“LAST MILE” TO DOOM

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 April 1937, Page 9

“LAST MILE” TO DOOM

ELECTRIC-CHAIR EXECUTION Walking the “last mile” from the condemned cell to the electrocution chamber at Sing Sing Prison. John Fiorenza, a 24-year-old ex-convict, recently remarked, “Saying good-bye to mother is tougher than going to the chair.” -w With the electric chair fate of Fiorenza the curtain fell on one of New York’s most sensational crimes. Fiorenza was found guilty of murdering Mrs. Nancy Titterton. aged 34, the well-known writer of children’s stories. She was the wife of Mr. L. 11. Titterion, an official of the American National Broadcasting Company, whose parents live 'al Wimbledon, London. Mr. and Mrs. Titterton were preparing to visit them when the crime was committed. Mrs. Titterton, a beautiful and accomplished woman, was found dead in a bath at her apartment in a fashionable quarter of the city on Good Friday last year. She had been strangled witli the cord of her pyjamas. Her body bore the marks of a ferritic struggle.

Fiorenza entered the death chamber accompanied by a priest. Here he uttered no words, but his lips moved as if in prayer. “Once i thought.' - declared Fiorenza, “something would save me. but the Case murder turned everybody against me all over again.’’ Fiorenza was then referring to the murder of Mrs. Alary Case, a young married woman, in circumstances similar to those surrounding his own crime.