August 14: On This Day in History … briefly

1936:   Rainey Bethea is hanged in the last known public execution in the USA

Rainey Bethea (born 1909) was the last person publicly executed in the United States. Bethea, who confessed to the rape and murder of a 70-year-old woman named Lischia Edwards, was convicted of her rape and publicly hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky on August 14, 1936. Mistakes in performing the hanging and the surrounding media circus contributed to the end of public executions in the United States.

Born in Roanoke, Virginia, Bethea was a black man orphaned after the death of his mother in 1919 and his father in 1926. Little is known of his time before he arrived in Owensboro in 1933. He worked for the Rutherford family and lived in their basement for about a year. Bethea then moved to a cabin behind the house of Emmett Wells to work as a labourer and rented a room from Mrs Charles Brown. He also attended a Baptist church.

Bethea first had a brush with the law in 1935, when he was charged with breach of the peace and fined $20. Then in April of the same year, he was caught stealing two purses from the Vogue Beauty Shop. Since the value of the purses exceeded $25, Bethea was convicted of a felony, grand larceny, and sentenced to one year in the Kentucky State Penitentiary at Eddyville. He arrived there on June 1, 1935. His physical described him as 5 ft. 4⅜” (1.635 m) tall and weighing 128 pounds (58 kg). He was paroled on December 1, 1935.

On returning to Owensboro, Bethea continued to work as a laborer and was paid about $7 per week. Less than a month later, he was arrested again, this time for house-breaking. On January 6, 1936, the court amended this charge to drunk and disorderly. He couldn’t pay the $100 fine and remained incarcerated in the Davies County Jail until April 18, 1936.

Crime and arrest

During the early morning of June 7, 1936, Bethea entered the home of Lischia Edwards at 322 East Fifth Street by climbing onto the roof of an outbuilding next door. From there, he jumped onto the roof of the servant’s quarters of Emmett Wells’ house, and then walked down a wooden walkway. He climbed over the kitchen roof to Edwards’ bedroom window. After removing a screen from her window, he entered the room, waking her. Bethea then choked Edwards and violently raped her. After she was unconscious, he searched for valuables and stole several of her rings. In the process, he removed his own black celluloid prison ring, and failed to retrieve it later. He left the bedroom and hid the stolen jewels in a barn not far from the house.

The crime was discovered late that morning after the Smith family, who lived downstairs, noticed they had not heard Edwards stirring in her room. They feared she might have been ill and knocked on the door of her room, attempting to rouse her. They found the door locked with a skeleton key still inside the lock from the inside, which prevented another key from being placed in the lock from the outside. They contacted a neighbour, Robert Richardson, hoping he could help, and he managed to knock the key free, but another skeleton key would not unlock the door. Smith then got a ladder. He climbed into the room through the transom over the door and discovered that Edwards was dead.

The Smiths alerted Dr George Barr while he was attending a service at the local Methodist Church. Dr Barr realised there was little he could do and summoned local coroner Delbert Glenn, who attended the same church. The Smiths also called the Owensboro police. Officers found the room was otherwise tidy, but there were muddy footprints everywhere. Coroner Glenn also found a celluloid prison ring, which Bethea, in his drunken state, had inadvertently left behind in the room.

By late Sunday afternoon, the police already suspected Rainey Bethea after several residents of Owensboro stated that they had previously seen Bethea wearing the ring. Since Bethea had a criminal record, the police could use the then-new identification technique of fingerprints to establish that Bethea had recently touched items inside the bedroom. Police searched for Bethea over the next four days.

On the Wednesday following the discovery of the murder, Burt ‘Red’ Figgins was working on the bank of the Ohio River, when he observed Bethea lying under some bushes. Figgins asked Bethea what he was doing, and Bethea responded he was ‘cooling off.’ Figgins then reported this sighting to his supervisor, Will Faith, and asked him to call the police. By the time Faith had returned to the spot on the river bank, Bethea had moved to the nearby Koll’s Grocery. Faith followed him and then found a policeman in the drugstore, but when they searched for him, he again eluded capture.

Later that afternoon, he was again spotted. This time, he was cornered on the river bank after he tried to board a barge. When police officers questioned him, he denied he was Bethea, claiming his name was James Smith. The police played along with the fabricated name, fearing a mob would develop if residents were to learn that they had captured Bethea. After his arrest, he was identified by a scar on the left side of his head.

Judge Forrest A Roby of the Daviess Circuit Court ordered the sheriff to transport Bethea to the Jefferson County Jail in Louisville, fearing a lynch mob. While being transferred, Bethea made his first confession, admitting he had raped Edwards and strangled her to death. He also lamented the fact that he had made a mistake by leaving his ring at the crime scene.

Once incarcerated at the jail, Bethea made a second confession, this time before Robert M. Morton, a notary public, and George H. Koper, a reporter for The Courier-Journal. Officials requested the presence of the notary and the reporter anticipating that Bethea, or someone else, might accuse them of coercing his confession.

On June 12, 1936, Bethea confessed a third time and told the captain of the guards where he had hidden the jewellery. Owensboro police searched a barn in Owensboro and found the jewellery, where Bethea said he had left it.

The execution

The crime was infamous locally, but it came to nationwide attention because of one fact —the sheriff of Daviess County was a woman. Florence Shoemaker Thompson had become sheriff on April 13, 1936, after her husband, Everett Thompson, who was elected sheriff in 1933, unexpectedly died of pneumonia on April 10. As sheriff of the county, it was her duty to hang Bethea.

Among the hundreds of letters Sheriff Thompson received after the public learned she would perform the hanging was one from Arthur L Hash, a former Louisville police officer, who offered his services free of charge to perform the execution. Thompson quickly accepted this offer. He asked only that she not make his name public.

On August 6, the Governor of Kentucky, Albert Chandler, signed Bethea’s execution warrant and set the execution for sunrise on August 14. However, Sheriff Thompson requested the governor to issue a revised death warrant because the original warrant specified that the hanging would take place in the courthouse yard where the county, at significant expense, had recently planted new shrubs and flowers. Chandler was out-of-state, so Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky Keen Johnson signed a second death warrant moving the location of the hanging from the courthouse yard to an empty lot near the county garage.

Rainey Bethea’s last meal consisted of fried chicken, pork chops, mashed potatoes, pickled cucumbers, cornbread, lemon pie, and ice cream, which he ate at 4pm on August 13 in Louisville. At about 1 am, Daviess County deputy sheriffs transported Bethea from Louisville to Owensboro. At the jail, Hanna visited Bethea and instructed him to stand on the X that would be marked on the trapdoor.

It was estimated that a crowd of 20,000 people gathered to watch the execution with thousands coming from out of town. Hash arrived at the site intoxicated wearing a white suit and a white Panama hat. At this time, no one but he and Thompson knew that he would pull the trigger.

Bethea left the Daviess County Jail at 5.21am and walked with two deputies to the scaffold. Within two minutes, he was at the base of the scaffold. Removing his shoes, he put on a new pair of socks. He ascended the steps and stood on the large X as instructed. He made no final statement to the waiting crowd. After Bethea made his final confession to Father Lammers, of the Cathedral of the Assumption in Louisville, officers placed a black hood over his head and fastened three large straps around his ankles, thighs, arms, and chest.

Hanna placed the noose around Bethea’s neck, adjusted it, and then signalled Hash to pull the trigger. Instead, Hash, who was drunk, did nothing. Hanna shouted at Hash, “Do it!” and a deputy leaned onto the trigger, springing the trap door. Throughout all of this, the crowd was hushed. Bethea fell eight feet and broke his neck instantly. About 14 minutes later, two doctors confirmed Bethea was dead. After the noose was removed, his body was taken to Andrew & Wheatley Funeral Home. He had wanted his body sent to his sister in South Carolina, but instead, he was buried in a pauper’s grave at the Rosehill Elmwood Cemetery in Owensboro.

Many newspapers, having spent considerable sums of money to cover the first execution publicly performed by a woman, were disappointed, and several journalists took liberties in reporting the event, describing it as a ‘Roman Holiday’ – some falsely reporting that the crowd rushed the gallows to claim souvenirs, and at least one newspaper falsely reported that Sheriff Thompson fainted at the base of the scaffold. Afterwards, Hanna complained that Hash should not have been allowed to perform the execution in his drunken condition. Hanna further said it was the worst display he experienced in the 70 hangings he had supervised.

End of public executions in the USA

As the Kentucky General Assembly met in biennial sessions at the time, the media circus surrounding the Bethea execution embarrassed members of the Kentucky legislature, but it was powerless to amend the law until the next session in 1938. However, the trial judges in two separate Kentucky rape cases ordered that the hangings of John ‘Pete’ Montjoy and Harold van Venison be conducted privately. Montjoy (23) was privately hanged in Covington on December 17, 1937.

On January 17, 1938, William R Attkisson of the Kentucky State Senate’s 38th District (representing Louisville), introduced Senate Bill 69, repealing the requirement from Section 1137 that death sentences for the crime of rape be conducted by hanging in the county seat where the crime was committed. Representative Charles W Anderson Jr, one of the attorneys who assisted Bethea in his post-conviction relief motions promoted the bill in the Kentucky House of Representatives.

After both houses approved the bill on March 12, 1938, Governor Chandler signed it into law and it became effective on May 30, 1938. Chandler later expressed regret at having approved the repeal claiming, ‘Our streets are no longer safe.’ The last person legally hanged in Kentucky was Harold van Venison, a 33-year-old black singer, who was privately executed in Covington on June 3, 1938.

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