Tom Black Jack Ketchum Last Words
Tom Black Jack Ketchum Last Words
And let rip they did, because the rope around Tom ‘Black Jack’ Ketchum’s neck was too long. The 37-year-old train robber literally lost his head when it came clean off as he hanged on 26 April 1901. I’d like to be in hell in time for dinner.”. “I’ll be in Hell before you start breakfast! Let her rip!” Tom ‘Black Jack’ Ketchum’s 26 April 1901. I’d like to be in hell in time for dinner.” Edward H. Ruloff 18 May 1871 “If anyone has a message for the Devil, give it to me – I’ll deliver it!” Lavinia Fisher February 18, 1820.
Tom Black Jack Ketchum Last Words
His last words were a misquote from the film Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. Tom “Black Jack” Ketchum Image via wikipedia Last words: “I’ll be in hell before you start breakfast, boys. Let her rip!” Tom “Black Jack” Ketchum, the infamous outlaw was finally caught after a failed train robbery. Tom “Black Jack” Ketchum The number of killings is unclear, but he eventually was hanged for his role in a train robbery. “I’ll be in Hell before you start breakfast, boys.
Texas cowhands-turned-outlaws Tom and Sam Ketchum, along with range pals like David Atkins and Will Carver, robbed trains and became notorious in the Southwest.
By Jeffrey Burton
At almost 1:15 on the afternoon of Friday, April 26, 1901, a one-armed man in a black suit hurried up the 13 steps of the gallows at Clayton, Union County, New Mexico Territory. Tom Ketchum, an attested but unconvicted killer and the most notorious outlaw in the Southwest, was soon to become the first person to suffer public judicial execution for merely attempting to rob a railroad train. A bad life was about to end for a bad reason. And the ending would be worse, for he would not die in the officially approved fashion-from breakage of the neck vertebrae-but from decapitation at the rope's end.
At 17 minutes past the hour, and at the second attempt, Sheriff Salome Garcia's hatchet sliced through the control rope, the trap was sprung, and in a moment or two Tom Ketchum had made history-twice. The clicking cameras mounted beside the stockade snapped again and the ghastly scene was captured for all time: There, held on its side by a doctor and a deputy sheriff, was the body of Thomas Ketchum, and there, in the bloodied black hood held in place by horse-blanket pins, was Ketchum's severed head.
'Nothing out of the ordinary happened,' Sheriff Garcia declared. 'No bungling whatever. Everything worked nicely and in perfect order.' Like many of the others present, the sheriff probably was not lastingly discomforted by the horrifying spectacle of butchery that had been enacted before his eyes. It was a bad and hard way to die, but Ketchum, manifestly, had been a bad and hard man.
Texas cowhands-turned-outlaws Tom and Sam Ketchum, along with range pals like David Atkins and Will Carver, robbed trains and became notorious in the Southwest.
By Jeffrey Burton
At almost 1:15 on the afternoon of Friday, April 26, 1901, a one-armed man in a black suit hurried up the 13 steps of the gallows at Clayton, Union County, New Mexico Territory. Tom Ketchum, an attested but unconvicted killer and the most notorious outlaw in the Southwest, was soon to become the first person to suffer public judicial execution for merely attempting to rob a railroad train. A bad life was about to end for a bad reason. And the ending would be worse, for he would not die in the officially approved fashion-from breakage of the neck vertebrae-but from decapitation at the rope's end.
At 17 minutes past the hour, and at the second attempt, Sheriff Salome Garcia's hatchet sliced through the control rope, the trap was sprung, and in a moment or two Tom Ketchum had made history-twice. The clicking cameras mounted beside the stockade snapped again and the ghastly scene was captured for all time: There, held on its side by a doctor and a deputy sheriff, was the body of Thomas Ketchum, and there, in the bloodied black hood held in place by horse-blanket pins, was Ketchum's severed head.
'Nothing out of the ordinary happened,' Sheriff Garcia declared. 'No bungling whatever. Everything worked nicely and in perfect order.' Like many of the others present, the sheriff probably was not lastingly discomforted by the horrifying spectacle of butchery that had been enacted before his eyes. It was a bad and hard way to die, but Ketchum, manifestly, had been a bad and hard man.