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Tag Archive for: hanging

Death Investigation

Effects of Hanging and Strangulation: Bill Bailey Ain’t Coming Home

Effects of hanging

“Won’t you come home, Bill Bailey, won’t you come on home

I’ve moaned that whole day long
I’ll do all the cookin’ honey, I’ll even pay the rent
I know, that I have done you, oh so, wrong

You remember that rainy evenin’
I throwed you out, with nothin but a fine tooth comb
I know I’m to blame, now … ain’t it a shame
So baby, won’t you please come

I said now, won’t you please come.

Bill Bailey, won’t you please …. come on home.”

~ Hughie Cannon (1902)

Bill Bailey, the last person executed by hanging in the United States

On a bitterly cold January night in 1996, around midnight, the toes of 49-year-old convicted murderer Billy Bailey dangled ten feet above soggy, wet soil. His new white tennis shoes a sharp contrast to the black nighttime sky.

Hanging from five feet of manila rope, Bailey’s body slowly spun counterclockwise six times, stopped, then began a final rotation in the opposite direction, coming to rest like a limp rag doll. One sleeve of Bailey’s denim prison jacket fluttered and flapped in the brisk winter wind.
Moments earlier, witnesses arrived at the Delaware Correctional Center compound to see Bill Bailey already standing on the 15-foot wooden gallows platform. He faced forward, toward the witnesses, showing no emotion. The trek to the top of the gallows was achieved by climbing a set of twenty-three plank steps.

The two guards who’d escorted Bailey to the platform, now stood one on Bailey’s left and the other to his right. Each wore black jumpsuits, and black hoods held in place by baseball caps.

The officer to Bailey’s right kept his back to witnesses and held the condemned prisoner’s shoulder. The other officer maintained a firm grasp on Bailey’s left arm.

Warden Robert Snyder stood farther to the right.

A noose hanging from the gallows pole gently swayed in the breeze.

No one knows what Bailey was thinking as he stood on the platform that night. Perhaps he’d been replaying “that night” in his mind. Maybe he thought of being the 19th of 23 children in an abusive and poverty stricken home. That when faced life in prison as a habitual offender in March of 1979, he’d decided to walk away from the work-release center to hold up a liquor store and then murder Gilbert Lambertson, 80, and his wife, Clara, 73, in their farmhouse. A property situated barely 10 miles from the very spot where the gallows stood.

It’s possible that Bailey remembered that he’d been crying when he committed the liquor store robbery.

It could be that he’d committed the murderers as a means to receive the death penalty. If so, he’d gotten his wish because he was convicted and sentenced to death for the shotgun murder of the innocent innocent and elderly farm couple.

Standing on the platform Bailey stood quite still, and when Warden Robert Snyder asked if he had any last words Bailey quietly replied, “No, sir.” But the warden couldn’t hear Bailey’s response to his question, so he asked again, “Do you have any last words?” Bailey again replied, “No, sir.”

The warden then motioned for the officers to lead Bailey onto the trapdoor where they placed a strap around his ankles and pulled a black hood over his head and chest. Then they placed the noose noose over the hood and securely tightened it beneath Bailey’s chin.

Warden Snyder checked and double-checked the hood to be certain that the hangman’s knot lay directly beneath Bailey’s left ear, an old Army regulation to assure the straightening rope would bring a quick death by severing the spinal cord.

When he was satisfied that everything was in order, the warden stepped back and used both hands to pull the gray wooden lever with both hands.

The murdered couple’s sons, Saxton and Delbert Lambertson, were among the witnesses to Bailey’s execution. They saw the trapdoor swung open in response to the pulling of the lever, and they heard dull thump of its mechanisms. They watched Bailey fall through the opening in the floor with five feet of manila rope rapidly snaking behind in his wake, snapping taut when it reached its end.

Eleven minutes of silence passed before Bailey was pronounced dead at 12:15 a.m.

There had been no complications.

Hangings

Hangings have been a staple in mysteries for as long as we can remember. The Wild West featured them at high noon. The government also used them as a means of execution, with the last being that of Mr. Bill Bailey, the fellow from the state of Delaware mentioned above.

Now, knowing that Bailey’s life ended at the end of a rope in Delaware, well, we finally have the answer to the never-ending question. No, he’s not coming home, so feel free to stop singing about him.

Most writers who’ve penned death by rope or other “twisted” cord have never seen a victim of strangulation, or hanging (sometimes they’re the same). And that, of course, makes the task a bit more difficult, having to rely on books, TV, film, and the word of experts. So before we look at an actual photo straight from the morgue (I snapped the image), let’s take a moment to discuss why and how something as small as a shoelace has the ability to end a human life.

The neck, although looking sturdy perched on a set of nicely toned shoulders (above left), is actually quite vulnerable to life-threatening injury.

After all, there’s a lot of important stuff packed into a fairly small space—spinal cord, airway, and major blood vessels—and there’s not a lot of protection surrounding those vital body parts. There’s no bony encasement, such as our ribs that protect internal organs (heart and lungs), that circle around the interior of the neck. Nope, it’s basically just muscle and skin that separate the spinal cord, airway, and major blood vessels from harm.

Did you know that hanging is actually a form of strangulation? Well, sometimes hangings may include some spinal cord or bone injury, but basically the death is by strangulation.

Hangings are either complete (the entire weight of the body is suspended by the neck), or incomplete, where a portion of the body is touching the ground/floor.

A judicial hanging (execution) is normally a death by internal decapitation, where the weight of the body combined with the fall causes the neck to break, disconnecting the head (internally) from the body.

A separation at C2 is the classic hangman fracture.

Rarely, as I’ve often read in novels, does a complete, external decapitation occur. However, it is possible to see an external decapitation (the head completely separates from the body—two individual pieces) in cases where the drop is much further than the length of the victim’s body. For example, the victim is 6-feet tall and is dropped from a height of 30 feet or more before the rope tightens.

The muscles of the neck, such as the sternocleidomastoid muscle, remain intact during an incomplete decapitation.

Strangulation by ligature, tool, or mechanism is a little different, however. Death is normally caused by obstruction of blood flow to the brain, which causes loss of consciousness followed by a loss of muscle tone and finally arterial and airway obstruction. Naturally, other things occur during the time of strangulation, but those listed are probably of the most concern for writers.

However, pressure applied to the neck for mere moments doesn’t always cause death. Martial arts strangle/choke holds often involve a compression of the major neck arteries, causing a temporary unconsciousness. The trachea (windpipe) is not compromised during the application of these techniques.

This post-autopsy photo (below right – note the stitching of the “Y” incision) shows a deep ligature mark on the neck (upper left of the image).

The murder weapon was an extension cord, the typical cord found in many homes.

Thanging autopsyo help orient – the head is to the left, just outside the upper edge of the photo. The Y-stitching begins at the bottom left  (upper right shoulder area) and continues to the mid chest area where it’s met by a like incision that began at the upper left shoulder area (upper area of the image) and continued to the chest center. The incision continued down to the area below the navel (bypassing the bellybutton).

By the way, the “Y” incision image is not of the mysterious Bill Bailey. And no, he’s definitely not coming home.

*This particular autopsy was conducted in the state of Ohio, where procedure may vary from the area where your story is set.


“Hangman, hangman, hold it a little while,
I think I see my friends coming, Riding many a mile.
Friends, did you get some silver?
Did you get a little gold?
What did you bring me, my dear friends, To keep me from the Gallows Pole?
What did you bring me to keep me from the Gallows Pole?”

“Gallows Pole
~ Led Zeppelin


Bill Bailey, a classic Dixieland song has been covered by artists such as Louis Armstrong, Patsy Cline, Bobby Darin, Aretha Franklin, Brenda Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Jimmy Durante, Harry Connick Jr., Michael Bublé, Sam Cooke, Al Hirt, and Bing Crosby.

By the way, I was once a member of a jazz band that used to perform the song from time to time. That was a long time ago, back in my trumpet-playing days.

December 30, 2020/by Lee Lofland
https://leelofland.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/New-Picture-38.jpg 278 350 Lee Lofland https://leelofland.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/the-graveyard-shift-1.png Lee Lofland2020-12-30 08:43:252020-12-30 14:41:23Effects of Hanging and Strangulation: Bill Bailey Ain’t Coming Home
Police Procedure

No Flashlight and No Ghosts: A Murder by Hanging

The abandoned factory sat just across the county line. Its towering and crumbling red brick smokestacks stood like fingers pointing to the sky. Portions of the building’s red brick facade and stacks appeared as if they’d been devoured by mounds of deep green kudzu.

A vast asphalt parking lot and an array of driveways surrounded the enormous building, a place where hundreds of employees once buzzed about like bees in a hive.

During its heyday, rows upon rows of workers sat side-by-side at long metal tables, operating industrial sewing machines. Others were charged with dying operations, driving forklifts, and pushing the buttons and dialing the knobs of machinery that clicked and clacked and whirred as they transformed tiny threads into enormous rolls of various types of cloth. Floor sweepers maneuvered back and forth in the corridors and spaces between equipment. Their nonstop to-and-fro movements were much like the mechanical and mindless ducks in a shooting gallery.

An in-house machine shop contained every tool imaginable for the repair of equipment from the smallest of contraptions to the hulking and huffing and puffing metal machinery, some the size of buses. There, highly skilled professionals wore heavily soiled overalls and displayed a shift’s worth of jet-black grease stains on their faces and hands. They went about the business of fixing and mending and fabricating at a never-ending pace, round the clock, seven days per week. Likewise, the factory workers tended to their never-ending tasks that, too, were divided into three round the clock shifts.

A constant flow of tractor trailers arrived empty and left filled with goods, heading to other factories where the materials would be transformed into an assortment of consumer goods.

Then, without notice, came the layoff notices and one by one workers were let go, machinery slowed, lights ceased to flash, motors stopped turning, and the factory quickly began to die. Paint peeled, roofing sagged, and pipes leaked. Weeds sprouted through cracks in the parking lot and driveways. With the end of truck traffic the wild plants and stalks flourished and propagated and spread and grew and grew and grew.

Rats and roaches replaced workers. Raccoons and opossums took over office spaces.

Vandals arrived to break windows and leave behind painted symbols and signs. Teenagers held spooky nighttime seances. Others smoked pot and drank beer and cheap wine and told stories of ghosts who roamed the empty hallways and cavernous spaces.

We received a call from a concerned citizen who’d reported seeing what appeared to be a person inside the factory, using a flashlight to find their way. It was just after midnight and the caller said “something just didn’t seem right.” She was absolutely correct.

Inside the factory, using our bright Maglights to help find our own way, we stepped into a room big enough to contain two high school gymnasiums. Inside the sprawling space we waded through an assortment of monstrous machinery and rows of metal racks. The roof sagged and  dripped oily water. Rust coated the steel supports that crisscrossed the upper spaces. Field mice scurried along tabletops and among the broken glass that littered the floors. Roaches as big as my thumb scattered and slid into cracks and crevices when the powerful beams of our flashlights illuminated them.

And that, in that huge room among the mice droppings, dripping water, massive insects, and eerie echoes, is where we found the boy. His body hung from a thick and long, black extension cord that connected his neck to a steel beam that supported an upper floor. Two loops of cord around the neck were held in place by a granny knot.

The boy, barely a teenager, wore a dark t-shirt, shorts a bit too big for his narrow frame, dirty white socks, and one black Converse tennis shoe. Its mate, the left one, was on the floor beneath the body. Also under the boy’s body was old office chair. The seat was on its side with its wheels two or three inches from the left shoe, which was also on its side.

His eyes and mouth were open, as if locked in a silent, terror-induced scream. His skin was cool and firm to the touch. There was no flashlight and without it there was no way the boy could’ve found his way through the pitch black darkness to find the room, find a chair and cord, attach the cord to a rafter, and so on. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face inside that place without the assistance of a light of some kind.

The knot that held the cord closed and tightly to the boy’s flesh was positioned on the right side of the neck. According to his mother, the boy was left-handed and to use his right would have been extremely awkward, unlike many left-handers who are fairly fluid with the use of both. Still, a knot on either side of the neck is not a particularly strong indication of left- or right-handedness. A point to consider if all else failed.

The victim’s friends said he’d been hanging out with a group of older teens who sold drugs They said the boy was not a user, not even pot. However, an autopsy indicated the presence of cocaine and pot. The examination also showed bruising in various spots on the body, including the areas around the wrists and forearms, as if someone had held him there, tightly. The signs pointed to a beating and a murder.

Still, the medical examiner ruled the death as a suicide. I knew better. Remember, the call came in as a report of someone seeing a light inside the factory. There was no flashlight to be found and common sense told me that flashlights don’t grow legs and flee crime scenes. So, in spite of the official ruling and based solely on the witnesses claim of seeing a light, and common sense, I continued to investigate and it didn’t take long to learn the truth.

The boy sold drugs for a known dealer. While selling those drugs he caved to peer pressure and began using. Then he became hooked. His habit grew to a point greater than he could afford so he started using the drugs he was given to sell. Then, as is often a problem, he was quickly unable to pay his dealer and went deeper and deeper into debt.

So they killed him. And they left his body swaying in an abandoned warehouse among rats and mice and roaches and raccoons and opossums and rust and broken glass, dripping oily water, and eerie echoes.

A few days after the boy’s funeral, teenagers, those who went to the factory at night to drink and to smoke pot and to tell tall and spooky tales, had a new ghost story to tell, one of a new spirit roaming the factory corridors. Many claimed to have seen the dead boy hanging from the rafters, especially on Halloween nights. Passersby sometimes said the boy appeared at the windows, peering out from behind cracked glass.

As a result of those vivid imaginations we’d sometime receive calls of people seeing what appeared to be a person inside the factory using a bright flashlight to find their way. And we’d investigate. Of course, we never found a single ghost, but each time I went, even though it was just a memory, I did indeed see that poor boy hanging from the rafters. It’s one of those things you never forget.

The cause of death, by the way, was changed to Murder, a fact I never doubted, not even for a second. So remember, writers, sometimes it’s “the thing” that isn’t there, such as a the flashlight in this case, that’s the key to solving a crime.

 

December 29, 2018/by Lee Lofland
https://leelofland.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/factory-1.jpg 286 448 Lee Lofland https://leelofland.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/the-graveyard-shift-1.png Lee Lofland2018-12-29 06:56:422018-12-29 12:16:33No Flashlight and No Ghosts: A Murder by Hanging

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Lee Lofland is a nationally acclaimed expert on police procedure and crime-scene investigation, and is a popular conference, workshop, and motivational speaker.

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