Alice Hartley (first married name) was convicted in 1895 of killing Nevada State Senator Murray D. Foley by gunshot in 1894. She was sentenced to eleven years but had served only two when she was pardoned.
She was born in England in 1864. She testified that she was married and had one child there. She came to the United States and married a silver prospector and miner named Henry Hartley in the Meadow Lake district of Nevada County, California in 1886.
Her husband died in late 1893, after which she moved to San Francisco, California where she exhibited three oil paintings and six watercolors during the spring exhibition of the Hopkins Institute of Art. In March 1894 she exhibited at the California Midwinter International Exposition in the same city.
She told investigators and testified in court that she was approached by Senator Murray D. Foley, the bank president, who visited her in her studio and insisted that she drink some liquor with him, drugged brandy and bénédictine, she said. She took a sip and he persuaded her to drink it all. She lost consciousness, awoke once and passed out again. She awoke again at 5 a.m. and he was still there.
She testified that Foley knocked at her door "several times on different nights afterward," and on February 25 she went into her room to find him inside. He kissed her violently, picked her up and threw her on a couch, where she lost consciousness again.
She found she was pregnant and insisted that he "acknowledge the paternity of the child and put it in writing. He said he would, but there must be no witnesses." On July 26, he visited her room and threatened to strike her, seizing a chair as a bludgeon. She took a pistol hidden on a shelf behind a curtain and shot him twice.
Mrs. Hartley was indicted by the Washoe County grand jury in August 1894 and went on trial the next month before an overflowing crowd of spectators. The all-male jury found Mrs. Hartley guilty of second-degree murder, with a recommendation of mercy. She was sentenced to eleven years in prison.
On November 16, 1894, she gave birth to a boy, whom she named Vernon Harrison Hartley.
Petitions both for and against the sentence were presented to the State Board of Pardons. It met on June 3, 1895, and turned down her bid for freedom. On June 18 she and the baby were taken to the state prison in Carson City, where they were assigned to two adjoining rooms and she was given the privileges of a trusty.
In January 1897 the State Board of Pardons granted her a full pardon on the ground that the shooting was justified in that Foley had "wronged her," that she had been sufficiently punished and that she had a child to raise.
Mrs. Hartley then proceeded to file a suit for one-half of Foley's estate, valued between $2 million and $8 million, on behalf of their son. Testimony began on November 24, 1896, in Carson City. A jury reported it stood 8 to 4 in favor of Mrs. Hartley, but could not reach a valid agreement, and the case was headed for a retrial when news came that the little boy had died of scarlet fever.
Mrs. Hartley carried on the case as the heir to her son, but in June 1897, a judge declared that her testimony was not valid and she was declared not of interest to the estate, which at that point was estimated to be only $100,000.
Ushers and others escorted her from the church, where she was surrounded by passers-
by and a policeman investigated, but Mrs. Hartley hurried away.
Alice Maud Hartley remarried William S. Bonnifield of Winnemucca, Nevada, in San Francisco on January 4, 1899.
Mrs. Hartley died in Denver, Colorado, on December 28, 1907.
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