Hanging the Peachtree Bandit

The crime that led to “the first significant challenge to capital punishment in Georgia” and inspired the Grateful Dead song “Dupree’s Diamond Blues” (Atlanta INtown).

On December 15, 1921, gunshots echoed across Atlanta’s famous Peachtree Street moments before a handsome young man darted away from Kaiser’s Jewelers. Frank DuPre left in his wake a dead Pinkerton guard and a missing ring. As Christmas shoppers looked on in panic, he raced through the Kimball House Hotel and shot another victim. The brazen events terrified a crime-filled city already on edge. A manhunt captured the nineteen-year-old, unemployed DuPre, who faced a quick conviction and a hanging sentence. Months of appeals pitted a prosecutor demanding some “good old-fashioned rope” against “maudlin sentimentalists” and “sob sisters.” Author Tom Hughes recounts the true harrowing story behind the legend of one of the last men hanged in Atlanta.

“Revisits the crime, the trial, and the execution that captured newspaper headlines for months.”—WABE.org