On this date in 1959, Guenther Podola became the last man hanged in Great Britain for killing a police officer.

A German emigre, Podola had been deported from Canada for committing a series of thefts and burglaries.

He’d just moved to London in May of 1959, not six months before his execution, when he tried to ransom stolen jewelry and furs to an American model he’d stolen them from. The model notified police and when they tracked him down, Podola shot Detective Sergeant Raymond Purdy straight through the heart.

Grasping for straws at his trial, he offered the soap opera-esque claim that he (now) labored under amnesia from a knock on the head suffered during his arrest. “I do not remember the crime for which I stand accused,” he told the court. “I am unable to answer the charges.” A Crown psychiatrist, the jury, and anyone’s common sense figured that he was shamming, which Podola himself also admitted after conviction.

Podola’s was the last British hanging of the 1950s. Five years and nineteen executions later, Britain binned capital punishment.

On this day..

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• 1607: Jan Le Loup, Maastricht werewolf
• 1915: Louis Bundy, "I would like to have shown the world what I could do"
• 1864: Four Confederate soldiers, under Burbridge's Order 59
• 1556: Hemu
• Executioner-in-Chief: a tour of U.S. Presidents and the death penalty
• 1927: Alfredo Jauregui, Bolivian lottery winner
• 1978: 12 coup plotters in Yemen
• 555: Rusticus and John
• 2009: Khristian Oliver, Bible basher
• 1941: Arndt Pekurinen, conscientious objector
• 1925: Sidney Reilly
• Themed Set: Spies