Octavius Hite
Joined: 28 Jan 2004
Location: Househunting, looking for a new bunker from which to convert the world to homosexuality.
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 Posted: Sat May 20, 2006 11:04 pm Post subject: Master craftsman of death |
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British farmer builds and sells professional hanging machines, another fan of the BNP, good thing them and their suporters are not complete crazies!
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060520.GALLOWS20/TPStory/Front
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MILDENHALL, ENGLAND -- As you drive along a pleasant country lane in southeast England, the sign for Eldon Farm advertises "animal and bird feed, dog and cat food, animal bedding, hay and straw."
It doesn't say anything about the farm's other business: building custom-made gallows and execution machines to be used in the prisons and public-hanging-grounds of African dictatorships.
To find out about that, you have to stroll past the cages of black Labrador puppies and plump rabbits and into the workshop of David Lucas. A dour, 58-year-old man with a Rasputin beard and a muscular build, Mr. Lucas claims to be the best, and possibly the only, builder of professional hanging equipment in the world. And until a week ago, before he was exposed to public scrutiny, it appeared to be a quiet and lucrative sideline.
"These things are 100-per-cent effective. They will kill people efficiently and quickly and they don't need much maintenance," he said, gesturing to a flatbed trailer of the sort he says he transforms into a six-victim mobile hanging facility, one of which the regime of Zimbabwean strongman Robert Mugabe reportedly bought from him.
Nearby was an example of his simplest device, a sturdy oak gallows of the traditional sort, with a large noose hanging from its arm. They sell for $24,000, and he says they're popular.
"These big oak ones are meant to be put in the market towns. You only need to hang someone once, and leave the body hanging, and it's the best deterrent you can have."
"If you see a public hanging, you're going to think twice about doing anything wrong."
These gallows could have been build a century ago. The mobile killing machines, which sell for $200,000 and can be operated with the sides open for public viewing, are modern, clinical-looking devices, designed for efficiency, low maintenance and easy cleaning.
"You can get a lot more efficiency if you put five or six units on a semi-trailer and drive it from town to town, and get rid of all the bad people in one go." He won't name his clients, but suggests that the low crime rate in Libya is as a result of machines like this. He says he has also built custom metal killing machines to be installed inside prisons.
Since Mr. Lucas's business was exposed a week ago in Britain by an investigator posing as an African buyer, he has been condemned by Amnesty International, the British Parliament and the European Union, which is rushing to pass a law that would outlaw the selling of execution equipment (none of the EU's 25 member countries have capital punishment). That law is likely to come into effect at the end of July. But for now, what Mr. Lucas is doing is perfectly legal.
"There is no law in the world to stop me selling execution equipment," said Mr. Lucas, who says he is a supporter of the extreme-right British National Party. "The only person who could stop me doing this would be the Queen. If she wrote me a letter asking me to stop, I would, because I consider myself a loyal subject of hers."
The publicity, he claims, has helped his business: In the past week, he said, he has received 25 orders, 15 of them from one country.
The death penalty is still used in 74 of the world's 196 major states, according to Amnesty International. Asian countries tend to prefer shooting, while Saudi Arabia and some other Arab countries use beheading and the United States employs a variety of technologies. But hanging remains popular in the African continent, and that is where Mr. Lucas's clients reside.
He said that when he thinks about his machines being used by dubious African regimes to snuff out citizens' lives, he feels contented and proud.
"A lot of people say, 'How can you help execute people and end lives?' but look at the number of lives that I've saved because people have been killed so they can't commit crimes again. This is what we need in this country, and in yours. We've got to get control of crime, and get rid of criminals. When you visit these countries, when you go to places like Libya, you don't live in fear of being a victim of crime. That problem has been solved."
His business, he said, is essentially humanitarian in nature, since it makes execution quicker.
"With the system that I'm manufacturing, it's a humane system of execution. If you outlaw this equipment, you're going back to the most barbaric kind of execution, like chucking people over a tree. With my equipment, it takes only 13 to 15 minutes to get rid of someone."
There aren't many people who know how to build a proper gallows, he said. The trick is in making it rigid enough and of the proper dimensions that it breaks the condemned person's neck rather than strangling them.
"I learned this craft as a boy. In my early days there were a lot of old men around who knew how gallows worked. . . . It's a trade that's been going on around here for more than 100 years. Then I learned engineering in school, and applied my skills to improving things."
Mr. Lucas won't say where he builds his more lavish mobile execution equipment, or how he ships it abroad, but he noted at one point that he has "a bunch of white South African guys" who can build things for him in other countries.
He also won't name his clients. "These guys do not want to be getting publicity. They would not be nice to me if I started talking about the sales," he said. "I've got to keep my head on my shoulders."
When asked if he trains people to use his equipment, he became uncomfortable. "I can't say I'm doing any kind of training of hangmen," he said, "because that could be considered to be making me an accessory."
Is he concerned that his devices might end up being purchased by criminals themselves?
"That's actually why I keep my prices high," he said. "At the prices I'm charging, for the quality of equipment I'm making, it's not going to be bought up by gangs and the like. The prices are in order to keep it in the hands of the right kinds of people." |
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