Russell Pascoe

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.

Whitty and Pascoe split the money and took £2 each, returning to the caravan at Truro. The girls they lived with later testified that Whitty was "grinning all over his face", and that Pascoe was seen wiping blood from Whitty's face. The following day, Pascoe's girlfriend confronted Whitty with a copy of the evening newspaper, which contained details of Rowe's murder. She asked Whitty, "You went to Constantine. Did you do this?" Whitty replied, "Yes I did." The girl later claimed that Whitty and Pascoe threatened to kill the girls if they told anyone what they knew.

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