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Thread: Notable California Executions

  1. #1
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Notable California Executions




    Dead certain about his date with the hangman

    Dallas Egan, a Depression-era murderer, admitted his guilt and 'gave no quarter and wanted none.' What was unusual was his insistence on being hanged. He even danced a jig as he entered San Quentin's death chamber.

    Back in the days when execution by lethal gas or hanging came "swift and sure" for San Quentin's condemned — long before lengthy appeals and federal court rulings rendered death sentences academic — death row inmates could only dream of ways to "cheat the hangman."

    One young killer, William E. Hickman, tried diving off his bunk bed onto the concrete floor of his cell. It didn't work. Caryl Chessman, the "Red Light Bandit," was a pioneer of execution delays. Chessman was convicted in 1948, and he studied law and wrote a series of appeals that put off his date with cyanide gas for 12 years.

    But one capital criminal stands apart in the history of executions in California. Dallas Egan, a Depression-era murderer, admitted his guilt and "gave no quarter and wanted none," even when it came to carrying out his death sentence. His crime was a garden-variety robbery-killing, vicious but not extraordinary. What was unusual was his insistence on being hanged.

    On the afternoon of July 23, 1932, the habitual criminal and a gang of accomplices held up a jewelry store at 768 S. Vermont Ave. Egan forced the proprietor, Sidney Broder, and a clerk into the back room. While Egan kept both men covered with his Springfield rifle, his partners (reportedly "two white men and a Negro") gathered up $5,000 worth of jewels.
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    At just the wrong moment, a man approached the store's front window. Squinting against the sun's reflected glare, he peered inside, close to the open door. William J. Kirkpatrick, 76, a tourist visiting from Michigan, was innocently checking his watch against the clocks behind the glass.

    Egan pointed his rifle at Kirkpatrick from the rear of the store and shouted at him to get behind the counter. But Kirkpatrick, who was deaf, couldn't hear him. When the man didn't budge, Egan pointed his rifle at him and fired. The window shattered and Kirkpatrick fell backward. Spectators screamed and Egan's gang ran through the doorway, over Kirkpatick's body and into a getaway car. The shop owner ran out, jumped into a stranger's car and chased them for five blocks before giving up. Soon the coroner arrived.

    Apprehended later, Egan protested lamely, "I gave the man full warning." But he later admitted he was set on killing anyone who got in his way. Having already served a nine-year sentence at Folsom State Prison that included a long stretch in solitary, he had "come out embittered against society … with the intention that society owed me a duty, and I was going to collect that duty."

    Egan pleaded guilty to Kirkpatrick's slaying and was sentenced to death, while his accomplices were tried separately. At his sentencing before Judge Isaac Pacht — a jurist with a strong aversion to the death penalty — Egan resisted his attorney's request for a second, "sanity trial." "I don't know whether or not I'm insane," he told Pacht. "We're all a little crazy; even you, Judge. But I don't want nine years' punishment, or 20 years. I want to pay in full!" Dallas Egan's only request was that he be hanged at San Quentin, not Folsom. Pacht reluctantly agreed.

    On death row, Egan quietly awaited his execution. But CaliforniaGov. James Rolph — a controversial figure who had applauded a recent lynching in San Jose — took interest in Egan's case and seemed bent on ordering a clemency hearing. Via prison authorities, Egan thanked him but would have none of it: "I can think of nothing better than the drop through the gallows. I'm a criminal at heart and I want to be hanged."

    Egan then wrote to the state Supreme Court, issuing this demand: "Should Mr. William T. O'Shaughnessy, my true and faithful attorney, overrule my voice … fine him $1.98 and court costs for having a heart too big for his Irish soul."

    The night before he was to be hanged, Egan asked for some whiskey. Rolph responded by telling prison officials to give him "all the whiskey he can safely stand up under," enough to take the prisoner through the night and the morning of his doom. "Take care of him, and say goodbye for me, too," the governor said. Eight ounces of high-quality Kentucky bourbon was duly delivered to the death cell.

    Egan's last morning, Oct. 20, 1933, began with a good breakfast, some final sips of whiskey and a cigar "tilted at a ridiculous angle," according to one witness. The previous night he'd played a record of "Ida, Sweet as Apple Cider" over and over in his cell, telling guards: "I'll dance out to that tune." (Some newspapers misquoted this statement with the more formal "I want to dance out to the gallows.")

    When the hour came, he really did dance an Irish jig as he entered the death chamber handcuffed between guards. He then walked up the 13 steps, energetically and alone. Offering no final words, he plunged through the trapdoor.

    Rolph's generosity toward Egan resulted in a two-day controversy. Some Bay Area preachers chided him for it, but Rolph had the last word: "We would be pretty small when we sent a man into eternity if we could not grant his last request."

    http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...,1122988.story

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Thought this was pretty cool.

    May 2, 2016

    Today marks 70 years since the beginning of the Battle of Alcatraz

    Seventy years ago today, six inmates at Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary set into motion the bloody escape plan that would become known as 'The Battle of Alcatraz.'

    On May 2, 1946, the ringleader of the plan, Bernard Coy, initiated the prison break. For weeks, he'd been watching the guards and searching for weaknesses — and he found one. The gun gallery was caged off with bars, but Coy reckoned he could pry the bars apart and push himself through to reach the weapons. He began losing weight, 20 pounds, so he could make the tight squeeze.

    A little after 1:30 pm, Coy's plan went into action. As guard Bill Miller opened the gate to conspirator Marvin Hubbard's cell, Coy and Hubbard grabbed the guard and beat him unconscious. Coy took Miller's keys and sprung three more conspirators before climbing to the top of the unguarded gun gallery. At the top, he used purloined pipes and pliers to spread the cage bars just wide enough to push his body through.

    When the next guard came along, Coy used the guard's necktie to strangle him into unconsciousness. With both guards incapacitated, Coy raided the gun gallery for weapons and ammo. Armed and free, Coy and his five fellow escapees readied for the next part of their plan: Using the guards as hostages to negotiate their way onto a boat to San Francisco.

    And then their plan started to fall apart. Coy tried every key on Miller's key ring, but none opened the cell block door. Unbeknownst to the convicts, Miller had hidden the crucial key in the toilet of the cell where he was being held.

    Across the water at 2:07 pm, San Francisco residents heard the first wail of the prison siren, only used during dire emergencies. Thousands gathered along the waterfront to watch the battle unfold.

    Back on The Rock, Coy had opened fire with his rifle on the guards gathering outside the cell block. Panicked, one of his conspirators, Joseph Paul Cretzer, decided he had to kill the hostages so they wouldn't be able to testify against them. With a stolen revolver, he shot into the cell containing the captive guards, fatally wounding Miller.

    Police, military and prison guards began the assault from outside, attacking the cell block with rifle-launched grenades as night fell. The sky was lit by the tracers from the artillery.

    "The island was a ring of fire in the night," Chronicle reporter Edward McQuade wrote.

    On the morning of May 4, the smoke settled and the guards stormed the cell block. Inside, they found three dead conspirators (Cretzer, Coy and Hubbard) and three survivors who surrendered. All told, five died, three escapees and two guards.

    But two more deaths would follow. Two of the surviving conspirators were sentenced to death (and later executed in the gas chamber of nearby San Quentin). The third was Clarence Carnes, the youngest inmate in the history of Alcatraz, imprisoned for killing a garage attendant during an attempted robbery when he was 16. It was determined Carnes tried to stop the other conspirators from murdering the guards; he was given 99 more years instead of death.

    Carnes stayed at Alcatraz until its closure in 1963.

    http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/articl...pe-7381389.php

    Joseph Paul Cretzer one of the escapees killed in the battle was on the FBI's most wanted list before he was arrested.

    Sam Shockley and Miran Thompson whom were the other escapees were executed on December 3rd 1948 by Gas Chamber.

    Sam Shockley was the son of Richard "Dick" Shockley and Anna Bearden. He was born in Arkansas City, Arkansas.Shockley was arrested for bank robbery and kidnapping in Oklahoma and sentenced to life imprisonment in May 1938. Examined by prison psychiatrists, Shockley was found to have an unstable character, he was found to have a low IQ of 54, and was prone to violent rages.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Shockley

    Miran Thompson was serving life plus 99 years for kidnapping, and for the murder of Amarillo, Texas police officer Detective Lemuel Dodd Savage. He also pulled armed robberies in New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma. He had notoriously bad luck when getting caught, but extremely good luck at escaping from jail. He had been arrested eight times and held in small jails, and had escaped every time. Thompson had a record of eight escapes from custody by the time he was transferred to Alcatraz in October 1945.

    Detective Savage was shot and killed while transporting Thompson and Elber Day to jail. Savage had arrested the two when he found them burglarizing a store. He searched the two suspects before transporting, but missed a handgun hidden in Thompson's pants. During the transport, Thompson produced the gun and shot Savage. As Thompson fled, he kidnapped three other people before being apprehended.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miran_Edgar_Thompson

    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Juanita 'The Duchess' Spinelli: The first woman legally executed in Calif. ran an SF crime school

    Juanita Spinelli was reported to be a former pro wrestler, madam and trained nurse, though none of these can be confirmed.

    A hearing aid mistaken for a weapon may be what ruined Juanita Spinelli’s gang. The botched robbery-turned-slaying of a San Francisco barbecue stand owner kicked off a chain of events that led to “The Duchess” becoming the first woman legally executed in California 79 years ago.

    Fearing one of her gang would talk to police about the killing, Spinelli had 19-year-old gang member Robert Sherrod murdered and thrown in the Sacramento River in swim trunks to make it look like a drowning. But that only scared one of the killers into confessing.

    3 stays of execution and a San Francisco celebrity’s pleas for mercy couldn’t save The Duchess. Nor could her fellow death row inmates at San Quentin, who offered to die in her place. On Nov. 22, 1941, Spinelli wore a picture of her daughter – the same one she blamed for the crime – on her way to the gas chamber.

    2 of Spinelli’s co-conspirators were executed a week later, marking the end of a short-lived, small-time San Francisco gang with an enigmatic leader who schooled young criminals on how to rob drunk people.

    It’s hard to know where the biography ends and the legend begins with Spinelli, who came to San Francisco after fleeing the so-called Purple Gang she ran with in Detroit. She was reported to be a former pro wrestler, madam and trained nurse, though none of these can be confirmed. Her husband may or may not have been killed during an earlier smuggling job in Mexico.

    She picked up the “Duchess” moniker at some point in Detroit, but it isn’t clear how much of that was based on admiration or irony.

    A more reliable detail about her is that she was a highly skilled knife thrower. In April 1940, San Francisco police raided her Fillmore District apartment that doubled as a crime school, finding several homemade knives and daggers, plus a wooden gun.

    Spinelli taught her knife-wielding skills to her impressionable young followers for a series of crimes including gas station robberies, auto thefts, street muggings and drunk rollings. The latter involved her daughter Gypsy, around 18 years old, luring drunk men out of bars and into their home. This is the same home where Spinelli’s underage sons lived with them: 15-year-old Anthony and 9-year-old Vincent.

    Except for her common-law husband Mike Simeone, Spinelli’s gang members were exclusively very young, ignorant and without much agency.

    This was by design to preserve her power over her gang – a true criminal matriarch, she kept the gang’s money and weapons in between jobs. She gave orders not to kill their victims unless absolutely necessary to avoid intense police scrutiny.

    “She was a bit like Fagin but not as good,” said San Francisco crime historian Paul Drexler, who wrote about Spinelli in his book, “Notorious San Francisco.” “She was living in San Francisco with 3 young idiots, for lack of a better word.

    “She had this theory, I guess. If you don’t do big crimes, you stay under the radar.”

    The three idiots Drexler references, who were all recruited by Gypsy, were Albert Ives, 23; Gordon Hawkins, 21; and Robert Sherrod, 19. All three of them were there on April 8, 1940 when Ives pointed a gun at Leland Cash as he closed down his barbecue stand at Ocean Beach.

    Police believed that Cash, who was hard of hearing, reached for the hearing aid in his pocket to understand what the robbers were saying. Ives, possibly thinking Cash was armed, shot and killed him.

    “Oh God, Beatrice, I’ve been shot!” Cash was reported to yell at his wife, who was locking the stand’s rear door.

    Beatrice Cash ran to her fallen husband to find a pool of blood and a car speeding away. She couldn’t identify the killers, and the gang may have been able to get away with it.

    But Sherrod was distressed by the unexpected killing and talked about it openly in the following days – so much so that Spinelli and the others thought he might report them to the police. And that was not an option.

    The gang agreed they had to kill Sherrod, but they had some difficulty doing it. Ives later said they failed on several attempts to lure him into fatal situations, including going out for “target practice” and taking a walk along a levee where they would run him over.

    “I wouldn’t say these were brilliant criminals,” Drexler said. “They wanted to shoot him, but she wanted to make it look like a suicide or an accident or something.”

    They finally succeeded after drugging Sherrod’s whiskey at a Sacramento hotel room party, then knocking him unconscious with a blow to the head – an act Spinelli considered merciful because, according to Ives, she "liked the boy."

    The gang then drove Sherrod to the Freeport Bridge, dressed him in swimming trunks, and threw him into the Sacramento River to make it look like an accidental drowning.

    But police recovered Sherrod’s body soon enough to suspect a homicide, and the search for the killers was on. This time, it was Ives who lost his nerve.

    Fearing he would be next on the Duchess’s hit list as they cased new victims in Truckee, Ives placed an anonymous call to San Francisco police, who had arrested a suspect in Cash’s killing.

    “That fellow didn’t kill Cash,” Ives said on the call. “We’ll send a bullet from the gun that did to prove it.”

    Ives eventually led the police to him and the rest of the gang, where they were all arrested. A ballistics test matched Ives’ gun to the one used in Cash’s killing. Ives confessed to everything, saying Spinelli gave him the gun.

    A Sacramento jury convicted Spinelli, Ives, Hawkins and Simeone of murdering Sherrod, and all were sentenced to die in the gas chamber except for Ives – he was sent to an asylum for the mentally ill. Because of the verdicts, there was no trial for the murder of Cash.

    Lorraine “Gypsy” Spinelli wasn’t charged, despite the efforts of her mom – the Duchess tried to blame the Sherrod killing on her and Simeone.

    3 times between June and November 1941, Spinelli was to arrive at San Quentin State Prison to be executed, and three times she and her gang members got a last-hour reprieve from Gov. Culbert Olson, pending further information.

    By the governor’s own words, Spinelli’s gender had much to do with the delays. While the death penalty had been legal in California as early as 1851, no woman had been executed since.

    (The only previous known case of a woman’s execution in California came in 1851, when vigilantes hanged a Mexican American woman over the Yuba River after she killed a man who broke into the home she shared with her husband. Her name was believed to be Josefa, but a plaque in Downieville links her to Spinelli by calling her Juanita.)

    Sympathy for Spinelli extended to her fellow San Quentin Death Row inmates. Over 300 of them pledged to sign a petition asking Olson to spare her the death penalty. Some said they were willing to draw straws to be executed in her place.

    “After establishing a worthy and universally commendable record, a 100-year record, of never executing a woman, the State should not break that record,” the inmates’ petition said.

    Olson said he tried to find a reason to commute Spinelli’s sentence to life imprisonment, but he could not: “Perhaps that hope was extraordinary because of the fact that the condemned person is a woman,” he said.

    A half-hour before the fourth scheduled execution, Sally Stanford, a former San Francisco madam who went on to become mayor of Sausalito, tried to save Spinelli again with a petition to the state’s Court of Appeals. But it was no use: “I just did it to help the poor sucker,” Stanford said.

    A day after eating turkey in her cell on Thanksgiving, Spinelli was executed in the gas chamber in front of 65 journalists and 23 guards. Simeone and Hawkins were executed a week later.

    Clinton Duffy had just begun serving as warden at San Quentin a year before Spinelli’s execution, and hers was among the first of 90 he presided over even though he opposed the death penalty and advocated against it.

    Years later Duffy wrote that Spinelli was the "coldest, hardest character, male or female, I have ever known." Yet he didn’t spare his own misgivings.

    “The Duchess was a hag, evil as a witch, horrible to look at, impossible to like,” wrote Duffy. “But she was still a woman, and I dreaded the thought of ordering her execution.”

    (source: Greg Keraghosian is an SFGATE homepage editor----sfgate.com)
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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