Military Pistol, Team, Men

The United States team won this event easily, even though their best shooter in the individual event, Ray Bracken, was not entered for the team event. One of the United States’ shooters, James Snook, is the only known American Olympian to have been executed for a crime. In June 1929 Snook was practicing at the Ohio State rifle range when he was arrested and accused of the murder of Theora K. Hix, a medical student at Ohio State. It turned out that Snook and Hix had posed as man and wife for three years, sharing an apartment near the school’s campus. On 13 June 1929, Snook claimed that Hix asked him to divorce his wife and marry her, threatening to kill his wife and child if she was refused. Snook confessed to then beating Hix several times with a hammer before severing her jugular vein with a pocketknife to, in his own words, “relieve her suffering”. On 14 August 1929 a jury deliberated only 28 minutes before finding Snook guilty of first-degree murder. A week later he was sentenced to be put to death, and at 7:10 PM (1910) on 28 February 1930, he died in the electric chair at the Ohio State Penitentiary.