February 8, 1924: Gee Jon Executed by Gas

Today in True Crime

Parcast

True Crime, Education, History

4.4 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 8 February 2022

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Until this day, the majority of executions in the U.S. were carried out via hanging or firing squad. Gee Jon would become the first American executed by lethal gas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today is Tuesday, February 8th, 2022. On this day in 1924, Guy John became the first American executed by lethal gas.
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0:48.3	Welcome to Today in True Crime, a Spotify original from Parcast. Due to the graphic nature of these crimes, listener discretion is advised.
0:58.3	This episode includes descriptions of execution and death. We advise extreme caution for children under 13.
1:05.8	Today we're covering America's first execution using lethal gas, a controversial method of capital punishment.
1:13.4	Now let's go back to the Nevada State Prison in Carson City on February 8, 1924.
1:22.9	It was a cold and humid morning at the prison as Guy John was led to the former butcher shop.
1:29.3	John must have been frightened. Who wouldn't be? No one in America had ever used a gas chamber to execute a prisoner.
1:37.3	Some claimed the new method would be simpler and more humane, but Nevada had botched executions in the past.
1:43.3	Tensions were high in the old butcher
1:46.0	shop. The concrete, stand-alone building had been converted into a death chamber. Supposedly, the room
1:53.0	was airtight so that the state-mandated witnesses could observe the process. For the execution,
1:59.1	the prison needed hydrogen cyanide, also called HCN. HCN is dangerous,
2:05.6	poisonous, and susceptible to changes in temperature. When released in the contained room,
2:11.6	the chemical was supposed to kill Gijon within a few minutes. There was just one problem. There was only a single distributor
2:19.7	of Liquid HCN west of the Mississippi in Los Angeles, and they refused to ship the tanks
2:25.7	to Nevada for liability reasons. The warden of the Carson City Prison dispatched an assistant
2:31.7	to transport the dangerous cargo through mountains to reach the facility.
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