Suicide By Expanding Gases, Singular And Collective (With One Case Of Deliberate Mass Murder)

Willliam Kogut, 1894- 1930

Death by playing cards. Sentenced to die for the stabbing death of his landlady, Mayme Guthrie.  It is unknown just why he killed her, although there is speculation that he thought she was an immoral woman and thus deserved to die.  There is all kinds of stuff out on the net about this and even the dates vary from site to site.  However, the most consistent date for Kogut's spectacular suicide is given as October 20, 1930, and that is the one that Find A Grave lists.  Clinton Duffy, Warden of San Quentin, in his book "88 Men and Two Women", relates that because it was so cold that the men on death row had small oil heaters in their cells.  Kogut wrenched a leg off his bed, stuffed the hollow pipe with soaked, mashed up playing cards, and laid the device on his heater with his head next to it.  Most reports say that he used only the red pieces of the deck as those were dyed with nitrocellulose, and he may have.  However, the entire deck was coated with nitro and that is most certainly what did the trick.  Nitro is not used as a dye but as a surface, i.e. film stock.  The mashed, coated cards decomposed in the resulting heat and pressure, building up steam until the mixture went critical.  Multiple reports state that nine inmates were thrown from their bunks but I do not see how.  I first heard of this from Ripley's Believe it or Not when I was eleven or so.

Ripley's was in paperback collections which is how I saw this.  I soon quit reading him as the overwhelming amount of later "facts" were completely believable and sometimes poorly researched.   This mixture of steam and heat is what blew Texas City off the map in 1947, although the explosive was nitrate fertilizer.

April 16,1947.  To save 300 dollars worth of ammonium nitrate fertilizer that had started self combusting the captain of the Grandcamp ordered the hatches battened and the steam turned on.  At least 581 people die. (No one has any real idea how many people died).  Then the High Flyer blew up. This was an avoidable fuck up of the highest order.  Other than natural disasters and atomic testing, this was the largest release of energy in North America, with the possible exception of the Halifax disaster (avoidable fuck up) or the Black Tom explosion (proven German sabotage).  My mom was in school a few miles away and she said she thought the world was coming to an end.

Hallifax. Dec 6th, 1917.  On that day, the Mont Blanc was loaded with 11 million lbs of picric acid and TNT, for use in the war.  Another boat sailing on the wrong side of the channel rammed her in spite of every known and clearly marked warnings.  The crew of the Mont Blanc stayed with the burning ship but in spite of beaching her she blew up leveling Halifax.  Halifax is in a natural bowl and is approached by a winding gorge of a waterway.  The destruction was beyond belief.  Every window within 50 miles was shattered.

The Black Tom, Jersey City.  July 30 1916.  Later proven to be an act of war against a neutral by E. O. Heinrich, the "Wizard of Berkeley", his ownself.  I understand why Germany would want to destroy such a dangerous cargo point, but she should have declared war first.  In the Corps, I trained with C-4 as part of my anti-tank specialty, but American military equipment is designed to be handled by American teenagers.  Explosives are not to be used by anyone who does not know they are doing, just ask Dustin Hoffman about that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Village_townhouse_explosion

In the future, young radicals, I have one word for you.  'Plastic'.

The first pic I posted is all over the net as a picture of the William Kogut, murderer and suicide.  It looks like a picture of some dignified and adventurous author, but until I find out otherwise, that is what he looked like.  Go figure.

(A Wikipedia site about the largest artificial non-nuclear explosions puts Halifax at 2.9 kilotons, and Texas City at 2.7 kilotons.  Over 2000 people died at Halifax.  Only 7 died at Black Tom.  This makes the Halifax explosion the most powerful of it's type in world history.  Texas City comes in a close second).