The warped wooden gallows used more than a century ago to hang convicts in Chicago, beginning with those condemned for the May 4, 1886, Haymarket Square riot, has been bought at auction by Ripley's Believe It or Not museums for $68,000, Mastro Auctions said on Thursday.

Between 1887 and 1927, 86 men were hanged from the gallows built to execute those convicted of inciting the violence at the labor rally in which eight policemen died. Four of the supposed conspirators were hanged from the gallows.

The contraption had been kept disassembled in the basement of Chicago's criminal courts building awaiting the recapture of cop killer O'Connor, who was 31 when he escaped a few days before his scheduled execution in 1921.