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PRICE 25 CENTS 
 
 THE SIX WHO WERE HANGED 
 
 (By CLEM. G. HEARSEY) 
 
 I 
 
 This book contains a graphic pictorial and 
 narrative description of the history-making execu¬ 
 tion at Amite, La., May 9, 1924, when six men 
 paid the extreme penalty on the gallows for the 
 murder of one. The three scenes of the actual 
 execution contained in this book are among the 
 most unusual photographs in the world. 
 
The author has no apology to offer for this 
 book; it is the unfolding of a story whose “light¬ 
 est word should harrow up the soul and freeze 
 the blood”. 
 
 It is an impartial narrative, but it bitterly 
 arraigns Society as a Monster of Cruelty, and 
 points to the conclusion that Death by Hanging, 
 as judicial punishment, has no part with civiliza¬ 
 tion. 
 
 Society must be protected from its undesir¬ 
 able units, yes, but Society has passed the Savage 
 State, and in the application of its system of Crim¬ 
 inal Correction, it should not exercise the Spirit 
 of Vengeance. 
 
 If Capital Punishment must stand, let us 
 have, not “Lex Talionis”—the Law of Retaliation 
 —but a humane infliction of the Death Penalty. 
 
 - 
 
 — 
 
 JBV 1 
 
 ■ 
 
 Ij 
 
 ' 
 
 Copyright, 1924 
 By 
 
 Clem. G. Hearsey 
 
THE SIX WHO WERE HANGED 
 
 By Clem. G. Hearsey 
 
 The Gallows Tree ripened to its grim harvest in the 
 palisaded inclosure of the jail at Amite, La., on a Friday, 
 the Ninth of May, and the fruit for the Feast of Death 
 numbered six. 
 
 In three creaking, crashing stanzas, the scaffold sang 
 its Hymn of Doom, and each period carried with it, the 
 ghastly snapping of neck bones, and the straining and 
 stretching of bound and hood-winked bodies as they swayed 
 at the rope’s end. 
 
 Six died for one, and the agony of the six, carrying 
 through three years of imprisonment, was perhaps greater 
 atonement than even the sternest System of Law might 
 have required, could that agony have been placed in the 
 Scale of Justice and weighed against the enormity of the 
 crime for which the courts demanded payment. 
 
 The agony of three years, even before its grim climax 
 of the quivering trap doors had been reached, was terrific, 
 sombre with the touch of the heaviest tragedy, and the hap¬ 
 less six, buffeted by the mailed fist of Fate, lived in tor¬ 
 ment, between hope and dread. 
 
 Even in the gloom of first imprisonment, and long be¬ 
 fore the gaunt skeleton in wood, which was finally to grip 
 them in its throttling embrace of death, had cast its shadow 
 across' their hopes, theirs was the conviction that they 
 would escape the Law, and that any penalty paid by them, 
 would be but a partial penalty—a term of years in the peni¬ 
 tentiary at the most. 
 
 These six men, Natale Deamore, Rosario Leona, Joseph 
 Bocchio, Andreas Lamantia, Joseph Giglio and Joseph 
 Rini—they are named in the order in which they were 
 groomed by the Deathsman—relied upon their friends, the 
 strong and influential forces behind them, to save them 
 from the law, and late in the evening before their execution, 
 and just as the bugler down in the court house square 
 sounded “taps”, Rini and Giglio, their fingers gripping the 
 bars of their cells, told newspaper men and sheriffs, who 
 
 1 
 
had come to bid them good-night, that they did not be¬ 
 lieve that they were to die on the morrow, and felt confident 
 of being saved before the hangman reached them. 
 
 They were the six who died for one—Deamore, Leona, 
 Bocchio, Lamantia, Giglio and Rini, and the one who died 
 at the hands of the six, or so the law declared, was Dallas 
 Calmes, peaceful restaurateur, and hotel-keeper of the 
 little town of Independence, La. 
 
 The story is best told in its slow and sensational un¬ 
 folding, from the morning of May 8, 1921, when the murder 
 was done, to the afternoon of May 9, 1924, when Justice, 
 as man writes it, was satisfied with the scaffold offering. 
 
 It was in the quiet little village of Independence, nestl¬ 
 ing sleepily on the first slope from the lake marsh, that 
 Crime; paying its heavy toll to death, stalked to the thrill¬ 
 ing accompaniment of a woman’s shrill screams, the sharp 
 staccato of revolver shots, and the gasping groans of a 
 desperately wounded man. 
 
 Dallas Calmes, the village inn-keeper, or restaurant 
 proprietor, was the victim of the storm of bullets; his 
 shrieking distracted wife crouched on the ground beside 
 him, holding the bloody head on her lap, and slinking away 
 in the darkness of the early morning to the chugging auto¬ 
 mobile where Joe Bocchio and Joe Giglio awaited them were 
 Roy Leona, Joe Rini, Natale Deamore and Andreas La¬ 
 mantia. 
 
 Murder was committed there in the blackness of that 
 May morning—Calmes gasped out his life in his wife’s 
 arms—and on another May day, three years after, as a 
 sequel to that tragedy of unerring pistol fire, there was 
 another and more hideous revel of Death and Pain when 
 the six men—Bocchio, Giglio, Leona, Rini, Deamore and 
 Lamantia were groomed by the hangman and swung from 
 the tall gibbet. 
 
 The murder and the execution of the slayers make up 
 one of the most startling pages of criminal history of the 
 past decade. It was crime which aroused the indignation 
 of a country parish known for its turbulence in former 
 years; there was ever the threat of night riders storming 
 the prison and taking the culprits out to the forest as gal¬ 
 lows’ tree fruit, and leading men of the district had to 
 exert all their eloquence to calm the fury of the people. 
 
 That was while the men were in jail in the little town 
 of Amite, the county seat of Tangipahoa Parish, sixty miles 
 
 2 
 
from New Orleans, undergoing their two trials. The long 
 term of their confinement was in the massive, steel-lined 
 Parish Prison in New Orleans, where they were held under 
 the watchful care of Captain Archie Rennyson, the prison 
 governor, for safe keeping. 
 
 It was during the last days of their captivity that the 
 case of the six who were hanged assumed something of an 
 international aspect. Every legal means had been ex¬ 
 hausted ; the courts from the District Court of Tangipahoa 
 to the United States Supreme Court had sealed the men’s 
 warrant to the gallows; Governor Parker, although threat¬ 
 ened by Blackhand letters, genuine or spurious had an¬ 
 nounced that no clemency would be shown the murderers, 
 and the majority of the members of the Board of Pardons 
 had made clear that their ears were deaf to pleas of mercy. 
 
 It was then that the Chancellor of the Italian Con¬ 
 sulate in New Orleans, Cavallero Papini, bore to Governor 
 Parker at Baton Rouge, the State Capital, a letter from 
 Prince G. Gaetani, the Italian Ambassador at Washington. 
 His Excellency, the Ambassador, wrote unofficially, but he 
 politely advanced a request that the six men might be 
 spared the gallows and sent to prison for life terms. He 
 urged that Italy had long since abandoned capital punish¬ 
 ment as having no part with civilization, and he thought 
 that a commutation of the sentence might serve to further 
 promote the good feeling so long existing between the an¬ 
 cient kingdom of southern Europe and the great republic 
 of the West. While Governor Parker refused to comment 
 on the Ambassador’s letter, the appeal from the ambassa¬ 
 dorial source did not move him from the course of High 
 Justice as he saw it, and work proceeded on the gallows 
 building in the jail yard at Amite. 
 
 The crime for which the six men were required to pay 
 the law’s heaviest penalty is a picture of banditry, set in 
 a frame of murder. Tangipahoa Parish is the great center 
 for the strawberry culture of the Delta country, and in In¬ 
 dependence is the Farmers’ & Merchants’ Bank, where 
 the owners of the rich fruit acres and the berry pickers 
 deposit their money after the season’s successful work. 
 
 As the story in its bloody course runs, the six Italians, 
 meeting in New Orleans, plotted to rob the bank in Inde¬ 
 pendence. 
 
 Roy Leona and Joe Giglio came to the great southern 
 
 3 
 
city from Chicago, at the end of April, 1921. They came 
 with the intention of “bootlegging”, making wine and 
 whiskey for the thirsty trade, selling it at a high figure and 
 amassing a great fortune, as others before them had done. 
 Vito de Gorgio, a brigand at heart, first devised the scheme 
 
 Joseph Giglio 
 
 of the bank robbery, de Gorgio was no participant in the 
 raid, but remained in New Orleans, and later going to Chi¬ 
 cago was killed in a brawl. “It would be easy work,” said 
 de Gorgio; “all you need is nerve, and you can make a get¬ 
 away with a lot of money.” 
 
 Leona, who was something of a ring leader in the 
 affair, as his confession indicates, interested Lamantia and 
 Rini, New York Italians not long in New Orleans, in the 
 venture, and Deamore, once a knife sharpener but later 
 interested in an automobile repair shop, was pressed into 
 service, as he knew roads for automobiles from New Or¬ 
 leans to Independence, and in and out the swamps and 
 forests. Bocchio had just come in from Chicago with $300 
 in his pocket intending to return to Italy to see his mother, 
 and as he was an automobile mechanic and chauffeur he 
 was requested to drive the little Hudson car. 
 
 The six bandits left New Orleans in their car on a 
 Friday afternoon, and made a difficult run, because of 
 engine troubles. They spent Friday night with a country¬ 
 man of theirs, named Giamalva, way up on the river road, 
 and the next afternoon. May 7th, they started on the last 
 lap of their dangerous journey in their uncertain machine. 
 
 4 
 
Late at night they stopped in the thick woods near Inde¬ 
 pendence, and waited for the dark of the morning for their 
 work. The automobile resumed its journey and was parked 
 several blocks from the bank and the robbers went to 
 their work. 
 
 Next to the bank was Calmes’ little restaurant, and 
 the yards of the two places were as one. The robbers, in 
 getting through a fence, overturned some boards, and Mrs. 
 Calmes was aroused from sleep. She awakened her hus¬ 
 band, and Calmes, with his revolver in hand went to the 
 back door, threw it open, entered the yard, saw the dark 
 forms of several men and cried “Halt there!” The answer 
 to his command was a hail of bullets, and as Calmes fell 
 mortally wounded he returned the fire. 
 
 The men escaped in the blackness of early morning, 
 and Mrs. Calmes supporting her dying husband in her 
 arms screamed for help. The chase was taken up at once 
 by Sheriff Lem Bowden, the man with the steel blue eyes 
 and desperate courage, and in less than twenty-four hours, 
 the six were in prison. They made their first break for liber¬ 
 ty in the automobile, but when the pursuit was hot they 
 
 Joseph Rini 
 
 abandoned the machine in the swamps and separated. Three 
 were taken together, after exchanging shots that had no 
 effect with the sheriff’s posse, and the others were arrested 
 individually late on the day following the killing, in adja¬ 
 cent villages. They had with them sawed-off shot guns, re¬ 
 volvers and dynamite. Bloodhounds, common in Louisiana 
 
 % 
 
 5 
 
in man hunts, played a successful part in running down the 
 culprits. 
 
 As a bloody connection with the crime in Tangipahoa, 
 a connection the police recognized but could not establish, 
 two Italians were found shot to death in an automobile near 
 the Industrial Ship Canal in New Orleans. 
 
 The prisoners were taken to New Orleans as the author¬ 
 ities of Tangipahoa wanted the law to take its course and 
 feared the Vengeance of Night Riders, were the men de¬ 
 tained for any great length of time in the weak Amite jail. 
 They had two trials, appeals to the State Supreme Court, 
 the United States Supreme Court and hearing before the 
 Pardon Board, but the demands of Justice pointing toward 
 the gallows were maintained. 
 
 The execution was set for three years and one day 
 after the killing of Calmes. 
 
 It was a long, hard siege for Capt. Rennyson, the Pris¬ 
 on Governor, and his deputies—the stay of the condemned 
 men in the Parish Prison at New Orleans—and the last 
 fortnight of that stay was a series of sensational happen¬ 
 ings. First Leona confessed as having been the only one 
 of the six who fired at Calmes; then Deamore went insane, 
 or pretended violent madness; Bocchio, the student who 
 wore eyeglasses, fell into settled melancholy, and the other 
 three lost their nerve almost to the verge of a breakdown, 
 even Rini forgetting to fondle and play with his little Chi¬ 
 huahua dog, his cell companion for more than a year. 
 
 And during the recent days Captain Rennyson re¬ 
 ceived strange letters. One sent from a remote postoffice 
 in North Carolina offered him $50,000 with an additional 
 $25,000 to be given to Superintendent of Police Molony to 
 allow the men to escape, and one threatening him with 
 Blackhand vengeance. These letters were not seriously 
 considered. 
 
 As the sands of their mortal days ran lower in Life’s 
 Hour Glass, the state of the six men presented the awful 
 picture of wrecked and shattered nerves, and emotionalism 
 touching the very fringe of stark madness. Deamore was 
 the first to break entirely, and setting a lot of papers aflame 
 in his cell and smashing stools and benches furiously, he 
 cried that the whole world was on fire and that he was 
 being consumed. His ravings carried on intermittently un¬ 
 til his voice choked in the gripe of the hangman’s noose. 
 
 6 
 
Leona, after his confession that he alone had fired the 
 fatal shot and that the other five had had no part in the 
 killing of Mr. Calmes, showed a phase of emotional insan¬ 
 ity. He paced ceaselessly to and fro in the narrow confines 
 of his cell, and would occasionally exclaim: “I am dead 
 now, already am I dead; they cannot hang me, because a 
 dead man would not look well dropping through a gallows 
 trap”. 
 
 One afternoon he showed Captain Rennyson a spool, 
 carefully whittled in the shape of a bullet. “This they shot 
 through me,” he cried; “I am dead, they cannot hang a 
 dead man.” 
 
 Captain Rennyson was alarmed, and well he might be 
 as the character of the spool carving pointed to the fact 
 that Leona had somewhere concealed in his cell a very sharp 
 knife. Leona was taken to the bull ring, stripped and 
 searched by deputies. Nothing was found. Neither was 
 the knife in evidence in any corner or hiding place of the 
 cell, and the incident for the time was closed. 
 
 Lamantia, always sad-eyed, and appealing in voice and 
 action, maintained a surprising calmness through the clos¬ 
 ing days in the Condemned Row at the Prison in New Or¬ 
 leans. With his face close to the steel lattice work of his 
 cell, he would daily ask the visiting newspaper men: “Any 
 good news for us boys outside; you think we have any 
 chance?” Evasive answers expressing the negative would 
 generally wring from him a deep sigh, and the remark: “Oh, 
 we did no killing, how can they hang so many men who 
 are innocent!” 
 
 A little dog, not much on hair, but with big pointed 
 ears and a stub of a tail nervously wagging, lay on Joe 
 Rini’s bed, staring with large inquisitive eyes through the 
 cross net work of steel bars, at the group of men in the 
 long corridor of condemned row. It was the evening of 
 Tuesday, the day before the men were removed to Amite 
 for the hanging. 
 
 The little dog was a pathetic picture, she seemed to 
 sense the impending doom which hung like a pall over her 
 master, and whimpers and growls expressed the varying 
 canine appreciation of the visit. 
 
 Captain Rennyson, the prison governor, and newspaper 
 men were in the party, and as Rini laced his fingers through 
 the bars and leaned over the bed on which the dog lay, the 
 
 7 
 
devoted animal stood up on her hind legs and placed her 
 fore-paws affectionately on the man’s side. 
 
 “Toots she love me very much,” said Rini with a sad 
 smile, “and me when I go next Friday, I think of Toots 
 and wonder for her, where she go and who will be good 
 to her.” 
 
 Poor little Toots had lived for more than two years 
 from whining puppyhood in the cell with Rini. She came 
 as such a tiny dog, hardly with her eyes opened, and Rini 
 nursed her on the bottle through the weeks of crying in¬ 
 fancy to the strength of playful canine adolescence. 
 
 Toots was a Chihuahua or hairless dog. She had 
 hair but not too much, and what hair there was worked 
 out into beautiful white and brown spots. 
 
 The dog certainly knew that some heavy woe was im¬ 
 pending and all day long during the final death watch, she 
 moped on Rini’s bed, and cried and whimpered in her sleep. 
 
 “You see the dog,” said Rini, that last evening in the 
 New Orleans Prison; “she knows something going to hap¬ 
 pen, and already she begin her cryin’. Toots, when I am 
 gone, maybe my father take her and love her, because I 
 loved her and she loved me.” 
 
 Deputy Sheriff Elliott gave Toots to Rini, and the con¬ 
 demned man’s love or his dog, in the face of his great 
 trouble, demonstrated at least one noble and redeeming 
 characteristic. 
 
 Early the next morning, shackled hand and foot, and 
 ready for his death journey to Amite, Rini took an affection¬ 
 ate farewell of the whining, whimpering Toots. He held 
 the dog on his lap until it was time to go, and then rais¬ 
 ing the protesting, plaintively howling animal with diffi¬ 
 culty in his steel girt hands, he kissed her several times on 
 the forehead, and with tears streaming down his cheeks 
 passed her to Deputy Sheriff Elliott. 
 
 In the bull ring, just in front of Rini, Guy, Cap¬ 
 tain Rennyson’s magnificent great Dane, crouched on his 
 haunches, surveying with soft, questioning eyes, the crying 
 struggling little dog in Deputy Elliott’s arms. Toots saw 
 the bulky Guy, but could not appreciate the sympathy ex¬ 
 pressed in his gaze, and struggling to be free, she yelped 
 and barked in a canine hysteria, until Elliott removed her 
 to the Captain’s room upstairs. The sympathetic Guy, with 
 never a resentful growl, arose slowly from the floor and 
 
 8 
 
with drooping tail moved out of the bull ring, to his quar¬ 
 ters in the sheriffs’ office. 
 
 Sheriff Bowden, of Tangipahoa, with District Attor¬ 
 ney Matt Allen, who conducted the prosecution of the Ital¬ 
 ians at their several trials in Amite; Dr. W. H. McClen¬ 
 don, the coroner of the Parish, and several deputy sheriffs 
 arrived Tuesday night in New Orleans, to take charge of 
 the prisoners and carry them to the Hard Mart of Criminal 
 Trade, where they were to yield their lives for a life they 
 had taken, as the law required. 
 
 The last two days had produced new and startling 
 phases to the internationally celebrated case. Sheriff Bow¬ 
 den had accepted Governor Parker’s tender of troops, and 
 Adjutant General L. A. Toombs had his soldiers in bar¬ 
 racks under command of Captain Carter all ready for the 
 journey to Amite. The soldiers were to guard against any 
 attack that might be made on the prison train by friends 
 of the condemned, planning a rescue, and also, as some 
 suggested, to protect the prisoners from possible mob vio¬ 
 lence, should a stay of execution be ordered at the last 
 minute. 
 
 A determined effort had been made in the United States 
 Court by the attorneys for the Italians to obtain a Writ of 
 Error and Stay of Execution. The legal battle was fought 
 by Girault Farrar, A. D. Henriques and George Gulotta, 
 representing the condemned men, and T. Semmes Walms- 
 ley, Amos Ponder, District Attorney iUlen, District At¬ 
 torney R. H. Marr, of Orleans Parish, representing the 
 State. 
 
 Both Sheriff Bowden and George Williams, the Crim¬ 
 inal Sheriff of Orleans Parish, who were made defendants 
 in the writs were present in court. Judge Rufus Foster 
 who heard the proceedings denied the writs late Tuesday 
 night, and the last barrier to the gallows was removed. 
 
 Mr. Farrar at once announced that he would leave for 
 Washington that night to lodge an appeal with the United 
 States Supreme Court. No stay of execution was allowed 
 him, and under his plan he would have to leave Tuesday 
 night to reach Washington in time to present his case. 
 
 Mr. Farrar did take the train for Washington, but 
 found that his law partners in the case were not on board 
 with the necessary papers, so he abridged his journey at 
 Bay St. Louis and returned to the city. 
 
 9 
 
A fraction of a second before the hangman (stooping) cut the rope, the photographer took this scene. Roy 
 
Captain Rennyson, because of his long experience in 
 prison management, volunteered to render Sheriff Bowden 
 every assistance possible in the execution of the six, and 
 when the sheriff arrived Tuesday night, he had ready the 
 one hundred feet of five-eighths rope, the six black caps 
 for the murderers, and the mask for the hangman. 
 
 Gathered in the Captain’s office that night were the 
 sheriff and his party from Amite; Sheriff Williams, Frank 
 Sullivan, former criminal sheriff, Col. John P. Sullivan, 
 General Toombs, Superintendent of Police Molony, and 
 others with a number of newspaper men, local and from 
 points in the north and east. 
 
 Captain Rennyson showed the black caps, and Sheriff 
 Bowden’s curiosity to see how they were adjusted, was 
 satisfied by a newspaper man who tried on one of the 
 hoodwinks, and then fitted the hangman’s mask to his face. 
 
 The black caps were there, so was the executioner’s 
 mask, and to add to this collection of horrors, Captain Ren¬ 
 nyson took from an old armoir in a corner of the room a 
 mass of dangling, twisting white cords. “These are for 
 their legs, when they are standing on the trap,” he ex¬ 
 plained. It is necessary that a man in execution should be 
 carefully pinioned, as if his neck is not broken and he strug¬ 
 gles in strangulation, his contortions would not be pleasant 
 to look upon.” 
 
 Sheriff Bowden, who was not in the best of health, lay 
 at restful ease on Captain Rennyson’s bed, and seemed in¬ 
 terested in the accounts the Prison Governor gave of the 
 actions and mental conditions of the men. Captain Ren¬ 
 nyson, although long associated with the management of 
 a big prison, and in daily contact with the ugly phases of 
 prison life, is nevertheless a humane man, thoroughly ap¬ 
 preciative that all prison codes need reformation, and that 
 Society to maintain Civilization’s high standards, must get 
 away from the present barbarous forms of capital punish¬ 
 ment. 
 
 The Captain had known the doomed Italians for all 
 of three years, as the better part of that time they spent 
 in his jail, and he learned to like them. They were good 
 prisoners, always polite to visitors and never violating 
 rules, or taking advantage of their unfortunate position, 
 and imposing upon Captain Rennyson’s kindness. 
 
 “They are in a rather bad state tonight,” Captain Ren- 
 
 11 
 
nyson informed Sheriff Bowden, “and naturally so, but I 
 don’t think that they are going to give us any trouble.” 
 
 One of the newspaper men present had witnessed thir¬ 
 ty-six executions, and was full of gloomy scaffold lore, 
 which he dispensed with a wealth of hideous detail for the 
 benefit of Sheriff Bowden, who was something of a stranger 
 to the forms and ceremonies attending the fatal exercise 
 of the Law’s severest mandate. 
 
 Frank Sullivan, the former sheriff, smiled and ob¬ 
 served, indicating the newspaper man: “There he is sheriff, 
 you never see him in the prison until around execution time, 
 ask him, he can tell you all about it.” 
 
 “In all the men you have seen hanged,” asked Sheriff 
 Bowden from the bed, “was there ever an instance where 
 it was necessary to carry the culprit to the scaffold?” 
 
 “No,” returned the writer; “I have seen some weak 
 and faltering victims of the noose, but never a man in the 
 actual state of collapse. It’s true that Sam Sparo was 
 close to a frenzy of fear as he stood on the gallows out there 
 in the prison yard. He had diced with Death and lost, and 
 was to give his own life for having abridged the doleful 
 days of poor Tony Luciano, with several pistol shots in the 
 back. Sparo was weak, swayed on the gallows with tremb¬ 
 ling limbs, as they trussed him up for the drop with sleek 
 new ropes, and had it not been for big ‘Doc’ Briney, one 
 of Archie’s deputies, he wmuld have thrown himself over 
 the gallows rail to the hard paved yard fifteen feet below. 
 ‘Doc’ caught him just in time. 
 
 “And then when Hangman Johnson came, in funereal 
 robes and black mask, and Sparo saw the darkly repulsive 
 face over his shoulder, he cried in a spasm of fear ‘Hurry 
 upa, Johnson, work queek!’ Johnson worked quick as he 
 always did and as the trap sprung, and Sparo’s body took 
 the awful plunge, a muffled shriek came from beneath the 
 black cap. The shriek had hardly begun, ere it ended, in 
 a loud crack, that seemed to merge with the hollow echo 
 of the clanging trap. 
 
 “I was just in front of the gallows, and heard the 
 crack plainly. It was Sparo’s neck violently breaking, and 
 as Coroner O’Hara’s examination showed later, the whole 
 neck bone structure had been shattered and splintered; 
 that was why the snapping was so loud and distinct among 
 the other gruesome gallows sounds. 
 
 12 
 
“No, Sheriff, men don’t generally go to the scaffold in 
 a collapse; it always seemed to me that they inclined to 
 Lady Macbeth’s advice to her husband about to kill the 
 sleeping Duncan, and screwed their courage to the stick¬ 
 ing place, so as not to fail in their painful passing out. 
 
 “I think you will have no trouble with your prisoners 
 sheriff, and from my experience, I dare hazard the opinion 
 that they will go boldly to their fate. There’s one at least 
 I’m sure of and that’s Rini.” 
 
 “What was that, Rini?” inquired Captain Rennyson. 
 
 “Yes, Rini,” was the answer. 
 
 “They’ll have to carry him,” was the prison governor’s 
 doleful prediction, a prediction which was not borne out by 
 the events of the tragic day of execution at Amite. 
 
 The night wore on, and the prisoners at odds with sleep 
 paced or crouched disconsolately in their cells looking for¬ 
 ward to the morrow’s journey. 
 
 Bocchio, the poor, weak student, who had once con¬ 
 templated Holy Orders as his life’s mission, lay back on 
 his bed against the steel lattice work; his gold rimmed 
 glasses were on his well shaped nose; his eyes were closed, 
 and the peak of the cap was drawn down on his forehead. 
 In a husky monotone he asked over and over “What time 
 is it, what time is it?” 
 
 Leona paced restlessly back and forth in his cell, and 
 Deamore in hoarse tones roared his melancholy plaint, with 
 wildly tossing head and violently swinging arms. Lamantia 
 asked anxiously of the death watch if it was true they were 
 to be taken to Amite in the morning; Rini nervously fondled 
 his dog, and Giglio sat staring out into the condemned 
 corridor, remarking every now and then as though to him¬ 
 self : “It’s a shame to hang five innocent men, Governor 
 Parker did not treat us right”. 
 
 “Try to get a little sleep, Joe,” advised a newspaper 
 man accompanying Captain Rennyson on a late visit to 
 the tier. 
 
 “Sleep,” answered Giglio, with a hard smile, “I’d like 
 to; why, I haven’t slept for two nights; with a crazy man 
 on one side yelling that the world’s on fire, and another one 
 on the other side bawling out that he’s shot and already 
 dead and can’t be hung, I had a fine chance for quiet rest.” 
 
 Giglio, always courteous, smiling and polite, was just 
 a little surly on his last night in the New Orleans prison. 
 
 13 
 
The iron tongue of night was telling twelve, when the 
 group in the Captain’s room upstairs thinned out. They 
 had discussed murders, hangings, executioners and such 
 topics that accord well with jails and prisons, and the 
 veteran newspaper man took occasion to voice a protest 
 against the horrible modes society follows in doing away 
 with its objectionable units. 
 
 “Hanging is a barbarous thing,” the writer observed, 
 “so full of terrific chances for protracted suffering. You 
 remember the case a few years ago, upstairs there in the 
 Tower, don’t you, Captain? It was one time that I saw 
 you moved almost to nervous weeping.” 
 
 “God, how that poor wretch cried in choked and 
 wheezy tones for Heaven’s mercy, as he writhed at the end 
 of that strangling cord. For twenty minutes after the drop 
 fell, he swayed, spun and fought, not for life, but to find 
 the Portals of Death, where in the lethal shadows, his soul 
 might sleep, and the bodily torment end. 
 
 “I will never forget that sigh which came from under 
 the black hood when the rope had slipped in place and the 
 exhausted frame quickly yielded its failing energies to the 
 grip of strangulation. It was a deep, thankful sigh, a sigh 
 of relief, and the quiver of death speedily passed down the 
 body. ‘Thank God, it’s over,’ murmurred in an undertone, 
 the good priest Father Helinski, so faithful in his attend¬ 
 ance on gallows victims. 
 
 “In my experience as a newspaper man I have seen 
 many criminals strangle horribly, and such a mode of cap¬ 
 ital punishment has no place in a civilization such as is ours. 
 
 “What do you think of the electric chair?” asked Sher¬ 
 iff Bowden. 
 
 “I know nothing of electricity, and have never seen 
 the chair in operation,” answered the old reporter, “but I 
 am told that there are some constitutions which resist the 
 current until their very flesh fries and burns.” 
 
 “How about the guillotine?” advanced a young re¬ 
 porter, with only four hangings to his professional recoi’d. 
 
 “It may be quick and certain if the machine is good, but 
 disgustingly bloody and unsightly”, commented the veteran. 
 
 “And then, too,” he went on, “if you’ve read much 
 French History, dating from the Revolution, and modern 
 French criminal annals, you will find instances where the 
 guillotine had its fearsome bungles. When they executed 
 
 14 
 

 
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 ■.?■„ < 
 
 
 f . . .. ■ .^«**»**« 
 
 Roy Leona, on the left trap, is watching the hangman tie the hands of Natale Deamore, on the right trap. 
 
Chalier in Lyons, the National Assembly sent down from 
 Paris a worn out ‘Red Widow’ with ungreased grooves and 
 dull knife blade. The result was the knife fell seven times 
 before Chalier finally sneezed in the sack. This case has 
 some more modern parallels, so we may dismiss the guil¬ 
 lotine as being in a measure uncertain.” 
 
 “What mode of capital punishment would you sug¬ 
 gest,” Sheriff Bowden wanted to know. 
 
 “The Lethal Chamber,” was the ready reply. “There 
 is, a clean, a certain and a painless way for Society to rid 
 itself of its objectionable units. There could be no failure 
 in this; have a nicely fitted up condemned chamber, with 
 the gas openings concealed from view. Set no certain time 
 for the execution, but have a period of death during the 
 term of a week at the sheriff’s discretion. Drug the prison¬ 
 er’s food some night during the period, and when he has 
 fallen asleep turn on the gas. There’d be no struggling 
 torture, no horror attending this, and the Lethal Chamber 
 would express the humane in legal executions. 
 
 “Society is too far advanced to exact vengeance after 
 the order of the old Lex Talionis, an eye for an eye and a 
 tooth for a tooth, and Society should be satisfied to destroy 
 its criminals and not torture them, or subject them to the 
 chance of torture.” 
 
 It was generally agreed that the Lethal Chamber was 
 the thing, but yet, as said one of the company, if execu¬ 
 tion was robbed of its terrors, it would not serve as a 
 heavy lesson to wrong doers. 
 
 As early as five o’clock, in the foggy dawn of an un¬ 
 usually chill May morning, the escort for the patrol wagons 
 to the train which was to convey the prisoners to Amite 
 arrived in front of the big jail in Gravier Street. First 
 came the motorcycle police, on their chugging machines, 
 and next several automobile loads of soldiers armed with 
 improved rifles. Two auto patrols backed up to the long 
 barred gate, and the grim array awaited the hour set for 
 leaving the prison. 
 
 Sheriff Bowden arrived from the hotel where he sought 
 a few hours sleep, with Dr. McClendon, District Attorney 
 Allen and the Amite deputies, at 5:30, and Captain Renny- 
 son who had remained up through the night, went to call 
 the prisoners from their cells and shackle them for their 
 journey. 
 
 16 
 
It was then that the mystery of Leona’s whittled spool 
 was solved in an incident that was close to tragedy. Leona 
 in his cell madly slashed at his breast with a long knife. 
 Captain Rennyson, alone and single-handed, subdued the 
 desperate man, and took from him the weapon. Whether 
 Leona lacked courage or strength, it cannot be said, but 
 certain it is that his several wounds were not deep and were 
 driven with a faltering hand. The knife had been con¬ 
 cealed under a drain pipe in the cell. 
 
 Leona’s wounds were dressed by Dr. McClendon and 
 the ambulance surgeons, and the man reclined on the bench 
 in the bull ring, shackled hand and foot, and his groans 
 were heard above the murmurs and complaints of the 
 others. 
 
 It was necessary for Captain Rennyson and his depu¬ 
 ties to forcibly dress Deamore, and the other four gave no 
 trouble, Rini, only for a moment losing his calm, and ex¬ 
 pressing a sudden flash of rage in a bitter curse, hurled at 
 all his enemies. General Toombs had provided a good es¬ 
 cort of military, forty men of the headquarters troop 108 th 
 cavalry commanded by Captain Harold Nathan. Captain 
 Thurber B. Richey, of Battery A, and Lieutenant Eric V. 
 Lucy, with a squad of picked men, waited at the train. 
 
 The journey of sixty-eight miles to Amite was made 
 without incident. The prisoners were in a special car 
 guarded by the soldiers, and supplementing this force were 
 two special plain clothes men from the New Orleans Police, 
 furnished by Superintendent Molony for the occasion. 
 These were Fred Beckler, formerly well known as a boxer 
 and athlete, and Paul Surcouf, experts in the use of police 
 tear bombs, and other instruments and weapons in riot¬ 
 ing and street warfare. The motorcycle police commanded 
 by Captain Harry Duvalle accompanied the prison party 
 only to the railroad station. 
 
 Amite was quiet and there was no feeling of bitter¬ 
 ness against the Italians during the last days of the tragedy. 
 The people were out to see the men leave the train and make 
 the three blocks journey to the prison in automobiles, but 
 something like sympathy, rather than anger seemed to 
 temper the crowd. 
 
 The Amite prison is of the usual type of small town 
 county jails. Tt stands in a great square about fifty feet 
 from the court house. It has no yard, and it was necessary 
 
 17 
 
for Sheriff Bowden to build a large palisade, forming two 
 sides of an inclosure. The prison walls forming an angle, 
 completed the inclosure. The scaffold covered nearly all 
 of the inclosure, and the only open space was on the south 
 side, tow T ard the jail door, where steps built at an angle 
 reached the platform. The jail has three stories, and 
 its corridors are very cramped. In the tower is the per¬ 
 manent gallows, but it was only used once, to work high 
 justice on Avery Blount, a feudist and bad man. The 
 scaffold is a small affair with steel trap doors opening 
 into a chute, and would hardly do as an instrument of 
 punishment where as many as six were to take the fatal 
 plunge to death. 
 
 Deamore and Leona were placed in cells adjoining on 
 the second story, close to the gallows in the improvised 
 yard. Rini and Giglio were cell mates far down the cor¬ 
 ridor and just next to them in a single cell were Lamantia 
 and Bocchio. These last cells opened on a very narrow 
 corridor and faced barred windows overlooking the court 
 house square where the soldiers had pitched their tents. 
 
 The men could hear the activities of the camp below, 
 and to their dying ears on their last two evenings on 
 earth, just at sunset, came the plaintive wail of the bugle 
 sounding “taps.” “I remember that in the army,” said 
 Rini the night before his execution; “they play that music 
 over dead people, and its just as well for them to play it 
 for me, because I was in the army.” 
 
 Thursday there was another effort put forth to save 
 Bocchio. The sad-faced young man had asked to see Mrs. 
 Calmes, widow of the slain man. Mrs. Calmes, broken and 
 worn from the excitement of the last hard days, and dis¬ 
 turbed by threatening letters received from an unknown 
 source, could not come but she sent a relative. The rela¬ 
 tive heard Bocchio’s story, and some of the Calmes family 
 showed the true spirit of forgiveness by personally appeal¬ 
 ing to Governor Parker in Baton Rouge. The Governor, 
 however, would not change his mind; he felt that justice 
 could best be conserved by carrying out the mandate of the 
 court which said that all six must hang. 
 
 Bocchio, shivering and in tears spent that last Thurs¬ 
 day, bereft even of the faintest ray of hope. Late Thurs¬ 
 day evening, just after the melancholy wail of the bugle 
 sounding “taps” had died in far off echoes on the cool Spring 
 
 18 
 
air, J. W. Mixson, deputy sheriff of Tangipahoa, brought 
 the condemned men Mrs. Calmes’ last message. The mes¬ 
 sage was that she forgave the men, and hoped that they 
 would find peace in the hereafter. Rini was eloquent in a 
 crude, uncultured way in sending a message in return to Mrs. 
 Calmes. “The poor lady she lost her man, and she felt 
 bitter,” he said, “and we are glad that she has no hatred 
 for us. Tell her we are sorry for her and that we thank 
 her for her message.” 
 
 “For God sake you gentlemen there from the news¬ 
 papers,” said Rini through the bars of his cell after Mr. 
 Mixson had gone, “tell the world for us how terrible is 
 capital punishment. I hope that God will grant this prayer, 
 that we six will be the last men to die on the gallows. 
 Often I have heard of innocent men dying by the rope but 
 I said no, it cannot be; now I know it can be because I, 
 an innocent man, must died on the gallows tomorrow.” 
 
 From down the corridor came the sobbing cries of 
 Deamore, who having bid his wife and children goodbye, 
 yielded to his wild emotional impulses. “Oh God, my baby, 
 look at my baby, there she goes; I would die for my baby, 
 and tomorrow they hang her papa.” The wife and daugh¬ 
 ter and niece left the prison, passing the steps of the gal¬ 
 lows as they entered the court house square, all crying 
 bitterly. Captain Richey was in the cell corridor during 
 these final interviews, and was careful that his revolver 
 in its holster was out of reach of desperate hands thrust 
 suddenly between the narrow bars. 
 
 The men passed the last night variously, Deamore 
 occasionally bursting forth in emotional weeping; Leona 
 nervously pacing his cell; Bocchio and Lamantia in deep 
 depression, and Rini and Giglio smoking, talking and oc¬ 
 casionally napping. About three in the morning Beckler 
 and Surcouf, with Captain Nathan’s kindly assistance at 
 the camp kitchen, prepared for Rini and Giglio appetizing 
 egg sandwiches. The other four cared for nothing to 
 eat. 
 
 Late Thursday night Captain Rennyson arrived from 
 New Orleans in an automobile. He brought the 100 
 feet of rope with which the men were to be Ranged, 
 and which had been stretched in the prison at New Orleans. 
 His companion on the journey was “Joe, the Hangman.” 
 Joe, a bowed man, with stiff, sandy hair, short grey mus- 
 
 19 
 
hrnnrtiit 11 non the scaffold. 
 
tache, tobacco stained; and fiercely bushy eye-brows, is a 
 sort of “jack” carpenter and iron worker of New Orleans. 
 He is 61 years old, lives in Carrollton, and before dispatch¬ 
 ing the Italians had hanged ten or a dozen men in the 
 Parish Prison in New Orleans. 
 
 As a hangman he is a butcherly worker, and has such 
 little skill that his victims are lucky indeed if their necks 
 break on the drop. He is callous and hardened as is nat¬ 
 ural for a man of his trade, and when on a “job” as he 
 terms it, must have a drink of whiskey every now and then. 
 
 Sheriff Bowden is a man of judgment and determined 
 courage. He had said that he would bring his prisoners 
 openly to Amite, notwithstanding veiled threats in anony¬ 
 mous letters, and he carried out his plan, letting it be 
 known the day before. The sheriff gave little consideration 
 to the threatening letters; he knows most of the Italians 
 of his parish, and recognized in them peaceful law-abiding 
 citizens. “These letters, I think,” said the sheriff, “have 
 been sent by cranks, or those extraordinary and abnormal 
 creatures, who find the present awful instance the occasion 
 to show their skill as mysterious letter writers. I don’t 
 think any of the letters received were sent by Italians.” 
 
 The sheriff did everything he possibly could for his 
 prisoners and allowed them all they asked for in the way 
 of food or such considerations as a prison may afford. 
 
 On Thursday, the day before the hanging, Mr. Farrar, 
 the attorney, recognized as one of the leading lawyers of 
 his time, made a last minute attempt to save his clients. 
 He tried to obtain an aeroplane to fly to Washington for 
 his appeal to the United States Supreme Court, but fail¬ 
 ing, sent a rather sensational telegram to Hon. Henry L. 
 Fuqua, governor-elect of Louisiana. Mr. Farrar urged 
 that Mr. Fuqua either have the men commuted or cancel 
 the big inaugural ball planned for the Capital, May 19. 
 Ending one gubernatorial term with a wholesale hanging 
 and beginning another with a great inaugural ball did not 
 look well, Mr. Farrar said in his telegram. 
 
 And now to the last scene of all that ends this strange 
 eventful history—The Way to the Gallows and the agony 
 under the beam. 
 
 iUl through the morning there was an air of sup¬ 
 pressed excitement, and Captain Rennyson, who had volun¬ 
 teered to assist Sheriff Bowden, and give expedition to 
 
 21 
 
the woe-weighted ceremony, was busy with the prepara¬ 
 tions. Early Joe the Hangman came from his hiding place 
 in the prison kitchen, nimbly climbed the gallows and set 
 the ropes above the two traps. The double rope was coiled 
 in two lengths of fifty feet and fitted to the staples over 
 the traps. Joe his face hidden by his black mask, deftly 
 made his nooses and retired to the kitchen where he 
 clamored loudly for a drink of whiskey. All the whiskey 
 that could be obtained had been given to the condemned 
 men as occasional stimulant during the night just passed, 
 and the hangman had to content himself with strawberry 
 wine. It was not to his palate—he craved “hot and rebellious 
 liquor” but it was strawberry wine or nothing at all, so Jack 
 Ketch contented himself with the substitute. 
 
 John E. Wilcombe, the chief deputy sheriff, read the 
 death warrants in the jail at 8 o’clock, and the men, ex¬ 
 cepting Rini and Giglio, stood dazed all the while. Then 
 came two Catholic sisters, with a young girl, a devout church 
 worker, bearing on trays the sacred vessels for Holy Com¬ 
 munion. Father Casimere Munichia, of St. Helena’s 
 Church, Amite, and Father Martinez, of the Catholic 
 Church at Independence, conducted the service. A bench 
 improvised into an altar served the purpose of the holy 
 men and the blessed sarcrament was impressively given, 
 the prisoners appearing the better for it. 
 
 The hapless six had expressed a desire for chicken 
 gumbo to be served at eleven o’clock, but their craving for 
 food was gone when that hour came, and only Rini and 
 Giglio ate the delicious broth which had been prepared with 
 extra care by the direct order of Sheriff Bowden. 
 
 Bocchio was now in a state of collapse, and as the 
 Golden Hour of Noon drew near, only Rini and Giglio 
 showed real composure. Leona was nervous but unafriad. 
 Deamore wept but showed no cowardice. Bocchio seemed 
 unconscious on the floor, and Lamantia lay on his bunk his 
 head half concealed by his arms. 
 
 Captain Richey and Lieutenant Lucy had their soldiers 
 well placed about the ropes serving as a barrier outside the 
 jail, and the soldiers who arrived that morning from Frank- 
 linton in automobiles were doing guard duty in the square, 
 and keeping the small crowd beyond the moat, or rather 
 flooded ditch which surrounded the square. Captain Nathan 
 saw to the placing of his detachments, and superintending 
 
 22 
 
all the military arrangements was General Toombs himself. 
 
 Sheriff Bowden who was not well did not come into 
 the jail but stayed in his private office in the court house, 
 stretched out on a leather lounge. 
 
 At a few minutes before 12 o’clock Leona and Deamore 
 were brought from their cells, and their hands manacled 
 behind their backs. The men were remarkably cool, only 
 Deamore sighed heavily once or twice. Down the narrow 
 stairs they came and into the yard, Father Munichia walk¬ 
 ing with Leona, and Father Martinez the last companion 
 to weeping Deamore. The legal witnesses were on the broad 
 gallows, and the ready nooses hung over the traps. Cap¬ 
 tain Rennyson had full charge, and his well ordered direc¬ 
 tion robbed the grim ceremony of much of its horrors. 
 Deputies H. D. Storey, J. W. Mixson, G. S. Bankston and 
 Johnson guarded the prisoners, and Leona ascended the 
 steps first, with unfaltering tread. Deamore came behind, 
 and his tearful voice rose in the woeful plaint, “They hanga 
 me, they hanga me, Oh God, they hang a gooda man.” 
 
 Deamore’s face was a study and might have inspired 
 an artist who sought a subject to thoroughly convey the 
 impression of a deep heart-searching grief. His face up¬ 
 turned in the glare of the noon-day sun, was white and 
 drawn and about his chin and jaws was a disfiguring 
 growth of beard. His eyes were glazed with tears, and 
 there was nothing of fierceness or hatred in his expression, 
 only grief, a pathos which seemed to reveal a soul in dark¬ 
 ness and sorrow. 
 
 “Pray for me, everybody, oh, pray for me, hard!” 
 he cried in sobbing voice as he stepped on the scaffold and 
 was led to the trap on the east side of the inclosure. 
 
 Three steps at a time the masked hangman ran up 
 the gallows and first rushed to Deamore to groom him for 
 the hard passing. Deamore stood impassive as the hang¬ 
 man wrapped the strands of rope about his legs, and at¬ 
 tached the cords to his manacled wrists. Leona on the 
 other trap turned and watched the deathsman at his task, 
 and Deamore bound, noosed and hooded, Leona listened 
 again to the words of Father Munichia, as “Joe the Neck 
 Breaker,” stooped to tie his legs.. Never a word said Leona, 
 he stared into space as it were and waited for the black 
 cap to blot out the light. 
 
 “Pray harda for me, everybody,” came in moaning 
 
 23 
 
 
tones ti'om under Deamore’s black cap. “Pray for me, 
 oh, pray for me, tney hanga a gooda man. 0, Deo—!” It 
 was his last word, the executioner with his keen edged 
 cleaver had cut the cord holding the double traps and the 
 doors flew open. God was in Deamore’s thoughts as he 
 encountered darkness, and Father Martinez standing by the 
 yawning mouth of the scaffold, raised his hand in a silent 
 benediction. 
 
 The two bodies fell as one, came up with a sudden jerk, 
 which visibly stretched the neck several inches; and then 
 hung still. It was clean, quick work from the hangman’s 
 standpoint, shattered neck bones, and all sensation ended 
 in one sharp blow. Leona’s shirt was open, showing the 
 plastered knife wounds in his chest. 
 
 The men dropped at half a minute after 12 o’clock by 
 Captain Rennyson’s watch, and in thirteen or fourteen 
 minutes, Dr. McClendon, the coronor, pronounced them 
 dead, all pulsation having ceased. 
 
 The bodies were cut down, placed in ready coffins and 
 carried away in an automobile truck ten miles to Ham¬ 
 mond, where they were to be embalmed before being finally 
 sent to New Orleans. 
 
 When the scaffold was cleared, the hangman, who had 
 vanished in the prison, returned to set his traps again and 
 prepare new nooses from the long strands of rope. 
 
 With deft fingers the masked man went to his task and 
 soon the nooses were ready. Then came the tragic an¬ 
 nouncement from the prison that Lamantia had stabbed 
 himself to the heart. Dr. McClendon who had been sum¬ 
 moned to the cell returned to the yard and said that La¬ 
 mantia had no pulse, that one of the many stab wounds 
 made with a small knife had evidently reached his heart. 
 
 Then word came that Lamantia was not dead, and it 
 was decided to bring him and his cell mate, Bocchio, at once 
 to the gallows, instead of Rini and Giglio who had been 
 named to die on tne second dropping of the traps. Rini 
 and Giglio were in the corridor looking through the bars 
 of the cell at the bloody Lamantia lying on the floor when 
 the order came to hold them. 
 
 “What,” said Giglio; “they are not going to take us 
 now after we are ready; well, it’s only a case of where we 
 are dying twice, and we’ll wait until they call us again.” 
 They were returned to their cells. 
 
 24 
 
Lamantia, his eyes closed, and his head swaying in 
 sickening manner from side to side was removed to the 
 corridor, and then, two deputies holding him by the arms 
 and two supporting his legs, he was carried down to the 
 gallows. He was unconscious, and Bocchio who came after 
 him was nearly so from abject terror. Bocchio was the 
 only one of the six who showed fear, and his collapse the 
 doctors thought might have been due to nerve exhaustion, 
 resulting from his strange and distorted thoughts, the last 
 few days of his imprisonment. Lamantia had stabbed 
 himself many times with the small knife, which he obtained 
 from some mysterious source. Just how many times it 
 was never ascertained, but the undertaker who later pre¬ 
 pared the body for burial said that there were twenty- 
 seven wounds. The man stabbed himself while lying on 
 the floor, and after the old Roman fashion he several times 
 fell upon the blade, until the narrow strip of steel was 
 “notched and dull” like the headsman’s axe; in the old 
 English song. 'While he was about his bloody work, 
 Bocchio stood in the cell and stared as though fascinated 
 by the flow of blood. 
 
 Lamantia was a bloody sight as they carried him up 
 the gallows stairs. The entire left side of his fancy striped 
 shirt was heavily blotched in a deep crimson, and red 
 bubbles rose and broke, as the wounded, laboring heart 
 exerted its last energy. Bocchio staggered up the steps 
 like one in the spell of a terrible dream. Deputy Johnson 
 supported him on one side, and Father Munichia on the 
 other, and all the while the priest whispered words of re¬ 
 ligious cheer into the deaf ears. 
 
 The bloody man was placed on a rough wooden chair 
 set on the drop lately occupied by Deamore. His hands 
 were manacled behind him, and he slumped forward with 
 his chin on his chest and his legs widely extended. Bocchio 
 with a vacant stare in his eyes, a stare of horror, and 
 hanging jaw stood on the trap, his knees bending and his 
 body swaying, and Father Munichia again had to support 
 him. 
 
 The hangman came, quickly drew Lamantia’s legs 
 together and deftly roped them. As he did so, Lamantia 
 feebly stirred, opened his eyes, and looked toward Bocchio. 
 It was like a sad farewell, for the eyelids closed again, 
 and the senseless head sunk forward on the chest. La- 
 
 25 
 
mantia was hooded and set for the drop and the deathsman 
 turned his loathsome attention to Bocchio. 
 
 It was a startling scene, a scene touched with som¬ 
 berness and terror, and even those men on the gallows who 
 had been hardened by contact with the School of Criminal 
 Experience were glad that the executioner was hurried in 
 his actions. 
 
 “My God, hurry, let’s get it over,” whispered one 
 of the deputies to the hangman, and the masked man took 
 only a few seconds to truss, noose and hoodwink the dan¬ 
 gerously swaying Bocchio. Then the cleaver guided by an 
 unerring hand, gleamed in the sun, the rope parted and 
 traps opened with a loud crash. 
 
 The bodies shot to quick death; like the first two 
 neither man moved, and the end must have been as painless 
 as it was instantaneous. Lamantia’s pulse stopped in four 
 minutes, and in thirteen minutes, Dr. McClendon’s stetho¬ 
 scope could find no heart beat in Bocchio. 
 
 “They come for us again, now there will be no wait,” 
 said Giglio, when the grating )of the key sounded in the 
 lock, and the heavy steel door of the corridor slowly swung 
 open. Down in the yard under the scaffold, Lamantia’s 
 bloody corpse lay close to Bocchio’s. The undertakers were 
 hurrying them into a little improvised dead house, ad¬ 
 joining the executioner’s cell In the prison. 
 
 Out came the cowled, slinking figure from the narrow 
 door, the deathsman ran up the scaffold stairs, superin¬ 
 tended the setting of the traps, and went to work with 
 rapidly moving fingers to make a third pair of nooses. 
 “All ready, cap,” said Joe, the Neck Breaker, to Captain 
 Rennyson, and the Captain signalled to the deputy on the 
 gallows stairs. 
 
 Giglio and Rini felt the summons before they heard 
 it, for Giglio threw away a half-smoked cigar, and ner¬ 
 vously smoothed his sleek hair, brushed back from the 
 forehead, and Rini muttered, “it’s all ended now.” The 
 men submitted to having their hands manacled behind their 
 backs with never a tremor, and Rini shook hands with sev¬ 
 eral deputies, awkw r ardly turning his arms to give the fare¬ 
 well clasp. 
 
 Giglio a few minutes before had been humming a popu¬ 
 lar song, and the refrain still seemed to run in his mind, 
 as he pursed his lips to wiiistle, but the priests entered 
 
 26 
 
the corridor then, and the men endeavored to turn their 
 thoughts heavenward. Through the corridor, down the 
 stairs and into the yard moved the gloomy procession, 
 with Giglio and Father Munichia in the lead, and Rini and 
 Father Martinez close behind. As they ascended the steps 
 to the gallows, Giglio, unable to contain himself, broke forth 
 in resentful words. “They’ve butchered four of us,” he 
 said in loud, even tones, “and now they are going to butcher 
 two more; they’ll be satisfied in five minutes, when we are 
 dead.” 
 
 “That’s right Joe, five innocent men,” spoke Rini; 
 “we go innocent, God knows we do.” The platform was 
 now reached and Giglio took his place on the west drop 
 where Leona and Bocchio had died, and Rini stood firmly 
 on the east drop, where a splash of blood drying in the 
 sun, was a gruesome reminder of Lamantia’s pain and 
 death. 
 
 “Governor Parker ought to get himself six more Ital¬ 
 ians,” cried Giglio waiting for the hangman; “he got 
 us six and he had eleven before, that makes seventeen; he 
 ought to get some more.” 
 
 The deathsman had come and was tying Rini’s legs. 
 Rini looked boldly toward the sky and seemed to watch 
 for a moment the movements of an airship circling over 
 the jail. 
 
 “Joe,” said Dr. McClendon, who stood close to the trap, 
 “you’re going to die now, tell us who was the seventh 
 man; who did the killing?” 
 
 “Listen,” answered Rini, “that man who went before 
 us, Roy Leona, he told who did the shooting, didn’t he? We 
 are innocent of murder, we are; Leona told you.” 
 
 Both Fred. Beckler of the New Orleans force and 
 Deputy Johnson urged Rini to confess. “Listen,” said the 
 dying man; “I’m straight, I am, every bone in my body’s 
 as straight as a candle; I’m straight, I’m honest; Leona 
 told you and he paid for it and so are we paying for it but 
 we are innocent.” 
 
 Just then, the deathsman, having bound Rini’s legs, 
 and placed the noose about his I neck, reached up to slip 
 on the black cap. Rini drew aside angrily and cried: 
 “Wait a minute, you, can’t you see I’m talking?” The exe¬ 
 cutioner dropped the black cap and waited. 
 
 “Maybe we were guilty of attempt murder—” Rini then 
 
 27 
 
declared, but before he could proceed, Giglio from the other 
 trap interrupted him: 
 
 “Not attempt murder, Joe, attempt robbery—” was 
 Giglio’s interruption. 
 
 “That’s right, attempt robbery, not attempt murder,” 
 Rini corrected himself; “God knows we are innocent of 
 murder.” 
 
 “Who was the seventh man who put the light out in 
 the bank?” questioned Dr. McClendon, while the deaths- 
 man, having hooded Rini was binding and noosing Giglio. 
 
 “Leona told you the truth”, came in muffled tones 
 from under the black cap; “I’ll tell you nothing.” 
 
 Giglio seemed angry and resentful, and once uttered 
 the words, “Oh bother all.” But Father Munichia called 
 on him to remember he was to face his God, and the young 
 Italian, as the cap was drawn down, bowed his head in 
 contrition and answered, “That’s right, Father, I forgive 
 them all.” 
 
 Then the final tragedy. “Good-bye Joe,” from under 
 Giglio’s hood, and an answering good-bye Joe from under 
 Rini’s hood. The hangman crouched like an ugly poison 
 spider between the two, raised his cleaver, and “Crash” went 
 the double traps. The men fell straight through the gaping 
 jaws of the gallows and under the platform the bodies were 
 stayed in their flight with a sickening jerk. Rini hung 
 motionless, but Giglio spun twice on the rope, and vented 
 a deep and long sustained groan, as his chest heaved and 
 his shoulders and arms were drawn up in an ugly move¬ 
 ment. 
 
 Giglio groaned again, feebly this time, and there was 
 a wheezing gurgle in his throat as he gasped for breath. 
 His chest rose and fell rapidly, and his wrists twisted and 
 turned as though trying to free themselves of the manacles, 
 but soon the body seemed to stretch downward, and then 
 it hung as motionless as Rini’s. Although Giglio showed 
 evidence of strangulation, and Rini’s neck bone was shat¬ 
 tered by the drop, Giglio’s pulse stopped one minute be¬ 
 fore Rini’s. The men were pronounced dead in less than 
 fifteen minutes. Each pair, however, remained suspended 
 for twenty-one minutes, formal gallows hanging time. 
 
 And all the while the Sun looked down from a cloud¬ 
 less sky, bathing the scaffold in light, and lining Death’s 
 Sable Mantle with gold. 
 
 28 
 
In the baggage car on the evening train going to New 
 Orleans were six coffins, and each coffin contained the 
 corpse of a hanged man. Deamore’s neck was so swollen 
 and distorted, that the undertakers used more than a hun¬ 
 dred pounds of ice to reduce the ugly folds of discolored 
 flesh. The rope had mangled and gashed Deamore’s neck, 
 and had the drop been greater, the man’s head might have 
 been torn from his shoulders. 
 
 Lamantia, Leona and Giglio were buried in New York; 
 Rini found a resting place in a Chicago cemetery close to 
 his mother, and Bocchio and Deamore occupy their little 
 bit of God’s Acre in a New Orleans grave yard. 
 
 The legal witnesses to the hanging were Dr. McClen¬ 
 don, J. P. Westhope, R. L. Hillburn, Dr. Edward McGehee, 
 and Allen Dowling and George Vandervoort, the last two, 
 well known New Orleans newspapermen. Among the 
 deputies from the New Orleans prison who went to Amite 
 for the execution were Bob Kennedy, J. Wicks, Bill Lyons, 
 Paul Caze, R. Cummings, Bill Bentley and A. Kippers. Dr. 
 McClendon took the pulse and heart beats of the men after 
 they had dropped. Assisting him in this formality were 
 Dr. A. B. Pitkin, of New Orleans; Dr. McGehee, of Amite 
 and Dr. Hyde of Roseland. Another prominent Tan¬ 
 gipahoa Parish physician in the prison during the day was 
 Dr. Eugene Robards, of Independence. Rene Calmes, 
 brother of the murdered man, whose coolness three years 
 ago, helped save the prisoners from mob violence, wit¬ 
 nessed the executions, but his manner showed only a spirit 
 of kindliness and forgiveness for the unfortunate six. 
 
 During their long confinement in the New Orleans 
 Prison, the men found spiritual help and consolation from 
 the faithful ministration of Father Raymond Carra, of St. 
 Patrick’s Church. William Warrington, of the Warrington 
 House, showed the men friendly attention, and was active 
 in securing the funds to bury the destitute Bocchio. 
 
 The Curtain has fallen on the last Scene of this Great 
 Tragedy, and the Stage of the Theatre of Life will long 
 reek with the blood and horror of the terrific action. 
 
 29 
 


# 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 1 
 
 
 L99146 
 
 DATE 
 
 
 ISSUED TO 
 
 - 
 
 Vol.21 
 
 mi 9 A‘M- 
 
 -otsl. £,i