Arthur Gooch and Ambrose Nix were on the run in Texas after escaping from jail in Holdenville, Oklahoma, in 1934.
In Tyler, Texas, on November 25, 1934, the two men committed a robbery. Approached by police the next day, the pair forced the two police officers back in to their patrol car and fled with them into Oklahoma.
The officers were released unharmed in Oklahoma. No matter. The Lindbergh Law, enacted in the wake of the sensational kidnapping of the famed aviator’s son in 1932, had been violated. The law made kidnapping a federal capital offense, even in the absence of murder.
Gooch and Nix were apprehended in Oklahoma in December, 1934. Nix was killed while being arrested.
Arthur Gooch was executed by hanging in Oklahoma on June 19, 1936. His was the only federal execution for kidnapping that did not involve murder.
The Federal Death Penalty Project 