Benjamin C. BIRDSALL

BIRDSALL

Posted By: Sarah Thorson Little (email)
Date: 1/29/2012 at 15:14:51

21 January 1923 --- 15 November 1987

Ben C. Birdsall, Retired Arizona Judge, 64

Ben C. Birdsall, a retired judge who presided over two of Arizona's most publicized criminal cases, died Sunday of cancer. He was 64 years old. In 1980, while serving on the Superior Court bench, Judge Birdsall sentenced John Harvey Adamson of Phoenix to die in the gas chamber in the murder of Don Bolles, a reporter for The Arizona Republic who was slain in 1976. Judge Birdsall also presided over the trial of Patrick Henry, a former physician whose 1977 plot to murder his former wife was the subject of a book and a television mini-series. He was convicted of attempted murder in 1979 and was sentenced to 5 to 15 years in prison.

November 25, 1987
New York Times -- NY

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[son of Charles and Esther (Clark) Birdsall. He grew up in Clarion, Wright County, Iowa and married Kathleen Hanson.]