This week in 1951

September 21st, 2013 by admin

“I’m ready to go. No one will miss me. My life has been worthless.”

— Ray Gardner, convicted of rape and murder, firing squad, Utah.
Executed September 29, 1951

Gardner raped and killed seventeen-year-old Shirley Jean Gretzinger, who answered his call for a babysitter. He applied repeatedly for clemency but was denied. The location of his execution was improvised in an unfinished corridor of Utah’s new state penitentiary.

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