25 Facts About Gary Gilmore

Gary Mark Gilmore was born in McCamey, Texas, on December 4,1940, the second of four sons, to Frank and Bessie Gilmore.

Gary Gilmore was born while they were living in Texas under the pseudonym of Coffman to avoid the law.

Frank's mother, Fay, kept the original "Faye Coffman" birth certificate, and when Gary Gilmore found it two decades later, he assumed he must be either illegitimate or someone else's son.

Gary Gilmore seized on this as the reason that he and his father never got along; he became very upset and walked out on his mother when she tried to explain the name change to him.

Gary Gilmore ran away from home with a friend to Texas, returning to Portland after several months.

At the age of 14, Gary Gilmore started a small car theft ring with friends, which resulted in his first arrest.

Gary Gilmore was released to his father with a warning.

Gary Gilmore was sent to Oregon State Correctional Institution on another car theft charge in 1960 and was released later that year.

Gary Gilmore faced assault and armed robbery charges again in 1964 and was given a 15-year prison sentence as a habitual offender and sent to the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem, Oregon.

Gary Gilmore was granted conditional release in 1972 to live weekdays in a halfway house in Eugene, Oregon, and study art at a community college.

Gary Gilmore never registered and, within a month, he was arrested and convicted of armed robbery.

Gary Gilmore was conditionally paroled in April 1976 and went to Provo, Utah, to live with a distant cousin, Brenda Nicol, who tried to help him find work.

Gary Gilmore worked briefly at his uncle Vern Damico's shoe repair shop and then for an insulation company owned by Spencer McGrath, but he soon returned to his previous lifestyle of stealing, drinking, and fighting.

Garage mechanic Michael Simpson witnessed Gary Gilmore hiding the gun in the bushes.

Gary Gilmore's two court-appointed lawyers, Michael Esplin and Craig Snyder, made no attempt to cross-examine the majority of the state's witnesses, and rested without calling any witnesses for the defense.

Gary Gilmore protested, and the following day asked the judge if he could take the stand in his own defense, perhaps arguing that due to the dissociation and lack of control he felt at the time, he had a good case for insanity.

Gary Gilmore's attorneys presented the findings of four separate psychiatrists, all of whom had said that Gilmore was aware of what he was doing and that he knew it was wrong at the time.

Gary Gilmore chose to not pursue habeas corpus relief in federal court.

Against his expressed wishes, Gary Gilmore received several stays of execution through the efforts of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Gary Gilmore was strapped to a chair, with a wall of sandbags placed behind him to trap the bullets.

Gary Gilmore was restrained and hooded, and the shots were fired at a distance of 20 feet, aiming at the chest.

Gary Gilmore had requested that some of his organs be donated for transplant purposes.

Gary Gilmore's body was sent for autopsy and was cremated later that day.

In 1982, The Executioner's Song was adapted by Mailer for a television movie of the same name starring Tommy Lee Jones as Gary Gilmore, and co-starring Christine Lahti, Eli Wallach, and Rosanna Arquette.

Mikal Gilmore, an American writer and music journalist and the brother of Gary Gilmore wrote a memoir in 1994 entitled Shot in the Heart, detailing his relationship with Gary and their often troubled family, starting with the original Mormon settlers and continuing through to Gary's execution and its aftermath.