly, and then it didn’t. Court records and trial testimony established a clear pattern. Martha was deeply jealous of the relationship between William and his daughter. The New York Times, covering the trial in July 1898, reported that Martha believed William loved Ida more than he loved her.

 That belief did not stay buried. It grew.  It hardened. And over time, it turned into something far more dangerous than resentment. Martha’s hostility toward Ida was not a private feeling. She did not keep it to herself. She said it out loud. She made threats and those threats were serious enough that William Place contacted the police at least once.

 He reported that his own wife had threatened to kill his daughter. That report was filed and nothing happened. William knew the danger. Ida remained in the house anyway. No authority stepped in. No one removed Ida from that environment. The threat was documented and then ignored. Both the acid and the axe were already inside the home long before February 7th, 1898.

 The acid came from Williams photography supplies. The axe sat in the cellar. Martha knew exactly where both of them were. Arguments inside the house grew worse in the weeks leading up to that morning. Then the day arrived. William left for work as he always did. The street outside was quiet. The house looked ordinary from the outside.

 Inside, Ida was alone with Martha. Martha later told police she only acted because she felt mad when Ida slammed a door in her face. But the rage that exploded that morning had not started that morning. It had been waiting for years. Here is what the court records make absolutely clear. Martha Place had no accompllices, not one. She planned this alone.

 She carried it out alone. Every decision she made that morning was her own. She did not go out and buy a weapon. She did not need to. The acid was already sitting in William’s desk, part of his photography supplies. Martha knew exactly where it was kept. She had lived in that house. She had watched William use it.

 The axe was in the cellar, also already there, also within easy reach. Court records show that what happened to Ida was not one single act. It was a sequence. Martha threw the acid into Ida’s eyes first. Then while Ida was incapacitated and in pain, she smothered her. Step followed Step. That is not a loss of control.

 That is sustained deliberate action. And then Martha did not run. She did not call for help. She did not break down. She went to the cellar, retrieved the axe, and waited. Ida’s body was upstairs. Martha sat in that house and waited for William to come home. The prosecution later argued and the jury agreed that the waiting was the clearest proof of premeditation.

 When police questioned her, Martha said, “I was afraid he was going to attack me. I took it upstairs with me. My husband came in afterward and I struck him with it.” Court records show that claim was rejected entirely by investigators, by the jury, and by the court. Her legal team later built an insanity defense around the sleigh accident from her youth. But even Reverend Dr.

 David Cole of Yonkers, her own pastor, a man who had known Martha since she was a child, did not believe she was insane. If you are watching this for the first time and have not subscribed yet, now is the moment. Every week we go deep into cases that changed history, hit that subscribe button and stay with us.

 Morning, February 7th, 1898, 598 Hancock Street, Brooklyn, New York. William Place left for work. The front door closed behind him. The house went quiet. Martha and Ida were alone. Before William left, an argument had broken out between him and Martha. Court records confirm it happened.

 The exact words exchanged were disputed, but what happened next was not. Ida, as she had always done, took her father’s side. When William walked out the door and Martha tried to approach Ida, Ida went into her bedroom and slammed the door in Martha’s face. Martha did not walk away. She walked to William’s desk. She picked up the photographic acid.

 The same acid William used for his amateur photography hobby, stored right there in the house. She carried it to Ida’s room and she threw it directly into the 18-year-old’s eyes. Court records confirmed the acid caused serious damage to Ida’s face and eyes. The pain would have been immediate and  unbearable.

 But the attack did not stop there. Martha later told police she left the room after throwing the acid. The autopsy told a different story entirely. Medical examiners confirmed that Ida Place did not die from the acid. She died from esphyxiation. The conclusion drawn from the post-mortem examination was that bedding had been heaped over Ida while she lay helpless and in agony and she was smothered to death.

 Ida place died in her own bedroom. [snorts] She was 18 years old. Hours passed. Martha did not call for help. She did not leave the house. She did not sit down and weep. She went to the cellar. She came back up with an axe and then she waited. Evening February 7th, 1898. William Place came home from work. He walked through the front door of his home at 598 Hancock Street and Martha was waiting.

 She struck him with the axe. Court records confirm she fractured his skull. The injuries were severe. William was bloodied, disoriented, and fighting to survive. But he managed to pull himself out of that house. He stumbled onto the street, calling desperately for help. Neighbors heard him. Police were called. Police arrive. Officers entered the home at 598 Hancock Street.

 Upstairs, they found Ida Place lying dead on her bed. Blood was visible around her mouth. Her eyes bore the damage from the acid. Downstairs, they found Martha in a critical state. The gas burners had been turned on. Clothing had been heaped over her. She had apparently attempted to harm herself after attacking William. She was taken to hospital under arrest.

 Medical examiners completed their examination. The finding was final. Ida Place had died from asphixxiation. William Place survived and he would go on to become the most damaging witness the prosecution had. Testifying against his own wife in open court. Martha Place told police she remembered nothing but the acid, the acts, the hours she spent waiting.

 Court records told a very different story. Martha Place was taken from 598 Hancock Street by ambulance and treated at hospital. She recovered and when she was well enough to face the authorities, she was formally arrested and arraigned for the murder of Ida Place. Her first statement to investigators was simple. She said she remembered nothing.

 No investigator believed her. No court official accepted it. The physical evidence at the scene had already told its own story. And that story did not include a woman who remembered nothing. William Place was in serious condition. His skull had been fractured by the axe. But he survived and his survival would prove to be the single most damaging development for Martha’s case.

 Once William recovered, he cooperated fully with investigators and prosecutors. He held nothing back. He became the most powerful witness the prosecution had, and he was the one person who knew exactly what life inside that house had looked like. The home at 598 Hancock Street was sealed as a crime scene.

 Contemporary press accounts described Martha as detached and flat in the days following her arrest. No recorded expression of grief, no visible distress, nothing that resembled remorse. The Brooklyn press did not wait for a trial to form an opinion. They named her immediately. They called her the Brooklyn Murderous. That name followed her all the way to Sing Singh Prison.

 Public reaction across the city was a mixture of horror and fascination. Female defendants in capital cases were extremely rare in 1898. The idea of a woman facing the death penalty gripped the public imagination. Investigators found no financial motive, no insurance, no hidden gain. Court records and trial testimony confirmed only one motive, jealousy.

 Years of it, all of it directed at a child. This was not a case that kept investigators guessing. From the moment police walked into 598 Hancock Street on the evening of February 7th, 1898, the evidence was right in front of them. Physical, immediate, undeniable. The acid was on Ida’s face. The axe was in the house. William’s skull had been fractured.

Martha had been found on the scene. There was no alibi to examine. There was no competing suspect. Martha’s claim that she remembered nothing was investigated and dismissed early. No medical evidence was produced at that stage to support it. The claim simply did not hold up against what the scene had already revealed.

 Investigators confirmed the source of the acid quickly. It came from Williams photographic supplies stored inside the home, familiar to Martha and completely unknown to Ida as a weapon. The autopsy result added another critical layer. Ida had not died from the acid. She had died from asphixxiation. That finding told investigators the attack had continued well after Ida was already on the floor, blinded and unable to defend herself.

During his recovery, William gave a full account. He described the years of escalating tension inside the house, Martha’s direct threats against Ida, and the police contact he had made before the murder. Court records confirmed that prior report existed. Authorities had been warned.

 That fact did not leave the case file. Martha maintained her innocence from her hospital bed. Her legal team began quietly building a different strategy centered on the head injury she had suffered as a young woman. The trial was set for July 1898. Brooklyn had never seen anything quite like what was coming. There was no chase, no dramatic manhunt.

 Martha Place had been found at the scene and taken directly to hospital under arrest. But what followed, the formal legal process, was just as significant. A grand jury reviewed the evidence and returned an indictment. Martha Place was formally charged with murder in the first degree for the death of Ida Place. The cornerstone of the prosecution’s case was William Place.

 His formal deposition was detailed, consistent, and deeply damaging. He described the years of tension inside the household. He confirmed Martha’s direct threats against Ida. He told prosecutors about the police contact he had made before the murder. Every word he gave them added another layer to an already strong case.

 The prosecution’s central argument was straightforward.  This was not a woman who had snapped without warning. The acid had been retrieved deliberately. The attack had continued after Ida was already helpless. The ax had been collected from the cellar and then Martha had sat in that house for hours and waited. That sequence, the prosecution argued, was premeditation.

Martha’s legal team entered a formal insanity defense built around the sleigh accident of 1872. Their argument was that Martha had never fully recovered mentally from that injury and could not be held fully responsible for her actions. Prosecutors responded by requesting a psychiatric evaluation. Two physicians, Dr.

 Dana and Dr. Pulk, were appointed to examine Martha and assess her mental state. Their conclusion was clear. She was sane. She was fit to stand trial. And then there was Reverend Dr. David Cole of Yonkers, Martha’s own spiritual adviser, a man who had known her since childhood. He told authorities he had never once believed Martha was anything other than a sane woman.

 The insanity defense was weakened before the trial even opened. The trial of Martha Place opened in July 1898 in Brooklyn, New York. The courtroom was packed every single day. Reporters from newspapers across the city filled the press section. Every detail was documented. Every expression on Martha’s face was noted and published.

 Those descriptions were not kind. The New York Times wrote that her face reminded observers of a rat’s sharp chin, thin lips, a long pointed nose, and eyes that stayed completely unchanged no matter what was said in that courtroom. She sat through testimony after testimony without blinking, without flinching, without any visible emotion at all.

 Except once when William took the stand and testified against her, something shifted. Contemporary press reported that her thin lips parted into what they described as a sardonic grin and she fixed her eyes directly on him. It was the only visible reaction she showed during the entire trial. Williams testimony was precise and credible.

 He walked the jury through the years of escalating threats, Martha’s open hostility toward Ida, and the police report he had filed before the murder. He left nothing out. The prosecution then walked the jury through the physical evidence. The acid from Williams photography supplies, the ax from the seller, and the autopsy, which confirmed that Ida had died from asphyxiation, not from the acid, meaning the attack had continued long after Ida could no longer fight back.

 The insanity defense was presented. The jury was not moved. The findings of Dr. Dana and Dr. Pulk had already been submitted. Reverend Dr. Cole had already declined to support the insanity claim. Martha’s own continued claim that she remembered nothing, only made her position weaker. The jury returned its verdict.

 Guilty of murder in the first degree. The sentence was death by electric chair. By all accounts, Martha Place did not believe the state  would actually execute a woman. Her legal team immediately filed for clemency with the newly elected governor of New York, Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt did not act quickly or carelessly.

 He ordered a second psychiatric review. Dr. Dana and Dr. Pulk examined Martha again. Their conclusion did not change. She was sane. Roosevelt’s response was recorded by the press of the time. He stated, “My sympathies in criminal cases are for the wronged and not the wrongdoer. The appeal was denied. The execution date was set.

” Martha Place arrived at Sing Singh Prison in Austining, New York, and  waited. She waited with certainty that she would not die. Even after the verdict, even after the sentence, she maintained through the long months that followed her conviction that the state would not go through with it, that someone would step in, that a woman would not actually be put in that chair.

 Then Warden Sage came to her cell and told her the truth.  Governor Roosevelt had refused. There would be no intervention. She would die on Monday, March 20th, 1899. It hit her hard. In the days that followed, she could not sleep. She could not eat. The woman who had shown almost no emotion throughout her entire trial was now visibly shaken by the reality of what was coming.

Reverend Dr. David Cole of Yonkers, her spiritual adviser and a man who had known her since she was a girl, visited her regularly in those final days. Prison matron Mrs. Coltrich maintained constant watch. Mrs. Sage, the warden’s wife, came to spend time with her. A mission worker from Brooklyn named Mrs. Murie, who had taken a personal interest in Martha’s welfare, also came to offer what comfort she could.

 The night before the execution, a gale force storm tore through Austin. Wind rattled the windows of the old hospital building where Martha was being held. Snow drove hard against the glass. Several times through the night, Martha got up from her bed and went to the window to watch the storm. She did not sleep until 2:30 in the morning.

 And even then she rose again repeatedly to pray. She had a black dress. She had sewn it herself plain and simple during her time in custody. She had made it with the expectation of wearing it at a new trial or the day she walked free. She wore it to the chair. March 20th, 1899, 11:01 in the morning, Martha was led from her quarters through a series of corridors.

On either side, the doors of the murderer’s cells were draped with heavy curtains, blocking her view and theirs. The procession moved quickly through that section. 12 witnesses were already standing in the death chamber. The electric apparatus had been tested. Everything was ready. She entered, leaning heavily on Warden Sage’s arm.

Witnesses recorded that her face was very white. Her head was tilted slightly upward. Her eyes were closed. She held a small prayer book in her left hand. Because no woman had ever been executed by electric chair before, the procedure had required adjustments. Her thick graying hair had been clipped in the area where the electrode needed to rest on her forehead.

 Her skirt had been slit along the side so the electrode could be fastened to her right leg without exposing her. She was guided into the chair and strapped in. The electrodes were fastened, and in those final seconds, she murmured the last words anyone would ever hear her speak. God help me. God have mercy. Executioner Edwin F.

 Davis threw the lever at exactly 11:01 in the morning. 1,760 volts passed through her body for 4 seconds. The current was then reduced to 200 volts and held for 56 seconds. Dr. Irvine examined her and ordered a second shock. Standard procedure at Sing Singh. After it was administered, the body settled naturally in the chair.

 A small amount of foam appeared at her lips. Dr. Irvine’s official finding was recorded in court documents. Death had been instantaneous. It was the 26th electrocution carried out at Sing Singh Prison. It was the first involving a woman anywhere in the United States. Martha Place was 49 years old. She was not the first woman sentenced to die in the electric chair.

 Serial killer Lizzie Hall had received that sentence in 1894, but her conviction was commuted and she was sent to an asylum. Maria Barbella had been sentenced in 1895, but was acquitted on retrial. Martha Place was the first woman to actually be executed. Her body was transported by train to East Milstone, New Jersey, and buried in the family cemetery plot.

 There were no religious observances at the funeral. Reverend Dr. Cole had been asked to officiate. He could not bring himself to do it. He attended, but he did not speak. Ida Place never got a future. She was 18 years old. She died in her own bedroom in pain and alone. She had done nothing except grow up and in doing so she had become the target of a woman who could not bear to watch it happen.

William Place survived the axe. He recovered. But the house at 598 Hancock Street and everything that took place inside it on February 7th, 1898 could never be undone. Martha Place did not enter history by choice. The state put her there. She became the first woman executed in the electric chair in the United States, forever tied to a crime driven by nothing more than jealousy over a child she chose to destroy.

 By its peak in 1949,  the electric chair had been adopted across 26 states. Martha Place’s execution helped establish it as the standard method of capital punishment in America. A police report had existed.  A threat had been recorded and filed, and Ida was left in that house anyway.

 She paid for that with her life. Tell me in the comments what moment in this case hit you hardest. Was it the waiting, the acid, the dress she sewed herself with her own hands? If this story moved you, please subscribe, turn on notifications, and share this video with someone who needs to see it. Every share helps this channel reach further.