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THE LAST PUBLIC EXECUTION IN THE UNITED STATES

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THE LAST PUBLIC EXECUTION IN THE UNITED STATES

On August 14, 1936, a young Negro Rainey Bethea was publicly hanged on the Ohio River embankment in Owensboro, Kentucky. This event was the last public execution in the United States.

It is known that Rainey was born in Virginia, left an orphan early. In 1933, he came to Kentucky’s Owensboro, where he was hired as an employee at a tobacco plantation in the vicinity of the city.

On the night of June 7, 1936, Bethea was very drunk. Seeing an open window, he climbed into the house of 70-year-old Lisha Edwards, hoping to profit from something inside. In the bedroom, he came across the hostess lying in bed. During the rape, the woman resisted. Bethea didn’t want to kill her, but he did. I took the jewelry out of the casket from the poor widow and decided to run away from the city.

The very next day, the killer was detained while boarding the ferry. On the other side of the Ohio River was another state-Illinois. Rainey Bethea didn’t have any documents with him and, at random, introduced himself as John Smith. And he got pissed because the police were looking for a gang leader named John Smith. Bethea had to give her name. But it didn’t make him feel any better, because by that time he was already wanted for the murder of Edwards. The evidence against him was reinforced concrete – traces of his hands and shoes in the victim’s house, his black celluloid prison ring forgotten there. Rainey didn’t really lock himself in, although he didn’t remember the murder very well.

It is clear that he could not escape a guilty verdict. But then there came a situation when lawyers had something to puzzle over. If the court finds Bethea guilty of a federal crime — murder and sentences him to death, then the convict will have to be sent to the federal prison in Eddyville, Kentucky, so that he can be put on the electric chair away from prying eyes.

But the local prosecutor did not want to deprive the residents of Owensboro of the spectacle of the execution of the murderer. He deliberately did not incriminate him with murder and robbery, but accused him only of rape. And for this, the prosecutor had a legal trick. The investigation could not prove exactly what was primary — the murder of the unfortunate victim, or rape. For this crime, Bethea was sentenced to public hanging.

On August 13, at four in the Louisville jail, Rainey Bethea received his last meal. They brought him fried chicken, pork with mashed potatoes and corn, pickled cucumbers, Cornbread cornbread and a piece of lemon cake. At one o’clock in the morning, he was taken to Owensboro Prison. And at dawn on August 14, 1936, they were taken to the square, where there was a large wooden gallows. Despite the early hour, a crowd of 20 thousand gathered to watch the execution. Many specially came for the sake of this spectacle from other cities in Kentucky and neighboring Illinois.

Sheriff Florence Thompson.

Of particular interest to people was the fact that the county sheriff was a woman Florence Thompson. She became sheriff by inheritance of a widow after her husband, who served as sheriff, died of pneumonia. People wanted to see how she would cope with hanging. But the authorities hedged their bets and invited farmer Phil Nunn, who had experience in carrying out executions, to carry out the execution. And she suddenly had a volunteer assistant — Arthur Hash, a former Louisville police officer, offered his services for free to carry out the execution. Florence accepted his offer, and he almost ruined everything by showing up to the execution drunk.

When Bethea was raised to the scaffold, he received communion from a Baptist priest there. He refused the last word. Nanna and her assistants put a black hoodie and a noose on his head. Drunk Arthur Hash, who helped the executioner, could not normally pull the floor extension lever. Phil had to pull this lever himself. Only after that, the condemned man fell through the hatch. After 14 minutes, the doctor recorded that he had given his soul to God.

The journalists who described this execution did not dare to report that it became a real holiday for Owensboro. There, on her occasion, music blared for the rest of the day, and the owners of drinking establishments treated visitors to free drinks. But when this was read in other cities, a wave of protests against public executions arose in the United States.

As a result, the Kentucky Senate and House of Representatives approved a bill to abolish public executions. Kentucky Governor Arthur Chandler signed it on March 12, 1938, but later expressed regret about it, saying, «Our streets are no longer safe.»

Oleg Loginov

*Translated using an electronic dictionary. The original text in Russian and much more on the criminal topic can be selected on the main page of the site — http://crimerecords.info/

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