Ep 1 - Angelina Napolitano Part One

Episode Overview

In the inaugural episode of Rooted and Crime, hosts Lauryn Macdonald and Nima Hodoudi revisit the case that ignited Lauryn's true crime podcasting passion under her first podcast, Sepia Crimes. This is the story of Angelina Napolitano, and Italian immigrant mother living in Sault Sainte Marie, ON in 1911 under the constant threat of murder from her abusive husband. Once she had enough of his forceful requests for her to live a shameful life, she ended the life of her abuser. Listen as we explore Angelina's early life, the hardships she endured, and the events of April 1911 in part 1 of this episode.

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Special thanks to Lindsay Macdonald for recording and producing our intro and transition music.

Episode Transcript

Nima: [00:00:00] Rooted in Crime contains course language and mature themes such as violence and sexuality, which may not be suitable for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised.

Lauryn: Welcome to Rooted in Crime. I'm your host, Lauryn Macdonald and I'm Nima Hodoudi. And this is the podcast that uncovers the hidden stories of historical true crime through the lens of genealogy. Together we're going to look at historical criminal cases from around the world using a modern perspective to dig deep into the secrets of the past.

So Nima, before we dive into our first episode, I wanted to take a second for us to introduce ourselves. Now I'm both a true crime and history lover. I actually got into genealogy as a pretty young kid. My grandma introduced me to it. We loved looking at our family tree together. So when I was about 12 or 13, I started my ancestry account and just continued that.

Pretty much all through my life ever since. Yeah. Uh, really do love [00:01:00] history. I actually studied it for my undergrad, uh, focused primarily on Canadian history with a, a greater focus on migration and immigration history, and to really combine those loves of history and true crime. I actually released my first podcast, uh, Sepia Crimes back in October of 2020.

Now with that one, I wasn't quite happy with it, just cuz I did really wanna have a more conversational podcast. And that one was inspired by, you know, single storyteller narratives, like Canadian True Crime and, and those types of podcasts. So I kind of decided, you know, let's put this on the back burner and.

I'll come back to it one day and, you know, we've really come to love watching a lot of true crime documentaries and that sort of thing together. So just kind of seemed like a really great way to bring all of that together.

Yeah, big

Nima: time. Uh, I couldn't agree more, and for me, it actually started when I was younger, uh, watching shows like, you know, CSI Law and Order, um, Really, really big influence.

Uh, at one point I even wanted to [00:02:00] become a detective. Uh, of course that changed later on. Nonetheless, uh, I think the thing that actually strikes me the most is, you know, we do love watching True crime together, but watching how excited you get about it, um, and the route you take. To get to the answers that you want, um, is really what actually inspires me to want to do this with you.

So I'm excited.

Lauryn: Awesome. Yeah, it's, it's something I have so much fun doing, you know, reading up on these old cases and just starting to understand more of what life used to be like back way back in the day, understanding how people came to certain decisions, you know, why certain laws were in place. All of that is.

Really interesting to me. So I'm really excited to get to talk about a lot of that stuff. Yeah, me too. Now, with the case that we're gonna be covering today, it actually holds a pretty special place in my heart. Uh, it's actually the case that I covered from my very first episode of Sepia Crimes back in 2020.

Now, although this case wasn't a precedent setting case, it's still pretty fascinating insight into the changing attitudes towards violence towards women. With [00:03:00] this story, it is pretty tragic. Uh, it was widely covered at the time, but not much is widely known about the before and after of, you know, the crime, the trial, everything like that.

So that's what I really love to get into. And when I was doing the research initially, then there were, you know, certain documents that weren't available yet that I knew would be able to provide me with some information or. Hoped would be able to provide me with some information. Uh, the 1931 Census of Canada just came out, uh, that wasn't available back in 2020.

That just came out a couple weeks ago. Yeah. Uh, so it's things like that, that I wanted to come back to and be able to really expand upon the episode. I also did get a couple of minor details wrong when I covered that episode, which I came to find out as I was researching, uh, this case later on. Um, so I did wanna correct those, so I have corrected those for this episode for sure.

Now, as a bonus, uh, the original episode for this case is going to be available on our Patreon. So if you listeners would like to support us and listen to that [00:04:00] very first episode that's already live, so you can check us out at patreon.com/rooted in crime. So today we're going to be getting into the story of Angelina Napolitano.

Now, she was an Italian immigrant mother living in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. In 1911, she had a very abusive husband who essentially wanted her to turn to a life of shame in order to support their family when they were financially struggling. Now, after years of emotional and physical abuse, she couldn't take it anymore, and she essentially ended the life of her abuser.

So today, let's talk about Angelina. Let's do it.

So before we get into the events of the spring of 1911, we first need to talk about Angelina's early life. She was born on March 12th, 1882 on a [00:05:00] farm in Caserta, Italy, which is near Naples. To parents, Pellegrino and Victoria DiStefano. She married her husband, Pietro Napolitano at the age of 16. Now, no records or information really exists about the early days of their marriage.

It's safe to assume that they tried farming like her parents and many others in the area at the time, right? It's also safe to assume that they failed at farming because at this point, that is something that we're seeing across Italy. Italy is a very new country at this point, and so it had very high taxes imposed on its citizens, right, while also seeing farming conditions really deteriorating.

The soil's pretty exhausted and it's just not sustainable. Yeah, so massive immigration is happening to North and South America, especially along that eastern coast, and so Angelina and Pietro settle in New York City in 1901. Here they have their eldest son, Michael, who's born in 1904. Now with growing financial strain while living in New York [00:06:00] City, the family moved to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario for Pietro to be able to find better work. Okay. Sources do differ on when they actually came to Canada. From what I can see, it looks like they came sometime between 1904 and 1905, between having their first two children. And it looks like they had their eldest daughter, Amelia, in 1905 in Thessalon, Ontario, which is just east of Sault Ste. Marie Ontario.

And then later on they had their daughter Rafaella, uh, also called Pearl in 1906, and then their son, Pietro Jr. Or Peter was born in 1908. At this time, there's a growing Italian community in the Al Goma region of Ontario with Sault Ste. Marie being the major city center of that area. This area is on Robinson-Huron Treaty Territory, which is traditional territory of the Anishnaabeg.

It sits along the St. Mary's River, which divides Lakes Superior and Huron. So Sault Ste. Marie Ontario sits directly [00:07:00] across from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Okay. So since it's situated along all of those major waterways, it's a really ideal spot for immigration, especially at this time when the cost of living is so low and immigrants are able to come and find work pretty easily.

So this is exactly what the Napolitanos do. Now, Sault Ste. Marie today is home to about 75,000 people. However, at the time in 1911, the population was only about 16,400. Okay? So very different from the Sault Ste. Marie that people know today. Yeah, of course. The family first briefly settled at a small farmhouse that they purchased in Thessalon Ontario, which is, like I said, just east of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.

And this is before they moved to the little Italy neighborhood of Sault Ste. Marie, with a population of about 3000 Italian immigrants. Following the move from the us, Pietro really became obsessed with the idea of home ownership and eventually building his own house. They did have to sell the house in Thessalon due to growing debts and financial strain.

Okay. And after this point, it really drove that [00:08:00] obsession to a new level, right? During this time, Pietro was mainly working as a laborer in unskilled labor jobs. He wasn't really earning significantly at the time of his murder. In 1911, he was actually working at the Algoma Steel plant, which employed a lot of Italian men from the community in court proceedings.

Angelina later admitted that their relationship had been good up until the point where Pietro really got to this brink of his obsession, and at this time he also started to drink very heavily. Mm-hmm. At this point as well, he really will do anything that it takes to get that house and, and get the funds by any means necessary.

Yeah. In the early 20th century, Sault Ste. Marie's economy was heavily resource-based and most of the jobs were quite labor intensive, so it wasn't really appropriate for women under the standards of the time. So, So this meant that for someone like Angelina, you know, a mother of four young children under the age of seven, there weren't really any ways for her to conventionally contribute to her household income.

Yeah. So as a [00:09:00] result, you know, Pietro feeling the financial pressure, he feels Angelina really should start to contribute financially. So he asks her to become a prostitute. Wow. Angelina completely refused to do this. She did not wanna bring men into their house, despite what Pietro was saying. You know, he was asking her to bring these men into their home and charge them anywhere from two to $5 for various sex acts, which in today's dollars would be about 50 to $130.

Yeah, no, thank you. So really not much. Yeah. Ultimately, obviously with inflation, a hundred dollars today means. What a hundred dollars and 1914 money would be is, you know, so very different. Vastly, vastly different, but in any case, not a lot of money that he's asking for. A hundred percent. So she completely refuses.

Now, what he would do is come home from work in the evening and demand to see all the money that she made during the day. But of course, she wasn't making any money because she wasn't doing this. She, [00:10:00] like I said, continued to refuse. And with this. He grew more violent towards her, and the abuse really escalated.

It got to the point where he was beating her more and more severely, and the threat of murder was constantly looming over her. Right. In November of 1910, after several months of abusing his wife, Pietro abandoned his family. He up and left, and Angelina was left to provide solely for her children. Wow. And like I said, there weren't really many opportunities for women to have a job or any of those ways that today anybody would be able to go and earn some money.

Yeah. So what she did was took in a border, which was pretty common at the time, to, you know, rent a room or, or that sort of thing in your house. Yeah. So that's exactly what she did. And so from court documents, this border was an Italian man referred to as Mr. Nish. Okay. I wasn't able to find his first name either in those court documents or report it anywhere.

We just know him as Mr. Nish. Okay. But nonetheless, uh, him and Angelina actually ended up having a [00:11:00] short-lived affair. It was very clear that there was no exchange of money for sex. She was not prostituting herself Right. To Nish. He was paying for rent and then this relationship evolved separately. Right.

Makes so by makes sense, by no means working as a prostitute. Yeah. However, after a few weeks, Pietro decided he was going to return home, and that's exactly what he did. He came home and he found niche there and at first he figured he was a John. For Angelina to service. Yeah. So he was excited. She finally was listening.

She was finally bringing in money. Yeah. You know, his ideas of home ownership are going crazy, I'm sure. But he quickly learns that No, Mr. Nish is a borderer, and he learned of the affair as well. Yeah. So once he learns of the affair, he immediately returns to physically abusing Angelina at the severest extent.

Yeah, of course. Three days after he came home on November 21st, 1910, Angelina told Pietro that she'd had enough and she no longer wanted to be his [00:12:00] wife. This sent Pietro into a brutal rage, and he ended up stabbing Angelina nine times with a pocket knife hitting her in the chest, arms, shoulders, and face.

Wow. Neighbors overheard the attack and called police, and they arrested Pietro when they arrived at the home. But Angelina wasn't there. She later told journalists on her fanning that she went down to the river to try to drown herself after the attack. Wow. Now, she was so severely beaten. The extent of her injuries were quite extreme, and police were able to locate her pretty quickly.

She ended up having to be hospitalized for three weeks after this attack. Three weeks for three weeks due to the extent of her injuries. That's so long. Wow. Despite the brutal assault, Pietro received a suspended sentence after pleading guilty to wounding with intent to maim, which under today's criminal code, the closest thing would be aggravated assault.

Okay? Yep. Now, this happened because the judge was [00:13:00] quite sympathetic to Pietro. He was the sole breadwinner of the family who just came home to find his wife having an affair. And you listeners can't see Nima's face right now, but. Quite incredulous. His eyebrows just went up. Yeah. I mean,

Nima: you already know what I think about that.

Lauryn: Well, tell

Nima: us what you think about that. I mean, I just, I know it was a different time, but no matter what that, none of that should matter. I mean, she got stabbed nine times, was in the hospital for three weeks and he gets off pretty much Scott-free. That doesn't make sense to me.

Lauryn: So, Well, nonetheless, he was able to essentially go right back to living his life as he was prior to the arrest.

And this meant he continued to drink very heavily and he continued to severely physically and emotionally abuse Angelina. Of course he did.

Nima: Of course he did. What else would he do?

Lauryn: So what do you think of all this? This young immigrant mother with four children who is in a struggling [00:14:00] family with an incredibly abusive husband who's.

Pushing her to do these things that she is not comfortable with doing. Yeah,

Nima: so I mean, again, in today's terms, you know that when I think about it, I, I'm just in absolute shock to put her through four pregnancies and then go ahead after and tell her to prostitute herself as well so this guy can get his dream house.

Like, that's fucking ridiculous. I don't know what else to say about it. So. That's how I feel about that. I mean, at this point, I would say justice system is failing her big time and her kids. So, I mean, I understand the affair. Uh, I, I, again, in today's terms, maybe not, but you know, he's gone, he up and leaves her with four people, she can't get a job, you know, what else is she supposed to do, right?

Mm-hmm. So, I mean, my hands are up in the air at this point,

Lauryn: I think. Pretty much anybody reading about this case or listening to this case today would throw their hands up in the [00:15:00] air. Yeah, I mean, I think there were so many points when I was researching this case where you'd hear me chuckle because I would say this is a point where you're gonna get really angry or upset.

That's very true. You

Nima: did say that a lot,

Lauryn: and it is something that's not. Outrageous for us to think about. These stories do still come up all the time today. You know, this abuse is still very prevalent in our society. Yeah. It's, however, the attitudes are incredibly different. Yeah. Big time. And at the time for a, a woman to do anything that was immoral, sinful society.

Had absolutely no sympathy or no leeway for those sorts of things. Yeah. Whereas the double standard was incredible. Men could get away with Yeah. So much. I mean, here he almost killed her. Yeah. And ended up getting off Scott-free despite pleading guilty. Yeah. I mean obviously he still had a criminal record, but gets off Scott-free.

Yeah. And is able to go right back to doing what he [00:16:00] was doing before. Yeah.

Nima: No restraining order. No, nothing like that. Right. And you know, I. I don't know if it would be similar back then to now and how that would work, but I mean, in that situation, even going and trying to file that, I feel like the police would probably laugh her out of the station with how things go.

Lauryn: And she's also a very disadvantaged person, you know, they're very poor, they're immigrants. Yeah. There's a lot up against them. Yep. Totally. Yeah. Well, in a sec, Nima, let's talk about what ends up happening in the spring of 1911, but first, let's take a quick break. Let's do it.

Nima: And

Lauryn: we're back. We're back, and now we're going back to spring of 1911, since this is when it all happens. So at this point in the spring of 1911, uh, April, now Angelina was seven months pregnant with the couple's fifth child, and [00:17:00] Pietro was working the night shift at the steel plant. Three days before Easter Sunday, Pietro tells Angelina that this weekend she has to make $30 before Easter Sunday.

Otherwise he would poke out her eyes and stab her. Wow. Yeah. So like I said earlier, these threats of violence, like extreme violence were constant. Yeah. Yeah. She's at the point of thinking she could die any minute now because she's refusing what he wants her to do. Yeah. I couldn't imagine that. So the morning of April 16th, which is Easter Sunday, Pietro returned from work since, like I said, he was on the night shift and was again demanding that Angelina engage in sex work to support the family.

So she continued to refuse and he responded as quoted from court proceedings by saying, if you do not want to do all that, I want you to do, I can go away. I'm going to go to bed. If when I will get up, I find you in the house, [00:18:00] I will kill you. You better fall in the river. Wow.

Nima: You better fall in the

Lauryn: river.

You better fall in the river. Meaning you better go drown in that river. Yeah. And this, uh, I'd seen in other newspaper articles. This is something that he had said to her on other occasions. Okay.

Nima: Yeah, I believe it.

Lauryn: So this is essentially the final straw for Angelina. She has had enough, and this cannot continue.

So around noon she goes out back to their shed and there's an axe out there. It's one that they used for cutting firewood. Okay. And she went upstairs to find her sleeping husband, and she started striking his head and neck and she ended up striking him seven times with the ax. Wow. And in doing so, she severed his carotid artery and broke open his skull exposing braid matter.

Wow. So I want to read Angelina's retelling of that day during her conversation that she had with Journalist Honor Fanning. Okay. This is one that she had when she was in prison. Uh, so with this recounting, uh, [00:19:00] Obviously Angelina's English wasn't perfect, so there's going to be some grammar difference. I'm going to be reading it exactly as it is in the newspaper.

Okay, sounds good. He say he kill me, but he say, I won't kill you now. I first put you out and then I kill you because you leave me and the children. And then she continued. I was afraid he went upstairs to bed. That was noon. The children were out to play. I was mad. Blood was hot. No place for me to go. No friends.

I could not stand it. I was crazy. I'd go to the kitchen for acts. I'd go upstairs. I think if he is awake, he'd kill me. I do not care. I was sick of life. He was asleep. I struck him. I kill him. It had to be.

Nima: Wow.

Lauryn: That's amazing. That's the point that she got to. Yeah. So she returned the axe to the shed, came back inside and she actually held her baby son Pietro by the fire for a couple of hours.

[00:20:00] I would imagine she was in quite a state of shock at that point. Yeah, of

Nima: course. Big

Lauryn: time. And afterwards around 2:00 PM she went over to her neighbor, Teodore Mazzo, who lived in the apartment just at the back of the house and told him that she killed her husband. Yeah. At this point, he said that if she had in fact killed her husband, then the police would be called to, which she replied, let the policeman come.

I don't care. Wow. Don't care. And she didn't. Yeah. I mean, she was at that point. Yeah. It was killer. Be killed. Really. And it really was killer. Be killed. That's a great way to say it, because he was constantly telling her, I'm going to kill you. I am going to do these terrible, torturous things to you. Yeah.

Before killing you. Yeah. It wouldn't be an easy death from what he was describing. And so to be in that circumstance where all you could think to do is to defend myself and my children, I have to kill him. Yeah. And that is an extreme to get to

Nima: the psychological warfare there too, right? Like [00:21:00] that's huge.

Oh yes. Constantly be saying that and. Having to beat her and stab her nine times previously, like, you know, in her shoes. Of course, that's what you're thinking. You don't care.

Lauryn: And it's important to consider at this point in 1911, this is even before World War I. And World War I, in my opinion, was the first wide scale introduction to what we now know as PTSD.

Yeah. At the time. Or nerve shock, different terms, right? Yeah, yeah. Uh, you know, typically attributed to soldiers coming back from war. But now we know this can affect. All sorts of people going through all sorts of incredibly traumatic situations. Yep, yep. So really, society doesn't understand what PTSD looks like.

It's something that is a concept, but isn't really diagnosed and isn't really understood by common people. Yeah, really good point. Now, at this point, like I said, she went over to Teodor, told him about what happened, and so he starts going around to neighbors to tell them about what's happened and the police are called over.

Mm-hmm. [00:22:00] So neighbors go upstairs and they find Pietro dead, and they see that Angelina is downstairs by the fire and she's calmly holding the baby. She's described as being very calm. Yep. However, like I said, in my opinion, from everything that has been described and reported, I would think she's in a state of shock.

Yep. So this is a description of the crime scene from court documents. The dead body of Peter Napolitano was lying on its left side in bed upstairs. There was a cover over his face and head. When this was removed, wounds were seen on the right side of the head and blood over his face and the blood had gone down.

As far as the hips. He was practically lying in blood. The wounds were not examined then closely, but they were stated by the doctor who saw the body in bed to be so sufficient to cause death. There was no rigor mortis, and the body was still warm. The cause of death was shock and hemorrhage produced by these [00:23:00] injuries mild.

So at this point, 29 year old Angelina Nap ano was arrested for the murder of her husband, Pietro, and the trial was set to begin on May 8th, 1911, just three weeks later. Okay. So a really short turnaround time between the actual crime happening and getting to trial. Yeah. I think that speaks to a few things.

A. Just the courts weren't overloaded like they are today. Yeah. That would never happen today. That would never happen. I mean, takes years, three years if you're lucky. Not three weeks. Yeah, exactly. But also I think it speaks to how quickly they wanted to process these cases. Mm-hmm. And especially with, you know, a case like Angelina's where, you know, she's an immigrant woman who is known to have done sinful things like have an affair.

Yeah. There's gonna be so much bias and prejudice that we see. Spoiler alert and

Nima: Yeah. I mean, just push 'em through. Right.

Lauryn: Just get it done. Get it done. Yeah. Which [00:24:00] unfortunately will be a little bit of a pitfall for her. We'll, we'll see that in a little bit. Of course. But what are you thinking so far about this?

Nima: I mean, yeah, I can kind of already see where this is going. Right. But, um, nonetheless, it's interesting to. See her perspective and actually hear what she has to say. But yeah, I can only imagine what, what she's going through and feeling, and I can only imagine how the kids are feeling, you know? But we'll see.

Lauryn: So following her arrest, Angelina pleaded guilty to culling her husband immediately. There was no contest to that. She admitted it right away. However, the court didn't accept a guilty plea and subsequently entered her plea as not guilty. What. Why I, I couldn't find anything that spoke to why this decision was made.

Oh. However, this forced a trial by jury. Oh, of course. That's all they wanted. And at the time, in all male jury was chosen. Oh,

Nima: how [00:25:00] convenient.

Lauryn: So you didn't have anybody who understood what it was to be a mother or a wife. Mm-hmm. Anybody who could be truly sympathetic and fully empathetic to her position.

Yep. Nobody like that was represented on that jury. Keep that in mind. Yes, I will. So the trial starts on May 8th and the presiding judge is Justice FM Britton, and he assigned Uriah McFadden, a 31 year old up and coming lawyer to her case just on the first day of the trial.

Nima: Just on the first day?

Lauryn: On the first day.

This was the process at the time, since she couldn't afford a lawyer, so he was assigned on day one, so he had no time whatsoever to prepare a defense. Of course. It's pretty crazy. Yeah, that's insane. He, I. What a system. Yeah. And I would imagine at the time he was reading up on the case in the papers. Yeah.

I don't know what exposure he had to the case beforehand, but to actually have access to Angelina as his client who he's defending, that's [00:26:00] there's not much opportunity there to get her side of the story and be able to understand what she's gone through to be able to defend her. Yeah. Not at all. No, not whatsoever.

And this trial only lasts three days. Wow. Only last three days. They call on neighbors policemen and the doctor who pronounced Pietro dead to the stand. This is the crown calling these people to the stand. Okay, so these crown witnesses that were called to the stand express that Angelina stated she killed her husband to escape her impending future as a prostitute rather than allow her and her children to escape her abusive husband.

Nima: Oh,

okay. That's way different.

Lauryn: Yeah. So people already are saying she could have run away, she could have taken the kids, she chose this route. Yeah. In order to defend herself. Yeah. So on the stand, I. You're really seeing the bias from these witnesses come through. Yep. Big time now to the judge and jury, this really painted Angelina as a selfish woman without regard for her children.

Mm-hmm. She's had the [00:27:00] history of having an affair. Yep. Now she's gone and killed her husband while he's sleeping, while her children are playing at home. Yeah.

It doesn't look so good while the way they

portray it. Right. The way that they portray it. Yeah, exactly. Is not looking good. And Angelina was the sole witness for the defense.

Of course they didn't have time to prepare. Yeah. Now McFadden tried to introduce evidence regarding the assault that took place in November, 1910 as sufficient provocation for the murder. But each time he tried to do so, justice Britton deemed the evidence to be inadmissible saying, and this is a quote, if anybody injured six months ago, could give that as justification or excuse for slaying a person.

It would be anarchy Complete.

Nima: Wow. What a

Lauryn: quote. So somebody in a position of judicial power who is making these decisions will not recognize prior assaults, prior cases that were taken to court where [00:28:00] even though he was found guilty as. Sentence was suspended. So there's still that criminal history there that's being ignored completely in

Nima: this.

Yeah. And it's not just criminal history, it's criminal history between those

Lauryn: two. Yes. Yes. Domestic history, the, the. The intimate violence is very present. Yeah. There's now a documented history of this happening between these two individuals. Yeah, exactly. And to say it would be anarchy complete is so dismissive.

I think that speaks to, and this is my opinion, I think this speaks to his impression of women and how hysterical women can be. Mm. And if we were to allow everyone. To get emotional and upset about something that happened six months ago, like a, like a woman, would I see that? Then it would be anarchy. Okay.

Yeah, I see what you're saying there. I definitely think interesting. There's a gender bias component there. Yep. In addition to her being a poor immigrant, there's a lot that is gonna be contributing to that feeling. Yep. For

Nima: sure. I would agree with that. [00:29:00]

Lauryn: So the judge also advised the jury to consider the fact that Pietro was asleep at the time of the attack, so he was unable to adequately defend himself and that Angelina was, and another quote, at perfect liberty to leave.

Nima: Mm. Uh, well, I mean, perfect liberty to leave and why leave her kids behind and. Yeah. That and go where,

Lauryn: how does he expect her to do that? When she has no money? There's no money for her to take there. This household is tapped out. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So there's no, no resources for her, no financial resources.

Yep. She has four children under the age of seven. And she's pregnant. Yeah. And she's pregnant. That's right. She's heavily pregnant. Yeah. Yeah. So five and go where Yeah. Five kiddos to consider. Yeah. Uh, I did at one point see a newspaper article that said, uh, Pietro's brother was also living in the area that they lived on the farm with him for a while.

Okay. But I don't know of any of her family coming over. I don't really know what friend she had. I mean, She [00:30:00] did say in that one quote, she had no friends. Yeah. She had nowhere to go. Yeah. And especially at this time, there were no resources to support these types of immigrant women. There were a lot of societies that were meant to support, you know, Protestant women.

Yeah. British women. That makes sense. White women, you know, traditionally British white women. Yep. And so really she has nothing at her disposal. But everybody here who's on the stand, and now the judge with that bias is saying, well, no, she would've. Been able to leave. Yeah. I mean it's, she could have figured it out.

It's easier to say that. Right? There's a lot of victim blaming in that, right. You would say today? Yeah. Now I did wanna take a pause from trial proceedings, and this really ties in with what we were just saying. I did wanna give a little bit more context on the societal perception of, of somebody like Angelina at the time.

Yeah. So we've already talked about what that bias is that's coming in from those people who are saying she could have left, but. I think it's important to understand a little bit more about what [00:31:00] it looked like to be not just an immigrant, but an Italian immigrant. So according to the 1911 census of Canada, only about 9% of Canada's population were Europeans of non British descent.

Wow. So this includes what we would consider to be. White people that at this time they consider to be the other, you know? Yeah. Germans, Portuguese, Italians, yeah. All of those types of, of immigrants and Italians themselves only made up 0.64% of the population at the time, so small, so. It was very small.

Yeah. A a very small community. And between the years of 1901 and 1914, there were about 35,000 Italians who settled permanently in Canada. So this is at that time of really massive migration to North and South America. Right. Still overall, not a huge amount of people. When you consider the hundreds of thousands of Brits coming over, Comparatively, it's a very small number.

Yep, absolutely. And at this time, in [00:32:00] 1911, Canada's population stood at about 7 million people. Okay. Per the 2021 census, just for a bit of a comparison, this is our most recent census that was taken in Canada Racialized Groups account for 69.3% of the immigrant population in 2021. Oh, wow.

Nima: What a change.

Hey.

Lauryn: Overall visible minorities make up 26.5% of the total population. Yeah, that's huge. And I don't believe by today's standards, Italians would be included in that by that visible minority population. Yeah. I don't know if they were. These would be people of color, indigenous peoples. Yeah. Um, now at this time, immigrants from the Mediterranean were largely viewed as undesirable by Canadian immigration officials.

Canada at the time had just had the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan joined Confederation and there were these major, major immigration campaigns to go settle the West and in general, just have more farming come to Canada. Yep. To really support [00:33:00] growing these populations in these very rural areas.

And there were certain groups of Europeans that immigration officials particularly wanted to come to Canada because they felt that they had the farming skills that were desirable. That makes sense. These were people like Eastern Europeans, Ukrainians, you know, that were known for very successful wheat farming.

Those were the types of immigrants who could easily be labeled as second class at the time. Yeah. The, you know, non-white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Brit, yeah. European coming over. So it was very easy for them to be able to take advantage of that and exploit those people while getting them to come over very easily and meet those population demands that they wanted.

Yeah, of course. So it's interesting to see how even within those disadvantaged peoples that are being given a lot of racial prejudice, even within that, there's going to be very distinct levels of that prejudice. Yeah, absolutely. You can see [00:34:00] that. With this racial component today, it's a little ridiculous, I think.

To look at Italians with this lens, but Italians had darker features, olive skin. This made them a visible minority at the time.

Nima: Yeah, that is funny to think about nowadays. And

Lauryn: for the listeners who don't know you, I mean, your name is Nima Hodoudi, but do you wanna speak to your background? Yeah,

Nima: yeah. So I am, uh, I was born in Turkey.

My family comes from Iran. Um, I am Azeri, so I am a very dark featured man, but I did grow up in Canada. That's where this accent comes from, obviously, uh, Western Canada. Funny enough, we're just talking about it. Um, so yeah, so, uh, talking about Italians nowadays, I would not consider them anything but, uh, mostly white.

Lauryn: You were mistaken for being Italian though when we were recently on vacation. This is true

Nima: actually. That's very true. I was, I actually was once, and I [00:35:00] sometimes get mistaken to be Italian or Spanish depending on how

Lauryn: tanned I am. Yeah, this is true. And you know, with some of those regions of Southern Italy, you're pretty far south, you are gonna be getting a lot of sun exposure, especially coming from a farming background.

You're gonna be darker than somebody like me who comes from a very British Irish background. Yeah. But like we said, still not somebody that we would necessarily consider today to fall under the term person of color. No, not here. There's also a very significant religious component that's coming in at this time.

Angelina's Italian. Right. The vast majority of Italians are Catholic. Yep. She was Catholic. Well, Canada is a very Protestant country at the time. Yep. Now the province of Quebec was and still is heavily Catholic. Mm-hmm. But outside of Quebec, you don't really see major Catholic areas in Canada. Yep. Widely Protestant, and I said this term before, but Wasp White Anglo-Saxon Protestant is [00:36:00] very much the way to describe, especially Sault Ste.

Marie. Now, those wasps, those were the people that held power. And so with that prejudice towards somebody like Angelina, combined with that power so heavily justified in their minds, it was pretty easy to cast that blame since she represented all of the bad that these non British, European immigrants supposedly were bringing into the country.

This was very much the thought at the time. Yep. Yeah, I can see that. When you consider that these people on the jury, obviously we wouldn't know unless there actually were women on this jury, but we can assume, like I said earlier, not having those sympathies towards her. It's just gonna be even easier to jump towards those conclusions of, look at how terrible she is and she's guilty as anything.

Yeah. Too easy. Very easy. Now, another component in all of the prejudice against her was that in 1911, Women were viewed very much so as the lesser sex and the question of female respectability largely concerned [00:37:00] society. Yep. Are you familiar with the term female respectability? A

Nima: little bit, but enlightened me.

Yeah. So

Lauryn: it, it mainly refers to maintaining this sexual purity, pursuing these really pure endeavors within a woman's sphere of work or influence. Mm mm-hmm. So, you know, being a good homemaker, being a good mother, a good wife, yep. If, uh, you're a more advantaged woman, you've got some time and money pursuing some philanthropic pursuits, getting involved with your community, your church, uh, different charitable organizations, this is something that is very much expected of women to do at the time.

Okay. And interacting with those people that upheld those same standards of femininity was really key to that. Yeah. So if you're someone who's. Acting in bad character and associating with those in bad character outside of this definition, which they would argue Angelina was, was doing that she was, yeah.

It's gonna be pretty easy to put her into that box and say You're guilty. Yep. And she didn't admit her [00:38:00] guilt, but they're not considering all of those other circumstances around what got her to that point. Yeah. At this time, it was also societally acceptable for men to enforce obedience upon their wives through pretty much whichever means necessary.

Mm. Including all levels of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Yep. Which we've already seen a lot of in this case. Yep. Abuse was considered to be a private matter, so law enforcement typically didn't concern themselves with protecting the victims of domestic abuse since they were also engaged in perpetuating these cycles themselves.

Right. That makes sense. Either they themselves at home. Yeah. By allowing other men who, whether they're affiliated with these people or not, yeah. It's gonna be pretty easy for them, just like we saw with the judge and Pietro earlier on, to be sympathetic to those abusers. Yep. Absolutely. So her affair with Nish really painted her as an adulterous and it wasn't socially acceptable for women to engage in extramarital affairs [00:39:00] despite the fact that Pietro had abandoned the family prior.

Nima: Yeah, yeah. That kind of touches on what I was saying too, like in made sense, but it doesn't make sense, but it does make sense in that time because, you know, he up and left. She needed something, it was money ended up being a boarder and you know, she has needs and. There you

Lauryn: go to imagine not having any companionship.

Any true companionship. Yeah. What you're going through that level of abuse, and it does sound like with the level of his drinking and this obsession of his, with the house, it did seem like. There was a really big shift in who he was, and she couldn't have that companionship anymore. Yeah. That was gone. So it really does make sense to me that A, he's out of the picture.

Yeah. B, she needs income, so she's gonna take in a border. Yeah. And then you have somebody living in your house constantly around you. It makes sense that a relationship would develop at that point. Yeah, it does. It absolutely does. Of course we have a [00:40:00] modern understanding of what Angelina experienced to bring her to murder her husband, which the vast majority of people did not have at the time of Angelina's trial.

The events leading up to her murder and the court proceedings we've discussed so far emphasize the prevalence of racism, sexism, and classism in Canadian society at the time. Next, we'll be discussing the impact of these prejudices in the judge's instructions to the jury and their verdict, but we're actually going to save that for part two of this episode.

We'll also get into the aftermath of the trial and some new discoveries since the last time I researched this case.

Nima: So given the topic of this episode, we wanted to include some resources for survivors of intimate partner violence and their loved ones in Canada. Assaulted Women's Hotline toll free at 1-866-863-0511 in the United States, 1-800-799-SAFE or 1 [00:41:00] 800-799-7233.

Lauryn: And that's it for part one of Episode one of Rooted in Crime. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. We really appreciate all of the support from everybody listening today.

Nima: Yeah. Thank you all. Appreciate the friends and family that are listening and, uh, all the true crime lovers.

Lauryn: I did wanna give a special shout out to Lindsay Macdonald for recording and producing our intro and transition music.

And to follow us and support us. You can find us on Instagram at Rooted in Crime and on Patreon, like I said, at patreon.com/rooted in crime. You can also get in touch with us directly by sending us a DM or emailing us at rootedincrime@gmail.com. We really appreciate it. If you subscribe and review us on your favorite podcast listening apps like Apple Podcasts and Spotify, that's a really great way for us to get to know how the podcast is doing and be able to tweak things along the way To give you listeners a really great podcast to listen to.[00:42:00]

If there's a story from your hometown that you want me to research, or even one from your family tree, let me know. Send me a message or an email, and I'll definitely take a look at things. Now part two of this episode is already available, so you can go ahead and listen to part two now, and then new episodes will be released every other Thursday.

And that's it. Thanks so much for listening everyone.

Nima: Thanks for listening, everyone.

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