“I have a right to choose the way I die!”

— Douglas Van Vlack, convicted of murder, hanging, Idaho.
Executed December 9, 1937

Van Vlack kidnapped his ex-wife and killed her, as well as two police officers. A few hours before his hanging was scheduled, Van Vlack broke away from his guards and scrambled over the cell block  o cling to the ceiling rafters. He stayed in the ceiling for a half an hour as his lawyer and the prison chaplain begged for him to come down; he jumped thirty feet below just before the guards entered the cell block with a net. Van Vlack’s hanging was unsuccessful; technically he died the next day, December 10, after a few hours in a coma.

“I want to start out by acknowledging the love that I’ve had in my family. No man in this world has had a better family than me. I had the best parents in the world. I had the best brothers and sisters in the world. I’ve had the most wonderful life any man could have ever had. I’ve never been more proud of anybody than I have of my daughter and my son…I’m dying tonight based on testimony, that all parties, me, the man who gave the testimony, the prosecuter he used knew it was a lie…It’s bad enough that a prosecutor can take truth and spin on it and try to re-doctor it. But when they actually make facts up and present to the public as trial’s evidence. That goes beyond fail, that’s completely unforgivable…”

— James Beathard, convicted of murder, lethal injection,Texas.
Executed December 9, 1999

Beathard assisted Gene Hathorn Jr. in the murder of Gene Hathorn Sr., Linda Sue Hathorn, and the couple’s fourteen-year-old son. Hathorn promised Beathard he’d pay him $12,500 from his father’s estate. The men tore apart the Hathorn home, stealing several items and a van to make it appear that the murders had been committed in the course of a robbery. Hathorn, who later learned his father had cut him from his will just weeks before the crimes, also received the death penalty.

After taking off her eyeglasses:
“These are for my sister. Please see that she gets them.”

— Mary Mabel Rogers, convicted of murder, hanging, Vermont.
Executed December 8, 1905

Rogers, age twenty-two, faced her execution “with the stoical calmness she has maintained since her arrest.” She had chloroformed her husband Marcus and rolled him into a river to drown with the help of “a half witted boy,” Leon Perham. Granted two reprieves by the state of Vermont, Rogers waited three years before her death sentence was carried out after a decree from the U.S. Supreme Court.