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Show Condit Executed ForThorne Murder Donald Lawton Condit, 25-year-old murderer of a iSalt Lake grocery gro-cery salesman, was. executed this Thursday at dawn within the walls of the Utah state prison in Salt Lake City. The execution was in charge of officials from Iron county, where the murder was committed and the conviction secured in a long drawn out trial. John Moore Williams, young Milford Mil-ford attorney now in the service of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Investi-gation, was. associate counsel for Condit in the trial and early appeal ap-peal procedure, by appointment of I the court. The young man, who confessed the slaying of Harold A. Thorne on an Iron county road.' 15 months ago, accepted death without emotion. emo-tion. He walked the "long last mile" calmly, relaxed in a low-backed low-backed chair .before a huge block of wood on the south wall of the prison, and stolidly awaited the rifle-blast he knew would snuff out his. life. ""I still can't see any need for this," he commented evenly, without with-out protest, when .Sheriff Sherman C. Lamb of Iron county asked whether he had anything to say. He issued no last statement. Instead, he turned to Dr. Morgan Mor-gan S. Coombs, applying the stethoscope, and asked, "How is it, doctor? Okeh?" The physician pinned a small round bit of black paper against the white of Condit's shirt over hjs heart, as Sheriff Lamb and the deputies made taut the straps binding the young slayer to the chair. The Kev. J. P. Moreton had remained re-mained at .Condit's side through-I through-I out the night, and left him only a j few minutes before tlie execution. I Five rifles, four of them loaded jwith steel-jacketed bullets, crackled crack-led at 6:10 a.m. The doomed man gasped for breath, his head rolled forward .nd his debt to society , was paid. Thirty-four witnesses peace officers of-ficers and newspaper men had stood nervously, jumping aside uneasily as whiffs of gunpowder smoke rose from the canvas curtain cur-tain behind whicn stood six Iron county depujtyi sheriffs, ,five of them serving as executioners. The sixth was an alternate. Only four of the rifles .3O-.30 caliber rifles provided by the Salt Lake county sheriff's office contained con-tained steel-jacketed cartridges. The fifth was a blank. From which gun the blank was fired will never be known. Condit was pronounced dead two and one-half minutes after the slugs tore through his shirt. Condit killed Mr. Thorne in March, 1941. The Salt Lake grocery salesman, returning to j Utah from Las Vegas. Nevada, i gave Condit a ride. Condit, menac-j menac-j ing the Salt I-aker with an autc-j autc-j matic, fired when Mr. Thorne attempted at-tempted to disarm the hitchhiking j bandit. Mortally wounded, Thome i continued to struggle as the two j rolled from Thorne's car into the brush and sand along the Gedar-jModena Gedar-jModena roadway west of Cedari City. Condit Ibeat him over the head with a rock, he confessed, and hid the body in bushes at the side of the road He was arrested in Salt Lake City after he drove though a red traffic semaphore. |