William H. Heagy

William H. Heagy, an officer with the Pittsburgh Police Department, was shot and killed on March 25, 1954, when responding to a shooting incident in the Hill District.

Aloysuis Spalding, a former heavyweight boxer, was involved in a fight with another man when a woman intervened, leading Spalding to fire a shot at her. He then fled. Heagy found him hiding and was shot and killed. Spalding hanged himself in his police station cell three days later.

Heagy had been a principal figure in the Cleveland Thompson case, the last Allegheny County execution. Heagy was the original arresting officer. Thompson’s defense subsequently used Heagy’s history of “chronic alcoholism” in an effort to reverse his conviction.

Author: Bill Lofquist

I am a sociologist and death penalty scholar at the State University of New York at Geneseo. I am also a Pittsburgh native. My present research focuses on the history of the death penalty in Allegheny County (Pittsburgh), Pa. This website is dedicated to collecting, analyzing, and sharing information about all Allegheny County cases in which a death sentence was imposed. Please share any questions or comments, errors or omissions, or other matters of interest related to these cases or to the broader history of the death penalty in Allegheny County. View all posts by Bill Lofquist