On March 6, 1957, Virginia Cook, a 39-year-old female resident of Phoenix, Arizona, was shot multiple times inside Sublett’s Cafe on the 1600 block of East Washington Street, directly across from the Dispatch Laundry where she worked; the contemporary public records available today do not clearly state how she identified in terms of race or ethnicity, only that she was killed by gunfire in Phoenix on that date.
Cook had recently divorced Vernice Lonnie “Battling Blackjack” Craft, a former professional boxer who had turned his attention to trying to win her back after their short marriage broke down in 1956. According to later reconstructions based on court records and retrospective articles, he accompanied her downtown on the morning of March 6 and arranged what he framed as a reconciliation lunch at Sublett’s Cafe. After she went on to her shift at the Dispatch Laundry, Craft waited until a nearby savings and loan office opened, withdrew money from his account, and used it to purchase a pistol and ammunition before returning to the area where she worked. When Cook eventually crossed the street to join him at the lunch counter, they ordered food and began talking about their relationship. She reportedly made it clear that their marriage was over and that she intended to leave, with later accounts quoting her as saying that Phoenix was not “big enough for the both of us” or that she was tired of him and was going to go away.
At that point, multiple independent narratives of the case agree that Craft drew the concealed handgun from his pocket and opened fire at close range. Appellate summaries and subsequent write-ups describe him shooting Cook twice in the back, causing her to fall to the floor of the cafe in front of bystanders. As she lay on the ground, he stood over her and fired additional rounds into her back, continuing until the revolver was empty. He then turned the weapon on himself, firing into his own chest, reloading, and shooting himself again in what appears to have been a failed suicide attempt carried out in the same small cafe where Cook had just been fatally wounded.
Police and emergency personnel responded to the shooting to find Cook mortally wounded and Craft badly injured but still alive; Cook was pronounced dead from multiple gunshot wounds, while Craft was transported for medical treatment under guard. Contemporary summaries of the case report that he was apprehended the same day and, once he was physically able to face court proceedings, was formally charged with first-degree murder on March 27, 1957, in connection with Cook’s death. In statements later described in the appellate decision and in true-crime accounts derived from those records, Craft admitted that he had bought the pistol that morning with the intention of using it on both himself and his former wife if she refused to return to him, and he reiterated that she had told him she was tired of him and planned to leave; the courts later treated these admissions and the sequence of events as strong evidence of premeditation rather than a sudden, impulsive act.
Craft was tried in Maricopa County Superior Court and convicted of first-degree murder, the jury concluding that he had acted with malice aforethought and premeditated intent when he withdrew savings, purchased a firearm, lured Cook to a public lunch meeting, and then repeatedly shot her in the back. The Arizona Supreme Court, in State v. Craft, later reviewed and unanimously upheld both the conviction and the sentence of death, rejecting defense arguments that the evidence did not support a finding of premeditation or that an emotional outburst in the courtroom had unfairly influenced the jury. With appeals exhausted, Vernice Lonnie Craft was executed in the gas chamber at the Arizona State Prison in Florence on March 7, 1959, for the murder of Virginia Cook. Across the legal records and later historical and boxing-related retrospectives, he is consistently identified as the sole perpetrator, and there is no indication in the documented record that investigators ever regarded anyone other than Cook’s ex-husband as a suspect or pursued any additional arrests in connection with her killing.
