The Palm Beach Post

Federal death penalty: Florida ‘King of Rumrunners’ among those who’ve met that fate

March 31st, 2009 by Holly Baltz
Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing

Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing

A jury has sentenced Ricardo Sanchez Jr. and Daniel Troya to death for killing the Escobedo family of four along Florida’s Turnpike in St. Lucie County.

The federal death penalty is different from the state of Florida’s death sentence in many ways.

Only 51 inmates are on federal Death Row in Terre Haute, Ind. Florida houses 392. Crimes punishable by the federal death penalty include genocide, killing witnesses, in a trial, terrorism and murder committed as part of a drug enterprise.

Florida has executed 67 men and women since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976. The feds have executed three men since Congress reinstated it in 1988. Some of the more famous of those executed were Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of sabotage for selling atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.

Here’s some of those executed since 1927:

James Horace Alderman

James Horace Alderman

1927: James Horace Alderman, known as “King of the Rumrunners,” was intercepted by a Coast Guard vessel 30 miles off Florida’s coast. His boat was laden with alcohol during the era of Prohibition. As Alderman boarded the vessel, he pulled out his pistol. When two Coast Guardsmen and a Secret Service agent rushed him, he shot them all dead. Later, his execution was scheduled for the Broward County Jail, but the county wanted it to occur on federal property. So a makeshift gallows was erected at the Coast Guard hangar.

“When this is read I will have passed over the brink of eternity into the Great Beyond. “I would like to state through the medium of The Miami Herald that I am feeling fine, physically, mentally and spiritually. With the wonderful comfort and strength that I received from Jesus Christ, I am assured that when tomorrow comes I will go with smiles of comfort on my face. … “As I sit here in my cell I can look back and see just what caused me to be where I am today. Drunkenness first starts a young man to gambling — and swearing grows on him — and from that step he becomes hardened in his heart in envy and hatred toward mankind. Then, as he grows up, he becomes what you would call educated to crime. Bootlegging and smuggling is the next step. And there are other angles of downfall that lead to the devil. “The money I made neither did me nor my dear family any good. We thought it did, but no. You can see what it has done — a death sentence by hanging — and a broken-hearted family.”

Read the 1929 Time magazine account of his hanging, here. SERIAL KILLER TAKES REVENGE ON PRESIDENT TAFT 1930: Carl Panzram, 36, murdered the laundry foreman at the U.S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kan., after a spree of killings across the country.

Panzram

Panzram

Panzram was a prolific thief but frequently caught and imprisoned. Utterly defiant, Panzram attack guards and refuse their orders. The guards would retaliate with beatings and punishments. He often escaped from prisons, once getting revenge on William H. Taft, whom Panzram believed was responsible for jailing him. Panzram had served a jail sentence from 1908 to 1910 at Leavenworth Military Prison for larceny shortly after enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1907. Taft had approved the sentence as secretary of war. In August 1920, Panzram robbed Taft’s New Haven home, stealing a large amount of jewelry and bonds, as well as Taft’s .45 caliber handgun, which Panzram used in several murders. In 1920, Panzram committed his first murders.

He lured sailors in New York away from bars, got them drunk, shot them and dumped their remains into the river. He claimed to have killed 10 in all. He was stopped only when the vessel he was in was shipwrecked near Atlantic City, N.J.; his last two potential victims escaped to parts unknown. Panzram then went to Africa, where he raped and killed an 11-year-old boy. In 1928, Panzram was arrested for burglary and held in Washington, D.C. During his interrogation and jail time he voluntarily confessed to killing two boys. The prisoner wrote his autobiography.

“In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings, I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons and last but not least I have committed sodomy on more than 1,000 male human beings. For all these things I am not in the least bit sorry.”Carl Panzram

In light of his extensive criminal record, he was handed a 25-year sentence to be served at Leavenworth. “I’ll kill the first man that bothers me,” Panzram told the warden; on June 20, 1929 he battered to death with an iron bar Robert Warnke, foreman of the prison laundry. Panzram was sentenced to death. He refused to appeal, threatening to kill human rights groups that attempted to appeal on his behalf. Panzram was hanged on Sept. 5, 1930. When asked by the executioner if he had any last words, Panzram barked:

“Hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard! I could kill 10 men while you’re fooling around!”

DEATH SENTENCE FOR KILLING FBI AGENT; HANGING HOBBYIST CARRIES OUT EXECUTION

1936: George Barrett, 55, was called “Diamond King” because he often carried a handful of diamonds. He was the first person to receive the death penalty by hanging under a congressional act that made it a capital offense to kill a federal agent.

Nelson Klein

Special Agent Nelson Klein

Barrett shot and killed Special Agent Nelson B. Klein on Aug. 16, 1935. Klein and Special Agent Donald McGovern had tracked Barrett to College Corner, Ind. Barrett was wanted for car theft and interstate transportation of stolen vehicles among other crimes. When ordered to surrender, Barrett ran behind a garage and started shooting, seriously wounding Klein, who later died. Even though mortally wounded Klein returned fire, hitting Barrett in both legs. Upon his release from the hospital, Barrett was tried in Indianapolis. Indiana had adopted the electric chair in 1913 and was not prepared for a hanging execution.

Phil Hanna, an Illinois farmer who was shocked by the specter of a bungled hanging, had taken up hanging as a hobby, experimenting and practicing with plow lines and straw dummies. When Hanna perfected a method, he volunteered his services to any state that needed him. Indiana called upon Hanna to carry out the mandated execution.

EXECUTED UNDER ‘LINDBERGH’ KIDNAPPING LAW; HE DIDN’T KILL ANYONE

Gooch

Arthur Gooch

1936: Arthur Gooch, 27, helped kidnap two police officers in Texas and released them in Oklahoma. His crime fell under the newly revised Lindbergh kidnapping law, and he was the first man hanged under the new law. He became the only person who has ever been “legally hanged” at Big Mac, Oklahoma State Prison.

Due to be hanged at midnight on June 19, Gooch persuaded the warden to get him a radio so he could listen to the heavyweight fight between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling. However, the fight was postponed 24 hours.

Gooch commented, “Won’t need a radio if it’s going to be Friday night — I’ll be up there somewhere; think I’ll float over and grab myself a seat right above the ring!”

AT THE END OF A ROPE FOR 25 MINUTES

1936: Earl Gardner, 30 — In December 1935 a San Carlos Apache with a fierce temper, Earl Gardner, killed his wife, Nancy, and his baby boy, Edward. He had previously killed a fellow tribesman in 1925, had served several years in prison, but had been released.

After killing his wife and child, he quickly challenged the government to “get a good rope and get it over with.” Everyone wanted him executed, especially the members of his tribe. Consequently, he was tried, convicted and sentenced to die by hanging. In a letter to historian Douglas D. Martin, a former reporter for the Phoenix Gazette, Jack Lefler, wrote the following about the July 13 execution:

The hanging of Earl Gardner was a very dramatic story and an exciting one to cover. . . . He was a juvenile delinquent and mean as hell, especially when loaded with tulapai. Marshal McKinney deputized everybody in sight, including reporters. We strutted the streets of Globe carrying rifles and stacking them in the corner of a bar when we went in for a drink. The gallows was an abandoned rock crusher in a canyon below Coolidge Dam. Earl was brought from the jail at Globe during the night and spent his last hours sitting in a car with the Rev. Uplegger. . . . I tried to interview them but they wouldn’t talk. Reporters, officers and other witnesses lounged around campfires in the sandy bed of a wash through the night. There was quite a bit of boozing and horsing around. Earl went to the gallows without apparent concern and died a ghastly death. I was crouched in a corner of the crusher on a pile of gravel and damn near went through the trap after him. Earl’s shoulder struck the side of the trap and broke his fall. He hung at the end of the rope gasping for 25 minutes until Maricopa County Sheriff Lon Jordan, a giant of a man, stepped down through the trap and put his weight on Earl’s shoulder to tighten the noose and shut off his breathing.

BANK ROBBERY GOES AWRY, THANKS TO DENTIST’S KEEN SHOTS

Anthony Chebatoris

Anthony Chebatoris

1938: Anthony Chebatoris, 39: Chebatoris was the only person executed for a capital crime in Michigan since it became a state but was tried and executed by the federal authorities. Michigan abolished the death penalty more than 90 years before his execution. In 1937, Chebatoris and fellow prison inmate, Jack Gracy, planned to rob the Chemical State Savings Bank in downtown Midland, Mich. On Sept. 29, Gracey entered the bank first with a sawed-off shotgun under his long coat. Gracey approached bank president Clarence Macomber and shoved the shotgun into his ribs. Macomber and Gracey grappled with the weapon. Chebatoris, who was standing back from the fight, aimed his revolver at Macomber, wounding him in the shoulder. Paul Bywater, the head teller, came to the front counter and Chebatoris shot him in the stomach. Chebatoris and Gracy fled the bank in their black two-door Ford.

Meanwhile, when Dr. Frank Hardy, a dentist on the second floor of the bank building heard the gunshots, he grabbed a deer rifle he kept by the window in case of a bank holdup and fired at the getaway car. One of Hardy’s shots hit the driver and the car careened into a parked car. Chebatoris and Gracey got out of the car and mistaking Henry Porter, a truck driver, as a police officer, Chebatoris seriously wounded him. When Gracy tried to commandeer a truck, Hardy shot him in the head, killing him instantly. Then Chebatoris ran along some railroad tracks and tried to get away by stealing a car, but was stopped by Sheriff Ira Smit

GREETING CARD EXEC ABDUCTED IN CHICAGO BY LUMBERJACK, ACCOMPLICE

Seadlund

Henry Seadlund

1938: Henry Seadlund, 27: was a lumberjack convicted of kidnapping a wealthy greeting card manufacturer, Charles Sherman Ross, on his way home from a dinner party in Chicago. Ross and Seadlund’s accomplice, James Atwood Gray, were found dead in the Wisconsin woods northwest of Spooner after Seadlund was captured by FBI agents at a race track with $14,000 in ransom money in his pockets.

Charles Sherman Ross

Charles Sherman Ross

Ross was taken driving his sedan in Chicago with his former secretary and friend Florence Freihage in the front seat. Ross pulled over to let pass a car that had been following them for some time. The car pulled over in front and Seadlund put a gun to the driver’s side window. They left Freihage behind, huddled on the floor and without the $85 she offered the kidnappers to not take Ross.

James Gray

James Atwood Gray

Seadlund and Gray hid out with Ross in Emily, Minn., for two weeks while a series of ransom notes were sent to his family. Then they moved on to an underground pit near Spooner.

Typewriter case holding ransom money

Typewriter case holding ransom money

The Ross family complied with the ransom demand, sending $50,000 via Harley motorcycle rider. The night of the day that Seadlund picked up the ransom money, Seadlund claimed Gray tried to kill him and in a scuffle, he, Gray and Ross all fell into the dirt hideout pit. He said both appeared to be dead, so he unloaded his pistol into Gray and shot Ross once in the head because he said he could not revive Ross and believed Gray could not recover. Seadlund was convicted under the “Lindbergh Kidnapping Law.”

The trapdoor to the pit where Ross and Gray were found dead

The trapdoor to the pit where Ross and Gray were found dead

Proof of life

Proof of life: Ross with a newspaper

ANOTHER SLAYING OF FBI AGENT DURING POST OFFICE ROBBERY

Special Agent Wimberly Baker

Special Agent Wimberly Baker

1938: Robert Suhay, 25, and Glenn Applegate, 34, were hanged at the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan. The two were convicted of killing FBI Special Agent Wimberly W. Baker in a gunfight at a Topeka, Kansas, post office. On April 16, 1937, Baker was mortally wounded when he and another Agent were trying to apprehend two bank robbers, Suhay and a man believed to be Alfred Power. The next day, Baker died from his wounds. The agents had been in the U.S. Post Office at Topeka, Kansas, when a man they identified as Power entered. As Baker tried to arrest him, Suhay began firing on Baker. Both robbers opened fire, which was returned by an agent who had come to help Baker. Both Suhay and his companion escaped; however, they were caught later that night in Plattsmouth, Neb. They admitted their participation in the gun battle and were removed to Kansas City, Kansas. Suhay and his associate, who was found to be Applegate, were convicted of killing Baker.

The courthouse and jail where Charles was hanged

The courthouse and jail in Juneau, Alaska, where Nelson Charles was hanged

TOOK BUTCHER KNIFE TO MOTHER-IN-LAW: LIQUOR INDUCED? 1939: Nelson Charles, 37, was hanged in Juneau, Alaska, for murdering his mother-in-law, Cecilia Johnson, in Ketchikan the previous year. Charles was a Native American fisherman, the father of a young daughter and a veteran of World War I.

Charles was known as a peaceful, easy-going man, except that when intoxicated he seemed to have a liquor-induced mania. Johnson’s murder occurred on Sept. 4, 1938, on a hillside behind Tatsuda’s Store. Johnson, 58, was a Native. She and her husband were in Ketchikan along with their adult daughter, Rosie; Nelson Charles, Rosie’s husband; and Nelson and Rosie’s young daughter. The family, who was staying with friends, seemed to be celebrating a successful fishing harvest.

According to testimony, Johnson had been steadily drinking whiskey on her husband’s fishing boat for at least three days before her death. On the afternoon of Sept. 4, 1938, Charles and Johnson were seen going up the hill behind the store. Shortly after 6 that evening, Charles phoned the Ketchikan police from a public phone, saying he had stabbed his mother-in-law with a butcher knife. When police arrived, Charles took them to Johnson’s body. She had been stabbed in the back and chest and had been sexually molested with an empty bottle.

Charles said that his mother-in-law had been drinking and had said she was going to kill him; that she had tried to stab him with a butcher knife; and that he stabbed her only after this attack. The trial took four days. George Sundborg, then a young reporter on The Juneau Independent, recalls seeing the U.S. Marshal and his deputies pore through the manuals in order to learn their new duty: hanging.

“They of course had never conducted a hanging, and I think they got a few books out of libraries somewhere, probably from the U.S. Marshal Service, to tell them how a hanging was to be set up and carried through. And I know that they had done some dry runs with the trap that they built, and had carefully calculated the weight of the victim - of the accused, so that he wouldn’t be dropped so far as to behead him, which sometimes happens in a hanging, I learned at that time.”

Charles faced his death calmly. Federal law required that the execution be witnessed by at least 12 people. The witnesses received printed invitations, which looked almost like engraved wedding invitations, printed on blue paper tickets.

At the hanging, Charles’ arms and hands were bound tightly to his sides with white straps. His legs were also bound. The Marshall asked, “Is there anything you’d like to say, Nelson?” Charles spoke, his voice a half-sob, whispering: “I am innocent of killing my mother-in-law,” he murmured. “I don’t want to hang; I still say I am innocent.”

Assisted by two men, Charles shuffled inch-by-inch to the edge of the trap. He then refused to proceed and had to be lifted onto the center of the trapdoor. The Marshal took a small black hood and began to pull it over Charles’ head. Too small, it got caught on Charles’ right ear. “Fix my ear,” he asked softly. The newspapers reported these as Charles’ last words.

GERMAN SABOTEURS LAND IN FLORIDA, ON LONG ISLAND

Haupt

Haupt

Heinck

Heinck

1942: Herbert Hans Haupt, Heinrich Harm Heinck, Edward John Kerling, Hermann Otto Neubauer, Richard Quirin, Werner Thiel: This group of German saboteurs landed on America’s East Coast in June 1942 in order to disrupt key parts of American industry during World War II.

Quirin and Heinck landed at Amagansett on Long Island from a German submarine on June 13 and the others landed in Florida on June 17 at Ponte Vedra Beach.

Their targets? Hydroelectric plants, aluminum factories, railroad tracks, bridges and canals as well as New York City’s water supply system.

Dasch

Dasch

Burger

Burger

George John Dasch, 39, led the first team of Ernest Peter Burger, Heinck and Quirin. The second team leader, Kerling, 32, was in charge of Haupt, Neubauer and Thiel.

Both teams were told to plant bombs in Jewish-owned department stores and in locker rooms at major passenger rail stations. They were to bury munitions crates on the beach, where they could be dug up later, then set up phony identities in various cities. They planned to meet in Cincinnati on July 4.

These were to be the first of many sabotage teams slipped into America.

Heinck

Heinck

Quirin

Quirin

Dressed as German marines so they would not be shot as spies, Dasch’s team came ashore in an inflatable rubber raft.

While crates were buried, a Coast Guardsman headed in Dasch’s direction. The saboteur told the Coast Guardsman that they were stranded fishermen.

Burger approached and asked a question in German.

Dasch then made the Coast Guardsman an offer. “Forget about this and I’ll give you some money and you can have a good time.” The Coast Guardsman held out a few times but eventually accepted. The team joined commuters on the train to New York.

Meanwhile, Seaman 2nd Class John Cullen ran back to the Coast Guard station and roused colleagues. They hurried back to the beach, but the Germans were gone. Then they found the munitions crates. By the time Dasch and his team were in Manhattan, the FBI was on the case.

The team bought clothes at Macy’s, then split into pairs. That evening, over dinner, Dasch and Burger talked about their worries for Germany and for their families there. They began to realize they had identical intentions: to betray the operation to the Americans. Dasch would go to Washington, drop in on FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and tell him everything. Burger would wait at the hotel and pacify Heinck and Quirin.

Kerling

Kerling

On June 18, Kerling and his team landed on Ponte Vedra Beach. They buried their crates, walked to Route 1 and caught the Greyhound bus for Jacksonville. Within hours, all four were on trains, bound for Cincinnati or Chicago.

Dasch arrived in Washington and called the FBI. He told his story for 13 hours. Before he finished, FBI agents had Burger lead them to a clothing store, where he met Quirin and Heinck. All three were arrested. Burger told the FBI he was in on Dasch’s surrender.

The FBI had a little more trouble rounding up the second team, since Dasch knew only that both groups were supposed to meet in Cincinnati on July 4. The only help he could offer was the handkerchief that listed German contacts in America in invisible ink. The FBI lab figured out how to make the script visible, and agents began watching the contacts.

Thiel

Thiel

Neubauer

Neubauer

Kerling, traveling with Thiel, had gone to New York. There, he had contacted one of the names on the handkerchief. FBI agents spotted Kerling, followed him to a bar, where he met Thiel, and both men were arrested.

Haupt had gone back to his parents in Chicago and told them everything. He used some of his sabotage money to buy a new car and proposed to his girlfriend. Then he dropped into the local FBI office to clear up his draft problems. He explained that he had been away when he should have registered. When Haupt left, agents followed him. Haupt told them where Neubauer was.

Neubauer had spent most of his time in movie theaters. When he got back to his hotel after a film, FBI agents were waiting for him. Only after all his colleagues were in jail did the FBI officially arrest Dasch. He begged to be jailed with his colleagues, so they would not realize he had turned them in.

The trial, held in secret at the Justice Department, occupied most of July 1942. The prosecution asked for the death penalty, but it had a hard time making its case against Dasch and Burger.

On Aug. 8, six of the eight German agents were electrocuted at the District Jail in Washington, D.C. Burger was sentenced to hard labor for life; Dasch was given 30 years. In 1948, Dasch and Burger were deported to Germany.

KILLED FBI AGENT IN RAID ON MOONSHINE STILL

William Pugh

William Pugh

1943, Clyde Arwood killed a federal agent during a moonshine raid and became the only person ever executed in Tennessee on a federal warrant. He was electrocuted in Lauderdale County on Aug. 14, 1943.

William Pugh was shot and fatally wounded with the help of two other officers as he arrested an ex-convict Arwood, whose moonshine still had been found and destroyed the previous day by FBI men.

Arwood had acknowledged that it was his still but wanted to tell his mother good-bye before starting with the officers to jail. Pugh accompanied him to the door and stood outside while Arwood went in. When Arwood returned to the door he had a shotgun and shot Pugh in the face at close range.

Two other officers shot at Arwood as he ran off, then carried Pugh to a hospital where he died in a short while.

GAS CHAMBER FOR KILLING OF CHEYENNE MAN

1945, Henry Ruhl, 36, was executed April 27, 1945 by gas chamber at Wyoming State Penitentiary for murder and robbery of a Cheyenne man on a government reservation.

2 MEN EXECUTED AT SEPARATE TIMES FOR SAME MURDER

1948, Austin Nelson, 28, and Eugene LaMoore, both black, were separately convicted and executed for the same crime, the December 1946 murder of a 52-year-old (white) Juneau, Alaska, storekeeper named Jim Ellen.

Nelson, who did odd jobs around Juneau, was arrested for the murder after a check written by him to Ellen was found on the store counter following the robbery/murder. Nelson was convicted on circumstantial evidence, including that of a witness who reported seeing him in the victim’s store on the night of the murder.

No one witnessed the actual murder, nor was a murder weapon found, not even the straight-edged razor witnesses testified that Nelson had once owned. Nelson lacked money to pay for an appeal and there was no provision for a public attorney in post-conviction proceedings.

‘OLD SPARKY’ BORROWED FOR EXECUTION FOR NAVY

1948, David Joseph Watson, 23, was electrocuted by Florida’s “Old Sparky” at Raiford Prison in Starke for murder on the high seas at the request of the U.S. Navy.

ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ: 2 GO TO GAS CHAMBER

1948: Samuel Richard Shockley, 36, and Miran Edgar Thompson, 31, were gassed to death Dec. 3, 1948, at the State Penitentiary in San Quentin, Calif. These two survived an incident known as the “Battle of Alcatraz” and the “Alcatraz Blastout” when six prisoners overpowered cell-house officers to get access to weapons and keys. Their plan began to fall apart when the inmates found they did not have the key to unlock the recreation yard door. Instead of giving up, Bernard Coy, Joe Cretzer, Marvin Hubbard, Shockley, Thompson and Clarence Carnes decided to fight. Eventually Shockley, Thompson and Carnes returned to their cells, but not before the officers taken hostage were shot at point-blank range by Cretzer (encouraged by Shockley and Thompson). One officer, William Miller, died from his injuries. A second officer, Harold Stites (who stopped the third escape attempt), was shot and killed attempting to regain control of the cell house. About 18 officers were injured. The U.S. Marines were called out to assist, and the two-day “battle” ended. Shockley and Thompson received the death penalty. Carnes, 19, received a second life sentence.

1948, Carlos Romero Ochoa, 27, was executed in the gas chamber for murder Dec. 10, 1948, at the State Penitentiary in San Quentin.

2ND EXECUTION FOR SAME MURDER IN ALASKA

1950, Eugene LaMoore was hanged April 14, 1950, at the U.S. Jail in Juneau, Alaska. He was convicted of murdering Jim Ellen, a Juneau storekeeper during a robbery. Austin Nelson was convicted of Ellen’s murder and sentenced to die. But LaMoore signed a confession stating he participated in the robbery in which Nelson killed Ellen. During the trial, LaMoore retracted his statement, saying he confessed because he wanted to delay Nelson’s execution. Nelson was put to death in March 1948. LaMoore followed him two years later.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

1953, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were the only two American civilians to be executed for the crime of espionage during the Cold War. They denied all charges and insisted they were innocent, but they were executed in New York’s Sing Sing Prison in 1953, despite numerous protests in the United States and abroad. Ethel was 37 and Julius was 35. They were convicted of conspiring to steal U.S. atomic secrets for the Soviet Union. The prosecution’s case rested mainly on the testimony of David Greenglass, Ethel Rosenberg’s younger brother and himself a convicted spy. Greenglass, who worked on the atomic bomb at the top-secret Manhattan Project in Los Alamos during World War II, had been convicted of giving the Soviets information about nuclear research. He was spared execution in exchange for his testimony. He spent 10 years in prison and was released in 1960.

Heady

Heady

Hall

Hall

1953: Carl Austin Hall. 34, and Bonnie Heady, 41, were convicted of the kidnapping and murder of 6-year-old Bobby Greenlease in 1953, and the subsequent disappearance of half of the $600,000 ransom his family futilely paid for his release. On Oct. 30, 1953, Hall and Heady pleaded guilty before federal Judge Albert L. Reeves in Kansas City, Mo. On Nov. 19, 1953, a federal jury recommended the death penalty after only an hour and eight minutes of deliberations. Fifteen minutes after the verdict was announced, Reeves sentenced both of them to be executed on Dec. 18, 1953. Hall and Heady were executed together in Missouri’s lethal gas chamber at the State Penitentiary, Jefferson City, Mo., on Dec. 18, 1953. Hall was pronounced dead at 12:12 a.m. and Heady was pronounced dead twenty seconds later. The Missouri authorities had installed a second chair in the gas chamber, so Hall and Heady could be executed simultaneously. Heady was the only woman to ever be executed in the gas chamber. It’s said that Heady had chirped on cheerfully as she was led into the gas chamber, and while she was being strapped in, until Hall finally told her to be quiet.

Puff

Puff

PUMPED BULLETS INTO FBI AGENT IN STAIRWELL 1954, Gerhard Arthur Puff, 39, was found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death in the electric chair for killing FBI Special Agent Joseph John Brock during a standoff in which Puff was being sought as one of the agency’s Top 10 Fugitives. As agents surrounded Puff and his accomplice in a bank robbery, George Arthur Heroux, Puff encountered Brock in a stairwell and pumped two bullets into his chest. On Aug. 12, 1954, Puff was electrocuted at Sing Sing Prison, Ossining, New York.

Brown

Brown

KIDNAPPED,KILLED MOTHER OF 2 BOYS, WIFE OF CHEVY EXEC 1956, Arthur Ross Brown, 30, an ex-convict from San Jose, Calif. kidnapped, robbed, raped and murdered a woman named Wilma Allen. She was the mother of two boys — 11 and 8 years old and the 34-year-old wife of the president of the Allen Chevrolet Company of North Kansas City, Mo., William R. Allen, Jr. Brown was in the midst of a nationwide crime spree, when he killed her. Brown abducted his victim from Kansas City and murdered her in a field in rural, Johnson County, Kan. He kidnapped her in an upscale Brookside shopping district in south Kansas City. Then he raped and murdered her and disposed of her body. 1957, George and Michael Krull, ages 34 and 32, were brothers from Pennsylvania, convicted of the kidnapping and rape of a 53-year old woman from Chattanooga, Tenn. She was not killed. The rape occurred at Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Park, a place under the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal government. They were electrocuted at the Georgia State Prison at Reidsville. KILLED A DOCTOR FOR DRUGS, LAST EXECUTION BEFORE MCVEIGH 1963, Victor Feguer, 28, was hanged at the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison. He was convicted of kidnapping Iowa doctor Edward Bartel and taking him across state lines to kill him.

Feguer

Feguer

Feguer was a drifter, a native of Michigan. In the summer of 1960, Feguer rented a room at a decrepit boarding house in Dubuque, Iowa. Soon after arriving, Feguer phoned Dr. Edward Bartels, claiming that a woman needed medical attention. When Bartels arrived, Feguer kidnapped him. Feguer killed Bartels in Illinoise with a single gunshot to the head. A few days later, Feguer was arrested in Montgomery, Ala., after trying to sell Bartels’ car. It is believed that Feguer chose Bartels, a 34-year-old father of two, at random from the local Yellow Pages. Authorities believe that Feguer had kidnapped and killed Dr. Bartels in order to gain access to any drugs that Bartels may have carried to treat patients. Because Feguer crossed state lines, federal charges were filed against Feguer. In his defense, Feguer claimed that a drug addict from Chicago, whom Feguer met in Dubuque, had actually murdered Bartels. Feguer claimed that he killed the drug addict and dumped his body in the Mississippi. However, authorities could not find any evidence that this other person ever existed. Feguer was sentenced to death by hanging. Feguer submitted an appeal, which was denied. At that point, only President John F.Kennedy could have commuted the death sentence. Iowa’s governor, Harold Hughes, a death penalty opponent, along with Feguer’s attorney, contacted Kennedy to request clemency for Feguer. Kennedy thought that the crime was so brutal that he denied their request. OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBER MCVEIGH, KILLER OF 168 2001, Timothy McVeigh, 33, was executed for the April 19, 1995, attack in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people and wounded hundreds more. It was the first federal execution since 1963. Witnesses said McVeigh lifted his head and made eye contact with them before the drugs took effect. Then he looked at the ceiling. He died with his eyes open. Federal officials declared the man responsible for the worst act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history dead by lethal injection at 7:14 a.m.

Garza

Garza

‘DRUG KINGPIN’ EXECUTED FOR ORDERING MURDERS OF OTHER TRAFFICKERS 2001, Juan Raul Garza, 44, was sentenced to death in August 1993 under a federal “drug kingpin” statute. Garza was convicted of murdering or ordering the murders of three other drug traffickers. He was also found guilty of importing thousands of pounds of marijuana from Mexico and reselling it to dealers in Texas, Louisiana and Michigan. He was executed by lethal injection at Terre Haute, Ind. SAYS SARIN GAS DAMAGED BRAIN; CONVICTED OF RAPING, KILLING PRIVATE

Jones

Jones

2003, Louis Jones, 53 was convicted of kidnapping 19-year-old Pvt. Tracie Joy McBride from a Texas Air Force base, raping her and beating her to death with a tire iron In his request for executive clemency, Jones argues he suffered brain damage from Sarin nerve gas wafting from an Iraqi weapons depot destroyed by American troops after the 1991 Gulf War ended. Louis Jones, Jr. died of lethal injection on March 18, 2003, at the federal penitentiary at Terre Haute, Ind.

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