Number 1572: Tough-talkin' and straight-shootin' — Good night, Irene!

Irene Shrader  (sometimes spelled Schroeder), took up with Glenn Dague, who had left his wife and children for her. What interested me about the story is that a part of it (the part that got the pair the electric chair) took place near my son’s home in Western Pennsylvania. This article from The Lawrence County [PA] Memoirs is one of the better articles I’ve read about the pair.

There is a way crime comics presented women as criminals, which was to show them tougher than their men. The males were portrayed as being followers, even wimpy. The women robbed and killed without mercy and ordered their significant others to do the same. This version, drawn by George Tuska for Crime Does Not Pay #57 (1947) has a fairly standard panel-by-panel description of Shrader/Schroeder and Dague’s short but murderous career. Lots of tough dialogue and action to match. There is also Irene’s speech in the final panel where she says to Dague, “We were wrong in goin' bad, Glenn! It doesn’t pay!” Considering Irene’s psychopathy I doubt she ever expressed such a thought. Part of any psychopath’s mental make-up is to blame their victims rather than themselves.

Shrader/Schroeder has the dubious distinction of being the first woman executed by electric chair in Pennsylvania, and only the fourth woman in America executed by that method.