today, a horror story!
I have always had a strong
imagination. I think this is important in a historian-criminologist.
It's not just about the cold facts, the police reports, the
evidence. You also have to be able to put yourself into the mind of
the criminal; to see the world through his eyes (almost always it was
he not she; to understand the culture and the times in which he
operated. I can walk through a present day landscape and imagine how
it was at the historic time I am researching. I can see almost like
a double image how the streets would have looked at the time – the
old fashioned shop fronts, the hurrying people in crinolines and top
hats, the horses and carts, like a black-and-white movie overlaying
the technicolor image of today. I can even move back and forth in
time, fast forwarding the chiaroscuro image, back to a time of wooden
cottages and dirt roads, forward to impressive facades and brick and
cobbles.
So it was a real privilege to
visit the actual scenes of one of the murderers I have always been
interested in: Carson Ferzackerley. He was no Jack the Ripper. It
was a fairly banal murder as they go, but my interest was sparked by
the fact that he was the first to be executed by electric chair, in
1920s Chicago. As I looked into it, something fascinated me about
it. It seemed to be a motiveless crime. His relationship with his
wife previously had been idyllic and their love for each other was
remarked upon. There had been no sign of mental illness –
Ferzackerley lived a blameless life, he was a hard worker, a good
churchman, a follower of the temperance movement. There was no
evidence of gambling or debts; nor of infidelities on either side.
This was Chicago in the 1920s, but there were no indications of
connections with the underworld. So all the usual motivations for
murder were absent. Some thought that a devil had possessed him,
others that some kind of seizure had made him mad. The violence of
his attack was horrific, by all accounts. But he offered no
resistance to the authorities afterwards, and no explanation. In
fact, he claimed not to be Ferzackerley at all, on the rare occasions
when he spoke.
So with my good wife I decided to
visit modern day Chicago. Olga likes to accompany me on these trips,
even though I can sometimes appear to be in a dream as I wander the
streets with my double exposure imagination going full tilt. The
courthouse building where Ferzackerley was tried and convicted, and
which housed the horrific machine that would end his life, was still
there and is now a museum, although the execution suite is now
normally off limits. I had been given special access by the curator,
Sam Wise, whom I knew through collaborations and conferences we had
both attended. So I arranged a private tour a few days after we
arrived. The courthouse was quite close to the house where Carson
and Marie Ferzackerley boarded, which is even now a small family-run
hotel, little changed externally but with better plumbing and quite
plushly furnished rooms in that characteristic American 'inn' style,
and that is where we stayed. As I walked through its hall and
sitting rooms I could picture how it would have looked in the
twenties, somewhat faded and filled still with the heavy Victorian
mahogany and brocades that survived from a more prosperous time. It
would have all been threadbare but respectable: my research showed it
was run as a temperance boarding house by an impoverished widow. The
silent movie ran in my head, overlaying the real images as we toured
the house and climbed the ornate staircase to our room. I had of
course booked the room where the Ferzackerleys had lived, generously
sized and now with an ensuite carved out of one corner where there
would have been an overbearing wardrobe and dressing table. There
was a small closet and the chimney breast of a fireplace, long since
boarded up. The bed would have been a big iron-framed affair in the
same location as today's twin beds.
We went out to dinner and then
back in the room to read. I wanted to find all I could about the
house while I was there. Olga retired early and I stayed up in a
comfortable armchair, reading once more the police reports, which
survived. I imagined the door opening and Ferzackerley entering from
a late shift, his wife already in bed just like my wife tonight, the
room cold and dark but for the flickering light of the dying embers.
It was as if I could really see him now, standing there, taking off
his heavy coat and his hat, brushing off a little snow on this deep
winter night. He stood for a minute looking down at the bed and his
sleeping wife. Then suddenly he looked up and seemed to stare right
at me. I shook my head to lose the image: I had seen the police
mugshot, directly into the camera, so that was the look I imagined.
I went to bed and turned out the
light. The house, one of those late Victorian trophy houses, all
gothic details and grey clapboard, creaked and cracked as the night
temperatures fell. I fell asleep I think, because I seemed to see
him again, staring at me in the firelight.
Next morning was bright and clear.
[something about perfect relationship with wife]
That evening we had dinner with
Sam who explained the history of the courthouse, an imposing
classical edifice that had seen many a famous criminal sent down.
Tomorrow the building was closed to the public but he had offered to
take us round personally. It was an entertaining evening: Olga
enjoyed Sam's anecdotes and decided to come with me on the tour.
We got straight to bed, ready for
an early start. As I lay down, I felt decidedly chilly, even despite
the late spring sunshine earlier, and decided to fetch the extra
comforter in the closet. As I turned back into the room, I seemed to
imagine Ferzackerley entering the room with his wife, perhaps a
happier earlier occasion, I thought to myself. With these visions of
the past it was always vision only, but tonight instead of the
sketchy version of the mind's eye, the figures, while still black and
white seemed more solid, more real. He was taking her in his arms:
they seemed to be laughing wildly, whirling round and round in a mad
dance, then abruptly he checked them and threw his wife roughly on
the bed. Enough: my imagination was running away with me. I shook
my head and thought no more about it. I went to bed and switched off
the light. My wife's sleep seemed to be disturbed: she was breathing
fast and shallow and moving about in her bed. I opened my eyes and
looked over. I was shocked to be confronted by the vision of
Ferzackerley's face no more than a couple of feet from mine, as if he
was lying on top of Olga, looking straight at me, staring wildly. I
jumped up and the vision was gone. My heart was beating fast and I
decided I had lapsed into a dream, perhaps a little anxious about
tomorrow.
Early next day Sam took us around
the museum exhibits then into the courtroom, oak panelled and
surprisingly small. He pointed out the various features – the
judge's dais, the witness box, the jury bench, and the barred cage of
the dock, with its stairs down to below. 'To be honest, it gives me
the willies,' he said, 'every time I go down there. So if you don't
mind, here's the key. Take your time down there and come up to the
office when you're finished.' To be honest, I rather wanted to have
some quiet time there, to imagine what it would have been like for
the prisoner. I could imagine him standing there in the dock, with
the officers behind him ready with their truncheons in case of
trouble, hearing the dread words of the foreman as his fellows of the
jury looked on – serious and upstanding gentlemen aware of their
solemn duty – and then the awful sentence of the judge as the
lawyers and the gawping public looked on. I saw him pleading,
pointing at the jury then once again, strangely, seeming to stare
directly at us, shouting something. This imagination thing was
getting out of hand. I wondered how he felt as he descended the
steps into the darkness below, then was led to the small whitewashed
cell we found there, probably much smarter and cleaner than in his
time, but still grim and dark. We walked along the corridor to a
plain metal door at the end. It was heavy and creaky: it was
obviously rarely opened. Quite large, with some natural light from
arched barred windows high on the wall. To one side, a heavy
partition with a window, through which could be seen a brighter room,
with ancient electrical equipment, and a separate entrance to another
circulation route. This was where the witnesses would have stood,
with the executioner. In the middle of the electrical panel was a
big switch, the kind that Dr Frankenstein would have used to pulse
electricity into the dead body of his monster, to give it life. But
here it served the opposite purpose. And in this room accessed from
the cells, stood nothing but the horrific instrument of torture and
death. We both shivered a little. In fact, Olga was shaking and I
took her in my arms and comforted her. I could imagine the
moustachioed gentlemen watching as the guards dragged Ferzackerley
into the room and strapped him down. Was he terrified, was he calm?
There was nothing in the record about this, just the bare fact that
he was executed at such and such a time on such and such a day.
I imagined him there, scared,
looking nervously over to the window as the guards left and locked
the metal door, alone now. Seeing the men in the other room, looking
back grim. I could see it all. He seemed to be calling out. Then
the hand of the executioner moving almost in slow motion towards the
switch. Then it seemed all too real for me: I could see his actual
body there, as he turned and looked at me and he was mouthing –
something. What was it? It looked like 'You – you!'
I hurried Olga out and back up the
stairs and locked the door to the cellar behind us. 'What is it?' she
said. You look more scared than me! Like you've seen a ghost.'
'Just my imagination running away
with me again' I said.
'Such a sensitive creature' she
said. She laughed and kissed me on the cheek.
That night we went to bed early as
we had an early flight in the morning. I lay awake thinking about
what I had seen in the execution chamber. For a minute it had seemed
absolutely real. I really need to get more detachment, I thought.
My eyes were just drooping shut when I thought I saw a flash of
light, as if the door from the hall had opened. I sat up and looked
over. There was the form of Ferzackerley, just like the first night,
still wavering - but I realised that it was if he was seen in
firelight – otherwise he appeared to be completely solid. I
jumped out of the bed and stood at the far side of the room. He
seemd so real. He brushed off the snow and took off his hat and coat
again. Then he took a knife from the coat pocket, long bladed like a
butcher's knife – the knife that was in the police report – and
went to stand by the bed. Over the sleeping form. Was it my wife?
Was it an image of his wife? It was hard to tell. I saw the old
iron bedstead and the modern twin beds like a double exposure in my
head. Then he lifted the knife and slowly turned to me and once
again was looking directly into my eyes: into my soul.
Then he started to plunge the
knife rapidly down into the body, over and over. I wasn't thinking,
but just from instinct I rushed forward and tried to grab the knife,
but my hands seemed to go right through him. Then there was a
blinding flash. Suddenly the room was brightly lit and there was
blood, bright red blood, lots of it below me. It was Ferzackerley's
wife, stabbed over and over and I heard her last gasps as she
expired, and almost the echo of her screams from before. And I
looked down at my hand and it was bloody too, and in my hand was the
knife. And I looked around and there was the mahogany and the
brocade, the dowdy wallpaper of the old boarding house, just as I had
imagined it. And there was a sudden banging on the door, a crash, a
splintering of wood, and two men burst in and wrestled me to the
ground. And they dragged me away from the bed, wrenched the knife
from my hand.
'Ferzackerley, what have you
done?'
There was another flash. Suddenly
I was in the courtroom from this morning. The judge and the jury and
the counsel were all there, just as I had imagined them, but real
this time, in full colour and sound. They were all looking at me
sternly. Three people entered the floor of the court – strange,
insubstantial people I could barely see in the glare of the winter
morning. One of them was pointing around but making no sound. The
other two, a man and a woman, were laughing and smiling, taking no
notice of the courtroom proceedings. And the grim-faced jury stood.
And the judge said: 'Have you reached your verdict?' And one of them
said: 'Yes, your Honor. Guilty!' And there was some cheering and
clapping and the judge banged down his gavel and called for silence.
Then he sentenced me to death. 'No, no, I'm not Ferzackerley,' I
yell. 'Tell them!'
Another flash. I am sitting in the
dreary cell. Unpainted, dirty, dank, just as I had imagined it would
have been then. The man and woman appear again at the barred door
hatch. They look in. They are insubstantial, like ghosts. But I
recognise them.
Another flash. I am strapped into
the electric chair. The guards are just closing the door. The man
and woman are there in the room, black and white, flickering now,
fading. I look across to the side and there are the men behind the
glass; and there is the switch. I stare back at the couple. He
takes her in his arms, hugs her tight, tenderly.
It is Olga and me. Or is it me?
The man checks their dance, stopping facing me, staring into my eyes.
It looks like my face: but suddenly it breaks into a malevolent
grin. I realise now. 'You! You!' I cry. He grins wider, the
embodiment of evil. Suddenly he slams her body against the wall.
Olga's body. Out of the corner of my eye I see a movement behind the
glass. The hand moves towards the panel and starts to close the
switch.
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