A FATHER’S EXECUTION.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 September 1922, Page 9

A FATHER’S EXECUTION.

DECREED BY DAUGHTER. Deep sorrow, mingled it may be, with remorse, has fallen upon Mabel Donovan, of Michigan City, Indiana, the 17 year-old girl who, having it in her power, by an appeal to Governor McCray, to save from the electric chair her father, sentenced to death for killing her mother, decreed his execution. William E. Donovan, the father, went to his doom insisting, as he had done from the moment of his arrest, that his wife was accidently shot during a quarrel. His last words were a prayer for Mabel and his three younger children. To Governor McCray, on the eve of the execution, Mabel sent the following letter: “Dear Governor, —I am writing to ask you to be sure that my father pays the full penalty for the crime he committed. I do not want him pardoned or his sentence commuted. My mother was surely the best woman that ever lived. She was shot down with my little baby sister in her arms, without any cause whatever. My father was always an overbearing man, and had lots of trouble. If he could ever get out, he would be none too good to kill us children.” By an appeal ’to the Governor, the girl could have saved her father’s life. Instead she sent the letter quoted. In face of this, the Governor was bound k to execution,