Criminal. Henry Judd Gray received notoriety as an early 20th century American, who was convicted of the murder of his lover's husband. The case had heavy media coverage making the headlines in the nation's newspapers. He was a short, bespectacled salesman who was married with a young daughter. In 1925 he became romantically involved with Ruth Brown Snyder, a tall, blue-eyed blond married woman, who was the mother of a young daughter. Snyder claimed her marriage was loveless as her husband was still in love with a woman who had died years before, thus she was planning to murder him. By 1927 their adulterous affair had reached the level that Snyder was able to coerce him to help murder her husband, Albert, an art editor for the magazine, “Motor Boating.” After Snyder failed in at least a half-a-dozen attempts to murder her husband, he became involved. With a forged signature, she had purchased a hefty insurance policy on her husband. After consuming alcohol for courage, he went to the Snyder home in the wee hours of the morning where his lover was waiting for him. On March 20, 1927 the couple attacked her sleeping husband, putting a rope around his neck to hold him still while stuffing chloroform-soaked rags up his nose, and then hitting the victim in the head with a window weight; Snyder was killed by suffocation. The window weight was called a dumbbell during the trial, hence the headlines of the “Dumbbell Murder,” or was it because their plan was dumb? The couple poorly staged a burglary, which the police soon realized, with a little investigation, did not happen; at that point, the couple were arrested for first degree murder. The trial, which became a carnival-like event, began with many noted celebrities attending and souvenirs sold on the Queens County Courthouse steps. The newspapers labeled them “The Granite Woman and the Putty Man.” After Gray confessed, the lovers turned on each other during the trial, contending the other was responsible for actually killing Albert Snyder. The jury took only 98 minutes before returning with a verdict of "guilty". Now convicted, they were sentenced to death in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison. On January 12, 1928 Snyder's fate would come first at 11:06 PM, while blindfolded and strapped into the electric chair. She was the first woman to be executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison since 1899. With a hidden camera strapped to a “Chicago Tribune” reporter's ankle, a fuzzy photograph was taken as she was actually being executed, which was published in all major newspapers. This camera is on exhibition in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington D.C. At 11:14 PM Henry Judd Gray was executed in the electric chair. With a smile, he had said his wife had sent him a letter saying she had forgiven him. In 1944, the highly successful and critically acclaimed movie “Double Indemnity,” featuring Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, was released. The plot of the movie was based on the Ruth Brown Snyder and Henry Judd Gray murder case. In 2007, the American Film Institute listed “Double Indemnity” as the 29th best movie on their list of the top 100 American movies of all time, thus keeping their tragedy alive. Over the years, there have been several other successful movies and novels based on the case. The Snyder's daughter, Lorraine, was nine at the time of her father's murder. As an orphan, she was sent to live with her maternal grandmother, who was awarded guardianship after a legal battle. The insurance policy was declared invalid in 1930.