Daviess County Public Library

After 75 years, last public hanging haunts city

"I think it was over there," said Howe, an 81-year-old lifelong Owensboro resident and retired county coroner. "I used to pass it on the way to school. That's what I was told. It was over there somewhere."

The grave is anonymous and unmarked, like other places associated with Rainey Bethea's hanging on Aug. 14, 1936. As the 75th anniversary of the execution approaches, it is something some in Owensboro would like history to remember differently.

Bethea, a farmhand and sometime criminal, went to the gallows near the banks of the Ohio River before a throng of people estimated at as many as 20,000 strong. The execution drew national media coverage focused on a black man being executed by a white, female sheriff with the help of a professional hangman.

"It was not a carnival in the end," insisted 85-year-old James Thompson, the son of then-sheriff Florence Thompson.

Still, Kentucky lawmakers cited the negative publicity surrounding Bethea's hanging in ending public executions in the state in 1938. Kentucky was the last state to do so. Later, Gov. Albert B. "Happy" Chandler expressed regret at having approved the repeal, claiming, "Our streets are no longer safe."

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By the time Bethea went to the gallows, most states had long since closed executions to the public and started using the electric chair because hangings were becoming "ghoulish public events" said Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor who studies the death penalty.

"There was a feeling that with the pain and botched hangings ... it was inviting the worst in human behavior," Denno said.

That's certainly the way Bethea's death was portrayed nationally.

Headlines from around the country screamed news. From Chicago — "Death Makes a Holiday: 20,000 Revel Over Hanging." From Evansville, Ind. — "Ghostly Carnival Precedes Hanging." From Louisville — "'Did You Ever See a Hanging?' 'I Did,' Everyone in this Kentucky Throng can now Boast." Newspapers described vendors selling hot dogs, popcorn and drinks.

After 75 years, last public hanging haunts city

Kentucky (AP) -- Bob Howe points to an overgrown, muddy patch of land in a cemetery in Owensboro, gesturing to where the grave of the last man publicly executed in the United States may be.

"I think it was over there," said Howe, an 81-year-old lifelong Owensboro resident and retired county coroner. "I used to pass it on the way to school. That's what I was told. It was over there somewhere."

The grave is anonymous and unmarked, like other places associated with Rainey Bethea's hanging on Aug. 14, 1936. As the 75th anniversary of the execution approaches, it is something some in Owensboro would like history to remember differently.

Bethea, a farmhand and sometime criminal, went to the gallows near the banks of the Ohio River before a throng of people estimated at as many as 20,000 strong. The execution drew national media coverage focused on a black man being executed by a white, female sheriff with the help of a professional hangman.

"It was not a carnival in the end," insisted 85-year-old James Thompson, the son of then-sheriff Florence Thompson.

Still, Kentucky lawmakers cited the negative publicity surrounding Bethea's hanging in ending public executions in the state in 1938. Kentucky was the last state to do so. Later, Gov. Albert B. "Happy" Chandler expressed regret at having approved the repeal, claiming, "Our streets are no longer safe."

___

By the time Bethea went to the gallows, most states had long since closed executions to the public and started using the electric chair because hangings were becoming "ghoulish public events" said Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor who studies the death penalty.

"There was a feeling that with the pain and botched hangings ... it was inviting the worst in human behavior," Denno said.

That's certainly the way Bethea's death was portrayed nationally.

Headlines from around the country screamed news. From Chicago -- "Death Makes a Holiday: 20,000 Revel Over Hanging." From Evansville, Indiana -- "Ghostly Carnival Precedes Hanging." From Louisville -- "'Did You Ever See a Hanging?' 'I Did,' Everyone in this Kentucky Throng can now Boast." Newspapers described vendors selling hot dogs, popcorn and drinks.

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