10 Men in History They Almost Couldn’t Kill

John ‘Babbacombe’ Lee

For centuries, executions in England were carried out by professionals. These skilled executioners were paid handsomely to ensure that condemned men – and women – were dispatched quickly and effectively. By the nineteenth century, hanging had become firmly established as the preferred method of executing murderers and other notorious criminals in English prisons. As well as being bloodless – and certainly less traumatic to prison staff than death by firing squad – it was also hugely reliable. Hardly anybody survived a hanging. But to survive three attempts? It sounds impossible. But a man by the name of John Lee allegedly did just that.

Lee was convicted of the murder of Miss Emma Anne Whitehead Keyse. Emma Keyse (as she was more commonly known) lived alone in the small village of Babbacombe, in the county of Devon. However, she shared her house with four servants. Lee, the half-brother of the house’s cook, was one of the servants. Indeed, he first got the job when he left school in 1879. He soon left, however, to travel the world in the Navy. But the sea-faring life was not for Lee and, after being dismissed, he got a job as a footman in the town of Torquay. It was here in Torquay that he first fell foul of the law. After being caught stealing from his employer, he was sent to prison. Lee was released in 1884 and immediately returned to Babbacombe.

Since Lee was the only male in the house, as well as the only person with a criminal record, when Emma Keyse’s body was found on a November morning in 1884, he was the prime suspect. The spinster had been brutally killed: as well as her head being bashed in, her throat had been slit. What’s more, the culprit had attempted to burn the body. When questioning Lee, the police noticed that he had cuts on his arm. He could not account for the injuries. These cuts, as well as his past record, were enough to see him convicted of murder. He was sentenced to hang in Exeter Prison on the morning of 23 February 1885.

By all accounts, the Exeter Prison executioner, a man by the name of James Berry, was thorough in his work. Indeed, he tested the gallows trapdoor several times before Lee was brought out and a noose put around his neck. However, upon pulling the lever, the trapdoor failed to open. Berry tried again. No luck. And a third time. Still it wouldn’t open. The execution was postponed and Lee’s lawyers appealed. Upon hearing of the case, the Home Secretary, Sir William Harcourt, commuted the death penalty. He said: “It would shock the feeling of anyone if a man had twice to pay the pangs of imminent death.”

That’s not to say Lee went unpunished. He was still given a life sentence and was released only after 22 years. Throughout his imprisonment, Lee maintained his innocence. And, indeed, in the English media, he became known not as the man they couldn’t hang but, due to his lack of guilt, the man they shouldn’t hang. What happened to Lee after his release, nobody knows for sure. Some say he stayed in the South-West of England. Others report he emigrated to America for a new life. His guilt – or innocence – has never been comprehensively proved, though he will always retain a place in English history as the man who escaped the hangman’s noose.

Gord Manktelow

The Korean War didn’t just involve U.S. troops. In all, some 26,000 Canadians were involved in the battle for the Korean peninsular that raged between 1950 and 1953. Some were unlucky and died in the war, and many returned home seriously injured. Others were far luckier. None, however, was probably as lucky as Gord Manktelow, who became known as “the man the Chinese couldn’t kill”.

Manktelow was just 20 years old when he found himself in Korea as part of the First Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment. In March of 1952, Manktelow, who held the rank of Lance Corporal, along with five other men, was tasked with pressing forward and scouting out a section of no-man’s land that was commonly known as Hill 163. Before long, the forward observation team came under Chinese mortar fire and were ordered to withdraw.

Unable to retreat, Manktelow instead tried to play dead as Chinese ground forces approached. They found him lying face down and decided to see if he really was deceased. At first, they pummelled every part of his body with the butts of their rifles. Not satisfied by this, they then proceeded to bayonet him. Manktelow remained still and silent throughout, even though the pain must have been incredible. Then, to make extra sure, the Chinese soldiers took one of Manktelow’s own grenades, pulled the pin and left it by his side.

The enemy soldiers all ran away. Manktelow simply lay there waiting for the explosion to come. When it did, it tossed the Canadian in the air, bringing him back down to earth. There, lying face up, he was kicked again by the returned Chinese soldiers. Satisfied he was dead, Manktelow was at last left in peace. Miraculously, he lay there through a long night, with mortars landing all around him. Finally, a Canadian comrade found him and got him to a field hospital. Though he had lost a lot of blood, he pulled through.

Before long, the media got hold of the story and the legend of the ‘man the Chinese couldn’t kill’ was born. Manktelow returned to Canada and, for more than 20 years, tried to forget all about the Korean War. After some time, he decided to join a veterans’ association and remains proud of his role in the largely-forgotten conflict.

Jacklyn Lucas

When most boys his age were busy studying for their high school exams or worrying about making the football team, Jacklyn Lucas was busy fighting in the bloodiest war his country had ever seen. What’s more, as if volunteering as a teen wasn’t enough, he was displaying feats of bravery that would win him the admiration of his comrades-in-arms and ultimately earn him a place in the history book. That he lived to collect his Medal of Honor is nothing short of miraculous – the Japanese Imperials forces simply couldn’t kill him.

Lucas was born in Plymouth, North Carolina in February 1928. When his father died, he was sent, at the age of 10, to the Edwards Military Institute where, by all accounts, he excelled, especially on the sports field. Though he was just 14, he succeeded in enlisting in the Marine Corps – his height and muscular build convinced the recruiting officer that he was 17. By November 1943, he was shipping out of the continental United States. But, far from being sent to the theatre of combat, he was assigned to a base on Hawaii. Unhappy with this, Lucas walked out of his camp and stowed away on a transport ship.

Just one day before he would have been listed as a deserter, Lucas turned himself in. Officers accepted his request to join a combat unit and, with the 5^th Marine Division, he was off to Iwo Jima. It was there, just a few days after his 17^th birthday, he had his finest moment. On 20 February, Lucas and his comrades were crawling towards a Japanese trench. The enemy spotted them and opened fire. They also tossed two grenades towards the American troops. Without hesitation, Lucas ran past a fellow Marine, threw his body on top of one grenade and pushed the other deep into the soil. The first exploded, sending him flying. The second did not, remaining in his hand.

Marines from another unit found Lucas and evacuated him to a hospital ship. He should have been killed, and nobody can say how he survived. But, after more than 21 surgeries, he was discharged from the Marine Corp. Lucas was awarded the Medal of Honor in October of 1945. After that, he remained active in the armed forces up until the 1960s. He died in 2008.

Michael Malloy AKA ‘The Irish Rasputin’

In the nineteenth century, if a friend or family member suggested that you take out a life insurance policy, then you would have had good reason to think twice. This was time when a number of murders were carried out in order that the culprit cash in on an insurance policy. And, all too often, it was a victim’s friend or relation who got them to set up the policy, only to kill them and make it look like natural causes. Sometimes, they got away with it, or sometimes they got caught. Or, as was the case with the so-called Irish Rasputin, Michael Molloy, the would-be murderers couldn’t finish the job and cash in.

Molloy was born in County Donegal in Ireland in 1873. Like many of his countrymen, he emigrated to America, ending up in New York City. Here, he worked as a firefighter and even as a professional boxer before falling upon hard times. By 1933, he was a homeless alcoholic, regularly seen on the streets of the Bronx. His ill health and known troubles convinced five men – all known to Molloy – that he would be the perfect victim for their scam. They would get him to sign a life insurance policy, naming them as beneficiaries, and then get him to drink himself to death. Simple, right?

Sure enough, with the help of a corrupt insurance broker, the men, led by Tony Marino, got Malloy to take out a policy. Under the terms of the document, the five plotters would share $3,500 (around $66,000 in today’s money) in the event of his demise. Marino then invited Malloy to drink for free at the speakeasy he owned. He assumed the drunk would just overindulge and keel over. No such luck. Then they tried spiking his drink with antifreeze. Malloy just drank it, went to bed and woke up the next morning ready to go again. Finally, they tried horse medicine and then rat poison. Still, Iron Mike kept going.

Frustrated, Marino heeded the advice of one of his co-conspirators and fed Malloy raw oysters soaked in alcohol. And then they tried feeing him rotting sardines laced with rat poison, again to no avail. Then, one night, they took a drunk, sleeping Malloy out into the freezing night and left him in the cold, hoping the elements would finish the job. But, sure enough, the following morning, Malloy was back in the bar asking for a drink. Even when they hit him with a taxi at 45 miles per hour, all they could do was break a few bones.

Finally, the five would-be killers decided enough was enough. One night in February 1933, they took a drunk, passed-out Malloy into an upstairs room and connected a gas jet to his mouth with a rubber hose. This did the job. And, indeed, the coroner ruled that Malloy had died of pneumonia. However, by the time the men went to cash in the life insurance policy, the legend of Malloy, ‘the man they couldn’t kill’ were doing the rounds of New York’s bars. The police learned of the scam, had the body exhumed and then arrested Marino and his co-conspirators. Four of them were given the electric chair, while the other went to prison for many years.

Where did we find this stuff? Here are our sources:

“How was Russian mystic Rasputin murdered?” Artem Krechetnikov, BBC, December 2016.

“The Man They Couldn’t Hang”. City of Parramatta Council, October 2013.

“Cruel and Unusual History”. The New York Times, April 2008.

“King Zog I of Albania”. Richard Cavendish, History Today, September 2008.

“Citroen helps De Gaulle survive assassination attempt”. History.com.

“The Weird Story of the ‘Man They Couldn’t Hang'”. Kat Eschner Smithsonian Magazine, February 2017.

“Iron Mike Malloy: The Donegal man they tried nine times to kill”. The Journal, December 2015.

“The Man the Chinese Couldn’t Kill”. Christopher Grosskurth, CBC Radio News, July 2003.

“Jack Lucas Dies at 80; Earned Medal of Honor at 17”. The New York Times, June 2008.