Rattlesnake James

Major Raymond Lisenba (March 6, 1894 – May 1, 1942) also known as Major Lisby, Robert Sherwood James, "Rattlesnake James" or the Rattlesnake Murderer, was the last man to be executed by hanging in California. He was charged with murdering his wife, Mary Emma Busch, to collect her life insurance benefit. Per the Associated Press, Busch was the last of James's six wives. He was suspected of killing his fourth wife, Winona Wallace, and his nephew, Cornelius Wright, to collect on life insurance benefits. Lisenba was also convicted on three counts of incest with his niece, Lois Wright, and sentenced to 3 to 150 years in prison. Wright was an adult at the time of James's arrest, but 17 at the start of the relationship.

Biography The Associated Press described him as paunchy, beady-eyed, auburn-haired, and "possessing a way with women." His father was a sharecropper, and he was taken out of school at age eight to do agricultural work. A native of Hale County, Alabama, Lisenba first worked in the cotton fields and then was sent to barber school by his sister's husband. James would later take the daughter of this sister and husband with him to Hollywood, where they had a sexual relationship until his arrest on murder charges.

At the time of the 1900 census the family was in Cottondale, Tuscaloosa County and his father worked as a farmer.

Major Lisenba, age 21, married his first wife, Maud Duncan, age 19, on October 8, 1914, in Birmingham, Jefferson, Alabama. (She may actually have been 16 years old.) He enlisted and served as a U.S. Marine Corps private during WWI. He "failed to return" to her after the war. to Robert S. James. In the 1925 Kansas State Census, "R.S. James" (family 920) and as "Robert S. James" (family 133) with wife Vera May James, mother-in-law Maud Vermillion, and brother-in-law Wayne Vermillion in Emporia, Lyon, Kansas, United States.

Lisenba moved to California in 1932 with his then 17-year-old niece Lois Wright, who had Hollywood ambitions. James got the idea of committing fraud. He married Winona Wallace of Glendale, California. Wallace was released from the hospital on October 8 and recovering at a tourist cabin in Manitou Springs when about a week later, James and a grocer found her lying on her back in a half-filled tub. At the coroner's inquest, medical examiner George B. Gilmore testified that James told him his wife had ignored physician's orders to avoid washing her hair because of the head wound and drowned as a result.

James soon wrote to Dr. George B. Gilmore, Manitou coroner, asking him to alter the death certificate so he could collect double indemnity on his wife's life. He pointed out that Winona's death had not been due not merely to drowning, but that the head injury she received in the accident had been a contributing cause. Dr. Gilmore thought this a reasonable request—and James collected $14,000.

On May 1, 1942, Rattlesnake James was executed by hanging at San Quentin State Prison in California. Prior to the execution he told the chaplain he thought God had forgiven him for his "bad life." The rope was the wrong length and it took over ten minutes for Rattlesnake James to die.