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)
