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1926–1928
The second name this county sent to execution is entered on the state's list as Grzyb, John, also known as John Hall. The Department of Correction's row is the whole of the official skeleton: born October 26, 1905; offense dated March 29, 1926; sentenced October 24, 1926; crime, murder in the first degree and robbery; four stays; electrocuted April 10, 1928 — by then at the state prison at Michigan City, under the 1913 law that had replaced the county gallows with the chair. The South Bend Tribune's 2005 account adds the venue and corrects the natural misreading of the state's table: Grzyb, a man from St. Joseph County, was convicted and sentenced in 1926 in Elkhart County — the sentencing registries enter him under Elkhart, the state's execution list under his home county, and the two records are describing the same man from opposite ends of his case.
The killing itself — a murder committed in the course of a robbery in the spring of 1926 — is not narrated here, because the sources reached for this page do not name its victim or its place, and a capital case is not reconstructed from a registry row. What the record establishes is the course of the law: a twenty-year-old from this county, tried in the neighboring one, held through four stays, and put to death on April 10, 1928, the second and last man of the county's ground on the state's execution list for seventy-seven years.
Sources:
- Indiana Department of Correction, "Indiana Executions 1897–Present" — entry no. 29: Grzyb, John (aka Hall, John), electrocuted April 10, 1928
- South Bend Tribune, August 2005 — Grzyb "from St. Joseph County," convicted and sentenced in 1926 in Elkhart County
- Rob Gallagher, "Before the Needles" execution registry — sentencing county Elkhart; occupation entered as ex-convict