Episode 198: Hannah Occuish
Hannah Occuish was born in March of 1774 in Groton, Connecticut. Not much is known about her childhood, but what we do know is troubling. Her mother, cruelly described as being “an abandoned creature,” was a member of the Pequot tribe, and her father remained unnamed. Hannah was Native American and of mixed race, making her an outcast from the very beginning of her life. With her father not present and her mother being an alleged alcoholic and a sex worker, Hannah’s young life was not one of receiving proper care and attention. Historians also believe that Hannah had an intellectual disability, putting her at yet another disadvantage in society.
At the early age of 6, Hannah and her older brother were said to have propositioned a little girl to meet them in an area far away from town. When they got her isolated, they beat her severely, leaving her barely hanging onto life. They then stripped her of her clothes and her gold necklace with the plans of splitting the loot and perhaps making a meager cent. Unfortunately for the siblings, however, they got into an argument right at the crime scene and missed the fact that the little girl was still alive. She woke up and managed to run away, immediately telling authorities what happened to her. As a result of this, Hannah and her brother were taken away from their mother. Hannah’s brother was sent to foster care and his fate was unknown, while Hannah was sent to live with and act as a servant to a widow in New London, Connecticut.
Hannah spent six years working under this widow when the crime that rocked her town sealed her fate. On the morning of July 21st, 1786, 6-year-old Eunice Bolles was brutally beaten and killed while walking to school. She was discovered lying face down next to a stone wall, with a fractured skull, bruises on her face, arms, and evidence of strangulation. She had been piled with some of the rocks from the stonewall to make it appear that she had died in a tragic rock-falling accident. This upset everyone in town, and the townspeople immediately began investigating her murder. It was during this manhunt that the justice-seekers encountered now 12-year-old Hannah Occuish, who denied knowing anything about Eunice’s death but shared that she had seen a group of four boys in the area that morning acting suspiciously.
The next day, after a short search finding no signs of this being truthful, the group found Hannah again and this time, convinced of her guilt based on that one factor, dragged her to the Bolles home and forced her to look upon the badly beaten body. It was here that she became upset, broke down and confessed to the murder. She was arrested on the spot.
Hannah’s trial came in October, and she appeared stoic and calm the entire time. The only evidence against her was her own confession, as there was nothing physical linking her to the crime. On the advice of her defense team, she pled not guilty, essentially recanting her confession. At the end of the trial, she was found guilty of murder. The judge told the court of an elaborate story where Hannah was stewing with rage after a previous incident about five weeks before the murder where Eunice had run home from picking strawberries with other children and told her parents that Hannah had stolen some of the fruit. The judge said that Hannah was waiting for an opportunity to get revenge and saw this opportunity on that July morning when Eunice was walking alone to school and Hannah was collecting water. Hannah supposedly lured her from the road with a small piece of calico before beating her with a rock, strangling her, and covering her with rocks from the stonewall. At her sentencing hearing, the judge did point out that he had considered her young age, but it didn’t count as a mitigating factor, stating, “The sparing of you on account of your age would, as the law says, be of dangerous consequence to the public.” With that, she was sentenced to hang.
Hannah remained calm and unwavering until the day of her execution in December of that same year. As she awaited her death, she was said to be tearful and afraid, with her eyes “begging” anyone in the crowd to come save her. Before she was brought to the gallows, a local reverend named Henry Channing turned her execution into a massive spectacle, preaching a long and intense sermon over the crowd that had gathered. His sermon was titled “God Admonishing His People of Their Duty as Parents and Masters” and he spent well over an hour preaching about how parents must raise their children to be obedient and dutiful or else they will end up like Hannah - a murderer. Hannah was forced to listen to the reverend as he talked about how evil she was and how she was going to continue to suffer after death.
Reverend Channing had visited Hannah in jail several times with the sole purpose of getting her to repent for her crimes so she could be saved. When she refused, as she wasn’t a religious girl and maintained her innocence after the initial emotional confession, he became frustrated and wrote up the intense sermon. At the end, he finished his long rambling by saying, “Hannah, the time for you to die is come.” Hannah Occuish was executed by hanging.
In 2020, a group of historians, tribal members, researchers and members of the Connecticut branch of the Innocence Project took a new look at Hannah’s case and questioned her guilt. Was she prosecuted simply because of her age, race, gender and potential mental disability? Her confession was weak at best, and it was the only evidence. In 2023, an article written for OddFeed by Jessica Seuss points out some inconsistencies with the story and the poor motivation for the murder itself, and the fact that Hannah had multiple chances to confess more details to the reverend but did not. Ultimately, this task force organized by the NAACP hopes to find enough information to perhaps get Hannah exonerated by the Connecticut General Assembly, over 235 years after her execution.
Hannah Occuish was the youngest person executed in the United States and the last female to be executed in the state of Connecticut.
Image sources:
connecticuthistory.org - “A Most Unusual Criminal Execution in New London”