Execution of Fred Hopt at Salt Lake for the Murder of J. F. Turner.
A paper one and one-half inches square was pinned over the condemned man’s heart, the good-byes were said, Marshal Dyer gave the order to fire, the guns clicked as though operated by one man, and in the twinkling of an eye Hopt was dead, two balls piercing his heart, and the other two passing through the body half an inch below that organ. There was a slight spasmodic action of the muscles of the throat, but not a muscle of the arms or legs twitched. Death was instantaneous. Father Kelly, the Catholic priest who had been with Hopt in his last hours, administered extreme unction. The body was prepared by the physicians, placed in a coffin, and taken to an undertaker’s establishment in the city.
Sheriff Turner was not permitted to witness the execution of his son’s murderer, but stood outside the walls and heard the shots fired which put an end to the wretch’s existence.
Hopt made no confession. He was very guarded in all his utterances during his last hours, but he made no protestations of innocence, nor did he say aught implicating Jack Emerson, who was at least an accessory after the fact.
The execution of Frederick Hopt for the murder of John F. Turner, seven long years after the crime, rung down the curtain on a drama as replete with startling incidents as any to be found in the realms of fiction. It is certainly one of the causes celebre of the West, and its thrilling events find but few parallels in the annals of criminal judicature. The case was made interesting, not only by the fact that the crime was a dastardly one, but also because one of the officers who tracked the murderer was the father of his victim; not only by reason of the fact that that father on three or four occasions saved the villain from mob violence, nor yet, because of the patience with which that parent for seven long years waited to see justice meted out and the law vindicated, but it is interesting because it emphasizes the marvelous safeguards which the law throws around a prisoner in this country, and the maudlin sentimentality which a criminal can arouse, no matter how cold-blooded his crime may have been.
A TALE OF TWO CONTINENTS.