They came in their thousands from near and far - men, women and children lined up on a Kentucky riverfront for the public hanging of a black man convicted of raping and killing an elderly white widow. It was 14 August 1936 in Owensboro, Kentucky, a sweltering Friday in the middle of a legendary heat wave. Some slept overnight near the gallows to preserve their spots.
Others held "necktie" parties the previous evening, arriving hungover as teenagers sold popcorn and soda to the spectators. By the execution time of 5am, the crowd had swelled to an estimated 20,000. That's when Rainey Bethea, an orphan in his 20s, stepped up to the gallows - sentenced to death after allegedly confessing to robbing, raping and killing Lischia Edwards, 70.
The previous afternoon, he'd eaten a last meal of fried chicken, pork chops, mashed potatoes, pickled cucumbers, cornbread, lemon pie and ice cream. Many of those gathered - including press from as far away as Chicago and New York - came to see the rumoured "Lady Executioner;" the local sheriff had died four months earlier, and his widow became the unlikely female replacement. She declined to pull the trip lever herself, however, and it was hired hangmen who instead sent Bethea to his death.
That moment marked the last high-profile public hanging in America. The circus surrounding Bethea's death embarrassed many in Kentucky, and the governor outlawed public executions 18 months later. By then, most states had abolished capital punishment in view of the masses as societal attitudes sought more humane and private methods.
Another hanging was attended by a few hundred in Missouri in 1937, but that was lesser known and marked America's final public execution - until now. A little more than 90 years after Bethea's killing, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that the military would publicly execute Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 unarmed fellow soldiers in 2009 at the Fort Hood military base in Texas. The Pentagon followed up by saying the execution by firing squad would be live-streamed.
"People need to understand that there's serious consequences for these types of things," Hegseth said. University of Colorado professor emeritus Michael Radelet, a long-time scholar of capital punishment, was shocked. "I never imagined [another] public execution," he told BBC.
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