Gary Gilmore | |
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Portland Police Bureau mug shot |
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Born | Faye Robert Coffman (renamed Gary Mark Gilmore later) December 4, 1940 McCamey, Texas, USA |
Died | January 17, 1977 Draper, Utah, USA |
(aged 36)
Charge(s) | Armed robbery (3 counts) Assault (2 counts) Murder (2 counts) |
Penalty | Execution by firing squad |
Status | Executed on January 17, 1977 |
Parents | Frank and Bessie Gilmore |
Gary Mark Gilmore (December 4, 1940 β January 17, 1977) was an American criminal, murderer, who gained international notoriety for demanding that his own 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). Gilmore was executed by firing squad in 1977.
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Gilmore was born in a hospital in McCamey, Texas on December 4, 1940, the second son of Frank and Bessie Gilmore. Frank Gilmore Sr. was an alcoholic con man who sold fake magazine subscriptions. He'd married Bessie, a Mormon outcast from Provo, Utah, on a whim, in Sacramento, California. Frank had many wives and families before her, none of whom he cared about or supported. They had a son, Frank Jr., and then Gary came along while they were wandering aimlessly through Texas under the pseudonym of Coffman to avoid the law. Frank christened him Faye Robert Coffman, which Bessie quickly changed to Gary, once they left Texas. However, this birth certificate proved to be a sore spot years later (Gilmore's mother had kept his original birth certificate). Many years later, in the early 1960s, upon finding the birth certificate that stated his name was "Faye Robert Coffman", Gilmore thought that he had been illegitimate or someone else's son, felt that it was the reason he and his father did not ever get along, and he was very upset and walked out on his mother, Bessie, when she tried to explain to him. [1]
The family relocated throughout the Western United States during his childhood, and his father supported the family by selling fake magazine subscriptions. Gilmore had a troubled relationship with his father, whom his brother Mikal described as a "cruel and unreasonable man." Frank Gilmore's mother claimed that Frank was the illegitimate son of magician Harry Houdini. Mikal has said he believes the story is false, however stated that his father and mother believed this. It is still not sure whether this story is true or not, because Fay (Frank Gilmore's mother) who was from Sacramento, told Bessie about Frank's father, whom she had a short relationship with, mentioned he was a famous magician who had stopped into town, and so Bessie went to the library to research it and came up to the conclusion that Harry Houdini had been Frank's father. However, Houdini was only sixteen years old in 1890, the year of Frank Gilmore's birth. Furthermore, he did not start his career as a magician until the following year.
Frank Gilmore, Sr. was strict and quick to anger. Often, he would whip Gary and Frank, Jr. with a razor strop or a belt for little or no reason. Less often, he would beat his wife, Bessie. As he got older, he mellowed some, and the youngest Gilmore son, Mikal, reported in his book Shot In The Heart, that Frank whipped him only one time, and he never did it again after his son told him "I hate you", which made him sad. But with Gary, Frank, Jr., and sometimes the third son, Gaylen, he would beat them with a whip, sometimes badly. In addition, Frank and Bessie would argue loudly and call each other hateful names. Frank would anger Bessie by calling Brigham Young, the second president and prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, "Bring'Em Young" and call her crazy, and then Bessie would retaliate saying maybe she was crazy and would kill him one night. Bessie also called him a "Cat-licker", which was supposed to be an epithet for "Catholic", because Frank was Catholic. This went on and on for the longest time, and certainly it led to a lot of emotional problems in all the four Gilmore kids. [2]
The Gilmore family settled in Portland, Oregon in 1952. Gilmore began engaging in petty crime as an adolescent, with offenses ranging from shoplifting, car theft and assault and battery. Although Gilmore had an IQ of 133, had high scores on both scholastic and academic tests, and clear artistic skills, he dropped out of high school in the ninth grade. He ran away from home with a friend to Texas, 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 remanded him, at age 14, to the MacLaren Reform School for Boys in Oregon, from which 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 the meantime, in 1961, Frank, Sr., was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer. He died a few months later, at the end of June 1962. Gary was broken up over his father's death, even though Frank had abused him physically. Gilmore was in jail in Portland, when he heard from a jailer that his father had died, and he tried to kill himself by cutting his wrist.
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 of armed robbery. Owing 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 distant cousin, Brenda Nicol, who tried to help him find work. Gilmore worked briefly at his uncle Vern Damico's shoe store and for Spencer McGrath's insulation company, but he soon returned to his previous lifestyle of stealing, drinking, and getting into fights. Gilmore, then 35, met and had a romance with Nicole Baker, a 19-year-old widow and divorcee, with two young children. The relationship was at first casual, but soon became intense and strained owing to Gilmore's aggressive behavior and pressure from Baker's family to stop seeing him.[3]
On the evening of July 19, 1976, Gilmore robbed and murdered Max Jensen, a Sinclair gas station employee in Orem, Utah. The next evening, 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 the .22 caliber pistol used in both killings, he accidentally shot himself in the hand, leaving a trail of blood from the gun all the way to the service garage where he had left his truck to be repaired shortly before the murder of Bushnell. Michael Simpson witnessed Gilmore hiding the gun in the bushes, 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, Brenda, turned him in to police shortly after he called her asking for bandages and painkillers for the injury to his hand. Gilmore gave up without a fight as he was trying to drive out of Provo. He was charged with the murders of Bushnell and Jensen, although the latter case never went to trial, apparently because there were no eyewitnesses.
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 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 Esplin 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 β firing squad or hanging β so Bullock allowed Gilmore to choose between the two. Gilmore's reply was, "I'd prefer to be shot." The execution was set for November 15 at 8 a.m.
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 β including that group of reverends and rabbis from Salt Lake City β 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 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the last of which occurred just hours before the re-scheduled execution date of January 17. That stay was overturned at 7:30 a.m. 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. 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 executed for their crimes in 1987 and 1992, respectively.
Gary Gilmore was executed on January 17, 1977 at 8:07 a.m. by firing squad at Utah State Prison in Draper, Utah. 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 of steak, potatoes, milk and coffee and a six-pack of beer; he consumed only the milk and coffee. His uncle, Vern Damico, who attended the gathering later claimed to have smuggled in three small, 50-millilitre Jack Daniel's whiskey shot bottles which Gilmore supposedly consumed. He was then taken to an abandoned cannery behind the prison which served as its 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. When asked for any last words, Gilmore simply replied, "Let's do it!" The Rev. Thomas Meersman, the Roman Catholic prison chaplain, administered the last rites to Gilmore. After the prison physician cloaked him in a black hood, Gilmore uttered his last words to Father Meersman: "Dominus vobiscum" (Latin, translation: "The Lord be with you.") Meersman replied, "Et cum spiritu tuo ("And with your spirit")[4]
Gilmore had requested that, following his execution, his eyes be used for transplant purposes. Within hours of the execution, two people received his corneas. Most of his other organs were used for transplants as well. 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, Utah.[5]
As Gilmore was the first person in the United States executed since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, his story had immense cultural resonance at the time, and it continues to echo in the works of writers, artists and even advertisers to this day.
Before his execution, the December 11, 1976, episode of NBC's Saturday Night Live featured guest host Candice Bergen and the cast singing a Christmas-themed medley entitled "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. Lyrics set to "Winter Wonderland" included this line: "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." [6][7] A later episode of 'Saturday Night Live, on October 20, 1979 featured guest host Eric Idle performing impersonations while strapped to a stretcher, assisted by orderlies. With the stretcher standing on end, Idle covered his eyes with a black blindfold and announced it as an impersonation of Gary Gilmore.
Other television comedies have referred to the Gilmore execution, specifically his final words, "Let's do it." The Seinfeld episode "The Jacket" originally included a reference to Gary Gilmore's final words, but the scene was changed during the final shoot. In the deleted scene, Jerry is trying to decide upon buying the titular jacket, when he remarks to Elaine: "Well, in the immortal words of Gary Gilmore 'Let's do it.'" On the Roseanne episode "The Wedding", Roseanne's daughter Darlene is asked if she is ready to get married. Darlene responds with a similar punchline, "Well in the words of Gary Gilmore, 'Let's do it!'". On NYPD Blue, Andy Sipowicz cracks "Let's do it," as his wedding is about to begin, then explains further, "That's what that guy in Utah said...'Let's do it.' He said that to the firing squad just before they whacked him."
The founder of advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy, Dan Wieden credits the inspiration for his "Just Do It" Nike slogan to Gary Gilmoreβs last words.[8]
Gilmore's story was documented in Norman Mailer's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Executioner's Song (1979). Notable not only for its portrayal of Gilmore and the anguish surrounding the murders he committed, the book also took a central position in the national debate over the revival of capital punishment. Another writer to blend fact with fiction was the Colombian writer Rafael Chaparro Madiedo, who made Gary Gilmore one of the main characters of his 1992 National Prize Novel Opio en las Nubes.[9]
In 1982, The Executioner's Song was adapted by Mailer for a television movie of the same name starring Tommy Lee Jones as Gilmore, and co-starring Christine Lahti, Eli Wallach, and Rosanna Arquette. Jones won an Emmy Award for his portrayal of Gilmore. Gilmore's brother's memoir Shot in the Heart was also made into an HBO movie. Another film related influence was artist Matthew Barney's Cremaster 2 (1999), in which Gilmore was made the main character of the second part of The Cremaster Cycle, a series of five films. Gilmore, played by an actress this time, appears in the beginning of Cremaster 3 in a metamorphosed form.
Jack Nicholson's performance in The Postman Always Rings Twice was reportedly inspired in part by Gilmore.[10]
Many musicians have explored the Gilmore case. In 1977, The Adverts had a top 20 hit in the UK with the song "Gary Gilmore's Eyes".[11] The lyrics describe an eye donor recipient realizing his new eyes came from the executed murderer.[12] The song was later covered by the German punk rock band Die Toten Hosen and a country version of the song was recorded by Dean Schlabowske. Also in 1977, New York City experimental punk band Chain Gang released the song "Gary Gilmore and the Island of Dr. Moreau" as the B-side to their single "Son of Sam" about a contemporary serial killer that was still at large.[13] The Police's song "Bring on the Night", from their 1979 album Reggatta de Blanc, speculated on Gary Gilmore's possible feelings on the evening before the execution took place. In 1980, The Judy's released the song "How's Gary?" on their album Wonderful World of Appliances. The song presumably asks Gary Gilmore's mother what's wrong with him, saying that he never comes out to play anymore; the song also inquires about the holes in his vest and why he is wearing a blindfold.
Several playwrights have also integrated the Gilmore story into their work in one way or another. The Oakland-based performance artist Monte Cazazza sent out photos of himself in an electric chair on the day of the 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.[14] In Christopher Durang's play Beyond Therapy (1983), the character Bruce claims that he "Wanted to see Gary Gilmore executed on television." The Welsh playwright Dic Edwards dramatised Gilmore's life in his 1995 play Utah Blue.
Preceded by Luis Monge |
Executions carried out in the United States | Succeeded by John Arthur Spenkelink |
Preceded by James W. Rodgers |
Executions by firing squad in the United States | Succeeded by John Albert Taylor |