Speaker 1: All right, Next up, it's time for the Way Black
Speaker 1: History Fact. In Today's Way Black History Fact is sponsored
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Speaker 1: dot com. I'm gonna share a story with you from Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: I believe it to be true of research to other sources,
Speaker 1: but this is well written and I believe it's as
Speaker 1: factual as is necessary. But so you know, it's from Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: Alexandra McLay Williams July twenty third, nineteen fourteen to July
Speaker 1: sorry to June eighth, nineteen thirty one was an African
Speaker 1: American teenager wrongfully convicted and executed for the nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: murder of thirty three year old Vita Robar, a matron
Speaker 1: of the Glen Mills Reform School he attended in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: Williams confessed to the murder, although he later recanted his confession.
Speaker 1: The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania wrongfully executed Williams for Robar's murder
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty one, when he was sixteen years old,
Speaker 1: making Williams the youngest person ever executed in Pennsylvania. Vita
Speaker 1: Robar worked at the Glen Mills schools alongside Fred Robar,
Speaker 1: an agriculture instructor who, according to contemporaneous news reports, was
Speaker 1: her husband. Later researched by the grandson of Williams's attorney
Speaker 1: revealed that the Robars were actually divorced before the killing
Speaker 1: on the grounds of Fred Robar's extreme cruelty and domestic
Speaker 1: abuse towards Vita, and from that, you're supposed to infer
Speaker 1: that she comes from a violent home life with her husband,
Speaker 1: and yet the sixteen year old is the person who
Speaker 1: was executed. Earlier parts of Robar's killing claim that Fred,
Speaker 1: misidentified as her husband, returned home from work on October third,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty and stumbled across the crime scene. He alerted
Speaker 1: police afterwards, who arrived to find Robar lying in her bed,
Speaker 1: partially clothed, with over thirty five dab wounds in her chest,
Speaker 1: a fractured skull, and two broken ribs. There was a
Speaker 1: man's bloody handprint on a nearby wall, as ostensibly belonging
Speaker 1: to the killer. The handprint was photographed by the Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: State Police and examined by two local fingerprint experts, but
Speaker 1: it was never mentioned again either a trial or in
Speaker 1: contemporary newspaper accounts, and it was never determined to belong
Speaker 1: to Alexander McClay Williams. Three days after the murder, authorities
Speaker 1: claimed that they had evidence linking Alexander Williams to Robar's murder.
Speaker 1: They then announced that Williams had confessed to Robar's murder.
Speaker 1: Authorities alleged that Williams confessed to fatally stabbing Robar with
Speaker 1: an ice pick in spite of Robar's futally offering him
Speaker 1: money to stop stabbing her. Initially, authorities claimed that Williams's
Speaker 1: motive was revenge against Fred Robar for an unknown reason.
Speaker 1: Authorities also posited that Williams murdered be to Robar because
Speaker 1: she caught him in the act of stealing a box
Speaker 1: of shoe polish from her house. However, days later, the
Speaker 1: confess was amended to reflect that Williams allegedly murdered Robar
Speaker 1: because she fought against a rape attempt. Overall, Williams was
Speaker 1: interrogated five times, all without a parent or attorney president,
Speaker 1: and signed three confessions. No eyewitnesses or direct evidence connected
Speaker 1: Williams to the crime. At his trial, which took place
Speaker 1: in early January nineteen thirty, one. Williams was represented by
Speaker 1: William Ridley, the first black lawyer admitted to the bar
Speaker 1: of Delaware County. Williams I'm sorry. Ridley was paid ten
Speaker 1: dollars both to investigate evidence and defend Williams. He had
Speaker 1: ten weeks to build his defense, and on June eighth,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one, Williams was executed in Pennsylvania's Electrictare. Reporters
Speaker 1: stated that Williams was emotional, visibly shaking, and reliant on
Speaker 1: the assistance of a deputy to walk to his death chamber.
Speaker 1: And the reason I wanted to share this story is
Speaker 1: because the family is just now bringing a lawsuit nearly
Speaker 1: one hundred years after his death, because obviously he was
Speaker 1: wrongfully convicted. He was forced by the police to confess
Speaker 1: to a crime that he didn't commit, and everyone knew
Speaker 1: that it was the husband or ex husband all along.