Watt espy biography
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Notice Watt's signature.
Charles "Lucky" Luciano (born Salvatore Lucania)
and Bambi - source
The year was 1952. WWII had ended and the American military was operating permanent bases in Southern Europe. Not quite twenty years old, Watt Espy, from Headland, Alabama, was stationed in Naples, Italy.
Even at this age, Watt was already fascinated with crime stories. This fascination enticed him into going to Hotel Turistico in Naples, where he had heard that the notorious mafia gangster, Charles "Lucky" Luciano, owned the hotel and had rented out rooms to the US Air Force. He simply wanted to meet Luciano, who was unofficially retired from organized brott, and was living in Naples beneath terms (in exile, really) agreed to by the US Government, who had prosecuted and jailed Luciano for crimes i
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Details
90 cu ft
Arranged into the following series: Series 1: Card file index of executions, Undated -- Series 2: Research and documentation of executions, 1730-2008, Undated -- Series 3: Capital Punishment Research Project, 1974-1999, Undated -- Series 4: Subject Files, 1970-2003, Undated -- Series 5: Correspondence, 1962-2007, Undated -- Series 6: Biographical Materials: 1952-2008, Undated -- Series 7: Writings by Others, 1965-2002, Undated -- Series 8: Advocacy, 1977-2007, Undated -- Series 9: Publications, 1929-2001, Undated
The M. Watt Espy Papers document more than three decades of research from the nationally recognized expert on legal executions in the United States. Beginning as a macabre hobby in 1970, M. Watt Espy, Jr. began chronicling tens of thousands of government-sanctioned capital punishment sentences from the colonial period until the present day. The collection includes Espy's vast documentation of executions in America, including a series of typed index car
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M. Watt Espy
American researcher on capital punishment (1933-2009)
Major Watt Espy, Jr. (March 2, 1933 – August 13, 2009) was a researcher and expert on capital punishment in the United States.
Espy, a resident of Headland, Alabama, attended the University of Alabama where he was a member of the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity. Even in college he had garnered a reputation as an engaging speaker, serving as toastmaster for the 30th anniversary banquet of the chapter, held in 1955. He graduated in 1957.[1][2]
Espy was an author, with John Ortiz Smykla, of The Espy Files, a database of executions carried out in the United States and preceding territories from 1608, which is the most complete source of data on the issue, identifying 15,487 people put to death.
He began his research in the 1970s when he was a salesman, working with everything from cemetery plots to security systems. While making calls he would stop at a prison or courthouse for information. He