“May our tragic lives and ending serve as a warning to all-young and old. [We blame our crimes on] coming from broken homes, growing up in neglect and not having a fair chance in life.”

— Melvin Sullivan and Verne Braasch, convicted of robbery and murder, firing squad, Utah.
Executed May 11, 1956

Sullivan was shot side by side with his partner in crime, Braasch. The men were convicted together of the murder of a service station attendant during a twenty-dollar robbery in Beaver, Utah. Their executions had been moved back four times.

“Kiss my ass.”

— John Wayne Gacy, convicted of rape and murder, lethal injection, Illinois.
Executed May 10, 1994

Gacy became one of the most notorious serial killers in U.S. history after his conviction for the murder of thirty-three boys, many of whom he sexually molested and strangled. He hid most of his victims under his house, and others were found nearby. To friends Gacy was “Pogo the Clown,” because he liked to entertain neighborhood children. The press labeled him “the Killer Clown.”

“I felt at the time that I ought to have done it, and afterward I felt I did wrong. I tell you it’s a hard thing when a man brings it on himself, but whisky did it.”

— Isaiah Evans, convicted of murder, hanging, Louisiana.
Executed May 10, 1878

“Isaiah Evans (colored).” That’s all the New York Times revealed about the twenty-three-year-old man hanged for murdering an eighteen-year-old man. More than two thousand attended the execution. After a clergyman prayed, Evans’s rope was adjusted, he fell, and his neck broke. He had admitted to intoxication the night he shot a man named Edward Bowen.