Major Raymond "Rattlesnake James" Lisenba (March 6, 1894 – May 1, 1942) also known as Robert S. James, was the last man to be executed by hanging in California. He was charged with murdering his fifth wife, Mary Busch, to collect her life insurance benefit and was also suspected of causing the deaths of his third wife, Winona Wallace, and nephew, Cornelius Wright, to collect their life insurance benefits. Biography A native of Hale County, Alabama, Lisenba first worked in the cotton fields and then was sent to barber school by his sister's husband. In 1921, he married Maud Duncan, but she soon filed for divorce, accusing him of "kinky" and "sadistic" sex. Lisenba moved to Kansas and remarried, but his second wife divorced him after the father of a pregnant young woman ran him out of town. He moved to North Dakota and changed his surname to "James." First wife Major Lisenba married his first wife, Maud Duncan, on 8 Oct 1914 in Birmingham, Jefferson, Alabama On 5 Jun 1917, he reports as married, with "wife, baby, mother dependents" for his U.S., World War I Draft Registration. Name change It appears that Major Lisenba changed his name between 1917 and 1925 to Robert S. James. Second wife In the 1925 Kansas State Census, "R.S. James" (family 920) appears with wife Vera May James. and as "Robert S. James" (family 133) with wife Vera May James, mother-in-law Maud Vermillion, and brother-in-law Wayne Vermillion in Emporia, Lyon, Kansas, United States. Death of third wife After he was the sole beneficiary of an uncle's $4,000 life insurance policy, James got the idea of committing fraud. In 1932, he opened a barber shop in La Cañada Flintridge, California and married his third wife, Winona Wallace, and set a pair of $5,000 insurance policies for both from Prudential Insurance. On September 21, the couple was driving on Pikes Peak Highway near Glen Cove, Colorado, with Wallace at the wheel when the car left the road and fell down a mountainside. James told investigators he managed to jump free, but Wallace remained trapped in the vehicle until it stopped against a large boulder about 150 feet below the road. When rescuers got to the scene, they found Wallace alive with relatively minor injuries despite the intensity of the crash. She also smelled of liquor and had a massive wound behind her ear. A coroner later