This week in 1899

“Gentlemen, I not only lose my own life, but it kills my children and my mother.  I am an innocent man.  I wish you good bye.  Don’t look on me with a bad face when I am gone.  That’s all I have to say.”

— Michael Emil Rollinger, convicted of murder, hanging, Illinois

Executed November 17, 1899

Hall, who was credited with killing 19 men over a 20 year time span, had prison guards and town police so worried that measures were taken the night before and the morning of his execution to regulate traffic into the town. Hall’s friends were so vigilant in trying to get his sentence overturned that local police searched cars coming into the town, confiscating weapons and preventing moonshine from being imported into the town.