Oklahoma City
Feb. 27, 1948
Ray Parr’s story about Rich Owens, the longtime executioner at McAlester State Penitentiary, has been knocking around my home office for ages, passed along by a former co-worker many years ago. Writing for the Daily Oklahoman, Parr painted a long, vivid portrait of the man who killed 75 human beings: 65 by electrocution, one by the gallows, two with a knife, six with a gun and one with a shovel. And there could have been more: “I never count peckerwoods,” he said.
By 1948, Owens was bedridden and dying of cancer. Parr paid a final visit to the old executioner to see how he was facing his own death. The headline (incomplete in my copy) says:
“Afraid of Death?
Now Rich Owens
Has the Answer.”
Now Rich Owens
Has the Answer.”
Part II
Part III
ladailymirror.com 
Interesting article. Disturbing in a way, but interesting as well.
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I stumbled on your post. I have an old photocopy of Ray’s story that I’ve toted around for 30 or 40 years. Ray was one of my mentors and later worked for me when I was asst. city editor at the Oklahoman. He tried to get me fired once when I forced him to convert to using a “Goddamned newfangled” electric typewriter instead of his old manual. His story about Rich Owens was one of the best newspaper stories I ever read.
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Bob, the Rich Owens saga is a terrific story. When I was at the Arizona Daily Star back in the 1980s, we had a couple of guys from the Oklahoman and one of them gave me a copy.
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