Alpine Hangman to Retire

(Wimpton-on-Uncompahgre) The Ladies Auxiliary of the Old West will host a pie and coffee gathering to honor the infamous Alpine Hangman, who will hang up his noose and hood in December.

Filthy Pierrepoint, the chief executioner for Colorado, Wyoming and Utah assumed the role of circuit rider in order to perform his morbid tasks. He logged more than a million miles on horseback, train and automobile from the mid-Fifties to present. Even in his golden years he never traveled by air saying he was frightened by the whole experience.

In 1977 he served as a guest executioner in Alaska but never warmed up to the Midnight Sun and the months of darkness saying his profession was better suited to the sunrise. Pierrepoint has hosted over 177 hangings since 1956 making him the most prolific hangman in history. Insisting on hemp rope, he scribbled notes on each victim as to neck size, body language and last words.

A former chief of the notorious motorcycle gang, The Sons of Succotash, Pierrepoint saw the light after the Korean War and embraced his current vocation. A longtime Colorado Republican Pierrepoint served as deacon at the Bland Valley’s Blinding Faith Temple and is an avid collector of dead butterflies.

– Fred Zeppelin

“Is not the whole world a vast house of assignation to which the filing system has been lost?” – Quentin Crisp