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Through The Eyes Of A Serial Killer |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Sunday, 26 December 2004 |
Mad Dog' Taborsky The Last Man Executed By Connecticut
By KENTON ROBINSON
12/26/2004
Somebody somewhere could be looking at the world today through Joseph Taborsky's eyes.
Before he was strapped into the electric chair, one of the last acts of the last man put to death by the state of Connecticut was to will his eyes to the eye bank.
It was an uncharacteristic act of charity by a man so ruthless that newspapers had christened him and his partner “The Mad Dog Killers.â€
In the winter of 1957, Joseph “Chin†Taborsky and Arthur “Meatball†Culombe, a man with the mind of a child, wound up a string of armed robberies that terrorized the state.
They left five men and one woman dead — most shot execution style in the back of the head — and another dozen beaten unconscious, some so brutally pistol-whipped their faces were unrecognizable.
During his trial, Taborsky would laugh as gruesome evidence was introduced in court, and he would give spectators the willies by pointing his finger at them and mouthing the word “Bang!â€
So it was that on the night of May 17, 1960, when Taborsky was due to die, only a handful of protestors stood outside the state prison in Wethersfield.
For the most part, the people of Connecticut wanted Joseph Taborsky dead.
“They wanted violence, whether it be hanging or shooting or the electric chair,†says Gerald Demeusy, 87, one of the last surviving witnesses of Taborsky's execution.
Demeusy, the crime reporter for The Hartford Courant, had been as close to Taborsky as anyone ever got. He had been Taborsky's ghostwriter, producing the killer's memoirs for Inside Detective magazine after he was released from death row for a previous murder. He was released when Albert, his younger brother, the only witness who could finger him for the crime, was diagnosed as “incurably insane.â€
In his retirement, Demeusy has authored the whole story of Taborsky's life of crime. His book is titled “Ten Weeks of Terror: A Chronicle of the Making of a Killer.â€
If Taborsky's eyes are alive today inside somebody's head, they are looking upon a state grown queasy at the prospect of putting another murderer to death, even as it counts down the days to the Jan. 26 execution of serial killer Michael Bruce Ross.
This time opponents of the execution are vocal and numerous, and the state public defender's office is fighting vigorously to stop it.
If Ross is executed as scheduled, it will be by lethal injection, a supposedly painless clinical procedure akin to putting down a domestic animal. Witnesses will watch through a pane of glass.
It will be nothing like it was in Taborsky's day, says Demeusy, who had the dubious honor of sitting through six executions.
There was nothing clinical about the death chamber then, he says. “It was a hanging chamber at one time, and it was in tough shape. The paint was flaking off the walls, and you still had the trappings of the gallows in there.â€
Reporters who were sent to cover it were seated no more than five feet from the electric chair with nothing between them and the victim but thin air.
The first time he covered an execution, Demeusy says, he was afraid an arc of electricity would jump across those five feet.
“I had a concern the goddamned thing would leap,†he says. “I thought, ‘Christ, what'd they put me so close to the chair for?'â€
He remembers thinking, “I can't watch this.†And for a moment he closed his eyes. But not for long. He quickly remembered that it was his job to write the story for the morning paper. He had to watch.
“The first one was tough. It was hard to believe that you just saw a life being taken. You know, the guy still alive, walking in, he sits down, the next thing you know he's dead minutes later. You don't really grasp it, you know? And it shook me up quite a bit,†Demeusy says.
The execution itself took mere minutes: Three 30-second jolts of 2,000 volts were poured into the victim's body.
But, Demeusy says, the whole thing was pretty gruesome.
“Any hair on the guy goes up in flames. I can't think of a case where we didn't have that. So if you want to say that he burned to death or you want to say flames engulfed him, it's true,†he says. “But that's the way it is with the electric chair. It touches off the hairs ... not on the head but on the legs and anywhere on the body.â€
The other unnerving thing about it was “these guys were going through these spasms like they were going to come back to life. Every time they would turn the rheostat wheel and give them another 30 seconds, the guy would come back to life. Then you have the fear that maybe they're not going to kill them.â€
That fear was not ill founded.
Demeusy's second execution was a twofer. As the first man's body was lifted from the chair, a second man, Robert Malm, a submariner who had raped and strangled an 11-year-old girl, was strapped in.
Malm, Demeusy says, was convicted on scant evidence, but did not choose to appeal, saying, “Killing me will kill the monster inside me that made me do what I did to that girl.â€
Three blasts of current later, Malm's heart was still beating. The doctor who was required to pronounce death said, “This man is still alive.â€
Meanwhile, the blue smoke reeking of burnt flesh and hair was descending, Demeusy says, and all the reporters were sinking lower and lower in their seats to avoid breathing it in.
“My concern was, ‘Jesus, what if he comes back to life?' We sat there and the doctor kept checking with his stethoscope for about two minutes ... and finally said, ‘This man is dead.'â€
The witnesses, Demeusy says, couldn't scramble out of there fast enough.
•••
Robert Murphy, then of The New Britain Herald, also witnessed an execution, though not that of Taborsky.
He was sent to watch the execution of Frank Wojculewicz, a paraplegic after he got a bullet through the spine in a gunbattle with police.
They had to modify the electric chair to accommodate him.
“The thing that got me was the power of the state to put a guy who was in a wheelchair or a gurney and wheel him in and reconstruct the electric chair so it looked like a Barcalounger, so he would fit in it,†Murphy says. “The thing about this guy is he couldn't do anything. That's what impressed me. That's what got me. The state can take a guy that is, and this is not the politically correct term, crippled and execute him.â€
The other thing Murphy vividly remembers: “The executioner looked like Elmer Fudd. He was bald-headed, slightly built, the last guy you would think was an executioner. The warden said he also did executions for Sing-Sing.â€
The most remarkable thing about Taborsky's execution, Demeusy says, is that Taborsky didn't stop it. Right up until the end, Demeusy thought that Taborsky, who had waived all appeals, would stop the whole thing at the last minute by saying he'd changed his mind.
That, Demeusy says, would be just the sort of thing that Taborksy would find funny.
Instead, Taborsky walked down the line of cells that made up death row saying goodbye to the other inmates.
He even shook hands with Culombe, who had dodged the chair by ratting out his partner.
“I later saw Culombe in prison, and he said, ‘Jeez, that was horrible, saying goodbye to Joe.' And as they were taking him out, he hollered out, ‘Joe, good luck to you tonight, no matter where you go!'â€
When Taborsky came to Benny Reid, a superstitious young man convicted of beating an old woman to death, Reid was shaking with fright.
“Benny said, ‘I'm going to say a prayer for you, Joe,' and he was crying,†Demeusy says. “And Joe told him, ‘Don't worry about it. I'll be back as a fly right after it's over.'â€
As Taborsky was being strapped into the chair, his eyes locked on Demeusy. He lifted his one free hand and said, “Hi.†He seemed to say something else, but Demeusy couldn't make out what it was.
He was strapped down, the metal helmet placed over his head — “It looked like a mixing bowl†— and the black mask draped over his face. The executioner pulled the switch. Taborsky's body thrashed in the chair, and his hair burst into flame.
Three jolts later, a guard tore open his shirt for the stethoscope. Taborsky's skin, Demeusy remembers, was blue.
At 10:36 p.m. Joseph Taborsky was dead.
Moments later, Benny Reid let out a scream.
There was a fly on his ceiling.
“He was hospitalized for three months for psychiatric care,†Demeusy says. “He went absolutely berserk.â€
And somebody somewhere got Joseph Taborsky's eyes.
http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=8C476D57-7485-445E-88F2-EB6ACF97C445 |
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