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Monday, July 31, 2023

July 31, 1927: The Final Victim of Alma Dittman

Rose Savoren, age 27, travelled from her home in Leadville, Colorado to Denver with a friend named Signe Pearson. They registered at the St. Francis Hotel on July 27. Rose told Signe that she was going on a fishing trip but instead went to St. Anthony's Hospital.

On July 31, Signe and another friend, Josephine Grige, were summoned to the the hospital because Rose was dying. Rose's sister, Mary Savoren, along with a woman identified as Mrs. S. I. Godman also went to the hospital to be at the dying woman's bedside. Deputy District Attorney Segal also went to the hospital and took Rose's dying statement, implicating midwife Alma Dittman.

Rose died that day.

Police found entries about a romance with a man named Jack in Rose's diary. However, police did not believe that Jack was the father of Rose's aborted baby. They told the Fort Collins Express-Courier that they were seeking another man.

Another woman, 28-year-old Anna Parks, was also arrested but police would not say if she was connected to Rose's death or was arrested for an unrelated crime. William Lindsey was arrested and released after providing police with information about illegal abortion.

Dittman had already been identified as the abortionist responsible for the death of Mabel Duncan in 1923, Carrie McDonald in 1922, Mabelle Cannon in 1917, and Blanche Ainsley in 1912. According to the Fort Collins Express-Courier, Dittman had been released on technicalities on all of her previous abortion cases.

Evidently Dittman decided that she could not face another abortion trial. On December 15, a friend went to Dittman's home and found her lifeless on the kitchen floor. She had turned on the gas jets and asphyxiated herself. She had left notes nearby indicating that she was innocent of the crime and feared being convicted.

Watch Midwife Ends Her Own Trail of Death on YouTube.

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