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Toni
Jo Henry, a love worth dying for? |
Toni Jo Henry was born Annie Beatrice
McQuiston on January 3rd 1916 near Shreveport Louisiana, the third of five
children. She became the only women to get the electric chair in Louisiana when
she was put to death on the 28th November of 1942 for the brutal murder of
Joseph P. Calloway on St. Valentine's Day, February 14th 1940. Click here for a
photo of her.
Background.
Toni Jo's mother died when she was 6
years old and later her father remarried. She was never happy with the new
domestic arrangements and begged her aunt to take her away from the family
home. She got a job at the age of thirteen in a macaroni factory but was fired
when the manager found out her mother had died from tuberculosis. She was
beaten by her father when she got home that day and resolved to leave home for
good after this. She soon got drawn into drugs and prostitution. Prostitution
was one of the few things she could actually do. She was petite and very pretty
with jet black hair so getting customers was not a problem for her. By the age
of sixteen she was smoking, drinking, taking cannabis and associating with
Shreveport's underworld. She was arrested several times during her teens including
once for assaulting a man, but avoided prison by virtue of her age.
In 1939 Toni Jo met Claude
"Cowboy" Henry at the Shreveport brothel where she was now working
full time and fell for him immediately. He was down on his luck and she felt
instantly attracted to him. Cowboy had a criminal record but was also on bail
awaiting a second trial over the shooting of an ex police officer. Toni Jo, by
this time, was addicted to cocaine so they made a great couple. Cowboy
succeeded in getting Toni Jo off the drugs and they got married on November
25th 1939 in Louisiana with Toni Jo using her real name. Cowboy took her on
honeymoon to Southern California but their marital bliss was short lived when
he received a telegram to appear in court in Texas on the shooting charge.
Cowboy turned up at the court despite Toni Jo's pleas to him to go on the run
with her and his second trial also ended in conviction. In January 1940 he was
sentenced to 50 years in the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville - a
sentence which shocked and infuriated Toni Jo who had believed all along in her
husband's story of self defense and his almost certain acquittal. On hearing
the sentence she vowed to get him out of jail and thus embarked on series of
the most amazing criminal acts which in reality had no hope of success.
The murder.
Toni Jo had contacts in the criminal
underworld in Louisiana and southern Texas and immediately started making plans
to spring Cowboy despite being warned that the idea was hopeless. She was
staying in Beaumont, Texas to be near Cowboy and teamed up with a young man
named Harold Burks who was known as Arkinsaw. Arkie, as she called him, had
served a sentence in Huntsville and was presently absent without leave from the
army. He claimed a detailed knowledge of the jail and together they decided
that they could get Cowboy out.
They planned to steal a car and then rob a bank, that he knew in a small town
in his native Arkansas, to pay for the expenses to be incurred in springing
Henry. They armed themselves with pistols which Toni Jo had got a couple of
acquaintances to steal for her from a gun shop and posing as newly weds hitched
lifts towards Arkansas and their target bank. By the evening of the 14th
February they were in Orange, Texas and were looking for the "right"
car, and then along it came.
Joseph P. Calloway was delivering a new Ford V8 Coupe for a friend when he saw
them and decided to offer them a ride. The Ford was perfect for their purposes,
new and fast for its day - capable of outrunning the police when the jail break
came, so they thought.
They drove onwards toward Jennings,
Louisiana, where Mr. Calloway was to deliver the car. They had passed through
Lake Charles and got out into the countryside when Toni Jo pulled out her 32
caliber revolver and ordered Mr. Calloway to turn off the main highway onto a
quiet country road. She told him to stop and then they all got out of the car
where to his amazement she ordered him to undress. Arkie gathered up his
clothes, his watch and his money - $15. Toni Jo wanted the clothes for Cowboy
to change into when they sprang him. She ordered Calloway into the trunk and
they set off with Arkie driving and continued for some distance until Toni Jo
found a suitable spot. They got Calloway out of the trunk and she walked him
across the field to some haystacks. She told him to kneel down and say his
prayers and then calmly shot him through the head, killing him instantly. She
and Arkie made off in the Ford, driving through the night to Camden, Arkansas,
where they had originally intended to rob the bank. They booked into a cheap
hotel and while Toni Jo slept, Arkie, who had been completely unnerved by Mr.
Calloway's cold blooded killing, escaped from her in the car taking Calloway's
clothes with him. Murder was certainly not on his agenda - he claimed later
that he was broke when he met Toni Jo and just went along with her ludicrous
plans as it would be easier to get lifts back to Arkansas in the company of a
pretty girl.
Finding herself deserted, Toni Jo decided to use the last of the stolen money
for a bus ticket back to Shreveport Louisiana. She looked up an old friend who
ran a brothel there and who persuaded her to go and stay with her aunt. The
aunt clearly realized that Toni Jo was in trouble but was only able to glean fragments
of information. Worried she decided to tell her brother who was a policeman but
found that he was on vacation. So she explained her concerns to one of his
colleagues, Sgt. Dave Walker. Walker accompanied the aunt back to her house
where he interviewed Toni Jo. He was aware of Mr. Calloway being reported
missing but completely unprepared for the full confession he was about to hear
from Toni Jo. She even gave him the revolver with one fired and five live
rounds still in it. Walker was disinclined to believe the confession as no
murder had been reported and no body or the car found. He decided to arrest her
and handed her over to the Lake Charles police who took her out in a car to try
and locate the body of the man she claimed to have killed. Eventually they
located the correct spot and found Mr. Calloway's body just as Toni Jo had left
it. The bullet that killed him was recovered at the autopsy and was found to
match the gun the Walker had taken from Toni Jo.
The Ford coupe was soon discovered abandoned in Arkansas and still containing
Mr. Calloway's clothing and cigarette ends with lipstick on them.
Toni Jo was formally charged with murder but
refused to give any details of her accomplice because she was displeased at the
way she was being reported in the press.
Eventually she was persuaded to talk and
Arkie was soon arrested and brought back to Louisiana and charged with the
murder too. They were to be tried separately, however.
The trial and appeals.
Toni Jo's first trial opened in Lake
Charles on March 27th 1940 and attracted huge press coverage - she
was described in the press as a sultry brunette. In it she tried to shift the
blame for the killing onto Arkie but the jury didn't believe her and after
deliberating for six hours on Friday March 29th 1940 she was guilty of murder
for which there was at the time a mandatory sentence of death by hanging. Toni
Jo showed no emotion at the verdict. She
was formally sentenced later.
Arkie was also convicted at his trial later in the year and sentenced to death.
She appealed on the grounds that the trial
judge had permitted conduct prejudicial to her case and was granted a retrial
which took place in February 1941. Arkie testified against her and the jury took
only an hour to convict her. Again she heard the death sentence pronounced on
her and again she appealed and won. Her third hearing took place in January
1942 with, the by now, usual outcome. This time the court saw no reason to
overturn the lower court but her lawyers challenged the constitutionality of
her sentence.
While Toni Jo had been going through the courts Louisiana had changed its
execution method from hanging to electrocution. There was a legal challenge to
the constitutionality of this but the Supreme Court found that this was in line
with constitution The state Governor, Sam Jones, let it be known that there
would be no reprieve.
In the condemned cell.
While the various court cases
rumbled on Toni Jo had been incarcerated in
Towards the end she granted an interview to reporters where she tried to
explain her feelings towards Cowboy. She also made a sworn statement saying
that it was she who shot Mr. Calloway in a final bid to clear Arkie.
On
On Friday the 27th Toni Jo was allowed to phone Cowboy from the
chief jailers office and is reported to have told him "Get rid of that
prison suit go out the front door. Go straight and try and make something of
your life" He was crying and emotional throughout the call and yet she was
bright and cheerful.
The picture of Toni Jo in the condemned cell
(click here) is
amazing - it is hard to believe that it was taken the morning of her execution
or that she was allowed such apparently comfortable and relaxed surroundings.
She was even allowed the company of a small black and white dog while awaiting
execution. She said to the news cameraman who took the picture "I've
smiled twice, Mister. Have you any idea how much talent is being wasted here
today?"
Execution.
Toni Jo's execution was set for
Several press reporters were present and she
managed a smile for them. Here is a photograph of the
procession to the execution room.
She was allowed to pray for a few moments
and then sheriff Henry Reid Jr. asked if she had any last words to which she
replied “No”. She smiled at her executioner and mumbled a few words inaudible
to the witnesses as she was strapped into the chair, the electrodes applied to
her shaven head and her calf and a leather mask put over her face. A moment
later 2000 volts hit her and at
Arkie was executed in the same electric
chair four months later, despite Toni Jo's belated efforts to take
responsibility for the murder after she had lost her final appeal. No relatives
came forward to claim his body so it was buried in an unmarked grave.
Comment.
As crimes go Toni Jo's was ill
planned, under resourced and had virtually no hope of success from the word go.
It would seem too easy just to have stolen a car off the street, instead of
hijacking one and killing its driver. Would she and Arkie be able to
successfully raid the bank in Camden? How did she really think that she was
going to get her Cowboy out of a large, heavily guarded and well run jail like
Huntsville? There are no obvious answers to these questions other than she had
absolutely no chance of success.
At the time of the murder she would have been hanged, if convicted, as Julia
Moore had been just four years earlier . And yet none of this seemed to
register with her at all.
So what were her motives for these crimes. It seems that the only true motive
was her total love for Cowboy Henry which was so strong it overcame all
practical considerations, including her own safety.
And yet why did she instantly confess to a
murder that, at the time, had not even been discovered? Why hadn't she disposed
of the gun which was a major piece of evidence against her. She co-operated
fully with the police in finding Mr. Calloway's body. Had she disposed of the
gun carefully, cleaned the car up with Arkie and kept her mouth shut there
would have been very little to connect her to the killing. We will never know the
answers to these questions.
For a
detailed account of this case read Stone
Justice by Lawrence King.
Back to contents page The electric chair 20th century American female executions
