Amazing True Stories of Execution Blunders (9 page)

With difficulty his brother-in-law threw some more wood on, but this only made matters worse, as it pressed down on the smouldering timber until another bystander seized a long pitchfork and lifted the faggots, so that the flames suddenly burst into an inferno. Whereupon Ridley forced himself into the heart of the fire, and the powder, igniting, did its deadly, albeit merciful, work.

At York in 1634 John Bartendale, an itinerant piper, was sentenced to death for robbery and duly hanged. After three-quarters of an hour the body was cut down and buried near the scaffold, but a passer-by later saw the earth moving and courageously dug the ‘corpse’ out. The muscular development in the throat and lungs brought about by the victim’s profession having cheated the hangman, the judge ruled that, being legally dead, he would not have to be hanged again – and Bartendale no doubt thanked his lucky stars that he hadn’t been a pianist!

John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester

Another clergyman to suffer death in Oxford on the orders of Queen Mary, John Hooper met his end outside the gates of the college in which he used to teach those entering the priesthood. As he knelt to pray, he was brought a box which contained the Queen’s Pardon and was told that if he renounced his religion, he would be exonerated. He waved it away and proceeded to obey the Sheriff ’s orders to remove his doublet, waistcoat and hose.

He was then made to stand on a high stool with his back against the stake, to which he was secured by an iron hoop which was so tight that he had to press his stomach in with his hands so that the executioner could fasten it. Upon the man approaching with more hoops with which to encircle his neck and ankles, he said they would not be necessary, exclaiming, ‘I am well assured I shall not trouble you; I doubt not God will give me strength to abide the extremity of the fire without bands.’

The man appointed to kindle the fire then came to him and requested his forgiveness, of whom he asked why he should forgive him, since he knew of no offence he had committed against him. ‘Oh, sir’ said the man, ‘I am the man appointed to make the fire.’ Replied the bishop, ‘Thou dost nothing to offend me. God forgive thee thy sins and do thy office, I pray thee.’

He had been granted the concession of having three bladders, each containing a pound of gunpowder, one hung between his legs, the others beneath his armpits. Then, as described by an eyewitness,

‘command was given that the fire should be kindled, but it did not kindle speedily, but was some time before it took the reeds placed upon the faggots. At length it burnt about him, but the wind, having full strength in that place, it blew the flame from him, so that he was in a manner little more than touched by the fire. Endeavours were then made to increase the flame, and then the bladders exploded, but did him little good, being so placed, and the wind having so much power. In this fire he exclaimed, ‘Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me! Lord Jesus receive my soul!’ And these were the last words he was heard to utter. But even when his face was completely black with the flames and his tongue swelled so that he could not speak, yet his lips went till they were shrunk to the gums; and he knocked his breast with his hands until one of his arms fell off, and then continued knocking with the other while the fat, water and blood dripped out at his finger ends.

Soon after, the whole lower part of his body being consumed, he fell over the iron that bound him, into the fire, amid the horrible cries and acclamations of the bloody crew that surrounded him. He was nearly three-quarters of an hour or more in the fire, as a lamb, patiently bearing the extremity thereof, neither moving forward or backward, but died as quietly as a child in his bed.’

At the execution of François Courvoisier for the murder of Lord William Russell in 1840, the famous novelist William Makepeace Thackeray was among the spectators, afterwards describing the surrounding windows as ‘being full of quiet family parties of honest tradesmen, sipping tea, and moustached dandies squirting the throng below with brandy and water.’

The Electric Chair

William Kemmler

It was almost certain that if anything was going to go wrong, it would go wrong when William Kemmler, alias John Hart, who had murdered his mistress Tillie Zeigler with a hatchet, occupied the electric chair, for his was the baptism of the device which took place on 6 August 1890 in Auburn Prison, New York.

He, a short, black-bearded man, was introduced to the large body of physicians and scientists present to watch the proceedings and then strapped into the chair. The two electrodes were attached: one to the base of his spine, where his shirt and waistcoat had been split in readiness, the other to his shaven head. As the warden, Charles Durston, positioned the head electrode Kemmler shook his head a little, then said, ‘I guess you’d better make it a little tighter, warden.’ Durston readjusted it, then placed the mask over Kemmler’s face, saying goodbye as he did so. ‘Goodbye,’ came the muffled reply.

The warden rapped twice on the door of the adjoining room and at the signal the executioner, concealed from those in the death chamber, threw the switch, sending 1,000 volts surging through the victim. After seventeen seconds, during which observers reported smelling burning clothes and charred flesh, the power was switched off but then disaster struck, for, as reported in the
New York World
:

‘Suddenly the man’s breast heaved. There was a straining at the straps which bound him . . . the man was alive! Warden, physicians, everybody lost their wits. There was a startled cry for the current to be switched on again. Signals, only half understood, were given to those in the next room at the switchboard. When they knew what had happened, they were prompt to act, and the switch handle could be heard as it was pulled back and forth, breaking the deadly current into jets.’

Taking no further chances, a second charge of 1,030 volts was allowed to flow through Kemmler’s body for four minutes. Smoke was seen rising from the head electrode, and it was not until the body went limp that the current was switched off and Kemmler’s lifeless body was removed from the chair.

Those on duty during an execution were always prepared to allow the victim to say a few final words, and doubtless expected a fervent prayer or protestation of innocence when murderer Charles Fithian, on taking his place in the electric chair, said he had a complaint to make. Granted permission, he then exclaimed, ‘That soup I had for supper tonight was too hot!’

John Louis Evans

In April 1983 no fewer than three surges of current were needed to dispatch John Evans. During the first attempt, a defect was found with the wiring on the leg electrode: the wiring had burned right through, shorting the circuit. So, while Evans continued to sit in the chair, the technician hastily replaced the defective wiring, and once again the switch was thrown, but this time smoke was seen coming from the victim’s mouth and left leg! Rather than delay any longer, two further applications of current were applied, Evans’ body eventually sagging against its restraining straps, but ten minutes elapsed before he was confirmed dead by the prison doctor.

Not all criminals were overcome by the solemnity of the execution chamber. The Chicago gangster George Appel, on being strapped into the electric chair, exclaimed to the watching reporters, ‘Well, folks, you’ll soon see a baked Appel!’

Albert Fish

In 1928 Mr Budd of New York was contacted by a man offering to give his son a job. At the Budd’s house the man, Albert Fish, also met his host’s 10-year-old daughter Grace, and he offered to take the little girl to a birthday party being given by his sister. Somewhat reluctantly Mr Budd and his wife agreed. Grace never returned, vanishing without trace. Their overwhelming sense of loss continued for six years and was made even worse when they received an unsigned letter – later traced to Fish – which said, ‘I came to your flat on 3 June 1928 and under the pretext of taking your daughter Grace to a birthday party at my sister’s, I took her to an empty house in Westchester County and I choked her to death. I cut her up and ate a part of her flesh.’

Not long after writing this letter he was tracked down and arrested, much to the surprise of his unsuspecting neighbours to whom he had always seemed to be a quiet unassuming family man with six children, rather than the sado-masochistic pervert portrayed by some of the more sensational New York newspapers.

After further investigation and interrogation he was charged with the little girl’s murder and he finally admitted his guilt, subsequently signing no fewer than six confessions in which he described in lurid detail what he had done; how he had first decapitated her, then cooked and cannibalised parts of her body. Police records showed that in addition to serving prison sentences for a number of different offences, he was also suspected of killing at least a dozen other children.

When put on trial, his defence lawyers attempted to show that Fish was not responsible for his actions; that he had been diagnosed as being addicted to self-mutilation, frequently inserting needles into the more sensitive parts of his body and had twice been held in psychiatric institutions for short periods.

But the jury was not convinced, and he was found guilty and sentenced to die by electrocution.

In January 1936 he was strapped into Sing Sing Prison’s electric chair. The power was switched on and as the first charge surged through him, his body was seen to jerk and writhe desperately, the current failing to extinguish his life. A further attempt was made, and this time the officials present gave a sigh of relief as the doctor, after using his stethoscope, confirmed that Albert Fish had breathed his last. The cause of the first abortive attempt was never discovered, although many attributed it to the presence of twenty-nine needles in his body, some of them rusty, that were detected by the X-rays taken during the subsequent autopsy.

Serial killer Paul Jaworski passed the time in his cell by reading, appropriately enough, a serial story in a weekly magazine, and was disappointed when he realised he would be executed before the last instalment was published. ‘Gee,’ he exclaimed, ‘it’s tough not to know how it all ends!’

There was a happy ending to the event, however, if not for Jaworski himself, because the publishers, on hearing of the prisoner’s dilemma, promptly sent him an advance copy of the final instalment.

Willie Francis

One can only pity this 15-year-old criminal, no matter how heinous his crime may have been, for the mental and physical suffering he endured when secured in Louisiana’s electric chair in 1946. The switch was operated but despite the obvious surge of power, the victim was heard to gasp, ‘Let me breathe.’ The cause of his continued struggles could only be a lack of voltage, so it was turned off and then on again, only for those present to hear him exclaim, ‘Take it off!’

The warden ordered the circuit to be disconnected and Francis to be released – from the chair but not his fate, for he was returned to his cell while the electrical problem was identified and rectified. This temporary and callous reprieve caused a public outcry, it being argued that a second execution would be a ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ under the Eighth Amendment of the American Constitution. However, the Supreme Court disagreed with this viewpoint and Willie was duly returned to the chair in the following year when everything worked without fail.

Emulating Bonny and Clyde, Irene Schroeder and Glenn Dague committed robberies across Pennsylvania until finally cornered by the police. During the shoot-out, Irene killed one of the policemen and both criminals were sentenced to die in the electric chair. Her companion was very much in her thoughts all the time she was in the condemned cell, and when she was asked by one of her guards whether she would like anything done for her on the morning of her execution, Irene replied, ‘Yes, please tell them in the kitchen to fry Glenn’s eggs on both sides. He likes them that way.’

Martin D. Loppy

Short but terrible was the account of the electrocution of murderer Martin Loppy in December 1891 at Sing Sing Prison. Half fainting, the condemned man had to be carried into the death chamber by the guards and held while being strapped in. No fewer than four separate surges of current were allowed to course through his body between intervals in which the electrodes had to be remoistened, but those present were shocked and horrified on becoming aware of the strong smell of charred flesh, and witnessing the victim’s left eyeball being emitted from its socket on to his cheek, the fluid running down his face.

Sing Sing convict no. 69711 admitted his crimes but pleaded that he had robbed the rich for the benefit of the poor. Nothing unusual about that, but there certainly was in the manner in which he went to the execution chamber, for his request to walk there on his hands was granted. When finally strapped into the electric chair he said, ‘Goodbye, Warden, old timer – now step on the gas!’

Charles E. McElvaine

McElvaine was sentenced to death for murdering a grocer and in February 1892 was escorted into Sing Sing Prison’s death chamber holding a brass crucifix up in front of him. These were still early days in the evolution of delivering death by electrocution, and there was little doubt that the condemned man was petrified with fear as, seated in the chair, a leather visor was placed over his face, straps were tightened around his body, and he felt his hands suddenly immersed in large jars of salt water positioned beneath the sloping arms of the wooden chair. Next, the metal-wired cap was put on his shaven head and an electrode attached to his bare leg. All was ready. ‘Let ’er go!’ he exclaimed wildly and Davis, the executioner, operated the switch.