The Executioner's Song (139 page)

She was not sure there was any such thing anymore as Gary. She didn’t know if that was where her belief rested. He was a lot out of her mind. He might really be dead.

In Christmastime of 1977, Vern bought barbells and delivered them to Utah State Prison for the convicts. Gary had asked him to do that after the execution.

It had not been a good year and it did not get better. Vern’s leg was so bad he needed another operation, but he had no money. Because he could not stand on his feet for a full day, he had to sell his store, and then there were the lawsuits against Gary’s estate. The State of Utah sued him for Snyder and Esplin’s legal fees, and the companies who had guaranteed the life insurance on Max Jensen were suing, and there was still a $i ,ooo,ooo suit from Debbie Bushnell. Then Ida got a serious stroke, and Vem fed her three meals a day in the hospital for three weeks and tried to teach her to walk and talk again. Since her hospital bill would come to $2o,ooo, he forgot about his own operation.

From the day Brenda told her that Gary committed the murders, one of Bessie’s legs turned in at the ankle. Then, from the day Gary was killed, that leg would no longer allow her to walk. Up till then,

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she had been able to make it over to the office for mail. Now, although the office was only three trailers away, she did not try. The leg didn’t want to walk.

Sitting in her chair, she would remember the haunted house in Salt Lake where the nice Jewish lady had been her neighbor. Bessie would think that whatever it was that lived in the house, whatever it was the nice Jewish lady had warned her against, must in those years have begun to live in Gary.

Now she heard that Ida had a stroke. Veto turned around one night in the house, and there was Ida with the stroke. Bessie could have told Vern. Whatever had attached itself to Gary long ago in that house in Salt Lake must recently have attached itself to Ida. Bessie would not, however, tell Vern. When all was said, she did not know Vern well enough to inform him that the apparition was now sitting in his house.

She did, however, think of her mother-in-law Fay and the old house in Sacramento where the furniture wouldn’t stay in place. Bessie sat in her chair among the coffee cups and the saucers on the table of this trailer, sat in the faded nightgown that looked one hundred and two years old, and said to herself, “I have reached the point of no return from Hell.”

Outside the trailer park, automobiles went by on McLaughlin Boulevard. Once in a while, a car would drive under the battered white wooden archway at the entrance, come up to her dark windows and stop. She could feel them looking. She had received letters that threatened her life and she ignored them. Letters could not hurt a woman whose son had taken four bullets through the heart.

She also received letters from people who wrote songs about Gary and wanted her permission to publish. She ignored such letters

She would just sit there. If a car came at night, came into the trailer park, drove around and slowed up, if it stopped, she knew somebody out in that car was thinking that she was alone by the window. Then she would say to herself, “If they want to shoot me, I have the same kind of guts Gary has. Let them come.”

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FINIS

Deep in my dungeon

I welcome you here Deep in my dungeon

I worship your fear Deep in my dungeon,

I dwell.

I do not know

ill wish you well.

Deep in my dungeon

I welcome you here Deep in my dungeon

I worship yourfear Deep in my dungeon,

I dwell.

A bloody kiss

from the wishing well.

old prison rhyme

AN AFTERWORD

This book does its best to be a factual account of the activities of Gary Gilmore and the men and women associated with him in the period from April 9, I976, when he was released from the United States Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois, until his execution a little more than nine months later in Utah State Prison. In consequence, The Executioner’s Song is directly based on interviews, documents, records of court proceedings, and other original material that came from a number of trips to Utah and Oregon. More than one hundred people were interviewed face to face, plus a good number talked to by telephone. The total, before count was lost, came to something like three hundred separate sessions, and they range in length from fifteen minutes to four hours. Perhaps ten subjects are on tape for more than ten hours each. Certainly, in the last two and a half years, Nicole Baker’s interviews have added up to thirty hours, and conversat”ions with Bessie Gilmore may come to more than that. It is safe to say that the collected transcript of every last recorded bit of talk would approach fifteen thousand pages.

Out of such revelations was this book built and the story is as accurate as one can make it. This does not mean it has come a great deal closer to the truth than the recollections of the witnesses. While important events were corroborated by other accounts wherever possible, that could not, given the nature of the story, always be done, and, of course, two accounts of the same episode would sometimes diverge. In such conflict of evidence, the author chose the version that seemed most likely. It would be vanity to assume he was always right.

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A considerable amount of time was spent trying to establish the sequence of events. My researcher, Jere Herzenberg, discovered that people had characteristic flaws or tics in recollection. Some would always remember separate episodes as taking place a few days apart, when, fact, if one had a provisional calendar already constructed from other sources, a particular adventure might be two weeks apart from another. Since accurate chronology soon showed itself as crucial to understanding motivation, every effort was made to get it right, and not for the sake of history alone. One understood one’s characters better when the chronology was correct. Of course, many an event could simply not be given an exact date (as, for instance, the spg night when Nicole and Gary cavorted on the ground in back ofte mental hospital). One could only situate it approximately, and hope no critical error of sequence had been made.

Secondary raaterial, like newspaper quotes, allowed a few liberties. S0raetimes words or phrases were removed without inserting marks ofdlipsis, and very occasionally a sentence was relocated or a paragraph transposed. It was not done to make the newspaper copy more arresting or absurd; rather the procedure was to avoid repetition or elimin confusing references.

Gflrn0re’s interviews were trimmed, and very occasionally a sentence w transposed. The aim was not to improve his diction so much as to treat him decently, treat him, let us say, half as well as

one would reat o ‘

ne s own remarks if going over them in transcript. Transtti0 from VOice to print demands no less.

With Gilmore’s letters, however, it seemed fair to show him at a level hgher than his average. One wanted to demonstrate the impact of htsraind on Nicole, and that might best be achieved by allowing his bra to have its impact on us. Besides, he wrote well at times. His good letters are virtually intact.

Finally, one Would confess one’s creations. The old prison rhyme at the begning and end of this book is not, alas, an ancient ditty but a new one, ad was written by this author ten years ago for his movie Maidstone.

Also, e cross-examination that John Woods makes of a psychiatrist vcho adninisters Prolixin comes in fact from an actual interview Lawrence Schiller and myself a couple of years later and has been placed in Dr. Woods’s mind with his kind permission.

Moreover, the names and identifying details of certain characters have been changed to protect their privacy. Naturally, any similarity AN AFTERWORD
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between their fictitious names and those of persons living or dea, purely coincidental.

It is always presumptuous to say that a book could not have b written without the contributions of certain people since it assu the book is worth writing in the first place. Given the length of” work, however, it may be safe to assume that any reader who come this far must have found something of interest in the preced pages. Let it be said then that without the cooperation of Nk Baker, there would not have been a way to do this fact account — this, dare I say it, true life story, with its real names real lives — as if it were a novel. But given the intimacy of the perience Nicole Baker was willing to communicate to Schiller then to me, I had enough narrative wealth from the start to feel couraged to try for more.

As has already been indicated in the last pages of the book its the work of those interviews with Nicole belongs in the main Lawrence Schiller. Many of them were completed before it was e, certain whether I would take on the job. In the months af Gilmore’s execution, Schiller would go each week to Provo or S Lake and there conduct two or three long interviews a day. By I time the contracts were signed and I was ready in May 1977 to co mence my labor, Schiller had already collected something like si: interviews and would yet do as many more and make countless tr to Utah and Oregon. That was the first of his invaluable contri[ tions to my task; the other was his willingness to be interviewed hi self. Maybe he wanted the best book he could get, but Schiller st˘ for his portrait, and drew maps to his faults. He exposed his sect in the confidence, doubtless, that old methods revealed, he wou now be spurred on to more cultivated techniques, and so he not or delivered the stuff of his visions but the logic of his base schem and in the months that followed, he did not feel regret, or seem have second thoughts. If he did, he kept them to himself. Witho Schiller, it would not have been feasible to attempt the second half The Executioner’s Song. A profound appreciation, then, to Nicc Baker and Lawrence Schiller.

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There are others I would like to thank with the recognition that they contributed far more than one might expect. Vern Damico, Bessie Gilmore, and Brenda Nicol are three whose names come first to mind, and their contribution was large and they gave unstintingly of their —ne and were always available for checking discrepancies and verifying details, as well as offering the personal flavor of their own personalities to the work. Indeed, part of the pleasure of writing this book was to make their acquaintance. In almost equal measure, I would like to thank April, Charles, Kathryne, Rikki, and Sterling Baker, as well as Jim Barrett, Dennis Boaz, Earl Dorius, Barry Farrell, Pete Galovan, Richard Gibbs, Toni Gurney, Grace McGinnis, Spencer McGrath, Robert Moody, Ron Stanger, Judith Wolbach, and Dr. John Woods, but indeed to establish such categories is unfair to all the others who were interviewed, since nearly everyone was generous in the effort to portray his or her portion of the story. Let me list their names here: Anthony Amsterdam, Wade Anderson, Gfl Athay, Kathy Baker, Ruth Ann Baker, Sue Baker, Mr. and Mrs, T. S. Baker, Jay Barker, Bill Barrett, Marie Barrett, Thomas Barrett, Cliff Bonnors, Alvin J. Bronstein, Brent Bullock, Judge J. Robert Bullock, Chris Caffee, David Caffee, Ken Cahoon, Cline Campbell, Dr. L. Grant Christensen, Rusty Christiansen, Glade Christiansen, Val Con-lin, Mont Court, Virginius (Jinks) Dabney, Ida Damic0, Michael Deamer, Pam Dudson, Porter Dudson, Roger Eaton, Michael Esplin, Mr. and Mrs. Norman Fulmer, Elizabeth Galovan, Richard Giauque, Frank Gilmore, Jr., Stanley Greenberg, Steven Groh, Dr. Grow, Howard Gurney, Phil Hansen, Robert Hansen, Ken Halterman, Doug Hiblar, Dr. Howells, Alex Hunt, Julie Jacoby, Albert Johnson, Dave Johnston, Judge David T. Lewis, Kathy Maynard, Wayne McDonald, Rev. Thomas Meersman, Bill Moyers, Johnny Nicol, Gerald Nielsen, Captain Nolan, Martin Onveros, Glen Overton, Lieutenant Peacock, Shirley Pedler, Margie Quinn, Lu Ann Reynolds, Michael Rodak, Jerry Scott, Craig Smay, Lieutenant Skinner, Lucinda Smith, Tamera Smith, Craig Snyder, David Susskind, Craig Taylor, Frank Taylor, Julie Taylor, Wally (of the Sundowners), Wayne Watson, Dr. Wesley Weissart, Noall Wootton.

In addition, the following: Don Adler, T. Aiken, Paul J. Akins, Mildred Balser, Mary Bernardie, Frank Blalm, Tony Borne, Mark Brown, Vince Capitano, Warden Hoyt Cupp, Dynamite Shave, LeRoy Earp, Richard Frazier, Duane Fulmer, Sally Hiblar, Mildred Hfllman, Dr. Jarvis, Detective Jensen, Tom Lydon, Harry Miller, John Mills,

Bill Newall, Andrew Newton, Dr. Allen To Lieutenant Lawrence Salchenberger, Bishop Seeley, Linda Stokes, Captain Wadman, Captain Harold Whitley, Tolly Williams, Dr. Joe Winter, were interviewed. For reasons of structure, they did not appear (except foran occasional reference to their name) in the pages of this book, but their influence on it was not small. Many trips were taken to Oregon State Prison to interview guards and prisoners who had known Gilmore during his many years in that institution, and the author’s

derstanding of prison life was powerfully aided on the official side by Warden Hoyt Cupp who offered many kinds of invaluable cooperation including most specifically his own tough estimate of prison conditions, by Captain Whitley, Lieutenant Salchenberger, and security officers in Segregation and Isolation, and by Paul J. Akins, Vince Capitano, LeRoy Earp, Andrew Newton, and Tolly Williams for their recollections of Gilmore as a fellow convict. A debt of real measure is also due to Duane Fulmer who furnished a.clear, well-written, and highly detailed manuscript of life at MacLaren School for Boys. These contributions, while not appearing in the book directly, formed an indispensable subtext, a body of private material, so to speak, out of which one was far better able to comprehend some of Gilmore’s motivations in the last nine months of his life. To their assistance must be added the letters of Jack H. Abbott, a convict who has spent much of his life in Western prisons and sent to me a series of exceptional letters, well worthy of being published, that delineate the code, the morals, the anguish, the philosophy, the pitfalls, the pride, and the search for inviolability of hard-line convicts in language whose equal I have not encountered in prison literature in recent years.