Joe Arridy

Joseph Arridy (/ˈærɪdi/; April 29, 1915 – January 6, 1939) was an American man who was falsely convicted and wrongfully executed for the 1936 rape and murder of Dorothy Drain, a 15-year-old girl in Pueblo, Colorado. He was manipulated by the police to make a false confession due to his mental incapacities. Arridy was mentally disabled and was 23 years old when he was executed on January 6, 1939.

Joe Arridy
Arridy's mug shot
Born	(1915-04-29)April 29, 1915 Pueblo, Colorado, U.S.
Died	January 6, 1939(1939-01-06) (aged 23) Colorado State Penitentiary, Cañon City, Colorado, U.S.
Cause of death	Execution by gas chamber
Known for	Being wrongfully executed
Criminal status	Executed ((1939-01-06)January 6, 1939) Pardoned (January 7, 2011)
Conviction(s)	First-degree murder, rape (pardoned)
Criminal penalty	Death

Many people at the time and since maintained that Arridy was innocent. A group known as Friends of Joe Arridy formed and in 2007 commissioned the first tombstone for his grave. They also supported the preparation of a petition by David A. Martinez, Denver attorney, for a state pardon to clear Arridy's name. Another man, Frank Aguilar, was convicted and executed for the same crime two years before Arridy's execution.

In 2011, Arridy received a full and unconditional posthumous pardon by Colorado Governor Bill Ritter (72 years after his death). Ritter, the former district attorney of Denver, pardoned Arridy based on questions about the man's guilt and what appeared to be a coerced false confession. This was the first time in Colorado that the governor had pardoned a convict after execution.

Early life

Arridy was born in 1915 in Pueblo, Colorado, to Mary and Henry Arridy (originally Arida; Arabic: عريضة), Maronite Christian immigrants from Bqarqacha, a village in Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, Ottoman Syria. The couple came to the United States in search of work in 1909 via ship over Patras, Greece. They were first cousins and did not speak English. Henry took a job with a Colorado Fuel and Iron steel mill in Pueblo that he learned was hiring workers.

Arridy, the eldest of the couple's three surviving children, was non-verbal for the first five years of his life and only spoke in short simple sentences. Even as an adult, he generally did not talk at all unless spoken to first. After he attended one year at Bessemer Elementary School, his principal told his parents to keep him at home, saying that he could not learn. Arridy did not socialize with other children in his neighborhood, instead preferring to wander town, hammer nails, and make mud pies, a habit he kept up into his mid-teens.

Admission to training school

After losing his job a few years later, his father Henry appealed to friends to help him find a place for his son and in October 1925, Arridy was admitted at the age of ten to the State Home and Training School for Mental Defectives in Grand Junction, Colorado. It was noted during formal psychological exams that Arridy was "extremely concrete in his thinking and totally unable to think abstractly about anything", noting he could not tell the difference between a stone and an egg or wood and glass, with other examples including his inability to count past five without assistance, tell apart colors, or name the weekdays. Examiners at the home also had Arridy's family undergo several psychological tests and concluded that his mother Mary was "probably feeble-minded" and his younger brother George considered a "high moron". Henry regretted sending his son away and requested his full release only ten months later, with Arridy returning to Pueblo on August 13, 1926.

On September 17, 1929, while Henry was serving a prison sentence for bootlegging, Arridy was sexually assaulted by a group of teen boys, who sodomized him and forced Arridy to perform oral sex on them. Arridy's juvenile probation officer walked in on the scene and wrote a complaint letter to the school's superintendent Dr. Benjamin Jefferson. The probation officer misrepresented the rape as consensual, citing the same-sex and interracial nature of the assault as evidence that Arridy posed a moral danger to society, calling him "one of the worst Mental Defective [sic] cases I have ever seen", and threatened to shift blame onto Jefferson for allowing Arridy to leave the training school. The fate of the assailants, if any, was not addressed in the letter. He was subsequently recommitted to the school, where it was reported that Arridy could only be taught "tasks of not too long duration" such as mopping floors or washing dishes. Arridy was often mistreated, beaten, and manipulated by his peers, only ever becoming close with one Mrs. Bowers, a kitchen worker who supervised his chores, during his seven-year stay. Dr. Jefferson made note of Arridy's suggestibility and need for constant guidance, outlining an incident in which Arridy falsely took responsibility for stealing cigarettes. Appeals by Arridy's family for him to be discharged were blocked by Jefferson, who claimed that their son was being kept for safety reasons due to his "perverse habits".

On August 8, 1936, 21-year-old Arridy, along with at least four other young men, left the school grounds and, mimicking the behaviour of train-hopping laborers in the nearby railyards, he stowed away in freight carts and traveled through Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming.

Attack

On the evening of August 14, 1936, two girls of the Drain family were attacked while sleeping at home in Pueblo, Colorado. An intruder entered the house through the unlocked front door and bludgeoned 15-year-old Dorothy and her 12-year-old sister Barbara Drain with a bladed weapon, believed to be a hatchet. Dorothy was also raped; she died from the hatchet attack, while Barbara survived after spending two weeks in a coma. Their parents had been out of the house that night while their younger brother, who slept in an adjacent room, was left unharmed. A fellow runaway from the school would later tell workers that he and Arridy had passed through Pueblo only once, in the late hours of August 16, to visit his family in Bessemer, unaware that they had moved to a different part of town, and getting on a train to Denver shortly after.

Arrest and conviction

After several weeks of train-hopping, Arridy arrived in Cheyenne, Wyoming on August 20 at noon and not long after, he walked up to a kitchen car and asked the workers for food. The car's supervisors, Mr. and Mrs. Glen Gibson, allowed Arridy to stay with the crew, gave him clean clothes and allowed him to work as a dishwasher in exchange for meals. On August 26, while in Archer, the kitchen car's train was bound to head out of state and as Arridy was not officially an employee, the Gibsons told Arridy he could not go with them and drove him back to the railyard in Cheyenne.

On the night of August 26, 1936, Arridy was arrested by two railroad detectives for vagrancy in Cheyenne, Wyoming, after being caught wandering around the railyards. He was brought to jail, where he was questioned by Laramie County Sheriff George Carroll. Carroll was aware of the widespread search for suspects in the Drain murder case and when Arridy revealed under questioning that he had traveled through Pueblo by way of a train after leaving Grand Junction, Colorado, Carroll began to question him about the Drain case. Carroll said that Arridy confessed to him. Carroll contacted the Pueblo police Chief Arthur Grady about Arridy before calling the local press, who reported the sheriff's news the next morning on August 27, naming Arridy as the sole perpetrator in the Drain attacks.

Frank Aguilar

Only a few hours later, Carroll was informed by Grady that he had learned that his officers had already arrested a man considered to be the prime suspect: 33-year-old Frank Aguilar, a laborer with the Works Progress Administration from Mexico. Aguilar had worked for the father of the Drain girls, Riley Drain, who was a foreman with the WPA, and had been fired shortly before the attack. The three-room apartment Aguilar shared with his mother, wife, and children was searched by police, with investigators finding an axe head with notches matching the wounds inflicted on both Drain girls, as well as a calendar with the date August 15 marked, with photographs of nude women and newspaper clippings containing articles about "sex slayings" taped to the surrounding wallpaper. Shortly before his execution, Aguilar was also connected to a murder that occurred earlier on August 2 at a home only three blocks away from the Drain residence, when he bludgeoned 72-year-old Sally Crumply, as well as her 48-year-old niece R.O. "Lilly" McMurtree, who survived the attack, and a third undisclosed murder that occurred in 1934. Aguilar had been already arrested on August 16 when he attended Dorothy Drain's funeral, after he attracted the attention of law enforcement for being dressed in work overalls, cutting in line twice to see the casket and forcefully handing the deceased's father, Riley Drain, a handful of nickels "to help the family", but did not admit to the attack while in custody, with his mother providing an alibi that he had been home the night of the attacks. Grady was only informed of Aguilar as a suspect after an analysis of scrapings from Aguilar's fingernails showed fibers of blue-dyed chenille fabric, the same material that the bedsheets of the Drain girls had been made of.

Meanwhile, Sheriff Carroll subsequently claimed that Arridy "kept changing his story," and while being transported to Pueblo to participate in a re-enactment at the Drain residence on August 27, Arridy reportedly confessed again and had eventually told him several times he had "been with a man named Frank" at the crime scene. Several details had been changed from the first confession, including Arridy's initial statement that he had used a club in the attack, while other parts of the confession were left out, such as the claim that Arridy ran back home after the crime and was sheltered by his family. Arridy repeatedly provided wrong addresses that were either incomplete or led to the neighborhood Arridy had grown up in, but his family had moved out of during his stay at the school.

On August 28, Aguilar confessed to the crime. He was sent to Colorado State Penitentiary for holding, where Sheriff Carroll had arranged for him to meet with Arridy, and was told that he was arrested as his accomplice. While Arridy identified Aguilar by saying "That's Frank", Aguilar initially told police he had never seen or met Arridy. However, on September 2, a stenographed five page document obtained through a joint nine-hour interrogation of Aguilar and Arridy by the penitentiary's warden Roy Best in presence of District Attorney French L. Taylor was released, in which Aguilar affirmed that Arridy was an accomplice in the killings. A total of six pre-prepared questions, which were always structured to include mention of Arridy, incriminated Arridy, with Aguilar having provided no further comments and with his responses consisting almost entirely of some variation of "yes" when asked to confirm. Aguilar was the only one to sign the statement with "X" as the signature, while Arridy, who remained silent throughout the interrogation, did not, which D.A. Taylor acknowledged, but assumed that Arridy was under the influence "of marijuana or something similar". The prevailing narrative, published in The Pueblo Chieftain, was now that Aguilar and Arridy, who were both characterized as sexual deviants, had met by chance in the Bessemer area of Pueblo on the evening of August 14 and carried out the Drain attacks together before Arridy left town via train. Aguilar recanted shortly after, claiming Best and Grady had threatened him with "terrible things" and that there would be "a dead Mexican" if he did not implicate Arridy. Aguilar was also convicted of the rape and murder of Dorothy Drain and sentenced to death on December 22 of the same year. He was executed on August 13, 1937, in Colorado State Penitentiary. Before the execution, Aguilar's mother died at the prison infirmary after collapsing during a final visit. During the execution, a male spectator died of a heart attack.

On August 29, Chief Hugh Davis Harper of the Colorado Springs Police Department announced that Arridy had been positively identified as having assaulted Helen O'Driscoll on August 23, after the victim had identified Arridy's picture in the newspaper as her assailant. Arridy had confessed to the assault upon being asked, but eyewitnesses and coworkers placed Arridy at his workplace in the railroad kitchen in Cheyenne, 170 miles away from Colorado Springs, at the time, after which the charge was dropped. Similarly, a pawnbroker had claimed that Arridy bought a gun from him before the attack on the Drain residence, but this allegation was dismissed because the pawnbroker, who repeatedly changed the date he supposedly met Arridy, could not provide evidence for the purchase.

Trial

When the case was finally taken to trial on February 8, 1937, Arridy's lawyer pleaded insanity to avoid the death penalty for his client. Sherriff George Carroll testified eight separate times in court and contended that Arridy was mentally fit and aware of his actions, claiming that he was articulate during questioning, provided accurate information during the crime scene reenactment (which several of Carroll's deputies present at the time vouched for) and that Arridy had shown guilt by displaying "great remorse" in private. Judge Harry Leddy ruled Arridy to be sane, while acknowledged by three state psychiatrists to be so mentally limited as to be classified as an "imbecile", a medical term at the time. They said he had an IQ of 46, and the mind of a six-year-old. They noted he was "incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong, and therefore, would be unable to perform any action with a criminal intent". To showcase Arridy's mental development, Arridy's lawyer allowed the prosecutor to ask him several questions, ranging from case-related to common household knowledge. Among other things, Arridy did not know who Franklin Roosevelt or George Washington were, said that he had never seen a hatchet and did not know what one looked like, could not tell the difference between a nickel and a dime, and was unable to recognize his own father, whom he had not seen for 8 years by this point, when he was pointed out in the court room. He also stated that he did not know who Dorothy Drain or Frank Aguilar were, this having been the first time he was directly questioned about them by a non-police entity.

On April 17, a jury convicted Arridy of the murder, largely due to his false confession. Studies since then have shown that persons of limited mental capacity are more vulnerable to coercion during interrogation and have a higher frequency of making false confessions. The only physical evidence against him was a single strand of hair that was supposedly matched with one of Arridy's. Pathologist Frances McConnell, whose work had partially helped convict Frank Aguilar through his finger nail samples, compared the hairs under a microscope and identified the hair as belonging to a specific ethnicity through visual comparison, in this case claiming that it bore the characteristics of an "American Indian". The evidence was accepted, even though it ran contrary to the fact that Arridy was of recent Syrian ancestry and Arridy's race being (incorrectly) listed as "Hispanic" on prison documents, with visual matching of hairs having since been proven to not be an accurate act of measure. Barbara Drain had testified that Aguilar had been present at the attack, but not Arridy. She could identify Aguilar because he had worked for her father. After the trial, Sheriff Carroll and the two railroad detectives who had arrested Arridy were each rewarded with $1000 (equivalent to $21,194 in 2023) for their part in resolving the case. In the days after the trial, Benjamin Jefferson, who had read a statement corroborating the psychiatrists' findings in court, gave a speech to the press and used the example of Joe Arridy to advocate for eugenics, stating that his "imbecility" was the result of a "diseased germ plasma that was never allowed to unfold" and made a public plea to Colorado legislation to pass a law that would mandate the sterilization of "imbeciles", i.e. individuals with an IQ below 50.

Appeals

Attorney Gail L. Ireland, who later was elected and served as Colorado Attorney General and Colorado Water Commissioner, became involved as defense counsel in Arridy's case after his conviction and sentencing. While Ireland won ten delays of Arridy's execution, he was unable to get his conviction overturned or commutation of his sentence. He noted that Aguilar had said he acted alone, and medical experts had testified as to Arridy's mental limitations. Ireland said that Arridy could not even understand what execution meant. "Believe me when I say that if he is gassed, it will take a long time for the state of Colorado to live down the disgrace," Ireland argued to the Colorado Supreme Court. Arridy received nine stays of execution as appeals and petitions on his behalf were mounted.

Death row

In early November 1938, weeks before Arridy's penultimate scheduled execution date on November 20, a request was put forth by lawyer and Republican Colorado State Legislature candidate William Lewis to have Arridy's eyes removed before his execution so that Lewis, who was left blind in one eye following an accident when a tear gas grenade exploded in his hand, could receive a cornea transplant; a post-mortem extraction was considered infeasible due to concerns over damage by the cyanide gas to the lens. Attorney General Byron G. Rogers said that the request would be within Colorado law, but the warden stated that Arridy would be unable to give consent to this on account of his mental deficits.

While held on death row during the appeals process, Arridy was liked and treated well by both the prisoners and guards alike. Warden Roy Best became one of Arridy's supporters and joined the effort to save his life; he was said to have "cared for Arridy like a son", regularly bringing him gifts, such as toys, picture books, crayons, and handicraft material. Best also would regularly bring candy and cigars from home to share with Arridy. Arridy particularly liked to play with a battery-powered toy train he had received on Christmas, 1938, given to him by Best, and would often roll it between the metal bars to other cells for fellow inmates to catch and push back. The warden said that Arridy was "the happiest prisoner on death row". Before Arridy's execution, he said, "He probably didn't even know he was about to die, all he did was happily sit and play with a toy train I had given him."

On January 5, 1939, Best convinced Arridy to agree to leave the train to a fellow death row inmate, 32-year-old Angelo Agnes, who would be executed in a double execution with Pete Catalina the same year on September 29 for the murder of his wife Malinda Plunkett Agnes and the attempted murder of his brother Roy Finley. Arridy was initially reluctant to give his favorite toy away, but warmed up to the idea after playing with Agnes for a few hours.

Execution

On the morning of January 6, 1939, just a few hours before his execution that same evening, Arridy received an unscheduled final visitation from his family, consisting of his mother and sister, as well as an aunt and a cousin, which had been arranged as a surprise by Warden Best. Arridy had been unable to attend the funeral of his father Henry, who had died on 24 February 1937 at the age of 51, and had not seen his mother Mary since his incarceration. It was noted that Arridy displayed a flat affect throughout the entire 15-minute visit; when his mother burst into tears upon seeing her son and hugged him while shouting "Joe, my Joe!", Arridy did not reciprocate, only saying "Hello" while looking off to the side. Barring this, Arridy stayed silent for the duration of the visit and remained expressionless, except for a "slight smile" when fellow inmates brought in a three-gallon bucket of ice cream for the family to eat.

When questioned about his impending execution, Arridy showed "blank bewilderment". He did not understand the meaning of the gas chamber, telling the warden "No, no, Joe won't die.". Arridy did not understand the concept of death despite repeated attempts at explanation through Best and prison chaplain Albert Schaller. When the death warrant was read to Arridy by Best and was asked if he understood, Arridy responded in a neutral tone, "They are killing me". Before he left his prison block, Arridy went to each cell and shook the hand of every inmate to say goodbye. For his last meal, Arridy requested a bowl of ice cream, which he reportedly had not finished before he would be taken to the chamber's holding cell, requesting for the remaining ice cream to be refrigerated so he could eat it later, not understanding that he was to be executed soon and would not return. Arridy became upset upon being told that he could not take his toy train and played with it one last time together with Angelo Agnes before the former had to leave, with Arridy saying "Give my train to Agnes" while he was led away.

Roy Best accompanied Arridy during the walk up Woodpecker Hill, where the gas chamber was located, and while passing the prison chicken coop, Best asked Arridy if he would "still raise the chickens in Heaven", as he had previously voiced a fondness for the hens. Arridy replied that he wanted to play the harp, which Best speculated was influenced by being told stories of angels in the afterlife by Father Schaller, specifically because he said that Arridy would be "swapping [his toy train] for a harp". Arridy was reported to have smiled as he entered the gas chamber. After having his last rites and sitting down inside the chamber, Arridy's smile momentarily faded when he was blindfolded for the execution, but calmed down when the warden grabbed his hand and reassured him. Members of the Drain family, who had previously attended Frank Aguilar's execution, did not witness the execution. Roy Best was noted to have been weeping during the execution, with him pleading with Teller Ammons, the Governor of Colorado, to commute Arridy's sentence, which Ammons refused to do. Arridy reportedly lost consciousness smiling after taking three breaths and was declared dead at 8:19 p.m.

Mary Arridy moved to live with her brothers in Toledo, Ohio in 1947, adopting the surname "Areddy" after her brothers' spelling of the name, where she died at Cardinal Nursing Home on September 20, 1960.

2011 posthumous pardon

Arridy's case is one of a number that received new attention in the face of research into ensuring just interrogations and confessions. In addition, the US Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment was unconstitutional for convicted people who are mentally disabled. A group of supporters formed the non-profit Friends of Joe Arridy and worked to bring new recognition to the injustice of his case, in addition to commissioning a tombstone for his grave in 2007.

Attorney David A. Martinez became involved and relied on Robert Perske's book about Arridy's case, as well as other materials compiled by the Friends, and his own research, to prepare a 400-page petition for pardon from Governor Bill Ritter, a former district attorney in Denver. Based on the evidence and other reviews, Ritter gave Arridy a full and unconditional pardon in 2011, saying "Pardoning Joe Arridy cannot undo this tragic event in Colorado history, it is in the interests of justice and simple decency, however, to restore his good name."

Legacy

In June 2007, about 50 supporters of Arridy gathered for the dedication of a tombstone they had commissioned for his grave at Woodpecker Hill in Cañon City's Greenwood Cemetery near the state prison.

Representation in other media

• The final interaction between Arridy and Best was the subject of a 1944 poem, "The Clinic", by writer Marguerite Young. The inspiration of the poem from the Arridy execution was only made public in 1966.
• Robert Perske wrote Deadly Innocence? (1964/reprint 1995) about Arridy's case after conducting research on it and similar cases for years. He had tracked down the author of the 1944 poem before Young's death. His book also explores other cases in which defendants were classified as disabled, and implications for police and the justice system.
• In 2007–2008, producers Max and Micheline Keller, George Edde, and Yvonne Karouni, and Dan Leonetti, screenwriter, announced plans to make a film about Arridy and Gail Ireland, to be called The Woodpecker Waltz. Leonetti won a New York screenwriting award for his screenplay, which attracted attention by producers.
• Terri Bradt wrote a biography of her grandfather, Gail Ireland: Colorado Citizen Lawyer (2011). She was proud of his defense of Arridy, and began to work with the Friends of Joe Arridy on making his cause more widely known.

See also

• Capital punishment in Colorado
• Capital punishment in the United States
• List of wrongful convictions in the United States
• Ricky Ray Rector