The Last Public Execution In The History Of United States Of America Was Held In Owensboro,Kentucky On August 14, 1936.

Rainey Bethea had been convicted of raping and then killing seventy-year-old Lischa Edwards, but the event had become nationally famous as rumors spread that the executioner might have been a woman, one Florence Thompson, who became sheriff of Davies County after the death of the father who held the position.

Arthur Hash, an ex-Louisville cop, offered to operate the trapdoor lever for her, and Florence accepted.

On the day of the execution, however, in front of a crowd of 20,000 people including journalists from all over America who had come to immortalize the moment, the man showed up drunk and at the decisive moment stood still before the eyes of the world.

A deputy pulled the lever in his place and Bethea fell to the ground from 3 meters high, breaking his neck; the embarrassing outcome of this event, added to the outcry received in the following months, contributed to the decision to stop public executions in the USA forever.

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