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I Have Shot My Betrayer: The Trial of Amanda Olson, 1890
Interior of Salt Lake Knitting Works, circa 1917. Amanda Olson, who was to become the center of a sensational trial, worked at another Salt Lake City knitting factory in the 1890s. Utah State Historical Society, Shipler photograph no. 18504.
I Have Shot My Betrayer: The Trial of Amanda Olson, 1890
BY LISA OLSEN TAIT
It was Monday evening, September 29, 1890, about 6:30 p.m., just past the corner of C Street and First Avenue in Salt Lake City. It was almost dark; the sky was overcast and the weather portended the end of summer. Frank C. Hall, a thirty-eight year-old engineer by training currently employed as a barkeeper at the Mint Saloon, strolled along in the company of Ann Hart, a widow of about his age. Hall was estranged from his wife and had custody of his two young children; they boarded with Hart at 277 C Street. The pair chatted amiably as they made their way toward Brigham Street.
As they passed the corner of C and First streets, a young woman stepped out from behind a tree, said something unintelligible, and fired a single shot, striking Hall in the head and killing him instantly. Her name was Amanda Olson, and she was twenty-two years old. 1 She was employed at Pearson’s knitting factory and had recently moved with her parents to 318 Sixth Avenue. The Olsons’ new house was just around the corner from their previous residence at 286 C Street, which was across the street on the other end of the block from Hart, whom they had known for eighteen years. 2 After a few moments of confusion immediately following the shooting, Olson walked to the police station and turned herself in, stating, “I have shot my betrayer.” 3 She handed a 32-caliber pistol to the stunned police officer, along with a letter explaining why she had done it, then refused to talk any more until she had consulted an attorney.
Five days later, following an inquest and grand jury proceedings, Amanda Olson was charged with murder. By this time, the former judge and prominent local attorney Orlando Powers had been engaged to defend her, and three men, including the former Salt Lake City mayor James Sharp, had agreed to post a five thousand dollar bond to release Olson from jail until the trial. 4 The trial, which was held in early December 1890 and lasted six days, drew huge crowds and was covered extensively by all the local papers. The defense was insanity. The jury deliberated thirty-five minutes before returning a verdict of not guilty, and the onlookers in the courtroom erupted in cheers. 5 The next day, newspaper reporters and editorialists celebrated the acquittal.
As reported in the local press, the Amanda Olson case became one of the most noted trials to that date in Salt Lake City’s history. It was understood to be the first time a woman had been tried in territorial Utah for capital murder. It featured a compelling cast of characters and scandalous details of sex and violence. At the center was the enigmatic figure of Amanda Olson herself and the ultimately unresolved question of what exactly happened to lead her to that corner, gun in hand. Taken together, the newspaper accounts and the statements of the main players in the case show that Amanda Olson’s case was primarily interpreted as a story, read by press and public alike through the lens of popular fiction and real-world news accounts. From our vantage point, we can also see that this trial confronted some of the most vexed and central questions of nineteenth-century American culture regarding gender, sex, and justice. Like many sensational trials, the Amanda Olson case captured public attention because it represented much more than itself.
Within a day of the shooting, the newspapers reported the backstory of the murder, framing it as a well-known tale. “The old familiar story of man’s treachery and woman’s weakness . . . seems to have never been more exactly repeated than in the instance of which we write,” observed the Deseret Weekly. 6 In a word, the story was seduction. “It was the old story,” Olson herself wrote in her letter, describing how Hall had, after being introduced to her by Hart, persisted in pursuing her until she had fallen in love with him and agreed to become engaged while waiting for him to obtain a divorce. Her parents were reluctant at first but eventually granted their permission and seemed to have been won over by Hall’s gentlemanly demeanor and conversation. 7
What happened next was repeated many times in the course of the newspaper reports and the trial, always treated indirectly and euphemistically. Having already been framed as “the old story” of “seduction” and “betrayal,” it was certainly assumed that readers would understand the reality behind those careful phrases: rape. John F. Olson, Amanda’s father, in the initial interview with a reporter, was the first to tell the story:
Elsewhere, John Olson said Hall had “seduced her and ruined her for life.” 9 The newspapers repeatedly referred to it as Hall having “ruined her” and conventionally referred to him as her “seducer” or “betrayer.”
Within a few days of this encounter and without any further communication with Amanda Olson, Hall left Salt Lake City and was gone for ten months. During this time, she became increasingly distraught. Her health suffered; she could not work for several months; she withdrew from her friends and barely functioned. Her family (unaware of the rape) tried to reassure her by saying that Hall must have gone to get his divorce and would return before long. Finally, on Saturday, September 27, two days before the murder, she spotted Hall by chance out her window, which sent her into a state of extreme agitation. A short time later, alarmed at Amanda’s condition, her mother Charlotte accompanied Amanda downtown, and they sent a message to Hall requesting that he come and talk to her. Hall came right away but insisted on taking Amanda into a private area of a nearby restaurant, the Café Louvre. There, according to her account, he sneered at her distress and made some kind of physical overture.
Olson pushed him away—Charlotte told a reporter that Amanda had “felled him to the floor with a chair” 10 —and left the restaurant, “so excited she could not see me,” her mother said. That night and the next she sat up without sleeping, becoming “wild and distracted.” 11 Her parents had become greatly alarmed at Olson’s state and decided to send her to California to visit relatives; on Monday, she went downtown with her mother to purchase a trunk for her trip. While she was there, Olson told her mother she was going to Auerbach’s to buy some gloves but went instead to a gun store, where she purchased a 32-caliber Hopkins & Allen pistol. “She said that she was going to travel and that she wanted the pistol for protection,” the salesman later testified. Olson rejected a 22-caliber model as “too small” and purchased only thirty cents’ worth of cartridges. “She asked no questions about loading it,” said the clerk stated. “She took it and went away.” 12
Returning home, Olson wrote the letter she would later give to the police. As she sat in her room examining the gun, she repeatedly snapped the pistol and broke the trigger spring. By this time, it was late afternoon, but Olson returned to the gun store, taking the letter with her, and had the gun repaired. She left the store at about six o’clock and fatefully encountered Hall and Hart half an hour later as she walked home.
The newspapers were immediately aware that they had a blockbuster story on their hands. The Salt Lake Herald opened its coverage in terms reminiscent of a novel or stage directions for a melodrama: “A hurried word passed from a woman to a man, a pistol shot, an exclamation of horror, from a bystander, a few gasps, and a human life had gone out.” 13 The Salt Lake Tribune took the perspective of the victim: “It was twenty minutes of seven last evening, and twilight was fading into darkness, when Frank C. Hall, a well built, fine looking fellow aged 38, and Mrs. Ann Hart, of 237 C street, walked leisurely down C street toward Brigham.” 14 The Deseret News took a straightforward approach but could not resist taking a stab at Hall, calling him “a sporting character.” 15 All devoted significant column space to the story over the next several days and again during the trial, complete with large, bold headlines such as
“shot her seducer” and “frank c. hall is shot dead,” the latter adding in slightly smaller print, “Amanda Olson Put a Bullet Through His Heart Last Night because he had betrayed her.” 16
Just as quickly, the papers recognized that public sentiment was running in Olson’s favor. Indeed, they actively helped to create that sentiment. The Herald’s initial report set the tone: “There will be but little sympathy for the man who now lies cold in death. We are very much inclined to believe that the popular verdict, even though it be not the law in the case, will find plenty of excuse for the unhappy girl whose fingers pressed the trigger of the weapon which sent the fatal bullet into the body of her seducer.” 17 The Tribune went even further, publishing an editorial two days after the murder, calling Olson “The Heroic Girl.” The column spared no pains to praise and justify her desperate act:
“May the lesson of the tragedy . . . go to the pitiless sons of men who hold it as a mere pleasantry to beguile from woman her confidence and then blast her life forever,” the editorial concluded. 18
The Tribune editorialist made his case, in part, through literary allusion. Describing the fateful scene, he wrote, “Her victim, her seducer, draws near, and on his arm another woman. Oh! the hour of bitterness! ‘Now paint the ruined maid and her distraction wild.’” The last line is a quote from a very popular poem by Robert Burns, “The Cotter’s Saturday Night,” a lengthy work praising a typical night of family togetherness in the home of a poor peasant. Describing the arrival of the young daughter’s lover, Burns pauses to denounce, in contrast to the wholesome scene he describes, the sorrow caused by a dishonorable suitor. In this poem the “distraction wild” refers to the desperate grief the girl’s parents would suffer should she be seduced. The Tribune misquotes Burns slightly, attributing the “distraction wild” to the ruined maid herself—shifting sympathy from the parents to the girl and hinting at an insanity defense. 19
The Cotters Saturday Night, engraving by S. Hollyer, 1886. Both a Tribune editorialist and Orlando Powers called on Robert Burns’s popular poem of the same name to lend an air of humble, righteous domesticity to the Olson household. Courtesy Library of Congress, LC-USZ62–54184.
Public fascination, of course, centered on Amanda Olson. The Herald was sympathetic from the start, describing her appearance at the bail hearing as composed and collected, but showing strain. Olson was dressed, the paper reported, “very neatly, but plainly, in a dark green cloth dress . . . , a stylish straw hat, black kid gloves and a very heavy blue veil, which she kept down over her face all the time she was in court.” 20 In this description, as in most others, it is important to note the way in which Olson was characterized as “neat” and “stylish”—or in other words, respectable. She was repeatedly depicted as a decent, reputable young woman, and this image was crucial in creating public sympathy and granting immediate credence to her allegations.
The Deseret News was even more overtly sympathetic, drawing on a commonly used discourse of the period in which physical features were believed to reveal character:
Olson’s remarkable self-possession would again be noted during the trial.
The other characters in the drama were interviewed and appraised. Hart, Hall’s walking companion when he was shot, spoke to reporters shortly after the murder. The Tribune described her as “a widow of about 38, from whom death has taken children as well as husband” and as a “a plain, though a bright, and at times engaging woman.” 22 When told by the reporter that Olson said she had shot Hall because he betrayed her, Hart’s initial reaction was skeptical: “‘I don’t believe a word of that,” she insisted. “I don’t believe he ever wronged her. You can say that I knew Mr. Hall to be an honorable gentleman in any respect, and that he always treated me as such.” 23 As the Tribune reporter put it, “Mrs. Hart gave the deceased a way-up character.” 24
At the inquest the next day, Hart colored her recital of the shooting with a few of her own observations. “I have known Miss Olson for eighteen years,” she said, “and I have never seen such an expression in her eyes as I did when we passed her. She looked devilish.” Hart also testified repeatedly that after shooting Hall, Olson had brandished the gun at her and said, “I will serve you the same.” 25 Hart’s characterization of Olson’s appearance was not likely meant to be sympathetic; she was clearly traumatized and even angry at what had occurred. But as it read in the newspapers, her description of Olson’s crazed manner reinforced the testimony of the police officers and other witnesses, who all insisted that Olson had not appeared sane— further anticipating the insanity defense.
Meanwhile, Olson’s letter, which was published in the same article with the report of Hart’s testimony, seemed to impugn Hart’s character. Recounting that the older woman had introduced her to Hall, Olson wrote, “I did not know that they had plotted any harm against me. I trusted her as a friend and him as a gentleman, and she cannot say that I flirted with or gave him any cause to increase his thoughts to me . . . but nevertheless she became jealous and told me not to come over anymore, for she was afraid that Mr. Hall would fall in love with me.” 26 Moreover, there was a damning detail in Hart’s cross-examination testimony to Olson’s attorney, as reported in the Herald: “Hall went east in November last, and five months ago she went east with his children. They all returned to this city and went to [Hart’s] house to live.” 27
The fact that Hart had taken Hall’s children and spent five months with him before returning to Salt Lake City, where they took up residence together, was certainly suggestive. The newspapers did not remark on the implications of this fact, but readers would have caught its significance and read Olson’s later testimony that Hall had called Hart his “mistress” as confirmation of the initial implications. Without overtly saying so, the newspapers represented Ann Hart as the scheming, immoral foil to Amanda Olson: or, perhaps more accurately, they allowed Olson’s characterization of Hart to stand. When Hart testified as the star witness for the prosecution, the Tribune summed up her performance in terms we might now call snarky: “She tripped smilingly to the stand, but when she left it the smile had given place to a frown.” 28 Powers, in cross-examining Hart, “took the witness in hand” and tried to cast her credibility into question. While Hart “steadily adhered to her story,” the reporter thought Powers had the best of the exchange. 29
In contrast to Hart, the press treated Olson’s parents sympathetically. They, too, were interviewed almost immediately after the shooting, and it was through her father’s statement, quoted above, that Amanda’s version of the story was first told. John Olson recounted the persistence of Hall in courting Amanda, his initial oppostition to an engagement followed by his reluctant permission, her breakdown after Hall left, and her subsequent “confession” of the seduction. “She has always been a quiet, affectionate girl,” John concluded. “It’s terrible to think that my first girl should have been seduced and that she should have shot her seducer.” He then described how, on his way home from work that evening, he had happened upon the scene of the murder and saw the dead body lying on the ground. “I asked what the trouble was and Mrs. Hart replied, ‘Amanda has done this.’ This was the first I knew of it, but in an instant the whole thing flashed upon me. I realized that my daughter had killed her betrayer, and then I fainted and was brought home.” 30
The Tribune described John Olson as “sick at heart and distressed”: “such a tale of perfidy and shame as he related, though it almost broke his heart.” He was also characterized by the same reporter as “an honest, hard-working old Saint,” meaning that he was a Latter-day Saint; this was not, we might note, a term that the Tribune often used in a positive tone. Charlotte Olson added the story of her daughter’s altercation with Hall in the restaurant two days before the murder. “The old people feel terribly at their beloved daughter’s disgrace and her terrible deed,” the Tribune summed up. “They are an honest old couple who evidently mean to live righteous lives, and the blow has fallen heavily on them.” 31
And what of Frank Hall himself? The newspapers did not seem to take much interest in him. The Tribune dispatched Hall’s life in a one-sentence paragraph: “The deceased was a stationary engineer by trade, but has long been a barkeeper at the Mint saloon where he is given an excellent character as a quiet, peaceable, industrious and temperate man.” 32 By contrast, in a brief notice about the murder, a Park City newspaper reported that Hall was a known character in that town. He “was pretty well known by old time Parkites,” according to this account, “and those who knew him best say this sort of business was an old trick of his.” 33 The evidence about Hall, such as it was, presented contradictory accounts, and that seems to have been the extent of the newspapers’ investigation.
In the days following the murder, the papers reported on the inquest and arraignment. 34 By this time, Olson had already retained a lawyer— and not just any lawyer. There is no comment about how a working-class girl came to be represented by Judge Orlando W. Powers, but in Powers, Olson found an able defender indeed. Given Powers’s later career, it is likely that the Olson affair was important in establishing his reputation and expertise in defending high-profile murder cases.
Powers was born in New York in 1850 and attended the University of Michigan Law School as a young man, graduating in 1871. In 1885, he was nominated by President Grover Cleveland as an associate justice of Utah and as judge of the First District, based in Ogden. Pending the Senate confirmation process in Washington, Powers took his seat in Utah just a few weeks later, and almost immediately found himself embroiled in the escalating anti-polygamy crusade and other complex Utah cases, including the Bullion-Beck mining case. 35 During the course of that trial, political opposition to Powers mounted, and in the spring of 1886, exhausted both personally and financially, he requested the president to withdraw his name from nomination and stepped down from the Utah bench in August of that year. While not a political success, this brief interlude afforded him something of great value that he used to advantage for the rest of his life: the title of “judge.”
Powers went back to Michigan briefly but returned to Salt Lake City in 1887 and established his legal practice. He also threw himself into local politics and was instrumental in the momentous victory of the non-Mormon Liberal Party in Salt Lake City elections early in 1890. Powers built an extensive practice in Utah and the West. He was in demand nationally and acted as a defense attorney in several high-profile cases. In 1913, a profile of Powers reported that he had been involved in defending and prosecuting over seventy murder cases. 36 His success was attributed to his deep knowledge of the law and his gift of “holding his listeners spellbound under the power of his eloquence”—qualities that were thought to have been masterfully displayed in the Olson case. 37
There is no mention, in the newspaper reports or in Powers’s surviving papers, of whether Powers had previously defended a case as sensational as the Olson murder trial; this case may well have helped to set a pattern in his career, setting important precedents in his strategy and oratory. Certainly his victory in this trial contributed to his being retained as defense counsel in a high-profile Nebraska case just two years later. There, he successfully defended a man who had killed a prominent Lincoln banker for having an affair with his wife, hinging his argument on the “sanctity of the American home” with an address to the jury that many considered his masterpiece. It was reprinted alongside a lengthy article reporting his death in 1914. 38
Even more sensational was Powers’s successful 1907 defense of Annie Bradley in the murder of Arthur Brown, one of Utah’s first senators. The Bradley case bore unmistakable resemblance to the Olson murder. Brown, who was called “the Gentile polygamist,” had engaged in a long affair with Bradley, stringing her along with promises that he would divorce his wife and then refusing to follow through after his wife died. Desperate, Bradley shot Brown; he died a few days later. Just as in the Olson case, Powers mounted a defense on the basis of temporary insanity, and again, as in the prior trial, the defendant was acquitted by the jury. 39 The case received much national attention, with one New York paper calling his closing argument a “tear-compelling address” and “an engulfing, overwhelming wave of tremendous earnestness.” 40 In the Bradley defense, Powers employed an oratorical flourish that, if it did not originate in the Olson case, certainly echoed his arguments in it: “Sometimes the bullet from a pistol held by a tender hand becomes the thunderbolt of God to manifest His power.” 41
Amanda Olson was not, by far, the first nineteenth-century American woman to be put on trial for murdering a man. In his study of women murderers in turn-of-the-century Chicago, Jeffrey S. Adler found that while the number of homicides committed by women was relatively small as compared to those perpetrated by men (never more than 10 percent), it did grow during this period. Moreover, homicide by women overwhelmingly followed certain patterns. First and foremost, women killed people close to them: relatives and lovers, simply put. Adler also found that women murderers were most often motivated by “deep emotional attachments.” Most killings by women were premeditated, and in their statements about their crimes, some women “anticipated the arguments that they would offer to policemen, judges, and juries when planning the murder of their lover.” All of these elements are found in Olson’s crime. 42
Adler attributes the rise in female-perpetrated homicides to wives’ newfound insistence on the right to defend themselves against abusive husbands, justifying their actions by invoking an “unwritten law”: “The new unwritten law gave a woman the right to use lethal force in resisting an abusive husband.” 43 If she could establish a history of domestic violence on the part of her husband, the woman was legally justified in killing him, as the argument went, and it was successful before juries. This “new” unwritten law was an extension of the “old” one: namely that a man was justified in killing another man who had sexually violated his wife, daughter, or sister. 44 Both of these “unwritten laws” came into play in seduction-murder cases such as Olson’s, and there were many throughout the century. Just as Chicago prosecutors claimed that a woman could not be convicted for killing an abusive husband, so Powers, in his defense of Olson, reminded the jury that “in the history of American jurisprudence there never yet has been a girl convicted of killing her seducer.” 45
Powers’s claim cannot be easily corroborated, but it is important primarily for expressing popular perception, and Powers knew that this case was all about public perception. Indeed, the difficulty of seating a jury showed just how formidable public opinion was going to be. The trial opened Thursday, December 4, 1890, in the Third District Court, with Judge Charles S. Zane presiding. Both attorneys conducted “far-reaching and exhaustive” questioning of potential jurors; their questions revealed their prospective arguments in the trial. 46 Powers asked the men whether they were willing to render a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. The prosecutor, Charles S. Varian, asked whether the potential jurors were oppposed to the death penalty generally and specifically whether they would hesitate to sentence a woman to death.
Jury selection was complicated by several factors. One was the publicity that had already been given to the murder. Several potential jurors admitted that they had already formed an opinion about the case from reading the papers; others acknowledged that their views were founded both on what they had read and their opinion of “such cases” generally: meaning, presumably, that they were predisposed to consider a wronged woman justified in striking back against a seducer. The other complicating factor was the gender of the defendant. One potential juror said that “he had scruples which might prevent him from bringing in a verdict of guilty in a capital case where the defendant was a woman,” and several men said they opposed the death penalty in any case. Such scruples resulted in the dismissal of several potential jurors, although others professed that they did not object to capital punishment and would make no distinction based on sex. A third issue, which probably overlapped with the other two, was the argument of insanity. Most men who stated an opinion did not oppose the insanity defense. Interestingly, while the connection between gender and capital punishment was central, no one—attorneys or jurors, judge or reporters—made any comment about gender and insanity. 47
Publicity of the trial became an issue as the jury selection proceeded. One of the potential jurors, echoing the comments of others, said “that if the newspaper reports of the proceedings at the coroner’s inquest were correct— then he had a fixed opinion.” Moreover, he asserted, it would take “considerable evidence” to change his mind. At this point Varian, clearly exasperated, pointed out to Judge Zane that a “statement of the facts of the case” had appeared in the morning’s papers. The judge responded by asking who the reporters were, forcefully declaring, “A reporter ought to have intelligence enough to know that he should not obstruct justice by trying to get men to commit themselves. It is an improper attempt to influence persons who may be called to act as jurors.” 48 After a testy exchange between the judge and both attorneys, Zane demanded that the reporters for the Tribune and the Herald answer questions about their reporting. Both maintained that they were simply doing their jobs and that they had not published anything beyond what was standard practice in other cases. Powers made comments supporting the reporters, which enraged Varian, and bickering between the two lawyers ensued. Zane insisted that it was wrong to publish detailed facts of a case in trial but finally conceded. “Well, I will let it pass this time, but if such a thing as this occurs again I shall deal with the reporter very severely. I will not have the administration of public justice delayed in this way.” In response the Herald sniffed, “Is this Russia?” 49
The truth was that the papers wielded enormous influence in shaping public opinion, and reporters knew that interest in the case was running high. The newspapers made a point each day of remarking on the size of the crowd in the courtroom and the attendance of women at the trial, which they called a “spectacle.” 50
Interest was of course centered on Olson herself. Zane’s objections to the media coverage of the trial probably referred, at least in part, to the Tribune’s description of Olson as she entered the courtroom on the first day of the trial: as a sad and self-controlled young woman, dressed in “heavy mourning” with “her whole demeanor showing that she was fully alive to the great peril she is in.” Olson had once appeared “as the very embodiment of health and beauty. To-day she is a physical wreck, and whether she is guilty or not guilty of the premeditated murder of Frank Hall, it must indeed be a heart of stone that will not give one throb of pity for the unfortunate prisoner.” 51 The Deseret News, meanwhile, noted that Olson “preserved a strict silence, not even exchanging a passing word with her mother, who seems to realize keenly the sad and trying position in which her daughter is placed.” 52
Once the jury had been seated, the trial began in earnest. Opening statements and testimony occupied three days; closing statements took two more days, with the verdict being rendered almost immediately thereafter. Both the prosecution and the defense presented their cases in relatively simple terms, both affirming the same fundamental fact: Amanda Olson had killed Frank Hall. In the prosecution’s version, she had done it calmly, deliberately, and with premeditation. According to the defense, she had lost her mind and acted in a state of insanity because of the suffering Hall had inflicted upon her. The newspaper coverage, not surprisingly, was heavily weighted toward the defense.
Prosecutor Varian seems to have had little strategy other than showing that Olson had committed the killing. In spite of having seated a jury that had affirmed its willingness to render an impartial verdict, he betrayed an awareness that he was facing long odds in securing a conviction. As the Deseret News reported it, Varian implored the jury to act impartially, based on the evidence presented to them and not on the swirl of information already out in the community. 53
Judge Charles S. Zane (top), who presided over Amanda Olson’s case, and the prosecuting and defending attorneys, Charles S. Varian (center) and Orlando W. Powers (bottom. Utah State Historical Society, photograph nos. 14337, 20342, 13313.
From several people who had been on the street or in the police station the night of the murder, Varian elicited brief testimony establishing that Olson had committed the killing. W. A. Stanton, chief of the fire department, told of arriving at the murder scene by chance shortly after the shooting and then sending for the doctor; Captain Lange of the Salt Lake City Police Department recounted Olson’s sudden entrance into the station, handing over her gun and the letter and stating that she had shot her betrayer. The gun store owner testified that Olson had purchased the pistol at about noon; one of his employees affirmed that she had returned to have the trigger spring repaired. Ann Hart gave her eyewitness account of having been walking along with Hall when she heard the gunshot, saw Hall drop to the ground, and saw Olson brandishing the pistol in her direction, saying “I will serve you the same.” 54
Powers took full advantage of his cross-examination, and most of the prosecution’s witnesses proceeded to bolster the defense’s case of insanity. She had looked “very wild,” said the fire chief, “and I thought she was out of her mind.” The police officer recalled that Olson had had “a look in her eyes which attracted my attention,” and she had “walked about the room in an agitated manner and talked incoherently.” Hart said, “There was a devilish look in her eyes, such a look as I had never seen there in my life.” Only the gun store owner maintained that Olson had been “cool and deliberate” and there had been nothing unusual in her manner. 55 In the midst of these testimonies, Varian had Olson’s letter read into evidence. He must have seen this document as the conclusive piece of evidence proving the murder to have been deliberate and premeditated, but its impact was likely lost in between affirmations of Olson’s wild and insane appearance.
At this point, the defense stepped forward. Having deferred his opening statement until after the prosecution presented its witnesses, Powers occupied the remainder of this day with his overview of the case. He began with a dramatic assertion that he would “make no contention against the fact that Amanda Olson killed Frank Hall.” Instead, the defense would show that “at the time the pistol was discharged, Miss Olson was not responsible, morally or legally, for the act.” 56 This strategy depended entirely on creating sympathy for Olson. Amanda Olson was “a modest, shy, virtuous girl,” he said. “She had never had a lover, and aided her father in her support by her work daily.” She had not enjoyed educational advantages but was a happy, social young woman, “the light of her home.” By contrast, Hall was a perfidious villain. Powers wasted no time in employing the time-honored strategy of putting the victim on trial by representing Hall as the well-known character type of the seducer. He was “an experienced man of the world” who set about to win Olson’s love by taking advantage of her youth and inexperience, leading her on with promises that he would get a divorce and securing her promise that she would marry him. “She had given to him her whole heart and soul,” Powers summarized, “and the man knew it.” 57
Powers described the alleged rape and then narrated Olson’s descent into madness. “Miss Olson changed from a gay, light-hearted girl, to a melancholy and sad-hearted person. Then her health failed her and she was unable to go to her work regularly. Her whole physical and mental nature changed, and she became a victim of melancholia, a type of insanity.” 58 After the ill-fated encounter with Hall in the restaurant, Olson further declined into madness and became suddenly “possessed” (a word he repeated several times) with the idea of buying a gun when she went downtown with her mother: “From that moment she was irresponsible, although she became cool, calm, and collected.” The fateful encounter with Hall and Hart on C Street was entirely unplanned. In that moment Olson’s mind was a blank; after the shooting she could only “jabber incoherently.” The witnesses for the defense would testify to the facts as he had related them, he promised, and it would be proved “to the satisfaction of the jury that the accused was insane at the time of committing the deed.” 59 The trial then adjourned until the next day.
The second day of testimony, December 6, was eventful and dramatic; it also laid bare the central issues at stake in the case. It was a Saturday, and an “eager throng of people” attempted to get in to the courtroom. Zane strictly enforced the seating capacity of the building, and scores of people were turned away. 60 The day’s proceedings centered on the defense’s two key witnesses: John Olson, the defendant’s father, and Amanda herself.
We should note, again, that any violation of a daughter’s virtue would have been seen as a crime against her father in common nineteenth-century thinking, something of which everyone in the courtroom was well aware. Against this backdrop, John Olson’s testimony worked to elicit sympathy for Amanda and her family and to bolster the insanity defense. Prompted by Powers, Olson added some new information: he had an uncle in Sweden who had died insane. “I saw him when I was twelve years old and knew he was crazy,” he remembered. 61 The prosecution did not pick up on this line of testimony in cross-examination, and it was passed over quickly, but it could have added a significant dimension to the defense by playing into popular notions that insanity could be inherited.
Olson’s most dramatic description of his daughter’s mental state came as he related the events of the days immediately preceding the murder. “On the Saturday preceding the shooting she was not up when I went to work, and when I returned home I found her in bed,” he recalled. “She was lying on her back with her eyes wide open and staring. I called to her, but could get no response. I felt of her pulse and found it was very weak.” After Amanda’s parents induced her to tell them about the seduction, John said that she became “particularly low-spirited” and talked about suicide. 62 Such behavior would have been seen as consistent with an unstable mental state.
John Olson’s testimony, as reported in the papers, reveals some ambiguity about the alleged rape. According to the Herald, he recalled: “On Sunday she was crying and said, ‘Oh, that cruel man.” I tried to comfort her, and said, ‘Amanda, let us thank God he did nothing wrong with you.’ At this she began to cry and became agitated, so that I found she had been keeping something back, and finally asked her if Hall had seduced her. She replied that he had.” 63 The Deseret News’s account was a bit more detailed: “She fainted twice. I tried to comfort her and said ‘Thank God he has done nothing bad to you,’ but she answered that he had. I then said to her: ‘Tell it square out. Did that man seduce you?’ She replied, ‘Yes, he did,’ and began to hollo loudly. She was greatly excited, but I promised to forgive her if she would keep calm. She said, ‘Life to me is nothing,’ and spoke twice of committing suicide.” 64
This aspect of the account introduces significant ambiguity regarding what really happened between Frank Hall and Amanda Olson. In his initial interview with reporters, John Olson said that Hall had “brutally outraged” his daughter, employing a euphemism for rape. 65 Amanda herself, in her testimony on the witness stand, characterized Hall’s actions as an “assault,” and this was the same term used repeatedly by Powers. 66 Unquestionably these indirect expressions were meant to suggest that she had been raped.
And yet Olson’s father said that he would “forgive” her. Would he have thought it necessary to “forgive” her for being the victim of a rape? Possibly. Nineteenth-century mores often held women responsible for men’s sexual behavior, refusing to recognize the many forms coercion might take short of actual violence. At the same time, Mr. Olson’s use of the word seduction maintained a salacious uncertainty. That there had been sexual intercourse was absolutely clear. But had Olson been forced or had she acquiesced? This was the tantalizing question expressed in seduction. In the thinking of Victorian moralists, a pure girl such as Olson would not, by definition, agree to sex outside of marriage. Therefore, if sex had occurred, the explanation had to be located somewhere besides the girl’s agency. Moreover, for an otherwise upright girl such as Olson was supposed to be, “seduction” might provide crucial cover in salvaging her reputation and self-regard if she had yielded to persuasion. Because of the mental and rhetorical conventions that made it all but impossible for anyone to openly discuss in detail what had—or had not—occurred, the word seduction, with all its unexamined assumptions and implications, worked its own magic.
Nonetheless, there is reason to question what really happened. Perhaps signficantly, Olson did not directly mention the alleged rape in the letter she gave the police. “He soon carried out his evil purpose to me and blighted my life with his smooth tongue,” she wrote. “He gained my promise to keep quiet and would marry me.” Here she attributes the seduction to his “smooth tongue,” which at least suggests she may have yielded to his persuasions rather than having been forced. In this scenario, Hall persuaded Olson to engage in sex with him based on a promise that he would marry her. When he broke that promise—“betrayed” her, as she put it in her letter—it drove her to despair and desperation.
While she did describe the encounter, both to her parents and in the trial, as an assault, her account of the event is difficult to interpret.
This is how she described it in her testimony: “While we were sitting on the lounge he threw a handkerchief over my mouth and assaulted me. I struggled and soon became unconscious. When I recovered he was sitting by my side, chaffing my hands.” 67
Given the moral and rhetorical conventions of the time, it would have been next to impossible for a respectable woman to publicly describe a sexual encounter in any detail, and from our current vantage point we can never fully understand the indirect and euphemistic language used by all parties in this case. Still, Olson’s story raises many questions. What does she mean by saying she “struggled”? How long was she unconscious? For that matter, what did she mean by “unconscious”? Given the physicality required to accomplish a sexual assault— on a sofa, in a room next to the one in which the victim’s parents were sleeping—it seems unlikely that Olson would have remained “unconscious” for the duration or that such an act could have been accomplished without at least some degree of cooperation. On its face, Amanda Olson’s own story seems implausible.
But this implausibility is exactly the problem. Prosecuting attorney Critchlow inadvertently identified the conundrum at the heart of the case in his closing statement. He argued, as reported by the Herald:
Critchlow was right. Had Olson not shot Hall but instead brought charges of rape against him, her case would not have stood a chance. She would have found herself on trial either way. Just as the defense in the murder case had put the victim—Frank Hall—on trial, portraying him as a villain who deserved to die, so the prosecution in a rape case (if the authorities had even agreed to press charges) would have tried the victim—Amanda Olson—portraying her, we can easily imagine, as a seductress, a liar, or worse. Olson herself knew this reality all too well. When she first told her parents that Hall had violated her, John Olson told her to press charges against him. Her response was indignant: “Yes, the law will give him a few months, and then he can get out and laugh at me.” 69 Even this scenario was optimistic, since it assumed that the law would take her charges seriously, when it was more likely that her allegations would have been summarily “disposed of” as Critchlow said.
Whatever the other implications of John Olson’s testimony, Powers’s overriding objective in court that day was to establish the insanity defense for Amanda Olson. Her father’s account of an insane uncle and his daughter’s mental state certainly helped with that, as did most of the other witnesses. Charlotte Olson corroborated her husband’s account. She had seen her daughter become low spirited, unable to work, and uncharacteristically violent in her temper. Between the encounter at the restaurant and the day of the shooting, Amanda had become “wild and distracted.” Mrs. Olson had no idea her daughter was going to buy a gun. She confirmed that Amanda had said, “Either he must die or I.” 70 Other defense witnesses— including a twelve year-old messenger boy, the manager of the restaurant, and three people who had been at the murder scene—all bolstered the insanity defense. 71
Having thus set the scene, Powers next announced that Olson herself would testify on her own behalf. All day so far, she had sat impassive, “her eyes bent on the table before which she was seated,” veiled but appearing less nervous than previously. 72 The Tribune offered a colorful explanation for her “marvelous” self-control, suggesting that it “may be attributed to the phlegmatic temperament so characteristic of the Swedish race.” 73
By contrast to Powers’s dramatic rhetoric and the parental heartbreak the jury had already heard, Olson’s testimony, at least as characterized by the newspapers, was “straight-forward,” almost emotionless. 74 She recounted in some detail the development of her relationship with Hall, the fateful Saturday night visit during which he “outraged” her, the subsequent decline of her health, and his callous treatment of her after his return. “During his visits I got to love him with all my heart, and told him so,” she coolly recalled. “He then asked me to promise to marry him within one year, and I did so, giving him my full trust and confidence. Up to the time of his last visit, he acted like a perfect gentleman and at all times expressed great affection for me.” 75
Olson did not offer much by way of explanation for her actions. “I cannot say what induced me to do this,” she said regarding the gun purchase. “I don’t know,” she answered when Powers asked her why she shot Hall. “I cannot say why I waited on the corner of First street for Hall and Mrs. Hart to come up,” she insisted during cross-examination. “I cannot say that I had any purpose at the time.” 76
It is difficult to tell whether Olson’s unemotional demeanor was a deliberate strategy of the defense, a reflection of her own character, or a function of how the story was shaped by the reporters. To this latter point, it is worth noting that the newspaper accounts all fall silent on Critchlow’s cross-examination. They report that it lasted over an hour-and-a-half, and was “of the most thorough and searching kind. Every detail connected with the tragedy was gone into.” Instead of the detailed account presented so far, however, we learn only that “Miss Olson stuck to her story.” 77
This abrupt ellison of Olson’s words reminds us that we are reading a story—accounts written by reporters who had a definite point of view, and perhaps an agenda, in shaping their articles. Heretofore, they had given detailed accounts of each witness’s testimony or had at least summarized its important aspects. Why fall silent on Olson’s “thorough and searching” cross-examination? It could have been a simple matter of space. If Olson did, indeed, stick to her story, perhaps nothing new or significant was added. Perhaps they did not like Critchlow’s line of questioning and chose to leave out anything that might cast doubt on the version of Olson’s story the papers had already accepted as credible. At the very least, this omission meant that a significant voice of doubt in the case was not given a public hearing.
Olson’s telling of her own story was a high point of interest for the defense, but when she finished Powers still had some distance to go in presenting his case. For the rest of the day, and again when the trial resumed on Monday, December 8, he called a number of witnesses to further substantiate the claim of insanity. One of Olson’s friends who had encountered her shortly after the shooting, the clerk of the police court, two newspaper reporters, the wife of the jailor, the assistant city attorney: all testified in succession that Olson had not appeared to be sane when they saw her in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Major W. A. Stanton, chief of the fire department and neighbor to the Olsons, served as a character witness, as did a line of neighbors, friends, and acquaintances, including Olson’s boss at the knitting factory. In all, ten witnesses affirmed that Amanda Olson’s “reputation for peace and quiet [had] always been good.” 78
Powers also called a few expert witnesses, including two physicians, to testify about the central claim of the defense that Olson was insane when she shot Hall. To these professionals, Powers set out a lengthy “hypothetical question” in which he essentially repeated (with none of the dramatic flourishes missing) the defense’s version of the case. Dr. J. F. Hamilton testified that in such a case the girl was “clearly” suffering from melancholia. “At the time the shot was fired, was or was not this girl actuated by an uncontrollable impulse?” Powers asked. “I would not consider her responsible for her actions,” Hamilton replied. He also affirmed that melancholia arose “from a disarrangement of the menstrual functions.” 79
Prosecutor Varian was not about to let Powers’s expert witness go unchallenged. He first sought to cast doubt on the classification of Olson as insane. “Melancholia is a type of insanity most easily feigned, is it not?” he asked Hamilton. “All forms of insanity are easily feigned,” Hamilton replied. “As to melancholia, is it not very difficult to distinguish the real from the counterfeit?” Varian continued. “There may be masked cases, in certain forms and conditions,” Hamilton answered evasively. Varian asked the doctor whether he considered Olson sane when she testified in her own defense; Powers objected that they were not asserting that Olson was insane at the present time, only at the time of the shooting. 80
After the noon recess, Varian resumed his cross-examination of the medical professionals by posing his own hypothetical question in which he essentially laid out the prosecution’s case. A young woman, “consumed by jealousy, believing that another woman had stolen her lover away,” brooded over the “alleged wrongs until she could stand it no longer.” She determined at last to have revenge and was “in full possession of her mental faculties” up to the very moment she fired the gun. If those facts were true, Varian asked Hamilton, “do you not think that such an act would be that of a responsible and sane person?” “I think so, if the facts should be as you have stated them,” Hamilton replied, no doubt confident that his previous testimony had already established that Olson was not in fact “in full possession of all her mental faculties” at the time of the killing. 81 Powers redirected, and Dr. Hamilton added that “melancholia was a disease insidious in its advances, and the victim was able to carry out homicidal or suicidal plans with cunning and deliberation.” 82 Another doctor, Foster, affirmed that “impulsive insanity” was a credible characterization of the girl’s actions in Powers’s hypothetical. 83 The insanity defense was complete.
The penultimate day of the trial, December 9, saw the prosecution and the defense wrap up the case with resounding final arguments. On behalf of the prosecution, Critchlow began by acknowledging that public opinion ran heavily in Olson’s favor. The prosecution stands alone, he declared. 84 He set forth the theory of jealousy that had already been presented in the prosecution’s case. Perhaps attempting to balance the sympathy scales, he pointed out that Hall, the victim, had no voice in these proceedings and that his two young children had been left “worse than fatherless.” For his part, Critchlow dramatically described Olson’s motivation— again invoking popular narratives: “The whole thing was a tale of jealousy and revenge.” Was Olson insane, afflicted with “impulsive, emotional, melancholia and all that”? No. “The girl saw before her the two roads she must follow, either murder or suicide, and calmly and deliberately she made up her mind that Frank Hall must die.” 85
As with other lawyers up against women who had invoked the “new unwritten law,” the prosecution insisted that if men could simply be shot down in the streets in this way, America’s cities and towns would soon be depopulated. 86 As mentioned earlier, the prosecution made a point of questioning whether a rape had actually occurred that night in the Olsons’ home and dismissed outright her account of the attempted assault at the restaurant. As Critchlow put it,
In moments such as this, the Olson case demonstrates well the conundrum at the intersection of nineteenth-century conventions regarding sex, rape, justice, and gender. A woman who engaged in extramarital sex was considered “ruined” for life and could only hope that her partner would marry her and preserve her reputation—even if the sexual relations had not been consensual. Olson had become despondent not only because she had been raped, but because her “betrayer” then refused to marry her. But the prospects were no better if she tried to call it out for what it was and press charges for rape.
The Olson case, therefore, exposes two significant legal and social fault lines in nineteenth-century American society: rape and seduction. 88 Legally, there were laws on the books against rape, but socially those laws were very difficult to enforce; either way, the burden fell disproportionately on women. Men were granted a great deal of latitude for their sexual behavior, and the male-dominated justice system worked to preserve those privileges and protect men’s reputations. Women thus found theselves at severe legal disadvantage. Socially, too, the stigma attached to women over any kind of sexual irregularity—not to mention the resentment they would encounter for daring to disrupt the system of male privilege by making their abuse public—served to discourage them from seeking justice or bringing attention to even egregiously abusive situations. The sense that violation of a woman constituted a crime against her male guardian added another layer to the system, ultimately rendering women’s sexual victimization as a transaction between men. The ambiguity at the heart of the term seduction was part of this system. It acknowledged some kind of sexual impropriety but shifted agency from the man to the woman: whatever he might have done, she had yielded. In the worst cases, such as Olson’s might have been, seduction could be cover for rape. 89
As Critchlow all but acknowledged, most knew the terms of this conundrum. It was not fair: “justice” was not going to be served no matter the outcome. Attempts had been made throughout the century to introduce anti-seduction legislation, but those efforts went nowhere. Adultery laws, which were already on the books, tended to punish both parties. For their part, women’s rights activists argued that women needed less “protection” and more opportunity—to become educated, to work, to be seen as full human beings. It would be almost another century before those arguments gained much traction.
Instead, there seems to have been an unspoken gentlemen’s agreement—another unwritten law, perhaps—that when the occasional desperate woman could not reconcile herself to the situation and acted out, it would be called insanity and she would be let go. Trials such as Olson’s served as an occasion for high-minded men to make eloquent speeches denouncing cads and invoking higher definitions of justice to acquit the wronged woman. (It was not de rigeur, of course, to point out that many of those cads were otherwise indistinguishable from the men making the speeches.) Meanwhile, those speeches and those trials preserved the status quo. As one modern writer aptly put it, “The public scapegoating of the seducer seemed to please almost everyone, while changing nothing.” 90
The last scenes of the Olson trial played out with more drama, more speeches. Powers gave a three-hour closing statement that was universally lauded as a masterpiece. Even the habitually sarcastic Tribune reporter was enthralled: “At the conclusion of his address the pent-up enthusiasm of the audience could no longer brook restraint, and hearty applause followed.” 91 At this outburst, Judge Zane immediately called the room to order. One man who had applauded was brought before the bench and issued a fine; the crowd promptly contributed the amount on his behalf. 92
Finally, on the morning of December 10—after final arguments from the prosecution, instructions from Zane, and a scant thirty-five minutes of deliberation—the jury arrived at its verdict: not guilty. 93 And then, pandemonium. “The feelings of the immense crowd of spectators were expressed by a loud cheer, which was followed by a burst of enthusiastic applause.” 94 Olson herself was deluged with “warm congratulations” that continued as she and her family made their way out of the courtroom and onto the street where a crowd awaited the news. When the verdict was read, according to the Deseret News, Olson “seemed overcome with thankfulness.” At the same time, “tears of joy coursed down the cheeks of her parents, whose mental anxiety during the trial has been great.” 95
“Thus ended one of the most exciting cases that has probably ever come within the jurisdiction of the Third District Court,” concluded the Deseret News. “There are none who will regret the action of the jury save those who, had they their just deserts, would have met the same fate as Frank Hall,” opined the Herald. Likewise, the Ogden Standard published an editorial summarizing popular opinion of the verdict: “Amanda Olson goes forth from the prisoner’s dock not only a free woman but one who is fully vindicated. . . . The theory of the defense, we believe, counted for nothing; she was acquitted on general principles.” 96
Little is known about what became of Olson after her sensational trial. The Herald had reported, without citing a source, that “her relatives in the old country are quite wealthy, and it is understood that her parents will send her on a visit to them shortly.” 97 While that trip might have happened, we can see that Olson lived at her parents’ house and worked as a dressmaker until at least 1893. 98
Her weeks in the spotlight, during the fall of 1890, meanwhile, revealed much about Utah and, to be sure, American, culture. Well did the Standard report Olson was aquitted on “general principles”: principles of sexual double standards, of an “unwritten law” (new or otherwise) that supposedly protected female virtue, and of the double bind in which women found themselves in matters of rape, seduction, and justice. So too did the Olson trial show the key role of newspapers in shaping public opinion. The local press—with their initial reports, editorials, unequal reporting of testimony, and heartrending portrayals of the Olson family—did much to create sympathy for the trial’s defendant. Amanda Olson herself, meanwhile, remained ultimately enigmatic, obscured behind the layers of public opinion, newspaper reporting, and legal wrangling between men. Those forces had served to free her, but they could not—regardless of the verdict and regardless of what actually happened to drive her to that corner, gun in hand—give her justice.
Notes
1. The author wishes to thank Holly George for her substantial help in bringing this article to publication. The newspapers are consistently inconsistent in spelling Amanda’s surname as either Olson or Olsen. Amanda Olson’s father stated that he was born in Sweden, which makes Olson the more likely spelling. “The Defense,” Deseret Evening News, December 6, 1890, 5.
2. R. L. Polk Salt Lake City Directory (Salt Lake City: R. L. Polk, 1890).
3. “Miss Olsen’s Examination,” Deseret Weekly, October
4. Bond, October 4, 1890, reel 7, box 4, fd. 10, Case 688, Third District Court Territorial Criminal Case Files, Series 6836, Utah State Archives and Record Service, Salt Lake City, Utah (hereafter Case 688). The other two men who posted bail were P. W. Madsen, a Salt Lake City businessman, and Andrew Peterson, who worked at Sandberg Furniture Company with Amanda Olson’s father. “The Second Degree,” Salt Lake Herald, October 5, 1890, 8.
5. Verdict, reel 7, box 4, fd. 10, Case 688. “Acquitted!” Salt Lake Herald, December 11, 1890, 8.
6. “Shot Her Seducer,” Deseret Weekly, October 11, 1890, 530.
7. “The Coroner’s Inquest,” Deseret Evening News, October 1, 1890, 3.
8. “Shot Her Seducer,” Salt Lake Herald, September 30, 1890, 8.
9. “The Shooting of F. C. Hall,” Salt Lake Tribune, October 1, 1890, 5. One news account lists Mrs. Olson’s name as “Charlotte,” which only partially matches the available census records. See “Her Version,” Salt Lake Herald, December 7, 1890, 8; 1870 United States Census, Salt Lake City Ward 10, Salt Lake, Utah Territory, roll M593 1611, page 610b, John Olson; 1880 United States Census, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, roll 1337, page 171a, enumeration district 50, John Olson, both accessed September 30, 2020, ancestry.com.
10. “Shot Her Seducer,” Salt Lake Herald, September 30, 1890, 8.
11. “Her Version,” 8.
12. “Insanity Is the Defense,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 6, 1890, 5.
13. “Shot Her Seducer,” Salt Lake Herald, September 30, 1890, 8.
14. “Frank C. Hall Is Shot Dead,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 30, 1890, 5.
15. “Shot Her Seducer,” Deseret Weekly, October 11, 1890,
16. “Shot Her Seducer,” Salt Lake Herald, September 30, 1890, 8; “Frank C. Hall Is Shot Dead,” 5. Hall, of course, was shot in the head. Perhaps the Tribune’s headline writer got carried away.
17. “Shot Her Seducer,” Salt Lake Herald, September 30, 1890, 8.
18. “The Heroic Girl,” Salt Lake Tribune, October 1, 1890, 4.
19. “The Heroic Girl,” 4. Orlando Powers referred directly to Burns’s poem in describing the Olson home. “In the Olson Case,” Salt Lake Herald, December 14, 1890, 10. “Cotter’s Saturday Night” is widely available in print and online. See, for instance, The Cotter’s Saturday Night and Other Poems by Robert Burns (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1895), 13.
20. “The Second Degree,” Salt Lake Herald, October 5, 1890, 8.
21. “Miss Olsen’s Examination,” 533.
22. “Frank C. Hall Is Shot Dead,” 5.
23. “Shot Her Seducer,” Salt Lake Herald, September 30, 1890, 8.
24. “Frank C. Hall Is Shot Dead,” 5.
25. “The Hall Killing,” Salt Lake Herald, October 1, 1890, 8; “The Shooting Off [sic] F. C. Hall,” Salt Lake Tribune, October 1, 1890, 5.
26. “The Hall Killing,” 8.
27. “Held Without Bail,” Salt Lake Herald, 8.
28. “Insanity Is the Defense,” 5.
29. “Insanity Is the Defense,” 5.
30. “Shot Her Seducer,” Salt Lake Herald, September 30, 1890, 8.
31. “Frank C. Hall Is Shot Dead,” 5.
32. “Frank C. Hall Is Shot Dead,” 5.
33. “Park Float,” Park Record (Park City, UT), October 4,
34. The Herald and the Deseret News reported that Olson had been charged with second degree murder, but the Tribune said the charge was murder in the first degree. Apparently, the grand jury’s indictment was somewhat vague, since the degree of the murder charge later became a matter of debate between the two sides in the trial. Since Olson was put on trial for her life, it seems certain that the charge was first degree murder. “Amanda Olson’s Bonds,” Deseret News, October 6, 1890, 3; “Amanda Olson Arraigned,” Salt Lake Tribune, October 5, 1890, 5; “The Second Degree,” 8.
35. Portrait, Genealogical and Biographical Record of the State of Utah (Chicago: National Historical Record Co., 1902), 49.
36. History of the Bench and Bar of Utah (Salt Lake City: Interstate Press Association, 1913), 184.
37. Portrait, Genealogical and Biographical, 45.
38. “Judge Powers Dies Suddenly of Pneumonia,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 3, 1914, 5.
39. Linda Thatcher, “The ‘Gentile Polygamist’: Arthur Brown, Ex-Senator from Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 52, no. 3 (1984): 231–45.
40. Ada Patterson, writing in 1907 in the New York Journal, as quoted in “Judge Powers Dies Suddenly,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 3, 1914, 11.
41. Quoted in “Judge Powers Dies Suddenly,” 11.
42. Jeffrey S. Adler, “‘I Loved Joe, but I Had to Shoot Him’: Homicide by Women in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago,” Journal of Law and Criminology 92, no. 3/4 (2002): 871.
43. Adler, “‘I Loved Joe,’” 882.
44. See Kenneth L. Cannon II, “‘Mountain Common Law’: The Extralegal Punishment of Seducers in Early Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 51, no. 4 (1983): 308–327.
45. “In the Olson Case,” Salt Lake Herald, December 14, 1890, 10.
46. “On Trial for Her Life,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 5, 1890, 5.
47. “The Olson Trial,” Deseret Evening News, December 5, 1890; see also “The Olson Trial,” Deseret Evening News, December 4, 1890.
48. “The Olson Trial,” Deseret Evening News, December 5, 1890.
49. “The End Near,” Salt Lake Herald, December 6, 1890, 5.
50. “The End Near,” 5.
51. “On Trial for Her Life,” 5.
52. “The Olson Trial,” Deseret Evening News, December 5, 1890, 5.
53. “The Olson Trial,” Deseret Evening News, December 5, 1890, 5.
54. “Insanity Is the Defense,” 5.
55. “The End Near,” 5.
56. “The Defense,” 5.
57. “The Defense,” 5.
58. “The Defense,” 5.
59. “The Defense,” 5; see also, Witnesses Affidavit, November 23, 1890, reel 7, box 4, fd. 10, Case 688.
60. “Amanda Olsen Testifies,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 7, 1890, 5.
61. “Her Version,” 8.
62. “Her Version,” 8.
63. “Her Version,” 8.
64. “The Defense,” 5; “Amanda Olsen Testifies,” 5.
65. “Shot Her Seducer,” Deseret Weekly, October 10, 1890, 530. A contemporary dictionary definition of “outrage” included “to violate; to commit an indecent assault upon (a female).” Webster’s International Dictionary of the English Language, Reference History Edition (Springfield, MA: G.&C. Merriam, 1907), s.v. “outrage.”
66. “Her Version,” 8.
67. “Her Version,” 8.
68. “Is Still On,” Salt Lake Herald, December 10, 1890.
69. “Frank C. Hall Is Shot Dead,” 5.
70. “The Defense,” 5.
71. “Her Version,” 8.
72. “Her Version,” 8.
73. “Amanda Olsen Testifies,” 5.
74. “Her Version,” 8.
75. “Her Version,” 8.
76. “Her Version,” 8.
77. “Her Version,” 8.
78. “The End Near,” 5.
79. “The Amanda Olson Trial,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 9, 1890.
80. “The Olson Trial,” Deseret News, December 8, 1890.
81. “The Amanda Olson Trial,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 9, 1890.
82. “The End Near,” 5.
83. “The End Near,” 5.
84. “Is Still On,” Salt Lake Herald, December 10, 1890, 5. Quotation re-worded. Newspaper reads “the prosecution stood alone.”
85. “Is Still On,” Salt Lake Herald, December 10, 1890, 5.
86. Adler, “‘I Loved Joe,’” 886–87.
87. “Nearing the Close,” Deseret News, December 9, 1890; see also “Not Guilty,” Deseret News, December 10, 1890, 5.
88. Ann Jones, Women Who Kill (New York: Holt, Rhinehart, and Winston, 1980), especially chapter 3.
89. Estelle B. Freedman, Redefining Rape (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), 43–47.
90. Jones, Women Who Kill, 152.
91. “The Olsen Trial Closing,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 10, 1890, 5.
92. “Not Guilty,” 5.
93. Requests, December 10, 1890, reel 7, box 4, fd. 10, Case 688, contains what appear to be Judge Zane’s instructions to the jury.
94. “Acquitted!” Salt Lake Herald, December 11, 1890, 8; see also, Verdict, reel 7, box 4, fd. 10, Case 688.
95. “Not Guilty,” 5.
96. “Miss Olsen’s Acquittal,” Ogden (UT) Daily Standard, December 12, 1890, 2.
97. “Acquitted!” 8.
98. R. L. Polk Salt Lake City Directory (Salt Lake City: R. L. Polk, 1893), 606.
