A door opens at the far end of the corridor .    A pair of footsteps echo through them, slow, even, without hesitation.    Sing Sing Prison, Ossining, New York, August 9, 1934, 11:00 p.m. The woman walking to the execution chamber weighs only 36 kg.  Her head is partially shaved.  She is wearing a blue dress with white trim, a dress that she made herself in her death chamber, cutting the fabric and sewing each stitch by hand.

  Earlier that day, prison staff asked her what she wanted for her last meal.  She said three words to them, and those words melted the hearts of everyone around her. Now she is approaching the electric chair .  She entered this prison 15 months ago as a convicted murderer.  But as she takes these final steps, something else is happening outside the corridor.

  And 90 years later, one question still hangs over that night .  Was the woman in that chair really the murderer the state believed her to be?  Did New York simply execute the wrong person? Stay with us, because this story is not what it seems from the outside. Welcome back to the Red Mark Files.  This is an interesting video. Click the Like button and subscribe to this channel.

  We cover cases that history has almost forgotten. Let’s look at this in more detail.  To understand what led her to the execution chamber, you must first understand the man whose death led her there .  His name was Salvatore Antonio. Most people called him Sal. He was approximately 30 years old at the time of his death.

  He worked as a railroad brakeman in Albany, New York. Union job, steady pay, working class income.  On paper, Sal Antonio looked like a man who kept his family together. He had two life insurance policies. One worth $2,800 in the Brotherhood of Railroad Workers, his union.  The second for $2,500 is from Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.

In total, it was about $5,000, which was a significant amount of money in 1932, at the height of the Great Depression.  Sal met Anna when she was only 16 years old.  He was much older.  From the very first day of their marriage, the age difference meant that the balance of power in this relationship was never equal.

Together they had four children.  One died in infancy. Three survived: Phyllis, who was nine, Marie, who was seven, and Frank, who was only 3 years old.  But behind the image of a worker with a union card and an insurance policy, court records tell a different story about what life was like in Antonio’s family.

  Anna told investigators, and later confirmed in court, that their home, in her own words, was “always full of drugs and weapons.”  This one statement suggests that Sel’s life extended far beyond his railroad shifts. It indicates connections, activities, and associations that had nothing to do with legitimate work.

  Anna also described 12 years of physical abuse .  Sal allegedly controlled every part of her life: where she went, what she did, who she talked to, and when she broke the rules, she was beaten.  So , here is the question that the facts pose to us. Was the $5,000 insurance really the motive, or was Anna Antonio simply a woman who had lost her way? The facts presented here speak for themselves .

  The court found Anna Antonio guilty.  This is legal protocol. But the full picture of who she was before the verdict deserves to be told clearly and honestly.  Anna was born around 1906.  She was Italian, part of an immigrant community that settled in the Albany, New York area.  People who knew her called her little Anna.  She was slim, dark-haired, and quiet.

  At the time of her execution, she was so small that the electric chair, designed for the physique of a grown man, completely dwarfed her.  She married Sal when she was 16 years old.  From then on, her world was home, her children, and whatever boundaries Sal had set around her.  She had no income of her own, no independence. Divorce was an unrealistic option for a poor Italian immigrant woman in the 1930s with three children and no resources .

  It was, for all practical reasons, completely inaccessible to her. She had no criminal record.  No prior contact with law enforcement until Easter 1932. Anna Antonio was never arrested, never charged, and never appeared in any court documents.  Her daily life, by all accounts, consisted of raising children and sewing her own clothes.

  The blue dress she wore to her execution she sewed herself in the house of death.  But here’s the detail that changed everything.  Sam Feraci, the man later named as the person Anna allegedly hired to kill Sel, was not the one Anna found herself.  Feraci was a friend of Sel.  He revolved around Sel’s world, not Anna’s.

  This one fact complicates the state’s version of events in a way that the prosecution was never able to fully uncover at trial.  And then there was a knock on her door .  The moment the police told Anna that her husband had been found dying on the side of the road, her reaction set in motion everything that happened after that.

  12 years is a long time to live in fear in your own home.  From the day Anna married Sel, the walls of that marriage surrounded her.  Court records show that Sal controlled her movements, where she went, when she went, who she saw.  When she resisted, even slightly, the punishment was physical.  This was not an isolated incident.

  This was a pattern that had been going on for over ten years, and the house itself was not a refuge. Anna told investigators that the house, in her own words, was always full of drugs and weapons.  These weren’t things she found hidden in a drawer. They were outdoors, part of everyday life. Sal’s world included people and activities that had nothing to do with his work on the railroad, and Anna and her children lived in this world with no way out.

  By the winter of 1931-1932, the pressure in this family had reached a point that Anna could no longer bear.  She had three children who depended on her.  She had no income of her own.  She had no legal way to end the marriage.  A poor Italian immigrant in Albany during the Great Depression didn’t just walk into a lawyer’s office and file for divorce.

  This door was not open for her .  Then, according to court testimony, something happened that changed everything. Sam Feraci, not a stranger but Sel’s own friend, reportedly came to Anna and told her bluntly that he intended to kill Sel. His stated reason was a personal grievance, separate from what Anna was up to. Anna’s response, according to her own statements to the authorities, was: “I don’t care what you do.

  “I’m only interested in children.” Four words that accompanied her to the courtroom.  What Anna said at that moment, just those four words, would be repeated in court and cost her everything.  Now we need to look at the two men at the center of this case, because without them, there are no murder charges against Anna Antonio at all .

  The first is Samuel Feraci, 42, from Geneva, New York.  Court records describe him as a drug dealer associated with the Sel Antonio cartel.  He was not the person Anna brought into her life. He was already there, moving in the world of the Village long before Easter 1932. The second, Vincent Saetta, 22, from Albany, is also connected to the same criminal circles that surrounded Sel.

As with Ferrazzi, Saetta’s path to this crime was through Sel, not Anna.  Before we get to the night of the murder, if you’ve been watching for a while , you know what to do. Click the ” like” button.  This helps this channel more than you think.  Now, Easter Sunday 1932.  The state’s case against Anna rested on one central claim: she arranged for Ferrazzi and Saetta to kill Sel in exchange for a share of his life insurance.

Ferrazzi and Saetta, the prosecution alleged, were to receive $800 after receiving the policies.  The attack itself, in which Sel was shot five times and stabbed several times, was not accidental. The use of both a firearm and a knife indicated something premeditated, rather than a confrontation that got out of control .

  But this is where the state theory runs into serious problems.  The entire case against Anna is based almost entirely on the testimony of Faraci and Saetta, two men who were also accused of the same murder.  Two men who had every reason to shift as much of the blame as possible onto someone else.  And there is another fact to which the prosecution has never given a proper answer.

  According to Anna’s attorney, Daniel Pryor, no one has received a single dollar from any insurance policy since Sel’s death.  Not a single dollar.  Easter, March 27, 1932.  It was a holiday, a Sunday.    The kind of day that most families in Albany spent together at home.  Church in the morning, lunch in the afternoon, kids nearby.

  For Antonio’s family, that day ended very differently. Antonio set out that evening.  Where exactly he was told he was going, or who told him, the records do not fully document.  What the records document is what happened to him on the road south of Albany, and it’s not an easy read. Foraci and Sayetta were with him, according to their own statements given to the police after their arrest.

  The three men traveled together until they reached Castleton Road outside Hudson, south of Albany. That’s where the car stopped.  That’s where Sel Anthony’s life ended.  What Foraci and Sayetta did to him on that road was cruel.  The villages were shot five times.  He was wounded approximately 15 times. When it was all over, his body was left near a roadside chimney, partially buried but not completely.

  The two men drove away and left him there.  It was only by chance that someone passing by on that road noticed him.  A passerby noticed the body, realized the man was still alive, and called for help.  Selya was rushed to the hospital.  He was barely holding on to life. He died in the emergency room.  And before taking his last breath, Salvatore Antonio never named a single person who had done this to him.

No name.  His final silence left the entire case open, and investigators spent the following weeks trying to fill that silence on their own. New York State Police Officer William H. Flubacher arrived at the hospital within minutes of Sel’s death.  At that moment, he made a decision that influenced everything that happened after that.

He didn’t go to the crime scene first.  He immediately headed to Anna.  What he saw when he talked to her stopped him. Anna’s answers were vague.  Her answers were vague, and most damaging of all, she showed no visible shock, no grief, no tears during the officer’s account of the man who had just been found beaten and dying on the highway.

  Flubacher noted every detail.  A woman who had just been told her husband was dead, and she didn’t cry.  This single moment accompanied her all the way to the electric chair.  The news spread quickly throughout Albany.  A railroad union worker was murdered on Easter Sunday, shot, stabbed, and left on the side of the road. The brutality of this was impossible to ignore, and people noticed.

  The investigators focused their attention on two directions simultaneously.  The crime scene on Castleton Road and the behavior of everyone connected to Sal Antonio.  In the following days, Hannah did not behave as expected of a grieving widow. She did not pressure the authorities to find her husband’s killers.  She made no public statements.

  She didn’t break down in the way the community around her expected to see.  Investigators noted this.  This completed the picture that Flubacher had already begun to form in his mind on the night of Sal’s death.  Then there was the issue of insurance money. Sal had almost $5,000 in life insurance.  If the whole point of the murder, as the state later claimed, was to collect this money, then within a few weeks of his death there should have been some movement towards filing a lawsuit .  But he wasn’t there.

Anna’s attorney, Daniel Pryor, later confirmed that no attempt to collect on any of the policies was made by Anna or anyone associated with her. Forahi and Sayetta, for their part, did not escape. Both men remained in the area in the days and weeks following the murder.  They didn’t disappear.  They didn’t leave the state.

  Whether it was confidence or carelessness, the records do not confirm.  Anne, according to her later statements, focused on her children, Phyllis, Marie, and Frank.  Three young children, no income, and a future that suddenly collapsed around her.  Her brother, Pasquale Capello of Schenectady, remained close to the family throughout.

He later became the only person to step forward to preserve what was left of it. Suspicion is not a legal matter.  Officer Flubacher knew this. His visions of Anna on the night of Sal’s death had already given him a clear direction.  But what he felt in that room and what he could prove in the courtroom were two very different things.

The investigation needed evidence, and in the spring of 1932, evidence was hard to come by.  At the crime scene on Castleton Road, investigators discovered a body with five gunshot wounds and approximately 15 stab wounds.  This confirmed that the attack was violent. It did not tell them who was responsible.    The forensic tools available in 1932 were limited.

  There was no eyewitness who came forward immediately after the murder, and Sal himself died without giving any names. The investigation has reached a dead end.  So the investigators changed their approach.  They began to map out every person associated with Sal Antonio, his union contacts, the people who passed through his house, and the criminal organizations that Anna herself had described to the police.

The painting that emerged from this process was not a portrait of a pure, simple working man. Two names kept popping up: Samuel Feraci and Vincent Saetta.  Both men were known to Sal, both were associated with the drug activity that Anna described at home, and both were seen with Sal in the period leading up to Easter Sunday.

Anna’s own location on the night of the murder was a little-known but important detail.  She wasn’t on that road. She didn’t fire a gun or raise a knife.  Her presence with the children was the basis of her implied defense, but the state did not build a case around who kept the gun. Under New York State conspiracy law, the person who orchestrated the murder was equally guilty whether or not they were present.

  With this legal framework in place, investigators put full pressure on Faraci and Saetta, and eventually both men spoke up.  When Faraci and Saetta finally gave their statements to the police, the direction of the entire case changed. Both men told investigators the same thing .  Anna Antonio came to them and asked them to kill her husband.

  In exchange, she promised them $800, which would be paid out of Sal’s life insurance after receiving the policies.  These statements, made under constant pressure and without the level of legal protection required by modern standards, became the basis of the entire prosecution case against Anna.  Without them, there was very little that directly linked her to the murder.

  On May 5, 1932, 5 weeks after Sal Antonio died on Castleton Road, all three were arrested.  Anna Antonio, Samuel Faraci and Vincent Saetta were charged with first- degree murder.  But here’s a problem that every viewer watching this should think about for a moment. The two men who accuse Anna of planning this murder were the same two men who drove Sal down that road, shot him five times, and stabbed him approximately 15 times.

  They were not neutral witnesses.  They were not random witnesses who happened to see something.  They were murderers who now pointed the finger at the woman they claimed had pushed them to do so in a situation where shifting the blame onto Anna was also the most logical way to diminish their own.  The defense would loudly raise this issue at trial.

  It was a reasonable argument.  The jury wouldn’t be moved by that. Anna, for her part, had held her position since the moment of her arrest. She admitted that she knew Farachi.  It was true and could be proven.  But she denied the conspiracy described by the state. She denied ordering anyone to kill Sel.  She denied that she had promised anyone a single dollar.

  In Depression-era Albany, a young Italian immigrant mother has just been charged with orchestrating the murder of her husband. The case was about to go to court.  The trial of Anna Antonio, Samuel Ferracci, and Vincent Saetta began in Albany County Court in the spring of 1933 .  It lasted 26 days.  For that era, that was a long time.

  This reflected how complex and controversial the case really was. Because at first glance, the state had its own history.  But beneath this story lay questions that would not go away. Judge Earl H. Gallup presided in the courtroom. Anna’s interests were represented by her attorney, Daniel H. Pryor of Albany. A man who believed in his client enough to continue fighting for her long after the verdict was handed down.

The state presented its arguments in plain language.  Anna Antonio wanted her husband dead.  She recruited two men from his own circle of friends.  She promised them $800 from Sel’s insurance policies. The result was the murder on Castleton Road.  The prosecution presented this as a deal that was cold, deliberate, and entirely motivated by money.

Pryor flatly denied it.  He argued that the state’s case rested almost entirely on the testimony of two men who were themselves accused of murder.  Two men who had every personal reason to present the story in a way that would put Anna in the spotlight and minimize their own guilt.  Without their statements, Pryor noted , the case would not have happened.

Writer James M. Greiner, who later researched the case in detail , documented another layer that shaped everything in the courtroom.  Anna was poor.  She was an Italian immigrant.  In 1933 in Albany, these two facts alone put her at a serious disadvantage before a single piece of evidence was presented. The jury deliberated and reached a verdict.

All three defendants, Anna Antonio, Samuel Ferracci, and Vincent Saetta, were found guilty of first-degree murder.  On April 15, 1933, Judge Gallup sentenced all three to death by electrocution. Pryor immediately began filing appeals. Court after court refused to overturn the verdict. A motion for a new trial, filed later during the deferral period, ended up back on Judge Gallup’s desk.

  The same judge who sentenced Anna to death dismissed it.  Anna Antonio arrived at Sing Sing Prison in April 1933.  She was the only woman on death row. No facilities were provided for the convicted female prisoner , so three guards were specially invited to supervise her 24/7, every hour. Over the next 15 and a half months, New York State spent $4,650 on her personal supervision alone.

Prison officials later told the press that this was more than had ever been spent on any individual prisoner in the history of Sing Sing. But no amount of supervision could protect Anna from what her time on death row had done to her .  She survived three official reprieves, three separate occasions when her execution date was set, and then backed down at the last moment.

Each cycle brought her closer to the limit.  She stopped eating regularly.  She stopped sleeping.  The weight fell off her body week after week.  Until recent months, she weighed up to 85 pounds. The guards brought her tea and toast and urged her to eat. She told them, “I am almost dead.  Sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe.

”  These wardens, technically her guards, became the closest friends she had within these walls. They took care of her.  And on the night when she finally walked to the chair, they stood right in front of her to prevent any photographer from capturing the moment.  They remembered what happened in 1928 when a hidden camera took a photograph of Ruth Snyder’s death.

They weren’t going to let this happen to Anna. Outside the prison walls, things were gaining momentum.  Italian community organizations throughout New York sent petitions to the governor.  Clarence Darrow, one of the most respected defense attorneys in the country and a lifelong opponent of the death penalty, publicly stated his support for Anne.

Newspaper editorials described the cycle of pardons and commutations as cruel and unusual punishment .  None of this was enough.  On June 27, 1934, the guards partially shaved Anna’s head in preparation for the first execution attempt.  As the hour approached, she waited.  Then, at 10:50 p.m., just 10 minutes before her scheduled death, Vincent Saetta sent a message saying he needed to speak to prison warden Lewis E. Laws immediately.

What Saetta told the chief that night was this: Only he killed Sal Antonio.  The motive, he said, was a personal dispute over a $75 debt Sal owed him.  Sal threatened his life, and he acted first.  Anna, Sayeta bluntly stated, was completely innocent of the crime.  Chief Lawes stopped everything.  He ordered him detained for 2 hours and called Governor Lehman.

Anna, who was already standing in the corridor near the execution chamber, fainted upon hearing the news. Governor Lehman listened.  He read Sayeta’s full statement. He granted a 24-hour reprieve, then a 10- day reprieve, then a full month while the courts considered whether a new trial was necessary. Albany District Attorney John Delaney had no patience for any of this.

  He called Sayeta’s statement an absolute fabrication of lies and insisted on carrying out the execution. All the courts agreed with Delaney.  The motion for a new trial was denied.  The appeals are over.  The new execution date was set for August 9, 1934.  By that time, Anna had not eaten for several days.  Her head was shaved for the second time.

  A few days before her execution, she would drift in and out of a semi-conscious state. That same day, her brother Pasquale arrived with his wife and Anna’s 3-year-old son, Frank. They were not allowed to touch each other.  Anna kissed her little boy through the prison bars and once again made her brother promise to take care of her children.

  On the same day, August 9, her daughter Marie turned 7 years old.  From death row, Anna sent Marie a handmade dress and a box of chocolates.  Marie wrote back that if good news came from prison, she was planning a birthday party .  There was no good news. Anna’s last recorded words, spoken to Warden Lawes before she left her cell, were: “I don’t care what you do to me .

  I am not afraid of death.  I have nothing on my conscience.  “I’ve never killed anyone.”  At 11:00 that evening, the guards arrived.  Anna went to the execution chamber without outside help. She was sitting on a chair.  She prayed quietly with Father John P. McCaffrey, the prison chaplain.  She didn’t cry.  She didn’t fight.

  She didn’t break. Three electric current discharges were applied.  At 11:16 that evening, Dr. Charles K. Sweet pronounced her dead.  Samuel Feraci was brought in immediately afterwards. He entered, smiling, sat down, and told the witnesses: “I am going to die, but I am innocent.  I wish you all good luck.”  He was pronounced dead at approximately 11:23 a.m.

Vincent Saeta entered the cell at 11:27, the same man who, just 40 days earlier, had declared Anna completely innocent. He didn’t say anything. He was pronounced dead at 11:31 a.m. The next morning, family members collected the bodies of all three.  Anna Antonio was buried in Albany on August 13, 1934, four days after the state placed her in that chair.

  Her brother Pasquale kept his word.  He took custody of her children. Three-year-old Frank moved to live with him in Schenectady. The girls were temporarily placed in an orphanage with a firm plan to return them home as soon as their wife’s health permits.  Two insurance policies, a Union policy for $2,800 and a Metropolitan Life policy for $2,500, were never collected.

  Not a single dollar.  The financial motive on which the state built its entire business brought nothing to anyone.  Three people died in this execution chamber for the murder of Salvatore Antonio, the one man whose last- minute confession could have changed everything, waited until it was time.    all that remains is for it to matter.

  And August 9, the day of Anna Antonio’s execution, was her daughter’s seventh birthday. This detail needs no comment.  What moment in Anna’s story struck you the most? Leave it in the comments below.  And if you haven’t subscribed yet, now is the time.  We highlight cases that deserve attention.  See you in the next issue.