BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY Woman's Execution 50 Years Ago Still A Hot Issue Corrine Sykes At Time Of Her Arrest In 1946 For Robbery-murder

by Ron Avery, Daily News Staff Writer

It was 50 years ago this month that Corrine Sykes walked the proverbial ``last mile'' to the electric chair in Rockview Prison and became the last woman executed in Pennsylvania.

The slow-witted 20-year-old black maid was convicted of killing her white employer in Oak Lane during a robbery.

Her name may dredge up memories and emotions for some in Philadelphia's African-American community. The Sykes case can be compared to the O.J. Simpson case in the way it divided whites and blacks.

``I was only 10, but I remember clearly what a big story it was,'' said Harold Franklin, a city employee and part-time filmmaker. ``Everybody was talking about it.'' About four years ago, Franklin was called to jury duty when another prospective juror in a murder trial of a black man told him, ``I won't let happen to him what happened to Corrine Sykes.''

Franklin said the remark ``hit me like a bomb.''

``It's still big,'' he said. ``You talk to some older people about it, and they get all worked up.'' Franklin, too, has gotten worked up about the case.

He has been studying newspaper clippings, working on a screenplay and trying to find financial backers to make a feature movie about Sykes.

A city-employed graphic artist, Franklin has also made four low-budget films, using mostly volunteer actors and crew.

Sykes was convicted of using a carving knife to murder her employer, Freda Wodlinger, on Dec. 7, 1944, and taking jewelry, a fur and some cash.

She had been hired only three days before the slaying under a false name she used to conceal a criminal record for petty crimes.

A prime suspect from the onset, Sykes gave several conflicting stories to police before confessing. She even led detectives to the missing murder weapon under a piano in the house.

Her court-appointed lawyer, Raymond Pace Alexander, who later became a city councilman and judge, told the all-white jury, ``We will make no attempt to exculpate Corrine in this shocking crime.''

Instead, the lawyer tried to mitigate the crime by proving Sykes was mentally slow, emotionally unstable and under the influence of a boyfriend who put her up to the crime.

A psychiatrist told the jury she was a ``constitutional psychopathic inferior.'' A School District witness said Sykes was tested at age 13 and found to have an IQ of 63, giving her a mental age of about 7.

Sykes' boyfriend, bootlegger James ``Jayce'' Kelly, denied any part in the crime and Sykes's claim that he had threatened to kill her and her mother if she did not rob the house.

Kelly was tried later and convicted of receiving stolen goods from Sykes - a ring and the fur - and received a five-year prison term.

There was considerable sympathy among African-Americans for Sykes as she faced the chair. Few women had been executed in Pennsylvania; governors usually commuted their death sentences to life in prison.

Even before the trial, the Philadelphia Tribune ran a headline ``Death Penalty Unlikely For Maid In Murder Case,'' declaring that psychiatrists ``showed the girl is at least temporarily unbalanced . . . in this particular case folks who are still HUMAN would not want to see punishment meted out where TREATMENT is needed.

``The facts stare us in the face that a SUBNORMAL CHILD and NOT A WOMAN committed what we smugly say is an atrocious crime.''

After the conviction, sympathy increased and there was a belief among many that she wasn't the murderer.

``There was a rumor that [Wodlinger's] husband confessed to the killing on his deathbed,'' said Franklin. ``But there's no truth to it.''

While Sykes was a victim to many, thousands of white Philadelphia families who employed black domestic workers were angry and frightened.

Both the state and U.S. Supreme Court rejected Alexander's appeals. In his final emotional plea to Gov. Edward Martin, Alexander said it was her race that doomed Sykes.

A crowd estimated at 3,000 attended Sykes funeral. Four years after the execution, the Tribune ran a story headlined ``Ghost of Corrine Sykes Walks Streets of the City'' concerning rumors ``sweeping the city'' that someone else had confessed to the slaying. But there was no substance to the rumors.

Another African-American publication pointed the finger of guilt at Sykes's boyfriend, implying that the cops protected him because he bribed them to overlook his bootlegging.

``When you talk to people today who remember her, they get all the facts mixed up,'' Franklin said. ``But they all say she shouldn't have been executed - that she was wrongfully put to death.''