State authorities reported that the War Department, on behalf of the Chemical Warfare Service, had requested that a competent observer prepare a report on the mode, materials, and effects, psychological and other, of the execution.39
Once the cyanide arrived at the prison, a chemical expert from the private sector, E. B. Walker, took charge of the poison. His orders were to ensure that the necessary precautions were taken to safeguard the executioners, attendants, physicians, and spectators.40 Walker inspected the death house and checked its newly installed vents and exhaust system. He explained that the gas had been reduced to a liquid form that would be used during the execution. Once it was pumped through the death chamber and turned into gas, it would rise up, kill the prisoner, and then float away harmlessly over the prison walls via an outlet pipe, he said. Therefore, there would be no need for anyone to wear a gas mask.41
But others were not so sure. As preparations for the execution entered their final phase, four prison guards resigned from their jobs rather than participate, saying they “didn’t want to take a chance on being mixed up in it.”42 Undaunted, Walker went ahead and conducted a “dress rehearsal” of the death chamber using a stray white cat and two kittens. Warden Dickerson estimated that the cats died within fifteen seconds after the liquid was sprayed into the chamber through a hole in the floor.43 The tests also revealed a small leak in the chamber, which was quickly patched to avert the possible poisoning of the witnesses or staff. Although he still had his doubts about the chamber’s safety, Dickerson had no choice but to proceed.
Guards described the twenty-two-year-old Russell as calm and apparently untroubled by his approaching death. Attended by a Catholic priest, he continued to maintain his innocence. Accounts pictured Gee as “very nervous,” solitary, and brooding. He reportedly hadn’t eaten for nine days and weighed a gaunt ninety pounds. Although authorities sometimes used an interpreter to explain the latest developments in his case to him, he often seemed confused or resigned to his fate.44 One reporter quoted him as saying, “Gas allesame lope or shootem gun—me no wolly.”45
The day before the scheduled execution, prison authorities allowed a delegation of reporters into the prison to interview both of the condemned men. Gee had trouble understanding their questions and had little to say. He said he had emigrated from Canton, China, to San Francisco about eighteen years earlier and denied being a member of any tong. Russell, meanwhile, clung to his story that his girlfriend had been slain by her own mother after a quarrel over money, claiming that he had fled the scene out of fear he would be attacked by an Indian mob.46 Reporters described the other prisoners and guards as exhibiting horror and terror over the approaching execution, averting their eyes from the small stone barber shop that had been turned into a “death sepulchre.”47
The night before the execution, Warden Dickerson received a last-minute commutation order from Governor Scrugham, saving Russell from death. But Gee was still doomed to face the lethal chamber.48 Now his execution was scheduled for only thirteen hours later. Two Chinese friends from Reno and a cousin from Garnersville visited Gee in his cell and talked with him in low tones for about half an hour. Nearby Hughie Sing and Thomas Russell counted their blessings.49
At dawn on Friday, February 8, slate-colored clouds hung low over Carson City. The weather was humid and cold, with temperatures in the forties. In addition to the usual sounds of the prison awakening, the chilly air reverberated with the noises of approaching automobiles, shouted instructions, and clanging gates as waves of camera-toting newsmen and other participants converged on the scene with their engraved invitations. The excitement was growing. Finally the warden appeared at the door and said, “Come inside, gentlemen,” directing the group of about thirty men to file into the hard-baked prison yard.50
The official physicians included Dr. Anthony Huffaker, the prison doctor; Dr. Joseph B. Hardy of Reno; Major Delos A. Turner of the Army Medical Reserve Corps; and others. Turner was an associate of Governors Boyle and Scrugham in the American Legion and acting as General Fries’s official representative on the scene.51 He already had caused a sensation before the execution by telling some members of the press that he wanted to revive the Chinese prisoner after the gas had been expelled from the room. Warden Dickerson, however, refused to comment publicly on such a plan, which he must have considered out of the question and bizarre.52
Clusters of visitors gathered around as prison officials imparted to the reporters a few precious bits of information: After acting extremely nervous and restless for weeks, they said, Gee seemed to have braced himself last night, his last night on earth. For breakfast he had eaten ham and eggs, toast, and coffee. The warden also warned his guests that the cold temperature might slow the gas inside the room, and they would have to be especially careful not to break the glass separating them from the poison gas.
Accompanied by two beefy guards clad in bulky overcoats, Captain Joe Muller headed over to Gee’s cell to fetch the condemned man. Finding the prisoner lying on his bunk, Muller unlocked the steel door and stepped inside. Gee was dressed in prison overalls and an old green sweater over a faded yellow shirt open at the throat. The captain wasted no time with pleasantries. “Get up, Gee; it’s time to go,” he said gruffly. When the prisoner stirred but didn’t rise, Muller tersely said, “Come, Gee; it’s time.”
Gee stood up and gulped, appearing unsteady. But when Muller said, not very sympathetically, “Take it like a man,” Gee seemed to steel himself. He stepped into the corridor where Lieutenant Ducker and Officer Sheehan promptly buckled leather straps around his thighs and hands.
Then, with Muller leading the way and one guard grasping Gee by each arm, they proceeded outside toward the death house.53 Soon they confronted the crowd gathered by the window. Upon seeing Gee, several witnesses shuddered at his small and vulnerable form, escorted by men twice his size. They noted the doomed man was bareheaded and rather shabbily dressed. A thin patch of jet-black hair swept back from his forehead, and his red lips and black eyes accentuated his prison pallor. Stubble covered his expressionless face. His eyes flickered over the crowd before he passed by. At 9:35 A.M. two guards escorted Gee through the open door and into the death chamber.
The witnesses grew more agitated. Although the warden had warned all of the visitors to stay behind a black line that had been painted on the stone floor outside the building, some of the correspondents kept pressing forward, scribbling onto sheets of paper that from time to time they would hand back to messengers, who would rush off to waiting telephones or telegraph.54
Gee gazed at the plain, unpainted pine chair and quickly sat down. The guards immediately strapped him in, and he started to weep as they hurried out and sealed the doors.55 The seconds had ticked into minutes. As the witnesses crowded closer to the glass, they spied him seated in the death chair facing the observation window. Everyone fell silent.
At 9:40 A.M. the silence was pierced by the terrifying hiss of the hydrocyanic acid that was being introduced into the chamber. Out of view from the witnesses, a technician had begun to spray a solution of the deadly liquid into the chamber from a small pressurized tank.