We live in a day and age where the internet connects us all. Injustice in many forms is often publicly revealed through social media and activist groups. False and coerced confessions from accused criminals are exposed because information from all over the globe is constantly at our fingertips.
Unfortunately for a man named Joe Arridy, this was not the case in the 1930s.
Joe Arridy was born in Pueblo, Colorado in 1915 to Syrian immigrant parents. When he was only in his teens, Arridy’s parents put him into the Colorado State Home for Mental Defectives in Grand Junction. Arridy had an IQ of only 46. He was an easy target at the State Home and was regularly beaten and abused by older boys.
In August 1936, at the age of 21, Arridy and a few other young men escaped the facility in Grand Junction and hopped on a passing freight train. Their destination was Pueblo, Arridy’s hometown. That same week, a brutal attack occurred in Pueblo that outraged the town. Two sisters, 15-year-old Dorothy Drain and 12-year-old Barbara Drain, were viciously assaulted in their home. Dorothy had been raped and killed with an axe. Barbara was seriously injured but survived the attack.
The young men who escaped Grand Junction with Arridy decided to return to the institution, but Arridy chose to wander and hop trains. He ended up in Cheyenne, Wyoming and was arrested there on August 26, 1936 after being found in a train yard.
Arridy told the Sheriff, George Carroll, that he had been through Pueblo during his railway travels. Carroll knew about the murder of Dorothy Drain and immediately linked Arridy to the unsolved crime. Sheriff Carroll interrogated Joe Arridy for hours, and Arridy ultimately confessed to the slaying.…
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