A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion

Ruth felt her legs weaken but she was held upright by the matrons. She hated it that she could not halt the tears. She was gently urged into the corridor that was called “the last mile,” and she managed to stagger forward, saying over and over again, “Jesus have mercy on me.” She cradled a large crucifix.

Even though it was cold and late at night and there was really no spectacle to witness, a great crowd had formed outside Sing Sing’s main gate, where four rifled prison guards were stationed. Children straddled their fathers’ shoulders; some teenagers shinnied up trees; journalists sat on the running boards of their cars, desultorily smoking cigarettes as they waited for the flare that would signal the first death. Some people tramped through a field of snow to watch ice float by on the dark Hudson River.

Zoe Beckley wrote for the same Famous Features Syndicate that was serializing Judd Gray’s memoir, and she was the sole woman who’d volunteered to witness the executions. She told Warden Lawes she wanted ever so much to see Mrs. Snyder die, however she felt a conflict of interest concerning Mr. Gray. She therefore told the warden she would have to leave when Judd was escorted in, but Lawes wouldn’t permit that, hence she was replaced by a man.

And so it was that when Ruth entered the execution chamber she was greeted by the silence and scrutiny of twenty male reporters, four male physicians, some sullen prison guards, Warden Lawes and his assistants, and with Father McCaffery still reciting Latin prayers beside her. All told, there were forty-one men. Albert’s sister had called Ruth “man crazy” and now she was overwhelmed by them, with only the matrons for sisterly company.

Oak church pews for the witnesses had been hauled up from the chapel, but otherwise the wide room was stunningly white except for some silver pipes and silver radiators. Six frosted wall lamps increased the glare, so that Ruth was shading her eyes when she finally noticed the wide oaken chair on its rubber mat. And there was nothing to do but shriek in such a high-pitched way that some reporters held their ears. She would have fallen like a child in a tantrum without the matrons holding firm.

Saying, “Jesus, have mercy on me, for I have sinned,” Ruth tottered forward as if she’d soon faint but was guided around and gently pushed down onto the rubber seat. McCaffery took the crucifix from her and completed the rite of extreme unction as each upper arm and wrist was buckled to the wooden chair with a leather restraint. Ruth’s black stockings were rolled down to her ankles and each ankle was restrained. She was belted in at the chest and waist. She wildly glanced around at a civilization frankly staring at her fear. Waiting for her to die. She fought to breathe as a strapped black leather mask with just a slit for the nose and mouth was fitted over her face so her head could be fettered against a rubber headrest and so the viewers would not have to see her face in its horrible constrictions. A sea sponge that was soaked in salt water and contained a circular mesh of fine copper wire was inserted into the crown of a leather football helmet, Ruth’s wet hair was parted to expose the shaved occiput of the skull to the electrode, and the helmet was fitted on, the chin strap cinched. She softly said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” and another electrode was attached to Ruth’s shaking right calf to complete the electrical circuit.

All the attendants stood back.

Cameras were prohibited, but an overly ambitious photographer named Thomas Howard, who’d lied that he was a journalist, was sitting in the front row with an Ansco Memo Miniature taped to his ankle. Raising his trouser cuff and gripping the inflated bulb for the shutter in his front pocket, Howard waited.

Robert Elliott stood in his alcove, his hands on the electrical controls, and looked through window glass at Warden Lawes.

Lawes was just watching an overhead clock until it was exactly eleven.

Ruth was praying, “Jesus, have mercy on me, Jesus, have—”

She could not finish the sentence because Lawes nodded and the e

xecutioner slammed the switch that closed the electrical circuit. Ruth’s body heaved up but was held fast by the restraints. Howard snapped his photo and was paid an extra one hundred dollars. It would be headlined “DEAD!” on the front page and be judged one of the Great Moments in News Photography.

The high voltage instantly shocked Ruth into a coma and paralyzed her heart muscles, but Elliott maintained the current for five seconds more until he felt certain that the skin temperature had crossed the threshold of 140 degrees, when the central nervous system would be destroyed. Elliott shut off the current and Ruth’s body relaxed. With folded arms, Lawes considered the floor.

Ruth’s hands clenched in an involuntary muscular reaction. Ruth’s flesh was fried a scarlet red.

Elliott forced up the switch again and two thousand volts coursed through Ruth, and again she surged up against the restraints. There was a crackling sound. Her hair caught fire and faint smoke trails floated up from the helmet. She relaxed when Elliott shut off the current, and then, erring on the side of caution, he hit her with the electricity again for a full minute.

Dr. Sweet went forward and took off the helmet and mask. Ruth had shut her eyes but the current had caused the rictus of a smile, and foam slid from a corner of her mouth. Sheehy held up a towel to hide Ruth’s naked breasts from the witnesses as Sweet searched for a heartbeat with his stethoscope. Dr. Harold Goslin searched too and shook his head. Another doctor did the same.

Dr. Charles Sweet shouted out, “I pronounce this woman dead.”

It was 11:04 p.m., Thursday, January 12th, 1928. A red flare was shot up into the heavens to alert the reporters outside the penitentiary.

Attendants walked forward to carefully hoist the electrocuted body onto the gleaming white enameled bed of a gurney cart. The housedress smock was not just for modesty; it kept the helpers from being burned by her scorching-hot skin when Ruth’s corpse was lifted from the chair. She was wheeled into the white-tiled morgue, “the icebox,” and Principal Keeper Sheehy went down to the west wing to tell Henry Judd Gray it was time.

Within seconds, it seemed, he was there, dressed in a gray, pinstriped suit and a tieless, unbuttoned white silk shirt. The flower of a mauve handkerchief bloomed from his left chest pocket. Like Ruth he shushed along in felt slippers. His right trouser leg had been scissored for the electrode and it flapped when he strode in, but he seemed otherwise organized, efficient, and formidable in spite of being the smallest man in the room. His tortoiseshell glasses were off, as they’d been whenever he made love to Ruth and when he went in to kill The Governor. The Protestant minister, Anthony Peterson, was helping Judd cope by reciting the “Blessed are” halves of the Beatitudes while Judd supplied the latter halves. But Judd, like Ruth, was distracted by the sheer number of people there to watch him die, and he hesitated in disorientation until Warden Lawes held a hand out to the oaken chair like an overtipped waiter, and Judd went directly to it, wiping hot tears away with his shirt cuff.

Judd flicked his trousers as if they were crumbed and was buckled down just as Ruth had been, and Reverend Peterson bent close to him to help in reciting the twenty-third psalm, cueing him with, “‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.’”

Holding his chin up to help the attendants affix the face mask, Judd overloudly responded, “‘He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.’”

Reverend Peterson recited, “‘He restoreth my soul.’” The helmet was fitted on. And Judd said, “‘He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.’” Sheehy cautioned Reverend Peterson to retreat from the rubber mat as Judd tremblingly said, “‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for—’”

And then, in midsentence, all air gone from his lungs so that they would not gurgle, the current shot through him with a sizzling sound, his body jerking up as if he could have flown had he not been belted. Elliott shocked him twice for a total of two minutes. His right sock flamed; his dark brown hair underneath the helmet sent up spirals of smoke. The face mask was removed. His eyes were half-shut and his mouth was wide, as if he were laughing.

There was still some buzzing from the transformer.

Dr. Sweet hunched over Judd’s body with his stethoscope and officially shouted, “I pronounce this man dead!”

It was 11:14.

Warden Lawes hitched his head toward the door and the gentlemen witnesses saw it was time to go and filed out.

In the yard, an inmate yelled, “It’s over! It’s over!” and that heralded a ghoulish celebration that grew ugly and then just wearisome and finally caused the crowd to straggle off to their homes.