British Hangmen
Thomas William Pierrepoint (1870–1954)
Period on Home Office List: 1906–1946
Thomas William Pierrepoint was the older brother of Henry Albert Pierrepoint, who was on the British list of hangmen from 1901 to 1910. Henry persuaded his brother to apply for the job, and even privately “taught him the ropes.” Thomas was accepted and worked as a hangman for 40 years before being removed from the official list in 1946 due to his age, as he was by then 76 years old.
Thomas assisted at 35 executions and carried out 203 civilian hangings in England and Wales (among which were three spies) and four in Scotland. Thomas was the official executioner for the Irish Republic after it gained independence from England in 1923 and carried out 28 executions at Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison between 1923 and 1944, plus four in Belfast.
He was appointed as executioner for the U.S. Military in Europe, being responsible for the hangings of 16 U.S. servicemen at Shepton Mallet Prison during World War II between March 1943 and August 1945, and one in Canisy, France, in August 1944. In at least four, possibly six, of the hangings at Shepton Mallet, Thomas was assisted by his nephew, Albert.
Tom Pierrepoint died on 10 February 1954 in Bradford.
Albert Pierrepoint (1905–1992)
Period on Home Office List: 1932–1956
Albert Pierrepoint was the son of Henry Pierrepoint. His first experience of the family “trade” was assisting his uncle Tom in the hanging of Patrick McDermott at Mountjoy Prison in Dublin on 29 December 1932. His first job as an assistant in England was again with his uncle, at the execution of Richard Hetherington at Liverpool’s Walton Prison on 20 June 1933. He took over as “No.1” when Thomas had to retire in 1946.
Albert Pierrepoint was by far the most prolific hangman of the 20th century, having been assistant or principal at the hangings of 433 people, including 16 women, in his 24 years of service in the U.K. and abroad. His tally of executions was greatly increased as a result of World War II, working at Hameln (Hamelin) Prison in the British-controlled sector of Germany between 1945 and 1949, where he carried out 201 executions.
These included 149 men and ten women convicted of war crimes, 40 for civilian crimes, plus two British soldiers convicted of murder. The most notable of these executions was the first batch which took place on 13 December 1945, when he hanged 11 members of staff from the Belsen Concentration Camp at Hameln, including Irma Grese, Elisabeth Volkenrath, and Johanna Bormann, plus eight men including Josef Kramer, the Commandant of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, dubbed by the press as “The Beast of Belsen.” A further two men were hanged that day for the Almelo murders of a British soldier and a Dutch civilian.
Albert was flown over to Germany for each series of executions and was given the privileges of a Lieutenant Colonel by the Army. He was assisted by Regimental Sergeant Major Richard O’Neil at all of these, plus Alexander Hurry, Sergeant James Hunter RCMP, and Edwin James Roper at some of the double hangings, where it was normal British practice to have two assistants.
Albert also carried out two hangings in Gibraltar on 11 January 1944 of two Spanish agents recruited by the German intelligence service. They were Luis Lopez Córdon Cuenca, who had planned to detonate bombs in the British naval dockyard there, and 19-year-old José Martin Munoz, who had started a serious fire there.
He was involved as principal or assistant in the execution of 14 men convicted of espionage, treachery, and treason during and immediately after World War II. These included John Amery, who was hanged at Wandsworth on 19 December 1945, and Nazi propagandist “Lord Haw-Haw,” real name William Joyce, at Wandsworth for treason on 3 January 1946. Theodore Schurch was the last person to be executed for treachery in Britain when Albert hanged him at Pentonville on 4 January 1946.
In 1956, Albert resigned over a dispute of fees. He died in a nursing home in Southport, Lancashire, on 10 July 1992 at the age of 87.
Stanley William Cross (1893–1942)
Assistant Executioner: 1932–1941
Cross was born in Fulham on 9 September 1893. After six years and 160 days of service with the Dorset Regiment, he was discharged in July 1915. He joined the Metropolitan Special Constabulary Reserve on 8 March 1926 and was still serving with this body when he applied for an assistant executioner’s job in 1932. At that time, he described himself as a Motor Driver (currently unemployed) and single.
He was accepted and took the training course at Pentonville, starting on 25 July 1932, together with Albert Pierrepoint. The October 1932 list of executioners featured their names already. On 23 November 1932 at Oxford, he saw his first execution as trainee observer. Officially, this function was called “second assistant,” but there was nothing to do except to stay on one’s feet and to keep one’s breakfast down.
He assisted on 16 occasions, of which four were doubles, mostly to Thomas W. Pierrepoint. His first execution, and the most memorable one of the four he performed as principal, was the hanging of Udham Singh at Pentonville on Wednesday 31 July 1940. Singh, a Sikh extremist, was condemned for the murder of Sir Michael O’Dwyer.
His execution report sheet shows a very curious entry: the length of drop as determined before the execution is given as 7 ft 1 in, but the length as measured after the hanging is 6 ft 6.5 in only. Very obviously, something was amiss with the drop length, and the prison doctor, Mr. Murdoch, firmly placed the blame at Cross’ doorstep: “He is not a suitable person on account of mental incapacity vide particulars of length of drop.”
The apparent muddle of the Singh execution did not prevent Cross from being employed for the double execution of Carl Heinrich Meier and José Waldberg, both sentenced under the Treachery Act, at Pentonville on 10 December 1940. However, Cross again struck the prison doctor as being of questionable mental capacity: “Not good at figures. I am of opinion he is not yet certain of working out drops.”
Still, Cross was given his fourth job at Pentonville when he was engaged to hang another spy, Charles Albert Van Der Kieboom, on 17 December 1940. Since the execution report is missing, it is open to conjecture whether the hanging was another debacle. Anyway, Cross was never again employed as number one executioner.
After assisting in yet another double spy hanging on 6 August 1941 at Wandsworth, his last job was assisting Thomas Pierrepoint at Winson Green Prison in Birmingham on 19 September 1941 with the execution of Eli Richards. Shortly after that, he died in spring 1942.
Herbert Morris (1888– )
Assistant Executioner: 1939–1951
After school, London-born Herbert Morris worked three years in a bookbinding and printing shop, then joined the Army and spent 13½ years in the Royal Artillery and the Military Mounted Police until discharged in July 1919. The next year, in March 1920, he joined the Prison Department of the Federated Malay States and stayed on for 17 years. During 15 years of that time, he was employed as executioner.
In April 1937, he was 49 years old (born 18 February 1888), married with four sons, 14, 11, 9, and 7 years of age. He decided to return to Britain “for family reasons.”
In May 1938, he sent in his application as executioner to the Prison Commission. When told that he would need to take a course of instruction at Pentonville Prison, he graciously replied that “Your offer of course of training is accepted. Though I am perfectly conversant with the scale of drops, weights, the system of measuring the rope…” He was accepted and, after his instruction, was present on 1 November 1938 at Wandsworth as a trainee observer when Thomas W. Pierrepoint, assisted by Stanley W. Cross, hanged one George Brain.
He may have dreamt of becoming a principal in England too, but he was restricted to a subordinate role. From 1939 to 1946, he assisted in 23 hangings, of which two were doubles. Among these were one spy and three U.S. soldiers. From July 1946 to January 1951, he does not appear on record.
On 4 January 1951 at Shrewsbury, instead of strapping the legs of the culprit as he should have done, he tried to “assist” Albert Pierrepoint with the rope. The prison governor reported this to the Prison Commission, and on 14 February 1951, a letter to Morris was penned telling him that it had been decided “not to call upon your services in future.”
Alexander Riley (1908– )
Assistant Executioner: 1940–1946
The 30-year-old Manchester scaffolder applied for employment as executioner on 23 June 1938. According to a newspaper article published in 2006, when National Archives files regarding his service were released, he wrote: “I am not afraid of anything. … I’m a British subject and all my parents think I’m quite capable of carrying out any duties.” Like many other applicants, he had a military background, having served in the Royal Navy for seven years.
After completing his course of instruction, he saw his first execution as a trainee observer on 8 February 1939 at Durham. In the following years, he assisted in at least 12, possibly 15, executions including three American soldiers, two persons convicted for treachery, two German prisoners of war, and one traitor.
There is no information as to why he disappeared from the record after 24 April 1946.
Henry (Harry) Kirk (1894–1967)
Assistant Executioner, 1941–1950
Harry Kirk was born on 23 December 1894 in Great Grimsby, Lincolnshire. After some time as a clerk and lunacy attendant, he joined the Port of London Police at age 20 and stayed for 25 years—without promotion—until being pensioned off around 1939.
He applied for a job as executioner’s assistant in August 1938. The governor at Brixton Prison, who interviewed him, suspected he might have a morbid interest in the job—one of his friends having been an executioner in Arabia. This first application fell flat because Kirk realized the job was not paid as well as he had thought and that he needed to complete 25 years with the police to receive his pension.
In August 1940, still living in Catford in south-east London, he renewed his application and was accepted. Sometime in the summer of 1942, he took over a village inn named The Black Horse at Elton in the historic county of Huntingdonshire (7 miles southeast of Peterborough). This two-storey 17th-century stone building with a slate-pitched roof and Georgian windows, just across the street from the church, was still in business as of 2016.
He worked as an assistant to Thomas and Albert Pierrepoint and Stephen Wade on at least 24, possibly 38, occasions. Two of these were double executions of men sentenced under the Treachery Act.
Kirk had a very short career as a hangman. When he executed Norman Goldthorpe at Norwich on 22 November 1950 for the murder of 66-year-old Emma Howe at Yarmouth, snorting sounds were heard coming from the prisoner. This was apparently due to the hood jamming in the eyelet of the noose. This was Kirk’s first and last hanging as principal.
Henry William Critchell (1901– )
Assistant Executioner, 1940–1948
Critchell’s application letter bore the date 11 July 1940. He described himself as a mortuary keeper with “experiences in my present occupation for the past 16 years… 39 years of age. British subject. Military service, 12 years regular service, enlisting as a Boy.”
Critchell’s father, having been blinded in the First World War (1917), was living at St. Dunstan’s, a charity for blind servicemen. Little Henry was educated and raised, as he wrote in his application, in Elder Rd. Schools (Poor Law), West Norwood. At age 13 years and 1 month—that would have been in November 1914—he enlisted as a boy in the Regular Army and attended Army School until age 18.
He served as a bandsman. During the latter years of his army service, he became a P.T. instructor. Upon transfer to the Army Reserve, he took a job as a male nurse in a mental hospital, followed by another as a “head male nurse over mental defectives.” After eighteen months as labour master at Edmonton (Work)House, he became a mortuary keeper shortly before Christmas 1936.
“All my life I’ve been taking on jobs other people didn’t like,” he wrote in 1949.
From this curriculum vitae, it is unclear how he counted his sixteen years’ experience in his “present occupation,” but it is evident that when speaking of “12 years regular service” in the military, he was counting the full years between enlistment and transfer to Reserve.
The Prison Commissioners accepted his application immediately, and after completing his training course, Critchell saw his first execution as trainee observer, together with Harry Kirk, on 31 October 1940 at Wandsworth.
After that, he was employed as assistant executioner on at least 22 (possibly 24) occasions—10 of them during the years 1942–43—of which four were doubles. He participated in the execution of four men sentenced under the Treachery Act and of traitor John Amery. He was mostly employed at Wandsworth and Pentonville Prisons, with only seven engagements elsewhere.
At the end of 1948 or beginning of 1949, he wrote to the Prison Commission that he was currently unable to accept engagements and remained silent when the Commission asked for what reason and for how long.
Two newspaper articles shed some light on his motives.
“1 OCT 1949,” reads the Prison Commission date stamp on a Daily Mail clipping. Headline: “Even a hangman has feelings.”
Harry Critchell is quoted as saying, regarding a condemned murderess, that he resented the “needless delay in the granting of a reprieve.” To reprieve women was almost certain, but they didn’t know, and the law, he said, kept them in unnecessary misery and suffering during the wait.
The other article dates from 1955. A few days after Ruth Ellis’ execution, he wrote in a letter to the Sunday Pictorial:
“Ruth Ellis had gone out of all misery and suffering. But what about those who had to watch? It is the living that suffered by this devilish, uncivilised practice. I write this in good faith. I have entered that pit and shamed myself many times. I am thoroughly ashamed. The harm it has done to me no doctor can remove. The memories and scenes of the Condemned Cell and the adjoining scaffold are forever embedded in my mind. No medicine can ever help me. I still suffer.”
Critchell seems to have pulled the brake when he noticed that his side job had harmed his soul.
Stephen Wade (1887–1956)
(Assistant) Executioner, 1940–1955
Born on 14 December 1887 in Droylsden, Manchester, Stephen Wade first applied to be an assistant executioner at age 21. He was turned down as too young and renewed his application every couple of years until finally accepted in 1940.
After working initially as a clerk, motors were the fulcrum of his professional life. He ran his own taxi or haulage business until moving to Doncaster in 1935, where he became a partner in a café and ran Wade’s Motor Coaches. Wade was now 52, a married man with two grown-up children: a 25-year-old daughter and a son two years younger.
The Prison Commissioners invited him to a training course from 26 to 31 August 1940 at Pentonville Prison, under the direction of Chief Engineer Pugh. There he met fellow trainees Harry B. Allen, Henry W. Critchell, and Harry Kirk.
His name was added to the list in October 1940, and on 26 November 1940, he saw his first execution as trainee observer at Bedford. His first job as assistant to Thomas W. Pierrepoint involved executing a man condemned for treachery: George J. Armstrong, hanged at Wandsworth on 9 July 1941.
His second job was assisting Albert Pierrepoint in the latter’s first senior assignment. His third brought him face-to-face with another enemy agent, Karel R. Richter, who fought his executioners and prison warders for 17 minutes before he could be hanged. Besides Armstrong and Richter, Wade was involved in the hanging of four more enemy agents.
In total, he assisted on 34 occasions, three of them doubles. On 6 October 1945, five German prisoners of war were hanged in five single executions for the murder of a fellow prisoner. Albert Pierrepoint was assisted by Stephen Wade and Harry B. Allen, though it’s unclear in how many hangings either assistant participated that day.
In March 1946, Wade was employed as senior executioner for the first time. In April, he was fined £10 plus costs for obtaining groundnut oil without permission—stolen oil at that. (These were food rationing times, and the Black Market bloomed.) The event did not end his career, however.
Until 1955, he hanged 29 men in 27 single hangings and one double. While most executioners stopped receiving assistant assignments once promoted to chief, Wade continued as Albert Pierrepoint’s regular assistant in Scotland. Pierrepoint held him in high esteem and told the 1949–1953 Royal Commission on Capital Punishment: “a good, reliable man.”
Wade was a quiet, restrained man of few words. In October 1955, he was removed from the list of executioners because his eyesight was failing and the Prison Commissioners did not want to take a risk.
He died of stomach cancer on 22 December 1956, aged 69.
Richard Anthony O’Neill
Assistant Executioner at Hameln, 1945–1949
Shortly before the first executions at Hameln took place, a document dated “Dec 45” mentions him as “C.S.M. O’Neil” and says he was to be “made available by 609 ‘P’ Det for the period of the ‘Belsen’ executions.”
Albert Pierrepoint remembered him as “Regimental Sergeant Major in the Control Commission for Germany” and noted he spoke fluent German. Since he had not participated in an execution before, Pierrepoint “was rather startled at being given a novice” but soon found he “could not have hoped for a better man.”
On 13 December 1945, Pierrepoint and O’Neill hanged three females in single executions, followed by ten men in five doubles. On 8 March 1947, they hanged eight more war criminals, followed by ten on 15 May and seven on 16 May 1946.
Contrary to British prison practice at the time, they performed double executions with just one assistant present.
RSM O’Neill assisted Pierrepoint, according to the latter’s memoirs, “at about two hundred executions” in Germany—which must mean in every execution performed at Hameln. Other men mentioned as assisting at Hameln appear to have been supplementary.
The New Year’s Honours list published in a Supplement to the London Gazette, 29 December 1953, states that the British Empire Medal (Civil Division) was awarded to “Richard Anthony O’Neill, Deputy Chief Warder, Allied Nationals Prison, Werl, British Zone of Germany.”
It seems O’Neill continued working in a German prison after Hameln was closed, though it is unclear whether he held the position at Werl as a soldier or civilian, or whether he had been a prison officer before he enlisted.
Alexander Hurry
Assistant Executioner at Hameln (1946–1947)
If it weren’t for a payslip, we would not know that this man assisted Albert Pierrepoint at Hameln. In the National Archives folder FO 1060/243, there is a “Claim for Assistant Executioner’s Allowance” by one Alexander Hurry, dated 18 June, 1949. Hurry (of whom we know nothing but his name) claimed, at £2 apiece, remuneration for his services on 8 and 11 October 1946, and on 7 March 1947 — £58 in total.
It is unknown why he waited for more than three years before demanding to be paid.
James Hunter
Assistant Executioner at Hameln (1947)
No biographical data are known of this man who worked with Albert Pierrepoint and RSM O’Neill on 22 and 23 January 1947 — except that he was a sergeant in the Corps of Royal Military Police, and obviously a courageous man.
On 31 March 1945 (then still a Lance Corporal), he was on post at a road junction near Süchteln, Germany, when a German mine exploded in a nearby field, killing one Sapper and wounding a Royal Engineer Sergeant. Hunter ran towards the man crying for help — although he knew the field was mined — made sure the Sapper was dead, and dragged the Sergeant to safety; the man survived. It was afterwards found that there were two more mines within three yards of the site of the exploded mine. Hunter was awarded the British Empire Medal for his gallantry.
It is a riddle why he assisted at Hameln at all. Normally, a second assistant would be needed only in double executions. Hunter, however, was first brought in as second assistant for the single execution of Driver Francis John Upson, a British soldier, for the murder of a German woman. Upson’s was the only execution on 22 January — and yet two assistants were present.
The next day, Pierrepoint, O’Neill, and Hunter hanged eleven German war criminals in five doubles and one single. After that, there is no further trace of James Hunter in European hangmen’s circles.
Edwin James Roper (1906 – )
Assistant (1935–1942) in Shanghai, Executioner (1946) in Hong Kong, Assistant (1947–1948[–49?]) in Hameln
Born 15 April 1906 in Flitwick, Bedfordshire, and raised in Rhondda Valley, Wales, Roper enlisted in 1922 in the Somerset Light Infantry, faking his age, and served with them until 1929. Some months after his discharge, he enlisted as a prison officer in the Shanghai Municipal Police and, after completing his training in the spring of 1930, was assigned to Shanghai Municipal Prison (average number of inmates: 8,000).
Out of what he himself called “morbid curiosity,” he watched 200–250 Chinese executions, of which 30 were by extremely slow strangulation, the rest by shooting.
In 1935, having been promoted to Principal Warder, he was asked by the Governor of the prison whether he’d like to assist in the execution of a British subject. The executioner whom Roper was to assist came from H.M. Prison, Hong Kong.
When Japan declared war on the USA (7 December 1941), Japanese troops occupied the prison but allowed the British to continue to run it until, two or three months later, they took over completely and interned the British — an experience which reduced Roper, over the next 3½ years, from 20 stone to 10.
After the end of the war, Shanghai and its prison came under the Chinese government, which meant Roper could not return to his previous post. However, he was offered the position of Chief Executioner at Hong Kong, where executions of condemned Japanese war criminals were due to begin. With “Revenge Is Sweet” in mind, Roper accepted, and performed a large number of executions between 1 April 1946 and shortly before Christmas.
He sailed for Europe in January 1947. That same year, British authorities, having informed him that his services as a hangman and prison officer would be invaluable in Germany, appointed him to the Control Commission for Germany, and he moved to Bielefeld with his wife.
On 5 September 1947, he assisted Albert Pierrepoint and Richard O’Neill (whom he failed to mention in his memoirs) for the first time at Hameln, hanging British Sergeant Charles E. Patrick for the murder of his A.T.S. girlfriend — followed by three Poles and ten German war criminals on the same day.
A payslip found in National Archive folder FO 1060/242 proves that he assisted on three more occasions (16, 5, and 10 executions). In his memoirs, he claims to have continued to participate in Hameln hangings after January 1948 until the last one on 6 December 1949, but there is no independent confirmation of this.
In April 1951, he returned to England. According to himself, his total tally of executions which he performed or participated in was “nearly 300.”
U.S. Hangmen
John Clarence Woods (1911–1950)
U.S. Army Executioner, 1944–1946
Woods was born on June 5, 1911, in Wichita, Kansas. He joined the U.S. Navy on December 3, 1929, and went AWOL (Absent Without Official Leave) within months. He was convicted at a general court-martial and subsequently examined by a psychiatric board on April 23, 1930. He was diagnosed with “Constitutional Psychopathic Inferiority without Psychosis,” was found “poor service material,” and discharged.
In 1933, after half a year with the Civilian Conservation Corps, he went AWOL again, refused to work, and was dishonourably discharged. Before being inducted into the U.S. Army in August 1943, Woods was intermittently employed in construction as a laborer. When registered for Selective Service in 1940, he was working part-time at a feed store in Eureka, Kansas. His military training began in September 1943. He may have participated in the landings on Omaha Beach with his unit.
Shortly after D-Day, a U.S. Army courts-martial in France sentenced soldiers to death for murder or for rape of French women. They found they did not have a hangman available. An enquiry among the troops found some volunteers, among them “John C. Woods, 37540591, Company B, 37th Engineer Combat Battalion, 5th Engineer Special Brigade.” When questioned about his antecedents, he said he had been “assistant hangman twice in the state of Texas and twice in the state of Oklahoma.”
The Judge Advocate recommended that this claim be checked, but there is no proof that it was done.
In October 1944, Woods was promoted from private to master sergeant and attached to the 2913th Disciplinary Training Center. He was a hangman now.
Careful investigation by French MacLean found that he hanged at least 34 soldiers (possibly two more) and assisted in the execution of five more in the European Theater of Operations.
On June 29, 1945, we find him in Germany for the first time. In a corner of the prison yard at Rheinbach, assisted by S/Sgt. Thomas F. Robinson, he hanged three Germans for the murder of an unidentified U.S. airman.
Newspaper articles from this time already report that he had been an executioner before the war, and that his total tally of executions, civilian and military, ran into hundreds. Obviously, Woods was already working on his legend.
The next execution in Germany that can be attributed to him with certainty was on November 10, 1945, at Bruchsal. Again, the gallows was erected in a prison yard, and again the convicts were German civilians who had beaten to death U.S. airmen who had at the time been prisoners of war. S/Sgt. Fred Guidry assisted Woods in executing these five men who were involved in the Rüsselsheim massacre of August 26, 1944.
Observations from Colleagues
Around this time, Herman J. Obermayer, later to become a well-known journalist and publisher, served as a clerk in the office of the Theater Provost Marshal. In this capacity, he got to know Woods. He was not favourably impressed:
“John Woods was a short, muscular sort of a man, and I would describe him as kind of the world’s flotsam. He talked the language of the hobos and flotsams and the people who do these kind of jobs. He was, I think, an honest craftsman who took pride in his job, and he thought it was a very good job…”
But on one occasion, Woods showed up a day or several days late and excused himself, saying he was delayed because he had to look for the right kind of rope. He shuffled into the general’s room, boots unpolished, and instead of being reprimanded, the general jumped up and exclaimed, “Glad to see you, Woods!” The Army gave Woods very special treatment indeed. Once, Obermayer even had to play the role of babysitter to ensure Woods didn’t get drunk and miss an execution.
Later Career and Execution Work
The Woods/Guidry team performed four more executions at Bruchsal in January 1946. In March, there were four more hangings at Bruchsal, probably also performed by Woods (assistant unknown).
In spring 1946, Woods sought a new assistant and found military policeman Private First Class Joseph Malta. Together, they hanged 14 men convicted at Dachau for concentration camp atrocities on May 28/29, 1946, at the U.S. War Criminal Prison No. 1, Landsberg/Lech.
The Army built two gallows and split the executions between Woods (with Malta) and German executioner Johann Reichhart. They returned to Landsberg for the hanging of Justus Gerstenberg on September 12, 1946.
Lt. Stanley Tilles, who was present at the Gerstenberg execution and later organized the Nuremberg hangings, reported a favourable impression of Woods:
“In the time that we worked together Woods was professional and knowledgeable… respectful, friendly and controlled when on duty.”
Woods was next assigned to hang the Nuremberg defendants. He and about five MP volunteers constructed three dismountable gallows, transported them to Nuremberg, performed the executions, dismantled the gallows, returned them to Landsberg, and destroyed them.
A celebration followed at the NCO club at Landsberg, where Woods caused a scene over liquor. Lieutenant Joseph H. Williams was called and put an end to it.
Woods appears not to have worked as an executioner after that. He returned to the U.S. in late 1946 and remained in the Army. On July 21, 1950, while working on a power line on Eniwetok Island, Woods was accidentally electrocuted. He is buried in Toronto, Kansas.
Vincent J. Martino (1924–2003)
U.S. Army Assistant Executioner, 1945–1946
A Bronx native, Martino enlisted on March 1, 1943. Described as a stock clerk with three years of high school education, he weighed 195 lbs and stood 5’6″.
According to execution records, Martino assisted Woods in the hanging of August Kobus on March 15, 1946, and had known Woods from at least six prior executions. It’s probable he also assisted with the Hadamar executions the day before.
Thomas F. Robinson (1920– )
U.S. Army Assistant Executioner, 1944–1945
Born in New York in 1920, Robinson enlisted in 1942 and volunteered as a hangman post-D-Day. Promoted to Technician Third Grade, he worked with Woods on at least eleven executions. He was present at the Rheinbach execution of three Germans on June 29, 1945, for killing a U.S. airman.
Robinson was discharged on November 9, 1945, in New York and likely returned to his trade as a baker.
Fred J. Guidry (1922– )
U.S. Army Assistant Executioner, November 1945 – January 1946
Very little is known about Guidry, except that he assisted in executions of men responsible for the Rüsselsheim massacre. He appears in films of the Bruchsal hangings in November 1945 and January 1946.
Joseph Malta later said that Woods was looking for a new assistant in early 1946, indicating that Guidry likely left Europe around that time.
Joseph Malta (1918–1999)
U.S. Army (Assistant) Executioner, 1946–1947
Malta, the son of Sicilian immigrants, was drafted in late 1945 and joined the MP in Germany. Bored with routine duty, he volunteered to assist Woods. He participated in the May 28/29, 1946 Landsberg executions and later hanged Justus Gerstenberg.
Malta and Woods built and used the Nuremberg gallows on October 16, 1946. After Woods returned to the U.S., Malta became chief hangman.
According to Lt. Williams, Malta became arrogant and exhibited sadistic behavior, even mocking prisoners. When he later demanded a sedan for travel and refused to come otherwise, Williams dismissed him from duty.
Malta claimed to have executed 60 Nazis across Germany but these claims appear exaggerated. He likely left Europe and the Army in 1947. Interviewers in the 1990s noted he still kept a miniature scaffold in his apartment.
Johann Baptist Reichhart (1893–1972)
German Executioner in U.S. Employ, 1945–1946
A hereditary executioner, Reichhart performed over 3,000 executions during his career. During Nazi rule, he used guillotine and later hanging (via strangulation) methods.
Post-war, he worked for the Americans at Landsberg, executing 14 of 28 condemned war criminals on May 28/29, 1946. His methods differed slightly from the Americans—he used handcuffs instead of strings, and positioned the noose differently.
He was arrested in May 1947 and interned until December 1948. He later claimed to have ceased executions after realizing one of the men hanged was wrongly identified.
N.N.
U.S. Army Executioner, 1947–1949
After Malta’s last execution in mid-1948, hangings at Landsberg continued under an unidentified executioner. Lt. Williams mentioned a U.S. Army staff sergeant from the 508th MP Battalion, aged around 28, from Louisiana. He may have been responsible for executions between Malta’s departure and March 21, 1949.
Warrant Officer Britt
U.S. Army Executioner, 1951
No personal details are known. Britt performed the last seven executions at WCP #1, Landsberg, on June 7, 1951. He was reportedly flown in from Texas and had performed “scores” of executions before. He positioned the noose coils at the nape of the neck.
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