Albert Snyder, the Editor of 'Motorboating Magazine' was so attached to his former fiancee Jessie Guishard (to whom he'd been engaged for over 10 years) that marriage to Ruth Brown (in 1915) did nothing to alter his affections. He not only continued to enjoy Jessie's company, he also took her to his bed and expected his wife to have no objections. When Albert named his latest boat after his lover and Ruth complained about this public demonstration of his adultery, Albert angrily told her that Jessie was "the finest woman I have ever met!

In 1918, their union produced a daughter, but Ruth eventually followed her husband's example and took lovers of her own.  The little girl - Lorraine - was cynically used to give a veneer of respectability to her mother's trysts with men. Ruth figured, correctly as it turned out, that hotel staff would never dream that any mother would take her young daughter to such meetings. Ruth would send Lorraine to sit in the lobbies and read magazines whilst she and her latest lover went to bed.

In 1925, she met Judd Gray - a corset salesman - it was the start of an affair that led to murder and the electric chair. He was weak and easily dominated; Ruth liked to impose her will and there was no doubt who was in charge of their relationship. 

Eventually, Ruth  decided to rid herself of Albert - whom she now called 'The old crab'. She took out a $48,000 life insurance policy on him with a double-indemnity clause. Twice, she disconnected the gas while Albert slept and slipped from the house - but both times he woke up and saved himself from asphyxiation. Apparently, he never suspected his wife. Another time she closed him inside the garage door while the automobile's engine was running, but Albert survived. Then she started putting bichloride of mercury in his whiskey. But he survived again.

Finally, in February 1927, with her husband still stubbornly alive, Ruth convinced Judd to help her murder him. Gray hid in a bedroom closet and when the Snyders returned home, he rushed out and hit Albert over the head with a sash weight. Albert struggled and begged for his wife for help. Judd reportedly weakened and could not finish what he had started - but Ruth picked up a 5 pounds sash weight and hit her husband repeatedly until he slipped into unconsciousness. Then, she chloroformed him and strangled him with picture wire.

Gray tied up Ruth. When the police arrived, she claimed they had been robbed and attacked by burglars. Albert's body was found in the bedroom, tied hand and foot. He had been chloroformed, his head bashed in; there were three bullets on the floor and a revolver on the bed. Picture wire was tied tightly around his neck. Money from his wallet was missing. Ruth told police that her jewels had also been stolen. Unfortunately for Ruth, the plan began to fall apart almost immediately - the missing jewelry was found tucked under her mattress.

In the police search of the house a bloody pillowcase was also found as well as the bloodstained sash weight. Police found a $200 check in Ruth's desk made out to H. Judd Gray and a tie clip with his initials on the bedroom floor. They found his name, along with 28 other men, in Ruth's address book. Later a $90,000 life insurance policy on Albert Snyder - including double indemnity clauses - turned up in a safe deposit box registered in her maiden name.

Judd contributed to the murderous couple's downfall. When he left the scene of the crime he walked to a bus stop and asked a policeman how long it would be before the next bus would come. He took the bus, then went to Manhattan by taxi. The cabbie remembered Judd very well because he'd given him a miserly five cent tip.

The police told Ruth (quite untruthfully) that Gray had confessed to everything. Ruth confessed too - laying most of the blame on Gray. Hearing that Ruth had confessed, Gray confessed for real. He said that Ruth had hypnotised him with "drink, veiled threats, and intensive love." He claimed that Ruth had tied the wire around poor Albert's throat. All Ruth knew, she said, was that Judd went into the bedroom and came out again, saying, "I guess that's it."

It took a jury only an hour and a half to convict them on May 9th, 1927. They were duly sentenced to death. The day before their executions, Judd spent his time quietly reading the Bible. Ruth pounded on the bars of her cell and screamed her head off. She had been undergoing a Death Row conversion to Catholicism - when a prison matron asked if she was serious on that point, Ruth told her to "Go to hell."

They were electrocuted one after the other at Sing Sing Prison on January 22nd, 1928. When double executions were carried out, it was considered logical to kill the weakest and most nervous prisoner first; Ruth was considered to be the stronger of the pair, so Judd died before her.

His electrocution was ineptly handled - his feet caught fire as the current coursed through his body - but Ruth's three minutes in 'Old Sparky'  monopolised the newspaper headlines.

Photography was banned at Sing Sing executions, but Thomas Howard, a news photographer, secretly wore a camera strapped to his ankle. At the very moment that Ruth's body went rigid against the restraining straps as the electricity hit her, Howard crossed his legs and snapped a picture.