Zero at the Bone: The Playboy, the Prostitute, and the Murder of Bobby Greenlease

by John Heidenry

  On the morning of Heady’s last day, Nellie Baker, who was clearly showing signs of strain, visited her niece in her cell. Heady’s defense attorney, Harold Hull, accompanied her.

  “Bonnie acted quite natural,” Baker said. “She always had a way of facing up to things and taking them as they come.”

  Since this was the first time a man and a woman would be executed simultaneously, prison officials were also making an exception on how the two prisoners would be dressed. The officials now decided that Heady and Hall would be permitted to wear their usual prison garb when they were strapped into their chairs.

  Hall and Heady were allowed to be together twice on their last day. A small table was placed in the corridor just outside Hall’s cell. During their midday meal, she sat on a chair and he sat on the edge of his cot, reaching through the bars to eat. Marshal Tatman sat nearby. They talked for about thirty minutes, and held hands for a part of that time. Tatman later told reporters, “I made no attempt to overhear their conversation, but they appeared happy and eager to see each other.”

  Marshall Hoag, the lawyer from Pleasanton and longtime friend of the Hall family, was a late-afternoon visitor. He had agreed to claim Hall’s body, and declined to reveal when and where the funeral service and burial would be.

  Hull told reporters that private graveside services would be held for Heady in Clearmont, Missouri, at a time to be decided by Baker. At five o’clock, they both left for the return trip to St. Joseph.

  Hall and Heady also each spent two hours—from 3 to 5 P.M.—meeting privately with a priest. Hall talked with Father Evans, and Heady met with his assistant, Father Bull. Father Evans asked Hall about the story published in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat that quoted Shoulders as saying that Hall told him he planned to kill Heady soon after he collected the $600,000 ransom.

  “That’s absolutely false,” Hall replied. “It never entered my mind. If it had, I would have had plenty of time to do it in.”

  He went on: “I wish you would tell the newspaper people for me to please state that this was never in my mind. I want to refute those accusations made by Shoulders and others.”

  Hall also revealed that he was trying to keep Heady’s spirits up, even though he had appeared to be the gloomy one, while she had often seemed almost unconcerned about her impending fate.

  “She’s proud,” he said. “She doesn’t want to break.”

  Asked about the rumor that Hall planned to kill her, Heady was equally dismissive, saying, “Why would he want to kill me?”

  Father Bull pointed out to her that she had been seen taking Bobby from the French Institute of Notre Dame de Sion, and had been the only person who could identify Hall as her accomplice.

  “That isn’t true,” Heady insisted. “I love Carl, and Carl loves me.”

  Hall claimed that he had “only pity for Shoulders and Hager,” the crooked detective who arrested him and the taxi driver who betrayed him.

  The two priests left the prison to have dinner at a downtown hotel. Before eating, they read the “Prayer for Prisoners” from The Book of Common Prayer for Hall and Heady.

  The condemned pair ate their last meal at five o’clock. Both ate heartily. Marshal Tatman, state corrections director Whitecotton, and two guards stood about five feet away, but could not hear what they were saying. Tatman and his wife later visited the couple, who said both were satisfied with the food and had no complaints.

  Shortly before 9 P.M., Father Evans and Father Bull returned to the prison for a final visit with the condemned pair. The two priests would remain with Hall and Heady until the end. Hall told Father Evans that he saw the hand of God in his arrest.

  “I can see good in this, Father,” Hall confided. “I only killed Bobby. If I had had just twelve hours more, I would have killed five more. God saved me from that.”

  Did Hall mean five people who had already been identified with the case? the priest asked.

  “Oh, no,” Hall said. “I mean five that I’ve hated all my life. I’d have got them, too. With all the money, it would have been easy. See what I mean, I killed only one, and was caught. It might have been six, five more.” After pausing for a moment, he then emphatically declared, “That’s the working of Christ. It had to be. I had murder in my heart. God knew, and saved those five others.”

  Lighting a cigarette, he added reflectively, “I’m glad. And you can do something for me, Father. Tell the world. Tell them that only God is important. I know now. And tell them that if it weren’t for whiskey, those penitentiaries would be closed. Tell the world, Father. Look, if Christ could do this for me—a mean, drunken, miserable so-and-so—Christ could do it for anybody. I know.”

  Hall denied that his death cell conversion was prompted by a fear of death.

  “Father, I’m an intelligent man,” he said. “This isn’t a conversion because I’m afraid of death. I’ve never been afraid of death. All my life I’ve been wondering, thinking. And if it made sense to intelligent men all over the world, there must be something to it.”

  He then repeated his desire to have the world know that he had become an instrument of Christ’s will.

  “Why do we have to wait so long?” he asked. “Why do we have to be so stupid? Since I’ve been in jail, I know it was the will of Christ that I couldn’t kill those other five. He stopped me after killing Bobby. And now I’m ready for God, my judge. And I’m glad.”

  Was Bonnie equally repentant? Father Evans asked.

  “Sure. She’ll tell you. She loves me, and I love her. I know her better than anyone else. Bonnie was drunk for a year. I was drunk daily for months. After a while, anything seems all right. I’m the guilty one. She couldn’t say no to me. The only sin she was guilty of was loving me.”

  Hall then asked the time. Told that it was around 9 P.M., he laughed.

  “I haven’t got long to live, Father,” he said. “Not here, anyway. And I’m looking forward to meeting my judge.”

  Around 11 P.M., less than an hour before she would be led to the gas chamber, Heady declared to Father Bull, “I’m not going to go down there crying. Of course, we’re both sorry for this horrible crime. We want to be forgiven. But then these crusaders come around and ask me to say it was whiskey, and I won’t go for those crusaders.”

  Hall, of course, had already placed the blame squarely on his drinking.

  “I used to go to church in Maryville,” Heady went on. “I’d see a man who’d had a date with a blonde the night before. Hypocrites. It would be a lot better if he’d leave the blonde alone, and stay with his wife. That’s why I left the church.”

  Father Bull pointed out that Jesus had come to redeem all sinners, including hypocrites.

  “Yes,” she replied, “but I don’t like hypocrites. Carl doesn’t either.”

  Some moments after eleven o’clock, Father Evans administered Holy Unction—the sacrament of the sick and the dying—by anointing Hall’s and Heady’s foreheads with oil, and presented each of them with a crucifix.

  At 11:25 P.M., the telephone rang on death row. That was the signal that the condemned pair were to be taken on their last walk. Deputy Marshal Marvin Rowland, accompanied by two prison guards, entered Hall’s cell. Marshal Tatman, his wife, and a prison guard proceeded the other thirty feet to Heady’s. With a loud rasp, the master security locks were unbolted, and the two cell doors swung open.

  Heady had prepared for her death as though she were making her last public appearance on a stage, and wanted to look her best. By the time the marshals arrived to escort her and Hall from their cells, she was primped and ready. Most condemned prisoners were given a haircut before their execution, but Heady’s long hair was neatly done up. She had also applied lipstick and donned a bright green regulation prison dress and her pair of bedroom slippers. Hall’s hair was also rather long. He, too, was dressed in regulation prison attire—an olive green twill shirt, matching cotton trousers with a black stripe down the sides, and black laceless shoes. He was not wearing s
ocks, and Heady was not wearing nylons. When Heady complained about the cold, Mrs. Tatman draped her short black Persian wool coat over Heady’s shoulders. Both prisoners, each wearing manacles attached to wide leather straps around their waists, went willingly. It was 11:28.

  Separated by about ten feet, the two groups walked down the sixteen-cell death row. Samuel Norbert Reese, the twenty-one-year-old convicted murderer who occupied the last cell, had composed a poem commemorating the execution entitled “Thoughts While Sitting in the Gas Chambers.” He had tried, but without success, to persuade guards to show it to the condemned pair.

  Climbing the seven stone steps to the ground-level landing, the group pushed through the double doors of B hall and into the cold night. The stars were clearly visible in a cloudless sky, and the temperature stood at a frigid seven degrees.

  The prison yard was draped with Christmas trimmings, and a fir tree was strung with brightly colored lights. In one cell block, “Gloria in Excelsis Deo”—the ancient hymn that began with the words, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace to men of good will”—blared from a radio. Some streets in downtown Jefferson City had been blocked off so that several churches could hold their annual Christmas procession. Lafayette Street, the main thoroughfare leading to the penitentiary, was roped off to keep curious spectators away from the prison gates.

  “It’s colder out here than I thought it was,” Hall said to his guards.

  In the light of the yard, both Hall and Heady could easily be seen by some of the other prisoners, and a few began calling and jeering at them.

  “Bye, Bonnie,” one of them shouted, and several others took up the refrain. Another prisoner called out, “Pour it on ’em.”

  In general, though, the majority of the twenty-five hundred prisoners seemed uninterested in the unfolding drama. All was quiet within the prison, as on any normal night. During previous executions, the prisoners were known to rattle their cell bars when a condemned man was led to the gas chamber. That afternoon, the prison guard had been doubled to 150; and another thirty-five highway patrolmen, most of them in civilian clothes, were stationed both inside and outside the walls. In addition, more than sixty patrolmen within a hundred-mile radius were on standby; and police were also operating two-way radios at locations considered vulnerable either to a riot or a demonstration by the public, including the prison’s railroad and garage gates, and two downtown intersections—Capitol and Cherry streets, and Capitol and Lafayette streets. The prison population had also been locked in their cells immediately after supper, and lights had gone out at ten o’clock.

  Two cars were waiting. Heady, still wearing Mrs. Tatman’s black coat, stepped into the first, along with Marshal and Mrs. Tatman. Hall and two deputy marshals got into the second car.

  The route to the gas chamber led down a five-hundred-yard road that wound past the prison yard and the plumbing shop, and then followed along the edge of the athletic field, which was ablaze with searchlights. Guards had been placed around the gas chamber, and other guards in the watchtowers were on alert to ensure that no prison outbreak or other violence interfered with the orderly implementation of the death sentence. Thousands of letters had flowed into Jefferson City, some bitterly congratulating the state for imposing the death penalty on the pair so swiftly. By now, an estimated ten thousand people had asked to witness the execution. Yet some letters also urged Heady and Hall to ask for forgiveness and repent for their sins. At least fifty people had written Governor Phil Donnell urging him to grant the pair clemency, even though he did not have the authority to do so. All of those letters were turned over to the federal government. Heady and Hall were not allowed to read any of them.

  The thirty-two people who were to witness the execution—including the eighteen official witnesses—walked behind the two automobiles.

  C. O. Parker, a prison official who drove the car that carried Hall, later said, “He walked right in with no hesitation. He did not appear tense or excited.” Heady struck those who escorted her as being “very spry.”

  The trip lasted scarcely a minute. Hall and Heady then remained in the two automobiles for several minutes. At 11:35 they walked across a large stone cross embedded in the ground; a few withered roses still drooped from an overhead trellis. The doomed pair, their guards, penitentiary officials, doctors, and newsmen entered through one door, while the official witnesses to the execution walked through another. Hall and Heady were led into a detention room, and Father Evans and Father Bull soon joined them. Hall and Heady appeared remarkably calm and reconciled to their grisly fate, talking animatedly, smoking, and at one point apparently laughing, perhaps over a shared joke.

  The death house, a small limestone building built in 1937, measured about thirty square feet, with a forty-foot-long exhaust pipe protruding from the roof. It consisted of two small doorless rooms on one side, and the gas chamber on the other. One of the rooms was used to detain the condemned while the gas chamber was being prepared. The second room contained the vats into which the sulfuric acid would be poured, and the leather straps used to restrain the condemned.

  The airtight gas chamber was painted white. The two perforated steel chairs reserved for Hall and Heady stood side by side. Conduits beneath each chair would soon be connected to three-gallon lead vats filled with sulfuric acid. When a lever was pulled, sodium cyanide pellets were dropped into the vats to create lethal hydrogen cyanide gas. After the execution, the gas was extracted through the exhaust pipe. Missouri was one of only nine states to use lethal gas as a method of execution. This was to be the first double execution in the state’s history, and Heady was to become the first woman ever executed in the United States for kidnapping, and the only woman executed by lethal gas.

  In the detention room, Director Whitecotton read the official execution order to Hall, while Marshal Tatman read the same order to Heady. Prison and federal officials stepped out of the cells at 11:45 to allow the two priests time to visit and pray with the pair. Father Evans said a psalm aloud, and led the couple in the “Our Father.” As Hall and Heady held hands, despite the cuffs, they also confessed their sins one last time and received absolution.

  Hall and Heady were then allowed to spend a few minutes together, sitting side by side on a cot, with Marshal Tatman on a chair in front of them.

  “You wouldn’t want to deprive them of that,” Tatman later remarked.

  The pair held hands and talked casually, and Hall, who had lit his last cigarette, leaned over at one point to give Heady a puff. Heady seemed animated, and even laughed at some remark by Tatman. They also kissed.

  In the adjoining room, the guards were mixing sulfuric acid and water, as the witnesses watched.

  Then three guards entered the cell and ordered the two prisoners to stand. At 11:55, Hall was ordered to remove his shoes, and Heady took off her slippers.

  “Okay, out of the way,” a deputy marshal ordered.

  “See you later,” Father Evans said to Bonnie.

  “Sure,” she said. “Thank you, Father.”

  “See you later, Carl,” the priest said.

  “You bet you will, Father,” Hall replied.

  While Heady watched, an official placed a blindfold on Hall, and then secured it at the back with a double strap. Mrs. Tatman then did the same with Heady. Guards and matrons led them into the gas chamber, with Hall going first.

  “Please be careful and don’t let me fall,” Heady complained. “I can’t see a thing.”

  The two metal chairs in the small, octagonal enclosure stood only a foot apart. Each prisoner was guided onto a steel chair, and the guards drew a series of straps tautly across each of their wrists, arms, chests, thighs, and ankles. Hall was strapped into the chair on Heady’s right. His mouth was smeared with lipstick where Heady had kissed him one last time.

  Heady complained that the straps on her arms and legs were too tight, and futilely tried to pull the hem of her skirt over her knees.

  “It’s tight,” she
said jokingly. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  She asked Hall if he had plenty of room, but he was breathing hard as the straps were being tightened and he did not answer.

  Just before the iron door was closed, she asked Hall, “Are you doing all right, honey?”

  “Yes, mama,” he replied, still breathing heavily, and licking his lips.

  “Is my dress pulled down?” Heady asked.

  No one answered.

  Two burly guards in shirtsleeves carried a vat filled with sulfuric acid into the chamber, and placed it under Hall’s chair with a clang that made spectators jump. Two minutes later, they placed a similar vat under Heady’s chair. The acid had cost the state a total of $4.40.

  Marshal Tatman entered the chamber and asked them if either had anything further to confess about the whereabouts of the missing ransom money. Both shook their heads to indicate that they did not. Heady said, “No.” Turning to Tatman, she added, “Goodbye and thanks.”

  She also addressed Assistant Deputy Warden Bernard Poiry, who had taken the pair their food during the four weeks they spent on death row. He had also helped to adjust the straps restraining Heady.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Poiry,” she said, “and thanks for everything.”

  Poiry clumsily shook hands with the pair, and Heady thanked him a second time.

  Tatman, his wife, and the others quickly exited, and the guards shut the heavy doors. Then they turned the six pressure wheels until the chamber was sealed. The eighteen official witnesses took their places outside the glass panels. Some of the observers, sitting side by side only five feet away from the death chamber, had no trouble reading Heady’s and Hall’s lips as they spoke their last words.

  “Carl.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Carl, I love you.”

  “I love you, Bonnie.”

  Hall also appeared to be mumbling to himself, and some observers assumed that he was praying.

  At 12:02 A.M., Warden Ralph Eidson slowly pulled the lever, tripping a mechanism inside the chamber that dropped granular cyanide pellets from shelves under each chair into the vats of sulfuric acid. Whitish fumes instantly spiraled upward from the cauldrons. Heady fought death by holding her breath, and kept her head upright. But Hall’s fell forward as the clouds filled the chamber. The clouding was unusually dense because a double dose of the cyanide had been required for the execution.