The Hangman's Ropemaker: Alexander Killen and the Three Hungarians Who All Cheated the Hangman

"Alderman Jacob Bupp yesterday received an order from Sheriff McCleary for the rope to kill Kilrain on July 23. The rope is to be finished on Friday. Mr. Bupp made the ropes with which the Nicely boys were hung. These two made the even 100 which he has manufactured. He is also to make the ropes for the three Hungarians and business is becoming so brisk he said he would make ten ropes at once and keep them in stock."

~"Business for the Hangman," Pittsburgh Dispatch (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), 7 July 1891, page 2

 *This blog post is one in a series of blogs on my famous ancestor, Jacob Bupp, the Hangman's Ropemaker- click the page tab above labeled "The Hangman's Ropemaker" for more information and the blog series*

After the success of the Nicely Brothers' hanging, Jacob Bupp was vindicated a bit (after all, William West's hanging did put a damper on his business).  In July of 1891, while in the final days of his alderman career, he was busy making the ropes for four hangings in Allegheny County.  Yet, very much like the three men the previous year who were not hanged, these ropes were never used either.

The four men were Alexander Killian, Andrew Toth, Michael Sabol, and George Rusnok/Rusnock.  All four were implicated in murders they never committed.

Alexander Killain
Paul and Mary Ann Rudert were the owners of a jewelry store along the riverfront in Tarentum, a borough about 22 miles up the Allegheny River from Pittsburgh.  On the evening of 23 December 1889, they were closing up shop after some last minute Christmas shopping when they heard the sound of breaking glass from the front of the store.  Mary went to see what was going on while her husband went in search for a weapon.  Three men had broken the front window and were scooping out as much as they could reach from outside of the building, and Mary interrupted them.  She was shot in the head, killing her instantly.

Police detectives on loan from Pittsburgh believed they uncovered the identities of the three men; Peter Griffin, Thomas Conroy and a third man known only as "New York Shine."  However, these men were never caught in connection to the murder.


Evidence pointed them also in the direction of a man by the name of Alexander Killian (also Killen), who had a shady history of robbery and burglary.  He owned the boat by which the murderers were able to get to the store and then later escape, and he was compensated with two pieces of jewelry, jewels which were later found to have been from the robbery. Killian admitted to loaning the boat to the men under threats from Griffin, but claimed he had no idea that they were going to use it to commit a crime, let alone murder.  He was charged as an accessory to the crime.

His trial happened in October 1890 and he was convicted of first degree murder.  The key piece of evidence in his conviction was the eyewitness account of Paul Rudert, who insisted he saw Killian at the store that night.  He was sentenced to death by hanging.  

In May of 1891, Killian's death warrant was signed and his hanging was fixed for 23 July 1891.  Allegheny County Sheriff McCleary ordered a rope for the hanging from Jacob Bupp in July.   The scaffold was also erected, but was taken down when Killian was granted a reprieve.  The rope was never used for the hanging.

The board of pardons recommended clemency to Alexander Killian on 2 October 1890, as evidence that was used to convict him was discovered by the detectives who collected it to be erroneous in theory, as guilt lay with the three men who did commit the murder and robbery and not with Killian.  It was also determined that Paul Rudert, possibly under duress from having witnessed his wife's murder, identified more that one man as the killer of Mary Ann, and while his identification of Alexander was taken as correct at the time of the trial, evidence later came to light that it was a false identification.  Killian's death sentence was commuted to life in prison on 29 October 1891 and he was sent to Western Penitentiary to serve out his sentence. 

Side note here: It was around this time that his name went from being spelled as Killian to Killen.  I am not sure which spelling is absolutely correct,. so both are used in the article

There were many prominent people who thought he was innocent, and began to campaign for his release, especially when word got out that Paul Rudert did indeed make a false accusation and testified to such.  In 1908, his case was brought up in front of the Pardon Board and on 24 April 1909 he was released from prison.  He wrote about his entire experience and it was published in The Pittsburgh Press.

Clipping of Alexander Killen's Story from The Pittsburgh Press on 16 May 1909 (page 46).  Found on Google News Archive Search.

Alexander Killian died from heart disease and asthma on 25 January 1925 in Pittsburgh City Hospital in Mayview, Pennsylvania.  The hospital was part of a series of homes and hospitals for indigent people.

The Three Hungarians
Edgar Thomson Works, a steel plant in Braddock, Pennsylvania was one of Andrew Carnegie's finest plants, but it had the same ethnic and class tensions as his Carnegie Steel Plant in Homestead, where the Homestead Strike of 1892 happened.

The Hungarian men who typically worked at the Thomson Works were angry.  They had been forced to work on Christmas Day 1890, which was typically a time for rest and family.  They also were being told they were to work on New Year's Day 1891 and they refused, calling for a strike.

So Irishmen were brought in to stoke the fires at the steel furnaces that day. When the men heard this, they rioted against the strikebreakers.

For almost a full hour, there was a huge fight at the Thomson Works, where over 200 strikers armed with clubs, picks, shovels and other weapons fought against the strikebreakers.  When the police hired to work the mill couldn't quell the uprising, the Allegheny County Sheriff and his entire posse of over 200 men were called in to quell the fighting.  More than fifty men were arrested for the riot.

However, an Irish furnace supervisor by the name of Michael Quinn was badly wounded in the riot (as were three others, and more than a dozen were injured), and when he died on 5 Jan 1891, the press and the public demanded justice.  Like the Haymarket Riots, there were mass arrests following the riots and the death, as newspapers cheered on any attempt to quell the uprisings by the workers.

Three men were ultimately charged with Quinn's murder; Andrew Toth, Michael Sabol, and George Rusnock.  All three were Hungarian immigrants and steelworkers.  All were present at the riot and had been arrested for fighting.  All three were identified by an Irishman by Peter Mullin as having beaten Michael Quinn.  Mullin stated he watched a man by the name of Toth strike Quinn over the head with a shovel, causing the fatal blow.

Andrew Toth, Michael Sabol, and George Rusnock were indicted 15 January 1891 and their trial happened in February 1891.  There was conflicting testimony about what had happened, as several eyewitnesses testified they saw the men there, but that not all of them were present at the beating.  The key eyewitness against Toth was  Mullin, who testified he saw Toth deliver the final blow.  However, he also stated that a man by the name of Steve Toth (no relation to Andy Toth) was the one present, not Andrew Toth, and he was at an entirely different furnace than the one Quinn had been working, making it difficult to have viewed the beating.  Despite this conflict in testimony, the three men were convicted on 7 February 1891, just one month after Quinn's death, and they were sentenced to die by hanging on 8 April 1891.

Defense appealed a new trial on a couple of grounds, one being that a few of the jurors in the murder trial had just the week prior served as jurors in the trials of the rioters, and that the charge of murder in the first was unwarranted because the murder was not premeditated but arose out of a riot and should have been a manslaughter charge. The Supreme Court denied the appeal and affirmed the first-degree murder convictions on 5 June 1891.

In July of 1891, Jacob Bupp was asked to make the ropes for the hangings.  It is not known whether or not he actually got the chance to finish the ropes, given the circumstances of the motions for appeals and pardons.

On the same day that Alexander Killian's case was recommended to be commuted to life in prison, the cases of the three men were held under advisement.  The three men were still in the Allegheny County Jail in February 1892, when the scaffold was erected the first time for the hanging of Patrick Fitzbpatrick.  They were alarmed when they heard of the scaffold, for they thought it was meant for them.

But there was hope yet. The outcome of the trial and the expediency with which the men were tried caused some alarm amongst the citizens of the great Pittsburgh area, including a minister by the name of T.N. Boyle, who started a petition to save the men from hanging.  Under pressure by several prominent people in Allegheny County, including Andrew Carnegie (who owned the mill) and his right hand man Charles Schwab (who ran the mill), Governor Pattison commuted their sentences to life imprisonment by 25 Feb 1892.  The three men were taken to the Western Penitentiary to serve out their sentences.

In March of 1895, word was received that Michael Sabol was dying from tuberculosis, having contracted it in prison shortly after being confined there.  Several prominent ministers and lawyers traveled to Harrisburg to ask the Board of Pardons for a full pardon for Sabol, and armed themselves with a petition of over 1000 names pf prominent citizens.  The petition worked, and Michael Sabol was released from prison on 30 March 1895.  He died 8 April 1895, leaving a wife in Hungary..

Rusnock was pardoned in October 1897 and release from prison 13 October 1897.  It was reported that he too had consumption and was not expected to live much longer.  Later news accounts stated he died shortly thereafter, but no exact date has been located.

In 1910, Stephen Toth, who had fled to Hungary after killing Michael Quinn, made a confession to local authorities while dying from typhoid fever.  The story made its way to Allegheny County (with a little help from Andrew Toth's sons, who wanted to see their father freed), where prominent people again made a push to pardon Toth.  On 15 March 1911, the Board of Pardons made a recommendation for pardon. Their best argument for pardoning him (besides the fact that his compatriots had already been pardoned) was that:

 "The trial occurred within about six weeks after the riot, and at a time the public mind was under the influence of the excitement naturally arising from the tumultuous events of the day, which in fact furnishes an explanation of the failure to advance this theory in defense of the applicant on his trial in court." (Letter of the Board of Pardons to Gov. John K. Tener, 15 March 1911, page 184 of Journal of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania For the Session Begun at Harrisburg on the Seventh Day of January 1913 found on Google Books)

Headline from the 18 March 1911 edition of The Pittsburgh Press found on Google News Archive

Andrew Toth left prison on 18 March 1911, having spent more than 20 years wrongfully convicted of murder.  He harbored no ill will against anyone associated with the trial, including Mullen,  and was happy to be free.  Toth was granted a $40 a month pension by Andrew Carnegie when the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania refused to compensate him for having sent him to prison for most of his life.  He returned to Hungary and reunited with his wife and four sons after having been separated for over 26 years.  According to some of the sources, he lived a good long life afterwards on the pension he received.

His case prompted some to push for compensation for the wrongfully accused who had been imprisoned.  California started the process in 1914, and other states followed suit.

Sources Used and Referenced
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