This week in 1930

“Father Mac is the greatest man who ever lived.”

— Joseph Calabrese, convicted of murder and robbery, electric chair, New Jersey.
Executed December 29, 1930

“Father Mac” was Rev. Cornelius McInerney, chaplain of the Essex County penitentiary. Calabrese, age twenty- one, also gave the chaplain a rose and “asked him to wear it in his memory,” according to the New York Times. Along with accomplice Arthur Cort—executed minutes later—Calabrese had been convicted of murdering druggist Morris Grossman in a holdup.