TheRealCherokeeOwl 🦉

He asked for ice cream for his last meal. When he didn't finish it, he asked the guards to save the rest for later. He didn't understand there would be no later. August 1936, Pueblo, Colorado. Someone broke into the Drain family home and attacked two sleeping sisters with a hatchet. Fifteen-year-old Dorothy was killed. Twelve-year-old Barbara survived. Days later, railroad police in Cheyenne, Wyoming, picked up a drifter named Joe Arridy. He was 21, had an IQ of 46, and had wandered away from a state school for the intellectually disabled. He couldn't count past five, tell colors apart, or name the days of the week. A sheriff questioned him and announced Joe had confessed. There was a problem. Pueblo police had already arrested the man they believed did it: Frank Aguilar, who had once worked for the girls' father and was found with a hatchet head matching the wounds. Aguilar was convicted and executed. Joe was convicted anyway, on the strength of that confession. On death row, Warden Roy Best grew so fond of him that he brought him toys. Joe's favorite was a wind-up train he'd roll down the corridor for other prisoners to send back. Best called him "the happiest prisoner on death row." The day before his execution, Joe gave his train to another condemned man, Angelo Agnes. On January 6, 1939, he walked to the gas chamber smiling. The warden wept. In 2011, Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter granted Joe Arridy a full posthumous pardon, citing "the great likelihood" he was innocent and a coerced false confession. It was the first posthumous pardon in Colorado history. A pardon can restore a name. It can't bring back a life. Should a confession from someone who couldn't understand it ever be enough? Disclaimer: Details of his last days come from the warden and newspaper accounts of the time. The 2011 pardon found he was very likely innocent; no court ever retried the case. Photos: unknown photographers, Joe Arridy and his toy train, 1936-1939 newspaper photos (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons