Death-House Hullabaloo

Not since the New York Daily News ghoulishly sneaked a picture of Murderess Ruth Snyder*dying in Sing Sing's electric chair, in 1928, had such a death-house hullabaloo stirred the U.S. press. Chicago's lusty, raucous Herald-American had started it by running a Page One "exclusive photograph" of the electrocution of "Mad Dog Killer" James Morelli, 22, who had killed four men in what crime-loving Hearst newspapers called "the worst Chicago mass killing since the St. Valentine's Day massacre."

Hearst's Heald-American had been on the street only a few minutes before Cook County Jail Superintendent Chester L. Fordney cried: "The picture is a fake!"

None of the witnesses, said he, could have taken a picture. They had been gone over by the jail's $7,000 "inspectoscope," and with its X-ray beam it would have either detected the hidden camera or, at least, fogged its film. (City Room gossip was that Photographer Joe Migon had sneaked a tiny camera in his shoe past the machine.) Fordney charged that the man had been painted in the chair and pointed out "discrepancies" between the actual execution and the picture. Where there had been a dark electrode on Morelli's right leg, the heavily retouched Herald-American picture showed none. The cable, and other chair fixtures, said Fordney, were out of proportion to their actual size. To illustrate his points, Fordney dressed an aide in death-house garb, seated him in the chair and had his picture taken. Nevertheless, the Herald-American's Executive Editor George A. De Witt insisted that his photo was genuine, but he refused to explain how it was made. Said he: "Why explain it? There may be more executions."

*Snapped by Photographer Tom Howard, with a camera strapped to his shin. To get the picture, he sat in the front row, pulled up his pants-leg and snapped the shutter while the attention of officers was fixed on the execution.

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