Throughout the centuries there are many different countries that used executions to punish serious
offenders.
Some of the final public executions occurred in the 20th century, and in America the final
one of these executions occurred in August 1936.
Today America executes condemned criminals inside of private cells in prisons, however
it was not always like that as crowds would flock to come and witness an execution.
But what is the story of the final public execution in America?
Rainey Bethea was the criminal who had the record in the history books for being the
final person publicaly hanged.
He was a young man who was an African America, and he suffered heavily in his early years
after he became an orphan and then he began around the age of 26 to have run ins with
the law.
He was charged with breach of the peace in 1935, and then he was also caught stealing
a couple of purses from a beauty shop.
He was convicted of grand larceny and was sentenced to 1 year in the Kentucky State
Penitentiary.
He was a slight man, of 5 feet 5 inches tall, and when he was released he continued to work
as a manual labourer where he earned a rather poor wage of around 7 dollars a week.
He was then arrested again, and was fined heavily but he could not afford this and he
was then imprisoned in jail because of this.
But his encounters with the law and the police would culminate in the crime that sent him
to the gallows.
In the early hours of June 7th 1936, Bethea went into the home of Ischia Edwards.
He accessed her house by climbing onto a roof and then he jumped on the roof of the servants
quarters of another house and walked down a wooden walkway.
He then climbed over the kitchen roof to Edwards window.
After removing part of her window, Bethea entered the room and he woke her up, and then
he began to choke her and assault her.
Rainey Bethea left Ischia Edward, a 70 year old woman unsconscious, and he then ransacked
her house and stole her valuables and jewellery.
He then left the bedroom and hid the stolen jewels nearby in a barn, but the following
morning a neighbouring family knocked on Ischia Edward’s home and they worried she was ill.
They could not get in the door, but then eventually they entered the house and they found the
70 year old lady dead.
A doctor was summoned and he said he could do nothing to save her, however Rainey Bethea
had left his prison ring there, and the police suspected he was behind the crime.
He had been spotted wearing his ring, and fingerprints could now be used to see if he
had been involved in the crime.
Bethea hid out for 4 days, but then a worker near the Ohio River saw him lying under some
buses, and he was reported to the police.
But then Bethea moved again, and he was then found on a river bank after trying to board
a barge.
He was arrested, and was then brought to trial.
Bethea admitted his involvement in the murder and assault, and he said leaving his prison
ring was a mistake.
He confessed a second time, and he told prison officials where he had left the jewellery,
and quickly a trial took place in Owensboro a few weeks after the crime took place.
On the night of the trial, Bethea told his lawyers he wanted to plead guilty, but the
death penalty had been requested, and the prosector said, ‘, "This is one of the most
dastardly, beastly, cowardly crimes ever committed in Daviess County.
Justice demands and the Commonwealth will ask and expect a verdict of the death penalty
by hanging."
The defence did not offer much, and the judge then offered his comments, before 4 and a
half minutes of deliberation occurred, and Rainey Bethea was sentenced to death by hanging.
There was an appeal but this was rejected, and the death sentence was pushed ahead with.
The Sheriff at the time who would oversee the execution was a woman, the wife of a previous
sheriff who had died unexpectedly.
Arthur L Hash a former police officer offered his services to the Sheriff to perform the
execution, and she then accepted this offer, and Hash then arrived at the execution site
drunk and wearing a white suit and a white Panama hat.
But no one knew he was the one who would execute Bethea.
On the 6th August the governor signed the execution warrant and arranged it for the
14th August 1936.
Rainey Bethea had his last meal, and the following morning he was transferred for his execution.
A professional hangman had visited him to tell him to stand on the X which was marked,
and then at 5:21 am he left Davies County Jail, and he was walked flanked by two deputies
to the scaffold.
Within 2 minutes he was at the foot of the scaffold, and he removed his shoes and put
on a new pair of socks.
He went up the steps of the gallows and stood on the large X which was marked.
He had previously made his confession, and then the noose was placed around his neck.
It was adjusted, and then Hash was told to pull the trigger, but he was too drunk and
he did not.
Then the executioenr then screamed at Hash to ‘Do It,’ and a deputy then released
the trigger which opened the trapdoor, and Rainey Bethea’s drop of 8 feet snapped his
neck instantly.
In front of a crowd of around 20,000 Rainey Bethea was executed, and there were many complaints
afterwards that the drunk man should not have been allowed anywhere near the execution.
The executioner Hanna would later say that in the 70 Hangings he oversaw, this was the
worst display he had ever seen.
There was a significant degree of embarrassment and a media circus around the execution, and
this would be the final execution performed in public in America.
Many more executions occurred behind closed doors, and they still do today, but Rainey
Bethea’s name is cemented in History as the final man to be executed in front of a
huge crowd in the United States.
At the age of 26 he was killed, but his crime was one which was in particularly heinous.
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