Russell Pascoe

Pascoe's last moments were the subject of a BBC documentary in 2012, presented by Gethin Jones.

Shortly afterwards, both men were buried in unmarked graves within the walls of the prisons where they had been executed, as was the custom. Only two more prisoners would be subsequently executed in Britain, both in August 1964.

Russell Pascoe (1940 – 17 December 1963) was (along with his 22-year-old accomplice Dennis Whitty) the third-last prisoner to be executed by hanging in a British prison. He was 23 years old.

Pascoe was executed at 8.00 am in Bristol's Horfield Prison on Tuesday, 17 December 1963 for his part in the murder of 64-year-old Cornish farmer William Garfield Rowe. Pascoe and Whitty had believed that Rowe kept a fortune hidden on his farm, Nanjarrow Farm, Constantine, near Falmouth.

During 1963, Whitty and 23-year-old Pascoe were living with three young women in a caravan at Kenwyn Caravan Park, on the outskirts of Truro, Cornwall. Whitty was working as a labourer at Truro Gas Works. Pascoe had previously worked as a labourer at Nanjarrow Farm near Falmouth and knew the farmer, William Rowe. Rowe was somewhat reclusive, living in the untidy sitting room of his farmhouse, the four bedrooms unoccupied after his mother and brother had died. Local rumour held that Rowe had a large sum of money concealed on the premises, and he had been the victim of a burglary in 1960, during which £200 and some other items had been stolen.

On the night of Wednesday, 14 August 1963, Whitty and Pascoe travelled to Nanjarrow Farm on Whitty's motorcycle. They were armed with a starting pistol, a knife and an iron bar. Whitty was wearing dark jeans and a dark, double-breasted blazer with silver buttons. When they knocked on Rowe's door at around 11.00 pm and the old man opened it, Whitty used this uniform-like clothing to support a story that they had crashed a helicopter nearby, and he asked to use Rowe's telephone. They then attacked Rowe; Whitty with the knife and Pascoe with the iron bar, leaving the farmer dead with six or seven wounds to the head, a fractured skull, a broken jaw, a severed finger and five chest wounds, including one knife wound to the heart. They searched the house for the money, but came away with only £4 that Pascoe found in a piano, and Whitty's haul of a watch, two boxes of matches and some keys. The sum of £3,000 was later found in the farmhouse.

The local police were soon tipped off about the murder by one of the three girls. On 16 August 1963, a policeman saw Pascoe riding his motorcycle in Constantine, stopped him and asked him to report for routine questioning at the murder headquarters. Pascoe claimed that he had been in the caravan in Truro at the time of the murder, but when Pascoe admitted knowing Rowe and working for him in the past, the police realised that Pascoe had worked for Rowe at the time of the burglary in 1960. Whitty was then also brought in for questioning. The following day, each man was questioned and told that they were suspected of committing the murder.

At the trial at Bodmin Assizes, beginning on 29 October, the murder was described as "brutal and savage in the extreme". The jury debated for four and a half hours before returning with guilty verdicts for both Whitty and Pascoe, and they were sentenced to death by Mr Justice Thesiger. On 2 November 1963, the two men were driven to separate prisons: Whitty to Winchester Prison and Pascoe to Horfield Prison in Bristol.

On 23 November 1963, Whitty and Pascoe's appeals were heard and rejected by the Court of Appeal, and the executions were set for Tuesday, 17 December. Clemency was refused first by Home Secretary Henry Brooke and then by the Queen. Pascoe's wife and mother visited him in prison for the last time on 16 December.