On this date in 1927, Illinois conducted a public triple hanging, actually among the last public hangings in the state’s history.*
Charlie Duschowski, Walter Stalesky, Charles Shader, Roberto Torrez, Gregario Rizo and Barnardo Roa had busted out of the old Collins Street Prison in Joliet, along with a seventh man named James Price. In the process, they killed Assistant Warden, and former policeman, Peter Klein.
This has dirty Chicago politics from the Prohibition era all over it.
The events angered much of the general public, but among Chicago Mexicans, the fugitives became heroes. Will County officials investigated allegations that Klein belonged to a parole-selling ring headed by Will Colvin, chairman of the Board of Pardons and Paroles. The newspapers also reported that Chicago police had arrested Klein for selling bootleg liquor while still warden and for allowing prisoners to leave the prison and commit robberies so they could raise money for paroles. (Source)
At any rate, six of the men — all but James Price — were recaptured and condemned to die.
However, friends and relatives of the “doomed” Mexican trio began smuggling in saw blades with their care packages, and by March 1927, Rizo and Roa were hard at work sawing through their bars while the songbird Torrez covered them by belting out La Paloma for days on end.
Roa made a clean getaway, but Rizo and Torrez were taken after a few days in a south Chicago shootout. Now the proposed gallows club was down to five.
Nothing daunted, the three white folk in the party attempted their own breakout by picking their cell lock — joined by Rizo, who would find that the third time was not the charm. Taking sheriff Alfred E. Markgraf hostage, they attempted to drive out of the jail yard: Rizo was shot dead in the resulting fusillade, but somehow Charles Shader managed to scramble away in the mayhem as his compatriots were being re-arrested.
So now, with Shader, Roa, and Price on the lam and Rizo on the ice, only three guys remained to hang.
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Left to right: Duschowski, Stalesky, and Torrez.
Notwithstanding the abysmal retention percentage, the prospect of a public triple hanging was a tremendous draw — no less so for the elusive desperadoes’ talent for grabbing headlines afresh every few weeks. A raucous crowd pressed around a sizable detail of riflemen who had good reason to suspect one last bid for freedom. (In a failure of showmanship, that did not happen.) The widow of the original victim even petitioned to throw the trap to drop them. (Ditto.)
So nothing remained but to visit justice upon them.
But not only upon them.
According to the July 17, 1927 Chicago Tribune, the curiosity of the spectacle made it an irresistible lure to yet another fugitive. What was it about Illinois jails in the Roaring Twenties?

Lincoln, Ill., July 16. — (AP) Albert “Blackie” Logan, escaped prisoner from the Logan county jail, is under arrest again here today, awaiting trial for safecracking. Logan ventured from concealment to see the three murderers of Deputy Warden Peter Klein hanged at Joliet. He was recognized by the sheriff.
As for the three escapees:
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Shader was recaptured and hanged on October 10, 1928. It was the last hanging in the state’s history.
Price made it to New York, where he eventually wound up in prison for robbery. Illinois got him back in 1937, gave him a long prison term, and eventually paroled the guy in the 1960s.
Roa made it to Mexico, dodged a couple of near-miss extradition attempts, and was never returned to the tender mercies of Illinois. His fate after 1948 (the last time he was arrested, and an extradition fell through) is unknown.
* They were also the first executed in July of 1927, which was important because July 1 was the date Illinois adopted a switch to the electric chair. The change was not retroactive to crimes before that date, however, so it was the gallows for these fellows and several others into the following year.
On this day..
- 1942: Wenceslao Vinzons
- 1958: Nuri al-Said
- 1857: Danforth Hartson, again
- 1738: Baruch Leibov and Alexander Voznitsyn, Jew and convert
- 1381: John Ball, radical priest
- 1936: Charlotte Bryant
- 756: Yang Guifei, favored concubine
- 1883: Leoncio Prado, for defending his homeland
- 1907: Qiu Jin, Chinese feminist and revolutionary
- 1953: John Christie, a little late in the day
- 1977: Princess Misha'al bint Fahd al Saud and her lover
- Themed Set: The Feminine Mystique
- 1685: James Scott, Duke of Monmouth
Well, can’t blame them for trying.
These three remind me of Jesse Pomeroy, the “Boy Fiend” who served a life sentence in solitary after he killed two people at age 14. He spent most of his time trying to escape from his cell — and why not? He had nothing to lose. In the book about Pomeroy, Harold Schechter showed the discipline log of an ordinary prisoner, which listed infractions like “singing in cell” and “talking back to a guard.” Then he showed Jesse’s log, which basically said “tried to escape” over and over.