On July 23, 1850 in a simple, unassuming house, John McCaffary strangled his wife Bridget and then, while she was still breathing, stuffed her into a large barrel filled with dirty water. Needless to say, Bridget drowned in over a foot of sludge, and her husband would soon suffer the consequences.

In May 1851, with anti-capital punishment fervor at an all-time high throughout the state, McCaffary was sentenced to death. While many Wisconsin citizens and journalists expressed outrage at the sentence, McCaffary, convinced that his dead wife was haunting him, feverishly turned to religion in his last months. However, it was too late.

On August 21, 1851, county officials and the Kenosha City Guard accompanied McCaffary to the scaffold. In front of a raucous crowd of 2,000-3,000, McCaffary publicly confessed and the sheriff tipped the spring. It took McCaffary nearly 20 gruesome minutes to die.

Using the horrible execution to incite the public against the death penalty, Kenosha journalist Christopher Latham Sholes condemned the murder in his newspaper the Kenosha Telegraph and then decided to run for assembly. After Sholes won, he and Senator Marvin Bovee crafted and rallied for a bill that abolished the death penalty in 1853. McCaffary's execution was not only the first and last execution supported by the State of Wisconsin, but also played a key role in the campaign to abolish the death penalty in Wisconsin.

More information about the case may be found on the Wisconsin Historical Society website.