This week in 1955

“I’ve lived a rough life, but I wonder if God has a place for people like me?”

— Johnson William Caldwell, convicted of murder, gas chamber, California.
Executed May 6, 1955

After serving time in the Texas State Prison for embezzlement, Caldwell found his way to California, where he met Lilly Pearl Storts. Three days and one drunken party later, they were married. When Caldwell asked for an informal loan one night, Storts refused. The next morning he returned home, hit her with an iron ipe, and strangled her to death with two belts. When stopped by an officer in Arkansas, he surprised the lawman by saying: “I’m the man you want for the murder of my wife.”