Researching Charles Thompson

Thompson is appealing his death penalty conviction as he states that there was insufficient evidence to support his capital murder conviction because intervening medical care was the direct cause of Dennise Hayslip’s death, not the actual shooting.

In 2008, a biography by Roger Rodriguez was released titled The Grass Beneath His Feet: The Charles Victor Thompson Story. In it, Rodriguez highlights the details regarding his escape, but he does not reveal how Thompson received a handcuff key.

Thompson resides in solitary confinement on Death Row in Livingston, Texas at the Polunsky Unit. He writes on inmate blog Between the Bars.

Thompson is featured in the fifth episode of the first season of the Netflix series I Am a Killer.

Thompson was also featured in an episode of "Extreme Prison Breaks", entitled "Runaway Chuck", which first aired on the Documentary Channel on 15 August 2012.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, he was given some piano lessons in his youth, though he later described himself as self-taught. He left St. Louis in 1911 to tour in Ohio and Indiana. In 1912, he met James P. Johnson in either Washington D.C or Coney Island. Thompson also played in Buffalo, New York, Detroit, Cleveland, Toledo, Erie/Pennsylvania, and Atlantic City/New Jersey.

He won the great ragtime contest of 1916 in the Booker T. Washington Theatre of in St. Louis, with his composition "The Lily Rag". He defeated Tom Turpin, the owner of the theatre and the owner of the "Rosebud Club", where nearly all the great ragtimers of America met since 1900.

Born in Grey County, Ontario, Thompson worked as a teacher, rancher, and an automotive dealer. In 1945 he became a Vancouver alderman and from 1949 to 1950 served as mayor. He promoted the construction of city infrastructure such as streets and bridges. A prevailing theme during Thompson's term of office was a widespread belief that communism posed a threat to citizens.

Thompson was a devoted Freemason since 1924, initiated with the Latonia Lodge No. 125 in Saskatchewan and affiliated with the Melrose Lodge No. 67 in Vancouver.

Thompson served as United States Assistant District Attorney from 1855 to 1857, was elected a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1872. He was elected as a Democrat to the Forty-fourth Congress (March 4, 1875 – March 3, 1877). He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection to the Forty-fifth Congress.

Thompson resumed the practice of law, and served as city solicitor of Gloucester. He was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Governor of Massachusetts in 1880 and again in 1881, and served as judge of the Superior Court of Massachusetts from 1885 until his death in Gloucester on January 19, 1894. His interment was in Oak Grove Cemetery.

Born and raised in Easington in County Durham, England, Thompson attended the College of Islington for brief medical training and was later accepted as a missionary by the Church Mission Society. He was deployed to Kherwara, India, where he spent nearly 20 years living and working, ultimately dedicating his life to the plight of the Bhils.

As a doctor, teacher, reverend and philanthropist, Thompson worked to treat cholera, leprosy, the Bubonic plague, ophthalmia, malaria, rheumatism and fever. During his medical missionary career, Thompson laid the foundation for later medical missions in the Bhil region by establishing primary schools, dispensaries, relief centers and orphanages, pioneering Christianity to the Bhils, and training several Bhils in medicine. Besides his medical work, Thompson was also interested in diminishing the communication gap between the Bhils and the Europeans, which eventually led him to publish the first grammar and vocabulary book in the Bhili language as well as a prayer book.