The Executioner's Song

by Norman Mailer

  They called Spencer McGrath, and he said he liked Gary, but was very disappointed over the turn of events. The mothers of a couple of young fellows he had working for him were indignant that he had hired a criminal. He was now catching about all the trouble he needed. People would stop him on the street and say, "How's it feel, Spencer, to have had a murderer on your payroll?" That wasn't helping his projects any.

  They never talked to Vern Damico. Gary kept saying that his relationship with his relatives had not been that good. Besides, the lawyers received a report of a conversation with Vern from Utah State Hospital:

  Mr. Damico gave me the following information regarding Gary Gilmore:

  He doesn't like to be defeated, and when he is, he will not forget it and won't forgive. He is also very revengeful and has Mr. Damico's family very frightened as they were the ones who turned him in. He has written a letter to his cousin and told her he hopes she has nightmares for turning him in. The family is also a little concerned that he will break out of jail or the hospital as he has a history of that in the past.

  They were down to searching for a psychiatrist who would declare Gilmore insane. Failing that, Snyder and Esplin were looking to find a paragraph in one of the psychiatric reports or even a sentence they could use.

  PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT

  Dates of Assessment: August 10, 11, 13 and 14, 1976

  Assessment Procedures:

  Interviews with patient

  Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

  Bipolar Psychological Inventory

  Sentence Completion

  Shipley Institute for Living

  Bender-Gestalt

  Graham Kendall

  Rorschach

  Mr. Gilmore said at one point, "All week long I had this unreal feeling, like I was seeing things through water, or I was watching myself do things. Especially this night, everything felt like I had this unreal feeling, like I was watching at a distance of what I was doing . . . I had this cloudy feeling. I went in and told the guy to give me the money, and I told him to lay down on the floor, and then I shot him . . . I know it's all real, and I know I did it, but somehow or other, I don't feel too responsible. It was as though I had to do it. I can remember when I was a boy I would put my finger over the end of a BB gun and pull the trigger to see if a BB was really in it, or stick my finger in water and put it in a light socket to see if it really would shock me. It seemed like I just had to do it, that there was a compulsion for me to do these things."

  Intellectual Functioning:

  Gary is functioning in the above-average to superior range of intelligence. His vocabulary IQ was 140, his abstraction IQ was 120, and his full-scale IQ was 129. He said that he had read an awful lot in his life, and indeed, he missed only two words on the vocabulary test . . .

  Personality Integration:

  On the paper-pencil personality test, Gary shows himself to be an individual who is very hostile, socially deviant, currently unhappy with his life, and insensitive to the feelings of other people. He has a high hostility component toward the establishment . . .

  Summary and Conclusion:

  In summary, Gary is a 35-year-old Caucasian single male . . . of superior intellect. There is no evidence of organic brain damage. Gary is basically a personality disorder of the psychopathic or antisocial type. I think, however, that there may be some substance to his talk about the depersonalization symptoms that he experienced during the week that he was separated from Nicole and during the shooting of these two people. It is clear, however, that he knew what he was doing . . . I see no alternative other than to return him to court for further legal processing.

  Robert J. Howell, Ph.D.

  I8 August 1976

  Neurologic Consultation

  He indicated he occasionally has jagged lines across his visual fields, especially on the right, followed by inability to see for about 10 minutes followed by severe headache, which is occasionally accompanied by a dizziness. Headache lasts an hour or so, then goes away.

  The headache always follows a visual experience, but he also has other headaches which are sometimes "real bad," which come without this and may occur at any time. These occur with considerable variability, and at times he has used Fiorinal almost every day because this usually stops it, whereas aspirin, Tylenol, and other things have not seemed to help. He has been struck in the head in some fights, but has not been knocked out. A few months ago he suffered a laceration in the left eyebrow region, which has healed well. As a youth, his brother tended to hit him on the back of the neck and he thinks he may have a vertebra out of place, and has recurring neck aches.

  He reports that from his youth he has had a tendency towards compulsive behavior. He would get a thought in his mind and not be able to keep himself from doing it. He gives as an example going out to the middle of a train trestle and waiting until the train came to the end of the trestle before starting to run in the opposite direction to get off the trestle before the train caught up with him. While in the penitentiary on a fifth tier, he would get a compulsion to stand up on a railing and touch the ceiling above, with the possibility of failing 50 feet to the floor below . . .

  His unusual behavior in response to a sense of compulsion and his alleged spotty amnesia will require further appraisal from the psychiatric point of view, but at this point it seems quite unlikely that they represent any sort of seizure manifestation.

  MADISON H. THOMAS, M.D.

  August 31, 1976

  Staff Presentation:

  DR. HOWELL How many ECTs did you get?

  ANSWER Well, they told me they gave me one series of six . . . the doctor they had working there at the penitentiary, the psychiatrist, that was his cure-all for everything. If you got violent or got out of line or whatever, or he figured you needed to be a little more passive, he would, you know, hook you up to Bonneville Dam.

  DR. WOODS So a lot of guys got hooked up to Bonneville Dam.

  ANSWER Yeah, while he was working there. One hell of a lot of guys.

  DR. LEBEGUE Now why did you get the Prolixin? What happened there?

  ANSWER Well, there was another riot. It happened in the hole and it took them about 11 days to contain it. I was chained for two weeks, and during that time they came in and shot me with Prolixin. They were giving me 2 cc's twice a week, and I had lost 50, maybe a little bit more, 50 pounds by the time they finally let me up out of that nightmare.

  DR. HOWELL About how many would you guess you had?

  ANSWER They were giving me two shots a week for four months.

  DR. KIGER You have got clean psychiatric reports eleven out of twelve. The whole time you have been in the prison system except one. One report . . . said you had a paranoid psychotic state. Do you recall when that one was?

  ANSWER God, it's so easy to be accused of being paranoid in prison. I mean maybe I had a disagreement with somebody and they were in a position to say I was paranoid and thereby dismiss whatever the thing was. I don't know.

  DR. HOWELL During that time you don't see yourself as having been mentally ill.

  ANSWER A lot of those guards are mentally ill.

  DENNIS CULLIMORE, MEDICAL STAFF WORKER Was there anything either of the evenings of the murders about your mental state that was different than usual?

  ANSWER Well, I didn't have—all of the strings had been cut, like I didn't have control of myself. I mean I was just going through motions. I wasn't planning anything. These things were just occurring . . .

  DENNIS CULLIMORE, MSW At what point did you know that you were going to shoot him?

  ANSWER When I shot him. I didn't know it before then . . . it just seemed like it was the next move in a motion that was happening, you know.

  DR. KIGER Have you had other emotionally charged episodes where you didn't remember all that happened at that time?

  ANSWER I'm not really excitable, you know, I don't get emotional. Some things I let weigh on me pretty heavy, but it's not the sort of thin
g that mounts and builds, you know. It's not a spur of the moment thing.

  DR. LEBEGUE That feeling that you described to several of us about somehow things being unreal like seeing through water, has that happened to you before this summer?

  ANSWER Not, not really . . . only there have been times when life seems to slow down and you can watch movement more intensely. Like if you get in a tight situation, a fight situation, or something like that, the feeling there is somewhat similar to this.

  DR. KIGER Anything similar to when you are on grass?

  ANSWER When you are on grass, you just trip along and everything is fine, but when you're in a tense situation, I don't know. No, I can't say that I have really experienced that feeling before.

  DR. LEBEGUE So, it was something new to you.

  ANSWER Yeah, I would say so.

  DENNIS CULLIMORE, MSW Does anyone have anything else? OK.

  DR. WOODS Thanks for coming in, Gary.

  ANSWER All right.

  Comprehensive Treatment Plan

  A report will be made to the court stating that the patient is both competent and responsible.

  BRECK LEBEGUE, M.D.

  Resident in Psychiatry

  Formulation:

  This is a 35-year-old white male who is here for psychiatric evaluation. There is no evidence of thought disorder or psychosis, amnesia, organic brain damage, seizures, or any other behavior of pathology which would prevent him from conferring with his attorney and standing trial on the charges. He is aware of the circumstances and of his actions. He does describe some symptoms of depersonalization during the actions, but it is not uncommon for those who murder to undergo a temporary process of dehumanization. I feel that he was responsible for his actions at the time of the incident.

  Staff Diagnosis:

  Personality disorder of the antisocial type.

  BRECK LEBEGUE, M.D.

  Resident in Psychiatry

  Gilmore gave off no aura of the psychotic. The more Snyder and Esplin searched these staff reports and transcripts, the less they encountered madness, and the more he appeared grim, ironic, practical.

  There was hardly a wall in the law you could not climb if you could get onto some little thing, some legal grip with which to raise yourself to find another hold. There were cracks in many a block of law, but in the Gilmore case, these psychiatric walls offered nothing.

  They took the problem to Dr. Woods, who had seen a lot of Gary at the ward level, and John Woods went over it with them. The lawyers came up so often to his office that he began to worry about it.

  Woods was young to be Director of the Forensic Program, and he liked his job, and was intellectually stimulated by the therapeutic ideas of his superior, Dr. Kiger, whom he thought was one hell of an innovator. So, Woods didn't want to get the hospital in any trouble, and worried a little over the correctness of all these visits. On the other hand, he didn't mind helping the defense lawyers and enjoyed contemplating the problem. Finally, he told himself, Well, if the prosecuting attorney wants to talk about these things, I'll help him too.

  I'm here to give any information I can.

  Woods thought that if Gary's defense was to be based on his mental condition, then Snyder and Esplin had to come up with an argument that would connect the psychotic to the psychopathic. Not easy. The law recognized insanity. You could always save the neck of a psychotic. Psychopathy, however, was more a madness of the moral reflexes, if you could begin to use such a term (which you couldn't) in a Court of Law. Woods pointed to one interview where Gary, speaking of the moment he shot himself, said, "I looked at my thumb and thought, 'You stupid son of a bitch!' " That was hardly a psychotic reaction.

  Morally self-centered, yes. Criminally indifferent to the mortal damage just done to others, yes, but there was no psychological incapacity to grasp his practical situation. If you were practical, then you were liable.

  Of course, Gary did fit into a psychiatric category. There was a medical term for moral insanity, criminality, uncontrolled animality—call it what you will. Psychiatrists called it "psychopathic personality," or, same thing, "sociopathic personality." It meant you were antisocial. In terms of accountability before the law, it was equal to sanity. The law saw a great difference between the psychotic and the psychopathic personality.

  Maybe they could attack the problem here. The line between fantasies and hallucinations would certainly not be precise. The trouble, however, remained that in the observations made of Gary over these weeks, there just hadn't been any behavior that was excessively paranoid. They had to recognize, Woods warned, that the law wanted to keep psychopathy and psychosis apart. If the psychopath were ever accepted as legally insane, then crime, judgment, and punishment would be replaced by antisocial act, therapy, and convalescence.

  In psychosis, Woods said, there was little connection between the event and the personal reaction. If Gary, after he shot his thumb, had said, "They are poisoning hot dogs in Chicago," you could assume he was psychotic. Instead, Gary had said, "You stupid son of a bitch," just like anyone else.

  A certifiable psychosis usually depended on thought disorder.

  Gilmore did not exhibit that. Of course, it wasn't always a simple question. If a man came up to you and said, "My mother just died," and he giggled, you would think psychosis was present. If the man, however, was a hardened criminal, his pride might be that there was no feeling he would not laugh at. So his attitude would be sociopathic, not psychotic. Of course, that example was small use to the lawyers. They needed something that might appear psychopathic but would prove psychotic.

  Woods had pondered this question before. A psychopath could certainly become a psychotic. The average psychopath lived, after all, in a dangerous world. A reasonable amount of paranoia was even necessary. You had to be sensitive to trouble in the environment.

  Under stress, however, what had been a serviceable paranoia could become magnified. If you were asleep, and the alarm went off, and you were under such tension you thought it was a fire siren, and saw imaginary flames and leaped out of a high window into eternity, well, it hardly mattered then whether your normal label had been psychopathic, manic, melancholic, or obsessive-compulsive, you could be sure to be called psychotic as you went through the window. The psychopath had fantasies. The psychotic had hallucinations.

  Chapter 24

  GEELMORE AND GEEBS

  Gary had propped up a photograph of Nicole, and made a sketch with a ball-point pen, then took an old refill and broke it in half. Using a toothpick, he dug out a little of the coagulated ink. With a watercolor brush and a few drops of water, he shaded the drawing. Gibbs always enjoyed watching him.

  Sept. 20

  Wish I had taken more pictures of you naked. No kiddin—Nicole I think you should never have to wear clothes. There is something about nakedness and you that just go together. I don't mean anything crude, baby, you know that—although you are tremendously sexy. You are just so natural naked—innocent, playful, happy, pretty, like a sprite in the forest. Just something that belongs.

  I was surprised to get this flick back—l bet those cops in Orem looked this picture over pretty good, huh? Bastards pisses me off to think that some fuckin pig—or anybody—saw such a personal picture of my love.

  Sept. 21

  I would really like you to see a picture of that sculpture "Ecstasy of St. Therese." I believe the sculptor is Bernini. I've never seen any great works of art in person but I guess I'm familiar with most European Art through books I've studied. I once saw a picture of Christ by a Russian artist that really haunted me for a long time.

  Christ didn't look anything like the popular beaming Western Christian version of the kindly shepherd we're used to. He looked like a man, with a gaunt, lean, sort of haunted face with deep set large dark eyes. You could tell he was pretty tall, angular, rangy, a man alone and I guess that was the most striking thing about the picture.

  No halo, no radiant beam from heaven above. Just this extraordi
nary man—this ordinary human being who made himself extra-ordinary and tried to tell us all that it was nothing more than any of us could do. Loneliness and a hint of doubt seemed to fill the picture. I would like to have known the man in that picture.

  In the Salt Lake pokey, just before Gibbs had been transferred to Provo, a jailer told him about some student who'd been in law school with Jensen. The dude had actually tried to get into jail to kill Gary.

  He had planned to tell the guards he was a working lawyer, but would smuggle in a knife.

  Gilmore said he could sympathize. What was a dead man worth, if he didn't have friends to avenge him? Then he looked at Gibbs and said, "You know, this is the first time I've ever had any feelings for either of those two guys I killed."

  Sept. 22

  I'm the only one in my family who feels the pull of the Emerald Isle. It's a land of magic.

  I got something I want to give you and I hope you won't think its silly. It's something I do and it's kind of magic. It's a force, a pull, that I've tapped and it works. Just a little sort of chant:

  GOOD THINGS COME

  TO ME NOW.

  Lately I have revised it to: GOOD THINGS COME TO US NOW. Just a personal prayer spoken softly, quietly in my mind, aloud if I'm alone. I hope this don't seem silly to you. I know the power of things like this, the rhythm, the repetition of a soft harmonic chant sets magic in the air, pulls, draws, gives the believer power to attract and power to receive.