George Sitts

Who was George Sitts?

George Sitts was executed at the age of 33 by the U.S. state of South Dakota for the murder of state Division of Criminal Investigation special agent Tom Matthews, who was attempting to arrest Sitts on a fugitive warrant from Minnesota.

He was the only person to die in South Dakota's electric chair, and it would be a little over 60 years until the next time South Dakota would carry out an execution — Elijah Page via lethal injection on July 11, 2007.

Sitts, who escaped from prison while serving a life sentence for murder, also shot and killed Butte County Sheriff Dave Malcolm near Spearfish, on January 24, 1946. Sitts was convicted in Minnesota for the 1945 murder of a liquor store clerk during a botched robbery.

After spending three weeks sawing on the bars of his cell in the Minneapolis city jail, Sitts and three other men broke out the day before Sitts was scheduled to be transferred to a state prison.

After the slayings of Matthews and Malcolm, Sitts fled to Wyoming, where he was arrested on February 5, 1946, and returned to South Dakota.