Today’s Sneaky Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
The following is an account detailing the execution of Ruth Snyder, a housewife from Queens Village, Queens, New York City and her lover Henry Judd Gray, a married corset salesman, with whom she murdered her husband for his insurance money in 1927:
Ruth Snyder came first, wearing a black cotton skirt and a plain brown smock. She carried a crucifix, mumbling to herself over and over, “Jesus, have mercy on me,” even after the mask was put over her face. The executioner pulled the switch on the control panel, releasing a current of 2,000 volts through the wires, sending her body lurching forward against the restraints. He threw the switch twice more, just to be sure. Her hair caught fire. Her skin could be seen charring around the edges of the mask. The wardens untangled her from the chair, put her body on a gurney, and wheeled her out of the room.
Gray came next, meticulously groomed in a pinstripe suit. He waited quietly until the mask was in place and then began to recite the Twenty-third Psalm. “The Lord is my Shepherd,” he murmured, “I shall not want.” The executioner hit the switch. Gray’s right sock began smoldering. Plumes of smoke uncoiled from under the helmet. The executioner pulled the switch again, sending another 2,000 volts. The wardens again stepped forward with their gurney. Both bodies were put into gray hearses and shuttled away for burial.
Ruth and Henry
To the outrage of state officials, from the Sing Sing director to the governor, the front page of the next day’s New York Daily News was filled by a single photo: Ruth Snyder at the moment a surge of electricity ripped through her body.
The paper had imported a famously devious photographer from Chicago’s Tribuneand sent him into the Death House posing as a writer. The photographer had a camera strapped around one leg, attached to a cable that ran up his trouser leg and into a pocket. He could squeeze a bulb in his pocket to take one picture which would be unnoticed in the glare of sparks and the horror generated by the chair.
Tom Howard’s Ankle Camera
The photographer had muscled his way into the first pew and caught an unobstructed view of Ruth Snyder’s body rattling with electricity. The Daily News placed a single word over the photo: “Dead!” The picture was maybe a little grainy, but that only made it more exciting. The paper sold more than 1.5 million extras of that edition. Fearing that its prized photographer, Tom Howard, might be arrested, the Chicago paper sent him straight from New York to an assignment in Cuba. As he related later, a group of Marines there recognized his name – he’d become temporarily nearly as infamous as the subject of his photograph.
Howard’s first thought was that the Marines had come to take him to jail. But it turned out he troops merely wanted to celebrate his Marine-worthy daring. They carted him off to a bar, where the group spent an evening cheering his success with good Havana rum.
Culled from: The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
So lovely to see you posting so frequently these days! Your posts are always educational and entertaining (in a morbid way, of course).
Thank you so much! It’s good to know my morbid little hobby is appreciated!