Free Amazing True Stories of Execution Blunders by Geoffrey Abbott

other children.
    When put on trial, his defence lawyers attempted to show that Fish was not responsible for his actions; that he had been diagnosed as being addicted to self-mutilation, frequently inserting needles into the more sensitive parts of his body and had twice been held in psychiatric institutions for short periods.
    But the jury was not convinced, and he was found guilty and sentenced to die by electrocution.
    In January 1936 he was strapped into Sing Sing Prison’s electric chair. The power was switched on and as the first charge surged through him, his body was seen to jerk and writhe desperately, the current failing to extinguish his life. A further attempt was made, and this time the officials present gave a sigh of relief as the doctor, after using his stethoscope, confirmed that Albert Fish had breathed his last. The cause of the first abortive attempt was never discovered, although many attributed it to the presence of twenty-nine needles in his body, some of them rusty, that were detected by the X-rays taken during the subsequent autopsy.
     
    Serial killer Paul Jaworski passed the time in his cell by reading, appropriately enough, a serial story in a weekly magazine, and was disappointed when he realised he would be executed before the last instalment was published. ‘Gee,’ he exclaimed, ‘it’s tough not to know how it all ends!’
    There was a happy ending to the event, however, if not for Jaworski himself, because the publishers, on hearing of the prisoner’s dilemma, promptly sent him an advance copy of the final instalment.
     
     
     
    Willie Francis
    One can only pity this 15-year-old criminal, no matter how heinous his crime may have been, for the mental and physical suffering he endured when secured in Louisiana’s electric chair in 1946. The switch was operated but despite the obvious surge of power, the victim was heard to gasp, ‘Let me breathe.’ The cause of his continued struggles could only be a lack of voltage, so it was turned off and then on again, only for those present to hear him exclaim, ‘Take it off!’
    The warden ordered the circuit to be disconnected and Francis to be released – from the chair but not his fate, for he was returned to his cell while the electrical problem was identified and rectified. This temporary and callous reprieve caused a public outcry, it being argued that a second execution would be a ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ under the Eighth Amendment of the American Constitution. However, the Supreme Court disagreed with this viewpoint and Willie was duly returned to the chair in the following year when everything worked without fail.
     
    Emulating Bonny and Clyde, Irene Schroeder and Glenn Dague committed robberies across Pennsylvania until finally cornered by the police. During the shoot-out, Irene killed one of the policemen and both criminals were sentenced to die in the electric chair. Her companion was very much in her thoughts all the time she was in the condemned cell, and when she was asked by one of her guards whether she would like anything done for her on the morning of her execution, Irene replied, ‘Yes, please tell them in the kitchen to fry Glenn’s eggs on both sides. He likes them that way.’
     
    Martin D. Loppy
    Short but terrible was the account of the electrocution of murderer Martin Loppy in December 1891 at Sing Sing Prison. Half fainting, the condemned man had to be carried into the death chamber by the guards and held while being strapped in. No fewer than four separate surges of current were allowed to course through his body between intervals in which the electrodes had to be remoistened, but those present were shocked and horrified on becoming aware of the strong smell of charred flesh, and witnessing the victim’s left eyeball being emitted from its socket on to his cheek, the fluid running down his face.
     
    Sing Sing convict no. 69711 admitted his crimes but pleaded that he had robbed the rich for the benefit