Listen to this“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow
older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.”
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Images have power – and never more than with children. I have a memory of a photograph (or perhaps it was a television image) of a chair with a splash of blood interspersed with bullet holes. The image was a powerful one – especially for a ten-year-old. The year was 1976 and this was the chair in which Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad in the state of Utah in the United States of America. What made his case unique was not the execution itself (executions are commonplace in several states in the USA) but the fact that Gary Gilmore had fought for his own execution “refusing to spend the rest of his natural life in prison.
Periodically during the intervening years I have stumbled upon a book, an article or simply a picture about Gary Gilmore and his life and have absorbed whatever information I could. The most notable of the books and articles on the subject was The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer. This was an attempt, using the facts of Gary Gilmore's life in a fictional form (a genre known as 'faction'), to come to terms with Gilmore's life and death. Unlike much of the material I had come across before, this work failed to ignite my interest.
Recently however, I came across a book written by Gilmore's youngest brother Mikal entitled Shot in the Heart: One Family's History in Murder. This book proved to be one of the most powerful books I have ever read, not so much for the plot (although it reads as a fascinating tale), or for the beauty of its telling (Mikal Gilmore writes like a poet), but rather as a disturbing evocation of the nature and realities of the abuse of children by the very systems designed to protect them (institutional abuse) “and of the tragic consequences of a childhood lived in pain and terror.
One life
Gary was born the second of four sons to Frank and Bessie Gilmore in the
state of Utah in the USA. This simple fact of geography was to run like
a barbed thread through his life “and even play a significant part in
the mechanics of his death. His father Frank was a sometime salesman,
fraudster and confidence trickster. Gary's early years (along with those
of his brothers) were characterised by drifting around the American
mid-west, living out of a car and trying to stay one step ahead of those
'who were trying to get hold of their father'. Mikal (the youngest)
never knew this life, and in his telling of it he speaks much about the
secrecy of these years for his brothers, how they were 'always on the
run' without ever really knowing who or what they were running from. In
his piecing together of the story, Mikal attempted to find out about the
early years of his father's life (he was more than twenty years older
than his wife) but was never able to find out anything significant. Much
of his father's life was shrouded in secrecy “just as the whole
family's life came to hold more secrets than truths. Out of secrets grow
myths, and the Gilmore legends would come to parallel those of the state
of Utah – secrecy, violent death and the myth of blood redemption.
Abuse
A crucial element of these early years on the road was the physical and
emotional abuse of Bessie Gilmore and her sons by Frank. The beatings
the babies received were as common as those of Bessie herself. Frank Jnr
(the oldest son) spoke of times when he was virtually unable to
recognise his mother's face through the bruises and welts suffered as a
result of her husband's temper. In turn the mother would beat her sons: “He (Frank Jnr) told me it wasn't the hitting that bothered him so much;
it was Bessie's screaming, her frantic craziness." (pg 133) In short,
the first years of Gary's life were characterised by wandering and
abandonment, and by sustained and protracted physical and emotional
abuse. At one point he ended up in an orphanage when his father was
arrested for fraud, while Bessie sat at a petrol station waiting for her
husband to return from an errand “she only found her son days later).
Alcoholic
Much of the father's abuse came during alcohol binges. When he nearly
died and had to give up alcohol, far from becoming less violent he
became 'meaner and more violent'. The brothers (and more especially
Gary, who became the scapegoat) were beaten for the smallest of
infringements – perhaps eating too slowly, or eating too fast – while
their mother's face was more often swollen and bloody. Gary's early
school years were more stable in the sense when the family bought a
house and settled down. What did not change, however, was the abuse.
Mikal, in speaking of the beatings his brother received, says: “The
outrage and unfairness of being beat that way became a sticking point in
his heart. It was as if, for the rest of his life, he would be
re-enacting the drama of his father's punishments with every authority
figure he encountered." (pg 175-176) Mikal sums up these early years for
his brother: “When I think of what my brothers went through almost every
week of their childhood and young adolescence, the only thing that
surprises me is that they didn't kill somebody when they were still
children." (pg 178)
Never forgotten
One can but guess at the nature of Gary Gilmore's schooling “it was
traumatic and destructive and mirrored his childhood in many ways. He
was always the troublemaker who landed himself and others in trouble.
One teacher tells poignantly of how Gary had reached out to him and how,
because of the chaos and history with the boy at school, he had missed
the opportunity to respond. Many years later Gary remembered this and
spoke of having reached out to this particular teacher. The teacher
said:
"In all the years since then, I've never forgotten the lesson that Gary taught me. I have always told teachers to take all the steps that you are capable of, and then take one more. If this were your kid, you would want people to keep reaching for him." (pg 187)
Predictably Gilmore spent most of his final school years at the MacLaren's Reform School for Boys – and much of this time in what was known as the LED (the maximum security unit). His seeking out the worst punishment available became a pattern during this time. The moment he was released from maximum security (usually for good behaviour) he would immediately commit some flagrant act of disobedience and would summarily be placed back into the LED unit. This would be the pattern for the rest of his prison career – in fact from this point on until his execution twenty or so years later, Gary Gilmore would spend nearly the entire time in prison. By the time of his death Gary had spent about half of his prison time in isolation, solitary confinement or whatever extreme method of incarceration was available. Rape, torture, and isolation were the consistent elements of Maclaren Reform School, where the ethos was one of violence rather than any attempt at real rehabilitation. One of Gary's friends during his years at Reform school spoke to Mikal of his experience of Gary:
"He wasn't a simple, mindless monster, in the way that the newspapers often portray somebody who has committed a violent act. He was a good guy who got fucked over. A lot of it, I admit, he did himself. But not all of it. Not all of it by a long shot." (pg 227)
More violent
Gilmore began and ended his adult life in prison. His crimes became
steadily more violent, moving from petty theft to armed robbery, and
ultimately to murder. His stays in jail became longer and at the same
time more traumatic. For a long period of his incarceration he was put
onto the drug Prolixin which turned him into a living zombie, virtually
unable to walk or talk. It was felt by the authorities at the time that
this was the only way they could deal with his violent behaviour. The
end of the road came in late July of 1976. Gary walked into a petrol
station, pulled a .22 automatic from his pocket, robbed the
twenty-six-year-old attendant and proceeded to shoot him in the back of
the head. The following night he walked into a motel and shot the man
behind the counter in the back of the head. He had moved from criminal
to murderer, and, as it turned out, had violently written himself into
history.
Death penalty
Utah had been one of the first states in America to pass legislation
restoring the death penalty “the Supreme Court had recently cleared the
way. But allowing for it in theory was entirely different to actually
practising it. Gary Gilmore changed that. The Mormon religion (most of
whose adherents live in Utah today) has a long history of blood
redemption. Gilmour seemed to be saying “there's really nothing you can
do to punish me, because this is precisely what I want; this is my will.
You will help me with my final murder." (pg xii). Shot in the Heart
was an attempt by Mikal Gilmore to come to terms with his family,
his brother and ultimately, his own life. There are no final answers or
absolute truths. There is much in the book about Frank Jnr and how,
although he suffered throughout, he never ended up killing anyone. In
speaking of this Mikal says: “The fact that one child killed and the
other did not is obviously an important matter, but the fact that my
brother Frank wasn't a killer does not mean he did not also suffer a
damage worthy of killing. There are all kinds of ways to die in this
world. Some die without taking others with them. It's a victory, no
doubt, but that doesn't make it the same as redemption." (pg 272) The
same could be said of Mikal “as for the countless other children in the
world who suffer through the cruelty of adults.
