A media horde for a US execution, such as that now assembling in Terre Haute for Timothy McVeigh's death watch, is not unprecedented.
Neither is the boorishness that has inspired vendors in the Indiana city to sell T-shirts reading "Hanging Times", or "Die! Die! Die" or "McVeigh: June 16, 2001".
In fact, thanks to McVeigh's earlier request for a televised execution, Owensboro, the self-styled "Bar-B-Q Capital of the World", has again become a name in the national news, as the site of the last public execution in the US. About 5.25 a.m., August 14th, 1936, convicted rapist Rainey Bethea ascended the traditional 13 steps to a gallows there, completed the day before in the county garage's parking lot.
His every step was watched by a crowd of more than 15,000 people, at least a few a tad impatient after a long night holding their places.
Bethea's hanging drew international headlines, orchestrated by 1,300 reporters and photographers vying for a good view with the throng packed in the lot's three acres. Newsweek reported: "HANGING: Big Day in Kentucky For Hawkers and G. Phil Hanna." At least in this instance, Bethea took a back seat to Hanna, a self-styled "hanging consultant" who was guiding, by his own count, his 70th.
The New York Daily News two-page photo spread, anchored by a panoramic photo of the crowd and gallows, exclaimed: "Drop Through Trap to Eternity Provides Populace With Roman Holiday."
The Philadelphia Record announced: "They Ate Hot Dogs While a Man Died on the Gallows."
In defence of the crowd, though, surviving eyewitnesses said that, while hawkers found ready customers, once Bethea was brought out, one could nearly hear a pin drop.
Both Bethea and Hanna were merely supporting players: The main star of the show, or so the onlookers thought, would be County Sheriff Florence Thompson, a widow and 43year-old mother of four, whom the court directed to execute Bethea. "Woman Sheriff to Hang Slayer," read a story in the Boston Traveller, just one of scores of articles the prospect generated in the US and abroad.
Bethea, a 22-year-old black hailing from Roanoake, Virginia, walked about 200 paces from the county jail to the gallows, as the huge crowd parted to ease his way. The sheriff, after fencing with the press for weeks on her role, left the trapdoor lever to a volunteer, Arthur Hash, a former Louisville police officer and a heavy drinker.
Thompson took a seat in a car 75 feet away. Intoxicated, wearing a panama hat and white seersucker suit, Hash told a reporter his name was "Daredevil Dick from Montana".
With all ready, the brashness departed and he hesitated, annoying Hanna, who shouted "Do it now!" Finally, a deputy forced Hash's hand.
As narrated in Kentucky state prosecutor Perry Ryan's book The Last Public Execution in America, Bethea had arrived in Owensboro at least three years earlier.
Despite a drinking problem and even a prison term for theft, he seemed to have little trouble winning the confidence of whites in Owensboro, who offered him lodging in return for labouring work.
In fact, Bethea had done some work for his victim, and once lived in a cabin behind the house where she lived.
Alcohol seemed, ultimately, to seal his doom. In several confessions, Bethea told authorities that he had been drunk on June 7th and looking for money to buy drink, the night 70-year-old widow Lischia Edwards awoke after he had entered her room.
He raped and strangled her and then took five rings, a brooch and a dress. Bethea was captured three days later, hiding under some willow trees on the banks of the Ohio, only 400 metres or so from the courthouse and his eventual execution site.
Blacks in Owensboro, about 10 per cent of the city's 25,000 then residents, offered him no support after his arrest.
In fact, according to Ryan, some local blacks made the offer to execute Bethea themselves for his role in endangering the "otherwise amiable relationship" between the races.
It fell to five young, talented black lawyers from Louisville to try to save Bethea's life, filing an appeal after his trial, which had lasted only three hours with Bethea pleading guilty.
His trial defence had been handled by four white lawyers assigned by the court, one the son of the presiding judge.
The all-white, all-male jury quickly found him guilty. Bethea was then taken to the county jail in Louisville for his own safety.
The night before his death, Bethea was photographed, calmly gazing into the camera, eating his final meal. Bethea had been baptised a Catholic, taking the name Joseph, 16 days earlier. Around his neck is a crucifix. His body was buried in Owensboro's potters field, contrary to the wish he conveyed in a letter to his sister, living in South Carolina. He wanted to be buried next to his father and wrote: "I am saved and don't you worry about me because I goin' to meet my maker and you must pray to meet me some day in the other world."
Bethea's letter was printed in the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer the day after his death.
After Bethea arrived at the gallows, he stopped the guards and was quoted as saying: "Let me take off these shoes. I want to put on this clean pair of socks." With manacled hands, he removed his shoes, and pulling new socks from a side pocket, pulled them on. In his stocking feet, he climbed the eight steps of the base and the 13 steps of the gallows.
As Bethea dangled, an official took a tag from the black hood. Others, at arm's length, took souvenirs as well, according to an editorial in the Messenger- Inquirer, who expressed regret over the action as it gave "scavenger writers" licence to describe the crowd as "tearing Bethea's clothes from his body".
Bethea's shoes and hole-filled socks remained at the foot of the gallows. According to one newspaper, within an hour, the gallows was dismantled, and the field returned to parking. Today the execution site is the parking lot of the Executive Inn Rivermont, a hotel, conference centre and cabaret that features country music.
Meanwhile, reporters rushed to file their photos and stories, some highly imaginative. According to Ryan, a reporter for the Chicago Sun did not even wait for the hanging, inquiring of the sheriff's daughter the whereabouts of the local telegraph office before Bethea even climbed the gallows. The Sun reported that the sheriff had begun climbing the scaffold and then fainted.
After the hanging, Thompson, a widow, received letters from all over the world, most critical, a death threat and even offers of courtship. An anonymous writer from Scotland likened Kentuckians to primitive Africans in their "cannibalism", saying that extensive crime in America had made it particularly worthy of international ridicule.
The coverage elicited this editorial comment from The Gleaner, published in nearby Henderson: "The dull thud of a human body at the end of a hangman's rope is heard all but around the world. It is receiving editorial comment, east, west, north and south, and eventually Canada, Mexico and Europe will come to know Owensboro."
Gerald A. Regan is a New York- based journalist. Contact: ger@garmedia.com.