What provokes these morbid reflections is a document sent me by a reader, Miriam V. The condemned man was seated on a horse, the horse was walked to an oak tree, a rope was knotted around the man’s neck and tied to an overhanging limb, then a principal whacked the horse on his hind quarters, the horse bolted, and the man was left with his feet dangling in midair. Hanging was peculiarly suited to the Old West, because all that was needed to accomplish it was a horse, a rope and a tree, all of which were plentiful. A jury of eight men and four women found him guilty, and Hickman was hanged at San Quentin Prison before a festive gallery of 400. He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Hickman was arrested on a highway in Washington state and brought back to Los Angeles for trial for murder. This crime set off what was called the biggest manhunt in the West. Hickman drove on, stopped briefly and dumped out a bundle. Hickman drove up with a bundled-up figure in the back seat. The exchange was to take place on a residential street, without the presence of police. In a series of bizarre notes he instructed her banker father to pay him $1,500 (in 75 $20 bills) for her safe return. Perhaps the most notorious of hangings in California was that of William Edward Hickman, a bright young psychopath who in 1927 kidnaped a 12-year-old schoolgirl, Marion Parker, for ransom. Hanging is not the most amiable of subjects, but as a form of punishment that helped to forge the West, it fascinates many of us.Įvidently it was seen as too brutal by some souls, so it has been replaced in California by the gas chamber and in other states by electrocution and lethal injection.īeheading by ax or sword was never (or rarely) practiced in America, though it was used in England to dispatch numerous queens and noblemen, as well as minor felons.
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