The Executioner's Song

by Norman Mailer

  As I saw her come out of the prison, levi-clad, sweater in hand and smoking a cigarette, I asked about her visit and our conversation began. As we got in my Volkswagen, I left the radio off so that it would be silent if she wanted to talk—and it seemed she did.

  "There are knots in my stomach when I first go to see him," she said, "but I feel better afterwards. He is so strong, so much stronger than I am, and he always reassures me and makes me feel better."

  It was one piece of work Tamera carried out like a robot. Actually took her news story over to the terminal and started putting it in, before any feeling began to come. Then she really did have a slew of mixed emotions. She had had no idea Nicole was going to do it today, none on earth.

  By the time she calmed down one way, she was getting angry another. Gary was just a manipulator of the worst kind. It was one thing, Tamera thought, to try to talk someone into going to bed with you, but to manipulate them to die with you, that was totally selfish.

  All those letters, where he was so insanely jealous. Couldn't stand the thought of her meeting another man or something. Boy, Tamera thought, just boy!

  Exactly then, her brother Cardell came walking into the newsroom.

  He worked downtown but this was the first he had ever done that. Heard the story on the radio and figured Tamera would be needing him. She just hugged Cardell and cried. They might both be thinking of her old boy friend, the convict. Later that night, her brother up in Vancouver, Washington, called to congratulate her and say how proud he and his wife were of her. They were making copies of the stories to send to the family. She found out later she had been syndicated all over. The AP carried her heavily and the London Observer, a Scandinavian service, some paper in South Africa, a Paris syndication, Newsweek, and the West Germans. The paper made each of those sales at $750, which more than made back Tamera's salary to date. That was really neat.

  Wayne Watson and Brent Bullock, from Noall Wootton's office, went over to Nicole Barrett's apartment after a call came from the police about the letters. They thought there might be admissions therein that could prove useful for the Max Jensen case if they ever had to try Gary on it.

  Back in Noall's office, Watson and Bullock started going through the stuff, but by the time they'd read the first ten, they got pretty disinterested.

  The guy was obviously an intelligent individual, but the letters, from the standpoint of uncovering new evidence, were boring.

  Wayne Watson did come across a paragraph that made sense if you knew how to translate rhyming slang, for it referred to pills as Jacks and Jills, and he contacted a man in the Sheriff's office at Salt Lake who was doing the prison investigation on how the drugs got smuggled in, and told him Nicole might be the one.

  Actually, the best part of the whole deal was that Brent Bullock and Wayne Watson had their picture taken by a press photographer in Nicole's little living room. There they were, each squatting on one knee while looking at the letters on the floor, both of them appearing as big as professional football players, and handsome as all get-out with Brent showing his six-inch handlebar mustache. After that came out, they took a ribbing from their wives and friends. Super-sleuth, stuff like that.

  Kathryne was at work at Ideal Furniture when her mother, Mrs. Strong, called. "Have you heard the radio?" she asked, "do you have the radio on?" Then she blurted out one word, "Nicole!"

  Kathryne went to pieces. Started screaming, "No! No! No!" She just assumed the worst. The big stereo in the back of the store was on, but it had been turned low and she'd not been listening. Now her ears came right into focus, and she heard the words, "Gilmore's girl friend . . . suicide." Kathryne went hysterical. Her mother had to keep yelling over the phone until she heard what was being told her.

  "She's not dead, you know," said her mother, "she's up at Utah Valley. I'll be right over to pick you up." Time passed for Kathryne in lost minutes, like she was in concussion. Then her mother was outside the store in the old Lincoln, the stinking Lincoln, their old family joke, picking her up. Next, they were in the emergency door of the hospital, and the lady at the desk was sending them to the second.

  When she entered Nicole's room, Kathryne went through the horrors.

  That dreadful machine was there once more. Not seven days ago, her father had had the same machine on him. Now he was dead and they were working on Nicole.

  They gave Kathryne a little Valium, and a doctor came by.

  He talked out of a tight little mouth and couldn't even give Nicole a 50-50 chance. "Could go either way," he said, then added, "We don't know if there was brain damage or not . . . question is if the machine can keep her lungs working . . . can't guarantee that either."

  Sure wasn't offering hope. "I can't," he said, "guarantee anything until all medication is out of her system." There was a police officer sitting outside the door.

  Kathryne would go to Nicole's room for fifteen minutes, then go out and sit in the hall, while they let her mother in. Then she'd go back. This went on all afternoon. Rikki had come back from Wyoming for her father's funeral, and was still here, and now he stayed in the Intensive Care Unit waiting room and kept journalists away. The reporters were all being held downstairs, but one girl snuck up to Intensive Care, and sat there all day with a knitting bag on the floor.

  They never knew she was a reporter. After three hours, she said to Kathryne, "Are you Nicole's mother?" Kathryne just looked at her and paid no mind. The girl then said to Kathy Kampman, "Are you Nicole's family?" Kathy said, "Please don't bother us." But the girl asked, "Does Nicole have any brothers and sisters?" That was when Kathy got it. She said, "You're a TV reporter." She had noticed that whenever any of them started to talk, the girl would lean down to her knitting bag and turn on something. Kathryne went berserk. They got the girl right out.

  At first, Charley wasn't going to come, but then, to Kathryne's surprise, he popped over around three in the afternoon while she was over to Nicole's apartment. The nurse said Mr. Baker had been there and went all to pieces when he saw Nicole, and left.

  Later, Kathryne found out Charley had gone to Pleasant Grove and stayed there with Angel and Mike for the rest of the day and night.

  Kathryne hung in. She couldn't remember eating anything. A little after midnight, she called some Elders she knew in the Church and they came over and prayed with Kathryne by Nicole's bed, anointing her head with oil, putting hands on her forehead. Prayed to God to bring her through. They could not do it in the name of the Church due to the fact she had tried to take her own life, but did ask the Lord to hear her on the basis of the faith of all the rest of the family.

  About 4 A.M., Kathryne's mother took her home and she stayed up with Charley until ten when he took her back to the hospital. In all those hours, she had no rest. Kept calling the hospital to see if there was any change.

  By the next day, so many reporters were downstairs that Kathryne was obliged to go in and out with a long, blond wig.

  DESERET NEWS

  Nashville, Tenn. (AP) Nov. 16—Country music star Johnny Cash says he tried to call Gary Gilmore at the Utah State Prison to urge him to "fight for his life" only minutes after the convicted murder was found unconscious, in an apparent suicide attempt.

  "I don't know what I would have told a man who was planning to take his life," Cash said. "Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. But I would have tried to talk him out of it."

  The singer said his first impulse was not to get involved. "I told him (the attorney) I wasn't looking for any publicity. I thought I had better mind my own business. Who needs that kind of publicity?"

  When Boaz persisted, saying his client wanted to see Cash or visit him, Cash said he decided to call the prison.

  The moment Brenda heard the news, she began to call every hour, but all they would say at Gary's hospital in Salt Lake was that he was still alive. Brenda would ask, "If I go over, will you let me see him?"

  They would reply, "You better be walking in with the Governor if you w
ant to get through." She asked if she could talk, at least, to one of the nurses taking care of him, and they finally put a woman on.

  "Would you please tell Gary that Brenda called and I'm thinking of him dearly," she said. "I'd love him to fight for his life." It was a mind-blower. She never knew if the nurse passed on the message.

  Up at the hospital, they had about decided Gary had not made a real attempt to kill himself. By their best calculation he had taken half of a lethal dose, twenty capsules, about two grams. Three grams represented a 50-percent lethal dose, that is, half the people who took such an amount died. Since Gilmore was a big man, his chance of doing the job with two grams was small. Besides, he had taken the pills just before morning check, That was suspicious. Nicole seemed to have swallowed the same amount many hours earlier and was in much worse condition. After all, she hardly weighed one hundred pounds. He weighed nearly twice as much.

  Warden Sam Smith was being interviewed.

  INTERVIEWER Any ideas as to how he may have gotten the substance?

  WARDEN Well, there's a number of possibilities. He could have accumulated his own medication, saved it up, ingested it, he could have obtained it from possibly other inmates living in Maximum Security, it's possible he could have obtained it from those that have visited him.

  INTERVIEWER How easy would it be for someone to take drugs in to the men?

  WARDEN Well, it's virtually impossible to prevent someone from hiding something as small as drugs on their person or in a cavity of the body.

  INTERVIEWER Aren't people searched, though, when they go in and see him?

  WARDEN Yes, the people are given a skin shakedown but that does not mean that you can explore every cavity of the body and ascertain that there is no medication.

  INTERVIEWER As the man responsible for Gilmore's well-being and safety, how do you feel about what happened today?

  WARDEN Of course I feel bad but I recognize realistically that if a person desires to kill themselves then it's pretty difficult to prevent over a prolonged period of time.

  INTERVIEWER Thank you, Sam.

  The press was in a savage mood after this interview. One reporter remarked that with Sam Smith to listen to, you didn't need Seconal.

  The joke among the press was that looking for a street address in any one of these Utah towns was like trying to locate artillery coordinates on a map. 2575 North 1100 West. "Yes, sir," wrote Barry Farrell in his notebook. "You have the right address. It's just that you're in the wrong town." Barry Farrell, there to do an article for New West, was at a point of frustration where his best pleasure was taking notes. He hated Salt Lake. "There is a Swissness to the place," he wrote, "a complacency that people from the Coast are likely to find infuriating. Getting drunk here is like signing up for methadone maintenance."

  Then he added, "After one o'clock, the only sound downtown is the creaking of the neon signs."

  It was hard to get near this story. Everything was shut off. Farrell couldn't remember too many occasions when the center of interest in a story had been so removed. He had not been a writer for Life magazine over many a year without getting into a few places.

  Often, he could obtain interviews others couldn't. There were, however, no interviews here. In his notebook, Farrell wrote, "One can only imagine how suffocating Gilmore must have found it . . . The claustrophobia that ensues when one finds himself without the opportunity to sin."

  Earl Dorius was naturally concerned how the drugs had reached Gilmore and he phoned the Warden for information. Sam Smith told him the prime suspects were Nicole Barrett, Dennis Boaz, Vern Damico, Ida Damico, and Brenda Nicol. Dorius thanked him for the information.

  When Gibbs heard the news, he thought back to a discussion with Gary on how to smuggle drugs into Maximum. It was his advice, he remembered, to use balloons.

  That night when Big Jake came on duty, he told Gibbs the prison officials were stupid. Why, the Provo Police had informed the prison that Nicole picked up two prescriptions of Seconal the day prior to these suicide attempts. Yet they still didn't give her a real search. Big Jake looked at Gibbs and added, "I'll bet you educated him on how to get the stuff inside." Big Jake put on a big grin and walked off.

  DESERET NEWS

  Most Letters Urge Clemency

  Nov. 16— . . . A Minneapolis man asked why Gilmore should be singled out for execution when other convicted killers live.

  "Former Lt. William Cailey, convicted of the 'premeditated murder of not less than 22 Oriental human beings,' is now walking the streets," he wrote.

  Ironically, George Latimer, chairman of the Board of Pardons which will decide Gilmore's fate, was Calley's chief civilian defense attorney.

  DESERET NEWS

  Nov. 16—The Daughters of Wisdom in Litchfield, Connecticut, speaking of Gilmore, said, "We believe he is meant to do something worthwhile for mankind. He needs time to find out what that something is."

  DESERET NEWS

  Nov. 16— . . . Max Jensen's father, David Jensen, an Idaho farmer and stake president in the LDS Church, said, "His death made us feel sad, but it's something we are accepting. We sure wouldn't want to trade places with Gilmore's parents."

  DESERET NEWS

  Nov. 6—Bushnell's widow, who is expecting another child shortly after the first of the year, has gone to California to live with her mother-in-law. Family members say she goes to pieces at a mention of her husband's name.

  Chapter 7

  Taste

  On Monday evening, while Nicole was going over her Last Will and Testament, Larry Schiller drove out to the International Airport in L.A. to buy a copy of Newsweek's cover story on Gary Gilmore. Schiller knew that airports received magazines a day earlier than the average outlet, and sometimes, working on a story, when he had to have a newsmagazine ahead of the competition, he'd even look up the local distributor.

  Schiller spent part of Monday evening going over that cover story. It told him there were five people's rights he would have to buy. Gary's obviously, and Nicole's made two, but Monday night, for the first time, he heard of April Baker and decided he had better get her as well. Then he read Brenda Nicol's name in the article, and saw she was responsible for getting Gary out of jail. That could be a key link in the story. Brenda's rights had to be obtained. He didn't know she was Vern Damico's daughter, or even related to him, but Vern was the fifth name on his list.

  First thing Tuesday morning, he called Lou Rudolph at ABC, and told him of his great interest in the story. There were a lot of different ways to do it, Schiller said, and quickly laid out a number of possibilities. He had learned a long time ago that in television you had to sell executives on the subject first. Had to establish it would still be bona fide television even if you did not obtain all the rights. If, for example, he got Gilmore's okay without Nicole's, a scenario could be worked up of a guy who comes out of prison and struggles with his old con habits, but finally kills a man, a real study of the pains of getting out of jail. That way they could do capital punishment and whether a man had a right to die, and never need to touch upon a love story.

  On the other hand, said Schiller, if they got the girl, but couldn't succeed in signing up Gilmore, they might do an interesting struggle of two sisters both in love with the same criminal. They'd have to substitute a fictionalized criminal, but could still explore the triangle.

  Or they could focus completely on Nicole and turn the thing into a study of a young girl who has been married a few times, is saddled with children, then falls in love with a criminal. Play down the murders, but emphasize the romantic difficulties of trying to live with a man that society does not trust.

  Schiller was not trying to impose judgment, he told Rudolph, on the relative merits of these separate scenarios. He was just saying you could bypass Gilmore, make it a woman's story, and still have something of value.

  No sooner had he hung up, than the radio was informing him that Gilmore and Nicole had tried a joint suicide. Immediately he booked a plane
ticket to Salt Lake. At the airport, he called Rudolph again to suggest another alternative. Still, assuming they couldn't get the rights to Gilmore, they could do a study of a girl who wanted to die and so entered into a suicide pact with a criminal, thereby looking for a star-struck way to solve an unendurable problem.

  Schiller repeated that he was sure of the potentialities, and wanted ABC to finance him in a real way. Not hotel bills or airplane fares, Schiller said, because that, Lou, he could always handle with his credit cards, no, Schiller wanted backing to get in there and deal for Gilmore. He would call again from Salt Lake.

  He might have known. The moment that suicide attempt hit the media, not only was Larry Schiller on the plane, but everybody was heading for Salt Lake, ready to check into the Hilton where each of the media monkeys could watch all the other monkeys. There were going to be a lot of monkeys in that zoo.

  From stories that got back to him, Schiller knew he was well known in the media for his impatience and his funds of energy. He always gave his big friendly grin when he heard such stories. They protected his secret weapon: it was that he had patience. He didn't tell people. Cultivated the opposite image. But he didn't mind being in situations where he just had to sit and wait. Give him an airplane trip or a waiting room. If you counted the years from the age of fourteen when he began to make money as an expert on skid marks, he had, by his own estimate, been running like a maniac for close to twenty-five years. So he didn't mind sitting on occasion.