James W. Hutchins was gassedexecuted by lethal injection in North Carolina on this date in 1984.

Hutchins was “credited” with the largest one-day slaughter of North Carolina law enforcement officers in 1979. An altercation with his teenage daughter* led to a domestic disturbance call, which led eventually to three dead cops all killed in separate shootings.

Hutchins shot Captain Roy Huskey by ambush when he responded alone to the 911 call. Several minutes later, a deputy named Owen Messersmith rolled up to check on the situation since Huskey hadn’t checked in. Messersmith quickly realized the reason, but was shot through the window of his patrol car as he slammed into reverse and “the vehicle drifted backwards across the street and came to rest in a ditch with Messersmith’s body slumped over the steering wheel, causing the horn to blow without stop.” (Wikipedia) The third victim, state highway patrolman Robert L. Peterson, pulled Hutchins over for speeding as the latter fled in his car.

Only by this point did the garbled and chaotic communications flying through dispatch radios that day finally coalesce sufficiently to give cops on the scene a full picture of what was going on: Peterson, for instance, is thought to have been entirely innocent of the knowledge that a suspect in a double shooting was at large in the area.

At any rate, the ensuing manhunt brought Hutchins into custody and a postscript as a part of political lore: in a sort of Ricky Ray Rector play, Democratic Governor Jim Hunt theatrically staged Hutchins’s execution date and denial of clemency in the run-up to his 1984 Senate campaign. But Rector’s sacrifice at least had the excuse of success: not so Hutchins’s. No matter Hunt’s tough-on-crime credentials, he was still trounced at the polls by goggle-eyed racist Jesse Helms.

There’s an independent film about the events in this notorious murder spree, titled Damon’s Law.

* Hutchins was pissed that she spiked the punch for her high school graduation party with vodka.

On this day..

• 1968: My Lai Massacre
• 1841: The Jewboy's Gang
• 1946: Max Blokzijl, voice of Dutch fascism
• 1868: Eleven samurai, for the Sakai Incident
• 1773: Lewis Hutchinson, "the most detestable and abandoned villain"
• 1789: Not Mary Wade, 11-year-old thief
• 1649: Saint Jean de Brébeuf, missionary to the Huron
• 1677: Thomas Sadler and William Johnson, mace thieves
• 1244: Two hundred-plus Cathars at Montsegur
• 37: Some poor wretches, despite the death of Tiberius
• 2005: Mohammed Bijeh, the desert vampire
• 1457: László Hunyadi, the death before Hungary's rebirth