(Thanks to Robert Elder of Last Words of the Executed — the blog, and the book — for the guest post. Fans of this here site are highly likely to enjoy following Elder’s own pithy, almanac-style collection of last words on the scaffold. -ed.)
“I have nothing to say except that I am innocent. It’s easier to convict a Negro than a white person. So long everybody.”
—Robert E. Folkes, convicted of murder, gas chamber, Oregon.
Executed January 5, 1945
Folkes, age twenty-three, was convicted of slashing a woman’s throat on a Southern Pacific train while working as a cook. The Associated Press described him as “the first condemned man to see the chamber,” as Folkes was the first prisoner to ever walk into the Oregon gas chamber without a blindfold on.
On this day..
- 2011: Yaqub Ali, stabber
- 546: Croesus
- 1866: Charles Carrington
- 1963: Stanislaw Jaros, twice-failed assassin
- 1900: Geronimo Parra and Antonio Flores, the last hanged in El Paso
- 1771: Captain David Ferguson, for the murder of his cabin-boy
- 1655: Jane Hopkins, Bermuda's last known witch execution
- 1638: Four Frenchmen in effigy
- 1917: Sub-Lt. Edwin Dyett, shot at dawn
- 1993: Westley Allan Dodd, child molester
- 1527: Felix Manz, the first Anabaptist martyr
- 1463: Not François Villon