Famous Last Words
Joseph Behiter
Carson City, Nevada
July 13, 1934

“Don’t strap me to the chair too tightly. It might keep the gas from my lungs.”

Behiter was executed in the gas chamber for the murder of a dance-hall girl named Maxine Armstrong, who was the unfortunate victim of mistaken identity. Behiter had intended to murder another woman and broke into his victim’s room by mistake, killing her with multiple blows from a miner’s pick-axe.

Behiter reportedly whistled on his way to the gas chamber.