Throughout the centuries there were many different executions performed across different countries.
Women in history often found themselves at the executioner’s scaffold being wrongly
accused of crimes such as witchcraft.
Men would at times accuse difficult women of a variety of different offences and they
were subjected to punishment and humiliation and the most serious offences resulted in
execution.
The final woman to be executed in The UK was Ruth Ellis, a woman who had been found guilty
of murdering her lover outside a pub in London.
Ruth Ellis’ execution took place on the 13th July 1955, but there was a significant
degree of criticism regarding her death as many believed that she was in fact a victim.
At the time across the Uk there were calls to abolish the death penalty but Spain was
a bit later when the abolition of capital punishment came in.
The last executions in Spain were carried out in September 1975, but the final woman
to be executed in Spain was Pilar Prades, who was subjected to a brutal execution in
May 1959.
But what was her story?
Join us today as we look at the horrific execution of the last woman garroted in Spain?
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Pilar Prades was born in 1928, and she was born into a rather quiet family that moved
to Valencia when she was 12 years old.
She was described as introverted and illiterate, and over the next few decades she moved house
a number of times, but then in 1954 she worked for Enrique Villanova and Adela Pascual.
Pilar worked for this married couple and they ran a farmhouse in Valencia, and Prades worked
in their house, and she also worked inside of their shop.
She regularly also worked on the counter of the deli that the couple owned, and the customers
would regularly come in to see her.
However tragedy then hit the family as Adela became very sick and ill which was said to
have been flu, and then she got worse and then died.
Following the death of his wife, Enrique Villanova kicked Pilar out of the house and the business,
and he left Valencia.
Pilar Prades was now out of work, and she then found it inside the house of a military
doctor named Manuel Berenguer and his wife.
She was recommended by the cook, however soon the cook became ill.
She was taken to hospital, and she did get better however when the doctor’s wife began
to get ill too, doctors began to test for a trace of poison.
They found poison and with this, Pilar Prades fell under suspicion based on what had happened
also to her former mistress.
A complaint was filed against her, and despite the fact Adela Pascual had been dead a while
and buried, her body was exhumed and it was then tested positive for arsenic, meaning
that she had been poisoned and that it was this that probably killed her.
The evidence was considered circumstantial at the time as there was nothing concrete
which could link her completely to the murder.
However this wasn’t needed, as Prades during her arrest went 36 hours without eating or
sleeping, and she then confessed to poisoning.
This was very serious, and throughout history poisoning was dealt with very seriously by
Kings and Queens, as Henry VIII would boil a cook alive for poisoning the household of
Bishop John Fisher.
But Pilar Prades would also be linked to the crime as a flask of arsenic based ant killer
was found amongst her possessions, and this was deemed to have been the poison she used.
She pleaded not guilty, but this was against the advice of her lawyers.
The lawyers hoped that she would escape the death penalty if she plead guilty, but regardless
she was sentenced to death for murder.
Pilar Prades was to experience a horrific execution method known as garroting which
was common inside of Spain throughout the centuries.
A garrotte was a weapon which was usually a ligature of a chain, rope or wire which
was used to strangle someone.
It was used in Spain heavily throughout the centuries to take the lives of condemned criminals,
and there were some garroting machines used which killed.
These were someone would be sat on a stool, with the garrotte secured around their neck,
but then after this they would be choked and killed.
Some even had a blade in which severed part of the spinal cord, and it was this fate that
awaited Pilar Prades.
However the executioner who was summoned to carry out her execution Antonio Lopez Sierra
refused to do so as he did not agree with executing a woman in this way.
Her execution was scheduled for 6 o’clock in the morning on the 19th May 1959, but two
hours later she was executed by garroting.
The executioner had got drunk before and, and he had to be dragged into the execution
chamber.
Whilst here, Pilar had the life choked out of her by the garrotte and she was killed.
Her execution was an incredibly brutal and violent one, and the execution was delayed
as some officials were waiting to hear if a pardon would arrive to excuse the killing.
The executioner would later say that what he had done was worse than executing the over
100 men he had previously executed.
But the garrotte was a brutal end for Pilar Prades, the poisoning maid who killed a number
of people.
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