Murderpedia

 

 

Juan Ignacio Blanco  

 

  MALE murderers

index by country

index by name   A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

  FEMALE murderers

index by country

index by name   A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

 

 

 
   

Murderpedia has thousands of hours of work behind it. To keep creating new content, we kindly appreciate any donation you can give to help the Murderpedia project stay alive. We have many
plans and enthusiasm to keep expanding and making Murderpedia a better site, but we really
need your help for this. Thank you very much in advance.

   

 

 

Caryl Whittier CHESSMAN

 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 


A.K.A.: "Red Light Bandit"
 
Classification: Robber and rapist
Characteristics: The Bandit was known to approach victims in ‘Lovers Lane’ spots and flash a red light resembling that used by police in order to stop motorists
Number of victims: 0
Date of crimes: 1947
Date of arrest: January 1948
Date of birth: May 27, 1921
Victims profile: Men and women
Method of murder:
Location: Los Angeles County, California, USA
Status: Convicted on 17 counts of robbery, kidnapping and rape in July 1948, and condemned to death. Executed by asphyxiation-gas at San Quentin Prison on May 2, 1960
 
 
 
 
 
 

photo gallery

 
 
 
 
 
 
FBI - Part 01 FBI - Part 02
 

FBI - Part 03

FBI - Part 04

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Caryl Whittier Chessman (May 27, 1921 in St. Joseph, Michigan, – May 2, 1960 at San Quentin Prison) was a convicted robber and rapist who gained fame as a death row inmate in California. Chessman's case attracted world-wide attention, and as a result he became a cause célèbre for the movement to ban capital punishment.

Crime and Conviction

Chessman was a criminal with a long record who had spent most of his adult life behind bars. He had been paroled a short time from prison in California when he was arrested near Los Angeles and charged with being the notorious "Red Light Bandit." The "Bandit" would follow people in their cars to secluded areas and flash a red light that tricked them into thinking he was a police officer. When they opened their windows or exited the vehicle, he would rob and, in the case of several young women, rape them. In July, 1948, Chessman was convicted on seventeen counts of robbery, kidnapping and rape and condemned to death.

Part of the controversy surrounding the Chessman case stems from how the death penalty was applied. At the time, under California's version of the "Little Lindbergh Law", any crime that involved kidnapping with bodily harm could be considered a capital offense. Two of the counts against Chessman alleged that he dragged a woman a short distance from her car before raping her. Despite the short distance the woman was moved, the court considered it sufficient to qualify as kidnapping, thus making Chessman eligible for the death penalty.

Legal Appeals

Acting as his own attorney, Chessman vigorously asserted his innocence from the outset, arguing throughout the trial and the appeals process that he was alternately the victim of mistaken identity, or a much larger conspiracy seeking to frame him for a crime he did not commit. He claimed at other times to know who the real culprit was, but refused to name him. He further alleged that statements he made during his initial police interrogation implicating him in the Red Light Bandit crimes were coerced through torture.

Over the course of the twelve years he spent on death row, Chessman filed dozens of appeals and managed to successfully avoid eight execution deadlines, often by mere hours. He appealed his conviction primarily on the grounds that the original trial was improperly conducted and that subsequent appeals were seriously hampered by incomplete and incorrect transcripts of the original trial proceedings. The appeals were successful and the U.S. Supreme Court finally ordered the State of California to either conduct a full review of the transcripts or release Chessman. The review concluded that the transcripts were substantially accurate and Chessman was scheduled to die in February, 1960.

The Chessman affair put then-governor of California, Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, an opponent of the death penalty, in a difficult situation. Brown initially did not intervene in the case, but then issued a last-minute, 60-day stay of execution on February 19, 1960, just hours before Chessman's scheduled execution. Brown claimed he issued to the stay out of concern that Chessman's execution could threaten the safety of President Dwight D. Eisenhower during a planned visit to South America, where the Chessman case had inflamed anti-American sentiment.

Literary Appeals

Chessman was an exceptionally charismatic and intelligent individual who eloquently argued his case in the court of public opinion through letters, essays and books. While on death row, he wrote four books. In Cell 2455, Death Row, he clearly implies he once killed a man, though he was never prosecuted or convicted for this.

Chessman's memoirs became bestsellers and ignited a world-wide movement to spare his life, while focusing attention on the politics of the death penalty in the United States at a time when most Western countries had already abandoned it, or were in the process of doing so. Brown's offices were flooded with appeals for clemency from noted authors and intellectuals from around the world, including Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury, Norman Mailer and Robert Frost.

In addition to giving him world-wide notoriety, the books earned Chessman hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties.

Execution

In 1954 or 1955, California repealed the Little Lindbergh Law and converted the death sentences of those who had been convicted under its statutes to terms of life in prison. Some of these inmates earned parole years later; Chessman, however, never had his sentence repealed. His sentence was upheld, and Brown refused to grant clemency.

Brown's stay of execution, along with Chessman's last appeals, ran out in April 1960 and Brown subsequently declined to grant Chessman executive clemency. Exhausting a last-minute attempt to file a writ of habeas corpus with the California Supreme Court, he finally went to the chamber on the morning of May 2, 1960.

As the lethal gas was rising up in the gas chamber, the phone in the execution room rang; the secretary from a U.S. district judge's office calling with a ninth stay of execution (she had misdialed the number on her first attempt). But because the hydrogen cyanide gas inside the chamber was already at a lethal concentration, opening the chamber's door would have been deadly for witnesses and prison officials. Chessman was pronounced dead just a few minutes later. A reporter made an arrangement with him in which he agreed to nod his head if the execution procedure was painful. Chessman vigorously nodded several times before the gas took effect.

Most people familiar with Chessman's case allege that, regardless of his actual guilt or innocence, Chessman's insistence on representing himself ultimately led to his execution.

Chessman in popular culture

  • Before becoming famous as a country music star, Merle Haggard served time with Chessman in San Quentin.

  • Chessman is mentioned on the Genesis album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.

  • On the album notes of I Ain't Marching Anymore, Phil Ochs references Chessman as part of the inspiration for his song Iron Lady.

  • The 1977 movie Kill Me If You Can, with Alan Alda, was based on Chessman's story.

  • In the song "Done Too Soon" written by Neil Diamond, Chessman is listed along with several other famous individuals.

Wikipedia.org

 
 

Caryl Chessman was once a household name and the standard bearer for anti-capital punishment campaigning. As a criminal condemned to die in the gas chamber he attracted the support of public figures and celebrities from all areas of American soicety.

Chessman was just 27 years old when he was arrested in Los Angeles on suspicion of being the notorious thief and sexual predator known as the ‘Red-Light Bandit’.

The Bandit was known to approach victims in ‘Lovers Lane’ spots and flash a red light resembling that used by police in order to stop motorists. He would then rob the vehicle’s occupants and sometimes abduct women and force them to perform sexual acts.

Although Chessman signed a confession, he later recanted, saying that it had resulted from police brutality.

The Crimes

It is still unclear as to whether the ‘Red-Light Bandit’ was a single person – many claim it was simply a useful moniker used to describe the acts of a number of criminals. Despite such speculation, Chessman was charged with the entire crime spree attributed to the Bandit.

In some cases the evidence strongly pointed to Chessman. Two women testified that he had robbed and sexually assaulted them by making them perform fellatio after they had persuaded him not to rape them.

In all, evidence pointed to his involvement in 17 cases, ranging from robbery to kidnapping. Unfortunately for Chessman the ‘Little Lindbergh’ law, which was passed in California in 1933 after the public outcry over the Lindbergh case, enforced severe penalties on kidnappers.

Chessman found himself facing a far more serious sentence when the prosecution successfully argued that he had ‘kidnapped’ his victims by moving them some distance from their cars. Any crime relating to the Lindberg law meant either life in prison or the death sentence.

The Trial

Chessman didn’t do himself any favours by representing himself in court. His demeanour was interpreted as arrogant and matters weren’t helped by the fact that the court stenographer died early on in the trial.

The transcription was now undertaken by a relative of the prosecutor, without Chessman's approval. That relative, a chronic alcoholic, made indiscriminate changes and couldn't even interpret his own handiwork in a court of law. But despite such judicial bungling even Chessman’s own defence lawyer George T. Davis thought the defendant difficult. However, Davis became fond of Chessman over the years and even though he believed him to be arrogant he also thought of him as a ‘decent and sensitive guy’.

"California was determined never to give him a retrial," said Davis years later. "Our only hope was to get the case into a federal court."

During the trial Chessman repeatedly refuted claims that he was the Red Light Bandit, but could not provide evidence corroborating his innocence.

Eventually the jury determined that one of the kidnapping counts included bodily harm of the victim. The jury did not recommend mercy, so the death sentence was automatically applied. Chessman was convicted as the ‘Red Light Bandit’ for the kidnap and rape of one Mary Alice Meza.

The Aftermath

During his twelve years on Death Row, Chessman became a cause celebre. His case won media exposure as he presented himself not only as an innocent man but also as one rehabilitated from his prior life of crime. His case attracted interest and support among leading criminologists, liberal intellectuals, and ordinary citizens, many of whom engaged in protests to halt Chessman's execution.

Among the many notables who supported Chessman’s fight against execution were former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, writers Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury, William Inge, Norman Mailer, Dwight MacDonald, Christopher Isherwood, Carey McWilliams and Evangelist preacher Billy Graham.

Wenzell Brown, Chairman of the American Writers Committee wrote:

“Chessman is guilty of other crimes, to wit, robbing bordellos and gambling dens operating in California. However, justice cannot be served by convicting a man of one crime because he committed another.”

Chessman’s own talent for writing convinced many that a prisoner, even one guilty of murder, could make a great contribution to society and its understanding of the criminal mind.

Cell 2455 Death Row (1954) Chessman’s first book was an autobiographical account of his own life in prison. By producing this work Chessman demonstrated to his supporters and critics that he was a talented intellectual and the kind of prisoner who exemplified the notion of the rehabilitative ideal.

Over the years more books followed such as Trial by Ordeal and The Kid Was A Killer. But it was in his last book The Face of Justice, completed in secret and just hours before his death, that he commented on why he was likely to go to the gas chamber. He wrote that to the authorities he represented:

"a justice-mocking, lawless legal Houdini and agent provocateur assigned by the Devil (or was it the Communists?) to foment mistrust of lawfully constituted Authority."

In Justice Chessman wrote about the conditions of the penal system of the time. The book was well received and revealed that he was a great thinker and writer. Actually writing the book in prison was an achievement in itself due to the fact that Chessman’s cell was constantly checked. In order to hide his daily prose he would transcribe his long drafts into shorthand and dispose of the original draft down the toilet. The shorthand pieces were then camouflaged with legal notions so that the wardens dismissed them.

All four of Chessman's books are now out of print, and the unpublished writings that were known to exist at the time of his death have never seen the light of day.

But at the time Chessman’s lawyer, George T. Davis, believed that the media exposure of the case had brought the issue of capital punishment to the forefront of American politics.

Despite Chessman’s protestations of his innocence, his own memoirs, somewhat ironically testified to his criminal personality. It was clear from a young age he seemed to be on a collision course with prison.

Davis himself, although declaring a fondness for Chessman, also admitted that his client was hard-headed and unyielding. Unfortunately for Chessman this attitude was often interpreted as arrogance and he was depicted by the media as a ‘monster’ or ‘psychopathic wild beast’.

If anything, Chessman was more likely to be an intelligent sociopath who had difficulty feeling empathy for others. Whatever the view of him, he had become an embarrassment to the authorities and for some, in an ultraconservative era, had undermined the judicial system.

Davis himself is not entirely sure why the authorities decided to carry out the death sentence after eight stays of execution over twelve years. He concedes that Chessman’s languishing on Death Row, gaining celebrity status and media exposure, was a source of embarrassment to the government.

"The state of California's attitude then is like President Bush's now," said the 94-year-old Davis forty-one years later. "That is, 'well, he got his trial, so let's carry out the sentence'. No-matter what. Expediency is all they were interested in."

Chessman had to deal with the psychological impact of preparing himself for death on eight separate occasions. He would take the ‘dead man’s walk’ to the gas chamber that was housed just below his cellblock. Then at the eleventh-hour a stay of execution would be approved and Chessman would take the elevator back up to his cell. It is difficult to think of many people being able to survive such a continuous ordeal without breaking down.

However, on May 2nd, 1960, time finally ran out for Chessman. At 10am, Chessman’s execution was given the go ahead. Davis had anticipated that the petition for leniency would be rejected and had arranged for a cab to take him to the US District Court by 9am. This was the cliff-hanger of all cliff-hangers for at precisely 10am the cyanide pellets were to be dropped into the gas chamber.

What followed was the kind of nail biting scene expected in a Hitchcock thriller as Davis had to rush over to the district court several blocks away and re-present his petition after the State Supreme Court had rejected it by 4 to 3.

With astute foresight, Davis had sent the 15 page document to the Judge the day before. Unfortunately the Judge had still not read it.

Standing in the courtroom, with one eye on the clock and the other watching him carefully leaf through the thick manuscript, the opportunity to save Chessman’s life was hanging on a thread. With only one minute before the cyanide pellets were to be dropped, the Judge finally agreed to a stay of execution.

All it needed was a direct call to the chamber phone to stop the execution. Whether it was a planned operation by the State or a genuine case of bad luck and bad timing, the secretary who was to make the call, misdialled.

By the time she got through to the warden, the pellets had been dropped and any attempt to open the chamber or stop the process may have endangered other people.

After twelve years maintaining his innocence on Death Row, Caryl Chessman was finally executed at San Quentin prison.

Richard Bevan
CrimeandInvestigation.co.uk

 

 

 
 
 
 
home last updates contact