4 1929 newspapers RUTH SNYDER Judd Gray EXECUTED Murder

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Please visit our EBAY STORE at the link directly below for THOUSANDS more HISTORICAL NEWSPAPERS on sale or at auction: /Steve-Goldman-HISTORICAL-NEWSPAPERS_W0QQsspagenameZL2222QQtZkm SEE PHOTO----- Four (4) COMPLETE ORIGINAL NEWSPAPERs, the Springfield Republican (MA) dated Jan 11, 12, 13, and 14, 1928. Day by day headlines wirg detailed coverage of the EXECUTION of RUTH SNYDER and her lover JUDD GRAY for the murder of her husband with a heavy weight !! Ruth Brown Snyder (1895 – 12 January 1928) was an American murderer . Her execution , in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison , for the murder of her husband, Albert, was captured in a well-known photograph. In 1925, Snyder, a Queens Village, Queens housewife, began an affair with Henry Judd Gray, a corset salesman. She then began to plan the murder of her husband, enlisting the help of her new lover. Snyder first persuaded her husband to purchase insurance, but with the assistance of an insurance agent (who was subsequently fired and sent to prison for forgery) 'signed' a $48,000 life insurance policy that paid extra if an unexpected act of violence killed the victim. Ruth then made a series of varied attempts to kill him, all of which he survived. On March 20, 1927, the couple garroted Albert Snyder and stuffed his nose full of chloroform -soaked rags, then staged his death as part of a burglary. Detectives at the scene noted that the burglar left little evidence of breaking into the house; moreover, that the behavior of Mrs. Snyder was inconsistent with her story of a terrorized wife witnessing her husband being killed. Finally, stolen property started turning up in the house. Albert Snyder had dated a young woman named Jessie Guischard, who had died, before meeting Ruth. A detective found a paper with the letters "J.G." on it, and asked about it. Mrs. Snyder immediately asked what Judd Gray had to do with this, which was the first time Gray had been mentioned at all. Gray was found upstate, in Syracuse . He claimed he was t all night, but eventually it turned out a friend of his had created an alibi, setting up Gray's room at a hotel. Gray proved far more forthcoming about his actions. ( Dorothy Parker told Oscar Levant that Gray tried to escape the police by taking a taxi from Manhattan to Long Island, which Levant noted was “quite a long trip.” According to Mrs. Parker, in order “not to attract attention, he gave the driver a ten-cent tip.”) He was caught and returned to Jamaica, Queens and charged with Mrs. Snyder. This became a 'cut-throat' case. Snyder and Gray's defense was that the other was responsible for killing Albert. The jury ended up believing both, and Gray and Snyder were eventually convicted and sentenced to death . The inmates on death row were excited that a woman was going to be on death row; they were all sure she would never be executed. Some said it will be like home having a woman , although none of them ever saw Ruth Snyder, not even when she exercised in her private yard. During the time she and Judd Gray spent in the Sing Sing Death House they developed a close friendship with Jimmy "The Shiv" DeStefano, the death house barber of Sing Sing. He was their barber and became their friend. He was t to console them both when their final hours were near and the Governor did not intervene on their behalf. Jimmy was the last person to have physical contact with them. He said it was hard enough to cut the hair of a man, but a woman going to the electric chair was the most difficult thing he was ever asked to do by Warden Lawes. Aside from spending time with the prisoners, Jimmy also carried personal messages from Ruth Snyder to her mother Mrs. Brown, and personal notes she had written to her daughter Lorriane. The final moments of her execution (by " State Electrician " Robert G. Elliott ) were caught on film with the aid of a miniature (one time use) camera strapped to the ankle of Tom Howard , a Chicago Tribune photographer work... read more

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