“I want to thank you, gentlemen. I go to die, but I am innocent. That is all I can say. I wish you good luck—all of you—all your life.”

— Samuel Feraci, convicted of murder, electric chair, New York.
Executed August 9, 1934

Samuel Feraci was one of Anna Antonio’s two accomplices in murder and attempted insurance fraud. The trio attacked, shot, and stabbed her husband on Easter Sunday. Antonio promised Feraci eight hundred of the expected five-thousand-dollar settlement. Instead, he followed her to the electric chair.

“I am innocent. I was arrested for grand larceny and for assault on a previous occasion, but I was found innocent of those charges. I went into the army during the World War when I was only 15. This is the reward.”

— Daniel J. Graham JR., convicted of murder, electric chair, New York.
Executed August 9, 1928

The third uniformed member of the New York Police Department to die in the electric chair since 1915, Graham was accompanying Midtown paymaster Judson Pratt to a construction site when, prosecutors said, he shot the man in the head and stole the forty-seven hundred-dollar payroll. Graham then moved Pratt’s body into the passenger seat and drove from Fifty-third Street all the way to the Bronx with the dead man. Because of a downpour, nobody noticed.

“I am innocent of the killing of that cop. I committed other crimes and I lay that to evil companions. But I didn’t kill the cop. I wouldn’t kill one. Didn’t I try to save the life of one? Graham was one, wasn’t he, and didn’t I try to prove him innocent?”

— George Appel, convicted of murder, electric chair, New York.
Executed August 9, 1928

Police Lieutenant Charles J. Kemmer walked into a Brooklyn restaurant just as Appel and an accomplice finished robbing it. In the ensuing scuffle, prosecutors said, Appel shot Kemmer three times. Though mortally wounded, Kemmer jotted down the plate number of their getaway car. The clue was crucial and landed the partners in jail. The Graham in Appel’s last statement was Daniel J. Graham Jr., a former patrolman convicted of killing a paymaster. Appel, age forty-one, confessed to the murder in prison, but “the evidence was found to be so flimsy, no new trial was ordered,” according to a newspaper account. Graham was executed the same evening as Appel.

Appel’s last words have been erroneously reported as “Gentlemen, you are about to see a baked Appel.”