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Rainey Bethea Last Public Execution In The United States

Kentuckians convicted of every capital crime except criminal assault die in the electric chair. For rapists the penalty is hanging in the county where the crime was committed. Last year 1,500 sightseers packed Smithland to see William Thomas De Boe become the State’s first white man hanged for rape (TIME, April 29, 1935). Last week in Daviess County, which has not had a hanging since a private one in 1905, a Negro outdrew white William De Boe nearly 7-to-1 as a gallows performer.

Added attraction at the execution of 22-year-old Rainey Bethea, who raped and strangled a 70-year-old white woman, was Kentucky’s only female sheriff, plump, matronly Mrs. Florence Thompson. When her husband died four months ago. Governor Albert Benjamin (“Happy”) Chandler passed his job on to her. It thus became her duty to spring the trap under Bethea. A devout Roman Catholic, Sheriff Thompson consulted her priest, learned from him that nothing in canon law prohibited her from sending the blackamoor to his legal death. Protestant churchmen concurred. Nevertheless, soft-hearted Sheriff Thompson sighed: “I suppose I will spend the rest of my life forgetting—or trying to forget.” Would she lose her nerve at the last minute was the big question last week at Owensboro, scene of the hanging.

Night before the execution, Owensboro was host to the greatest crowd in its history. Cars poured in from neighboring counties, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri. Every bar was packed to the doors. Down the main street tipsy merrymakers rollicked all night. “Hanging parties” were held in many a home. Sheriff Thompson’s 17-year-old daughter sneaked out against her mother’s orders to attend one. As before the execution of Rapist De Boe, one motorist was in such a hurry to get to the scene that he cracked up, killed himself.

The hanging was scheduled for dawn (5:12 a. m.). By 3 a. m. the lot near the Ohio River where the scaffold was erected overflowed with 10,000 men, women and children. Hawkers squeezed their way through the crowd selling pop, hot dogs. Telephone poles and trees were festooned with spectators. By 4:30 a. m. the crowd crushed through the wire fence around the scaffold. Police had a hard time getting Phil Hanna from Illinois, whose knowledge of knots has made him a distinguished necessity at 80 hangings, to the gallows. Businesslike, he tested the trap three times, found it good.

At 5 o’clock the sky was dove grey. The crowd grew impatient, began to yip: “Let’s go! Bring him out!” At 5:20 a.m. Bethea, his stomach bulging with chicken, pork chops and watermelon, was pushed through the crowd to the base of the platform. “I don’t like to die with my shoes on.” he said, sitting down on the bottom step and taking them off. Up the 13 steps to the platform he walked. Then for the first time the crowd learned that Sheriff Thompson could not nerve herself to her job. Fingering the trap lever instead was Arthur (“Daredevil Dick”) Hasch, a pensioned Louisville policeman, deputized by Sheriff Thompson. The Sheriff miserably sat in her automobile 50 yd. away. Assistant Hangman Hanna adjusted the noose. Unlike Rapist De Boe, who was permitted to quarrel for an hour with his victim, Negro Bethea had nothing to say. “Man, he’s there!” whispered an admiring spectator. The hot-dog sellers fell quiet.

At 5:25 a. m. everything was ready. At 5:28 there was a swish, a snap. Doctors climbed through the supports, felt Bethea’s pulse. The spectators closed in. At 5:44½ a. m. physicians pronounced Bethea dead. With a yell the spectators charged from every side, eager hands clawed at the black death hood. In a moment it was torn to shreds. The lucky ones stuffed the bits of black cloth proudly into their pockets. Slowly the crowd straggled away.