He Killed 600 People LEGALLY | The Macabre Albert Pierrepoint

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]This man executed Nazi war criminals, serial killers, and even an innocent father. And then he said that the death penalty doesn't work. He executed over 400 people, possibly as many as 600. And at the end of his life, he wrote that capital punishment had achieved nothing.

[00:00:16]His name was Albert Pierre Pont. He was Britain's most prolific executioner of the 20th century. Death wasn't just his job. It was a family business. His father was a hangman. His uncle was a hangman. And as a school boy, when they asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said, "I want to be an executioner like my daddy." Albert got his wish. Then he spent the rest of his life wondering if the whole thing was pointless. This is a fascinating episode and a really interesting deep dive onto a historical figure that you may have never heard of, but you will never forget. So sit back, relax, and welcome to History Camp.

[00:00:57]What's up people and welcome back to History Camp. My name is Mark Gagnon and thank you for joining me in my tent where every single week we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from all time, from all history forever. Yes, that's what I do in this tent is I try to figure out everything that's ever happened. And oh man, there's a whole bunch of stuff. It's just been non-stop stuff going on ever since I got here.

[00:01:17]So, we got a lot of catching up to do.

[00:01:19]We have no time to waste. But before we begin, I just want to say thank you so much to you for tuning in to this episode. Truly, every time you click on an episode, every time you support the community, uh every time you join the the, you know, the campsite, it helps everything work. It truly is the reason that I do the show is because I get to hang with people like you for, you know, an hour a day. It really means the world. So, thank you so much for, you know, keeping the lights on in the tent, keeping the fire burning, and um I'm indebtedly. I'm indebted to you and uh so is Christos, right, Christos?

[00:01:48]>> Absolutely. All right. Come on, dude.

[00:01:49]Just you take a puff of your vape and then you just It's just Come on. Come on. We got to be a little more professional here at the camp. What is it? Bohemian Grove. Exactly.

[00:01:57]>> You got to be a little more serious. All right. Um, no, Christo, I want to say thank you to you as well. You're a great guy and I appreciate you always being here.

[00:02:04]>> I really appreciate that, Mark. That's really sweet.

[00:02:06]>> All right. All right. Let's just >> I was just going to say it's really sweet.

[00:02:09]>> Let's just jump into it. All right. Who is Albert Pierre Pont? He's uh he has a French last name. So, first off, I'm going to pronounce it Pier Pont. His name is obviously like Pia Pon is how you would say it, but I'm going to say Pier Pon because that's how the British said it. He's a fascinating character in history and I think uh someone that you probably have never heard of, but uh will change your perspective on the death penalty, on execution, on life, and will has a real philosophy tied into his entire journey that is truly crazy.

[00:02:35]One little detail that I love to start with, Albert Peront was an executioner.

[00:02:39]He was a hangman. He killed somewhere between like 400 and 600 people. He was the guy that did it, the executioner, the guy in the black hood that just made it happen. Now, he died in 1992.

[00:02:52]That's that's He was running this whole thing from in the 1900s. He listened to Red Hot Chili Peppers.

[00:02:59]>> It's crazy.

[00:03:00]>> 1992 was when he died. He heard Metallica. He got to drink Mountain Dew.

[00:03:04]>> He drank Mountain Dew. I mean, think about that. Like, this was not like, oh, way back. This was a real guy that saw World Cups and stuff. You know what I mean? Like it's crazy. So let's set the scene. Okay. How do you even become an executioner? Well, for Albert Pierre Pon, he was born into it on March 30th, 1905 in the village of West Riding in Yorkshire, England. He was the third of five children, the oldest boy, and his family was poor. And not like the romantic kind of like, you know, like my mama milked the cows. No, it's the kind where like father kind of like drifts between jobs as like a butcher's apprentice, a clog maker, a mill worker and you know drinks whatever money comes in and just it was terrible. Now his dad was a guy named Henry Pier. Now Henry had a secret in 1901. He had actually been on the official list of executioners for his majesty's prison service. It was a part-time job. All right? It was something you picked up at $1099. You know what I mean? And there's no salary. No pension, just a fee you get paid per execution, gig work, and you're only paid and you only show up when you're called. So now, the role requires discretion above anything else.

[00:04:15]Executioners were forbidden from attracting public attention or sharing details of their work with anyone. But here's the thing with old Henry. Henry was a drinker and a heavy one at that.

[00:04:26]Now, one day he shows up to the prison a day before an execution was scheduled, potentially under the influence of alcohol and furiously berates the people that uh had called him in. Now, maybe it was the stress of supporting a family.

[00:04:39]Maybe it was the guilt of being a hangman. Whatever it was, in 1910, Henry is removed. Now, his brother, Thomas Peron, who had been who had joined the executioners list in 1906, continued the work with a lot more professionalism and would go on to become one of Britain's most experienced hangmen. Now, Albert didn't learn about all this until 1916 when Henry's memoirs were published in a newspaper. That was the moment that Henry's true career was fully revealed to his family. Albert was 11 years old.

[00:05:08]And rather than being horrified, he was fascinated. Well, when old papa Henry died in 1922, Albert, then just 17 years old, inherited two small pamphlets basically in which his father had written his story as a hangman. And in these books was his dad's execution diary. And the diary listed details of every hanging that he participated in.

[00:05:31]And Albert studied them and obsessed over them. And through the rest of the 1920s, Pure Pont worked as a delivery driver for a grosser. But he never lost sight of what he actually wanted to do.

[00:05:41]And then on April 19th, 1931, he wrote to the prison commissioners and applied to become an assistant executioner. He was turned down. There were no vacancies, no jobs. Come back later. Six months later, this invitation arrives and he trained for 4 days at Pentenville Prison in London practicing on dummies.

[00:06:00]And in September 1932, at the age of 27 years old, he was officially accepted into the list as an assistant executioner. And his first job came in December of 1932. He was actually assisting his uncle Tom at a prison in Dublin, hanging a young Irish farmer named Patrick McDermott, who had murdered his brother. Perpon's job as assistant was basically to follow the prisoner onto the platform, bind his legs together, and step back off the trapoor before his uncle pulled the lever. Pretty easy, right? The entire process from scaffold to death took less than a minute. And for the rest of the 1930s, Pure Pont was basically, you know, a part-time killer. He worked his day job and then he took these execution odd job assignments as they came. Now, most of them were alongside his uncle Tom. and not that uncle Tom. He was just like an actual his he just had an uncle Thomas we'll call him and he learned his uncle's approach. He was, you know, dignified and like uh very precise. He wasn't hammered all the time, which is good. And Tom's advice to Albert was pretty clear. If you can't do it without whiskey, don't do it at all. At the time, I guess, you know, hangman had kind of a reputation of being uh drinkers because the guilt would get to them and it would stress them out. They get on the fritz, so they'd be hitting the bottle. And Tom was like, "No, no, no. You gotta be a pro about this. No drinking on the job." Now, Albert earned his stripes for the next like 10 years until October 1941 when Pierre Pont finally conducted his first execution as the lead hangman. Now, he was only 36 years old and he found his life vocation. The first assignment was executing the brutal gangland killer, Antonio Babe Mancini. But Albert wasn't just going to do the job. He was going to reinvent the craft of killing. Now, here's where things get a little weird, so just roll with me. Albert Perpont didn't just clock in, do the job, and leave. He perfected what he was doing.

[00:07:53]He approached execution with the precision of like a surgeon or something. And that combination, right, like taking this morally gray thing and it's a little questionable and trying to find the best way to do it and how to do it, you know, humanely. It's one of the most interesting things about this whole story, right? Like, okay, you're going to go kill someone. You hope that they did something bad, but you don't know all the details, you know? So, you're kind of like rationalizing your mind.

[00:08:21]You want the death to be fast because that's the most humane thing to do. You don't want this person to suffer anymore. I mean, this happens sometimes with hangings where like, you know, someone's hanging there, they break their neck, but they don't die. And then what? They're free. Can't let them go.

[00:08:37]Cut a chicken's head off. runs around a little bit. Dang, that's dark. Christos, >> that's one of the most popular examples.

[00:08:44]>> You could wait. Examples of what?

[00:08:45]>> Of a chicken not dying.

[00:08:47]>> No, I'm talking about a guy breaking his neck, but he doesn't die. So then they have to kill him another way. Okay, that's quite different. Sorry. All I'm saying is that Pierre Pon basically tried to standardize this process and he refined it into what people have described as an art. So this is what he would do. The day before an execution, he would arrive at the prison and be given the condemned prisoner's height and weight. And he would look through what they call the Judas hole. Now, this is a small like, you know, like peep hole in the cell door to observe the prisoner's build without actually being seen. And then he would go to the execution chamber, which was typically right next to the condemned person's cell, and test the equipment using a sandbag of equivalent weight. I mean, it's pretty wild that like he would just have to like walk into the jail and look at a guy and be like, "This guy's going to die tomorrow." And then he was the one killing him.

[00:09:42]Now, when it comes to hanging, the length of the drop is critical. Too short and the neck doesn't break and the prisoner would just strangle slowly for like 20 minutes. Um, that's what I meant to say. That Yeah, you you don't not that they break the neck, is that they just strangle and that they don't break the neck. You get what I'm saying? Yep.

[00:10:00]from the earlier chicken point that you're bringing up.

[00:10:02]>> Now, if the drop is too long, then you could literally sever the head and that's extremely brutal and graphic and frankly a mess. Bloody. Yeah. Now, in order to find the perfect length, Pure Pont used the Home Office table of drops. This is a chart that calculated the correct drop length based on the prisoner's weight. But he would make his own adjustments to the chart based on what he observed through the spy hole.

[00:10:29]literally like how thick is their neck?

[00:10:30]How muscular are they? And after a while, he was just able to like eyeball it. Like literally like how like an expert can like, you know, look at your twisted ankle and be like, "It's twisted ankle." He would just look at a dude and be like, "Yep, 8 ft. This type of rope nylon." Like he was just he he knew how to do his job to a science. Now, on the morning of an execution, always at 8:00 a.m., Pierre Pont, his assistant, and two prison officers would enter into the condemned person's cell. Pierre Pon would then strap the prisoner's arms behind his back with a leather strap and then the group would walk through a connecting door into the execution chamber. The prisoner was then positioned on a marked spot on the trap door. And then he would place a white cotton hood over the head and then the noose, a leather lined rope with this metal eye positioned under the left jawbone designed so that when the prisoner dropped, the head would be forced backwards and that the neck would break at the second cervical vertebrae.

[00:11:29]And then he would push the lever. And by his own account, from the moment Pier Pont entered the cell to the moment that he opened the trap door, it was 12 seconds. That was his standard. And it's widely cited in popular accounts, though some historians note that it's difficult to really verify. Whether that number is exact or slightly mythologized, what's undisputed is that Pierre Pont was exceptionally fast and he was extremely intentional about all of this. He wanted it to be quick. By his own account, he called the execution sacred. Not in a religious sense necessarily, but like in in the sense that he believed that the condemned person deserved to have their death handled with absolute competency and respect. He didn't want to be fumbling around trying to get the rope, making a joke, being cruel, any unnecessary suffering, just speed, like just get it over with. And that was his version of Mercy. And that raises a lot of questions. And there's one that's, you know, you can't talk about with Pier P without really looking at. Can you do something bad like killing people, but make it good and redemptive in a way?

[00:12:35]Like it's okay to kill 600 people if you're doing it for the government and if you do it humanely, but could you do it? Like is that something you could deal with as like a human being? Like yeah, it kills a gunner people and they were terrible people, you know, serial killers, Nazis, murderers, you know, sexual abusers. I I but I was the one that did it. I don't think that's for me. just taking orders, I guess. I mean, but also these are bad people, but I'm not a big death penalty guy. I'm not like I'm Catholic and so we're kind of like against the death penalty like our whole thing. I mean, it worked out one time, shout out Jesus, but like other than that, like you can't and we're just not just lock them up, right? Like the death penalty is almost like easy way out.

[00:13:19]It's more about the the intrinsic punishment of the whole thing. But to me, I'm like, the punishment is that you got to spend the rest of your life in prison, which is a tough place to be and maybe there's a redemptive element where maybe, you know, you turn 80 years old and maybe you've done some good in the world and you got to redeem yourself.

[00:13:35]>> Was prison all that bad back then? Back then, what do you I mean, back then you'd probably be easy to break out, but yeah, it sucked. No, you're living in squalor anyway, kind of. If this guy was poor, come on. A prison in 1930 in England and in the late 1930s, moving into the 40s, you know what's going on.

[00:13:51]World War II and in the late 19 like late 1945 early 1946 following the liberation of Bergen Bellson concentration camp the British military conducted war crime trials for the camp staff and our boy Albert Pierre Pont was the one that they called up to do the honors. So they brought him out to Hamel Prison in Germany and the scale of what awaited him there was unlike anything he had ever seen before. I mean, multiple gallows were erected in the prison yard.

[00:14:22]Executions were conducted in batches, meaning that several prisoners were hung in rapid succession, one after another after another. On some mornings, more people would be hung in a single session than Pure Pont would normally execute in an entire year. On December 13, 1945, Perpont hanged 13 people convicted of war crimes at Bergen Bellson, including Ysef Kramer, the camp commander known as the Beast of Bellson, and Irma Graves, the 22-year-old SS guard, who had been convicted of selecting prisoners for the gas chambers and of sadistic physical abuse. Graes was the youngest woman sentenced to death under British law in the entirety of the 20th century. But the executions for Bergen Bellson was really just the beginning. Over the next several years, Peron would repeatedly travel to Germany and Austria, executing around 200 war criminals, many of them former concentration camp staff from Bellson, Ravensbrook, and other camps, as well as individuals who were convicted of various other atrocities during this occupation. Now, the work was carried out with again the same mechanical precision, which I'm sure the Germans appreciated. You know, they like good engineering.

[00:15:34]>> Absolutely.

[00:15:34]>> This guy was like the BMW of um killing people. He's like, "We're going to do it, you know, the right way."

[00:15:40]>> Isn't this like no nonsense?

[00:15:43]>> Just, you know, just >> get this guy out of here.

[00:15:45]>> Brass tax. You know what I mean?

[00:15:47]>> Now, the context here is very strange because, you know, he's actually dealing with, you know, regular murderers and, you know, sadistic freaks in Britain.

[00:15:57]And then now he's dealing with like war criminals, right? And the people that he's facing are genuinely, you know, like evil. Like it's a part of like this industrialized, you know, genocide evil.

[00:16:09]Now, Peron never spoke publicly in detail about what it felt like to execute war criminals, especially at the scale. I mean, imagine you just go home and you're like, "Yeah, I killed 13 people today." Like, of course, what those people did was wrong, but also like dealing with the weight of blasting 13 human lives off the earth is uh I mean, it just got away on you right now.

[00:16:29]In his memoirs, he maintained the same professional detachment that he brought to every execution. But the sheer volume, I mean, 200 hangings in the aftermath of World War II placed him at this unique intersection of history and morality. And he was the embodied instrument through which Allied justice, you know, was basically carried out. The hand that pulled the lever day after day, name after name. I mean, yeah, in a way, I guess he was like a military attaches to like the British military, you know, because that's what the British were doing. They were also shooting at the Germans. Now, what really shook Britain, though, wasn't how Albert killed, it was who. So, back home, several of Pon's executions became like uh like historical landmarks in their own right in British legal history. Not because of him necessarily, but because of what happened afterward, because of the Hamel hangings and the industrial sort of justice brought to this wartime trial at a massive scale.

[00:17:26]Three, these domestic cases that Albert were dealing with were in certain ways more intimate, in some ways more devastating. So there were individual miscarriages that could call the entire system into question. So, you know, when it comes to capital punishment, obviously the first thing people think is, "Well, what if you kill an innocent guy, right?" Like, that's like kind of the whole thing. Like, imagine people arrest you one day and they go, "You did this crime." They go, you go, "No, I didn't." And they go, "Yes, you did."

[00:17:52]And then you go to trial and they're like, "You're guilty of the crime and the sentence is death." And you go, "I'm getting killed now for something I didn't do." I mean, is there a more atrocious way to die? Especially if one of them is like particularly convincive.

[00:18:09]I did not do this and you see it in his eyes. Sucks.

[00:18:12]>> And then he's And then Albert Peron's the one that has to kill him and he's looking at you like, bro, I I'm on my life. I didn't do this. And he just has to be like I mean, how do you live with that? Well, this has happened. His name was Timothy Evans, and he was convicted for the murder of his infant daughter.

[00:18:30]Evans had also been accused of murdering his wife, though he was only tried for the death of his child. Evans maintained his innocence throughout the hearings, insisting that his neighbor, this guy named John Reginald Christie, he was the real killer, but no one believed him. So Evans was hanged by a pure pond on March 9th, 1950. But three years later in 1953, that neighbor dude, that guy Christy, he was arrested and confessed to murdering six women, including Evan's wife. Their bodies were found hidden throughout his house at Willington Place in London. And then Pier Pont hanged Christy, too. But the terrible truth was obviously impossible to, you know, overlook. Timothy Evans had almost certainly been innocent and the state killed a dude for a crime committed by his neighbor, the same neighbor neighbor who testified against him at the trial and then Albert Pier Pont killed both of them. I mean crazy. Evans was even posumously pardoned in 1966. I mean just like oh my I mean crazy on all accounts.

[00:19:35]Like if if you're an executioner you just have to quit that day. You're like I put a guy to death that didn't do it.

[00:19:40]It says the neighbor confessed to killing six women. Didn't say anything about the baby, though.

[00:19:45]>> That's a fair distinction. Yeah. But, I mean, according to British law, he was pardoned. Yeah. After his death, so I'm assuming that there's probably more to that case than I even know about off the top of my head. But, I mean, just like he went on and did this for a couple more years after this, after he's like, "Oops." But, I don't know how you can be so like detached.

[00:20:06]You know what I mean? Like it's like the most intimate thing. Like killing another human being, like looking at them, putting it back on their head, sizing them up, and then doing it and then getting it wrong and being like, you know, bad day at the office. Like that's crazy. Yeah. What's up, guys?

[00:20:19]We're going to take a break real quick because uh I got to tell you something kind of embarrassing. All right. I've been working out pretty consistently for a while. I love working out. I think it's super important part of my daily routine. And I don't really eat garbage and I'm doing all the stuff you're supposed to do. And I got in pretty good shape. But at some point I noticed the results kind of just stopped like matching my effort kind of around the time that I had a kid. You know, I'd put in like the same amount of work, but like I wasn't getting the same results at the gym. I would get like a little bit more belly fat. My energy was kind of inconsistent. Recovery was taking a little bit longer. And I assumed like I was just getting older, which makes sense, right? You know, guys when they hit their 30s, testosterone not like naturally goes down. And you know, when that happens, your body literally starts storing more fat and you start losing muscle faster. But here's the thing that messed me up. The more body fat you carry, the more your body actually converts testosterone into estrogen, which makes it even easier to gain this fat. And it's a cycle that keeps on going around. And so I started taking Mars Men and honestly, I've been on it for a while and I've actually noticed a difference. This is going to sound crazy. This is real. 2024, I did blood work. My testosterone was like fine. It was like on the little lower side of normal. And I did blood work recently, completely unrelated to this. And I've been taking Mars Men for I don't know, maybe like four or five months. my testosterone went up. Now, I don't know if it's from Mars. I'm not going to say it's only them. You know, maybe I've been eating a little cleaner. I've been sleeping better. Who knows? But my testosterone actually got an an increase. I mean, I couldn't believe it.

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[00:24:29]And when they ask you about how you heard about us, tell them the good people at Camp Gagnon sent you. It really helps out the show. Now, let's get back to it. Derek Bentley was hanged on January 28th, 1953. He was 19 years old and he had learning difficulties and he had been involved in a botched burglary with a 16-year-old accomplice named Christopher Craig. Now, during the arrest, Craig shot and killed a police officer. Bentley was already in police custody when the shot was fired, but because Craig was under 18, he couldn't be executed. So, the full weight of the law fell on Bentley. And the case provoked like enormous public outcry.

[00:25:09]over 200 members of parliament signed a motion for clemency. They were like, "Hey, this young kid killed a cop. Take put it on him." But like this other kid with learning disabilities, he was just there. He was already arrested and he didn't have anything to do with murdering this cop. But the motion was denied and Pierre Pont carried out the execution and once again Bentley received aostumous pardon in 1998.

[00:25:34]So this is the craziest one because Peron kind of knew that he was innocent.

[00:25:40]Like the whole general public knew like members of parliament knew. They all knew that this whole thing was a fugazi that it was actually Craig that did it.

[00:25:48]Bentley was the one that was completely in like he wasn't completely innocent.

[00:25:51]He was involved in a burglary of course like you know punish him for that. But he didn't kill the cop and Peron knew it and still sized him up through the people and said I'm working for the government. They want me to kill this guy. I'm going to go do it. They put him on, executed him, and the actual killer, this guy Craig, he lived.

[00:26:13]But then you have Ruth Ellis. Ellis was a 28-year-old nightclub hostess, and she shot her abusive lover outside a pub in London. Ellis never made any attempt to deny what she did or even flee. And at trial when they asked her like what she intended to, you know, happen when she fired the gun, she said, "I intended to kill him." She was convicted and sentenced to death in under 25 minutes.

[00:26:38]I mean, it's a pretty clearcut case.

[00:26:41]Ellis became the last woman to be executed in Britain, and she was hanged by Pure Pont on July 13th, 1955. Now, the Ellis case generated a massive public sympathy, not because anyone doubted her guilt. Everyone was like, "Yeah, you probably killed your, you know, boyfriend." But because of the circumstances around domestic violence and abuse and desperation, it made giving her the death penalty feel like disproportionate. You know, by all accounts, it's like, okay, this woman's like being abused by her, you know, by her partner, and there's no recourse for it in the state. Getting a divorce is difficult, and yeah, she did it, but it's a wrong thing that she did, but now she's also going to get put to death.

[00:27:19]Like, she's getting abused. Tries to find a way out. It's the wrong way, and now she has to die. Part of you just goes like, "Ah, all right. That's tough.

[00:27:27]Like these three cases, right? You got the Evans case, you got the Bentley case, and the Ellis case, they became the pillars of the campaign to abolish capital punishment in Britain. The wrongful execution of an innocent guy, that's atrocious. The execution of a teenager with learning disabilities for a murder that he didn't commit, that they knew in the moment that he didn't commit, and then the execution of a battered woman. And together they made this sort of patchwork abstract argument against the death penalty into something that was very real and tangible that you could put faces to. And the man who pulled the lever on all of them who was at the center of the whole thing was none other than Albert Pier Pont. Now, while all of this was happening, war crime executions, controversial hangings, the growing sort of public uh anxiety around the death penalty, Albert Peron was living a truly ordinary life.

[00:28:22]So, from the mid1 1940s, he and his wife Annie ran a pub in the village of Hollandwood near Oldm in Lancashire. And the pub was called Help the Poor Struggler. A name that was darkly ironic that it's like hard to believe that that was really help the poor struggler. And how are you going to help a poor struggler and give him a drink, you know? But this was a real pub. And most regulars had little idea that like the nice little landlord, the dude behind the taps, you know, was actually the chief executioner of Britain that had killed hundreds of Nazis, a couple innocent people here and there, and a lot of other bad people. Now, Pure Pont was by all accounts a pretty social guy.

[00:29:01]He sang in the pub. He told jokes. He was in uh the language of the time as people would call it a good sort. and this double life that he led kind of as like a friendly kind of like pub owner by night to then waking up that morning and becoming like the most notorious executioner like the most notorious uh killer perhaps the most deaths maybe of anyone in England ever speaks to something genuinely fascinating about Pierre Pon's mind is that he was like the textbook case study of compartmentalization now this is a hugely important thing when looking at, you know, the psychology of serial killers. And it takes a special kind of person to be able to function really well ini society and be very pro-social and, you know, hold down a job and then be also able to simultaneously hide this dark side of themselves. So, while Pure Pont is technically a serial killer, meaning you know, he killed a lot of people in, you know, a series, he's not a serial killer in the way that most people would understand that, right? There are no accounts and no evidence that he ever took pleasure in what he did. It was never hidden. It was always with the consent of the state. We do know, however, that he approached each of these executions with a lot of respect and care and dignity. And then he went home, poured some pints for, you know, his neighbors and his customers. And because of the discretion rule, he never told anyone what he did at the daytime.

[00:30:25]Like, he completely lived a full-on Hannah Montana, but I'm a serial killer life. Like, kill him by day, you know, killing Guinnesses by night. And the question of responsibility still is kind of like up in the air. He didn't elect for those people to die.

[00:30:41]He's not the judge or the jury. He simply elected to carry it out, to trust the system, that the system is telling me to do this, so I'm going to do it.

[00:30:49]And he trusted that the court was actually going to uphold their standards and that the person that he was killing is dangerous and needs to be removed from society. Does it make him guilty?

[00:31:00]Probably not. Does it make me feel weird? Yeah. And then after years of maintaining this delicate balance, executioner by day, bartender by night, in 1950, something happened that finally cracked his shell of professional detachment. He was called into Strange Ways Prison in Manchester to execute a man named James Corbett. And James Corbett, uh, this is an interesting story because Corbett was a guy that Albert Pier Pont knew personally. You see, Corbett was a regular at the pub.

[00:31:32]Corbett and Albert would put their arms around each other and sing songs together. They were like legit friends.

[00:31:39]Now, Corbett had uh a crime. He had a little bit of a secret. Um he uh banged a pub owner's wife. No, imagine he'd be like, "Dude, I would love to kill this guy." No. Corbett strangled his girlfriend in a jealous rage and had been sentenced to death for murdering his girlfriend, which you're like, "All right, again, I'm not a pro death penalty guy, but I can see why they're like, "All right, a life for life, yada yada." Now, Pier Pont is meticulous with his process. He always peers into the, you know, door to actually see the victim and the holding cell to make sure that there's, you know, proper calculations for the execution. So you can imagine just the blood draining from his face when he looks through the people and he sees his friend.

[00:32:24]And then the next morning, he enters the cell at 8:00 a.m. like always, and according to Peron's memoirs, their eyes met. And in that moment, that wall between the executioner and the victim completely collapses. Right? Like Peron reportedly greet his friend by his nickname at the pub. He looks at him and goes, "Uh, Tish." To which Corbett responded, "Posh," which was Albert's nickname. And that was it. Then Pier Pont did his job. 12 seconds went home, killed a man that he knew for years at that point. Now, Pier Pont never publicly talked about what this execution did to him. But in a 1974 memoir, Executioner, Pure Pump basically wrote a passage that became one of the most quoted statements in the history of the death penalty debate. And he says this, "I have come to the conclusion that executions solve nothing and are only an antiquated relic of a primitive desire for retribution, which takes the easy way and hands the responsibility for retribution to other people." The fruit of my experience has this bitter aftertaste that I do not now believe that any one of the hundreds of executions I carried out was in any way has in any way acted as a deterrent against future murder. Capital punishment in my view achieved nothing except revenge.

[00:33:47]Now this quote has been cited by abolitionists around the world ever since he wrote it down. But here's where the story gets even more complicated.

[00:33:54]Because Pon's views were never quite as clean as that one single passage. You see, throughout his career, even after retirement, Puron consistently emphasized that he was doing his duty.

[00:34:06]He spoke of the role with pride. He described execution as, you know, this sacred sort of ritual. Some biographers, including Lenora Klene, had argued that Puron's anti-deterrent stance was genuine, but very narrow. He believed hanging didn't prevent future murders.

[00:34:21]But he doesn't necessarily mean that he believes that the state had no right to carry it out and that there's a difference between, you know, this doesn't work as a deterrent and that this, you know, should never happen in any circumstance whatsoever. In interviews later in life, Pure Pont was kind of cy around this subject. He sometimes, you know, defended his work even while still questioning the results. And some scholars actually think that the memoir that he wrote was partly shaped by the political climate of the time. You see, Britain had already abolished the death penalty and an abolitionist framing made him, you know, look a lot better and was a lot more uh, you know, a better context for selling a book. Now, the truth is probably that Peron held contradictory views the way that a lot of people do when they spent a lifetime within, you know, any specific job. And he could believe that the work was sacred and also that it achieved nothing. he could take a lot of pride in what he did but then also kind of regret what it was being used for. And it was probably complicated and confusing, right? To be a person responsible for killings for so long and then at the end of it at the end of all of it basically wondering like am I even doing anything? Am I doing the right thing at all? Holding all these things in tension is extremely difficult and trying to balance them all is maybe the most human experience ever.

[00:35:40]You know, like you can think about anything like okay, I'm I'm uh you know, punishing my kid, but like it's the right thing to do, but it's also difficult or like, you know, my I work at a, you know, massive international corporation that, you know, deforest trees somewhere, but also I like my job and uh pays well and I try my best to help the people around me. And it's like, yeah, both these things are happening. I have an iPhone and I'm like, I love my iPhone. on like scrolling on Instagram and looking at Tik Toks, but also like there's probably a decent amount of exploitation that went into that and I kind of hold both of them at the same time and just like yeah so after you know all of this you know after you know Peron's entire life right like all the hangings killing really bad people but also killing innocent people Albert Pupont kind of looked back and basically had to ask like was it worth it did I do anything well Britain formally abolished a death penalty for murder in 1965 with the last executions carried out in August of 1964, which uh is a little bit funny to be like the last guy to be hanged and being like really I'm not making the cut off. I'm I'm dying now because of the election cycle being the last guy to get hanged and like they're all kind of coming in like one more time, boys. It'd be a kind it'd be a funny sketch. Might be worth looking into. Now, that was eight years after Peron's retirement. He retires and then eight years later, you know, the death penalty is basically done. There's no death penalty without Albert Peron. You know what I mean?

[00:37:19]That'd be like if they dissolve the NBA after MJ retired, you know, be like, "Hey, how are we going to go on?" It only took 8,000 executions, but >> Yeah. Exactly. right now. Abolition wasn't instant or, you know, completely uh total. Capital punishment remained on the books for treason and certain military offenses until 1998. And it wasn't until 2003 that the United Kingdom ratified what they call protocol 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which completely abolishes the death penalty in all circumstances with no exceptions. It is funny that the one that they held on to, they were like, "Look, if you murder another human being, you can't be murdered. But if you steal tell a secret, like really, if you tell our secrets, we're going to kill you." It is considered treason, and treason's worse than murder. Is it?

[00:38:05]Because it could lead to a lot more murders. Look, I'm on the stance of uh don't kill people. Okay, someone does something horrible, put them in prison.

[00:38:15]I would rather die than be in prison for the rest of my life. Hot take.

[00:38:19]>> That's Satan.

[00:38:20]>> So like if you really want to punish someone, like what are you talking about? Like I I don't know. Now Now I'm getting on my high horse. Sorry. I I I I'm just a guy, you know? We're all trying to figure it out. I'm not I I got a little too fired up there. Now these cases that Pure Pond had been involved in, right? the Evans case, Bentley Ellis, those like significant ones that really created the tapestry for kind of what, you know, pulled back the death penalty in the UK. They, you know, they kind of made the steps possible in a way like Albert Peron like contributed to the abolition of he contributed to the abolition of uh the death penalty in a way because he was was the one that carried out these like landmark historical legal cases. Now, the legacy of Albert Peron is still contested now, right? You have anti-death penalty, death penalty people that cite his memoir as proof that even the executioner himself knows that the system is messed up. And then you have other people that point to his lifetime of dutiful service and argue that his late in life doubts were, you know, they they don't erase the fact that he carried out his work willingly for decades. You know, like, hey, you killed all these people and now you feel bad about it too late. And then of course you have like true crime people and historians that are debating like who what does he really represent? Is he a necessary function of state violence? Is there, you know, is this like a conscientious professional that's caught up inside like this flawed system? Was he a sadistic guy that, you know, did all this stuff because he really wanted to kill people? They actually made a movie about him in 2005. They called Pier Pont and it stars this guy Timothy Spall and he proclaimed his story to the world and leaned into the psychological toll of the work. And you know, a lot of documentaries and podcasts still kind of like look at this topic and really try to like put themselves in the shoes of this guy that had to deal with like so much like pressure and guilt and pride and all sorts of stuff, you know. And what's crazy is that this still goes on to this day. You know, Britain, you know, stopped the death penalty a long time ago, but United States, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia still kill their citizens to this day. They still carry out these executions, making his testimony not like a historical thing like way back in the day, but it's like a thing that's going on right now.

[00:40:38]Now, Albert Peront died on July 10th, 1992 at the age of 87 in Murzyside in England. And his death was pretty quiet, natural, unremarkable. The most prolific executioner in modern British history, living out his final years in this peaceful kind of seaside town. no mask, no trap door. And uh one thing that I keep on thinking about is like how much he, you know, thought about his death, like his like the the people that he was executing, like their death and how deliberate he was and how he tried to show them mercy. And that was kind of his attempt at his own death. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is an a bridged history of the life of the most notorious and final executioner of England, Albert Peront. I mean, a very strange story. Like truly a a difficult one to wrap your head around where you're like gh like I guess someone's got to do it. Like someone in America is doing this right now, right? Like they're doing a lethal injection on people. It's a little different. Lethal injection versus hanging. Sure, it's different, but like someone's still got to like do it. Multiple people got to do it. They got to like walk them into the thing, put them into the chair. I don't really know how it all works, but like it's a thing that we do. That's pretty crazy. Now again, I understand both sides. I'm not here to like dissuade people, but I just personally I wouldn't want to be the guy doing it. And it's just crazy to think there's a guy out there right now that does do it. I don't know. Like it's interesting because Peron did have like some general idea of what the crime was. Like when he would talk to the prison officials, like he would size them up. He saw like what their name was, height, weight, and then he saw the crime. And then if it was a big publicized case, like obviously like you know Nazi trials, like he would know what happened. But still, he kind of treated everyone the exact same. Come in, do my job, walk out, go to my pub.

[00:42:31]Like, pretty crazy. I don't know.

[00:42:34]There's a there's an element of it that's like so morbid and like dark, but also like if something terrible happened to someone in my family, you know what I mean? Like, and they were going to get executed, I'd be like, I wonder how my tune would change. But I don't know.

[00:42:48]There's just a part of me that's like I just I don't know if the state should have a monopoly on violence, you know?

[00:42:53]like you can't kill people, but we can kill people. It's like I don't want to live. I don't I don't like that. This feels weird to me. I don't know. This it's a wild life, though. Like this guy lived a full-on life being an executioner and just kind of died like this quiet death and he I I bet you I I don't know. The guilt would eat me alive knowing that I like this guy specifically like the uh what is it? The Bentley case.

[00:43:17]>> Mhm.

[00:43:18]>> Like that's the the kid that had nothing to do with it. He knows that he's innocent. Like the one case of the guy that he was accused and convicted of murdering his kid and then we find out that maybe it was probably the neighbor that did it, yada yada. Like at least in the moment you're like, I did what I had to do. I did what the court told me. It was the right thing and then I moved on.

[00:43:39]Fine. Being like, I know this kid's innocent. I saw the news reports. I saw the protesters. He wasn't there when it happened, but the state wants revenge.

[00:43:50]And the courts and the cops want to get back for a guy that took one of their own, so we're going to kill his friend.

[00:43:56]It just feels like gang [ __ ] Like, it's crazy. Like, but again, it was from above. It was nothing he could do about it. What's he going to say? I'm not going to kill him. They'll get someone else. Yeah, sure. But at the very least, you protect your own conscience and like you protect your own moral code. You're like like objecting and just being like, "Yeah, I'm not down with this one. I'm sorry. I'm not going to do it. You can find someone else to do it. I'm sure there's a bunch of other people. You can fire me forever. I'm not doing it." One thing we kind of glossed over the James Corbett, his buddy that he had to execute. Do you remember the nicknames?

[00:44:26]>> Tish and Tosh.

[00:44:28]>> Isn't that crazy? That sounds like a sickop.

[00:44:30]>> Tish and Tosh.

[00:44:30]>> Tish and Tosh.

[00:44:31]>> Two buddies at the bar singing old sea shanties.

[00:44:34]>> Yeah.

[00:44:35]>> So they go off and strangle. Part of me is also like that's almost easier. I'd rather kill an innocent man than No. No.

[00:44:42]I'd rather kill my friend that's a criminal then kill an innocent man that I don't know.

[00:44:45]>> Yeah.

[00:44:46]>> Like there's a part of me that's like Yeah, dude. you're my buddy, but also like you did something atrocious. You strangled your wife. Like you can't kill your wife. That's crazy. And again, I'm not big on the death penalty, but if you got to do one, I'm like that one I'm fine with. Killing an innocent dude. I don't know. Like come on. And he's looking at you like I can't believe this is it. I cannot believe this is how I go out. Just wrong place, wrong time, dealing with the death of my child, and now I'm getting killed.

[00:45:13]I don't know. Kind of morbid. What do you guys think? Like what's your what's your take, dude? you that's listening back at home working right now on the job probably uh driving UPS or something maybe uh working in a warehouse.

[00:45:27]>> Amazon delivery driver. Shout out to you.

[00:45:29]>> Yep. Amazon the Amazon boys. Shout out to y'all. I appre I saw an Amazon guy get into a fight outside of the apartment recently. A guy like backed into his truck and tried to flee and the Amazon guy was like, "Yo, what are you doing?" And they had a whole thing while I was eating dinner. I just watched it.

[00:45:42]The guy eventually got out of his car and it was a whole thing. But I feel bad for the Amazon guys. I got to deal with all this BS all the time. So, I appreciate you guys always getting my packages on time and just generally being pretty cool when I see you in the neighborhood. But anyway, that's beside the point. Uh, what do you think about El Pier Punk? Would you could you be an executioner? Could you deal with that?

[00:45:58]Like, I guess there's the flip side, which is like, yeah, get to give all these families peace and like take out these bad people from society that could potentially go and offend again. You know, it's like, who's to say they're not going to like hurt people in prison?

[00:46:09]And, you know, say what you will about prisoners. Like I think they should also be treated with respect and they shouldn't get hurt by some crazy maniac.

[00:46:16]So I don't know. I think it's complicated. I see both sides. But the fact that this guy Albert Peron actually had to live it. I would love to know your thoughts. Please drop a comment YouTube Spotify. I read all of them. Uh furthermore, uh if you want to see me on the road, Mark Agnon live. If you want to hang in the, you know, inner sanctum with the boys and actually post up with the squad, great news. We have the Patreon. That is the campfire. That's where we all gather. You know, we do episodes every single month. uh that are exclusively on Patreon. We do Zooms that are live with the whole squad and we put out episodes that are ad free. If you're one of those people that's like, "Hey, I hate the ads." Great news. For the price of a cup of coffee, you're going to get what is it? 16 episodes a month.

[00:46:54]Completely adree. I mean, not a bad deal. Plus the bonuses.

[00:46:58]>> Plus the bonuses. I mean, it's like an insane value. We should probably bump that up. No, I'm saying it. Um no, but seriously, jump in while you can. And uh yeah, I appreciate you guys dearly. If you like history stuff, great news.

[00:47:09]We're doing history camp all the time.

[00:47:10]That's what that's what we do here. If you like religion content, we have Religion Camp. You can check that out.

[00:47:14]And of course, if you like conspiracy rabbit holes and deep dives and all things going on right now, well, that is where we have Camp Gagnon, where I sit down with actual experts way smarter than me. But if you just like to rock with a history vibe, we're here. Thank you so much for tuning in. I appreciate you all dearly. God bless. And I will see you in the future to talk about the past.