Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [174]
IN THE FALL OF 1974, GARY FELL IN LOVE with a woman named Becky. She had become familiar with him through another woman who was visiting a friend of Gary’s at the prison. Becky started writing Gary, then started visiting him. She talked to him about shaping up and starting his life over—maybe in Canada. She said she would do everything she could to get him released if he would promise to change his life and curb his violence. Gary agreed. Then he asked Becky to marry him. Becky agreed.
First, though, she had to have some surgery—something to do with an ulcerous condition that had been painful for a long time. She died while she was on the operating table.
The night Gary learned of her death, he went to see the prison psychiatrist and asked for some medication. The psychiatrist decided Gary wasn’t seriously depressed enough to merit the medication and sent him back to his cell.
Over the next month, Gary grew more outrageous and more violent. One day he got hold of a razor blade and blockaded himself in his cell. He was going to kill himself, he announced, and he would slice anybody who tried to stop him. It took several guards and a can of Mace to get him under control and to get the razor from him.
That was when Dr. Weissert decided to put Gary back on Prolixin. Weissert wrote: “It is my impression that at this time Gilmore is in a paranoid state, so that he is unable to determine what his best interests are. He is totally unable to control his hostile and aggressive impulses, and external controls seem necessary, as he is unable to place internal controls on his own aggressive impulses. He presents a real danger to the physical safety of himself and others, and this, in a structured and closed environment, creates a real physical hazard. It is, therefore, my recommendation he be given intramuscular injections of tranquilizers to help him control his hostility and aggression until such time as he is able to apply the necessary controls … In a paranoid psychotic state, medication is the most expedient treatment modality to insure a subsidence of symptoms so that the condition is more manageable. I feel completely justified in giving Gilmore medication against his wishes, as he creates a serious problem to the patient and the entire institution.”
When Gary heard of Weissert’s recommendation, he wrote the warden, Hoyt Cupp, begging him for any other form of punishment. He said he was more afraid of Prolixin than anything else on earth, and he didn’t think he could withstand any more treatment with the drug. He said he would be willing to go for the rest of his life without teeth, rather than submit to Prolixin.
Warden Cupp offered Gary a compromise: a transfer to a maximum security federal penitentiary, in Marion, Illinois. After all, Cupp reasoned, Gary had become a risk to everybody at OSP, including himself. There were several rumors that many of the prisoners who had been his former friends and supporters were now so disgusted or frightened by his behavior, they were talking about killing him themselves.
Gary agreed to Cupp’s transfer offer. Then, on the last day, Gary reneged. He told Cupp he thought the transfer was illegal. Besides, he wanted to stay close to his friends and family in Oregon. Cupp told Gary that whether he liked it or not, he was going to Marion.
On the night of January 21, 1975, Gary was sitting in his cell, awaiting the guards. They were supposed to come for him at midnight and take him to his plane to Illinois.
“Man, I don’t want to go,” Gary told a friend by the name of Roger, in the cell next to him. “At least I don’t want to go without a little noise. When they come to get me, do me a favor. Raise some hell. Pound on the bars. I want everybody to know this is going down and how wrong it is.”
Roger agreed to Gary’s request. No matter what any of the prisoners thought of Gary, he was still an inmate, and inmates had to back each other whenever possible.
When the guards came for Gary, Roger was asleep. Gary asked the guards if he might wake his friend, to say