Quintuple Executions
True Crime Historian
Richard O Jones
4.5 • 720 Ratings
🗓️ 18 November 2025
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is a combination of two early episodes with a common theme.
The Shocking Death Of William Kemmler: The First Electric Execution
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Episode 19. Following the brutal murder of his common law wife Tillie Ziegler in Buffalo, New York, March, 1889, the rough character William Kemmler said he was glad he did it was was happy to hang for the crime. He did not quite get his wish, as a newly passed law in the state of New York allowed Kemmler to become the first man to die in the electric chair. His executioners knew that the execution would be an experiment of sorts, and it was not exactly the rousing success they had hoped for, but it did usher in a new era in America’s criminal justice system.
Quadruple Electrocutions: Four Murders, Four Executions
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Episode 39 is a follow-up to Episode 19, "The Shocking Death of William Kemmler," which I had published about two months prior. If you remember, that execution went so badly that many thought it was a failed experiment. Indeed, it took the state of New York nearly a year to perform a second electric chair execution, but it did so with a bang, putting four men to death on the same day, July 7, 1891. - Will it work out any better? Listen and find out…
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Auburn, New York, August 6, 1890. |
| 0:18.0 | At 5 o'clock this morning, landlord Gregory of the Osborne House, holding in one hand |
| 0:25.1 | a list of room numbers, stood in his office tapping push buttons, which rang an electric |
| 0:30.1 | firebell in each of the rooms indicated upon his list. In them were sleeping the persons who had |
| 0:35.5 | been summoned by the prison warden to witness the death by electricity of murderer William Kimler. |
| 0:41.8 | Porters, too, were heavily thumping at room doors. |
| 0:45.1 | There was to be no mistake about the efficacy of the summons. |
| 0:48.8 | There was none. |
| 0:50.0 | Doctors and laymen hurriedly dressed. |
| 0:52.6 | The sun was sending its slant bars of morning light over the city of Auburn. |
| 0:57.0 | The sky was cloudless. The air cool and a slight breeze swayed the treetops. The men of the press had been vigilant. |
| 1:05.0 | They too came trooping from the rooms to swallow coffee and rolls before going to the prison. |
| 1:10.0 | In the pocket of each |
| 1:11.7 | guest of the state was a card bearing an order of admission to the prison, and before retiring, |
| 1:17.3 | each had been privately warned to present himself at the prison gate not later than six o'clock |
| 1:21.9 | this morning. Some were there at the hour named, others were not, and Warden Dursden, impatient for the delay, |
| 1:29.3 | was pacing the halls and peering often and anxiously down to the big iron gate at the entrance. |
| 1:34.3 | The hour and fifteen minutes more had passed before Dr. Spitzka arrived with a case of instruments |
| 1:41.3 | in his hand. Dr. Stradie and Jenkins of New York were yet missing. |
| 1:45.8 | They had not left the hotel table. |
| 1:47.8 | At 7 o'clock, the 1,200 convicts would be marched, according to the daily routine, |
| 1:52.3 | out from the mess room to the shops. |
... |
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