Amazing True Stories of Execution Blunders (11 page)

Edward J. Mares

Unlike the traditional method adopted by the military, in 1951 one American state employed five civilians as a firing squad and equipped them with brand new rifles. Their identities were concealed by selecting them in secret; moreover they were positioned behind a thick stone wall, their weapons protruding through gun ports. The condemned man was tied to a chair some little distance away with a heart-shaped target pinned to his chest. When the order was given, all the squad members fired with abysmal results; whether through humane reluctance or sheer incompetence, all the bullets struck the right-hand side of the victim’s chest and death came with agonising slowness as Mares bled to death.

James Rodgers, robber and murderer, faced the firing squad in Utah in 1960. Upon being asked whether he had any last requests, he replied, ‘Yes – a bullet-proof vest!’

Private Eddie Slovik

On 31 January 1945 in a little French village, a young army deserter was tied by his shoulders, knees and ankles by parachute cord to a six-inch square post to face a firing squad. He was Eddie Slovik, the only American soldier to be executed in that manner since 1864 and the only American soldier shot for desertion in World War II. Found guilty by court martial, his appeal rejected, summary justice had to be delivered, and seen to be delivered, as a warning to others.

Behind the post to which he had been secured was a stone wall, and in front of that was a parallel wall of thick heavy boards to act as a backstop; bullets fired from M-1 service rifles were capable of killing a man two miles away, and should any of the bullets miss the target and the post, they would penetrate the wooden boards rather than rebounding from the stone wall into the assembly of officers and paraded troops. A short crossbar had been nailed to the post at shoulder height to stop the corpse slipping down to the ground after the execution.

Twelve marksmen from Slovik’s regiment had been selected to form the firing squad, a task which all understandably found distasteful; in fact one member reportedly asked his commanding officer whether he could avoid being a member of the detail, only to receive the dry reply, ‘Not unless you want to take his place.’ The men were issued with rifles, one being loaded with a blank round as a salve for the conscience, but this was hardly credible for there is little or no recoil with a blank, nor is its cartridge ejected afterwards, as is that of a live round.

After prayers had been said, a black cap was drawn down over Slovik’s head and, in accordance with Army regulations, the order for his execution was read out. Eventually the dreaded sequence of orders was given, the major in charge shouting, ‘Squad – Ready

– Aim – FIRE!’

As the salvo of bullets found their mark, the man’s body jolted, then slumped forward in the restraining cords. But he wasn’t dead, witnesses reporting that they saw him struggle up at least twice. The regimental doctor, padre and other officers went forward to find that although all eleven bullets had struck Slovik, not one had pierced his heart. Checking with the stethoscope, the doctor established that breathing was still present, albeit shallowly, and the heartbeat was faint and fluctuating. Meanwhile each member of the firing squad was ordered to hold their rifles behind them out of their sight, so that they could be reloaded as before: eleven bullets plus one blank. When that time-consuming task had been completed, the officer in charge asked the doctor either to pronounce the man dead or to move away so that a second salvo could be fired, he and the squad no doubt feeling overwhelming relief as the medic said, ‘The second volley won’t be necessary – Private Slovik is dead.’

Perhaps the young soldier did lapse into unconsciousness when hit by the first shots; perhaps the terrible suspense-filled aftermath wouldn’t have been necessary had a paper target been pinned over Slovik’s heart; but that suggestion was rejected by the officer in charge as ‘tending too much towards the theatrical.’ What a pity.

Shortly before his execution on 29 October 1618 Sir Walter Raleigh met his barber, who said, ‘Sir, we have not curled your hair this morning.’ Raleigh replied jocularly, ‘Let them comb it that shall have it!’

On reaching the place of execution on Tower Hill he saw his friend, Sir Hugh Ceeston, who complained that he had been prevented from accompanying him on the scaffold. ‘Prithee, never fear,’ exclaimed Raleigh, ‘I shall have a place!’

Once there, he felt the edge of the axe and commented, ‘This is a sharp medicine, but it will cure all diseases!’

Wallace Wilkerson

One man who did have a target over his heart was Wallace Wilkerson, in 1879. He was allowed to sit in a chair unbound while facing the muzzles of the firing squad’s weapons. The orders were given to fire, then, as reported in the local newspaper, ‘the instant the bullets struck, he got to his feet, partially turned and, taking two steps forward, fell on his left side onto the ground. On the instant of striking the ground he turned on his face, exclaiming, “My God! My God! They missed it!”’ How wrong he was.

Found guilty of murdering his wife in 1910, Henry Thompson was sentenced to be hanged. While in the condemned cell he learned that the infamous wife-murderer Dr Crippen was to be hanged on the day following his execution. ‘Ah, well,’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ll be senior to him in the other shop!’

So unconcerned about his coming fate was he, that he commented to one of the prison warders guarding him that he expected his execution to be over quickly, adding ‘Summat like that!’ and then demonstrating it by standing on one of the chairs and leaping off.

Gas Chamber

John Redfern

As described earlier, small sacks of cyanide capsules are dropped into jars of sulphuric acid when the executioner rotates the rod to which they are attached, thereby creating the deadly fumes in gas chambers. But in 1943, when John Redfern was strapped into one of the chairs in the death chamber in Raleigh, North Carolina, the executioner operated the mechanism – but the capsules did not fall. He tried a second time, with the same negative result. While the victim waited, his nerves doubtless at breaking point, a frantic conference with the warden ensued, and a highly dangerous course of action was decided upon. Taking a desperate risk – and no doubt a deep breath – the warden opened the airtight door to the death chamber for the executioner to dash inside; free the sacks of capsules with one hand, then flee, the warden slamming the door behind him just in time as the noxious gases started to rise. And within minutes John Redfern was dead.

In 1992, after eating his last meal, which consisted of Kentucky Fried Chicken, two pizzas, a bag of jelly beans and a cola drink, murderer Robert Alton Harris entered the gas chamber saying, ‘You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everybody dances with the Grim Reaper!’

Guillotine

M. Chalier

Although the guillotine was mechanically simple in its operation, great care had to be taken to ensure that both it and the scaffold on which it was mounted were on an even keel; the slightest diversion from the horizontal would result in the blade jamming in its grooves as it descended. M. Chalier found this out to his cost when, having been secured and lying flat on the plank with his neck held firmly in place by the lunette (the iron collar) between the two uprights, the blade was released. However, instead of descending at an ever-increasing rate, the blade fell more and more slowly, eventually coming to a halt, but not before making a superficial wound in the back of his neck.

The executioner, Ripert, desperately hauled the blade to the top again, hoping against hope that the first descent would have cleared whatever had initially obstructed it, but it was not to be

– again the blade leisurely descended, only succeeding indeepening the wound rather more. At the executioner’s bungling inefficiency, and their horror at the sight of the victim’s ever-increasing suffering, the crowd’s vociferous abuse now became more and more threatening and Ripert, his nerves rapidly approaching breaking point, tried twice more, then gave up; pulling a knife from his belt, he proceeded to decapitate the now badly mutilated M. Chalier. And if the expression ‘to have a bad hair day’ existed in revolutionary France, its meaning must have suddenly become clear when, on attempting to hold his victim’s head on high, the wig came loose and he found that his victim was completely bald – so he had to display it to the crowd by holding it by the ears!

One cannot but admire the panache of the French aristocrat who, when offered a glass of rum to fortify him before being taken to the guillotine, waved it away with the comment, ‘No thanks – I lose all sense of direction when I’m drunk!’

M. Lacoste

Another of the guillotine’s many clients was M. Lacoste who, like M. Chalier, was also bald. This complicated matters for the assistant executioner, whose job it was to stretch the victim’s neck ready for the blade by pulling on the hair or, failing that, the ears. But M. Lacoste had very small ears and so, although being held down by the iron collar, he managed to shake his head free of the assistant’s grasp and sink his teeth into the man’s hand just as the blade descended. The head duly fell; as usual the blood jetted all over the assistant’s hands and legs; and he looked down into the basket to see the end joint of his severed thumb still gripped firmly between the teeth of the grimacing head.

Condemned to death in 1793 by the French Revolutionary Council, the Duc de Chatelat had previously attempted to commit suicide in his cell by cutting his veins with a piece of broken glass. On the scaffold, the executioner offered to dress his wounds to stop them bleeding.

‘Don’t bother,’ the aristocrat said unconcernedly. ‘I’ll be losing the rest of it now.’

M. Collot

When one is to be guillotined, one does not expect to be delayed any longer than absolutely necessary – and certainly not all day. Similarly, when one is a spectator, one doesn’t see why, just for voicing a small criticism or two, that one should be raked in to take part in the proceedings – and then lose one’s own life into the bargain! Yet that is precisely what happened in Paris on 19 August 1792.

It all started when Monsieur de Paris, the executioner Charles-Henri Sanson, was ordered to behead a M. Collot, sentenced to death for forgery. The guillotine had been assembled on its usual site in the Place de Grève and as the horse-drawn cart containing the executioner and his victim arrived, they were greeted by a tremendous clamour from the large crowd waiting there, the outcry consisting of shouts of ‘To the Carrousel!’ The cart continued to advance, but a man seized the bridle and said that the will of the people was that the execution should take place, not there, but in the Place de Carrousel, opposite the palace of the late king, and that the executioner was to transfer his ‘tools’ there. After gaining the acquiescence of the Town Hall authorities, a procedure which took some considerable time, Sanson complied; the guillotine was dismantled and conveyed to the new location.

Meanwhile Collot, who up to now had been calm, began to struggle violently, and even more complications arose when it was discovered that most of the carpenters who had been paid to erect the guillotine on the first site and assist the executioner, had gone home on seeing it being moved away. However, members of the crowd, determined not to be cheated out of watching the execution, willingly, though amateurishly, assisted in the assembly of the machine on its new site.

By now it was nearly sunset and the felon, fearing appalling mistakes could be made in the half-light, begged that his execution might be adjourned until the next day, but the request, with its implication of further delay, was met with jeers of derision, the crowd’s attitude becoming threatening. One of those nearest the scaffold, a beardless young man wearing the red cap of the Revolution suddenly stepped forward, shrieking that Sanson was a traitor and that he should taste the guillotine himself unless he ‘operated’ without further ado. The executioner explained that without his assistants, he could not dispatch the victim.

‘You can find as much help as you require here,’ exclaimed the man. ‘The blood of aristocrats cements the happiness of the nation, and there is not one man in the crowd who is not ready to lend you a hand!’

A general cry of assent followed his words, but Sanson, noticing that despite their vocal willingness, those surrounding the scaffold had started to back away, hastened to accept the man’s offer, and prevented him from re-joining his comrades.

All was then ready for the execution, but when Collot was led to the scaffold steps he refused to mount them, and Sanson had to carry the struggling man on to the boards. On seeing the dark outline of the guillotine, Collot’s resistance became more desperate and he shrieked for mercy. The crowd grew silent, and the young ‘volunteer’ had by now turned very pale. At last, after a final struggle, the victim was strapped to the vertical plank, which was then pivoted horizontally so that his neck lay beneath the pendant blade, but his contortions were so violent that an assistant had to sit on him.

Sanson now told the young man that he could not furnish better proof of his patriotism than by taking a leading part in the execution, and he handed him the rope which released the blade. At his bidding the young man gave a tug; the blade fell, and the head dropped into the waiting basket. But this was not all, for of course it was essential to show the head to the multitude after decapitation, and the bloodthirsty onlookers were not slow in reminding Sanson that they were waiting. Determined to teach the zealous revolutionary a lesson, the executioner explained to him what he had to do. Reluctantly the young man lifted the head by the hair and advanced to the edge of the scaffold, but as he was raising his arm to display the bloody trophy to his triumphant comrades, he suddenly staggered and fell back. Charles-Henri, thinking that he had only fainted, went to his assistance – but the young man’s violent emotions had proved too much for him and had brought on a heart attack: he was dead!