by Laurel | June 30th, 2009
June 30, 1909, page 14
Monat is Sentenced
Holyoke Man to be Electrocuted at Sing Sing August 9.
Napoleon Monat, Navy Garb
In the supreme court at Poughkeepsie, N.Y., yesterday, Justice Tompkins sentenced Napoleon Monat, formerly of Holyoke, to be electrocuted in Sing Sing prison during the week of August 9. Monat was convicted Monday night of murder in the first degree for killing John Kliff, a restaurant keeper at Hopewell Junction, last January. Sentence was passed what a jury was being drawn to try George Conrow for complicity in the same crime. Conrow is indicted for murder in the first degree. Monat struck the blow which killed Kliff, and took $525 from under Mrs. Kliff’s pillow. His defense was that he was weak-minded and that Conrow induced him to commit the crime. Conrow’s defense, it is understood, will be that he had no knowledge of the crime before its commission. Conrow’s young wife sat by his side, and showed much agitation when the death sentence was passed on Monat.
Napoleon Monat, though mentioned during the trial as of Holyoke, had not lived in that city since 1902, when he was sent to Concord reformatory. After leaving the reformatory he claimed that he had served in the navy and later was employed by the New York, New Haven and Hartford railroad as a brakeman. He was born in Holyoke in 1885 and attended the Sacred Heart school. Even at that time we was what was commonly known as a “bad actor” and had a special fondness for carrying firearms. He was arrested for larceny in 1897 when 12 years of ages and fined. Later he was connected with an assault case and was sent to the Lyman school. This was the time when he begged a ride from A. P. Pease a Southampton farmer, and after leaving the city shot the farmer in the head with a 32-caliber revolver which he carried, his intention evidently being to capture the farmer’s money. He had visited the city at times, although not often, and was arrested at the home of his father, Peter A. Monat, of 357 Main street, the afternoon of February 3, his wife and two children Edward and Eva being at his father’s home with him.
Excerpted from the Springfield Republican.
