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This is Botched Executions from Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marlar.
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For nearly 400 years, states have been putting people to death,
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and some of those executions went horribly wrong. Trap doors
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wouldn't open, flames rose from the electric chair, and needles
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couldn't find a vein. In this series, I'm taking you
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through my book, Botched Executions, one chapter at a time.
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Everything you'll hear comes from the witnesses, the court records,
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and the state's own written reports. Where the accounts disagree,
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you'll hear both. Whatever you believe about capital punishment, these
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are the cases where a state set out to kill
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someone and got it wrong. A word of warning before
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we begin. These are real deaths, described by the people
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who watched them, and some of the details are hard
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to hear. And now, botched executions, four centuries of failed hangings, electrocutions, gassings, injections,
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and firing squads. Chapter 6. Roxolana Drewes and the Counterweight Gallows. Herkimer,
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New York. February 28, 1887. William Drewes farmed in the
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town of Warren in Herkimer County, New York, and in
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December 1884, he stopped being seen About a month went
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by before anyone got suspicious. Then, the couple's 14-year-old nephew,
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Frank Gates, told what had happened while he was visiting
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his father, and in January 1885, the coroner's jury found
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that William had been shot and killed by Roxanna, his wife.
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His daughter Mary, his 10-year-old son George, and Frank, the
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jury said, had been feloniously present and gave aid. Frank's story,
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as the wires carried it, went like this. On the
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morning of December 18, 1884, during a quarrel in the farmhouse,
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Mary threw a rope around her father where he sat.
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Roxolana shot him, and then she made Frank shoot his uncle, too.
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The body was cut up with an axe and burned
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in the stoves, and Frank kept the fire going. What
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was left, ashes and charred bone, went into a swamp
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about a half a mile from the house. Some of
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the papers that told it added that William had been
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a brute to his family for years, He choked his
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wife until she was insensible at one time, beat her
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with a horsewhip at another, and kicked and cuffed her
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more or less nearly every day of her life, the
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Washington critic reported. And that morning, it said, he'd been
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swearing at her over the size of a grocer's bill.
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Roxelana's trial began in the fall of 1885. The jury
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was out about two hours and found her guilty of
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first-degree murder. Mary pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was
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sent to the Onondaga Penitentiary in Syracuse for life, and
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the two boys turned state's evidence and went home. One
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of Roxolana's jurors, a farmer named Adam Bellinger, was later
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committed to the lunatic asylum. Her execution was set and
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postponed three times while the appeals ran out. The last date,
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at the end of December 1886, came and went because
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Governor David B. Hill respited her until February 28 to
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give the legislature a chance to change the law for women.
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Hill had told the legislature in 1885 that, hanging has
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come down to us from the Dark Ages, and in
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1886 the legislature had set up a commission to find
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something better. a bill to let women convicted of first-degree
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murder go to prison for life instead of the gallows,
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went to the Assembly, and on Friday, February 18, 1887,
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it was defeated. Hill wouldn't interfere again. On her last Sunday,
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the New York Tribune reported, every pulpit in Herkimer mentioned her,
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and telegrams went off to Albany by the score, asking
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the governor to commute her sentence. In the three days
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and nights before the hanging, The New York Times reported Mrs.
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Drews slept three hours in all. On the last night,
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her minister, the Reverend G.W. Powell, stayed with her until 11.
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She cut a lock of her hair, tied it with
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a bit of black satin, and gave it to him,
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along with a poem. Who will care when I am
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gone and the bird's music hushed in the twilight dim
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and gloomy? Another lock went to Mrs. Waterman, one of
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the women watching her. they gave her oyster soup with
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an opiate in it, and it did little. Poor Mary,
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she muttered as she lay down, how she must feel
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this dark and dismal night to know that after tomorrow,
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her mother will be no more. She lay listening to
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the storm, the times said, timing her life by her heartbeats.
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Toward dawn, she talked in her sleep. Think they have
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got Bill's bones, she mumbled. They have only got a
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dog's bones. She sat straight up in bed, Sheriff, come. Well,
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I must go. All right. We'll be better off. Then,
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he ain't to blame. Her watchers sprang to help her
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as she threw the covers off. Once she was awake,
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she shuddered, and then she brightened and said she'd write
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some letters. She wrote to Sheriff Delavan Cook and his wife,
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to the people who'd sat up with her, and to
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her daughter. I shall have this letter buried with me
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if I die, she wrote to Mary, but hope that
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a kind, tender one from above, will whisper softly in
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the governor's ear and let me live. Dearest child, if
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no such message comes, do not grieve for me. Be brave,
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for I have suffered everything but death for what others
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ought to, and if I die, I shall be at rest.
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It was five o'clock and still dark when she finished.
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She pulled the covers over her head, and her watchers
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heard her mumbling scraps of hymns. She slept for almost
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an hour and and woke before seven. She dressed with care.
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The Times had her in black satin, with a narrow
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skirt made for the occasion, white ruching thread with silver
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at her wrists and throat, and a row of gilt
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buttons down the front. At her bodice, she pinned roses
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from a bouquet Mary had sent. The superintendent of the
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Onondaga Penitentiary, Irving Terry, had brought it down that morning
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with another letter from Mary, and after she read it, Mrs.
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Drewes cried. Then with a notary and two witnesses, she
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signed a statement, I, Roxolana Drews, in my last moments,
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do hereby solemnly swear and affirm that my daughter, Mary Drews,
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who is now confined in the Onondaga Penitentiary, had nothing
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whatever to do with the killing of her father, William Drews,
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or with the disposition of his body. The penitentiary chaplain
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told her Mary was one of the best-behaved prisoners there,
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and she chatted with him so coolly, the Times said,
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that she considerably astonished him. Outside, it was bitterly cold,
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with an icy wind from the northwest, and the town
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was full. The local militia company, the Remington Rifles of Mohawk,
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marched in at nine and took over the courthouse across
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the street. Last week, they'd had 57 men, the Times noted,
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and today they mustered 64. The chance to parade around
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a jail where a woman was about to be hanged,
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the paper said, had induced several patriots to join the corps.
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Farmers who had driven 20 miles over drifted roads stood
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outside the jail for a quarter of an hour and
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then went looking for somewhere warm. The country boys who
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stayed stared at the stone walls for hours, expressing their
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feelings in discordant and senseless howls. The gallows had come
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to Herkimer secondhand. Thirteen people had already been hanged on it,
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the Tribune reported, one of them a notorious murderer named
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Sam Steenberg in Montgomery County. and two men from Fonda
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who have done like work before. Cyrus Ballow and William
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McKinley would run it. It was an upright jerker. Instead
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of dropping the prisoner through a trap, it hauled her
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up off her feet, the rope running over the crossbeam
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to a 213-pound weight that fell when the sheriff gave
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the signal. When it arrived, it was black. Sheriff Cook
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had it painted white with a black border, and the
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Times thought the change only rendered it more deathly-looking. In
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the noon sun, the paper said, the ten notches on
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the scaffold were visible to every eye. Though the tribunes
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counted the people it had hanged was thirteen. While Powell
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prayed with her in her cell, the twelve citizens the
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sheriff had picked to witness the hanging filed in, and
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riflemen took up posts at the doors. Sheriff Cook read
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the death warrant and the governor's respite in a rather
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shaky voice, and Mrs. Drewes cried, but not hysterically. Then
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they walked her down through the jail, through the dining
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room and down a narrow stairway into the yard, and
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she leaned heavily on Powell. Her eyes were red with
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weeping and had a glassy look, the Times reported, and
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her cheeks were greatly flushed. She carried Mary's bouquet in
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her left hand. When she caught sight of the scaffold,
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she shook. They stood her in the middle of a
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platform of planks laid on the ground under the rope,
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on a plank they had marked for her. The sun
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lit the snow and caught her gilt buttons and transformed
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them to globes of fire. The twelve citizens stood in
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a row, against the jail wall facing her. Two doctors
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stood in the shadow, and near them, the county judge
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and the district attorney. Outside the walls, the guard was changing,
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and the orders carried into the yard. She knelt while
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Powell prayed, and he asked pity, the Times said, for
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the mistaken souls who demanded an eye for an eye.
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When the sheriff asked whether she had anything to say,
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she turned to Powell, who'd promised to speak for her.
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He thanked the people who'd been kind to her and
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asked her enemies to forgive, as she had. Then he
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raised his voice.' And now I wish to speak for myself,'
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Not to you only, but to the whole world, he said.
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I have led up on my arm this sorrowful child
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of earth to the fatal spot, and stand by her
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side as her true friend in trouble, but I am
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not here as a party to this ghastly scene. I
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have no manner of sympathy with it. It seems to
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me out of place in the civilization of our day,
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and incompatible with the sweet spirit of our Christian religion.
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and I can but hope that the humane people of
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our beloved land will from this dark day sweep the
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law of punishment by death into everlasting oblivion. He turned
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back to her. Go to thy fate, trembling child of sorrow.
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When he said amen, the deputies stepped up. Howell let
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go of her hand and stepped back, and she looked
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at him in a startled way. She shrank when they
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touched her, and they pinned her arms and legs. The
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black cap had been hanging down her back since she
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left her cell, held around her neck by a thin
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band of elastic, and when they reached for it, she
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cried out. As the last day of sunlight was shut out,
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a horrified shriek burst from her lips, the Times reported.
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Shriek after shriek, in quick succession, each louder and higher
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than the last, followed. The sheriff's hand fell. There was
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a rattle, a jar, and a strangled cry. At 11.48,
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the weight dropped. The Sun reported that it lifted her
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about three feet above the floor of the gallows, and
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that there was only one convulsion or muscular contraction of
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the body, and it then hung quiet. The critic said
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the weight choked her cries in her throat, and sent
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her flying upward about four feet, shooting forward to the
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right and settling back to within a foot and a
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half of the platform, and that after the lapse of
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one minute, a spasmodic clenching of the fingers occurred, followed
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by efforts to draw up the legs. her neck didn't break.
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The two doctors watched her pulse and heart, and 15
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minutes after the weight fell, they pronounced her dead. She
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had been strangled, the Times said, and 11 minutes later
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she was laid in a stained pine coffin. Even during
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the hanging, the Times said, the officers' orders and the
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shouts of senseless countrymen broke upon the solemn scene in
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the jail yard with startling distinctness. While it was going on,
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the Sun reported, Boys outside were throwing snowballs over the
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wall into the yard, and by nightfall, many of the
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men who'd come to town were drunk in the saloons.
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Powell took her body to a vault at Oak Hill Cemetery.
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The Times added that it may not be stolen before
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it is buried, but few will be surprised if it
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meets with such a fate, since more than one physician
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would like to examine the brain of such a woman.
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A confession, said to have been given to Powell, appeared
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in the Rome Sentinel. and went out on the wire.
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It blamed a man named Charles Gates, who it said
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had urged her on, supplied the revolver, and fired the
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other shots through the window. Howell said it was altogether
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without foundation. She'd made no confession at all, he said.
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By July, a wire story claimed that her ghost visited
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her old cell in the Herkimer jail every night and
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scared the prisoners with her moaning. At the penitentiary in
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Syracuse the night before the hangings, Mary had said she'd
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had neither hand, act, nor part in her father's death,
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and was as innocent of it as a child unborn.
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Her own story, the Tribune reported, matched the confession published
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under her mother's name in most respects, except that she
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denied knowing anything about the burning of the body. She'd
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gone out to call Frank and George, she said, and
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heard the first shot, but didn't see it. And when
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she came back in, Her mother had fainted, and Charles
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Gates was there with his son, Chester. In her version,
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Gates and Frank emptied two revolvers into her father, and
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at the first shot he said, Charlie, don't! When they
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told her that her mother had been hanged, she broke
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down so badly that her keepers feared she would lose
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her reason. In 1891, Hill turned down a petition to
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pardon her. In 1895, Governor Levi P. Morton pardoned her.
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The Times counted her as the fifth woman hanged in
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the state of New York, and the first in 30 years.
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She was also the last. In January 1888, the commission
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Hill had pushed for reported back to the legislature, and
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it recommended electricity. Thanks for listening. I've been reading from
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my new book, Botched Executions, Four Centuries of Failed Hangings, Electrocutions, Gassings, Injections,
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and Firing Squads. If you'd like a list of sources
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I used for this episode and for the book it's
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narrated from, you can find the full list at weirddarkness.com
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slash botched executions. Scroll to the bottom of the page
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for the sources used. If you'd rather not wait for
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the next section to be shared in the podcast, the
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00:15:32.090 --> 00:15:35.490
whole book is available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback.
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as well as Kindle Unlimited.
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This is Botched Executions from Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marlar.
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For nearly 400 years, states have been putting people to death,
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and some of those executions went horribly wrong. Trap doors
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wouldn't open, flames rose from the electric chair, and needles
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couldn't find a vein. In this series, I'm taking you
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through my book, Botched Executions, one chapter at a time.
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Everything you'll hear comes from the witnesses, the court records,
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and the state's own written reports. Where the accounts disagree,
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you'll hear both. Whatever you believe about capital punishment, these
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are the cases where a state set out to kill
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someone and got it wrong. A word of warning before
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we begin. These are real deaths, described by the people
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who watched them, and some of the details are hard
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to hear. And now, botched executions, four centuries of failed hangings, electrocutions, gassings, injections,
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and firing squads. Chapter 6. Roxolana Drewes and the Counterweight Gallows. Herkimer,
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New York. February 28, 1887. William Drewes farmed in the
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town of Warren in Herkimer County, New York, and in
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December 1884, he stopped being seen About a month went
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by before anyone got suspicious. Then, the couple's 14-year-old nephew,
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Frank Gates, told what had happened while he was visiting
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his father, and in January 1885, the coroner's jury found
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that William had been shot and killed by Roxanna, his wife.
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His daughter Mary, his 10-year-old son George, and Frank, the
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jury said, had been feloniously present and gave aid. Frank's story,
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as the wires carried it, went like this. On the
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morning of December 18, 1884, during a quarrel in the farmhouse,
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Mary threw a rope around her father where he sat.
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Roxolana shot him, and then she made Frank shoot his uncle, too.
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The body was cut up with an axe and burned
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in the stoves, and Frank kept the fire going. What
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was left, ashes and charred bone, went into a swamp
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about a half a mile from the house. Some of
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the papers that told it added that William had been
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a brute to his family for years, He choked his
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wife until she was insensible at one time, beat her
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with a horsewhip at another, and kicked and cuffed her
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more or less nearly every day of her life, the
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Washington critic reported. And that morning, it said, he'd been
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swearing at her over the size of a grocer's bill.
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Roxelana's trial began in the fall of 1885. The jury
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was out about two hours and found her guilty of
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first-degree murder. Mary pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was
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sent to the Onondaga Penitentiary in Syracuse for life, and
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the two boys turned state's evidence and went home. One
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of Roxolana's jurors, a farmer named Adam Bellinger, was later
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committed to the lunatic asylum. Her execution was set and
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postponed three times while the appeals ran out. The last date,
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at the end of December 1886, came and went because
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Governor David B. Hill respited her until February 28 to
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give the legislature a chance to change the law for women.
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Hill had told the legislature in 1885 that, hanging has
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come down to us from the Dark Ages, and in
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1886 the legislature had set up a commission to find
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something better. a bill to let women convicted of first-degree
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murder go to prison for life instead of the gallows,
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went to the Assembly, and on Friday, February 18, 1887,
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it was defeated. Hill wouldn't interfere again. On her last Sunday,
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the New York Tribune reported, every pulpit in Herkimer mentioned her,
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and telegrams went off to Albany by the score, asking
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the governor to commute her sentence. In the three days
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and nights before the hanging, The New York Times reported Mrs.
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Drews slept three hours in all. On the last night,
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her minister, the Reverend G.W. Powell, stayed with her until 11.
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She cut a lock of her hair, tied it with
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a bit of black satin, and gave it to him,
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along with a poem. Who will care when I am
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gone and the bird's music hushed in the twilight dim
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and gloomy? Another lock went to Mrs. Waterman, one of
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the women watching her. they gave her oyster soup with
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an opiate in it, and it did little. Poor Mary,
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she muttered as she lay down, how she must feel
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this dark and dismal night to know that after tomorrow,
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her mother will be no more. She lay listening to
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the storm, the times said, timing her life by her heartbeats.
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Toward dawn, she talked in her sleep. Think they have
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got Bill's bones, she mumbled. They have only got a
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dog's bones. She sat straight up in bed, Sheriff, come. Well,
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I must go. All right. We'll be better off. Then,
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he ain't to blame. Her watchers sprang to help her
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as she threw the covers off. Once she was awake,
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she shuddered, and then she brightened and said she'd write
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some letters. She wrote to Sheriff Delavan Cook and his wife,
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to the people who'd sat up with her, and to
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her daughter. I shall have this letter buried with me
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if I die, she wrote to Mary, but hope that
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a kind, tender one from above, will whisper softly in
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the governor's ear and let me live. Dearest child, if
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no such message comes, do not grieve for me. Be brave,
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for I have suffered everything but death for what others
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ought to, and if I die, I shall be at rest.
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It was five o'clock and still dark when she finished.
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She pulled the covers over her head, and her watchers
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heard her mumbling scraps of hymns. She slept for almost
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an hour and and woke before seven. She dressed with care.
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The Times had her in black satin, with a narrow
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skirt made for the occasion, white ruching thread with silver
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at her wrists and throat, and a row of gilt
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buttons down the front. At her bodice, she pinned roses
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from a bouquet Mary had sent. The superintendent of the
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Onondaga Penitentiary, Irving Terry, had brought it down that morning
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with another letter from Mary, and after she read it, Mrs.
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Drewes cried. Then with a notary and two witnesses, she
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signed a statement, I, Roxolana Drews, in my last moments,
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do hereby solemnly swear and affirm that my daughter, Mary Drews,
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who is now confined in the Onondaga Penitentiary, had nothing
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whatever to do with the killing of her father, William Drews,
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or with the disposition of his body. The penitentiary chaplain
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told her Mary was one of the best-behaved prisoners there,
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and she chatted with him so coolly, the Times said,
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that she considerably astonished him. Outside, it was bitterly cold,
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with an icy wind from the northwest, and the town
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was full. The local militia company, the Remington Rifles of Mohawk,
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marched in at nine and took over the courthouse across
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the street. Last week, they'd had 57 men, the Times noted,
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and today they mustered 64. The chance to parade around
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a jail where a woman was about to be hanged,
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the paper said, had induced several patriots to join the corps.
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Farmers who had driven 20 miles over drifted roads stood
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outside the jail for a quarter of an hour and
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then went looking for somewhere warm. The country boys who
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stayed stared at the stone walls for hours, expressing their
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feelings in discordant and senseless howls. The gallows had come
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to Herkimer secondhand. Thirteen people had already been hanged on it,
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the Tribune reported, one of them a notorious murderer named
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Sam Steenberg in Montgomery County. and two men from Fonda
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who have done like work before. Cyrus Ballow and William
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McKinley would run it. It was an upright jerker. Instead
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of dropping the prisoner through a trap, it hauled her
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up off her feet, the rope running over the crossbeam
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to a 213-pound weight that fell when the sheriff gave
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the signal. When it arrived, it was black. Sheriff Cook
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had it painted white with a black border, and the
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Times thought the change only rendered it more deathly-looking. In
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the noon sun, the paper said, the ten notches on
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the scaffold were visible to every eye. Though the tribunes
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counted the people it had hanged was thirteen. While Powell
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prayed with her in her cell, the twelve citizens the
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sheriff had picked to witness the hanging filed in, and
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riflemen took up posts at the doors. Sheriff Cook read
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the death warrant and the governor's respite in a rather
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shaky voice, and Mrs. Drewes cried, but not hysterically. Then
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they walked her down through the jail, through the dining
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room and down a narrow stairway into the yard, and
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she leaned heavily on Powell. Her eyes were red with
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weeping and had a glassy look, the Times reported, and
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her cheeks were greatly flushed. She carried Mary's bouquet in
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her left hand. When she caught sight of the scaffold,
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she shook. They stood her in the middle of a
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platform of planks laid on the ground under the rope,
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on a plank they had marked for her. The sun
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lit the snow and caught her gilt buttons and transformed
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them to globes of fire. The twelve citizens stood in
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a row, against the jail wall facing her. Two doctors
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stood in the shadow, and near them, the county judge
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and the district attorney. Outside the walls, the guard was changing,
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and the orders carried into the yard. She knelt while
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Powell prayed, and he asked pity, the Times said, for
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the mistaken souls who demanded an eye for an eye.
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When the sheriff asked whether she had anything to say,
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she turned to Powell, who'd promised to speak for her.
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He thanked the people who'd been kind to her and
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asked her enemies to forgive, as she had. Then he
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raised his voice.' And now I wish to speak for myself,'
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Not to you only, but to the whole world, he said.
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I have led up on my arm this sorrowful child
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of earth to the fatal spot, and stand by her
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side as her true friend in trouble, but I am
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not here as a party to this ghastly scene. I
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have no manner of sympathy with it. It seems to
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me out of place in the civilization of our day,
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and incompatible with the sweet spirit of our Christian religion.
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and I can but hope that the humane people of
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our beloved land will from this dark day sweep the
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law of punishment by death into everlasting oblivion. He turned
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back to her. Go to thy fate, trembling child of sorrow.
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When he said amen, the deputies stepped up. Howell let
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go of her hand and stepped back, and she looked
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at him in a startled way. She shrank when they
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touched her, and they pinned her arms and legs. The
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black cap had been hanging down her back since she
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left her cell, held around her neck by a thin
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band of elastic, and when they reached for it, she
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cried out. As the last day of sunlight was shut out,
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a horrified shriek burst from her lips, the Times reported.
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Shriek after shriek, in quick succession, each louder and higher
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than the last, followed. The sheriff's hand fell. There was
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a rattle, a jar, and a strangled cry. At 11.48,
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the weight dropped. The Sun reported that it lifted her
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about three feet above the floor of the gallows, and
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that there was only one convulsion or muscular contraction of
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the body, and it then hung quiet. The critic said
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the weight choked her cries in her throat, and sent
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her flying upward about four feet, shooting forward to the
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right and settling back to within a foot and a
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half of the platform, and that after the lapse of
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one minute, a spasmodic clenching of the fingers occurred, followed
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by efforts to draw up the legs. her neck didn't break.
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The two doctors watched her pulse and heart, and 15
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minutes after the weight fell, they pronounced her dead. She
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had been strangled, the Times said, and 11 minutes later
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she was laid in a stained pine coffin. Even during
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the hanging, the Times said, the officers' orders and the
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shouts of senseless countrymen broke upon the solemn scene in
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the jail yard with startling distinctness. While it was going on,
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the Sun reported, Boys outside were throwing snowballs over the
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wall into the yard, and by nightfall, many of the
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men who'd come to town were drunk in the saloons.
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Powell took her body to a vault at Oak Hill Cemetery.
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The Times added that it may not be stolen before
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it is buried, but few will be surprised if it
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meets with such a fate, since more than one physician
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would like to examine the brain of such a woman.
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A confession, said to have been given to Powell, appeared
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in the Rome Sentinel. and went out on the wire.
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It blamed a man named Charles Gates, who it said
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had urged her on, supplied the revolver, and fired the
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other shots through the window. Howell said it was altogether
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without foundation. She'd made no confession at all, he said.
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By July, a wire story claimed that her ghost visited
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her old cell in the Herkimer jail every night and
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scared the prisoners with her moaning. At the penitentiary in
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Syracuse the night before the hangings, Mary had said she'd
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had neither hand, act, nor part in her father's death,
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and was as innocent of it as a child unborn.
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Her own story, the Tribune reported, matched the confession published
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under her mother's name in most respects, except that she
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denied knowing anything about the burning of the body. She'd
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gone out to call Frank and George, she said, and
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heard the first shot, but didn't see it. And when
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she came back in, Her mother had fainted, and Charles
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Gates was there with his son, Chester. In her version,
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Gates and Frank emptied two revolvers into her father, and
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at the first shot he said, Charlie, don't! When they
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told her that her mother had been hanged, she broke
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down so badly that her keepers feared she would lose
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her reason. In 1891, Hill turned down a petition to
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pardon her. In 1895, Governor Levi P. Morton pardoned her.
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The Times counted her as the fifth woman hanged in
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the state of New York, and the first in 30 years.
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She was also the last. In January 1888, the commission
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Hill had pushed for reported back to the legislature, and
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it recommended electricity. Thanks for listening. I've been reading from
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my new book, Botched Executions, Four Centuries of Failed Hangings, Electrocutions, Gassings, Injections,
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and Firing Squads. If you'd like a list of sources
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I used for this episode and for the book it's
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00:15:18.639 --> 00:15:22.600
narrated from, you can find the full list at weirddarkness.com
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slash botched executions. Scroll to the bottom of the page
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for the sources used. If you'd rather not wait for
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the next section to be shared in the podcast, the
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whole book is available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback.
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as well as Kindle Unlimited.
