She knew that her family would be a subject of public shame within the Italian American community if Domenico left her unwed.

In New York City on April 26, 1895, at approximately 9:30 am, Domenico Cataldo was playing cards in a saloon on East 13th Street, and had planned to board a ship leaving for Italy that afternoon.

Barbella produced a straight razor and slashed his neck so swiftly Cataldo had no chance to scream.

He staggered out the door, clutching his throat with both hands, knocking Barbella over, spraying blood everywhere.

[4] Barbella was arrested and put in The New York Halls of Justice and House of Detention (otherwise known as "The Tombs")[5] for 2.5 months.

[1] She was the second woman sentenced to be executed by electric chair (after serial killer Lizzie Halliday's commuted 1894 conviction).

She was granted an appeal on the basis of the judge's jury instructions, which explicitly argued in favor of conviction.

This time, counsel presented a much more sympathetic case: that she was a rape victim whose experience exacerbated her preexisting epilepsy.

In a 1940 census, she is living as Mary di Chiara with her second husband, Ernesto, on Pike Street in Manhattan.

[11] "Illicit and Lethal" - episode about Maria Barbella's life from the documentary Deadly Women, originally aired on Discovery Channel in 2017.