Friday, May 18, 2018

10 Who Lost Their Heads (or Nearly Did) When Hanged

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman


Take your time,” serial killer Herbert Webster Mudgett told his executioner before he was hanged. “Don't bungle it.” (LINK 1)

Mudgett's concern was warranted. There's a reason judges sentence the condemned to “hang by the neck until dead.” If things go awry and their necks are not broken in the fall from the gallows, they may survive at the end of the rope for several minutes as they strangle to death.

In the United States alone, 85 of 2,721 hangings conducted between 1890 and 2010 were “botched.” (LINK 2)

The trick, hangmen eventually learned, is to calculate the length of the drop according to the condemned person's weight. Too short a drop can cause strangulation. Too long a drop can cause decapitation. Sometimes, the decapitation can be “internal,” meaning the neck is broken, but the head does not separate from the body. Hanged criminals who experience internal decapitation may be said to have nearly lost their heads.

The men and women on this list lost their heads or nearly lost them when hanged.

10 Robert Goodale (?-1885)


The first hangman to write his memoirs, James Berry (1852-1913) of Heckmondwike, Yorkshire, conducted 130 hangings. Not all of them went off without a hitch. When Robert Goodale stepped onto the gallows on November 30, 1885, his drop into eternity cost him his head. An investigation of the manner of Goodale's death included a discussion of such matters as the “elasticity” of the “government ropes” and the “correct position for the eyelet or thimble of the noose.” Berry's idea concerning the matter was that the noose's eyelet ought “to be placed behind the left ear,” unless, of course, the hangman were left-handed, in which case it could “be equally well positioned under the right ear.” Despite his botched hangings, Berry didn't retire for seven years after Goodale's horrific execution. (LINK 3)

Goodale's victim was his wife, whom he suspected of infidelity. They were fond of staying overnight in Wisbech. When he returned alone on September 16, he aroused his neighbors' suspicion, and their search turned up his wife's body at the bottom of a well on his farm. Her skull, it was discovered, had been bashed in. (LINK 4)

In his memoirs, Berry clarifies what happened during Goodale's execution. He says he reduced the original drop length from “7 ft. 8 in.” to “5 ft. 9 in.” because Goodale did not appear to have “well-developed” neck muscles. Although it doesn't appear Berry weighed Goodale again before hanging him, Berry was “exonerated by the coroner.” His experience seemed to haunt him, though, and he devised a table indicating drop lengths for individuals of various weights. As a result of his table, in Goodale's case, he estimates, since Goodale weighed “15 stones” (210 pounds), he should have used a drop length of “2 ft. 1 in.,” instead of “5 ft. 9 in.” (LINK 5)

9 Moses Shrimpton (?-1885)




While walking his beat, constable P. C. Davies may have caught Moses Shrimpton stealing chickens, a crime for which Shrimpton was known. The slash marks on the constable's hands indicate he struggled for his life. The many wounds he suffered, before his throat was slashed, indicate that the fight was a protracted and violent one. The barking of a dog, heard nearby on the morning of Davies' death, suggests the attack took place between 3:30 and 4:00 a. m. Shrimpton was suspected almost immediately. Six chickens had been plucked from a nearby hen house, and Shrimpton was a known chicken thief. He had a criminal record, too, and had previously attacked both a game warden and another police officer. He'd recently been released from jail. When police confronted him, Shrimpton had cuts to his face. An account of Shrimpton's crimes and execution, reported in the May 26, 1995, issue of The Times states “a long drop was given to the culprit, whose head was partially severed from his body.” (LINK6)

However, another source claims Shrimpton was completely decapitated in the fall. It also provides more details concerning the evidence against him. Although circumstantial, the evidence suggested Shrimpton had killed his victim. Blood-stained clothes were found in Shrimpton's room, as was a knife matching the 40 or so wounds in Davies' body. Police also found a pair of boots in Shrimpton's possession. Their soles matched the prints at the crime scene. Another resident in Shrimpton's rooming house had Davies' watch and chain, items, he said, he'd bought from Shrimpton. The evidence was regarded as persuasive of Shrimpton's guilt, and he was sentenced to death. Although his hangman, James Berry, selected the correct drop length for Shrimpton, based on the condemned man's weight, the hanged man's weakened muscles resulted in his decapitation when he was hanged. (LINK 7)

Whether Shrimpton completely lost his head is, perhaps, a moot point, in a way, for, whether he was completely or nearly decapitated, the final result of the hanging was the same. Shrimpton paid for his crime with his life.

8 Unknown Criminal Hanged by Bartholomew Pendleton (?-1870)

The death of the ill-fated victim of hangman Bartholomew Pendleton is evidence for the argument against employment through cronyism. One need not have had any special knowledge or experience to be a hangman, especially if he had friends in high enough places to secure him the position, as Pendleton did. He was appointed to the position on no other grounds than that he was the cousin of the canon of Durham Cathedral. At this time, hangings took place at Dryburn Hospital, north of Durham City, and it was there that Pendleton exhibited his ineptitude. He botched his first execution, and the condemned man was decapitated as a result. Unfortunately, in seeking to correct the error of his ways, Pendleton caused a great deal of suffering for subsequent victims of his incompetence. To ensure there were no more decapitations, he shortened the drop from the gallows with the result that no one else lost his or her head, but a good many strangled. The executed's distraught families seized their loved one's legs, adding their own weight to that of the condemned, to break the unfortunate's neck and bring a close to the person's terrible suffering or, in some cases, paid others to do so on their behalf. (LINK 8)

7 Tom “Black Jack” Ketchum (1863-1901)



Bank robber Tom “Black Jack” Ketchum looks none too happy with a noose around his neck. In a photograph preserving the moment for posterity, Ketchum, “The Prince of Highwaymen,” standing on the gallows as the hangman slips the noose around his neck, scowls, looking straight ahead. He's decked out for the occasion. Wearing a three-piece suit, he looks as though he may be going to a funeral. Hanged on April 26, 1901, for "felonious assault upon a railway train," Ketchum was decapitated in the fall. Another photograph shows his head, next to his body, on the ground at the foot of the gallows' scaffold. Court officials gather round his remains. (LINK 9)

Ketchum missed several appointments with the hangman. When officials received word the outlaw's gang might try to free him, they decided they'd better get on with his execution. The hanging was a huge event, and the town of Clayton, New Mexico, did all it could to cash in on it. Local lawmen sold tickets to the execution. They also sold Ketchum dolls suspended on sticks. After the affair concluded, they sold postcards of Ketchum on the gallows, as the noose is being placed around his neck. Sheriff Garcia did the honors, striking the rope twice with a hatchet, and, as Ketchum reached the end of his rope, he was decapitated, the black hood he was wearing alone preventing his head from rolling off his shoulders. After the attending physician was satisfied Ketchum was dead, the executed man's head was sewn back onto his body and he was buried in the town's boot hill cemetery. (LINK 10)

A newspaper account of the event attributes the decapitation to Ketchum's weight and the length of the drop: “The drop of the body was seven feet and the noose was made so it slipped easily. Ketchum was a heavy man, and the weight of the body, with the easy-running noose, caused the rope to cut the head cleanly off. . . . It is stated too much of a drop was given for so heavy a man.” (LINK 11)

6 Eva Dugan (1878-1930)


 The February 1, 1930 issue of the Memphis Evening Appeal reported the news of Eva Dugan's hanging on its first page, above the fold (a choice position on newspapers). The headline reads, “Six of Sex See Arizona Woman Die” (women, in more sexist days, were frequently referred to as “the sex”). Sub-headlines provide the further details that Dugan had murdered her “employer,” that she'd been “executed,” and that her “head” had been “severed” by the “rope's snap.” It was a grisly story to read over one's morning cup of coffee. The article provides equally spectacular details: “Mrs. Eva Dugan, the first woman to be executed legally in Arizona, paid today on the gallows for the slaying in 1927 of A. J. Mathis, Tucson rancher. The trap was sprung at 5:11 a.m.” As a result of her six-foot drop, she was decapitated, and her “body catapulted to the floor.” She was pronounced dead “immediately” and handed over to the “prison physician and an undertaker.” Dugan offered no last words. The women who witnessed the execution did not look as the noose was placed over the condemned woman's head, and they “shuddered” as the gallow's “steal trap clanged.”

She was charged with Mathis' death, the article adds, after she was arrested in White Plains, New York, “on a charge of automobile theft” and the corpse of the car's owner was subsequently found. On the morning of her execution, she played cards with two female friends and a prisoner, asking that “her 'guests' be served orangeade.” She “joked” with the guards, kissed them, and, on her way to the gallows, sang “I Don't Know Where I'm Going, But I'm on My Way.” The warden, tipped off by an informant, earlier conducted a search of Dugan's cell and found “a two-ounce bottle of 'deadly poison.'” (LINK 12)

Her execution brought international attention. Although she worked as Mathis' housekeeper, she was terminated after two weeks' employment. Mathis, his Dodge coupe, and a few of his personal belongings disappeared soon after Dugan was fired. Included among the missing items was a cash box Mathis kept on hand. Shortly before she left Arizona, Dugan tried to sell some of Mathis' property to his neighbors. An Oklahoma tourist discovered Mathis' “shallow grave” while driving tent stakes. When the decomposing remains were identified as those of Mathis, Dugan was charged with his murder. During her incarceration, she granted interviews to the press for a dollar each, made “her own burial dress,” and sold “embroidered handkerchiefs” to pay for her coffin. (LINK 13)

5 Thomasina Sarao (1890-1935)

Public executions in Canada had been prohibited on January 1, 870, following the hanging of Nichola Melady, but people could still attend if they could finagle an invitation from officials. It's for this reason that, on March 29, 1935, members of the public were in attendance to enjoy the spectacle of 45-year-old Thomasina Teolis Sarao's execution. (LINK 14)

She'd murdered her husband Nicholas to collect his insurance. Hanged before a crowd of onlookers inside the gates of the Bordeaux Jail in Montreal, Canada, Sarao gave spectators more than they'd bargained for. Dropped from the gallows, she plummeted to her doom, losing her head in the process. The incident so horrified the crowd that the Canadian government made hangings a strictly private affair, between the condemned and the state, rather than allowing the public to continue to witness them, even by invitation. Her hangman, Arthur Bartholomew English, (LINK 15) who went by the assumed name Arthur Ellis, was told the wrong weight for Sarao. Consequently, going by his table of drop lengths, as determined by the condemned's body weight, he used a rope appropriate for a woman 32 pounds less than she. The Crime Writers of Canada were so impressed with Ellis' work they named their award after him. Winners receive an articulated figure suspended from a miniature noose. Pulling the string attached to the figure causes its arms and legs to move, simulating the actions of a hanged person whose limbs are not secured ahead of the hanging. (LINK 16)

Like many other hangmen, Ellis was allowed to sell the clothing of those he hanged. Apparently, whether as part of the buyer's wardrobe or, perhaps more likely, souvenirs, the garments earned the hangmen as much as the fees they were paid by the state. According to Dale Brawn, a law professor at Laurentian University in Ontario and the author of Last Moments: Sentenced to Death in Canada, “the fact was he used to make as much money selling the clothes of the person he hanged as he did for the hangings.” (LINK 17) For the public, hangings were fun, it seems, until someone lost her head. Not only did Sarao's decapitation end public executions in Canada, but it also cost Ellis his job.

4 Arthur Lucas (1908-1962)


Whether 54-year-old Arthur Lucas' hanging resulted in decapitation, in the strictest sense of the word, is perhaps debatable, although many writers on the subject consider him to have lost his head when he was hanged. Some contend it's also questionable whether the African-American from Detroit, Michigan, actually killed police informant Therland Crater and Crater's wife, Carolyn Ann Newman. Others question whether the mentally impaired man was competent to stand trial. Still others contend that he had poor legal representation. His attorney, 29-year-old Ross McKay, was regarded as “brilliant,” but he was also an alcoholic who lacked trial experience. In addition, he was representing another defendant at the time, 24-year-old Ronald Turpin, a Caucasian Canadian convicted of killing Frederick Nash, a police officer, during a restaurant robbery. (LINK 18)

What is certain is that both Lucas and Turpin, found guilty, were hanged together, back to back, on December 11, 1962, in Toronto's Don Jail. These were Canada's last executions. Some claimed Lucas' weight was miscalculated, but it was not, although he lost about 50 pounds while in custody. He had syphilis, and it's believed the disease may have weakened “his muscles, connective tissue and blood vessels, resulting in his near-decapitation.” As a result, when he was executed, his head was ripped almost completely from his body, and blood sprayed everywhere. 

Until the last moment of his life, Lucas denied killing Crater and Newman, and the evidence against him was purely coincidental. McKay's daughter, herself an attorney, believes her father's client was innocent. She contends Lucas didn't receive a “fair trial,” and says the “back-to-back” trials of Lucas and Turpin's were “too quick.” Lucas' case was the first McKay had defended. The only evidence linking Lucas to the murders he was accused of committing is a phone call he made to Crater; a phone call he made from Crater's apartment; a ring Lucas owned, which was found lying “in a pool of blood” at the crime scene; a “discarded revolver on the Burlington Skyway” matching “the bullets in Crater's body”; and bloody clothing in Lucas' car. Lucas' chaplain said “his head was torn right off. . . . hanging just by the sinews of the neck,” and “there was blood all over the floor.” (LINK 19)

The media was told the deaths of the two was 'practically instantaneous,'” author Robert Hoshowsky says, “and that’s the story that stuck for decades.” (LINK 20)

3 Unidentified Suicide (Staircase Hanging) (1952 -1999)

Not all who lost their heads during a hanging were executed. Some committed suicide. One such case is that of an unidentified man, age 47, who hanged himself from “a staircase banister of an apartment house.” He weighed 144 kilograms (317 pounds). His hemp rope was 2 centimeters (.78 inch) thick and 2 meters (6.5) long. The length rope was thin and long enough to decapitate him. As a forensic medical report concerning the suicide points out, although rare, complete decapitation during a hanging can occur “under under extreme conditions (heavy body weight, inelastic and/or thin rope material, fall from a great height).” Normally death results from “cerebral ischaemia [blood loss to the brain] caused by compression of the carotid (and vertebral) arteries.” “Death from typical 'normal' suicidal hanging is usually due to cerebral ischaemia caused by compression of the carotid (and vertebral) arteries,” the report states, with “only occasional injuries to the cervical [neck] soft parts or hyoid bone and/or laryngeal cartilage. A fall with a noose around the neck, on the other hand, is associated with more frequent injuries to cervical structures through additional axial traction [pulling of the point of rotation] and radial shearing [breaking] forces of the tightening noose.” (LINK 21)

2 Unidentified Canadian Suicide (1942-2007)

The Journal of Forensic Science reports another decapitation death as the result of hanging as a means of suicide. In this case, a jogger found the Canadian man's body lying “against a pillar of a road bridge,”in a “large pool of blood,” his head 5 meters (16.4 feet) away. The death scene revealed no signs of “a fight” or of the presence of anyone else. Judging by a note found in his pocket, he'd recently divorced. The bridge was 7.2 meters (23.6 feet) “above the road level.” The nylon rope was 10 millimeters (.39 inch) thick and 3.6 meters (11.8 feet) long, with its lower part an equal distance above the ground. The noose was in the form of a slipknot. The 65-year-old, whose identity is not disclosed in the report, is described as of “a medium stout build.” He was 1.7 meters (5 feet, 6 inches) tall and weighed a total of 74 kilograms (163 pounds), his head weighing 5 kilograms (11 pounds) and his torso 69 kilograms (152 pounds). These measurements ensured his decapitation. The autopsy, which indicates suicide as the cause of death, states that the severance of his neck occurred between the third and fourth cervical [neck] vertebrae, before adding another equally gruesome detail: “The epiglottis had been torn off and remained on the head segment.” (LINK 22)

1 Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti (1951-2007)


Perhaps one of the most controversial cases of a decapitation during a hanging is the most recent one, that of Saddam Hussein's half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti. Many of his mourners believed the decapitation was intentional. By executing him in such a fashion, they maintained, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's largely Shiite administration was expressing its disdain for Ibrahim and his supporters, who were Sunni Arabs. Ibrahim's brother, Salam al-Tikriti, considered the botched execution an “insult” to his “body.” Sunni legislator Alaa Makki seemed to agree. He characterized the execution as a “revenge on the body.” Executed for his part in the murders of 148 men and boys in the Shiite village of Dujail following an assassination attempt on Saddam, Ibrahim was Saddam's intelligence officer. (LINK 23)

The government's video cameras captured the moment, showing Ibrahim's blood-soaked body lying next to its severed head, several feet away. Officials attributed the decapitation to the length of rope used to execute Ibrahim. It was too long. However, its use was the result of a mistake, not a planned “insult,” government officials insisted. Basem Ridha, one of al-Maliki's advisers, who witnessed the execution, called it “an act of God.” Nevertheless, many Iraqis and other Arabs were outraged by the botched execution, and many world leaders, including US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the spokesperson for the United Kingdom's Prime Minister Tony Blair, criticized the manner of Ibrahim's execution. Rice said she was “disappointed there was not greater dignity given the accused,” and Blair's spokesperson said the failure to execute Ibrahim in a “dignified way” was “wrong.” (LINK 24)

Ibrahim, who was hanged with Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former Chief Justice of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, was buried near him in an exterior courtyard at the Al-Awja Religious Compound, close to the bodies of Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay. (LINK 25) Saddam, who was also hanged, is buried in the same cemetery, inside a building. (LINK 26)


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