Electric chair builder worried Tennessee execution will fail
Source: Associated Press
Travis Loller, Associated Press
Updated 11:16 pm CDT, Tuesday, October 30, 2018
Photo: Mark Humphrey, AP
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FILE - In this Oct. 13, 1999, file photo, Ricky Bell, the warden at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tenn., gives a tour of the prison's execution chamber. If Tennessee electrocutes Zagorski, it will be in an electric chair built by a self-taught execution expert who is no longer welcome in the prison system.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — If Tennessee electrocutes Edmund Zagorski on Thursday, it will be in an electric chair built by a self-taught execution expert who is no longer welcome in the prison system and who worries that his device will malfunction.
Fred Leuchter (LOOT'-cher) had a successful career in the execution business before his reputation was tainted by his claim that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz.
Tennessee's chair, which hasn't been used since 2007, is just one of many execution devices that Leuchter worked on between 1979 and 1990, according to an article by Fordham University professor Deborah Denno in the William and Mary Law Review. In addition to electric chairs, Leuchter built, refurbished and consulted on gas chambers, lethal injection machines and a gallows for at least 27 states.
After his comments about the Holocaust, it came to light that he had neither an engineering degree nor a license, even though he promoted himself as an engineer. His rise and fall was portrayed in a 2000 documentary.
Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/us/article/Electric-chair-builder-worried-Tennessee-13348973.php
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https://static1.squarespace.com/static/579fa3912994ca0eff850271/t/5b833bc24d7a9cb23e5a0566/1535327175636/Mr+Death+gas+chamber+and+guard.jpg
Fred Leuchter, as a younger man.
More recent image, Leuchter, on the left, so to speak.
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