Pierrepoint (25 page)

The three women Albert hanged on 2 May had been convicted for crimes that took place at Ravensbrück concentration camp near Furstenberg in Germany. It was the only Nazi concentration camp for women and also acted as a training base for female SS supervisors, with over three thousand women undergoing training there. On completion of training, some took on duties at Ravensbrück; the remainder were sent to a number of other camps. Ravensbrück had been established in 1938 and was liberated by the Russian Army at the end of April 1945. It was estimated the number of victims there totalled over ninety-two thousand.

Between December 1946 and February 1947, a court in the British zone tried 16 members of the Ravensbrück staff. All were found guilty except one, who died during the trial. Eleven were sentenced to hang, including four women, and the rest to lengthy periods of imprisonment.

At 60 years of age, Elisabeth Marschall was the eldest of those executed. Greta Bösel, born in 1908, had trained as a nurse before she went to work in Ravensbrück in August 1944. Her role was to supervise female working teams, and she was alleged to have used the edict: ‘Let them rot if they can't work.' Dorothea Binz was born in 1920 in Dulstarlake. A single woman, she had joined the staff of Ravensbrück in April 1939 and worked as an Aufseherin in the women's camp. She was arrested in Hamburg in May 1945, before being brought back to stand trial at Ravensbrück.

In the summer Albert made another trip to Germany.
Again, official papers noted him arriving in the British Zone on 25 June and leaving by air on 28 June. He carried out the judicial sentences of execution, by hanging, of one woman and twelve men, a total of thirteen persons, on 26 June. The executions were carried out in his usual most efficient manner and to the entire satisfaction of the commission. The papers again listed the names and times of execution:

Twenty-eight-year-old Vera Salvequart was the fourth woman convicted at the first Ravensbrück trial in February. She had argued that she had not been an SS guard, only a prisoner in Ravensbrück. With a shortage of personnel, the SS frequently made German prisoners supervise other non-German inmates. Like Dorothea Binz she had also first trained as a nurse, before embarking on a life of petty crime. Salvequart had been recruited to guard duties while serving as a prisoner, having been convicted of theft. Sent to Ravensbrück in December 1944, she worked as a nurse in the camp's hospital wing, where it was alleged she had administered poison to some of the patients. She petitioned the King for a reprieve, claiming that her last imprisonment was due to her stealing plans relating to the V2 rocket that she intended to pass to
the British secret service. She was granted a stay of execution while the appeal was heard. It was in due course rejected, however, and she was returned to Hameln to await a flying visit from the British hangman.

Albert next arrived in the British Zone on 3 September, again by air, leaving on 6 September. On this visit he carried out the execution of one British soldier, three Polish and ten Germans on the 5 September. The executions were again officially noted as being carried out in the most efficient and discreet manner.

The following persons executed Zuchthaus Hameln on Sept 5:

Corporal Patrick was a soldier serving with the British Army of the Rhine who had been sentenced to death by a military
court martial. Assisting Albert and Richard O'Neill for the first time was Edwin James Roper.

On 29 April, while in London on an official visit to the War Office, Albert had been leaving a Soho public house when he came across a crowd of people surrounding a man lying in the road next to a motorcycle. Thinking it was the result of accident he carried on his way and only when he picked up the following morning's newspapers did he realise it was the body of Alec de Antiquis, who had been shot dead as he tried to prevent three armed robbers fleeing from a jewellery shop. Trying to prevent their escape by swinging his motorcycle in their path, he was shot in the head by one of the gang, who escaped in the busy traffic.

A witness told police he had seen two masked men enter a building on Tottenham Court Road, and a search uncovered a raincoat that was traced to 23-year-old Charles Henry Jenkins, who had a long criminal record. Two friends of Jenkins, Christopher James Geraghty and Terence Rolt, were also picked up. Under questioning Geraghty implicated Rolt in the murder and he, in turn, implicated Jenkins.

Mr Justice Hallet, at the Old Bailey, sentenced Jenkins and Geraghty to death, and Albert and his two assistants carried out the sentence at Pentonville on 19 September. The hard line taken in the passing and subsequent carrying out of the death penalty resulted in a large amnesty of weapons among the underworld, and to the disbanding of many criminal gangs.

Albert made one final trip to the Zuchthaus Hameln, Germany in 1947, when on 14 November he hanged sixteen men in eight double executions. Starting at 9.02 a.m., he then carried out the second at 9.36 a.m., another at 10.12 a.m, 10.46 a.m., and the final morning execution at 11.22 a.m. He then broke for lunch and carried out the final three double executions at 2.03 p.m., 2.34 p.m. and 3.08 p.m.

The final execution of the year took place at Bristol when, on 30 December, Albert and Harry Allen hanged a Polish soldier for the rape and murder of an elderly publican.

The year 1948 was to see another parliamentary debate on the subject of capital punishment, and as a result there were only ten executions in Great Britain and Ireland. While this may have had a detrimental effect on the earning power of rival executioner Steve Wade, Albert's bank balance was bolstered by a further heavy workload in Germany. On 29 January he carried out the execution of five war criminals and on the following day he hanged another ten in five double executions.

A Hamburg newspaper, HNN, reported the execution in the following day's paper:

The newspaper erroneously reported 21 persons executed instead of the correct total of 15. The airmen mentioned were portrayed being executed in cold blood at the end of the classic 1963 war film The Great Escape.

In February, Albert carried out three executions at home. On the 3rd, he travelled down to Cardiff, where he hanged a young collier who had committed the dreadful rape and murder of an old woman in the Rhondda Valley. Three days later, he travelled to Perth for his first execution in Scotland, where he hanged Stanislaw Myszka, a Polish deserter.

On 26 September 1947, 47-year-old Catherine McIntyre failed to turn up as planned at a friend's house. Her friends called at her isolated cottage overlooking Loch Tay, Tayside where she lived with her husband and three children and found her son outside the house, expecting his mother to return and let him in. Forcing entry into the house, they found her dead: bound and gagged with terrible cuts and bruises to her head and throat. Missing from the house were her gold wedding ring and a large amount of cash.

Myszka, who lived nearby in a Polish camp, was an immediate suspect. The bruises had been caused by the butt of a gun recovered in a field and which police believed the Pole had stolen from a house earlier that year. They also found at the murder scene a bloodstained shaving razor that
had been used to cut the victim's throat. Traces of stubble found on he razor matched the whiskers on Myszka's face. He was arrested on 2 October, and when searched the stolen wedding ring was found hidden in his shoe. The jury at his trial in January needed less than 20 minutes to find him guilty. Albert and assistant Steve Wade hanged Myszka on the portable gallows erected in a cellar at Perth Prison.

The last execution in Great Britain before a temporary suspension of all death sentences took place at Pentonville, when Walter John Cross, a 21-year-old Dagenham lorry driver, was convicted of the murder of a crippled watchmaker. Neighbours had heard screams coming from a house at Barking on the night of 14 November 1947. They spotted a man leaving the house and when they went to investigate, they found the body of Percy Busby. He had been strangled and his empty wallet was found beside the body. Cross was identified as the man leaving the house. At his trial at the Old Bailey, it was alleged that he had gone to the house with a friend on the pretence that his friend wanted a watch repaired. The friend would leave the door ajar as he left and Cross would enter and steal the money from the wallet.

Albert returned to Hameln in February. Again he travelled by air, and carried out the executions to everyone's satisfaction.

A month later he was back again, this time executing four men in two double executions. Unusually, and quite coincidentally, all were given longer than average drops, each over 8 feet.

Up to this time the total number of persons executed in the British Zone since the start of occupation was 357, made up as follows:

The executions resulted from trials by the military, military government, Control Commission and German courts, and of the persons executed 126 were non-German nationals.

In April, Sydney Silverman MP, recommending the suspension of capital punishment for an experimental period of five years, introduced a Bill to the House of Commons to that effect. Passed by a narrow majority, it lead to reprieves being granted to all condemned murderers during that period, including that of Donald Thomas who was convicted of the murder of a London policeman.