Job No. 69

"What part do you do in this?"

"Well, I tie the noose and adjust it around his neck."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean the rope."

"Oh, yes. Yes, the rope. I didn't understand you."

Two men were amiably chatting one afternoon last week in the Marion County Jail in Indianapolis. One was a mild-mannered, bespectacled Kentucky feudist named George W. Barrett, first man sentenced to death under the new Federal law which makes the killing of a U. S. officer a mandatory capital offense by hanging. The other was jovial, mastiff-jowled Phil Hanna, an Illinois farmer.

Barrett claimed he mistook the G-man he shot last year for another feudist, shared his last meal with the prison cat. Then attendants lifted his bullet-ridden, paralyzed body, clad in a pair of white pajamas, on a stretcher, carried it into the tented prison yard, toted it up 13 steps to the gallows. There they held him upright, half comatose.

For this Federal hanging in a State which adopted the electric chair in 1913, the U. S. Government had to supply all the equipment. Since no official was familiar with the finer points of the hangman's technique, Phil Hanna was called to do the job for nothing. Some 50 years ago Hanna was shocked by the spectacle of a bungled hanging. Thereupon he took up hanging as a hobby, experimented with plow lines and straw dummies. When he perfected a foolproof method, he volunteered his services to any State that needed him.

Carefully Hangman Hanna adjusted the arm straps, tightened around Killer Barrett's neck the stout $65 rope which he had used in 18 other hangings. Over Barrett's head he slipped a black satin hood, the handiwork of his sister-in-law. Then he walked calmly down the steps, confident that his 69th job would be without flaw. A deputy sheriff sprang the trap. Ten minutes later George W. Barrett was dead. At daybreak he was buried in Indianapolis' Holy Cross Cemetery.

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