A couple of swingers

She's got a pretty throat, that Doris Palmer. 

Not even a rope could make this 20-year-old's neck look ugly. And Montreal's local hangman was told to get ready to fit her with a noose, so the theory could have been put to the test. But nice neck or not, good looks don't sway good executioners. 

   

And if anyone was going to sway on March 23, 1928, it was this pretty American -- described as as a cabaret entertainer, Broadway ballerina and movie actress -- and her husband, George McDonald (inset). Both were found guilty of the murder of Adelard Bouchard, a Lachine taxicab driver, in July of 1927.

The couple hired Bouchard to drive them to Canada from the United States, robbed him and took his life, leaving his body in a ditch, according to evidence at the trial. They were caught in Butte, Montana, and extradited to Quebec for their trial.

So she was sentenced to swing. 

Still, just three weeks before she was scheduled to be transported from the women's prison on Fullum Street in Montreal (where she had converted to Roman Catholicism in January) to Valleyfield, where she would be allowed to spend her last living moments with her husband before being hanged together, she appeared in this wire photo (probably taken some weeks earlier), looking cool as a cucumber.


Waiting for the hangman

Montreal, March 2, 1928-Public sentiment insists that Doris McDonald, 21-year-old American flapper, pay with her life for part in murder of Montreal taxi driver and little hope remains for commutation. She's show in her cell. (Press photo and caption.)

As this drama was playing out in the press, Doris's mother, Mrs. Michael Greco was busy behind the scenes, fighting for her estranged daughter's life. Not that there was a lot of love lost between them -- they hadn't been in contact for years. Nevertheless, Mrs. Greco approached a women's organization who worked with Chicago lawyer James O'Brien.

By mid-March, O'Brien petitioned Quebec to treat Doris with leniency on the grounds that witnesses had signed affadavits describing Palmer as being "irresponsible," that she had always suffered from delusions of grandeur, and that she often assumed the names of celebrities she admired, and so on.

Meanwhile, her lawyer, J.A. Legault, lobbied for his client in Ottawa. He claimed that the confession that she made to detective Bert Clark had been forced, after Clark allegedly threatened to break her neck if she didn't "come across."

In the end, Mr. and Mrs. McDonald went their separate ways -- he towards the gallows, while her sentence was commuted to life just three days before the big drop. Last we heard about her was in April, 1928, when about 80 of her friends and relatives signed a petition in Mount Vernon, N.Y., for a retrial. That didn't seem to go anywhere, though.