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A century ago, Arkansas Governor Thomas McRae postponed the execution of a confessed murderer named Amos Ratliff 10 hours before he died in the electric chair.
Ratliff, 25, was sentenced to death at midnight on September 29, 1921, for the murder of Winfred Frazier, described by the Arkansas Gazette as “an old maid” who lived four miles from Eureka Springs.
Ratliff had confessed to a friend of his – the Carroll County Sheriff – that he shot Frazier when she pointed a gun at him while he was in his room trying to steal it. Ratliff was on bail at the time, charged with murder, and I think we should use the word “ironically” somewhere here. Ratliff wanted to rob Frazier because he needed the money to pay a lawyer to defend him – on the murder charge.
He had also confessed to this first murder, for which he was charged with second degree murder. From what we know of public attitudes about adultery in 1920s Arkansas, he was probably not convicted: the man Ratliff shot had slept with Ratliff’s wife.
After being arrested for shooting the elderly woman, Ratliff was unable to pay the lawyer, Claude Fuller, to defend him. So a court-appointed lawyer handled his capital murder trial, the one who refused to let Ratliff testify in his own defense and whose strategy was to claim that Ratliff had not, in fact, confessed – although he did.
If this sounds like I’m describing the plot of a cops and cops TV show, then I have to get my humor back. Amos Ratliff’s story is just one framed in a much larger story unfolding at the same time, about brutality in the state’s criminal justice system and a concerted but ultimately futile effort. to do something to stop it.
The young man was sitting in the penitentiary’s death cell when 4th Circuit Judge WA Dickinson and District Attorney Jay W. Nance called McRae to ask him to postpone the execution. It turns out that they had received reports that Ratliff did not confess to Frazier’s murder until after his friend Sheriff E. McShane promised him a life sentence.
Oddly enough, it seems that promising to take it easy with the accused murderers was not an entirely respectable way to get a confession in 1921.
Where the new court information came from, the newspaper did not know, but it reported that another prisoner’s wife said she paid Fuller $ 250 to help Ratliff and was supposed to give it to her. lawyer an additional $ 250 after “Ratliff’s life was saved”.
Whoever it was and yet, on the day he was to die, Amos Ratliff was spared. But we didn’t tell him that. The Gazette reports:
“Execution preparations had been made in great detail before notice of the respite was received from the governor’s office. A tailor had visited the condemned man, leaving a new suit; a coffin had been purchased; the generator grave put into working order and the chair inspected. All of these preparations were known to Ratliff, who was confined to a cell barely ten yards from the chair.
After dark, he was escorted to the prison dining hall and had the opportunity to make a final confession to Reverend WB Hogg, pastor of Winfield Memorial Methodist Church in Little Rock; George W. Morris, Prison Commissioner; a journalist from the Gazette, who may have been Fletcher Chenault; and “several others”, apparently including Tucker’s Prison Warden EH Dempsey.
Hogg had previously visited Ratliff in his cell to offer him spiritual consolation.
THE STORY OF RATLIFF
By saying he knew he was doomed, Ratliff began his story:
“After returning home from Tucker State Farm where I served two years on false pretenses and selling mortgaged property, I found my wife and 3 year old baby living in the countryside 10 miles from ‘Eureka Springs with his people. A friend of mine also went to Eureka Springs with me, and he rented a hotel there that we were to operate at 50-50.
“My wife was in town the day after I got back and I searched until I found her. We were reunited and lived in our room at the hotel. Everything went smoothly for several days, until John Berry came to the front of the hotel. and called my wife. She went to the door and told him that I was back and that she didn’t want him to molest her anymore. heard this myself.
“Berry left and several days later left for the harvest fields in Kansas.”
But two months later, Ratliff said, Berry returned and his wife started dating him again.
“I asked Berry to leave her alone, but he wanted to fight me,” Ratliff continued. “I told him I didn’t want to be in trouble and left him, after warning him that if I caught him with my wife again, there would be trouble.
“One Thursday I went on horseback to church, where a funeral service was to be held. Along the way, I met Berry and my wife in his buggy. me something horrible. However, I kept my cool until I saw him pass under the seat of the stroller. “
Ratliff said he shot Berry once, but believing he missed, he shot again just as his horse was running away. This second bullet grazed his wife’s arm. At first he feared he had killed her. But after seeing that she was not badly injured, he told her that he hoped she would be faithful to the next husband she had, if she ever had another. And he left her there.
“I went on horseback and stayed in hiding for several days, during which time I corresponded with Sheriff E. McShane, a friend of mine. Then I surrendered. I was charged with second degree murder and released. on $ 10,000 bond I borrowed $ 500 from a bank Claude Fuller, a lawyer living in Eureka Springs, followed my note.
“Then I got down to work to pay the bill, but work was very scarce. I worked for several days, then I found myself unemployed again. I stayed with two other young men, and we had clustered near the town. These men We were also out of work most of the time. The three of us got work from the county and after working 22 days, we learned that the county judge had refused our pay. by then we were all in debt to a restaurant. owner. We owed him $ 25 to $ 40 for board and had no way to pay it. The county owed us $ 63 each, but we didn’t. couldn’t get it. “
Her roommates started talking about Miss Frazier and her house full of money. They had seen “the old maid” flash a roll of bills in a downtown drugstore. For several days, the men talked about stealing her, but Ratliff didn’t like the idea of hitting her on the head for money.
“Several days later I left Eureka Springs for a sawmill 10 miles outside of town where I got an engineering job. I worked for a while and when I was told I had to serving jail time for killing Berry, has become desperate to “beat” my friends with their money, “Ratliff said.
“Then the idea of flying Miss Frazier again came to my mind, and I thought about it a lot. “
Next week: Amos Ratliff is hiding in the old lady’s room.
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