The Last Gasp Page 33

  44. NSJ, February 7, 1924.

  45. (Canandaigua, NY) Daily Messenger, February 8, 1924.

  46. REG, February 7, 1924.

  47. Clearfield (PN) Progress, February 8, 1924.

  48. “Reprieved in Gas Cell,” LAT, February 8, 1924.

  49. Interestingly, the execution was scheduled to occur about a month before the deadline for disabled World War I veterans to present their claims for compensation to the United States Veterans Bureau. In other words, anyone who claimed to have suffered ill health as a result of poison gas related to their military service had little time left to establish they had been harmed. NSJ, March 9, 1924.

  50. NSJ, February 9, 1924.

  51. “Gas Kills Convict Almost Instantly,” NYT, February 9, 1924. Born in Pioche in 1877, Turner had served as sheriff of Lincoln County and was a former federal marshal.

  52. NSJ, February 9, 1924.

  53. For the most detailed journalistic account of the execution, see NSJ, February 9, 1924.

  54. Ibid.

  55. Delos A. Turner to Chief of Chemical Warfare Service, U.S. War Department, February 1924, NSP-2320; Young China, February 9, 1924; NSJ, February 9, 1924; SJMH, February 9, 1924; NYT, February 9, 1924; Chan, “Example for the Nation,” pp. 100, 105.

  56. Biennial Report of the Warden of the Nevada State Prison, 1923–1924, p. 4; Chan, “Example for the Nation,” pp. 100, 105.

  57. NSJ, February 9, 1924.

  58. Biennial Report of the Warden of the Nevada State Prison, 1923–1924, pp. 3–4. See also REG, February 8, 1924; SFE, February 9, 1924; SJMH, February 9, 1924; Chan, “Example for the Nation,” pp. 100, 105.

  59. SFC, February 9–10, 1924.

  60. NSJ, February 9, 1924.

  61. REG, February 8, 1924; SFC, February 9, 1924; Chan, “Example for the Nation,” pp. 100, 105; NSJ, February 9, 1924.

  62. Delos A. Turner, M.D., to Warden, Nevada State Prison, February 16, 1924, Nevada State Prison file 2320, Nevada State Archives.

  63. “Witnesses Agree Lethal Gas Death Is Painless,” OSE, February 10, 1924.

  64. NSJ, March 7, 1924.

  65. Ibid.

  66. Turner to Chief of Chemical Warfare Service, February 1924, NSP-2320.

  67. Copeland C. Burg, “New Style Cage,” Ogden (UT) Standard-Examiner, February 10, 1924.

  68. Ibid.

  69. “Witnesses Agree Lethal Gas Is Painless.”

  70. “Law Held Success; State Claims Life for Life by Novel Method Used for First Time in History at Carson City; End Comes Quietly, Without Pain to Tong Killer,” NSJ, February 9, 1924.

  71. NSJ, February 9, 1924.

  72. SJMH, February 9, 1924.

  73. NYT, February 9, 1924.

  74. “Execution by Gas,” LD, March 1, 1924.

  75. “Against Execution by Gas,” NYT, February 10, 1924.

  76. “Tong Clamor to Be Stilled,” LAT, February 13, 1924.

  77. Biennial Report of the Warden of the Nevada State Prison, 1923–1924, p. 4.

  78. SFCP, February 9, 1924; “Lethal Gas Act to Be Retained,” REG, February 27, 1925; “Lethal Gas Holds in Nevada,” NYEW, April 9, 1925.

  79. “Gas Chamber to Claim Another,” LAT, April 26, 1926; “Slayers Await Sleeping Death,” OSE, May 17, 1926; “Lethal Chamber Ready,” LAT, May 19, 1926.

  80. “Nevada Girl’s Slayer Put to Death by Gas,” NYT, May 22, 1926.

  81. Associated Press, “Trotsky Sees War as American Aim,” NYT, April 21, 1924.

  82. See Robert G. Waite, “Law Enforcement and Crime in America: The View from Germany, 1920–40,” in Criminal Justice History, ed. Louis A. Knafla, vol. 13 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993), pp. 191–216 (quotation on p. 192); Nikolaus Wachsmann, Hitler’s Prisons: Legal Terror in Nazi Germany (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 364.

  83. Cyril Brown, “New Popular Idol Rises in Bavaria,” NYT, November 21, 1922.

  84. Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), p. 218.

  85. Roger Eatwell, Fascism: A History (New York: Penguin, 1995), pp. 13–14.

  86. Associated Press, “Help from America to Bavarian Fascisti,” NYT, December 11, 1922; “Berlin Hears Ford Is Backing Hitler,” NYT, December 20, 1922.

  87. “Germany Checks Effort to Form ‘Klan’ There,” NYT, September 10, 1925.

  88. Ernst (“Putzi”) Hanfstaengl, Hitler: The Missing Years (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1957); Carlos Widmann, “Play It Again, Putzi,” Der Spiegel 10/8, March 1999, p. 60. Some of his papers are housed at the University of Maryland Archives.

  89. John Toland, Adolf Hitler, vol. 1 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), p. 195; Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1889–1936 Hubris (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), pp. 217–18.

  90. Philipp Gassert and Daniel S. Mattern, The Hitler Library: A Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001). Madison Grant, Die Eroberung eines Kontinents order die Verbreitung der Rassen in Amerika, trans. Else Mez (Berlin: Alfred Metzner, 1937). With a foreword by Nazi race scientist Eugen Fischer, the book was published in the United States as Conquest of a Continent.

  91. Unpublished autobiography of Leon F. Whitney, 1971, Whitney Papers, American Philosophical Society, pp. 204–5.

  92. “Hitler Tamed by Prison,” NYT, December 21, 1924.

  93. Ernst Hanfstaengl, “My Leader,” Colliers, August 4, 1934.

  94. Hanfstaengl, Hitler: The Missing Years, pp. 113–18. See also Neil Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate (New York: Public Affairs, 2002), p. 172.

  95. Hanfstaengl describes this Hitler mannerism in Walter C. Langer, The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report (New York: Signet, 1972), p. 44.

  96. Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945 (New York: Bantam Books, 1975), p. 3.

  97. Toland, Adolf Hitler, vol. 2, p. 802.

  98. Edwin Black, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003), p. 275.

  5. “LIKE WATERING FLOWERS”

  1. “The New Lethal Gas House at the Nevada State Penitentiary, and the Method in Use for the Administration of the Gas to Capital Offenders,” unpublished description sent by Nevada Warden M. R. Penrose to I. W. Winsmore, January 17, 1935, Board of Charities and Reform, Penitentiary, Gas Chamber file, Wyoming State Archives, Rawlins.

  2. Peter Hayes, From Cooperation to Complicity: Degussa in the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 6–7.

  3. U.S. Patent 1,502,190.

  4. Roessler & Hasslacher Chemical Co., Zyklon B for the Control of Insects and Rodents Causing Great Economic Losses (New York: Roessler & Hasslacher, July 1929).

  5. Neil Spencer Marinovich, “American Industry and Finance, and German Rearmament: A Case Study of Standard Oil, Dupont, and General Motors and Their Relations with Interessengemeinschaft-Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft,” M.A. thesis, Eastern Michigan University, 1995, p. 14 n105. U.S. Patent 2,120,204 describes the American Cyanamid Zyklon discoids.

  6. An American pesticide trade publication from 1928 noted the following:“The dangers of the use of hydrocyanic acid are increased by the fact that some people are unable to smell its peculiar almond odour and hence have no warning of its presence. In Germany, where hydrocyanic acid is often employed as a house fumigant, this difficulty has been overcome by the addition to the gas of an irritant component which will facilitate its detection. For this purpose, a trade preparation Zyklon (Cyclon) was introduced consisting of 90 parts of ‘cyancarbonic ester’ (probably methyl cyanoformate, CN.COOCH2) and 10 parts of ‘chlor-carbonic ester.’ It was claimed that this material, was an efficient substitute for hydrocyanic acid. More recently, this material has been replaced by ‘Zyklon B,’ which consists of a ‘carrier’ of kieselguhr impregnated with liquid hydrocyanic acid and a volatile irritant. Herzog has shown that kieselguhr is able to absorb half its weight of liquid hydrocyanic acid. The product is stored in airt
ight tins and, on being strewn on the ground, the hydrocyanic acid is slowly evolved. According to Staehelin, the irritant poison present increases the respiratory activity of the insect and enhances the toxic effects of the hydrocyanic acid.” Hubert Martin, The Scientific Principles of Plant Protection (New York: Longmans Green & Co., 1928), p. 179.

  7. For a startling account of the delousing of Mexican immigrants, see David Dorado Romo, Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground History of El Paso and Juarez: 1893–1923 (El Paso, TX: Cinco Puntos Press, 2005).

  8. Oliver McKee Jr., “He Watches over the Nation’s Health,” NYT, June 10, 1928; quoted in Alexander Cockburn, “Zyklon B on the U.S. Border,” The Nation, July 9, 2007.

  9. See, e.g., Dr. Gerhard Peters, “Blausäure zur Schädlingsbekämpfung” (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1933), p. 64. The title means “Hydrocyanic Acid for Pest Control.”

  10. J. R. Ridlon, “Experiments with Certain Fumigants Used for the Destruction of Cockroaches,” USPHR 46(28) (July 10, 1931): 1572–78. This was one of many such reports the agency issued in 1931.

  11. C. L. Williams, “The Air Jet Hydrocyanic Acid Sprayer,” USPHR 46(30) (July 24, 1931).

  12. C. L. Williams, “Report on Some Tests of the Use of a New Cyanogen Product in Ship Fumigation,” USPHR 46(35) (August 28, 1931).

  13. F. Flury, “Über Kampfgasvergiftungen I. Über Reizgase,” Z. Gesamte Experimentelle Medizin 13 (1921): 1–15; F. Haber, “Zur Geschichte des Gaskrieges,” in Fuenf Vortraege aus den Jahren, 1920–1923 (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1924), pp. 76–92, as described in Hanspeter Witschi, “Some Notes on the History of Haber’s Law,” Toxicological Sciences 50 (1999): 164–68.

  14. American Cyanamid, Research in the Development of Cyanogas Calcium Cyanide (n.p.: American Cyanamid Co., 1926).

  15. “World Dye Trust Laid to 8 Big Firms,” NYT, May 15, 1942.

  16. See Gerard Colby, DuPont Dynasty: Behind the Nylon Curtain (Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1984); Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy: An Exposé of the Nazi-American Money Plot 1933–1949. The plot was confirmed by the Dickstein-McCormack Committee, which held hearings on the subject. See House of Representatives, Special Committee on Un-American Activities, “Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities,” 73rd Cong., 2nd Sess., November 24, 1934.

  17. http://heritage.dupont.com/floater/fl_randh/floater.shtml (accessed March 17, 2007).

  18. Roessler & Hasslacher Chemical Company, Fumigation of Flour Mills by Hydrocyanic Acid Gas Generated from “Cyanegg,” Cyanide of Sodium 96–98% (New York: Roessler & Hasslacher, 1929).

  19. http://heritage.dupont.com/floater/fl_randh/floater.shtml (accessed March 17, 2007); Alan Lougheed, “The Anatomy of an International Cartel, 1897–1927,” Prometheus 19(1) (2001): 6–7.

  20. Robert Hauptman and Susan Hubbs Motin, The Holocaust: Memories, Research, Reference (Binghamton: Haworth Press, 1998), pp. 105–6.

  21. Gerard Colby Zilg, DuPont: Behind the Nylon Curtain (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall 1974), p. 304.

  22. U.S. Patent 2,120,204, application April 27, 1936, and patented June 7, 1938.

  23. See, e.g., American Cyanamid, Zyklon Discoids: Fumigation Manual (New York: American Cyanamid, 1942).

  24. “White Is Executed in Nevada by Gas,” NYT, June 3, 1930.

  25. Edward E. Hamer, M.D., “The Execution of Robert H. White by Hydrocyanic Acid Gas,” JAMA 95 (August 30, 1930): 661–62.

  26. “Nevada’s Gas House,” Outlook 155 (October 1930): 256.

  27. See, e.g., P. J. Zisch, “Lethal Gas a Means of Asphyxiating Capital Offenders,” Medico-Legal Journal, January–February 1931, p. 36; Anthony M. Turano, “Capital Punishment by Lethal Gas,” AM 29 (1933): 91–93. See also Stuart Banner, The Death Penalty: An American History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 196–205.

  28. “Head Severed from Body as Trap Is Sprung,” PEG, February 21, 1930; “Brief Funeral Rites for Eva Dugan Attended Only by Prison Heads,” AR, February 22, 1930; “Lethal Chamber Replaces Rope,” ADS, March 15, 1931; “Lethal Gas, Which Replaces Rope in Arizona, Makes Execution Painless,” TDC, March 18, 1931.

  29. House Joint Resolution No. 4, amending Section 22, Article XXII of the state constitution, received by the secretary of state on March 15, 1933. Arizona Constitution, art. 22, sect. 22.

  30. Crane McClennen, “Capital Punishment in Arizona,” Arizona Attorney, October 1992, p. 19.

  31. Alan Goldberg, Hooded Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Colorado (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981); Lee Casey, “When the Klan Controlled Colorado,” RMN, June 17–19, 1946.

  32. “Cañon City Klan Organized,” The Rocky Mountain Klansman 1 (January 20, 1924).

  33. Stephen J. Leonard, Lynching in Colorado, 1859–1919 (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2002), p. 3.

  34. “Eddie Ives Ends 40 Years of Crime in Three States on Gallows at Cañon City,” RMN, January 11, 1930; “Belongia Goes to Death Gladly in Gas Chamber,” DP, June 22, 1935; Michael L. Radelet, “Capital Punishment in Colorado, 1859–1972,” UCLR 74(3) (2003): 961–62.

  35. Act of March 31, 1933, ch. 61, 1933 Colo. Sess. Laws, 420–22; “Governor Signs Gas Bill,” RMN, April 1, 1933.

  36. Diana Andersen, “Warden Roy Best,” Local History Center, Cañon City Public Library, 2002.

  37. The state was becoming more sophisticated in determining the precise lethality of the chamber. In May 1930 Nevada’s public health officer, Dr. E. E. Hamer, announced that he planned to utilize a special stethoscope with an extended tube over the heart of the next convict to be executed in the state’s gas chamber, in order to test the actions of the heart and lungs of someone who was undergoing lethal gassing. “Doctors Will Study Man Being Executed,” NYT, June 1, 1930.

  38. “2,500 for Death House,” RMN, June 15, 1933; Maurice Leckenby, “State Pen Death Chamber Nearing Completion Here,” RMN, September 24, 1933.

  39. Thomas J. Noel and Kevin E. Rucker, Eaton Metal Products: The First 80 Years (Denver, CO: A. B. Hirschfeld Press, n.d.). Timothy J. Travis, president of Eaton, declined to be interviewed for this project and would not allow research into his company’s records about the gas chamber.

  40. “Execution Chamber Styles,” RMN, February 27, 1938; Cary Stiff, “Denverite ‘Refined’ Death,” DP, September 15, 1966; Bill Pardue, “Denver Firm Receives Inquiries on Gas Chambers,” RMN, December 6, 1976; Cary Stiff, “The Death House by the Side of the Road,” DP, May 16, 1971; Empire Magazine, May 16, 1971, pp. 17–22.

  41. A detailed description of the Eaton design is available in Appendix 1.

  42. Walden E. Sweet, “Young Wife’s Plea for Mercy Fails to Save Kelley from Death Chamber,” DP, June 19, 1934.

  43. “Boy Is Told He Must Die in Gas Chamber,” NYT, December 30, 1933.

  44. Lorena Hickok, One Third of a Nation: Lorena Hickok Reports on the Great Depression, ed. Richard Lowitt and Maurine Beasley (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1983), pp. 285–86, recounted in Radelet, “Capital Punishment in Colorado,” p. 989.

  45. Charles T. O’Brien, “Kelley Executed in New Gas Cell,” DP, June 23, 1934.

  46. Ibid.; “Death by Gas: 90¢,” Time, July 2, 1934.

  47. Hernandez v. State, 43 Ariz. 424 (1934).

  48. “Youthful Slayers Executed,” St. John’s Herald, July 12, 1934.

  49. “Arizona Has Double Lethal Gas Execution,” New Castle (PA) News, July 6, 1934; AR, July 6, 1934.

  50. McClennen, “Capital Punishment in Arizona,” p. 19.

  51. “Kisses Executed Man, Is Mysteriously Ill,” NYT, July 12, 1936.

  52. McClennen, “Capital Punishment in Arizona,” pp. 17–21.

  53. “Burglars Murder Colorado Farmer and Schoolboy and Wound Woman; Fiends Shoot Three Then Pour Kerosene on Them and Light It,” DP, February 28, 1934; “Defense Suddenly Rests in Trial of Pacheco Brothers,” DP, March 30, 1934; Wallis M. Reef, “Two Brothers Die for Brutal Murder,�
�� RMN, June 1, 1935.

  54. “Ex-Convict Murders Colorado Rancher and Wounds His Wife,” DP, December 17, 1934; “Murderer Offers Brain to Science,” DP, June 20, 1935; “Belongia Goes to Death Gladly in Gas Chamber,” DP, June 22, 1935.

  55. “Posses Encircle Slayers of Sheriff in Colorado,” RMN, July 16, 1935; Jack Carberry, “McDaniels Shows Remorse and Fear on Execution Day,” DP, February 14, 1936; “Otis McDaniels Walks Smiling to Gas Chamber to Die as Double Slayer,” RMN, February 15, 1936.

  56. RNO, May 2, 1935. The best source on the history of North Carolina’s lethal gas executions is Katrina Nannette Seitz, “The Transition of Methods of Execution in North Carolina: A Descriptive Social History of Two Time Periods, 1935 & 1983,” Ph.D. diss., Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, 2001.

  57. RNO, March 27, 1935.

  58. RNO, April 4, 1935; Journal of the House of Representatives of the General Assembly of the State of North Carolina, 1935; RNO, May 2, 1935.

  59. RNO, May 2, 1935.

  60. “Lethal Gas Bill Will Become Law: Almost Made a Bad Slip,” GDG, April 25, 1935; “Death Gas Assailed as Cruel,” NYT, December 8, 1935.

  61. “New Execution Method to Be Tried,” Middletown (NY) Times Herald, December 23, 1935.

  62. Quoted in David Margolick, “Save Me, Joe Louis!” LAT, November 7, 2005.

  63. RNO, January 24, 1936.

  64. RNO, January 25, 1935; February 1, 1935; Virginius Dabney, “Use of Death Gas Stirs Carolinians,” NYT, February 2, 1936. See also Trina Seitz, “The Killing Chair: North Carolina’s Experiment in Civility and the Execution of Allen Foster,” NCHQ 81(1) (2004): 1–35.

  65. David Margolick, “Save Me, Joe Louis!”

  66. RNO, January 25, 1936.

  67. RNO, January 27, 1936.

  68. Seitz, “Transition of Methods,” p. 130.

  69. Associated Press, “Slayer Executed by Gas,” NYT, February 1, 1936; RNO, February 1, 1936.

  70. Associated Press, “Two Die in Gas Chamber,” NYT, February 8, 1936.

  71. RNO, February 1, 1936; Judge M. H. Patel, unpublished opinion, No. C-92–1482, Fierro v. Gomez, 77 F.3d 301 (9th Cir. 1996).