Crimescribe

It was January 11, 1962 on San Quentin Prison’s notorious ‘Condemned Row’ on the top floor of North Block. Caryl Chessman, California’s notorious ‘Red Light Bandit,’ was long gone. Executed on May 2, 1960, he was a mere memory. An enduring memory, granted, but dead and gone all the same. Merle Haggard, in for robbery on a three-to-fifteen-year sentence, was paroled just over two years previously. Haggard, who knew Chessman while doing time in solitary, later credited Chessman with his own reformation.

On December 3, 1961, Haggard’s other friend, James ‘Rabbit’ Kendrick, went downstairs to the legendary ‘little green room’ never to return. Kendrick, who had escaped about a year previously, had invited Haggard to go with him but warned him against it. Haggard had talent according to Kendrick and should go straight and try to use it. Kendrick’s freedom had lasted only two weeks before murdering California Highway Patrolman Richard Duvall. The next time Haggard saw him was in the prison yard on his way to the Row. On November 3 Kendrick made his final escape, the gas chamber.

A week after Kendrick it was the turn of William Wesley Monk, California penultimate convict to die for a crime other than murder. Condemned under California’s ‘Little Lindbergh Law,’ Monk had kidnapped Rose Caroline Schaefer and Katherine Sorena for the purpose of robbery. Raping Sorena and attempting to rape Schaefer made it kidnapping with bodily injury for the purpose of robbery and Monk was also the last American to die for a non-fatal kidnapping.

With Monk died Richard Arden Lindsey. Condemned for the rape and murder of his six-year-old daughter, Lindsey pled guilty to murder knowing he would almost certainly die for the crime. The jury fully agreed that he should and, when the guards took him down with Monk, neither heard so much as a goodbye from the other prisoners. Even on the Row some things remain beyond the pale and, the gas chamber being a two-seater, either was missed by anyone else on Condemned Row.

Rudolph Wright was different to most residents of Condemned Row. Already serving consecutive sentences for murder and kidnapping, Wright would die under another rarely-used California statute written specifically for Jacob Oppenheimer, California’s legendary ‘Human Tiger.’ Section 4500 of the California Penal Code was seldom used, but no less lethal than conviction for first-degree murder or under the ‘Little Lindbergh Law.’ To be specific:

“Every person undergoing a life sentence in a state prison of this State, who, with malice aforethought, commits an assault upon the person of another with a deadly weapon or instrument, or by any means of force likely to produce great bodily injury is punishable with death; provided, however, in cases in which the person subjected to such assault does not die within a year and a day after such assault and as a proximate result thereof, the punishment shall be death or imprisonment in the state prison for life without possibility of parole for nine years, at the discretion of the court or jury trying the same, ….”

Oppenheimer had been the first of several Californian prisoners to die under Section 4500. Rudolph Wright would be the last and, to a non-convict, it would be for the silliest of reasons. A fight over a handful of cigars saw him go from San Quentin’s general population to its infamous death cells. Oppenheimer had died on San Quentin’s gallows in 1931, located in what was then nick-named ‘Hangman’s Hall.’ Wright would die in more modern fashion, the octagonal green gas chamber on the ground floor of North Block.

Installed in 1937, the airtight steel chamber had claimed dozens of men and a couple of women including some of California’s most notorious felons. Like the prison’s gallows, the chamber had nicknames too. California’s convicts were all-too-familiar with The ‘little green room,’ ‘Time Machine’, ‘smokehouse’ and, as well-known to movie buffs as convicts, ‘the Big Sleep.’

That last nickname was bestowed by Warden Clinton Duffy who had described it as like going to sleep. The reality was far different and Duffy, veteran of supervising the executions of 88 men and two women including, knew it all too well. During Duffy’s tenure there had been the first and second wwomen to enter the gas chamber, gangster Juanita ‘The Duchess’ Spinelli and serial killer ‘Lethal’ Louise Peete. Duffy might have had to oversee executions but he didn’t have to like them or see them as having any useful purpose. Nor did he, Duffy was one of America’s most widely known abolitionists.

The botched gassing of killer Leanderess Riley in 1953 saw Riley break free of his restraints three times, running around inside the chamber and beating frantically against the windows before finally being overcome and strapped so tightly that he could barely breathe let alone move. One guard even had to sit on him when they strapped him for the third time, remarking later that he had been so rough with Riley that it disgusted him long afterward. Several prison officers, veterans well-used to executions, refused ever to work another one.

‘Vampire Killer’ Rodney Greig had also provided fodder for California’s reporters. Greig had been arrested on December 8, 1938 for the seemingly motiveless murder of Leona Vlught. A few days before his arrest California had debuted its new chamber by executing Albert Kessel and Robert Cannon on December 2. The day after Greig’s arrest Wesley Eudy and Fred Barnes had followed.

One week after Barnes and Eudy it had been the turn of notorious Depression-era outlaw Ed Davis. Kessel, Cannon, Eudy, Barnes and Davis had been the notorious ‘Folsom Five‘ condemned for murdering Warden Clarence Larkin during a failed escape in September of 1937. Greig’s execution on August 23, 1940 aroused far less comment, partly because those involved did not want to relive it.

Securely strapped into one of the two steel chairs inside the chamber, he had one last joke to play. The chamber had been designed with its chairs facing away from the witnesses for their benefit. Prison staff still had to see the prisoner’s face contort and turn purple, often vomiting as the cyanide gas attacked their nervous system, but spectators did not. Just as society had a cure for Greig, Greig devised a cure for facing the wrong way. With the executioner getting $150 for his morning’s work, Greig wanted his audience to get their money’s worth.

Knowing he would be facing away from them, Grieg made sure to twist in the chair despite his restraints. For the lasting memory of those present, he gave them a wolfish grin as the airtight door was sealed and the lever pulled to drop cyanide eggs into a vat of dilute sulfuric acid directly under his seat. As the gas rose around him Greig spent his last moments laughing dementedly at the horrified witnesses until he finally passed out. A virtual nonentity in life, Rodney Greig’s death was unforgettable for anyone unfortunate enough to witness it.

Wright had been condemned for repeatedly knifing fellow-convict Robert Grayson on December 20, 1959. According to another convict, Howard Regan, Grayson had stolen a handful of Regan’s cigars and the pair had approached Grayson to get them back. According to Regan, Grayson had drawn a home-made knife and attacked Wright who had taken the knife and used it on its owner. To a non-convict this seems like senseless brutality over nothing but, prison being the Darwinian environment that it is, allowing one convict to take advantage would have made Regan fair game for all of them. With that in mind he had approached Wright for help, Wright being a violent offender with an extensive criminal history. With hindsight it may have been a poor choice.

Wright himself claimed he had no memory of the stabbing and that the shank in question did not belong to him, but the jury begged to differ. With Grayson dying some time after the stabbing, Wright was tried under Section 4500 instead of for first-degree murder. It made no difference. The State wanted the death penalty and judge and jury duly obliged. With his appeals denied and Governor Edmund ‘Pat’ Brown not feeling generous, Wright was doomed.

For Governor Brown this was unusual compared to many Governors before and after. At first ambivalent about it, Brown eventually became a confirmed foe of capital punishment. He commuted twenty-three death sentences during his tenure and confirmed thirty-six including Caryl Chessman on May 2, 1960, James ‘Rabbit’ Kendrick on November 3, 1961, Billy Monk (also for a non-homicidal crime) who died with murderer Richard Lindsey on November 21, 1960 and Rudolph Wright. Brown also allowed California’s most recent female execution, that of Elizabeth Duncan. Condemned for ordering the murder of her daughter-in-law Olga, ‘Mother Duncan’ died with accomplices Luis Moya and Augustine Maldonado on August 8, 1962.  

A former prosecutor himself, Brown had entered the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento at the start of 1959 and would remain Governor until 1967. If any Governor would have been prepared to commute Wright’s sentence it would have been either Brown or his predecessor Goodwin Knight. If Brown was unmerciful, on the other hand, Wright’s fate was effectively sealed and Wright knew it.

Only three months before Wright murdered Grayson, serial killer Harvey Glatman had gone to the chamber on September 18, 1959. To this day Glatman still holds California’s unofficial record for the shortest stay on Condemned Row before entering the gas chamber. Two more convicts, Jimmie Jones and Philip Hamilton, were slated to die on January 8, 1960 and did. Brown had no mercy to spare for them, either.

The end, when it came, was actually a fairly typical affair by San Quentin standards. Unlike with Greig and Riley there was no more horror than usual. Nor was there a scrum of reporters as there had been when Caryl Chessman met his end. There was no significant group of protesters for or against Wright’s imminent departure and his place in California’s criminal history, though worth noting, was nothing earth-shattering in and of itself. Had it not involved a young man’s death it would have been just another normal day at the prison.

Wright was taken from the Row the day before his execution, escorted on his last elevator ride in restraints by two guards. Placed in the ‘Ready Room’ two small cells with no walls, just bars, he was under permanent guard, the notorious ‘death watch,’ until just before ten on the morning of January 11, 1962. Still nervously waiting on any last-minute stays or legal miracles, Elbert Carter remained in his cell up on Condemned Row. Slated to die on January 17, Carter too was entering his final few days. Governor Brown did not stay the executioner’s hand for Carter, either.

At the appointed time and with no last-minute changes from either Brown or the courts, Rudolph Wright was marched barefoot to his death. It was a short last mile, only a dozen steps between the Ready Room and the chamber. It was meant to be short for, if a prisoner collapsed or fought, the less far they had to be forced or carried the better. Within thirty minutes of the Ready Room door clanging open, Rudolph Wright was dead. California’s last execution for a crime other than murder had been concluded.