This week in 1939

“I want to praise God I am being taken out of this world of sin tonight and I feel confident that you people will meet us all up there. God bless you all. Pray for my loved ones. That is all.”

As the sheriff adjusted the noose:
“Don’t choke me.”

— W. Lee Simpson, convicted of murder, hanging, Montana.
Executed December 30, 1939

Simpson had a list of sixteen people labeled “Rats” whom he intended to kill. He succeeded in killing three of them—including a sheriff—before he was arrested. After he confessed, Simpson slashed his wrists with broken glass. He survived, but before he passed out from blood loss he wrote a note in his own blood. It said, “The result of a frame-up through my wife and . . .”