29. Fallon Standard, January 16, 1924.
30. (Elmira, NY) Chronicle Telegram, January 22, 1924.
31. CCDA, January 25, 1924; Chan, “Example for the Nation,” pp. 98–99, 104. See also “Gas Execution Is Inaugurated,” LAT, February 9, 1924.
32. REG, January 28, 1924. Hughie would remain imprisoned at Carson City until his parole in 1938. Chan, “Example for the Nation,” pp. 99, 104–5.
33. CCDA, February 4–5, 1924; NSJ, February 5, 1924. Two warden-appointed medical doctors, Dr. John E. Pickard of Reno and Dr. Anthony Huffaker of Carson City, the prison physician, examined Gee and declared him sane. Young China, February 7, 1924.
34. Gilbert Schenk, “Cyanogas Calcium Cyanide for the Control of Insects Infesting Grain in Storage Bins,” in Research in the Development of Cyanogas Calcium Cyanide (n.p.: American Cyanamid Co., 1926), pp. 3–41.
35. NSJ, March 9, 1924. Two years earlier Water Heerdt in Germany had perfected a process for packing the volatile hydrogen cyanide in its principal product, a fumigant called Zyklon, in tins filled with small absorbent pellets. These stabilized the chemical until the cans were opened and the pellets were dumped, at which point the contents vaporized and would serve to block the transfer of oxygen to any warm-blooded organism in the vicinity. This product, known as Zyklon-B, amounted to a major technological breakthrough and rapidly enjoyed commercial success. Zyklon-B would have been safer to transport and easier to use in the Nevada execution because it didn’t require the additional step of dipping into an acid solution, but Zyklon-B was not available on the West Coast.
36. REG, January 26, 1924; NSJ, March 9, 1924.
37. REG, January 26, 1924.
38. CCDA, January 15 and 28, 1924; SFCP, January 22, 1924; REG, January 26, 1924; February 5, 1924; Chan, “Example for the Nation,” pp. 99, 105. In 1923–24 American Cyanamid conducted a series of experiments in an attempt to use liquefied HCN to fumigate grain elevators, but it proved difficult to get the poison to distribute evenly throughout the bin of grain. American Cyanamid Co., Research in the Development of Cyanogas Calcium Cyanide, pp. 3–41.
39. NSJ, February 5, 1924.
40. NSJ, February 7, 1924.
41. Ibid.
42. “Ready with Death Gas,” LAT, February 7, 1924. The men who quit were identified as Harry James, John Gulling, Ed Kofed, and Richard Savage. NSJ, February 7, 1924.
43. “Nevada Will Execute Slayer by Gas Today,” NYT, February 8, 1924; NSJ, February 8, 1924; Chung Sai Yat Po, February 8, 1924.
44. NSJ, February 7, 1924.
45. (Canandaigua, NY) Daily Messenger, February 8, 1924.
46. REG, February 7, 1924.
47. Clearfield (PN) Progress, February 8, 1924.
48. “Reprieved in Gas Cell,” LAT, February 8, 1924.
49. Interestingly, the execution was scheduled to occur about a month before the deadline for disabled World War I veterans to present their claims for compensation to the United States Veterans Bureau. In other words, anyone who claimed to have suffered ill health as a result of poison gas related to their military service had little time left to establish they had been harmed. NSJ, March 9, 1924.
50. NSJ, February 9, 1924.
51. “Gas Kills Convict Almost Instantly,” NYT, February 9, 1924. Born in Pioche in 1877, Turner had served as sheriff of Lincoln County and was a former federal marshal.
52. NSJ, February 9, 1924.
53. For the most detailed journalistic account of the execution, see NSJ, February 9, 1924.
54. Ibid.
55. Delos A. Turner to Chief of Chemical Warfare Service, U.S. War Department, February 1924, NSP-2320; Young China, February 9, 1924; NSJ, February 9, 1924; SJMH, February 9, 1924; NYT, February 9, 1924; Chan, “Example for the Nation,” pp. 100, 105.
56. Biennial Report of the Warden of the Nevada State Prison, 1923–1924, p. 4; Chan, “Example for the Nation,” pp. 100, 105.
57. NSJ, February 9, 1924.
58. Biennial Report of the Warden of the Nevada State Prison, 1923–1924, pp. 3–4. See also REG, February 8, 1924; SFE, February 9, 1924; SJMH, February 9, 1924; Chan, “Example for the Nation,” pp. 100, 105.
59. SFC, February 9–10, 1924.
60. NSJ, February 9, 1924.
61. REG, February 8, 1924; SFC, February 9, 1924; Chan, “Example for the Nation,” pp. 100, 105; NSJ, February 9, 1924.
62. Delos A. Turner, M.D., to Warden, Nevada State Prison, February 16, 1924, Nevada State Prison file 2320, Nevada State Archives.
63. “Witnesses Agree Lethal Gas Death Is Painless,” OSE, February 10, 1924.
64. NSJ, March 7, 1924.
65. Ibid.
66. Turner to Chief of Chemical Warfare Service, February 1924, NSP-2320.
67. Copeland C. Burg, “New Style Cage,” Ogden (UT) Standard-Examiner, February 10, 1924.
68. Ibid.
69. “Witnesses Agree Lethal Gas Is Painless.”
70. “Law Held Success; State Claims Life for Life by Novel Method Used for First Time in History at Carson City; End Comes Quietly, Without Pain to Tong Killer,” NSJ, February 9, 1924.
71. NSJ, February 9, 1924.
72. SJMH, February 9, 1924.
73. NYT, February 9, 1924.
74. “Execution by Gas,” LD, March 1, 1924.
75. “Against Execution by Gas,” NYT, February 10, 1924.
76. “Tong Clamor to Be Stilled,” LAT, February 13, 1924.
77. Biennial Report of the Warden of the Nevada State Prison, 1923–1924, p. 4.
78. SFCP, February 9, 1924; “Lethal Gas Act to Be Retained,” REG, February 27, 1925; “Lethal Gas Holds in Nevada,” NYEW, April 9, 1925.
79. “Gas Chamber to Claim Another,” LAT, April 26, 1926; “Slayers Await Sleeping Death,” OSE, May 17, 1926; “Lethal Chamber Ready,” LAT, May 19, 1926.
80. “Nevada Girl’s Slayer Put to Death by Gas,” NYT, May 22, 1926.
81. Associated Press, “Trotsky Sees War as American Aim,” NYT, April 21, 1924.
82. See Robert G. Waite, “Law Enforcement and Crime in America: The View from Germany, 1920–40,” in Criminal Justice History, ed. Louis A. Knafla, vol. 13 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993), pp. 191–216 (quotation on p. 192); Nikolaus Wachsmann, Hitler’s Prisons: Legal Terror in Nazi Germany (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 364.
83. Cyril Brown, “New Popular Idol Rises in Bavaria,” NYT, November 21, 1922.
84. Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), p. 218.