By LEONARD GRAY

HAHNVILLE – One of the darker periods of St. Charles Parish’s colorful history recently came to light as Parish Administrator Timothy Vial opened an old folder in the courthouse. Within were several photographs of three men being simultaneously executed by hanging.

Some time back, Capt. Patrick Yoes of the St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Office unearthed a newspaper account of the same hanging and had not suspected the event had been photographed. Internal evidence of the photograph quickly affirmed its identity.

First of all, according to Yoes, there were not an abundance of occasions when three men were hung at once. Second, clearly shown in the photographs is then-Sheriff Lewis Ory. This dated the occasion to a particular day, recalled in the Jan. 8, 1898 edition of the St. Charles Herald, headlined: “The Majesty of the Law Upheld: ‘Creole,’ Morris and Washington Explate Their Crimes on the Scaffold.”

The colorful lead paragraph told much of the mood – “The wages of sin is death. The last chapter in the celebrated murder cases was enacted yesterday, and the law triumphed. The three condemned, Creole, Morris and Washington, were executed on the scaffold. The crimes for which the three men gave up their lives is too fresh in the minds of the citizens of the parish to need repetition.”

Briefly then, the newspaper repeated some details of the crimes. “Creole” was convicted of the January 1897 murder of “the Constantine,” called “a Jerusalem peddler” in the rear of the St. Charles station.

Morris and Washington were hand for the murder of a Jewish peddler, Louis Miegler, with “Creole” being implicated in the crime. The trio were arrested and “the authorities put the prisoners to a rigid examination and succeeded to make them confess.”

The three men had to be shielded by deputies from an enraged mob who wanted to storm the jail and lynch them. Instead, they were tried in October 1897 and found guilty. Even the executioner came under the unnamed journalist’s eyes: “During Wednesday and Thursday, Mr. J.B. Taylor, the executioner, was busy erecting the scaffold on which the three men paid the penalty of their crimes, and is a fine piece of workmanship. Mr. Taylor is a man of cool temper, and genial disposition, and though the task looks horrid, he considers it a plain and lawful duty which her performs without a flaw.”

During that Thursday night, friends and relatives were joined by several ministers, some of whom are visible in the photographs. The three men marched to the scaffold and declared their innocence.

At 1:05, Sheriff Ory gave the signal, and the trap was sprung. By 1:30 p.m., all were pronounced dead and cut down. Vial has since had the photographs reproduced and may one day be exhibited at a parish museum, if one is established. The originals are back in the archives.

This was not the only triple hanging in St. Charles Parish. Earlier, on Aug. 9, 1896, three Italian laborers were lynched by a mob, as Sheriff Ory slept.

The lynching of the three Italians was recalled in “Bread and Respect,” a history of Italian immigration in Louisiana, recently published by Pelican Publishing in Gretna, and recalled a period of lynch law during the 1890s. There were six Italian lynchings in America, three of them in Louisiana and one of those in Hahnville.

Lorenzo Saladino, Decino Sorcoro and Angelo Marcuso were awaiting trial in separate incidents. Saladino allegedly assassinated well-known merchant and planter, Jules Gueymard, and Sorcoro and Marcuso were accused of the beating death of Don Rexino, a successful moss-gatherer, on the Ashton Plantation near Boutte Station.

All three awaiting trial were instead stolen from the jail by 100 masked horsemen who arrived after having promised Ory no such event would take place. A midnight whistle alerted the lynch mob and the sole elderly jail guard was quickly overcome.

The three men were hung and riddled with bullets, by the time Ory found them swinging from the rafters of a shed near the courthouse.

Ory declared he was “more than surprised,” and promised justice would be done. Nothing came of it.

Executions date back to colonial times and hanging was a common method. In 1888, the first electric chair was demonstrated and that method was adopted by New York in 1890. The first gas chamber came along in 1924, and the first execution by lethal injection came in 1977 in America.

For many years, Louisiana stayed with hanging as its primary method of execution through 1938. St. Charles Parish’s courthouse at that time had a built-in scaffold between the courthouse itself and the jail at the rear, with a ring-bolt in the ceiling of a walkway to secure the noose.

From 1941 to 1961, the electric chair was the new method for Louisiana, and in keeping with state law that executions be carried out in the parish where the crime took place, “Old Sparky” hit the road, the last time in 1957, according to Cathy Fontenot at Angola, when the law changed and all executions since have been at the penitentiary.

The last execution in St. Charles Parish, for example, was that of Pete Wilson in the mid-1950s. The last execution in St. James Parish was that of “Blackie” LeBlanc in 1947.

In June 1972, Furman v. Georgia led the way for capital punishment to be set aside, with Louisiana’s death row inmates having their sentences commuted to life in prison. By this time, from 1930 to 1967, 157 executions had been carried out in Louisiana. In 1977, Gregg v. Georgia reversed that trend and, soon after Gary Gilmore’s 1977 execution by firing squad in Utah, “Old Sparky” was back in business in Louisiana.

Louisiana’s electric chair was retired in 1991 and moved to the small museum at Louisiana State Penitentiary.

This execution method was replaced by lethal injection at that time.

Since 1977, 26 executions have been carried out in Louisiana. At present, 93 inmates are on Louisiana’s “Death Row,” 92 males and one female, Fontenot confirmed.

From the River Parishes, death row inmates include Daniel Blank, James Dunn, Glynn Juniors, Anthony Scott and John Francis Wille.

Blank has been on death row since December 1999, Dunn since June 1999, Juniors since June 2000, Scott since August 1999 and Wille since February 1987.

Potentially, three others could join them, if convicted and sentenced to death, including David Joseph from St. Charles Parish; Van Leonard and David Roy from St. John Parish.