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A heavy fog blanketed San Francisco's ocean beachfront at midnight on April 7th, 1940.

To Leland S. Cash, 55, counting the day's receipts and preparing to close up a lonely barbecue stand,

it was just another foggy night, although in reality it was to be his last night on earth.

While Mrs. Cash took a final look around, Cash stepped outside. A car spurred

gravel as its driver applied the brakes. On account of his deafness, 55-year-old Mr. Cash

did not hear it and was surprised a moment later to see a solitary figure loom up out of the fog.

This is a stick-up, the stranger announced sharply.

Cash reached for his pocket to turn on his mechanical hearing device

that would translate the man's mumble into understandable words.

As he did so, something appeared suddenly in the other hand.

There was a spurt of flame, a flat report, and Cash fell dead.

At the sound of the shot, Cash's pretty wife Beatrice, 45, a waitress at the stand, said she heard a noise

that sounded like a blowout and then heard her husband cry. As she recounted events before

coroner's jury, the shooting occurred on a Sunday night, actually early Monday morning. Monday was their day off and they were going to the country on a picnic.

Leland, I said, put some food in the car. All the customers were gone. I was in the rear and I heard a shot. Then I heard Leland. He called to me twice,

B, B, come quick, I'm shot, for God's sakes, call the police. Beatrice rushed in from the kitchen,

but only in time to hear a door slam and a motor purr away into the fog.

Rushing around to the front, where her husband had been storing material for a trip in their automobile,

she found him in a pool of blood. True Crime True Crime Historian presents an eye for an eye, a special edition of yesterday's news,

exploring the criminal justice system at its most extreme, inflicting the death penalty.

Although there's nothing funny about real-life murder, if episode 361 were fictional,

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