US Olympic Gold Medalist Was Executed After Committing Horrific Crime

A two-time Olympic gold medalist who represented the USA was executed after committing a horrific crime.

James Howard Snook is one of the most successful shooters in America's history at the Summer Olympic Games.

During the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp, Belgium, Snook represented the US in two events, taking home a gold medal in both of them.

Snook was a member of the U.S. Olympic Pistol Team, which won gold medals in both the men's 30 metre team military pistol and the men's 50 metre team pistol events.

However, his impressive Olympic career ultimately ended in disgrace after the gold medallist committed a brutal crime that led to him being sentenced to death and later executed.

James Howard Snook represented the US in the Olympic Games. (Image: Wiki Commons)

Alongside his Olympic career, Snook also worked as a professor and an equine surgeon at the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine.

During his time at the college, he met, and later married, a sixth-grade teacher named Helen Marple, who he had a daughter with named Mary Snook.

Four years after meeting his wife, Snook, now 45 years old, started having an affair with 22-year-old student Theora Hix.

During their relationship, Snook and Hix had posed as a married couple for three years, sharing an apartment near the school's campus.

Eventually, their relationship turned sour, as Snook claimed that Hix asked him to divorce his wife and marry her instead, threatening to kill his wife and child if he did not do so.

This led to Snook attacking Hix, brutally beating her with a hammer before cutting her jugular vein with a pocket-knife, claiming that he did so to "relieve her suffering."

Snook won two Olympic gold medals at the 1920 Games. (Image: Clive Rose/Getty Images)

Not long after, Snook was arrested and accused of the murder of Hix while he was practicing at the Ohio State rifle range.

Snook's trial took place on 14 August 1929 and it took the jury just 28 minutes before they found Snook guilty of first degree murder

A week later the former Olympian was sentenced to be put to death by electrocution, with the execution taking place on 28 February 1930, with Snook dying in the electric chair at the Ohio State Penitentiary.