She faked being a man, but really did kill
BEFORE HE cracked her skull and set her body on fire, Harry Crawford told many lies to his wife, Annie. He said he was from Scotland when he hailed from Italy. He told her he had no relatives, neglecting to mention a teenage daughter, two parents (still alive) and 16 siblings. He promised he had stopped drinking but he had not. He said his name was Harry Crawford, and it wasn’t.
All those fibs paled next to the big lie.
The man Annie Birkett married in February 1913 was a woman.
Crawford, who would soon become known to the world as the “Man-Woman Murderess,” managed to fool his wife because he had been practicing the art of gender deception for about 40 years.
It started not long after the birth of a baby girl, Eugenia Falleni, in a town near Livorno, Italy, in 1875.
She was the oldest child of a poor couple, Luigi and Isola Falleni. Two years after she was born, Luigi moved his growing family (there would eventually be 22 babies, of which 17 would make it past childhood) to New Zealand.
Eugenia did not behave like other girls. She cut her hair short, wore boys’ clothes, preferred the games her brothers played and learned to ride horses with remarkable skill.
As a teen, she took manual labor jobs in brickyards and stables, easily passing for male despite her delicate features and 5-foot 4-inch frame.
After an arranged marriage failed, Eugenia took the escape route favored by many who feel hopelessly out of place. She went to sea.
Calling herself Eugene Falleni, the 22-year-old hopped onto a Norwegian cargo ship. According to one account, the captain, also from Italy, became friendly with this kindred spirit from his homeland, wrote Mark Tedeschi in his 2012 biography, “Eugenia: A True Story of Adversity, Tragedy, Crime and Courage.”
During their conversations, the captain became suspicious that this sailor was not who he appeared to be. The realization of Falleni’s deception led to a nightmare, in which the captain repeatedly raped her until they docked in Newcastle, Australia. There, he kicked her off, pregnant and with no place to go.
A childless couple in Sydney took the girl in and cared for her through the pregnancy. But Eugenia showed no love for her baby girl, named Josephine, and was often cruel to her. In a few years, with a new masculine disguise — Scotsman Harry Crawford — Eugenia vanished, leaving the child with the couple.
Crawford knocked around from town to town, job to job. By 1912, his wandering led him to a job as a coach driver and handyman for a doctor in Wahroonga, New South Wales. There, he met and took a shine to the pretty housekeeper, Annie Birkett, 35, a widow with a 9-year-old son. She said yes to Crawford’s proposal in 1913.
Their marriage was rocky, with the groom’s drinking a major source of conflict. Oddly, his lack of what is generally considered essential equipment for a husband was not, at least for a while. Eventually, she began to express concerns that something was not quite right with Harry. Their arguments grew worse.
On Sept. 28, 1917, Harry took Annie on a picnic to discuss their future. He came home alone, saying Annie had “cleared out with a plumber,” Annie’s son would recall later.
Crawford moved to Sydney where, incredibly, he found another woman who agreed to marry him and who also seemed blissfully unaware that something was missing from the relationship.
Annie’s son went off to live with relatives, but never really believed Crawford’s story of his mother’s disappearance. The boy started to investigate on his own when he learned that shortly after Annie vanished, a woman’s body had been found on the outskirts of the town where they lived. The corpse was burned beyond recognition and police couldn’t figure out who she was.
Annie’s son could. He identified the body based on some charred pieces of jewelry, shoes, and clothing.
Police arrested Harry Crawford on July 5, 1920. Faced with being sent to a men’s prison, he revealed the truth.
Falleni’s trial started in October 1920. She appeared in women’s clothes in court and her story was that she had no idea where Annie had gone or why she had left.
The murder was sensational enough, but it took a backseat to the horror over the genderbending aspects of the case. Everyone wanted to know how a woman pretending to be a man managed to fool two wives.
The answer came in an object that has gone down in court records as the “article,” a phallus fashioned of wood, fabric and leather that Falleni strapped to her body and used to simulate intercourse.
It took the jury two hours to find her guilty, and that meant the death penalty. Later, the sentence was commuted to life, and in 1931 she was freed, under the condition that she never pretend to be a man again.
Falleni took yet another name, Jean Ford, and lived quietly until 1938, when she stepped off a curb and was hit by a car.
Buried in an unmarked grave, Falleni, who provoked frenzied press coverage during the trial, was forgotten for decades. Today her story has been revived in books, films and plays that reflect her role as, Tedeschi wrote, “a transgender warrior at a time when there was no understanding of her condition and no support for her cause.”