Ep 1 - Angelina Napolitano Part Two

Episode Show Notes

In part two of the inaugural episode of Rooted in Crime, hosts Lauryn and Nima continue their discussion into the verdict of Angelina's trial and explore the profound aftermath that followed. Through genealogical research, shares new information about the surviving members of the Napolitano family, shedding light on their ultimate fate.

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

Episode Transcript

Ep 1 - Angelina Napolitano N Pt 2

Nima: [00:00:00] Rooted in Crime contains coarse 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.

In part one of this episode, we discussed Angelina's early life and the conditions of her marriage to her abusive husband Pietro. After years of enduring his violent abuse, she killed him on Easter Sunday, 1911, in a desperate attempt to free herself from her abuser. Despite admitting her guilt, the judge overseeing her trial didn't allow her to enter this plea, and forced her to plead not guilty.

With enormous prejudice against the immigrant mother, We've [00:01:00] seen that those holding judicial power during this time did not understand how abuse can physically and psychologically devastate victims.

Nima: I'm very curious to see how all of this plays out considering what she's going up against in court. So let's dive in.

Lauryn: So as we do dive in, it's important to remember a few things from part one of this episode. So we've seen that in the judge's instructions to the jury, we're really meant to disregard Angelina's position as a mother who's been abused in the past. We see that he tells them to forget about the prior assault in November of 1910.

You know, it's ridiculous that she's even saying that this affected her, you know, to say that an assault from six months prior was still relevant. Yeah. [00:02:00] We saw that quote from earlier on. And then also to consider the fact that Pietro was asleep at the time of the attack with no way to defend himself.

Despite, obviously, the history with that level of abuse that he was imposing on Angelina and we knew what he was physically capable of, you know?

Nima: Yeah, absolutely.

Lauryn: And, obviously, we've been going through everything that Angelina went through to get her to that point. And we do have a very moderate understanding of what that would have been.

So we're obviously going to sound pretty sympathetic to her. Right. Murder is murder. However, We do understand today that there are certain psychological conditions that will make someone make that decision that they wouldn't make if they weren't under those conditions of abuse. Yeah. We do know that people can be unfit to stand trial as a result of those conditions.

Nima: Yeah, it's a perspective we have to look at, right?

Lauryn: Exactly. So we understand that that is something that [00:03:00] could have been possible with her trial. If it had been done in today's day and age, but obviously in 1911, that perspective was not there. Oh, yeah, so with that said under all of this prejudice the jury finds her guilty No surprise.

However, they do recommend that Angelina be given a lenient sentence because of her pregnancy and other children Okay, so we do see that the jury is considering these other things despite Not being so prevalent in the witness testimony despite the judge's instructions to the jury now at the time Otherwise the sentence for murder was to be executed regardless.

You would have been hanged They're saying hey, maybe we should consider these other things. Yeah, so as a result Justice Britain just completely ignores all of that He instead says, okay, we'll wait for her to have the baby, but she's still going to be executed. So we won't execute the unborn baby. So the rest of her life will basically be [00:04:00] to have this baby.

And then her date of execution was set for August 9th. Since she was expected to have the baby by the end of July.

Nima: Unreal. That's, wow. I couldn't imagine that. Just going through, you have this child that's coming, and you know that your death is impending right after, and not knowing what's going to happen to that child, that would be so tough.

Lauryn: And already to be under such physical and emotional duress, and then for that to be the conditions in which you're growing a child. Yeah,

Nima: oh my god, that poor child. Yeah.

Lauryn: And how do you think the general public reacted to the sentencing?

Nima: Oh, I mean, that's a tough one because, again, it was a different time, but I would imagine there should be some backlash, but I'm not sure.

Lauryn: There definitely are some that ultimately agree with the judge and jury, however, there also is widespread backlash. From what I saw in the newspaper reports and other [00:05:00] publications from the time, it seemed like the vast majority supported giving some sort of leniency to Angelina. Well, that's good. Yeah, it's important to understand where women's issues lie at this time.

So, during the late 19th, early 20th century, this is when we really see the women's suffrage movement start to grow. Okay. You're familiar with that movement, I take it? Yeah, somewhat. And what's your impression of that movement? What do you think of when you hear women's suffrage?

Nima: Um, I mean, there was so many factors to that. There was, like, Rights to vote you know, equality in many different ways, that's at least my understanding as far as I go.

Lauryn: But right to vote is the one that really stuck out in your head.

Nima: That's the, that's the biggest one, right?

Lauryn: That is really the one that started the women's suffrage movement, but it did, like you said, start to extend to other facets.

And, I mean, at this point, 1911, women still don't have the right to vote in most places in North America. Actually, I don't think there were any jurisdictions at that point. [00:06:00] That allowed the right to vote. I think maybe some territories in the U. S. Yeah. But I don't think anywhere in Canada allowed it up until that point.

Right. Um, I know it was Manitoba that first allowed it. I'm not sure when. That's a bit of a tangent, though. We'll save that for another time. Um, but nonetheless, we're seeing that women's suffrage is really extending to the welfare of women. It's tied into the temperance movement. So, sobriety, um, enforcing prohibition.

It was typically women that were coming from. Domestic abusive relationships where their husbands were drinking significantly wasting all of the money on booze Similar things that we're seeing Angelina go through and then also the welfare of children, you know, making sure that they're not Working in really dangerous conditions, you know, we've just come from the Industrial Revolution where child labor and exploitation is rampant And so it's a lot of these groups really leading Women and children's welfare at this time.

And so, these women really concern themselves with Angelina's case and Angelina's children going [00:07:00] forward. Yeah. And so, with this, the news of Angelina's case really picks up and just spreads around the world. And hundreds of thousands of people, men and women alike, were speaking out against the decision and demanded that Angelina be released or be given clemency, which means, you know, to be pardoned.

Still serve some kind of sentence, but ultimately have that sentence be reduced so that she can still live some kind of life. Yeah, makes sense. At the time, it was widely acknowledged that the severe abuse she received reasonably pushed her to kill her husband. And this is a pretty significant growing shift in societal mentality at this time.

Right. It was largely the fact that Angelina was a pregnant mother of nearly five that the world took issue with. You know, like I said earlier, how is it fair to hang a mother of five, you know? Yeah. A lot of people saw this as the judge essentially deciding orphanhood on these children. Yeah, exactly.

Deciding their fate. You know, at this time, children's welfare isn't [00:08:00] great. We'll chat about that a little bit later on. Um, but people do understand this and there's a lot of stigma around fostering, adoption, and people do want families to stay together as much as possible. So even though people do see that, Angelina.

Is guilty for killing her husband. She admitted it. They do think, okay, she needs to either serve some time or what she's already served, what she's already gone through is enough. And she needs to be reunited with her children. Yep.

Nima: That makes sense to me. There's got to be a better way.

Lauryn: So because of that, so many people rally together and especially across Canada and the United States, women's societies and independent citizens were signing petitions, publishing articles and writing letters directly to the justice department.

Minister of Justice, and Governor General with their demands. Amazing. So you were seeing a lot of groups like the Salvation Army, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and National Council of Women. Right. So really major groups that were for the betterment of women, [00:09:00] predominantly white, middle to upper class women were participating in these groups.

Yeah, that makes sense. So like we talked about in the last part of the episode, it's really those people that lead society. And so it's really interesting to see how. These white, upper class men are making these decisions to control women and it's ultimately their wives that are looking for the betterment of women at this time.

Nima: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's good. It's at least a good thing to see.

Lauryn: And it's a really effective way for those women to use their power, too, because they're in such close proximity to those decision makers, ultimately. Yeah, exactly. You know, their pillow talk was basically getting them to think about these issues and change their perspectives.

Yeah. So it's, it's a really important thing to, to consider the position of those groups at this time. Totally. I did want to give a few examples of what those different efforts looked like from those groups. So on July 8th of 1911, I saw that the Toronto Star had published several short press dispatches from several cities around North America, actually specifically in the [00:10:00] U.

S. Okay. So cities like Chicago, Indianapolis, Little Rock, and New Orleans. There were additional petitions from major cities across North America, and they ultimately garnered over 100, 000 signatures that were sent to Ottawa. Wow. So there's pretty major power behind Angelina's case. There's widespread public support.

I saw that there were lots of Italian newspapers also speaking about this issue. Yeah, of course. Unfortunately, I don't speak or read Italian. Yeah. And because they're just basically scans of old newspapers. Yeah. There aren't really, you know, ways to Google Translate that easily. Yeah. So I wasn't able to really understand the Italian perspective.

But it was being widely reported around the world. Yeah, I'm sure it was similar.

There were also government officials from other places outside of Ottawa writing in to ask for clemency. An example of this is the Governor of Indiana who wrote to the Governor General of Canada in Angelina's defense. Wow. So, essentially, the court of public opinion has proven that it's [00:11:00] understood why Angelina felt that she had no choice but to kill her husband.

And as a result, she shouldn't be punished by death as a result of admitting her guilt. Yeah. Wow. That makes sense to me. Now in Honor Fanning's description, note at the end of her article that I talked about in the last part, she actually mentions that she wasn't allowed to tell Angelina about any of the support that she was receiving.

Wow. Yeah, so the interview took place just a few weeks after she was sentenced. She hadn't had the baby yet. Yeah. And so she was basically sitting there waiting her death. And prison rules didn't allow the journalist to actually share with Angelina all of that outside support. Wow. Yeah. Prison rules. Yeah.

She was very limited in the types of questions she could ask Angelina. She pretty much could only ask Angelina for her perspective, for her direct information. She couldn't really provide her with outside information since she wasn't her lawyer.

Nima: Yeah. Oh, wow. I mean, that's fair, but that's sad. That sucks.

Lauryn: Oh. Oh well. I mean, what can you do, I guess. But, [00:12:00] it is sad. It kind of makes sense legally. I don't know if it's like that now. It would make sense that it would be. Um, but, nonetheless, that still, that still sucks. It'd be nice to know that, you know, that you're sentenced while you're in there. Hey, everyone out there is pushing and rooting for you.

You know, that would give you a little bit of hope and maybe it would help with the baby and everything else that's going on. So

yeah. Just to have something, like you said, some sort of hope that light at the end of the tunnel, just to make those really difficult days a little bit better. Yeah. And you could really tell from Honor Fanning's article, the amount of sympathy and empathy that she felt for Angelina.

Yeah. You could definitely feel a sense of pity that She understood why Angelina was in that position and how it was so unfair. It was kind of heartbreaking to read and, you know, from our perspective, I would say it was a little bit dry and maybe not the most sensitive. But it was still pretty heartbreaking.

She really understood [00:13:00] what that woman was going through. Yeah, absolutely. Now, with all of the public support and, you know, especially the written efforts, all those petitions, those government officials writing in to Canadian officials, It ended up helping a lot. Good. Because on July 15th, the Minister of Justice Aylesworth announced that Angelina Napolitano would not be hanged.

Oh wow. She would instead be commuted to a life sentence. Oh, still sad. Still sad, however she wouldn't be killed right away. Right. Commuted to a life sentence at Kingston Prison for Women, which was a part of the infant, which was a part of the infamous Kingston Penitentiary. Yep, yep. We know some pretty notorious serial killers that have ended up there.

Paul Bernardo. Billy Pickton. Yep. Who else? Willie Pickton. Billy. It's Willie Pickton, right? Willie Pickton? Willie Pickton, not Billy. He went by Willie. But nonetheless, she's going off to Kingston, which we know, or you and I know, maybe not [00:14:00] everybody listening, but Kingston is notorious for being one of the worst Mac securities places.

Max security prisons in Canada. At this point I don't know if any of Kingston Pen is actually still in operation. I know there were lots of different parts of the jail that had previously closed. There's like ghost tours and stuff that you can go and do there. Right. It's a tourist attraction now, so I don't think there are any parts that are still in operation.

Probably a good thing. Maybe there are. I know that Paul Bernardo was just transferred to a medium security facility, but I don't know where he was before. But he was at Kingston for some time. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Awesome. By all means, a terrible place to be going to. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this isn't that great.

No, this is one of the worst prisons in Canada at the time, and in its entire existence, really. While she was at the Kingston Prison for Women, Angelina gave birth to her baby, a girl, on August 2nd, 1911, and she was placed into the care of the Children's Aid Society. Yeah. However, she did die two weeks later.

No

way. Yeah. Oh, no. I mean, [00:15:00] honestly, I'm not surprised with how much stress she was probably going through. Um, and then who knows how well they were taking care of her, really, at the end of the day, right? And mom's not there, like.

And also, if she's born at the beginning of August, there's a good chance that she was conceived right around the time of Pietro attacking Angelina, if we do the math.

Oh, you're right. So it could be that she was pregnant at that time, whether that was Nish's baby or Pietro's baby, I don't know, but just doing the math in my head, it seems like it kind of lines up with that. So he could have attacked her really brutally at that point, and I mean, for very privileged women at the time.

OBGYNs provided a good enough level of obstetric care, but it wasn't anywhere near the level that we have today. And somebody as poor and disadvantaged as Angelina, somebody as poor and disadvantaged as Angelina wouldn't have had [00:16:00] access to really any medical care during her pregnancy. Yeah. So outside of those weeks while she was in hospital, if they even knew she was pregnant at that time.

Yeah. You know? Or maybe she had the baby a little bit premature and the baby was conceived after she got back from the hospital. Yeah. But in any case, she went through so much, including continued physical abuse after she got back from the hospital. Yeah. That's right. So, for her body to be going through all of that, plus the emotional trauma.

Yeah. It's a lot of stress. It's a lot of stress, you know, before Pietro's murder and then after the fact as well, so I wouldn't be surprised if there were a lot of things that contributed to that. Yeah, probably some complications too. Oh, definitely.

And the care once it was in the care of those people. Yeah, 100%, exactly. Throughout her imprisonment, support continued for her to be released rather than commuted for life, but ultimately support for Angelina did dwindle over time. Yeah. There was a small group that did continue to pressure the [00:17:00] government, and Angelina herself also made efforts legally to petition them.

Right. And, again, those efforts worked. Good. On December 30th, 1922, so 11 years after she was initially imprisoned, at the age of 40, she was given a pardon and released from prison.

Nima: Oh, wow, that's amazing! I did not know that. Yeah. That's awesome.

Lauryn: So, she has the opportunity, she's 40 years old, to... Still get out and do something with her life, you know, What do you think she must have been feeling at that point?

Nima: I mean All I would be thinking if I were her were probably about her kids And how she gets to go and see them again, hopefully. I mean i'm hoping that's what it is. Um, but yeah, otherwise I I mean, I feel like if I were in her shoes. I think this is a case. That's Not only a win for her, but it's a win for a lot of people in the long run.

Lauryn: It's definitely gonna lay the groundwork for a lot of [00:18:00] precedents. Uh, although no precedents were set with this case, the judge ruled that she was, or sorry, the judge, the jury found that she was guilty and then the judge ultimately gave her a sentence to be executed. Yeah. So. At the time, no precedents were set, but like I said, we really do see the shift in public understanding of things like abuse, things like motherhood, things like poverty.

So it is pretty pivotal nonetheless. With her kids though, we're going to see that there's still quite the uphill battle for what they're going to be facing. We're going to talk about that in a second, but let's take a quick break.

Nima: All right, let's do it.

Lauryn: And

we're back. We're back. And we've got a lot to talk about. Yes, we do. It's pretty interesting from my perspective as a genealogical researcher to have been able to dive into what happened to Angelina and her [00:19:00] kids after the trial while she was in prison after her release. It's not something that was widely covered in newspapers.

Right. But... So, in today's day and age of having access to all of these tools online with really great paid databases, free resources, there was a lot that I was able to find. Amazing, I'm excited to see it. So, let's first chat about what happened to the four surviving children. Okay. Like I said, not much was widely reported about them, even at the time of her trial and all of these events while they were still very hot in the press.

Most of it was really about Angelina and the murder itself, and then what was happening in the courts. We didn't really see much about the kids. There were some things that we did see reported about them. Typically, these news articles and little things were included to help show public support for Angelina and support her character as a loving mother to her children.

[00:20:00] Okay. So on July 3rd, the Brantford Expositor had an article featured with the headline, Lad Writes He Wants Mama to Come Home. And this was written by her eldest son, Michael. Oh, okay. He wrote this to her while he was in foster care. Okay. So the article reads, or uh, the clipping reads, Dear Mama, I hope you will come home to us soon.

Amelia takes good care of us, but we all want you. We are lonesome every night without you. I go to school every day. I can write good now. Mrs. Walden lets us play in a big grassy yard where there are flowers, but we all want you to go home to us.

Nima: Oh, that's so sweet.

Lauryn: It's sweet, but it's, it's so heartbreaking.

I know. How old is he at this point? Do you know? He would have been about seven at this time. At seven? Yeah. Oh. And then his sister, Amelia, he mentioned, she would have been about six. Okay. So, six years old, taking care of her siblings. You [00:21:00] know, there's a lot that these and they're having to grow up very quickly.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, he does mention, He's writing and playing in the yard and doing things kids are supposed to do, but he's in foster care with his siblings because his mother has just murdered his father and I don't know what he would have been told, what they would have understood, what the people around them would have said at the time if they would have been, hush, hush, said that your mom did these terrible things, who knows what his impression would have been, right?

It was interesting for me to see him, uh, mention Mrs. Walden. I was curious to find out a little bit more about who that was. Okay. So some genealogical sleuthing helped me with this. Um, I don't actually have the... firm source on where I found this information. This is something I'm 99% sure I saw listed in the 1911 census.

Okay. I went through quite a few of these sub [00:22:00] districts in Sault Ste. Marie again to try and find this, but I had a really hard time. I'm pretty sure I saw, this would have been anywhere from a few months to a couple years ago, just in doing my fun and term research, I'm pretty sure I saw that they were all living at The Children Aid Society foster home at the time.

Okay. And Mrs. Walden was the matron of the home. Oh, that would make sense. Yeah, so she was the, I guess, headmistress would be another word for it. Sure, yeah, yeah. She, she took care of all the children. There was an assistant there with them too. Um, But she would have been chiefly responsible for all the kids.

And I don't remember how many were there. I don't think it was a huge number. Maybe 8 to 12 from what I remember on the census. But I couldn't find it this time around for this round of research. Um, but I am very certain Mrs. Walden was the matron of the home. Okay. And so it doesn't seem like at that point then they were adopted out and they were still At the home.

At the foster home run by the Children's Aid Society in Sault Ste. Marie. Right. So as of July 3rd we can [00:23:00] say They were most likely still in Sault Ste. Marie. I know I said that most of the pieces that were published about the kids were done to support Angelina's character and help her position as, you know, a mother who obviously has children that love her.

Yeah. But not everybody had great sentiments towards the kids. And not everybody wanted that relationship to continue. Okay. And I think this does speak quite well to the attitudes at the time towards adoption and fostering, uh, as well as, uh, Poor immigrant children and their position in society, we know how racist Canada is at this time and arguably still is today.

There's a pretty terrible history of lots of different types of systemic abuses towards lots of racial minorities. Like we discussed at this time, Italians are widely viewed as a minority. This is an opinion piece that was also published in the Brantford Expositor. This one was published on August 5th of 1911.

[00:24:00] It's titled, The Napolitano Children. It would be a blessing if the babe to which Mrs. Napolitano has just given birth at Sault Ste. Marie could be taken far away from its mother and lose its identity forever. A greater crime than the hanging of the wretched woman would be the bringing up of this innocent child to a realization of the truth that her father was murdered by her mother.

It would be better that the life had never been brought into this world than it should become clouded by this terrible disgrace. Canada is a big country, and the Napolitano Babe and the other children of these terrible parents should be removed far from any who know them and started in life under a new name.

And in surroundings that would bring no recollection in future years of the family tragedy, Mrs. Napolitano's rights as to her children were forfeited long ago, but even if the woman has the feelings natural to a mother, she will be glad [00:25:00] that her children will not be called upon to bear the shame of her crime.

The thousands of Canadian women who actively interested themselves in securing Mrs. Napolitano's reprive might now embrace the nobler opportunity of coming to the rescue of her children.

Nima: Wow.

Lauryn: So this really, like I said, speaks to the attitudes towards children who have criminal parents. Yep. Children who are born to...

Immigrants, or immigrants themselves, children of poor parents, working class parents. There's a lot of prejudice against these kids, and so the best solution in the minds of some is to completely sever that relationship with Angelina, give them a fresh start in their minds, wipe the slate clean, and get to live the life of a Canadian, essentially.[00:26:00]

To be able to distance themselves from their ethnic background to distance themselves from their name. I found that comment to be pretty remarkable because that's something that was very common at the time. Especially of non white, non Anglo children. So if you were somebody coming from Italy, Napolitano, then maybe your last name would be changed to something like...

Nathaniel or something. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something similar. Or if you were placed with another family, you would take on their name. There's lots that would happen. Yeah. And people actively wanted that to happen. Thinking it would be the best thing to spare those children. Wow. And there's this impression that Already, Angelina has done the worst thing bringing this child into this world under these conditions.

Yeah, and, I mean, in some ways they got their wish because, uh, you know, he passed a couple weeks after.

Yeah, it was only two weeks [00:27:00] later that the baby passed away. The baby passed, yeah. Yeah, so, he did get his wish, tragically. Yeah. It was also reported previously that there were... um, considerations to put the kids in US homes.

Oh. Or in other provinces.

Nima: Oh, interesting.

Lauryn: And again, this is something that was pretty common at the time. Yup. Adoption wasn't very structured and I'm going to chat about that in just a second. But it was pretty easy to basically just find parents that wanted to take in a kid or foster a kid. Yup. There were a few different ways to do that.

And then it would just be go stick them there. Wow. The processes weren't anywhere as sophisticated as they are today. I would imagine. Yeah. There's a lot of places that the kids could have ended up and we do find out some information about that from Karen Dubinsky and Franca Iacovetta's 1991 article, Murder, Womanly Virtue and Motherhood, the case of Angelina Napolitano, 1911 to 1922, which I would say at this point was probably the best [00:28:00] resources around her case in the early 90s.

They were really just starting to get access to cases from this time and more information about the early 20th century because of things like those privacy laws that I mentioned around certain timeframes and basically statutes of limitations on accessing information. So it was a really great resource for me.

And they cited a confidential report written about five years after the murder, which was submitted to the Justice Department, detailing that her two boys settled into their homes well. But both of her daughters were, quote, difficult to control, and the girls had already been placed in several foster homes.

Yikes. Yeah, and the girls were only about 11 and 10 at the time of that report, so Amelia being 11 and Pearl being about 10. And you can't handle

these girls.

That's sad. Yeah, for them to have been placed in several homes, um, It's sad to think what the conditions for them could have been like, too. We know today how prevalent things like sexual abuse are [00:29:00] in the foster care system.

And at that time, Can only imagine. Can only imagine. Things were always happening behind closed doors. Just like they very much still do today. Yeah. But there were absolutely no resources in place for any kind of, and of course, this is purely speculation, this is purely our own speculation.

Nima: Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

Lauryn: There's no evidence of this. No. But just knowing types of trauma that you can go through, especially as a child, and the way that children will act out when they go through those types of trauma, I wouldn't be surprised if there's still a lot they're recovering from, from their father's murder and losing access to their mom.

Uh, It's extremely likely that they lost access to their brothers as well. Yeah, that's true. They split families up all the time. Right. And there's a lot of adjustments to be made going from home to home. And the tone in which they described the girls seemed very apathetic. Yeah, [00:30:00] it does. Yeah. Yeah. And especially when, you know, boys are always taught to stuff your emotions down, hide everything and just work, you know, like the boys likely could have been sent to farms or other types of, uh, labor that was offered to, to boys, you know, even pretty young boys.

Yeah. There were different ways that you could still employ them. Yeah, of course. And they typically would look for those types of things for children. Yeah. Now a little bit more context around adoption in Ontario at this time. So we don't see the Ontario Adoption Act come in until 1921, and that was the first piece of legislation in Canada to give the courts the power to transfer legal parental right to adoptive parents.

Okay. Otherwise, beforehand, the adoption could only be made legal through individual bills in the Ontario legislature. So you'd actually have to have... a member of provincial parliament submit that bill for you to be able to legally adopt a child. So, people typically didn't do this [00:31:00] because it was extremely expensive.

They didn't have access to these types of people to essentially lobby on their behalf for this adoption. So like I said, with these organizations, typically they would just kind of put a kid in a home and it wasn't anywhere near the same vetting process, legal process to assume these rights. Things were a lot more lax at that time, you know, if, let's say, the census enumerator was to come around, there's nothing that would stop somebody from saying, oh, that's my son or my adopted son.

They wouldn't ask for any sort of paperwork, right? Right, right. You can just say those things. People didn't have the same types of identification, registrations that we have today. Yeah, yeah, of course. So it's just 1921 where we see this coming in. So it's important to keep that in mind when we look at these conditions for these kids when they're going through foster care and being adopted.

Yeah. There's also a major stigma around adopted children because they typically belong to unwed, young, single, disadvantaged mothers. Obviously, Angelina [00:32:00] was only disadvantaged of those things. But, nonetheless, there's still this huge stigma around adoption because of where these kids typically come from.

They're going to be poor. They're often bastards, which at that time, that carried so much weight under that. religious connotation of society.

Nima: That's so crazy to think about today.

Lauryn: It was also tied into the question of women's respectability. What kind of a woman would have a child out of wedlock, so what kind of child is she producing?

Right. There's, you know, kind of these ideas that Sins are very much passed on from mother to child.

Nima: Yeah, that's fair. I understand. But it's just a funny ass concept to me. I'm sorry. I know. Uh, go on.

Lauryn: As a result of all of this stigma around adoption, typically adoption stories and birth stories were adoptees due to this shame.

Oh. So even if... [00:33:00] You were adopted as a youngster, you know, looking at the youngest, Pietro, who was about two, three at the time of the murder. Perhaps they never told him he was adopted. You know? Right, right. They could have just said, He was too young. He wouldn't have known better. We're just going to tell him he's ours.

Yeah, and remove

him from

everything else. Exactly. And again, our speculation, but these things happened all of the time. Pre adoption act, various charitable organizations and religious societies in Canada and Britain primarily facilitated private adoptions, sometimes even with financial incentive for the adoptive parents.

Right. So in my opinion, there is opportunity for there to be. malicious intent. Of course, you're making money. You're making money off of children. Yeah. Who really are there to be protected by those, those people, those people working for those organizations to place them in the care of people. Yeah. But ultimately it's for monetary gain in some instances.[00:34:00]

We often see at this time these adoption campaigns that were really geared towards agricultural families. It was, like I said, super common to place kids on farms. There's, like we talked about in the last part, these immigration campaigns to settle the West and really grow farming so that we can support.

And feed our growing population. So it was really common to use child labour in those efforts. Uh, we saw this with the Bernardo children or home children. Uh, there was a philanthropist in England, his last name was Bernardo, and he had a huge orphanage. And what they did with these children, they called them the home children coming from Bernardo's Home for the Children.

I can't remember the exact term, but Bernardo's Home was in the title. They basically just sent boatloads of these kids over to Canada and placed them. With different families that had farm sons.

Nima: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense.

Lauryn: My second great grandmother actually was one of the home children.

Nima: Oh, no way!

Lauryn: Yeah, she came over with her two sisters. And [00:35:00] she was placed with one of her sisters, but not the youngest sister.

Nima: Oh, that's sad.

Lauryn: She was the oldest, yeah. And so my great grandma, she told me stories when I was a kid of her mom being on the boat coming over and how scared she was. She was young, I think she was only about 10 or 11 coming over, and she was in charge of her younger sisters.

Nima: Wow. Yeah. I couldn't imagine that.

Lauryn: And it was all these children with only a few people on the boat with them to supervise. So it was, I mean, and those were British children coming over, those. Weren't children coming from an immigrant background, you know? Yeah. Who's to say even how much English these kids spoke when they first got...

to the foster home or to the children's aid society... Yeah. if their parents were Italian immigrants, there's a good chance their parents were speaking Italian at home with them. Yeah. 100%. I mean, you didn't really speak English growing up at home with your family, did you?

Nima: No, no, not when we started, obviously. Um, but for me, obviously, because I grew up in Canada. Um, my parents would speak our native tongue at home, which is... which [00:36:00] is a dialect of Turkish. And then, um, we spoke a bit of Farsi as well, but what they did is they wouldn't speak to me in English and they let me learn English through TV in school so that I didn't have an accent, so I sound like a Westerner now.

Lauryn: And it looks like kind of similar efforts were made once the kids were at the Children's Aid Society to get them to really... Get into English. We see Michael's letter to his mom. It's written pretty well. Yeah, that's true. I mean, seven years old. He could have been at school before. I wouldn't be surprised if he did receive some kind of schooling at that time.

But, nonetheless, they are receiving education in English now. There's that definite distancing from that cultural background. Yep, for sure. Last time I researched this case for the sepia crimes episode, I wasn't really able to find much else about the kids beyond what we've already chatted about. But luckily this time around we've had a few new resources, new sources come out, like I was talking about at the very beginning [00:37:00] of this episode in part one.

There's a few that came out, um, in the last A few years, and then the 1931 census just came out in the last few weeks. Yeah. So we have a good variety of sources. I can't remember exactly what started me on this journey for looking into Amelia. It's been a couple years now. Um, but not long after originally releasing the sepia crimes episode, I started to deep dive into what could have happened with the kids.

Right. And I got a hint on Ancestry. ca for... A different website, findagrave. com, it's affiliated with Ancestry, it's basically where people will post pictures of, um, graves all over, all over the world. So you can confirm like burial information, dates of birth and death, there's lots of great things you can get from that.

And so I got a findagrave hint. for Amelia Roy, buried just outside of Toronto. And so that got me thinking, um, and it was [00:38:00] also buried, sorry, she was also buried at a Catholic cemetery and the Napolitano's were Catholic and she could have been placed with a Catholic family going forward, right? Roy could have been Roi, French even.

So, not crazy things. And the birth year, all of the birth information with this was accurate and it gave me a death year of 1972. Okay. So, from that, I used that to basically guide the rest of my research. At this point, I wasn't taking it as firm information. Yeah. Because when you get info like that, you can't just jump on it and take it as fact.

Of course. You need to find other sources to back that up, especially when we're looking at Somebody that was placed in foster care and adopted out as a young kid in the 1910s. There's a lot of things that are going to prevent us from attributing her to the name Amelia Napolitano, for example, and to her parents and all of that.

So with the digging, I did [00:39:00] find her obituary. She died August 26th of 1972. With her sister Pearl Lennon listed in the obituary. Pearl. Pearl. I remember that name. Yes. So then I started looking into Pearl, this particular Pearl, and Pearl Lennon and Amelia Roy actually lived just about a ten minute walk away from each other for a good amount of time on Broadview Avenue in Toronto.

Oh, okay. So that also made me think, okay, it's not unlikely that sisters would live nearby, especially if they've been able to. Stay close throughout their lives. Right. So continued to do some digging found Pearl's obituary. She passed away in May 18th 2000 and I was able to confirm it was the same Pearl that was listed on these voter lists and in Amelia's obituary Because in Pearl's obituary and mentioned that she had been a longtime Eaton's department store employee Which had been noted [00:40:00] on all of those voter lists, because those always took employment information.

Right. Address and employment info. Yeah, yeah. So I could see that she was an Eaton's store employee on all of those, thus confirming the obituary. And in the obituary, um, also confirmed that she had a husband, Hugh Lennon, so her maiden name wasn't Lennon. So, still open very much so to the possibility of Napolitano or another name that she was adopted under.

Nima: Yeah, of course.

Lauryn: So from everything that I saw from all of that, I was very confident that I knew... Ultimately where they ended up. They both were in Toronto. They lived very close to each other. I mean, Pearl was working as an Eaton store employee. Seems that she worked there for a very long time. It was noted in her obituary that she was a long time and loved employees.

It seemed like she did have a pretty good life. In that sense.

Nima: Considering, yeah.

Lauryn: Considering, you know, got married. And, um, for Amelia, there's a few other things that I was able to find out. [00:41:00] I'm not as confident about this information. Um, but I'm feeling pretty good about it. So with the 1921 census, I found a listing for Amelia Roy, listed as the adopted daughter of James and Kate Joyce.

And this was a farming family in Adjala, which is just outside of Barrie, just southwest of Barrie, Ontario. So still in Ontario, not too too far from Sault Ste. Marie, a few hours away, but... Not outrageous. Um, and to have the name Amelia Roy, I'm not 100% sure where that could have come in, if that was maybe a foster family, or maybe they just kind of blanket gave the kids a different name.

Yeah, that's possible. But nonetheless, with her being the adopted daughter, being in close proximity and she's the right age on the census, I feel pretty good that it's her. Yeah, that's fair. And she was not with the family for the 1931 census. Okay, interesting. They were listed at the same [00:42:00] address. Yeah.

But she wasn't on there. Okay. Which makes sense, she would have been in her mid 20s or 25 at that point, so not outrageous for a woman in her mid 20s, in the 1920s, to be living on her own. Yeah, of course. Right. And from that, I did find that Amelia Roy was listed as a nurse or nurse's assistant on all of those voter lists.

Okay. It doesn't appear that she ever married. She was always listed as Miss Amelia Roy. Okay. But nonetheless, she went off and became a nurse and, and still, from what I saw, was able to live a pretty successful life. She worked pretty long as a nurse. It wasn't until the 1950s that I saw, late 1950s. I think maybe even early 60s I saw that she was being listed as retired on the voter list.

Oh, wow. Worked for some time too, um, worked kind of all over. I saw her in the Hamilton area as well as working in Toronto, so definitely did move around. So there's still some more digging to be done. Yeah, for sure. To really find out what happened with that.

Nima: Still cool to see that.

Lauryn: It's really cool. [00:43:00] It's really fun to finally get these answers.

There's still some question marks. I can't say for certain, but based on the information I'm seeing with all the overlap with Perl, I feel pretty confident about this. There's still some question marks with Perl, though. So I tried using the same kind of logic with Amelia being listed as an adopted daughter on the 21 census when searching for Perl.

Okay. So what I did was I just typed in Uh, that I wanted to search for all of the Pearls born in 1906 with the relation to head of household listed as adopted. Mmm, okay. Now that didn't turn anything up for this Pearl. I mean there were some Pearls that were adopted born in 1906, but I was able to confirm through other records that they weren't this Pearl.

Okay, yeah. However, I did find A 1921 census record for a children's home in Port Arthur, which today is a part of Thunder Bay. Okay. And this record lists [00:44:00] Pearl Burton living there. Hmm. She's the same age as our Pearl. Okay. And it's a children's home that she's living at. Oh, okay. So, Similar kind of foster care, children's aid society environment.

Right. So knowing that she was bouncing around when she was ten years old or so. Yeah, that's right. Because of behavioral issues. Yeah. Kind of, yeah, led me to say it was plausible that this one was her, but I wasn't able to really find other records of this Pearl Burton to confirm if this had been Pearl before she got married to Hugh Lennon.

So still a question mark, still some digging to be done with the 1931 census. It's It's only been up for like two weeks now. It literally released two weeks ago as of the day this episode goes live. And it's only really been scanned by AI basically for name recognition. So there's still a lot of errors with that.

So it's not the easiest to just go in and search for names and it'll give you all the results. [00:45:00] There's a lot of errors. I've seen so many people online complaining about. All sorts of issues with the census and it's just going to take time, right? It's not a perfect system. People need to review it and make sure it's a usable resource.

So there could still be some things to be found out with the 1931 census. For these girls. Yeah. Fingers crossed. So hopefully I have an update on that down the line. Hopefully.

Nima: Still a lot of chicken scratch on there from what I saw. So it'd be uh, it'd be pretty tough to translate even if you're AI or a human. So.

Lauryn: It's pretty incredible. I've posted in some Facebook groups that I'm in before, some genealogy groups where You know, you take a screenshot of an old death certificate or census record or something where it's almost illegible between the terrible handwriting and like the terrible scan quality. Yeah.

And people are still able to read it. It's incredible. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to track down any information about the boys. Oh, brutal. It's been pretty frustrating. And I think that's for a lot of reasons. They both have extremely common names. Right. Michael, and although the [00:46:00] baby's name was Pietro, he was also called Peter.

So Michael and Peter are extremely common names at this time. And even if they were to have stayed in Sault Ste. Marie, even with the same names, Michael and Peter Napolitano were pretty common still at the time. And I wasn't able to find records for those names in that area that were about the same. Age or anything like that.

So I don't think they stayed in the Sault Ste. Marie area, at least under those names. Right. And we saw it could have been possible that they were adopted out to the U. S. Right. Another province even. There's lots of places they could have gone. I mean, it seems that the girls stayed in Ontario and if anything came south.

Makes sense that they came south as adults looking for work. It was easier for women to work in a city at the time. Yeah, maybe

they went west.

Right. Or they could have gone back to the States. Michael was born in New York. Oh, okay. He could have, I don't know. Yeah, that's right. If he would have been able to get citizenship.

Right. Or, I mean, it was pretty easy at that time to just cross the border and take up residency. Yeah. I mean, my great grandfather who, uh, he was born in the States, [00:47:00] but his kids weren't. He was able to pass some of them off as being New York citizens, or sorry, New Jersey, uh, New Jerseyans. New Jersians. Not sure what the term would be, but he was able to pass them off as being born in the States, although they were born in Canada, um, when they were trying to not be Canadians because he wanted to get out of the draft for World War I.

Nima: Ah, yes, yes.

Lauryn: Yes, he was a draft dodger. That's right. So, there's lots, there were so many easy ways to lie at that time. Right. And then coming back to Canada, said that they had never lived in Canada, he was born in the States, didn't come over until 1921, even though he grew up in Eastern Ontario.

Nima: That's amazing.

Lauryn: So, it, like, lying happens all the time.

Nima: Oh, of course.

Lauryn: People had no issue lying to any sort of government official. Like, these are border agents that they were lying to about these sort of things. Yeah, yeah. When talking about my family. Yeah, yeah. But nonetheless, it was so easy to change names, change dates, change places.

There's a lot of things that could have changed with these boys, and I don't know that I'll ever get those [00:48:00] answers, really. Yeah. That's fair. It's a little frustrating. Especially when there's a whole continent to look at, but maybe one day, maybe one day. We'll see. We'll see and in a second We'll see what happens with Angelina, but let's take a quick break.

Nima: Let's do it

And

we're

back

Lauryn: we're back so we know now what we Do know about Angelina's four children, and the other thing that we know is from Dubinsky and Iacovetta's article, where they state that Angelina did renew contact with her children at the end of her prison term, but I really couldn't find any other information beyond that about their relationship following her release.

Anything else I say about that will be speculation, and I will speculate a little bit about that. Angelina was released on December 30th, 1922, and began living with the nickel family in Kingston, [00:49:00] working as their domestic servant. Okay. The nickel family was very prominent, Hugh C Nickle . He was actually the mayor of Kingston from 1920 to 1921,.

Nima: Right.

Lauryn: And he was one of Angelina's supporters who was. Who was petitioning for early release for her. Right on. So I'm not sure exactly what his influence was in that release, since she was released the year after he was in office. Right. But clearly he... Yeah. And so she did live with them for some time working in this capacity.

Yeah. I did read that apparently Angelina believed she wasn't allowed to leave the city of Kingston following her release, and it wasn't until nearly two years after she received her freedom that she found out she could actually leave. Okay. So it wasn't until 1924 that she left Kingston. And up until that point in 1990 when Iakoveta and Dubinsky were researching Angelina, it was believed that we [00:50:00] didn't really know where the trail went from there.

But we do have a few more answers today. So this is where the genealogical sleuthing comes back into play. There's definitely still some gaps to fill in with Angelina. Yeah. But we do have a few clues at least. Okay. So Angelina passed away on September 4th, 1932. And some of these clues come in from her death certificate.

So she died in hospital in Kingston of sepsis following a surgery a few weeks prior. Okay. On her death certificate, her address at the time of death was listed as the hospital, but the address prior to that was the Nickel family address. The interesting thing with this, though, is that she didn't appear on the 1931 census as living with them.

Hmm, that is interesting. So, she passed away in 1932, and the year prior wasn't listed on the census with them. Right. So where is she at that time? Yeah, who knows. So, she [00:51:00] could have been, perhaps, with one of her kids at this point. We know her daughters ended up in the greater Toronto area, most likely. And Kingston's only about two and a half hours east of Toronto.

So it is possible that she had renewed contact and was able to maybe live with one of her daughters or maybe even one of her sons at this point. Yeah. Perhaps she was able to live on her own, or something like that, and then return to living with the Nickle family. She maybe was homeless at this point in time, and the Nickles were her last address.

Yeah. But there was nothing before being in the hospital, so that's why they put that on her death certificate. Right. There's a lot of questions there, and honestly I don't know that we'll ever get those answers. Yeah, fair enough. Hopefully we do, and as I do find more facts about this case, I will release updates.

Hopefully there are new facts to release, fingers crossed, but we'll just have to stay tuned for that. Yeah, absolutely. Angelina's case does hold a lot of [00:52:00] significance in Canadian history. Her case was the first in Canada to use the battered woman defense. Now, battered woman syndrome, which is now known as a psychological condition and a form of PTSD caused by intimate partner violence, despite its name, can happen to anyone regardless of their sexual orientation and their gender identity.

Symptoms of battered woman syndrome vary from person to person, but include the possibility of becoming violent towards their abuser, which we saw in Angelina's case. In 1990, in the case of R. v. Lavallee, we see that this is the first case in Canada to successfully use the battered woman defense. In this case, coincidentally named Angelique Lynn Lavallee, very similar to Angelina, shot and killed her common law husband after he said that if she didn't kill him first, he would kill her.

Nima: Mmm, that sounds familiar.

Lauryn: We saw pretty much the exact same [00:53:00] thing play out in Angelina's case where she received those Extreme threats of violence including you better kill me. Otherwise, I'll kill you. Yeah huge parallel there with this case as well There was a long and well known history to police of domestic violence and emotional abuse same idea there were several incidences where police were at their home and He was a known abuser Ultimately, Lavallee was charged with second degree murder, and the jury did acquit her, initially.

However, the Crown appealed the decision to the Manitoba Court of Appeal, which forced a new trial. Of course. The appeal ended up going to the Supreme Court of Canada, where Madam Justice Bertha Wilson agreed with the original court decision that the battered woman defense was sufficient, thus setting the judicial precedent.

That's huge. It was 79 years after we saw the battered woman defense first introduced in Canadian court. Until it was actually successful.

Nima: Yeah, that's a long time.

Lauryn: That's a very long time. It does definitely speak to [00:54:00] the vast changing attitudes in society and the way that women are viewed. Yeah. But there's still a lot of work to be done.

Of course. What are your thoughts on all of this? Um,

Nima: yeah, I mean, it's nice to hear that, you know, even though it was 79 years down the road, that, um, We are able to recognize these things and be able to defend people in these situations. Like, it sucks that these situations happen and, uh, you know, especially women are put in these situations all the time.

Um, so, in that case, I'm really happy. Of course, there's a lot of sadness in Angelina's story overall. Um, but I think it's a story that's worth being told so that we can see the growth as we move in the future.

Lauryn: Yeah, absolutely. And like I said at the very start of part one, it's really key to understand [00:55:00] why certain decisions were made in the past in order to understand really how we got to where we are today.

Yeah. So, definitely worth revisiting for that reason. Totally. Before we end off, I wanted to include a few recent stats from Stats Canada about domestic violence and assault in Canada today. In Canada in 2019, of the 107, 810 people aged 15 and over who experienced intimate partner violence, 79% were women.

And this is just police reported data. Wow. So I'm sure that number goes a lot higher, knowing... How often these instances go unreported. Yeah, absolutely. Between 2014 and 2019, there were 497 victims of intimate partner homicide, and 80%, so 400 of these victims, were women. Oh. So similar numbers to the instances of intimate partner violence.

These ones obviously don't go unreported, but [00:56:00] nonetheless, it's a pretty high number.

Nima: That's a very high number. And it could be even higher.

Lauryn: It could be even higher. Yeah. There absolutely are some that go unreported. For sure. And a lot of these women are missing cases, not yet classified as homicide. Yeah.

So that isn't even included in the statistic here.

Nima: That's a great point.

Yeah. So, due to the course of what we are speaking of today, uh, we did want to provide some resources for survivors of intimate partner violence and their loved ones. Again, in Canada, Assaulted Women's Hotline toll free at 1 866 863 0511 and in the U.

S., 1 800 799 SAFE or 1 800 799 7233.

Lauryn: And that's it for our very first episode of Rooted in Crime.

Nima: That's a wrap.

Lauryn: Wow. Well, thank you so much to everyone for listening to parts one and two. We do really appreciate all of your

support.

Nima: Yeah, thanks everyone. Without you, uh, we definitely wouldn't be doing this.

Lauryn: And a [00:57:00] special shout out to Lindsay Macdonald for recording and producing our intro and transition music.

Nima: So, some socials, where to find us here. Um, Instagram, check us out @ rootedincrime. And you can also get in touch with us at rootedincrime@gmail.com.

Lauryn: We're also on Patreon if you'd like to support the podcast.

It's patreon. com slash rooted in crime right now We already have some bonus content live if you'd like to check it out We've actually posted the very first episode of sepia crimes the episode on Angelina Napolitano that inspired this Podcast so definitely check it out It's worth a listen fun to hear about the facts that I got wrong the last time around and hear how that's different with this episode.

So definitely give it a listen, and we'd really appreciate your support there. You can also subscribe, follow, and review on your favorite podcast listening apps like Apple Podcasts. Those [00:58:00] reviews really do help us to reach more listeners, and it's also a really great way to see how you guys feel about the podcast and make those adjustments along the way to make sure it's a great podcast for you.

Nima: Yeah, definitely let us know guys.

Lauryn: Last but not least, if there's a true crime story from your hometown or even your family tree that you'd like me to research, let me know. You can send me an email or shoot me a DM. Any of those Rooted in Crime socials are great.

And remember, we are releasing bi weekly episodes every other week.

Next episode coming up June 29th. Stay tuned.

Thanks again, everyone. We'll see you next time. See you next time, guys.

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