The Executioner's Song (37 page)

                "If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you without cost. Do you understand?" asked Allen.

                The man nodded.

                "If you do not have an attorney available, you have the right remain silent until you have an opportunity to consult one. Do understand?" asked Allen.

                The man nodded.

                "Now that l have advised you of your rights, are you willing to answer the questions without an attorney present?" asked Allen. All the while, Lieutenant Peacock was putting handcuffs on the man. "Be careful of that hand. It's been hurt," said the man.

                Peacock fastened the restraints, turned him over, and began to go through his pockets. The fellow had upwards of $200 in large and small bills in various shirt pockets and pants pockets, and certainly had a wild look in his eye. "What am I going to do now?" said his expression. "What's my next move?"

                Peacock had the feeling that the prisoner did not make any move without looking for the possibility of escape. Even though he had him handcuffed, Peacock remained on guard. It was as if he was still capturing the fellow. There was such resistance in the way this man hesitated whenever a command was given. He looked like a wildcat in a bag. Temporarily quiet.

                A number of people had begun to come out of nearby houses and they stood in a circle staring at the captive. Lieutenant Nielsen arrived then in another police car and at that point, the prisoner spoke up suddenly. "Hey," he said, pointing at Gerald Nielsen, "I'm not going to talk to anybody but him."

                They put him in the back seat of Peacock's car and Nielsen got in and said, "What's going on, Gary?" Gilmore said, "I'm hurting, you know? Can you give me one of those pills?" He pointed to the plastic bag where they had everything they took from his pockets. Nielsen said, "Well, we'll take you down, get you taken care of." They drove off.

For hours before this capture, Kathryne was spending a fearful evening. April had taken off again, and the weather had been hot beyond belief all day. They left the doors open, and the windows, and kept waiting for April to come back. Watched television. The tension in the house got so great they couldn't even go to sleep. Nicole had come over with the kids and bedded down with them on the floor of their room because it was cooler, but Kathy and Kathryne were too keyed-up and just sat around talking, scared to death.

                Then all of a sudden, a floodlight went right across the windows.

                My God, they didn't know what was happening. A huge loudspeaker boomed in, a huge loudspeaker. "YOU IN THE WHITE PICKUP," it shouted. Two words, "Crazy Gary," jumped instantly into Kathryne's mind. "Oh, my God, it's that crazy Gary." Then they heard the loud speaker say, "AT THE COUNT OF TWO, PUT UP YOUR HANDS, PUT UP YOUR HANDS." A quieter voice said, "Get ready to open up, if he doesn't obey."

                At those words, Kathy and Kathryne hit the floor. They might have been soldiers, they did it so instinctively. The bedroom filled with light. A police beacon was turning in a circle. When they began to raise their heads they could see three policemen walking up road carrying guns. Then someone yelled, "They got him."

                Nicole woke up out of a crazy dream, and started screaming.

                Kathryne was holding onto her, shouting, "Sissy, don't go out there. You can't go out," which was all Nicole needed to break loose. Then she was out and in the crowd that was standing on the road around Gary on the ground. With all those lights on him, he didn't know what was going on.

                The police wouldn't let Nicole up close. She stood a distance away looking at him, and one of the cops began to question Kathryn who had just come out and asked, "Do you know him?" When Kathryne said, "Yeah," then the cop said, "Well, he was right about up to your driveway when we got him. You were lucky." Then another cop said, "We think he killed the fellow last night too." That's when panic hit Kathryne. They still hadn't found April.

                Nicole didn't know whether she wanted to go up to him or not. She just stood there, watching them point those rifles. There was nothing in her.

                Back inside the house, however, she was shaking and screaming and crying. She took Gary's photograph and threw it in the garbage. "That crazy son of a bitch," she shouted, "I should have killed him when I had the chance!

                Later that night, she went through all kinds of changes. She lay there and words went through her mind like a broken record. Things they had said, over and over.

                Toby Bath called Brenda. "We've got him," he told her. "Is he okay?" asked Brenda. "Yes," said Toby, "he's fine." "Anybody else get hurt?" asked Brenda. "Nope, nobody got hurt. Did a good clean job. "Thank God," said Brenda. She had never been in a more shattered state. She couldn't even cry. "Oh," she said, "Gary's going to hate me. He's not too happy with me anyways. But now he's going to hate me." She was more worried about that than anything.

Chris Caffee couldn't sleep at all and Debbie kept saying, "I can't believe Ben's dead. I can't believe it."

                They were all feeling pretty paranoid. Chris got up once to take a shower but started shaking when she realized there was a window in the bathroom and the killer could come through it. While the water was running she wouldn't hear a sound. It was like the movie Psycho.

                Then she got back in the living room, and almost gave a yip. Some big person with a flashlight was walking in the front yard. But it was only a policeman. He had noticed their car door was open, and a cat had taken up abode in the back seat. They invited the man in, and that was how they learned a suspect had been caught. They didn't know if it was really the killer, but at least the police had somebody.

                Debbie kept saying things you couldn't answer any more than you could talk back to your TV set. "When I was a kid," she announced, "I used to play touch football with the boys. I liked to swing off the roof on ropes." She said that, sitting in the rocking chair, holding Benjamin. "Yeah, that's great," said Chris from the studio bed.

                "Ben took a lot of classes in bookkeeping and business administration, but his main interest was working with people," Debbie said, "and advising them."

                "That's true," said Chris.

                Debbie said, "We never had any time to play tennis or water ski because there was no recreation time. We were working all the way."

                Holding Benjamin and rocking in the chair, she looked straight ahead. She had dark green eyes but they looked flat and black now.

                "It was Ben," she said, "who wanted to have the baby by natural childbirth. I went along because we always had the same idea about things."

                "Yes," Debbie said, "Benjamin weighed seven pounds when he was born. The delivery presented no problem at all. Ben was with me at the hospital. He had a doctor's white outfit on. I could feel," she said, "his presence all the time. That was a nice time." She paused. "I wonder if I am pregnant now. Yesterday, I told Ben I thought I was. I think he's happy about it."

                Debbie was in the rocking chair all night and Benjamin was in her arms. She kept trying to get the new thing together, but there had been too many breaks. Seeing the strange man in the motel office was a break in her understanding, Then the instant when she saw Ben's head bleeding. That was an awfully large break. Ben dead. She never went back to the motel.

                Next afternoon, Debbie's mom came, and people from the Ward, and the Bishop. Things never stopped moving. Debbie stayed with Chris and David for three days before she went back to Pasadena. It was the first time she traveled on an airplane in her life.

Chapter 17

CAPTURED

After the arrest, on the drive to the hospital, Gary said to Gerald Nielsen, "When we get alone, I want to tell you about it." Nielsen said okay. It alerted him to look for a confession. Most of the time they were silent, but Gilmore did say again, "I want to talk to you about it, you know."

                At the hospital, Gerald Nielsen stayed close while they doctored him. The Provo police had already called to say they wanted a metal detection test on his hand, but Gilmore refused. He said, "I want to talk to an attorney first." Gerald said, "Well, we'll get you an attorney, but he can't help you there. That's legal evidence."

                Gilmore said, "Do I have a legal right to refuse it?" "Yeah," Gerald said, "you can. And we always have the legal right to do it by force." "Well," said Gilmore, "you're going to have to force me." He swore a couple of times and cussed and hollered and said he wasn't going to do it, and a couple of times Nielsen thought it might end up in a brawl, but finally he consented. The tests revealed he had held metal in his hand. Gilmore replied, "Yes, I had to do some filing today at work." It must have been four in the morning before they got to the Provo City Jail.

                While the doctors were setting plaster of paris on Gilmore's hand, Nielsen decided to take a gamble and said, "Put a ring in it, will you, so we can get the handcuffs on." Gary said, "God, you have a polluted sense of humor." Nielsen felt it got them started.

Noall Wootton, the prosecutor for Utah County, was a small guy with light hair, a high forehead, and a large nose that looked like it had been flattened. He was usually a bundle of energy. When he got stoked up, he was like a tugboat chug-chug-chugging at any big job assigned to him.

                In Noall Wooton's opinion the best lawyer he ever met was his father. Maybe for that reason he could never go into a courtroom without a stomach tied in knots. He won cases and still felt badly because they hadn't been up to what they should have been. For that reason he was more than careful to observe all the legal amenities on the night they brought Gilmore to the Provo City Police Station.

                Tuesday night, or, rather, Wednesday 1:00 A.M. when the call came in to Wooton's home that the police had a man in custody for the motel murder in Provo, Noall sent a deputy to the hospital, and himself proceeded to the murder scene at the City Center Motel where he spent an hour and a half directing the search for a gun. Having talked to Martin Ontiveros, and learned that Gilmore had come in bleeding, he backtracked up the street from the gas station following the trail of blood to its source near a bush on the street. They looked into the twigs and found a Browning Automatic .22.

                Wootton was sitting on the desk in the detectives' room at the Provo Police Station, wearing his boots and Levi's, and not looking very official, when Gilmore was brought in. The prisoner looked pretty messed up. His left arm was bandaged in a cast and his hair was unruly. His Vandyke goatee looked wild. He was glaring. Seemed pissed off about the whole deal.

                Gilmore acted particularly angry that he had chains on his feet. It made Wootton glad there were a number of cops around. Chains and all, he would not have wanted to be alone in that room with Gilmore.

                Just so soon as Wootton learned that the only man Gilmore would talk to was Gerald Nielsen, he took the Lieutenant aside and told him what strategy to use to calm Gilmore down, get him into a befriending type of thing, be sure to advise him of all his rights. Also make sure he was not under the influence of alcohol, knew where he was, what he was doing. Most important, don't put pressure on him.

                Wootton was taking care not to get into a dialogue with Gilmore. Such a conversation could easily become evidence, and then he might have to get up on the stand. Since he was going to prosecute the case, he didn't wish to be in Court wearing a second hat. So he listened through a speaker to the conversation Nielsen conducted in another room.

July 1, 1976 5:00 a.m.

GILMORE  What am I being held for?

NIELSEN    I don't know except I suspect armed robbery. I'm almost sure that's what it is.

GILMORE  What robbery?

NIELSEN    The one here in Provo tonight at the motel, and the one last night in Orem at the service station.

GILMORE  You know, I can account for last night real well, and I can account for tonight . . .

NIELSEN    Not too well, Gary.

GLMORE   Yes I can . . . I went and had some work done on my truck down at Penney's. You'll see the receipts in the glove box, and I did some drinking. The truck kept stopping so I took it down here . . . and told them, "Listen, I'll leave my truck here and I'll pick it up in the morning and go to work and go down here and rent a room." I walked in and this guy had a gun on this guy. I grabbed it and he tried to shoot me in the head, and I pushed the gun up, and it got me in the hand. By that time, we was about outside, so I just went back down and got my truck and went out to Pleasant Grove . . .

NIELSEN    That's your story?

GILMORE  That's the truth.

NIELSEN    I don't believe it, Gary, I really don't believe that, and I know that you know that I don't . . .

GILMORE  I'm just telling you what happened . . .