This week in 1958

To a guard, after tearing the heel off one of his shoes:
“I don’t want anybody else to stand in my shoes.”

— Richard Carpenter, convicted of murder, electric chair, Illinois.
Executed December 19, 1958

Carpenter, age twenty-seven, went to the electric chair for murdering a policeman on a subway platform. According to one newspaper, prior to being led to the death chamber he said, “I don’t believe in God. I’m going to the electric chair, and there’s nothing I an do about it.”
Although the Chicago Daily Tribune reported that Carpenter went silently to the chair, another publication quoted him as saying, “Get it over with quick”—words that were muffled by the black hood over his head.