Born in Salisbury, Missouri, in 1878, Dugan later married and had two children (a son and a daughter) but her husband abandoned the family, leaving them destitute.

Dugan relocated to Juneau, Territory of Alaska, after trekking north during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896–1899, and became a cabaret singer and worked as a prostitute to support herself and her children.

Many years later, she moved to Pima County, Arizona, where she worked for an elderly chicken rancher, Andrew J. Mathis, as a housekeeper.

Mathis had previously served time in prison for his role in the kidnapping and lynching of two Native American teenagers in the Seminole burning.

She was arrested in White Plains when a postal clerk, alerted by the police, intercepted a postcard to her from her father in California.

During her testimony, Dugan said that Mathis believed that she had poisoned his breakfast food, but she claimed that he ate rotten meat in the form of a rabbit that had boils on it.

When that failed to revive him, they loaded the body into the coupe, and Jack drove it out alone to dump it and came back at five o'clock in the morning.

To pay for her own coffin, Dugan gave interviews to the press for $1.00 each and sold embroidered handkerchiefs that she knitted while she was imprisoned.

Her cell was searched, and a bottle of raw ammonia and three razor blades hidden in a dress were confiscated.

She swayed slightly when the noose was put around her neck and shook her head in the negative when she was asked if she had any final words.