Two Deaths 80 Years Apart

On September 30, 1904, Stanislawa Zagonski died in Chicago from an illegal abortion performed that day. Mrs. Alexander Wojtanowski, whose profession is not given, was arrested and held by Coroner's Jury on October 5.

No matter if Mrs. Wojtanowski was a doctor or not, she was probably far more professional than Joe Bills Reynolds, who killed 21-year-old Gaylene Golden on September 30 of 1985. Reynolds (pictured) performed the abortion on Gaylene in his Oklahoma City office. Due to a cervical laceration, Gaylene developed an embolism -- both air and amniotic fluid in her bloodstream. This embolism killed her, leaving Gaylene's son motherless. Reynolds wasn't merely an abortionist. He was a jack of all trades, doing a variety of elective surgeries in his filthy clinic. Reynolds' anesthetist, age 60, had originally been hired as a janitor, and an untrained orderly was acting as his nurse. The operating room was littered with dirty cups and papers. Reynolds tried to collect $500,000 on his wife's life insurance after she bled to death after he opened 25-inch incision, ostensibly for liposuction, on September 7, 1989.