In the spring of 1957, Ada Romig, a 68-year-old female pensioner, was living a quiet life in San Francisco, California. Her life was irrevocably shattered on the evening of April 5th, when she was savagely attacked in a vacant lot situated between Fulton and Grove Streets, near Webster Street. The assault was perpetrated by a man who accosted her, threatened her with a knife, and then forced her into the lot.
There, in the darkness, he subjected her to a brutal beating, striking her repeatedly with a piece of pipe, a cement brick, and other objects he found. He choked her with a piece of wire and left her for dead.
The attacker dragged Ada’s grievously injured body through the lot, eventually leaving her near Fulton Street. She was discovered semi-conscious by a passerby who immediately alerted the authorities. Rushed to the hospital, Ada was found to have suffered extensive injuries to her head, face, and neck, including a fractured skull and numerous bruises. Despite the severity of the attack, she displayed incredible resilience, clinging to life for more than a month. In that time, she was able to provide investigators with a partial description of the man who had attacked her, describing him as being around 40 years old with dark hair. Her courageous fight ended on May 9, 1957, when she succumbed to the devastating injuries she had sustained.
Ada Romig’s case was not an isolated incident. She was a victim of Vender Lee Duncan, a serial killer who preyed on elderly women in the city. Duncan, a house painter with a troubled past that included a previous conviction for assault with intent to commit murder, was responsible for a series of burglaries, rapes, and murders between 1955 and 1957. His other known victims were 82-year-old Marceline Herdlick, killed in January 1955, and 75-year-old Elizabeth Manning, murdered in September 1955. Both women had been beaten and strangled in their own homes.
The breakthrough in the case came in 1957 when Duncan was arrested for a burglary. While in custody at the county jail, and apparently plagued by guilt, he contacted the chief homicide inspector, Al Nelder, and confessed to the three rape-murders. He provided details about the crimes that only the perpetrator could have known, describing the locations and specific aspects of each attack. In his confession regarding Ada Romig, Duncan recounted forcing her into the lot and the brutal manner in which he beat and choked her. His common-law wife later corroborated parts of his story, telling police he had returned home on the day of the attack with bloodied clothes and a cut on his hand. Duncan claimed he was always drunk when he committed the crimes, which made him aggressive, and that he killed his victims because he couldn't stand their screams.
At his trial, which began in April 1958, Vender Lee Duncan was charged with the murders of Elizabeth Manning and Ada Romig. In a reversal of his initial intent to plead guilty, he entered a plea of not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. After an 11-day trial, the jury found him guilty on two counts of first-degree murder, as well as rape, burglary, and assault with intent to commit murder.
Following the guilty verdict, separate proceedings were held to determine his sanity and penalty. The jury found that he had been sane at the time of the offenses. Duncan was sentenced to death for both murders. His subsequent appeals to the Supreme Court of California and to Governor Pat Brown were denied. On May 29, 1959, Vender Lee Duncan, 31, was executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison. His execution brought an end to his violent spree, but it could not erase the pain and loss he inflicted upon the families of his victims, including the family of Ada Romig, a woman whose final weeks were a testament to her will to survive.
