The Bloody Blonde and the Marble Woman: gender and power in the case of Ruth Snyder.

In the wee hours of March 20, 1927, Ruth Snyder and her lover, Judd Gray, brutally murdered her husband, Albert Snyder, while her nine-year old daughter slept across the hall. The pair bludgeoned Albert with a sash weight, strangled him with picture wire, stuffed chloroform-soaked cloth in his nose, and then set about ransacking the house to make it look like a burglary. As a finishing touch, Judd tied up Ruth and left her in the hallway where she would claim she had been attacked by two "giant ltalians." (1) The cover-up was sloppy, however, and police suspected Ruth from the beginning. She confessed quickly, then recanted and laid the blame on Judd, who, when captured, admitted his role entirely, but accused Ruth of being the mastermind. The case immediately made front page news across the country--quiet, unsuspecting Albert, art editor at Motorboat magazine, had been slain in his own bed in a peaceful, New York City suburb, by his own wife and her lover, a corset salesman--the story was a gold mine for the press. Within a month, the trial was underway and the public watched breathlessly as it raced from start to finish in just three weeks.

Over the protests of both defense attorneys, New York prosecuted Ruth and Judd together, forcing each to take the stand and viciously testify against the other. Thirty-two at the time of the murder, Ruth was accused of growing bored with Albert, fourteen years her senior, and attempting to kill him on several previous occasions. She had also tricked Albert into signing a double indemnity insurance policy on his own life shortly before the murder. The all-male jury debated only an hour and forty minutes before finding both Ruth and Judd guilty. All summer and fall, the reading public followed the pair as they appealed the verdict, lost, then desperately pleaded their case before Governor Al Smith. When he denied their appeal for clemency, Ruth and Judd died minutes apart in the electric chair at Sing Sing prison on January 12, 1928.

The Snyder-Gray case was extraordinarily well known, generating frenzied reporting in both the "legitimate" and tabloid press, and spawning popular literature, volumes of political rhetoric, and reams of government and court documents (often printed word for word in the papers). The normally reserved New York Times published a daily transcript of the trial and kept the story on page one, above the fold, for months on end. Fifteen hundred people packed the courtroom every day of the trial, while up to 2,000 people mobbed the streets outside; counterfeit tickets sold for $50 a piece; souvenir vendors hawked sash weight stick pins for ten cents; and stunt photographers vied for the best shots, one snapping what may have been the first aerial photo when he hired a plane to swoop down on Ruth from above. (2)

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The case was riveting drama, making Ruth and Judd overnight celebrities. The filmmaker D.W. Griffith sat through the trial, as did songwriter Irving Berlin, the producers of the then-in-process musical adaption of the Broadway hit play Chicago (about women murderers in prison), and authors such as James Cain (who based the classic film Double Indemnity on the case). (4) As Ruth's motorcade made its way from the county jail to Sing Sing, people hung from roofs and leapt from streetcars to get a better look and two city aldermen even joined the parade of cars, "accompanied by their wives and children, who seemed to enjoy the outing." (5) From the time of the murder in March 1927 through Ruth and Judd's electrocution in January 1928, the news coverage dwarfed nearly every other event--including Lindbergh's celebrated cross-Atlantic flight and the controversial execution of Sacco and Vanzetti.

An apt contemporary comparison would be the O.J. Simpson trial with its near-total saturation of the media, the elevation of bit players (including reporters) to celebrity status, and the almost universal struggle to find meaning in the case. Scholars looking at the Simpson trial decades from now are likely to conclude from the equally enormous discourse it generated, that the case resonated with people because, fundamentally, it was about race (as it intersected with class and gender) in America in the 1990s. So, too, can we look back at the Snyder case and glean from its discourse that, at its heart, it was about gender in America in the 1920s.

In fact, two complex, contradictory, gendered characterizations of Ruth emerged from the public discourse surrounding her case: in one, Ruth was a woman (a "Bloody Blonde"), but one who must die in the electric chair regardless of her sex. In the other characterization, Ruth was no longer a true woman at all. She was a "Marble Woman," lacking all proper feminine emotions, a sexual aggressor who overstepped gender boundaries. It was precisely here, in these complex renderings of Ruth as a woman and a non-woman, that society grappled with the meaning of gender. Was Ruth a modern woman, a young flapper, or a traditional housewife and mother? What were the consequences of modernity on the role of women in society? Would Victorian ideals of womanhood prevail? Was Ruth too emotional, not emotional enough? Too aggressive, too sexual? Abnormal?

Newspaper reporters, editorialists, letter writers and popular authors used the Ruth Snyder case to argue that women in the 1920s were threatening patriarchal centers of power, namely the family and state. The cultural narrative resulting from this public discourse justified Ruth's execution (and by extension all female execution) while appealing for a return to "traditional" gender roles. This "Execute Her" narrative functioned as both a release valve (providing a space to air fears and anxieties about class, race and, especially, gender), and as a cork (acting to constrain women's roles in society).

This paper extends the body of work on cultural narratives begun by historians by tracing the Execute Her narrative in popular discourse from the time of Ruth's arrest and trial in 1927 to her execution in 1928. (6) Using public discourse as primary evidence, this paper rests on the assumption that language itself is a crucial locus of gender and power. Historian Joan Scott has argued that gender, as a culturally produced, historical category, "is one of the recurrent references by which political power has been conceived, legitimized, and criticized." (7) To understand how hierarchies of gender have been constructed, Scott has urged historians to study "processes," to look for "multiple rather than single causes," and to explore "rhetoric or discourse rather than ideology or consciousness." (8)

As a work of discourse analysis, then, this paper seeks to do just that. By examining the debate surrounding Ruth's electrocution, and situating her case in historical context, it uncovers the political work of the Execute Her narrative as it served to prop up traditional gender and power hierarchies.

Spectacle and Sensationalism

While the execution of a woman in 1928 was unusual, Ruth was by no means the first woman put to death by the state of New York; in fact, she was not even the first woman to die in the electric chair. (9) Introduced in 1890, the electric chair promised to reform capital punishment with advanced American technology, providing the solution to what the New York Times called, "the barbarities, the inhumanities of hanging." (10) For many, the enormous spectacle of public hangings remained one such relic of barbarism: in 1819, for instance, ten-thousand people had reportedly gathered in New York City to watch Rose Butler hanged for arson. (11) In his classic Discipline and Punish, historian Michel Foucault suggests that this frenzied spectacle of public torture and execution diminished over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as states became more concerned with rehabilitating souls than punishing individuals through bodily pain. (12)

While the debate over "painless" execution continues even today, what the electric chair did succeed in doing was to remove state-sponsored executions from the scaffold, relocating them to the isolated, tightly controlled space of the death chamber. However, public spectacle was not entirely erased, but rather transferred to the events leading up to the electrocution: the public shifted much of its focus from the moment of death, to the arrest, trial and incarceration of the criminals. To participate in the spectacle then, the vast majority of the public relied on printed accounts of the trial and appeals process. With the concurrent rise of modern mass communications in the 1890s (including the birth of the modern tabloid press), the spectacle of execution and these preceding events found wide expression in public discourse. For instance, while the courtroom in the Snyder case was unusually large, seating at least 1,500 people, not everyone could witness the trial firsthand and only 20 or so individuals witnessed the actual executions. To fully participate in the spectacle of Ruth's trial and execution, the public relied on newspaper reports and other publications.

The tabloid press, in particular, played a significant role in the transmission of the Execute Her narrative. With the perfection of halftone technology (for printing photographs) at the turn of the century, followed by new presses that could churn out up to 50,000 papers an hour, the tabloids had become a booming business: by 1925 in New York City, the top two tabloid papers alone claimed 1,140,000 readers, and the New York Daily News was America's largest selling daily paper. (13) The tabloids raced to scoop each other, digging up minute "facts," sending investigative reporters to camp out on people's lawns, inventing stories to keep their readers interested, and publishing exhaustive interviews with every bit player and analysis of every last aspect of the case. The Daily News, founded in 1919, sealed its reputation as the "mother of all tabloids" when its reporter sneaked a camera into Ruth's execution and snapped a photo of her in the electric chair. It published the photo the next day (still the only known photograph of a woman being executed), setting off a firestorm of controversy that resulted in changes to the electrocution procedure itself. (14)

Although the tabloids appealed to a broader, working class audience than the conventional press, they did not necessarily contain material that would inspire class-consciousness. In fact, anthropologist Elizabeth Bird has pointed out that tabloids convey a quite conservative message, aimed at reinforcing the status quo. (16) In telling and re-telling stories such as the Ruth Snyder murder case, Bird suggests that tabloids reproduce cultural norms (such as gender roles), encouraging people to feel comfortable in their place in society: tabloid "narratives help people cope with daily existence and their position in the pecking order by telling tales that dramatize values that are essentially conservative." (17) In essence, tabloids are what media theorist Jim Grealy called a "site of symbolic order within which the subordinate class lives its subordination." (18) Both the conventional and tabloid press, then, while targeted to a broad spectrum of readers, offered a narrow interpretation of acceptable power relationships.

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For instance, the New York Daily News polled readers on their view of clemency for Ruth and Judd and ran a daily tally under a headline counting down their days left to live. Though the editors claimed, "This newspaper ... mirrored the thoughts of the people as a service, taking no sides and having no interest in the matter one way or another," reader's comments favoring the death penalty were always featured at the beginning of each article in large type. (19) While every vote count showed more men and women in favor of clemency, the paper generally printed only one pro-clemency letter in each article, tucked near the end. Similarly, the Daily Mirror called for the abolition of capital punishment in its editorial pages yet published article after vicious article attacking Ruth and Judd. (20) Hence, the discourse in the Snyder case repulsed any challenge to the dominant power hierarchies of class and gender. And New Yorkers consumed that printed discourse in vast quantities: afternoon papers alone were selling out five to eight editions every day and The New Yorker wryly observed, "at least 70,000 square miles of forest had to be cut down to make enough wood pulp for the use of the tabloids and legitimate press" to cover "such an orgy of killing as the world has never seen since the days of Nero and Catherine de Medici." (21) The day the Daily News printed the execution photo of Ruth, it sold an extra half million papers. (22)

That is not to imply that those who read about Ruth in the tabloids were "cultural dopes," passively accepting the narrative and its fundamentally conservative message. Consumers of mass culture (including newspapers) were both active and creative readers, able to find multiple meanings in a text, often choosing the one that worked best for them. (23) Indeed, the Execute Her narrative--as told through public discourse--resonated with a wide spectrum of readers and reflected a collective understanding of the Snyder case (if not complete agreement on its meaning).

Public discourse, of course, was not a unified entity: while all the newspapers seemed to agree that Ruth should die, the conventional press frequently attacked the tabloids for their sensational coverage of the case. The editor and publisher of The Evening Graphic wrote to the New York State Crime Commission suggesting that newspaper reports of the Snyder case be limited to five hundred words. The editors of the New York Law Journal agreed that sensationalism was a terrible problem, but complained that

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  Five hundred words, even less, if accompanied by lurid and suggestive
  pictures such as most of our newspapers are now printing are more than
  enough to do untold damage. Indeed, in 200 words a skillful writer
  abetted by a snappy photographer can do more harm than every decent
  element in the community combined can correct. (25)

Judd Gray's lawyer also complained that he had "never seen such treachery, trickery and hypocrisy" as practiced by the tabloids in pursuing interviews. Dr. Diekmann, President of Bethesda Hospital in Cincinnati, felt that only "the bare facts in a case of this kind ought to be stated," and in the wake of the death-scene photograph of Ruth, many politicians agreed. (26) The New York state assembly hoped to pass a law barring the press from the death chamber altogether so that the "only information regarding an execution would come in a statement from the Commissioner of Correction, to be released to the public and press right afterward." (27) This legislation would have fined anyone caught printing something other than the state-sanctioned report. The conventional press somewhat hypocritically endorsed these efforts to rein in the tabloids, even as they benefited from their own extensive coverage of the spectacle.

The struggle between the conventional press and the sensationalists mirrored government efforts to control or eliminate the spectacle of execution--particularly female execution--and thus retain power. With the spectacle now primarily contained within and transmitted through printed discourse, it stood to reason that the state (and by extension, its representatives and those in positions of power) maneuvered to control that discourse. That is not to suggest that the Execute Her narrative was a state sponsored conspiracy. Rather, the narrative, as broadly construed, popularly understood, and deeply inscribed in the public discourse, accomplished the political work of justifying female execution.

She's a Woman

  We will shoot you if you let that woman Snyder go free. She must be
  electrocuted. The public demands it. If she is not done away with,
  other women will do the same thing. She must be made an example of.
  We are watching out. (28)
  --"The Public" (anonymous letter to the Court of Appeals)

In the she's-a-woman characterization, writers paid lavish attention to Ruth's feminine appearance (the "Bloody Blonde"), her alluring sexuality, and her middle-class status, persistently painting her as a modern, young woman. In direct contrast, Ruth's defense attorney emphasized her role as a wife and mother. Just as society struggled with the ramifications of modernity and the proper role of women, the she's-a-woman characterization contained this essential contradiction as it sought to condemn Ruth as either a modern woman or a traditional housewife. While the motives for each of these portrayals was clearly different (seeking either to execute or to save her), the net result was a picture of Ruth as an "every-woman." She was a woman--any kind of woman--and therein lay the danger, since she demonstrated that any woman could be a vicious killer.

By the 1920s, many Americans feared that women were getting too independent, too free, losing their dependence on men and their commitment to their families. Women had won the right to vote with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, and some were even pushing for an equal rights amendment. These modern women were quite literally a threat to men, as the letter writer above warned the Judges of the Court of Appeals: "other women will do the same thing" as Ruth. Men could be murdered in their own beds if they did not make an example of her. Men were not alone in this fear: fifteen-hundred club women in New Jersey took a poll and wrote the New York Daily News in favor of Ruth's execution. (29) Mrs. Maude Gossett, an officer of the Flushing, Queens branch of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, wrote: "If Ruth Snyder isn't electrocuted, then ladies will order sashweights by the dozens and men will never be safe." (30)

The press consistently played on these fears, portraying Ruth as a typical, modern woman. The morning after the execution, Thomas Kilgallen, writing in the Ossining Citizen Sentinel, reported that Ruth's life had all the hallmarks of modernity; it had been "a life full of mystery, booze, illicit love, jazz, broken home, another man, conspiracy, greed,... brutality ... and utter disgrace." (32) Reporter Frank Dolan called her a "good-looking, smart, gin-drinking suburbanite." (33) Ruth herself claimed to be a typical, modern woman, though was careful to distance herself from the "wild" flapper image. When asked what kind of man her husband had been, Ruth admitted, "Why, he was just the opposite from what I am. I am young and I like to have a good time and go out to parties and dance. He liked to stick around the house." (34) Later she explained that these things made her a typical (and therefore, respectable) woman for her time: "My taste ran to dancing, bridge, shows and other social affairs that most women want. I wasn't the wild type at all." (35) At least some people agreed--the mostly upper-class women attending the trial gave Ruth their only "real murmur of sympathy .. when she said that only once in her married life had her husband taken her to the theatre." (36) These comments reveal the contested space within the very image of modern womanhood in the 1920s: was it "wild" to dance, play bridge and go to the theater? Could good housewives also attend parties, drink or smoke? What did flappers, modern women and traditional housewives have in common; where did their images converge and part?

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While these questions of proper womanhood and gender roles were being debated throughout the decade, tremendous conflict erupted over class and race issues. Following the Red Scare, the government ransacked the offices of the Socialist party and decimated the Industrial Workers of the World. Union membership fell and the unemployment rate remained above 5% for most of the decade, while a burgeoning consumer culture urged Americans to go into debt for modern appliances and conveniences. (37) At the same time, the United States adopted an isolationist and anti-immigrant stance. The 1924 National Origins Act drastically reduced immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe while banning immigration from Asia altogether. That same year, membership in the Ku Klux Klan peaked at 4 million members, leading to the second most intense period of lynchings in American history.

In 1925, the Scopes Monkey Trial pitted Darwin's theory of evolution (and, by extension, modernism) against some deeply held Christian beliefs (claiming to represent "traditional" American values). This same conflict over modernity came into sharp focus in the Snyder case, particularly as Ruth came to represent for many the dire outcomes of modernization. Yet America was becoming both increasingly modern and urban: for the first time in U.S. history most of the population lived in cities and their new suburbs (a source of the problem, some believed, in Ruth's case). The Snyder murder drew out and played upon these familiar anxieties and conflicts. For instance, prohibition, in effect since the Eighteenth Amendment passed in 1919, figured prominently in reports on the case. People perceived an enormous rise in crime (particularly as organized crime seized control of black markets under prohibition) and saw Ruth as symptomatic of a modern society out of control.

Perhaps nothing marked Ruth more as a modern woman than her appearance--an issue that absolutely dominated the press coverage. For instance, at her trial, the Daily News explained Ruth's sex appeal: "Mrs. Snyder is generously endowed with the quality which [columnist] Eleanor Glynn calls 'it.' ... The result was that ... all the men knew that Mrs. Snyder had on black stockings." (38) For the next nine months reporters spent an extraordinary amount of column space debating Ruth's physical attractiveness, writing with exquisite detail about her blue eyes, blonde hair, clothes and makeup. Readers became so familiar with her attire that reporters could write, "She wore her green, close-fitting hat," or, "the black jet beads were again around her neck," sure that the audience would know exactly which hat and precisely the necklace. (39) Her choice of specific stockings, hats, shoes, fur collars, coats, and even rouge and nail polish served as recognizable markers of her youth and middle-class status.

Every newspaper, including the New York Times, provided a head to toe analysis of Ruth's mourning attire: "She was smartly dressed in black. Mourning is becoming to her blond type.... Now and then she touched the hair which escaped from under her small black hat with fingertips which gleamed with a rosy lacquer." (40) Under a headline reading, "What Well Dressed Defendant Wears," the New York Daily News elaborated on Ruth's clothing, including "a coat which made her look frail and feminine and not too obviously a widow" while a "[d]raped black velvet turban ... set off her blonde curls and blue eyes." The paper concluded, "Besides its amazing becomingness and suitability, the costume suggested respectability and 'niceness.'" (41) Commenting on Ruth's wish to wear a black silk dress for her execution, one reporter wrote, "Ruth is resigned to die--but she wants to die like a lady!" (42) Her blonde hair, in particular, which had earned her the moniker "The Bloody Blonde" in the tabloid press, became a signifier of Ruth's class and modernity: here was the quintessential 1920s bottle-blonde striving to appear respectable and "lady-like."

Ruth, and no doubt her lawyers, carefully calculated the effect of her appearance on the jurors and courtroom. At one point, the papers reported that she "made a slight alteration in her dress," changing hat styles because "the turban, which was drawn down nearly to her eyes, making a straight line across her forehead, emphasized the rather hard lines of her face." (44) Ruth's efforts to capitalize on her feminine appearance paid off in some circles: one tabloid ran the headline, "Mrs. Snyder's Attire Wins All. Her Chic But Decorous Costume, With Hint of Mourning, Held a Masterpiece." (45) When she cried during the trial, reporters assured readers that "Mrs. Snyder did not weep enough to impair her appearance. She apparently was not rouged. Her complexion was clear and her face, which was very much drawn two weeks ago, had filled out." (46) While at Sing Sing, the Times reported that "Mrs. Snyder will not be allowed any hair tonics or hair dye, and prison officials believe that lack of these may cause her pronounced blonde hair to become somewhat darker in hue." (47) Prison officials hadn't decided whether they would allow Ruth to cut her bobbed hair, but later "Sing Sing authorities conceded ... to Mrs. Ruth Snyder the privilege of using face powder." (48) They also reportedly gave her a rubber ball for bouncing during exercise since Ruth complained she was getting fat. These passages underscored Ruth's image as a modern, young woman: one who dyes and bobs her hair, wears the latest fashions, uses makeup and worries about her weight.

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By contrast, Ruth's defense attorney, Dana Wallace, played heavily on jurors' sense of chivalry in painting his client as an old-fashioned housewife and a loving and caring mother. Wallace rested his case on an ages-old conception of gender differences that had traditionally exempted women from the "ultimate sentence." While some women's rights advocates in the 1920s insisted on women's complete legal equality, others were not ready to give up the special status afforded to women. Indeed, many suffragists had argued that women deserved access to the vote precisely because they were different from men: women, they hoped, would bring a civilizing influence to the electorate. Through the 1920s, many of these same activists pushed for protective labor legislation on the grounds of gender difference. In fact, this very debate--women as different and deserving of special rights and protections vs. women as equal and deserving of equal rights--formed a philosophical wedge that would split the women's movement through the better part of the twentieth century. (49)

State officials clearly worried that the jury would be swayed by chivalry in the Snyder case. One reporter observed that "the prosecution is under no misconception as to the strength of the prejudice against sending a woman to the electric chair, and is planning to make every effort to fight this prejudice." (50) District Attorney Newcombe pointedly questioned potential jurors, "You feel that both [men and women] are equal before the law; that one is as responsible as another?... That if a woman is as guilty as a man she is subject to the same laws and to the same punishment?" (51) Justice Scudder warned the jury not to allow sentimentality for women to prejudice their decision-making: "nor should you let the fact that one of the defendants is a man and the other is a woman affect your verdict in any way." (52) Even Governor Smith admitted in declining clemency, "The execution of this judgement on a woman is so distressing that I had hoped that the appeal to me for Executive clemency would disclose some fact which would justify my interference with the processes of the law." (53) In the end, however, the state fought to portray Ruth as a modern woman, with equal rights and responsibilities before the law.

In opposition to the image of Ruth as a modern woman, Wallace assured the jury that the adulterous couple did not frequent clubs with dancing, and dwelled at length on Ruth's mothering abilities:

  I will show you ... that she was not a gay butterfly, but that she
  loved her home, that she taught her little child her evening prayers,
  that she taught her child her little Sunday school hymns, and sent
  that child to Sunday School; that she made that child's little
  clothes, dolls and dressed them for her; that she made most of her own
  clothes. (54)

Here Wallace was particularly careful to point out Ruth's adherence to religious norms--teaching her daughter prayers and hymns, sending her to Sunday school--in direct contrast to accusations during the trial that she was an atheist. (55) A good woman, a good mother, embraced religion, and specifically, Christianity. Furthermore, Wallace painted Ruth as the ideal housewife:

  [S]he kept a seven-room house ... Oh, if you could only see it, with
  the curtains made by her own hand. The pretty lamps made by her own
  hand; draperies made by her own hand, and she was known as an
  excellent cook, and she did all the cooking for the family. She was
  immaculate and careful and successful as a wife. Her cellar she filled
  each year with row after row of preserves that are still there ....
  she is a real, loving wife, a good wife. (56)

Wallace knew that the jurors were middle-class men from suburban Queens who might be persuaded by such rhetoric of "the good wife."

But the court room was packed with mostly upper-class men and women. According to one reporter, "The spectators, in fact, formed a typical Broadway audience, sophisticated and cynical." (57) The New York Daily News snapped a photo of the wife of a Supreme Court Justice leaving the trial and explained, "The Snyder trial draws all manner of spectators, and a great many of those who succeed in getting into the courtroom are of a high social or political standing." (58) When Wallace explained that Ruth had stocked the basement shelves with her own preserves, the courtroom burst into laughter.

  Later there was another titter when Mrs. Snyder, with a slightly self
  righteous air, said she never smoked. The audience in the court room
  apparently was composed very largely of women who did, and there was a
  great deal of nudging and eyebrow lifting over Mrs. Snyder's implied
  attitude toward the habit. During the greater part of Mrs. Snyder's
  testimony the court room was rippling with suppressed laughter .... on
  every bench in the court room were two or three jesters whispering
  ironical comments. (59)

Yet even while these "Broadway" women rejected traditional notions of femininity, the image of the good wife and mother still carried emotional weight with many people. Robert Elliott, the state's executioner, admitted that while he waited to pull the switch on Ruth, "a feeling of repulsion swept over me. I was to send a woman, a mother, into eternity. The more I permitted my mind to dwell upon it, the more it cut deep into my heart." (60) Just as Wallace used the rhetoric of traditional womanhood to defend Ruth's life, the very definition of proper womanhood was being contested, as the modern women in the audience demonstrated with their smoking, drinking, and scorn for such old-fashioned activities as making preserves.

While society debated what constituted a proper woman, the Execute Her narrative made it clear that a woman could, and should, receive the death penalty. One man from New York City wrote to Elliott saying, "The electric chair is too good for her, and I am willing to do the job." (61) A woman from Kingston, New York also asked, "will you let me have first offer? I won't mind it one bit ... It is just what she should get ... I could execute Ruth Snyder with good heart and think I had done a good deed." (62) While throughout his Memoir of an Executioner Elliott professed his opposition to capital punishment, he admitted that his sympathy for Ruth as a "wife and mother" had been misplaced: he "realized that this woman had murdered; that the law demanded her life for the one she had so cruelly taken." (63) The she's-a-woman characterization insisted that even though Ruth was a woman, she must die for her crime.

She's not a Woman

  If Ruth Snyder is a woman, then, by God! You must find some other name
  for my mother, wife, or sister. (64)

As the tabloid columnist quoted here made clear, many people felt that Ruth was so evil, her sins so horrifying, that she could not possibly be a woman. Perhaps no one did more to portray Ruth as a non-woman than Judd Gray's attorney, Samuel Miller, who planned a novel defense for his client: Miller attempted to exonerate Judd of wrongdoing by claiming that he had been "dominated by a cold, heartless, calculating master mind and master will." (65) Judd never denied killing Albert; in fact, he provided a painfully detailed account of the murder. However, Judd hoped he would be spared the electric chair if the jury understood he was simply the "poor victim of a designing, malicious human serpent of a woman." (66) After hearing Judd's trial testimony, one reporter labeled Ruth a "fiend incarnate" and "a most unlovely creature." (67) In his summary to the jury, Miller called Ruth "that poisonous serpent with her glistening coils," "a wild beast in the jungle," and a "peculiar venomous species of humanity." (68) These phrases were seized upon by the press and later by popular authors writing about the case. In their repetition, Ruth became an animal--a "fiend," a "creature," a "serpent," a "wild beast"--that deserved execution.

Peggy Hopkins Joyce, writing for the New York Daily Mirror, elaborated on this theme, calling Ruth a "Swedish-Norwegian vampire." Explaining the "strange mingling" of Ruth's ethnic heritage, Joyce wrote: "Swedes are emotional and passionate. Norwegians are cold blooded and deliberate.... Her passion was for Gray; her cold-bloodedness for her husband." (69) Here Joyce named the two dominant, yet contradictory, threads in the she's-not-a-woman characterization: Ruth could not be a woman because she was too unfeeling ("cold blooded and deliberate") while at the same time, she showed too much feeling (she was "emotional and passionate"). Other writers used this same contradiction in describing Ruth: a phrenologist hired by the Daily Mirror said that her eyelids had "a compressed or flattened appearance," and her mouth was "as cold, hard, and unsympathetic as a crack in a dried lemon." And yet he concluded that Ruth had "the character of a shallow-brained pleasure-seeker, accustomed to unlimited self-indulgence, which at last ends in an orgy of murderous passion and lust." (70) Hence Ruth could be both the "Marble Woman" and a passionate vampire.

The "Marble Woman" theme appeared early in the trial as reporters commented on Ruth's lack of proper emotion. "Her calm and repose could not have been greater if it had been a bridge party rather than a murder trial in which her life was at stake," wrote one reporter for the New York Times. (71) The tabloids labeled her, "the Iron Widow, the Woman of Steel, or the Frigid Blonde." (72) Irene Kuhn, writing for the Daily Mirror, called her, "'Ruthless Ruth,' the Viking Ice Matron of Queens Village" and citing her lack of emotion during the trial, said, "She did not shriek out in sorrow, in pain, in anger, in horror, as a woman with some shred of femininity might have done." (73) Kuhn then gave this no-holds-barred assessment:

  Ruth Snyder has been called ice. She has been called marble. She has
  been likened to iron and steel. But these things are all clean. She is
  ice. But she is the ice of a filthy, garbage-choked stream. If she
  could be melted down she would be a crawling mass of poisonous things.
  (74)

Ruth even responded to her unseemly image, explaining, "I have heard that many people say that I appeared very cold and stern in the court. I might charm and weep continually if I wanted to just act, but I made up my mind to hold myself together and to keep from breaking down." (75) Whether the public believed her or not, the portrait of Ruth as a stone cold, unemotional killer eliminated most sympathy from those who might have been willing to give a proper woman the benefit of doubt.

Similarly, the portrayal of Ruth as a passionate vampire, displaying an inappropriate, aggressive sexuality, did her much damage. Daily News reporter and execution witness, Sidney Sutherland, wrote that the electric chair stole "the life from the form that once ... throbbed with ... passion that, uncontrolled and uncontrollable ... led her to her doom." (77) Judd Gray maintained that it was Ruth who dominated him and masterminded the murder scheme: "With some veiled threats and intensive lovemaking she reached the point where she got me in such a whirl that I didn't know where I was at." (78) Author John Kobler explained that Judd had a "blameless past" but "the desires kindled by Ruth's overpowering carnality derailed him." (79) Her passion was dangerous, as Judd's lawyer told Governor Smith: "the unquenchable fire within the body of Ruth Snyder so distorted her moral and psychiatric being that she should have been in an institution or in the hands of a doctor long ago." (80) The tabloids, in particular, emphasized Ruth's sexuality. For instance, they listed among the contents of her suitcase (which she kept at the Waldorf hotel for rendezvous there) both condoms and douches. They also cited as evidence of her insatiable lust--and her lack of mothering skills--how Ruth left little Lorraine in the hotel lobby as a legitimizing "cover" for the couple's wild lovemaking. Finally, the tabloids delighted in the rumor that Ruth and Judd had engaged in steamy passion for over an hour with a corpse in the next room. While neither Ruth nor Judd ever mentioned having sex after the murder, that story was so often repeated that it became like the truth.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Perhaps nothing did more to illustrate Ruth's removal from the category of a "proper woman" than the characterization of Judd Gray. Judd was the perfect foil to Ruth, his weakened masculinity succumbing to her domineering, unnatural sexuality. She became the aggressor, the pursuer, the sexual instigator while he was emasculated and "took strange, humble delight in embracing her ankles and performing for her menial services." (81) A headline in the Daily Mirror captured the problem succinctly: "Money and Sex MainCauses ... Woman Was Dominant." (82) As one reporter summarized Judd's version of events, "Mrs. Snyder was a powerful-minded and imperious woman who reduced the ... corset salesman to a state of mental slavery, transforming him in a few months from a man of good standing and good record to a cold-blooded assassin." (83) In his opening statement to the jury, Judd's defense lawyer explained:

  He was in the web; he was hemmed in the abyss; he was dominated; he
  was commanded; he was driven by this malicious character. He became
  inveigled and was drawn into this hopeless chasm, when reason was
  gone, when mind was gone, when manhood was gone, and when his mind was
  absolutely weakened by lust and by passion and by abnormal relations.
  (84)

Judd fell at the hands of Ruth, his "manhood" gone--the literal result of Ruth's unnatural, aggressive sexuality.

Just as this characterization of Ruth contained an inherent contradiction (she's unfeeling/she's too passionate), the characterization of Judd also presented contradictory evidence. The public struggled to understand how Judd could have fallen so far, so fast. One alienist's report found that he was "a 'mama's boy' of the weakling type." (86) Was Judd a weak man to start with, easily swayed by "whiskey, lust and sin," as Judd himself explained? (87) Or was he a strong man, a fine example of white manhood, demolished by an animal force out of his control? For the most part, the press portrayed Judd as an inferior, even feminine man. When forced to re-enact the murder scene in the courtroom, "Gray, his face twitching, shuffled his feet into a sort of golfing stance and lifted the sash weight awkwardly with both hands. He held it 'girl fashion,' the left hand over the right." (88) One member of the criminal underworld wrote to the Daily News suggesting that if Judd "had any manhood in his system" he would have taken the rap for the crime, exonerating his female accomplice, as was common practice "in the days when men were men." (89)

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

On the other hand, when Judd spoke in court for the first time, his masculinity surprised one reporter, who wrote:

  Considering that he had been portrayed as a feeble-willed nonentity,
  his voice was a surprise to the court, as it was strong and rather
  deep./His face ... did not bear any of the supposed signs of weakness.
  Instead of the fragile chin and jaw that are popularly connected with
  weakness, Gray has a prominent chin and a big jaw. An old-time
  professional phrenologist would have credited him with Napoleonic
  force of character on the testimony of his jaw. (90)

And his old friend, Haddon Gray (no relation), who had been tricked into providing an alibi for Judd, not only forgave him but credited him with bravery: "I remember one time when he played the last five minutes of a football game between two high school teams with his collarbone broken." This Judd Gray was no coward, "I hope he beats the chair. If he doesn't ... I am sure he will walk to the chair, not be carried. If he has to go, he will go like a man." (91) These contradictory characterizations of Judd--as a coward holding his weapon "girl fashion" and as a brave man with a "prominent chin and big jaw"--complicated the story of Ruth's domination over him. Yet, in the end, all seemed to agree that the salient fact was that she did dominate him.

If he was no man, Judd accused Ruth of lacking the virtues of a true woman: "He told her that he doubted whether any real lady would make a present of pajamas to a gentleman. He read her lectures on etiquette and morals." (92) Author Ione Quinby also questioned Ruth's essential nature as a woman by suggesting that she was not satisfied with motherhood: "But the baby alone was not enough to fill her need; she was not primarily a mother-woman, who feels that she has fulfilled her destiny in giving birth to a child." (93) Mrs. L. Gibbes, a nurse from Rahway, New Jersey, opined that Ruth "really does not deserve clemency. She had no love for her daughter ... She's a washout as a mother." (94) Micheline Keating, writing for the Daily Mirror, agreed: "'Flaming' Ruth placed a big black smudge on the word motherhood ... All good mothers in the Queens Courthouse ... shuddered with a natural horror" at Ruth's testimony. (95) A bad mother, lacking the virtues of a "lady," Ruth was not even a genuine woman.

Ruth's womanhood was further called into question by the burgeoning field of psychology and its focus on "abnormality." The work of Sigmund Freud was starting to make its way into common use and psychologists, or "alienists," were making frequent appearances as expert witnesses at criminal trials. (97) In seeking a new trial, Judd's lawyer "declared that Mrs. Snyder was an abnormal woman." (98) Ruth's own lawyer said as much in his appeal to Governor Smith for clemency:

   I have many reasons to believe that my client, Mrs. Snyder, is so
   diseased in the emotional centres of her consciousness ... that
   although she can comprehend the nature and consequences of her acts,
   her will is powerless to deter her from courses of conduct that have
   their roots in her emotional abnormalities. (99)

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Furthermore, Hazelton asserted, "Hers is an abnormal psychosis and ... [Ruth] is possessed of a queer mentality." (100) Just a few days after the crime, worried that Ruth and Judd would use an insanity defense, district attorney Newcombe announced, "Both defendants are normal and rational. The prosecution will have no alienists called to examine them unless the defense makes the first move in that direction." (101) In November of that year, as the appeals process wore on, New York State refused to let Ruth be examined by a well known alienist (who had testified for the defense in the infamous Leopold and Loeb child murder case). Dr. Kieb, the State Commissioner of Corrections and himself "an alienist for many years ... ridiculed the attempt of the lawyers to have Mrs. Snyder 'psycho-analyzed.'" Despite the public's focus on their sexual perversion, Kieb insisted that Ruth and Judd were normal: "They aren't troubled with erotomania, either." (102) Newcombe and Kieb realized that abnormality could equal insanity under the law and were not prepared to let the defendants off the hook.

Taken together, Ruth's abnormality, her domination of Judd, her aggressive sexuality, her Marble Woman image, and her portrayal as an evil, animal-like creature, drew a vivid picture of a non-woman and successfully justified her electrocution.

"Execute Her!"

  ... the law and the dignity of the State would be upheld through her
  execution.
  --Dr. Kieb, State Commissioner of Corrections (103)

As either a woman, or a non-woman, Ruth was condemned and electrocuted by a group of men under a legal system controlled entirely by men. To be sure, Judd suffered the same consequences for his part in the brutal murder and both he and Ruth were almost certainly guilty of its planning and execution. But the popular frenzy surrounding the case focused to near exclusion on Ruth, constructing a strong defense of the state's authority to exercise capital punishment, particularly against a woman. Both the conventional and tabloid press were most complimentary of the state's officials and their use of power, offering enormous recognition to the police, jurors, judge, warden, and governor. Under the headline, "A Model Murder Trial," the Times editorial board praised Justice Scudder. His actions, they said, were "intelligent," "singularly impressive" and "a refreshing example of what a Judge, in the wise exercise of his power, can do to expedite justice." Even if Ruth appealed her verdict, the editors felt the death sentence was "most wholesome and will endure." (104)

They were similarly impressed with Governor Smith when he declined clemency for Ruth and Judd, issuing a headline declaring "A Governor Does His Duty." (105) A week later, another editorial called "The End of the Show," celebrated the jury that had been "insensitive to slobber," the "impartial and competent" judge, and Governor Smith who "righteously refused to interfere" with the death sentence. "The law had its course," they asserted, and "the rational part of the population will feel a stern satisfaction in the knowledge that an imperative act of public justice has been done." (106) Charles Fiske, the Bishop of Central New York, heartily agreed and wrote, "On every side I hear a chorus of approval of your editorial ... I send you my own hearty thanks for saying so well what needed to be said." (107)

The Bishop, and apparently many in his congregation, believed that killing Ruth had been "an imperative act of public justice." Imperative--an absolute necessity--because Ruth's death protected traditional gender and power hierarchies. That is why the prosecuting attorney used the image of "the American home" in his closing argument to the jury: "Gentlemen, our whole great nation, all of our American institutions are builded [sic] and founded upon the sanctity of the American home." If Ruth did not receive the electric chair, he warned, "that foundation, that cornerstone of these American institutions, will totter and fall."

(108) In other words, the patriarchal institution of the traditional family--a crucial locus of power--was directly threatened by a woman, whether she was a young, attractive, modern woman, an industrious housewife and mother, or an evil serpent and passionate vampire.

Dr. Kieb, the State Commissioner of Corrections, felt even more was riding on Ruth's death and declared "that the law and the dignity of the State would be upheld through her execution." (109) The Times editorial board concurred, as it railed against the tabloid press and its elevation of Ruth to celebrity status: "Who cares a rap for poor, honest, faithful [Albert] Snyder? Who ... has any thought that the State and not the criminal needs to be protected?" (110) Here, both the husband and the State shared a similar fate, victims that needed protection from all women. Thus, even with Ruth dead, the Times continued to worry. Just two days after Ruth's execution, an editorial lamented that capital punishment did not protect society from women: "On husband-murderers it has had no chance of deterrent effect. It is forty-three years since one has been executed in New York. Husband killing has come to be a safe industry." (111) Of course, they offered no evidence that women were actually killing their husbands in large numbers, but since it had been 43 years since Roxalana Druse was hanged for chopping up her husband, the editors surmised that women must have been getting away with something. Indeed, their very next sentence makes it clear that it was the changing status of women in society that appeared so threatening: "Equal suffrage has put women in a new position. If they are equal with men before the law, they must pay the same penalties as men for transgressing it." (112) This, then, was what was at stake: not only the American family, but the "dignity of the State." To preserve both, the Execute Her narrative insisted that a woman must die in the electric chair.

With her lawyers fighting in the courts to the very end, Ruth lost her last hope when a federal judge refused to intervene in the case. On Thursday, January 12, 1928 at 11pm, two prison matrons escorted Ruth quickly into the death house and strapped her, sobbing, into the large wooden chair. Outside Sing Sing's main gates, over two hundred cars packed the streets and throngs of people gathered to participate--even remotely--in this final death scene. The nearby Ossining train station, converted to a news center with telephones and telegraph wires for the occasion, awaited the return of reporters. Inside the death chamber, those twenty newspapermen sat in church pews facing Ruth, the room lit harshly from above by glaring, naked light bulbs. They could hear the priest praying and Ruth crying, "Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing," as the executioner fitted the black leather mask over her face. It took just one shock of electricity lasting two minutes to kill Ruth Snyder and, at 11:04pm, the prison physician turned to the witnesses and formally declared, "I pronounce this woman dead." (113)

Thus, the heroes of the Execute Her narrative did their part to defend both the American family and the state from the threat--literal and figurative--of a woman, indeed, of all women. Ruth Snyder's electrocution helped preserve these traditional, patriarchal American institutions just as the execution narrative accomplished the political work of reinforcing gender and power hierarchies.

Epilogue

Since the state exercises its ultimate authority at the moment it takes the life of a citizen, perhaps it is not surprising that the Execute Her narrative has resurfaced each time a woman faces the death penalty, legitimizing and reaffirming contemporary gender and power arrangements. Foucault drew this connection explicitly: the spectacle of execution, he said, "is to be understood not only as a judicial, but also as a political ritual. It belongs ... to the ceremonies by which power is manifested." (114) Since the electrocution of the first woman in 1899, this ceremony of power has been reenacted in nineteen states (and by the federal government), with fifty women paying the ultimate penalty. New York alone put to death eight women in that time span, twice the number of any other state. As of July 2003, there were forty-nine women awaiting execution, or 1.39% of a population of 3,517 death row inmates in the United States. (115)

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

ENDNOTES

1. Sacco and Vanzetti, the Italian anarchists convicted of murder in 1921, were frequently in the news at this time facing the last of their appeals. The pair was electrocuted in August 1927 while Ruth and Judd were in the middle of their appeals process (coincidentally by the same executioner who would take their lives five months later).

2. John Kobler, The Trial of Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray: Edited with a History of the Case (Garden City, New York, 1938), p. 56.

3. Cover pages from the New York Daily Mirror, 1927-1928, reprinted in Leslie Margolin, Murderess! The Chilling True Story of the Most Infamous Woman Ever Electrocuted (New York, 1999).

4. Contemporary author Leslie Margolin has even argued that the Ruth Snyder trial inspired American film noir and that the genre still resonates with a set of culturally produced themes from the case. [Margolin, Murderess!].

5. "Death Cells House Slayers of Snyder," New York Times, May 17, 1927, p. 1.

6. See, for example, Regina Kunzel, "Pulp Fictions and Problem Girls: Reading and Rewriting Single Pregnancy in the Postwar United States," The American Historical Review (Dec. 1995) and Lisa Duggan, Sapphic Slashers: Sex, Violence and American Modernity (South Carolina, 2000).

7. Joan Wallach Scott, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis," in Feminism and History, edited by Joan Scott (Oxford, 1996), p. 173.

8. Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, (New York, 1999), p. 4.

9. New York electrocuted the first woman, Martha Place, in 1899 and has executed twice as many women over the past century than any other state. The last was Ethel Rosenberg, a federal prisoner convicted of treason and executed on June 19, 1953.

10. "Far Worse Than Hanging: Kemmler's Death Proves an Awful Spectacle," New York Times, August 7, 1890. For a discussion of the development of the electric chair see: Craig Brandon, The Electric Chair: An Unnatural American History (Jefferson, N.C., 1999).

11. "2 Dozen to See Execution, But Woman's Hanging Drew 10,000 Just Century Ago," New York Daily News, January 11, 1928.

12. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Alan Sheridan, translator (New York, 1995).

13. Peter C. Marzio, The Men and Machines of American Journalism: A Pictorial Essay from the Henry R. Luce Hall of News Reporting (Washington, D.C., 1973), p. 123.

14. After Ruth's electrocution, newspaper reporters covering executions at Sing Sing were handpicked by the warden and thoroughly searched, and the lighting in the death chamber was dimmed so that cameras could not pick up any images. These efforts represent the on-going struggle of the government (both state and federal) to tightly control information about executions.

15. New York Daily News, January 13, 1928.

16. Elizabeth Bird, For Enquiring Minds: A Cultural Study of Supermarket Tabloids (Knoxville, TN, 1992).

17. Bird, p. 207.

18. Jim Grealy, "Notes on Popular Culture," Screen Education 22:5-11, quoted in Bird, p. 209.

19. The paper's final count showed 12,659 votes for the electric chair and 14,948 votes for clemency; 57% of the women voting and 51% of the men favored clemency. ["'If' Vote Majority 2,299 For Ruth," New York Daily News, January 12, 1928.]

20. Editorial, "Ruth Snyder," New York Daily Mirror, January 9, 1928.

21. Quoted in Margolin, p. 291.

22. Bird, p. 21.

23. Cultural studies scholars have debated for the past twenty years over the extent to which readers are empowered by their own interpretations of a text, providing a source of potential resistance to oppression (whether that oppression is gender, class, racial, etc.) But, as Elizabeth Bird cautions, with "enthusiasm for the power of the audience, it is easy to invest too much in an empowerment that may be illusory." [Bird, p. 207.] In the end, she argues, most printed discourse contains a limited set of possible interpretations and most conventional and tabloid papers deliver a consistently conservative message that seeks to maintain the status quo.

24. New York Daily News, April 20, 1927.

25. The Evening Graphic and New York Law Journal quoted in "Gray is Examined by Four Alienists," New York Times, April 15, 1927, p. 10.

26. "Takes Dr. Straton to Task," New York Times, April 25, 1927, p. 12.

27. "Bars Press at Executions," New York Times, February 8, 1928, p. 17.

28. "Threat in Snyder Case," New York Times, June 2, 1927, p. 27.

29. "Nurses 'Thumbs Down' for Ruth," New York Daily News, January 9, 1928.

30. "Convict Votes Chair for Ruth," New York Daily News, January 7, 1928.

31. New York Daily News, reprinted in Margolin, Murderess!

32. Thomas L. Kilgallen, "Mrs. Snyder, Gray Go To Death With Prayers On Lips," Citizen Sentinel (Ossining, New York), January 13, 1928.

33. Frank Dolan, "Ruth Asks for Silken Shroud," New York Daily News, January 10, 1928.

34. "Art Editor is Slain in Bed; Wife Tied, Home Searched; Motive Mystifies Police," New York Times, March 21, 1927, p. 1.

35. "Slayers Indicted; Snyder Case Trial Sought for April 4," New York Times, March 24, 1927, p. 1.

36. "Widow on Stand Swears Gray Alone Killed Snyder as She Tried to Save Him," New York Times, April 30, 1927, p. 1.

37. For an excellent discussion of the unions and working people in this period, see Priscilla Murolo and A.B. Chitty, From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend (New York, 2001).

38. Grace Robinson, "Ruth's Eyes Halt Talesmen," New York Daily News, April 19, 1927.

39. "Orders Mrs. Snyder to Trial with Gray Despite Her Plea," New York Times, April 12, 1927; "Slayers of Snyder Hear Doom Unmoved; Put Hope in Appeals," New York Times, May 14, 1927, p. 1.

40. "Snyder was Tricked into Big Insurance, State Witness Says," New York Times, April 26, 1927, p. 1.

41. "Ruth's Eyes Halt Talesmen," New York Daily News, April 19, 1927.

42. Frank Dolan, "Ruth Asks Silken Shroud," New York Daily News, January 10, 1928.

43. New York Daily News, October 16, 1927 (left) and New York Daily Mirror, April 29, 1927 (right).

44. "7 on Snyder Jury; Full Box Today Ordered By Court," New York Times, April 22, 1927, p. 1.

45. As reported in "Snyder Trial Headlines," New York Times, April 19, 1927, p. 26.

46. "Widow on Stand Swears Gray Alone Killed Snyder as She Tried to Save Him," New York Times, April 30, 1927, p. 1.

47. "Grand Jury Refuses to Indict Haddon Gray; Find No Perjury in Efforts to Aid Slayer," New York Times, May 19, 1927, p. 29.

48. "Privilege for Mrs. Snyder," New York Times, May 22, 1927, p. 16.

49. Many fine histories have been written about this philosophical dilemma of the women's movement. For an excellent summary, see Sara Evans, Born for Liberty (New York, 1989) or Nancy F. Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven, CT, 1987).

50. "Not a Juror Picked for Snyder Trial Out of 50 Examined," New York Times, April 19, 1927, p. 1.

51. Ibid.

52. "Judge Warned Jury to Avoid Sympathy," New York Times, May 10, 1927, p. 1.

53. Frank Dolan, "The Application for Executive Clemency is Therefore Denied," New York Daily News, January 11, 1928.

54. "Widow on Stand Swears Gray Alone Killed Snyder as She Tried to Save Him," New York Times, April 30, 1927, p. 1.

55. Ironically, Ruth converted to Catholicism just after her trial in what many speculated was an effort to save herself, assuming Catholic Governor Al Smith would not condemn a fellow member of the faith. However, Smith was battling for votes in his losing 1928 presidential race against Herbert Hoover when he was forced to make his clemency decision in the case and wished to downplay his religion as much as possible. As Smith "confided some years later, Ruth's patent opportunism rendered it impossible for him to intervene without causing the familiar outcry against dark, papist influences at work in the land." [Kobler, p. 57.]

56. "Widow on Stand Swears Gray Alone Killed Snyder as She Tried to Save Him," New York Times, April 30, 1927, p. 1.

57. Ibid.

58. Photo caption, New York Daily News, May 7, 1927.

59. "Widow on Stand Swears Gray Alone Killed Snyder as She Tried to Save Him," New York Times, April 30, 1927, p. 1.

60. Elliott, p. 187.

61. Ibid., p. 185.

62. Ibid. This incident provides further evidence of the contested space around gender definitions in the 1920s. Just as this woman offered to pull the switch on Ruth, dozens of women wrote to Warden Lawes asking to be execution witnesses and the Daily News wished to send a female reporter to cover the event. Lawes refused to allow women in the death chamber, however, presumably because it would be inappropriate for a "real" woman to witness an execution.

63. Elliott, p. 187.

64. Unnamed tabloid columnist quoted in Margolin, p. 74.

65. "Widow on Stand Swears Gray Alone Killed Snyder as She Tried to Save Him," New York Times, April 30, 1927, p. 1.

66. Ibid.

67. "Gray Describes Murder; Spares no Detail of Crime; Insists Woman Led Him On," New York Times, May 5, 1927, p. 1.

68. "Judge Warned Jury to Avoid Sympathy," New York Times, May 10, 1927, p. 1; Kobler, p. 349.

69. Peggy Hopkins Joyce, New York Daily Mirror, quoted in Kobler, pgs. 54-55.

70. New York Daily Mirror, quoted in Margolin, p. 74. Emphasis added.

71. "Not a Juror Picked for Snyder Trial Out of 50 Examined," New York Times, April 19, 1927, p. 1.

72. "Ruth, Steel Nerve Gone, Cringing Fury in Cell," New York Daily News, January 7, 1928.

73. Irene Kuhn, "Ruth Meets Cross-Quiz, Cold, Hard, Glib," New York Daily Mirror, May 3, 1927; Irene Kuhn, "Judd's Story Electrifies Court," New York Daily Mirror, May 5, 1927.

74. Irene Kuhn, "Judd's Story Electrifies Court," New York Daily Mirror, May 5, 1927.

75. "Mrs. Snyder Faces Long Ordeal Today," New York Times, May 2, 1927, p. 1.

76. New York Daily News, March 24, 1927.

77. Sidney Sutherland, "Ruth and Judd Die in Chair, Asking Forgiveness for Sin," New York Daily News, January 13, 1928. Emphasis added.

78. "Snyder Jury Hears Gray's Confession Accusing Woman," New York Times, April 28, 1927, p. 1.

79. Kobler, p. 29.

80. "Governor Smith Indicates He Will Deny Pleas of Snyder Slayers," New York Times, January 6, 1928, p. 1.

81. Kobler, p. 17.

82. "Money and Sex Main Causes in Snyder Murder/Woman Was Dominant," New York Daily Mirror, January 13, 1928.

83. "Poison a Mystery in the Snyder Case," New York Times, March 29, 1927, p. 23.

84. Margolin, p. 137. Emphasis added.

85. New York Daily News, reprinted in Margolin, Murderess!

86. "Two Will Accuse Each Other on Stand," New York Daily News, April 18, 1927.

87. "Slayers of Snyder Hear Doom Unmoved; Put Hope in Appeals," New York Times, May 14, 1927, p. 1.

88. "Gray Denies Wish to Kill; Insists Woman Dominated; Jury May Get Case Today," New York Times, May 6, 1927, p. 1.

89. "See Murder Bred if Ruth's Spared," New York Daily News, January 11, 1928.

90. "Gray Swears Mrs. Snyder Broached Murder Plot; Her Story Wavers at End," New York Times, May 4, 1927, p. 1.

91. "Child to Testify After Mrs. Snyder Faces State's Fire," New York Times, May 1, 1927, p. 1.

92. "Gray Describes Murder; Spares no Detail of Crime; Insists Woman Led Him On," New York Times, May 5, 1927, p. 1.

93. Ione Quinby, Murder for Love (New York, 1931), p. 20.

94. "Nurses 'Thumbs Down' for Ruth," New York Daily News, January 9, 1928.

95. Micheline Keating, "1,000 Site Unmoved by Ruth's Agony in the Shadow of Death," New York Daily News, May 3, 1927.

96. New York Daily News, reprinted in Margolin, Murderess!

97. For example, writing just a few years after the Snyder case, John Kobler comfortably adopts classic Freudian psychology to explain Judd's behavior: "Examined under the Freudian microscope, weak, timid little Judd Gray presents a magnificent clinical study of the Oedipus complex." Kobler, p. 13.

98. "New Snyder Trials Asked of High Court," New York Times, October 23, 1927, p. 31. Emphasis added.

99. "Asks 30-Day Stay for Mrs. Snyder," New York Times, January 4, 1928, p. 27.

100. Frank Dolan, "Smith Dashes Ruth's Hope," New York Daily News, January 6, 1928.

101. "Poisoned Whiskey in Snyder Home Bares Early Plot," New York Times, March 25, 1927, p. 1.

102. "Won't Let Alienist See Mrs. Snyder," New York Times, November 30, 1927, p. 27.

103. "Kieb Calls Penalty Just," New York Times, January 13, 1928. Emphasis added.

104. "A Model Murder Trial," New York Times, May 11, 1927, p. 24.

105. "A Governor Does His Duty," New York Times, January 7, 1928, p. 16.

106. "The End of the Show," New York Times, January 14, 1928, p. 16.

107. "Commenting on Editorial," New York Times, January 19, 1928, p. 22.

108. "Judge Warned Jury to Avoid Sympathy," New York Times, May 10, 1927, p. 1.

109. "Kieb Calls Penalty Just," New York Times, January 13, 1928. Emphasis added.

110. "The End of the Show," New York Times, January 14, 1928, p. 16.

111. Ibid.

112. Ibid.

113. Sidney Sutherland, "Ruth and Judd Die in Chair, Asking Forgiveness for Sin," New York Daily News, January 13, 1928.

114. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 47.

115. Statistics compiled by Death Penalty Information Center and published on <http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org>, n.d. (October 2003). Sources include Deathrow USA, published by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.

116. Sing Sing death chamber, courtesy of the Ossining Historical Society.

By Jessie Ramey

Carnegie Mellon University

Department of History

Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890