There was no mention of any signs of life after the first surge of electricity, and one would like to hope that that at least rendered her unconscious.
While Thomas Tobin was serving a prison sentence in Sing Sing Prison for robbery, it was decided to build a block of single cells, and Tobin, his other profession being that of a skilled mason, agreed to assist in the construction. He contrived to incorporate a short tunnel leading to a sewer which drained into the Hudson River, and he later used it to escape. He was eventually recaptured and completed his original sentence, but on his release in 1904 he committed further felonies, resulting in the death sentence. Back in Sing Sing he found himself in a cell which he instantly recognised. ‘To think,’ he exclaimed bitterly, ‘that I should’ve built this place myself! I built my own tomb, that’s what I did!’
William G. Taylor
A veritable series of errors combined to create total catastrophe when Taylor, sentenced to die for murdering a fellow inmate, was secured in the electric chair and the process began. As the first surge of current hit him his whole body straightened so violently that although the leg straps didn’t break, the front of the chair itself did, coming apart from the rest of the structure. The power was switched off immediately, a guard procured a box and propped up the chair, and the doctor, assuming that the shock had proved fatal, routinely checked the victim’s heartbeat – discovering, much to his surprise, that the man was still alive.At that, the warden gave the signal to the executioner to apply another surge of current. In his adjoining room, the official did so only to find that nothing happened, and on hastening to the powerhouse he discovered that the generator, overloaded by the amount of current it had to supply, had burnt out. Moreover there was no back-up or reserve equipment!
Faced with a totally unexpected situation, the warden had no alternative but to order that Taylor, now unconscious as a result of the first shock, be released from the chair and placed on the hospital trolley which had been brought into the death chamber. Drugs were then administered to him to ensure that he didn’t regain consciousness.
Meanwhile the prison electricians were frantically connecting long lengths of cable extending from their electricity sub-station to reach beyond the prison walls in order to obtain further electricity from the city’s supply. Although they were not to know it, their haste wasn’t necessary, for Taylor had already died on the trolley. When, an hour later, electricity supplies to the prison had been restored, Taylor’s corpse was carried back to the chair, strapped in and subjected to a further thirty seconds of high voltage. For the law, of course, had to run its course in full.
Early Electric Chair
The saying ‘the condemned man ate a hearty supper’ must have originated with one American prisoner in the 1930s, who ordered a Long Island duck, a can of peas and one pint of olives, all mixed into a brown stew with dumplings and boiled rice, together with tomato salad and four slices of bread. Then after finishing his sweet, which consisted of strawberry shortcake and a pint of vanilla ice-cream, he relaxed and smoked a few cigars. Following this feast he exclaimed, ‘Right – I’m ready now to ride that thunderbolt, boys!’
Fred Van Warmer
Sentenced to death for the murder of his uncle on Christmas Eve 1901, it was two years before all appeals failed and Fred Van Warmer finally occupied the electric chair. The executioner, Robert Elliott, had sent two shocks of 1,700 volts coursing through the man’s body for no less than two minutes, and was subsequently instructed to switch the power off. Having been pronounced dead by the doctor, Van Warmer’s body was then released from the chair and carried into an adjoining room to await the routine autopsy. However, a passing guard happened to walk through the room and to his horror saw the ‘corpse’ move one of its hands, and one eyelid flicker. Shocked, he ran out to locate the doctor, calling as he did so, ‘He moved! I saw him move! We’ve got to do something quickly!’
The warden and the other guards hastily reassembled and replaced the victim in the chair, where a further shock was administered; one so intense that when switched off, no doubt at all remained that Van Warmer had finally succumbed.
A later post-mortem revealed that Van Warmer’s heart was larger than that of any previous occupant of the chair, a possibility that had to be taken into account when planning future executions
A disabled felon sentenced to the electric chair had made a will in which he bequeathed his wooden leg to a newspaper reporter who had written some disparaging articles about him, adding in a codicil that he hoped the newsman would need it sometime!
Frank White
Frank White was a farm worker who had brutally murdered his employer and then hidden the body in a bale of hay. A violent prisoner while in jail, he refused all spiritual solace and was expected to resist as much as possible on being taken into the death chamber. However, the reverse was very much the case, for when escorted in, he was on the point of utter collapse and had to be supported by two guards. On seeing the chair he struggled wildly, shouting, ‘Don’t kill me! Don’t do it! Don’t do it!’
Somehow the guards got him into the chair and overpowered him long enough to strap him down. Further force had to be used to keep his leg still while the electrode was attached to his calf and, the other contact having been positioned on his head, the executioner operated the switch. Shock after shock of high voltage was applied, and after the fourth one, Dr Ulysses B. Stein, the physician on duty, checked with his stethoscope and announced, incredulously, that the man’s heart was still beating.
The doctor then shakily resumed his seat in the front row of the gallery, but as the fifth shock was about to be administered, he fainted, collapsing onto the floor, and had to be carried to another room, where he soon recovered. During the subsequent two final shocks, many of the other onlookers were also understandably horrified by the gasps and gurgling noises coming from the victim, these sounds apparently being caused by the air escaping from his lungs.
During the uprising in the Vendée region of France, the revolutionary mayor wrote to his opposite number in Paris on 1 January 1794, saying, ‘Our Holy Mother Guillotine works. Within three days she has shaven eleven monks, one former nun, a general, and a superb Englishman, six feet high, whose head was de trop. It is in the sack today.’
Firing Squad
Samuel and Malcolm McPherson and Farquar Shaw
This, a tragic episode in the history of the British Army, occurred in 1743 when 800 Scotsmen of Lord Sempill’s Regiment (which later became the Black Watch) were inveigled south under the pretext of being reviewed by George II, only to suspect that they were actually to be sent to the then plague-ridden colonies of the West Indies and Africa. Encamped on Finchley Common, London, 110 of the men mutinied and set off to march in an orderly fashion back to Scotland. When the alarm was raised the Government sent three companies of dragoons (mounted soldiers) after them and offered a bounty of forty shillings to anyone who could capture a deserter. The pursuing soldiers caught up with the Scotsmen in Northamptonshire and escorted them back to London where they were imprisoned in the Tower. Court martials of three leaders followed, the two corporals, cousins Samuel and Malcolm McPherson, and Farquar Shaw, the piper (without such a musician, of course, no Scotsman would march anywhere!). In order to set an example, all three were sentenced ‘to face death by musketry’ (before a firing squad).
At 6 a.m. on 18 July 1743, the three condemned men knelt on planks positioned in front of a blank wall of the Royal Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula within the Tower. All their fellow deserters were drawn up in a wide arc in front of them, forced to watch the fate of their comrades, and encircling them to prevent any escapes, were 300 men of the regiment on duty in the Tower at the time, the 3rd Regiment of Foot which, ironically, later became the Scots Guards.
The three victims, wearing their shrouds under their uniforms, were ordered to pull their hats down over their faces; meanwhile the firing squad of eighteen men, six of whom were held in reserve, had been drawn up
behind the Chapel. When the time came, as reported by General Williamson, Deputy Lieutenant of the Tower,
‘they now advanced round the corner of the Chapple and with the least noise possible, their Muskets already being cocked for fear of the Click disturbing the Prisoners, Sergeant Major Ellison – who deserves a greatest commendation for taking thisPrecaution – waved a handkerchief as a signal to ‘Present’, and after a very short Pause, as they aimed four to a man, waved it a second time as a Signal to ‘Fire’.’
All three men fell instantly backwards, apparently dead, but despite the squad having fired at more or less point-blank range, it demands a lot for soldiers to have to aim deliberately at fellow soldiers and pull the trigger, so it was hardly surprising that some bullets missed their targets. Shaw was seen to move his hand, so one of the six reserve members of the firing squad was ordered to advance and deliver the coup de grâce by shooting him through the head and Samuel McPherson had to be shot again through the ear.
The bodies were stripped to their shrouds and buried in an unmarked grave before the door of the Chapel, only yards from where Anne Boleyn and the other executed queens lie interred beneath the altar. The surviving deserters were duly dispatched to the colonies, few, if any, ever to return.
Admiral John Byng was court-martialled in 1757, charged with showing cowardice in the face of the enemy in that he failed to engage a French squadron near Minorca. His defence, that the French admiral had superior armament, was rejected and he was sentenced to death by firing squad. He was later visited by a friend who casually stood next to him and then wondered aloud as to whom did he think was the taller. ‘Why this ceremony?’ asked Byng. ‘I know what it means – let the man himself come and measure me for my coffin.’
When he faced the firing squad he requested that he should not be blindfolded, but was then told that it would only unnerve the soldiers and would distract their aim to see him looking at them. ‘Oh, let it be done, then,’ he conceded. ‘If it wouldn’t frighten them, it wouldn’t frighten me.’
Edward J. Mares
Unlike the traditional method adopted by the military, in 1951 one American state employed five civilians as a firing squad and equipped them with brand new rifles. Their identities were concealed by selecting them in secret; moreover they were positioned behind a thick stone wall, their weapons protruding through gun ports. The condemned man was tied to a chair some little distance away with a heart-shaped target pinned to his chest. When the order was given, all the squad members fired with abysmal results; whether through humane reluctance or sheer incompetence, all the bullets struck the right-hand side of the victim’s chest and death came with agonising slowness as Mares bled to death.
James Rodgers, robber and murderer, faced the firing squad in Utah in 1960. Upon being asked whether he had any last requests, he replied, ‘Yes – a bullet-proof vest!’
Private Eddie Slovik
On 31 January 1945 in a little French village, a young army deserter was tied by his shoulders, knees and ankles by parachute cord to a six-inch square post to face a firing squad. He was Eddie Slovik, the only American soldier to be executed in that manner since 1864 and the only American soldier shot for desertion in World War II. Found guilty by court martial, his appeal rejected, summary justice had to be delivered, and seen to be delivered, as a warning to others.
Behind the post to which he had been secured was a stone wall, and in front of that was a parallel wall of thick heavy boards to act as a backstop; bullets fired from M-1 service rifles were capable of killing a man two miles away, and should any of the bullets miss the target and the post, they would penetrate the wooden boards rather than rebounding from the stone wall into the assembly of officers and paraded troops. A short crossbar had been nailed to the post at shoulder height to stop the corpse slipping down to the ground after the execution.
Twelve marksmen from Slovik’s regiment had been selected to form the firing squad, a task which all understandably found distasteful; in fact one member reportedly asked his commanding officer whether he could avoid being a member of the detail, only to receive the dry reply, ‘Not unless you want to take his place.’ The men were issued with rifles, one being loaded with a blank round as a salve for the conscience, but this was hardly credible for there is little or no recoil with a blank, nor is its cartridge ejected afterwards, as is that of a live round.
After prayers had been said, a black cap was drawn down over Slovik’s head and, in accordance with Army regulations, the order for his execution was read out. Eventually the dreaded sequence of orders was given, the major in charge shouting, ‘Squad – Ready
– Aim – FIRE!’
As the salvo of bullets found their mark, the man’s body jolted, then slumped forward in the restraining cords. But he wasn’t dead, witnesses reporting that they saw him struggle up at least twice. The regimental doctor, padre and other officers went forward to find that although all eleven bullets had struck Slovik, not one had pierced his heart. Checking with the stethoscope, the doctor established that breathing was still present, albeit shallowly, and the heartbeat was faint and fluctuating. Meanwhile each member of the firing squad was ordered to hold their rifles behind them out of their sight, so that they could be reloaded as before: eleven bullets plus one blank. When that time-consuming task had been completed, the officer in charge asked the doctor either to pronounce the man dead or to move away so that a second salvo could be fired, he and the squad no doubt feeling overwhelming relief as the medic said, ‘The second volley won’t be necessary – Private Slovik is dead.’
Perhaps the young soldier did lapse into unconsciousness when hit by the first shots; perhaps the terrible suspense-filled aftermath wouldn’t have been necessary had a paper target been pinned over Slovik’s heart; but that suggestion was rejected by the officer in charge as ‘tending too much towards the theatrical.’ What a pity.
Shortly before his execution on 29 October 1618 Sir Walter Raleigh met his barber, who said, ‘Sir, we have not curled your hair this morning.’ Raleigh replied jocularly, ‘Let them comb it that shall have it!’
On reaching the place of execution on Tower Hill he saw his friend, Sir Hugh Ceeston, who complained that he had been prevented from accompanying him on the scaffold. ‘Prithee, never fear,’ exclaimed Raleigh, ‘I shall have a place!’
Once there, he felt the edge of the axe and commented, ‘This is a sharp medicine, but it will cure all diseases!’
Wallace Wilkerson
One man who did have a target over his heart was Wallace Wilkerson, in 1879. He was allowed to sit in a chair unbound while facing the muzzles of the firing squad’s weapons. The orders were given to fire, then, as reported in the local newspaper, ‘the instant the bullets struck, he got to his feet, partially turned and, taking two steps forward, fell on his left side onto the ground. On the instant of striking the ground he turned on his face, exclaiming, “My God! My God! They missed it!”’ How wrong he was.
Found guilty of murdering his wife in 1910, Henry Thompson was sentenced to be hanged. While in the condemned cell he learned that the infamous wife-murderer Dr Crippen was to be hanged on the day following his execution. ‘Ah, well,’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ll be senior to him in the other shop!’
So unconcerned about his coming fate was he, that he commented to one of the prison warders guarding him that he expected his execution to be over quickly, adding ‘Summat like that!’ and then demonstrating it by standing on one of the chairs and leaping off.
Gas Chamber
John Redfern
As described earlier, small sacks of cyanide capsules are dropped into jars of sulphuric acid when the executioner rotates the rod to which they are attached, thereby creating the deadly fumes in gas chambers. But in 1943, when John Redfern was strapped into one of the chairs in the death chamber in Raleigh, North Carolina, the executioner operated the mechanism – but the capsules did not fall. He tried a second time, with the same negative result. While the
victim waited, his nerves doubtless at breaking point, a frantic conference with the warden ensued, and a highly dangerous course of action was decided upon. Taking a desperate risk – and no doubt a deep breath – the warden opened the airtight door to the death chamber for the executioner to dash inside; free the sacks of capsules with one hand, then flee, the warden slamming the door behind him just in time as the noxious gases started to rise. And within minutes John Redfern was dead.
In 1992, after eating his last meal, which consisted of Kentucky Fried Chicken, two pizzas, a bag of jelly beans and a cola drink, murderer Robert Alton Harris entered the gas chamber saying, ‘You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everybody dances with the Grim Reaper!’
Guillotine
M. Chalier
Although the guillotine was mechanically simple in its operation, great care had to be taken to ensure that both it and the scaffold on which it was mounted were on an even keel; the slightest diversion from the horizontal would result in the blade jamming in its grooves as it descended. M. Chalier found this out to his cost when, having been secured and lying flat on the plank with his neck held firmly in place by the lunette (the iron collar) between the two uprights, the blade was released. However, instead of descending at an ever-increasing rate, the blade fell more and more slowly, eventually coming to a halt, but not before making a superficial wound in the back of his neck.
The executioner, Ripert, desperately hauled the blade to the top again, hoping against hope that the first descent would have cleared whatever had initially obstructed it, but it was not to be
Amazing True Stories of Execution Blunders Page 7
