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Thread: Death penalty book examines Iowa's 46 executions

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    Death penalty book examines Iowa's 46 executions



    Iowa's death penalty ended Feb. 24, 1965, almost 46 years ago. But its reinstatement has been considered by the Iowa Legislature at least a dozen times since. And the hanging deaths of 46 men still intrigue historians and inspired Dick Haws, a retired journalism professor at Iowa State University, to write and publish "Iowa and the Death Penalty," a book that examines every case.

    "I think Iowa is blessed without capital punishment," says Dick, 67, of Ames. "That isn't why I wrote the book."

    Dick’s fascination with the death penalty began after Charles Starkweather of Lincoln, Neb., killed 11 people in 2 months and was executed June 25, 1959. And Dick wasn't alone. The Starkweather story inspired Stephen King (His book, "The Stand"), Bruce Springsteen (His song, "Nebraska") and a host of moviemakers ("The Sadist" in 1963, "Badlands" in 1973, "True Romance" in 1993, and "Natural Born Killers" in 1994 among them).

    "Growing up in Nebraska, you assumed that capital punishment was the law of the land," Dick says.

    He learned otherwise when he came to Iowa to teach 30 years ago after a career that included working for newspapers in Lincoln, Madison and Milwaukee, Wis., and Kansas City. Mo.

    On sabbatical from ISU about a decade ago, Dick researched Iowa's death penalty and wrote the manuscript. When publishers, including University of Iowa Press and ISU Press, balked at publishing the book, contending it didn’t have a large enough market, he stored it. A year ago he decided to self-publish — the book is available at Lulu.com ($25 for the 328-page book or $9.99 for electronic download) and soon to be on Amazon.

    As Dick dug through public records and newspaper accounts, one aspect of Iowa's capital punishment stood out.

    "The method," he says. "Iowa never did anything but hanging, and look at how difficult that was to get right. And the difficulty they're having with lethal injection now."

    Flip through the book, arranged in chronological order with one case per chapter, and you learn 1 man died almost instantaneously (his heart stopped after a minute) while another's ruptured neck artery spewed blood as 3 witnesses collapsed.

    That 2nd example was Walter "Dusty" Rhodes of Iowa City, hanged May 7, 1940, after being convicted of the shotgun death of his wife, Mabel. One of Iowa's more sensational cases, Rhodes was involved with another woman when he rigged a shotgun with dynamite that exploded and decapitated his wife when she fired it.

    Iowa had more executions (4) in 1938 than any other year, including John Mercer who murdered Tipton grocer and vigilante Robert Sproat during a shootout. "Saved" by a Quaker woman, Mercer's solitary grave sits along County Road F44 a couple miles east of West Branch.

    Victor Feguer, who killed a Dubuque doctor, became the last man executed in Iowa (March 15, 1963) before the state ended the death penalty in 1965, along with New York, West Virginia and Vermont.

    Because "Iowa and the Death Penalty: A Troubled Relationship 1834-1965," is written around the facts in a journalistic manner, it's a wonderful reference to Iowa's history with the death penalty.

    You learn how opinions went with the times, how sheriffs reluctantly pulled the lever, what the men ate for last meals.

    "The people up close to the death penalty," Dick says, "tended to oppose it."

    (source: The Gazette)

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    Heart Ache Continues 67 Years After Father’s Murder



    MARION — Sherron Watkins vividly remembers her father, but the trauma of his murder when she was but 5 years old still aches deep in her heart 67 years later. The hanging of his killer haunts her, too.

    Sherron told me her story after reading my Jan. 31 column about the new book, “Iowa and the Death Penalty” by Dick Haws, retired journalism professor at Iowa State University. The book examines the cases of all 46 men put to death in Iowa, including Stanley Kaster who shot Sherron’s father, Glenn Winchell, in the face Sept. 25, 1943, with a shotgun because Kaster wanted his pistol.

    “Another outlook on the book of people executed in Iowa,” Sherron wrote in an e-mail, “would be the way the murders greatly changed the lives of the family members of the deceased.”

    For Sherron, the murder was an immediate wake-up call that there was no Santa Claus. Her father had played the jolly man in red for parades.

    It was a loss of hair, a breakout of eczema and her body retaining fluids due to the trauma.

    It was hearing kids at school taunt, “You have no daddy,” and constantly drying tears in her eyes.

    It was a school field trip to the Bremer County Sheriff’s Office in Waverly to come upon the noose used to hang Kaster.

    “That noose hung in the sheriff’s office all those years,” Sherron says, comfortable and finally at peace in her Marion apartment. “I could hardly keep from crying. I didn’t know that noose was there.”

    Kaster’s hanging on Dec. 29, 1944, came more than 15 months after the murder. He’d been on the lam for two weeks after shooting Winchell, who was patrolling the Waverly electric plant as he’d been hired to do after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

    The entire community was in panic until Kaster was caught, Sherron says. Her mother, Mildred, put at least five locks on their door. Mildred wanted Kaster hanged. Sherron wasn’t so sure.

    “When I was a teenager and became a Christian … in my heart, I thought that man shouldn’t have been hung. He had a family. Maybe he could have done some good.”

    She pauses, to again think how her father’s death “burst all the colorful balloons in my life.”

    “Now that I’m older,” Sherron adds, “I think he needed to be hung. He was bad. I still don’t know. I have so many questions. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for pulling the lever to kill a man. I don’t know.”

    Her older brother, Gary, still won’t talk about it. Her mother died in 1997 at the age of 83.



    Glenn Winchell had prepared a neighborhood grocery store, planning to resign his guard duties to operate it. Mildred followed those plans, learning from Glenn’s uncle how to butcher meat.

    “I don’t ever remember her going to bed, she was butchering all night,” Sherron says. “My mom worked so hard, when she died she had no fingerprints left.”



    But, Mildred eventually realized a dream, moving to Cedar Falls to become a beautician.

    Piano lessons and playing provided much needed therapy for Sherron as a teen. So did ice skating and roller skating.

    Sherron has married, divorced and lost a longtime husband. She gave birth to four children but helped raise dozens more. From 1984 to 1994 she had her sewing machine shop in Anamosa. She’s made a dozen difficult “Grandmother’s Flower Garden” quilts. She knits and crochets and, every Memorial Day, elaborately decorates her father’s grave in Waverly.

    Sometimes, Sherron says, the grass has grown so tall around the headstone she uses grass clippers to trim it.

    Time, it seems, has forgotten Glenn Winchell. But his girl never will.

    “Our father was a clown,” she says, smiling. “He’d entertain all the kids out by our house. He volunteered at the hospital. I’d hold his hand as we walked up there.”

    At 72, Sherron still wants her daddy.

    http://easterniowalife.com/2011/02/2...80%99s-murder/

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