Gary Gilmore
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| Gary Gilmore | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 4, 1940 Stonewall, Texas, USA |
| Died | January 17, 1977 (aged 36) Draper, Utah, USA |
| Charge(s) | Two counts of murder |
| Penalty | Death |
| Status | Executed by firing squad |
| Parents | Frank and Bessie Gilmore |
Gary Mark Gilmore (December 4, 1940 — January 17, 1977) was an American criminal and spree killer who gained international notoriety for demanding that his death sentence be fulfilled following two murders he committed in Utah. He became the first person executed in the United States after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a new series of death penalty statutes in the 1976 decision Gregg v. Georgia (these new statutes avoiding the problems that had led earlier death penalty statutes to be deemed unconstitutional in Furman v. Georgia).
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[edit] Early life
Gilmore was born in Stonewall, Texas, the second of four sons. His parents drifted around the Western United States while he and his brothers grew up, his father earning a living selling advertising space in magazines. Gilmore was raised in a dysfunctional family, and had a horrible relationship with his father. Gary's brother Mikal described their father as a "cruel and unreasonable man." Frank Gilmore's mother claimed that he was the illegitimate son of magician Harry Houdini, who rejected his paternity. Mikal has said he does not believe the story is true, but suspects that his father believed it.
The Gilmore family settled in Portland, Oregon in 1952. Gilmore began getting into trouble with the law as a teenager, with offenses ranging from shoplifting, car theft and assault and battery. Although Gilmore had an I.Q. of 133, had high scores on both scholastic and academic tests, and clear artistic skills, he dropped out of high school at age 14. He ran away from home with a friend to Texas to see his place of birth, returning to Portland after several months.
By the age of 14, Gilmore started a small car theft ring with other friends, resulting in his first arrest. He was released to his father with a warning. Two weeks later he was back in court on another car theft charge. The court ordered him, at age 14, to Oregon's MacLaren Reform School for Boys, where he was released the following year. He was sent to Oregon State Correctional Institution on another car theft charge in 1960, and was released later that year.
In 1962, Gilmore was arrested and sent to the Oregon State Penitentiary for armed robbery and assault. He faced assault and armed robbery charges again in 1964, and was given a 15-year prison sentence as a habitual offender. He was granted conditional release in 1972 to live in a halfway house in Eugene, Oregon on weekdays, and study art at a community college. Gilmore never registered, and within a month he was arrested and convicted for armed robbery. Due to his violent behavior in prison, he was transferred from Oregon to the maximum security federal prison in Marion, Illinois in 1975. He was conditionally paroled in April 1976 and went to Provo, Utah to live with a cousin who tried to help him find work. Gilmore worked briefly at his uncle's shoe store, but he soon returned to his previous lifestyle, stealing items from stores, drinking, and getting into fights.
[edit] Murders
On July 19, 1976 Gilmore robbed and murdered Max Jensen, a Sinclair gas station employee in Orem, Utah. The next day, he robbed and murdered Bennie Bushnell, a motel manager in Provo. He murdered these people even though they complied with his demands. As he disposed of his .22 caliber pistol, he accidentally shot himself in the hand, leaving a trail of blood from the gun to the service garage where he had left his truck to be repaired shortly before the murder of Bushnell. The garage owner, seeing the blood and hearing on a police scanner of the shooting at the nearby motel, wrote down Gilmore's license number and called the police. Gilmore's cousin turned him in to police shortly thereafter, after he placed a call to her asking for bandages and painkillers for the injury to his hand. Gilmore gave up without a fight. He was charged with the murders of Bushnell and Jensen, although the latter case never went to trial, apparently because there were no eyewitnesses.
[edit] Trial
Gilmore's murder trial began at the Provo courthouse on October 5. Peter Arroyo, a motel guest, testified that he saw Gilmore in the motel registration office that night and that Gilmore robbed Bushnell by opening the cash register. After taking all the money, Gilmore was said to have ordered Bushnell to lie down on the floor and then to have shot him in cold blood. The next witness was Gerald F. Wilkes, a local FBI ballistics expert, who testified that he found the shell casing at the crime scene which he compared to Gilmore's pistol that was left there. Gilmore's two court-appointed lawyers, Michael Espin and Craig Snyder, surprised both the prosecutor Noall T. Wootton and Judge J. Robert Bullock by not cross-examining the majority of the witnesses and offering no defense. Gilmore wanted to testify on his own behalf, but suddenly withdrew the request the following day. Both sides made closing arguments.
On October 7, at 10:13 AM, the jury retired to consider the verdict. By mid-day, they returned with a guilty verdict. Later that day, the jury also unanimously recommended the death penalty because of special circumstances to the crime. At the time, Utah had two methods of execution – firing squad or hanging, so Judge Bullock allowed Gilmore to choose between the two. Gilmore's reply was, "I'd prefer to be shot." The execution was set for Monday, November 15 at 8 am.
In November 1976, during a Board of Pardons hearing, Gilmore said, "They always want to get in on the act. I don't think they have ever really done anything effective in their lives. I would like them all — including that group of reverends and rabbis from Salt Lake City — to butt out. This is my life and this is my death. It's been sanctioned by the courts that I die and I accept that." Gilmore received several stays of execution, brought about by the efforts of the ACLU, the last of which occurred just hours before the re-scheduled execution date of January 17. That stay was overturned at 7:30 am on the morning of the 17th, and the execution was allowed to proceed as planned. During the time Gilmore was on death row awaiting his execution, he attempted suicide twice, the first time on November 16 as a result of the first stay issued, and again one month later, presumably because the new execution date (January 17) was too far away for his liking. While incarcerated, Gilmore developed a deep dislike for two of his fellow inmates, convicted murderers and rapists Pierre Dale Selby and William Andrews, the "Hi-Fi Murderers." The two were eventually executed for their crimes in 1987 and 1992 respectively.
[edit] Execution
Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad January 17, 1977, at 8:07 a.m. The night before, Gilmore had requested an all-night gathering of friends and family at the prison mess hall. On the evening before his execution, he was served a last meal consisting of a steak, potatoes, milk and coffee, of which he consumed only the milk and coffee. He was then taken to an abandoned cannery behind the prison which served as the prison's death house. He was strapped to a chair, with a wall of sandbags placed behind him to absorb the bullets. Five gunmen, local police, stood concealed behind a curtain with five small holes cut for them to place their rifles through which were aimed at him. After being asked for any last words, Gilmore simply replied, "Let's do it." Gilmore had requested that, following his execution, his eyes be used for transplant purposes. Within hours of the execution, two people received his corneas. His body was sent for an autopsy and cremated later that day. The following day, his ashes were scattered from an airplane over Spanish Fork, Provo, and Springville, Utah.
[edit] References in popular culture
According to his brother Mikal Gilmore's memoir Shot in the Heart, Utah's tradition dictated that a firing squad comprise of five men — four of them with live rounds, and one with a blank round, so that each of the shooters could cast doubt to having fired a fatal shot. However, upon inspecting the clothes worn by Gary Gilmore at his execution, Mikal noticed five holes in the shirt — indicating, he wrote, that "the state of Utah, apparently, had taken no chances on the morning that it put my brother to death" (p. 390).
Gilmore's story is documented in Norman Mailer's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Executioner's Song (1979), which was adapted by Mailer for the 1982 television movie of the same name starring Tommy Lee Jones as Gilmore. Jones won an Emmy Award for his portrayal of Gilmore. Gilmore's brother's memoir Shot in the Heart was made into an HBO movie starring Giovanni Ribisi, Elias Koteas, and Sam Shepard.
The December 11, 1976 episode of NBC's Saturday Night featured guest host Candice Bergen and the cast singing a Christmas-themed medley enitled "Let's Kill Gary Gilmore For Christmas." Dressed in winter attire and surrounded by fake snow, the performers sang the medley of familiar Christmas carols with altered lyrics. Among its more memorable lyrics are set to "Winter Wonderland": "In the meadow we can build a snowman / One with Gary Gilmore packed inside / We'll ask him, 'Are you dead yet?' He'll say, 'No, man' / But we'll wait out the frostbite till he dies." [1] Later in the TV season and subsequent to Gilmore's death, NBC re-ran the episode, but the network removed this musical sequence. In its place, NBC inserted a brief, Christmas oriented film - filmed at an airport - about people meeting friends and relatives after disembarking from airplanes. For a subsequent broadcast of this episode in 2005, NBC reinserted the original Gilmore sequence.
The Oakland-based performance artist Monte Cazazza sent out photos of himself in an electric chair on the day of Gilmore's execution. One of these was mistakenly printed in a Hong Kong newspaper as the real execution. Cazazza was also photographed alongside COUM Transmissions/Throbbing Gristle members Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti for the "Gary Gilmore Memorial Society" postcard, in which the three artists posed blindfolded and tied to chairs with actual loaded guns pointed at them to depict Gilmore's execution. [1]
In 1977, The Adverts had a top 20 hit in the UK with the song "Gary Gilmore's Eyes". The lyrics describe an eye donor recipient realizing his new eyes came from the executed murderer. The song was later covered by the German punk rock band Die Toten Hosen. A country version of the song was recorded by Dean Schlabowske.
Gilmore is also the main character of artist Matthew Barney's Cremaster 2 (1999), the second part of The Cremaster Cycle, a series of five films dealing with surreal and controversial topics and themes.
In 1981, The Judy's on their Washarama album released the song "How's Gary?" which presumably asks Gary Gilmore's mother what's wrong with him, because he never comes out to play anymore; also inquiring what the holes in his vest are and why he's wearing a silly blindfold.
In Christopher Durang's play Beyond Therapy (1983), the character "Bruce" claims that he "Wanted to see Gary Gilmore executed on public television."
[edit] See also
- Capital punishment in the United States
- Capital punishment in Utah
- Executioner's Song, The
- Taylor, John Albert
[edit] References
Mailer, Norman. The Executioner's Song. 1979. L B and Co. Boston.
Schiller, Larry. Playboy Interview. April, 1977.
[edit] External links
| Preceded by Luis Monge |
People executed in US | Succeeded by John Arthur Spenkelink |
