This week in 1915

“I will raise mine eye unto the hills, whence cometh my help. . .”

— Roswell C. F. Smith, convicted of murder, hanging, Illinois.
Executed February 13, 1915

Smith killed a four-year-old girl, Hazel Weinstein, by luring her into an alley with candy and then strangling her with a strip of her dress. He returned the body to her home, where her parents  mmediately contacted the police. Called a “physical defective and degenerate” by the Chicago Daily Tribune, Smith received several mental health examinations but was found to have been mentally solvent at the time of the murder.