As soon as he got back, Greenberg called Susskind and said, “It’s fascinating, it’s ugly, and it’s complicated.” Susskind asked if it was a good idea to go out to Utah himself. Stanley replied, “Things are so hectic I would not advise it at the moment. The principals are being bombarded on all sides, and at the moment, we can’t see Gilmore, we can’t see the fiancee, you can’t get to any of the principals other than Damico.”
Susskind agreed. The story, after all, rested on Gilmore’s past deeds, and Stanley was there to get the foundations for that. No necessity to become acquainted with Damico and the others. Why, when he acquired the rights to Joe Lash’s Eleanor and Franklin, he happened to know a few of the Roosevelts, Elliot, James, and Franklin Jr., in particular, but he hadn’t tried to go around and meet any others, hadn’t personally intervened and said, “I’m David Susskind. Let me tell you why I should get the rights.” The thing to do, if necessary, was send a lawyer.
Meanwhile, Nicole Barrett, Gilmore’s girlfriend and apparent suicide pact partner, is in critical condition at Utah Valley Hospital.
When Gilmore returns to prison he will be moved to a tighter security cell, will have limited communications, and won’t be allowed any physical contact with outside persons, Warden Sam Smith said ….
DESERET NEWS
Nov. i7, Salt Lake—Gary Gilmore’s date with Utah State Board of Pardons passed today while the convicted murderer lay conscious and shackled in a hospital bed ….
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That night, on the news, it was mentioned that Tamera Smith’s story was being syndicated all over the world. Her phone began ringing, and she began hearing from people she hadn’t thought about in years. Friends kept telling her that some of the biggest reporters in the country were here in Salt Lake, yet she had scooped them all. Next day, a fellow from the New York Times wanted to interview her, then a reporter from Time again, and Newsweek. It got pretty standard that if a new man came to town on the story, he rang up Tamera as soon as he checked into the Hilton. Dying for background on Nicole. She got a lot of free lunches that week.
It was kind of exciting, of course, but one little side of her wanted to escape. Milly from Philly left town to go hiking in the mountains, and that’s where she wanted to be, just leave it all, let the world stay down in Salt Lake.
It was only after Gary had been at the hospital for 24 hours that the tube was taken out of his lungs. He had been awake for several hours, but they left it in until they were certain he could swallow. Then he was given oxygen by mask, and it was recorded that he was expectorating moderate amounts of phlegm. When they examined his throat, he said, “You’re violating my privacy.”
Next he wanted to know about his fiancee. Suddenly, he was alert, he was agitated, and he was refusing care. Told the nurse to get out. They had to put him in restraints. Then he refused to take a breath. Nearly turned blue before he had to open his mouth. He became extremely abusive. When the nurse tried to give him a needle, he spit in her face. Then he demanded to have the monitor recording his heartbeat removed from his chest. He demanded Fiorinal. When the nurses spoke to him, he refused to answer. On his chrt they wrote, “Spiteful, revengeful, obscene.” After the intern removed the trachial tube, Gilmore sat up, sputtered, and said, “I’ll fucking well get you, motherfucker.”
Most people who overdosed were not like Gilmore when they woke up. He was coming on exceptionally strong. It was dangerous to get within reach. “He looks,” said one of the nurses, “like the demon that got into Linda Blair in The Exorcist.” Other suicides were depressed when they came out of it. After all, that was why they had taken the overdose in the first place. Didn’t want to live. With Gilmore, it was more like he wanted to die.
SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
Nicole’s Mother Calls Slayer ‘Manson Type’
Nov. x7-Gary Mark Gilmore was described Wednesday as another “Charles Manson” by Mrs. Barrett’s mother.
Given all those rides back and forth with Charles from Intensive Care to Pleasant Grove, Kathryne began to live in old memories. Neither she nor Charley was saying much, but she was feeling close to him. After all, they had lived all those years together. It was the kind of mood to let her think of the summer she met Charley and dated him when he was I6 and worked at thecarnival and she was x4. Went together three months and never even kissed. But one day they decided to get married. Kathryne figured it meant going to the movies
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when you wanted to, and not taking orders from your folks anymore, so she talked her mother into driving them to Elko, Nevada. The Justice of the Peace there didn’t believe Charley was i8 and said, “If I make a long distance call to your folks, son, how will they answer my question?” Charley started to stammer. “Well,” the Justice of the Peace said, “you better say to your mum I’m going to phone,” He was obviously advising them to tell her to lie.
Verna Baker, however, had started screaming,-which made Charley finally speak up and say, “Knock it off, Ma. You tell him I’m 8.” That was how Kathryne remembered it.
Same day, they drove back to Provo, and Kathryne’s mother said, “Charley can sleep on the couch.” He actually did that first night.
The following morning Charley came over with his friend George, and they went riding around all day in George’s car, until Kathryne told Charley to have her home at Io P.M., which he did. The following night, George and he came over again, but George finally drove them over to this motel called Back of the Pine-Trees and Charley got out to get a room. Kathryne started carrying on, at which point George said, “Get out. You’re married to him.” “I’m not,” said Kathryne, “you take me home.” “I’ll tell you what, Nicky,” George said-they used to call Kathryne “Nicky” after her middle name, Nicole- “you can go with me, or you can go with him.” Kathryne had no choice. Nothing to do but go in and say hello to Charley. God, they were kids.
They’d fight and make up, fight and make up, and one time, in one of those fights, he enlisted in the Service. They didn’t even find out she was pregnant until months later. She had missed periods so many times that she never noticed the real misses. When she started to feel a lump in her stomach, and it got larger, she thought, I bet I got a tumor, and went to the doctor by herself, really scared. When she found out it was a baby, she nearly died of embarrassment. The doctor said, “Are you married?” She didn’t have her ring on. The one Charley had bought was too big, and they were waiting for her to grow into it. So when she said she sure was married, she could see the doctor didn’t believe her. When he asked where her husband might be, she said he had just finished basic training, only then he asked where Charley was stationed, and she couldn’t even remember the name of the fort, just said, “He’s in the Army. Somewhere, you
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know.” That doctor was so positive she wasn’t married that
Charley came home a couple of weeks later, Kathryne haull
down there with her for the second medical exam.
The way Charley looked,at it, he and Kathryne had been raarri
ul?esng..’-°,-ne °f th,,em ,c.°uld,n t st.art tnking without the other
ue m traces, trooaing about how they ,ot int, ,––
couldn’t even tell himself now ,,a. L ,, ,;,Ja.,
,man reme, moenng how Kathryne told him they had to et
,oeca,use. s, ne was.pregnant. Pretending she didn’t want tomay.
noo, out her motlaer sat them down and Choo,, ‘ don’t matter to me ” B the “
‘
,,,,y ,,au mu, Wll,
Y time he found out Kathryne wasn’t
nant, oy God, she was.
Over the years, he must have d,ropped a total of $500 to
lawyers for starting a divorce. Shed start bawling and say,
am I going to do? Can’t raise the kids b, m,,selŁ” He’- — ,-
,, .
u otCK OUt
time, say Forget about It, you know,” and lose his down payment
the lawyer. They were the kind of thoughts to put Charley in a th
oug st.at. of Zoom. his luck typical of his By the time
reacneo the hospital, he couldn t even bear to sit down Kept thia,-.
about Nicole and how much he used to love her Dam , –z’
moleUsil bLaeset ,enttmg drunk-Felt ready to kill Lee, that greedy eh.t.
They were no sooner in the door than Ch,-ar,!ey began to
around restlessly, and look at people as ff he didn t know whether
glare, bust out, or bawl Finally he had to leave and Kathryne settl from ho, , in for another vigil. Immediately, a fellOWassociated came up and said he (—t’s—j;7;°nTt.7q.7’, with Jeff Newman, anti t
v vet ,eeuea a oetter picture of Nicole. All the stills they’d seen
a:r 7uesctee.rlti nned they w.anted something complimentary to . j
.
ry remembered a picture taken at Midway
,lssy, was pre, gnant with Sunny, and said, “You can put the iea27.
Out tlaat. all,.” Ncole, was m a swimsuit and real pregnant. Heral
was pretty, out
er oig pregnant bud was the last thing Kathv-p>
wanted shown right now. an hour after the fellow took it, Jeff
man came by and Kathryne found out. the first fellow wasn’t from
Enquirerture for nothing.at all. Some paper she’d never heard of. They got the pi
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In the afternoon, Earl Dorius received word to be down at Judge Ritter’s Court by four. The message had been from Don Holbrook, one attorney Earl respected immensely. Holbrook said that the Tribune which he represented was filing a suit in Federal Court for the right to enter Utah State Prison and interview Gary Gilmore. Earl had an hour to get ready to argue before Willis Ritter, the toughest Federal Judge in the State of Utah. Conceivably the toughest in the nation. At seventy-nine, he was certainly the oldest, and a choleric personality if ever, one crusty, portly old man with a huge bay window and a full head of white hair. Earrs stomach felt stuck to his spine when he thought of going in to plead before Ritter without proper preparation. He didn’t even have time to call the Warden.
Since Ritter’s dislike for the Attorney General’s office was about equal to his declared detestation of the Mormon Church, and since Ritter was bound to see Sam Smith as an agent of said Mormon Church and somebody therefore to give the shaft to, Earl did not have vast hopes for this coming encounter. People on the outside tended to see LDS church members as part of one huge well-organized Mormon conspiracy, when in fact it wasn’t like that. But don’t try to tell Judge Ritter. Earl just grabbed his law books and quickly reread old trusty Pell v. Procunier, trying to get himself psyched up to expect anything around Ritter. Kept reminding himself to present his argument quickly.
Judge Ritter did not allow you to expound your case at great length. It was wise to conclude a presentation in five minutes that you would normally do in thirty. “Don’t get that mane of white hair bobbing,” was the general wisdom of his legal colleagues.
In Court, Earl began with the simple statement that the case might be moot because Gilmore did not necessarily want an interview. Nobody knew. The Salt Lake Tribune had made no effort to find out. Not even by sending the convict a letter. Judge Ritter, to Earl’s amazement, seemed to agree. Since Gilmore was unconscious in the medical center, he said he didn’t see any urgency to issue a
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temporary restraining order against prison rules and regulations. He would deny the Tribune’s request for now. When the man recovered, they could take the case up again. Earl went back to his office feeling drained from all the adrenalin he had generated.
Larry Schiller’s meeting with Vern took place in the Damico living room. Schiller had come prepared to make arl offer. He knew Damico was not Gary’s representative, but he still liked the idea. By delivering the offer, he would make Damico a representative, de facto. Gary would have to deal with him. A better approach than by way of Boaz.
So Schiller wanted to strike the right effect at this meeting. Under his dark brown winter overcoat, he was wearing a safari suit the color of a camel’s hair coat, and a brown tie with a stripe in it. Ever since his days on Life, he always went out on a job with one set of colors, that is, all brown, or all blue, so he wouldn’t have to worry about m.atchups. Today, brown was perfect. Blues would have been too cold, too much like Court. The brown was somber, warm, businesslike. The photographer in Schiller wanted himself placed in a field of colors reminiscent of family gatherings and cigars.
Soon as they got down to business, he told Veto he woUld offer a total of $75,ooo for all the rights, and Nicole was worth a third of that, since without her, there was no story. In effect, he said, he was offering Gary $5o,ooo. He added that he would not offer a penny more. This was a firm offer, he said, not a bargaining stance.
Schiller knew, of course, that this was way beyond the $4o,ooo ABC had given him to deal with. But, you couldn’t come in with forty on this market. He would get around to telling ABC later.
Schiller proceeded to underline why the figure was $75,ooo. “It is,” he said to Vem, “the economics of motion pictures that dictate this offer.” He had brought ammunition with him: Xeroxes of Francis Gary Powers’s contract, the Gus Grissom story contract, and Marina Oswald’s. These were his samples and he spread them out in.front of Vern and said, “Pick whichever one you want and take a good look at
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it. These contracts have been negotiated by the best lawyers in the country. Certainly,” said Schiller, “Marina Oswald had the best lawyer available. So did Francis Gary Powers. This is not to put you down, Mr. Damico, but the lawyers writing these contracts for Grissom and Powers and Oswald were people who knew more about profit-sharing, more about percentages, and more about how much money can be made with a given film than people like yourself, or for that matter, Dennis Boaz. What I am trying to tell you is that no matter what anybody offers, you take a look at the figures in these contracts right here. These are the real prices available. Susskind may be telling you the property is worth fifteen million dollars eventually, but I say you will never see a piece of that. He is offering a small amount now and talking about the big piece down the mad. The likelihood is that the big piece will never be seen. I, on the other hand, am willing to pay money right away. I am not offering it on the commencement of principal photography two or three or four years from now. I’m ready to gamble right this minute. I am taking the chance, not you.” When he saw that Vern Damico had picked up one of the contracts and was studying it somberly in his big hands, Schiller added, “I’ve come today with three monumental things to offer. The first, as I have stated, is, my cash on the barrelhead. The second is that I will make you my promise to stay in this town, and work on the story from here. I am not going to buy the rights and then vanish to New York. I’m not wealthy yet. I’m not like David Susskind who has already got it made. No,” said Larry Schiller, “I’m still climbing the ladder, so I’ll be here to work and give you advice, and the day I don’t deliver is the very day you have reason not to trust me.”