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
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00:00:23.699 --> 00:00:27.460
through my book, Botched Executions, one chapter at a time.
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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 --> 00:01:14.810
and firing squads. Chapter 8. Will Purvis Falls Through to
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00:01:14.829 --> 00:01:23.689
the Ground. Columbia, Mississippi. February 7th, 1894. In the early 1890s,
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Marion County, Mississippi, had a white cap problem. The white
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caps were a night-riding vigilante band of white men and
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a Kosciuszko paper later described them as terrorizing that section
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for a long time by burning barns, whipping Negroes, and
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killing stock. By the summer of 1893, it had gotten
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so bad that Sheriff McGee needed 50 special deputies to
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hold a term of circuit court. Many of them called
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for jury duty were sent home, because they were thought
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to be in sympathy with the Whitecaps. Three whitecaps had
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just been convicted of whitecapping and sent to the penitentiary
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for ten years apiece. One of the men who had
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turned on them was Will Buckley. The whitecaps had flogged
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the Buckley family's black farmhand, Sam Waller, by the account
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the National Registry of Exonerations gives, and Buckley, who had
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been a whitecap himself, decided to take what he knew
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to the grand jury. He'd been a witness against the Whitecaps,
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the Macon Beacon reported at the time, and it is
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said they threatened vengeance. Later reports said the band had
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an oath that the first man to turn traitor would die.
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On an evening in June 1893, Buckley was on his
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way home with his brother Jim and the farmhand when
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somebody fired from cover. The buckshot hit Will Buckley from
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behind and it killed him. Will Purvis was about 20.
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He'd been in the Whitecaps, and that, along with a
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bloodhound trail and a neighbor's suspicion, is what got him arrested.
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Sheriff McGee took him to Meridian, a Jackson paper reported,
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because he feared that if he left him at Columbia,
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he would have been lynched. At the trial that summer,
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Jim Buckley pointed at him and said, Will Purvis there
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killed the man. Purvis said an alibi, a neighbor he
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said he'd been talking with, but the jury didn't believe him.
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and Judge Terrell sentenced him to hang. He took it,
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the Mississippi leader reported, with unmoved stolidity at first. But
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after being conveyed to the jail, his nerves gave way,
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and he succumbed to piteous lamentations. In January 1894, the
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state Supreme Court upheld the conviction, and the hanging was
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set for Columbia, the county seat. He spent the night
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before it praying. On the morning of Wednesday, February 7th,
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the crowd came in from every part of the county,
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black and white. A strong guard was drawn up around
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the scaffold in case the white caps tried to rescue,
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the New York Sun's Wire report said. Before the death
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warrant was read, Purvis made a sworn statement in front
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of the clerk of the circuit court. It named other men,
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and the New Orleans Picayunes correspondent called it a partial
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confession of what he'd known about the Buckley murder. he
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admitted something, too. The Sun reported that he acknowledged that
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he was one of the party, but declared he did
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not fire the shot. A Methodist minister from Colombia, the
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Reverend Mr. Sibley, attended him on the platform. Then they
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put the black cap over his head and the noose
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around his neck, and the trap was sprung. As soon
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as the trap fell, Purvis, instead of being hurled into eternity,
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was precipitated to the ground, the Picayune reported. The noose
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had let loose, and Purvis' neck, instead of being broken,
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was only slightly abraded by the rope. He fell on
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his back and remained perfectly still for a few minutes.
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The Picayune's man was the first to reach him. He
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leaned over to see whether Purvis had been frightened to death,
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the paper said, and called to him. From beneath his
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black cap, Purvis replied, For God's sake, get me out
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of this! Nobody could agree on what the rope had done.
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The picayune said the noose let loose, the sun said
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it parted, and a paper in Wheeling, West Virginia said
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the rope broke. Kosciuszko paper later blamed a disarrangement of
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the noose, while the clarion ledger said the rope had
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simply slipped off his neck. By the time the story
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had been retold for a few years, the knot had
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slipped after the body writhed and quivered in midair. The
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state historical marker that stands in Columbia now says he
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fell straight through to the ground, the noose having slipped
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and spared his life. Sheriff McGee got ready to take
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him back up, but four members of the county board
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of supervisors were in the crowd, and they called the
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sheriff into the courthouse. Given how hard Purvis had sworn
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he was innocent, and the statement he'd just made, they
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advised him to put off the rest until he'd heard
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from Governor John M. Stone. McGee said he'd go along
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with it, willingly, the Picayune reported, but his orders were imperative.
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The supervisors had no say over a thing like this.
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While the sheriff was in the courthouse, Purvis believed they
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were fixing the rope for a second try, the Picayune said.
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He cried out that they were murdering an innocent man,
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and that if he knew who'd killed Will Buckley, he'd
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tell them. Then Sibley turned to the crowd. As the
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Picayune told it, the minister put the escape down to
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a divine intervention of providence and asked the people for
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a verdict. Should the hanging wait until the governor could
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be heard from? Not one voice was raised against it,
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the paper said. The Sun reported that Sibley made an
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impassioned plea to the spectators, and it was decided by
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unanimous vote that the execution be postponed. Later accounts gave
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the crowd a harder edge. The sheriff held off owning
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to the threatening attitude of the crowd, a Birmingham paper
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said in 1898. and the Macon Beacon had the people
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crying him down with one voice and threatening violence. The
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guards and those on the platform crowded around Purvis to
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embrace and congratulate him, the Picayune reported. He sat there
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for a while, as if he couldn't take in what
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had happened, and when it finally reached him, he sobbed.
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He'd asked a merciful God to spare an innocent man,
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he said, and God had done it. McGee took him
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back to jail. In Jackson, Nobody had told Governor Stone anything,
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and until he heard otherwise, the son reported, he'd believed
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the sentence had been carried out. This is the first
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time in the history of the state, so far as known,
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the report said, where a criminal sentenced to death escaped
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the same by the interference of outsiders. Stone said there
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was nothing he could do about it. Purvis would have
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to go back to court and be sentenced over again.
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A day or two later, a deputy took him up
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the road toward the jail at Hettysburg, and let him
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stop at his father's house on the way. His parents,
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a New Orleans paper correspondent wrote, received him almost as
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one who had arisen from the dead. He was still
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wearing the suit he'd put on to die in. There
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had been a radical change in the minds of the
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people in regard to his guilt, the correspondent went on.
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It is believed now by nearly everyone that he is
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an innocent man. The district attorney didn't believe it. He
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went back to court and and in June 1895, Purvis
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was sentenced to death again. In November, the state Supreme
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Court upheld it and set a new date, December 12th.
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A few nights later, a little after midnight, about a
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hundred men armed to the teeth with shotguns and Winchester
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rifles surrounded the jail at the town of Purvis. They
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opened his cell with duplicate keys and drove him off
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in a buggy, while some of them stayed behind to
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keep the deputies from raising the alarm. A large reward
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was posted. and no trace of him was found. Mississippi
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was electing a governor that fall, and Ansel McLaurin had
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promised that if he won, he'd commute Purvis' sentence to
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life and pardon him later. He won. On March 6th, 1896,
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Purvis walked in and gave himself up to the sheriff.
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He'd been only a few miles from home the whole time,
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he said, dressed as a woman. McLaurin sent word to
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bring him to Jackson, and he went into the penitentiary
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under a life sentence. He didn't stay long. In 1898,
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a petition for his pardon went around with the names
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of more than 100 legislators on it, and one of
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the people who signed was a brother of the murdered man.
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By then, in the account the National Registry gives, Jim
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Buckley had said he'd been mistaken. On December 19, 1898,
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McLaurin gave Purvis a full and unconditional pardon. In 1917,
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a Marion County farmer named Joe Beard, dying of pneumonia,
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confessed that he'd been one of the men who killed
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Will Buckley. The story that came out of it in
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the papers was that Beard and another man had waited
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by the road to kill both Buckley brothers. The other
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man fired the shot that killed Will, then threatened Beard
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for losing his nerve and not shooting Jim. Purvis, the
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confession said, had nothing to do with it. In 1918,
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a bill to pay Purvis for what he'd been through
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got a majority in the Mississippi House and still failed,
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because the Speaker ruled that it was a donation and
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needed more votes than it had. In 1920, it passed
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as an appropriation. One of the representatives backing it was B.B. Buckley,
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a cousin of the man Purvis had been convicted of killing,
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and Purvis got $ 5, 000. He farmed in Lamar County, married,
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and raised a family. He died of heart trouble in
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a hospital in Lumberton, Mississippi, on October 13, 1938. And
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the wire story that reported it said he had owed
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the last two-thirds of his life to a faulty hangman's noose.
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Retellings since then say he outlived every juror who convicted him,
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but none of them gives a source for it. Thanks
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for listening. I've been reading from my new book, Botched Executions,
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Four Centuries of Failed Hangings, Electrocutions, Gassings, Injections, and Firing Squads.
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If you'd like a list of sources I used for
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this episode and for the book it's narrated from, you
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can find the full list at weirddarkness.com slash botched executions.
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Scroll to the bottom of the page for the sources used.
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If you'd rather not wait for the next section to
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be shared in the podcast, the whole book is available
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on 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 --> 00:00:27.460
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 --> 00:01:14.810
and firing squads. Chapter 8. Will Purvis Falls Through to
16
00:01:14.829 --> 00:01:23.689
the Ground. Columbia, Mississippi. February 7th, 1894. In the early 1890s,
17
00:01:23.859 --> 00:01:27.920
Marion County, Mississippi, had a white cap problem. The white
18
00:01:27.959 --> 00:01:31.269
caps were a night-riding vigilante band of white men and
19
00:01:31.310 --> 00:01:35.640
a Kosciuszko paper later described them as terrorizing that section
20
00:01:35.689 --> 00:01:39.799
for a long time by burning barns, whipping Negroes, and
21
00:01:39.920 --> 00:01:44.459
killing stock. By the summer of 1893, it had gotten
22
00:01:44.700 --> 00:01:48.900
so bad that Sheriff McGee needed 50 special deputies to
23
00:01:48.980 --> 00:01:52.079
hold a term of circuit court. Many of them called
24
00:01:52.120 --> 00:01:54.769
for jury duty were sent home, because they were thought
25
00:01:54.810 --> 00:01:58.680
to be in sympathy with the Whitecaps. Three whitecaps had
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00:01:58.719 --> 00:02:02.180
just been convicted of whitecapping and sent to the penitentiary
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00:02:02.239 --> 00:02:05.280
for ten years apiece. One of the men who had
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00:02:05.319 --> 00:02:09.900
turned on them was Will Buckley. The whitecaps had flogged
29
00:02:10.020 --> 00:02:13.900
the Buckley family's black farmhand, Sam Waller, by the account
30
00:02:13.919 --> 00:02:17.620
the National Registry of Exonerations gives, and Buckley, who had
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00:02:17.659 --> 00:02:20.729
been a whitecap himself, decided to take what he knew
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to the grand jury. He'd been a witness against the Whitecaps,
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00:02:24.550 --> 00:02:27.340
the Macon Beacon reported at the time, and it is
34
00:02:27.379 --> 00:02:31.539
said they threatened vengeance. Later reports said the band had
35
00:02:31.580 --> 00:02:34.539
an oath that the first man to turn traitor would die.
36
00:02:35.740 --> 00:02:38.909
On an evening in June 1893, Buckley was on his
37
00:02:38.969 --> 00:02:41.909
way home with his brother Jim and the farmhand when
38
00:02:42.030 --> 00:02:46.330
somebody fired from cover. The buckshot hit Will Buckley from
39
00:02:46.370 --> 00:02:51.810
behind and it killed him. Will Purvis was about 20.
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00:02:51.810 --> 00:02:54.310
He'd been in the Whitecaps, and that, along with a
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bloodhound trail and a neighbor's suspicion, is what got him arrested.
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Sheriff McGee took him to Meridian, a Jackson paper reported,
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because he feared that if he left him at Columbia,
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he would have been lynched. At the trial that summer,
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Jim Buckley pointed at him and said, Will Purvis there
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killed the man. Purvis said an alibi, a neighbor he
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said he'd been talking with, but the jury didn't believe him.
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and Judge Terrell sentenced him to hang. He took it,
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the Mississippi leader reported, with unmoved stolidity at first. But
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after being conveyed to the jail, his nerves gave way,
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and he succumbed to piteous lamentations. In January 1894, the
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state Supreme Court upheld the conviction, and the hanging was
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set for Columbia, the county seat. He spent the night
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before it praying. On the morning of Wednesday, February 7th,
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the crowd came in from every part of the county,
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black and white. A strong guard was drawn up around
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the scaffold in case the white caps tried to rescue,
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the New York Sun's Wire report said. Before the death
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warrant was read, Purvis made a sworn statement in front
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of the clerk of the circuit court. It named other men,
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and the New Orleans Picayunes correspondent called it a partial
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confession of what he'd known about the Buckley murder. he
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admitted something, too. The Sun reported that he acknowledged that
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he was one of the party, but declared he did
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not fire the shot. A Methodist minister from Colombia, the
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Reverend Mr. Sibley, attended him on the platform. Then they
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put the black cap over his head and the noose
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around his neck, and the trap was sprung. As soon
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as the trap fell, Purvis, instead of being hurled into eternity,
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was precipitated to the ground, the Picayune reported. The noose
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had let loose, and Purvis' neck, instead of being broken,
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was only slightly abraded by the rope. He fell on
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his back and remained perfectly still for a few minutes.
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The Picayune's man was the first to reach him. He
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leaned over to see whether Purvis had been frightened to death,
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the paper said, and called to him. From beneath his
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black cap, Purvis replied, For God's sake, get me out
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of this! Nobody could agree on what the rope had done.
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The picayune said the noose let loose, the sun said
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it parted, and a paper in Wheeling, West Virginia said
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the rope broke. Kosciuszko paper later blamed a disarrangement of
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the noose, while the clarion ledger said the rope had
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simply slipped off his neck. By the time the story
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had been retold for a few years, the knot had
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slipped after the body writhed and quivered in midair. The
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state historical marker that stands in Columbia now says he
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fell straight through to the ground, the noose having slipped
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and spared his life. Sheriff McGee got ready to take
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him back up, but four members of the county board
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of supervisors were in the crowd, and they called the
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sheriff into the courthouse. Given how hard Purvis had sworn
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he was innocent, and the statement he'd just made, they
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advised him to put off the rest until he'd heard
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from Governor John M. Stone. McGee said he'd go along
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with it, willingly, the Picayune reported, but his orders were imperative.
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The supervisors had no say over a thing like this.
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While the sheriff was in the courthouse, Purvis believed they
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were fixing the rope for a second try, the Picayune said.
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He cried out that they were murdering an innocent man,
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and that if he knew who'd killed Will Buckley, he'd
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tell them. Then Sibley turned to the crowd. As the
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Picayune told it, the minister put the escape down to
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a divine intervention of providence and asked the people for
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a verdict. Should the hanging wait until the governor could
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be heard from? Not one voice was raised against it,
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the paper said. The Sun reported that Sibley made an
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impassioned plea to the spectators, and it was decided by
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unanimous vote that the execution be postponed. Later accounts gave
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the crowd a harder edge. The sheriff held off owning
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to the threatening attitude of the crowd, a Birmingham paper
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said in 1898. and the Macon Beacon had the people
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crying him down with one voice and threatening violence. The
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guards and those on the platform crowded around Purvis to
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embrace and congratulate him, the Picayune reported. He sat there
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for a while, as if he couldn't take in what
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had happened, and when it finally reached him, he sobbed.
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He'd asked a merciful God to spare an innocent man,
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he said, and God had done it. McGee took him
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back to jail. In Jackson, Nobody had told Governor Stone anything,
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and until he heard otherwise, the son reported, he'd believed
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the sentence had been carried out. This is the first
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time in the history of the state, so far as known,
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the report said, where a criminal sentenced to death escaped
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the same by the interference of outsiders. Stone said there
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was nothing he could do about it. Purvis would have
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to go back to court and be sentenced over again.
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A day or two later, a deputy took him up
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the road toward the jail at Hettysburg, and let him
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stop at his father's house on the way. His parents,
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a New Orleans paper correspondent wrote, received him almost as
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one who had arisen from the dead. He was still
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wearing the suit he'd put on to die in. There
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had been a radical change in the minds of the
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people in regard to his guilt, the correspondent went on.
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It is believed now by nearly everyone that he is
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an innocent man. The district attorney didn't believe it. He
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went back to court and and in June 1895, Purvis
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was sentenced to death again. In November, the state Supreme
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Court upheld it and set a new date, December 12th.
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A few nights later, a little after midnight, about a
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hundred men armed to the teeth with shotguns and Winchester
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rifles surrounded the jail at the town of Purvis. They
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opened his cell with duplicate keys and drove him off
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in a buggy, while some of them stayed behind to
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keep the deputies from raising the alarm. A large reward
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was posted. and no trace of him was found. Mississippi
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was electing a governor that fall, and Ansel McLaurin had
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promised that if he won, he'd commute Purvis' sentence to
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life and pardon him later. He won. On March 6th, 1896,
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Purvis walked in and gave himself up to the sheriff.
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He'd been only a few miles from home the whole time,
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he said, dressed as a woman. McLaurin sent word to
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bring him to Jackson, and he went into the penitentiary
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under a life sentence. He didn't stay long. In 1898,
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a petition for his pardon went around with the names
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of more than 100 legislators on it, and one of
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the people who signed was a brother of the murdered man.
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By then, in the account the National Registry gives, Jim
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Buckley had said he'd been mistaken. On December 19, 1898,
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McLaurin gave Purvis a full and unconditional pardon. In 1917,
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a Marion County farmer named Joe Beard, dying of pneumonia,
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confessed that he'd been one of the men who killed
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Will Buckley. The story that came out of it in
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the papers was that Beard and another man had waited
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by the road to kill both Buckley brothers. The other
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man fired the shot that killed Will, then threatened Beard
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for losing his nerve and not shooting Jim. Purvis, the
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confession said, had nothing to do with it. In 1918,
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a bill to pay Purvis for what he'd been through
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got a majority in the Mississippi House and still failed,
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because the Speaker ruled that it was a donation and
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needed more votes than it had. In 1920, it passed
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as an appropriation. One of the representatives backing it was B.B. Buckley,
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a cousin of the man Purvis had been convicted of killing,
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and Purvis got $ 5, 000. He farmed in Lamar County, married,
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and raised a family. He died of heart trouble in
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a hospital in Lumberton, Mississippi, on October 13, 1938. And
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the wire story that reported it said he had owed
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the last two-thirds of his life to a faulty hangman's noose.
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Retellings since then say he outlived every juror who convicted him,
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but none of them gives a source for it. Thanks
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for listening. I've been reading from my new book, Botched Executions,
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Four Centuries of Failed Hangings, Electrocutions, Gassings, Injections, and Firing Squads.
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If you'd like a list of sources I used for
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00:11:42.470 --> 00:11:45.269
this episode and for the book it's narrated from, you
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can find the full list at weirddarkness.com slash botched executions.
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Scroll to the bottom of the page for the sources used.
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If you'd rather not wait for the next section to
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be shared in the podcast, the whole book is available
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on Amazon in Kindle and paperback, as well as Kindle Unlimited.
