John C. Woods

John Clarence Woods (June 5, 1911 – July 21, 1950) was a United States Army master sergeant who, with Joseph Malta, carried out the Nuremberg executions of ten former top leaders of Nazi Germany on October 16, 1946, after they were sentenced to death at the Nuremberg trials. Time magazine credited him with 347 executions to that date during a 15-year career. Before being inducted into the United States Army in August 1943, he was working part-time at a feed-store in Eureka, Kansas, when he was registered for Selective Service in 1940. He married a nurse, Hazel Chilcott, There is no evidence that the U.S. Army made any attempt to verify Woods's claims—if they had checked, it would have been easy to prove that he was lying; the states of Texas and Oklahoma had both switched to electrocution during the period he claimed to be a hangman. The last hanging in Texas took place in August 1923 when Woods would have been twelve. Oklahoma did not carry out hangings during the relevant period, the last one taking place three months before Woods was born. There was a single hanging in 1936 under federal jurisdiction, while all other executions in Oklahoma between 1915 and 1966 were carried out by electric chair.

Woods served the U.S. military as the primary executioner in the hangings of 34 U.S. soldiers at various locations in France over 1944–1945 and assisted in at least three others. U.S. Army reports suggest that Woods participated in at least 11 bungled hangings of U.S. soldiers between 1944 and 1946.

Woods also participated in the execution of about 45 war criminals at various locations which included Rheinbach, Bruchsal, Landsberg, and Nuremberg. Donald E. Wilkes Jr., a professor of law at the University of Georgia Law School, wrote that many of the Nazis executed at Nuremberg fell from the gallows with a drop insufficient to snap their necks, resulting in their death by strangulation, which in some cases lasted up to 24 minutes.

Such suspicions were voiced at the time. According to a Time magazine article published just 12 days after the executions, it was alleged that they "had been cruelly bungled", In the case of Julius Streicher, reporter Howard K. Smith wrote that the initial drop was not fatal, and that "witnesses could hear him groaning", upon which "Woods came down from the platform and disappeared behind the black curtain that concealed the dying man. Abruptly the groans ceased and the rope stopped moving. Smith and the other witnesses were convinced that Woods had grabbed Streicher and pulled down hard, strangling him."

Woods later claimed in newspaper interviews that he "never saw a hanging go off any better", and that the assignment at Nuremberg was one he "really wanted to do", and also that someone had shot at him in Paris, "but the poison only made me sick and the bullet missed me."