Joe Arridy

An I.Q. score of 70 is considered low.  Joe Arridy peaked at an I.Q. of 46.  Such a score placed him at a moderate level of mental disability.  Joe lived his entire adult life (brief as it was) with the aptitude of a six-year-old.

False confessions of murder are a weird, but proven, part of our criminal justice system.  There are many documented cases of men and women, pressed by police investigators, confessing to crimes they did not commit.  Back in 1936, the combination of low intelligence, suggestion, and duress led Joe Arridy, age 20 at the time, to confess to the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl in Pueblo, Colorado.

Mostly, this confession seems result of an overly-ambitious sheriff named George J. Carroll pushing Joe into a false admission.  Sheriff Carroll is also notable for having a hand in breaking up the notorious Ma Barker gang.  Sheriff Carroll, in a jurisdiction far removed from the crime, found Joe wandering around a rail yards of Cheyenne, Wyoming.  The Sheriff, working on information spread throughout the region, quickly decided he could tie Joe Arridy to the rape and murder.   

Oddly enough, another man, Frank Aguilar, had already been arrested in the jurisdiction where the crime occurred by the time Joe Arridy was hauled in.  Eventually, an elaborate confession was cooked-up to show Joe Arridy as an accomplice to the crime.  Joe eagerly, innocently went along.

The state of Colorado executed Frank Aguilar for murder in 1937.  Prior to his execution, he confessed to raping and killing the young girl.  He also admitted he had never met Joe Arridy.

In spite of all this, Joe Arridy ended up on death row.  Up until this time Joe had lived a life of constant neglect and abuse.  Joe, a simple and gentle soul accepted death row as he accepted everything.  He really didn’t think about it.

All the guards and inmates on death row liked Joe.  He brought happiness to a dark place.

I end this story with a telling paragraph from “The Happiest Man on Death Row,” an online post by Emily Thompson:

Roy Best, the warden, lobbied tirelessly to save Arridy’s life. He visited him daily on Death Row and have him a red toy train to play with. “He was as happy as any child with something he always had longed for and never expected to have,” said Best. On Christmas Eve of 1938, Best even brought Arridy home to play with his nephews. He – as well as most other people – knew that Arridy was truly innocent of the crime for which he had been charged. On the 6th of January, 1939, Arridy was led to the gas chamber with his toy train still in his hand. “A wreck! A wreck! Fix the wreck,” Arridy cried out with glee as he played with his train one last time, pretending to crash it into the cell door. He requested ice cream as his last meal and didn’t comprehend that he was about to die. He didn’t even understand the meaning of the gas chamber, telling the warden: “No, no, Joe won’t die…”

Joe Arridy died at the age of 23.

In 2011, 72 years after his death (and following years of petitioning by many people), Joe Arridy received a full and unconditional posthumous pardon from Colorado Governor Bill Ritter.

 

—Mitchell Hegman

Sources: Wikipedia, Morbidology (Emily Thompson), verywellmind.com