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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 12. Five Shots for Ethel Rosenberg. Ossining,
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New York. June 19th, 1953. On March 29th, 1951, A
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jury found Julius Rosenberg, his wife Ethel, and a third defendant,
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Morton Sabell, guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage for the
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Soviet Union. Judge Irving Kaufman passed sentence a week later,
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on April 5th. Sabell got 30 years in prison. Julius
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and Ethel were both sentenced to death, with the date
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set for the week of May 21st, 1951. The government's
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case against Ethel leaned on her own brother. David Greenglass
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pleaded guilty, received a 15-year sentence, and testified for the prosecution.
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And when the prosecutors asked him who had typed up
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the information, he said, under oath, that his sister did.
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The FBI's history of the case still tells it his way.
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Rosenberg answered that it was nothing to worry about because Ethel,
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his wife, would retype the information, it says. And Ethel
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then prepared the information on a portable typewriter in the
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Rosenberg apartment. She turns up in a KGB file entry
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about Julius, too, preserved in the notes known as the
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Vasiliev Notebooks. His wife knows about her husband's work and
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personally knows Twain and Callistratus, it read. She could be
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used independently, but she should not be overworked. Poor health.
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Ethel spent the next two years in the death house
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at Sing Sing while the appeals ran. Pope Pius XII
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asked President Eisenhower to spare the couple, and on February 11th, 1953,
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Eisenhower refused. The last fight was in the Supreme Court.
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On Wednesday, June 17, 1953, Justice Douglas granted a stay
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of execution. He wanted an answer to one question, whether
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the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, which allowed a death
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sentence only when a jury recommended it, had replaced the
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penalty in the Espionage Act. The Rosenbergs' own lawyers hadn't
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raised it. It came from a lawyer named Edelman, who,
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Justice Jackson later wrote, was a stranger to the Rosenbergs
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and their case. His intervention was unauthorized by them and
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originally opposed by their counsel. The Attorney General asked the
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court to come back for a special term and throw
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out the stay, and on June 18th, it heard argument.
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During the next morning, the court held another conference and
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then met at noon and announced its decision, Chief Justice
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Vinson wrote. The vote was six to three. The Atomic
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Energy Act did not repeal or limit the provisions of
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the Espionage Act, the court said, and the stay was vacated.
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Justices Black, Frankfurter, and Douglas dissented. I do not believe
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that government counsel or this court has had time or
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an adequate opportunity to investigate and decide the very serious
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question raised, Black wrote. Douglas' dissent said, Now I know
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that I am right on the law. and added, no
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man or woman should go to a death under an
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unlawful sentence merely because his lawyer failed to raise the point.
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Frankfurter didn't file his dissent until June 22nd, three days
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after the executions. But I am clear that the claim
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Load full transcript
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had substance, he wrote. The hour of death was moved
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from 11 p.m. Thursday to 8 p.m. Friday in order
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to avoid an execution on the Jewish Sabbath. which begins
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at sundown on Friday, Time magazine reported, without saying who
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moved it. A fact sheet from the Rosenberg Fund for
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Children has it differently. The execution was set for 11 p.m.
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on Friday the 19th, after the court ruled, and then
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moved forward to 8 p.m. Wikipedia, citing a 2003 New
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York Times piece and Sam Robertson's book, The Brother, says
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Judge Kaufman made the change. That night, Gabe Pressman was
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outside the prison gates for the World Telegram and Sun.
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At 7.20, he later wrote, almost all conversation stopped, and
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at 7.52, a trooper said he understood one of them
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was dead. By the United Press timeline, that was more
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than ten minutes before Julius sat down in the chair.
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The official party came over from the administration building by
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prison van and reached the death house at 8.01. There
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were ten official witnesses and three newspaper men. At 8.02,
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a guard opened a door at the far end of
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the chamber, and Rabbi Irving Koslow, the prison chaplain, came
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through it, reading the 23rd Psalm. Julius walked in behind
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him in a T-shirt and brown trousers, clean-shaven, without the
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mustache he'd worn when he arrived there. United Press had
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loafers on his feet. Time had cloth slippers. For a
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brief moment, a puzzled look appeared on his face when
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he took one quick glance at the four benches at
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the rear of the chamber where the official witnesses sat,
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United Press reported. Otherwise, he gave no sign of emotion.
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Just before the chair, time said, he seemed to sway.
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He was in the chair at 8.04. Warden Dano signaled
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Joseph Francel and the slim little executioner through the switch,
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United Press reported. There was a buzzing sound for three seconds.
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and Rosenberg lurched forward, his hands clenched. The second charge
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ran for
57 seconds, and then came a third. Both
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United Press and Time said three shocks of 2,000 volts each,
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though Wikipedia says the first one killed him. The doctors
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stepped forward with their stethoscopes, and Dr. Kipp told the warden,
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I pronounce this man dead. United Press gave the time
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as 8.06, and the FBI gives it at 8.05. Two
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guards bundled the body onto a hospital cart and wheeled
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it into the autopsy room. Ethel was 37. At 8.08,
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the door to the left of the chair opened, and
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she came down the last mile, United Press reported, calm, unsmiling,
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her thin lips drawn to a narrow slit. Rabbi Koslow
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walked ahead of her, reading the 15th and 31st Psalms,
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though time gave only the 15th. Lord, who shall abide
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in thy tabernacle? On her left was Helen Evans, a
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prison matron who'd been with her the whole time she
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was in the death house. On her right was a Mrs. Manny,
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who said she'd filled in from her regular job as
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a telephone operator. Two male guards came behind. Mrs. Rosenberg
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had reached the chair, United Press reported, and had one
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hand on it when she turned and took Evans by
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the hand. She put her arm around the older woman
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and kissed her on the left cheek. then mumbled a
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few words, turned, and sat down in the chair. Time
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had the goodbye a little differently. The prisoner shook hands,
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then impulsively brushed a kiss on the cheek of a
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matron accompanying her. The state had dressed her. United Press
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described an ill-fitting, green-figured print dress. No stockings and loafers,
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like her husband's. Time saw a dark green print dress
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with white polka dots and cloth slippers. and noted that
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her hair had been cropped close on top for the electrode.
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She sat down with taut composure, wincing only slightly as
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the electrode was applied to her head, the magazine reported.
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The mask fell. At a quarter of a minute past 8.11,
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Brancel threw the switch. He was an electrician, and his sideline,
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United Press reported, was acting as executioner in prisons in
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five states. the state of New York paid him $ 150
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for each execution. When the first electric shock was applied,
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a thick white stream of smoke curled upward from the
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football-type helmet on her head, United Press reported. The juice
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went off, and the burned body relaxed. The story went
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on to a second shock, a third, and a fourth,
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but time counted only three before the doctors stepped in.
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Then the doctors went to her. A prison guard stepped forward,
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released one strap, and pulled down a round-necked dress, United
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Press reported. Doctors Kipp and McCracken applied their stethoscopes, then
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conferred in low tones. Francel walked over to join them
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and asked, The doctors nodded and went back to their
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places along the wall beside the warden, and Francel threw
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the switch again. Bob Considine of the International News Service
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was one of the reporters in the room, and afterward,
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he described it on the air. She died a lot harder,
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he said, when she'd had the same amount of electricity
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that had killed her husband. He said the doctors pulled
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down the cheap prison dress and a little dark green
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printed job, and put their stethoscopes to her. Partway through
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that sentence, he stopped and said, I can't say it.
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The doctors looked at each other, rather dumbfounded, and seemed
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surprised that she was not dead. More had come off
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her than one strap, by Considine's account. Believing she was dead,
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the attendants had taken off the ghastly strappings and electrodes
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and the black belts and so forth, he said. These
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had to be readjusted again, and she was given more electricity,
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which started again a kind of ghastly plume of smoke
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that rose from her head and went up against the
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skylight overhead. Time wrote that the doctors still heard a
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faint heartbeat, and that they stood back, and Ethel Rosenberg
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--> 00:11:04.470
was given two more shots. Considine also said two, and
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the United Press had four before the doctors and one after,
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which comes to the same five. When the doctors listened
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the second time, United Press reported they quickly pronounced her dead.
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The Wire story didn't print a clock time, only that
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she was dead after four and a half minutes, and
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the FBI puts her death at 8.15. A modern encyclopedia
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entry from EBSCO says she died after four minutes and
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50 seconds of electrocution. United Press wrote that the executions
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came shortly before sundown, ushered in the Jewish Sabbath. The
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Rosenberg Fund for Children's fact sheet says hers was finished
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after sundown, but the sun set at Ossining that evening
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at about 8.30, so by the reported times, both were
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dead before it went down. Considine, like many in the
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news media at the time, supported the executions, as Democracy Now!
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noted when it aired the clip in 2010. He closed
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his broadcast this way, After two more of those jolts,
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Ethel Rosenberg had met a maker she'll have a lot
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of explaining to do to. United Press wrote, The Rosenbergs
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refused to the end to trade the secrets for their lives. Outside,
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Pressman was watching the guard tower. At 8.18, he wrote,
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A guard in Tower 13 crossed his arms and then
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spread them out like an umpire calling a runner safe
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at home, and that was how the crowd learned both
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of them were dead. Pressman also quoted another of the
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death house matrons, a gray-haired woman named Natalie Jackson, who
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said she'd seen five women go to the chair and
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Ethel was the calmest. The only sentence Jackson had heard
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from her, Pressman reported, was about her children. Vinson's full
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opinion was filed on July 16, 1953. The sentence of
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death was carried out, it said. A week later, on
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July 23rd, Francel electrocuted a man named William Draper at
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Sing Sing, and then he quit. He was unhappy with
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the $ 150, and he was exasperated by the threats against
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his life. David Greenglass was released from federal prison on
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November 16th, 1960. In 2001, he went on 60 Minutes
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2 in what CBS called his first and only TV
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interview and said, I don't know who typed it, frankly.
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and to this day I can't even remember that the
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typing took place. He told the program, I would not
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sacrifice my wife and my children for my sister. And
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he said he slept very well. He told Sam Roberts,
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the New York Times reporter who wrote to the brother,
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that he'd lied at the trial to protect his wife, Ruth.
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Greenglass died in 2014, at 92. In July 2015, after
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a federal judge ordered it unsealed, The testimony he'd given
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a grand jury on August 7, 1950, was released, and
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it had nothing in it about typing. I said before,
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and say it again, honestly, this is a fact, he
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told the grand jury. I never spoke to my sister
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about this at all. Thanks for listening. I've been reading
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from 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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whole book is available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback.
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as well as Kindle Unlimited.