Ma Duncan: Mother-in-Law & Murderer
Tags: Family, Crime, Ventura County, Murder, Mother In Law

I know I’m not the only one transfixed by stories of awful mothers-in-law. Browsing these stories, I feel like I’m reading about awful villains devoid of compassion and common sense. The story of Elizabeth Ann Duncan, or Ma Duncan, is no different.

Ma Duncan, born in 1904, was a “drifter” with a Jocasta Complex. Ma married somewhere between 11 and 20 times throughout her life, often under the guise of inheriting money and allowing the men to cash in alongside her. She also operated a San Francisco brothel at some point.

Stories dispute the number of children Ma Duncan had in several news articles. However, one child, Frank, was her favorite. In 1948, she even opted to move in with him after her younger daughter, Patty Ann, died of “spontaneous cerebral hemorrhage.”

In the 1950s, Frank and Elizabeth moved to Santa Barbara, California. There, Elizabeth followed her totally adult lawyer son from courtroom to courtroom, applauding when he was successful. Apparently, she even married one of Frank’s classmates by lying about her age and finances.

Frank and Elizabeth fought a lot, surprising to nobody. He kicked her out one day, only for her to attempt suicide with prescription medications. The joke was on Elizabeth as Frank fell in love with the nurse taking care of her at Santa Barbara’s Cottage Hospital. Olga Kupczyk and Frank married in secret despite Ma Duncan’s threats.

When Elizabeth found out about the marriage, she was incensed and overcome with jealousy. All the while, Frank kept running back and forth from his mother to his wife. Supposedly, he had an arrangement to live with his mother until the birth of his first child with Olga.

Olga, seven months pregnant, heard a knock at the door one night. Nobody saw her alive again. In fact, Frank had not seen her in the final 10 days of her life. He’d gone back to his mother’s house. A co-worker who found Olga‘s door open after she failed to show up for a surgery reported her missing.

Soon after Olga disappeared, Elizabeth and a man she hired posed as Olga and Frank to secure an annulment in court. How anybody believed she was a 30-year-old woman remains a mystery.

Elizabeth was totally inept as a criminal. She’d harassed Olga so much that the young woman had reported the abuse to her father in writing. Even Olga’s landlady knew Ma Duncan was out to get her.

Police caught on to Ma Duncan, and her hired hands confessed all too easily. Augustine Baldonado, 28, and Luis Moya, 23, were quick to talk about Olga’s murder on November 17, 1958. Baldonado even took investigators to Olga’s body, which they had left on Casitas Pass. Elizabeth was supposed to pay them $6,000 to take out her daughter-in-law.

Apparently, Ma Duncan had talked to everybody and anybody about killing Olga. She offered money to many people in the hopes they would take care of it for her. And they were all willing to chat when the police asked questions.

Before Olga’s murder, Moya and Baldonado were not strangers to petty crime. Seemingly, they had never committed murder before. It showed in their lack of care in planning the crime.

The night Olga disappeared, Moya knocked on the door of her Garden Street apartment in Santa Barbara. He told her Frank was in his car, drunk and unable to get home. He asked her to help him get Frank into the house. Little did she know Baldonado was in the backseat of the car, pretending to be Frank. When Olga peered into the backseat, the duo attacked her by hitting her with the pistol.

Moya and Baldonado intended to take Olga to Tijuana to kill her. Instead, they grew tired of Olga’s struggling in the backseat. They also realized the car they’d borrowed in exchange for $25 was in no shape to make it to Mexico. Instead, they hit her with the gun until it broke.

According to the confession, Olga had been beaten with the pistol several times and strangled before the two buried her. They dug a grave with their bare hands because they didn’t think to bring their own shovel. When investigators examined Olga’s remains, they found evidence she’d been alive when she was buried along a hillside highway in Ventura County.

After the murder, Moya and Baldonado were desperate for their fair share. Elizabeth had only given them enough to cover the basic costs of fulfilling the deed. She owed them close to $6,000, but she met Moya in downtown Santa Barbara and gave him $150. She later gave him another $10 payment. Frank had given her the money she needed to buy a new typewriter, and he grew suspicious when she never purchased one.

Thanks to Elizabeth’s desire to talk about killing her daughter-in-law with anybody who would listen, her part of the plot was quickly realized. She was arrested too.

Elizabeth Ann Duncan’s Mugshot

Ma Duncan’s court case was a true circus. People gathered around to hear the salacious story of the man who slept at his mother’s house despite being a married man. Newspapers shied just short of calling the “unnatural love” incestuous, but the implication was obvious. The inept abilities of the murderers, the jealous mother-in-law, and the husband who couldn’t betray mommy all made for great news.

Frank’s behavior was under heavy scrutiny as well. Not only was he in the hot seat about his mother’s behavior, but he also admitted to dating another woman while married to Olga. He also secretly married during his mother’s trial.

When Elizabeth took the stand in court (after walking into the courtroom hand-in-hand with her son), she admitted to talking to Moya and Baldonado, but she also claimed they were blackmailing her. She did not convince the jury. They took less than five hours to deliberate. Ma Duncan committed first degree murder. She was sentenced to death.

Frank fought for his mother until the bitter end. When Ma Duncan was led to the gas chamber, she asked where Frank was. It wasn’t that he was angry at his mother. Instead, he was at federal court trying to receive a last-minute reprieve for her.

After his mother’s death, Frank moved to Los Angeles. He continued working as a lawyer.

Elizabeth Duncan, Augustine Baldonado, and Luis Moya were executed by the state of California on August 8, 1962.

More Reading: