Today’s Face-Down Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Charles Rodman Campbell, hanged in 1994, was dragged the entire forty feet from the last night cell to the gallows. Campbell, who had vowed, “If I go, correctional personnel will go with me,” was lying face-down on the floor of his cell when the hangman came for him. After refusing to get up and come to the cuff port to surrender his wrists, he was pepper-sprayed by guards, then bound and cuffed, toweled off, and dragged to the gallows.
Culled from: The Last Face You’ll Ever See
1994? I don’t remember seeing this guy’s name ever before. I guess I’ll have to look him up and see what he did. I had thought the last judicial hanging in the US was Westley Dodd in 1993.
Oh, guess what? “The Last Face You’ll Ever See” is available on Bookshare! I will be downloading it shortly. Comtesse, if you had anything to do with its being made available like that, thanks! If not, thanks anyway. 🙂
Okay, here’s what Wikipedia has to say about Mr. Campbell:
Campbell was charged with the April 1982 killing of Renae Wicklund, her eight-year old daughter Shannah, and her neighbor Barbara Hendrickson, in Clearview, Snohomish County, Washington. He was convicted and sentenced to death.
However, that was not the first time Campbell had harmed the Wicklund household: he had been previously convicted and sentenced for raping Wicklund in 1974. In that trial, she had testified that Campbell had attacked and sodomized her and held a knife to her baby’s throat while forcing sex upon her. Campbell served six years of a 30-year sentence in a Washington prison, and while on work-release (which Wicklund did not know about) tracked down Mrs. Wicklund and committed the three murders.
In 1982, he was convicted on charges of capital murder and was sentenced to death. Campbell had been given a choice between hanging and lethal injection, but refused to make a choice, so under state law, the then-default method of hanging was used upon him. Later in 1996, Washington state law was amended to make lethal injection the default method of execution.
I remember now. Ann Rule wrote him up in one of her books. Also, Renee Wicklund’s husband met a strange death, while Campbell was in prison. Somebody barged into his apartment (the couple was separated by then) tied him to a chair, said “Merry Christmas” doused him with gasoline and lit him on fire. He survived but was very badly burned and had to wear a special rubber suit under his clothes to protect his skin.
Soon after he was released from the hospital, his car swerved off the road and hit a tree, killing him. No alcohol or drugs, good road conditions, nothing wrong with his car. They don’t know if he was trying to avoid an animal in the road, was trying to kill himself, or was overcome by a bout of pain from his injuries and lost control.
He certainly didnt display any of the bravado some of the other killers did…
Acted like a big baby having a tantrum in the toy store, if you ask me.