Angelina Napolitano was born in either 1882 or 1883 in a small town outside of Naples, Italy. There are several articles about her but the year of her birth isn’t confirmed. Her family name is unknown. She married Pietro Napolitano when she was 16 years old and the young couple emigrated to America shortly after the turn of the century. They lived in New York City for 7 years and moved to Canada in 1909. First, they moved to Thessalon, Ontario and then to Sault Ste. Marie, where there was a sizable Italian immigrant community. The couple had 4 children together. Pietro found work as a labourer but struggled to earn enough money to support his family. To cope, he took to drinking and pressuring his wife to help out through prostitution. Despite Angelina’s repeated refusals, Pietro kept insisting and became increasingly violent; threatening her and abusing her daily.
In November 1910, after Pietro abruptly left town, Napolitano took in a boarder, believing that her husband had abandoned the family, she launched an affair with the man. Weeks later, when Pietro returned, the boarder fled. Pietro again demanded his wife turn to prostitution; Napolitano told him she didn’t want him as a husband. He flew into a rage and stabbed her 9 times with a pocketknife in the shoulder, arms, chest and face. Angelina spent the next three weeks in hospital and was permanently disfigured. Pietro was arrested and pleaded guilty to wounding his wife with the “intent to maim.” The judge in his case accepted that he was provoked by his wife’s affair, and handed him a suspended sentence, reasoning it was better to keep the family’s breadwinner out of prison than to land him behind bars.
On April 16th, 1911, Easter Sunday, the arguing reached a breaking point. Pietro issued an ultimatum to Angelina: Bring home money for the family by prostituting or be hurt or worse; killed. He then went upstairs to take a nap. This would prove to be fatal. While he slept, Angelina made a decision that would seal her fate and cement her fame. She went out to the woodshed and grabbed an axe. She then crept upstairs to the bedroom where Pietro slept and swiftly landed four axe blows to his head and neck, killing him instantly. She was 6 months pregnant with her fifth child. After she finished the deed, she returned the axe to the woodshed and then went inside to cuddle with her youngest child. She then called a neighbour to confess what she had done. She felt more relief than remorse at killing the man who had subjected her to years of violence, threats and humiliation. Her exact words to her neighbour were “I just killed a pig”.
Angelina’s trial began on May 8th, 1911. Her responsibility for the act was never in question. She admitted to killing Pietro. Unfortunately for Angelina, the judge would stifle her court appointed lawyer, Uriah McFadden, any time he tried to introduce evidence to explain her actions: how she feared her husband after his attack in November. The judge stated “If anybody injured 6 months ago could give that as a justification or excuse for slaying a person, it would be anarchy complete.” The testimony lasted 3 hours. Napolitano was the only defence witness, and told the jury in her broken English that she killed her husband to protect her virtue and her children. The judge claimed that Pietro was asleep at the time of his murder and presented no immediate threat to his wife, who “was at perfect liberty to leave.” As it turns out, the legal principle of “immediate threat” would be a key issue in the 1990 court case R. v. Lavalee, that ultimately established battered wife syndrome as a defence in Canada: It meant women who fought back and killed their abusers could be acquitted of the crime. The judge assured the jury that Napolitano, if found guilty, would not be hanged until well after she delivered her baby.
The jurors did not take long to decide the case. They quickly returned a guilty verdict, while recommending that the judge impose a lenient sentence. The judge, however, ignored the recommendation and ordered the 28-year old Napolitano to be hanged. He set the execution date for Aug 9th, 1911.
Regularly during the last 150 years, Canadians have been riveted by criminal trials that became part of the national conversation. Dennis Oland, Robert Pickton, Paul Bernardo and Robert Latimer to name a few. Few, though, have led to the international outcry that followed Napolitano’s conviction.
An American wire service correspondent, Honor D. Fanning, interviewed Napolitano in prison and wrote about her knitting baby clothes for her unborn child. Fanning also tracked down Napolitano’s children and had one write a letter to his imprisoned mother. This caused a media firestorm of sympathy for Angelina. Her 7-year-old son, Michael’s letter read “I hope you will come home to us soon. Amelia (his sister) takes good care of us, but we all want you. We are lonesome every night without you.”
Petitions demanding clemency poured in from across Canada, the U.S. and Europe. Women’s groups, suffragettes and church organizations spearheaded the campaign, which enlisted political support from a handful of U.S. Governors, including Tennessee Governor Ben W. Hooper, who said “If I have correctly understood the facts, the woman ought not to be hanged.”
Dr. Alexander Aalto, of Ohio, offered to take Napolitano’s place on the gallows. “It would only be fair to Mrs. Napolitano for a man to give his life for her, in as much as her life is in peril on account of a man’s persecution of her, and because men condemned her.” He said.
Federal Justice Minister Sir Allen Bristol Aylesworth was taken aback by the outpouring of support for Napolitano, an admitted murderess who “chopped the head of a man to pieces while he was asleep.”
More than 100,000 people added their names to petitions and letters calling for clemency. The liberal government finally bowed to the pressure on July 14th, 1911 and commuted Napolitano’s sentence to life imprisonment. Napolitano gave birth in prison, but her infant died two weeks later. She was paroled in late December 1922 after serving 11 years. Napolitano worked as a live-in-maid for the Nickle family in Kingston before disappearing from the public record a few years later.
I found a post on Reddit that stated all of Napolitano’s children were taken from her and it was years later when one of her daughters came to see her. The reunion was joyful and Angelina was to go live with her daughter until she passed in 1932 at only 49 years old.
In 2003, independent film director Sergio Navarretta began researching Angelina’s life for a documentary, but expanded the project into a feature film once they realized how dramatic the facts were. The film, Looking for Angelina, was shot in two weeks in 2004 in Sault Ste. Marie, on a small budget of $250,000. The writers took inspiration from Canino’s play “The Angelina Project”. The film Looking for Angelina included a domestic violence awareness campaign component. The film’s producers often screened the movie before a panel discussion of domestic violence experts, or put on screenings to raise money for organizations.
