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<\/a>\nLeona and no-good Rodney.<\/em><\/p>\n
Twenty-one-year-old Rodney Greig was a petty criminal who had his first contact with the police when he was ten years old.\u00a0 The handsome Berkeley resident was a thorn in the sides of his law-abiding parents.\u00a0 He was just no good.<\/p>\n
Besides episodes of petty theft in the East Bay area, Greig had once done time at the infamous Preston School of Industry in Ione for breaking into his place of employment, a San Francisco wholesale grocer, and stealing two hundred and thirty dollars.\u00a0 He was promptly caught and arrested, yelling threats as he was being led away.<\/p>\n
Life at the old Preston School of Industry, also known as the Castle because of the towering, red sandstone Romanesque Revival-style building high on a hill in Amador County that couldn’t be mistaken for anything else, was tough, but fair.\u00a0 The reformatory was reserved for young offenders who were not incorrigible.\u00a0 The inmates were schooled and taught marketable skills to set them on a straight and narrow path toward a better life.<\/p>\n
Some of the graduates of the Castle went on to great success, like comedian Eddie Anderson, who played Rochester on the long-running Jack Benny radio and television programs, country musician Merle Haggard, actors Rory Calhoun and Eddie Bunker, boxers Don Jordan and Eddie Machen, authors Neal Cassady, Phil Thatcher, Ernest Booth and Bill Sands, casino owner Tony Cornero, and tennis great Pancho Gonzales.\u00a0 However, many other inmates, like Greig, went on to a life of crime or an early death.<\/p>\n
Greig was found by police in his Berkeley home, sleeping soundly.\u00a0 He agreed to go with the police to the station house for questioning and quickly admitted in those pre-Miranda Rights days that he had indeed murdered the young lady, claiming that it was an accident.\u00a0 The police found Vhught’s watch, locket, and keys in his room. They found a bloody hunting knife, along with photographs of naked women, in a back cushion of his car.<\/p>\n
At the police station, Greig nonchalantly told the detectives that he had killed Vhught and that he threw her purse and gloves in a garbage can at 19th and Alice Streets.\u00a0 A little later, Greig changed his story and said that Vhught was despondent over her height and the lack of available men that were willing to date a female as tall as she was.\u00a0 He claimed that she was always talking about suicide.<\/p>\n
Confidently, Greig told the police that after listening to her talk about suicide, he pulled out a large hunting knife, held it to her chest, and accidentally stabbed her.\u00a0 He pulled the knife out of her breast and lit a cigarette while the beautiful girls’ life drained out of her. Greig smoked several more cigarettes before he decided to check to see if Vhught was still alive.\u00a0 Instead of feeling for a pulse, Greig took out a smaller knife and made three cuts in her neck to see if she would bleed.\u00a0 He told the police that he was innocent by reason of insanity.\u00a0 Greig waived his right to a jury trial at his sanity hearing and agreed to a bench trial presided by the Honorable Edward J. Tyyrrell.<\/p>\n
The impeccably dressed Greig slumped his head onto his chest as his insanity defense immediately wilted when one by one, six female friends of Leona Vhught debunked Greig’s accusations of Vhught being suicidal.\u00a0 They also told of warning Leona not to go out with Greig, and that she had told them that Greig had gotten a little too fresh with her on their previous date.<\/p>\n
A parade of doctors and family members claimed that Greig suffered from epileptic seizures possibly brought on as a result of an automobile accident a few years earlier.\u00a0 Throughout the hearing, Greig was aloof, wisecracking with the press during recesses, but he broke down on the stand when he was being questioned and sobbed hysterically.<\/p>\n
The prosecutors called Greig a colossal liar and were able to prove that Greig was standing out side of his car when he stabbed Vhught in the chest.\u00a0 They also proved that Vhught was sitting upright in Greig’s car when Greig plunged his knife into her up to the hilt.<\/p>\n Since Greig had waived a jury trial, admitting his guilt, and gone before the judge only on a sanity issue, it was up to Tyrrell to determine the sentence.\u00a0 On March 13, 1939, Judge Tyrrell declared that Rodney Greig was sane.\u00a0 Greig showed no emotion as the judge spoke.\u00a0 His attorneys responded by asking for a two-day continuance, which was granted.<\/p>\n Two days later, on March 15, Judge Tyrrell sentenced the dapper murderer to death by gas chamber at San Quentin Prison.\u00a0 It was only the second death sentence that Judge Tyrrell ever handed down.\u00a0 Observers claimed that Greig didn’t bat an eyelash when he heard the verdict.\u00a0 After he was returned to the Oakland jail, he enthusiastically played a card game with fellow prisoners.<\/p>\n On November 9, 1939, the Supreme Court of California denied Greig’s appeal and Greig went to his death on August 23, 1940.\u00a0 In a last act of defiance, the twenty-two-year-old Rodney Greig ripped his blindfold off as he was being led into the gas chamber.<\/p>\n Culled from:\u00a0\u00a0Death In California<\/a>\u00a0by David Kulczyk<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Here\u2019s an except from Stanley Burns\u2019 excellent collection of vintage medical photographs,\u00a0A Morning\u2019s Work<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nGreig on the Dock.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nGoodbye, Greig.<\/em><\/p>\nVintage Medical Photo Du Jour!<\/h3>\n