Bestial (46 page)

Whether Nelson was insane, according to legal definitions, is a question that will never be conclusively resolved, but he certainly wasn’t deluded about his chances for survival.

Hearing the news in his cell shortly after Mulvey’s telegram arrived, he merely shrugged, gave a little sigh, and said, “That’s what I expected.”

†

Prov. 28:14

Whoso walketh uprightly shall be saved; but he that is perverse in his ways shall fall at once.

A
few hours after Nelson received the bad news, a gray-haired, birdlike little man checked into a downtown hotel in Winnipeg, having just arrived from his home in Vancouver. Peering through thick-lensed, gold-rimmed spectacles, he signed the register under an assumed name—his standard practice whenever he was engaged in official business. The sixty-year-old gentleman preferred to remain anonymous, since his presence, as he had learned over the course of his long career, tended to make people extremely uneasy.

His true name was Arthur Ellis, and he was the official executioner of the Dominion of Canada.

Ellis spent part of the following day, Thursday, January 12, inspecting the scaffold that stood in the jail yard. A thoroughgoing professional, he also visited the condemned man in his cell, to size up Nelson’s stature and weight.

Afterwards, Ellis was interviewed by reporters from the city’s dailies. His precise words were never printed, but in its evening edition, the
Free Press
summed up the gist of his remarks. “Regarding Nelson’s crimes as the most horrible he has ever known,” the paper reported, “the hangman expressed keener anticipation at carrying out this execution than any other in his history.”

*    *    *

Ellis wasn’t the only one looking forward to Nelson’s execution. For weeks, the sheriff’s office had been swamped with requests from people eager to witness the hanging. The letters poured in from near and far. One particularly pressing appeal came from a woman in Minneapolis.

Regarding these applicants as little more than ghouls, the sheriff consigned all their letters to the trash bin. “Only those whose duty calls them there,” he announced on Thursday afternoon, “will be present at the hanging.”

Barred from the big event, a bunch of rubberneckers gathered outside the jail on Thursday morning, hoping to catch one last glimpse of the “Strangler” through his cell window. Guards were posted on the street to maintain order, but aside from their unabashed prurience, the gawkers were perfectly well-behaved. For the most part, they did nothing but mill on the sidewalk and peer eagerly up at the barred window.

One or two of the bolder women cupped their hands to their mouths and shouted Nelson’s name, but their calls went unanswered. When it finally became clear that the condemned man had no intention of coming to the window, most of the crowd began drifting away, leaving only a few diehard curiosity seekers, who remained throughout the day.

There
was
one vantage point from which spectators could watch Nelson swing, even without an official invitation. As far back as June, right after Nelson’s arrest, officials had expressed concern about the proximity of the jail to the University of Manitoba, whose main building directly overlooked the courtyard where hangings took place. These officials believed that the mere sight of the gallows would be intensely distressing to the students.

In point of fact, the students were so excited about the hanging that a bunch of them planned to sneak into the upper-floor rooms of the building and watch the execution through the windows. Much to their disappointment, the university president got wind of this scheme and issued an immediate warning:

“Swift and stern,” he proclaimed on Thursday afternoon, “will be the end of the career of any university students who attempt to witness the execution of Earle Nelson tomorrow morning. Any students who attempt to reach rooms overlooking
the jail yard at the time of the hanging will face instant expulsion.”

While the city buzzed with excitement over his impending death, Nelson himself remained remarkably calm throughout Thursday. For much of the day, he was attended by his “spiritual advisor,” a priest named J. A. Webb.

At the urging of his wife, Mary, who had written to him regularly since her return to California, Nelson had converted to Catholicism in early December, when he was baptized in his cell by Father Webb. Since then, he had continued to receive instruction in the fundamentals of his newly adopted faith.

Besides Father Webb (and, briefly, hangman Ellis), Nelson had a number of visitors throughout Thursday. In midafternoon, he agreed to see William McConnell, whose wife, Mary, was the sixteenth murder victim officially attributed to the “Dark Strangler.” Desperate for what we now call “closure,” McConnell had made the long trip from Philadelphia in the hope of securing a confession from Nelson.

But Nelson refused to oblige. “I have no confession to make,” he insisted. “I did not do the deed.” He had never been to Philadelphia in his life; indeed, he had never travelled “east of Nevada.” The whole thing was a “frame-up,” he told McConnell. “I just hope for your sake that the real guilty party will be caught one day and pay the penalty.”

After nearly two futile hours, McConnell finally gave up. Though the Philadelphian had every reason to abominate Nelson, he somehow found it in his heart to forgive him. “I hope he’s made his peace with God,” he told reporters afterwards. “From the bottom of my heart I forgive him. I think he’s insane. I have no malice whatever against the man.”

Nelson displayed the same heartless obstinacy towards another bereaved visitor, Lola Cowan’s mother, Randy. Like William McConnell, Mrs. Cowan was seeking whatever solace could be derived from the conclusive knowledge that Nelson was the killer. But she, too, came away emptyhanded. “I never saw the child,” Nelson maintained, insisting that he had never even been in Winnipeg before his arrest.

*    *    *

Nelson granted one more interview that afternoon, to a reporter from the
Free Press
. Once again he protested his innocence. Speaking in “the most solemn tones,” he declared that “God in his own good time will disclose the guilty parties to the world.” He appealed to the reporter to “proclaim to the people of Canada and the United States” that he was “the victim of circumstances.

“Before God and man I am innocent,” he avowed. “I am ready to meet my God, who I’m sure will have pity on me for everything I’ve suffered.”

When the reporter suggested to Nelson that he was “on the brink of eternity” and ought to avail himself of this final opportunity to unburden himself, Nelson became even more emphatic. “Why should I lie?” he exclaimed. “Tomorrow morning I’m going to hang. There’s no hope of saving my body, and I’m certainly not going to do anything to hurt my soul. I swear to you, I’m telling the truth. I never murdered anybody—never, never, never!”

Seated on the edge of his cot, he gave a deep, self-pitying sigh. “I’ve been unfortunate from the day of my birth,” he said. “I’ve been handicapped by the sins of my parents, who left a taint in my blood that’s caused me all kinds of agony of body and mind. They blame me for attacking women in my earlier years. But that’s untrue! I never did so. Women as such never even interested me. I was never anxious to be among them.”

“Is it possible that you committed the crimes when your mind wasn’t functioning normally,” asked the reporter, “and that you’ve completely forgotten the facts?”

“No, sir,” Nelson replied, shaking his head vehemently. “That’s absolutely impossible. I am innocent—innocent!” Here, he gave the reporter an imploring look. “Don’t you believe me?”

“Well,” said the newsman. “The jury found you guilty. And the evidence against you looked pretty strong.”

“I know that,” Nelson admitted. “But I was wrongly identified by people who didn’t realize what they were doing.”

The reporter had just one more question to pose. “Are you afraid to die, Nelson?”

The condemned man took a moment to reply. “Life is sweet,” he said earnestly. “Like everyone else, I prefer to
live—but only long enough to clear my name. I’ve thought everything over and—you know what?—I think God is good to take me away. If I lived, the law would just send me away to the penitentiary for life. Or to an insane asylum. I don’t want that. I’d rather die than be locked up with hardened criminals or madmen.”

Here, his eyes took on a dreamy look. “Tomorrow morning, I expect to be in Heaven. There are no detectives or policemen up there—only the good. Maybe I’ll finally find the peace and happiness that have been denied me here on earth.”

Not long after the interview ended, a guard brought Neson his final supper, which he consumed with his usual gusto—grapefruit, liver and bacon, apple pie, and coffee.

At around 9:00 P.M., an unusual ceremony took place in his cell, when His Grace Archbishop Sinnott arrived to administer the sacrament of confirmation. Never before had this rite been conducted within the precincts of the provincial jail, and various guards and prison officials crowded around the open door of the death cell to watch as Nelson was confirmed.

Afterwards, the archbishop spent several moments quietly conferring with Nelson. When the cleric departed at around 9:45, Father Webb seated himself on the cot beside Nelson and opened his Bible.

The two men spent the rest of the night reading and discussing passages from Scripture. From Nelson’s tranquil demeanor, an observer would never have guessed that his death was so near—that, within a few hours, on the morning of Friday the thirteenth, he would mount the thirteen steps of the scaffold and (as the newspapers never tired of pointing out) become “the thirteenth man to be hanged for murder on the gallows of the provincial jail.”

At 5:00 A.M., Father Webb, assisted by another priest named Holloway, conducted a mass. Nelson received Holy Communion. Another mass was said at 5:30.

Shortly afterwards, a guard brought Nelson a tray holding a light breakfast of toast and tea. Nelson calmly consumed his last meal.

A crowd of people—some of whom were authorized witnesses, others who were there simply to satisfy their morbid curiosity—had gathered outside the jail at daybreak. At approximately 7:30
A.M.
a prison official appeared to admit the former into the courtyard, where the scaffold, partly enclosed by a tentlike canvas shield, hulked against a grimy, far wall.

The spectators spoke in hushed whispers as they huddled at the foot of the gallows. Suddenly, their murmuring ceased. The hangman, Arthur Ellis, had materialized. Mounting the scaffold stairs, he made a last-minute inspection of the apparatus, then asked that the condemned man be brought out.

All eyes turned to the door through which Nelson would emerge. He appeared a moment later, arms strapped behind him, flanked by a pair of burly guards, and followed by the two chanting priests. He was dressed in a collarless shirt, blue serge trousers, tan shoes, and stockings. His face was pale, hair unbrushed, his face unshaven.

With Father Webb at his heels, he climbed to the top of the scaffold, took his place at the center of the trapdoor, then turned and faced the assembled crowd. After holding out a cross for him to kiss, Father Webb murmured a few final words to Nelson and descended the stairs, while the hangman adjusted the noose around the condemned man’s neck.

Asked if he had any last words, Nelson—speaking in a clear, firm voice—said, “I declare my innocence before God and man. I forgive those who have injured me and I ask pardon from those I have injured. May the Lord have mercy on my soul.”

No sooner were these words out of his mouth than Ellis slipped a black hood over the prisoner’s head, stepped away from the trap, and drew the bolt. The trap crashed open, and Earle Leonard Nelson plunged through the hole.

The hooded, pinioned figure fell, bounced, dropped again. Neck broken, head cocked at a grotesque angle, he spun lazily in the shadows beneath the scaffold, his limbs giving an occasional spasmodic twitch.

Stepping up to the body, hangman Ellis removed the leather straps from Nelson’s wrists. In spite of his long experiece,
he seemed strangely unsettled, his hands shaking visibly as he undid the restraints.

When the straps were off, the prison physician, Dr. J. A. McArthur, strode up to the body and felt Nelson’s pulse. Though the evening papers would report that “death was instantaneous,” it wasn’t until 7:52 A.M., eleven full minutes after Nelson took the plunge, that Dr. McArthur turned to the witnesses and said, “It’s over.” A black flag was promptly hoisted on the prison tower to signal that the execution had been carried out.

Minutes after the corpse was cut down and transported to the prison morgue, the coroner’s jury returned its verdict. The official cause of Earle Nelson’s demise, fittingly enough, was “death by strangulation.”

†

L
ess than nine hours before Nelson’s execution, a pair of onetime lovebirds named Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray, the principal figures in one of the most sensational murder cases of the twentieth century, were put to death in the electric chair of New York’s Sing Sing prison.

At the time of her arrest, Snyder—a voluptuous blonde with baby blue eyes and a lantern jaw—had been unhappily married for thirteen years to an overbearing art editor named Albert. A perennial “party girl” who looked much younger than her thirty-odd years, she had been seeking solace from her domestic misery in the arms of assorted lovers.

In 1925 she was introduced to a mousy, myopic, thirty-two-year-old mama’s boy named Judd Gray, who made his living as a corset salesman. Before long, they were involved in a torrid affair—meeting clandestinely in Manhattan hotel rooms, exchanging love letters composed in cloying baby talk, addressing each other by saccharine nicknames. To Judd, the domineering, brazenly sexual Snyder was his “Momsie”; she called her Milquetoast paramour “Lover Boy.”

One year after meeting Gray, Snyder resolved to do away with her detested husband. After tricking him into taking out a $48,000 Me insurance policy with a double indemnity clause, she set about trying to kill him: spiking his whiskey with bichloride of mercury, sprinkling poison on his prune
whip, piping gas into his bedroom while he slept. Snyder not only survived these attempts; in spite of his wife’s barely disguised abhorrence, he apparently never suspected her.