Ruth Snyder
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Ruth Brown Snyder (1895 – January 12, 1928) was an American murderer. Her execution in the electric chair for the murder of her husband, Albert, at Sing Sing Prison on January 12, 1928, was captured in a famous photograph.
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[edit] The crime
In 1925, Snyder, a Queens Village, Queens housewife, began an affair with Judd Gray, a corset salesman. She then began to plan the murder of her husband, enlisting the help of her new lover.
Snyder first persuaded her husband to purchase a $48,000 life insurance policy, then made a series of varied attempts to kill him, all of which he survived. On March 20, 1927, the couple garroted Albert Snyder and stuffed his nose full of chloroform-soaked rags. They then staged his death as part of a burglary gone bad. Gray and Snyder were eventually convicted and sentenced to death.
The final moments of her execution (by "state electrician" Robert G. Elliott) were caught on film with the aid of a miniature (one time use) camera strapped to the ankle of Tom Howard, a Chicago Tribune photographer working in cooperation with the Tribune-owned New York Daily News. Minutes after the execution of Snyder, Gray was put to death.
[edit] Appearances in popular media
Sophie Treadwell's play Machinal was inspired by the life and execution of Ruth Snyder, as was the novel Double Indemnity by James M. Cain, which was later adapted for the screen by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler. The films Body Heat and The Postman Always Rings Twice may also have been inspired by the murder. The 1933 movie Picture Snatcher, starring James Cagney as a newspaper photographer, contains an incident inspired by Howard's photo of Snyder in the electric chair.
Ruth Snyder was mentioned as the first female in New York history put to death in Polly Adler's autobiography, A House is Not a Home. This is incorrect, however; Martha M. Place was executed in 1899, as were several black women dating back to the 1700s.
Ruth Snyder's Sing Sing Prison cell was also used for Eva Coo and Lonely Hearts killer Martha Beck.
