1927 was a banner year in Roaring Twenties; Jazz Age America; the first trans-Atlantic telephone call; Lindbergh’s solo trans-Atlantic flight. In Michigan, the deadly Bath school-house bombing claimed four dozen lives. In Massachusetts, six years of legal appeals were finally exhausted, ending the lives of infamous anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. And the Golden Age of silent movies came to an end with the premiere of the first talkie, Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer.
That same year, the life of an obscure husband, father and magazine editor also came to an end, violently, in the wee hours of a Sunday morning in the upstairs bedroom of his home in the quiet suburban neighborhood of Queens Village east of New York City. Police believed the motive was burglary…for about five short minutes. Closer inspection of the premises and evidence soon fixed their suspicions on the victim’s younger, discontented wife.
What would today be a run-of-the-mill murder of a spouse for a life insurance payout dominated the national headlines for the next ten months as Ruth Snyder and her hapless lover Judd Gray confessed, recanted, mutually pointed fingers of guilt, stood trial before standing-room-only galleries, were convicted by a jury and then delivered to the death house at New York’s dreaded Sing Sing Prison for a spectacular double execution.
And in the aftermath, public sensibilities were shocked by a startlingly horrific landmark in American photojournalism…the front-page Daily News photo snapped with a hidden ankle camera smuggled into the death chamber, capturing the moment 2,000 volts of electricity were administered as lethal punishment to the victim’s adulterous, murderous mate.
The classic 1944 film noir Double Indemnity starring Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson is based on the sensational case.
