Delaware Killer Executed in 3rd U.S. Hanging in 30 Years

Billy Bailey, the 49-year-old murderer of an elderly couple, climbed onto a wooden gallows and was hanged early Thursday, becoming only the third convict in the nation to be executed this way in 30 years.

Bailey closed his eyes, sniffled and said nothing before the black hood was placed over his head. His body twisted quickly in the wind once the trapdoor was sprung, then turned slowly beneath the 15-foot high platform in the cold night air.

He was pronounced dead 11 minutes later, at 12:15 a.m. EST.

Bailey became the first person to be hanged in Delaware in 50 years and the third in the nation since 1965.

About 70 death-penalty opponents gathered outside the prison, separated by a fence from about 20 supporters of the execution.

“I think it’s really past time this should have come about. It’s been too many years,” said Mary Ann Lambertson, the daughter-in-law of the victims.

“I happened to be the poor soul who found the bodies, and it was a gruesome sight,” she said.

Dennis Lambertson, 40, a grandson of the victims, said he went to the prison to “see justice done.”

Gilbert and Clara Lambertson were murdered with a shotgun at their farmhouse in 1979. Delaware has not previously allowed family members of the victims to witness executions.

The gallows were built on the grounds of the Delaware Correctional Center 10 years ago as Bailey’s first execution date approached. Appeals delayed the hanging until the U.S. Supreme Court denied a stay of execution last week.

Three other states allow hanging--Montana, New Hampshire and Washington, where two murderers were hanged in 1993 and 1994. Before that, the last hangings in the United States were in Kansas in 1965, when four murderers were executed.

Bailey was sentenced to hang before Delaware changed its method of execution to lethal injection in June 1986. He could have chosen to die by injection, but said he chose hanging because “the law is the law.”

By coincidence, Utah is scheduled to have its first firing squad execution in 19 years early today. John Albert Taylor, sentenced to die for raping and strangling an 11-year-old girl, chose the firing squad over injection, the state’s second method of execution since Utah outlawed hanging in 1983.

Taylor said he chose the firing squad because it would be a costly inconvenience to the state and because he feared “flipping around like a fish out of water” if given an injection. He also hoped the method would more dramatically underscore his claim that his death would be state-sanctioned murder.