Deputy Warden Joseph Clark (Joliet CC) - Deputy Warden Joseph Clark died several weeks after being bludgeoned by Inmate George Chase in 1865. Clark's assailant, a convicted horse thief, was the first person executed in Will County on July 27, 1866. Joliet was shocked with the news of the murder of Wardenn Joseph Clark at the prison. George Chase had hit the warden with a club during an escape attempt. Chase was convicted murder and sentenced to death on a gallows. That sentence was carried out on a Friday in the summer of 1866. A gallows had been built in the hallway of the jail. Two posts with a beam over them held the hangman's noose with the other end of the rope tied to three large sandbags in the basement. Chase sat in a chair below the noose as the death sentence was read to him. He said he was innocent. "Gentlemen, I am to be slaughtered," he said as the hood was dropped over his head. The sheriff gave a signal and the rope snapped over the beam. Chase shot straight up. "He was launched into eternity," the Joliet Signal newspaper reported.