This week in 1943

“It’s getting light. What’s holding those fellows up?”

— Robert Walter Avery, convicted of murder, firing squad, Utah.
Executed February 5, 1943

“When a man faces death like I am,” said Avery in a prison interview, “life looks good under any circumstances.” Convicted in the murder of Detective Hoyt L. Gates, Avery blamed his criminal ways on a life of drugs. In a ten-page autobiography written prior to his death, Avery wrote: “Death to me is simply the cashing in of a stack of chips all of us receive at birth and while I have lost heavily in the game of life, I intend to face the cashier as a good loser.”