A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. Poisonous agents used include hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide.
I Want to Live! is a 1958 American biographical film noir directed by Robert Wise and starring Susan Hayward, Simon Oakland, Virginia Vincent and Theodore Bikel. It follows the life of Barbara Graham, a prostitute and habitual criminal who is convicted of murder and faces capital punishment. The screenplay, written by Nelson Gidding and Don Mankiewicz, was adapted from personal letters written by Graham in addition to newspaper articles written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ed Montgomery. The film presents a highly fictionalized version of the case, indicating the possibility that Graham may have been innocent.
Folsom State Prison (FSP) is a California State Prison in Folsom, California, U.S., approximately 20 miles (32 km) northeast of the state capital of Sacramento. It is one of 34 adult institutions operated by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
In the U.S. state of California, capital punishment is a legal penalty. However it is not allowed to be carried out as of June 2023, because executions were halted by an official moratorium ordered by Governor Gavin Newsom. Prior to the moratorium, executions were frozen by a federal court order since 2006, and the litigation resulting in the court order has been on hold since the promulgation of the moratorium. Thus, there will be a court-ordered moratorium on executions after the termination of Newsom's moratorium if capital punishment remains a legal penalty in California by then.
San Quentin State Prison (SQ) is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men, located north of San Francisco in the unincorporated place of San Quentin in Marin County.
Barbara Elaine "Bonnie"WoodGraham was an American criminal convicted of murder. She was executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin Prison on the same day as two convicted accomplices, Jack Santo and Emmett Perkins, all of whom were involved in a robbery that led to the murder of an elderly widow. Nicknamed "Bloody Babs" by the press, Graham was the third woman in California to be executed by gas.
Caryl Whittier Chessman was a convicted robber, kidnapper and serial rapist who was sentenced to death for a series of crimes committed in January 1948 in the Los Angeles area. Chessman was charged with 17 counts and convicted under a loosely interpreted "Little Lindbergh law" – later repealed, but not retroactively – that defined kidnapping as a capital offense under certain circumstances. His case attracted worldwide attention, and helped propel the movement to end the use of capital punishment in the state of California.
Harvey Murray Glatman was an American serial killer active during the late 1950s. He was known in the media as the Lonely Hearts Killer and the Glamour Girl Slayer. He would use several pseudonyms, posing as a professional photographer to lure his victims with the promise of a modeling career.
The Duchess is a character in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, published in 1865. Carroll does not describe her physically in much detail, although as stated in Chapter 9, "Alice did not much like keeping so close to her: first, because the Duchess was very ugly; and secondly, because she was exactly the right height to rest her chin upon Alice’s shoulder, and it was an uncomfortably sharp chin." Her hideous appearance and short stature is strongly established in the popular imagination thanks to John Tenniel's illustrations and from context it is clear that Alice finds her quite unattractive.
Robert Cosgrove Greenlease Jr. was a six-year-old from Kansas City, Missouri, United States, who was the victim of a kidnapping and homicide on September 28, 1953. His father, Robert Cosgrove Greenlease Sr., was a multi-millionaire auto dealer, and the demanded ransom payment was the largest in American history at the time.
Louise Peete was a convicted American serial killer. Peete was first convicted of the 1920 murder of wealthy mining engineer Jacob C. Denton, and was sentenced to life in prison in 1921. She was paroled in April 1939. In May 1945, Peete was convicted a second time for murdering her employer, Margaret Logan, and was sentenced to death. She was executed in April 1947, making her the second of only four women to be executed in the California gas chamber.
David Edwin Mason was an American serial killer who killed at least four elderly people between March and December 1980 in Oakland, California, his cellmate in 1982 and possibly his male lover. For these crimes, he was sentenced to death and executed at San Quentin State Prison's gas chamber in 1993, the last inmate to have been executed in this manner in the state. He was also the first condemned inmate since the reinstatement of the death penalty to voluntarily withdraw all of his appeals.
Juanita Adamina, known professionally as Jo de Winter, was an American actress most notable for her role in the short-lived television series Gloria.
Eva Dugan was a convicted murderer whose execution by hanging at the state prison in Florence, Arizona, resulted in her decapitation and influenced the state of Arizona to replace hanging with the lethal gas chamber as a method of execution.
Josefa Segovia, also known as Juanita or Josefa Loaiza, was a Mexican-American woman who was executed by hanging in Downieville, California, on July 5, 1851. She was found guilty of murdering a local miner, Frederick Cannon. She is known to be the first and only woman to be hanged in California.
Katie Sherrod is an American journalist who was inducted into the Texas Women's Hall of Fame in 1987. In 1991, she was fired from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram over accusations of plagiarism.
Darrell Keith Rich, known as The Hilltop Rapist, was an American serial killer who murdered three women and an 11-year-old girl in Redding, California between June and August 1978. He was sentenced to death in California in 1981 for two of the murders and was executed in 2000 at San Quentin State Prison by lethal injection.
Mendocino State Hospital, formally known as Mendocino State Asylum for the Insane, was a psychiatric hospital in Talmage near Ukiah, California, was established in 1889 and in operation from July 1893 to 1972. The hospital programs included the rehabilitation of the criminally insane, alcoholic and drug abuse rehabilitation, a psychiatric residency program, industrial therapy, and others. The property now is part of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas community.
Manuel Machado Alvarez was a Cuban murderer who was sentenced to death in California. In 1987, while on parole for voluntary manslaughter, he murdered a man during a robbery, a crime for which he was sentenced to die.
William L. Johansen, also known under the alias Harry W. Gordon, was an American serial killer who murdered three women, including his first wife, in New York and California between 1933 and 1940. He was arrested soon after his final murder, and executed by gas chamber at the San Quentin State Prison the following year.
