Ohio State University professor Dr. James Howard Snook was electrocuted on this date in 1930.
The eggheaded veterinary lecturer, Snook was an Olympic gold medalist in pistol shooting.* On a site like Executed Today one would presume that sidearms appear with a Chekhovian purpose, but it will transpire that different instruments cause his downfall.
Beginning, as so often occurs, with the instrument the good Lord gave him, which in 1926 was diverted from his wife in favor of comely undergraduate Theora Hix.
Dr. Snook soon installed his paramour in an apartment from which they carried on a torrid three-year love affair whilst Hix progressed to medical school. “We didn’t love each other,” Snook testified. “We satisfied each other’s needs.”
Hix’s needs, by Snook’s interested account, grew shockingly ravenous: she used cocaine, liked to hit and threaten him, and took on other lovers — including another university professor, agronomist Marion T. Meyers. The doctor’s explication of their relationship scandalized the university and the nation for the sordid particulars of their stormy affair. “Almost every letter trailed off into obsceneities [sic],” notes one report (Louisville Courier-Journal, Aug. 9, 1929.) “For the most part their content is unpublishable.” His own counsel was seen to chortle as some were read out to a stunned court, before rising in a vain attempt to claim they proved his client’s insanity.
Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) Daily News, July 1, 1929.
According to Snook’s testimony, matters fell apart on a motor outing on June 13, 1929, when he attempted to decline a weekend’s canoodle citing his domestic obligations: “She replied, ‘Damn Mrs. Snook. I am going to kill her and get her out of the way.'” And as Hix began raining blows on Dr. Snook, he grabbed a ball-peen hammer from the car toolkit and struck her … and then kept striking.
“I was sure she was going to shoot me,” Snook said through tears, claiming that he feared she carried a weapon in her purse. “My only thought was to stop her. I sprang after her and struck her again.” (Quotes per the Pittsburgh Post-Gaztte, Aug. 9, 1929.)
After bashing her about four times, she was a crumpled but still-breathing heap outside his vehicle. According to a confession that Snook attempted to repudiate, he then clinically finished her off with a pocket knife to her jugular, as a mercy.
* In the 30-meter team military pistol and 50-meter team military pistol competitions at the 1920 Antwerp games. This also happened to be the last year these disciplines were contested at the Olympics.
Though they numbered fewer than 20, Lundgren’s followers bought into his prophetic-revelation act well enough to fork over thousands of dollars to him. Lundgren reciprocated by keeping them under his sway, eventually moving most of them into his own house the better to control them.
Except the family of Dennis Avery.
Avery, his wife Cheryl, and daughters aged 15, 13, and 6 attracted Lundgren’s ire for their reticence about the move-in, although to judge by their liberal contributions the family’s confidence in Lundgren was in no way shaken. Eventually the prophet out of whatever combination of pique, power-tripping, and religious fervor decided to “prune the vineyard” — his phrase — by having the whole quintet slaughtered by his live-in apostles at a camping retreat in April 1989.
This murder kept under wraps long enough for Lundgren to move his little cult to West Virginia, and a few months later to ditch his fellow cultists and move himself to California, before an informant tipped John Law to the shallow grave in early 1990. Besides the prophetic mastermind, Lundgren’s wife Alice and several of his followers caught long prison sentences in payment of the butcher’s bill.
* Rebranded (since 2001) as the “Community of Christ”, this is the more moderate or Protestant mainline-adjacent cousin of the better-known Latter-Day Saints movement, a.k.a. Mormonism — recognizing leadership succession through Joseph Smith‘s son Joseph Smith III instead of through the militant desert pioneer Brigham Young.
Robert Anthony Buell, a former Akron city planner, was executed by lethal injection on this date in 2002.
He’d been condemned for abducting 11-year-old Krista Lea Harrison from a park in July 1982, raping, and strangling her to death. It wasn’t until an adult woman escaped his captivity and went to police that he came into focus for the case, and the evidence against him in that pre-DNA moment was sufficiently circumstantial that Buell continued to insist his innocence all the way to the end. Even his final words were a plea of innocence addressed to Krista Lea’s parents: “Jerry and Shirley, I didn’t kill your daughter. The prosecutor knows that . . . and they left the real killer out there on the streets to kill again and again and again. So that some good may come of this, I ask that you continue to pursue this to the end. Don’t let the prosecutor continue to spin this out of focus and force them to find out who really killed your daughter. That’s all I have to say.”
He didn’t have many takers, particularly after a posthumous DNA test years after his execution also incriminated him in the abduction and murder of 12-year-old Tina Harmon — a crime for which he was long a suspect but never prosecuted.
His last meal was a single black olive. (Perhaps a tribute to hanged kidnapper Victor Feguer?)
From the Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 29, 1895. The hot swap from “Chaplain Winget” to “Chaplin Wingate” is all [sic].
Columbus, May 28. — (Special.) — Lafayette Prince partook heartily at 6 o’clock of his last meal, at which he was given porterhouse steak, fried eggs and coffee, finishing the meal with strawberry short cake and cream. The other seven inmates at the annex were present at the meal. All appeared to relish the dainty dishes with the exception of Molnar, who was very nervous and excited.
Chaplain Winget conducted general religious services in the annex, in which all took part. At 8:35 Capt. John Langenberger entered the annex and informed Prince that the time had arrived for him to enter the death cage. It was expected that the murderer would weaken when the time came for the final separation from the others, but Prince surprised all by promptly replying to the request of Langenberger, “All right.” He then bade the other inmates farewell and with a light step ascended the stairway to a little narrow cell which he was to leave only to go to his death. At 10 o’clock a report reached the front office that the man so soon to enter eternity was at that time whistling “Irish Moll.”
Prince has always expressed great affection for his little boy and has often wished to see him before his death. When Chaplin Wingate visited the murderer at 10:30 Prince gave him a box of letters and a few small trinkets and requested that they be given to the boy. The letters were those received by the murderer since he was received at the penitentiary.
Prince was still holding out well at 11:30, and when asked how he felt responded “tip top.” He regretted very much that his brother at Cleveland had failed to be present, and said his brother had written him a few days ago that he would be here. “But that makes no difference,” said Prince. “I have made my peace with God and man and am prepared to go.”
Warden James read the death warrant to Prince at 11:30. The condemned man was unmoved during the reading of the instrument, and at the conclusion remarked that he was ready to go and anxious for the execution to be over.
Prince was hanged shortly after midnight. The drop fell at 12:11, and in fourteen and one-half minutes life was pronounced extinct. Prince’s nerve did not desert him to the last, and he died without a show or emotion or a struggle.
While the fastenings of death were being adjusted by two guards the condemned man gazed intently before him and appeared to be the least concerned of all present. Prince was asked if he desired to make a statement and replied: “No; I have nothing to say.” The black cap was then adjusted, the rope placed about his neck and the lever sprung. The body shot through the drop with lightning like rapidity, rebounded, turned half around and then hung limp until life was pronounced extinct. The neck was broken by the fall. The dead house gang entered, removed the body and the final act in the tragedy was completed.
The crime for which Lafayette Prince was hanged was the murder of his wife in Nottingham on the morning of Sept. 17, 1894. Prince had difficulty with his wife for several months. They did not live happily together. She insisted that she would go and assist her brother in gathering his grape crop. Prince remonstrated and insisted that she and the only son, Freddy Prince, should devote their time to gathering the crop on the Prince farm. Mrs. Prince argued that the grapes on the Prince farm were not in a condition to gather. The breach widened and on the afternoon of Sept. 16 Mrs. Prince and her son returned from her brother’s farm, which was two miles distant, and gathering a few personal effects went to her brother’s house and remained all night.
Prince returned home that night and discovered the absence of his wife. He prepared his own supper, ate it and walked over to the house of his brother. The twilight had settled and he hid behind a hay stack to ascertain as to whether his wife would leave the house.
Her brother had loaded a wagon with grapes the night before and was to take them into town early in the morning. He appeared before dawn and hitching the horse drove toward the city on the Nottingham road. Prince could not discover in the darkness whether his wife was on the wagon or not. He ran home, mounted a horse, and, taking a short cut, hid under the shadow of the Nottingham bridge. When the wagon appeared he discovered that his wife was not with the brother. He returned to his house, coolly cooked his breakfast and went back to his brother-in-law’s house, arriving there about 7 o’clock. His sister-in-law was in the kitchen preparing breakfast. The women were alone, the only man in the house having taken the grapes to the city.
Prince knocked at the door and said:
“I want to see my wife, Caroline.”
“I don’t know whether it would be best to do it or not,” replied his sister-in-law.
Prince then shoved her aside, walked through the sitting room and went up stairs.
“For God’s sake, Lafe, don’t go up there; you’ll murder her,” screamed his sister-in-law.
He went up stairs and into a back room, where Mrs. Prince and the boy were in bed.
“Caroline,” said Prince, “I want you to come home with me.”
“I can’t do it, Lafe,” she said, “you’ve promised to treat me right so many times that I’ve no faith in you.”
Prince kneeled on the floor and crying bitterly asked her to come. Freddy was also crying.
“Freddie,” said Prince, turning to his son, “won’t you come home? Come home to your father. I’ll treat you right, my boy. I’ll treat you right.”
The boy cried bitterly and said he wouldn’t do it. Prince arose hurriedly and went down stairs. His sister-in-law followed him out. Prince went out of the house and went to the woodhouse. He was watched carefully by his sister-in-law. He appeared from the woodhouse with an ax in his hand. His sister-in-law screamed and bolted the door. Prince knocked the door in with the ax and rushed up into his wife’s chamber. She was apprised of his approach and leaped from the bed. She ran down stairs, followed by her husband and the boy. He caught her in the yard and was about to strike her with the ax when the boy interfered. He threw the boy roughly aside. He again caught his wife in the road and struck her twice in the head with an ax. She sank to the ground and the boy again interfered. He was thrown roughly aside. Prince struck his wife several times in the head and twice on the body. She was clad in her night clothes and had no protection. One blow nearly cut her body in two. Prince went home and attempted to commit suicide by cutting his throat with a razor. He was unsuccessful.
During last term of court he was tried. Counsel attempted to work the insanity dodge without success. The jury was out forty-five minutes and the case was carried no higher.
From the out-of-print The palace of death, or, the Ohio Penitentiary Annex: A human-interest story of incarceration and execution of Ohio’s murderers, with a detailed review of the incidents connected with each case by H.M. Fogle (1908):
The Terrible End of Elmer Sharkey
Exit Elmer Sharkey and Henry Popp. The night of December 18, 1890, [i.e., after midnight on the 19th. People are just egregious with dates. -ed.] witnessed the double execution of Elmer Sharkey and Henry Popp.
Elmer Sharkey, serial number 20,517, was the picture of physical manhood, young, handsome and accomplished; but his crime was the most diabolical one that ever disgraced the fair pages of Ohio’s history.
About nine o’clock on the fatal night of December 18, Father Logan appeared at the Annex and baptized Sharkey in the Catholic faith. Shortly after this the two murderers were taken out into the reception room of the Annex, where they remained until after the reading of their death warrants. It was just a few minutes after eleven o’clock when Father Logan came into the Annex to comfort the condemned men. He informed them that there was no earthly hope; that the Governor absolutely refused to interfere, and that they should prepare for the worst. Sharkey and his doomed companion were then taken back into the Annex proper, where they bade good-bye to those who were left behind. A little later Warden Dyer came down the corridor and entered the reception room, to which the condemned men were again taken. Facing them the Warden said: “Boys, I have a painful duty to perform; but the law requires it. Henry,” to Popp “this is your death warrant.” Popp shook as with the ague, and stammered, “Yes sir.” He then arose to his feet and listened attentively to the reading of the warrant. The reading of Popp’s warrant finished, the Warden turned to Sharkey who was leaning against the steam heater and read his warrant. Sharkey stood with his hands in his pockets, seemingly indifferent. This over, Chaplain Sutton and Father Logan each offered up a fervent prayer, and then the Warden left the Annex to make further preparations for the executions that followed a few minutes later.
Promptly at midnight Warden Dyer, Deputy Porter and Assistant Brady at his side, stepped into the guard room. A mad rush was made for the gate. But a careful separation of the sheep from the goats was made by the Captain of the guard room, who carefully scrutinized each passport. Noiselessly the procession passed down the long, dimly-lighted corridor to the Annex. Once inside the enclosure Warden Dyer promptly mounted the scaffold, and placed everything in readiness. But a moment thus, and the approach of the doomed man was heralded by appearance of Father Logan who stepped from the cage onto the scaffold, and took his stand on the right of the trap door. A hush fell as the pale and bloodless countenance of Elmer Sharkey appeared. He moved with a nervous, gliding motion toward the fatal trap, hesitated for a moment, and then stepped squarely upon it; and with downcast eyes and drooping head, stood there in waiting, a picture of silent despair and hopeless agony. Once, twice, three times he raised his eyes and cast a quick, sweeping glance over the throng of spectators, then resumed his downward look of misery, murmuring in a low tone: “My God, make quick work of it!” When asked if he asked [sic] anything to say, he raised his head slightly and said: “I ask God’s forgiveness, and all I have wronged; and I forgive everything.” The Father pressed the cross to his passive, bloodless lips and he kissed it fervently. The hood was then made ready and he was asked for his last words. “That is all I can think of now.”
As the hood was being adjusted he faltered and would have fallen backward in a faint, but was sustained by ready hands. Just as the noose was being drawn around his neck, he again lost control of himself, and started to fall; but the noose was slipped with a quick movement; the trap sprung, and down he went. As a result of his fainting he fell in a partially horizontal attitude, and the tightening of the rope produced a swinging motion of the body, thus breaking the force of the fall. The result was that the neck was not broken, and the poor, wretched matricide was left to die by strangulation. The sounds that floated out over the awe-hushed group as the dying man struggled for breath, is [sic] beyond description. The sickening sight and horrible sounds drove many of the spectators from the execution room.
The drop fell at 12:05, and for several minutes the terrible struggle lasted, then the sounds from the throat, and convulsions of the body grew less frequent. At 12:34 the quivering heart ceased to beat, just twenty-nine minutes after the drop fell. All within that narrow enclosure breathed a sigh of relief when the attending physician finally pronounced him dead.
His execution was one of the longest on record, and the longest in the history of Ohio.
Elmer Sharkey suffered death on the scaffold for the cold-blooded murder of the woman who gave him birth, a widow of Preble County. No wonder his death was such an ignominous and horrible one. Mrs. Sharkey had violently opposed his marriage to the woman of his choice, and threatened to disinherit him if the marriage was consummated. The unnatural son, in a spirit of revenge, butchered his poor old mother with a meat axe, mangling her almost beyond recognition. He confessed his guilt, and “died in the hope of a glorious immortality.”
[Popp, not dwelt upon by Fogle, was a Bavarian immigrant who fatally stabbed the barkeep who attempted to eject him while rowdy in his cups. -ed.]
This ghastly description of a botched hanging comes courtesy of the out-of-print The palace of death, or, the Ohio Penitentiary Annex: A human-interest story of incarceration and execution of Ohio’s murderers, with a detailed review of the incidents connected with each case by H.M. Fogle (1908):
A negro robber who beat out the brains of Allen Wilson, near Yellow Springs, Ohio, with a dray pin. Hanged June 22, 1894
A Brutal Robber Meets a Just Fate
William Whaley, serial number 25,257, was executed in the Ohio Penitentiary Annex twelve minutes after the birth of a new day, June 22, 1894, for the brutal murder of Allen Wilson, a thrifty and hard working colored man.
The crime was committed near Yellow Springs, Greene County, Ohio, on the night of June 6, 1893. Robbery was the motive for the crime, and a dray pin the instrument of destruction. He sneaked upon his victim in the dark, and literally beat his brains out.
Whaley was a young man not over twenty-five years of age, and with perhaps one exception, was the most profane man that was ever incarcerated in the Ohio Penitentiary Annex. He refused all spiritual consolation, and cursed his executioners almost with his dying breath. He was a cowardly cur, and betrayed his cowardice while on the scaffold. Three times he sank to his knees as the noose was being adjusted. The attending Guards were compelled each time to assist him to his feet, and finally to hold him up by main strength until the rattle of the lever shot his body through the open trap. Being almost in a total state of collapse, the body instead of plunging straight through the opening, pitched forward, striking the side of the door, thus breaking the force of the fall. For this reason the neck was not broken, and death was produced by the slow and harrowing process of strangulation.
Reader, if you have never seen a sight of this kind you cannot understand or comprehend the horror of the situation. Time after time the limbs were drawn up with a convulsive motion, and then straightened out with a jerk. The whole body quivered and shook like one might with the ague; while the most hideous and sickening sounds came from the throat. This continued for eighteen minutes; but to one looking on it seemed an age. After eighteen minutes the sounds ceased; the body became perfectly still; the limbs began to stiffen; the heart-beats to weaken. In just twenty-six minutes after the drop fell the last pulsation was felt, and the doctor solemnly said: “Warden, I pronounce the man dead.”
The outraged law had been avenged, and a soul unprepared had been ushered into Eternity.
From America’s State Trials, vol. II, whose “Narrative” excerpted here continues in the form of trial transcripts explicating the particulars of this sad and banal stalker-murder situation. (As a juridical matter, Hughes’s fate hinged on finely measuring his degree of premeditation and intent — and drunkenness — at the moment that he shot his 17-year-old other wife; however, once the decision was in, even Hughes called “the verdict of the jury, just; the sentence of the law, inevitable … I know that I deserve death.”)
THE TRIAL OF DR. JOHN W. HUGHES FOR THE MURDER OF TAMZEN PARSONS, CLEVELAND, OHIO, 1865
THE NARRATIVE.
Dr. Hughes To His Friends (one of several poems Hughes wrote as he awaited hanging -ed.)
Of trifles the world is composed,
Like minutes that grow into years;
So friendship, in pity reposed,
Allays our most troublesome fears.
Away from all comforts at home,
From all the desires of my heart,
Not building on pleasures to come,
With feelings of hope I must part.
A moment of phrenzy, unthought,
A second of madness defined —
What change in the creature is wrought.
The soul in such horror entwined!
To review the dear scenes of the past,
Is but a renewal of strife
To a mind so constant o’ercast
In weighing the issues of life.
Grateful thanks is all I can give
For mercies which others deny.
Oh! that I were destined to live
To recompense you bye and bye.
Your efforts are sadly in vain;
The plea was a day or two late.
Remonstrance its malice to rain
Had hopelessly finished my fate.
Yet your prayers shall be to my death
Like the hidden treasure of leaven,
My spirit to raise by their breath
To waft it to Jesus in heaven.
I pray, and I never forget
To ask of my best friend above,
For blessings on those in whose debt
I am bound by their pitying love.
On the ninth of August, 1865, John W. Hughes, physician and surgeon, of Cleveland, Ohio, committed a murder in the small neighboring village of Bedford, which, from the nature of the case, the character of the parties to the tragedy, and the antecedents of the deed, forced him upon the attention of the people of Cleveland and of the whole of the State of Ohio. The public was shocked on the following morning by the publication in the newspapers that Miss Tamzen Parsons, a young lady of seventeen years of age, had been shot down in the streets of Bedford by this man, who had been her lover, and who, under cover of a forged decree of divorce from his wife, had married her in Pittsburgh, in December, 1864, and suffered in the Pennsylvania penitentiary, the penalty attaching to the crime of bigamy.
Dr. Hughes was born in the Isle of Man, educated at a Scotch University, and emigrated with his wife to the United States in 1862. After practicing his profession of a physician for a few months in Chicago and Cleveland, he enlisted in an Ohio regiment as a private, but was very soon promoted to the position of Assistant Surgeon of the 48th United States Infantry. After serving for about a year he resigned on account of the illness of a son in November, 1864. He now began the practice of medicine in Cleveland, but making the acquaintance of Tamzen Parsons, he induced her to go with him to Pittsburgh, after showing her a paper which he persuaded her was a decree of divorce from his wife. For this he was convicted and sentenced to one year’s imprisonment in a Pennsylvania penitentiary, but was pardoned after serving five months. Returning to Cleveland, he resumed the practice of medicine and after having sent his wife and child back to the Isle of Man on a visit, he endeavored to win again the affections of Tamzen, who refused to have anything more to do with him. One night in July after drinking deeply, he went to the house of her father in the village of Bedford at night and, by his noise, aroused the old gentlemen, who tried to eject him. Hughes refused to leave the house, and objected with sufficient force to give ground for a charge of assault and battery, which was brought on the following day, Tamzen herself appearing and making the affidavit against him, an act which enraged him. Personal differences, however, were at length adjusted and legal proceedings stayed, the Doctor solemnly promising that he would thenceforth have nothing to do with the Parsons family.
But, alas! a drunken revel with a companion, Oscar Russell, on the night of the eighth of August, ended in their driving to Bedford and drinking at all the road houses on the way. Hughes, Russell and their driver, Carr, issued from a hotel in Bedford, and drove to the house of Mr. Parsons. Dr. Hughes entered the house and learned that Tamzen and her mother had gone blackberrying. They drove on, but soon met the women, and the Doctor sought a private conference with Tamzen. A neighbor, however, came along in a wagon and took her home, while the men drove to the grocery, where they held a drunken revel for two hours. Hughes learning that all the Parsons family had gone to Bedford for safety and to arrest him, started to the village and, seeing Tamzen coming out of the house, he ran after her, calling on her to stop. She flew up the walk, saying, “No, I will not stop,” and rushed through the gate, endeavoring to reach the front door. But before that asylum was reached, the pursuer laid hands on her, and shouting, “You won’t stop, will you?” fired his revolver. The ball glanced off her head, she screamed, but the piteous cry was instantly hushed by a second and fatal discharge of the deadly weapon.
The noise attracted a number of persons, who pursued Hughes, who jumped into the carriage with Russell and Carr, and, menacing the crowd with his revolver, succeeded in getting a good start of his pursuers. But he was captured in a few hours and landed in jail.
Indicted by the Grand Jury for murder, after a trial lasting eighteen days, he was convicted, though his counsel tried very hard to prove that he was insane at the time he committed the act. On February 9th, 1866, he was hanged in the yard of the Cleveland jail.
At 11:35 a.m. on this day in 1880, three teen boys were publicly hanged in Canton, Ohio. George E. Mann was sixteen, Gustave Adolph Ohr was somewhere between fifteen and seventeen, and John Sammet(t) had just turned eighteen the day before. Between them, they had committed two murders.
Left to right: Mann, Ohr, and Sammett.
George Mann and Gustave Ohr came from similar backgrounds: both lost a parent in early childhood — George’s mother and Gustave’s father — and both didn’t adjust well. By the summer of 1879, both boys had run away from home. They were riding the rails when they met each other and began traveling with an older tramp, John Watmough.
The trio had reached Alliance, Ohio when, on June 27, 1879, Gustave and George decided to rob Watmough as he slept. They beat him on the head with a railroad coupling pin, mortally wounding him, and the boys took his watch, money and clothes and ran away. Watmough was able to crawl to a nearby house and mumble a few words before dying. His killers were arrested within minutes.
George, although he insisted it was Gustave who’d struck the fatal blows, was convicted of first-degree murder on December 6. Gustave was convicted on December 13. On December 31, both were sentenced to death. George went to his grave saying he was innocent, but his partner-in-crime refused to cinch his clemency argument by taking full responsibility.
According to the Stark County Democrat, while awaiting their deaths, George and Gustave were both able to obtain “many luxuries” by selling copies of the gallows ballads they supposedly wrote themselves. (Mann’s | Ohr’s)
John Sammett, like George Mann, lost his mother at a very early age and lived with his father and stepmother at the time of his crime. Like the Bavaria-born Gustave Ohr, he was of German parentage, although John was born in Ohio. He developed a reputation as a petty thief and was arrested several times, but his relatives always bailed him out of trouble.
In August of 1879, John and a sixteen-year-old friend, Christopher Spahler, broke into a saloon. They were arrested, and Spahler agreed to turn state’s evidence and testify against his erstwhile friend. The burglary trial was scheduled for November 26; the day before, John tracked down Spahler and tried to get him to change his mind. Spahler would not relent, and John shot him in the chest.
People heard the shot and came running; Spahler died a short time later without speaking, but both John and the murder weapon were still at the crime scene. He was arrested immediately, and on March 2, 1880 he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death.
Meanwhile, in a different hanging circus … (widely reprinted wire story via the Milwaukee Journal of Commerce of (despite the dateline) June 23, 1880.
The public hanging of Mann and Ohr, along with John Sammett, was the occasion for a community-wide extravaganza. People came to the small town of Canton in eastern Ohio by excursion train from as far away as Chicago and Pittsburgh to witness the event. A circus was part of the extravaganza [literally, Coup‘s circus was in town at the same time -ed.] and the night before the hangings included much music, cannon firing, speech making and similar merriment. The next morning, Mann and the other two teenaged boys were hanged in the city square of Canton before an estimated crowd of 10,000 people!
After the triple hanging, sheriffs deputies placed the three bodies in the jail corridor and permitted the entire crowd to file through and view the bodies. The public viewing lasted almost four hours, with the doors being closed at 3:30 p.m.
This was the first time the state of Ohio had executed minors.
These three young killers were featured in Daniel Right Miller’s 1903 book The Criminal Classes: Causes and Cures, which remarks (speaking of Ohr specifically) “that parental neglect, impure literature, and vicious companions were all responsible for this ruined life and forced death.”
On this date in 2014, Ohio very clumsily executed Dennis McGuire for raping and stabbing to death an eight-months pregnant woman in 1989.
For no reason better than chance, McGuire‘s was the execution scheduled to arrive when Ohio bowed to the growing scarcity of lethal injection drugs by innovating a new kill-cocktail comprising midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a painkiller.
McGuire’s attorneys fought this procedure on the plausible (quite plausible, as we will see) grounds that using an execution as a vehicle for nonconsensual human medical experimentation was liable to end badly.
It did. A Dayton Daily News staff reporter who attended the execution gave the disturbint account
Prison officials say the drugs — a combination never before used in an execution — were delivered at 10:28 a.m.
His daughter cried uncontrollably.
McGuire waved with his wrist, his body strapped down to the table. Then he suddenly yelled out “I love you. I love you,” before his head lay back, his eyes rolled back in his head and he appeared to fall asleep at 10:29 a.m.
Minutes went by without McGuire moving, his family cried as the priest patted them on the back and attempted to console them.
“Oh my god,” his daughter [Amber McGuire] said.
“Don’t watch,” [wife] Missie McGuire said.
At 10:35 a.m. I first noticed McGuire convulse, then gasp. He snorted for air — a sound like a violent snore, a guttural inhale — and then sat still. Then gasped again. Sometimes his mouth just opened soundlessly. At 10:39 a.m. he snorted so loud his daughter covered her ears.
His family cried. “How could this go on for so long?” one of them asked. There was some discussion with the priest that accompanied them saying they thought it would only take five minutes.
(Here’s another (more heavily editorializing) eyewitness account of the event, by McGuire’s priest.)
Predictably, more lawsuits followed, cases that are still working their way through the courts. Just two weeks ago as of this writing, a federal suit filed on behalf of Ohio’s other death row inmates brought a member of Dennis McGuire’s execution team to the stand. Behind an anonymizing cardboard screen, “Team Member No. 10” characterized the McGuire execution as unlike any of the others he had worked, and said that he “was wondering what was going on” as the prisoner heaved and choked his way to death.
As a result, McGuire’s execution remains as of this writing the most recent execution conducted in one of the largest Republican-dominated states in the U.S. — even though Ohio was setting up in the 2000s as the Texas of the North.
According to Snook’s testimony, matters fell apart on a motor outing on June 13, 1929, when he attempted to decline a weekend’s canoodle citing his domestic obligations: “She replied, ‘Damn Mrs. Snook. I am going to kill her and get her out of the way.'” And as Hix began raining blows on Dr. Snook, he grabbed a ball-peen hammer from the car toolkit and struck her … and then kept striking.
For no reason better than chance, 
