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CHICAGO (AFX) - Morbid curiosity beat out history to lay claim to the infamous Cook County gallows.
The oddity-loving Ripley's Believe It or Not! Museum outbid the Chicago History Museum late Wednesday night, offering $68,300 for the rights to the contraption that put 86 inmates to death between 1887 and 1927.
The gallows were first built to hang the anarchists charged in a deadly bombing during the May 4, 1886, Haymarket Square riot. In recent years, they were part of Mike Donley's Wild West Town, a tourist theme park in Union, about 50 miles northwest of Chicago.
But with Wild West Town increasingly catering to children, Donley, who bought the gallows from Cook County in 1977 for a price he declines to reveal, said it was time for the gallows to go.
The gallows were last used on June 24, 1927, to hang convicted murderer Elin Lyons.
After that, Cook County shifted to electrocution.
The gallows' 10- by 20-foot platform and 15-foot-high crossbar -- with its four noose bolts still attached -- would have been destroyed then had it not been for the Dec. 19, 1921, escape of convicted cop-killer "Terrible Tommy" O'Connor three days before he was scheduled to hang.
Since O'Connor's sentence specified he was to die by the rope, if he was recaptured he could not be electrocuted. He had to be hanged. Instead of being scrapped, the gallows was dismantled and relegated to a jail basement, where it remained, unused, for 50 years.
Brian Marren, vice president of Burr Ridge-based Mastro Auctions, which put the gallows up for auction starting at $5,000, said Ripley's had yet to make arrangements to move the structure. The San Francisco-based company operates several museums. Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
Copyright 2006 AFX News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
