Looking for Victor

As a kid growing up in Fort Madison, home of the Iowa State Penitentiary, I used to hear several stories about the last guy they executed in the state of Iowa. I never got too many details from the stories, only that he was hanged at dawn for the murder of a doctor.  Today I found out just a bit more about this man, Victor Feguer, and that he’s buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in town.   Victor’s name came up in 2001 when the U.S. government lifted the federal ban on execution for Timothy McVeigh.  Mr. Feguer was the last person to be executed by Uncle Sam until McVeigh’s act of domestic terrorism prompted authorities to make an exception.  His name has come up again thanks to this project.

Fun facts about the Iowa State Pen:

• The Iowa State Penitentiary is a maximum security prison for men built in 1839 – seven years before Iowa became a state.
• It’s a building that almost matches the look and age of the original fort after which the town is named.
• It’s an enormous fortress build into the bluff overlooking a wide bend of the Mississippi River.
• The Schafer Pen company used to be a couple of blocks away too, giving FM the nickname Pen City.
• Satanic rituals are routinely performed by inmates within the walls of this 19th century prison.
• Therefore, Pen City is a 200-year old town with a murderous, Satanic cult.  That is creepy and awesome.

Victor was a drifter who wandered into Dubuque, Iowa in 1960 looking for drugs and a flop house.  He landed at a decrepit boarding house and began calling up physicians alphabetically from the phone book.  Dr. Alt was unreachable but Dr. Bartels wasn’t.  Victor convinced him there was a woman who needed medical attention and that he would need to come quickly.  Once Dr. Bartel arrived it was clear Victor had another plan.  He kidnapped the good doctor and took him to Illinois, where he shot and killed Bartel and left his corpse in a corn field.

This is the story offered by the prosecution.  Victor himself claimed that he’d met a drug addict from Chicago and the addict killed the doctor.  Victor maintained to his dying day that he killed the drug addict in Dubuque and dropped the body into the Mississippi River.  No body was ever found.

After a brief stint at Leavenworth, Victor was transferred to the Iowa State Penitentiary and put on death row.  The Iowa governor at the time, Harold Hughes, requested clemency for Victor, but it was denied by President Kennedy due to the heinous nature of the crime.  Victor spent ten quiet days there waiting for the gallows, the last night in a vigil with a Catholic Priest.  For his final meal he only requested one olive with pit intact.

At dawn on the Ides of March 1963, Victor Feguer was hanged at the Iowa State Penitentiary gallows with an Associated Press reporter and Iowa Representitive John Ely as witness.  The scene was too brutal for Ely, who was already a death penalty opponent.  The execution of Victor Feguer inspired Ely to fight for the abolition of the death penalty in Iowa, which occurred in 1965.

Victor Feguer was buried in an unmarked grave in a Fort Madison cemetery with the single olive pit in his suit pocket.

Once the winter snow melts I think I’m going to try and find Victor’s grave.  My guess is it’s either in the ISP cemetery or in the municipal cemetary.  I will keep you posted.