Rebecca Hawkins
Rebecca Ann Littleton Hawkins (née Butts) was an American woman who hired a man to murder her husband by shooting after unsuccessfully attempting to kill him by poisoning. After enduring twenty years of beatings by her husband, Williamson Hawkins, she hired her neighbor Henry Garster in 1838 to kill him. The murder led to Garster's hanging, the first in
Jackson County, Missouri, in 1839. Rebecca had previously attempted and failed to murder Williamson with rat poison. She was convicted of being an accessory before the murder and for the prior attempted murder, but was found not guilty of the murder itself. She was sentenced to five years in the
Missouri State Penitentiary. The Jackson County community petitioned the governor for her pardon, which he granted shortly before Rebecca's sentence began. The pardon saved her from the fate of being the first woman to be imprisoned in the Missouri State Penitentiary.
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