Dead Men Walking

by Bill Wallace

  The routine was mundane. He spent hours down there, sometimes he stayed the night, playing with the children and talking to Elizabeth, when he was not raping her. The remainder of his time was spent buying and selling property and making a fool of Rosemarie in public. He once told someone when she was with him, ‘We don’t have sex any more; she’s too fat.’

  It was a secure dungeon. He was a good electrician and engineer and he had installed locks on the doors that could only be opened with the right access code. There was also a fail-safe mechanism that meant if he died or could not get to them, the doors would automatically open after a specified period of time. He added some home comforts over time. She had an old television, a video recorder, hotplates to cook on and a fridge. It was a charmless, low-ceilinged, oppressive place in which to live and it is impossible to imagine what Kerstin, incarcerated there for her entire life, made of the bustling world she saw on television. It must have seemed like a fantasy world to her.

  It appears that towards Christmas 2008, Fritzl was beginning to feel exhausted by the constant effort involved in keeping up his dreadful pretence. His time was filled with burning rubbish from the basement and shopping surreptitiously in order to provide for their daily needs. Furthermore, Elizabeth was getting older; she was forty-one by this time and he was becoming less attracted to her as her youth began to fade. He devised a plan whereby she would be released by the cult that had kept her prisoner for so long and return to the house.

  The plan was rendered unfeasible, however, by the deteriorating health of Kerstin who was becoming increasingly ill and for whom he could not obtain the right medicines. Elizabeth begged him to let her go to hospital but, of course, it was impossible. There would be questions he would not be able to answer. When the girl fell unconscious in April 2008, however, he had no option but to take her to hospital. Hospital staff were immediately suspicious and the police were alerted. Within a few days, Elizabeth stepped through the prison door she had herself helped to install twenty-four years previously.

  The children, eighteen-year-old Stefan, and five-year-old Felix were amazed by the new world they stepped into. They gazed in awe at the moon, screamed with excitement when they heard a police siren and flinched every time a car went past. The next day, there were extraordinary scenes as the downstairs family met the upstairs family for the first time. Elizabeth was reunited with her children, Lisa, Monika and Alex all of whom she had not seen since they were babies. She also fell into the arms of her mother. ‘I’m so sorry,’ Rosemarie said. ‘I had no idea.’

  However, the children were seriously damaged by their experiences. Stefan and Alex mainly commu-nicated to each other through growls and other sounds while Felix seemed terrified of everything, never letting go of his mother.

  Rosemarie moved into a psychiatric hospital with Elizabeth and her children as the authorities tried to socialise them and familiarise them with the world they had not known all those years. They later moved into an apartment, but after a time Elizabeth evicted Rosemarie. Some suggest she had suspicions that her mother had known all along what was going on beneath her feet.

  Fritzl claimed that he did it to protect his daughter but she had been nothing more than a normal teenager who was behaving the way teenagers across the world behave. She had been sneaking out of the house to sit in bars with her friends but given what her father got up to when she was at home, she can hardly be blamed for that. At the time of her initial incarceration she was waiting to hear about a waitressing job in Linz. She had already enjoyed her first taste of freedom when she had spent six months training to be a waitress at Strengberg and was anticipating getting away for good.

  On Thursday 19 March 2009, Josef Fritzl was found guilty of all charges and sentenced to life imprisonment. During the trial Elizabeth gave an eleven-hour video testimony but a few days before the end, she slipped into the courtroom, wanting to ensure, a representative said, that her father was finally going to be held accountable for his appalling actions. When Fritzl spotted her, he turned white and broke down.

  For the first time, this cruel, unemotional monster wept.

  PART TWO: HIGH PROFILE EXECUTIONS

  William Kemmler

  The electric chair is an enduring symbol of American justice. No longer the only method of dispatch of the condemned, sharing that role with the increasingly preferred lethal injection, it still looms in the back-ground of many great criminal cases. Amongst those who have sat uneasily on it are evil killers such as Ted Bundy, Lepky Buchalter and Charles Starkweather. The various electric chairs have taken on personalities of their own, given names that hide the gruesome nature of their purpose – Yellow Mama is Alabama’s chair; Gruesome Gertie is the name given to the Louisiana chair by inmates and the most famous of all, Old Sparky has almost become a generic name, having been used for electric chairs in a number of states.

  Until 1890, the favourite method of execution had been hanging, but a more humane method was needed to suit more enlightened times and the first beneficiary of this was William Kemmler, a convicted thirty-year-old murderer from Buffalo, New York.

  Punishment had always been harsh in America. Although hanging was the most common method of execution, other forms were not uncommon in the early years of the republic – burning, beheading and pressing to death, for example. By the early nineteenth century, however, hanging was normal for capital crimes. It began also to be practiced behind prison walls rather than in public in the town square. People began to believe that execution should be as humane and dignified as possible, a far cry from the bloodthirstiness of previous times.

  Towards the end of the nineteenth century, however, hanging was beginning to be thought of as an inhumane way of executing convicted criminals. There were endless variables for a hangman to consider, most notably the length of the drop. If it was too short, the condemned would not gather enough momentum for his neck to be broken and he would dangle on the end of the rope experiencing an excruciating, slow strangulation. It could sometimes take twenty minutes to die. If the drop were too long, the drop would be too violent and could result in the beheading of the condemned person. The knot used was also critical as was as its positioning. Americans considered themselves to be modern and progressive. Hanging, they thought, was barbaric and cruel.

  In New York, in 1887, therefore, moves were undertaken to find a better way. A Buffalo dentist, Alfred P. Southwick, had seen a drunk man accidentally touch a live electric generator and believed that electricity might provide the answer. The man had died very quickly and, Southwick reckoned, relatively painlessly. He reasoned that death by electrocution would, therefore, provide a good alternative to hanging. It may have been his dentistry background, but he suggested the current could be conducted through the body of the condemned person while he was seated in a large chair. With Dr George Fell, Southwick conducted experiments and the two men took their findings to the authorities.

  They approached the electrical giants of the day – Thomas Edison and Nikola Testa – who were, at the time, waging what was known as the War of the Currents. Edison promoted direct current – DC – while Testa and George Westinghouse advocated alternating current – AC. But they both initially feared that the association with killing a person would be an invidious one. Customers might become afraid of what they might consider to be ‘dangerous’ electricity, the one that kills. Nonetheless, Edison eventually decided to experiment with electrocution using DC electricity.

  Two of his employees, Harold P. Brown and Arthur Kennelly, made the first electric chair, using AC and not Edison’s DC. Edison claimed that it was the more lethal of the two forms of current. The fact that it was his rivals’ version, of course, had something to do with his decision.

  They proved its efficacy and the danger of the rival AC, by electrocuting numerous animals in public demonstrations. At these events, the term ‘electrocution’ was coined, meaning electrical execution. Edison, ever anxious to get at his rivals, tried to have the verb �
��to Westinghouse’ adopted to denote the execution of people using electricity, but it never caught on.

  In 1889, the committee looking into execution adopted Edison’s electric chair.

  Its first victim would be William Kemmler, an illiterate Buffalo vegetable peddler. Kemmler had a relatively successful business, although he lived in a notorious Buffalo slum, mainly because he was an inveterate drunk who drank any profits he made. He was married to Tillie Ziegler who had left her first husband in Philadelphia to travel with Kemmler to Buffalo. But Kemmler was worried that Tillie was going to leave him and return to Philadelphia. No wonder; they fought and argued ceaselessly and Kemmler’s drinking got worse.

  On the morning of 29 March, he was trying to shift the effects of a pulsing hangover by drinking beer. He had been drinking heavily the previous night and was in a poisonous mood. When one of his employees, John Debella, arrived to take him to work, Tillie asked Debella if he would go to the market and do some shopping for her. Somehow, this enraged Kemmler and he began to accuse her of packing her trunk in preparation for leaving him. She shouted back at him that she had merely rearranged the contents of the trunk. Kemmler continued shouting, however, that she had been stealing money from him and that she was planning to run away with Debella. Tillie snapped and screamed at him that it was all true, but whether she was trying to be sarcastic or whether it was true is unknown.

  Kemmler walked outside and fetched a hatchet from his barn. He came back in and started to hit his wife repeatedly with it until she lay dead. He then walked to a neighbour’s house, covered in his wife’s blood, and told him, ‘I killed her. I had to do it. I meant to. I killed her and I’ll take the rope for it.’ But, of course, it would not be the rope that finished him off.

  As he had confessed, and there was little doubt that he had murdered Tillie in a fit of rage, his trial was brief. He was found guilty on 3 May 1889, of first-degree murder and sentenced to death, the sentence to be carried out within three weeks. As he was the first man to be sentenced to death in New York State that year, he would also be the first man to die in the electric chair.

  Almost at once, however, a temporary stay of execution was granted as his lawyer, W. Bourke Cockran, made an appeal based on the fact that electrocution represented cruel and unusual punishment, violating the 8th Amendment of the United States Constitution.

  Although Cockran claimed to be working only for the benefit of humanity in opposing electrocution, he was actually working for Thomas Edison’s great rival George Westinghouse. Meanwhile, the maker of the electric chair, Harold Brown, constantly described the current to be used in the electric chair as deadly AC, with each mention damaging Westinghouse’s business prospects. When Edison testified at the appeal hearing, he was also diligent in reminding everyone that the AC current provided by a Westinghouse generator should be used.

  Edison won the day, the appeal was denied and William Kemmler would be executed at New York State’s Auburn Prison between 3 and 6 August 1890.

  A call went out for official witnesses to the execution and hundreds turned up to volunteer. Amongst those who were finally accepted were Southwick and Fell, who would be there to see their idea in action.

  The execution was set for 6 August at 6 a.m. and as the time neared, Kemmler seemed calm. That morning, he dressed and had the top of his head shaved to accomodate the electrodes and provide a better contact for them. He walked resolutely to the execution chamber and when asked if he had any last words, he magnanimously replied, ‘Well, gentlemen, I wish everyone good luck in this world. And I think I am going to a good place and the papers have been saying a lot of stuff that isn’t so.’

  As the warden fastened his arms to the chair with leather straps, Kemmler noticed that his hands were shaking and said, ‘My God, warden, can’t you keep cool? Take your time. Don’t be in a hurry.’ An electrode, in the form of a metal cap containing a sponge was placed on his head. Another was attached to his spine in order to provide a clear path through the body for the current. The increasing hum of the Westinghouse generator, located in the room next door, could be heard as it increased power. When it had reached 2,000 volts, the amount it was believed would kill a man, the executioner, Edwin Davis, pulled the switch that permitted the electrical current to flow to the chair. For seventeen seconds, electricity surged through William Kemmler’s body. Those watching saw him strain against his straps and turn red. When Davis switched off the current, however, there was one slight problem. William Kemmler was not dead. They would have to try again, but the generator needed time to build up again to the requisite 2,000 volts and as they waited they had the agonizing sight of the condemned man fighting for breath and groaning in pain. At 2,000 volts, Davis again threw the switch and held it on for a full minute until smoke began to rise from Kemmler’s head. It was horrific and those watching were appalled. The smell of burning flesh pervaded the small chamber and a strange crackling sound could be heard. This time there was no doubt. Kemmler was well and truly dead.

  Reporters who had witnessed the event wrote sensational pieces about it, one saying that flames had shot out of Kemmler’s mouth. There was considerable unease about it but although a large section of the public were outraged, legislators refused to repeal the law that permitted electrocution.

  The next four executions in the electric chair in the spring of 1891, using a modified version of the one used at Auburn, went much better.

  Meanwhile, although Thomas Edison won this particular battle, he would lose the war. DC systems fell out of favour and AC became the national standard in the United States.

  Bruno Hauptmann

  As stories go, it had everything. America’s greatest hero who was also one of the most famous men in the world, ransom notes, assignations in dark cemeteries and the kidnap and murder of a beautiful child, for whom a life of privilege lay ahead. Even the defendant was from central casting – a German-born man who fought against the Americans in the trenches of World War One. No wonder they called it the ‘Trial of the Century’.

  Charles Lindbergh was an aviator, author, inventor and explorer, son of a US Congressman and world-famous for making the first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic in his single-seat, single-engine monoplane, Spirit of St Louis. On the night of 1 March 1932, between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m., as Lindbergh and his wife Anne sat downstairs in their Hopewell, New Jersey home, someone scaled the wall of the house, using a home-made ladder and entered the window of the second-floor room where the Lindberghs’ twenty-month-old son, Charles Jr was sleeping. The child was snatched and the kidnapper left behind a ransom note on a radiator case near the window, which read:

  Dear Sir!

  Have 50,000$ redy 2500$ in 20$ bills 1500$ in 10$ bills and 1000$ in 5$ bills. After 2-2 days we will inform you were to deliver the Mony. We warn you for making anyding public or for notify the polise the child is in gute care. Indication for all letters are singnature and 3 holes.

  Investigators found a three-piece home-made extending ladder which had broken as the kidnapper descended with the child. There was also a chisel and in the mud, heading in a southeasterly direction, was a set of footprints. However, these were never measured so that they could be matched up with potential suspects.

  Rather than the news not being made public, it had flashed around the world by the next morning and hordes of people gathered at the Lindbergh house – reporters, cameramen, rubberneckers and souvenir hunters – and a great deal of evidence was destroyed by the milling onlookers.

  Charles Lindbergh, meanwhile, made it clear to the New Jersey State Police that he wanted a free rein to negotiate with the kidnappers. The ransom would be paid and the baby would hopefully be returned safely. Only then, Lindbergh insisted, could the police move in. He and his wife made a radio broadcast stating that any arrangements that were made to hand over the ransom would remain confidential.

  Finally, on 5 March a handwritten note arrived from the kidnappers. It told them that Charles Jr was bein
g well cared for and warned them again to keep the police out of ‘the cace’ (sic). A further note, they went on, would give details of where the ransom was to be handed over.

  Out of nowhere, a retired school principal, Dr John Condon became involved, writing in a newspaper that he would offer $1,000 of his own money to be added to the Lindberghs’ cash and he would make himself available to go anywhere to hand over the ransom. He promised never to divulge the details. The kidnappers wrote to Condon and instructed him to get the money from Lindbergh and await further instruction.

  At 8.30 p.m., on 12 March, a note was delivered to Condon instructing him to go to a specific location near a hot dog stand where, under a stone, he would find another note with instructions as to where he should go next. The note he found about forty-five minutes later told him to ‘follow the fence from the cemetery direction to 233rd Street. I will meet you.’ Condon did as he was told and as he walked towards the gate to the cemetery, he spied a figure motioning him over. The man had a handkerchief covering his nose and mouth and in a German accent, he asked Condon, ‘Did you gottit my note?’ He asked him if he had the money, but Condon replied that until he saw the baby there would be no money. The other man suddenly saw another man outside the cemetery and said ‘It’s too dangerous!’ before turning and fleeing. Condon ran after him and when he caught him up the two sat on a bench. The man, who told Condon that his name was ‘John’, asked him if he ‘would burn’ if the baby was dead. When Condon became agitated, ‘John’ told him the baby was not dead. After telling Condon the baby was on a boat, ‘John’ left, saying that he would send Lindbergh the baby’s sleeping suit. A few days later it arrived.