Did you know?
This is gruesome stuff.
“The execution was private, there were not more than 80 persons altogether who witnessed the infliction of the death penalty,” said story on the front page (second edition) of the Uniontown Daily News Standard on April 24, 1913.
One would have to wonder how any event (especially an execution) could ever be considered “private” with 80 people in attendance. But on that morning at 9:59, justice was served at the Fayette County jail.
Today, nearly one hundred years later, the extent to which that local execution was given front-page coverage seems rather macabre.
Pennsylvania has not executed a convicted murderer since Gary Heidnik was given a lethal injection on July 6, 1999. In fact, only three Pennsylvanians have been executed within the past 50 years.
But from the 18th until the early part of the 20th Century, the executions of convicted murderers across the country (including in Fayette County) were highly publicized.
John “Buffalo” Harris had been convicted of murdering a man at Isabella works on May 11, 1912.
The final days, hours and minutes of Harris’ life were chronicled in great detail on the pages of the Daily News Standard.
The front page of the morning edition of the paper was nearly entirely devoted to Harris and his fate.
Harris’ crime; the trial; the fight to save him from the executioner; his final Sunday; his complete written statements to the public just before his death; how the hangman’s scaffolding was erected and tested (“During the erection of the scaffolding and after it had been completed hundreds of people who could not attend the execution on Thursday visited the jail in order to see the instrument of death that was to remove John Harris from the land of the living.”) Harris’ biography; and his final seconds on earth — were each reported on extensively.
Even, bizarrely, how Harris had requested that he be allowed to wear his own clothes to the gallows. “When he was arrested his clothes which were just new were taken from him, and he was given others to wear while in jail. Warden Newcomer told him that his wish would be granted and so after the suit had been cleaned and pressed it was given back to its owner,” it was reported.
Harris, in his freshly cleaned and pressed suit, and sitting with his legs crossed in his cell, was pictured the following day on the front page of the Uniontown Morning Herald.
And there were the gory details of his demise.
A “rope expert” from Pittsburgh was part of the execution.
He was immediately called into service at the point at which the trap door was opened, and Harris was supposed to have died while dangling at the end of the rope.
That didn’t happen. According to the “rope expert,” the rope had stretched, and that meant that Harris’ feet hit the iron floor of the scaffold, and that prevented the full force of his weight from contributing to his own death.
“Sheriff Kiefer and his deputies bounded up the steps of the scaffold and catching hold of the rope pulled the negro’s body off the floor and held it suspended about a foot until Mr. Watt (the so-called “rope expert”) made the necessary adjustments to the rope,” it was reported.
I told you this was gruesome stuff.
I’ll spare you the even more gruesome details of Harris’ final seconds – which, on that day, were vividly recalled.
Harris’ lifeless body was removed from the scaffold, and taken to Clearview Cemetery where it was buried immediately.
The scaffolding was also removed immediately. Although, it was reported that in most of the Fayette County executions, it had been left standing for crowds who wanted to see such things.
How often did Fayette County executions happen? Well, Harris’ execution was the twelfth of the 13 hangings that took place in Fayette County dating back to March 7, 1795.
The last hanging I found was on June 25, 1914.
Frank Wells, who was a teenager at the time, was convicted of murdering a McClellandtown man on March 20, 1913.
Despite a number of appeals, and pleas from local clergymen to spare his life, Wells became that last person to be hanged in Fayette County in June of 1914.
After that time, Pennsylvania instituted electrocutions.
In February of 1915, a former Fayette County Sherriff, P.A. Johns, traveled to Bellefonte, Pa. to witness the very first “execution by electricity” in the state.
Johns had seen the last hanging in Fayette County, and he wanted to see the first electrocution.
According to the Feb. 25, 1915 edition of the Morning Herald, Johns told reporters “that there was not near so much suffering with the new method.”
According to the web site http://deathpenaltyusa.org, eight Fayette County residents have been electrocuted – the last being in September of 1935.