A Look Back:

Mary Campbell shot her husband once for running around with other women. She shot him twice more for beating her and bootlegging whiskey. And she shot him yet again for the Nevada mining tycoon she still loved.

“I didn’t mean to do it,” Mary Campbell sobbed after being carted off to the county jail in Santa Ana in June 1921, charged with the murder of her husband after chasing him into a beach tent with a gun and shooting him dead on Balboa Peninsula.

Mary and Jess Campbell had been quarreling that day at their home near East Bay Avenue and Adams Street in Newport Beach.

Witnesses heard a shot ring out before seeing Jess Campbell run from the house, followed by his wife, who was holding a gun, the Los Angeles Times reported June 29, 1921.

Jess Campbell, an oil worker, ran into a beach tent, where he pleaded for protection with its inhabitant, Alice Carson, the Times reported.

Carson helped Jess Campbell, who was bleeding, to a bed in the tent, and then tried to wrest the weapon from Mary Campbell’s hand.

“Three more shots were fired into the tent, the third striking [Jesse] Campbell in the fleshy part of the left arm, penetrating his chest and coming out the right side of his body,” the Times reported.

The couple had been separated for about a year at the time of the shooting, and Mary Campbell had started divorce proceedings.

Police also suspected Mary had been drinking that day — they took a bottle of whiskey from her after the shooting.

She later told police she and her husband had been fighting about his bootlegging activities and affairs with other women, including a flamboyant woman known in Los Angeles theater circles as Madame LaRue.

Contemporary news accounts characterize Mary Campbell as “hysterical” and “on the verge of a nervous breakdown” during preliminary court hearings after the shooting.

“Her face was white and tense throughout the proceedings and frequently she turned her head and leaned against a woman at her side and sobbed,” the Los Angeles Times reported on one of Mary Campbell’s court appearances Aug. 4, 1921.

During Mary Campbell’s trial, defense attorney Guy Eddie tried to convince the jury that constant beatings from hard-drinking Jess Campbell, as well being dumped years before by a Nevada businessman she still loved, drove her insane.

Mary Campbell’s first love was millionaire Nevada mining magnate and banker George Wingfield, but that relationship also had ended badly. She lived with Wingfield for eight years and gave him money, while he promised to marry her some day.

Wingfield promptly dumped Mary Campbell in San Jose after a Nevada senator took him on as his political protegee.

“He bought me a fine home in San Jose and told me he was going to be very busy with his mining interests. He lied to me,” Mary Campbell told the jury.

She told the jury she still loved Wingfield all the same.

A jury of eight men and four women found Mary Campbell guilty, but reduced the charges down to manslaughter. She served six years at San Quentin for the crime.