Skip to main content
1 comment

Joe Arridy: The man that was wrongly executed


This is the story of the happiest man to live on death row.

In 1936, 15-year-old Dorothy Drain was raped and murdered at her home in Pueblo Colorado .A man had entered the Drain’s home and assaulted Dorothy and her sister with an axe. A massive manhunt was launched, and the police were under pressure to catch the killer.

As they searched the railway lines, they came across 21-year-old Joe Arridy who confessed to the murder when they brought him in for questioning. He also fit the profile that was any Mexican-looking man, a description given by two women who were also attacked.

Joe wasn’t even Mexican, and his dark complexation was down to both his parents being Syrian. He also had an IQ of 46, and couldn’t tell the difference between a rock and an egg. His parents were first cousins, so Joe and his siblings suffered from problems related to inbreeding.

Joe couldn’t tell the difference between colours, talk very slowly, and was easily misled and was known to take the blame for things he didn’t do.

During Joe’s arrest, the police learned another man named Frank Aguilar had been arrested for the murder of Dorothy Drain. Frank was Mexican, worked for the murdered girl’s father, and was fired before the murders. They also found an axe head at Frank’s home, he also admitted to the murders.

The had concluded that Joe was with Frank at the time of the murders even though Frank admitted to the murders and told police he acted alone. Even Dorothy Drain’s sister who survived the attack pointed to Frank and said he was the only attacker.

Joe’s story would change depending on who was questioning him and it should have been clear Joe wasn’t a suspect. Even though three psychiatrists testified that Joe was mentally handicapped, he was still convicted and sentenced to death.

While on death row Joe, spent his time playing with a toy train given to him by prison warden Roy Best. He was treated well and with respect by prisoners and prison staff. Prison warden Roy Best would bring him gifts and said he cared for him like a son.

With the mental capacity of a small child, Joe didn’t understand he was going to die. When asked about is upcoming execution, Joe didn’t understand what a gas chamber was, and just said, “No no, Joe won’t die.”

Joe ordered ice-cream for his final meal, and before they took him to the gas chamber he asked prison staff if they could put the ice-cream in the freezer so he could finish it later. Joe smiled as he was led to the gas chamber, and when he got momentarily nervous, the warden held his hand.

Joe was executed on January 6, 1939, after many stays of executions and appeals. In 2011, Joe was finally pardoned seven decades after his death.

you can click here to watch the video
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Terrified Daily life in the Warsaw Ghetto through rare photographs, 1941.A woman lying on the pavement in the Warsaw ghetto, starving to death, 1941

Terrified Daily life in the Warsaw Ghetto through rare photographs, 1941.A woman lying on the pavement in the Warsaw ghetto, starving to death, 1941 On 2 October 1940, Ludwig Fischer, Governor of the Warsaw District in the occupied General Government of Poland, signed the order to officially create a Jewish district (ghetto) in Warsaw. It was to become the largest ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe. All Jewish people in Warsaw had to relocate to the area of the ghetto by 15 November 1940. The ghetto was sealed on that date. In total 113,000 gentile Poles were forced to resettle to the ‘Aryan side’ and were replaced by 138,000 Jews from other districts of the capital. The ghetto reached its highest number of inhabitants in April 1941. Within its wall lived 395,000 Varsovians (residents of Warsaw) of Jewish descent, 50,000 people resettled from the western part of the Warsaw district, 3,000 from its eastern part as well as 4,000 Jews from Germany (all resettled in the early months of 1941). ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Female insurgent walking home and a knocked out IS 3 tank in the background. After the revolution she was sentenced to death and executed. Photo by Erich Lessing

Female insurgent walking home and a knocked out IS 3 tank in the background. After the revolution she was sentenced to death and executed. Photo by Erich Lessing. Budapest, near the Kilian Barracks, 1956 October They call for ''**dictatorship** of the proletariat'', with all the conclusions that come from it. In all the states that tried to install Communism or ''advanced Socialism'' or whatever you want to call them, no democracy and no other powers aside from Communist party were allowed to have any say in anything. In fact if you tried to disagree with the Communist party, you were branded a traitor or a enemy and attacked in all of them The funny thing is that in the initial phase of the rebellion, many members of the communist party in the USSR wanted to deal with it diplomatically and to resolve it peacefully. For example, Soviet Marshall Georgy Zhukov (who wanted to fully cooperate diplomatically and economically with the west after the war) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Popular posts from this blog

How common were instances of sexual abuse in Nazi concentration camps

How common were instances of sexual abuse in Nazi concentration camps. The accounts that rap£ or prostitution was common, Were the guards were given "free reign" over the prisoners given view of them as subhuman The Nazis sort of developed a network of state-controlled brothels during the war. This included both the civilian and military brothels. The Nazis even set up brothels for the forced labor inmates that helped with the German war effort as incentives for higher production from prisoners in camps. Back then these brothels were suppose to serving several needs. For the soldiers that were far away from home, the Nazis thought that having these brothels would reduce the possibility of rape in occupied lands and reducing the sexual relations with impure local women or forced laborer's, as well. Heck, the Nazis tried to use these brothel women to cure homosexuality as a treatment with male prisoners that were gay. Regular German women were exempt from serving in these b...
Post a Comment
Read more

The prisoners in concentration camps have sex with each other

 The prisoners in concentration camps have sex with each other Steady on. Nearly all concentration camps were single-sex, and at those that held both men and women the sexes were usually kept separate, though at Auschwitz III (Monowitz) and possibly also some other sub-camps they worked together. At extermination camps (where the sexes were not separated) most of the prisoners were killed within 24 hours of arrival. Prisoners did not have privacy. Remember that at the time most people had a horror of same-sex relations, especially between men. However, some Kapos and even guards forced prisoners to have sex with them. In Night Elie Wiesel relates how he found his Kapo having sex with a female prisoner, and he (Wiesel) was given 25 lashes for finding them having sex.* In the Women’s Camp at least one guard forced another woman to have sex with her, and at many camps there was a piepel (camp bum boy). *He also describes the hanging of the piepel of a Blockältester ( ‘block senior’). ...
Post a Comment
Read more