Playboy Interview: Gary Gilmore

Why interview Gary Gilmore?

Why further glorify someone who cold-bloodedly killed two young men and became famous only because of a publicly expressed death wish?

Why give this criminal a posthumous format that might tempt others to try to "outcool" Gilmore's disdain for life--his own and that of others--and thus become celebrated by journalists and the public?

These questions, which might have been answered on purely journalistic grounds (by simply publishing a story nearly every other publication tried to get), were, in fact, especially difficult for us at Playboy. The magazine for many years has strongly opposed the death penalty and the aberrations that follow in its wake. In Gilmore's case, we feared that an interview with him would be less a study in the effects of the death penalty than a less justifiable look at a state-assisted suicide.

It was only when we'd embarked on the project, qualms and all, that we realized our interviewers were doing something else. As we looked over the early transcripts, it became clear that Gilmore posed even more puzzling questions about our society by the indications of his high intelligence, his articulateness and his brutal emotional detachment. Through the efforts of Lawrence Schiller, a Los Angeles journalist and agent who had bought the rights to Gilmore's story (see "Playbill"), and with the collaboration of writer Barry Farrell, a contributing editor to Harper's (who had written an article in New West on the "merchandising" of Gary Gilmore but was nonetheless intrigued by the story itself), Gilmore began to reveal himself over a period of two months. In looking over these conversations before deciding to publish them, we were struck by the likelihood that the street punk in Gilmore was responding to the craftiness of Schiller and the persistence of Farrell in a more honest, chilling way than if he'd talked to a battery of psychiatrists.

Many readers will find this a painful reading experience--and perhaps that is the point. Americans taught to believe that rehabilitation is the only logical alternative to locking up a criminal and throwing away the key--or, indeed, executing him--may be uncomfortable with the idea that a killer can be lucid, self-aware and quite prepared to go out and kill again if he's set free. As the project progressed, we became certain that the dialog produced by Schiller and Farrell illuminated as rarely before a question more important than the ones we asked ourselves at the outset: Why do men kill? Farrell's report:

"Gary Gilmore's real life lasted only 78 days, beginning last November first, when he told the judge who had presided at his murder trial that he was ready to see it end. Before that, Gilmore was known only to his victims, his keepers and the small, bewildered circle of his family and friends. When he died at the age of 36 on January 17, no one--not even the 100-odd men who had volunteered to serve on his firing squad--was more determined than Gilmore to obliterate a life so drenched in catastrophe and break-down that only three of his last 22 years could be lived outside confinement.

"Had Gilmore not had the grim distinction of being the first man executed in the United States in nearly a decade, his wish to die would have attracted scarcely more attention than his crimes. He was, in his phrase, an eternal recidivist, locked into a hopeless cycle of attempts to conduct a normal life, attempts that invariably ended with his surrender to the shackles and bars that were his only restraints. The last attempt began with his release from prison on April 9, 1976, and ended three months later with his confession to the senseless, execution-style murders of Bennie Bushnell and Max Jensen, young Mormon husbands and fathers, in the town of Provo, Utah, on the nights of July 19 and 20, 1976. Gilmore's trial in October lasted only three days, and when he stood to be sentenced to death, fewer than 20 people were in the courtroom.

"The fame that came to him after November first was partly a reflection of the world's morbid fascination with a man who so urgently wished to surrender himself to its guns. But it was also due to the challenge he posed to the legal system, a passive challenge that asked only that it live up to the weight of its ultimate sanction and deliver its promise of death. An eye for an eye, Gilmore said, was a concise expression of logic--'true by virtue of its logical form.' The letters Gilmore wrote immediately after his trial show no trace of awareness that his acceptance of his fate would win him the world's attention.

"Any other man in his circumstance would likewise have been caught in the glare that always accompanies those who go first. But Gilmore managed to rise to the one occasion where every misery of his life acquired a surprising new meaning and every bitter turn began to count. The interview that follows is the first expression of his cornered intelligence, and its intensity casts a rare and revealing light on the dangerous confusions of a man who finally had to kill.

"Lawrence Schiller slipped through the screen around Gilmore on November 27, when the condemned man suddenly found himself the object of hotly competitive bidding for the rights to his story. It was the first of four clandestine meetings between the two. Schiller was there to compete for those rights, and after the first four-hour meeting with Gilmore and careful arrangements with his family and the heirs of his two victims, he acquired them. Soon after that meeting, a court battle ensued, in which the press petitioned for access to Gilmore. Schiller joined in that battle, which was lost before the Utah Supreme Court and, eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court's decision made note of the right of the press to communicate with Gilmore by only those methods prescribed by the prison authorities, including the right of relatives to visit, written correspondence and communications through Gilmore's attorneys. All these means were employed in producing this interview.

"In addition to Schiller's notes from his face-to-face meetings with Gilmore, the interview was compiled from 37 hours of tape-recorded conversations and approximately 10,000 words of Gilmore's written answers to our questions.

"Gilmore saw this interview as an escape from the familiar oblivion of his prison years, and he used all his craft and guile to devise ways in which the exchange could be completed in his final days. At odd hours, the telephone would ring in the motel room that Schiller and I made our office. It would be Gilmore calling--and his call would convey an urgency and a doomed wish to be understood that both chilled and inspired us."

(Mid-December 1976)

[Q] Playboy: As far as we can tell from your prison record, you've been locked up almost continuously since you entered reform school, and that was 22 years ago. It's as if you never saw any choice but to live out a criminal destiny.

[A] Gilmore: Yeah, that's kind of a way of putting it. In fact, that's very nicely put.

[Q] Playboy: What got you started thinking like a criminal?

[A] Gilmore: Probably going to reform school.

[Q] Playboy: But you must have done things to get yourself sent there.

[A] Gilmore: Yeah, I was a-about 14 when I went to reform school and, ah, 13 when I started getting locked up.

[Q] Playboy: What had you done to get locked up at 13?

[A] Gilmore: Well, I started out stealing cars... but, ah, I guess my first felonies were probably burglaries, house burglaries. I used to burglarize houses on my paper route.

[Q] Playboy: Why? What were you after?

[A] Gilmore: Why? Well, I wanted guns, mainly. A lot of people keep guns in their homes and, well... that's what I was primarily looking for.

[Q] Playboy: How old were you then? Eleven? Twelve? Why did you want guns?

[A] Gilmore: Well, see, in Portland, at that time, there was a gang, the Broadway gang. I don't know if you ever heard of it--probably not. But, man, I figured that, well, I would like to be in the Broadway gang. And I figured the best way to get in was to go down and hang around Broadway and sell 'em guns. I knew they wanted guns. I mean, I-I don't even know if the gang existed... it may have been a myth. But I heard about 'em, you know? So I thought I wanted to be a part of an outfit like that...the Broadway boys.

[Q] Playboy: But instead you got caught and sent to reform school?

[A] Gilmore: Yeah, the MacLaren School for Boys, in Woodburn, Oregon. You want me to be precise about the details?

[Q] Playboy: Yes.

[A] Gilmore: 'Cause I've got a thing about precision and detail, and if we're gonna do this, we better do it right. You guys sure you can handle it, the fact of me dyin'?

[Q] Playboy: Not as well as you.

[A] Gilmore: 'Cause that's an absolute condition. If you want me to talk, you can't talk to Nicole and you can't do anything, or use anything I might say, to butt in on my execution. I got lawyers workin' for me, and I can't even talk unless I got your promise you won't fuck around on this, Promise?

[Q] Playboy: Promise.

[A] Gilmore: OK. Now, I can remember just about everything that ever happened to me, goin' back to an early age. Sometimes there's memories of places in my mind. I remember once, in Provo, I remember a bridge I walked across. I couldn't have been more than two or three. What sort of memories do you want?

[Q] Playboy: Whatever comes to mind. [Long pause] You mentioned wanting guns when you were 11 or 12. What's your first memory of guns?

[A] Gilmore: Well, the first time I can remember trying to shoot a gun--you hear that goddamn pounding?

[Q] Playboy: Is that a prisoner doing that?

[A] Gilmore: It's just some maniac. You hear shit like that all day and all night in here. Anyway, the first time I tried to shoot a gun, I was living with my grand-parents in Provo. I was about three or four, I guess. Anyhow, my uncle had an old .22 rifle, and I couldn't figure out how to make the son of a bitch shoot. My grandpa told me, well, you gotta have powder. And my grandmother had these capsules she had to take for some kind of ailment, migraine headaches or some damn thing. And there was one of 'em lyin' on the table, and I just eased up casually and laid my hand over it and slipped it into my pocket and went out, took the capsule apart and dumped the powder that was inside down the barrel of the rifle. And the son of a bitch still wouldn't shoot. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Do you remember when you first shot a gun?

[A] Gilmore: You're going to say it's strange, but I don't. I remember when I was about 13, I went to the movies downtown in Portland. I was always going to the flicks by myself. And this night, I was lookin' in the store windows, and there was a bunch of .22 rifles in there, and I picked out the one I wanted, a Winchester semiautomatic, just a beautiful gun, with a $125 price tag on it, way back in '53. I went across the street and got a brick and threw it through the window and got that gun and took it home.

[Q] Playboy: Just took it home on the trolley?

[A] Gilmore: No, I didn't wait for the trolley, 'cause it would have been an hour, and I'd cut my hand. So I dismantled the gun and wrapped it up in a newspaper and just went and got the goddamn bus and had to walk the last mile home. I couldn't take it in the house or nothin', because my old man, I didn't want him to know I had it. So I took it down to Johnson Creek, where I used to go swimming and everything. And later I got a box of shells, and I'd go plinkin' with that .22.

[Q] Playboy: All by yourself?

[A] Gilmore: Well, I had these two friends, Charley and Jim, and after a while, I let them in on it. I was gettin' tired of the damn thing, tired of hidin' it. You know what I mean--if I can't have something the way I want it, I don't really want it. Charley and Jim--they really loved this gun, so I said, listen, if I throw this gun in the deepest part of the creek, where it's about eight feet or so, do you guys have the guts to jump in and dive for it? They said you're goddamn right, man, just as soon as you throw it in. They thought I was bullshittin', then they heard a loud splash and they turned around and I didn't have the gun no more. There was a big old sharp rock stickin' up from the water about three or four feet from the bank, and I threw the gun just beyond it. So Jim jumped. He was gonna jump for that rock, but one foot slipped and he landed on his knee on that sharp rock and, boy, it hurt him bad. I laughed my ass off. Maybe that was the first gun I ever shot. I don't know.

[Q] Playboy: Are you good with guns? Do you handle them well?

[A] Gilmore: I got 20-20 vision.

[Q] Playboy: So you're a good shot?

[A] Gilmore: Yeah. Why so much about guns?

[Q] Playboy: Maybe just because it seems strange that a man of your age would commit his first two murders in the only state in the Union that has a firing squad.

[A] Gilmore: [Laughs] How do you know they were the first?

[Q] Playboy: There were others?

[A] Gilmore: We'll talk about that later. I'm not sayin' anything that involves other people. But the firing squad had nothin' to do with it. I came here because I got paroled here.

[Q] Playboy: You did choose the firing squad over the gallows.

[A] Gilmore: Look, I only had two choices. Hangin' or shootin' was all they had to offer, and I'd prefer to be shot.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Gilmore: Fuckers might not hang me right.

[Q] Playboy: What if there were some other choice, like electrocution?

[A] Gilmore: Fuckers might not electrocute me right.

[Q] Playboy: But doesn't the blood-and-guts aspect of a shooting appeal to you?

[A] Gilmore: Shit, fuck you. Blood and guts, yeah, man, that really appeals to me. I'm gonna take a spoon.

[Q] Playboy: OK. You were talking about Jim and Charley--were they your best friends?

[A] Gilmore: I'm probably closer to LeRoy Earp than anybody else. He's a white dude, LeRoy. [Laughs] Lotta spooks named LeRoy. We were always good friends as little kids, on the streets and in Woodburn, and then he came into the penitentiary about two years after I did. He's in Oregon State prison, far as I know, doing life for murder.

[Q] Playboy: What do you like about LeRoy?

[A] Gilmore: He's a real quiet guy. He never shows how he feels about anything. He's got a good sense of humor. He's pretty passive. He'll go two or three months without even speaking to friends some-times--just hello, goodbye. I'll see ya. But that being LeRoy, I understand. We both always liked doing the same things--you know, nice cars, good clothes, lots of girlfriends. I shot him one time in the stomach, accidentally.

[Q] Playboy: You shot him?

[A] Gilmore: Yeah, with an automatic, when we were kids, just messin' around. He didn't make no big deal out of it, and neither did I. His parents weren't too crazy about me, though. They always thought I was getting LeRoy into trouble. But he explained to them, he says, "Ma, I'm just going to get into trouble anyway, and Gary ain't nothin', he ain't influencin' me." LeRoy's sister really liked me a lot. She was a real beautiful girl. But I never messed around with her. I just didn't want to, you know. If I've got a real good friend, I don't mess with their sister.

[Q] Playboy: Would it have offended LeRoy?

[A] Gilmore: Oh, no, he tried to get me to take her out several times. But I had some other girlfriends I thought quite a bit about, and LeRoy's sister didn't really appeal to me. A real nice-looking girl, but she was a little too aggressive, too forward.

[Q] Playboy: For someone locked up so much, you seem to have had no trouble finding girls.

[A] Gilmore: I think the first time I felt any sort of love I was 13 and I was hung up on this little chick named Nancy Eve, who was also 13. She had a huge set of boobs that would have been big on a full-grown woman. On a beautiful 13-year-old girl they were alarming. We went together for a few months, but then I went to the reform school, and when I got out, she had moved on to other interests.

[Q] Playboy: Were women excited by the outlaw in you?

[A] Gilmore: All ladies love outlaws, didn't you know that? [Laughs] It's true. I've seen things in girls' eyes where you can tell they're excited to know that you're a person who doesn't observe the normal limits.

[Q] Playboy: Was that true of your girl-friend Nicole?

[A] Gilmore: We aren't talking about Nicole, remember? Nicole is a part of me. She's the part that was missing for 35 years. And now those sleazy bastards have got her locked up where she can't reach me and I can't reach her. So Nicole isn't in it, OK? You can say any shit you want to about me, but I don't want her gettin' dragged in all the goddamn time.

[Q] Playboy: OK--don't get excited. Let's go back to your phrase "observe the normal limits." It's an interesting phrase. You make it sound as though you're fully aware of the limits and choose not to observe them.

[A] Gilmore: Well, I always knew the law was silly as hell. But as far as limits between people go, that's something that gets shaped by the pattern of your life--you react in a certain way because your life is influenced by all the varieties of your experience. Does that make any sense?

[Q] Playboy: It's hard to say. Give us an example.

[A] Gilmore: Well, this is kind of a personal thing. It'll sound like a strange incident to you, but it had a lasting effect on me. I was about 11 years old and I was coming home from school, and I thought I'd take a short cut. I climbed down this hill, a drop of about 50 feet, and I got tangled in these briar bushes, and black-berry, and thornberry. Some of these bushes were 30 feet high, I guess, down in this wild, overgrown area in southeast Portland. I thought it would be a short cut, but there was no pass through there. Nobody had gone through there before. At one point, I could have turned around and gone back, but I chose to just go on, and it took me about three hours to pick my way through there. All during that time, I never stopped for a rest and just kept going. I knew if I just kept going I'd get out, but I was also aware that I could get hopelessly stuck in there. I was a block or so from any houses, and if I screamed...well, I could have died in there. My screams would have gone unheard. So I just kept going. It was kind of a personal thing. I finally got home about three hours late and my mom said, well, you're late, and I said, yeah, I took a short cut. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: What's the point of that story? Why did you stay in the brambles and struggle so hard when you could have turned around and walked right out?

[A] Gilmore: I just did it, you know. And after I got about halfway, I w-was--

[Q] Playboy: Past the point of no return?

[A] Gilmore: Yeah, exactly. And it was kind of fun. It made me feel a little different about a lot of things.

[Q] Playboy: What things?

[A] Gilmore: Just being aware that I never did get afraid. I knew that if I just kept going, I'd get out. It left me with a distinct feeling, like a kind of overcoming of myself. It was just an incident that... well, I hope I relate it right.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think that story applies to your situation now?

[A] Gilmore: Well, it shows I'm capable of arriving at an end. [Laughs] I'm supposed to have a low frustration level.

[Q] Playboy: But in fact you're perseverant, right? As the story shows.

[A] Gilmore: Well, I've fought my way through every kind of delay and motion and waiver tryin' to get 'em to carry out this sentence, against every kind of asshole lawyer, goin' before senile judges all over the goddamn country...Jesus!

[Q] Playboy: So going through the brambles taught you to keep trying until your situation was hopeless? [Gilmore laughs] Was that the point at which you just told yourself, from here on I'm in for trouble?

[A] Gilmore: The point of no return! [Laughs] Ah, Jees, I always felt like I was in for trouble. I seemed to have a talent, or rather a knack, for making adults look at me a little different, different from the way they looked at other kids, like maybe bewildered, or maybe repelled.

[Q] Playboy: Repelled?

[A] Gilmore: Just a different look, like adults aren't supposed to look at kids.

[Q] Playboy: With hate in their eyes?

[A] Gilmore: Beyond hate. Loathing. I'd say. I can remember one lady in Flagstaff, Arizona, a neighbor of my folks when I was three or four. She became so frustrated with rage at whatever shit I was doing that she attacked me physically with full intent of hurting me. My dad had to jump up and restrain her.

[Q] Playboy: What could you have been doing to get her so mad?

[A] Gilmore: Just the way I was talking to her and the way I was acting. I was never quite...a boy. My brother Frank can tell you about one evening in Portland, when I was about eight, we all went over to these people's house, and there were two or three adults there. I don't remember just what I did, giving everybody a lot of lip, fuckin' with everything in the house--I don't remember what all--but anyhow, this one lady finally flipped completely out. Screamed. Ranted. Raved. Threw me out of the house. And the other adults there supported her and all felt the feelings she felt. Apparently, shit like that didn't have much effect on me. I can remember just walking home, about three miles, whistling and singing to myself.

[Q] Playboy: It sounds as though you were on the course you've always followed well before you went to reform school. Why did you say it was going to reform school that got you started--

[A] Gilmore: You asked!

[Q] Playboy: Yes, but your answer misled us. It sounds as though your life might have worked out about the same even if you hadn't been sent to Woodburn.

[A] Gilmore: Look, reform schools disseminate certain esoteric knowledge. They sophisticate. A kid comes out of reform school and he's learned a few things he would otherwise have missed. And he identifies, usually, with the people who share that same esoteric knowledge, the criminal element, or whatever you want to call it. So going to Woodburn was not a small thing in my life.

[Q] Playboy: Was it bad at Woodburn?

[A] Gilmore: Nothing really bad happened to me. It wasn't all that bad a thing. I was just locked up, deprived of my freedom.

[Q] Playboy: That was the worst of it?

[A] Gilmore: Yes. Jesus! Being deprived of your freedom when you're ten or fourteen? A kid resents losing part of his life.

[Q] Playboy: How did you fit in there?

[A] Gilmore: Man, that place made me think that that was the only way to live. The guys in there that I looked up to, they were tough, they were hipsters--this was the Fifties--and they seemed to run everything there. The staff were local beer-drinkin' guys that put in their hours, and they didn't care if you did this or did that. They had a few psych doctors there, too. Psychoanalysis was a big thing then. They would come in and they would show you their ink-blot tests and they would ask you all kinds of questions, mostly related to sex. And look at ya funny and...things like that.

[Q] Playboy: How long were you there?

[A] Gilmore: Fifteen months. I escaped four times, and after that, I finally got hip that the way to really get out of that place was to show 'em that I was rehabilitated. And after four months of not getting into any trouble, they released me. That taught me that people like that are easily fooled.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you want to fool them? Perhaps they were trying to help you.

[A] Gilmore: The one way they could help you was by gettin' you released, and for them to do that, you had to fool 'em.

[Q] Playboy: How did you feel when you were released from Woodburn?

[A] Gilmore: I came out looking for trouble. Thought that's what you're supposed to do. I was anxious to do everything, like I couldn't burn up energy fast enough. I felt slightly superior to everybody else 'cause I'd been in reform school. I had a tough-guy complex, that sort of smart-aleck juvenile-delinquent attitude. Juvenile delinquent--remember that phrase? Sure dates me, don't it? Nobody could tell me anything. I had a ducktail haircut, I smoked, drank, shot heroin, smoked weed, took speed, got into fights, chased and caught pretty little broads. The Fifties were a hell of a time to be a juvenile delinquent. I stole and robbed and gambled and went to Fats Domino and Gene Vincent dances at the local halls.

[Q] Playboy: What did you want to make of your life at that point?

[A] Gilmore: I wanted to be a mobster.

[Q] Playboy: What's your idea of a mobster? Like James Cagney with a piece?

[A] Gilmore: No, man, a member of the Mob.

[Q] Playboy: Which, in Portland, might have been a myth, like the Broadway gang.

[A] Gilmore: Sure.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't you think you had any other talents?

[A] Gilmore: Well, yeah, I had talents. I've always been good at drawing. I've drawn since I was a child, and I remember a teacher in about the second grade telling my mom, "Your son's an artist," in a way that showed she really meant it. My mom used to tell me about my great-grandfather Kerby, who was a pretty well-known painter around Provo about a hundred years ago. And people in the family have always said, Gary's really lucky, he inherited all Grandpa Kerby's talent. I don't argue with that, but I don't agree. I think whatever talent I have is something I earned on my own.

[Q] Playboy: How long was it before you were locked up again?

[A] Gilmore: Four months.

[Q] Playboy: Four months! We thought you said that reform schools educate. Couldn't you have used your esoteric knowledge to stay out of jail?

[A] Gilmore: It was just the pattern of my life. Some guys are lucky all their lives. No matter what kind of trouble they get into, pretty soon they're back on the bricks. But some guys are unlucky. They fuck up once on the outside and it's the pattern of their lives to be drawn back to do a lot of time.

[Q] Playboy: And you're one of the unlucky ones?

[A] Gilmore: Yeah, "the eternal recidivist." We're creatures of habit, man.

[Q] Playboy: What's the longest stretch of time you've been free since you first went to reform school?

[A] Gilmore: Eight months was about the longest.

[Q] Playboy: Your I.Q.'s supposedly about 130, and yet you've spent almost 19 of the past 22 years behind bars. Why were you never able to get away with anything?

[A] Gilmore: I got away with a couple of things. I ain't a great thief. I'm impulsive. Don't plan, don't think. You don't have to be a superintelligent to get away with shit, you just have to think. But I don't. I'm impatient. Not greedy enough. I could have gotten away with lots of things that I got caught for. I don't, ah, really understand it. Maybe I quit caring a long time ago.

[Q] Playboy: But when you got out of prison last April, you'd just done 12 and a half straight years--

[A] Gilmore: Except for a few weeks in '72 when I was on escape--

[Q] Playboy: OK, but 12 and a half straight years, and here in Provo you had waiting for you all kinds of people who wanted to help you make it. Ida and Vern [Gilmore's aunt and uncle] gave you a room in their house and fixed you up with a job. You'd written 50 or more letters to Brenda [Gilmore's cousin, the daughter of Ida and Vern] telling her how desperately you wanted to make a decent life for yourself--

[A] Gilmore: Just a minute--let me have a drink of this coffee.

[Q] Playboy: OK.

[A] Gilmore: I didn't have any lunch, because the food was so goddamn cold. I know it seems like a small thing, man, but I let small things get to me. I always have, especially now, in here.

[Q] Playboy: So were the letters to Brenda a con? She allowed us to read them, and they were very beautiful, convincing letters.

[A] Gilmore: Thank you. The letters were sincere.

[Q] Playboy: So when you came out in April, there was a period of time when you were confident of making it?

[A] Gilmore: Making what?

[Q] Playboy: Making good.

[A] Gilmore: Ah, I don't know. The last two or three years, I've pretty well accepted the fact that I'd probably never be...free. I know I'm a little different from most people. Man, if, ah...I mean, I just....

[Q] Playboy: Did you think last April when you were set free that you were bound to get into trouble?

[A] Gilmore: I didn't know what the hell I was gonna do. I just...I didn't know what I was gonna do.

[Q] Playboy: Brenda told us about picking you up at the airport in Salt Lake City after you were released. She said you were like a visitor from another planet. You'd never seen an automatic money-changer. She took you to a mall to buy some clothes and you'd never seen a mall. You were so engrossed in looking at the girls that you fell into a fountain.

[A] Gilmore: Brenda says a lot of things. She also said I looked like a scared rabbit. She told that to Newsweek. I never looked like a fuckin' scared rabbit. I weighed 190 pounds.

[Q] Playboy: Maybe she was just moved by the sight of you. She hoped she could give you a break.

[A] Gilmore: Brenda gave me nothing. You really misunderstand all of that, ole buddy. Look, my actions and what I said to Brenda in those letters may seem inconsistent. But I believe Brenda knows how I really feel about her. I've told her. She may not understand. But I don't want to feel those harsh, bum feelings. I ain't got time to hate. It ain't a matter of forgiving and it ain't a matter of forgetting.

[Q] Playboy: But still, by the time you were home a month, you had a car, you had a job, and then you met Nicole. All of that was at least partly thanks to Brenda and Vern and others, wasn't it?

[A] Gilmore: Well, as you say, I'd been locked up for 12 and a half years straight, and I wanted to have a little fun and drink a little bit of beer. I didn't need a lot of money, but I wanted to drive around and do a few things. Everybody seemed to think that I was...like, I should mellow out and settle down and do the things they were doing.

[Q] Playboy: Isn't that what you tried with Nicole? With her two kids, you also had a ready-made family to enjoy before you were home a month.

[A] Gilmore: But Nicole understood me. We're twin souls. We've known each other forever. But that was one of my arguments with Vern. He felt like I was drinkin' too much and going too fast, things like that, you know? Well, I told him he could think what he wants. I just felt like--

[Q] Playboy: You had some catching up to do?

[A] Gilmore: [Sighs] Yeah.

[Q] Playboy: You think you might have been too impatient to make up for lost time?

[A] Gilmore: Probably. Yeah, probably. I mean, you can go too fast and miss the small things, and seek too hard for pleasures and miss them when they come.

[Q] Playboy: Well, yes, but what we're talking about is risking your freedom immediately by boosting things out of stores, cases of beer, water skis, hi-fis, stupid things like that. Did you think you could just keep getting away with things?

[A] Gilmore: I did get caught a couple of times, but I just refused to be arrested. I wouldn't let the fuckers take me back in the store. I just told them to get fucked and I left. Told 'em I can't stand those long check-out lines. [Laughs] You don't always have to let some asshole arrest you, especially if he doesn't have a gun. Sucker ain't got a gun, how's he gonna arrest you?

[Q] Playboy: But it went much further than that, didn't it? You broke into the store in Spanish Fork and stole eight or nine pistols. You took off for Idaho Falls and got arrested within 12 hours for beating someone half to death. Was that all part of the build-up to the murders?

[A] Gilmore: No, that shit happened before I met Nicole.

[Q] Playboy: And the murders came after.

[A] Gilmore: After I lost her. Look, Nicole and I have known and loved each other for thousands of years. I know this. Nicole knows it. We parted. Through my stupidity, I hurt her and caused her to leave me on July 13, two months to the day after I met her again in this life.

[A] I was hurting bad. I've never felt so bad, and I've gone through some shit in my life you wouldn't believe. But I never felt so terrible as I did in that final week. I mean, I couldn't hardly walk, I couldn't sleep, I didn't hardly eat. Booze didn't even touch it. It got worse every day, a heavy hurt and loss. If this doesn't make sense, well, neither does the death of Jenkins and Bushnell.

[Q] Playboy: Tell us what happened the night you killed Jensen.

[A] Gilmore: That's right, Jensen. I call him Jenkins for some reason, but the name's Jensen, Max Jensen. OK. Just a moment. [Long pause] Uh [Begins speaking in a rapid monotone], I drove over to Nicole's mother's house and I had my new truck and Nicole's mother was there and, uh, she came out and we talked a little bit and I asked her if she would return a gun that I had given her earlier. She didn't want to, but she did. She asked me if I'd drive April down to the store to get her tennis racket strung or something, and I said OK. I really didn't have a thing about April. I was concerned about Nicole and thinkin' about Nicole and it was kind of nice having Nicole's little sister there. So April got in the truck and, man, she turned the radio on real loud and moved right over beside me and told me she didn't want to go home, and I told her, well, look, I'll keep you out all night, if you want. So I drove down to the place where I'd bought my truck and I talked to those guys about the financial arrangements. I had about four or five pistols left from that robbery and I left them with these guys as security for the truck. I kept one pistol with me, the loaded one, and I signed the papers and took ownership of the truck. I'm tryin' to remember this as I talk.

[Q] Playboy: OK.

[A] Gilmore: So I signed some papers taking possession of the truck, and then I was drivin' around with April and we got out into Orem and I pulled around the corner to this service station and it looked fairly deserted. That's what I guess drew my attention to it, just a moment [Takes an aspirin with cold coffee]....So I just drove around the corner and parked and told April to stay in the truck, I'd be back in a moment. And I went over to the gas station and told Jensen to give me the money, and he did, and I told him, well, come on in the bathroom and get down on the floor, and it was pretty quick. I didn't let him know it was coming or anything. It was just a .22, so I shot him twice in rapid succession, to make sure that he was not in any pain or that he wasn't left half alive or anything. And, and, I left there and I drove to, uh, I don't know just where that Sinclair station was, but I drove back to the main drag. State Street, I guess it is, and I went into Albertson's and bought some potato chips and different things to take to a movie and half a case of beer and some things that April wanted to eat, and I asked if she wanted to go to a drive-in and I took her to see Cuckoo's Nest and it kind of freaked her out. April's been in the nut house a time or two, you know.

[Q] Playboy: Uh-huh.

[A] Gilmore: So she didn't want to stay there, so we left and I drove over to Brenda's and stayed there for about an hour. Then we left there and I got lost, you know. I asked April if she wanted to go to a motel and she told me she still didn't want to go home. I don't know this area, you know, so I was drivin' around, and April was guiding me and, Jees, you couldn't have a worse guide. So I got lost a time or two and I ran out of gas and I ended up in Provo and I just walked to a drive-in and got a couple guys and I told them "I'll give you five bucks if you take me to a gas station and get some gas." So they did and after I got my truck goin' again, I went to the Holiday Inn there in Provo and got a room, and then I went over to the restaurant and bought some food. I seen some kids I knew and I got a joint of weed from 'em and went back to the hotel room and smoked weed and that kind of flipped April out. She can't take things like that. It was pretty late then, probably two or three, so we just went on to sleep. It was twin beds and she slept in one bed and I slept in the other and the next morning I drove her home and she kissed me goodbye and we were still friends and everything. And I'm certain she had no knowledge of what happened at the gas station.

[Q] Playboy: She didn't know about it at all?

[A] Gilmore: I'm positive. She knew nothing about it.

[Q] Playboy: You're sure she didn't hear the shots?

[A] Gilmore: No, she didn't hear nothin'. She was in the truck. We were in the rest room. The door was closed. I'm pretty sure I closed the door. It was only a .22. April always kept the radio going, and I think I even turned it up louder than usual when I left. She always kept it loud, anyway. I'm certain she didn't hear the shots. She has no knowledge--she has no personal knowledge.

[Q] Playboy: What was her mood when she left you?

[A] Gilmore: Pretty good. April was in a pretty good mood all the time until she smoked that joint, and then it did some-thin' to her and she just started getting real belligerent, bossy, you know, and April can get pretty rowdy....

[Q] Playboy: Were you able to sleep that night?

[A] Gilmore: I think I slept for a couple of hours.

[Q] Playboy: So you felt more or less all right?

[A] Gilmore: I went to work the next day.

[Q] Playboy: The day you killed Bushnell?

[A] Gilmore: Yeah.

[Q] Playboy: But how could you explain to yourself what you'd done? Had Jensen said or done something to annoy you?

[A] Gilmore: No, not at all.

[Q] Playboy: Then what prompted you to take him back to the rest room?

[A] Gilmore: I don't really know.

[Q] Playboy: What do you mean, you don't know?

[A] Gilmore: I mean, I don't really know. I said the place looked deserted. It just seemed appropriate.

[Q] Playboy: Appropriate to kill a man?

[A] Gilmore: Fuck!

[Q] Playboy: Well, if this was your first murder, it seems curious that you'd describe it as "appropriate."

[A] Gilmore: Are you guys listenin'? If you listen, and try to catch the nuances in what I say, you might not ask so many stupid questions. I'm trying to express myself clearly. I'm trying to be understood. If sometimes I use a little humor, or say something diabolical, you should goddamn sure take that into consideration.

[Q] Playboy: Saying "appropriate" was meant to be funny?

[A] Gilmore: [Sighs] No.

[Q] Playboy: Well, tell us this: When you stopped at the gas station, was your intention to rob Jensen or kill him?

[A] Gilmore: I had the intention of killing him.

[Q] Playboy: How did that concept form in your mind?

[A] Gilmore: I can't say. It had been building all week. Then that night, I knew I had to open a valve and let something out and I didn't know exactly what it would be and I wasn't thinking in words or terms of I'll do this or I'll do that, that'll make me feel better. I just knew something was happening in me and that I'd let some of the steam off and, uh, I guess all this sounds pretty vicious.

[Q] Playboy: The steam was building up because of your breaking up with Nicole, is that right?

[A] Gilmore: Because I couldn't rectify it, because I couldn't seem to get her back. It was so silly the way we broke up. She didn't want to any more than I did, and I knew that. But she was maybe a little stronger than I was. Maybe a little more stubborn. I'm the one that kicked her out of the car and told her I didn't want to see her anymore. I mean, you may think that she left me, but that's not really the case. But after I did that, I had immediate regrets and the next day I went and tried to get her back, but her pride had been hurt and she'd taken a firm stand against it. I guess I--I'm tellin' you these things and I don't think Nicole would mind. I'm telling you the facts as I know them. I think Nicole may have told you different things. Am I right?

[Q] Playboy: We haven't talked that much.

[A] Gilmore: I don't think she would mind if I told this exactly as it happened, which is exactly what I'm doin'. I'm not putting the blame on her and I'm not putting it on me. I'm just tellin' you what happened.

[Q] Playboy: Sure.

[A] Gilmore: And then the people who smoke pipes and make judgments can, uh, uh--neither one of you guys smoke a pipe, do you? [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: No.

[A] Gilmore: Good. Let the pipe smokers make judgments. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: When did you start thinking that your release might come by taking somebody's life?

[A] Gilmore: [Long pause] I didn't w-want to kill Nicole and, and, uh, I had to either get her back and get it all straightened out or something was going to happen. There was no way on earth I could let it go. It wasn't a thing that I could just set aside.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Gilmore: Well, it just wasn't. Because I felt so strongly about Nicole and I knew she felt the same way about me and I felt that [Sighs] she may have just been avoiding me. She'd been hurt by guys before in her life and she didn't want that kind of thing anymore. Contrary to popular belief, I never really hurt Nicole physically. In fact, when we had arguments, I w-wouldn't...I'd let her win'em.

[Q] Playboy: We thought you said you were the one who threw her out.

[A] Gilmore: I'm not trying to make myself look good. I would rather just give you the facts and then, if you've got the facts, I think you've got the whole thing.

[Q] Playboy: Sure. [Long pause]

[A] Gilmore: I thought that I'd lost her forever and I couldn't accept it. [Long pause] Ah, well, see, I thought I'd lost her forever and I couldn't accept that. I wasn't going to accept it, and....

[Q] Playboy: How did you feel that killing somebody would help you accept losing Nicole? Can you explain that?

[A] Gilmore: I don't know. I didn't want to kill Nicole. Because I was thinking about killing her and if I had killed her, I would have killed myself. I wasn't thinkin', I was just doin'.

[Q] Playboy: Is it possible that you were trying to end your life by doing these things, getting caught and winding up where you are now?

[A] Gilmore: No, I was lookin' to get away with it.

[Q] Playboy: Apparently, killing Jensen didn't do anything to take the pressure off. Why did you go out the next night and kill Bushnell?

[A] Gilmore: I don't know, man. I'm impulsive. I don't think.

[Q] Playboy: You killed him the same way you'd killed Jensen the night before--ordering him to lie down on the floor, then firing point-blank into his head. Did you think killing Bushnell would give you some kind of relief you didn't get with Jensen?

[A] Gilmore: I told you, I wasn't thinkin'. What I do remember is an absence of thought. Just movements, actions. I shot Bushnell, and then the gun jammed--them fuckin' automatics! And I thought, man, this guy's not dead. I wanted to shoot him a second time, because I didn't want him to lie there half dead. I didn't want him in pain. I tried to jack the mechanism and get the gun workin' again, and shoot him again, but it was jammed, and I had to get my ass out of there. I jacked the gun into shape again but too late to do anything for Mr. Bushnell. I'm afraid he didn't die immediately. When I ordered him to lie down, I wanted it to be quick for him. There was no chance, no choice for him. That sounds cold. But you asked.

[Q] Playboy: Did either Jensen or Bushnell show fear?

[A] Gilmore: Jensen did not resist. Neither did Bushnell. Bushnell was huge. He looked like a college wrestler. I was struck by Jensen's friendly, smiling, kind face. I thought of these things at the time of the shootings.

[Q] Playboy: You said that Jensen didn't say or do anything to annoy you. Did Bushnell?

[A] Gilmore: I don't remember anything he said, except that he asked me to be quiet and not alert his wife. She was in the next room. He was anxious to comply. He was calm, even brave. I wasn't afraid of him.

[Q] Playboy: Was there any difference in the way you approached the two killings?

[A] Gilmore: No, not really. You could say it was a little more certain that Mr. Bushnell was going to die.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Gilmore: Because it was already a fact that Mr. Jensen had died, and so the next one was more certain.

[Q] Playboy: Was the second killing easier than the first?

[A] Gilmore: Neither one of 'em were hard or easy.

[Q] Playboy: Had you ever had any dealings of any kind with either one of those men?

[A] Gilmore: No.

[Q] Playboy: Well, what led you to the City Center Motel, where Bushnell worked? If robbery was part of your motive, certainly there were better targets in Provo than that quiet, unpretentious motel.

[A] Gilmore: Vern and Ida live right close by. I stopped by to see them. They weren't home. I just followed an impulse when I went in there. It wasn't anything I'd planned and schemed to do. Murder vents rage, and rage was what I was feeling.

[Q] Playboy: Over Nicole?

[A] Gilmore: Over Nicole.

[Q] Playboy: Let's see if we understand: You left your truck in a service station where you were well known; you walked around with your pistol in your belt; Vern and Ida weren't home; so you just walked into this motel and shot the night manager, robbing him of about $125. Is that about it?

[A] Gilmore: That's the whole story of Mr. Bushnell, right there.

[Q] Playboy: But you said at your trial that you also stopped off at the apartment of a girl who wasn't home. Was she a girl-friend?

[A] Gilmore: No, I just wanted some company. I wasn't planning anything, and I was walking around while they worked on my truck, and this girl was only a block and a half away, and she liked to drink beer, and she always had some beer. But she wasn't home.

[Q] Playboy: But if she had been home, and if you'd wound up making love to her, would that have vented the rage you were talking about?

[A] Gilmore: No, no, it's two different things. Just goin' for a fuck, makin' love, whatever man, I don't want to mess with questions like that. I think they're cheap.

[Q] Playboy: We're just trying to understand the quality of this rage you speak of. It wasn't a rage that might have been vented in sex?

[A] Gilmore: I don't want to bother with questions that pertain to sex.

[Q] Playboy: But if, on the night you killed Bushnell, you had wound up with a friendly girl who could offer you beer and company and a relaxing time, wouldn't that have helped you feel better?

[A] Gilmore: I don't want to answer that question.

[Q] Playboy: You seem to find it easier talking about murder than sex.

[A] Gilmore: That's your judgment.

[Q] Playboy: If you hadn't been caught that night, do you think there would have been a third or fourth killing?

[A] Gilmore: There would have been more than that, that night. [Sighs]

[Q] Playboy: You would have just continued?

[A] Gilmore: I was going to just continue.

[Q] Playboy: How long?

[A] Gilmore: Until I got caught or shot to death by the police or something like that. I wasn't thinkin', I wasn't plannin', I was just doin'. It was a damned shame for those two guys. But I've given some thought to the fact--well, I shouldn't use the word fact--to the possibility that maybe they were supposed to have been killed. How do I know they weren't meeting, at my hands, a karmic debt?

[Q] Playboy: It must be very comforting for you to think in those terms.

[A] Gilmore: It's just something I've pondered. There is so much similarity between Jenkins and Bushnell--both in their mid-20s, both family men, both Mormon missionaries. Perhaps the murders of these men were meant to occur.

[Q] Playboy: At the hands of a man who lacked, and might have wanted, all the qualities you've just described?

[A] Gilmore: I digress, I guess. I'm just saying that murder vents rage. Rage is not reason. The murders were without reason. Don't try to understand murder by using reason. Destruction, rage, futility, words like that--try them if you want to understand.

[Q] Playboy: If you intended to go on killing that night, why did you throw your gun away?

[A] Gilmore: I had other guns. I didn't want to keep that son of a bitch. It had just got through jammin'. I was taking precautions. I got rid of Jensen's money-changer. I don't think the Orem police ever did find that. And after the Bushnell murder, I thought I'd get rid of the gun. It was wiped pretty well--they never got any fingerprints off it or anything. I thought I was taking precautions. Of course, I wasn't thinking very coherently.

[Q] Playboy: And in the course of getting rid of your gun, you shot yourself in the hand.

[A] Gilmore: Well, automatics go off easy. They do. All you gotta do is press their triggers and the fuckers go off.

[Q] Playboy: So it was an accident that could have happened to anybody.

[A] Gilmore: Yeah, it's a touchy gun, man. I was pushing it into a bush and I guess I pushed it by the trigger and it shot me in the hand. I had thrown away the cash-box from the motel and I wrapped my hand in my jacket to keep from being noticed. But I was noticed by the kid back at the gas station where I'd left my truck. Sucker knew me. I tried calling Brenda and a-asked her to come and get me, and she said she would. But instead, she called the police and didn't give me any warning.

[Q] Playboy: Just looking at the facts, it would seem that shooting yourself and calling Brenda demonstrated a wish to be caught.

[A] Gilmore: No, no. I never thought Brenda would call the police. And shooting myself was a goddamn accident.

[Q] Playboy: You don't think it was a subconscious desire to be caught?

[A] Gilmore: I'm not gonna answer that question. Where you gettin' your info, from Brenda? You're about 35 degrees off course. Accidents can happen to psychopaths as easily as anybody else, man. That's what the psych doctors call me--a psychopath. They call you that when they don't get around to calling you a socio-path. You gotta be one or the other, you can't be neither or both.

[Q] Playboy: You said before that you were planning on killing more people until you were caught or killed. So the goal would be getting caught or killed, right?

[A] Gilmore: Whatever's fair.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think some people might commit murders because they want to be killed themselves?

[A] Gilmore: Some people might.

[Q] Playboy: But not you?

[A] Gilmore: Fuck, no.

[Q] Playboy: Your murders couldn't have been encouraged or provoked by your knowledge that in Utah you'd die by a firing squad?

[A] Gilmore: No, no. [Sighs]

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever had a dream in which the image of the firing squad occurred?

[A] Gilmore: No, just about every other goddamn kind of dream, morbid shit like that.

[Q] Playboy: Like what?

[A] Gilmore: Well, I used to dream that I was being led to this place, a place that had a wall with slots in it, like lockers, and they would open one of 'em, and it was all concrete and dirty, and they would slide you in there. I had that fuckin' dream about a dozen times.

[Q] Playboy: Would you call it a nightmare?

[A] Gilmore: Would you? [Laughs] No, no, I've only had one real nightmare.

[Q] Playboy: What about?

[A] Gilmore: About being beheaded.

[Q] Playboy: Did you have it recurrently?

[A] Gilmore: No, but it marked a conscious memory thing in my life. I was a kid then, but for years I was really afraid of losing part of my body. I thought being beheaded was the most horrible death imaginable.

[Q] Playboy: More horrible than shooting?

[A] Gilmore: Shootin's quick, man. It's over like that. You're dead before you hear the sound of the shot that kills you.

[Q] Playboy: It's been said that the guillotine is actually the most humane form of execution.

[A] Gilmore: For me, man, that is a morbid fuckin' image. That and the headsman's block, those two and the gallows. I've sounded people out on 'em, because they've stuck pretty deep with me. And most people agree that that's a pretty morbid bunch of images. But I don't think they hold the same effect for most people that they do for me. For me, they're like some kind of memory or some goddamn thing. It seems like, to tell you the truth, there's just something there I'm acquainted with in some way I don't understand.

[Q] Playboy: Can you recall any film or news-reel or anything along that line in which you've seen men die before a firing squad?

[A] Gilmore: Remember Goya's painting of a firing squad--The Death Squad, I think he called it? That may have stayed in my mind. And I've seen lots of cartoons about waving away the blindfold and taking a last puff on a cigarette. Then there was that movie, The Execution of Private Slovik.

[Q] Playboy: When you saw the movie, could you imagine yourself in the condemned man's place?

[A] Gilmore: Oh, I guess everybody that saw that movie probably imagined themselves in Eddie Slovik's place. I couldn't imagine myself saying all them Hail Marys, though. [Laughs] I thought Eisenhower was a real asshole to allow that execution to take place. Private Slovik should have been discharged from the Service. He was sentenced to die for cowardice, I guess, or dereliction of duty, or failing to be a good soldier, or some goddamn thing. If I'd a been in the war, I'd a fought, you know, I'd a been a soldier. But there was no goddamn excuse for killing the man, and Eisenhower is the son of a bitch that allowed it. Then the firing squad didn't kill him with the first round, and they were fumblin' and bumblin' and unable to reload, and Slovik had to suffer. It was an interesting movie, but I hated the actor who played Slovik, that Martin Sheen. Hail Marys! Jesus!

[Q] Playboy: If some kind of morbid fascination with a firing-squad death wasn't part of the reason, what was it about you that made these murders happen?

[A] Gilmore: I always knew I was capable of killing somebody.

[Q] Playboy: How did you know that unless you'd done it?

[A] Gilmore: It's just something you know.

[Q] Playboy: Had you ever proved it before like you proved it with Jensen and Bushnell? You hinted earlier you had.

[A] Gilmore: No.

[Q] Playboy: Well, your record doesn't suggest you did. Up until the murders, your crimes were relatively tame.

[A] Gilmore: Will you listen to that fool screaming for his goddamn cigarettes? This noisy motherfucker is some kind of rotten prison. It's like a second-class county jail in the South. Filthy motherfucker, too. The joint in Oregon is much more secure, and they keep that son of a bitch immaculate.

[Q] Playboy: Yes, Gary, but this question is still with us: How did you always know you could kill somebody?

[A] Gilmore: This may sound strange to you now, because I know I have developed a technique of making people like me. It's one of the things that I've overcome about myself. I think I have at least developed that: a way of making people like me. I can get along with people at least now. I--I always could, though, really, I guess. Nobody overtly disliked me. There was just the feeling that they'd rather not be around me if they had their druthers. I always kind of felt a victim of the "Fell" syndrome.

[Q] Playboy: The what?

[A] Gilmore: The "Fell" syndrome. It's from a 17th or 18th Century quotation. It's anonymous. It goes simply:

I do not like thee, Dr. Fell,

The reason why I cannot tell;

But this I know, and know full well,

I do not like thee, Dr. Fell.

When I read that, I understood its meaning at once and applied it to myself. Nobody liked this guy, and they didn't know why, either.

[Q] Playboy: We remember now reading that in a couple of your letters to Nicole. In fact, we remembered it all along. We just wanted to see if you'd tell it again the same, and you did, just about word for word.

[A] Gilmore: It's a poem, man. A poem has a certain set of words.

[Q] Playboy: Yes, but you also told the story of going down into the brambles in precisely the words you used when you wrote about it to Nicole--

[A] Gilmore: Those letters are personal, man....

[Q] Playboy: Gary, be serious. The guards read them. The D.A. has a full set. So do Nicole's psychiatrists. Many of them have been printed in the newspapers. What we're saying is that these stories sound like recitations that you use in a calculating way. Maybe part of your "technique" of making people like you is to charm them with little stories.

[A] Gilmore: I haven't learned to make people like me. I've learned how to like people. I should have never used the word technique. It's just a simple truth: Learn to like people and they'll like you. Ain't nothin' calculating about that. I got lonely. I like language, words, slang and rhymes and rhythms.

[Q] Playboy: The impression that you're running a con some of the time might come from the many voices you employ. Sometimes you talk like an East Texas drifter, sometimes like the mobster you wanted to be as a kid, sometimes, in fact, like a kid. It's as if you've learned half a dozen dialects and switch back and forth between them, depending on the listener and the subject at hand.

[A] Gilmore: When I tell somebody something, I like to make myself clear. I like humor, too. 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 and stories, and a person can get sort of practiced at recollecting. You probably got a few yarns you spin on occasion yourself. The fact that you tell something more than once to more than one person doesn't make it a lie. It doesn't make it calculating, either. And there's nothing wrong with tailoring your manner of speech to the listener. I mean, Jesus, what's wrong with that? I know I speak well. I'm not just a collection of stories.

[Q] Playboy: This awkward way of communicating doesn't help. If we didn't have this glass between us or didn't have to write notes, if we could be face to face more often--

[A] Gilmore: This is a bum way to talk, but we're tryin'! You probably noticed that when we talk personally, face to face, I don't put things quite as strong. See, I'm used to talkin' to somebody who I can't see. I lean on it a little bit to make goddamn certain I'm understood. Take this into account when you consider my fuck-in' answers.

[Q] Playboy: Of course.

[A] Gilmore: Maybe I do try to entertain and charm. I do emphasize things. One reason, ah... or how I learned to do this, let's say, is perhaps because I've spent a lot of time in the hole....

[Q] Playboy: How much time altogether?

[A] Gilmore: Maybe four years.

[Q] Playboy: In isolation?

[A] Gilmore: Well, sure, it's the hole. And when you're in the hole, you get used to carrying on a conversation with a guy you can't see. He's in the cell next door or down the line from you. And so, it, ah... just becomes [Sighs] necessary to kind of, ah... emphasize to make yourself clear and heard, because there might be other conversations going on and a lot of other goddamn noise, guards rattling keys, doors clanging shut, things like that. So think about that, and, you know, you're in the hole, you, and if you talk to somebody, you can't see 'em, yeah, and, well, when you get out, man, and you're talkin' to somebody face to face, it's something you have to get used to again.

(Late December)

[Q] Playboy: Is there anything you'd like to add about the circumstances leading up to the murders?

[A] Gilmore: The truth is the truth, and I'm telling you the truth not to pass blame, you know, to anybody. I'm telling it to you because it's true, and I think it's important. I thought about omitting it completely, and then I decided not to. I wanted to talk to Nicole first and get her permission, but the motherfuckers won't let me get through to her. Do you understand what I'm saying?

[Q] Playboy: You'll have to say more.

[A] Gilmore: Well, I've wanted to tell you this for weeks. I think it's time you should know.

[Q] Playboy: Go ahead.

[A] Gilmore: OK. See, Jensen was killed on a Monday, Bushnell on a Tuesday. Sunday, I was really feeling down. I drove around the park out there in Springville for a while, and I was hopin' to just see Nicole or little Sunny and Jeremy Peabody [Nicole's children]. And, ah, I went to sleep up against a tree in the park for about an hour. And when I woke up, I really felt shitty. I drank a couple of beers and went over to Nicole's house, and I went in and I took a bath and, ah, then I heard the front door open and Nicole came in. I went over and I put my arms around her and she just stood there, you know. I could see that I couldn't communicate with her anymore. It really fucked me up. I only had a towel on, and the fuckin' towel fell off. She told me to get dressed and I got dressed and, ah, she... I kept tryin' to talk to her and she was being smart and rude, you know. So I grabbed her by the hand and I was going to pull her to me and she just started hollerin' at me and jerked free and said something like, "Can't you talk to me without touching me?" or s-some-thin', and then she ran outside and I followed her. She was leaving, and when I went up to her car, she...just flipped out slightly, you know, and kept tryin' to get her kids in the car. She thought I was going to hurt her or something. I think I told her just don't go without taking the new Electrolux I bought for you, because the house would be empty and someone would rip it off. And I leaned up against her car and, ah, she pulled a gun on me and said, "Get away from my car, Gary Gilmore."

[Q] Playboy: What kind of gun was it?

[A] Gilmore: It was a magnum .22 Derringer. She had it pointed right at me. It was a gun I gave her, because she'd been hurt a couple times in her life by different guys, and I told her, man, if anybody ever fucks with you, slaps you around, gives you a hard time, just don't take it, you know. I didn't think it was loaded, and I was thinking about taking it away from her, but I didn't want her to start screaming. We were outside, and all the neighbors would hear and...and...she might start runnin'. So I just stood there and leaned against her car and told her, "I don't think your fuckin' gun is loaded, Nicole, so go get your vacuum cleaner, put it in your car and leave. If that's what you want. I mean, if you want to go, then I want you to." I don't remember all the words. I didn't say a whole lot. I didn't give a shit about getting shot, you know. In fact, I think I told her, hey, if you're going to shoot me, do it. And, ah, she wavered on that one a little bit, and I think she put the gun away and I didn't advance on her. I just left. I felt real bad. And I saw everything...well, it just seemed like a final ending to me right there.

[Q] Playboy: You say you left? Or did Nicole drive off?

[A] Gilmore: Well, I finally just moved away from her car and let her get in, and she got in real quick and rolled up all the windows and locked the doors. I don't know if that little story is as dramatic as it seems....

[Q] Playboy: Go on.

[A] Gilmore: I wanted to tell it to you because there were some things that may not have made sense. I told you that I didn't want to kill....I told you that I killed Jensen because I didn't want to kill Nicole. And Nicole told me later that the gun was loaded and that if she had shot me, man, she would have shot herself immediately afterward. So she didn't hate me at the time. It's just things happenin' to us--a little bit too much for both of us, I think. I don't know. Let me see if I can get a cup of coffee and rest for a while.

[Q] Playboy: Sure, that's fine. [Gilmore is escorted away by a guard. Five minutes later, he returns.]

[A] Gilmore: Always feel better after a hit 'n' miss. That's Cockney rhyming slang for a piss.

[Q] Playboy: You were saying before there were some things that didn't make sense. Certainly one of them has to be how losing Nicole explains killing Bushnell and Jensen. Your girlfriend leaves you, so you go out and kill two guys.

[A] Gilmore: God, hmmmm, well...I mean, ah, it makes sense to me. I mean, I don't say it makes sense that those guys are dead. I don't want to say it makes sense, because that'll make it seem acceptable, and it's not. It's a damn shame that it had to happen. But, ah, ask that again. Let me give it a little thought.

[Q] Playboy: Ask now?

[A] Gilmore: No, later.

[Q] Playboy: Your former cellmate, Richard Gibbs, says you told him that you killed two men in prison. Brenda says the same thing. Even Vern says you told him about two killings.

[A] Gilmore: No, they're mistaken. These stories, they involved near killings. Gibbs will say it did involve a killing, two killings, but neither guy died.

[Q] Playboy: One involved a black homosexual in the Oregon prison?

[A] Gilmore: Just a moment, please. Jesus fuckin' [Pauses] it's so goddamn noisy in here today I can't think. Goddamn guards kept me up all night with their bullshittin', playin' cards, shufflin', shit like that all night. I think I deserve a little fuckin' serenity at least.

[Q] Playboy: You always say you're willing to accept your sentence. Perhaps the noise is part of the sentence.

[A] Gilmore:You don't have to listen to the motherfucker 24 hours a day. [Pause. Loud noises in background] Well, OK [Sighs deeply], this kid comes to me in the joint in Oregon and asks if he could talk to me, go out in the yard with me, walk around with me, you know? And I asked him, "What's wrong?" and he said that this, ah, nigger was tryin' to fuck him. And the kid was going to check himself into the building, you know, isolation, just turn himself in and go to the hole and be locked up to get away from it. He didn't know how to handle it. What do you want me to do? I asked him, and he says, well, I'll be your kid if you protect me. And I tell him, I don't want a kid, I don't like punks, and I don't want you to be a punk, anyway. I told him, well, let me...let me think about it. So I just went and got another guy and I told him about it, and he said let's kill the motherfucker. So we just caught the guy comin' up the stairs and we both had pieces of pipe in our hand, and we beat him half to death and drug him down to another nigger's cell and drug him in and put him on the bunk and slammed the door and left. He was unconscious. We hit him so fast and so hard...he was a boxer, we didn't give him no chance. We was goin' to kill him, but we decided not to. And, uh, I mean, if we'd beat him to death, that woulda been OK, too, but we didn't.

[Q] Playboy: OK, tell us about your nickname, Hammersmith.

[A] Gilmore: Well, just a minute. Where did you hear that?

[Q] Playboy: Gibbs, Brenda, your letters to Nicole.

[A] Gilmore: Yeah, well, this friend of mine, LeRoy, the guy I shot in the stomach when we were kids, he came to the penitentiary two years after I did, and he had a life sentence. He liked dope a lot, you know, and he was always gettin' fucked up and he'd stay fucked up for months. He had a Valium habit and he was just stayin' so fucked up, he didn't know whether he was comin' or goin' and he got in debt with this guy named Bill who was a big rowdy, a bully-type guy who had a lot of money and was dealing in dope and pushing people around and fucking with people. Once they busted him for being drunk and they took him to the hole. And he sent word to me from the hole that this Bill, this dealer, had come into his cell earlier that day and robbed him and beat him up, kicked him, put the boots to him while he had him on the floor and then took his outfit, you know, his syringe and needle, and took his money and everything that he had. I knew LeRoy was awful drunk and I know that Valium will make you hallucinate a little bit and I wasn't certain whether the story was true. But LeRoy asked me if I'd fuck Bill up, you know, and so this other guy--the same guy that helped me with that nigger--he was going to the hole and I talked it over with him and he said, well, listen, I'm going to the hole tomorrow and I'll go down and talk to LeRoy and then I'll tell you whether it's true or not. So he went to the hole, stayed seven days--'cause in those days, you only stayed in the hole seven days for minor shit; now you spend months, you know--and when he came out, he told me, he says, it's true, LeRoy says go ahead, he wants you to stab Bill or pipe him or something.

[A] And he asks me, you want me to help you? I told him no, I'll do it myself, LeRoy is my personal friend, he's been my friend for years, and I'll do this one myself. So I worked on the wreck crew, and we were doing some construction out in the yard, and I just went over, stole a hammer, and that night I caught Bill sitting down watching a football game and I just planted the hammer in his head, turned around and walked off.

[Q] Playboy: How bad did you hurt him?

[A] Gilmore: How bad did I hurt him! [Laughs] I felt the hammer go into his skull. About four days later, they busted me for it. They had two or three snitchers that said they seen me do it, but they weren't willing enough to reveal themselves, so they just kept me in the hole for four months and took Bill up to Portland for brain surgery. But Bill was pretty fucked up, anyhow. So, to answer your question, this guy nicknamed me Hammersmith over that. He gave me a little toy hammer to wear on a chain, you know.

[Q] Playboy: You're certain that both these men lived?

[A] Gilmore: Yeah, they lived. [Sighs] Kind of altered their lives, though.

[Q] Playboy: Well, why did you go around telling everybody that you'd killed them? Were you bragging or confessing?

[A] Gilmore: [Laughing] More bragging, probably, to tell you the truth.

[Q] Playboy: Were you trying to frighten people, put them on the alert?

[A] Gilmore: I didn't tell those stories to everybody. Just selected audiences. That'll probably get garbled, so I'll repeat: selected audiences. But having to be brutally frank, yes, it's true, I guess I must have been bragging.

[Q] Playboy: It sounds like the kind of bragging a person might do if he didn't believe he could kill--

[A] Gilmore: I told you that was something I always knew. You must think I'm pretty goddamn shallow or forgetful.

[Q] Playboy: Well, why not tell us how you knew? Did you torture or kill pets when you were a kid? Did people see a mean streak in you?

[A] Gilmore: Yeah, there was some talk of it.

[Q] Playboy: Arising from what kind of thing?

[A] Gilmore: Once, when I was about 13, I got into a fight with a kid named Jim. I got angry and beat him half to death--choked him. Jim's dad was a rough-and-tumble fucker, and he just lifted me off Jim and picked Jim up and Jim was gasping for breath and chokin' and hurt-in' and bleedin' a little. Jim's dad asked him if he wanted to go out in the yard and finish it, and Jim backed down in front of his dad, you know. He was beat, physically and mentally. Jim's dad didn't like the fact that his son wouldn't fight anymore. So he just turned on me and told me, "Don't ever come around here again, and leave right now, and I don't ever want to see you again."

[Q] Playboy: Did that make you feel bad about the fight?

[A] Gilmore: I just went out and got on my bike. I didn't say anything. I just got on my bike and left. But Jim's dad looked at me in a way that, a way, well...a grownup shouldn't look at a kid.

[Q] Playboy: Was a fight like that rare or common for you when you were a kid?

[A] Gilmore: That was the most vicious fight I was ever in as a kid.

[Q] Playboy: Did it scare you that you could lose control of yourself?

[A] Gilmore: Scare me? Is that a serious question? It didn't scare me--it scared Jim.

[Q] Playboy: Was that fight what made you aware that you were capable of killing?

[A] Gilmore: Well, yeah, I think so. I don't know.

[Q] Playboy: It was just one of those things you did without thinking?

[A] Gilmore: Maybe I didn't...the feeling I got...I-I remember...it was the way Jim's dad looked at me and told me never to come around.

[Q] Playboy: That's what stays in your mind most about that event?

[A] Gilmore: That and the way that Charley looked at me the next day.

[Q] Playboy: How did Charley look at you?

[A] Gilmore: Like he was feeling things he didn't understand.

[Q] Playboy: How did your parents react when you got into scrapes like that?

[A] Gilmore: My dad wasn't around that much. I guess he was kind of a fugitive. I didn't know that until I was about 21, but I guess he'd done a little time on the chain gang, and then in San Quentin in the Twenties, and sometimes even after I was born, he was runnin' from the law.

[Q] Playboy: Taking the family with him?

[A] Gilmore: Sometimes. He was a rounder, you know? He'd been a circus acrobat, at one time a tightrope walker, and then sometimes he'd just disappear. My mom would tell us, well, he just walked out. The fact was, as I found out later, that he was in jail here and there for things lots of times. So up until the time I was eight, it was all knockabout, and we slept in a lot of train and bus depots.

[Q] Playboy: How did your mother take the trouble you were getting into?

[A] Gilmore: She never liked it. She resented it. She tried to understand the best s-she could.

[Q] Playboy: Even after you started getting into serious trouble?

[A] Gilmore: Her love was always strong, constant and consistent.

[Q] Playboy: Three strange and unsentimental words to describe a mother's love.

[A] Gilmore: I don't think they're strange at all. My mom isn't all that doting and sweet. Maybe, ah, some people's mothers are. Mine, my mother's pretty practical. We're not a real tight sort of emotional family. We don't write to each other all that much. But she was always there. We always had something to eat, we was always well taken care of.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think it upset you in your early life to be dragged around the country by a woman in love with a man who was on the lam?

[A] Gilmore: She stayed with my dad because she loved him.

[Q] Playboy: Loved him more than the kids?

[A] Gilmore: No, goddamn it. She kept the family together. Doesn't that count for something?

[Q] Playboy: How about your father--did he love you, too?

[A] Gilmore: God, I don't know. He was kind of a strange man. He was nearly 50 when I was born--I think that's too goddamn old to be starting a family.

[Q] Playboy: But there were two more sons after you?

[A] Gilmore: Yeah, but I just don't think he liked me. I think he felt this thing. I don't know. I'm not sure. But sometimes I felt that he particularly disliked me. My brother Frank, Dad had a sort of an admiration and respect for. Frank wouldn't cry when he got spanked, so he'd let him alone. And Mike he really loved. My brother Gaylen, I don't know how he felt about Gaylen. But I can say, just about say, that he didn't like me at all.

[Q] Playboy: Did he beat or whip you?

[A] Gilmore: Yeah.... I used to get whippin's with a razor strop a lot. He always...yeah, he favored things like that.

[Q] Playboy: You mentioned that Frank wouldn't cry. Were you quick to cry when the strop came out?

[A] Gilmore: Yeah...ah, man, it seemed like the thing you were supposed to do. Like start smokin' when you're about 12 or 13, because it seems like you're supposed to do that. And I thought, well, I was supposed to cry. I thought maybe that would get me out of the whoopin', but, man, it never did. Finally, I took a cue from Frank and, an...learned to take it. That way, pretty soon, the whole thing dies down better.

[Q] Playboy: What was your relationship with your father at the time of his death?

[A] Gilmore: Oh, just strained. We argued. It was '62 when he died, in case you want to get that fact down.

[Q] Playboy: Where were you at the time?

[A] Gilmore: I was in jail, the Rocky Butte Jail, and I was doing two weeks in the hole, I forget what the hell for--fightin' over some goddamn thing. Anyhow, I was in the hole, and this Lieutenant Cunningham came down, and he said, did you know your dad had cancer? I said, yeah. He said, well, he just died up in Seattle. And I said, all right. And he turned around and walked off. And about a day later, he came down and told me I was going to get to go to the funeral. He took me up to C Tank and I borrowed a razor and some shit from friends and got all cleaned up, and my mom came out with a suit, and then the judge who had me in there refused to sign the order granting permission for me to go. He figured I was an escape risk.

[Q] Playboy: So you didn't get to go.

[A] Gilmore: No, they took me down to the hole and left me there for another eight days or so. I was doing two years on traffic violations.

[Q] Playboy: Two years on traffic violations!

[A] Gilmore: Well, part of 'em was state and part was city. Driving without a license, utterly refusing to get a license, running red lights, all kinds of tickets stacked up that I wouldn't pay.

[Q] Playboy: Actually, according to your record, you were picked up in Vancouver.

[A] Gilmore: No, I was in jail.

[Q] Playboy: Weren't you really on the road to see your father on his deathbed when you were arrested for drunk driving and contributing to the delinquency of a minor?

[A] Gilmore: Oh, yeah, right! In Vancouver. Yeah....

[Q] Playboy: You keep referring to your killings, and even your own execution, as strokes of fate--"maybe it was meant to be." Does a lapse or failure like not getting to your father's bedside make you feel bad, or do you think you just weren't meant to get there?

[A] Gilmore: Shit. I got busted for a faulty taillight. Goin' through Vancouver. They impounded my car and all that shit. And, yeah, I felt bad, I would've like to saw him....

[Q] Playboy: How did your mother take your father's death?

[A] Gilmore: She's strong. But my dad didn't have any insurance or anything. She didn't have any money. She lost a lot of things she loved.

[Q] Playboy: Did it hurt you that she lost them because of your dad, or because you were in jail and couldn't help her?

[A] Gilmore: My dad should have provided better.

[Q] Playboy: How about you as a father? If you could escape and disappear, do you think you could live peacefully with Nicole and her kids?

[A] Gilmore: I think so, now. Yeah. I love Peabody and Sunny.

[Q] Playboy: Can you picture yourself as a good father?

[A] Gilmore: Yeah, I can.

[Q] Playboy: Then how could you encourage Nicole to join you in suicide?

[A] Gilmore: Oh, fuck you.

[Q] Playboy: Well, Gary, it's pretty obvious from your letters and from the fact that you both attempted suicide on the same day in November, that she was trying to comply with your urgings that she meet you on the other side.

[A] Gilmore: I never said any of that shit. That's the National Enquirer version you've been readin'.

[Q] Playboy: Don't forget what you said to her in the letters--"Come along, kid," and other lines like that. You don't actually tell her to kill herself, but you sure don't let the subject drop.

[A] Gilmore: Yeah, like her mother thinks I'm "Mansonesque," that I got a hold on Nicole like Manson had on his family or some goddamn thing. She's forgetting one big difference between me and Charley Manson: I do my own killing....

[Q] Playboy: But we're talking about Nicole killing herself. After writing her so many encouraging words about suicide, why did you get so angry with her for attempting to kill herself before you got around to it?

[A] Gilmore: I wanted to be there first to catch her. Why should she commit suicide before I die? Listen, I wanted to go first, that's all, because I think I'm a little stronger, and she might get lost out there. I know I ain't. I know I can go where I want. Some things you know. I wanted to be there to catch her when she came through the rye.

[Q] Playboy: You think it's easier to go first or last?

[A] Gilmore: Dead's dead.

[Q] Playboy: Well, if she's going to die to be with you, don't you want her to do it on her own terms, wherever or however she can manage?

[A] Gilmore: Dead's dead.

[Q] Playboy: It doesn't matter?

[A] Gilmore: Well, yeah, I'd like it to be a gentle, soft thing for her.

[Q] Playboy: Have you arranged a way?

[A] Gilmore: No. In fact, I-I...if I talk to her before I'm executed, I'm not going to ask her to do any particular thing. I may even encourage her to go on living and raise her kids. Ah, but, well, I don't want anyb-body else to be able to have her, and that's a big concern to me.

[Q] Playboy: So you're on the horns of a dilemma....

[A] Gilmore: You might say that it's giving me a little pause.

[Q] Playboy: She does have a responsibility to her children.

[A] Gilmore: Aw, no more responsibility than anybody has for their kids. Listen, your kids come through you, but they're not really of you. Nicole knew that before I ever met her. I mean...everybody is an individual little soul....

[Q] Playboy: Do you think her kids could get along as well without her?

[A] Gilmore: Them kids are famous, or...semifamous, and there's money, and, ah, there wasn't before, but, w-well, I guess this sounds like a cold-blooded thing, but I'm not really overconcerned about them kids. They're not going to starve to death. [Sighs] I'm concerned about Nicole and myself.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think there might be an element of cruelty in your love for Nicole?

[A] Gilmore: Oh, there might be. There might be an element of tenderness in there, too, if you look close enough.

[Q] Playboy: But if you wished her well, and wished well for her children, wouldn't it be kinder to tell her to forget you, get over you, and find a man who could do good for herself and her children?

[A] Gilmore: I'm not even going to answer that.

[Q] Playboy: Is it possible that you're trying to make Nicole do to her kids what your mother did to you? Your relatives say there was a time when you were small when your mother went through a phase of being very cruel to you.

[A] Gilmore: No, that's not true. Absolutely not.

[Q] Playboy: You think your mother was always loving and always did all she could for you?

[A] Gilmore: I think so.

[Q] Playboy: Even when she was on the run with your dad, making you kids move so often.

[A] Gilmore: [Long pause] I think so.

[Q] Playboy: Did she ever consider giving you up?

[A] Gilmore: No, never. She never did, she never....I'm sure she wouldn't have considered that.

[Q] Playboy: Yet that's what you're asking of Nicole.

[A] Gilmore: I'm not asking anything of Nicole. I just don't want her to be with anyone else. I want to be back with her.

[Q] Playboy: But Nicole still has a chance. She's only 20. She's got a good lawyer to help her get straightened out when she comes out of the hospital.

[A] Gilmore: What's he like?

[Q] Playboy: The lawyer? He's not too old, kind of bashful....

[A] Gilmore: He better not make no passes at Nicole.

[Q] Playboy: No, he wouldn't do that. He's a straight arrow.

[A] Gilmore: I'm worried about her. She's probably getting as much mail as I am. You know, I accidently got one of her letters. It was addressed to Nicole Barrett, Utah State Prison, and they gave it to me. And some goddamn son of a bitch in New York was writin' to ask her for $1200 and he wanted to marry her and....

[Q] Playboy: What is Nicole to you, anyhow? You hear that she's got a good lawyer and your only concern is that he might make a pass at her. You're getting thousands of letters from lovesick, lunatic girls, and you're furious that she should get one from some nitwit in New York. You fight with her and drive her away when you're free to love her, but as soon as you're in jail, she's your angel, your elf, and all the other things you call her.

[A] Gilmore: Well, King Solomon said, "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity," and I used to believe that until I met Nicole. From her I found out there was more to life than fucking vanity. There's love and duty. Period, stop, as they say in Mail-grams.

[Q] Playboy: So you don't want to answer?

[A] Gilmore: Try me next week.

[Q] Playboy: OK, but just answer this: You must have written her more than 2000 pages since you were arrested in July, and your letters are filled with sayings, quoted poems, little lessons, cute drawings, observations--all your stories, wishes, lies and dreams; but where in all those pages is there one word that indicates a sense of "love and duty" in your feelings for her? Where do you thank her for her love or indicate that she ever did anything for you?

[A] Gilmore: Well, she did: She got me re-interested in art, for one thing. At one time, I almost quit drawing. I'd become pretty disinterested and decided there were too many pictures already in the world, and if you painted or drew more, you'd just have to put up more walls to hang 'em on. But Nicole got me interested again. If I'd stayed out, I'd a mellowed out eventually. I would have done some more paintings.

[Q] Playboy: Once again, you define Nicole strictly in terms of Gary. Maybe she's just not real to you.

[A] Gilmore: Nicole's an intelligent girl. She's sensitive. When you're with her, she understands you. I think she's the only person who's ever understood me.

[Q] Playboy: Not counting your mother.

[A] Gilmore: Yeah, that's right.

[Q] Playboy: Has it struck you as the least bit odd that you keep praising your mother for keeping your family together, and then, in the next breath, you're persuading Nicole to abandon her children to a "gentle, soft death" with you?

[A] Gilmore: I'm just trying to get the truth out. If it sounds cold or whatever, let other people make the judgments.

[Q] Playboy: It does sound a little cold, but maybe you're just steeling yourself against the fact that it's Christmas.

[A] Gilmore: Maybe.

[Q] Playboy: When was the last time you were out of jail at Christmas?

[A] Gilmore: Nineteen-sixty-one.

[Q] Playboy: A long time ago.

[A] Gilmore: Yeah. It's like what W. C. Fields said: "All things being equal, I'd rather not spend Christmas in prison." [Laughs] W. C. Fields said a lot of cool shit.

(Early January)

[A] Gilmore: Listen to this shit: [Reading from a newspaper] "Attorneys opposing the scheduled execution of Gary Gilmore"--blah-blah-blah--"will meet to determine which strategy"--blah-blah, OK, listen: "The attorneys represent the A.C.L.U., the NAACP and other death-row inmates." It goes on, let's see, blah-blah, OK, now: "The A.C.L.U. attorney said there may still be a chance that Mr. Gilmore will flip-flop and change his mind." OK, now you know that term flip-flop, man, it has a certain jailhouse connotation that this idiot A.C.L.U. lawyer has got to know, what with all the clients he must have doin' time. It means a guy who's a punk, a guy who sucks dicks and things like that. That's what flip-flop means in jailhouse jargon, and you never hear it anywhere else.

[A] So when my lawyers come today, I'm giving them an open letter to release. I've just got to answer some of the bull-shit I keep readin' in the papers. And I'm going to say that as far as flip-flop goes, the A.C.L.U. is tops. They take one stand on abortions, which are actually executions of innocent souls--they're all for that--and then they take an opposite stand on capital punishment. And the NAACP, ain't nothin' you can say to discourage that Uncle Tom outfit. I told 'em before, in my last letter, "NAACP, look, boy, I am a white man! Get that through your Brillo-pad heads, boy!" But nothin' discourages 'em, I guess. Do any of these people have any true convictions, or have they just let their thing about me develop into a personal matter?

[Q] Playboy: Aren't you the one who's taking it personally?

[A] Gilmore: It's my life, goddamn it. It's my case. It's my sentence.

[Q] Playboy: But all the others on death row have lives and cases, too. Aren't you at all concerned about the effect your execution might have on them--almost 400 people?

[A] Gilmore: If I thought my death would cause the death of these other guys on death row, yes, I would probably back up on it. In fact, I made two valid, not bullshit, suicide attempts, and part of my thinking there was not only to speed it up and get it over with but also to do it in a way so these other guys would be left with their same arguments and me dyin' wouldn't cause what they call this snowball effect. But it's still my case. It's not their goddamn case. They can appeal their cases. I accept mine. They got their-selves in trouble. It's their business.

[Q] Playboy: But you've called them sniveling cowards.

[A] Gilmore: Yeah, well I put that a little strongly to offend them. I don't know if they're physical cowards or moral cowards, or what they are. Apparently, they're just desperately afraid of me being executed. Goddamn it, my execution ain't gonna affect them, because they'll stay alive on the merits of their own fucking cases. I don't really, I-I just don't understand those sons a bitches....

[Q] Playboy: Or care about them?

[A] Gilmore: No. I don't give a shit. I'm going to say that, man. Goddamn it, I'd (continued on page 130)Playboy Interview(continued from page 92) pull up on my case if I thought it would affect them guys. But because I get executed, they're not going to get executed. They're going to meet whatever fate awaits them. I attempted suicide twice. How much do I owe 'em?

[Q] Playboy: If you had the other condemned men in mind when you attempted suicide, that's very noble. But don't you think you've compromised your wish to die "with dignity and grace" by trying to sneak out softly on drugs?

[A] Gilmore: That's a possibility. But also, I was anxious to get it over. You know I'm an impatient guy. I'm impatient about this, too. I don't like layin' around in here till the 17th, and I thought that if I did commit suicide, then all these other death-row guys that are cryin' about, screamin' about, them bein' killed because I'm bein' killed, they wouldn't have anything to talk about.

[Q] Playboy: Haven't you made your executioners feel they're just collaborating in your suicide?

[A] Gilmore: I don't really care what they feel. I haven't made them feel anything. They can feel what they want. When they get done, they can go drink some beer and talk about it.

[Q] Playboy: You don't give a shit.

[A] Gilmore: Man, how could I? They can drink beer and talk about it and then go deer hunting next season and shoot something else.

[Q] Playboy: So you do feel there's a big distinction between you and the other condemned men.

[A] Gilmore: It's pretty obvious, isn't it? I accept the sentence. I figure if a sucker don't wanna get hisself capital punished, he shouldn't get the death penalty put on him. I mean, any damn fool that's stupid enough to get sentenced to death, what the hell's he got to snivel about after-ward? I'd like to put out this open letter and maybe plan some kind of legal counterattack against these assholes.

[Q] Playboy: Why are they assholes just because they want to stay alive and beat the cases against them?

[A] Gilmore: Because they're buttin' in on my life. I mean, I did kill those two guys, and what the hell, was anybody bein' unfair to me, the judge, society or anybody else? No. And now the people that're tryin' to stop it are buttin' in on my life, and they have no right to do that. I think it's a sin to butt in on somebody's life.

[Q] Playboy: Coming from you, that's an odd statement. Didn't you butt in on Jensen and Bushnell?

[A] Gilmore: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: You say you accept your sentence, but you seem to deny that it's just, maybe because you refuse to show contrition. In all your statements and remarks, we detect no hint of remorse that you took two men's lives away from them and their families. Why?

[A] Gilmore: Because it's a private and personal thing. I'm not saying I don't feel bad about it, but I ain't gonna tell you how bad I feel about it, and I ain't gonna ask you to forgive me, and I ain't gonna ask the priest, either: It's something I'm willing to give my life for, and I'm willing to meet whatever consequences or whatever is coming to me for it.

[Q] Playboy: By that answer, you indicate that there really is remorse.

[A] Gilmore: Man, I know what I did and I know it was wrong and unreasonable and totally senseless.

[Q] Playboy: You're sorry--but it's personal. Is refusing to say you're sorry in public some kind of point of pride?

[A] Gilmore: No. It's a personal thing, goddamn it.

[Q] Playboy: You're saying now that the killings were wrong, unreasonable, senseless. But not long ago, you said, "If you kill somebody and get away with it, that's cool." Did you mean that?

[A] Gilmore: Yeah.

[Q] Playboy: Well, if you hadn't shot yourself in the hand and been caught for those killings, do you think they would have stayed cool in your mind?

[A] Gilmore: I don't know.

[Q] Playboy: Wouldn't it have bothered you to realize what you'd done?

[A] Gilmore: It did bother me. But I could've, ah, well, I w-wouldn't have turned myself in or anything.

[Q] Playboy: Maybe we don't understand what you mean by cool.

[A] Gilmore: Lookit, if you do something wrong, you're supposed to try to get away with it. And if you do get away with it, that's cool.

[Q] Playboy: What's cool? You just finished saying that the killings bothered you.

[A] Gilmore: Ahhh, man, Jees, I don't mean that you've done something real cool by murdering somebody. I don't mean cool like Fonzie's cool. But if you do it, man, try to get away with it. I think in any frame of reference, if you do something wrong I think you, ah, you know, expect y-yourself to try to get away with it.

[Q] Playboy: Somehow we get the feeling that your last thought before the bullets strike will be, "I got away with it!" Maybe capital punishment for you is the ultimate escape. The eternal recidivist won't be going back to jail.

[A] Gilmore: Yeah, that's one way of lookin' at it.

[Q] Playboy: If you'd merely robbed Jensen and Bushnell, instead of killing them, you'd be looking at another ten or twenty years. That's a fate worse than death in your terms, isn't it?

[A] Gilmore: Lookit, man, I told you that robbing them didn't have anything to do with it. We're creatures of habit, and my habit was to do things like that. I don't like what I did. I thought about it, I-I, I've realized that eventually somehow it'd come back to me, maybe not in this life but sometime. You always meet yourself. And I figured, well, when the time comes, I'll just accept it.

[Q] Playboy: Accept what? Meeting Jensen and Bushnell in the next life?

[A] Gilmore: If that happens, I'll just--well, they got a right to be mad. I'm not gonna, ah, run from them. I'm...they got a right to be goddamn mad. I mean, you can't escape from some things. You can't escape from anything, really.

[Q] Playboy: At your trial, the prosecutor said you had learned one lesson from your last armed-robbery conviction in Oregon: Don't leave any witnesses.

[A] Gilmore: That's his thing for the jury. That's his words to the jury. That's the way he tries to impress them.

[Q] Playboy: Was getting rid of the witnesses part of the motive?

[A] Gilmore: Man, they didn't know me. They would've been able to give a description of me, but I've robbed people before and got away with it.

[Q] Playboy: Oh? When?

[A] Gilmore: When I was out on escape in '72, I did a couple of things.

[Q] Playboy: Not big enough to travel very far on, apparently.

[A] Gilmore: Well, I got $18,000 from a Safeway store once, when I was 18.

[Q] Playboy: Have you scored anywhere near that since?

[A] Gilmore: No.

[Q] Playboy: So you were a better robber as a kid than you've been as a man.

[A] Gilmore: Yeah, I was a more successful thief then.

[Q] Playboy: So the prosecutor was off course, as you'd say.

[A] Gilmore: Completely.

[Q] Playboy: Gibbs says you told him that the idea of killing Jensen came to you because you were with April, and by involving her in a murder, you'd have something to hold over Nicole.

[A] Gilmore: Gibbs said that?

[Q] Playboy: Yes.

(continued on page 174)Playboy Interview(continued from page 130)

[A] Gilmore: He's lying. That sorry son of a bitch just made that up.

[Q] Playboy: It's an imaginative lie.

[A] Gilmore: Give the fucker credit, then. He's got imagination.

[Q] Playboy: You never told him anything like that?

[A] Gilmore: No.

[Q] Playboy: You told us that April knew nothing about your killing Jensen. But Brenda says she was scared to death when you stopped by her house after you left Cuckoo's Nest. She says April was almost incoherent with fear and sat staring into the corner of the room, babbling....

[A] Gilmore: Brenda's a dramatic woman.

[Q] Playboy: OK, but she also says that April told her, "Gary really scares me." And when Brenda challenged you about it, you said, "April, tell Brenda that I didn't try to rape you or molest you or anything," and that April then said, "Oh, no, you know I didn't mean that, but it really scares me when you do that stuff, I really get afraid of you." And when Brenda asked her what stuff, she said she couldn't say.

[A] Gilmore: Ah, shit. You got any more like that? I told you enough times already: April didn't know a goddamn thing. She wasn't involved. She was just shook up from seein' Cuckoo's Nest.

[Q] Playboy: How about later, when you and April went to the motel? Didn't you try to get her into bed with you?

[A] Gilmore: I'm not going to dignify that with an answer.

[Q] Playboy: You wouldn't do that?

[A] Gilmore: What do you think?

[A] [In September, April, by then a patient at Timpanogos Community Mental Health Center, told doctors that Gilmore had "busted the side of my panties" trying to undress her.]

[Q] Playboy: Your code of conduct seems very strict when it comes to sex. You even seem a little prudish.

[A] Gilmore: Yeah, probably. Compared to today's standards. I've been locked up, see, while the sexual revolution revolted, or whatever, and I'm not exactly a youngster, not a spring chicken anymore. I'm 36, and I think I'm kind of oriented in the Fifties. Because the Fifties, that's the last time I really made any move of any kind, you know. Man, I was just about like any other kid growin' up in the Fifties. You found out what you could on your own and passed it on to your friends. You'd talk about broads, and exaggerate and lie, and embroider the fucking truth. If you copped a feel, man, you'd really done somethin', and if you swore around a broad, she acted shocked.

[Q] Playboy: And you still respect those limits?

[A] Gilmore: Well, one time when I was in about the seventh grade, this girl was standing on top of a table, decorating the room for some fuckin' holiday, and I just stuck my hand up under her dress and took a good shot at her ass, and she went fuckin' insane, enraged, man. Nowadays, a girl would be flattered if you did that to her, I guess.

[Q] Playboy: It still involves the use of force, though.

[A] Gilmore: Yeah, maybe, if you want to look at it that way.

[Q] Playboy: You find the use of force in sex objectionable?

[A] Gilmore: Yeah, I do.

[Q] Playboy: What other sexual behavior strikes you as objectionable?

[A] Gilmore: Well, when you start bringin' in the wild animals. [Laughs] And I find them closet queens objectionable, because they don't have the courage of their convictions, and, ah, them real blatant, simperin', whimperin' sissies, well, they're bitter, lonely frustrated people. There's some pathos there. I don't know if objectionable is the word. I find that sad.

[Q] Playboy: In prison, though, don't men who aren't homosexuals sometimes resort to each other for sex?

[A] Gilmore: I don't think so, not by and large. If a guy's a faggot, he's a faggot. And if he's in the joint, it's gonna come out, and if he's on the street, it's gonna come out. Take these goddamn questions down to some gay bar. I don't know that much about it.

[Q] Playboy: Can you tell us about your sexual encounters in prison?

[A] Gilmore: I haven't had any.

[Q] Playboy: Not in 19 years?

[A] Gilmore: Not in 19 years.

[Q] Playboy: This whole conversation upsets you. You are prudish.

[A] Gilmore: Shit. Fuck. Guess I'm just a goddamn prude. Maybe it's because I'm Irish and kind of puritanistic.

[Q] Playboy: You'd rather think about killing than sex.

[A] Gilmore: Yeah, that's my Irishness. You know us Irish are crazy killers. Go to Northern Ireland and you'll see what I mean. You can't buy no Playboys up there, but you can goddamn sure get killed.

[Q] Playboy: You're a man who could take two people's lives, attempt suicide, sink a hammer in a man's skull--yet when it comes to sex, you say there are all sorts of things you could never do, right down to dating a buddy's sister. What are some other things you could never do?

[A] Gilmore: Oh, I couldn't snitch on anybody. I couldn't rat on anybody. I don't think I could torture anybody.

[Q] Playboy: Isn't forcing somebody to lie down on the floor and shooting him in the back of the head torture?

[A] Gilmore: I'd say it was a very short torture.

[Q] Playboy: But how could any crime be worse than taking a person's life?

[A] Gilmore: Well, you could alter somebody's life so that the quality of it wouldn't be what it could've been. I mean, you could torture 'em, you could blind 'em, you could maim 'em, you could cripple 'em, you could fuck 'em up so badly that their life would be a misery for the rest of it. And for me, that's worse than killing somebody. Like, if you kill somebody, it's over for them. I-I believe in karma and reincarnation and shit like that, and if you kill somebody, it could be that you just assume their karmic debts. If you kill them, t-t-thrr-thereby you might be relieving them of a debt. But I think to make somebody go on living in a lessened state of existence, I think that could be worse than killin' 'em.

[A] Another thing, I think some forms of behavior modification, the irreversible forms, like lobotomies, and, ah, Prolixin, a drug that can have real damaging effects on a person--in fact, there may be people around who have been fucked up by it, badly, man--well, I won't say doin' that shit to a person is worse than murder, but you gotta give it some thought.

[Q] Playboy: Did you have to take much Prolixin?

[A] Gilmore: Man, they really fucked me over with that shit. A normal dose, as I understand it, is not to exceed two C.C.S a month. They were giving me 16 C.C.S a month. They damn near killed me with that shit.

[Q] Playboy: How long did they give it to you?

[A] Gilmore: About three months. Listen to that goddamn son of a bitch down there poundin'. How would you like to listen to that half the night?

[Q] Playboy: Couldn't stand it.

[A] Gilmore: Motherfuckers! Anyway, those prison psychiatrists will pull any shit to get those drugs into you. A lot of guys, they'd go to the shrinks and try to get some Seconal or yellow jackets so they could sleep or whatever. And the shrinks would trick 'em into tryin' this dangerous experimental shit they always had ready. "Hey, man, let me lay this new trip on ya!" The bastards. I didn't get it that way. I got it forcibly. I was handcuffed to a bed and they shot me with the shit.

[Q] Playboy: They'd just come in and shoot it into you?

[A] Gilmore: Yeah, twice a week. They were fuckin' me up bad with it. My mother came to see me and she couldn't stand it. She started cryin'. My little brother Gaylen--and he was dyin' at the time, he only lived a few months longer--he came down and raised all kinds of shit with the warden, and we got lawyers, and finally it stopped.

[Q] Playboy: How long were you chained to your rack?

[A] Gilmore: Well, I was chained down on four or five separate occasions. The longest was for two weeks. It wasn't chains. It was handcuffs, one on each hand, and leg cuffs, one on each ankle, with rings going over the bed, and you there spread-eagle. The last couple of times I got chained down, I made 'em beat me up first. I just decided I'd fight instead of just takin' it. So I just started swingin' at 'em. I lost them fights, but I felt a little better. The first or second time, they were knockin' me out with some goddamn thing, and I'd wake up and be so pissed off that I'd start scream-in', and they'd come in and knock me out with the needle again. Finally, the fuckin' doctor comes in, and I said, man, I'll play this cool. And I asked him, how 'bout lettin' me up, doc? And I said, when I was raisin' hell the other day, I wasn't myself. And he says, if you weren't yourself, who were you? So I says, come here a second, doc, and he kind of creeps over a step or two, and I coughed up a lunger and spit it right in his face.

[Q] Playboy: What happened then?

[A] Gilmore: Well, the two guards that were there punched me out. One of 'em choked me. He reached down with his thumb and forefinger and dug into my esophagus and pulled the pillow out from under my head and pushed it down tight over my nose and mouth. I thought the goddamn fool was gonna kill me. His lip was twitchin', man, and he had a real sadistic look on his face. He said, "I just don't like you, Gilmore," only he said it a lot meaner.

[Q] Playboy: Sounds like the old Dr. Fell syndrome.

[A] Gilmore: Well, man, they had reason to dislike me. I gave 'em plenty reason.

[Q] Playboy: And they expressed their dislike with Prolixin, with beatings and chokings? Or were they trying to cope with someone who was becoming unmanageable?

[A] Gilmore: I can't answer that properly, because my thoughts are ahead of my verbal ability at the moment. They've just brought me some cold food on a goddamn paper plate. I mean, I think I'm entitled to a goddamn tray. They say that they don't take anything away from you until you've abused the privilege. Last night they gave me a tray. This morning they gave me a tray. Now at noon they tell me I have to eat off paper plates. And I've never done anything with the trays. It's that inconsistent policy that gets to you. Fuck! Excuse me a minute. [Falls silent for several minutes] OK. Let's go.

[Q] Playboy: OK, what else was done to you by the psychiatrists--because you couldn't be handled, because they didn't like you--for whatever reason? Were you given electric-shock treatments?

[A] Gilmore: Yeah, a series of six. I'll tell you why I received them: I got drunk and tore up a cell while I was in the hole.

[Q] Playboy: Did any prison doctor ever discuss psychosurgery?

[A] Gilmore: No. I'm hip to all the behavior-modification techniques. There are all kinds, and I'm just naturally adverse to anything like that. But I never was threatened with psychosurgery.

[Q] Playboy: Why was none of this brought out at your trial?

[A] Gilmore: 'Cause my attorneys said it was no defense.

[Q] Playboy: But with the kind of heavy therapy you were given in Oregon, there must be some reason to believe that you were out of control....

[A] Gilmore: Aw, man...there was just no defense. I killed those guys.

[Q] Playboy: At your trial, though, you expressed your shock and amazement that the defense rested without calling a single witness. You seemed surprised....

[A] Gilmore: Surprised, yes, because the two lawyers defending me didn't let me know there would be nothing, not even a meager defense. I went into the trial thinking I had a good insanity defense, but the doctors didn't concur. The bastards would only talk to me under conditions that were impossible and, well, adverse to me. They'd talk to me with a posse of about 40 patients sitting in the room, like group therapy, man, and I wouldn't talk to 'em under those conditions, and I just blew my whole defense away. It wasn't fair to me, but, fuck--I accept it.

[Q] Playboy: There was no psychiatrist who might have helped you?

[A] Gilmore: Not according to my lawyers.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever been seen by a psychiatrist who seemed to be trying to help you?

[A] Gilmore: I don't know. There's one here...but he seems a little too enthusiastic for me. I talked to him before my trial, and, you know, he's one of the ones who start calling you Gary right away, and...you know, man, kind of seems like a backslapper or something.

[Q] Playboy: So you don't trust him?

[A] Gilmore: Trust him? You serious?

[Q] Playboy: You've had shock. You've had Prolixin. You've spent four years in the hole. Guards and cops have kicked out all but two of your teeth. And even with all this, they couldn't handle you in Oregon and had to send you to the heaviest prison in the country. Marion--the new Alcatraz. Was that because you always chose to do your time the hard way? Or are there aspects of your behavior that are beyond your control?

[A] Gilmore: [Laughing] I gotta pick A or B, huh? Multiple choice? [Laughs] Ah, man, I'm just a fuck-up. I just get in trouble. Damn. I guess it's just my habit to wind up in the worst kind of shit. Lookit, man, they got so many rules in these goddamn places...it's s-so damn easy to.... Look, I just can't abide by all these goddamned rules, man. Once I-I went for so long as a year without even gettin' one write-up in Oregon, completely stayin' out of trouble. I guess I can do it if I want to, but you know, after you get known as a troublemaker, ah, it's so easy to keep gettin' in trouble, 'cause all them guards, man, like, they put your picture on the hot list up in the fuckin' guards' lounge, and it's "watch this guy," and "suspected of doing this and that," all the time, man. And some guards take a personal dislike to you, and you can feel it, you can see it in the way they look at you, how they antagonize you in little ways that'll make you blow up, you know, and you can get a lot of write-ups that way. You get frustrated because you're in a s-situation where you're always wrong...and never right. Because you're the prisoner. And they got the hammer.

[Q] Playboy: Then why not keep your head down and not call attention to yourself?

[A] Gilmore: Because once you get a lot of write-ups, there's no way you can be inconspicuous, and in Oregon, I must have had at least 70. They get after your case, man, and out of that 70, at least four or five must have been bum beefs.

[Q] Playboy: Did we hear you right, four or five out of 70? Isn't that about as much justice as anyone can expect, inside jail or out of it?

[A] Gilmore:They're charged with being honest, I'm not. It's their duty to be honest and fair. They aren't supposed to bum-rap me. It's my prerogative to fuck up if I want, 'cause I'm the crook.

[Q] Playboy: Is that the same philosophy you subscribed to when you went home to Provo?

[A] Gilmore: Fuck you.

[Q] Playboy: No, seriously, think about it. The whole country has heard you say that you want to accept your death sentence with dignity and grace. So why couldn't you muster a little dignity and grace when you went back to Provo, where there were people who loved you, instead of frightening them by doing everything you could to show that you were a confirmed, habitual, highly dangerous criminal who was going to get himself and probably everybody else in bad trouble as soon as he could?

[A] Gilmore: You're tryin' to bring me a little bit of anger, right? A little bit of anger here so you can X-ray me better, and maybe get me to react a little more spontaneously, perhaps. That it?

[Q] Playboy: Here's just one example: Brenda introduces you to a girl, and the girl goes out with you, and the next night she's busy, so you smash the wind-shield of her car.

[A] Gilmore: All right. I broke the girl's windshield. It was a chickenshit thing to do. I had no real reason. I felt bad about it and still do. She was a nice chick. I guess I just wasn't her type.

[Q] Playboy: Another example, then: You're hardly home when you decide to take off for Idaho Falls. Vern pleads--he doesn't want you to lose your parole. But you take off anyway, and hitchhike, and wind up in a car with a "fruiter," as you would say, and he makes some kind of move toward you, or says the wrong thing, and you come close to killing the man. Why couldn't you restrain yourself just a little? Wasn't that a completely inappropriate response to what was, after all, merely an annoying sexual gesture?

[A] Gilmore: I don't really think that was an inappropriately strong reaction to that kind of shit. But, OK, here's your answer. I didn't hitchhike. I stole a car down the street from Vern's. I never told anybody about that. I left the car in Idaho Falls, because I was gettin' leery about drivin' it any longer, afraid of gettin' stopped. So this guy in a bar offered me a ride. And when he started that shit, I just unloaded on him. Apparently, he was pretty well known to the cops. Because when they stopped us, when I was tryin' to get him to the hospital, hopin' I could just leave him there and walk away, the cops just held me overnight and the next day let me go. So I figured they knew what was happenin'.

[Q] Playboy: We're trying to understand your capacity to control yourself....

[A] Gilmore: I can control myself pretty well....

[Q] Playboy: Pretty well?

[A] Gilmore: Well, you try and live under these fuckin' situations. Let's see you put up with it for three fuckin' days. Can you hear that loud, fuckin', goddamn noise? Jesus!

[Q] Playboy: But there were situations on the outside in which you could have controlled yourself.

[A] Gilmore: I wasn't used to livin' on the fuckin' outside, man. You're locked up for 12 and a half years and, ah...go out and, ah...expect to im-immediately adjust to the shit. You're thinkin', Jees, there's a subconscious thing that, ah...governs the way you act, and you know you shouldn't. [Long pause]

[Q] Playboy: But did you have the capacity--

[A] Gilmore: Look, man, I mean, I'm not wrong over every goddamn thing, you know. Every fuckin' thing that comes up. Sometimes things are other people's faults. What are you arguing with me about it for?

[Q] Playboy: We'd just like to know--

[A] Gilmore: You think I have the answers for everything? You ask me a question and then you're not satisfied with my fuckin' answer, man. I'm not the goddamn almanac, you know.

[Q] Playboy: Let's go at it a different way. You told us the story of how Nicole pulled a gun on you the day before you killed Jensen. And you told how the loss of her resulted in a seething rage that you could release only through killing two strangers. Another way of looking at it might be that it wasn't rage at all--it was just humiliation. You couldn't stand the idea that a little 20-year-old girl could back down Gary Gilmore with a tiny .22.

[A] Gilmore: It was a magnum, motherfucker. [Laughs] You get shot with a .22 magnum and it'll put a hole in you like a .45. I told you that I didn't think the gun was loaded. As a matter of fact, man, I just stood there for about three or four minutes and told her to go ahead and shoot me if she wanted to. She told me to get away from her car. I wasn't gonna get away from it until I felt like it. I didn't think the goddamn gun was loaded. Fuck!

[Q] Playboy: Do you think Nicole would have had the nerve to pull it if it wasn't?

[A] Gilmore: Goddamn right she would've. If she wanted to. She finally put it in her purse, and I didn't go over and do anything to her then, either.

[Q] Playboy: Well, if you could restrain yourself then, why take it out on two innocent--

[A] Gilmore: I don't know, man. I don't know. Just the habit of violence, maybe.

[Q] Playboy: You always speak of "habit" when we get around to talking of your crimes. Could this be a sly way of saying you're a junkie, a trouble junkie? Could it be that the impulsiveness of your behavior is not an impulse toward crime but an impulse toward punishment?

[A] Gilmore: I've thought of that. Maybe it's true. There's a term, institutionalized. Nobody wants to admit, n-nobody admits to being institutionalized. It means being so used to prison that no other way of life is possible anymore. It's a terrible thing to believe about yourself. But lock a motherfucker up for half his life and, well...it would have to breed some kind of habit. Perhaps a habit of return.

[Q] Playboy: Which might explain why you shot yourself in the hand....

[A] Gilmore: That was a goddamn accident! Nobody believes that, huh?

[Q] Playboy: It's like something out of Mac-beth to shoot the murderous hand.

[A] Gilmore: I told you I took precautions not to get caught.

[Q] Playboy: Like calling Brenda....

[A] Gilmore: I didn't know Brenda was going to betray me.

[Q] Playboy: No? What else could she do? You had everybody who knew you terrified.

[A] Gilmore: OK, think what you want, say what you want, print what you want after I'm dead. I just ain't gonna go for this psychological bullshit.

[Q] Playboy: Why not, if it's based on the wish to understand?

[A] Gilmore: I'll answer that after I have a little coffee. [Silence] Shit.

[Q] Playboy: You OK?

[A] Gilmore: Yeah.

[Q] Playboy: How do you explain the fact that the first thing on your mind after you were arrested for the Bushnell murder was getting through to Brenda and telling her, "Be sure and tell Mom"?

[A] Gilmore: I'm gonna answer that right now. It was Brenda's idea. I agreed, reluctantly. She insisted. She seemed eager.

[Q] Playboy: Whether it's "psychological bull-shit" or not, it's difficult to believe the murders didn't have something to do with how you were treated as a child.

[A] Gilmore: I swear to God that I cannot recall--and I have a terrific memory--I cannot recall my mom ever hitting me, or even spanking me. She always loved and believed in me. Fuck what everybody in the family says. I have a beautiful mother. [Louder] I have a beautiful mother. I repeated that because of all the goddamn noise in the background.

[Q] Playboy: Then why not make things easier for your mother by at least expressing some remorse, or fighting for your life....

[A] Gilmore: Aw, man, join the writ club. You can appeal a thing like this for years, and you'll still go down in the end. Even if I got the goddamn case thrown out, they'd just convict me on the other and I'd be right back in this miserable son of a bitch again. Look, man, I'm not dumb. I know I could have taken a stance of utter remorse, and started read-in' the Bible, and started preachin', and with the money I had there for a while, the publicity I was gettin', I could've hired Clarence Darrow, if he were around [Laughs], or Melvin Belli...but I'm just sick and tired. I'm leadin' a bad life this time around and, ah, if I did get out, I-I would probably get back in trouble even right now. I'm the same goddamn person. What I'm saying is, well, man, I just don't want to go through it all again. I don't want to mess with the law anymore.

(Evening, January 14)

[A] Gilmore: What are the ethics involved if I reneged on the donation of my eyes to the Lions Club? I mean, they get eyes all the time, don't they? Christ! I got a letter last night from a man, he's 90 years old and he wants my eyes. I hate to refuse somebody a thing like that, but I think it would be better to give them to somebody younger. A man 90 years old ain't gonna live a hell of a lot longer, and there are young blind people in the world. You think my ethics are OK here?

[Q] Playboy: Absolutely.

[A] Gilmore: The Lions Club Eye Bank is a good institution, I guess, but I'd just rather give 'em to an individual, maybe a young person. And then I got this letter from a doctor, and inside was a newspaper clipping, says, "Effort begins to get Cornea for ogdenite." And this guy's only 20. I don't want to be harsh about it, but it seems better to give 'em to the young guy. I think I'll just get the lawyers to call that doctor and, ah, just tell him simply: "You got 'em! Gary Gilmore." Or maybe we can give him one eye and give one to another. I don't know.

[Q] Playboy: It sounds like you've been giving these matters lots of thought.

[A] Gilmore: Whatever's fair, man. I mean, why not? Maybe there's something else somebody could use. I don't think the heart will be usable. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Your attitude is pretty amazing. You've got only 72 hours to live.

[A] Gilmore: You get right down to it, don't you? [Laughs] But, see, the one big advantage I got is that I know when I'm gonna die. That way, I can take care of everything beforehand. So I've made all the arrangements to have this and that taken care of. The pituitary's goin' to a cousin--they can't transplant it, but they'll use it in their research and give you credit. And I was just told today that the liver and kidney are easily salvageable. And I was truly and really deeply glad to hear about that, man. I mean, what the fuck, I'm in good shape, I haven't wasted my body with smokin' and drinkin', I ain't even messed with that many women. Now, if I could just have a little serenity to answer my mail.

[Q] Playboy: You're getting lots of mail?

[A] Gilmore: It fell off to 50 or 75 letters a day for a while, but now it's up to 1000 a day. [Laughs] I guess I've got about 7000 letters so far. [At the time of his death, Gilmore had received more than 40,000 letters at Utah State Prison.] One rural oaf in Georgia even sent me a hunk of rope. There's a god-awful lotta mail from Christians. Did you know that every person in Texas is a stom-down, knuckles-to-the-ground Bible back? Well, that's OK--everybody in New York is nuts, too. It balances out. Lots of this mail is from young tomatoes. I'll read a sample: "Dearest Gary, I admire you very much. I think you are a very brave man to want to die. I adore, love and respect and worship you very much....I hate to see such a very handsome man die....You're so manly, very masculine, sexy, very appealing. [Laughs] Good luck in the other world."

[Q] Playboy: How about mail from people you've known?

[A] Gilmore: There's a lot from people who think they knew me. Two different guys asked me are you the Gary Gilmore I was in the Marines with? And one guy says, if you're the Gary Gilmore I know, you won't go through with it. And if they televise it, I'm kicking the tube out. I wrote to him and said, don't kick the tube out on my account. Then I got a letter from a woman who said her son's name is Gary Gilmore, and he's an evangelist. I've never run across a Gary Gilmore. I was hopin' I was the only one.

[Q] Playboy: Are there many who keep writing?

[A] Gilmore: This one chick keeps writin', and she's in love, and I thought about her a lot, but I figured I have enough problems. She writes: "How's my wild pony with those wild eyes?" [Laughs] I got three letters from her today. Christ, oh, ah, man--it's a good thing I'm not in California. These kids'd wear me out. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Do young kids appeal to you, particularly?

[A] Gilmore: Why you ask that?

[Q] Playboy: Because of the story you told Nicole in one of your letters about the young boy you were in love with....

[A] Gilmore: Where'd you get that? That letter wasn't in the bunch the goddamn D.A. had. That wasn't in the ones the newspaper published.

[Q] Playboy: No, it got delivered to Nicole's mother by mistake.

[A] Gilmore: Holy shit. Nothin's sacred, huh?

[Q] Playboy: When you write letters that pass through censors, Gary, you can't assume they're sacred.

[A] Gilmore: So all them bastards probably read that, too, huh?

[Q] Playboy: It's a good idea to assume they did.

[A] Gilmore: Well, shit, there wasn't anything to it, except I did love that boy. I was in the state hospital in Oregon trying to beat an armed-robbery beef and this 13-year-old boy came in, 'cause he couldn't get along at home. He was really pretty, like a girl, but I never gave him much thought until it became apparent that he really liked me. I was 23 then. I'd be sittin' down and he would come up and sit beside me and put his arm around me. It was just natural to him, a show of friendship. He didn't have a dad, there was just him, his mother and a younger brother in the family. One time he came up to me in the locker room and asked if he could read this Playboy I had. I said sure, for a kiss. Man, he was dumfounded! His eyes got big as silver dollars and his mouth dropped wide open. He said, "No!" and it was really pretty, and I fell in love on the spot. He thought it over then and decided he wanted to read that magazine pretty bad, 'cause he gave me, or rather let me take, a very tender little kiss on the lips. I used to watch him down at the swimming pool. He was one of the most beautiful people I've ever seen, and I don't think I've ever seen a prettier butt. Anyhow, I-I used to kiss him now and then, and we got to be pretty good friends. I was just struck by his youth, beauty and naïveté.

[Q] Playboy: And then one of you was sent elsewhere?

[A] Gilmore: Then one of us was sent elsewhere.

[Q] Playboy: After the life you've led, what do you think explains the country's fascination with you?

[A] Gilmore: Jees, I don't know. I guess it's that I'm going first. I think that's the heart of it. Then there's the romantic thing....

[Q] Playboy: Between you and Nicole?

[A] Gilmore: Right. And then I'm sorta young, I guess. It is amazing, though. A black guard here who tells me shit says they're makin' lots a dough on Gary Gilmore T-shirts in California, with the Newsweek cover on 'em, you know, say-in' Death wish. Did you see that picture of me in Time, near one of Mr. Ford? Is that his name--Gerald Ford? [Laughs] It's weird getting used to seein' your picture all over the place. That picture in the Provo paper ruined me. I don't look good when I look up. I look better when I look down a little bit. I'm not really a very photogenic person.

[Q] Playboy: Does it bother you at all to be attracting such attention? Maybe you saw that old movie--Angels with Dirty Faces. Jimmy Cagney is on death row, and the padre comes by and tells him, if you go out like a man, the kids are going to be inspired by it and do all kinds of stupid things to show the world they're as tough as you are. But if you go out like a sniveling rat, it will turn them away from a life of crime. Cagney, of course, does the right thing and goes out like a sniveling rat.

[A] Gilmore: Hang on a minute, my chow's here. [Silence] OK, I'm back. In answer to your question: Sick minds will find encouragement, no matter what. If I start wondering and worrying about things like that, then I'm gonna have to start wonderin' and worryin' about every goddamn thing. I mean, I just can't be responsible for every son of a bitch in the world. I think we taught ourselves things that we've earned and deserved. From past lives. Just by being what we are. And, man, if you go around worrying about other people, and how you're gonna affect them, well, then, you're interfering in their lives. I mean, what the fuck, man, I don't have the right to even start thinking that way.

[Q] Playboy: Then why do you bother to stay up all night answering letters from obviously weird and unhealthy people who are attracted to you simply because you want to die?

[A] Gilmore: Not all of 'em, man. I get letters from people who understand all this in a beautiful way. Very concisely. They read all the shit that gets into the newspapers and they take out just the truth. Some of 'em really understand. They don't want publicity, like that surgeon who wants the eyes. Transplanting eyes, man--that's an act of genius. It takes a genius to do it. And this doctor, he don't want no attention. He just wants eyes.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you think so many people write to you?

[A] Gilmore: Well, at first I was amazed. I mean, nobody came to my trial, you know? Couldn't have been more than 20 people there the day I was sentenced. And when I first started seeing things in the paper, I wasn't surprised--a little bit, you know, but after a while, it dawned on me, man, that my name was known around the world. And that really did surprise the shit out of me. I told Nicole. I said, listen, man, things like money can go to a person's head. So can fame. You gotta keep everything in perspective. But I didn't need to tell her that; it was something she already knew.

[Q] Playboy: It's a strange kind of fame, though, isn't it? It's important to remember that if you'd only robbed those men, and been sent back to prison for life, or if you'd fought your sentence and appealed, you'd be a nobody.

[A] Gilmore: You think I'm concerned about the publicity, man? I try my best not to let it have any effect, and it doesn't really have any goddamn effect. It doesn't do that much for me to read my goddamn name in the paper. I mean, Jesus, I'm just in here for murder--what the hell is there to feel so good about?

(Morning, January 15)

[A] Gilmore: [Left alone for a moment in the maximum-security superintendent's office, Gilmore whips open every desk drawer, browses the shelves, pockets two pens, some paper clips, a pair of shoelaces.] My greatest caper to date is these goddamn shoelaces. They're really somethin', man. [Laughs] You should see these babies--I mean, they're both black, and maybe a little plastic's worn off on the ends, but I don't think they're gonna break that easily. I know I am proud of these shoelaces. For a man in my circumstance, they're handy to have.

[Q] Playboy: Your ability to swim through the prison, to smuggle in pills, to make two serious suicide attempts, to snatch a radio for a while, to shake down the superintendent's office--these talents must take all the years you've spent in prison to acquire.

[A] Gilmore: You just do things, you know. You don't wait to sneak around and be furtive. You just seize the moment. You take your own shoelaces out and put 'em in the drawer, and then you put the new ones on. New shoelaces--it ain't a bad feeling.

[Q] Playboy: You've said before that you can defeat fear by banishing its symptoms. It's getting close now--48 hours. What are the symptoms?

[A] Gilmore: Symptoms? Well, some people, the symptom of fear might be that their minds kind of stop. Some people, it might be an overabundance of adrenaline, like if you were runnin' from something, and the more you ran, man, the more it would feed the fear. It might be the hair rising on the nape of your neck. Knees knock, teeth chatter. I don't know.

[Q] Playboy: What symptoms do you feel?

[A] Gilmore: I didn't say I was scared, did I?

[Q] Playboy: No. But are you feeling fear?

[A] Gilmore: Fear's negative. Why feel it? You could damn near call it a sin if you let it run your life.

[Q] Playboy: Obviously, you're not acting out of fear now, but do you feel it?

[A] Gilmore: I guess I'm lucky. It hasn't come in. I don't think it will come in Monday morning--I haven't felt it yet. You know, a true man, a true b-brave man, a true man, ah...a truly brave man is somebody who feels fear and goes out and does what he's supposed to do in spite of that. I don't feel that fear, see, so you couldn't really say I'm that fuckin' brave. I ain't fightin' against fear and, ah, overcomin' it. I don't know about Monday mornin'.

[Q] Playboy: Most people, under the circumstances, would count not feeling fear as bravery.

[A] Gilmore: I don't. I don't. I don't...say I'm courageous or brave. I'm, well, not even sure I understand the meaning of those words.

[Q] Playboy: You can control your mind, perhaps. But doesn't a body that knows it's going to die protest in some way?

[A] Gilmore: I eat good. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Seriously?

[A] Gilmore: Yeah. I also sleep good.

[Q] Playboy: How about your nerves?

[A] Gilmore: How about 'em? They're relaying all messages to my brain. Aren't the nerves the ones that do that? [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Well, one thing that is observable is that things do upset you pretty easily. Your moods change.

[A] Gilmore: I've always been moody.

[Q] Playboy: Is there anything about your life that feels undone and makes you want to hang on?

[A] Gilmore: I'd like to have another go at that miserable bastard of a dentist who fucked me up in Oregon. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: You really wouldn't want to give life another try?

[A] Gilmore: Oh, I'd love it. I wish they'd let me go right now. I'd go get a gun and get Nicole out of that, ah...hospital. Then I'd pistol-whip these idiot A.C.L.U. lawyers....

[Q] Playboy: Same old Dr. Fell.

[A] Gilmore: Well, you asked. And, yeah! Yeah, of course. Why not? If I went up there to the hospital and just asked for her, and got insistent, well, shit--you asked. I got carried away here. I forget what the hell....

[Q] Playboy: We were talking about hanging on to life.

[A] Gilmore: Or accepting fate. Man, we all gotta accept our fate. You think you can evade yours? Does anybody? Sooner or later, you're gonna meet yourself.

[Q] Playboy: But when you talk about getting a gun and rescuing Nicole....

[A] Gilmore: Man, they got her in a new ward where they got the men and women sleeping together. And I don't like that at all, man, because they got nuts in there. They got unlocked rooms, and one dude that sits out there in the corridor, and he could fall asleep any time. And they got goddamn nuts in there who could rape you. I want Nicole out of there. I want her out of that goddamn place. And I know there ain't nothin' I can do. The Salt Lake police have got all kinds of our letters. The fuckin' shrinks have got all kinds of our letters. The words we've meant for us alone are the property of newspapers that take copyrights out on 'em. The warden won't let Nicole come to the execution, or else some goddamn psych doctor won't. And now they tell me today I can't even record a cassette to send her. I ain't askin' 'em for another goddamn thing. I just want it to get over.

[Q] Playboy: The frustration you're feeling isn't yours alone.

[A] Gilmore: I don't understand that.

[Q] Playboy: Take Ida and Vern, for instance. They don't want to see you shot.

[A] Gilmore: I'm not crazy about the idea myself.

[Q] Playboy: Yes, of course, but you're willing to accept it. They're not. Now that the uncertainty is over, it's just going to be a painful time for everyone.

[A] Gilmore: Man, ah...I-I'm not in pain.

[Q] Playboy: Yes, but others are.

[A] Gilmore: It's no big deal.

[Q] Playboy: All right, whatever you say.

[A] Gilmore: I don't want anything. I'd like to see Nicole. I'd like to stand. I don't want the goddamn hood. I just want a little quiet. I don't think I'll even come out tomorrow night. I don't want the papers to say, well, we really treated him great on his last night. He got to see his uncle and his lawyers.

[Q] Playboy: You've still got 48 hours to live--why not live them?

[A] Gilmore: I just see the fuckin' futility in asking for anything. It makes 'em happy when you ask for somethin', 'cause then they can say, "Well, let me get back to you on that one." And they never get back. And there ain't no time left anymore. Cocksuckers! They've put two of them fools out there guarding me, and all they do is talk to each other and play cards....

[Q] Playboy: When you get an execution date, you get a death watch. That's what you're undergoing right now.

[A] Gilmore: Well, OK, then. OK, man. But, man, it's so fuckin' noisy. If I could have some quiet during these last hours. I stayed up till three last night answering letters, you know. Fuck! People are decent enough to write you a fuckin' letter, least you can do....I answer about 50 of 'em a day. I've been givin' away autographed Bibles, too. Is that blasphemous? [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: From the way your mail's running, you could probably sell them.

[A] Gilmore: Oh, hey, man, I've got some-thin' that'll make a mint. Listen to this: Get aholda John Cameron Swayze right now, and get a Timex wrist watch here. And have John Cameron Swayze come runnin' out there after I fall over, he can be wearin' a stethoscope, he can put it on my heart and say, "Well, that stopped," and then he can put the stethoscope on the Timex [Laughs] and say, "She's still runnin', folks."

(Evening, January 15)

[Q] Playboy: You seem depressed.

[A] Gilmore: Ah, man, I think sitting down and wearing a hood is a morbid, macabre thing. I never wore a hood before. Why should I start wearing one now?

[Q] Playboy: You think it's more manly to do it your way?

[A] Gilmore: No. I just want to look them fuckers in the eye when they shoot me.

[Q] Playboy: Maybe the warden is worried that you'd move or flinch at the last minute.

[A] Gilmore: I won't budge. I would assume those marksmen they got would prefer a moving target. But I'm not gonna satisfy the bastards.

[Q] Playboy: Can't blame you for that.

[A] Gilmore: I asked the fucker, are you going to ask me if I have anything to say, any last words, like? And, ah, yeah, he looked like he hadn't thought about that one. And I said, well, are you gonna do it before or after you put the fuckin' hood on me? And he says, well-l-l-l, and you know, that fucker had never given it any thought. [Laughs] So I told him, well, look, no use thinkin' on it there, warden, 'cause I'm tellin' ya: Don't ask me any questions after you put that hood on me, 'cause I ain't answerin' 'em. I told him I can't help what you impose on me, bein' seated and hooded, but I need to keep dignity, no matter what.

[Q] Playboy: Did he say what the hood would be like?

[A] Gilmore: Fuck, I didn't ask him. A hood's a hood. Listen to them miserable sons a bitches back there. [Loud noises in background] They're tryin' to get the door closed, is what they're tryin' to do. Jesus!

[Q] Playboy: Have you always been this sensitive to noise?

[A] Gilmore: Man, noises bother everybody. Almost everybody in here's got earphones, big things that cover your whole ears. They can put 'em on and listen to the radios, tune out on this shit. But where I'm at, there isn't anything...I have to listen to this shit, ah...an awful lot of noises, man. I can put up with it. I've put up with it for 19 years. But right now, particularly, I would like some serenity, some quiet, and I think I'm entitled to that fuckin' much.

[Q] Playboy: Are you getting any sleep?

[A] Gilmore: I do about 1000 jumping jacks at night and, man, I do sit-ups, I do 50 push-ups, I chin myself, I run up and down this little four-cell corridor where they got me, and it's still a motherfucker to sleep with the lights on all the time and these two fools starin' in on me, and bullshittin', and carryin' on all night.

[Q] Playboy: You don't like your guards? You sort of liked the last ones.

[A] Gilmore: Ah, shit, they're pretty cool. I mean, they're men. If I gave 'em some shit, they would react. Some guys, you know, whether they're prison guards or not, they're still men.

[Q] Playboy: Something still seems to be bothering you. We thought you'd be glad that the wait was almost over.

[A] Gilmore: Of course.

[Q] Playboy: Something else, then?

[A] Gilmore: Ah, well, the warden came and talked to me while my brother Mike was here, and he told me he's not gonna allow you [interviewer Schiller] in the last night. And I told him, listen, man, you're doin' this personally, you're not being objective, you're bein' subjective because of the way I've talked around here and acted around here, and I said, now that's what you're doin' to Larry, he came in here, and he tricked you, and now you're punishing me for that. And now this is exactly what he said, he said, "Who else can I punish?"

[Q] Playboy: He actually said that?

[A] Gilmore: Those were his exact words.

(Morning, January 16)

[Q] Playboy: Has the warden made up his mind about the hood?

[A] Gilmore: I believe he's concerned that my standin' there and lookin' at the firing squad will unnerve 'em. He's worried about them guys gettin' nervous. But listen, he did say this--emphatically. He said they usually come to your cell, put a hood on you there, and you wear the hood from the time you leave your cell till you're dead. He said he wouldn't put the hood on me until after I'm in the chair. I want the son of a bitch to keep his word on that much, at least.

[Q] Playboy: With only 24 hours to go, it's unlikely he'll change his mind.

[A] Gilmore: Man, you don't know wardens.

(Noon, January 16)

[A] Gilmore: The father just came in and said a Mass. Gave me a sip of the weakest wine I ever drank in my life. Then they told me I couldn't have a cassette to say goodbye to Nicole. They said, hey, there's still a chance you'll get your phone call. Shit! Lieutenant Fagan says, "My hands are tied," and I says, "Well, how does it feel to walk around with your hands tied? Why don't you change? Have you ever thought about feeling like a man, instead of a sleazy son of a bitch?" Then I find out that there's still some kind of goddamn appeal being heard in Federal court here by some fumblin', bumblin' judge who wants to get famous off me. I'm afraid he'll decide to ponder it for a day, and that'll mean another 30-day wait for me.

[Q] Playboy: You're pretty much alone in your wish to see it happen tomorrow morning, you know.

[A] Gilmore: Well, I'll just hang myself tonight if they stay it.

[Q] Playboy: The shoelaces!

[A] Gilmore: You guessed it. They're gonna have to watch me constantly, continuously. 'Cause I'm not gonna fuck around with them anymore.

[Q] Playboy: How are you feeling, now that the time is drawing short?

[A] Gilmore: I tell you, I don't feel any different now than ever. Maybe I will in the morning. But I've talked to people who know more than I do, and people who know less, and I listen to all of 'em. And the only fuckin' thing I know about death, the only real feeling I have about it is that it'll be familiar. I don't think it'll be a harsh, unkind thing, because I think things that are harsh and unkind are here on earth, and they're temporary--all this passes.

[Q] Playboy: Are they treating you all right? Are they loosening up at all?

[A] Gilmore: Ah, yesterday I blew up and cussed out one of 'em, and today again the same. I like to cuss 'em out, you know. And I put it to 'em on a personal basis, too. You know, if you're gonna fight with somebody or say something to 'em or call 'em names, make it personal. Take it a step further than just a frivolous insult. I don't just do it on a whim to amuse myself or something.

[Q] Playboy: When we spoke yesterday on the phone, you said you were planning to do some writing.

[A] Gilmore: No, man, it's too goddamn noisy, and these assholes are starin' in on me, so I just write thank-you notes to the people who've sent me letters.

[Q] Playboy: Doing any reading?

[A] Gilmore: No, ah...I don't read anymore. Shit. [Sighs] I've read all I'm gonna read.

[Q] Playboy: Do you draw anymore?

[A] Gilmore: No.

[Q] Playboy: You said you were going to draw a self-portrait.

[A] Gilmore: No. Don't have a mirror.

[Q] Playboy: I guess you don't have much of anything in there.

[A] Gilmore: I've got myself.

[Q] Playboy: You're certainly...well, remarkably composed. [Pause]

[A] Gilmore: Hey, lookit, man, am I missing something here? I mean, have I-I, am I bein' kinda rude? You guys are a little upset about this, I guess. Goddamn. That's what bothers me. That's just the one thing that bothers me, when I see somebody...like when my brother Mike came by, and I seen his eyes get red. And, shit...I'm not...I wasn't unaware of that. I'm not, well, quite that egocentric. I mean, I'm capable of discerning somebody else's feelings. I understand that other people might have thoughts for me...and...I hope you don't think I'm tryin' to be rude. The fact is, well, I know your thoughts. I shouldn't say that. How can you know another person's thoughts? But I can sense some of your feelings, even through this wall, these windows, this fuckin' situation. I wish I could dissuade you from any troubling thoughts. Actually, I'm very fortunate. I'm dying and I know when. I've been given time to make arrangements for different things. Some people can't...they leave things undone. Think of Jensen and Bushnell.

(1:02 A.M., January 17)

[Gilmore telephoned from the office of Lieutenant Fagan, the maximum-security chief. He had spent the evening hours dancing, singing and talking with a few relatives and other visitors, and he had drunk a little whiskey they smuggled into him. His last request for a pizza and a six-pack of beer was denied by the prison authorities, so he hadn't eaten since morning. His mood was cheerful as he clowned around, wearing Fagan's hat, and his voice was a little slurred.]

[A] Gilmore: I just heard on the radio that it's all over. That appeal they were arguin' before Judge Ritter--I guess they lost out. So now there's no way anybody can butt in.

[Q] Playboy: We may not be talking again. Is there anything you'd like to add to all we've said?

[A] Gilmore: Like what?

[Q] Playboy: Like the one question you never quite answer: Have you ever killed anyone other than Jensen and Bushnell?

[A] Gilmore: No.

[Q] Playboy: No, for sure?

[A] Gilmore: Nobody else.

[Q] Playboy: We're still left with the feeling that something has to explain why suddenly you would choose to--

[A] Gilmore: I was always capable of murder. There's a side of me that I don't like. I can become totally empty of feelings for others, unemotional--

[Q] Voice: Hello?

[A] Gilmore: Hello.

[Q] Voice: Is this Mr. Fagan?

[A] Gilmore: Who's this?

[Q] Voice: This is the warden.

[A] Gilmore: This is Mr. Gilmore. I'm makin' a phone call.

[Q] Voice: OK. Thank you. Pardon me.

[Q] Playboy: You there?

[A] Gilmore: [Sigh] Yeah.

[Q] Playboy: We still don't understand what goes on in a person's mind who decides to kill--

[A] Gilmore: Hey, look. Listen. One time I was drivin' down the street in Portland. I was just fuckin' around, about half high, and I seen two guys walk out of a bar. I was just a youngster, man, 19, 20, something like that, and one of these dudes is a young chicano about my age and the other's about 40, an older dude. So I said, hey, you guys want to see some girls? Get in. And they got in the back. I had a '49 Chevrolet, two-door, you know, fastback? And they got in. And I drove out to Clackamas County, a very dark...now I'm tellin' you the truth, I ain't makin' this up. I'm not dramatizin', I'm going to be blasted out of my fuckin' boots in a few minutes, and I've already told you the goddamn truth, even if you don't believe me, and if it sounds like I'm tryin' to make up a story....

[Q] Playboy: No, there's no feeling of that....

[A] Gilmore: Goddamn, I swear to Jesus Christ on everything that's holy that I'm tellin' you the truth ver-fuckin'-batim. This is a strange story.

[Q] Playboy: Go ahead.

[A] Gilmore: So they got back there and I got to tellin' them about these broads, I was just embroiderin', how they had big tits and liked to fuck and had a party goin', and how I left the party to get some guys to bring out there because they were short on dudes, and these two were about half drunk when we drove out there. I drove out to a pitch-black road, and I stopped, and I had a bar about 16 inches long...just a minute. [Pause] Lieutenant Fagan walked in. He told me to take his hat off. OK. [Deep sigh] Jesus fuckin' Christ. OK. So-o-o-o, I got these guys in the car, and drove 'em down this pitch-black fuckin' road, it had gravel on it, you know, not a rough road, black, smooth, flat, chipped fuckin' concrete, that's how I remember it, and I reached down under the seat--I always kept a baseball bat or a pipe, you know...and I reached down under the seat...just a minute!...[Silence] Ritter just issued a stay.

[Q] Playboy: What?

[A] Gilmore: Ritter...just...issued...a...stay.

[Q] Playboy: For how long?

[A] Gilmore: [Off phone] For how long? For what reason? [Back on phone] Ritter issued a stay because of a taxpayers' lawsuit saying it's illegal to use taxpayers' money to shoot me. [Silence] Foul cocksuckers! That Ritter! I knew! A taxpayers' suit! I'll pay for it myself. I'll buy the bullets, rifles and pay the riflemen! Jesus fuckin' goddamn Christ. Man, I want it to be over!

[Q] Playboy: There's a lot of thinking you've got to do before you make your next move. Maybe there's something worth saving. We've done a lot of talking. We've done--

[A] Gilmore: I don't care about that!

[Q] Playboy: I know, but maybe you should think about it.

[A] Gilmore: Shit. I gotta listen to all this goddamn noise in this motherfucker....

[Q] Playboy: Maybe you're not meant to die. Maybe what you're going through now is a greater atonement....

[A] Gilmore: Goddamn, they gave me a sentence, and I'm willin'....

[Q] Playboy: You're not listening, are you?

[A] Gilmore: Huh? I'm listenin'.

[Q] Playboy: Let's just spend the next hour talking and see if....

[A] Gilmore: Aw, shit. Piss. Fagan wants to use the phone. I can't stay on here. I'll try and call back.

[Q] Playboy: OK. We'll be here. Goodbye.

[A] Gilmore: Goodbye.

[Gilmore did not call back.]

(January 17, Predawn Hours)

[Gilmore stayed up the night, believing, and profoundly bitter over, the news that his execution had been stayed. He was determined to end his own life if the state refused to do it, so the death watch over him did not slacken or abate.]

[Q] Playboy: This close to death, is there anything you feel you still must hide?

[A] Gilmore: I'm gettin' pissed off at that kind of question. I've been honest with you.

[Q] Playboy: What about--

[A] Gilmore: Goddamn! I don't give a damn what anybody else says, I ain't bein' defensive about my mother. My mother is a hell of a woman. She did the very goddamn best she could and, man, she was always there, we always had somethin' to eat, we always had somebody to tuck us in. I ain't bein' defensive about her. I know she'd be here if she could, and if she was here, I could make her feel a lot better. She's got rheumatoid arthritis real bad, she's had it about four years, and she never says a word about it, never bitches about it at all. Up until she got sick, she worked as a busboy. A buswoman. Not a waitress, like Time or Newsweek or some-goddamn-body said. And she worked in that café until the boss finally told her, I'm gonna have to let you go. My dad was dead by then. He didn't take out any insurance or anything--and my mom, she didn't have any money. My brother Frank had to help out as best he could, tryin' to hold on to that beautiful house we had, with a nice swing-around driveway, where you drive up and it makes a circle...she wanted that. She wanted some things and she lost 'em. She tried to hang on, she tried to keep it together, but she lost 'em. And she never said nothin'. My dad should have taken out some insurance. He should have provided better. But she never bitched about it at all. I keep bein' asked if I love her, if she loves me, if she loved me when I was a baby. Yeah, goddamn it! Yes! I don't want to hear any more fuckin' bullshit that she was mean to me. She never hit me. She loved me and believed in me!

[Shortly after 7:42 A.M., six guards arrived at Gilmore's cell and informed him that his time was up: The Tenth Circuit Court in Denver had met in a special predawn session and overturned Judge Ritter's stay. He was ushered out of his cell and escorted to a waiting van that drove him and the execution party to the prison cannery, where the firing squad awaited. The witnesses Gilmore had invited came forward and exchanged parting words with him. Then the warden, standing a few feet from Gilmore's chair, read the execution order and asked the condemned man if he had anything to say. Gilmore looked past the warden to stare deep into the dark-gray-fabric curtain that concealed the five riflemen. He rolled his head back for a long moment and looked up at the ceiling. Then he leveled his gaze, looked back at the warden and spoke his last words:]

[A] Gilmore: Let's do it.

These photographs were taken with a special camera without the knowledge of the Utah State Prison officials. Left, December 21, through a glass partition. Right, five A.M., January 17, in the security chief's office, three hours before the execution.

"You can't use anything I might say to butt in on my execution. Promise?"

"Hangin' or shootin' was all they had to offer, and I'd prefer to be shot. Fuckers might not hang me right."

"Reform schools disseminate certain esoteric knowledge. They sophisticate."

"It was pretty quick. I didn't let him know it was coming or anything."

"It was already a fact that Mr. Jensen had died, and so the next one was more certain."

"It's so goddamn noisy in here today.... I think I deserve a little fuckin' serenity at least."

"Why should Nicole commit suicide before I die?...I wanted to be there when she came through the rye."

"[My executioners] can drink beer and then go deer hunting next season and shoot something else."

"To make somebody live a lessened state of existence, I think that could be worse than killin' 'em."

"[Prison officials] are charged with being honest, I'm not.... It's my prerogative to fuck up, 'cause I'm the crook."

"Aw, man, join the writ club. You can appeal a thing like this for years, and you'll still go down in the end."

"Don't ask me any questions after you put that hood on me, 'cause I ain't answerin' 'em."