At the age of eighteen, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to die
in the electric chair at Sing Sing prison. But, literally at the last
minute, his sentenced was commuted from death to life by FDR, who was
at that time the governor of New York. Resko remained in prison for
twenty years and because of his talent as a painter, eventually
attracted the attention of several prominent people, among them Nelson
Rockefeller, writer Carl Carmer and others. They visited him in prison
and felt that his sentence for murder had been much too severe for a
crime that by today's standards would have been considered manslaughter.
They also said that he had been totally rehabilitated and worked to
gain his release.
Years later, as a free man, he and actor _Joel Grey_ were neighbors in New
York and became friends. Totally by accident _Joel Grey_ happened to be
walking past an auction gallery which was auctioning off some of FDR's
old documents which Eleanor Roosevelt was selling because she felt they
had no significant historical value. Grey went in and browsed through a
few of the papers and just happened to see the name John Resko on one
of them. It was the actual document, signed by FDR, which had kept
Resko from being executed in 1931. _Joel Grey_ bought it for fifteen
dollars and gave it to him.
John Resko lived a productive life after that and died at the age of
eighty. Many of his paintings are in the permanent collections of
museums around the country.
