John A. Bennett

Although he dropped out of the Ordnance Corps for academic deficiency, he became an ammunition handler and a truck driver with the U.S. Army's 11th Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion (11th AAA Battalion) at Camp Roeder near Salzburg in Austria.

After his sentence was stayed two times by lower courts, the U.S. District Court in Kansas overturned the rulings on appeal in 1960. On February 27, 1961, the newly appointed Secretary of the Army Elvis Jacob Stahr Jr. ordered that the sentence should be carried out. Days before Bennett's scheduled execution, the victim and her parents wrote to President John F. Kennedy, asking for clemency for Bennett. Bennett also wrote to Kennedy, asking for clemency since the girl did not die. Kennedy took no action on the appeals and let Eisenhower's death warrant stand. Bennett was hanged at United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas on April 13, 1961. His last meal consisted of cocktail sauce, hot rolls, cake, peaches, milk and coffee. Bennett's last words were "pray for me". He remains the last person to be executed following a United States Armed Forces court-martial.

A month later the court-martial found Bennett guilty of rape and attempted premeditated murder. He was sentenced to death. The death sentence was upheld by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on July 2, 1957.

Bennett was tried at a general court-martial at the Lehener Kaserne, the former military barracks of the 59th Infantry Regiment of the Imperial-Royal Landwehr in Salzburg, on February 8, 1955. The military court heard medical testimony from a doctor who examined the victim at the officer's home, as well as another who saw her later that day at the nearby hospital. Both agreed she had been sexually assaulted.

In 1954, just days before Christmas, a heavily intoxicated Bennett left Camp Roeder to find a brothel. Witnesses reported seeing him wandering around, entering random civilian homes asking for a girl (or according to some, for a woman) named Margaret or Margot. He even entered one house asking the local occupants if they had chickens. Later that evening, at Siezenheim, he met an 11-year-old girl returning from an errand for her parents. In a confession he gave to U.S. Army Military Police, he said:

John Arthur Bennett (April 10, 1936 – April 13, 1961) was a U.S. Army soldier who remains the last person to be executed after a court-martial by the United States Armed Forces. The 19-year-old private was convicted of the rape and attempted murder of an 11-year-old girl in Austria. Despite last minute appeals for clemency and pleas to President John F. Kennedy by the victim and her family to spare his life, Kennedy refused; Bennett was hanged at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in 1961.