The Effect
The year was 1930 and on the evening of May 29th, a gruesome discovery was made in a rooming house in San Mateo, California. The landlady, Mrs. Mayme Guthrie, lay dead in her kitchen, brutally slain with a pocketknife after what looked like a considerable struggle. Her husband, Archie, found her body, but suspicion quickly fell on one of their tenants, a Polish logger named William Kogut.
Kogut was heavily intoxicated when arrested and readily confessed, believing he deserved to …
The Effect
The year was 1930 and on the evening of May 29th, a gruesome discovery was made in a rooming house in San Mateo, California. The landlady, Mrs. Mayme Guthrie, lay dead in her kitchen, brutally slain with a pocketknife after what looked like a considerable struggle. Her husband, Archie, found her body, but suspicion quickly fell on one of their tenants, a Polish logger named William Kogut.
Kogut was heavily intoxicated when arrested and readily confessed, believing he deserved to hang for his crime. However, at his trial, he claimed no memory of the murder, the confession, or even the hours leading up to the tragic event. He pleaded not guilty.
Kogut’s trial was a whirlwind affair, lasting a mere three days. Despite the seeming certainty of his guilt, his lawyer valiantly fought for a life sentence instead of death, arguing his case for nearly an hour. The jury grappled with the weighty decision for an agonising twenty-three hours, ultimately deadlocking on the question of life imprisonment versus death. This deadlock hinted at the complexities of the case, suggesting that perhaps it wasn’t as open-and-shut as some believed.
Nevertheless, on Monday morning, June 17th, 1930, Kogut was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. A glimmer of hope remained in the form of an appeal to the California State Supreme Court, but Kogut had other plans.
Rather than await his fate at the hands of the executioner, he chose a different, more dramatic exit. Over the next few months, convinced that the deck was stacked against him, Kogut became obsessed with playing cards. Collecting almost 20 different packs - and despite having little interest in playing with them - Kogut still had one final Ace Up his Sleeve for his very last trick.
On the night of October 19th, a powerful explosion ripped through his cell at San Quentin, shaking the very foundations of the prison. While other death row inmates were rushed to safety, Kogut lay mortally wounded, the right side of his face and skull ravaged by shrapnel. He died a few hours after the explosion. Upon closer examination of the shrapnel embedded in his wounds, it appeared to be fragments of playing cards. How could these seemingly innocuous pasteboards become instruments of destruction?
The Method
Due to prison security watching closely the objects that prisoners had access to, Kogut had to devise a remarkable, albeit macabre, escape plan using an unlikely source, from an object that wouldn’t look out of place when possessed by an inmate: an ordinary pack of cards.
His method hinged on the explosive properties of nitrocellulose, a key ingredient in the lacquer used to coat cards at the time. This substance, also known as guncotton, was a powerful propellant used in firearms and early rockets.
Kogut knew of this property, he painstakingly tore apart over 20 decks of playing cards, meticulously focusing on collecting pieces with red ink, for they contained the highest concentration of nitrocellulose. Nitrocellulose, when wet, forms an explosive mixture, and when mixed with cardboard, forms Nitramide, a low-order explosive.
Kogut soaked his playing card fragments in water to create a pulp saturated with the volatile substance. He then repurposed a hollow metal leg from his bed, sealing one end with a broom handle and carefully packing the explosive playing card pulp inside, much like loading a muzzle-loading musket. After sealing the other end, he had created a makeshift pipe bomb.
He wrote two suicide notes and left them both to be discovered beside his bed. While one remains shrouded in secrecy, the other poignantly declared, “Do not blame my death on anyone because I fixed everything myself. I never give up so long as I am living and have a chance but this is the end.”
His final act was a grim gambit, a desperate wager against the inevitable. He placed the bomb near his cell’s lamp, the heat gradually igniting the volatile nitrocellulose within. This resulted in the explosion heard on October 19th, 1930. An explosion that, although not massive, was a wildcard that proved tragically effective, inflicting fatal injuries to Kogut’s head. His end was not instantaneous, he languished in the prison infirmary for many hours, before death finally dealt his own hand at 2:30 AM on October 20th.
© 2025, Lora Jones. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited without written permission.
