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Caryl Whittier Chessman (May 27, 1921 – May 2, 1960) was a convicted robbery, kidnapping, rape, and writer who was sentenced to death for a series of crimes committed in January 1948 in the Los Angeles area. Chessman was charged with 17 counts and convicted under a loosely interpreted "Little Lindbergh law" that defined kidnapping as a capital offense under certain circumstances. His case attracted worldwide attention, and helped propel the movement to end the use of capital punishment in the state of California.
While in prison, Chessman filed numerous legal actions of dubious merit that led to him being considered vexatious. One judge wrote in 1957: "Chessman playing a game with the courts, stalling for time while the facts of the case grow cold." Chessman wrote four books, including his 1954 memoir Cell 2455, Death Row. The book was adapted for the screen in 1955 and stars William Campbell as a character modelled after Chessman.
He was executed in California's gas chamber in 1960.
In July 1937, Chessman was caught stealing a car and sent to Preston School of Industry (also known as Preston Castle), a reform school in Northern California. He was released in April 1938, only to return a month later after stealing another car. In October 1939, Chessman was sent to the Los Angeles County Road Camp after yet another car theft. It was there that he met a group of young criminals known as the "Boy Bandit Gang." After his release from the road camp he joined the gang and, in April 1941, was arrested in connection with a number of gang-related robberies and shootouts with police. As the gang's leader, Chessman was convicted of robbery and sent to San Quentin State Prison, then transferred to the California Institution for Men in Chino. He escaped in October 1943 but was arrested a month later. Convicted on another robbery charge, Chessman was sentenced to five years to life and served the minimum, mostly at Folsom State Prison. He was released in December 1947 and returned to Glendale.
The following day, police in North Hollywood attempted to stop a 1946 Ford coupe matching the description given by Meza and her boyfriend, and also by witnesses to a robbery at a clothing store in Redondo Beach earlier that day. After a high-speed chase, the vehicle's occupants, Chessman and David Knowles, were captured and arrested. After a 72-hour interrogation, during which Chessman later claimed he was beaten and tortured, Chessman confessed to the "Red Light Bandit" crimes. He was also positively identified by the rape victims, Johnson and Meza.Hamm (2001), p. 4 In late January 1948, Chessman was indicted on 18 counts of robbery, kidnapping, and rape. After a three-week trial in May, he was convicted on 17 of the 18 counts,James (2012), p. 188. and was sentenced to death. The prosecution was led by district attorney J. Miller Leavy. Chessman's accomplice, Knowles, was tried and convicted as an accessory in the store robberies, but his conviction was reversed on appeal in 1950 due to an absence of direct incriminating evidence and "impermissible abuse of the law."
Chessman asserted his innocence from the outset, arguing throughout the trial and the appeals process that he was alternately the victim of mistaken identity, or of a conspiracy to frame him; he also claimed to know the identity of the real perpetrator, but refused to reveal it. He further alleged that the confession he signed during his initial police interrogation was coercion through force and intimidation.
Over the course of nearly twelve years on death row Chessman filed dozens of , acting as his own attorney, and successfully avoided eight execution deadlines, often by a few hours. Most appeals were based on assertions that he was forced to go to trial unprepared; that the trial itself was unfair; that confessions obtained by force and intimidation and promises of partial immunity were used in evidence against him; that California's "Little Lindbergh Law" was unconstitutional; and that the transcript of record forwarded upon appeal to the state supreme court was incomplete, and important parts of the proceedings were missing or incorrectly recorded. In 1957 the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the State of California to conduct a full review of the transcripts. The review concluded that the transcripts were substantially accurate.
Chessman also took his case to the public through letters, essays and books. His four books— Cell 2455, Death Row; Trial by Ordeal; The Face of Justice; and The Kid Was a Killer—became bestsellers. He sold the rights to Cell 2455, Death Row to Columbia Pictures, which made a 1955 film of the same name, directed by Fred F. Sears, with William Campbell as Chessman. Chessman's middle name, Whittier, was used as the surname of his alter ego protagonist in the film. The manuscript of his fourth book, The Kid Was a Killer, was seized by San Quentin warden Harley O. Teets in 1954 as a product of “prison labor." It was eventually returned to Chessman in late 1957, and published in 1960.
Chessman's books and public campaign ignited a worldwide movement to spare his life, while focusing attention on the larger question of the death penalty in the United States, at a time when most Western countries had abandoned it, or were in the process of doing so. The office of California Governor Pat Brown was flooded with appeals for clemency from noted authors and intellectuals from around the world, including Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury, Norman Mailer, Dwight Macdonald, and Robert Frost, and from such other public figures as former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Marlon Brando, and Billy Graham. Caryl Chessman, The Red-Light Bandit
The Chessman affair put Brown, an opponent of the death penalty, in a difficult position. He was unable to grant Chessman executive clemency as the California Constitution required the commutation of a two-time felon's death sentence to be ratified by the California Supreme Court, which declined ratification by a vote of 4–3. After a long period of inaction Brown finally issued a 60-day stay a few hours before the February 19, 1960, scheduled execution. He issued the stay, he said, out of concern that the execution could threaten the safety of President Dwight D. Eisenhower during an official visit to South America, where the Chessman case had inflamed anti-American sentiment. Obituary: R. Richard Rubottom, New York Times, December 20, 2010; accessed June 2, 2014. Pat Brown's son and future Governor Jerry Brown unsuccessfully lobbied his father to spare Chessman.
Author Dominique Lapierre visited Chessman several times during his incarceration. Lapierre was then a young reporter working for a French newspaper. His account of Chessman appears in the book A Thousand Suns.Dominique Lapierre: Bestselling Writer Turns Philanthropist. cityofjoyaid.org archive . Retrieved November 30, 2014.
Artist Bruce Conner created his sculpture Child in 1959–60 as an homage to Chessman's execution.
The radio version of Dragnet referenced the Chessman case and the Redlight Bandit in a 1949 episode. The producers changed the storyline of his crimes, allowing the rape victim to die in the fictitious version, justifying the death penalty.
Chessman's execution is referenced in Lucio Fulci's 1969 giallo One on Top of the Other, in which the character of George Dumurrier (Jean Sorel) is prepared to be executed in San Quentin's gas chamber. Not only were these sequences shot on location in San Quentin, but several of the prison personnel who were responsible for Chessman's death acted in them; a fact that was especially highlighted in the film's Film trailer.
Chessman is mentioned in Neil Diamond's 1970 song "Done Too Soon" and in French singer Nicolas Peyrac's song "So far away from LA".
Chessman's execution in the gas chamber is mentioned in Richard Brautigan's 1967 novella Trout Fishing in America.
In 1977, Alan Alda starred in an NBC television movie about Chessman's life, Kill Me If You Can. This was sometimes shown, subsequently, as The Caryl Chessman Story.Morales, T. (January 4, 2005). Alan Alda Shows Off His Dark Side. CBS News archive. Retrieved November 30, 2014.
The song "The Ballad of Caryl Chessman," written by the songwriting team of Al Hoffman and Dick Manning, includes the chorus "let him live, let him live, let him live". It was a minor hit single for Ronnie Hawkins two months before Chessman's execution.It peaked at number 32 on the CHUM Chart in Toronto in March 1960. The CHUM Chart Book: 1957–1983, Ron Hall, p. 81.
Country music star Merle Haggard stated in an interview in 1995 that many years earlier, when he was a prison inmate, observing Chessman's preparations for his execution helped to set him on the straight and narrow.
Chessman, a 2016 play by Joe Rodota, tells the story of the execution from the viewpoint of Governor Pat Brown.
The song "Broadway Melody of 1974" by the rock group Genesis, off their album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, contains the lyrics: "The cheerleader waves her cyanide wand with the smell of peach blossoms and bitter almond." (Gas chamber reference) then: " Caryl Chessman sniffs the air and leads the parade, he knows, in a scent, you can bottle all you made." "Sniffs the air" likely refers to the execution method; also the singer Gabriel pronounces "in a scent" indistinguishably from "innocent".
Mexican professional Lucha libre, "Chessman, the red light killer," from AAA, is named after Chessman.
A fictionalized version of Chessman appears in James Ellroy 2021 novel Widespread Panic (novel).
Chessman is believed by the fictional serial killer Thomas Bishop to be his biological father in the 1979 novel, By Reason of Insanity by Shane Stevens.
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