Mickelson Victorious Over Sitts the Slayer; Last
Words a Taunt to Executioner
By Shawn Werner -
Deathwoodmagazine.com
In all my experience, this is the first time
authorities helped me escape prison,” uttered to the 42 witnesses
present as authorities were strapping George Sitts into an electric
chair. The lever was pulled sending 2300 volts of current shooting
through his vital organs. The lever was dropped three more times,
effectively snuffing the life from his body at the time of 12:15 a.m.
Perhaps some context is
necessary to fully appreciate Sitts’ odd sense of humor, but the
fact of the matter was that he had once used a file to saw his way
out from behind bars while serving a life sentence.
It is interesting that a
child once regarded among his schoolmates as the most likely to be
successful ended up in Ol’ Sparky. Townspeople would regard him as
quiet, studious and well-mannered. As a child he would hurry home
after school to do chores for his grandmother.
Sitts was born in 1914 in
LeRoy, Minnesota. The small farming community of 724 people was
located on the Iowa border, fifty miles south of Rochester. The
rural lifestyle likely contributed to the young man’s earnest
interest in reading. Among the top of his reading list were novellas
that depicted romantic yarns of frontier exploits and criminal deeds.
The raucous tales planted the seeds for adventure in the young man
that would grow into macabre vines that strangled his future. He
learned to handle firearms just like the heroes in his stories,
cultivating a deadly aim. He also learned how to use his fists, and
acquired the ambition to become a boxer.
Boxing captivated America in
the 1920’s when Sitts was a young man. People would fire up the
vacuum tubes in their radios and excitedly listen to the cracks and
grunts of two wiry young men long off the boxcar driving clenched
fists into one another for a shot at money and fame.
Inspired by his idol Jack
Dempsey, Sitts entered the boxing ring himself in venues around the
country. Known as “Kid Kramer,” he traded blows in places like St.
Paul, Sioux City and even the emerging metropolis, San Francisco.
Though he never had the honor of slinging a championship belt around
his waist, his broken, flattened nose would forever attest to his
courage and willingness to step into the ring.
At the tender young age of
19, Sitts was able to attract the eyes of the law by receiving
stolen property and carrying a concealed weapon. After his
conviction he spent 90 days in jail in Iowa. The time he spent
locked up did little to deter his devious ways and just three years
later he found himself serving a 10 year sentence for burglary.
Being a handsome, charismatic young man he was able to impress the
parole board and was once again a free man in 1941.
His freedom lasted about as
long as his temper and he was jailed the very next year for a parole
violation. Over the next three years, while incarcerated, Sitts made
plans to try and live an honest life. When he was released he made
his way towards Portland, Oregon, where jobs were plentiful in 1944
with the economy being stimulated by the war effort.
Sitts’ trail goes somewhat cold after that, but it
was known that he had wooed a young lady and gotten married, but like
all the good things in his life it wasn’t destined to last. He later
told a reporter that he’d separated from his wife shortly after getting
hitched.
Around 1945 the
calculating Sitts made his way back to Minneapolis. His intentions were
to meet up with a girl that had been captivating his attentions. He
arrived to find nothing but the news that she had moved to Texas. His
passion for her, along with his romantic notions of outlaws culled from
dime store novels, he decided the best route of action to finance his
trek southward would be to rob someone.
It was the perfect plan; get
in and out quick and rendezvous with his sweetheart in the Lone Star
State. Unfortunately for Sitts, things didn’t go nearly as planned
and he ended up killing a liquor store clerk named Erik Johansson.
Though Sitts immediately fled
the scene he was arrested only 60 miles outside of town. Sitts
pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, most likely knowing that his
rough and tumble past would not likely play well with jurors. The
presiding judge saw fit to hand down a life sentence for Sitts’
cooperation and he was transferred to the Hennepin County Jail while
awaiting transfer to the Stillwater State Prison.
Enlisting the help of three
fellow inmates and a hacksaw blade he managed to acquire, Sitts made
the best of his time over the next three weeks and managed to cut
through two of the bars that confined him to his cell. He somehow
managed to free himself only a day before he was scheduled for his
transfer to prison. His accomplices were a pair of auto thieves and
a forger. His accomplices got a taste of Sitts’ past life as a boxer
when he socked a radio dispatcher on his way out of jail.
Two days after busting loose
Sitts stole a car and headed towards the Black Hills. Sightings of
the killer were reported in Madelia, a small town southwest of the
Twin Cities, but he never turned up there. A stolen car in Sioux
Falls also carried Sitts’ scent. Despite roadblocks being set up and
national attention given to the case the convicts managed to elude
the officers. Except for 19-year-old Robert Morris that is, one of
Sitts’ fellow jailbreakers who managed to get caught shortly after
the escape.
Sitts
zigzagged over South Dakota, getting gasoline where he could find it.
Then a Newell area rancher reported his gun being stolen, signifying
Sitts’ arrival in the western half of South Dakota.
Only 38 miles from Newell, on
Jan. 24, 1946, Special Agent Tom Matthews of the State Bureau of
Investigation and Sheriff Dave Malcolm of Butte County were manning
a roadblock on the north edge of Spearfish in Lawrence County.
The officers were watching
for a green 1940 Ford coach carrying an armed man. The suspect was
described over the police stations as being armed, six foot three,
with dark hair and had been unshaven for about a week.
Sure enough, a vehicle
matching the description was spotted speeding and was subsequently
pulled over. The car came to a halt, and Sitts emerged from the
driver side door. Not prepared to return to a life of imprisonment,
Sitts opened fire on the two men with his pistol. As they lay dying
on the road he systematically put a bullet into their heads. After
taking their money and weapons he made his way near Deadwood.
Setting up camp in an abandoned schoolhouse, he burned his shoes to
avoid dying from hypothermia.
You can only stay in one place so long before
succumbing to hunger and cold, and after wrapping his feet in burlap
Sitts headed into Deadwood to find a place to stay and a bite to eat.
The first house he found belonged to a former Deadwood police chief
named Ross Dunn. Sitts hid in the cellar while Dunn spent the days
scouring the Hills for the murderer. After a week of staying, Sitts took
a pair of shoes and fled.
In February Leonard Ronneberg,
who operated a local filling station, got inside of his car to find
Sitts waiting for him in the backseat. Sitts demanded that Ronneburg
drive to Wyoming, and the pair stopped at a filling station in
Beulah, Wyoming. Sitts handed the man $10 and ordered him out of the
car. It didn’t take long before Ronneberg alerted the authorities
and nearly three dozen patrol cars scoured the roadways in Wyoming
to bring the man to justice.
Sitts made it 370 miles from
Deadwood before getting stuck in the snow when two plainclothes
sheriffs approached him and asked if he needed any help. Sitts later
said that if he had known they were lawmen he would have shot it
out, but as it was they arrested him without a struggle.
After murdering the two
lawmen, Sitts had managed to evade the police for 11 days before
getting caught once again. The prosecutor in the trial was none
other than George T. Mickelson who would later go on to become
governor of South Dakota. The jury returned the guilty verdict of
murdering Matthews in less than three hours. The judge handed down a
sentence of death, making a trial for the murder of Malcolm
unnecessary.
One year and eight days would
be all that Sitts would have to wait in prison for his sentence to
be carried out. His final requests consisted of wanting a cake of
soap and clean shirt. He then sat down to a meal of chow mien, tea,
bread and butter, ice cream and cake.
Outside the room where the
electric chair waited, handmade by prisoners, the snow gently fell
over the South Dakota prairie. Sitts would be the first and last
person in South Dakota to die on the electric chair. The do-it-yourself
aesthetic of the chair was evident in the electrode that was
attached to his head was a football helmet purchased the day before
for $3.55. Sitts then uttered his famous remark to the prison
officials before the current was released and he drew his final
breath. South Dakota would not execute another prisoner until 2007.
The Chair
Like the guillotine in France, the electric chair
was initially developed as a humane alternative to hanging. While many
people ended their lives dangling at the end of the rope as they were
supposed to, sometimes the neck would not snap, and the victims would
strangle. Other times people would be decapitated or the rope would snap.
After a particularly bloody hanging, the state of New York established a
committee to develop a more humane system of execution.
Alfred P. Southwick had gotten the idea of using
electricity as a method of execution after watching an inebriated man
die after touching a live terminal on a generator. Southwick was a
dentist, and being accompanied to performing procedures with patients
being in chairs, his device appeared in the form of an “electric chair.”
Thomas Edison then hired
Harold P. Brown to invent the electric chair as we know it today.
Brown based his design off Edison rival Nikolai Tesla’s alternating
current in order to garner public favor for Edison’s direct current.
Brown and Edison even publicly electrocuted many animals, including
a circus elephant named Topsy, to prove that Tesla’s alternating
current was more dangerous and therefore better for electrocutions.
Everything from stray cats and dogs to unwanted farm animals were
slaughtered in Edison’s propaganda campaign. In reality, very high
currents of around 10 amperes were planned for the device, making
the difference in lethality between the two currents marginal at
best. The campaign worked, and legislation passed dictating that
alternating current be used in electrocutions.
The first man to be executed was William Kemmler, a
man who had murdered his wife with a hatchet. George Westinghouse, owner
of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, tried to back Kemmler’s appeal
that electrocution was cruel and unusual punishment to protect his
company’s interests. Westinghouse Corporation used and promoted
alternating current. Thanks to Edison’s endorsement for the state, the
appeal was lost.
On August
6, 1890, Kemmler was strapped into the chair. He was then zapped with
1,000 volts of electricity for 17 seconds. Kemmler was declared dead,
but witnesses noticed he was still breathing. Sure enough, when doctors
examined him they found out he was still alive and Dr. Edward Charles
Spitzka called out “Have the current turned on again, quick, no delay!”
Kemmler was then zapped with
2,000 volts, causing blood vessels under the skin to rupture and
bleed and his body actually caught fire. The execution would go on
to take eight minutes, prompting many disgusted witnesses to leave
the room.
Westinghouse later commented
that “They would have done better using an axe.”
Use of the electric chair has
severely declined in modern times due to legislators seeking more
humane forms of capital punishment. Still, some states offer the
chair as an alternative to lethal injection, but inmates must
specifically request a date with “Old Sparky.”
Outlaw Tales
