Guns, of course, were the first course of action. Just after Javier's death, blacksmith Hank Cox fired his rifle at Eve five times; the story goes that the bullets hardly phased her. "Kill the elephant. Let's kill him," the crowd began chanting. After the "knocked chips out of her hide a little" with his .45, the circus manager stated: "There ain't gun enough in this country that she could be killed”.
Someone suggested electrocution: "They tried to electrocute her - they put 44,000 volts to her and she just danced a little bit".
Other reports suggest a third execution method: hooking Eve to two opposing engines and dismembering her, or crushing her between two facing engines. Both were dismissed as too cruel.
And so it was decided, instead, that Evil Eve would be hung by the neck from a derrick car the next day.