BENTON, Ill. — The legend lives here of Charlie Birger, a bootlegging gangster who on the gallows flippantly remarked how lovely the world was.
Nearly eight decades later, the noose used in Illinois' last public hanging has taken on an ugly life of its own.
Rebecca Cocke, granddaughter of the sheriff who supervised the 1928 execution, says the rope is a family heirloom her mother lent to the downtown jail museum 10 years ago. With her mother now suffering from Alzheimer's disease, Cocke — her legal guardian — is suing to get the rope back.
Robert Rea, the local preservation society chief, wants a judge to determine whether Cocke, granddaughter of former Sheriff Jim Pritchard, is the rightful heir to the prized rope, or whether it belongs to the county because Pritchard was on its payroll.
Birger battled a rival gang led using homemade armored vehicles. He even weathered the bombing of the Shady Rest, his log hideout stocked with rifles, submachine guns, ammunition and cases of canned goods.
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The law caught up to Birger in 1927, when he was condemned for arranging the killing of Joe Adams, the mayor of nearby West City.
On April 19, 1928, 5,000 spectators packed the jail courtyard to see Birger walk to the gallows, where he shook hands with executioner Phil Hanna.
"They've accused me of a lot of things I was never guilty of, but I was guilty of a lot of things of which they never accused me," media accounts quoted Birger as saying. "So I guess we're about even."
Before his head was covered by a black hood, Birger grinned and said, "It's a beautiful world."
The noose was lent in 1996 to the then-fledgling museum by the last surviving child of Sheriff Pritchard. In a written agreement included with her daughter's pending lawsuit, Mary Louise Glover asked the museum to return the noose if the museum ever folded or if she requested it back.
When Cocke requested in September that the noose be returned, Rea refused, the lawsuit says, and Cocke filed suit in Franklin County Circuit Court.
