Silas Jayne

popular name: Joe Arridy

date_of_death: January 6, 1939

age: 23

cause_of_death: Execution - gas chamber

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: In August of 1936 Joe Arridy was arrested for vagrancy and shortly after confessed to the rape and brutal murder of Dorothy Drain, a 15-year-old girl in Pueblo, Colorado. Only problem was that Joe Arridy had an I.Q. of 46 and the understanding of a 6-year-old child. Unfortunately that did not matter to the arresting sheriff, the prosecutor or the judge who sentenced Arridy to death in the gas chamber. Despite the exhaustive work his attorney did along with a host of professionals to halt this travesty of "justice" Joe Arridy was murdered by the State of Colorado on January 6, 1939. So unaware of his surrounding or his situation, he enjoyed his last meal of ice cream and smiled and joked with the guards as they escorted him to the gas chamber.

popular name: Michael Maggio

date_of_death: March 14, 1959

age: 69

cause_of_death: Natural causes

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Michael Maggio was one of the original Philadelphia organized crime figures beginning in the 1910s. The leader of "the Greaser Gang" in south Philadelphia, he quickly ascended to a leadership role in the Philly crime family. Known in the city as a wealthy cheese importer, manufacture and businessman, we was also a leader in the criminal underworld who did not hesitate to use violence as a means to the end. In his early 60s. Due to health reasons, he turned the family operations over to his son Peter. He sponsored future Philadelphia Organized Crime Boss Angelo Bruno for membership into the Philadelphia Family during the 1930s who gradually ascended to the role of mafia Don. Michael died of natural causes in Miami, Florida at age 69. After mobster Michael Maggio died in March 1959 his protege Angelo Bruno used the Maggio Cheese Company on 11th and Washington Streets in Philadelphia, PA as headquarters from which the mob boss then ran his numbers racket. Upon his death, he was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, PA.

popular name: Velma Barfield

date_of_death: November 2, 1984

age: 52

cause_of_death: Execution by lethal injection

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Velma Barfield was an American female serial killer and is remembered for being one of the first women to be executed in the United States after the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Barfield was 1 of 9 children born in South Carolina into abject poverty. As the eldest girl, she was expected at a young age to cook, clean and mend clothes for the entire family (no easy task in a house with no electricity, no running water and no toilet facilities). A childhood marked by abuse and a difficult relationship with her family, she met and married Thomas Burke in 1949 and had two children. It was during her marriage to Burke that she developed a debilitating addiction to narcotics to treat depression and pain from several surgeries. Over a period of 16 years, Velma Barfield poisoned several victims when they discovered she was forging checks to fund her drug habit. Those victims include her own mother, her fiancé, and her mother-in-law, among others. She used arsenic to kill them, often claiming they had died from natural causes. After the death of Stuart Taylor (Barfield's boyfriend and a relative of victim #6 Dollie Edwards) the local police were tipped-off by Barfield's sister in 1976, thus investigators were able to link the deaths to her through forensic evidence. Upon her arrest and without a lawyer present, she confessed initially to 3 of the murders. In 1978 she was convicted of the death of her fiancé, Stuart Taylor, and sentenced to death. After 2 appeals and 6 years on death row, the "Death Row Granny" Velma Barfield was executed on November 2, 1984, by lethal injection in North Carolina. Her execution was notable because she was the first woman to be executed in the U.S. since 1962 and one of the few women executed in the 20th century. She was buried next to her first husband in a grave that remains unmarked in Parkton Cemetery in Raleigh, North Carolina.