DESERET NEWS
Salt Lake, Jan. 2—Utah Atty. Gen. Robert B. Hansen today received a letter from Salt Lake City attorney Judith Wolbach saying she had talked with well-known lawyer Melvin Belli who estimates Gilmore's relatives could file claims for a wrongful death action. The family could ask $1 million in general damages and $1.5 million in punitive damages, against state officers . . . if Gilmore is executed and the U.S. Supreme Court later rules unconstitutional the State's death penalty statute . . .
Barry Golson from Playboy came in. Schiller had already received a first payment of close to $2,000. After two days of talking and haggling like crazy over the last details of the contract, they were getting on each other's nerves. Breslin's presence disturbed Golson.
Was Schiller giving away Playboy material?
"You can get the hell out of the office," Schiller said. "Try being a little more courteous," said Golson, "and I will." What an ego contest!
Then Moody and Stanger started again. They came to the motel and told him they wanted a bonus. Otherwise, they wouldn't interview Gary anymore.
Schiller did his best. "I have to tell Gary what you're trying to pull," he said. Wondered if he was right. "I'm just going to send," said Schiller, "a telegram." When he saw they weren't the least bit frightened, he took another line.
"Look," he said, "you're falling prey to what every attorney falls prey to. You're holier than thou, until it comes to money." Finally, Schiller refused a bonus unless Vern agreed. "If he comes to me," Schiller said, "I'll give you what he OK's." It was a peculiar fight, because actually, it wasn't money out of Schiller's share, but Vern's, and so more a clash of personalities. They were definitely feeling frayed.
After dinner, Ian Calder of the National Enquirer called from Miami, to say that he had an idea that might be worth six figures.
"Get Gary," said Calder, "to agree to submit two small personal objects that are at present in his possession, and have him write twenty-five words, whatever they are. We'll send a bonded messenger to pick up the sealed envelope and put it in a vault. Before Gary dies, we will tell our worldwide network of seers and clairvoyants to key in on the exact moment of his execution. Then we'll see how close they come to guessing what those two objects are, or what the words in Gary's message might be." Schiller said into the phone, "Ian, how deep into six figures are we talking?"
"If it works, Larry," said Calder, "I mean, it's a hundred thousand idea. That's what I'm talking about. A hundred thousand dollars if it comes off."
Larry said, "What if nobody's guess comes close?"
Ian said, "Well, of course, then it would be worth much less."
Schiller said, "Good night," and hung up.
In the left-hand corner of the visiting room was a booth with three seats, three phones, and three small windows. Next day, when Mikal went to visit Gary, he could see Moody and Stanger talking to his brother through the glass. There was Gary with two phones to his ear, the voice of Moody in one receiver, Stanger in the other. None of them was aware, however, that Mikal was also there behind them, and could have gone over to pick up the last phone. Instead, he sat in a corner, unobserved, and listened to Moody say, "Schiller met with him last night. He thinks Mikal is going to stop the execution." Then Moody added, "Did you know Giauque brought him out in a Rolls-Royce?"
As he got up to leave, Moody must have taken a good look, for he seemed startled. Then Mikal heard him asking one of the guards who the visitor might be.
Gary came into the visitors' room wearing a black sleeveless sweat shirt. He was twirling a Scotsman's cap on his finger.
"Gary, I don't want to play games," Mikal said. "What your lawyer said is true. I may seek a Stay."
Gary's face took on the expression of his newspaper photos. All jaw. Flared nostrils. "Is it also true," he asked, "that Giauque brought you out here in a Rolls?"
Mikal saw how it looked to Gary. Wealthy liberals who never gave a damn about him in other years, were now gathering their wealth and power to frustrate him. "It's not important," Mikal tried to say.
They fought over Amsterdam and Giauque. "Who do you think they are," asked Gary, "holy men? They're trying to use you."
"Just recognize," said Mikal, "that I can take action without them. I can still go in and get a commutation of your sentence. They wouldn't be doing it, I would."
"Could you really?" asked Gary.
"I believe I could."
Gary paced around. "Look," he said, "I've spent too much time in jail. I don't have anything left in me."
A guard's voice came into the room. "Time's up."
"Come back," said Gary. "Talk to me tomorrow."
Even as Mikal was passing through the door, Gary called out. "Where were you, years ago, when I needed you?"
All the way back to Salt Lake, Mikal heard, "When were you when I needed you?" He had been ready to sign the paper for Giauque, but now he did not know if it was his choice or Gary's. His brother's voice kept saying, "I don't have anything left in me." Mikal wanted to disappear into a place when choices did not exist. After a bad night, he decided to write a letter to Gary.
In it, he said that when he was face to face with his older brother's anger, he could never remember what he wanted to tell him. He wrote to Gary that he had always been frightened of him. Only in their last two meetings had he come to realize that, in fact, he loved him. Whatever choice he made would come from love. If Gary chose to live, he hoped they could take down the barriers between them. He ended by speaking of his belief: one's best chance for redemption was found through choosing life over death. In life was when one found redemption, not death.
That afternoon at the prison, a guard read Mikal's letter and delivered it to Gary on the other side of the glass.
Gary looked it over quietly and began to cry. Just a tear or two.
Then he wiped an eye with his finger and smiled. "Well put," he said over the phone. He asked Mikal, "Are you familiar with Nietzsche? He wrote that a time comes when a man should rise to meet the occasion. That's what I'm trying to do, Mikal."
They sat then. Gary nodded, "Look, kid, I was thinking of what I said yesterday. That was unfair. I wasn't around when you were young. So get it straight. I don't hate you. I know you're my brother and I know what that means."
Gary's hand might just as well have been laid on Mikal's heart. Mikal could feel himself being manipulated here, softened there. He obliged himself to say, "What would you do if I tried to stop this?"
"Oh, you could have my sentence commuted," Gary said, "but you wouldn't have to live in prison. Do you know how strong you have to be, year after year, to keep yourself together in this place?" Gary asked.
Mikal would have been ready to concede then. Yet on his first day in Salt Lake, he had met Bill Moyers. He had spent hours with him ever since. Moyers, he felt, had to be one of the wisest and most compassionate men he had ever met, and Moyers had said, "If we are confronted with a choice between life and death, and choose anything short of life, we're choosing short of humanity." Gary might listen to such an idea. It was so clear cut. Gary liked ideas that were logical propositions. Mikal did not really think it would make a difference. Yet before he left, he asked Gary to talk to Bill Moyers. "Not for an interview. Just for a meeting."
"I'll do it," said Gary, "but it's got to be off the record. We can't forget my deal with Larry Schiller."
Chapter 27
CUTTING THE STRING
janvier 13
jeudi
Bon maten mon Soul Mate je Love vous. Oh! Je Love vous!
et avoir besoin de vous tant!
This morn i have only a few minutes to write as my lawyer should be here soon.
i have been having fun with an old french book. It is a beautiful language, i would like to learn it maybe even live in France one day.
Away from here—oh well . . .
Sundberg informed me that all of the doctors involved in this mess i am in are planning already to recommend that
i be released on January 22 (1977 hopefully)
These long days are truly drawing nearer to your execution date. i find that reality hard to grasp onto.
Not so much that soon you will die but that i cannot be with you now while it is so near to that time. Why should it be so? There must be logic behind my destiny but i cannot see even a partical of it. . . .
There are no longer words that can express the Love that is in my soul and my heart for you mon Soul Mate You have all my love. i believe that you know And i know i have yours if you die . . . so soon . . . i will know and feel your soul wrap around my thots and this soul who loves you so deeply.
Goodbye now my love Till then and forever No matter where i walk ill walk alone Till again im by your side
I Love you
Ever Yours
NICOLE
Larry talked it over with Farrell and they agreed. When it came to talking about himself, Gilmore, no matter how frank he might seem in the interviews, still lived behind a psychic wall. If they were going to learn more, they would have to make a breach. The questions must turn critical of Gary's poses, cut through the sham. So Farrell worked on a special set to give to Moody and Stanger. Schiller also instructed them that Gilmore was to read each question aloud, then answer it. They did not want either lawyer's voice affecting his reaction.
Over the phone in Maximum, Ron Stanger said, "Our friend is thinking he would like to have some serious answers. Quote, unquote."
"I've been playing serious all along," said Gilmore. "As serious as I've been playing anything."
"Okay," said Moody.
Gilmore began to read: "It seems to me now that in your situation with your sense of fate and destiny and karma, this conversation we're struggling to have is really an important event in your life as well as mine."
"Thanks, Larry," said Gilmore to the introduction.
"I think," Gary continued, "we both owe it to the importance of the situation to try hard to replace superficial speculative interpretations with deeper harder ones."
"Right," he said, answering his own reading voice.
"Sometimes you sound like you're telling a story you've told many times before," went the next question. "My reaction is—oh, Gary, do you tell that to all the girls, or all the shrinks, or all the people who see something of interest in you and want to know you better? A number of stories told in the course of these interviews are stories that you also told Nicole in your letters oft accompanied by, let us say, sweetheart touches, little indications that you wanted to charm the reader, the lover, the observer in a very practiced, calculating way. That's my honest reaction. Tell me where I might be wrong."
"You're wrong, Larry," said Gary.
Then Gilmore laughed. "Shit, ain't nothing calculating about that. I get lonely. I like language, but I tell the truth. In jail you rap a lot, you know, to pass the time. Damn near every convict has his little collection of reminiscences, anecdotes, stories, and a person can get sorta practiced at recollecting. You probably got a few yarns you spin on occasion yourself. You know, you gotta go to dinners and different things and, ah, talk to different people, Larry, so you've probably got your favorite little stories yourself. The fact that you tell something more than once to more than one person doesn't make that thing a lie." Gilmore paused. "Larry, I do emphasize things . . . I've spent a lot of time in the hole, and in the hole you can't see the guy you're talking to, 'cause he's in the cell next door or down the line from you. So, it just becomes necessary to . . . make yourself clear and heard because there might be other conversations going on and a lot of other noise, guards rattling keys and doors. Think about that, you know."
"I am not so sure," said the question, "that you remember truth of your early childhood."
In a different voice Gilmore answered, "Do you remember truth of your early childhood, Larry?"
"You've said," continued the question, "that your mother's love was always strong, constant, and consistent, strange adjectives, by the way, to describe a mother's love."
"I don't think," said Gilmore, "they're strange. I don't respect your question."
"I don't think," the question came back, "that I've ever heard 'strong, constant, and consistent' employed in such usage before."
"You probably haven't," answered Gilmore, "but have you ever asked anybody about their mother before?"
"My impression, Gary, based on talking to others in your family, and based on listening to your voice on these tapes—is that you may have been treated rather cruelly when you were a small child. There are people in the family who say that efforts were made by your grandparents to assume custody of you. That you came at an awkward moment in your mother's life and that she seemed to resent you, when you were small. Is there any truth to any of this?"
"Not that I know of, Larry," Gilmore replied.
"What kind of son is it, after all," continued the question, "who does these things you do, and in so doing takes a very beautiful revenge against all those who have failed to love him enough. Maybe that's psychoanalytical bullshit, and if so, I stand accused, but I am yearning to understand how this well-loved young boy grew up to reward his mama with the life you've lived. I think, Gary, that you have been exacting revenge against something that happened to you when you were too small to fight it off. Another reason I am tempted to believe this, is that when the conversation turns to any question where emotion is involved, a trace of a stutter appears in your voice."
"Dat, dat, dat, dat," Gilmore snickered.
"You begin," the question continued, "talking like a reformed stutterer. I don't think you're a man without feelings. I think you're a man who somehow can't bear to admit what his feelings are."
There was quite a pause before Gilmore replied. "Larry, I swear to God that I cannot recall, and I have a terrific memory, my mom ever hitting me. I don't think she ever even so much as spanked me.
She always loved and believed in me. Fuck what everybody in the family says. I have a beautiful mother. Fuck what everybody in the family says. I have a beautiful mother. I repeated that because of the background noise. I don't know if you can hear it on the tape, but I can."
Gary stopped reading for a moment. "Some feelings are personal," he said to Moody. "Christ, the guy wants to x-ray me publicly. Shit."
Moody said, "I think he's just trying to find out the facts."
"Dammit," said Gilmore, "Larry's probably trying to bring me a bit of anger here, so I might answer a little more spontaneously."
He went on with the interview, he read the rest of the questions, but nothing further developed. Gilmore did not get excited again.
Barry felt as if he had thrown his best punch and the man had taken it. Maybe the mother was not the sore spot. He gave up hope of a breakthrough. The Playboy interview would have to be constructed out of materials at hand plus whatever more came in on the Moody-Stanger local.
After the interview, Sam Smith had a conversation with the lawyers about a last-minute appeal. The Warden was worried that if Gary changed his mind at the very end, there would be no mechanism to stop the execution. Smith thought the lawyers ought to inform Gilmore of that.
Gary did not even care to discuss it. "There are no precautions to take," he told Moody and Stanger. Wouldn't even authorize them to have another conversation about it. The lawyers decided it was highly unlikely Gary was going to change his mind and, if he did, they still didn't see how the Warden could avoid contacting the Governor, no matter what he said now.
Sam Smith also consulted Earl Dorius. Should Gilmore be hooded? The man wanted, he said, to be able to stand up and face his executioners. However, Smith remarked, he had to think of what was best for the firing squad. The hood was for their benefit just as much. Who wanted to stare down his sights at a man staring back? Besides, Smith said, What if the fellow lost his nerve at the last minute and started dodging bullets?
By his reading of the statute, Dorius said, the details of execution were up to the discretion of the War
den. If Sam wished, Gilmore could be strapped in a chair with a hood over his head.
GILMORE Warden didn't come right out and say it, but I believe he is concerned that my standing and looking at the firing squad will unnerve them. I asked him for a good reason why I had to wear the hood, and he couldn't give me one, but he seemed to be thinking about something. Listen, he did say right in front of Fagan, he said, usually they come to your cell, put the hood on you there, and you wear the hood from the time you leave your cell till you're dead. He said he would not do that to me, he said he wouldn't put the hood on me until after I'm in the chair. Now I want the son of a bitch to keep his word on that at least.
Gilmore was certainly showing them how cool he could be. The only newspaper story that irritated him lately was the one that described him as nervous. If Gary was anything, he was not that.
Moody would query him all the time. "Aren't you scared?" he would ask. "No," Gilmore would say. Never once did he admit fear.
Never once was there anything to suggest he wanted to change his mind. His lack of wavering became unbelievable to Moody. Gilmore seemed to be backing his intentions with every cell in his body. Not only was his emotional strength increasing, but his physical. "How do you feel?" Bob Moody would ask. "Did you sleep?" "I slept good last night." "How's exercise?" "I'm building myself."
To demonstrate, Gilmore would do a headstand on top of a stool.
His muscle tone was certainly excellent. These convicts in Maximum seemed to live for nothing but their muscle tone, yet Gary still looked good compared to the super muscle tone of prisoners around him.
Moody never thought of himself as being easy to shake, but Gilmore was beginning to impress him:
When Gibbs handed over Gilmore's letters, the New York Post gave him $5,000, holding up the last $2,500. The next thing Gibbs heard from the Post was that they'd checked the list of people invited to the execution and his name was not on it. Still, after checking out his credentials from Treasury and the FBI, the Post people did an interview in a bar, and took about thirty pictures of him.
The Executioner's Song Page 84