During her 25 years at Forepaugh, Topsy gained a reputation as a "bad" elephant and, after killing a spectator in 1902, was sold to Coney Island's Sea Lion Park.

The event was instead limited to invited guests and press only and Thompson and Dundy agreed to use a more sure method of strangling the elephant with large ropes tied to a steam-powered winch with both poison and electrocution planned as backup, a measure supported by the ASPCA.

In 1902, another event brought her again to prominence: the killing of spectator James Fielding Blount[3] in Brooklyn, New York, at what was then the Forepaugh & Sells Brothers' Circus.

Accounts vary as to what happened but the common story is that on the morning of May 27, 1902, a possibly drunk Blount wandered into the menagerie tent where all the elephants were tied in a line and began teasing them in turn, offering them a bottle of whiskey.

A handler named Mortimer Loudett of Albany, New York was attacked by Topsy in Paris, Texas and suffered injuries but Daly could not find a record of his dying from them.

[5] Topsy was sold in June 1902 to Paul Boyton, owner of Coney Island's Sea Lion Park, and added to the menagerie of animals on display there.

[5] During the moving of the Luna in October 1902, handler William Alt was involved in an incident where he stabbed Topsy with a pitchfork trying to get her to pull the amusement ride.

Accounts say Topsy tried to batter her way through the station door and "she set up a terrific trumpeting", leading the officers to take refuge in the cells.

On December 13, 1902, Luna Park press agent Charles Murray released a statement to the newspapers that Topsy would be put to death within a few days by electrocution.

[9] The site they chose was an island in the middle of the lagoon for the old Shoot the Chute ride where they were building the centerpiece of their new park, the 200-foot Electric Tower (the structure had reached a height of 75 feet at the time of the killing).

[9] The Electric Tower had been re-rigged with large ropes set up to strangle the elephant, which were inspected by the ASPCA agents to make sure they conformed to what had been agreed.

[12] They spent the night before[12] stringing power lines from the Coney Island electrical substation nine blocks to the park to carry alternating current they planned to redirect from a much larger plant in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

Newspaper accounts of the events noted that Topsy refused to cross the bridge over the lagoon, ignoring prodding by Goliath and even bribes of carrots and apples.

[14] The owners of Luna Park then tried to get William Alt, who would not watch the killing, to lead Topsy across the bridge, but he declined an offer of $25 to coax her to her death[1] saying he would "not for $1,000".

[15] With chief electrician Sharkey making sure everyone was clear, Topsy was fed carrots laced with 460 grams of potassium cyanide by press agent Charles Murray who then backed away.

During the killing, the superintendent of the Coney Island station, Joseph Johansen, became "mixed up in the apparatus" when he threw the switch sending power to the park and was nearly electrocuted.

[15] This was one of many short "actuality" films shot by the Edison Manufacturing Company from 1897 at Coney Island, depicting rides, bathing scenes, diving horses, and elephants.

The chosen piece, created by New Orleans artist Lee Deigaard and exhibited at the Coney Island USA museum, allowed the public to view Electrocuting an Elephant on a hand-cranked mutoscope while surrounded by hanging chains and standing on a copper plate.

The theme of Topsy's electrocution also appears in songs, in the plot-line of several novels, and in poems such as U.S. poet laureate W. S. Merwin's "The Chain to Her Leg".

He had been forced out of control of his company by its 1892 merger into General Electric and sold all his stock in GE during the 1890s to finance an iron ore refining venture.