These are the 5 women Alabama has put to death

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. ( WIAT ) — Of all the death row inmates that Alabama has put to death over the years, only five have been women.

As of Thursday, only five of the total 165 death row inmates are women .

Here are the women who have been put to death by the state, ranging from hanging to the electric chair.

Pauline McCoy

According to newspaper accounts of the time, Pauline McCoy was the first woman put to death in Alabama since the area became a state in 1819. McCoy, a Black woman, was hung on October 12, 1888 after being convicted of killing Annie Jordan, a 16-year-old white girl, in Montgomery.

According a witness account reported in The Birmingham News in 1930, McCoy had been convicted of killing Jordan by choking her after Jordan allegedly wouldn’t sell her a pair of red shoes she was wearing. In an account of the case in 1888, McCoy alleged that she choked Jordan after the two got in an argument and Jordan tried to hit her. The article stated that McCoy was found wearing some of Jordan’s clothes, including her shirt and shoes, when she was arrested.

Silena Gilmore

Silena Gilmore was the first woman in Alabama to be sentenced to death by the electric chair on January 24, 1930. She was sentenced to death for the shooting of Horace Johnson, who owned a cafe in Birmingham in December 1928. In an article in the Birmingham Post-Herald, Gilmore blamed liquor for killing Johnson.

Earle Dennison

Earle Dennison died on September 4, 1953 by the electric chair after being convicted of poisoning her 2-year-old niece Diane Weldon in Wetumpka the previous May. Dennison was a former nurse at Wetumpka Hospital and had attempted suicide twice before she was executed, once by overdosing on sleeping pills and another by trying to slash her wrists, according to the Montgomery Advertiser. When asked if she had poisoned her niece, she allegedly replied “I don’t remember.”

Rhonda B. Martin

Rhonda Martin was put to death by the electric chair on October 11, 1957. Martin was sentenced to death after pleading guilty to poisoning her three children, her mother and two husbands, as well as feeding arsenic to another husband in Montgomery. Following the death of her fourth husband, Martin married his 28-year-old son, Ronald. Prosecutors argued that Martin had poisoned her husband to both marry his son as well as collect a “paltry amount of insurance and to get him out of the way.”

Lynda Lyon Block

Forty-five years after Martin’s execution, Lynda Lyon Block was the most recent woman put to death by the state, executed by the state on May 10, 2002. She was also the last Alabama death row inmate to be put to death by the electric chair.

Block was convicted of the death in the 1993 shooting of Opelika police officer Roger Motley. According to press reports, Motley was shot after approaching a car belonging to Motley and husband, George Sibley, in Opelika. At the time, Sibley and Block were wanted on an assault charge in Florida. Block claimed to act in self defense after Motley allegedly put his hand on his weapon and Sibley drew a gun and fired at him. Sibley was later executed in 2005.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to CBS 42.