Sam Shockley was born in Cerro Gordo, Caney Township, Little River County, Arkansas.
18 Facts About Sam Shockley
1.
2.
Sam Shockley's father, Richard Shockley, was a sharecropper who married three times and had eight children.
3.
Sam Shockley ran out of the house and collapsed, throwing the baby clear, and both lay outside for six hours.
4.
Sam Shockley started running away from home after his stepmother, Sally Barton, died of malaria in 1920.
5.
When examined by prison psychiatrists at Leavenworth, Sam Shockley was determined to have an IQ of 68 and a mental age of 10 years, 10 months.
6.
Sam Shockley was placed for three years in the D block isolation section, for most of the time in the "Hole" or "Dungeon", the darkened, stripped cells on the ground level, where he spent most of his time in darkness.
7.
Sam Shockley displayed classic schizophrenic symptoms: delusions, auditory hallucinations, and disorientation.
8.
Sam Shockley's IQ dropped to 54, indicating a mental age of 8.
9.
On May 21,1941, Sam Shockley was involved with Joe Cretzer, Arnold "Shorty" Kyle, and Lloyd Barkdoll in an attempted escape from one of the island's workshops.
10.
Barkdoll managed to speak with Warden James Johnston and convinced him that Sam Shockley was not involved in the plot, and Sam Shockley was released and sent back to his cell.
11.
Sam Shockley was tried for participation in the attempted escape and the killing and injury of the guards.
12.
Goodman elicited a statement from custodial guard Carl W Sundstrom that he had at no time seen a weapon in Shockley's hands, and that while Shockley did attack Sundstrom, he did not injure Sundstrom at any time.
13.
Sundstrom stated that Sam Shockley was running around and acting like a crazy man.
14.
Also the men all established that Shockley was in the D block when the shooting began that injured the guards taken hostage, and later killed guard W H Miller.
15.
Inmate Joseph Moyle testified that Sam Shockley did not say anything; he was just standing at the hostage cells, and he did not think Shockley knew what was going on.
16.
Sam Shockley was not a part of the plan at all and merely tagged along because no one told him he could not.
17.
Sam Shockley accepted his fate and rejected any further efforts to stay the execution.
18.
Sam Shockley is buried at Pollard cemetery in Haworth, Oklahoma.