Oscar Joseph Comery (July 1886 – February 18, 1916) was a Canadian-American chauffeur

hanged Hanging is killing a person by suspending them from the neck with a noose or ligature strangulation, ligature. Hanging has been a standard method of capital punishment since the Middle Ages, and has been the primary execution method in numerou ...

Concord, New Hampshire Concord () is the capital city of the U.S. state of New Hampshire and the county seat, seat of Merrimack County, New Hampshire, Merrimack County. As of the 2020 United States census the population was 43,976, making it the List of municipalities ...

for murdering his wife. Comery was born in Canada, the son of French Canadians Joseph Comery (also spelled Comire) and Celine Boisvert. According to the ''Concord Evening Monitor'', Comery killed his wife on November 29, 1914. He was arrested on January 1, 1915, brought to trial on February 8, 1915, where he "pleaded guilty to murder in the first degree with the expectation that the court would sentence him to life imprisonment." On February 18, 1916, Comery was convicted of murdering his wife. He confessed to killing his wife by poisoning her with

strychnine Strychnine (, , American English, US chiefly ) is a highly toxicity, toxic, colorless, bitter, crystalline alkaloid used as a pesticide, particularly for killing small vertebrates such as birds and rodents. Strychnine, when inhaled, swallowed, ...

by replacing the

quinine Quinine is a medication used to treat malaria and babesiosis. This includes the treatment of malaria due to ''Plasmodium falciparum'' that is resistant to chloroquine when artesunate is not available. While sometimes used for nocturnal leg ...

his wife normally took with the poison. An autopsy was performed and strychnine was determined to be the cause of death. He was hanged at 12:31 a.m. at the New Hampshire State Prison on February 18, 1916, at the age of 34. Comery was the first of only three people executed by the state of

New Hampshire New Hampshire ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...

in the 20th century. The other two were

Frederick L. Small Frederick Lincoln Small (1866 – January 15, 1918) was an American stockbroker, convicted and hanged by the U.S. state of New Hampshire for the murder of Florence Arlene Small (née Curry), his third wife. Background Small was married three t ...

in 1918 and

Howard Long Howard Long (September 21, 1905 – July 14, 1939) was an American convicted murderer who was executed for the 1937 murder of 10-year-old Mark Neville Jensen in Gilford, New Hampshire. Long remains the most recent person to be executed by the st ...

in 1939.

References

Executions in the U.S. 1608-1987: The Espy File (by state)
(

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) 1886 births 1916 deaths American people executed for murder Canadian emigrants to the United States Canadian people executed for murder Canadian people executed in the United States 20th-century executions by New Hampshire 20th-century executions of American people People convicted of murder by New Hampshire {{US-crime-bio-stub People executed by New Hampshire by hanging

See also

References