WOMEN WHO SAT IN “OLD SPARKY”

THE FIRST WOMAN TO BE EXECUTED AT SING SING

On March 20, 1899, Martha Place of Brooklyn, New York became the first woman to be executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing prison. She had been sentenced to die for the murder of her step-daughter. Place would be the first of a number of women to be electrocuted in “Old Sparky,” as the chair at Sing Sing came to be known, but the most sensational would occur almost three decades later in the very same chair.

"Old Sparky" at Sing Sing was the last chair for 614 men 

and women over the years

Martha Place was the first woman to be executed in the chair, but she was not the first in New York’s history to be sentenced to death. That dubious distinction belongs to a woman named Maria Barbella, who was convicted of murdering her lover in 1895.

Maria Barbella

Barbella was born in Ferrandina, Basilicata, Italy. Her family immigrated to Mulberry Bend, New York in 1892 and after living in America for nearly a year, she met Domenico Cataldo, who was from the same region of Italy. She became infatuated with the handsome shoeshine man and passed by his stand every day on her way home from the factory where she worked. The two began spending time together, but when Maria’s overprotective father found out, she was forbade from seeing him – an order she disobeyed.

The only known photograph of Maria Barbella

One day Cataldo took her to a boarding house, where he allegedly drugged her and took advantage of her. Maria became upset afterwards and demanded that he marry her. Cataldo agreed, but kept putting of the wedding date. Maria continued to meet him at his boarding house, believing that marriage was soon to follow. She was devastated when he told her that he was returning to Italy and was ending the relationship. She again demanded that he marry her and this time, Cataldo told her the truth and revealed that he was already married to a woman back home in Italy. When Maria told her mother about the situation, the older woman confronted Cataldo and insisted that he marry her daughter. Cataldo agreed – but only if the family paid him $200. With little money to speak of, the family was unable to pay.

On the morning of April 26, 1895, Cataldo was playing cards in a saloon on East 13th Street in New York, waiting to board the ship that would return him to Italy. Maria Barbella entered the bar and there was a brief exchange. "Only a pig can marry you!" were his last words. Maria whipped out a straight razor and slashed his neck so swiftly Cataldo had no chance to scream. He staggered out the door, clutching his throat with both hands, knocking Maria over, spraying blood everywhere. He managed to stagger out into the street and fell down dead in the gutter.

Maria was quickly arrested and taken to the “Tombs,” New York’s House of Detention, and remained there for more than two months. Attorneys Amos Evans and Henry Sedgwick were appointed to represent her at her trial, which began on July 11. This case stirred up controversy because Italians felt that the verdict was unjust since there were no Italians in the jury. At the time of the trial, Maria was unable to speak or understand English. She confessed to everything and while the jury had sympathy for her, there was little they could do but declare her guilty. She was sentenced to death in the electric chair at Sing Sing on August 19, 1895, the first woman in New York history to receive such a sentence.  

Thanks to her attorneys, this was not the end of Maria’s story. Numerous complaints were filed with the governor about the trial, but there was little that could be done. Finally, her attorneys managed to appeal on the grounds that she was “epileptic” and “mentally ill” over the situation with Cataldo. She was found not guilty in a second trial. After her release from prison, Maria married an Italian immigrant named Francesco Bruno on November 4, 1897 and gave birth to a son two years later. She had narrowly escaped the electric chair, but her story does not have a happy ending. By 1902, records show that she was living with her parents and her husband had returned to Italy and married another woman. Whatever became of Maria after that is unknown, but it’s likely that she remained unlucky in love.

Martha Place

In 1899, Martha Place became the first woman in New York to “ride the lightning,” as the old guards often called a seat in the electric chair.

Martha Place

Born Martha "Mattie" Garretson on September 18, 1849 in Readington Township, New Jersey, her early life was uneventful. Then, at age 23, she was struck in the head by a sleigh. Her brother claimed that she never completely recovered and that the accident left her mentally unstable. In 1893, though, she married a widower named William Place, who had a daughter named Ida from a previous marriage. William married Martha to help him raise his daughter, although it was later rumored that Martha was jealous of Ida. William called the police at least once after his wife threatened to kill the girl.

On the evening of February 7, 1898, William Place arrived at his Brooklyn, New York home and was attacked by Martha, who was wielding an axe. William escaped for help and when the police arrived, they found Martha Place in critical condition. She was lying on the floor with clothes over her head. She had opened the gas pipes and was allowing gas to fill the room in a suicide attempt. Upstairs, they discovered the dead body of 17-year-old Ida Place lying on a bed. Her mouth was bleeding and her eyes disfigured from having acid thrown in them. The evidence later indicated Ida Place died from asphyxiation. Martha Place was hospitalized and arrested.

Place proclaimed her innocence while awaiting trial but the jury refused to believe it. She was quickly found guilty of Ida’s murder and sentenced to death. Her husband was a key witness against her.

The governor of the State of New York, Theodore Roosevelt, was asked to commute Place's death sentence, but he refused. Having never executed a woman in the electric chair, those responsible for carrying out the death warrant devised a new way to place the electrodes upon her, deciding to slit her dress and place the electrode on her ankle. Edwin F. Davis was the executioner. According to the reports of witnesses, she died instantly.

As far as executions go, it was relatively a simple one, but the same could not be said for the electrocution of the next -- and most famous -- woman to die at Sing Sing.

Ruth Snyder

The Snyder murder, as one crime writer put it, was a "cheap crime involving cheap people." Many considered it the low point in the history of the early 1900s but for those who lived in the thrill-hungry days of the "Roaring '20s," they devoured every sordid detail and made the otherwise mundane Ruth Snyder and her accomplice, Judd Gray, into infamous celebrities. In addition to murder, their second-greatest crime was simply being stupid.

"Red Hot Cutie" Ruth Snyder.... uh?

The events in the case began quietly in 1925 when Ruth Brown Snyder, a discontented Long Island housewife, met a corset salesman named Henry Judd Gray while having lunch in New York. Ruth, 32, was a tall blonde with solid good looks and a commanding personality. Judd Gray, 34, was short and almost instantly forgettable. He had a cleft chin and thick glasses that gave him a perpetual look of surprise. Despite the fact that they seemed to be polar opposites, sexual attraction flared between the two of them at their first meeting and they soon began a torrid affair.

Ruth Snyder's husband, Albert, was the art editor of the magazine Motor Boating and was never home during the day. The adulterous couple only had the Snyder's nine-year-old daughter, Lorraine, to contend with and the amorous pair would often meet at the Snyder's home while Lorraine was at school. On other occasions, the little girl would be left in a hotel lobby while her mother and her lover met upstairs. They met as often as possible and seemed unable to get enough of one another.

But Ruth Snyder soon changed from a sex-obsessed housewife to a woman with devious plans. Bored in her loveless marriage, she tried to convince Judd that her husband mistreated her and that he must be killed. Gray objected but Ruth continued to pester him with hints, suggestions and outright demands.

Finally, on Saturday, March 19, 1927, Judd gave in. It was a cold, raw day on Long Island and Gray spent most of the day drinking, trying to summon the courage to go through with the murder. He and Ruth had cooked up a plan that had him traveling by train to New York from Syracuse and then by bus to Long Island. When he arrived in Queens Village, where the Snyders lived, he walked around for an hour, stopping under street lights to take drinks from his flask. It was almost as if he hoped to be spotted and arrested for breaking the law. No one paid any attention to him, though, and finally, he had to enter the Snyder home. He came in through the back door, as he and Ruth had planned. The Snyder family was away at a party and would return late. Judd had promised to hide in a spare room, where Ruth had left a window sash weight, rubber gloves and chloroform, all the tools of murder.

The family returned around 2:00 a.m. and Ruth opened the bedroom door a crack. She whispered, "Are you in there, Bud, dear?" She soon returned wearing only a slip and the two had sex with her husband asleep just down the hallway. Finally, after about an hour, Gray grabbed the window sash weight and Ruth led him to the master bedroom, where Albert Snyder slept with the blankets up over his head. The two of them stood on opposite sides of the bed and then Gray raised the sash weight and brought it down clumsily onto Snyder's head. The weak blow merely glanced off the man's skull and while stunned, he let out a roar and tried to seize his attacker. Judd became terrified and let out a whining scream for help.

There was no panic in Ruth Snyder and with a snort of disgust and anger, she grabbed the weight from Judd's hands and crashed it down on her husband's skull, killing him. After that, the two of them went downstairs, had drinks and chatted about the rest of their plan. They faked a robbery by knocking over some chairs and loosely tying Ruth's hands and feet. Minutes after Gray left, Ruth began banging on Lorraine's door. The child ran out and removed the gag from her mother's mouth. She told her daughter to get help and Lorraine ran next door to the neighbor's house, where the police were called.

Damon Runyon, the celebrated newsman, later wrote that Ruth and Judd were "inept idiots" and called the whole mess the Dumb-bell Murder, "because it was so dumb."

  

A crime scene photo of Albert Snyder after his head had been bashed in. Unbelievably, Ruth received 164 offers of marriage while she was in the death cell.

Even though the pair believed they had planned well, their "robbery" was far from convincing to experienced police officers. All of the items that Ruth said had been taken by the mysterious burglar were found hidden in the house and detectives began to question her. Surprisingly, she gave up almost at once and confessed to the murder but not surprisingly she blamed everything on Judd Gray. He was found hours later, hiding in his Syracuse hotel room. He shrieked his innocence and insisted that he had not been in New York. When confronted with the train ticket stub that he had carelessly tossed in the trash can of the hotel room, he broke down and confessed. Like Ruth, he blamed everything on his accomplice.

By the time the case went to trial, the two former lovers were at one another's throats, each blaming the other for the deadly deed. The trial became a media frenzy. Celebrities attended in droves, including mystery writer Mary Roberts Rinehart, director D.W. Griffith, author Will Durant, evangelists Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson and many others. McPherson even received a large sum from the New York Evening Graphic to write up a piece on the sordid case. Sister Aimee used her column to encourage young men to say, "I want a wife like mother -- not a Red Hot cutie."

Both defendants had separate attorneys arguing for their innocence. Ruth's lawyer stated that her husband "drove love out from the house" by longing after a departed sweetheart. He also said that Gray had tempted her by setting up a $50,000 double indemnity insurance policy on Albert Snyder. She was a loving wife, her attorney insisted, and it was not her fault about the conditions in her home. He then put the "wronged woman" on the stand, wearing a simple black dress. She played the role of the suffering wife, describing how her husband ignored her most of the time, except when taking her to the occasional movie. It had been she who had read from the Bible to daughter Lorraine and had made sure the little girl attended Sunday school. Her lawyer glossed over the Gray romance and Ruth justified their affair by saying that Judd was also unhappy at home. The affair had turned horrible as "Lover Boy" dragged her to speakeasies and night spots, where she had watched him drink himself senseless. She, Ruth swore, rarely ever touched a drink and never, ever smoked. Then she testified that Gray insisted that she take out the heavy insurance policy on her husband. She also told the court that he had once sent her poison and told her to give it to her husband.

At this, the excitable Judd Gray began whispering to his lawyers. A short time later, he also took the witness stand and his attorney described Judd's situation as "the most tragic story that has ever gripped the human heart." The lawyer claimed that Judd was a law-abiding citizen who had been duped and dominated by a "designing, deadly conscienceless, abnormal woman, a human serpent, a human fiend in the disguise of a woman." He then added that he had been "drawn into this hopeless chasm when reason was gone, mind was gone, manhood was gone and when his mind was weakened by lust and passion."

Ruth Snyder’s Final Photograph

Judd played the victim when he took the stand, nervously glancing over at his elderly mother, who was sitting in the courtroom next to the actress Nora Bayes, who had come to watch the show. He testified that Ruth had tried to kill her husband several times, once putting knockout drops in his drink and when they failed, trying to gas him. He also testified that she had once given Albert Snyder poison as a cure for the hiccups. It made the man violently ill instead. Judd said innocently, “I told her she was crazy. I said to her that it was a hell of a way to cure hiccups.”

Finally, Judd stated that it had been Ruth who had taken out the insurance policy on Snyder and it had not been his doing, or his idea, at all. He also described how she had struck the death blow on the night of the murder. At this, Ruth began to sob loudly in the courtroom and even the judge glanced in her direction. The jury was out only 98 minutes before coming back with a verdict of guilty. Both defendants were stunned and then shocked even further when they learned the sentence for their crime was death.

Judd Gray was executed first on January 12, 1928. He sat smiling in his cell when the warden came for him. He had received a letter from his wife forgiving him. He told the warden that he was ready to go. He said, “I have nothing to fear.”

Ruth Snyder followed her former lover just minutes after she watched the prison lights flicker, signaling that the switch had been thrown for the electric chair. Reporters remembered that, as she was being led to the death chamber, that she had said days before that God had forgiven her and that she hoped the world would.

A clever reporter from the New York Daily News smuggled a camera into the death chamber by strapping it to his ankle. He managed to click off a photo just as the current entered Ruth's body and snapped her body against the chair straps. The photograph ran in the next day's edition of the paper but soon the lurid tale faded into history. Soon, people remembered the photo more than they remembered who had been sitting in the chair. 

THE DOWNFALL OF MURDER, INC.

The Execution of Louis “Lepke” Buchalter

On March 4, 1944, Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, mobster and head of the organized crime hit squad known as Murder, Inc., went to the electric chair at Sing Sing prison in New York. He became the only major mob boss to ever receive the death penalty in the United States after being convicted of murder. Two of his lieutenants, Louis Capone and Emanuel Weiss, were also executed just a few minutes before the warden flipped the switch on Buchalter – ending an era in American Mafia history.

Louis "Lepke" Buchalter

Louis Buchalter was born on Manhattan’s Lower East Side on February 6, 1897. His mother, Rose, called him "Lepkeleh" ("Little Louis" in Yiddish), which later became "Lepke". Buchalter had one sister and three brothers; one brother eventually became a dentist, another brother a college professor and rabbi, and the third brother a pharmacist. His father, Barnett, was a Russian immigrant who operated a hardware store on the Lower East Side.

In 1909, when Buchalter was 12, his father died. In 1910, Buchalter finished elementary school and started a job selling theatrical goods. Soon after, his mother moved to Arizona for health reasons, leaving Buchalter in the care of his sister, Sarah. However, Louis was beyond her control. He had already become involved in crime and on September 2, 1915, he was arrested for the first time for burglary and assault. The case was discharged but there would be more to come.

In late 1915 or early 1916, Buchalter went to live with his uncle in Bridgeport, Connecticut. It was hoped that by getting him out of New York, he could get away from the bad influence of the city. It didn’t work. On February 29, 1916, he was arrested in Bridgeport on burglary charges and was sent to the Cheshire Reformatory for juvenile offenders in Cheshire, Connecticut until July 12, 1917. When he got out, he made an effort to go straight and went to work for his uncle. After a disputed over wages, though, Louis moved back to New York – and back into a life of crime.

He was arrested again (for grand larceny this time) on September 28, 1917 and was sentenced to eighteen months at Sing Sing in Ossinning, New York. After a transfer to Auburn Prison in Auburn, New York, Buchalter was released on January 27, 1919. In just over a year – on January 22, 1920 – he was back in Sing Sing on attempted burglary charges. He was released on March 16, 1922.

Buchalter's friend and partner, Jacob Shapiro

After this last stretch in prison, Buchalter went to work for a childhood friend, mobster Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro. They beat and extorted their way into control over the garment industry unions. Buchalter then used the unions to threaten strikes and demand weekly payments from factory owners while dipping into union bank accounts. Buchalter's control of the unions evolved into a protection racket, extending into areas such as bakery trucking. The unions were profitable for him and he kept a hold over them even after becoming an important figure in organized crime. Buchalter later formed an alliance with Tommy Lucchese, a leader of the Lucchese crime family, and together they controlled the garment district. In 1927, Buchalter and Shapiro were arrested for the attempted murder of bootlegger Jack Diamond, a criminal rival. However, the charges were later dropped due to a lack of evidence.

Meanwhile, Buchalter was earning a reputation as a good boss. He was a quiet man who preferred listening over speaking and he generously compensated the men who worked for him and took them to hockey games, boxing matches, and even on winter cruises. On August 20, 1931, Buchalter married Betty Wasserman, a British-born widow of Russian descent, at New York City Hall. Buchalter adopted Betty's child from her previous marriage. He could now add “family man” to his roster of personas.

Albert Anastasia

In the early 1930s, Buchalter created an effective process for performing contract killings for the national organized crime Syndicate. It had no name, but ten years later, the press dubbed it “Murder, Inc.” Syndicate bosses wanted to insulate themselves from any connection to these murders so Buchalter's partner, mobster Albert Anastasia, would relay a contract request from the Syndicate to Buchalter. In turn, Buchalter would assign the job to Jewish and Italian street gang members from Brooklyn. None of these contract killers had any connections with the major crime families. If they were caught, they could not implicate their employers in the crimes. Buchalter used the same killers for his own murder contracts also. The Murder Inc. killers were soon completing jobs all over the country for their mobster bosses.

Dutch Schultz crossed the Syndicate and ended up dead for his trouble.

In 1935, Buchalter arranged his most significant murder: the powerful New York gangster Dutch Schultz. Schultz had proposed to the Syndicate that New York District Attorney Thomas Dewey be murdered. Many Syndicate members hated Dewey, but they denied Schultz's request, knowing it would bring too much attention to organized crime. The easier fix was to kill Schultz instead, so they assigned the job to Buchalter. On October 23, 1935, Schultz was shot and killed in a Newark, New Jersey tavern.

The events that led to the downfall of Murder, Inc. began on September 13, 1936, when Murder Inc. killers, acting on Buchalter's orders, gunned down Joseph Rosen, a Brooklyn candy store owner. Rosen was a former garment industry trucker whose union Buchalter took over in exchange for ownership of the candy store. Buchalter had become angry with Rosen when he refused to leave town on Buchalter’s orders. Although no proof exists that Rosen was cooperating with District Attorney Thomas Dewey, Buchalter nevertheless believed it to be true. At the time, no one was indicted in the Rosen murder.

On November 8, 1936, Buchalter and Shapiro were convicted of violating federal anti-trust laws in the rabbit-skin fur industry in New York. While out on bail, both Buchalter and Shapiro disappeared. Five days later, both men were sentenced while absent to two years in federal prison. The two appealed the verdict, but in June 1937, both convictions were upheld. Before they could be taken into custody, the two men disappeared again. A $5,000 reward was offered for their capture.

On December 1, 1937, the fugitive Buchalter was indicted again in federal court, this time for conspiracy to smuggle heroin into the United States. The scheme involved heroin hidden in the trunks of young women and couples traveling by ocean liner from China to France, then to the port of New York. Buchalter bribed U.S. customs agents not to inspect the trunks.

On April 14, 1938, Shapiro surrendered to authorities in New York, but Buchalter remained a fugitive. Over the next two years, an extensive manhunt was conducted in both the United States and Europe, with reports of Buchalter hiding in Poland and Palestine. On July 29, 1939, Thomas Dewey requested that the City of New York offer a $25,000 reward for Buchalter's capture, citing a string of unsolved gangland murders. On August 24, 1939, Buchalter surrendered to FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover in front of a Manhattan hotel. The surrender deal was allegedly negotiated by the columnist and radio broadcaster Walter Winchell. It was later revealed that Buchalter had been hiding in New York City during his entire time as a fugitive.

After Buchalter was convicted on the federal narcotics trafficking charges, federal authorities turned him over to New York State for trial on labor extortion charges. On April 5, 1940, Buchalter was sentenced to 30 years to life in state prison on those charges. However, Buchalter was sent to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas to serve his federal sentence of 14 years for narcotics trafficking.

But soon, the deeds of Murder, Inc. would come back to haunt him. On May 9, 1941, Buchalter was arraigned in New York state court on the 1936 Joseph Rosen murder along with three other murders. Buchalter's order for the Rosen hit had been overheard by mobster Abe Reles, who turned state's evidence in 1940 and implicated Buchalter in four murders.

Mob "stool pigeon" Abe Reles

Reles's information also implicated Harry "Pittsburgh Phil" Strauss, Louis Capone, Mendy Weiss, Harry "Happy" Maione, Frank "The Dasher" Abbandando, and even Reles' childhood friend Bugsy Goldstein. All of these men were convicted and executed. Following these convictions, Reles' next target was Albert Anastasia, who had been co-chief of operations of Murder, Inc. Reles was to implicate Anastasia on the murder of union longshoreman Pete Panto. The trial, based solely on Reles' testimony, was set for November 12, 1941. Until then, Reles was under constant guard by six police detectives at the Half Moon Hotel on Coney Island. To protect the New York crime families from exposure, boss Frank Costello reportedly raised $100,000 to bribe these guards to kill Reles. In the early morning of November 12, 1941, Abe Reles fell to his death from a window at the Half-Moon Hotel on Coney Island. It is not known whether he was thrown or pushed out the window, or if he was trying to escape. A 1951 grand jury concluded that it was an accidental death, but suspicion remains about whether or not he was actually murdered. Because of his mob status as a "stool pigeon" and the circumstances surrounding his death, Reles gained another moniker after his death. Reles became known in a newspaper article as, "The Canary Who Could Sing, But Couldn't Fly."

"The Canary Who Could Sing, but Couldn't Fly"

Meanwhile, Buchalter was returned from Leavenworth to stand trial in Brooklyn for the Rosen Murder. After four hours of deliberation, the jury found him guilty of first degree murder. On December 2, 1941, Lepke was sentenced to death along with his lieutenants Emanuel "Mendy" Weiss, and Louis Capone. Buchalter's lawyers immediately filed an appeal, but the conviction and sentence were upheld by the New York Court of Appeals. His lawyers appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but they affirmed the conviction seven to none. His appeals were now exhausted.

When the Supreme Court confirmed Buchalter's conviction, he was serving his racketeering sentence at Leavenworth Federal Prison. New York State authorities demanded that the federal government turn over Buchalter for execution. On January 21, 1944, after many delays and much controversy, federal agents finally turned Buchalter over to state authorities, who immediately transported him to Sing Sing prison. Buchalter made several pleas for mercy, but they were rejected.

On March 4, 1944, Louis Buchalter was executed in the electric chair in Sing Sing. A few minutes before Buchalter's execution, his lieutenants Weiss and Capone were also executed. Murder, Inc. was now officially out of business.

DEATH IN THE GAS CHAMBER: 1924

The First Execution in the Gas Chamber

On February 8, 1924, the first execution by gas took place at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City as Gee Jon, a Chinese immigrant convicted of murder, was put to death – but things did not go as planned.

Gee Jon Executed at age 29

Gee Jon was born of Cantonese descent in China in 1895 and immigrated to the United States between 1907 and 1908 and spent most of his life in San Francisco’s Chinatown. As a young man, he became a member of the Hip Sing Tong, a criminal gang that dealt in narcotics and liquor. In 1922, territorial disputes with the Bing Kong Tong led to a bloody and brutal war between the tongs (Chinese gangs), spreading out across California and Nevada.

Tom Quong Kee, 74, was a laundry proprietor and a member of the Bing Kong Tong in Mina, Nevada. Hughie Sing, his American-educated apprentice of two years, set Kee up to be murdered by Gee Jon. On the night of August 27, 1921, Gee Jon knocked on the door of Kee’s residence. When the old man answered in his pajamas, Jon shot him with a .38-caliber Colt revolver. Unlike most tong murders, Jon and Sing were arrested and thanks to the anti-immigrant frenzy in the United States at that time, quickly arraigned and charged with murder.

Jon and Sing were defended by attorneys James M. Frame and Fiore Raffetto, but there was little defense to offer. After a quick trial, both were convicted and sentenced to death. Later, Sing's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment because he was only nineteen years old and Jon had committed the shooting itself. As luck would have it – bad luck as it turned out – a bill authorizing the use of lethal gas had passed the Nevada State Legislature in 1921, making Gee Jon the first person eligible to be executed by this method. Attorney James Frame argued that his sentence constituted cruel and unusual punishment, but his appeal was denied. The Supreme Court of Nevada instead complimented the state legislators for "inflicting the death penalty in the most humane manner known to modern science."

Problems with the planned execution began at once. The California Cyanide Company of Los Angeles was the only distributor of liquid cyanide in the western United States and refused to deliver it to Carson City because of liability concerns. The poison was used to eradicate pests from citrus groves in California, they said, it wasn’t meant to be used on people. But Warden Denver S. Dickerson had a way around the problem. He sent his assistant, Tom Pickett, to Los Angeles to personally pick up twenty pounds of the lethal gas, which was contained in a mobile fumigating unit that cost $700.

More problems occurred when it came time to carry out the execution. Four guards who did not want to participate in the process abruptly resigned. Then, officials first attempted to pump poison gas directly into Gee Jon’s cell while he was sleeping, but without success because the gas leaked from the cell – endangering everyone else in the prison.

It was realized that an actual “gas chamber” was needed, so a makeshift room was set up in the prison’s butcher shop. At least one cat was used to test the lethal effectiveness of the chamber to make sure that it worked correctly. It did. So, plans were made for Gee Jon to be strapped to a chair in the chamber, which was eleven feet long, ten feet wide and eight feet high.

On February 8, Gee Jon was placed in the chamber and tied to the chair.  A small window next to the wooden chair allowed witnesses to look inside. The attendees to the execution included news reporters, public health officials, and representatives of the U.S. Army. Gee Jon wept as he was placed on the chair until the captain of the guards told him to "Brace up!"

The makeshift gas chamber at the Nevada State Prison. Note the insect fumigator used to spray the gas, aimed at the chair when the inmate was strapped. 

At 9:40 a.m., the fumigating pump sprayed four pounds of hydrocyanic acid into the chamber. The weather was cold and humid outside and because an electric heater had failed, the temperature in the chamber was only 52 degrees, not the ideal 75 degrees, causing some of the acid to form a puddle on the floor.

Gee Jon appeared to lose consciousness in about five seconds, with his head continuing to nod up and down for the next six minutes. He was completely motionless after ten minutes. Some of the witnesses momentarily thought they smelled the odor of almond blossoms, a telltale sign of cyanide, leaking from the chamber. As panic ensued, the warden cleared the area and opened a vent so that the poison gas could be pulled out the witness room and the makeshift chamber. Regardless, prison staff members refused to enter the room until the puddle of acid on the floor had evaporated. It would be another three hours before Gee Jon’s body was removed from the chamber and taken to the prison hospital. A group of seven doctors declared him dead, but did not conduct an autopsy on the body for fear that remaining gas in his body might be released.

After the execution, the Nevada State Journal proclaimed, "Nevada's novel death law is upheld by the highest court — humanity." However, the San Jose Mercury News printed, "One hundred years from now Nevada will be referred to as a heathen commonwealth controlled by savages with only the outward symbols of civilization."

The editor of the newspaper in San Jose was not the only one unhappy with how things had gone with the first ever execution by gas. Warden Dickerson reported to Nevada governor James G. Scrugham and the state legislature that he believed the use of lethal gas was impractical. He believed that a firing squad was still the best method of execution.

But the gas chamber soon came into regular use (30 more times in Nevada) after methods were improved and safety issues addressed. The gas chamber continued to be used for executions for decades to come, only being largely replaced by lethal injection in the late twentieth century. It still remains a back-up option in Arizona. 

The Colt Family Curse

THE COLT FAMILY CURSE

The Winchesters were not the only Gun-makers Haunted by History

On this day, January 4, 1847, American gun-maker Samuel Colt sold his first revolver pistol to the U.S. government. It would be the start of a rocky rise to fortune that would marred by tragedy and death – such tragedy that rumors abound that the family was cursed. Colt’s story is one of American ruthlessness and the creation of an efficient assembly-line production that would make his guns affordable for every American. He never saw the creation of his mass-market guns as leading to a more efficient way for people to kill one another. He also had no qualms at selling his guns to both sides in armed conflicts around the world. Some say that this lack of scruples was what led to a curse that haunted his family almost from the beginning.

Samuel Colt sold his first revolver to the U.S. government on January 4, 1847

In the midst of his rise to power, trouble plagued the family. As Colt’s fortunes rose, he and his wife took on a lavish lifestyle at Armsmear Manor in Hartford, Connecticut. But it came with a price – Colt died prematurely at the age of only 48 from gout, a disease that in those days disproportionately affected rich gluttons, his children died young and death claimed a number of members of the family. In time, many began to doubt that Colt had actually invented the revolving pistol, as he claimed.

Samuel Colt – did the scores of deaths attributed to his guns lead to a family “curse?”

But the most infamous and arguably cursed member of the Colt clan was Samuel’s brother, John C. Colt, a failed businessman and frustrated writer, who was convicted of the brutal murder and mutilation of a business associate named Samuel Adams. The gruesome crime was so heinous that it inspired Edgar Allan Poe to write "The Oblong Box." Colt was tried and sentenced to death but managed to escape the hangman by committing suicide – or did he?

On Sept. 26, 1841, a long box in the cargo hold of a ship called the Kalamazoo was cracked open, letting loose a horrid stench. What was found was a man’s corpse — dismembered, hog-tied and naked but for a blood-soaked shirt. The body was what remained of a printer named Samuel Adams. His murderer, it turned out, was John C. Colt, brother of firearms inventor Samuel Colt. His capture and trial made this murder the crime of the century, inspiring short stories by two legendary authors — “The Oblong Box,” by Edgar Allan Poe, and “Bartleby, The Scrivener,” by Herman Melville.

The authorities discovery the gruesome murder when they opened the crate at the New York docks. The crate was eventually traced back to the building where the murder occurred – and where Colt and Samuel Adams had their offices. 

The dispute between Colt and Adams arose from a disagreement over an accounting book Colt had written. Adams was his printer, and believed that Colt lied about how much he had sold the books for, thereby cheating Adams out of profit. It was eventually determined that the dispute was over a difference of $15.35. Adams went to confront Colt at his office on the corner of Chambers Street and Broadway. According to Colt, after a heated argument, Adams punched him in the face, bloodying his nose, and then slammed him against a wall, choking him with his own cravat. Colt said that he then seized a nearby hammer and struck Adams in the head, almost instantly killing him.

Colt scrambled to clean up the evidence of the crime, soaking up the blood with a towel and then looking for a place to hide the body. A box he found was too small, so he hog-tied Adams’ corpse, propped it on a chair in an upright position, lifted it over his shoulder, and, using all his weight, pushed at it until he had “forced the stiffening corpse to form the shape of the container.” He then had the box shipped to a fictional address.

When word got out that Adams had gone missing and that he was last seen entering their building, Colt’s landlord, who had heard much of this activity, alerted the authorities. After a search of Colt’s office uncovered a hatchet and odd splatters on the wall, they hunted down the box on the ship and made their grisly discovery.

Colt was quickly arrested and while he admitted the killing, he claimed self-defense, but the grisly and elaborate nature of the murder caused great doubt among the investigators. During his trial, the prosecution brought Adams’ severed head into the courtroom, where a doctor held it up for the jury to see, then, keeping it in his lap, illustrated how Colt’s hatchet fit a hole in the skull perfectly. It was a macabre but effective method and the jury found Colt guilty of “willful murder.” He was sentenced to hang.

Samuel Colt had done what he could for his brother’s defense, but it was to no avail. Even so, he refused to let him die without a struggle. The case was appealed to every court with jurisdiction in New York. The verdict was upheld. Samuel Colt spread a lot of money around the politically powerful of the city, but the murder was just too well known. No one would chance the outrage that would occur if Colt’s sentence was commuted.

In the days leading up to his scheduled hanging, there were reportedly several attempts to bust him out, including one by a friend who dressed in female clothing so that they could switch, and Colt could then walk out disguised as a woman.

With his last appeal exhausted, Colt was scheduled to die at 4:00 p.m. on November 18, 1842. He requested permission to marry his long-time lover Caroline Henshaw on the last day of his life. The warden gave permission and the bride was accompanied to Colt’s cell by Samuel Colt and Reverend Henry Anthon, who performed the ceremony. Witnesses included Sheriff Monmouth Hart and Justice Merritt, who had presided over Colt’s trial. After exchanging vows, the couple was allowed an hour of privacy. Curiously, when Caroline left the prison, they say, she was smiling. Colt requested solitude for his final hours.

The wedding ceremony of Samuel Colt and Caroline Henshaw took place in the condemned man’s cell at the New York Tombs. 

On execution day, as Colt made his way toward the gallows, the prison rang suddenly with shouts of “Fire!” Bells went off, prisoners screamed and when the hysteria subsided, Colt was found dead in his cell with a knife through his heart. It seemed that Colt had beaten the hangman by committing suicide.

Sheriff Hart, New York’s top law enforcement officer at the time, was on hand for the hanging. But upon receiving word of Colt’s death, he behaved in a curious way. He first sent for the prison doctor to pronounce Cold dead, then hastily convened a coroner’s jury to rule the cause of death as suicide. Less than three hours after the body had been found, it was carried out of the prison, taken the graveyard behind St. Marks Church and buried.

A few days later, Mrs. Caroline Henshaw Colt vanished from New York, never to be seen again. Yet her family never asked the authorities to search for her.

Was the body in the prison cell actually that of John Colt? In his 1874 memoirs, Warden Charles Sutton insisted that it was, and Reverend Anthon also stated that the body was Colt’s. But days later, it was revealed that several prisoners escaped during the fire. Was Colt among them? Rumors spread that Samuel Colt had smuggled in a corpse to place in his brother’s cell in order to help his brother escape.

Sightings and incidents in the years that followed gave credence to the stories that Colt had somehow survived his brush with execution. Even Edgar Allan Poe was part of the mystery. A few years after Colt’s death, the writer – a friend of Colt’s – allegedly received a manuscript from Texas. It was unsigned but Poe recognized the handwriting as John Colt’s. When he took the manuscript to Knickerbocker Magazine editor Lewis Clark, he was shown an identical manuscript. Clark said that he also believed the handwriting was John Colt’s.

In 1852, Colt’s friend Samuel Everett reported meeting John Colt in California’s Santa Clara Valley. Everett claimed that his old friend lived there with his wife, Caroline Henshaw.

And while such stories may be of the dubious nature of those who claimed to meet John Wilkes Booth in the years after the Lincoln assassination – and the killer’s death – they served to keep the mystery of John Colt alive and to maintain the intrigue of the Colt family curse.