Trapped in a loveless marriage, Ruth Snyder found solace and pleasure in the arms of another man, Judd Grey. But the extramarital affair was not enough for the pair: they wanted more. Together, they would kill Albert, Snyder’s husband, create a cover-up, and get away with the insurance money. With the freedom that came from Albert’s death and life insurance, they could live out their lives together. On March 28, 1927, their plot came to fruition. They killed Albert in his bed, stashed away valuable items, and tied up Snyder to stage a robbery. They even left behind an Italian newspaper on the bedroom floor to validate Snyder’s claim that a pair of foreign men had broken into her home. However, it was not long until the truth was uncovered. The reportedly missing valuables were discovered in the basement of the Snyder home, and a series of questionings revealed discrepancies within Snyder’s story. The media had a field day as Grey’s and Snyder’s trial began, and more and more details came to light. Snyder had no peace as the tabloids and newspapers ripped apart her character; in media presentation, she somehow existed within a dual nature of hot-blooded and passionate, and cold and calculating. With the images painted by the media and the evidence in court piled against her, Snyder was given a guilty verdict. She and Judd were sentenced to death. On January 12, 1928, they were executed by electric chair. During the execution, a male reporter illegally snapped a photo from a camera he had hidden in his pant leg, capturing the final agonizing moments of her life. Her death would be immortalized, and this photo would become her legacy. Even in that last moment, she would not be allowed peace or freedom. 

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Freedom is a running theme throughout Machinal, Sophie Treadwell’s adaptation of this very case. The Young Woman, Helen, is desperate for freedom, a freedom from the machine of life, from the loveless marriage forced upon her by society. Like Snyder, she finds this freedom in the arms of another man, the Lover. But she can’t keep this freedom forever, and she does not. She cannot escape the suffocating cogs of the machine. She, too, ends up murdering her husband and being sentenced to die by electrocution. Unlike the demonizing light the media portrays Ruth Snyder in, Treadwell presents Helen as a victim of society, but their stories end the same: in death. Treadwell does not incorporate the illegal and invasive fact of the photograph within Helen’s narrative, but she does not have to. She found her own way of immortalizing Helen’s death; the play itself serves as the photograph. Helen’s final moments are not frozen in time, but played out in every performance as a perpetual reminder of her inability to achieve true freedom and peace within the confines of the mechanical world which made it impossible for her to do so.