In this new series, we dive into the legends of Prescott. The folklore, mystery, and irony of Gabrielle 'Dolly' Wiley is a hot topic in town. Teresa Strasser took a deep dive into her rather, interesting story.
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00:00 They say Gabrielle Dolly Wiley killed five out of her five husbands.
00:07 Nobody knows where she was born. Some say France, some say Italy, some say New York.
00:11 But we do know that she was buried right here in Prescott Mountain View Cemetery next to Everett,
00:17 one of her five dead husbands.
00:20 We wanted to know all we could about this infamous Prescott icon,
00:25 so we met with a local historian to find out more.
00:28 Gabrielle Dolly Wiley, known as Dolly around town.
00:33 How did she end up here in Prescott, Arizona, and what do we know about her?
00:37 Well, her background is really quite murky.
00:40 It's not too well established where she came from or even how she arrived in Prescott.
00:47 All we know is that she lived here for many years and left behind a great deal of folklore.
00:54 Speaking of which, she had five husbands.
01:00 Actually four husbands and one man who she was seriously involved with.
01:07 Until he met the wrong end of--
01:10 Yeah, she left her, she went to Los Angeles and shot him.
01:16 Oh boy.
01:17 And she was arrested for murder and went on trial.
01:22 The jury acquitted her in Los Angeles, probably out of sympathy for her story.
01:29 That happened more often in those days than it does today, I think.
01:33 And then she returned to Prescott.
01:35 When you say because of her story, I've read that she was a young prostitute and a madame.
01:42 And that could very well be.
01:44 It is widely accepted that she did operate a brothel over the years in Prescott.
01:50 The other four husbands, what happened to them?
01:54 All of them died under interesting circumstances,
01:58 and that has led to a lot of folklore that she killed all of them,
02:02 but there's no hard evidence to document that.
02:06 One of them was shot to death in a gambling dispute.
02:12 The other two of them died under circumstances that people thought resembled poisoning,
02:19 although the coroner in one of the cases ruled the death a suicide.
02:24 Okay, so five is a lot of mates.
02:29 She outlived five of them.
02:31 One for sure we know she killed, but because there were so many others,
02:36 the assumption has been made that she was a black widow of some kind.
02:41 Because what are the odds that you would outlive five mates
02:45 and that they would all die under unusual circumstances?
02:49 Right, and I think the other one, the remaining one, I think he fell and hit his head or something.
02:55 I'm not too clear on that and died from that.
02:58 So I'd have to go back and research those notes.
03:02 But yeah, they all died under less than natural circumstances.
03:09 And she had a best friend, May, and May did not live a long life.
03:14 No, of course, in the cribs and prostitution, lifespan was very short.
03:21 It was a rough life in those days, which I assume it still is,
03:25 and people who--working girls didn't live very long back then.
03:31 I've read that some think Dolly was responsible for killing May.
03:35 Yes, again, the story that she killed all these people,
03:41 and that's why her story still survives, the speculation.
03:45 We tried to find her tombstone.
03:47 We did find where her ashes were buried next to the tombstone of one of her husbands,
03:53 but her tombstone is gone.
03:56 She may have never had one.
03:58 Whoever--relatives or whoever that buried her may have just been content
04:03 to inter her ashes in the grave over there in Mountain View Cemetery.
04:09 The last husband died in the mid-1930s?
04:12 I believe so, yes.
04:14 And Dolly died in 1962.
04:17 Do we know anything about what she was doing in those decades?
04:20 A lot of people believed that she operated a hotel called the Rex Arms,
04:26 which was in business quite a while.
04:29 A lot of people believe it was a front for prostitution.
04:33 Okay.
04:34 Well, we're still talking about Dolly all these years later.
04:38 Why do you think she's such an interesting historical figure?
04:42 A lot of it is the folklore and the speculation that she outlived four husbands
04:49 and a couple of other people, and also because of the story of the movie.
04:55 The movie.
04:57 The Red Kimono.
04:59 Yes.
05:00 The Red Kimono was an unauthorized dramatization of the story
05:06 of how she went to Los Angeles and killed the man who abandoned her.
05:11 That's what the movie is about.
05:13 And she had--contrary to popular belief, she did not just go into the Elks Theater
05:19 and suddenly in shock see a movie based on her life.
05:23 She knew it was there because she sued the filmmakers.
05:27 She filed the lawsuit the day the movie opened in the Elks in Prescott.
05:32 So she would have seen this movie at the Elks, which is just a few blocks from here.
05:38 Yeah.
05:39 Okay, we're going to go to the Elks and check it out.
05:42 The Red Kimono played right here at the Elks Theater in Prescott,
05:46 and Dolly herself came to see it.
05:48 She sued the producers of the movie and won $50,000.
05:53 That was a large sum of money back in 1931,
05:57 and it changed the privacy laws in Hollywood forever.
06:00 So for Dolly, at least, the story has a happy ending.
06:05 For her husband, not so much.
06:08 [no dialogue]