He was the first person in history to be executed by electric chair. After the judge handed down his death sentence, he begged for mercy. He turned to the corrections officer standing beside him and said just one thing. Not a protest, not a threat, a plea, and nobody listened. On August 6th, 1890, he was strapped into a wooden chair inside Auburn Prison, New York.

 17 witnesses watched. The room was dead silent. Before the switch was thrown, he spoke his final words to the room, and those words would stay with the people who heard them. Then the electricity hit. What happened next? inside that cold stone room in front of doctors, reporters, and prison officials would become one of the most disturbing executions in American history because the electric chair was supposed to make executions more humane.

 But what they saw that morning was not what they had been promised. Welcome back to Redmark Files. This is where we go where the truth leads. No fluff, no speculation. Hit that like button, subscribe, and ring the bell so you never miss a case. And drop a comment below. Tell me where in the world you’re watching from.

 Now, let’s get into it. Before we talk about what happened inside that apartment on March 29th, 1889, you need to know who Matilda Zaggler was. Everyone called her Tilly. She lived in Buffalo, New York, deep in the workingclass part of the city where money was tight, options were limited, and life moved hard and fast.

These were neighborhoods where people worked long hours just to cover rent, where women especially had very few places to turn if things at home went wrong. Tilly was in a common law relationship with William Kemler. They were not legally married. There was no certificate, no ceremony, just two people sharing a life, and in Till’s case, sharing a cramped, run-down apartment that court records would later describe as squalid.

 She had no financial independence, no safety net. Her world by most accounts began and ended within the walls of that apartment and the streets just outside it. Historical records confirm no children in the household. No close extended family mentioned in any documentation. That matters because it means Tilly had very little support around her.

 Very few people positioned to notice if things were getting dangerous. Kemler had grown convinced that Tilly was stealing money from him. He also believed she was planning to leave him to run away with a man he considered a friend. There is no evidence in the record that either accusation was true. But in Kemler’s mind, they were enough.

 Tilly never got the chance to defend herself. The moment he believed she was leaving, her life was already in danger. She never got to leave. Now, let’s talk about the man who took her life. William Francis Kemler was born on May 9th, 1860 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents were German immigrants. Both of them were alcoholics.

 From the very beginning, the home he grew up in was shaped by instability, dysfunction, and the kind of daily chaos that leaves a mark on a child. He dropped out of school at 10 years old. He never learned to read. He never learned to write. For the rest of his life, William Kemler was completely illiterate.

 After leaving school, he went straight to work in his father’s butcher shop, a childhood spent around blades and blood, in an environment where violence was never far away. Then his parents died. His father passed from an infection he got after a drunken brawl. His mother died from the effects of her alcoholism.

 Kemler was left alone, young, uneducated, and entirely on his own. He moved into the pedalling business. He worked hard enough to buy himself a horse and a cart. For a brief moment, it looked like he might build something, but alcohol pulled him under just as it had pulled his parents. He became a heavy drinker, a regular, familiar face in the saloons of Buffalo, New York.

 People there knew him well. They called him Philadelphia Billy. His drinking binges were not a secret. They were neighborhood legend. His recklessness showed up in other ways, too. According to accounts from the time, Kemler once drunkenly bet that he could jump his horse and cart over an 8-ft fence with the cart still attached.

He tried. The cart was destroyed. His goods were gone. Court records would later describe him as slow-witted, volatile, jealous, and deeply dependent on alcohol. That combination, as Tilly Ziggler would discover, was deadly. By the time March 29th, 1889 arrived, the relationship between William Kemler and Tilly Ziegler had reached a breaking point.

 Kemler’s mind had turned against her. He was convinced she was stealing money from him. He was also convinced she was planning to run away, not alone, but with a man he knew personally, a friend of his. There is nothing in the historical record to support either accusation. No stolen money, no confirmed plan to leave. But facts did not matter to Kemler.

 What mattered was what he believed. And what he believed was eating him alive. The relationship had always been shaped by imbalance. Tilly had no financial independence, no legal protection, and no family support documented in any record. She was isolated. Kemler’s jealousy and suspicion had likely been building long before that final morning.

 But there are no formal complaints, no police reports, no documented warnings. Tilly had no official way out, and no one on record who stepped in. The night before the murder, Kemler was out drinking. Court records confirm he spent that night on a binge in Buffalo’s slum district. By morning, he had not slept it off. He came back impaired, wound tight, and ready to accuse.

 The argument started quickly. Voices rose. Till’s words, whatever they were, were not enough to calm him. Nothing was. Then, and this is the part that stays with you, Kemler stopped shouting. He went quiet. He did not raise his voice. He did not make a threat. He simply walked out to the barn.

 and what he came back with changed everything. By this point, no one was watching. No one intervened. And the legal machinery that would eventually take Kemler’s own life was already quietly in place, though for entirely different reasons. To understand what happened to William Kemler after his arrest, you need to understand what was happening in New York and across the entire country long before Tilly Ziegler was killed.

 On January 1st, 1888, New York became the first state in the world to replace hanging with electrocution as its official method of execution. The idea had been building for years. In 1885, Governor David B. Hill stood before the legislature and declared that death by hanging had come down from the dark ages.

 He wanted something modern, something scientific, something humane. So, the state appointed a special commission of three men to find it. Their names were Elbridge T. Jerry, Matthew Hail, and Dr. Alfred Southwick, a dentist. Southwick had first come up with the idea after watching a man in Buffalo accidentally touched the terminals of an electrical generator and die almost instantly.

 He believed electricity could make execution painless. The commission agreed. The electric chair was born. Auburn prison electrician Edwin R. Davis was then tasked with building the actual device. A sturdy wooden chair fitted with two electrodes made of metal discs held in rubber and covered with damp sponges. One for the head, one for the back.

 But here is where it gets complicated. The chair ran on alternating current AC. And AC was the technology owned and supplied by George Westinghouse. His competitor Thomas Edison ran on direct current DC. An anti-AC activist named Harold P. Brown secretly acquired a Westinghouse generator and used it to power the chair deliberately to make Westinghouse’s technology look like a tool of death.

Westinghouse fought back. He hired a prominent lawyer named W. Burke Cochran to challenge Kemler’s execution in court. Not to save Kemler. To save his business, the men fighting hardest to save William Kemler’s life didn’t care about William Kemler at all. If you are still with me right now, you already know this story goes somewhere you do not expect.

 Hit that like button, subscribe, and have the bell turned on so you never miss a case like this. Now, let’s get to the night everything fell apart. The night before the murder, William Kemler was not home. Court records confirm he spent the evening of March 28th, 1889, drinking in the slum district of Buffalo, New York.

 This was not unusual. His neighbors knew his pattern. The saloons knew his face. But that particular night, the binge ran long and deep, and by the time the next morning arrived, Kemler had not truly sobered up. He came home still carrying it. The morning of March 29th began the way mornings in that apartment often did, tight, tense, and unsteady.

 But this morning was different. Kemler was not just drunk. He was enraged. And the moment he saw Tilly, the accusation started. He told her she had been stealing from him. He told her he knew she was planning to run away, to leave him for a man he considered his own friend. Tilly had no documented history of theft.

 There was no confirmed plan to leave, but Kemler was past listening to reason. He was past being calmed down. The argument grew louder. Tilly spoke. Whatever she said, it was not enough. Then Kemler stopped. No more shouting. No more back and forth. He turned, walked out of the apartment, and headed to the barn. He came back with a hatchet.

 What followed is documented in court records and confirmed through testimony. Kemler struck Tilly Ziggler more than 25 times across the head, the neck, the shoulders. This was not one blow in a moment of rage. He struck her again and again and again. 25 times. Tilly did not survive. When it was over, Kemler did not run.

 He did not hide the hatchet. He did not attempt to clean the scene or construct any kind of story. Instead, he walked out of the apartment and went directly to a neighbor’s house. He told them he had just killed his girlfriend. That was his confession. Calm, unprompted, delivered on the same morning within minutes of the attack.

Authorities were called. Kemler was arrested the same day, March 29th, 1889. There was no chase, no resistance. He went without a fight. At the scene, Tilly Ziggler was confirmed dead. Cause of death: blunt force trauma from multiple strikes. The hatchet was recovered. The evidence was overwhelming, and Kemler had already told a neighbor exactly what he had done.

 Court records would later note what was obvious from the start. There was never a question of guilt. William Kemler had removed all doubt himself. Within minutes of the killing, Tilly Ziegler was gone. She had lived quietly in a squalid apartment in Buffalo with no legal protection, no financial independence, and no one close enough to pull her out before it was too late.

 She never stole from him. She never got the chance to leave. And the state of New York was now about to use the man who killed her to make history. William Kemler was arrested on the same day he committed the murder, March 29th, 1889. He did not resist. He offered no alibi. He had already told a neighbor what he had done.

 And when the authorities came, he went with them without a fight. There was no chase, no denial, no remorse recorded at the time of his arrest. The charge came quickly. First-degree murder. There were no insurance policies to chase. No family disputes over money or property, no relatives fighting for control of anything. This case was different from the start.

 The aftermath was not personal or domestic. It was institutional. The moment Kemler was placed in custody, the machinery of the state took over completely. In Buffalo, the reaction was not one of disbelief. People in the neighborhood already knew William Kemler. They knew him as Philadelphia Billy, the drunk, the loudmouth, the man whose binges were talked about in every saloon on the street.

 What shocked people was not that he had done something violent. It was how far he had taken it. More than 25 blows. Tilly Ziegler was buried. She was mourned. But within days, her name began to disappear from the headlines. The story was no longer about her. It was about the method the state planned to use to punish the man who killed her.

Because of New York’s 1888 electrocution law, William Kemler’s case was about to become a national conversation. Within days, a local murder had turned into a constitutional question that would reach the highest court in the country. The legal process moved fast, faster than most people expected.

 William Kemler went to trial and on May 10th, 1889, less than 6 weeks after the murder of Tilly Ziggler, he was convicted of first-degree murder. The evidence was ir. He had confessed to a neighbor on the day of the killing. There was nothing to argue about on the question of guilt. 3 days later, on May 13th, he was sentenced to death, but this was not going to be death by hanging.

 Under New York’s 1888 electrocution law, Kemler would be put to death by electric chair at Auburn Prison. he would be the very first person in history to face that sentence. His lawyers moved immediately. They filed an appeal arguing that execution by electric chair violated the 8th amendment of the United States Constitution, the clause that prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

 The appeal went first to New York’s Kauga County Court. Edwin Day dismissed it. It then moved to the general term of the Supreme Court in the fifth judicial department. Dismissed again. The case then escalated to the New York Court of Appeals, recorded as People XL, Kemler versus Dursten.

 Judge Dennis O’Brien wrote the decision on behalf of a unanimous court. His conclusion was direct. Electrocution, while certainly unusual, was not cruel. The punishment, he argued, was still death. Only the method had changed. The legislature had acted with care and caution, and the court was not going to override it. Newspapers across the country were paying close attention.

 Some called it progress, others called it something darker. Was this a modern step forward? Or was the state about to run a science experiment on a living human being? The debate was loud. But the courts were not listening to public opinion. And even as every judge rubber stamped the method, not a single one of them had ever seen it used on a human being. No one had.

 William Kemler would be the first. And what happened inside that execution room would shock the entire nation. The fight was not over yet. After every New York court had dismissed his appeals, Kemler’s legal team took the case to the highest court in the country. The case was filed as in Kemler and it landed before the United States Supreme Court in 1890. W.

 Burke Cochran, the lawyer George Westinghouse had hired to fight the case, argued with force and precision. He laid out the history of cruel and unusual punishment protections going back centuries. He was by all accounts brilliant in that courtroom. He still lost. Chief Justice Melvin Fuller authored the Supreme Court’s decision. The court declined to overturn New York’s ruling.

 Fuller’s framing was careful and deliberate. Punishments are cruel, the court wrote, when they involve torture or a lingering death. Electrocution, as the New York legislature had designed it, was intended to avoid both. It was meant to be instant, painless. The court said it was not its place to second-guess a legislature that had convened a special commission, gathered expert testimony, and made a considered policy decision.

The appeal failed on October 9th, 1889. Cochran’s arguments disappeared into the court record. The corporate war being fought behind the scenes. Edison versus Westinghouse, direct current versus alternating current, never became public knowledge at the time. To the outside world, this was simply a court ruling on a murder case.

 To William Kemler, it was a death sentence with no road left to travel. According to the Buffalo News, when Kemler learned his final appeal had failed, he turned to corrections officers and said, “Don’t let them experiment on me more than they ought to.” His execution date was set, August 6th, 1890. That plea would prove more prophetic than anyone in that prison was willing to admit.

 Let’s take a step back and look at the full picture of how the law handled William Kemler. From the moment he was arrested to the moment every door closed. March 29th, 1889. Arrested the same day as the murder. Confession already on record. May 10th, 1889. Convicted of first-degree murder. The verdict was not contested.

 There was no debate in that courtroom about whether Kemler had killed Tilly Ziegler. He had told a neighbor himself. The jury’s conclusion was unanimous. May 13th, 1889. Sentenced to death by electrocution at Auburn Prison, three days from conviction to sentencing. Then came the appeals. Kaunga County Court dismissed.

 General term of the New York Supreme Court dismissed. New York Court of Appeals dismissed unanimously. United States Supreme Court dismissed. At no level, in no courtroom did any judge reverse the conviction or the sentence. The legal record on William Kemler is clean and unbroken in one direction only. Guilty, condemned, and out of options.

 But the case left something behind that outlasted Kemler himself. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Inra Kemler established a legal standard that would echo through American history for generations. The court decided that the measure of cruel and unusual punishment is the intent behind the method, not the outcome.

 If a state intends a method to be humane, that intention is what the court will evaluate. That same argument intended to be humane was later used to defend lethal injection, then nitrogen gas. The reasoning first applied to William Kemler’s case kept being recycled decade after decade in debates about how the state should end a life. Kemler could not read.

 He could not write. His intellectual limitations were documented but ignored entirely. No framework existed in 1890 to treat them as mitigating factors. No further appeal was filed. No further appeal was possible. The chair was waiting. For approximately 15 months, William Kemler sat inside Auburn prison and waited.

 His time on death row was by all accounts quiet. No violent incidents were recorded. No outbursts, no breakdowns. Guards described him as calm, cooperative, and resigned. The man who had swung a hatchet more than 25 times was now in confinement entirely still. He had nothing left to fight. Every court in the country had already said no. Then came August 6th, 1890.

 At 5:00 in the morning, Kemler was awakened. He rose without protest. He dressed carefully, a suit, a white shirt, and a necktie. He ate breakfast. He prayed. Then the top of his head was shaved to allow clean contact with the electrode. He showed no visible distress through any of it. At 6:38 in the morning, warden Charles Dursten led Kemler into the execution chamber.

 17 witnesses were already seated, doctors, prison officials, and reporters. The wooden chair sat bolted at the center of the room. Kemler looked at the chair. He looked at the faces in the room. Then he spoke. Gentlemen, I wish you all good luck. I believe I am going to a good place and I am ready to go. He sat down. Then Durst ordered him back up.

 A hole needed to be cut in the back of his suit so the second electrode lead could be attached properly. Kemler stood, waited, and sat back down without complaint. He was strapped in. His face was covered. A metal restraint was placed on his bare scalp. His final words, “Take it easy and do it properly. I’m in no hurry.

” Warden Durst looked at him and said, “Goodbye, William.” The switch was thrown. The generator running on alternating current from a Westinghouse machine sent approximately 1,000 volts through Kemler’s body. The current ran for 17 seconds. Then the power was cut. Dr. Edward Charles Spitzka stepped forward, examined Kemler, and announced to the room that William Kemler was dead. The witnesses exhaled.

 Then someone noticed his chest moving. Kemler was still breathing. Dr. Spitzka did not hesitate. He called out immediately. Have the current turned on again. Quick, no delay. The second charge was far more powerful. The voltage was raised to somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 volts and held for 1 to 4 minutes.

 What followed is recorded in witness testimony and newspaper accounts that are difficult to read even today. Blood vessels ruptured beneath the skin. Smoke began to rise from Kemler’s body. The New York Times reporter in the room wrote, “An awful odor began to permeate the death chamber. The hair under and around the electrode on the head, and the flesh under and around the electrode at the base of the spine was singing.

Two witnesses fainted. Several others were overcome with severe nausea. The smell of burning flesh filled every corner of that room. 8 minutes after the switch was first thrown, it was over. The autopsy confirmed what the witnesses had already seen. Blood vessels beneath the skull cap had carbonized.

 The top of the brain had hardened. The electrode on his back had burned all the way through to the spine. The New York Times ran its headline the following morning. Far worse than hanging. Newspapers called it a historic bungle. Disgusting, sickening, and inhuman. Dr. Alfred Southwick, the dentist who had invented the chair, responded publicly.

 We live in a higher civilization from this day on. George Westinghouse, the man whose technology had powered the execution, said simply, “They would have done better using an axe.” As for the men behind the machinery, Harold P. Brown, the anti-AC activist who had secretly acquired the Westinghouse generator, faded from public life entirely.

 His campaign to brand alternating current as deadly, collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions. Thomas Edison’s opposition to AC became a historical footnote. Westinghouse, despite everything, ultimately won the war of the currents. Alternating current, became the global standard. Edwin R. Davis, the Auburn prison electrician who had built the chair, kept his job.

 He went on to carry out subsequent executions in New York without the fanfare of the first. William Kemler was buried within the grounds of Auburn prison. No public grave, no marker of any note. The electric chair did not die with the bad headlines. It spread. By 1915, 12 states had adopted electrocution.

 Between 1890 and 1963, New York alone executed 695 people by electric chair. Nationally, since 1973, 158 executions by electric chair have been carried out across the United States. 10 of them were classified as botched. The last known use was in Virginia in January 2013 when Robert Gleason was executed. New York abolished its death penalty entirely on constitutional grounds in 2004.

 It has not had capital punishment since. But here is what I want to leave you with. Tilly Ziegler was the reason this case existed. Not the chair, not the courts, not the war of the currents. Her and her name deserves to outlast all of it. William Kemler told prison officers, “Don’t let them experiment on me more than they ought to.” He was right.

 The state of New York proved him correct. to the very last breath. Which moment in this story hit you hardest? Was it Tilly or was it what happened in that room on August 6th? Drop your answer in the comments. I read every single one. If you are new here, hit that like button, subscribe, and hit the bell. This community shows up for every case, and I want you to be part of that.

 Thank you for watching. I’ll see you in the next