I could do a massive introduction to this article, just talking about the death penalty (don’t worry, I will save that for another article). It has been abolished in the UK since 1969 but remains a punishment in certain states in the US. Some people agree with capital punishment, and others don’t, but the thing with the death penalty is the finality of it all. There’s no release after 20 years as new evidence comes to light or as science develops. Dead is dead. Can officials be absolutely 100% sure that everyone sentenced is guilty? With that in mind, let me tell you about Joe Arridy.
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Henry & Mary Arridy were first cousins who had immigrated from Syria to Pueblo, Colorado, in 1909. They struggled to speak English, but that didn’t stop Henry from finding a job with the Colorado Fuel and Ironworks. This job also provided a small house for the couple. On the 29th of April 1915, a son, Joe, came along. Joe was a happy enough child but struggled with his development, which became all the more apparent when he attended his first year at school. After his first year, the principal told Henry that Joe was unteachable and couldn’t return due to his learning disability. Henry and Mary had no choice but to keep Joe at home. Both parents were busy with work and raising Joe’s brother and sister, so Joe was left to his own means. He would walk around the streets alone, but the neighbours didn’t like Joe; they were wary of him. I very much doubt this was because of something he had done but instead because of his learning disability and childlike nature. Henry started to struggle with Joe and his care and asked friends & neighbours for advice. Their ‘wonderful’ advice was to send him to Colorado State Home for Mental Defectives in Grand Junction. Henry approached the district court and had Joe committed to what was, basically, an asylum. Here, the staff tested his IQ, and it was just 46 - he had the same mental age as a six-year-old despite being ten years old (and his mental age would remain at 6 for the rest of his life). After nine months, Henry decided he missed his son and petitioned to have Joe released. Joe was released back into his parents' care and was, once again, left to his own devices.
Despite his age, it is essential to remember that Joe was basically a child. He was easily influenced and coerced, having the same innocent trust a child possesses. In September of 1929, a 14-year-old Joe was wandering the streets as usual, and a group of older boys cornered him. These older boys recognised Joe’s vulnerability and decided to take advantage; they forced Joe into committing various sexual acts on them. A police officer passed by, saw what was happening, and intervened. However, for some reason, the officer wrote a letter to the state home Joe had been in, stating that he should be returned for allowing these things to happen to him. Allowing. Some serious fucking victim blaming here. The letter stated that Joe allowed these older boys to ‘enter the dirty road with their penis’. I also can’t find out if the older boys were punished, which has annoyed me. Poor Joe ended up back in the Colorado State Home for Mental Defectives. He was put in a ward for sexual deviants, where staff members would watch for any sign of sexual behaviour, including masturbation. Joe never had a single incident of sexual activity reported on his file. Not one. Dr Benjamin Jefferson worked in the state home and commented that Joe was vulnerable and highly suggestible, even confessing to stealing cigarettes when staff knew he hadn’t.
On the 15th of August 1936, back in Pueblo, Riley and Peggy Drain left their two daughters at home to attend a benefit dance. When they returned a few hours later, they found the lights in the living room turned off. Riley ran to the bedroom where the girls should have been sleeping and found their bed, as a prosecutor later described it, ‘soaked with human gore’. Dorothy Drain was 15 years old and lay dead on the bed. Her sister, 12-year-old Barbara, was unconscious but still breathing. The coroner later determined that Dorothy had been raped and hit in the head with a weapon, like an axe. Barbara was hit in the head, possibly with the blunt end of the axe, and was sadly in a coma. It was similar to another murder that had taken place two weeks earlier in the same neighbourhood. 72-year-old Sally Crumpley had been murdered whilst in bed, and her friend who she was staying with, 58-year-old Lilly McMurtee, was seriously injured. Both victims had been hit in the head. A $ 1,000 reward was offered for information leading to the murderer.
Now, the home or asylum or whatever you want to call it, that Joe was in was next to active Union Pacific railroad tracks, and it was pretty standard for the patients in the home to escape via the trains that would pass by. A nice and secure place, obviously. In August 1936, Joe and some other patients jumped a train heading to Pueblo. He would hang around the train yards before jumping onto a different train. He remained in Cheyenne, Wyoming, for a few days after meeting Mr. and Mrs Gibson, who ran a kitchen car on the trains, and they allowed him to wash the dishes in exchange for food. It was while here that he was arrested for vagrancy on the 26th of August 1936. Not long after, Joe was transferred to County Sheriff Georgie Carroll, who decided that Joe was the suspect they sought in the Drain case. Carroll was a former newspaper publisher and loved the publicity of big cases. After only a few minutes of conversing with Joe, he realised he was learning disabled. Despite this, he continued to question him. Carroll told reporters that he had asked Joe if he liked girls and he had replied that he liked them fine. Carroll asked him, ‘If you like girls so well, why do you hurt them?’. Joe replied, ‘I didn’t mean to’. Now, we only have Carroll’s word that this is what was said. Joe was questioned for 8 hours over the next two days, and Carroll was adamant that Joe had given details of the murder and the Drain house. Interestingly, there seems to be no official documentation of Carroll interrogating Joe, so anything could have been said & done during this. The accounts Carroll later gave of these interrogations didn’t make any sense and he contradicted himself numerous times. Joe wasn’t even aware that Dorothy had been murdered with an axe until he was told. I also read that Joe wasn’t in the area when the murders happened and was still in the asylum when they occurred (he certainly was for Sally Crumpley’s murder).
Joe was from Pueblo, had escaped an asylum, and it was on his record that he was a sexual deviant – Sheriff Carroll was convinced he had found his murderer (after all, who needs evidence?). He rang Chief Arthur Grady and told him that he had a man who had admitted to the murders, saying ‘he’s either crazy or a mighty good actor’. This confused the Chief a little, though, as he was convinced HE had possession of the murderer and had done for the last six days. Frank Aguilar was a 35-year-old Mexican who had been employed by Dorothy Drain’s father and had also been fired by him. When they searched Aguilar’s apartment, they found what they firmly believed to be the murder weapon: a hatchet, a type of small axe that would match the injuries caused to Dorothy. Sheriff Carroll had a confession but no evidence, and the Chief had evidence but no confession. When Grady and Carroll met, they were accompanied by District Attorney French Taylor. Taylor showed Joe the hatchet that had been used in the murders, and Joe told him it belonged to someone named Frank. Now he was saying that he had committed the murders with someone named Frank, yet Carroll’s original account stated that Joe had murdered the young girls alone. Is it possible he could have been coached to say this? He was very amiable and eager to please people. Joe was taken to meet Aguiler and, upon seeing him, said, ‘That’s Frank’. Interestingly, Aguilar commented, ‘I never seen him before’.
However, Aguilar went on to change his story and said he and Joe had committed the murders together – although the ‘confession’ involved a lot of leading questions such as ‘then Joe assaulted the big girl, didn’t he?’. Later, Aguilar admitted that it was a lie and that he had been threatened into signing the confession that named Joe as a killer. Frank Aguilar finally confessed. He had wanted revenge for being fired, and he knew the Drains would be out that night and took advantage of the situation. He was brought to trial. Barbara, Dorothy’s surviving sister, testified. When asked if the man who had attacked her and her sister was in the room, she walked over to Aguiler and pointed at him. She wasn’t asked if he had an accomplice or if she recognised anyone else in the courtroom. He also confessed to the murder of Sally Crumpley. Aguiler was sentenced to death via the gas chamber.
Joe had been interviewed by three state psychiatrists, all of whom determined that Joe wasn’t capable of differentiating between right and wrong, so he had no criminal capability. He could be classed as an ‘imbecilic’, a medical term at the time. Every one of the psychiatrists testified in court. Joe was then asked 22 quite simple questions by prosecutor Ralph Neary. He was asked:
Neary: ‘Do you know what an oath is?’
Joe: ‘No’
Neary: ‘Can you write anything besides your name’.
Joe: ‘No’
Neary: ‘You want to do what you like to do, don’t you?’
Joe: ‘Yes’
Neary: ‘Do you like girls?’
Joe: ‘Pretty good’
He couldn’t tell you who the president was or even why he was in the courtroom. Despite this, the jury found Joe guilty of murder and rape. More disturbingly, they found him perfectly aware and capable of criminal intent. He was sentenced to death via the gas chamber. The papers reported that he showed no reaction – but how could he if he didn’t truly understand what had just happened? The $1000 award was given to Sheriff Carroll (what a surprise), and the media branded Joe a ‘weak-witted sex slayer’, a ‘perverted maniac’ and a ‘feeble-minded killer’.
Whilst on death row, Joe met Prison Warden Roy Best. Warden Best realised that Joe was, mentally, just a child and not the emotionless monster portrayed by the media. Joe spent a year and a half with Warden Best and was considered ‘the happiest man on Death Row’. He played like a child, using his metal plate as a mirror, pulling funny faces, and chatting to himself. Warden Best even bought him some children’s books, and he read & played with them until they fell apart. Joe’s favourite toy, though, was a toy train Warden Best had given him. He would spend hours running it around his cell and the Death Row hallway. Other prisoners were exceptionally patient with Joe, even pushing his train back if it went into their cell. Joe was so happy and unaware he told a reporter in December 1938, ‘I want to live here with Warden Best’.
On 5th January 1939, Best asked Joe what he wanted for his last meal; Joe wanted ice cream. The next day was his last. It started with a visit from his mother, aunt, cousin, and younger sister (his father had died nearly a year earlier). His mother cried, but Joe couldn’t understand why she was upset. He spent the rest of the day eating ice cream and playing with his toy train. When he finally walked down to the gas chamber, Joe passed his toy train to another inmate and told him he would soon be playing the harp in heaven. Like a young child, he had no real concept of death. Whilst in the gas chamber, he became worried and restless, saying to Best, ‘No, no, Joe won’t die’. Joe calmed down when Best took his hand and reassured him. He died on the 6th of January 1939. Warden Best wept when he passed away.
The next day, the daily news read,’23-year-old child dies’. One of the cruellest editorials about Joe was from the Denver Post: ‘He never could have been anywhere near a normal human. Alive, he was no good to himself and a constant menace and burden to society. The most merciful thing to do was put him out of his misery.'
The US Supreme Court has since ruled that it is unconstitutional to sentence a person who is mentally disabled to death. A non-profit group called Friends of Joe Arridy was started to bring more awareness to the case, even commissioning a tombstone for his grave in 2007. In 2011, Governor Bill Ritter gave Joe a full pardon and cleared his name – the first posthumous pardon in Colorado’s history. “Pardoning Arridy cannot undo this tragic event in Colorado history,” Ritter said. “It is in the interests of justice and simple decency, however, to restore his good name.” Joe’s tombstone now reads ‘pardoned on Jan 7, 2011. Here lies an innocent man. In loving memory.'
And that is the story of Joe Arridy. What do you think? Did Carroll coerce him into ‘confessing’ for glory and reward money? Could it have been a case of straight-up eugenics? Maybe you think Joe did have something to do with the murders? As always, please let me know what you think in the comments, thanks for reading, take care of yourselves and I will see you soon!
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