For whatever reason, I was under the impression that hangings were a thing of the 18th and 19th centuries. As a Canadian, I am very far removed from the notion of capital punishment – it isn’t something I think about too much, or at all, really. So learning that there was a man hanged in Delaware in 1996 surprised me. This is the story of how he got there.
Billy Bailey was born in January of 1947 (I couldn’t find an exact date, and frankly, didn’t feel like digging through birth records) in Smyrna, Delaware. He was born the 19th of 23 children. He grew up in stark poverty with chronic physical abuse in the household. Billy Bailey didn’t really have a great start to life.
The local police knew him well. He was a minor thief and a brawler. Unfortunately, it seems that Billy Bailey was no stranger to the justice system.
In the spring of 1979, Bailey discovered that he could face up to life in prison on a cheque forgery charge, a conviction under an habitual offender statute. At the time, he was assigned to Plummer House, a work release facility in Wilmington, Delaware. He didn’t want to face life in prison. He knew he couldn’t handle life in prison. He had to get out of there.
On May 21st, 1979, Bailey escaped Plummer House and fled to his see Sue Ann Coker, his foster sister, in Cheswold, Delaware. He told her emphatically that he couldn’t, and he wouldn’t, go back there. He sought shelter with her. She agreed.
Later on, he went into town with her husband, Charles, to run an errand. Once in the truck, he asked if they could stop at a liquor store. Bailey was a free man, he wanted to live it up. He walked in, and robbed the liquor store clerk at gunpoint. (His motivations for doing so are unclear, though I speculate his history of theft indicate this to be an habitual behaviour.)
Bailey walked out of the liquor store with a pistol in one hand, and a bottle of liquor in the other. He told Charles that the police would be on their way soon, and they had to get away. They drove. Bailey asked to be dropped off roughly 2.4 km later at Lambertson’s Corner. Then he started walking.
Bailey knew he needed to get away, and he needed to get away quickly. As he trekked through the fields, he found his escape.
He approached and entered a farmhouse belonging to Gilbert (80) and Clara (73) Lambertson. He wanted the pickup truck he’d spotted outside. Faced with the homeowners, Bailey started shooting.
He shot Gilbert twice in the chest and Clara once in the shoulder with his own pistol. Then he grabbed the Lambertsons’ shotgun that was just sitting there. With that, he shot Gilbert once in the head, and he shot Clara once in the abdomen and once in the neck.
He arranged their bodies on some chairs and started looking. Not finding what he was looking for, the keys to the pickup, Bailey decided to flee on foot.
He was spotted by a Delaware State Police helicopter as he was sprinting through the Lambertsons’ field. He attempted to shoot down the helicopter’s co-pilot with his pistol, long since having dropped the shotgun. He was unsuccessful. Police apprehended him and arrested him in due course.
By 1980, Bailey was found guilty of the murders of the elderly couple. The jury found Billy Bailey’s crimes to be “outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible, or inhuman”. They recommended the death penalty.
While Bailey was sitting on death row and going through the appeals processes, Delaware changed its policy on execution. In 1986, Delaware adopted the use of lethal injection. Bailey had a decision to make.
Exhausting his appeals, Bailey was scheduled for execution in January 1996. His original sentence had specified death by hanging. Bailey could choose between the old or the new method of execution. Bailey chose to be hanged by the neck until dead, telling a prison visitor: “I’m not going to let them put me to sleep.”
On January 25th, 1996, just shy of midnight, Billy Bailey was hanged at the Delaware Correctional Centre in Smyrna, Delaware – where he’d grown up beaten, battered, and bruised. The gallows were a mere 10 miles from where he’d sealed his fate. He had no last words upon his execution.
Billy Bailey was the first man to be hanged in Delaware in 50 years. As of 2019, he is the 3rd person to be hanged after 1965. As of 2019, Billy Bailey is also the last person to be hanged in the United States.
For someone so desperate to be a free man, Billy Bailey went out swinging.
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Sources:
An Execution The Old Way – Karl Vick for The Washington Post
The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes – Robin Odell
Wikipedia page for Billy Bailey