I had an Executed Today entry posted on Sunday: Five men were hanged at York Castle on August 19, 1786. They had all committed relatively minor offenses by today’s standards, thefts, not violent crimes, but under England’s Bloody Code it didn’t much matter.
Executed Today
ET August 11, 1853
I’ve got a new Executed Today entry up: Hans McFarlane and Helen Blackwood, a pair of common murderers in Scotland who actually got MARRIED while standing on the platform with ropes around their necks.
ET: Not John Montgomery
Another Executed Today entry I wrote, this one about John Montgomery, who cheated the hangman by taking prussic acid the night before he was supposed to be hanged for counterfeiting. The hangman had to be satisfied with just hanging William Rice, a thief, instead.
This was in the days of Britain’s Bloody Code, when just about every offense from shoplifting on up was punishable by hanging.
77 years ago today
Another Executed Today entry by me, this one about the massacre of 3,500 Jews in Zloczow, occupied Poland on July 3, 1941.
My biggest source for this entry is the wonderful diary by Ephraim Sten, 1111 Days in My Life Plus Four. It is, hands down, the greatest Holocaust diary I’ve ever read, and I’ve read EIGHTY of them. It’s beautifully written and tells a thrilling, edge-of-your-seat story.
Ephraim was a thirteen-year-old Jewish boy and he was not present at the massacre, but his father was and miraculously survived it. For awhile, anyway — his father’s health was ruined by the physical and mental trauma and he died later that year. Ephraim and his mom survived the war, hidden by some Ukrainian Catholic heroes.
ET: The Hamamatsu Deaf Killer
Got another Executed Today entry for y’all, the first in quite awhile: Seisaku Nakamura, the Hamamatsu Deaf Killer, a teenage serial killer in World War II Japan. He didn’t prey on deaf people but was himself deaf.
Nakamura was able to rack up a considerable body count for his age. He was hanged at the age of nineteen.
ET: Karol Kot
I’ve got an Executed Today entry up, first in awhile: Karol Kot, the Vampire of Krakow, a young Polish man who tried very hard to be a serial killer but didn’t quite make it. Perhaps he should have studied those anatomy textbooks better.
He was executed by the Communist government of Poland on this day fifty years ago.
Executed Today: Two guys in Cheyenne
Another ET entry: two men were lynched on this day in 1868 in Cheyenne, Dakota Territory (it didn’t become part of the state of Wyoming till 1890). One had shot a man; the other rustled livestock. They didn’t seem to have anything to do with each other and I think it’s just a coincidence that they were both hanged on the same night.
