This week in 1922

To the prison physician:
“Good-bye, Doc.”

— Luther Boddy, convicted of murder, electric chair, New York.
Executed August 31, 1922

Infamous “cop fighter” Boddy was sought for questioning in connection with the shooting injury of a patrolman. Within two hundred feet of the police station, he fired on and killed two detectives who had apprehended him. After a manhunt involving forty thousand law-enforcement personnel, Boddy was apprehended outside Philadelphia, after disguising himself as a woman and forcing a taxi driver to take him there. When asked why he killed the detectives, he claimed the pair had previously abused him and he thought they were taking him to the station house to beat him. Boddy, twenty-three, grinned at the verdict and in the electric chair.