This week in 1918

“I shouldn’t have killed those bank messengers. Maybe my death on the gallows will even the score.”

— Edward Blackie Wheed, convicted of murder, hanging, Illinois.
Executed February 15, 1918

While his accomplice fainted when taken to the gallows, veteran thief Wheed “kept cool and did some praying,” according to the Chicago Daily Tribune. Wheed had killed two bank messengers with a sawed-off shotgun during a seven-thousand-dollar payroll robbery. He was captured “after a battle with several hundred policemen.”