YOU’D HAVE TO BE OF “A CERTAIN AGE” to remember the original “Crime Classics” radio show (June 1953-June 1954). Or maybe you caught “Enjoying Crime Classics, Obsessively” here at SimanaitisSays.
Crime Classics: The Hyland Files is available from Radio Spirits.
The program is a regular feature on SiriusXM “Radio Classics” and recently introduced me to Laura D. Fair—a real femme fatale extraordinaire or was she a woman scorned? What follows here, in Parts 1 and 2 today and tomorrow, are tidbits about Mrs. Fair gleaned from this radio show as well as from elsewhere on the Internet where she appears at a goodly number of sites.
Early Life and Marriages (All Five of Them). Wikipedia recounts, “Laura D. Fair (née Laura Ann Hunt; 1837–1919) was an American murderer, whose death sentence was overturned. Her court case is notable due to her gender and the legal case framed around her gender; it received much attention in the press, and support of Fair by the suffragettes.”
Remember this last point as one in her favor.
“At the age of 16 in 1853,” Wikipedia continues, “she married her first husband, 36-year-old William H. Stone, an alcohol dealer from New Orleans. He died in 1854.”
She started school at the Convent of Visitation to become a teacher. Fair left school in a year to marry Thomas Gracien, but shortly abandoned him to join her mother operating a boarding house in San Francisco (around 1856 or 1857).
Hmm. That’s two husbands in three or four years. Unlucky in love? Read on.
Wikipedia sums up marriages: “She met her third husband, sheriff William D. Fair after moving to Shasta, California. Three years later, the couple separated and Fair committed suicide in 1861, leaving Laura to support herself, her young daughter, and her mother. They initially opened a boarding house in Sacramento, but this did not fare well. They then went back to San Francisco, where she worked briefly as an actress…. She was briefly married to Jesse Snyder for a few months in 1870.”
A Contemporary New York Tribune Report: The Trove website offers contrasting, questionable, albeit juicy tidbits from a contemporary New York Tribune report published in The Mercury, Hobart, Tasmania, August 29, 1871. The report was titled “Mrs. Laura D. Fair, Her Husbands, Divorces, and Crimes”: “Bright in mind and exceedingly comely in person, she soon found full investment for her capital. She caught a rich husband. She was eighteen [likely incorrect] and he was eighty [possibly correct]. His senile jealousy drove her to the remedy of divorce; but while the action was pending the dotard died in delirium tremens, and the adventuress found herself the mistress of an ample fortune.”
“She married within a month,” The Mercury reported, “and in less than three [years?] was a widow by suicide: With the semblance of decent sorrow fresh upon her, she took another husband, Colonel Fair, and the fortunes of the first running low, she emigrated with this one to Virginia City, Nevada, where she set up a hostelry, styled the ‘Fair House.’ The amiable Colonel made way for some one else by blowing his brains out, and the incorrigible widow, sated with her matrimonial ventures, essayed fame and fortune on the San Francisco stage.”
Laura D. Fair, prior to 1870.
The Crittenden Affair. Let’s return to a less florid source: “In September 1862,” Wikipedia observes, “Fair opened the 37-room Tahoe House Hotel in Virginia City, Nevada on South C Street, after silver was discovered in the nearby hills.” (We can conjecture where she had found her silver….)
“In 1863,” the tale continues, “Fair started a relationship with local lawyer Alexander Parker Crittenden, who was already married, although he said he was single and a widower. Fair eventually learned the truth, and Crittenden promised her he would divorce his wife, Clara Churchill Jones.”
The relationship would last for seven years.
The Crittenden Murder. In 1870, Clara Jones was to travel east and, Wikipedia notes, “Fair learned that Crittenden was going to meet his wife in Oakland, California, and was due to board a ferry back to San Francisco. On November 3, 1870, Fair caught the same ferry and shot Crittenden in the heart.”
She declared at the time, “I did it and I don’t deny it. He ruined me and my daughter.”
This drama (and its subsequent complications) are described in CBS “Radio Crime Classics.”
In Part 2, we visit the trials (two of them!) and find Mrs. Fair living well beyond the date of an intended hanging. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025