The Executioner's Song

by Norman Mailer

  Too late, he realized that Gary sometimes called her that in his letters. What a prize goof! He must have wanted to confess to Gary that he had read the letters. If Gilmore would only agree that reading those letters was no crime, it might encourage more intimacy in the questioning. No chance. While Schiller was still in Hawaii, Moody read him a note from Gary.

  Dear Larry,

  Freckles?

  Her name is Nicole.

  Dig?

  You've read the letters—I don't like that.

  I've got about a hundred letters right here in my cell that Nicole wrote to me.

  You aint reading them.

  DEC. 30, 3:43 P.M.

  GARY GILMORE

  UTAH STATE PRISON

  PO BOX 250

  DRAPER UT 84020

  I UNDERSTAND YOUR POINT AND IT WAS WELL MADE STOP I WAS NOT TRYING TO HIDE THE FACT STOP REGARDS

  LARRY

  When there was no answer, Schiller sent another telegram.

  JAN 2, I:42 P.M.

  GARY GILMORE

  UTAH STATE PRISON BOX 250

  DRAPER UT 84020

  NICOLE'S PRIDE IN YOUR LETTERS ALLOWED HER TO SHARE THEM WITH SEVERAL PEOPLE INCLUDING MYSELF STOP SIDE BY SIDE BOTH SETS OF LETTERS COULD ONLY LEAVE A TRUER AND MORE COMPLETE RECORD OF YOUR LOVE THAN EITHER OF THEM ALONE STOP I WANT TO DEFEAT THE IDEA THAT YOU HAVE A POWER OVER HER STOP THAT IS THE EFFECT THAT IS BEING DRAWN WHEN ONE READS ONLY YOUR SIDE STOP HER LETTERS IN MY OPINION WOULD BE THE STRONGEST WAY OF GIVING THE TRUE PICTURE OF YOUR RELATIONSHIP STOP THIS IS NO WAY TO COMMUNICATE BUT IT'S THE BEST THAT WE GOT.

  LARRY

  "I will before it's over," thought Schiller.

  The answer came back on tape via Moody and Stanger:

  I don't question your motives. I know you need to know all you can.

  But some of your methods . . .

  Its a matter of how you approach me Larry—

  You can offend me.

  I would rather you didn't

  May I suggest—that you be utterly straightforward with me.

  Because I'm a literal man.

  When I asked you not to read those letters you didn't argue with me or try to persuade me.

  The next time you offend me it will be forever Larry.

  But, for the nonce, this one time, I will let it ride.

  Now you know.

  Sincerely, Gary

  GILMORE I got a mailgram from Larry and he asked if he could have the letters Nicole has written to me. Just tell him that I destroyed 'em, I won't elaborate. He uses a little abstract psychology and that doesn't work with me. He sort of suggested . . . it was kind of an innuendo, too, that you know, a lot of people think I've got some kind of hold over Nicole and maybe if we could see this correspondence, we could clear that all up. I don't like that kind of suggestion. There's no way he can see her letters, they're printed in my heart. That's where they're at, and they're gone, so, this'll save me from writing him a letter" "(laughs)

  Next, it looked like the blip was going to hit the fan altogether. The National Enquirer came out with their piece, a disaster. It wasn't so much the letters Scott Meredith had sold to them, as that they analyzed a tape of Gary speaking, and put his psyche all over the page.

  NATIONAL ENQUIRER

  Murderer Gary Gilmore is Lying—

  He Does NOT Want to Die!

  By John Blosser That's the conclusion of Charles R. McQuiston, a former top U.S. intelligence officer, who used a PSE (Psychological Stress Evaluator) to analyze a 20-minute tape of a telephone conversation with Gilmore at the Utah State Prison . . . (The PSE is a device that is used by law enforcement agencies to determine when a person is lying, by charting stress patterns in the voice.)

  "I am totally convinced that Gilmore does not wish to die. He is very emotionally involved with this process of meeting his Maker, and he is very scared," the intelligence officer said.

  "He wants clemency for his crimes," McQueen told The Enquirer.

  Here are some excerpts of Charles McQuiston's PSE analysis:

  GILMORE "The law has sentenced me to die. I feel that is proper."

  MCQUISTON'S ANALYSIS

  "There is extremely heavy stress on the words 'to die. This means there is no way he wants to die."

  GILMORE "I'll simply go out there and sit down and be shot."

  MCQUISTON'S ANALYSIS

  "His cyclic rate goes wild on this statement. He may be forced to do this (face the firing squad) but it's not simple—and he certainly doesn't want it to happen."

  GILMORE "I guess you could say I do believe in a life hereafter, and that makes it a little easier for me (to face death)."

  MCQUISTON'S ANALYSIS

  "The stress patterns show that he does believe in a life in the hereafter. That is a true statement. However, it doesn't make it easier for him.

  "It makes it much more difficult. He believes.

  "But he feels that he is going there (to the hereafter) without the proper credentials—and he is scared."

  JAN 5 4:31 P.M.

  GARY GILMORE

  UTAH STATE PRISON

  PO BOX 250

  DRAPER UT 84020

  IT HAS TAKEN ME 24 HOURS TO CALM DOWN AFTER SEEING THE ENQUIRER OTHERWISE WESTERN UNION COULDN'T TAKE MY WORDS. THEY BOUGHT MATERIAL AND OBVIOUSLY USED ONLY A SMALL PART OF IT. I GUESS I SHOULD HAVE EXPECTED IT BUT IN SOME WAYS I'M STILL NAIVE. I'M JUST ASHAMED THAT THIS IS THE FIRST THAT YOU SEE BUT YOU KNOW THE REASONS WE WENT THIS WAY. THAT MARKET IS NOW SATISFIED AND WE CAN GO FOR WHAT WE WANT.

  LARRY

  Jan 5

  Dear Larry, Just read with unengrossed interest the National Enquirer.

  Very distasteful . . .

  I guess people can print and read and think what they like.

  But I am curious . . .

  I mean, I would assume a man in your position—and your experience and first-hand knowledge of yellow journalistic papers like the Enquirer—would be able to exert more control over what is released, what is printed . . .

  Or did you exert all the control you cared to?

  I'm distantly curious—

  Not greatly interested . . .

  You see, I know the truth of the matter. And so does Nicole. And I don't have to account to anybody but myself and Nicole.

  Im not a nice guy or a hero. But I'm not the guy the Enquirer says I am, either.

  Larry, you can think, print, and produce according to the conclusions you, yourself, reach. I believe you are a man of some sensibility and interested in the truth.

  My sole rebut to the Enquirer is this:

  Everybody knows that the National Enquirer is not exactly what you would call an "unimpeachable source."

  GARY

  Moody and Stanger told him Gary had no larger reaction than that.

  Schiller had to feel confused. This piece in the National Enquirer had impugned Gilmore's honor in death, and yet this reply was all it brought forth. Call Nicole Freckles, however, and Gary almost wouldn't speak. It nearly brought Schiller to a halt. He had to ask himself whether he was qualified, at bottom, to know Gary Gilmore?

  Hey Darlin Companion—i Love you!

  i am often lost here and i will be that way often wherever am—till i feel your soul wrap around me.

  i am alone with myself most of the daylight hours.

  But at night . . . oh, the nights i love so. i can go anywhere, do anything, feel anything and all things good . . .

  Hold you close and warm with your ruff wiskery face in my hands . . . Take you to places i loved as a child, a dark little glen in the forest of pines, it was my "room" So tightly knit around with tall pine trees and forever bearing blackberry bushes, that finding the tunnel leading into it was sometimes a challenge, i used to lay in the middle of it on the soft springy carpet of warm damp sweet pine needles—gazing straight up from the walls of the trees—a crystal blue sky and watch the cotton clouds sneak by. Listen my enchanted forest talking softly in its thousand tongues
.

  God, how i loved that place so long ago.

  i remember talking to my aunt Kathy there, she loved it. Dug a little hole in the carpet for her ashtray. And kept herself quiet and listened with me.

  i went there again with you only a night or so back.

  Oh crazy me.

  SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

  Salt Lake, Jan. 6—KUTV yesterday filed suit in U.S. District Court for Utah seeking the right to witness and report the scheduled execution on Jan. 17 of convicted murderer Gary Mark Gilmore . . .

  Chapter 23

  OUT WHERE THE TV IS MADE

  SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

  Cover Execution? Not Barbara

  Salt Lake, Jan. 7—Barbara Waiters would be horrified if she were asked to cover the execution of Gary Gilmore next week. She would probably turn down the assignment.

  Her co-anchor person Harry Reasoner, on the other hand, might move his job to Salt Lake City for the day.

  In fact he believes this case should be given national attention by being televised live. "But only this one," he said . . .

  Early in January, on the night Schiller met Bill Moyers at the Utah Hotel in Salt Lake to discuss going on "CBS Reports," he asked Tamera Smith to come along. She would, Schiller thought, jump at the occasion. This was the first payoff on all he had promised at her brother's house. Moreover, he wanted to see how far he could get Moyers to commit himself in front of a stranger.

  When they got to the table, Larry introduced her by name, and Moyers was cordial, but he didn't make the connection to the Deseret News. Knew all about Vern Damico, and Kathryne Baker, but certainly wasn't holding the names of the little players.

  They had a table with this incredible view. There they were on top of the Hotel Utah fifteenth-story level, looking at the towers of the Mormon Temple across the street at the same height, most important Mormon temple in all the world. Those towers had floodlights on them that made the temple look like a castle—a very dramatic sight.

  Still, Schiller wasn't altogether impressed. Chartres, when he saw it, had been a delight for his photographer's eye, and there was always something beautiful about Notre Dame. But this Mormon Temple was the same from every angle. Just a massing upward, with lots of all-out pious feeling. High ambition. It did, however, have another kind of mystery. Schiller had heard you couldn't visit the Mormon Temple the way a tourist might enter a famous cathedral. To get in, you had to be LDS in good standing with a key, which meant a Recommend by your local Bishop. It underlined how secret a society the Mormons really were.

  Maybe it was the idea of this church you couldn't enter, being right across the street, but Schiller got carried away and decided to gamble. As soon as the preliminaries were over, and Moyers said straight out that he wanted to interview Larry concerning the financial side of the execution of Gary Gilmore, he smiled nicely in reply, and said, "I don't want you tearing me apart on your show." Of course, as if he were a catcher, he could see the throw coming in slow motion from the outfield to home plate. "I have something," he began, "which you want and I'll give it to you. I'm going to let you read the transcripts of the Gilmore tapes, and pick three minutes for your show. But first, you have to understand my terms. I want you to take twenty minutes right now and listen while I tell you who I am, and what I am, and where my head is at. Then you can decide whether I'm a bona fide journalist or an exploiter."

  It wasn't the easiest twenty-minute version of his life story to give. Next to a man like Moyers, Schiller considered himself naive in many ways. Still, he always looked at the positive side of things. So he gave Moyers his best shot. Emphasized the face of Larry Schiller that people did not know much about, the work he'd done on artificial kidneys, and on mercury pollution in Japan with the eminent photographer Eugene Smith. Told how his emotional involvement with such worthwhile subjects had changed his life more than others could recognize. There might have been years when he ran fast to come in first, but he was motivated now by the quality of his work.

  That had to be understood about him. When he felt he had reached Moyers to this degree, Schiller said, "I'm going to let you read the transcripts of Gary Gilmore's interviews tonight, and you can select three"—he expanded that—"to five minutes' worth of tape, only there are the following conditions: You can only use Gilmore's voice, not the interviewer's. Nor can you say on the show who is asking the questions." Moyers nodded. "Then," said Schiller, "I have the right to kill anything you pick. I'll be reasonable, but I must have such control. I cannot give you carte blanche." Moyers said, "What do you want in return?"

  Schiller could see that Moyers was going to jump at it. He had to. There was not much TV in Salt Lake without Gilmore's presence.

  "One," said Schiller, "I want a journalistic background when you interview me. I want to be photographed in, let's say, a newspaper office, at a typewriter, or on the phone. I need," said Schiller, "such background to give me credibility. I have no control over how you're going to editorialize about me. I may have a little control over what you film, because I know a lot about cutting, so I can see what you'll be up to, but I have no control over what you, personally, say about me. Therefore, I need a visual background. The second thing is talk of money matters. That can only be discussed if I'm on the move." "What," asked Moyers, "do you mean by that?" "I have to be moving as I talk," said Schiller, "either walking or driving. I will not discuss money matters sitting down."

  "Why not?"

  "Because," said Schiller, "no matter how you shoot it, I'm overweight. If you take me with a normal lens sitting behind a desk, I look like a money man. Shoot with a wide-angle lens and I'm King Farouk." Moyers chuckled, then laughed. Schiller said, "If you're willing to make such a deal, and, remember, I'm leaving myself wide open—because you can still say anything you want about me—then I will give you the transcripts. Read them tonight and pick what you want."

  Moyers could, of course, run off and Xerox the stuff. Moyers could do a lot of things, but Schiller trusted him. Besides, there was more than trust. Schiller was confident he could present himself well enough at the news level that Moyers would have bigger things to do with his show than expose him as a character.

  Moreover, he had respect for Moyers's integrity. He thought Moyers had made a pretty strong editor at Newsday. On the basis of being able to give that compliment, Schiller could also say to the man that he wasn't necessarily going to make a very good "CBS Reports" personality. "You got to learn some acting, Bill." Moyers said he was aware of the problem. He had even, he confessed, tried looking in the mirror when he spoke, which wasn't his normal way of doing things.

  They began to relax. Moyers mentioned, that in November, when he had first proposed Gary Gilmore to CBS, the word had been, "Do Fidel Castro. We want credibility for your new show." Then, as Moyers got it from in-house gossip, somebody very big at CBS said to Frank Stanton, "Why not Gilmore? Everybody is talking about him."

  Stanton kept saying no until he went to a meeting with Paley who declared, "That's phenomenal. That's what we want for Moyers, ratings."

  So Bill had moved his entire team to Provo, film editors and all, and planned to air "CBS Reports" the night of the execution. He figured they would get the top rating that night. Schiller was thinking: I have to sell myself as not being exploitative, but CBS, holier than thou, is going for the good old ratings.

  Tamera found the dinner really special. When Larry told her they were having dinner with Bill Moyers she didn't even know who the man was. When she found out, therefore, it was exciting. Not every day did you get to go to dinner with the man who managed press relations for President Johnson.

  Up till then, she had been very relaxed. Actually, kind of bored.

  The men were talking business and she hadn't felt included. She had had to fascinate herself by trying things on the menu of a sort she'd never eaten before. They all shared a Caesar Salad for instance.

  Then, she had a soup something like cold borscht but awful, Gazpacho, she hated that
, and, for entree, frogs' legs. Dessert, she tried the Crepes Suzettes. She really did try.

  The frogs' legs were pretty good, although actually the whole meal didn't hit that well. Later, about four in the morning, she went out to Sambo's and had a good old hamburger.

  Next morning, Moyers came by to have breakfast, and said, "This is phenomenal. I want to do the entire show with your tapes.

  "No way," said Schiller, but decided he had to throw Moyers a bone. "I have photographs of Gilmore in Maximum," he said. "You can't mention who took the pictures, but if you want to run a montage of stills, well, I won't give you the prints, but I will shoot a movie film of the stills, provided you pay the lab costs. However, I must design it."

  Moyers's producer hit the fucking ceiling. "This is news," he declared, "not entertainment." Moyers, however, went along with Schiller. After all, the man was giving up his own pictures.

  Schiller figured he could design the montage to make Gilmore human, rather than a cold-blooded killer. There was a vulnerability he might be able to communicate. He wanted to get Gilmore before the public looking half-ass acceptable, anyway.

  The problem was not that Gilmore was a killer. The problem was not even that he was challenging all the straight people out there.

  The real difficulty was that he was making fools of them. They could live with a killer who was crazy, mixed-up, insane. But for a murderer to start controlling the issue—that was developing a lot of active hatred for Gilmore. People felt as if the world was being tipped on edge.