If you’re reading through the stories here at Sword and Scale then you’re probably getting your true crime fix, same as if you were reading a true crime book or watching a movie based on a real criminal and their crimes. Speaking of crime, criminals and Hollywood’s portrayal thereof, let’s take a shining example of just how far film-makers can stretch the phrase “Inspired by a true story”.

Henry Young, not nearly as nice as his Hollywood alter ego.

“Murder in the First”, released in 1995 and starring Christian Slater and Kevin Bacon, is “Inspired by a true story”. It’s just that the Hollywood version of Henry Young’s life and crimes is about as genuine as laser-printed copy of the Mona Lisa.

In the movie, Young kills a fellow-convict, Rufus McCain, after having been driven mad by his punishment for taking part in an escape attempt with McCain. He comes straight out of a freezing cold, soaking wet, pitch dark solitary confinement cell, has a shower, then he’s taken to the dining hall where he has an epic psychotic episode and rips out McCain’s throat with a spoon. He’s put on trial for capital murder (with a young, inexperienced and naïve lawyer, naturally) who (equally naturally) proves beyond all doubt that the regime and staff at Alcatraz are the real killers because their treatment of Young turns him into a psychotic animal. The Associate Warden at Alcatraz is portrayed as a sadistic brute who likes to spend his evenings beating inmates and cripples Young for life by slashing his Achilles tendon with a straight razor. The Warden himself is portrayed as a blundering, inept oaf with seemingly no day-to-day knowledge of the prison routine or the convict mentality, the guards mostly stand around watching Young’s suffering or joining in the beatings and Young himself, according to the movie was unjustly imprisoned on Alcatraz for stealing $5 to feed his starving sister. So, let’s take this epic that was “Inspired by a true story” and see just how true

Hollywood’s idea of this classic case actually is. We’ll start with its portrayal of Henry Young himself.

Henry Young, according to his criminal record and prison conduct papers, was exactly the kind of inmate Alcatraz was designed for. He arrived at Alcatraz after escaping from the Washington State Prison and being recaptured, having already racked up convictions for burglary, robbery, assault with intent, attempted murder, armed robbery, kidnapping and murder. His conduct reports at his various prisons are equally glowing with fulsome praise for his charming nature. At every prison he’d ever been to, including Alcatraz, he was in and out of solitary as though solitary had a revolving door. He incited strikes among prison workers, insulted prison staff, assaulted prison staff, threatened other inmates, feuded with other inmates, made a number of escape attempts even before landing on the Rock and escaped successfully once. The armed robbery resulting in his murder conviction was committed while he was on parole from a sentence for armed robbery. Not exactly a petty criminal, harshly treated by a brutal and overbearing penal system.

After arriving at Alcatraz Young racked up even more solitary time, insulting and assaulting prison officers tends to have that effect, before his unsuccessful escape attempt with Rufus McCain and others. He gave at least one guard a Bronx cheer, damaged his cell, damaged prison-issue clothes, brawled with several other guards and developed a simmering feud with McCain that pre-dated their escape attempt. McCain wasn’t even supposed to be involved in the escape, but managed to horn his way in by threatening to snitch to the Associate Warden if he wasn’t included by the others.

Murder in the First, starring Kevin Bacon, Christian Slater, and Gary Oldman.

After the escape, which the movie claims cost the lives of every inmate involved by Young and McCain (it didn’t, only one of the 5 escapees was killed), Hollywood would have you believe that Young was confined in the wet, cold, pitch-dark solitary cells for over 3 years with only 30 minutes of light and fresh air. Hollywood’s version also claims that Young was regularly beaten in his cell and that the Associate Warden ‘Milton Glenn’ (actually E.J. Miller on Alcatraz) deliberately hung him from prison bars in shackles and prevented further escapes by hamstringing Young with a razor. Young never acquired any such crippling injury and the only testimony that he was in what Alcatraz inmates called the ‘Dark Hole’ comes from Young himself and fellow-inmates testifying in his defense. That isn’t to say that Alcatraz guards never mistreated inmates, it’s proven that some of them did, but the word of convicts is always debatable, especially when they were crooked enough to end up on Alcatraz.

According to the movie Young went straight from the Hole to the dining hall via ten minutes under a shower and a quick haircut. While he was there he stabbed Rufus McCain through the throat with an ordinary dessert spoon. Hardly a practical thing to stab anyone with. It wasn’t a dessert spoon and it wasn’t in the dining hall. Come to that, he hadn’t just come straight out of 3 years in a dungeon, either.

Young and McCain had been out of solitary for months before the murder. Young was back at work in the furniture workshop and McCain was in the tailor’s shop making uniforms for the staff. Young managed to obtain not one prison-made knife, but two, slipped out of the furniture shop and stabbed McCain in the belly in the tailor’s shop. He wasn’t ranting, raving or otherwise showing signs of mental distress and, once guards had restrained him and confiscated both his blades, he said loudly “I hope I killed the b*****d.” He had, and it looked like San Quentin’s gas chamber would be his next port of call.

According to the movie Young was assigned single court-appointed lawyer to defend him. He wasn’t. He got two experienced trial lawyers, Sol Abrams and James Macinnis instead. Young himself, oddly for a supposed catatonic caveman, had the wit to ask for novice lawyers with no reputation for winning either acquittals or hung juries. He stated openly that they probably wouldn’t do him any good, but they might make good use of the experience. Federal Judge Michael Roche, presiding, overruled him and appointed Abrams and Macinnis instead.

The trial is beautifully played by the actors, beautifully shot by the cameraman and about as genuine as a Rolex watch from a Bangkok market stall. ‘Warden Humson’ (actually Warden James Jonston) is portrayed as blundering oaf in charge of three prisons at the same time who seldom seems to know what day it is. Warden James Johnston was actually a distinguished and experienced Warden, having previously run Folsom and San Quentin at different times and is credited with doing a lot to bring Folsom out its previously-medieval brutality. Hardly somebody who didn’t understand either the penal profession or the convict mentality.

Associate Warden Glenn is, according to the movie, a blustering sadist. He likes employing brutality as a first option, regularly mistreats his inmates at every opportunity, hates convicts indiscriminately and has little to separate him from the convicts themselves. The movie also claims he was dismissed after an investigation revealed his habitual brutality and never worked in the prison system again. The actual Associate Warden, E.J. Miller, certainly had a reputation for running a prison along firm lines and there’s more than one allegation of his having beaten prisoners if he had a mind to. But he’s also documented as having saved the life of at least one inmate, Lefty Egan after Egan fell off the main cell-house wall while touching up the paintwork. He did this at some injury to himself. He wasn’t disciplined for his work at Alcatraz, nor was he thrown out of the prison system. E.J. Miller was actually later promoted to Warden of the Federal Penitentiary at Leavenworth instead.

Young himself, far from being an inarticulate creature barely able to string a sentence together, was very different at the actual trial. His evidence was delivered articulately and calmly. He adopted a moderate, reasonable demeanor throughout apart from occasionally being cocky or sarcastic. No reporter present at Young’s trial (and there were a great many) saw him as being in any way functionally impaired by his prison experiences. He was what many lawyers would have considered the perfect witness, other than his criminal history.

None of this is to say that the Alcatraz regime was overly comfortable or even healthy for its inmates. The Rock was a prison of maximum security and minimal privileges. Even a job where a prisoner could earn a couple of cents an hour was a privilege that had to be earned by good conduct. Until 1938 the ‘silent system’ made a spell in solitary certain for any inmate who uttered so much as ‘Good Morning’ without a guard’s permission. Guards did sometimes mistreat inmates. The food was monotonous. The daily routine was unvarying each and every day. Letters were always censored and visitors could only actually visit if they passed a background check courtesy of the FBI. Everything about the Rock was purpose-built to crush rebellious ideas and enforce, sometimes by the harshest means, a meek, sheep-like conformity from the prisoners. In its own way, Alcatraz was designed to be as painful as any medieval dungeon and to break the will of its convicts. But it wasn’t the unrelenting hell on Earth portrayed in the movie. One former inmate even described it as the best prison he’d ever been in out of the dozen or so he’d passed through during his long, violent and undistinguished criminal career.

Don’t get me wrong. ‘Murder in the First’ is a great piece of cinema. Kevin Bacon and Christian Slater are superb and the supporting actors (Gary Oldman and R. Lee Ermey (the drill instructor from ‘Full Metal Jacket’) are every bit as good. The cinematography is excellent. If you didn’t know (or never found out) just how far away it was from the actual facts, you might be forgiven for thinking you were watching an accurate true-to-life movie “Inspired by a true story.” It’s a movie, certainly, but that’s about as close the true story as it ever actually gets

Meet Paul Poluszynski, alias ‘Paul Jawarski’, known throughout Pennsylvania as ‘The Phantom.’ Before the end of his extremely violent (and, some might say, mercifully brief) criminal career he claimed to have killed twenty-six people including four police officers and a payroll security guard. His gang, the ‘Flatheads’, also committed the first-ever robbery using a landmine. Criminals often use explosives to blow vehicle doors and crack safes. Blowing an entire armored truck onto its roof and then rifling the cargo had never been done before. Jawarski and his gang were the first to do it.

Jawarski was a Polish Immigrant born some time during 1900. He died in the electric chair at the Pennsylvania State Penitentiary at Rockview on January 21, 1929 aged only 29. When he died he was also wanted in Ohio and Michigan, mainly for a string of armed robberies and multiple murder. If Pennsylvania hadn’t executed him then Ohio almost certainly would have. In Michigan he would almost certainly have spent the rest of his life behind bars.

The world’s first robbery-by-landmine happened on March 3, 1927 on Great Bethel Road outside Pittsburgh. A Brinks truck was delivering a payroll to the Pittsburgh Terminal Coal Company in Coverdale. The truck and its single escort car tended to use the same route on a regular schedule and that proved their undoing. Jawarski got the idea from the First World War. On the Western Front opposing armies used mine warfare regularly, either by burying artillery shells nose-up to destroy enemy tanks and trucks or by tunneling under enemy trenches and burying huge explosive charges of up to 96 tons beneath their front line positions. Jawarski saw landmines as having a criminal use. Namely ambushing payroll trucks and incapacitating their escorts. It worked perfectly..

The crews of the truck and escort car didn’t expect anything out of the ordinary. They certainly didn’t expect the hundred pounds or so of industrial dynamite that erupted without warning right under their truck. Armored trucks are enormously heavy vehicles and don’t usually end up being blown twenty feet into the air and landing upside-down. This one did. Its support car went straight into the resulting crater, leaving both vehicle crews injured, dazed and utterly disoriented but, miraculously, still alive. The ‘Flatheads’ then rifled through the truck (which had been blown wide open) and disappeared with $104,000 in cash. Criminal history had been made and mercifully nobody had died.

This was the most notable crime of his career, but it wasn’t his first or last. It was only one of a string of armed robberies and murders Jawarski committed in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. Other criminals, security guards, bystanders, suspected informers and several police officers fell before his shotgun. It was for one of them, that of payroll guard Isiah Gump on Christmas Eve, 1925 during a Pennsylvania robbery with a haul of $48,000, that saw him condemned to death. It was the Gump case that caused him to show one of his rare moments of decency. Another man, Daniel Rastelli, was convicted of Gump’s murder and sentenced to death. Jawarski contacted a lawyer and passed on a confession, freeing Rastelli but also dooming himself when he was spotted and arrested two days after the landmine robbery. Rastelli was released while ‘Jawarski’ drew thirty-to-sixty years for the landmine robbery which did little to improve his attitude toward society. Two days after his conviction for the landmine robbery he was tried again for the murder of payroll guard Ross Dennis during a robbery outside Beadling, Pennsylvania. He was condemned to death. If he managed to gain a commutation for the Dennis murder it would make no difference. He could still have been condemned for confessing to the murder of Isiaih Gump.

Pennsylvania didn’t have a formal Death Row at that time. Unlike New York’s infamous ‘Death House’ at Sing SIng Prison, Pennsylvania lodged its condemned in local institutions such as the Allegheny County Jail and transport them to the State Prison at Rockview for their date with ‘Old Sparky.’ It was at Allegheny that he was confined in a cell on ‘Murderer’s Row.’ With a bitter irony, it was the same cell previously occupied by Daniel Rastelli. Jawarski was to wait there until his appeals were denied (with his record they almost certainly would have been) and a car arrived to take him to Rockview for execution. He would eventually visit Rockview and be executed, but not yet. The Pennsylvania Phantom’ planned a disappearing act.

It was in April, 1928 when the ‘Phantom’ suddenly (and violently) vanished. An outside accomplice (probably a ‘Flathead’) visited him. Security at Allegheny being somewhat lax in this instance considering Jawarski was a condemned prisoner, the staff didn’t find the guns the visitor was smuggling. One for himself, one for Jawarski and another was taken from a prison guard when the accomplice, the ‘Phantom and convicted murderer Jack Vasbinder decided to arrange their own reprieve. Having blasted their way out, the trio disappeared. Jawarski’s unofficial stay of execution wouldn’t last very long. Vasbinder’s would be even shorter.

Vasbinder, aside from being a murderer, had one other major failing. He was a hopeless drug addict and that made him a liability. If caught and going through withdrawal he might offer any and every piece of help to the authorities in return for a fix. His escape partner knew that full well and decided to solve the problem by shooting him. As Vasbinder lay dying, his killer finished the job by dumping him in the Allegheny River before moving on to Michigan and re-starting his crime spree. It was in Detroit that another career highlight presented itself. On June 6, 1928 ‘Jawarski and his new gang robbed the payroll of a newspaper, the Detroit News. They left having taken out nearly $30,000 in payroll money and also two police officers. Sergeant George Barstad had walked in on the robbery and was shot dead. Patrolman Guy Cragg was seriously wounded.

September 13, 1928 was the beginning of the end. Unknown to him, n old acquaintance had recognised him from ‘Wanted’ posters by then all over Pennsylvania and Michigan. The acquaintance alerted police who quickly responded. After a fierce gunfight and chase Jawarski was in handcuffs and seriously wounded. Patrolmen Effinger and Wieczorek were both dead from shotgun blasts. The crime spree was over and the extradition negotiations were about to start. They were unusually brief. Normally when a felon is wanted in multiple States then there’s a protracted and sometimes hostile amount of negotiation over where they eventually end up. As Jawarski had already been condemned to die in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio agreed relatively quickly that Pennsylvania could have him. Perhaps as far as law enforcement in all three States were concerned, the sooner he did the ‘hot squat’ the better.

They didn’t have long to wait. Jawarski knew it was hopeless. With his record trying for a commutation in Pennsylvania was a lost cause. Even if he escaped a death sentence in multiple murder charges there, he’d still be tried for murder in Ohio, also a death penalty State, or spend the rest of his days in a MIchigan prison. He ‘volunteered’ by dropping his appeals and instructing his lawyers not to make any efforts to delay the inevitable. His wish was granted. On January 20, 1929 the car and escort arrived to take him on his last ride. He remained unrepentant to the very end. During his last night he wrote a brief, scathing note to Andrew Park, the prosecutor who secured his death sentence. It read:

‘To Andy Park. See you at 49 Hell’s Fire Lane, 6 1/4 miles the other side of Hell.’

Shortly before he walked his last mile Paul Poluszinsky, alias Paul Jawarski, alias Paul Palmer, known to the pres and public as the ‘Pennsylvania Phantom’ was offered the spiritual advice of a Catholic priest. His last words were as blunt and forceful as his personality:

“I preached atheism since the day I quit singing in the choir. A man is yellow if he spends his life believing in nothing and then comes crawling to the Church because he is afraid his death is near.”

He didn’t believe he had a mortal soul. Judging by his career and reputation, it’s unlikely anybody else did, either.

The anonymous image sharing board 4chan has long held the reputation as a place where anything goes on the internet. Information flows quickly and everything from cat memes, gore, and pornography is shared. It is not uncommon, due to the anonymous nature of the service, for members to sometimes make shocking confessions. Hackers shared and bragged about stealing celebrity photos, on another occasion a user confessed to tampering with food and shared a photo of himself standing in a bin of lettuce at a Burger King restaurant, but none have been as shocking as what was posted in the afternoon of November 4, 2014.

David Kalac, the man that posted photos of his murdered girlfriend on the popular message board 4chan.

At 2:54 PM, an anonymous user posted the first of several photos depicting a nude woman with lacerations around her neck and a pale blue complexion. His comment read “Turns out its way harder to strangle someone to death than it looks on the movies.” At 2:58 PM a second photo was released, this time the user stated “She fought so damn hard.” Between the operator’s posts other users made some off-color comments, presumably since it isn’t uncommon for hoaxes to circulate within the online community. The final post at 3:06 PM, accompanied by an additional photo, read “Check the news for port orchard Washington in a few hours. Her son will be home from school soon. He’ll find her, then call the cops. I just wanted to share the pics before they find me. I bought a bb gun that looks realistic enough. When they come, I’ll pull it and it will be suicide by cop. I understand the doubts. Just check the fucking news. I have to lose my phone now.”

Shortly after the initial posts were made on the image board, the victim’s teenage son returned home from school. He immediately notified his father of his terrible discovery, whom then reported the incident to the police. Upon arriving on the scene, police found the victim laying next to her license with the word “Dead” scrolled across it. A picture on the wall had the words “She killed me first” on it, and “Bad News” was written on the blinds. The victim was identified as Amber Coplin and her killer is believed to have been her live-in boyfriend David Kalac, whom had been heard arguing loudly with Amber the night before.

No one knew the whereabouts of Kalac, but it had been presumed that he had fled in Amber’s car. Later it would be discovered that Kalac was partying at a bar in Portland, Oregon. He introduced himself to the bar owner and shared drinks and laughs with the local patrons, unaware that David was on the run and wanted for murder.

A photo of Amber Coplin taken from her facebook page posing with one of her five boys.

At around 1 AM November 5^th, a car matching the description of Amber’s car was spotted by Portland police. The plates were found to be Amber’s and a driver fitting Kalac’s description was behind the wheel. Kalac lead police on a high speed chase, which was called off when Kalac began swerving recklessly into oncoming traffic. The car was recovered later that day, abandoned somewhere near Portland. Sometime between the police chase and the car being recovered, Kalac took to the 4chan boards again in order to explain his motive behind the brutal murder of Amber Coplic. He wrote “I found out she was fucking another guy. our relationship was rocky at best. For the past 3 years I’ve been putting food on the table and raising her bastard son and she repays me with this!!?? We were getting ready to “do it” when i came up behind her with a .26 gauge wire I use for vaping and killed her. Bitch gave me a black eye. Im at a hotel now. I wont say where.”

Later that day, a Wilsonville officer doing routine patrols witnessed Kalac emerge from the woods. He approached the patrolman and told him that he was wanted on murder charges and would like to surrender peacefully. Kalac was taken into custody. Near the area Kalac had surrendered a handwritten confession was found.

“I killed Amber Coplin. I strangled her with my hands, Then a shoelace I had. No reason other than I was drunk and she pissed me off. Running from the cops was so fun.”  – DK

Kalac is now being held in a Washington jail. He has plead not guilty to his pending first degree murder charges, in spite of his full confession to the crime, and his first trial has been set for August 3, 2015. Kalac has a history of domestic violence and prior felony convictions. At the time of the initial proceedings the prosecutor stated that he will not be seeking the death penalty, however, new charges against Kalac may force them to re-evaluate that decision.

The note that Kalac left near the area he surrendered to an officer doing routine patrols of a Wilsonville, OR park area.

While in jail, Kalac reportedly attempted to murder another inmate. Using a piece of cardboard to jam the lock of his cell door, Kalac went to the cell of Wayne Allen Carlson, pulled him off the top bunk of his bed, then slammed his head repeatedly into a sink while keeping him in a choke hold. Kalac claimed that he wasn’t trying to kill Carlson, he only wanted to rough him up a bit. Kalac’s charges of first-degree murder for the Carlson incident were eventually dropped and lowered to the lesser offense of fourth-degree assault.

The fate of David Kalac is still on hold until August, but it is doubtful that he will ever see the light of day again. This violent offender that tormented women, murdered his live-in girlfriend, left five boys without a mother and one to stumble upon the grisly scene, then bragged about it callously on an online image sharing site, will likely spend the rest of his days behind bars where he belongs.

The Tower of London, nowadays a popular tourist destination. Once also a prison, defensive fortress, a crime scene (if you believe, as I do, that the ‘Princes in the Tower’ were murdered here) and also the site of a number of execution. Anne Boleyn, Lady Jane Grey (who was the shortest-reigning Queen in British history, in office for only nine days), and of host of others. And it’s one of those others that we’re looking at today.

If you’re thinking, as so many do, that the Tower’s reputation for executions ended in medieval times then you’d be wrong. 11 German spies were shot there in the First World War and one in the Second. He was Josef Jakobs from Luxembourg, executed by firing squad on August 15, 1941, who holds the grim distinction of being the last prisoner executed at the Tower. August 15 was also the date, in 1961, of the last hanging in Scotland, that of Henry Burnett at Craiginches Prison in Aberdeen and, in New York in 1963, the last execution in New York State, that of Eddie Lee Mays (by electrocution). But I’ve covered Mays already and we’ll get round to Burnett in due course. It’s Jakobs we’re interested in today.

Jakobs was a Luxembourger born on June 30, 1898. He was a veteran of the First World War (he served as a lieutenant in the 4th Foot Guards of the German Army), was drafted back into the German Army as an Oberleutnant (1st Lieutenant) in June, 1940 and then his career (and life) took a disastrous downturn when a previous conviction for selling counterfeit gold (and its accompanying stretch in a Swiss prison) saw him demoted to Feldwebel (Sergeant) and transferred to the Meteorologischen Dienst, the military weather service. His demotion also brought him to the attention of German Military Intelligence, the Abwehr, under Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, who recruited him to spy in England. Ironically, given Jakobs’ grim distinction, Canaris himself was executed for treachery on April 9, 1945 at Flossenburg concentration camp after his implication in the July Bomb Plot of1944 where Hitler narrowly escaped assassination.

His being a Luxembourger wasn’t unusual, many agents recruited by the Abwehr were either non-German or indigenous to the countries they betrayed. He was trained in espionage, equipped with £500 in forged money, a radio transmitter, a pistol, civilian clothes, forged identity papers and a sausage, an obviously German sausage which wasn’t all that smart of his recruiters as it would have stood out like a sore thumb in wartime Britain.

He flew out Schiphol Airport, in the Occupied Netherlands, landing by parachute near Ramsey in Huntingdonshire on January 31, 1941 and promptly broke his ankle on landing. Crippled and with no means to pursue his mission, that of discovering troop movements and monitoring weather conditions to aid air raids on British targets. He fired his pistol repeatedly into the air until two local farmers came to his aid. Charles Baldock and Harry Coulson promptly notified the local police and Home Guard who detained him for transfer to London. He was still wearing his flying suit with a civilian suit underneath and his equipment. Jakobs was promptly arrested and transferred to London to the secretive ‘Camp 020′ used for holding German spies while deciding whether they’d be more useful as double agents or simply be tried secretly and executed. Jakobs wasn’t seen as useful enough to be a double agent which made his trial, held secretly, a foregone conclusion.

His trial was held in secret because the British wanted to protect the ‘Double Cross’ system used to ‘turn’ captured German spies and use them t feed disinformation back to Abwehr HQ in Berlin. It was via ‘Double Cross’, at the instigation of a singularly unsavoury Welsh nationalist, MI5 agent, Abwehr agent and self-interested ne’er-do-well named Arthur Owens (codenamed ‘SNOW’) that Jakobs and many other German agents dropped into Britain and were almost immediately caught, then either ‘turned’ or executed. Owens was devious, selfish and only acted on one side, his own, while making as much money as he could from whichever side paid best at the time. He betrayed scores of Abwehr agents, knowing full well the fate that awaited them. He was an opportunist, a crook, a mercenary and quite possibly a psychopath.

Jakobs ended up at ‘Camp 020′ via Ramsey Police Station and Cannon Row Police Station in London. He was interrogated, harshly but not mistreated, by an expert in the art of mentally breaking prisoners, ‘Tar’ Robertson of MI5’s Section B1A to help decide if he’d be offered the chance of working for the British. He was kept at Brixton Prison’s infirmary and again interrogated, thsi time by MI5’s ‘Tin-Eye’ Stephens, an even more ruthless interrogator who, like Robertson, disdained physical torture. Like a small fish, Jakobs was thrown back as not worth keeping. He was, in fact, thrown in among sharks. His secret trial was forgone conclusion, given that he’d been caught with spying equipment, had already admitted arriving for the purpose of espionage and hadn’t inspired any respect by readily offering to betray the Abwehr. If, MI5, reasoned, he would fold so quickly on capture then he’d be of no use to them. Jakobs spent another two months at Dulwich Hospital being treated for his ankle injury before his trial on August 4-5, 1940.

Jakobs was given a military court-martial rather than a civilian trial with Lieutenant-General Sir Bertram Sergison-Brooke presiding. The evidence of eight witnesses, Jakobs himself and his own equipment was overwhelming and he was promptly sentenced to death by shooting. In deference to his being a soldier he was allowed shooting rather than the civilian method of hanging, affording him the chance to die like a soldier instead of as a common criminal at the hands of Britain’s chief hangman Albert Pierrepoint like Duncan Scott-Ford in 1942. Jakobs appealed to King George VI by letter, offering again to spy for the British and claiming he had always intended to turn himself in. It made no difference, the judgment was affirmed and his final, desperate appeal was rejected. His execution would take place on August 14, 1941 at the miniature rifle range at the Tower of London. Nobody had been executed at the Tower since 1747.

Well, we’ll probably never know and that’s what makes this case so interesting. A distinguished Professor, two Inuit helpers, the first successful expedition to the North Pole and Admiral Robert Peary, one of America’s most famous explorers. Throw in the frozen wasteland of the Arctic Circle and that the murder (if it was a murder) occurred in an area not within any legal jurisdiction and you end up with more questions than answers. What really happened? Did Marvin go insane under the strains of Polar exploration? Did his Inuit helpers have to kill him to save themselves? Was it a murder or simply self-defense?

Our tale begins in 1908, when Admiral Peary led his eighth attempt to reach the North Pole. In late-1908 the party left for Greenland with Peary in command and Marvin acting as his personal secretary and in charge of training the team in basic survival techniques such as sledge maintenance and repair and how best to build shelters. Marvin was a resolute, determined and brave soul, physically fit and highly educated with degrees in physics and meteorology as well as being a qualified civil engineer. He was the type who actively sought out challenging, hazardous environments. Peary,himself no shrinking violet, took a liking to Marvin immediately and also saw his valuable skills.

Peary broke his team up into seven small parties. In total there would be 28 sledges pulled by 148 huskies and the party would be accompanied by 19 Inuit helpers. Two of these would find themselves taking a very rare place in criminal history.  Six groups were to support Peary’s team in their attempt to reach the North Pole. They would travel by different routes, each dropping off supply caches as they went for Peary’s team to collect as they moved towards their destination. Between September, 1908 and February, 1909 they trained hard for the mission and departed as soon as conditions made an attempt feasible. Marvin and two Inuits, Kudlooktoo and Inukitsoq, made up the sixth of the seven groups which departed. Inukitsoq and Kudlooktoo would return. Marvin would never be seen or heard of again.

But what exactly happened? Peary’s team reached the North Pole on April 6, 1090 and sent a message on their return from the Pole dated September 6, 1909:

‘Stars and Stripes nailed to the North Pole – Peary.’

Initially, the two Inuit helpers arrived at the rendezvous site where Peary’s men were celebrating their success. Peary’s sense of achievement and glory was thoroughly ruined by their report that Marvin had fallen through a patch of thin ice and, unable to rescue him, they had to leave him where he was and return to the rendezvous without him. As Peary put it:

“It killed all joy I had felt. It was indeed a bitter blow to our success.”

The expedition erected a memorial to their fallen member, reading:

‘In memory of Ross Marvin of Cornell University. Aged 34. Drowned April 10, 1909, fifty-five miles off Cape Columbia, returning from 86 degrees 38 minutes northern latitude.’

It would be seventeen years before the truth (or a well-concocted lie) would come out. Danish missionary Jens Olsen was preaching at Karnah in 1926 and his prayer meetings were well-attended. One of them saw Inuksutoq and Kudlooktoo attend and, when Olsen asked if anybody in the crowd wanted to confess their sins, Kudlooktoo stunned all concerned by standing up and saying:

“Ross Marvin did not die because he drowned, but because I shot him.”

According to the two Inuits, Marvin’s personality had become progressively more irrational and disturbed as the expedition wore on. He became increasingly foul-tempered, aggressive, verbally abusive and his behavior deteriorated to the point where he emptied Inukutsoq’s possessions from the sled and attempted to leave him out on the Arctic tundra with no way to get back to the start point which would have meant certain death. One of them stated:

“It was not at all our good Marvin. He was a different man from the one we had come to know.”

Having tried to ditch one of his helpers, Marvin proceeded on with Kudlooktoo in tow and they were caught up by Inukutsoq and they stopped to rest. Marvin also refused to allow Kudlooktoo to share his igloo, which would almost certainly have been fatal., before telling him that he would also not have any food. During questioning by Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen, Kudlooktoo said he’d asked for his rifle to shoot a seal and instead shot his employer before turning the gun on his fellow Inuit and threatening him with summary execution if he informed anybody of what Kudlooktoo had done. Both men, fearing ‘white man’s justice’, had managed to keep silent for seventeen years before one of them felt a need to unburden himself.

What actually happened is unclear. We only have the word of the two survivors as to why Marvin was killed. On the other hand, it isn’t unknown for explorers to lose their minds when confronted with extreme hardship and discomfort for extended periods. What confused things even more was that, at the time, the area wasn’t part of any legal jurisdiction. In the absence of any nationality, the area was effectively exempt from the rule of law until it was finally claimed by Denmark in 1921, some years after the killing happened. With no legal system in place at the time, there could be no trial which left the Inuits, regardless of whether they committed a cold-blooded murder or acted in self-defense, free to continue their lives without any further action being taken.

A Professor, a distinguished explorer and Admiral, two Inuits, the North Pole and a killing, certainly one of the most curious (and frustratingly odd) events in criminal history.

Every day we hear of murder, rape, death, and some of the most horrific atrocities we could ever fathom covered on the news. Since the inception of live media coverage, it is not uncommon for events surrounding some of these stories to unfold as the cameras are rolling. It should not be surprising that even murder has occurred live on the air, directly in front to stunned film crews and has sent shockwaves around the world. Presented for your viewing (dis?)pleasure is five of the most shocking reels of footage ever recorded before a live news crew. I shouldn’t have to say it, but I will still warn you that the videos listed below are neither safe for work or the mind.

King Alexander the I of Yugoslavia

On October 9, 1934, King Alexander arrived in France for a diplomatic meeting with French foreign minister, Louis Barthou. Driving through the streets of Merseillis, a crowd began to form in order to offer a warm welcome to their Yugoslavian guest. Suddenly the pleasantries were gone, and a hail of bullets began flailing through the air. King Alexander’s blood began draining out like a devil’s rain directly in front of the hysterical onlookers. He was mortally wounded, potentially by police fire in the mass of confusion. The assassin was immediately identified, shot by police and beaten by the crowd. The King’s assassination would be the first murder ever caught on video.

The JFK Assassination

President Kennedy arrived in Dallas in the early afternoon of November 22, 1963. Traveling with his wife, Vice President Lyndon Johnson, Texas Governor Conelly, and several secret service agents, the motorcade set off on a route through the city, which would allow for maximum exposure of the President and his caravan as they made their way to a luncheon in order to discuss the President’s final decision on the Trade Mart building.

The President waved at his adoring supporters, as his 1961 Lincoln Continental four door convertible slowly coasted along the streets of Dallas. The motorcade turns onto Elm Street in order to embark onto the freeway exit. Suddenly shots began to ring out, coming from the direction of the Texas School Book Depository, directly across from where the motorcade was passing. Kennedy had been shot directly in the head. His bullet riddled body continued to parade the streets as his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, sits next to him. Floundering and scared, Mrs. Kennedy immediately vacates the vehicle and is pulled into the safety of the secret service vehicle driving directly behind the Presidential limousine. Fans kept waving and cheering, unaware that they had just witnessed the President’s assassination. Texas, along with the rest of the country, was in outrage when the news was finally revealed that the President was dead.

Lee Harvey Oswald

After being detained by Dallas police, Lee Harvey Oswald was awaiting transport to prison in the basement of the police department. As Oswald left the building he was met by a crowd of reporters, eager to get a clear shot of the man responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy. A man emerges from the crowd and walks directly in front of Oswald. The man was night club owner, Jack Ruby. Ruby shot Oswald in the stomach, killing him in order to save Mrs. Kennedy the grief of having to withstand the trial. Today the footage is one of the most well-known murders to occur during live news coverage.

The 1979 Greensboro Massacre

A protest staged in order to organize black industrial workers happened to be occurring on the same day as a white supremacist rally on November 3, 1979 in Greensboro, North Carolina. As one could imagine, there were tensions between the two groups, however, there seemed to be little if any police presence within the area. The only other people witness to the scene was the local news media covering the event. As the KKK and Nazi sympathizers move in like wolverines in dark black suits through the area of the industrial workers’ protest, the crowd begins shouting “Death to the Klan!”. They did not take kindly to the protesters, and all hell breaks loose. Five protesters were shot in cold blood, with only the news media there to capture the carnage.

Telemundo Cemetery Murder

Grief stricken over his daughter’s suicide, Emilio Nunez contacted the Spanish television station Telemundo in order to conduct an interview within the cemetery she was buried at. Telemundo had no idea that Nunez had a vendetta against his wife. He wanted to make her death public, he wanted to make her pay for what he believed had driven his daughter to suicide. As the news team enters the cemetery, first interviewing Nunez’s wife, Emilio runs up behind her and shoots her execution style in the back of the head in front of a horrified reporter.

Alabama Governor Bibb Graves

That is the question for any State Governor with the power to do so. Some agonize over the decision, some don’t and a great many will base their decision more on their approval rating than on justice and the law. What –as far as I’m aware– no other Governor has ever done was to stand peering through a small window at a convict already strapped into an electric chair and decided then and there whether or not to spare that convict’s life. At the electrocution of Alabama wife-murderer Samuel Hall at Kilby Prison on September 8, 1927 Governor David Bibb Graves did exactly that.

Governor Graves wasn’t squeamish about executions. During his tenure between 1926 and 1930 twenty men walked their last mile. Under Graves, Alabama saw its first use of the electric chair when double murderer Horace Devaughan took his unwilling place in State history on April 8, 1927. Two weeks after him, Alabama electrocuted its first white inmate, wife murderer Virgil Murphy. Then it was the turn of murderer Clyde Batchelor. Now Samuel Hall sat in his cell, considered his chances and awaited his fate and his fate looked pretty bleak.

Hal’s sole contribution to his trial and appeals had been to resoundingly irritate all concerned by simply saying the same phrase when answering almost every question. Namely:

“Boss, I never done it.”

Despite police, the jury, the trial judge and the Alabama Board of Pardons not having the slightest doubts about his guilt, Samuel Hall still persisted in constantly denying his having beaten his wife almost to death before finally drowning her in the Autauga Creek. With no relief from the Board of Pardons and his legal issues appealed and all rejected, his only chance of survival lay in Governor Graves deciding to grant executive clemency. What Hall, the execution witnesses and Kilby Prison’s Warden and Chaplain didn’t know was whether Graves would commute Hall’s sentence or send him on his way to ‘Yellow Mama.’ Right up until the very second the switch was thrown, neither did Governor Graves.

The first anybody knew of anything out of the ordinary was when Warden Thomas Shirley received a strange order from the Governor’s office. He was told that Graves in person would attending the execution, an extremely rare occurrence in American penal history, and that Hall was to be taken to the chair and strapped down. Once he was strapped down, however, under no circumstances was Warden Shirley to throw the switch without a direct signal from Graves personally. The Warden thought it was an odd order, but continued with the customary arrangements. Hall got his last meal and his visit with the prison chaplain Reverend Brassell, the witnesses assembled, the chair was tested and despite some speculation from journalists witnessing the execution nobody was any the wiser. State Governors don’t normally attend executions, especially not of nondescript nobodies like Samuel Hall. Kilby Prison (shown below) had never had so unusual a witness, although it had seen plenty of executions.

The notoriously tough Kilby Prison, a few miles from Montgomery, Alabama.

Graves knew full well that Hall would have repeatedly been told to deny everything and keep denying it right to the end. He also knew why Hall was getting this advice, Graves’s own reputation for commuting death sentences whenever an inmate denied their guilt and kept denying it. Graves was about to take that theory to its extreme and Samuel Hall was the master of his own fate. He just never knew it. Graves’s plan was simple. As Governor he could grant executive clemency right up until the switch was thrown. Even if Warden Shirley had his hand on the switch, Graves could signal him to stop and save Samuel hall from a fate many thought he richly deserved. If Hall was marched in, strapped down and asked one last time by Reverend Brassell whether he was guilty, Graves would either commute the sentence then and there or simply nod his head at Warden Shirley. If Graves nodded, Shirley would throw the switch. And Samuel Hall would die…

The ‘Death House’ at Kilby Prison had an odd layout. Three doors opened into the actual execution chamber. One opened onto Death Row itself, through which Hall would arrive just after midnight on September 8, 1927. Another opened into a small room off to the right of the chair itself. The door to that room held a small window through which chair and inmate could be easily seen. The third door opened from that room into the switch room where Warden Shirley would be awaiting the signal. Normally that meant a white disc bearing the word ‘Ready’ would be held up in front of a small round window between the switch room and the execution chamber.. When the ‘Ready’ signal was shown, the switch was thrown. This time it would be different. Graves was in clear view of Warden Shirley and it would be Graves himself giving the signal, or not, depending on Hall’s answer to one very simple question. Was he guilty?

Alabama being Alabama, September nights are often hot, muggy, uncomfortable affairs. Being asked to stay up half the night. looking at your watch, chain-smoking and trying to pass the time before watching a man being electrocuted within feet of you probably doesn’t improve the general atmosphere, either. The speculation as to why Graves was attending in person and his strange order to Warden Shirley doubtless made already tense and difficult night for all involved even harder. Shortly before midnight the official witnesses were assembled in front of ‘Yellow Mama’ and wondering where the Governor had got to. They knew he was at the prison, but where was he? What was he doing? Why wasn’t he waiting to witness the execution?

Graves was there. As a terror-stricken Samuel Hall, so frightened that he only made it into the room with guards physically supporting him, slumped into the chair, the guards moved quickly. The straps and electrodes were fitted and tightened, everybody took a few steps away from the chair and all awaited the ‘Ready’ signal. While the rest of the witnesses stood before ‘Yellow Mama’, Graves was in the alcove behind the door, looking through the little window at Hall who was strapped, capped and ready to die.

Alabama’s equally notorious ‘Yellow Mama.’

Reverend Brassell stepped forward. In a clear (if rather trembling) tone he asked Samuel Hall one simple question. Hall’s life depended on his answer. One more denial and he would live, if spending the next thirty or forty years in Kilby could be called living. If he finally admitted his guilt, Samuel Hall would die…

.Brassell waited for an answer. Graves waited, on the answer depended his signal to commute the sentence or throw the switch. Warden Shirley waited for a signal one way or the other. The witnesses waited and wondered, what was the delay..?

“Yes, I done it…”

Brassell stepped back a safe distance. The barely-visible  at the little window turned and nodded to Warden Shirley. The switch was thrown. 2000 volts seared through Hall’s body. He died never knowing that he was one denial away from surviving a seat in ‘Yellow Mama.’

You’re probably wondering why such an unpleasant device has such a quaint nickname. Simple. The original Alabama chair was painted yellow, courtesy of paint donated by the State Highways Department whose base was directly adjacent to Kilby Prison. ‘Yellow Mama’ with a certain grim irony, was designed and built by an inmate, a British cabinet-maker named Ed Mason, then serving sixty years for burglary and grand larceny. Mason was given a temporary leave from Kilby after he installed the chair and decided never to return to Kilby and finish his sentence. Given convicts tend to dislike inmates assisting the executioner, it was probably far healthier for him that he stayed out and disappeared into obscurity..

‘His creation didn’t. ‘Yellow Mama’ stayed at Kilby and was in regular use until 1970 when Kilby was shut down. Its second home was at the Holman Correctional Facility where it remained, albeit in less regular use, until it was replaced by lethal injection. But for how long? With the current crisis over supplies of the right drugs to perform lethal injections, Alabama’s legislators are considering whether to dust off their pet museum piece and return it to active service.

But it’s far more unlikely that a State Governor in Alabama, or anywhere else for that matter, will ever again consider a clemency appeal at such close quarters.

Meet Henri Charriere. Frenchman, Venezuelan, career criminal, transportee to Devil’s Island, denier of the murder that sent him there, happy to claim to have committed a murder while he was there and general storyteller and writer. Also known as ‘Papillon’ (due to a butterfly tattoo on his chest) and writer of the eponymous book turned into the 1973 movie starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman (on which he was also technical adviser).

We know that Charriere was convicted of the manslaughter of Roland LeGrand, a pimp of no particular note or repute. We also know that Charriere received a sentence of life in the penal colonies of French Guiana with an extra ten-year sentence tacked on to it. Additionally, we know that he actually went to Guiana aboard ‘La Martiniere’ and that he did indeed know Louis Dega, and that Dega was indeed a forger (and a very good one apart from getting himself caught and sent to Guiana for the rest of his life).

It is true that he was married before his exile to Guiana and married again in Venezuela after his successful escape from the penal colonies,  his mother died when he was only ten years old, and that he served two years in the French Navy before joining the Parisian underworld as a safe-cracker. Everything else that appears in ‘Papillon’ is open to question. Did it happen to Charriere personally? Did he steal other inmates’ stories, passing them off as his own personal experiences? How many of them were his experiences or even happened? Was Henri Charriere really ‘Papillon’ at all?

Charriere definitely arrived on the 1933 shipment from France to St.Laurent, capital of the colony and of the numerous prison camps that formed the ‘Penal Administration, French Guiana.’ He claimed that his first escape was made within weeks of arrival. Penal colony records state he was there for nearly a year before his first unauthorized absence. That he made eight further escapes, this too can’t be confirmed. That he killed an informer after being transferred to Royale Island, odd to admit that murder while denying the one that sent him to Guiana in the first place. He claimed to have spent several months with Guajira Indians while on the run through Colombia during one unsuccessful escape, which is also unconfirmed except by Charriere’s own account. Charriere also claimed to have saved a young girl’s life by fending off sharks during a swimming break when he was in solitary on St. Joseph Island for an escape attempt. A different account states that the incident did indeed happen, but that the inmate who made the save lost both his legs to a shark and died soon afterward.

While transferred to Royale Island (home to so-called ‘Incos’ or ‘Incorrigibles’), Charriere claimed to have been both a ringleader in a convict mutiny and also to have calmed the same mutiny down, his status as an ‘Inco’ being enough to persuade other ‘Incos’ to abandon their insurrection. Again, other inmates and penal colony records suggest strongly that Charriere was actually a peaceful inmate who caused very little trouble except for escaping. They also suggest he was largely content in his job on Royale Island cleaning out the latrines. According to Charriere he was a hardened felon and desperate escaper. According to seemingly everybody else, official or otherwise, he was happy to work most of the time cleaning latrines for other convicts.

There’s also the small matter of his supposed escape from Devil’s Island itself by floating to the mainland aboard a sack of coconuts with another inmate named Sylvain. Sylvain drowned in mud while trying to reach land, according to Papillon, which leaves nobody to corroborate his story or to explain why a conventional criminal like Charriere would be confined to Devil’s Island when that island was only used to hold political prisoners. In fact, of the 70,000 or so inmates sent to Guiana, only around 50 were ever confined to Devil’s Island itself. Neither Charriere nor his supporters can explain that or why, according to Penal Administration records, Charriere’s legendary successful escape through the Guiana jungle was made from St. Laurent where he was assigned at the time. Nor is there any explanation as to why Charriere freely references events in his book such as a convict-turned-executioner’s sadistic murder or the so-called ‘Cannibals Break.’ During that particular escape a group of escapers became so desperate they cooked and ate one of their group to survive. One member of that group (who declined the free buffet) was fellow-inmate Rene Belbenoit, himself a successful escaper and author of the far more reliable ‘Dry Guillotine,’

The biggest problem of all for Charriere’s devotees, aside from the many inconsistencies and contradictions is Charriere’s book, a book he passed off as a memoir and not as a work of fiction, is the existence until 2007 of one Charles Brunier. Charles Brunier was a First World War veteran, armed robber and murderer sent to Guiana before Charriere. According to Brunier, he was ‘Papillon’, not Charriere. Brunier openly acused Charriere of lying and stealing the experiences of other inmates while claiming them to be his own. Brunier was also an unwilling resident of the colonies until 1940 when he escaped and joined the Free French forces under Charles de Gaulle. He also wore a number of tattoos, one of which just happened to be of a large butterfly adorning his chest and the withered little finger, both identifying marks of the real ‘Papillon.’ In 1970, former Paris-Match reporter Gerard de Villiers wrote ‘Papillon Epingle’ (‘Butterfly Pinned’), openly accusing Charriere of being a fraud and producing much evidence to prove his case. Charriere, infuriated, didn’t try to debate de Villiers’s book, he simply tried to have it banned instead rather than disprove the allegations made. A distinct body of opinion began to coalesce around Charriere being a plagiarist and a fraud, not least the damning opinion of Truman Capote who openly derided him as a liar and a fake.

There’s no denying that Henri Charriere knew how to write, he knew how to tell a story and how to spin a few myths. But as other inmates accused him of stealing their experiences, the official records show him to have lied on numerous occasions, French officialdom openly states that the truth of his book can be divided by ten to get to what he actually experienced, a reliable journalist has solidly disproved many of his claims and Truman Capote openly called him a fraud, it’s pretty hard to deny that he was also a professional liar as well.

That said, he was a pretty successful one. Certainly a better author and liar than he was a safe-cracker. And is anybody of reasonable intelligence really so surprised to read a criminal memoir and then find it’s been spun like a DJ’s record collection?

Somehow, I doubt it.

Duelling was once an accepted practice in both European and American society. When two gentlemen had a disagreement, what was quaintly termed at the time ‘A matter of honor,’ they would agree to meet and fight with either swords or pistols, one-on-one, according to a strictly-defined code known as the ‘Code Duello.’ This is the story of the last fatal duel fought on British soil, fought on Priest Hill in the county of Surrey in October, 1852.

Oddly, neither of the combatants were British. In fact, both were French exiles living in England as a result of political and social upheavals in their native France. Both were experienced duelists, and one of them already had a conviction for murder in France and would later be hanged in England for an unrelated murder.

Lieutenant Frederic Cornet was a former naval officer, exiled for his role in a national uprising in 1848. Like most military officers of his time he was chivalrous man and it was his sense of honor that would prove his undoing. His opponent, Emmanuel Barthelemy, was a criminal and political activist with a violent streak and a vicious temper. He was also a convicted murderer, so his ability and willingness to kill were already proven. Odd bedfellows, you might think, but both were exiles and exiles of any nation often tend to rub shoulders with one another.

There were two alleged reasons for them to meet at dawn on Priest’s Hill on that October morning. They might have been fellow exiles, but they supported rival wings of the French exile movement. Barthelemy was a supporter of the faction led by Louis Blanc while Cournet was a follower of Blanc’s bitter opponent Alexander Ledru-Rollin. The other reason, political antipathy aside, was a woman. To be exact, a former girlfriend of Cournet’s whom Barthelemy is said to have insulted. By the standards of the time (bizarre though it may seem today) either reason would have been considered good enough for a challenge to be issued and a challenge duly was. Cournet, a skilled swordsman, challenged Barthelemy to a duel and Barthelemy accepted.

Unfortunately for Cournet, while he was a skilled swordsman, he wasn’t particularly good with a pistol and Barthelemy was. What Cournet seemed to forget was, under the very strict ‘Code Duello’ laid down in 1777 to govern the fighting of duels, was that as the challenger he didn’t get to choose between swords and pistols. As the man challenged, Barthelemy did get the choice. Knowing Cournet’s skill with a sword, Barthelemy had the sense to choose the weapon that gave him the advantage. He chose pistols. The duel’s terms were agreed, the combatants would fight with pistols on Priest’s Hill at dawn, and were delivered to the combatants via their seconds, friends who had agreed to act as go-betweens and to witness the duel being fought. Neither man being willing to back down, there was nothing left but for them to fight. The last fatal duel in England was now on.

Aside from his superior skill with a gun and being a proven killer already, Barthelemy’s other advantage was that he lacked any great sense of chivalry. Unlike Cournet, Barthelemy had no scruples about taking advantage of the scruples of others. He would do that on Priest’s Hill, with fatal results.

They met as arranged on Priest’s Hill, escorted by their seconds. Seconds attended duels not only to witness fair play and report either combatant showing any sign of cowardice, but also to enforce the rules. If, in a pistol duel, one combatant moved or fired before the agreed signal was given (known in dueling as ‘Taking advantage’) then the seconds had the right to use their own pistols and shoot the cheat where they stood. In sword duels, it wasn’t unknown for a breach of the rules to result in a bloody free-for-all as combatants and seconds all engaged each other at once once.

All was ready. The combatants and their seconds agreed a signal to fire, the seconds stood well back and, on that cold and misty October morning, British criminal history was made. Cournet fired first and missed. Barthelemy returned fire, or tried to. His own pistol misfired, failing to discharge the lead ball. Cournet, true to his chivalric approach to life and according to the strict rules of the ‘Code Duello’ stood rock-steady while Barthelemy again tired to fire his pistol. Again, it misfired.

According to the rules of dueling Cournet didn’t have to do what he then did and, if he hadn’t, he might well have lived to fight another day. What he did do was either truly courageous or breathtakingly stupid according to your point of view. Barthelemy’s weapon having failed, Cournet had a second reload his own pistol and offered it to his opponent. Barthelemy didn’t have to take the loaded pistol, either, but he did take it and promptly shot Cournet through the chest, mortally wounding him.

Barthelemy fled, as did his three seconds. Cournet’s seconds, Monsieurs Allain, Barronet and Mourney, stayed beside their fallen friend and with the help of a local doctor carried him to the Barley Mow Tavern, a pub which still stands today. There Cournet died of his wounds. All involved were now wanted men. The seconds were wanted for manslaughter and faced serious prison sentences. Emmanuel Barthelemy faced something far more serious. He was now wanted for murder and murder carried a mandatory death sentence at that time. They all fled, and they were all caught.

The seconds drew two months each for manslaughter, having already spent five months on remand until their cases were heard. Remarkably, the judge showed them mercy on account of their being foreigners and also, in the judge’s opinion, ignorant of English laws and traditions. A total of seven months for effectively being accessories to murder was a pretty good deal and they were only too happy to take it. Barthelemy, not for the first time, stood trial for his life on a charge of capital murder. At his trial, events were to take yet another twist.

Barthelemy pleaded self-defense on the grounds that Cournet had been standing before him with a gun in his hand, fully prepared and willing to kill him. The fact that he was as willing a combatant as Cournet seems to have been overlooked by the trial judge and prosecution and, especially, by the jury. Emmanuel Barthelemy was acquitted. English attitudes to foreigners at the time probably played a significant part their decision, the prevailing attitude being that foreigners were lesser than native English folk and so couldn’t necessarily be held to same high standards of conduct. Barthelemy wasn’t to be so lucky a couple of years later.

After the duel and his surprising acquittal, you might think that Barthelemy would have grasped that having risked the guillotine in his native France and the gallows in his adopted England, it was time for him to live a decent, law-abiding existence. It wasn’t. He spent the next couple of years working in London as a civil engineer and in 1855 he finally met his Waterloo. While visiting an acquaintance in London the two had a significant argument which culminated in Barthelemy inflicting serious injuries on his host with a stick before shooting him dead. Fleeing the house, Barthelemy soon found himself being pursued and caught by former police officer Charles Collard. Seeing no chance of escape and knowing he had to escape Collard to avoid yet another murder trial and probable public hanging, Barthelemy turned to his friend, the pistol. Charles Collard fell mortally wounded, but survived long enough to make a dying declaration positively identifying Barthelemy as his killer. Barthelemy’s goose was now well and truly cooked.

Barthelemy was detained immediately after shooting Collard by two other men who disarmed and restrained him until police arrived. The next day police brought him to visit Collard, who positively identified him shortly before dying. He was tried in January 1855 on a charge of capital murder and, this time, was convicted. Given his lengthy criminal history and public notoriety, the judges opted not to show mercy. Nor did the Home Secretary or Queen Victoria when they were asked to grant him a reprieve in response to the jury making (for some unknown reason) a strong recommendation for mercy.

For Emmanuel Barthelemy, mercy wasn’t forthcoming and his time would soon run out. On Monday January 22, 1855, Barthelemy was met in his cell by an escort party and the chief public hangman and his assistant. He was pinioned with a leather body belt and escorted out through Newgate Prison to its legendary ‘New Drop’ where the noose and hood were applied and he was asked if he had any final words. He had none. Before a sizable crowd, public executions still being standard practice, the hangman jerked the lever and Barthelemy dropped to his death.

Meet Professor Mathieu Orfila, the ‘Father of Toxicology.’ He was born on April 24, 1787 on the island of Minorca and died on March 12, 1853 in Paris. He was a graduate of both Barcelona and Valencia in toxicology and chemistry and is one of the most influential, respected and overlooked figures in criminal history. His ‘Treatise on Poisons’ is still regarded as one of the classic texts in criminal forensics and crime detection and his work resulted in the end of France’s infamous ‘Age of Poisons’ and, paradoxically for man devoted to saving lives, the public execution of many a murderer.

The ‘Age of Poisons’ was a poisoning epidemic  within France. Toxicology and forensics were in their earliest infancy, disease was common and many poisons shared common symptoms with many poisons. Arsenic was the poisoner’s favourite, resembling the symptoms of many common diseases like gastroenteritis, general food poisoning, dysentery and a host of others. It became  so popular with murderers that it became known as the ‘Prince of Poisons’ and, in France it was delightfully nicknamed ‘Poudre d’inheritance.’ ‘Inheritance powder.’

Orfila chanced upon the woefully inadequate toxicology then in use entirely by accident. In April, 1813 he was delivering a lecture on arsenic poisoning to his students and demonstrating a supposedly-infallible test to discover arsenic. The test failed despite having been properly performed and Orfila, like any academic shown up in front students, was both outraged and embarrassed. But it also made him curious. If the standard tests for so common a poison were useless, then what about tests for other poisons? After all, arsenic was the ‘Prince of Poisons’ but there were plenty of pretenders to the throne like cyanide, antimony, morphine and a whole host of others. He started running through all the commonly-used tests, checking them for accuracy and finding that a great many of them were useless even when performed perfectly well according to the instructions. He realised that, in terms of criminal detection, that most of the standard toxicology tests were useless, that many people were getting away with murder and that a fair few innocent ones were either awaiting the guillotine or had already had the ultimate haircut courtesy of what French folk called ‘The National Razor.’ Something was very, very wrong and Orfila decided he was the man to fix the problem.

He spent many months testing the tests themselves, discarding those that obviously didn’t work and improving many of those that did. The result was his famous ‘Treatise on Poisons’ published in two volumes in 1813. The ‘Treatise’ was so highly regarded that it still in publication in 1853 when Orfila died and by then had been translated into English, German, Italian and Spanish and sold well all over Europe. It was both scientifically ground-breaking and a benchmark in the beginnings of modern toxicology and forensic science. In short, it was a triumph.

Being a distinguished academic who knew the right people and had socialized with the right crowd, Orfila was able to use his contacts to push publicity and book sales. He knew scientists, politicians and lawyers at the highest level, published a second short textbook on criminal and accidental poisoning aimed firmly at laymen as much as professionals (you didn’t need to be a lawyer, detective, doctor or magistrate to understand it and, if need be, use the advice therein) and was showered with awards. In 1815 he was elected ‘Membre Correspondant’ of the Paris Academy of Science. He was awarded the ceremonial title of ‘Royal Physician’ and in 1819 was appointed Professor of Legal Medicine at the Paris Faculty. His ‘Treatise’ was also being translated into English, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese and sales had skyrocketed. But it wasn’t so much his ‘Treatise’ and his social life that made his name. It was the case of Marie LaFarge in 1840, accused of poisoning her husband.

Marie LaFarge

Marie was known to have bought arsenic (supposedly for rodent control), her husband had several unexplained illnesses before he died, Marie was a beneficiary when he died, had been seen putting a then-unidentified white powder in her husband’s food, white powder residue had been found in several dishes and glasses containing food consumed by her husband and prepared by Marie and, while Marie claimed to have bought the arsenic to control rats, the poison paste supposedly containing arsenic was found untouched. Analysis revealed it to contain no arsenic, but lots of flour and water and there was no evidence of there even being a rodent problem. What police and prosecutors didn’t have was proof of arsenic being in the victim’s body but, with so much circumstantial evidence available, Marie was arrested and held for trial. A conviction would mean, at best, life imprisonment. A less merciful judge might sentence her to life with hard labor (meaning a permanent stay at the French penal colonies in New Caledonia) or, most likely, she would be condemned and spend a few short weeks in the local prison awaiting her date with the ‘Man from Paris’ and his ‘National Razor.’ Things looked, very, very bleak.

The local magistrate asked the victim’s doctors, Monsieur’s De Lespinasse, Bardon and Massenat, to perform the then-new ‘Marsh Test for arsenic. The test, designed by English chemist William Marsh, was as ground-breaking as Orfila’s ‘Treatise’ and, provided it was performed 100% according to the instructions, was as near to infallible as could be. It’s still in use today, such is its reliability. The doctors knew almost nothing about the test but, rather than admit their ignorance, performed the test and submitted their results to the magistrate. According to them there was no arsenic found in Monsieur LaFarge’s stomach contents.  The defense leapt on this as proof of innocence and tried to discredit the testimony of Anna Brun who had seen Marie taking white powder from a small box and putting it in her husband’s food. Having scored this extremely useful point they should have had the sense to leave well alone. They didn’t, and it would come back to haunt them and especially their client.

Arsenic, sometimes known as ‘Inheritance powder.’

It was her lead counsel, Monsieur Paillet, who served the cause of justice by completely burying his own client. He insisted, in the interest of his client and to absolutely prove her innocence, that Orfila himself perform the test. As Europe’s pre-eminent toxicologist he could prove absolutely whether or not arsenic was involved. He did, and Maire LaFarge paid the price. Originally the judge decided that Orfila’s presence wasn’t required and that an affidavit from Orfila would suffice, which Orfila duly provided. The affidavit stated that the tests were so badly performed that the results were meaningless as evidence in a criminal trial which, without Monsieur Paillet’s overconfidence, should have resulted in an easy acquittal. The test itself, in Orfila’s absence, would be performed by two local chemists, Monsieur Dubois and his son, aided by Monsieur Dupuyfren, a respected chemist from Limoges. They performed the Marsh Test on the stomach contents (but not the food items retained as evidence by the prosecutor) and all agreed they had found no arsenic. Great for the defense and devastating for the prosecution. Or so it seemed at the time.

The prosecutor was a learned man who’d studied Orfila’s ‘Treatise’ extensively and knew he had only one card left to play. Arsenic can leave stomach contents over time, but lasts far longer in food items and crockery. These hadn’t yet been tested. Nor had the small malachite box that Anna Brun had testified to seeing Marie LaFarge use for storing white powder she regularly added to her late husband’s food, although the stomach contents had.  It would prove to be his ace in the hole. When the defense had originally requested Orfila himself conduct the tests, the prosecutor had opposed them and the judges had backed him. Now he  requested the exact opposite. Seeing as the box, food items and crockery hadn’t been tested, he argued, they now should be. And, seeing as the defense had originally requested Orfila himself do the testing, surely they’d have no objection to the prosecutor doing the same. The defense, having painted themselves into a corner and put their client at serious risk of the guillotine, had no choice but to agree.

Orfila arrived, took the food items, plates and glasses and performed the Marsh Test exactly as described in the manual. The result was entirely accurate and utterly destroyed Marie’s claims of innocence. Orfila reported, having tested everything he’d been asked to, that the food items, crockery and malachite box contained between them enough arsenic to kill dozens of people. Combined with Marie being a major beneficiary of her husband’s death, Anna Brun’s eyewitness testimony of her putting white powder in her husband’s food, his several unexplained illnesses, the fake rat poison paste that contained no arsenic and the house seemingly untouched by any actual rats, the verdict was inevitable. Marie was guilty.

The judges did show her some small mercy. She managed to avoid the guillotine, receiving instead a sentence of hard labor for life. King Louis-Phillippe also showed some mercy, albeit not much. He commuted her sentence, removing the hard labour but still leaving her imprisoned for life. She was released in June, 1852 by Ny Napoleon III (ironically the same year in which Napoleon III opened the infamous penal colonies in French Guiana now notorious as ‘Devil’s Island’). She settled in the town of Ussat, dying of tuberculosis on November 11, 1852.

Mathieu Orfila, nemesis of Marie LaFarge and so many other poisoners, died only four months later.

As many as 1 in 3 of the women that are murdered each year is by the hands of a current or former lover. At a glance, the murder of Kelly Anne Bates may seem to be just another sad statistic. A young girl was charmed by her much older partner, hid the abuse from her friends and family, until one day things were taken too far and her abuser took her life. At the surface her story is all too common, yet what sets this case apart from others is the manner in which she was killed and what has earned this case the title of “The Most Horrific Murder in England’s History” .

Described as a bubbly girl with an old soul, 14-year-old Kelly Anne Bates was known to hang around a much older crowd. Naturally, it came to no surprise to the teen’s parents that she had began to date a much older man. At 16, when Kelly decided to introduce them her boyfriend, “Dave Smith”, claiming he was 32-years-old, Kelly’s mom says that the hairs on her neck began to stand up the moment she met him and in hindsight regrets not killing him right then and there.

48-year-old James Patterson Smith began dating Kelly Anne Bates when she was only 14-years-old.

Kelly’s mom had no idea that the man her teenage daughter was dating was not “Dave Smith”, nor was he 32-years-old. Smith’s real name was James Patterson Smith and he was much older than Kelly’s mom had suspected. Smith was actually 48-years-old, making him over 30 years Kelly’s senior. It would seem odd that the man that claimed to love this girl would go out of his way to disguise his identity, however, Smith’s checkered past may be one explanation.

Smith had a number of relationships before meeting Kelly, and at least three of them depict Smith as a misogynist that enjoyed tormenting the women he was involved with. The first documented case of Smith’s violence involved his 10 year marriage, which was absolved in 1980 after his former wife claimed that she was subjected to his violent outbursts. He then began dating 20-year-old Tina Watson. Watson testified that during their two year relationship Smith essentially “used her as a punch-bag”. She said that Smith would regularly beat her, even when she fell pregnant with his child. Fortunately for Watson, she was able to flee the relationship after Smith attempted to drown her in the bathtub. Another teenager, 15-year-old Wendy Mottershead, was also victimized by Smith and claimed that he had also attempted to drown her by holding her head into a kitchen sink. It wouldn’t be until 1993 that Smith would gain the attention of the bubbly school girl, Kelly Anne Bates, and Smith’s legacy of violence against women would go on to make national headlines.

In spite of her mother’s attempts to keep Kelly away from Smith, shortly after introducing him to her parents Kelly began spending more and more time at Smith’s home. Although still worried about her daughter’s relationship with this much older man, it seemed to Kelly’s mother that Smith did have Kelly’s best interest at heart and would often phone her parents to discuss concerns he had about her. It wouldn’t be long before that impression was shattered and the cycle of possessiveness and violence with in the couple’s relationship began.

Kelly’s mom eventually discovered the truth about “Dave’s” identity. Preferring to be called “Jimmy”, Smith claimed he only lied about his age because he felt that if she had known how old he really was she wouldn’t approve of the relationship. Kelly would come home to check in every few days. Her mother noticed that Kelly’s appearances had drastically changed during this time. When Kelly visited her parents’ home they reported that she looked as if she hadn’t bathed, she had began to lose weight rapidly, and was often seen with bruises and what appeared to be bite marks.

Kelly Anne Bates was reported to have accidentally drown in the bathtub at James Smith’s home, but the scene told a different story.

There were several arguments between the couple and Kelly would return home for short periods, but would always return back to Smith. Never admitting to the abuse, Kelly spent less and less time around her family, until eventually she cut all contact with them. Kelly’s parents did receive some cards from her, but they noticed that the cards were not written in Kelly’s handwriting. Her mother felt something was terribly wrong, but was unable to do anything about the situation.

Her mother’s instinct was unfortunately correct. On April 16, 1996, Smith reported to a local police station that his girlfriend had accidentally drown in his bathtub. Police arriving to the scene at Smith’s home found blood in virtually every room of the house, indicating that there was much more to Kelly’s death than an accidental drowning.

Weeks before her death, Smith gouged Kelly’s eyes out and tied to a radiator by her hair. For at least three weeks she was refused food and water, scalped in places, and her inner thigh was burned with a hot iron. Her arms, legs, hands, and knee caps had been completely crushed. Medical examiners found 150 separate stab wounds on her body, including inside of her mouth and her empty eye sockets. She was mutilated to her face, mouth, nose, and genital areas. Finally, in what probably seemed like an act of mercy to Kelly, Smith knocked her unconscious with a shower head and drown her.

Smith denied having anything to do with Kelly’s murder, and stuck to his story that her death was a result of accidental drowning, but he did admit to abusing Kelly. He said that she would often inflict injuries upon herself, making the abuse appear worst than it was, and would purposely “wind him up” by taunting him. Smith’s excuse for beating, stabbing, and gouging her eyes out was only because she had “dared him” to do it, and claimed that Kelly was the one that provoked him into torturing her.

It only took an hour for the jury to find Smith guilty and he was sentenced to life in prison. It is perhaps one of the few cases where jurors were offered professional counseling services in order to deal with being subjected to the horrific police photographs of Kelly’s badly mutilated body and the crime scene.

Sociopathic killers are often proud of their crimes. They collect mementos, they may brag about it to their friends, but above all they want to be caught. They want the media spotlight and the attention that comes along with being a horrific monster. Naturally it would make sense, in that aspect, why killers like the Zodiac Killer and BTK would reach out to the media and taunt them with letters implicating that they were involved in a series of unsolved murders, but times they are ‘a changin’.

The days of writing letters are practically extinct, superseded by email and internet correspondence, and it would only seem natural that the mode for killers to take credit for their handiwork would evolve along with it. You’ve heard about David Kalac, the man that murdered his girlfriend and posted photos to the 4chan image board, but Kalac is not a minority. In a society ruled by over sharing and acceptance on social media, it was only a matter of time before it became the latest new trend among murderers to gloat about their crimes or in some instances, use it as a church confessional.

Randy Janzen

Randy Janzen confessed that he was responsible for the murder of his daughter, wife, and sister before taking his own life during a police standoff.

On May 7, 2015, a deranged British Colombian man by the name of Randy Janzen took to Facebook to reveal what was on his mind. Janzen confided to all of his loyal Facebook followers and curious lurkers that he had “…done some of the worst things I could have ever imagined a person doing.”. He confessed that he had killed his daughter, Emily Janzen, after watching the once driven and accomplished young woman deteriorate slowly due to her battle with depression and crippling migraine headaches.

He claimed that she was the best daughter two parents could ever have, but her condition was heartbreaking to him and felt it was his duty to end Emily’s suffering once and for all. He then killed his wife, Laurel, in order to save her the grief of burying her child. Two days later, he murdered his sister Shelley, claiming that he only wanted to spare her the shame of the tragedy.

After his Facebook post was reported to police, three badly burnt bodies were discovered and believed to have belonged to Janzen’s murdered family members. Janzen died during a police standoff by taking his own life. Those who knew Janzen were shocked by the events that transpired, describing him as a loving, caring man, and all-around nice guy. The world may never officially know what made Janzen snap and see death as the only option for his family.

Murder Confession via Meme?

Reddit user Naratto used the popular Confession Bear meme to claim responsibility for the death of his sister’s boyfriend.

The verdict is still out on whether or not the “Confession Bear” meme, posted to the popular message board reddit, was a legitimate confession to murder. What is known is that in 2013 a reddit user, going by the name Naratto, used the popular bear image to state that he had killed his sister’s abusive boyfriend using his own drugs. The authorities later determined the case to be an overdose. Debate over the post ensued, and after a few internet detectives tracked down and posted Naratto’s true identity and location, Naratto returned to backtrack on his claims.

He stated that the post was a joke, though it did include some true details. He also called out the Google P.I.s that posted his personal information. Some that witnessed the post did take the liberty of alerting the F.B.I. and further investigation into the case began. To date there has been no follow-up stories reported on the case, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the user was cleared of any wrong-doing.

A Post Secret murder confession, later determined to be a hoax.

It wouldn’t be the first time redditors had freely confessed to crimes, including everything from drug smuggling to committing rape, when one user created a post titled “What’s the Most Illegal Thing You’ve Ever Done?”. However, it should be noted that it is uncertain how many of these confessions are actually true, and how many were made up for a sort of internet street-cred.

A similar crime was also reported later in 2013, when a murder confession was made to the art project Post Secret‘s “Sunday Secrets” blog, where readers are encouraged to send in handmade postcards revealing some of their deepest or most embarrassing secrets. The postcard contained a picture of a map with an arrow, indicating that it was the location where the sender dumped the body of an ex-girlfriend. The confession was later determined to be a hoax.

Derek Medina

The 31-year-old South Miami man and self-help writer, Derek Medina, took to Facebook where he confessed to murdering his wife. He claimed that the murder was a result of self-defense, after an altercation between the troubled couple became heated and Medina’s wife pulled a knife on him. Shortly after the confession, Medina posted a grim photo of wife, Jennifer Alfonso, contorted on the floor and covered in blood. The accompanying caption read “R.I.P. Jennifer Alfonso”. The post went viral and circulated around the popular social media site for at least 5 hours before Facebook administrators became aware and took Medina’s profile down.

Medina’s shocking confession to the murder of his wife, Jennifer Alfonso, before posting the gruesome photo of her dead body.

After the public confession, Medina went to visit family and told them what he had done. He then turned himself into the Miami Dade police. Medina’s trial is still on-going, but he has reportedly requested to have a bench trial in lieu of having a jury of his peers determine his sentence. If convicted, Medina faces either life in prison or execution.

“I Killed a Man”

The YouTube channel “Because I said I would”, is known for spreading inspirational stories of hope. Their videos are often powerful and thought provoking, and display unbelievable courage from those that choose to participate in the project. To date, few have been as courageous and inspiring as the video titled “I Killed a Man”.

Matthew Cordle, a 22-year-old man from Ohio, discusses on video how he inadvertently killed a man after an evening out drinking with his buddies. Cordle explains how he has had trouble controlling his drinking, which inevitably has caused a number of problems within his personal life. He then goes on to say that after visiting several bars one evening he had blacked out and decided to get behind the wheel of his car. Cordle ended up driving the wrong way down the highwayand struck the car of 61-year-old Vincent Canzani head on.

After consulting with several attorneys, Cordle was assured that he could probably get the case thrown out if he simply lied in court. The guilt of Vincent’s death weighed too heavy on Cordle’s conscious, and rather than deny his charges, he decided to take his story public. He wanted to use his story as a cautionary tale for others that may make the decision to drink and drive, and take full responsibility for June 22, 2013 accident that took Canzani’s life.

Canzani’s ex-wife wrote a letter for the judge presiding over Cordle’s trial. She commended his bravery and urged the court to not seek the maximum sentence against him. The court also viewed the confession video as evidence and recognized that Cordle’s actions were done out of sincerity. Vincent’s daughter, on the other hand, was not as sympathetic towards Cordle and stated that the maximum 8 ½ year sentence he faced was nothing compared to the sentence her father received for Cordle’s actions. He apologized to the victim’s family and assured everyone present within the court that he would not allow Vincent Canzani’s memory to be in vain.

Cordle was sentenced to 6 ½ years in prison. He has been working hard to come to terms with his drinking problem and and since released a followup video from behind prison walls. He hopes that his story will prevent others from facing the same fate as Vincent Canzani.

Gypsy Blanchard

The post made to Gypsy and Dee Dee’s joint Facebook account.

At the time of writing this a new case has emerged. This time, 23-year-old Gypsy Blanchard, along with her boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn, have been accused of stabbing Gypsy’s mother, Dee Dee. At first it was believed that Gypsy, who suffers from muscular dystrophy and leukemia, was kidnapped. After a mysterious Facebook post on Gypsy and Dee Dee’s shared account appeared, stating simply “That bitch is dead!”, it was determined that Gypsy had a hand in her mother’s death. Both Gypsy and Godejohn were tracked in Wisconsin, where the Facebook post originated from. A standoff occurred with police before the couple was taken into custody.

The case just gets even more bizarre and hints at Gypsy and Dee Dee both having a secret life. Although Gypsy had always used a wheelchair, it was discovered that Gypsy was able to walk on her own when she was taken into police custody. There is also the suggestion of financial fraud, and questions on whether or not the Blanchards were even Hurricane Katrina victims as they had claimed to friends and family. Stay tuned as more details develop with this case.

UPDATE: Find out more about the ongoing investigation on the Gypsy Blancharde case on Sword and Scale Episode 49.

Irene Schroeder and Glenn Dague

We’re back in Pennsylvania for our latest criminal curiosity. Irene Schroeder, AKA ‘Trigger Woman’, ‘The Blonde Bandit’, ‘Tiger Woman’ and ‘Iron Irene’, was the first woman to be electrocuted in Pennsylvania. Executioner Robert Elliott said that, of all the 387 convicts he executed, that she was the most composed and fearless inmate he ever executed.

She started young, barely 20 years old, hooking up with a married insurance salesman, Sunday school teacher and Boy Scout leader named Glenn Dague. Along for the ride were her brother Tom Crawford and Tom ‘Red’ Wells, an ex-convict Schroeder and Dague picked up on the road in New Mexico. They were essentially a poor man’s Bonnie & Clyde, robbing grocery stores, diners, filling stations in small-time jobs seldom netting more than $100 a job. They also killed and wounded a number of police officers and all the gang members would pay with their lives without ever gaining anything like the lasting fame and pop culture cachet of their more infamous brethren. They were dead and buried before Bonnie & Clyde really got started and the fact that they were finished before the ‘Crime Wave’ of the early 1930’s really got underway saw them achieve only Statewide infamy. Tragic though the story is, with all the gang’s members and several police officers dead, young Donnie Schroeder’s story is the most tragic of all. But we’ll get to that later.

They were responsible for a string of car thefts, armed robberies, several non-fatal shootings, a couple of murders and the kidnap of a Sheriff’s deputy. In Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and West Virginia their guns blazed and their fingers emptied wallets and cash registers. The beginning of the end came with the murder of Pennsylvania Highway Patrol Corporal Brady Paul. The final nail in their coffins came from evidence unwittingly supplied by her own son Donnie, himself having been taken along for the ride by his murderous mother. What separates this little gang from other Depression-era gangs is their being led by a woman. Bonnie Parker has often been inaccurately and unfairly portrayed as the leader of the Barrow-Parker Gang. She wasn’t. Clyde would never have tolerated anybody else being in charge, especially not a woman. Irene, on the other hand, never left anybody in any doubt as to who ran the show and that included her male accomplices.

After leaving his wife for Irene, Dague lost his job and his posts at the Boy Scouts and Sunday school. It’s highly unlikely that he would have left the straight and narrow had he not met her. That isn’t to say that he didn’t choose to live (and later die) at her side, he did. But Irene was certainly the dominant partner in their relationship. Maybe it would have been better for all involved if she hadn’t been. As for the other gang members, Crawford had only a minor criminal record while Wells had done time for armed robbery in New Mexico. They were your typical Depression-era bottom-feeders and of no note other than their links to Irene Schroeder. Crawford and Wells would come to regret those links as much as anybody.

Their spree began in August, 1929. Schroeder, Dague and Crawford loaded up a Buick, put Donnie in the back seat and set off in search of places to rob. It wasn’t long before their did their first job. On September 1, 1929 the Meadowland Inn in Cadiz, Ohio was robbed. The job went perfectly with no gun-play and convinced our terrible trio that armed robbery was their calling. Four days later they were in Moundsville, West Virginia robbing a diner and filling station belonging to Jack Cotts. Another simple, small-time job resulted in a $70 haul and, again, no gunplay. Then it all started to go wrong.

Corporal Brady Paul

Having to abandon their car, they stole another at gunpoint and fled the scene. The abandoned car was traced to one Henry Crawford, Irene Schroeder’s father, In the car was a red scarf identified as belonging to the female shooter by Deputy Moore. He also identified her as Irene Schroeder. Deputy Moore was with police in Wheeling, West Virginia when they visited Henry Crawford to question him when he recognized someone else from the roadblock. It was Donnie Schroeder. Donnie, doubtless unaware he was signing his mother and uncle’s death warrants, told police:

“I saw my Mama shoot a cop! Uncle Tom shot another one in the head.”

The gang’s fate was sealed. Pennsylvania wasn’t the most hawkish State regarding the death penalty, but cop killers could expect swift justice tempered with little mercy (Paul Jawarski, for example). If caught the gang could expect to die, even Irene if the jury didn’t recommend mercy. Always assuming, of course, that the gang themselves didn’t die in a last stand or some police officers become a little overzealous after the cold-blooded murder of Corporal Paul. Whether the gang died at the hands of police officers or the executioner made no difference. Dead is dead. On January 30, 1930 the gang finally resurfaced in Florence, Arizona (ironically now the location of ‘supermax’ prison ADX Florence). Crawford had gone solo and been replaced by Tom Wells. Dague and Schroeder were recognized by Deputy Joseph Chapman, who they promptly abducted. Snared at a roadblock (they don’t seem to have had much luck  at roadblocks) they threw Chapman from the car, seriously wounded Deputy Lee Wright with gunfire (who later died) and aslo wounded Deputies Chapman and Butterfield. Another dead Deputy, in another death penalty State (Arizona had the gallows at the time). It wasn’t long before Justice would claim Schroeder, Crawford, Dague and their latest recruit Tom Wells and send them to join their victims.

There were over 100 armed men in the posse that ran Schroeder, Dague and Wells to earth in the foothills of the Salt River Mountains. A furious firefight, remembered later as the ‘Battle of the crags’ saw no casualties on either side. It did see the trio surrounded, overpowered and arrested. Their choices were simple. If they weren’t lucky enough to spend the rest of their lives in jail then they could either dance the hangman’s hornpipe in Arizona or do the hot squat in Pennsylvania. It was that or enough 99-year sentences to see them disappear forever into the prison system. Wells was held for trial in Arizona as Deputy Wright had died from his infected wound. Tried for capital murder within a week of his arrest, he was convicted and later hanged. Tom Crawford was later shot dead during a solo bank raid in Texas, although the identification was never conclusive. Glenn Dague and Irene Schroeder would be hauled back to Pennsylvania to be tried for the murder of Corporal Paul. Their train ride from Arizona seemed more like a valedictory parade than two murderers about to meet their Maker. Irene even posed for pictures and signed dozens of autographs as ‘Irene Schroeder, Trigger Woman.’

The jury’s verdict and sentence.

The trial was practically a foregone conclusion, only the sentence was really in doubt as Pennsylvania had yet to electrocute a woman. It wouldn’t be long before Irene Schroeder would be its first. After Deputy Wright, Corporal Paul, Tom Crawford and Tom Wells, Glenn Dague would be the fifth and last person to die because he met Irene Schroeder. Schroeder was convicted and sentenced in mid-March, 1930. The jury’s verdict read simply:

‘Guilty of murder in the first degree, with the death penalty.’

Turning to her sisters in the public gallery, sobbing as the death sentence was read out, ‘Iron Irene’ showed the steel that had hallmarked her criminal career. She’d turned 21 only a fortnight before her sentencing but still turned to her sisters and snarled:

“Shut up, you sissies. I can take it.”

In a media interview she waxed lyrical about her lover and her sentence:

“If I do go to the hot seat, Glenn will want to go too. We will love each other always until the end…”

‘The end’ wasn’t far away. Glenn Dague’s trial began two days after Irene’s had ended. The result was the same. Convicted of Corporal Paul’s murder, sentence of death was passed immediately. The two condemned lovers were transferred to Rockview Prison to await execution. Seeing Rockview had never had a female inmate under a death sentence, special arrangements were made for the doomed pair. Schroeder’s cell was decked out in a much more feminine manner than your typical Death House cell, although no less secure. A partition separated her cell from Dague’s, Dague being installed only feet away and both were scheduled to die on February 23, 1931.

End of the road for the poor man’s Bonnie and Clyde.

They died as planned. Schroeder went first, promptly at 7am. Dague’s former Sunday school pastor, Reverend Teagarden, walked part of her last mile with her. Halfway between her cell and ‘Old Sparky’ she turned to him, saying softly:

“Please stay with Glenn. He will need you now more than I do…”

She walked into the brightly-lit, crowded room, sat down and expressed no emotion, leaving no final statement as Robert Elliott applied the straps and electrodes. At a signal the switch was thrown and Irene Schroeder died only days after her 22nd birthday. As her body was removed from the chair Glenn Dague began his final walk. He said nothing as he sat down, the smoke and stench  from Irene’s burns still hanging heavy in the air. The signal was given. The switch was thrown. Glenn Dague was dead.

Perhaps the last word on this sorry tale rightly belongs to Donnie. Having unwittingly paved his mother’s path along her last mile, he was very gently told of her impending execution. His response?

“I’ll bet my Mom would make an awful nice angel.”

Ray Hamilton on Death Row.

Ray Hamilton, thief, armed robber, kidnapper, escape artist, murderer. He worked with Clyde Barrow as part of the infamous ‘Bonnie & Clyde’ Gang before his out-sized ego caused him to strike out on his own. By his execution in May, 1935 (at the tender age of 22) he’d racked up no less than 362 years of unserved jail time and committed armed robbery, kidnapping, car theft, burglary, prison escape, petty theft, murder and general mayhem across Kansas, Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma and Arkansas. And those are just the states that we know he was active in. He wasn’t even executed for any of his several known murders. Texas being Texas, in 1935 you could be executed for being a habitual criminal, which with Ray’s rather compendious criminal history in mind, probably wasn’t the Walker County District Attorney’s biggest challenge of his career. But while Bonnie and Clyde are still icons of modern popular culture, the 1967 film having given them a fictional and entirely unmerited glamor, their most senior cohort is almost forgotten except to crime buffs and a few very, very old Texans.

Ray was a more gifted criminal than Clyde. His armed robberies netted him more money than most of Clyde’s, though still not the big-time hauls of John Dillinger or Harvey Bailey. He also had a slightly smaller predilection for killing people, unlike Clyde who was so quick to start shooting that he became known as the ‘Texas Rattlesnake’. That’s not to say that Ray was a reluctant murderer, he’s believed to have several notches on his gun, but that he had a cooler head than Clyde although their out-sized egos were about the same.

Therein lay the problem. Clyde was an egotist and control freak. He wanted everything done his way and everybody blindly taking his orders. Ray wasn’t minded to take orders from anybody, was equally arrogant, had a sarcastic, snippy, over-active mouth and one attribute that probably galled Clyde more than anything. Whenever he had Ray on a robbery there always seemed to be more money and less gun-play. They disliked each other almost from the start.

Born near Schulter, Oklahoma on May 21, 1913, Ray spent his childhood in West Dallas, then considered one of the very worst slums in the entire country. In West Dallas he met Clyde Barrow and formed the ‘Root Square Gang.’ Nothing serious at first, just petty theft and shoplifting mainly. Clyde graduated to car theft and burglaries while Ray had a flourishing operation stealing cars in Texas and selling them in Oklahoma. They both moved up to armed robbery, sticking up shops and small businesses and both ended up serving time. They robbed their first bank together at Laurence, Kansas on March 19, 1932. They committed their first murder together at Stringtown, Oklahoma on August 5, 1932 when they shot a deputy sheriff at a local dance while on the run. After murdering a lawman in a death penalty State there was no turning back for either of them.

Ray soon ended up in the worst prison in Texas, Eastham Prison Farm, a prison where Clyde had already served time. Eastham was renowned for corruption and brutality. It wasn’t just one of the worst prisons in Texas, it was one of the worst in the entire country. Guards routinely brutalized inmates and inmates brutalized each other. The food was inedible, the daily work crippling, discipline was brutal and arbitrary, and many guards regarded cruelty as a perk of the job. Inmates routinely assaulted, raped, and murdered each other. Clyde himself became a regular victim of lifer and serial rapist Ed Crowder, who singled him out for regular beatings and sexual assaults. It’s said that when Crowder was found beaten to death in the wash-house an inmate named Aubrey Scalley had taken the life sentence as a favor to the real murderer, Clyde Barrow. Clyde suffered enough to develop an obsessive hatred of Eastham, vowing that he’d never be taken alive and also to raid Eastham and start a mass escape. In 1932 he secured release through an ‘accidental’ injury when an ax slipped and removed two of his toes. Ray didn’t plan on staying any longer than he had to, either.

The Eastham raid was instigated by Ray, arrangements were made via Jimmy Mullens (a former inmate). and pistols were smuggled into Eastham. On January 13, 1934  Clyde, Bonnie Parker and Ray’s brother Floyd parked up near Hamilton’s work party while Hamilton and another inmate, a lifer named Joe Palmer, murdered guard Joel Crowson and wounded Guard Bozeman. Hamilton, Palmer and two other inmates — multiple murderer Hilton Bybee and Henry Methvin (serving ten years for attempted murder) — boarded the car and escaped. Another inmate, J.B. French, ran into nearby woods, but was recaptured a few hours later. Clyde hadn’t helped Hamilton because he liked him, he’d done it because however much Ray needled him he was still useful during robberies.

Ray and Clyde performed a few more robberies together, but soon enough all the old sore points returned along with a particularly obnoxious new one. Her name was Mary O’Dare, disliked heartily by everybody in the Barrow Gang except Ray and sneeringly nicknamed ‘The Washerwoman’. She was immature, demanding, rude, arrogant, and despite never taking an active role in any robberies, seemed to think she was entitled to an even share of the proceeds. In short, she was nothing but trouble and more trouble than she was worth. Nobody except for Ray found her anything other than a burden and a bitter argument between Clyde and Ray over whether she was entitled to a share from a robbery (she and Ray thought she was, everybody else thought she wasn’t) saw to it that Ray and his moll leave the gang and strike out on their own.

The Barrow Gang went their way and Ray went his. He kept a relatively low profile while Bonnie and Clyde stole and shot their way to immortality. While they increased their body count and racked up a string of small-time robberies, Ray and his pet washerwoman were hidden away in Louisiana living fairly quietly. After the Barrow Gang murdered yet another policeman, Constable Cal Campbell in Commerce, Oklahoma on April 6, 1934, Ray sent a letter to his lawyer, A.S. Baskett,  denying all involvement in the killing. Proving the letter was genuine by putting an inky fingerprint on it, the letter claimed Ray now had nothing to do with Barrow and hadn’t for some time. According to Ray, he was a ‘Gentleman Bandit’ which, by implication Clyde Barrow wasn’t.

With an ever-increasing list of murders and robberies and a huge, permanent search going on, it was only a matter of time before the end came. Bonnie and Clyde were shot to pieces near Gibsland, Louisiana in a police ambush on May 23, 1934. They’d been set up by Henry Methvin’s family, hoping to save their son from conviction and execution by trading a pardon for Bonnie and Clyde. Joe Palmer was recaptured in June, 1933, along with Ray. They were tried on capital charges, Ray for being an habitual criminal and Palmer for the murder of prison guard Joel Crowson during Clyde’s raid on Eastham. They were both convicted, condemned, and shipped off to Huntsville Prison to await execution. Floyd Hamilton drew two years for his role in the Eastham raid and various Barrow and Hamilton relatives drew smaller sentences for harboring the fugitives. Their run was all but over.

Ray and Palmer might have been sentenced to die and confined at Huntsville’s notorious ‘Death House’, but they weren’t finished quite yet. A lifer, Charles Frazier, wanted to help a friend and condemned inmate named ‘Blackie’ Thompson escape Death Row. Few Texas inmates had successfully escaped from Huntsville and none at all from Death Row. On June 22, 1934 Hamilton and Palmer would be the first. Knowing a guard who was in serious financial trouble and easily bribed, Frazier managed to have three loaded pistols smuggled into Huntsville. Out in the prison yard Frazier met with fellow lifers Roy Johnson, ‘Hub’ Stanley, and ‘Whitey’ Walker. Together they forced their way into the Death House and, at gunpoint, forced a guard to open the cells of Thompson, Hamilton, and Palmer. Taking hostage Guard W.G. McConnell, they used him as a human shield, stole an extension ladder from the prison fire engine, mounted the wall, entered a guard tower, ran down the outside steps, and disappeared into downtown Huntsville. Well, Hamilton, Palmer and Thompson did at least. The others had been either shot dead or recaptured. Either way, it didn’t matter. After being sentenced to die, Ray had proclaimed to reporters that he would escape from the Death House. The reporters put it down to criminal bravado at the time, as did the Texas prison system, but now it became fact. For the first time in its history (though not the last) the Texas Death House had been successfully breached.

This did Palmer no good at all. He was recaptured and returned to Huntsville in early-August, 1934. Ray lasted until April, 1935 before being caught near Fort Worth, Texas and returned to Huntsville for execution. The Texas authorities were sick of them. Hamilton and Palmer had made two successful escapes from maximum-security Texas prisons within a seven month period, during which they murdered a prison guard and then secured informal stays of execution by escaping from the Death House itself. Authorities had waited long enough to rid themselves of this troublesome pair, and with Raymond now in custody, they weren’t in the mood to wait much longer. Ray was captured in late-April, 1935. Both he and Palmer would die just after midnight on May 10.

Old Sparky, AKA the ‘Texas Thunderbolt.’

Neither the Texas courts or State Governor were remotely inclined to intervene in their cases, and seeing as they were already condemned men when they last escaped, there was no problem arranging the earliest possible execution date. Ray, always so cocky and arrogant, always needling Clyde about his superior skill and bravery, didn’t manage to face his own end quite so bravely. He spent his final day growing progressively more fearful to the point of prison staff fearing he’d have to be carried or manhandled on his final walk. Palmer was calmer and seemed more resigned to his fate.

When their time came, Ray broke down. He was so distraught that Palmer, seemingly wanting just to get it over with, even volunteered to go first while Ray composed himself. As Ray regained his composure, Palmer walked calmly into the execution chamber and sat down at 12:01AM. Guards moved quickly, securing the straps and electrodes without any resistance from him. He was pronounced dead at 12:09AM. Ray, by now having recovered some of his nerve, walked in at 12:19AM. He managed a fixed smile and very forced casualness, his final words being “Well, goodbye all.” He was dead at 12:27AM.

But, again, this isn’t quite the end of the story. Floyd Hamilton, having been involved in the Eastham raid, developed quite a taste for high-level crime. So much so that his spree of armed robberies saw him listed as the Texas ‘Public Enemy Number One’ and earned him 20 years in prison, including a stint at Alcatraz from which he tried (unsuccessfully) to escape. He was released in 1958 and afterward was a model citizen. Ray’s sister Lillian Fairris and her two sons weren’t quite so well-behaved. In January, 1956 Lillian herself was serving a life sentence for second-degree murder and one of her sons was serving a ten-year sentence for burglary. The other was Hurbie Fairris. Lillian was taken from her prison in Texas to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary at Mcalester to visit her wayward son, who himself was only hours away from a seat in what Oklahomans delightfully called ‘Sizzling Sally’ for murdering Detective Bennie Cravatt during a bungled robbery. Hurbie was only 20 years old, had spent his childhood surrounded by notorious criminals, had never had a stable upbringing (he remarked that his time on Death Row was the longest period in his life spent in one place), and seemed as indifferent to his own death as he’d been to that of his victim. He faced his death with greater composure than his cocky, arrogant uncle. Standing by the chair he simply tapped his foot while the warden read out the death warrant and , when asked for his final words, said simply:

“What is there to say? Let’s get on with it!”

Willie on Death Row. Note the calendar.

Here’s another strange but true case, this one courtesy of the State of Louisiana.

It was on May 9, 1947 that a 17-year old black teenager walked his last mile. But not for the first time. As he took his final fifty steps from his cell to the courthouse where he’d been convicted of murder two years prior, in order to be strapped into Louisiana’s infamous portable electric chair notoriously nicknamed ‘Gruesome Gertie,’ Willie must have had a particularly rare feeling of déjà vu.

Of course, it isn’t as unusual as you might think for a condemned prisoner to walk their last mile more than once. Time and again, America’s condemned have been strapped in chairs or on gurneys awaiting the throw of the switch, the push of a lever, or the press of a button, only to hear the death chamber telephone ring and guarantee them a few more days, weeks or months of life. If, that is, you can call sitting in a cell for 23 hours a day watching the calendar remorselessly approaching the next date that you’ve ringed with a red pen. But no other condemned inmate in American history has ever returned to an execution chamber after having felt the searing blast of 2000 volts and managed to walk away from having sat in Old Sparky’s lap.

Willie Francis did.

The murder of local pharmacist Andrew Thomas horrified residents of St. Martinville, Louisiana. He was found shot dead at his pharmacy in 1944 and, for some nine months after the murder, Louisiana police were baffled. They produced no suspects and no murder weapon. Then, in August, 1945, black teenager Willie Francis was arrested in Texas on unrelated drugs charges and according to Texas police, Andrew Thomas’s watch was found in his pocket. The fact that Francis was also from St. Martinsville didn’t escape investigators, judge or jury. Nor, it seems, did the fact that Andrew Thomas was respectable and white, while Willie Francis was both poor and black.

According to Texas police, Francis possessed Thomas’s watch when he was arrested. He also made two written confessions and was able to direct police to where he had disposed of the pistol holster that had contained the murder weapon though not, it seems, the weapon itself. The revolver in question actually belonged to a deputy sheriff who had previously threatened to kill Andrew Thomas and after Willie’s conviction the holster, gun, and ballistics report disappeared from the evidence locker. Still, police had already secured a conviction and death sentence for Willie Francis, so this wasn’t looked upon as a major problem.

St. Martinville Courthouse, where Willie was tried, convicted, executed and then executed again.

Willie’s trial or, to be specific, his defense, was a farce. His court-appointed (white) lawyers altered his plea to guilty without his consent, called no witnesses, made no objections, and didn’t even make an opening statement during the trial which lasted only two days. The all-white, all-male jury’s deliberations, not surprisingly, were even more abbreviated. They heard the prosecution case, heard the non-existent defense, and were out for only fifteen minutes before delivering the entirely predictable verdict. Guilty as charged, with no recommendation to mercy. The trial judge was equally quick to pass the mandatory sentence — death in the electric chair. Willie was held under guard at the county jail to await a somewhat unusual means of execution.

Unlike New York, with its infamous custom-built ‘Death House’, Louisiana and Mississippi both brought Old Sparky’s power to the people. Both States used a portable version of the electric chair. Carried aboard a large truck along with her own generator, straps, electrodes and switchboard, ‘Gruesome Gertie’ rode from town to town, stopping off whenever and wherever individual counties had condemned prisoners.

The State of Louisiana had yet to make executions a purely State affair, preferring to dispense the ultimate penalty where locals could be reassured (if they were respectable and white) and intimidated (if poor and black) by seeing the infamous silver truck pull up outside their local courthouse. They didn’t get to watch the executions themselves, but they did get to see ‘Gruesome Gertie’ unloaded, the heavy power cables being run from the truck into the courthouse or county jail, and usually a crowd would gather around the truck prior to the execution. This was a Retribution Roadshow by any other name.

The retribution roadshow.

It was in May, 1946 that ‘Gruesome Gertie’ arrived in St. Martinsville for her date with Willie. Accompanying her were executioner Captain Edward Foster and his assistant, a trustee convict from Louisiana’s infamous Angola Penitentiary named Vincent Venezia. It would be their job to unload and set up the equipment for the next day’s festivities, which would be May 9, 1946. Unfortunately for Willie, they decided to stop at a local tavern for a few drinks before performing their duties.

Witnesses later reported that, in their opinion, both men prepared the equipment and performed the actual execution while so drunk they couldn’t have been fully aware of what they were doing. When they arrived back at the courthouse and set up the equipment, they were very much the worse for wear and too drunk to notice they hadn’t set it up properly.  Willie was about to ride the lightning and his ride would go on to make criminal history.

Along with official witnesses, reporters and County Sheriff Resweber,  gathered at the courthouse for what was a fairly routine event in Louisiana at the time. Nobody expected this one to be any different to any other electrocution. They were very, very wrong.

Willie was brought from his courthouse cell, strapped into ‘Gruesome Gertie’, and the electrodes were fitted. Resweber asked him if he had anything to say before the sentence was carried out. He didn’t. With a signal to the hung-over executioner, Resweber started the ball rolling. The switch was thrown. Willie, heavily strapped down, simply didn’t die as planned. Nor was he incapable of speech, either — unusual in someone with 2000 volts running through them. After the switch had been thrown his muffled voice was heard from beneath the leather hood.

‘I’m not dying.’

‘Take it off! Take it off! Let me breathe! It hurts!’

Sheriff Resweber’s reply, stunned though he was by this unexpected turn of events, was short and none too sweet.

‘It’s supposed to hurt. You’re not supposed to breathe.’

Willie Francis awaiting execution.

‘Gruesome Gertie’ herself was rocking and wobbling around the courtroom as she hadn’t been firmly secured to the floor. While appalled onlookers heard Willie being considerably more conversational than he should have been by that point, ‘Gertie’ was performing a ghastly jitterbug around the courtroom floor. It was a scene both farcical and horrific in the same moment.

The executioner kept the switch thrown and the current flowing, but after a couple of minutes had passed and poor Willie was still very much alive, Sheriff Resweber ordered the power be cut. Willie, having just become the only convict in criminal history to survive his own electrocution, was unstrapped and taken back to his cell while officials wondered what on Earth they were going to do next.

It was only a matter of hours before Willie’s non-execution became a national media sensation. Botched electrocutions, sadly, weren’t unusual. Actually, they still aren’t, but botched electrocutions in which the chair wobbles around like a washing machine while its occupant voices loud complaints were unheard of. Regardless, the Governor Jimmie Davis decided that Willie would have to ride the lightning again only a few days later. Enter local lawyer (and friend of Andrew Thomas) Bertrand LeBlanc, who persuaded the US Supreme Court to decide otherwise.

LeBlanc, while both white and personal friend of the murder victim, had been appalled by both the trial with its non-existent defense and Willie’s non-execution. Appalling him still further was Governor Davis’s decision that Willie would face execution again only a few days after such an horrendous experience.

LeBlanc spent months fighting Willie’s case all the way up to the Supreme Court, whose members — after much back-room wrangling and vote-changing — finally ruled by a margin of 5-4 that a second attempt to execute Willie didn’t constitute either double jeopardy or, bizarrely, cruel and unusual punishment. A strange decision in a case where the appellant has just suffered something hitherto unique in criminal history.

Despite LeBlanc’s immense efforts, made on general principle and without hope of any financial reward, Willie was still doomed. After months of wrangling, the Supreme Court declined to either reverse the original conviction (probably because Willie’s trial lawyers hadn’t bothered filing any appeals, either) or to overturn the death sentence. They also set a new date, May 9, 1947, exactly one year to the day since Willie had taken on ‘Gruesome Gertie’ and won. He wouldn’t be winning again.

On that date both Willie and his mobile nemesis were back at St. Martinville courthouse. The witnesses were assembled, along with ‘Gruesome Gertie’, and they’d even assembled her properly this time. It also probably helped that the executioner and his assistant were actually sober. Courtesy of Willie’s remarkable escape the first time and the strenuous, high-profile efforts of Bertrand LeBlanc, the eyes of the world were upon the courthouse and whatever happened therein.

‘Gruesome gertie,’ now a museum piece.

This time it went as perfectly as any State-sanctioned killing could do. At 12:05pm on May 9, 1947, Willie Francis would again walk his last mile. Once again he took his last fifty steps, escorted by guards and a chaplain. For the second time he sat in the chair and was strapped down, the electrodes attached to his head and leg. He was asked for his last words and, once again, he didn’t have any.

The signal was given. The switch, this time operated by a qualified electrician after a change in Louisiana law due to Willie’s first time in the chair, was thrown.

And, this time, Willie Francis, aged only 17, poor, black, under-educated and quite possibly innocent, was dead.

August 6, 1890 saw the dawn of a new age for criminal history. At Auburn Prison in upstate New York there was the execution of one, William Kemmler, condemned for murdering his girlfriend Matilda Ziegler with a hatchet. There was nothing remarkable about Kemmler (an alcoholic vegetable peddler with a vicious temper) or about his crime. There wasn’t anything unusual about an execution in New York State, either, hangings being a fairly regular event.

What was unusual was the method. Americans had been hanged, shot, drowned, and burnt alive, but none of them had ever been electrocuted. Even the word ‘electrocute’ was brand new, coined specially to reflect what its enthusiasts clumsily named ‘electrical execution.’ It had never been done before and, after its nightmarish debut, there was much debate about whether it should ever be done again.

Of course, it was. There have been over 4000 electrocutions in American penal history since Kemmler’s and, while the ‘Old Sparky’ is (rather ironically) at death’s door due to the introduction of the gas chamber and lethal injection, it was once by far the most popular means for America’s prisons to perform human pest control. State after State threw away its gallows and plugged into the latest way to get the job done. They did so with varying degrees of enthusiasm. New York really loved it, South Dakota only used it once and even then they had to borrow one from the State of Nebraska because they didn’t have their own. They also turned on to the new idea with varying degrees of competence — often with hideous results for all concerned, especially the condemned.

Tillie Ziegler, Kemmler’s sometime girlfriend and victim.

Hanging can be the least inhumane method of execution if properly performed, so there’s a bitter irony in the reason for Old Sparky’s long tenure, that being that many American executioners would probably have found it a challenge correctly hanging curtains, let alone humans. Bungled hangings were regular events, with prisoners often beheaded or slowly strangled by hangmen using faulty or unsuitable equipment. British hangman Albert Pierrepoint was openly scathing of American hangmen and their kit, sarcastically calling the traditional hangman’s rope a ‘cowboy’s coil’. After one horror show too many at the hanging of Roxalana Druse, New York State Governor David Hill decide to form a ‘Death Commission’ to decide which method would best replace the rope. Enter two very big names, an inventor, a dentist and, of course, William Kemmler.

The idea of electrocution came from a dentist, Alfred Southwick of Buffalo, New York. Southwick had seen a drunk die instantly from accidentally staggering up against an electrical generator and, being a staunch supporter of capital punishment, decided that the new technology would be perfect for deliberately killing people. Also, being a dentist, he thought a chair with straps all over it was the best way to convey the current to the inmate. He left the actual building of the ‘hot seat’ to Harold Brown, an electrical engineer working for a rather famous name. Enter one Thomas Edison.

Edison had been approached to oversee the creation of the electric chair but, being an opponent of capital punishment, had firmly refused to take part. Unfortunately, Edison became locked in the ‘War of the Currents’ with his great rival George Westinghouse. Edison championed direct current (DC) while Westinghouse was marketing an alternating current (AC) system. Both wanted to corner the rapidly-snowballing market in electricity and related products. Westinghouse’s system was far more efficient at transmitting electricity over long distances, but it was required far higher voltages to do so, making it potentially far more dangerous to technical staff and consumers. Edison saw that as an opportunity to bury his rival’s new system and, putting his personal opposition to executions aside (along with many other principles), decided to make full use of AC being more dangerous to human life.

He started by mounting a publicity campaign openly touting AC as deadly and his own DC as the safe option. He mounted a series of public demonstrations, electrocuting animals ranging from cats and dogs to a fully-grown elephant. Then he reconsidered his attitude to the death penalty. What better way was there to discredit George Westinghouse by harnessing both his system and his name to death? Westinghouse had refused to sell the State of New York a generator for executions so Brown, funded by Edison, bought one under a false name, had it delivered to Brazil and then shipped back to Auburn Prison. This infuriated Westinghouse, but not nearly as much as the more personal aspect of Edison’s campaign. The new method, in the eyes of many Americans, needed a new name. ‘Electrocution’, a combination of ‘electricity’ and ‘execution’ caught on to replace the clumsy phrase ‘electrical execution.’ Edison campaigned in favour of describing inmates as having been ‘Westinghoused.’

Auburn Prison in upstate New York

With Kemmler, a violent drunkard, ensconced on Auburn’s Death Row, Westinghouse funded his appeals. Edison secured large funding from one of his investors, J.P Morgan, to ensure Kemmler’s appeals failed. They did. William Kemmler was destined to take a prime (and unwilling) place in criminal history as the first inmate ever to do the ‘hot squat’.

At Auburn Prison preparations went ahead. Harold Brown enlisted Edwin Davis to help perfect the final touches to the ‘electrocution chair.’ Davis was a qualified electrical contractor at Auburn and was the perfect choice to become the world’s first ‘State Electrician’. Davis would execute around 200 inmates and train two of his proteges, John Hurlbut and Robert Elliott, both of whom succeeded him as executioners. Between them, these three men would execute over 700 prisoners and Elliott would be credited with perfecting electrocution as an execution method. For now, though, Davis was in charge. Davis designed and patented the first electrodes, which on early chairs were fixed to the inmate’s head and the base of their spine. After much gruesome experimentation, electrodes were fixed to an inmate’s head and leg as standard.

August 6, 1890 dawned bright and clear. The chair had been installed, linked to the prison generator (later chairs had their own separate generator) and thoroughly tested. Warden Charles Durston woke Kemmler at 5am, gave him a final breakfast and had him dressed for the occasion. At 6:30am the grim ritual began. Kemmler, his head and spine shaved and with a slit in his shirt-tails, was led into a room in front of 17 witnesses including 3 doctors and numerous reporters. He was asked for his last words which proved grimly ironic in the light of what was about to happen:

“Take it easy and do it properly, I’m in no hurry…”

Kemmler probably would have been in a hurry if he’d known what was coming and the execution team, given that they’d never actually electrocuted anyone before, certainly didn’t do it properly. About the best that could be said for the witnesses was that their misery would be less horrendous than Kemmler’s.

At 6:38am the signal was given and Davis threw the switch. 1000 volts of alternating current seared Kemmler’s body and nervous system. After 17 seconds the power was shut off and Doctor Charles Spitzka stepped forward fully expecting to certify Kemmler dead.

He wasn’t.

Spitzka initially thought Kemmler was dead and said as much. The chair’s inventor, dentist Alfred Southwick, proudly stood before the witnesses and in front of Kemmler’s smoking body and uttered the immortal words:

“Gentlemen, we live in a higher civilisation from this day.”

Then the dead man began to breathe and started twisting against the straps and moaning increasingly loudly. Horrified witnesses blanched as Warden Durston and Doctor Spitzka hurriedly discussed what to do. Either the current had been too low or not applied for long enough so the obvious solution was to double the voltage and increase the duration. Spitzka spoke briefly and sharply:

“Have the current turned on again, quick. No delay!”

The current was turned on quick. Not knowing what they were doing the execution team turned it on far too high for far too long. For a full minute 2000 volts cooked Kemmler alive. His remaining hair smouldered, his flesh singed and blood vessels burst under his skin, causing him to bleed through his pores. Smoke and a stench of burnt meat filled the room while witnesses tried to get out through locked doors. Some fainted and slumped around the floor.

Tennessee’s electric chair at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution

Kemmler did at least die, but in a way that nearly made his the first and last electrocution in criminal history. The newspapers competed to run the gaudiest tales of his suffering, as though it needed to look any worse than it actually was. Two of the doctors present, Charles Spitzka and Carlos MacDonald, feuded bitterly and publicly for years afterward. Edison, whose role in the affair was now public knowledge, refused to comment or to even speak to reporters. His great rival George Westinghouse, when asked for his opinion of the execution, was far more forthcoming and brutally frank:

“They would have done better using an axe…”

Of course, the chair, its components and the overall method were steadily refined and perfected over the next century or so. Davis’s apprentices Hurlbut and Elliott would go on to perfect the process and kill hundreds doing so, although Hurlbut did commit suicide shortly after resigning from his job as the euphemistically-titled ‘State Electrician’. All of New York’s executioners after Davis had to be qualified electricians, and were paid $150 per prisoner with an extra $50 for any additional prisoner during multiple executions. Good money if you could stomach pulling the switch.

There’s a grim postscript to this story. Until earlier this year the electric chair had fallen into disfavour and disuse. No States retained it as their primary method, having changed to lethal injection as their first choice. The current refusal by drug companies to supply American prisons with the drugs for lethal injection has led to experimentation with different drug combinations and, in turn, botched lethal injections such as Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma and Joseph Wood in Arizona. Wood took over two hours to die in a process that should have taken minutes.Which is why the State of Tennessee, previously discarding their electric chair for lethal injection, have reinstated electrocution and dusted off their ‘hot seat.’

Unlike William Kemmler and 4000 or so other inmates, Old Sparky has risen from the grave.

Francis Crowley, the inspiration for movie gangster Rocky Sullivan

He was no relation to famed Satanist Aleister Crowley, but young Francis had more than a touch of the Devil in him just the same. Born in New York City on October 31, 1912 (fitting for someone as scary as him) he lasted only 19 years before walking the last mile at the notorious Sing Sing Prison on January 21, 1932. It was a short life and a very, very violent one.

His start in life, to be fair to him, none too promising. His biological mother, a woman of German descent, was unmarried at a time when single mothers tended to attract much worse criticism than they do today. In fact, she was so afraid of how people might react that immediately put him up for adoption.

His childhood became increasingly turbulent. As a young boy he frequently picked arguments and fights, often with bigger boys. They had to be bigger than Francis as he never grew to be more than five feet, six inches tall with little muscle to compensate for his lack of height. Like such charming characters as ‘Baby Face’ Nelson, Francis Crowley seemed to have severe case of ‘small man syndrome’ and a temper to match. He wasn’t keen on humans in general, but he reserved his most bilious attitude for police officers. Whether or not his absent father was a cop, as has been suggested at least once by people trying to explain his venomous attitude towards them, has never been resolved. But, whatever he lacked in physical bulk, he more than made up for in sheer violence and a hair-trigger temper. Perhaps to compensate for his diminutive stature Crowley (also nicknamed the ‘Half-Pint Killer’) developed a habit of carrying several guns on him at all times. It wasn’t long before he’d find an excuse to use them.

After several years of petty crimes Crowley’s crime spree began in the Bronx on February 21, 1931 when he and two accomplices gate-crashed a dance held by the American Legion. The Legionnaires didn’t take kindly to their behaviour and demanded that they leave. Crowley and his friends refused and, when several of the Legionnaires tried to eject them from the building, Crowley responded by shooting two of them. Now he’d made the leap from petty hoodlum into being wanted on two counts of attempted murder. On March 13 Crowley, by now in hiding, found himself cornered by police. He wasn’t cornered for long, shooting Detective Ferdinand Schaedel. Like the two Legionnaires, Detective Schaedel was seriously wounded, but survived. Crowley had racked up three shootings in only a couple of weeks.

Four days later he racked up another felony. With four accomplices Crowley robbed a bank in New Rochelle in Westchester County. This time he managed to get away without shooting anybody, but that didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of the NYPD to catch a felon who had almost killed one of their own.

A month after that Crowley was back in action, this time performing a home invasion with two accomplices. They forced their way into the home of Rudolph Adler, a real estate broker of considerable means. Adler’s dog, Trixie, proved more than a match for them, attacking them and standing her ground after they had injured her owner. In company with his long-time crime partner Rudolph ‘Fats’ Duringer (so called because of his vast waistline) Crowley fled the scene empty-handed.

It was on April 27 that Fats and Two Gun committed their first confirmed murder. He was joyriding in a stolen car with Duringer and  dancehall hostess Virginia Brannen when Duringer made a pass at her. Brannen, repulsed by her morbidly obese suitor, brushed him off none too gently. It was the wrong move to make. Enraged, Duringer raped her and then shot her in the head before he and Crowley dumped her body outside St. Joseph’s Cemetery in Yonkers. They were both now facing a seat in the infamous ‘Old Sparky’ at Sing Sing.

Crowley’s murderous rampage didn’t end there. Only two days after murdering Virginia Brannen, Crowley was again driving around the city when he was spotted by police. After a frenetic car chase and firefight he escaped, but not for long. The NYPD were not only thoroughly infuriated by crime spree, but were now determined to nail him for capital murder. Bullets extracted from the police car were matched to those found in the body of Virginia Brannen and also to several other unsolved shootings. The NYPD now made it a top priority to bring Crowley’s rampage to a permanent end. The following day Crowley’s car was found abandoned and, most interesting to the police, was riddled with bullet holes and also contained a number of bloodstains. It was obvious to police that, even though Crowley had escaped, he or Duringer hadn’t escaped unscathed.

The NYPD continued their efforts to catch Crowley. Crowley, equally determined, continued to elude them. At least he did until May 6. On that date he was sitting in another stolen car with his girlfriend Helen Walsh, who was only 16 and perhaps unaware of just how bad a choice he was for a long-term relationship. Two local officers, Patrolmen Frederick Hirsch and Peter Yodice, approached the car on Long Island and requested that Crowley identified himself. He did so by fatally shooting Patrolman Hirsch and seriously wounding Patrolman Yodice.

Furious before these two shootings, the NYPD were now thoroughly enraged. Not only was Crowley embarrassing them by proving so difficult to catch, he also seemed to think that he could murder their officers as and when he felt like it. The day after Patrolmen Hirsch and Yodice were shot they would have their revenge.

Crowley and Walsh hid out in an apartment on West 91^st Street, hoping somehow to stay hidden until the storm blew over. They didn’t have too long to hide. One of the building’s other residents was a former girlfriend of Crowley’s and, on seeing him with another woman, promptly developed an entirely non-jealous sense of civic virtue and called the police. With the prospect of bagging the infamous ‘Two Gun’ Crowley to look forward to, the NYPD arrived quickly and in large numbers. Crowley’s last stand, what became known as the ‘Battle of 91^st Street,’ was about to begin.

Crowley under arrest. He didn’t come quietly.

A total of 300 officers, all toting tommy guns, pistol, shotguns, rifles and tear gas guns, converged and surrounded the building. This, not surprisingly, attracted spectators, some 15,000 New Yorkers turned out to also surround the building and see the show. They were not to be disappointed. For over two hours Crowley shot it out against hopeless odds. NYPD officers fired over 700 rounds into the building in addition to many tear gas canisters. Crowley’s response was to shoot back and throw several of the gas canisters back out into the street. It was an all-out gun battle seldom seen even during the Prohibition era. While Crowley did most of the shooting, Duringer and Walsh helped by constantly reloading his pistols for him, keeping up a continuous supply until Crowley’s guns began to overheat from excessive use.

But it was a forlorn hope. No one gangster, however violent they may be, can tackle around 300 heavily-armed and vengeful police officers. Surrounded and with no escape, wounded seriously by four gunshot wounds, Crowley was eventually captured. Captured with him were Duringer and Walsh. True to his nickname, the arresting officers found two pistols strapped to Crowley’s legs when he was finally arrested.

Helen Walsh got off lightly. She testified against Crowley and Duringer and was later released in return for her testimony. Duringer and Crowley, as expected, weren’t treated with any mercy. Duringer and Crowley both drew death sentences, Crowley for murdering Patrolman Hirsch and Duringer for the murder of Virginia Brannen. They were promptly transferred to Sing Sing Prison’s dreaded ‘Death House’ to await execution.

Duringer died first on December 10, 1931. As you might have noticed, the State of New York didn’t tend to waste time when dealing with condemned inmates. Duringer was reportedly one of the fattest men ever to sit in the electric chair and had to be squashed down a little before being strapped in. He was dead only moments later. Soon his crime partner, who had fallen out with both Walsh and Duringer since his trial and believed both were informants, would walk his own last mile, perhaps much to the relief of the prison staff who had to deal with him during his last few months.

Crowley was a disciplinary nightmare on Death Row. He attacked officers, he attacked other inmates, he was caught in possession of home-made weapons, he set fire to his bedding, then stuffed his clothes into the cell’s toilet and flooded the cell. It took Warden Lawes ordering that he be kept naked in an empty cell for several days before he began to calm down. He even made a friend, a wild starling which he fed and doted on. Whether he tamed it, it tamed him or possibly both was never fully ascertained.

At 11pm on January 21, 1932, Two Gun met his maker. He was escorted down the corridor between the cells and Sing Sing’s death chamber and he was defiant to the end. Standing in front of the chair, Warden Lawes asked him for his last words and if he had anything to say before execution. He did.

First, he demanded a rag to clean the chair. Duringer having died first, Crowley stated:

‘I want to wipe off the chair after that rat sat in it.’

Having made this astonishing (and unfulfilled) request Crowley sat down and waited while the straps and electrodes were applied. As the leather helmet containing the head electrode slid down over his face he managed one last, bitterly sarcastic remark:

‘Give my love to my mother…’

Warden Lawes gave the signal and ‘State Electrician’ Robert Greene Elliott threw the switch. For two full minutes electricity seared through his body. Elliott watched carefully, altering the voltage to avoid burning him too much as the two-minute cycle was completed. Then he shut off the power and the prison doctor confirmed that Francis ‘Two Gun’ Crowley was finally dead.

The Masonic Square and Compass.

The fraternal order of Freemasons is no stranger to conspiracy and controversy. Their secretive nature, use of eclectic pagan symbolism within their lodges, as well as rumors of bizarre rituals have long been the root of many legends and stories. Dating back to medieval times, this old organization has had members from all walks of life including war veterans, engineers, builders, astronauts, and even the Founding Fathers of the United States.

We’ve all heard the stories of the New World Order and the Illuminati, along with their connection to an elite inner circle of Freemasons. While some evidence is more believable than others, the fact remains that there is no concrete evidence that such an organization exists or that the Freemasons are at the center of it. That’s not to say that some Freemasons haven’t been publicly scrutinized for injustices, and the Morgan Affair shows just how far some Masons may be willing to go to keep their secrets.

The Anti-Masonic Depiction of “Captain” William Morgan.

The trouble all began in 1823. Having lost everything in a fire that destroyed his distillery in Canada, “Captain” William Morgan, along with his young bride, decided to move to New York and start fresh. Having lived in the city of Rochester for several years, Morgan eventually relocated to the town of Batavia in 1826. There he befriended several Masons in town and started patroning a local temple.

He told members that he had been initiated at a different chapter in Canada and wished to attend meetings at their lodge. It was true that he had visited Masonic lodges before appearing at the Batavia office, but no one could confirm where he was inducted into the organization or if he ever had been. His admission into the York Rite chapter of Masonry had been denied. It was later confirmed that Morgan did receive his York Rite Royal Arch Degree in 1925, though it is unknown if he had achieved the six degrees proceeding it.

An opportunity to open a new chapter had been proposed and William Morgan’s name was on the petition. He was enthralled with the opportunity, but those dreams were cut short. Other members of Morgan’s chapter opposed the idea, citing his sketchy credentials as the reason why he should not be a candidate. Bitter about the rejection, Morgan, along with the help of newspaper editor David C. Miller, set out to write a tell-all book. This is where the story begins to get a bit blurry, depending on which account you believe.

Depiction of William Morgan from Masonic literature.

According to Masons, Morgan was a drunk, a thief, and a liar. He was never a Mason; he wasn’t even a Captain, as he had claimed, and when outed by his local chapter he decided to turn on them by threatening to publish an Anti-Mason book. Masons also claim that David C. Miller may have been willing to scheme with Morgan because he himself was once a first degree Mason, but was prevented from moving up within the order.

What is known is that after Morgan and Miller revealed their intentions, the newspaper building was burned to the ground. The Masons offered a reward for the capture of the culprits, but believe that Miller set the fire himself. Four Masons were indicated in the fire and three were arrested.

Morgan was also not without his own troubles. Shortly before his book was due to be published he was arrested several times, allegedly because of charges instigated by the Masons. On his final arrest a man showed up to pay his bail and Morgan was never seen again. At least a dozen different “eye-witness” reports exist to what exactly happened that day.

Some say that he was carried away by men with torches and murdered. Others say that he was met with a horse and wagon and told never to return. The Masonic story says that Morgan was kidnapped and ordered to return to Canada. There he would receive some money to begin a new life as long as he took a pledge to never to return to the United States, publish his book, or speak a word of the arrangements.

The Masonic version of Morgan’s story does not explain how in October of 1827, a body washed up on the shores of Lake Ontario. Although the body had been in a state of decomposition, Morgan’s wife claimed that the body was her husband’s. She said that she was able to identify the corpse because of the distinctive broken teeth, matching those of Morgan’s. Morgan’s doctor also identified the body, noting the distinctive teeth. The case would have probably been closed, had the inquest committee not included a particularly outspoken Anti-Mason, New York politician Thurlow Weed. Masons accused Weed of intentionally mutilating the corpse in order to make it appear to be Morgan’s.

During the same time frame of Morgan’s disappearance, another man named Timothy Monroe had also been reported missing. During the third inquest, Monroe’s wife was called in to identify the body. She positively identified the body as that of her missing husband’s. The ruling stood and no Masons were ever brought to trial for the murder of Morgan.

After Morgan’s mysterious disappearance, his case was often used as propaganda fodder for a rising political party. Formed in 1828, the Anti-Masonic party unofficially became the U.S.’ third political party and touted Morgan as a hero for standing up against the powerful and dangerous organization of Freemasons. It would be illogical not to question if the story had been exaggerated by Anti-Masonics in order to gain support for their party.

A monument purchased by The National Christian Association was erected in the Batavia Cemetery, commending Morgan for his heroism.

Perhaps we will never really know what really happened to “Captain” William Morgan. Was he just chased off by some over-zealous Masons, angered that he wanted to reveal their heavily guarded secrets, or did Morgan face a far more sinister fate for his brazenness? A third theory also exists that Morgan ran off on his own accord, as a publicity stunt for his book. The only thing that is certain is that in spite of Morgan’s disappearance, his book was able to be published. Proving that, just maybe, the Masons aren’t nearly as powerful as some may believe.

As regular readers are aware, I cover true crime here a fair bit and the death penalty is a regular feature. So, today, it’s with some small satisfaction that we’re going to look at Britain’s last executions.

On August 13, 1964 Gwynne Evans and Peter Allen took their unwilling place in British penal history as the last-ever inmates to suffer the ‘dread sentence’, to be taken to one of Her Majesty’s Prisons and keep their date with the hangman. Well, hangmen, actually. Evans met his death at HMP Strangeways at the hands of Harry Allen (grandfather of British comedienne Fiona Allen) assisted by Harry Robinson. Allen met his at HMP Walton at the hands of Robert Leslie Stewart (known as ‘Jock’, being from Edinburgh) assisted by Royston Rickard.

Their crime was unremarkable (not that any murder is a trivial matter) and their executions were equally standard affairs except for the fact that they were the last in British penal history. Judges would continue to don the dreaded ‘Black Cap’ and pass the ‘dread sentence’ until 1969, when the death penalty was retained for  several crimes other than murder. The death penalty would finally be repealed in 1998 under the Human Rights Act. By then the noose and scaffold had already been consigned to history and the occasional prison museum. Never again would the prison bell toll or the black flag be hoisted just after eight or nine in the morning. No longer would crowds gather outside a prison’s gates in protest at what was happening inside.. No more would a prison warder have to brave an angry crowd to post the official announcement on a prison gate. After centuries of State-sanctioned killing ranging from the deliberately-barbaric to the scientifically-precise, ‘Jack Ketch’ had finally put away his noose and passed into history.

Hangmen of Britain.

Not that this was any consolation whatsoever to Evans and Allen. As far as they were concerned it made no difference at all and nor did it to anyone else. They still had to sit in their Condemned Cells at Walton and Strangeways, guarded 24 hours a day by prison warders and hoping every day for a reprieve that never came. Prison staff and the hangmen still had to report for duty as instructed and ensure that everything was prepared properly down to the finest detail. The Appeal Court judges and Home Secretary still had to discuss, debate and ponder their decision, knowing all the time that if they refused clemency then these two deaths would be as much their responsibility as that of the executioners themselves.

Their crime was brutal and their guilt undeniable. Given the evidence against them there was almost no chance of their being acquitted. To manage that would require lawyers possessed of both boundless talent and equal optimism. If they did ever stand a chance of avoiding the gallows then it was far more likely to be through a reprieve than an acquittal. Barring a reprieve or a legal blunder serious enough to impress the Court of Criminal Appeal, their  race was run and they probably knew it.

Evens and Allen, the last two convicts to be executed in Britain.

Evans and Allen were both your typical condemned inmates. Under-educated, lower IQs than usual, failed to hold down any job for very long and had a string of petty criminal convictions between them. Fraud, theft, deception, the usual type of relatively low-level crimes that see a person in and out of trouble on a semi-regular basis and nothing to suggest that either was capable of a brutal and old-blooded murder. Then again, a great many brutal, cold-blooded murderers have been described as not being ‘the type’ even though there is no ‘type’ to watch out for. It would make honest people’s lives so much easier if there were.

Aside from not seeming the type, Allen and Evans weren’t exactly criminal masterminds either. After beating and stabbing to death Alan West in his home during a bungled robbery on July 7, 1964, Evans in particular left a trail of evidence that Hansel and Gretal would have been proud of. He left a medallion at the crime scene with his name inscribed on it. When he was dumping the stolen car they’d used to visit West’s home, he dumped it at a builder’s yard and made himself so conspicuous (and, to a neighbour, highly suspicious) that it wasn’t long before he found himself in custody. Being found in possession of the victim’s gold watch probably didn’t help his case much either.

Once under questioning Evans excelled himself even further. Initially he denied being involved. On realising he’d left a smoking gun with his name on it at the scene he decided to bury Peter Allen and save himself from a charge of capital murder by putting all the blame on his accomplice. He denied having a knife on him during the robbery and clearly blamed Allen for stabbing West to death, which might have worked a great deal better  but for one small problem. At the time Evans was loudly denying his having had or used a knife to murder Alan West, police pointed out to him that they hadn’t actually mentioned a knife, nor had they released that information to the press. Oops.

Allen was now also in custody and being questioned. Both killers were under lock and key within 48 hours of committing their crime, a pretty fast resolution to a murder investigation. By modern American standards, their road from trial to execution would certainly seem faster still. One of the principle complaints of America’s pro-execution lobby is that the appeals process takes far too long. There are too many levels of court, too many technicalities, too many bleeding-heart pro-bono lawyers, too many soft judges and State Governors who refuse to allow what a judge and jury have already decided to hand down. Not so in Britain. A condemned inmate was granted a minimum of only 3 Sundays between sentencing and execution. That didn’t mean an execution always happened 3 weeks after a sentence due to appeals, finding new evidence, court schedules, sanity hearings and so on, but 3 Sundays was all you could expect as of right.

Your avenues for appeal were both smaller in number and moved a great deal faster than their American counterparts as well. After sentencing your first stop was the Court of Criminal Appeal where your appeal against conviction and sentencing would be heard by a panel of 3 judges, often including the Lord Chief Justice himself if he hadn’t presided at your trial. If they turned you down, you moved up the Home Secretary (nowadays the Minister of Justice). If the Home Secretary turned you down you could still appeal to the King or Queen, but this was effectively pointless. By one of the many unwritten rules so beloved of British officialdom, the Monarch didn’t grant an appeal except on the private advice of the Home Secretary. A Home Secretary (an elected official) might want to respond to (or defy) public opinion by granting a reprieve while risking their job if they were seen to do so. The Monarch, on the other hand, not having to consider their approval rating, could grant an appeal thereby saving a prisoner without causing problems for the elected officials concerned. But, regardless of whether a prisoner appealed directly to a Monarch, without a Home Secretary’s advice there would be no reprieve. Nobody involved felt merciful towards Evans and Allen.

The black cap traditionally worn by British judges when sentencing a defendant to death.

Their trial began at Manchester Assizes on June 23, 1964 with Mr. Justice Ashworth presiding. Leading for the prosecution was was Joseph Cantley, QC (Queen’s Counsel, a senior lawyer) while Allen was defended by lawyers F.J. Nance and R.G. Hamilton. Evans was represented by Griffith Guthrie-Jones, QC. It didn’t take very long. With Evans’s many and varied blunders and Allen’s wife as the star prosecution witness, testifying that she’d seen Evans dispose of the knife and that Allen had made incriminating remarks in her presence, even the best of defenders couldn’t have won a verdict of not guilty. Justice Ashworth then took his own place in British penal history, becoming the last British judge in a British courtroom to don the dreaded ‘Black Cap’ (a square of black silk placed atop a judge’s wig as a gesture of mourning for the newly-condemned and recite the modified death sentence.

Previously, the judge would have recited a long, drawn-out set script which usually did little to help a prisoner keep their composure. It was this:

“Prisoner at the Bar, you have been convicted of the crime of willful murder. The sentence of this Court is that you be taken from this place to a lawful prison, and thence to a place of execution where you shall be hanged by the neck until you are dead. And that your body be afterwards cut down and buried within the precincts of the prison in which you were last confined before execution. And may the Lord have mercy upon your soul. Remove the prisoner…”

Ashworth’s version was edited for brevity and out of compassion for the prisoners hearing it:

‘”Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans, you have been convicted of murder and shall suffer the sentence prescribed by law.”

The hanging room

Shorter, certainly. But not tasting any more sweet. Their one mandatory appeal was heard by Lord Chief Justice Parker, Justice Winn and Justice Widgery on July 20, 1964. It was denied the next day. The executioners were engaged and a date set. Evans and Allen would die at HMP Strangeways and HMP Walton respectively. Harry Allen and Harry Robinson would execute Evans, Robert Leslie Stewart and Royston Rickard would execute Allen. Both men dying at the same time meant that no one hangman could ever claim to Britain’s last executioner.

John Bellingham, assassin of Prime Minister Spencer Percival.

Assassination of important and powerful political figures is nothing new and neither is it particularly rare. Four American Presidents, Mahatma Gandhi, Tsar Nichols II’s entire family after the Russian Revolution and so on.

One place where such killings are rare, despite its prominent role in world affairs, is Great Britain. Where the United States has lost four Presidents at the hands of assassins (and if assassins had their way would have lost far more), Great Britain has lost only one Prime Minister. The Prime Minister was Spencer Percival, the year was 1812 and the assassin was an angry, bitter and possibly insane former businessman named John Bellingham.

In 1809 the previous Prime Minister (the Duke of Portland) resigned due to his failing health. On the Duke’s resignation the job passed to Spencer Percival. Percival himself was an average politician, so average that his tenure would probably have been of little note if he hadn’t become the only British Prime Minister to be assassinated.

Bellingham, on the other hand, was businessman and rather more successful in business than Percival had been in politics. Where Percival was seen by many as merely an unexceptional safe pair of hands until somebody more notable could take over, John Bellingham was wealthy, self-made man. At least he was until he visited Russia on business, anyway.

Bellingham went to Russia in 1811, some months before Percival took office. During his visit he found himself under arrest by the Tsarist police. He was locked up and, seeing as he wasn’t able to manage either his business interests or his considerable personal wealth, he managed to lose both. On his release after months locked up in a Russian prison (not, as a rule, a prison known for its gentle regime and respect for human rights) Bellingham was finally released and deported back to Britain,

On his return he complained long, loud and bitterly to anybody and everybody he thought would and should listen to him. Unfortunately for Bellingham (and ultimately for Percival) the British Government decided that they neither should nor would listen. Bellingham’s long series of increasingly bitter and furious complaints about his treatment in Russia were met with increasingly terse replies to the effect that his arrest and incarceration were his own fault. In the opinion of Her Majesty’s Government, any British citizen arrested in a foreign land had only themselves to blame for not observing that country’s rules in the first place.

Bellingham already hated the Russian authorities. Now he began to hate the British authorities as well. He brooded, complained, demanded action, received responses that did nothing but infuriate him further and eventually his mind turned to thoughts of violent revenge. If he couldn’t directly attack the Russian authorities then the more easily-attacked British ones would have to do. And who should he choose for retribution? Whose death would make the biggest impact possible in the corridors of power?

Naturally, it would be the Prime Minister of the day, Spencer Percival.

Spencer Percival, Britain’s only assassinated Prime Minister.

Bellingham promptly spent some his now highly-limited funds on the purchase of a pistol, powder and ammunition. He reconnoitered the Houses of Parliament (far easier then than it would ever be today) looking for perfect time and place to strike. After a few weeks of planning and waiting around, he found what he was looking for.

On May 11, 1812 Prime Minister Percival arrived at the House for another day of governmental business. Waiting for him in the Lobby was John Bellingham, armed with a loaded pistol hidden under his clothes. Percival walked briskly into the Lobby, heading for the Chamber where Parliamentary debates and votes are routinely conducted. He never made it that far.

Bellingham stepped out from behind a pillar he’d been hiding behind. Without so much as word or pausing for breath he raised his arm, leveled his cocked pistol and fired. Percival was hit in his chest, dead centre. He fell to the Lobby floor as people dashed towards the sound of the pistol shot. It did them or Percival no good. A large-calibre pistol shot to the chest was almost always fatal, especially when delivered at close range. Prime Minister Percival died lying in the Lobby before a doctor could even try to treat him.

Murder in the Houses of Parliament.

They didn’t have to chase Bellingham or subdue him. Minutes after the shooting an official asked loudly who had fired the shot. Bellingham instantly stepped forward and announced that he was the assassin. He was instantly detained and marched away to the cells below the Palace of Westminster.

The conspiracy theorists, existing in large numbers then like they do now, noted that Bellingham is actually an Anglo-Irish name, not an purely English one. This immediately drew frenzied speculation that Bellingham had killed the Prime Minister as a political act involving Irish independence. Bellingham himself was open about his motives. When asked he said simply:

‘It’s a private injury. I know what I have done. It was a denial of justice on the part of the Government.’

Bellingham’s fate was in almost no doubt. He had assassinated the Prime Minister and thus it was almost certain he would pay for it on the gallows. His trial, however, had a lasting impact on the British legal system. It was obvious that he was somewhat unhinged and, at his trial defence counsel Sir James Mansfield successfully argued what’s is now a cornerstone of criminal trials the world over. He asked the court whether the defendant had sufficient ability and judgment to recognise the difference between good and evil. If he could then he should be punished to the limit of the law. If he couldn’t, punishment should be tempered with mercy.

This concept did become part of English but not, unfortunately for another three decades when it became the basis of the famous McNaughten Rules introduced to define the difference between legal insanity and the purely medical version. The court declined to accept Bellingham was entirely insane and without a defence of diminished responsibility (not introduced to English law until the Homicide Act of 1957) Bellingham was convicted and condemned to the gallows. Of course, in those days that meant he die in public before a large crowd outside the notorious Newgate Prison. His only hope was either the Home Secretary issuing a reprieve or an appeal directly to King. Neither chose to show mercy.

On May 18, 1812 John Bellingham was visited in his cell at Newgate. His hands were bound securely and the execution party consisting of Bellingham, the prison Governor, the prison Chaplain, the prison Doctor, the hangman and several prison officers made their way through the door set high in the Debtor’s Wall of Newgate and on to the ‘New Drop.’ While the Governor read out the crime and death warrant and the Chaplain muttered the Lord’s Prayer and a specially0shortened version of the Burial Service hangman Calcraft slipped a white cotton hood over Bellingham’s head. Over this he slid the noose, positioning it under Bellingham’s jawbone. The noise of the sizable crowd ebbed away into near-silence.

End of the line. The ‘New Drop’ above the Debtor’s Door at Newgate Prison.

The Governor gave the signal and Calcraft drew the huge bolt supporting the trapdoors. Bellingham plummeted to the end of the rope. Unfortunately for him the ‘variable drop’ method of hanging wasn’t developed until the early 1870’s by one of Calcraft’s successors, William Marwood. Calcraft always used the same length of rope regardless of the height and weight of a prisoner so John Bellingham, the first and so far only person to assassinate a British Prime Minister, took a long time dying..