This week in 1934

“. . . The thought never occurred to anyone during the trial to show the circumstances of John Scheck as a mere boy who was lured and tempted into the life of crime because of his intense devotion to his parents and to his home that they were about to be deprived of as victims of a nationwide economic depression . . .”

— John Scheck, convicted of murder, electric chair, Illinois.
Executed April 20, 1934

Bank robber Scheck, twenty-one, held on a murder charge, killed policeman John G. Sevick in an escape attempt from a courtroom. The shocking crime led to “the court’s war on crime, and he was among the first hit by the reaction,” wrote the Chicago Daily Tribune.