On this site in 1908, George Rock was executed by hanging, and a year later William Hayes met a similar fate. Rock and Hayes killed Deputy Warden John Robinson and severely wounded Warden Frank Conley during an escape attempt. Conley surprised the inmates after they had murdered Robinson and fired on them with his .41 caliber revolver. Both inmates were hit, but the ammunition was defective, and Conley was forced to subdue them by clubbing them with the revolver. Because both Rock and Hayes were armed with knives, Conley suffered numerous knife wounds that required 103 stitches. Rock and Hayes were executed by an unusual jerk-up scaffold that used the drop of a 300-pound weight that was supposed to break their necks, but the device failed and death came by strangulation. They were the only inmates executed at this prison.