Youngest Person Executed in the Electric Chair in U.S. History, for a Crime He Never Committed

The electricity was already running through his body when the mask slipped. And for one horrifying moment, everyone in that execution chamber could see the face of the child they were killing. His eyes were open, tears were running down his cheeks, and he was only a teenager. But here is the part that makes this case so difficult to forget.

 What if the state had never proved he was guilty in the first place? There was no signed confession, no physical evidence conclusively connecting him to the murders, and the lawyer assigned to defend his life had barely challenged the case against him. So, how did a 90 lb child end up strapped into an electric chair? And why did the people who could have stopped it allow the execution to continue? Because the story did not begin in that execution chamber.

It began with two little girls who disappeared on an ordinary spring afternoon. It continued with a teenage boy who made one innocent statement that would later be used against him. Then came an interrogation with no parent beside him, no lawyer protecting him, and a confession that would eventually appear in two completely different versions.

 But those weren’t even the biggest problems with the case. There was an alibi, there were witnesses, there were unanswered questions surrounding the crime scene. And outside the courthouse, an angry mob was demanding the boy. Yet somehow everything moved forward with astonishing speed. The trial lasted only hours.

 The jury deliberated for less than 10 minutes. And 53 days later, George Stinny Jr. walked into that execution chamber carrying a Bible. He walked in as a child. He walked out as the youngest person executed in 20th century America. But 70 years later, a judge would reopen the case. And what she found would force the state to confront a question it had avoided for seven decades.

 Had they executed a murderer or had they executed a 14-year-old boy who never received a fair chance to prove he was innocent? Welcome to Redmark Files. If you are new here, subscribe right now and hit the bell so you never miss a story. Today we are going deep inside one of the most disturbing cases in American legal history. Let’s get into it.

 To understand what happened in Alkaloo, South Carolina, you first need to understand the town itself. Alkaloo was small, quiet, a workingclass miltown where almost everyone knew everyone, but only on their own side of the railroad tracks. Those tracks ran straight through the middle of town, dividing white families on one side and black families on the other.

 Separate schools, separate churches, separate lives. That division matters because it is the foundation of everything that followed. On the white side of those tracks lived two little girls. Betty Jun Bcker was born on December 9th, 1932. By the spring of 1944, she was 11 years old, a girl known around her neighborhood, the kind of child who was always recognizable on her bicycle on warm afternoons. Her companion was younger.

Mary Emma Tames was born on March 14th, 1936. just 8 years old. Cheerful and small, she rarely went anywhere without Betty beside her. On the afternoon of March 22nd, 1944, both girls left home together. Nobody who watched them go had any reason to worry. They never came back. And by the following morning, Alkaloo would never be the same again.

Now, let’s talk about the boy the state of South Carolina put in that electric chair. George Junior Stiny Jr. was born on October 21st, 1929. In the spring of 1944, he was 14 years old, 5′ 1 in tall, weighing somewhere between 90 and 95 lb. By every measure, he was still a child. He lived with his family on the black side of Alcaloo’s railroad tracks.

 His father, George Stiny, Senior, worked at the local sawmill, the same mill that kept most black families in that town employed and housed. The Stinnies lived in company housing, meaning the job and the roof over their heads were tied together. Lose one, lose both. It was a large family. George had two older brothers, Loy, 21, and Johnny, 17, and an older sister, Carolina, 20.

 His younger siblings were Charles, 12, Catherine, 10, and little Ame, just 7 years old. George attended a segregated school. He helped with the family’s cow. He played outside like any other boy his age. Court records and family testimony confirm he had no prior criminal record. Not even close. Years after his execution, a teacher named WL Hamilton claimed that George had once scratched a classmate with a small pocketk knife at school. That story spread.

 But then George’s sister Ame tracked Hamilton down personally and confronted him. His response was stunning. According to Ame, Hamilton admitted in his own words that someone had paid him to say it. He never named who. He died shortly after giving that statement, taking the full truth with him.

 Here is what is important to understand about this section of the story. In a typical true crime case, this is where the warning signs appear. The troubling patterns, the history of violence, the moments that looking back seem to point toward what came next. In George Stinny’s case, none of that exists. What exists instead is a quiet 14-year-old boy from a black working-class family living in a town that within 24 hours of two girls turning up dead had already decided exactly who was responsible.

 And that decision had very little to do with evidence. To understand how a 14-year-old boy ended up convicted in under 3 hours, you have to understand the world he was living in. This was South Carolina, 1944. Jim Crow was not just a set of rules. It was the air people breathed. Black citizens across the South were systematically blocked from voting.

 No vote meant no representation on jury roles. No representation on jury roles meant no black voices in any courtroom [music] ever. And the politics that spring made everything worse. The United States Supreme Court had just struck down all white Democratic primaries across the South. A ruling that sent white southern politicians into a fury.

 South Carolina’s own governor, Olan D. Johnston, stood before state legislators and publicly promised to keep white Democratic primaries, in his exact words, pure and unadulterated. That was the man who would later decide whether George Stinny lived or died. When the bodies of Betty June and Mary Emma were found on the black side of Alkaloo’s railroad tracks, that location alone was enough for white residents and local officials to point their suspicion directly at the black community.

 No broader investigation followed. Court records from the case’s re-examination decades later, show no documented canvasing of white residents, no recorded search on the white side of town, no forensic effort to properly trace or test the weapon described in the medical examiner’s report. The investigation moved in one direction only, and it moved fast.

 Now, here is where this case takes a turn that is almost impossible to believe. There was a prominent white family in Alcaloo at that time. The father, George Washington Burke, Senior, was a wealthy local businessman. He owned the land directly behind Green Hill Baptist Church, the very land where the girls bodies were found.

 He also served as foreman of the grand jury that would go on to formally indict George Stiny Jr. His son, George Washington Burke, Jr., born in 1917, was known locally for predatory behavior and getting away with it. He had access to a lumber truck. Two elderly women from Alcaloo would later recall that Burke Jr.

 was widely known as a man who committed wrongdoing without consequence. His name never appeared in a single police report, not once. Meanwhile, during the community search party on the night of March 22nd, 1944, young George Stinny Jr. did something completely natural. He mentioned to a fellow searcher that he had seen the two girls earlier that afternoon near his home. He was being cooperative.

 that one honest remark would become one of the main tools used to destroy him. George Stinny Jr. did not just fall through the cracks of the justice system. He was pushed and there were specific people doing the pushing. We are just getting to the worst of it. If you are not subscribed yet, do it right now because this next part is where everything completely falls apart for a 14-year-old boy who had absolutely no one in his corner.

 Let’s go back to where it all began. Late afternoon, March 22nd, 1944. It is a regular spring day in Alcaloo, South Carolina. The kind of afternoon where children play outside and nobody thinks twice about it. Betty June Baker, 11 years old, and 8-year-old Mary Emma Tams set out together on their bicycles. Their plan was simple.

 Find May Pops, the wild passion flowers that grew around the edges of town, a completely ordinary childhood errand. At some point during that ride, the girls passed near the Stinny property outside by the railroad tracks. George Stinny Jr. and his seven-year-old sister Ame were tending to the family’s cow. The girls stopped briefly and asked if either of them knew where to find the flowers.

George and Ame did not know. The girls thanked them and pedled away. That is confirmed. That exchange happened. What is equally confirmed and what would be ignored for 70 years is that Ameay was standing right beside her brother the entire time. When the girls left, George and Ame went back inside their home together.

 Ame stated this clearly in interviews conducted decades later. She never changed her account, not once. Evening March 22nd, 1944. As the sun went down, neither Betty June nor Mary Emma came home. Their families began to panic. Word spread fast, the way it only can in a small town. Within hours, a large search party had formed, pulling in residents from across Alcaloo.

 George Stiny Senior joined the search. So did his son, George Jr. At some point during the search, George Jr. spoke to a fellow searcher and mentioned that he had seen the two girls earlier that afternoon near his house. He said it openly, calmly in front of other people. He was trying to help.

 He had no reason to hide it because he had done nothing wrong. But that simple, honest statement made in the middle of a community search party would later be twisted and used against him as though it were an admission of guilt. The search went on through the night. The girls were not found. [music] Warning, March 23rd, 1944.

 It was the son of Reverend Francis Batson who made the discovery. Both girls were found lying in a water-filled ditch on the black side of Alcaloo’s railroad tracks. Reverend Batson himself later submitted an affidavit during the case’s re-examination in 2014. In it, he noted something that had always disturbed him. There was remarkably little blood in or around that ditch for two children with the kind of head injuries described in the medical examiner’s report.

 That detail was never once raised during George’s trial. It pointed strongly toward the possibility that Betty Jun and Mary Emma had been killed somewhere else entirely and their bodies had been moved to that location afterward, but no one in authority pursued it. The medical examiner’s report confirmed severe blunt force trauma to the skulls of both girls, deep enough to penetrate the bone.

 The wounds were described as consistent with, in the examiner’s own words, a blunt instrument with a round head about the size of a hammer. No weapon matching that description was ever definitively recovered, tested, or forensically linked to George Stiny Jr. The examiner also found no physical evidence of sexual assault on Mary Emma.

 As for Betty Jun Baker, there was slight bruising noted, but that bruising alone did not meet the standard for a formal rape charge. And yet, in the weeks that followed, officials and politicians would repeatedly describe George as having committed acts of sexual violence on both girls. Claims the autopsies simply did not support.

 Rape was never formally charged. It did not need to be. The accusations alone were enough to fuel the fury building across that town. Morning March 24th, 1944. Less than 24 hours after the bodies were found, sheriff’s deputies pulled up to the Stinny home. George and his older brother Johnny were both taken away. Johnny was released before the day was over. George was not.

 He was 14 years old, 90 pounds, and from that moment forward, he would not see his parents again in any meaningful way until after a jury had already decided he should die. Court records show that from the moment those handcuffs went on, no lawyer, no parent, and no advocate was present with George during what followed.

 What happened inside that interrogation room was never written down by anyone other than the officer running it. And yet, it would be used to kill him. The handcuffs had barely gone on George Stinny Jr. before the punishment extended far beyond him. That same day, George was taken into custody. His father, George Stiny, Senior, was called in by his employer and fired from his job at the Alkaloo Sawmill.

 No warning, no process, no conversation, just gone. And because the Stinny family lived in company-owned housing, the job and the home were the same thing. Lose the job, lose the roof. The entire family, including children as young as 7 years old, was forced out of their home under the weight of racial threats and community pressure.

 They had nowhere to go and no time to find anywhere. Just 2 days after George’s arrest, on March 26th, 1944, a white mob showed up at the Alkaloo jail demanding George be handed over to them. He was not there. Authorities, anticipating exactly this, had already quietly transferred George to a jail in Colombia, 50 mi away. His location was deliberately kept from the public.

 The mob arrived at an empty cell. George would remain in that Colombia jail for 81 days from the moment of his arrest all the way to the morning of his execution. During that entire period, his parents were effectively blocked from reaching him. The threat of racial violence made travel to Colombia dangerous for his family.

 They were permitted to see him once, a brief visit after his conviction had already been handed down before he was killed. Back in Alcaloo, three of George’s siblings, Charles, 12, Catherine, 10, and Ame 7, had all been present with George on the afternoon of March 22nd. Any one of them could have told investigators and attorneys exactly where their brother was and what he was doing when those girls were last seen alive.

 Not one of them was ever interviewed by law enforcement. Not one of them was contacted by Charles Plowen, the attorney appointed to save George’s life. They would carry what they knew in silence, unable to speak publicly on their brother’s behalf for the next 70 years. In any capital murder case, a case where a person’s life is on the line, certain steps are not optional.

They are the baseline. Investigators are expected to forensically test the crime scene, recover and properly examine the weapon, interview every possible witness, including anyone who could place the accused somewhere else, and preserve every single statement made during questioning in writing, signed, and verified.

 None of that happened here. Court records from the case’s full re-examination in 2014 confirmed one unavoidable fact. There was no written signed confession from George Stinny Jr. Not one document bearing his name acknowledging any guilt. The entire prosecution case was built on the verbal testimony of three sheriff’s deputies, including Deputy H.

 Newman, all of whom claimed George had confessed orally while being questioned alone. Three officers, one boy, no paper trail, and the confession they described could not even keep its own story straight. Prosecutors presented two completely different versions of what George had allegedly admitted to. In the first version, George claimed one of the girls fell into the ditch and he acted in self-defense after being attacked.

 In the second version, there was no accident. He had followed the girls deliberately and attacked them without any provocation. These two accounts directly contradict each other on the most basic question of intent. Charles Plowen did not challenge either version, not once. He let both stand before the jury without a single question.

 Newman’s written statement also claimed that George led officers to a piece of iron about 15 in in length found in a ditch approximately 6 ft from the girl’s bicycles. This piece of iron was presented as the likely weapon, but court records show it was never forensically matched to the wounds described in the medical examiner’s report with any documented certainty.

 No conclusive scientific connection was ever established between that iron and either victim. Meanwhile, the alibi was sitting right there, ignored. A Stinny told anyone who would hear her that she was beside her brother when the girl stopped by that afternoon. She said George came home with her afterward.

 Her older siblings, Charles and Catherine, later confirmed the same timeline independently. Investigators never followed up. Plowen never called them. And while all of this was happening, Governor Olan D. Johnston was receiving letter after letter, appeals for clemency, pleas for an independent review of the evidence from people who could see what was wrong with the case.

He did not order any review. Instead, Johnston, locked in a fierce race for a United States Senate seat against a deeply segregationist opponent, reportedly wrote in at least one letter that George had committed acts of sexual violence on the bodies of both girls. The autopsies did not support that claim.

 Rape was never formally charged, but the accusation did not need to be true to do its damage. in 1944 South Carolina. Those words alone were enough to make sure no one in power would ever look too closely at the holes in this case. April 24th, 1944. Everything that would determine whether George Stinny Jr. lived or died happened on a single day.

 Jury selection, opening statements, prosecution testimony, defense presentation, jury deliberation, verdict, sentencing, all of it. One day, the trial was held at the Clarendon County Courthouse. Outside the building stood a Confederate soldier statue, a permanent reminder of exactly whose history this town was built to honor. Inside, more than 1,000 white spectators packed every bench, every corridor, and every available space in that courthouse.

 Not one black resident was permitted through the doors. Not George’s mother, not his father, not Charles, Catherine, or Ame, the siblings who had been with George on the afternoon those girls went missing and could have spoken to exactly where he was. His family waited outside while strangers decided his fate. Jury selection pulled from voter registration roles, the standard process at the time.

But in 1944, South Carolina, black citizens were systematically blocked from registering to vote. The result was an all-white jury in a county where black residents made up nearly 3/4 of the entire population. Not a single juror looked like George. Not one. The prosecution presented its case through the testimony of three police officers who described George’s alleged verbal confession.

 Reverend Batson took the stand to describe the discovery of the bodies. Two doctors who had performed the post-mortem examinations testified about the cause of death. Prosecutors also raised the question of sexual assault, drawing from nothing more than bruising noted on one of the victims, despite the fact that rape had never been formally charged and the medical findings were not conclusive.

 Then it was the defense’s turn. Charles plowed stood up. He cross-examined no one. He called no witnesses to the stand. He presented no physical evidence of any kind. He did not question the two contradictory versions of the confession presented by the prosecution. He did not raise the alibi that three of George’s siblings could have confirmed.

 Court records from the 2014 re-examination noted plainly that Plowen had never even interviewed those siblings before walking into that courtroom. The entire trial, prosecution, and defense combined lasted 2 and 1/2 hours. The jury left to deliberate. They were back in less than 10 minutes. Guilty of murder.

 Judge Philip H. Stole sentenced George to death by electrocution. immediately following the verdict. No delay, no request for a psychological evaluation of a 14-year-old child, no formal sentencing hearing, just death. Plowen filed no appeal. He did not request a stay of execution. He did not challenge the sentence on any ground.

 There is no surviving transcript of those proceedings. The record of the day a child was sent to die was not considered worth preserving. 70 years later, the 2014 court re-examination would describe Ploudin’s performance in precise terms, calling it the essence of being ineffective. A courtappointed lawyer who, in the court’s own words, did little to nothing to defend a child whose life depended on him.

 Little to nothing for a 14-year-old boy facing the electric chair. From the moment Judge Philip H. Stole handed down the death sentence on April 24th, 1944, George Stinny Jr. had 53 days left to live. He spent every one of them at the Colombia Penitentiary, largely alone, largely in isolation, in a facility 50 mi from everyone who loved him.

 But outside those walls, people were fighting. George’s family wrote to Governor Olan D. Johnston. Black churches across South Carolina wrote to Johnston. The nacky a cheap pope wrote to Johnston. Letter after letter landed on the governor’s desk, each one raising the same urgent points. George was 14 years old. There was no physical evidence tying him to the crime.

 His courtappointed attorney had done nothing. A fair trial had been impossible under the conditions that existed in Alcaloo. Some white South Carolina citizens also wrote in. A handful expressed discomfort at the idea of executing a child, though several of those same letters included statements affirming white supremacy in the same breath.

 Others wrote to Johnston explicitly urging him to let the execution proceed. Johnston refused clemency without hesitation. In his written responses, he repeated graphic, unverified claims about what George had allegedly done to the two girls. Accusations that the post-mortem examinations had never confirmed and that were never formally charged in court.

 Those statements were not made in the interest of justice. Johnston was deep in a Senate campaign against a fiercely segregationist opponent. Any move that could be read as sympathy toward a black accused would have been politically devastating. Johnston won that Senate race. He went on to serve in the United States Senate until his death in 1965.

5 days before the scheduled execution, Dr. J. Baxter Thunderberg of the South Carolina Board of Pardons visited George at the penitentiary. According to Thunderberg’s account, George initially denied the murders, then shifted and said he was guilty, but added that he did not know why. No written statement was signed.

 No documentation was independently verified. Two days before the execution, the penitentiary’s captain of the guard reported another verbal admission from George. Once again, no written record, no signature, nothing from George’s own hand. George’s chaplain, Reverend Charles M. Red Kelly, went directly to Governor Johnston and pleaded personally for the boy’s life, citing his age alone as reason enough to stop. Johnston refused him too.

 George’s parents had been permitted one brief visit to the Columbia Penitentiary after the conviction, the only time they were able to see their son between the day he was arrested and the day he died. The threat of racial violence made any further visits impossible. Inside the penitentiary, a fellow inmate named Wilfford Johnny Hunter spent time with George during those final weeks.

 Hunter later testified formally at the 2014 re-examination hearing. His account was direct. George told him repeatedly in private that he had been forced to confess. George maintained his innocence throughout every one of those 53 days. Nobody in power was listening. Friday, June 16th, 1944, 7:30 in the morning, South Carolina State Penitentiary, Colombia. George Junius Stiny Jr.

 was led into the execution chamber. He was 14 years, 7 months, and 26 days old. He was carrying a Bible. What happened next was not clean. It was not dignified. It was not humane. The electric chair in that room was built for an adult. George weighed 90 lb and stood 5’1 in tall. He was far too small for the restraints.

Officials struggled to secure him properly. Contemporary newspaper accounts reported that they placed a book beneath him, widely said to be the very Bible he had carried in with him to raise him high enough in the chair to be strapped down. His feet still did not reach the floor. His arms were strapped. His legs were strapped.

 His torso was strapped. A metal electrode was attached to his body. Then a large mask was placed over his face. A mask designed for a grown man, not a child. An officer stepped forward and asked if he had any final words. George shook his head slowly. No, sir. Two words. That was all. The executioner applied the first surge of electricity, 2,400 volts, through the body of a 14-year-old boy, and the mask slipped.

 Contemporary newspaper accounts reported that as the current hit, the oversized mask slid from George’s face, exposing him completely. His eyes were wide open. Tears were streaming down both cheeks. It is worth noting that Terry Evans, the niece of Mary Emma Tim’s mother, later shared an eyewitness account from her uncle Clyde Barnes, who was present that morning.

 Barnes disputed certain specific details, including whether a book was actually used beneath George. Those discrepancies are documented and acknowledged by researchers. But on the central fact, every account, disputed and undisputed alike, agrees completely. A 14-year-old child was strapped into an adult electric chair and killed by the state of South Carolina.

 George Junior Stinny Jr. was pronounced dead at 7:30 in the morning. He was buried in an unmarked grave at Calvary Baptist Church Cemetery in Lee County, South Carolina. No headstone, no marker. as though the state wanted to erase every trace of him. The men from the Alcaloo mob, the ones who had made a quiet deal with officials months earlier, were in that room.

 They had been promised they could watch. One of them confirmed this to a local historian decades later without shame. And what became of the men whose decisions had put George in that chair. Charles Plowen, the attorney who cross-examined no one, called no witnesses, and filed no appeal, went on to win his election and serve in the South Carolina State Legislature.

Governor Olan D. Johnston went on to win his Senate race and served in the United States Senate for more than two decades. Newman’s handwritten statement, the only documented record of a confession that was never signed, never witnessed, and never verified, remained the sole piece of confession evidence on record until the case was formally reopened 60 years later.

 Not one official was ever held accountable. Not one. In 2004, a local historian named George Frierson started digging. Frierson had grown up in Alcaloo. He had heard the whispers his entire life. quiet conversations between residents who knew something had never been right about what happened to George Stiny Jr.

 He spent years pulling the threads together until his work reached a team of attorneys McKenzie Burgess and Chandler and eventually caught the attention of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern University School of Law. Frierson went further. He stated publicly that a person from a prominent white Alkalu family had been named in connection with the murders of Betty June Baker and Mary Emma Tames.

 A deathbed confession had allegedly been made. The alleged individual had died in 1947. His father had served on the grand jury that formally indicted George Stiny Jr. on December 16th, 2014. Circuit Court Judge Carmen T. Mullen vacated George Stiny Jr.’s conviction. In her ruling, she wrote, “I can think of no greater injustice.

” George’s surviving sister, Catherine Stinny Robinson, heard the news surrounded by friends. She threw both hands into the air and said, “Thank you, Jesus. It’s what we wanted for all these years.” Then she added something that is impossible to forget. I get chills every time I think about it. He had no one to help him. Their mother never laughed again after the day George was taken from their home.

 not once for the rest of her life. In January 2022, South Carolina State Representative Caesar Mcnite introduced the George Stinny Fund, legislation that would require the state to pay $10 million to families of wrongfully executed individuals whose convictions are later overturned. The state of South Carolina executed George Stinny Jr.

 on a Friday morning in June 1944. 70 years later, that same state admitted it never had the right to. George Stinny Jr. was 14 years old, 90, and completely alone in that system. 70 years later, a judge called it exactly what it was, the greatest injustice she could imagine. I want to hear from you in the comments.

What moment in this story hit you the hardest? Was it the 10-minute deliberation, the mask slipping from his face, the unmarked grave? Tell me below. And if you are not subscribed yet, please do it right now. This channel exists for one reason, to make sure stories like George’s are never forgotten. I will see you in the next