WEBVTT
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This is Botched Executions from Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marlar.
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00:00:07.250 --> 00:00:10.509
For nearly 400 years, states have been putting people to death,
3
00:00:10.910 --> 00:00:15.460
and some of those executions went horribly wrong. Trap doors
4
00:00:15.519 --> 00:00:19.600
wouldn't open, flames rose from the electric chair, and needles
5
00:00:19.780 --> 00:00:23.579
couldn't find a vein. In this series, I'm taking you
6
00:00:23.699 --> 00:00:27.480
through my book, Botched Executions, one chapter at a time.
7
00:00:28.179 --> 00:00:31.469
Everything you'll hear comes from the witnesses, the court records,
8
00:00:31.969 --> 00:00:35.810
and the state's own written reports. Where the accounts disagree,
9
00:00:36.310 --> 00:00:41.140
you'll hear both. Whatever you believe about capital punishment, these
10
00:00:41.179 --> 00:00:43.280
are the cases where a state set out to kill
11
00:00:43.359 --> 00:00:47.700
someone and got it wrong. A word of warning before
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00:00:47.740 --> 00:00:51.679
we begin. These are real deaths, described by the people
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00:00:51.740 --> 00:00:55.299
who watched them, and some of the details are hard
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00:00:55.539 --> 00:01:04.569
to hear. And now, botched executions, four centuries of failed hangings, electrocutions, gassings, injections,
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00:01:05.269 --> 00:01:16.879
and firing squads. Chapter 4. Wallace Wilkerson Refuses the Blindfold. Provo,
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00:01:17.239 --> 00:01:25.819
Utah Territory. May 16, 1879. Wallace Wilkerson was born in Quincy, Illinois,
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and came to Utah with his parents in 1852. When
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he was eight, in one of the Mormon wagon companies.
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He was baptized at nine. Later, he went to California
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and stayed 11 years, and in the fall of 1876,
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he came back to see his father and mother who
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were living at Payson. I'd made up my mind to
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stay right with them as long as they lived, he
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told a reporter for the Salt Lake Herald a few
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days before he died. Two of his brothers had a
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contract burning charcoal at Homansville, in the Tintic mining country
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of Waub County. and he went to work with them.
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On June 11, 1877, he was at a table in
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a saloon at Homansville with a man named William Baxter
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and a third man named Messenger. And there he killed Baxter.
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The Herald gave the account that came out at the trial.
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Wilkerson drew a pistol and fired across the table, and
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the ball struck Baxter under the right eye. Baxter didn't fall.
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he was leaning back against a pile of flour sacks
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and his head dropped onto his chest. Wilkerson reached across
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the table, took hold of Baxter's hair, lifted his head,
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set the muzzle against his cheek in front of the
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right ear, and fired again. When they stripped the body,
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the only thing they found on Baxter that looked anything
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like a weapon was a pocket knife two or three
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inches long. The paper allowed that there were people who
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believed Baxter had been armed and that his friends had
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made the gun disappear. Wilkerson's lawyers asked to move the
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trial out of the district. The citizens of Wobb and
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Utah counties, their affidavit said, had offered a $ 500 reward
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for his capture, and crowds had gathered with the avowed
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purpose of shooting or hanging the defendant. The motion was denied.
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Before the trial, he broke out of jail. The sheriff
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of Sevier County and a posse caught him near Richfield,
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and he was back in jail four weeks to the
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day after he got out. The trial itself took about
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three days, and the jury was out only a short time.
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Judge P.H. Emerson sentenced him to be publicly shot until
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you are dead on Friday, December 14, 1877, between 10
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in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. His lawyers
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took the case to the Supreme Court of the Territory
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and then to the Supreme Court of the United States,
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and the argument they made was narrow. Utah's 1852 law
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had let a condemned man choose to be shot, hanged,
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or beheaded. The new code of 1876 had dropped that
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provision and put nothing in its place, so, they said,
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no judge had any power to order a man shot.
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They didn't argue that shooting was cruel, and the court
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noted that it was not pretended by the counsel of
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the prisoner that it was. On March 17, 1879, it
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affirmed the sentence and said in passing that shooting as
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a way of carrying out a death sentence for murder
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was not the cruel and unusual punishment the Eighth Amendment forbids.
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Soldiers convicted of desertion, the opinion noted, were usually sentenced
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to be shot. What the Constitution ruled out, the court said,
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were punishments like the ones Blackstone described, prisoners emboweled alive,
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beheaded and quartered, and all others in the same line
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of unnecessary cruelty. Wilkerson was resentenced to be shot on
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May 16th. He spent the weeks before it at the
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penitentiary in Salt Lake City, where, the Herald said, he'd
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earned a name as one of the foulest-mouthed men in
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the place. When the warrant was read to him, he
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swore at the officer reading it the whole way through.
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The warden, General Butler, took Wilkerson and the paper's reporter
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into the guard's dining room and gave the prisoner a
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drink and a cigar, and he talked about his parents
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and about Baxter. His friends had asked that he be
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given some liquor every day since he was used to it.
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Just before the execution, he was taken to Provo. The
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jail there stood in a board-walled yard about 40 feet
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square and took up more than half of it. The
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marksmen were put in a wood shed in the northeast
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corner of the yard. Across from them, against the west wall,
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railroad ties had been stacked to stop the bullets, and
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a chair was set in front of the ties. His
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wife stayed with him through the night. In the morning,
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he talked about his life. A correspondent for the Ogden
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Junction reported, his father and mother had raised him right,
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he said. and he'd never listened to them, and this
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was where it had brought him. He'd killed Baxter, and didn't,
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for the life of him, know why. He'd also killed
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a man in Humboldt County, Nevada, he said, but the
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marshal had the jail cleared before anyone could get the particulars.
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At about five minutes to twelve, his wife was led
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out of his cell, weeping. When she'd been taken far
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enough away that she wouldn't hear the shots, they brought
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him out. He wore black broadcloth and a white felt hat,
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and between the fingers of his left hand was a
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cigar which stayed there to the end. He exhibited unmistakable
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effects of liquor, the junction said, which had been provided
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him when desired. Some 20 people were in the yard,
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by the paper's count, and two or three hundred stood
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outside the wall. At the chair, the United States Marshal,
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a man named Shaughnessy, asked whether he had anything to say.
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I have come to my fate, Wilkerson said. He had
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no hard feelings toward anyone, he said, except one man
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who had sworn to lies at his trial, and he
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hoped God would be merciful to him. The officers had
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treated him well. I have good wishes towards you all. Goodbye.
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I have done right, haven't I? The marshal said he had.
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I am ready to die, Wilkerson said. My spirit is ready,
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and will soon fly to meet my God. Goodbye, all.
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He shook hands with the marshal, with a Mr. Van Zyl,
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and with Sheriff Turner, and sat down. He wouldn't be blindfolded.
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No handkerchief was tied over his eyes, as is usually done,
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the junction noted, and the version of his reason that
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has come down through the Utah writer L.K. Gillespie is,
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I give you my word, I intend to die like
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a man, looking my executioners right in the eye. The
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marshal pinned a round piece of paper over his heart.
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as nearly as could be judged, and the officials, the doctors,
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and the reporters stepped back about six feet. Shaughnessy tapped
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three times for the marksman to make ready, and Wilkerson
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looked straight at the muzzles in the shed. Then the
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marshal tapped three times again, and the rifles went off together.
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Wilkerson came up out of the chair and jumped forward
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five or six feet, the junction reported, falling on his
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left thigh and turning over on his face. As he went,
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he said, oh my God, they have missed the mark,
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oh God. Then the paper said, a revolting spectacle ensued,
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as he lay on the ground, gasping, breathing, and once
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or twice faintly moaning. He took 27 minutes to die.
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The paper counted three shots fired, and none of them
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had hit his heart or his lungs. Gillespie's later account
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counts four, three holes in the paper an inch above
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the heart and a fourth in the left arm, and
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has him drawing his shoulders back at the command so
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that the paper rode up with his coat. It puts
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the dying at 15 minutes. His body was put in
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a plain coffin and given to his family. That same afternoon,
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the Deseret Evening News, the Latter-day Saints paper in Salt
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Lake City, printed an editorial on the execution that said
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nothing about how it had gone. Wilkerson had atoned for
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that deed as far as it is possible to so
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to do by the pouring out of his own blood,
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it said. Thus the divine law has been executed and
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human law honored. The paper said he had chosen shooting
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over hanging or beheading, his privilege under our local statutes,
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though the Supreme Court had just found that the choice
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was no longer in the code, and it approved there
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was something barbarous in the idea of strangling a man
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to death like a dog. The dignity of the law
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could be served just as well by sending a bullet
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into a murderer's breast as by choking the life out
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of him with a rope. The Ogden Junction had heard
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how it went. Its editorial the next morning called the
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execution another illustration of the brutal exhibitions of inquisitorial torture
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that had lately disgraced the country. Rotten ropes, ignorantly or
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carelessly adjusted nooses, or inexperienced marksmen. Such scenes, it said,
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were always blamed on accident, and they had become so
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frequent that some other method of judicial murder should be adopted.
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It had a candidate. The French guillotine never fails. The
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swift falling knife flashes in the light. A dull thud
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is heard, and all is over. Thanks for listening. I've
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been reading from my new book, Botched Executions, Four Centuries
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of Failed Hangings, Electrocutions, Gassings, Injections, and Firing Squads. If
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you'd like a list of sources I used for this episode,
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00:11:02.250 --> 00:11:04.610
and for the book it's narrated from, you can find
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the full list at WeirdDarkness.com slash Botched Executions. Scroll to
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00:11:09.990 --> 00:11:12.789
the bottom of the page for the sources used. If
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you'd rather not wait for the next section to be
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shared in the podcast, the whole book is available on
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Amazon in Kindle and paperback, as well as Kindle Unlimited.
1
00:00:02.350 --> 00:00:06.269
This is Botched Executions from Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marlar.
2
00:00:07.250 --> 00:00:10.509
For nearly 400 years, states have been putting people to death,
3
00:00:10.910 --> 00:00:15.460
and some of those executions went horribly wrong. Trap doors
4
00:00:15.519 --> 00:00:19.600
wouldn't open, flames rose from the electric chair, and needles
5
00:00:19.780 --> 00:00:23.579
couldn't find a vein. In this series, I'm taking you
6
00:00:23.699 --> 00:00:27.480
through my book, Botched Executions, one chapter at a time.
7
00:00:28.179 --> 00:00:31.469
Everything you'll hear comes from the witnesses, the court records,
8
00:00:31.969 --> 00:00:35.810
and the state's own written reports. Where the accounts disagree,
9
00:00:36.310 --> 00:00:41.140
you'll hear both. Whatever you believe about capital punishment, these
10
00:00:41.179 --> 00:00:43.280
are the cases where a state set out to kill
11
00:00:43.359 --> 00:00:47.700
someone and got it wrong. A word of warning before
12
00:00:47.740 --> 00:00:51.679
we begin. These are real deaths, described by the people
13
00:00:51.740 --> 00:00:55.299
who watched them, and some of the details are hard
14
00:00:55.539 --> 00:01:04.569
to hear. And now, botched executions, four centuries of failed hangings, electrocutions, gassings, injections,
15
00:01:05.269 --> 00:01:16.879
and firing squads. Chapter 4. Wallace Wilkerson Refuses the Blindfold. Provo,
16
00:01:17.239 --> 00:01:25.819
Utah Territory. May 16, 1879. Wallace Wilkerson was born in Quincy, Illinois,
17
00:01:26.120 --> 00:01:27.799
and came to Utah with his parents in 1852. When
18
00:01:27.819 --> 00:01:32.170
he was eight, in one of the Mormon wagon companies.
19
00:01:33.049 --> 00:01:36.310
He was baptized at nine. Later, he went to California
20
00:01:36.409 --> 00:01:38.909
and stayed 11 years, and in the fall of 1876,
21
00:01:38.909 --> 00:01:42.599
he came back to see his father and mother who
22
00:01:42.659 --> 00:01:46.159
were living at Payson. I'd made up my mind to
23
00:01:46.200 --> 00:01:48.799
stay right with them as long as they lived, he
24
00:01:48.859 --> 00:01:51.079
told a reporter for the Salt Lake Herald a few
25
00:01:51.099 --> 00:01:54.159
days before he died. Two of his brothers had a
26
00:01:54.200 --> 00:01:58.250
contract burning charcoal at Homansville, in the Tintic mining country
27
00:01:58.310 --> 00:02:00.750
of Waub County. and he went to work with them.
28
00:02:01.930 --> 00:02:05.310
On June 11, 1877, he was at a table in
29
00:02:05.349 --> 00:02:08.449
a saloon at Homansville with a man named William Baxter
30
00:02:08.830 --> 00:02:13.150
and a third man named Messenger. And there he killed Baxter.
31
00:02:14.069 --> 00:02:16.689
The Herald gave the account that came out at the trial.
32
00:02:17.370 --> 00:02:20.830
Wilkerson drew a pistol and fired across the table, and
33
00:02:20.849 --> 00:02:24.770
the ball struck Baxter under the right eye. Baxter didn't fall.
34
00:02:25.180 --> 00:02:28.039
he was leaning back against a pile of flour sacks
35
00:02:28.099 --> 00:02:32.259
and his head dropped onto his chest. Wilkerson reached across
36
00:02:32.300 --> 00:02:35.340
the table, took hold of Baxter's hair, lifted his head,
37
00:02:35.759 --> 00:02:37.879
set the muzzle against his cheek in front of the
38
00:02:37.919 --> 00:02:41.949
right ear, and fired again. When they stripped the body,
39
00:02:42.270 --> 00:02:44.870
the only thing they found on Baxter that looked anything
40
00:02:44.949 --> 00:02:47.770
like a weapon was a pocket knife two or three
41
00:02:47.849 --> 00:02:51.449
inches long. The paper allowed that there were people who
42
00:02:51.490 --> 00:02:54.349
believed Baxter had been armed and that his friends had
43
00:02:54.389 --> 00:02:59.319
made the gun disappear. Wilkerson's lawyers asked to move the
44
00:02:59.379 --> 00:03:02.659
trial out of the district. The citizens of Wobb and
45
00:03:02.780 --> 00:03:07.080
Utah counties, their affidavit said, had offered a $ 500 reward
46
00:03:07.139 --> 00:03:10.520
for his capture, and crowds had gathered with the avowed
47
00:03:10.580 --> 00:03:14.900
purpose of shooting or hanging the defendant. The motion was denied.
48
00:03:15.680 --> 00:03:18.500
Before the trial, he broke out of jail. The sheriff
49
00:03:18.539 --> 00:03:21.610
of Sevier County and a posse caught him near Richfield,
50
00:03:21.930 --> 00:03:24.090
and he was back in jail four weeks to the
51
00:03:24.129 --> 00:03:27.819
day after he got out. The trial itself took about
52
00:03:27.879 --> 00:03:31.060
three days, and the jury was out only a short time.
53
00:03:32.020 --> 00:03:35.879
Judge P.H. Emerson sentenced him to be publicly shot until
54
00:03:35.939 --> 00:03:38.199
you are dead on Friday, December 14, 1877, between 10
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in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. His lawyers
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took the case to the Supreme Court of the Territory
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and then to the Supreme Court of the United States,
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and the argument they made was narrow. Utah's 1852 law
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had let a condemned man choose to be shot, hanged,
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or beheaded. The new code of 1876 had dropped that
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provision and put nothing in its place, so, they said,
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no judge had any power to order a man shot.
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They didn't argue that shooting was cruel, and the court
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noted that it was not pretended by the counsel of
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the prisoner that it was. On March 17, 1879, it
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affirmed the sentence and said in passing that shooting as
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a way of carrying out a death sentence for murder
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was not the cruel and unusual punishment the Eighth Amendment forbids.
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Soldiers convicted of desertion, the opinion noted, were usually sentenced
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to be shot. What the Constitution ruled out, the court said,
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were punishments like the ones Blackstone described, prisoners emboweled alive,
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beheaded and quartered, and all others in the same line
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of unnecessary cruelty. Wilkerson was resentenced to be shot on
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May 16th. He spent the weeks before it at the
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penitentiary in Salt Lake City, where, the Herald said, he'd
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earned a name as one of the foulest-mouthed men in
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the place. When the warrant was read to him, he
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swore at the officer reading it the whole way through.
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The warden, General Butler, took Wilkerson and the paper's reporter
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into the guard's dining room and gave the prisoner a
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drink and a cigar, and he talked about his parents
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and about Baxter. His friends had asked that he be
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given some liquor every day since he was used to it.
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Just before the execution, he was taken to Provo. The
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jail there stood in a board-walled yard about 40 feet
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square and took up more than half of it. The
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marksmen were put in a wood shed in the northeast
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corner of the yard. Across from them, against the west wall,
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railroad ties had been stacked to stop the bullets, and
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a chair was set in front of the ties. His
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wife stayed with him through the night. In the morning,
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he talked about his life. A correspondent for the Ogden
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Junction reported, his father and mother had raised him right,
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he said. and he'd never listened to them, and this
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was where it had brought him. He'd killed Baxter, and didn't,
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for the life of him, know why. He'd also killed
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a man in Humboldt County, Nevada, he said, but the
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marshal had the jail cleared before anyone could get the particulars.
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At about five minutes to twelve, his wife was led
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out of his cell, weeping. When she'd been taken far
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enough away that she wouldn't hear the shots, they brought
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him out. He wore black broadcloth and a white felt hat,
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and between the fingers of his left hand was a
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cigar which stayed there to the end. He exhibited unmistakable
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effects of liquor, the junction said, which had been provided
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him when desired. Some 20 people were in the yard,
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by the paper's count, and two or three hundred stood
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outside the wall. At the chair, the United States Marshal,
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a man named Shaughnessy, asked whether he had anything to say.
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I have come to my fate, Wilkerson said. He had
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no hard feelings toward anyone, he said, except one man
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who had sworn to lies at his trial, and he
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hoped God would be merciful to him. The officers had
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treated him well. I have good wishes towards you all. Goodbye.
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I have done right, haven't I? The marshal said he had.
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I am ready to die, Wilkerson said. My spirit is ready,
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and will soon fly to meet my God. Goodbye, all.
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He shook hands with the marshal, with a Mr. Van Zyl,
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and with Sheriff Turner, and sat down. He wouldn't be blindfolded.
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No handkerchief was tied over his eyes, as is usually done,
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the junction noted, and the version of his reason that
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has come down through the Utah writer L.K. Gillespie is,
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I give you my word, I intend to die like
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a man, looking my executioners right in the eye. The
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marshal pinned a round piece of paper over his heart.
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as nearly as could be judged, and the officials, the doctors,
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and the reporters stepped back about six feet. Shaughnessy tapped
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three times for the marksman to make ready, and Wilkerson
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looked straight at the muzzles in the shed. Then the
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marshal tapped three times again, and the rifles went off together.
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Wilkerson came up out of the chair and jumped forward
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five or six feet, the junction reported, falling on his
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left thigh and turning over on his face. As he went,
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he said, oh my God, they have missed the mark,
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oh God. Then the paper said, a revolting spectacle ensued,
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as he lay on the ground, gasping, breathing, and once
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or twice faintly moaning. He took 27 minutes to die.
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The paper counted three shots fired, and none of them
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had hit his heart or his lungs. Gillespie's later account
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counts four, three holes in the paper an inch above
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the heart and a fourth in the left arm, and
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has him drawing his shoulders back at the command so
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that the paper rode up with his coat. It puts
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the dying at 15 minutes. His body was put in
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a plain coffin and given to his family. That same afternoon,
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the Deseret Evening News, the Latter-day Saints paper in Salt
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Lake City, printed an editorial on the execution that said
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nothing about how it had gone. Wilkerson had atoned for
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that deed as far as it is possible to so
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to do by the pouring out of his own blood,
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it said. Thus the divine law has been executed and
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human law honored. The paper said he had chosen shooting
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over hanging or beheading, his privilege under our local statutes,
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though the Supreme Court had just found that the choice
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was no longer in the code, and it approved there
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was something barbarous in the idea of strangling a man
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to death like a dog. The dignity of the law
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could be served just as well by sending a bullet
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into a murderer's breast as by choking the life out
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of him with a rope. The Ogden Junction had heard
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how it went. Its editorial the next morning called the
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execution another illustration of the brutal exhibitions of inquisitorial torture
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that had lately disgraced the country. Rotten ropes, ignorantly or
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carelessly adjusted nooses, or inexperienced marksmen. Such scenes, it said,
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were always blamed on accident, and they had become so
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frequent that some other method of judicial murder should be adopted.
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It had a candidate. The French guillotine never fails. The
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swift falling knife flashes in the light. A dull thud
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is heard, and all is over. Thanks for listening. I've
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been reading from my new book, Botched Executions, Four Centuries
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of Failed Hangings, Electrocutions, Gassings, Injections, and Firing Squads. If
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you'd like a list of sources I used for this episode,
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00:11:02.250 --> 00:11:04.610
and for the book it's narrated from, you can find
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the full list at WeirdDarkness.com slash Botched Executions. Scroll to
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00:11:09.990 --> 00:11:12.789
the bottom of the page for the sources used. If
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00:11:12.799 --> 00:11:15.029
you'd rather not wait for the next section to be
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shared in the podcast, the whole book is available on
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Amazon in Kindle and paperback, as well as Kindle Unlimited.
