San Pedro News Pilot, Volume 11, Number 182, 7 October 1938 — Adam Richetti Goes to Death Without Telling of Massacre [ARTICLE]

Adam Richetti Goes to Death Without Telling of Massacre

JEFFERSON CITY. Mo. (/P)— Adam Richetti, last survivor of a desperate trio which terrorized the midwest a few years ago, was executed in Missouri’s lethal gas chamber early today for his part in the 1933 'Kansas City Union station massacre of four officers and their prisoner. Death of the sardonic, sallowfaced pal of Pretty Boy Floyd blasted the last hope of officials for a first-hand account of the sensational mass murders. Richetti murmured only seven words as authorities strapped him into the chair: “What have I done to deserve this?" Blindfolded, he walked calmly Into the tank, its sixth victim. He

gulped several times as officials released the gas, uttered one sharp gasp as deadly fumes filled the chamber, and struggled momentarily. He was pronounced dead four minutes after the gas was released. Richetti, Floyd and Verne Miller, a former South Dakota sheriff who turned gangster, were named by federal officials as the actual Union station murderers. The massacre was a bungled attempt to rescue Frank Nash, an escaped convict, from officers taking him back to Leavenworth, Kas., federal prison. Robert Hermanson, son of one of the victims and now a Kansas City policeman, witnessed the Richetti execution.