Roberto Giron and Pedro Castillo, peasants who raped and murdered a four-year-old girl, were shot at the Guatemalan town of Escuintla on September 13, 1996.
The executions — Guatemala’s first juridical shootings since 1983, although civil war death squads had ravaged the country in the meanwhile — were filmed by the press and televised, and the tape told an troubling tale: both men survived the initial volley and after paunchy doctors hastily conferred by the gasping doomed men, were icily finished off by the squad commander’s pistol.
Warning: Mature Content. This is a snuff film. A slightly longer cut of the same reel can be found here.
Thanks to this ghastly debacle, Guatemala changed its execution method to lethal injection — an application of which was also televised in 2000.
On this day..
- 1951: Robert Dobie Smith, suicide by Pierrepoint
- 1775: Huttenkloas
- 1569: Gaspard de Coligny, in effigy
- 1862: William Robert Taylor, angry tenant
- 1567: Four Anabaptists in Antwerp, after torture
- 1418: Beatrice di Tenda
- 1896: Chief Uwini of the Maholi
- 1944: Noor Inayat Khan, SOE operative
- 1916: Mary the Elephant
- 1962: Mack Merrill Rivenburgh cheats the executioner
- 1847: The San Patricios
- 1946: Amon Göth, Schindler's List villain