Gary Gilmore | Biography, Crimes, Execution, & Facts (2024)

Gary Gilmore (born December 4, 1940, McCamey, Texas, U.S.—died January 17, 1977, Draper, Utah) was an American murderer whose execution by the state of Utah in 1977 ended a de facto nationwide moratorium on capital punishment that had lasted nearly 10 years. His case also attracted widespread attention because Gilmore resisted efforts made on his behalf to commute the sentence.

Gilmore was the second of four sons born to a petty criminal, Frank Gilmore, Sr., and his wife. His name was originally registered as Faye Robert Coffman, because the family was using Coffman as an alias at the time of his birth, but he always used Gary Gilmore. In his youth Gilmore was often beaten by his father. After years of traveling, the family settled in Portland, Oregon, in 1948.

Gilmore had intelligence and artistic talent but turned to criminal behaviour at an early age. After stealing a car when he was 14, he was sent to MacLaren’s Reform School for Boys in Woodburn, Oregon. Released a year later, he resumed his criminal activities. Between 1960 and 1961 he was incarcerated at the Oregon State Correctional Institution on a larceny charge. In 1962 in Vancouver, Washington, he was arrested for driving with an open container of alcohol and without a license, and he was sentenced to serve a term at Rocky Butte Jail in Portland.

In 1964 Gilmore received a sentence of 15 years imprisonment for assault and armed robbery. Released from Oregon State Penitentiary in 1972 to attend school, he instead committed an armed robbery in Portland. As a prisoner in Oregon, Gilmore frequently made trouble for his jailers. They treated him with the antipsychotic drug Prolixin and finally arranged for his transfer to the federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, then a maximum security facility, in January 1975.

Gilmore was released on parole from Marion on April 9, 1976, into the custody of his cousin Brenda Nicol, who lived in Provo, Utah. Nicol arranged for Gilmore to be employed in the shoe-repair shop of her father, Vern Damico. Gilmore also did work for an insulation company, and he soon formed a romantic relationship with 19-year-old Nicole Baker Barrett. However, Gilmore continued to commit petty thefts, and he drank heavily.

After several months of dating, Barrett became fearful of his violent outbursts and broke up with him. Shortly thereafter Gilmore embarked on his murder spree. On July 19, 1976, he robbed a gas station in Orem, Utah, and shot and killed the attendant, Max Jensen, even though Jensen, by Gilmore’s own account, complied with all his demands. The following day, while his pickup truck was being repaired in Provo, he walked into a nearby motel and fatally shot the manager, Ben Bushnell. Bushnell’s wife saw Gilmore as he fled with the motel cashbox. While attempting to discard the gun, Gilmore shot himself in the hand, leaving a wound that the garage owner noticed when Gilmore came back for the truck. When Gilmore called Nicol for help, she turned him in to the police.

Gilmore was tried only for Bushnell’s murder because that case was especially strong. The trial began a mere 11 weeks after the killing and lasted just three days. Despite his efforts to convince the jury that he had acted while insane, Gilmore was convicted on October 7 and sentenced to death. He had been eligible for the death penalty only since July 2, when the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment nationally.

During the last three months of his life, the media made Gilmore a household name, and death penalty opponents made him a cause célèbre. Gilmore himself confounded his would-be saviours—who were bringing up constitutionality issues in the new Utah death penalty law—with his openly expressed wish to die. During this time he went on a hunger strike and twice attempted suicide with pills. The execution date, originally November 15, 1976, was delayed two times. A request for a stay of execution, made on behalf of Gilmore’s mother, reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled on December 13 that the execution could proceed. Gilmore chose death by firing squad, an uncommon method of execution not available in most states. His last words to the executioners, “Let’s do it,” were widely quoted thereafter.

Gilmore’s death did not bring on an immediate wave of executions. By the end of 1982, only five more criminals—three of whom, like Gilmore, had voluntarily given up the appeal process—had been put to death. But the pace subsequently quickened: in the first 40 years after Gilmore’s death, 1,443 convicts were executed in the United States.

Gilmore was the subject of a fact-based novel, The Executioner’s Song (1979), for which Norman Mailer was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Mailer adapted the book into a teleplay for a film (1982; released theatrically in Europe) that starred Tommy Lee Jones as Gilmore, in an Emmy Award-winning performance. Shot in the Heart (1994), a memoir of Gilmore and his family by his younger brother Mikal Gilmore, was also made into a television film (2001).