“Goodbye, darlings” (the last words of Eva Coo)

Tags

Colliersville, Cooperstown, Eva Coo, Eva Curry, Haliburton Ontario, Harry Wright, Martha Clift, Oneonta New York, Sing Sing

Seven names appear on a Wikipedia “People from Haliburton County” category page. Five of them are from the sports world, one was a politician and one was a teenage runaway who ultimately made front page news in the United States.

Eva Curry was born 17 Jan 1889 in Haliburton, Ontario, the second child of parents Albert Paterson Curry (1862-1920) and Margaret McDonald Watt (1867-1950). She appears on the 1891 and 1901 Canada census with her family:

Eva abandoned her rural roots and headed to the big city of Toronto where her older sister Elizabeth Mary had married Erwin Snider in 1906. There, Eva met William Coo. They married and headed west.

In the 1916 census of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, J W Coo — 38 year old store keeper with the CPR — and his 28 year old wife Eva Coo appear living at 235 7 Avenue Northeast in Calgary, Alberta.

By the mid 1920s, Eva had separated from her husband. In 1927, she appears in the Oneonta New York City Directory living at 39 Chestnut Street. From 1928 through 1934 Mrs Eva Coo is listed in Oneonta directories as the owner of a ‘roadstand’ in Colliersville, Oneonta, New York.

Through Prohibition and the Great Depression, “Little Eva’s Place” did a steady business, supplying alcohol and ‘girls’ to patrons that included labourers and lawmakers. Located on the Albany-Oneonta Highway at the foot of Crumhorn Mountain, Eva’s roadhouse provided a way to make a living but it was certainly not fancy:

The place … is nothing more than a road stand. It has three not over large rooms, one of them evidently used for dancing as it has a hard wood floor. In the extremely small kitchen may be seen [a] couch … There are no other beds as there is no place for them. The third room might be called a social or living room. In the rear is one building which might be called an overnight cottage. The other buildings on the place are a small garage, chicken house and small outbuilding.

– from an article by K.O. Barton, Evening Recorder, Amsterdam, NY Tuesday, August 28, 1934

In 1934, passenger service on the D&H railway line between Cooperstown and Colliersville was discontinued. It’s not hard to imagine how this would have affected Eva’s business.
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The world became even more complicated for Eva when her crippled handyman, Harry Wright, was found dead in a ditch alongside Route 7. Things might not have ended as badly as they did had Eva waited a bit longer to cash in on a life insurance policy she held on Harry’s life.

The claim was processed but the insurance company became suspicious and took their suspicions to the police. An autopsy was conducted on Wright and the coroner ruled the death suspicious. It was later discovered that on the night of Wright’s death, Coo and [Mrs Martha] Clift were reported to be trespassing on an old farm near Crumhorn Mountain. That was enough for the sheriff’s office. Both women were arrested. While they were held at the local jail, sheriff’s deputies went to Eva’s home and, without a warrant, broke in and searched the place. Officers found dozens of insurance polices on Eva’s friends, acquaintances and employees, all naming her as the beneficiary. When confronted with the evidence, both women soon confessed. Coo said they took Wright to an old farmhouse near Crumhorn Mountain outside Oneonta and smashed his head in with a hammer. They ran over his body using a friend’s car and then threw Wright into a highway ditch where he was found. However, each woman named the other as the one who actually did the killing and would not relent.

Source

Newspaper coverage of Eva’s arrest, trial and eventual conviction for first degree murder was extensive. Her friend, Mrs. Martha Clift, mother of two young children, was sentenced to 20 years to life in the New York State Prison for Women for her part in the murder of Harry Wright. Eva was sentenced to death.

– from Evening Recorder, Amsterdam, NY, 7 Sept 1934

Following three weeks of testimony from 74 State witnesses and 17 witnesses for the defense, the jury took only two hours to return their verdict. Following her sentencing, the Amsterdam NY Evening Recorder published information about Eva’s early life and family:

She is the eldest of six daughters of Mrs. Margaret Currie of Haliburton, Ontario.

Years ago the family lost contact with Eva and members presumed she had died until the Cooperstown trial projected her name into national notoriety.

Mrs. Coo, when 17 years old, left Haliburton, almost 30 years ago. The village of a few hundred persons is 150 miles north of Toronto.

The eldest Currie girl worked as a nurse at Toronto and Calgary. She married a railroad man but after three or four years they were divorced.

Later Eva came to New York. She advised the family that she was to be operated upon. Thereafter nothing was heard from her, although the family advertised for her. Mrs. Coo’s father died 13 years ago. Her mother collapsed when informed her daughter was on trial for her life. She became dangerously ill.

NOTE: The Curry family name was occasionally misspelled as ‘Currie’. As noted at the beginning of this post, Eva was the second daughter not the eldest.

EVA COO DIES IN CHAIR AT SING SING
A grave beside that of the handyman she murdered for $12,000 insurance awaited Eva Coo today. She paid for his life with hers in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison last night.

Whether she actually would be buried in the plot she had selected for herself and Harry Wright in quiet Cooperstown was to be decided after word was received from relatives in Ontario.

Mrs. Coo went dazedly to her death with no last minute denial of the crime. “Good-bye, darlings,” was all she said. She addressed two matrons who stood weeping before the chair, clinging to the arms of a white-haired guard. They formed a screen between the woman in the flowered blue print and 22 witnesses. The chaplain intoned the 23rd Psalm — “The Lord is My Shepherd” — and the current crackled.

– from The Daily Argus, Mount Vernon, NY, Friday 28 June 1935

Back in her hometown when her sister, Mrs. William Baker, was asked for a reaction to the execution, she told reporters that Eva “has been dead to her family for 17 years” (New York Times, June 28, 1935). No one from the family claimed her body.