"LET'S DO IT: GARY GILMORE AND THE THREE WORDS THAT REOPENED AMERICA'S DEATH CHAMBERS"

0:03 Calarogus Shark media. Good morning, I'm reed Carter. Saturday, January seventeenth, twenty twenty six, forty nine years ago today, Utah State Prison, eight oh seven am. Gary Gilmore sat strapped to a wooden chair in a converted cannery, black hood over his face, target pinned over his heart. Twenty feet away, behind a curtain with five small holes, stood five volunteer police officers with point three zero caliber rifles, four loaded with live ammunition, one with a blank. No shooter would ever know for certain if his bullet killed a man. The warden asked, if Gilmore had any last words, Let's do it. Four shots fired simultaneously. Gary Mark Gilmore slumped forward dead within two minutes, thirty six years old, the first person executed in the United States in almost a decade, and he demanded it happen. That's the part that made Gary Gilmour a household name. Not the murders two young Mormon men shot execution style in back to back robberies. Not the childhood abuse dysfunction, eighteen years in prison by age thirty five.

1:14 What made America obsessed with Gary Gilmore was his insistence that the state of Utah carry out his death sentence. While the ACLU filed appeals on his behalf, Gilmore told them to butt out. While his mother begged for clemency, he published a letter asking her to stop. While protesters held vigils outside the prison, Gilmore told the board of pardons to stop being cowards and get it over with. He wanted to die, and on January seventeenth, nineteen seventy seven, Utah obliged. His final words became more than a footnote. Eleven years later, an advertising executive in Portland remembered that story.

1:54 A man facing certain death with such defiant confidence changed let's do it to just do it. Turned Nike from a struggling sneaker company into a global empire. Three words from a firing squad, billions of dollars in shoe sales. Welcome to America. I'm Red Carter today. Gary Gilmore, the man who reopened America's death chambers, the murders that should have been prevented, the victims who deserved better, and the cultural legacy of a killer's final words. This is celebrity trials.

2:35 Gary Mark Gilmore was born December fourth, nineteen forty in McCamey Texas, second of four sons, father Frank Gilmore Senior, mother Bessie Brown. The family was a disaster from the start. Frank Senior was an alcoholic con man, made his living selling fake magazine subscriptions, had multiple wives and families scattered across the country, none of whom he supported. When Gary was born, the family was hiding from the law under the name Kaufman. Frank christened his son Fay Robert Kaufman. Once they left Texas, Bessie changed it to Gary Mark. Years later, Gary found the original birth certificate, assumed he was illegitimate became convinced that's why his father hated him.

3:20 The family moved constantly throughout the American West, always a step ahead of creditors and authorities. Frank was strict and quick to anger. Would whip his sons with a razor, strop, a belt, whatever was handy, for little or no reason. Sometimes he beat Bessie too. The boys never knew when the violence would come or why. Gary's youngest brother, Micall, later described their father as a cruel and unreasonable man. Gary internalized that lesson if punishment came randomly, if beatings arrived without cause, then the world was harsh and arbitrary. Nothing made sense, rules were meaningless. Authority was just power exercised without reason. By nineteen forty eight, the family had settled in Portland, Oregon. Gary was eight years old, already drinking, already getting into trouble. According to statements he later made to psychologists, he developed a need for bravado, staring down, approaching trains until near impact, sticking wet fingers into electrical outlets, proving he couldn't be scared. At fourteen, Gary dropped out of school. By fifteen, he was running a car theft ring.

4:30 First arrest, his father hired a lawyer, got him off, taught him that the legal system could be manipulated. Two weeks later, Gary was back in court on another car theft charge. This time no lawyer could save him. The court sent him to McLaren Reform School for Boys in Woodburn, Oregon. He was fifteen years old. His criminal career had officially begun. Released after a year, Gary bounced between jail and brief periods of freedom. Car theft charge at eighteen landed him in Oregon State Correctional Institution. More charges piled up, more sentences extended. Then in nineteen sixty two, while Gary was locked up in Rocky Butte Jail in Portland, his father died lung cancer. Gary wasn't allowed to attend the funeral.

5:15 When a guard told him the news, Gary went wild, tore apart his cell, slashed his wrists with a broken light bulb, attempted suicide. Despite everything, the beatings, the abuse, the dysfunction, Gary was devastated. Whatever chance at reconciliation might have existed was gone forever. He was twenty one years old, already had spent years behind bars, and now the father who had shaped him through violence was dead. Gary's behavior after that deteriorated rapidly, assault, armed, robbery. More years added to his sentence. Oregon classified him as an habitual offender, gave him fifteen years at the state penitentiary. While incarcerated, his brother, Galen, third of the four boys, was stabbed in the stomach during an unrelated incident. No money for medical care, Galen died. Gary was allowed to attend this funeral, but losing another family member only made things worse. Here's the thing about Gary Gilmore that complicates the narrative. He was intelligent, IQ of one hundred thirty three high scores on academic tests, artistic talent that won prison competitions. During endless stretches in solitary confinement, he educated himself, read literature, wrote poetry, developed genuine skill as a visual artist. In nineteen seventy two, that talent earned him conditional release. He could live in a halfway house in Eugene, Oregon, attend

6:46 art school at the local community college. A chance at rehabilitation, a chance at a normal life. He never registered for classes. Within a month, he'd committed armed robbery. Back to prison. Gary gilmore Or wasn't stupid. He was intelligent enough to understand consequences, skilled enough to have pursued legitimate success. But something was broken inside him. Prison psychiatrists diagnosed antisocial personality disorder with intermittent psychotic decompensation. In plain language, he couldn't function in society, couldn't follow rules, couldn't control impulses, and periodically he'd have episodes that looked like psychosis. Because of his violent behavior, Oregon transferred him to the federal prison in Maryon, Illinois Maximum Security, one of the toughest facilities in the country. Gary spent years there, drugged on antipsychotics to control his outbursts. His mother had to intervene to get him off the medication. By April nineteen seventy six, Gary Gilmour was thirty five years old. He'd spent more than half his life in prison, eighteen years behind bars, interrupted by brief stretches of chaotic freedom. Now somehow he was being released, conditionally paroled into the custody of his cousin, Brenda Nicole in Provo, Utah. Brenda believed Gary just needed support, moral guidance, a fresh start in a place far from Portland, far from his criminal history. She found him a job

8:18 at her father, Verne Damaco's shoe repair shop, later got him work at an insulation company. For a few weeks. It almost worked. Gary had a place to stay, had employment, was meeting people, seemed to be adjusting. Then he met Nicole Baker Barrett, nineteen years old, twice married, once widowed, mother of two young children, and everything fell apart. Their relationship was intense from the start. Gary moved in quickly, but he couldn't escape himself. The drinking resumed, the petty thefts, the aggressive behavior, the violent outbursts. Nicole's family saw what was happening, begged her to leave him. She did, broke up with him after just a few months together, and Gary Gilmore, thirty five years old, half his life spent in prison, snapped. Make it make sense, an intelligent man with artistic talent, given multiple chances at rehabilitation, throws it all away because a teenage girl dumps him. But that's the reality. Gary Gilmore wasn't capable of handling rejection, wasn't capable of processing loss, had never developed the emotional tools that most people acquire in childhood. So when Nicole left him, he did the only thing he knew how to do.

9:31 He lashed out, and two innocent men paid with their lives. July nineteenth, nineteen seventy six, Aorum, Utah summer evening. Max David Jensen twenty four years old, Brigham young, university law student, graduated cum laudy from Utah State, married to Colleen, father of an eleven month old daughter. That afternoon, Max and Colleen had spoken at a Latter Day Saints gathering. The topic was honesty, the challenge of being honest in a complicated world. Max finished the presentation, kissed his wife and daughter goodbye, and went to work the late shift at a Sinclair gas station. He'd lost a coin flip with the assistant manager. That's why he was working that night.

10:17 Random chance heads are tails. Max called tails. The coin landed on heads, so Max Jensen drove to the station on one hundred sixty eight East and eight hundred North in Oreum started his shift, pumped gas, made small talk with customers. Normal night. Around ten thirty pm, Gary Gilmore walked in. He'd been drinking. He'd been spiraling since Nicole left. He'd bought an expensive pickup truck he couldn't afford. Now he needed money, needed to prove something, needed to feel powerful. Gilmore pulled out a stolen point two to two caliber automatic pistol. Demanded money. Max complied, emptied his pockets, gave him everything. It wasn't enough. Gilmore ordered Max to the bathroom, made him lie face down on the floor. Max didn't resist, did everything he was told. Maybe if he cooperated, the man with the gun would leave. This one is for me, Gilmore said, then fired into the back of Max Jensen's head.

11:19 This one is for Nicole. A second shot. Max Jensen, twenty four years old, was dead. Gilmore took the cash, left the station, didn't bother emptying the register. The money almost didn't matter. This was about rage, about punishment, about making someone else suffer because Gary Gilmore was suffering. The next night, July twentieth, provo Utah, Gilmore's pickup truck was having problems. He dropped it at a garage for repairs. While waiting, he walked to the City Center Motel at one hundred and fifty West and three hundred South. Benny Bushnell twenty five years old, night manager, also student at Brigham Young University, married to Debbie, father of one son.

12:05 His wife was pregnant with their second child. Gilmore walked into the registration office, pulled out the same point two two pistol, demanded the cash box. Benny complied, gave him the money, did everything right. Gilmore ordered him to lie on the floor, shot him twice in the head. Debbie Bushnell heard the shots, came to investigate, saw a man fleeing with the cash box, saw her husband on the floor dead. Here's what makes these murders particularly senseless. Both victims cooperated. Both gave Gilmore what he wanted, Neither resisted, neither threatened him. They followed every instruction, hoping compliance would save their lives. It didn't matter. Gary Gilmore wasn't robbing them for money. He was executing them for being happy, for having lives he couldn't have, for representing everything that had been denied to him. After shooting Benny Bushnell, Gilmore tried to dispose of the gun. Threw it into some bushes, but he was careless. While disposing of the weapon, he accidentally shot himself in the hand. Michael Simpson, the garage mechanic working on Gilmore's truck, heard about the motel shooting on his police scanner. When Gilmore came back for his vehicle, Simpson noticed the bloody bandage on his right hand. Noticed Gilmore was agitated, wrote down the license plate number. Called police. Meanwhile, Gilmore called his cousin, Brenda, the same cousin who'd helped him get paroled, who'd found him jobs, who'd believed he could change. He asked her for bandages and painkillers. Didn't

13:35 explain why Brenda knew something was wrong. Called the police. Utah State Police apprehended Gilmore as he tried to drive out of Provo. He gave up without a fight. The gun was recovered from the bushes. Ballistics matched the bullets that killed both men. Gary Gilmore, thirty five years old, half his life spent in prison, had murdered two young fathers in two nights for a few hundred dollars because he was angry at a teenage girl who dumped him. And now he faced the death penalty in a state that still offered firing squad as an execution method. Max Jensen should be seventy four years old today. Should have graduated law school. Should have practiced law for decades. Should have watched his daughter grow up, get married, have children of his own. Instead, he's been dead for forty nine years because he lost a coin flip and worked the wrong shift. Benny Bushnell should be seventy five years old today.

14:30 Should have met his second child, should have raised a family, should have grown old with his wife Debbie. Instead, he's been dead for forty nine years because a stranger walked into his motel lobby. Someone has to say their names. Max Jensen Bennie Bushnell twenty four and twenty five years old, law students at BYU, Mormon fathers with infant children. Both complied with every demand. Both died anyway, Rest in peace, Max, Rest in peace, Benny. We'll be right back with Gary Gilmore's trial, his demand to be executed, and the three words that became a billion dollar slogan. October fifth, nineteen seventy six, Provo Courthouse. Gary Gilmore's murder trial began just eleven weeks after the killings. The case was straightforward. Eyewitness testimony placed Gilmore at the City Center motel. Ballistics matched the murder weapon to the gun found in the bushes.

15:41 A police officer traced Gilmore's blood trail from the motel to that same bush The evidence was overwhelming. Gilmore was only tried for Benny Bushnell's murder. That case had eyewitnesses. He later admitted to killing Max Jensen, but was never formally charged because no one saw it happen. The trial lasted two days. His court appointed lawyers, Michael Esplin and Craig Snyder barely cross examined prosecution witnesses called no defense witnesses made little effort to fight the charges. Why because Gary Gilmore told them not to. Four psychiatrists examined Gilmore. All agreed he was aware of what he was doing when he killed those men. He knew it was wrong.

16:23 He had antisocial personality disorder, possibly aggravated by drinking in drugs, but he didn't meet the legal criteria for insanity. Gilmore briefly considered taking the stand, arguing some kind of dissociative defense, then withdrew the request. He wanted this over. October seventh, ten thirteen am, the jury retired to deliberate. By midday, they returned with a verdict guilty of first degree murder. Same day, the jury recommended death special circumstances murder committed during armed robbery. Under Utah law, Gilmore could choose his method of execution, hanging or firing squad. Judge J. Robert Bullock asked for his preference. I'd prefer to be shot.

17:09 Utah was the only state still offering death by firing squad. The method traced back to Mormon doctrine blood atonement, the belief that certain sins require the shedding of blood to achieve salvation. Execution dates set for November fifteenth, nineteen seventy six, five weeks away. Then things got complicated. Utah had disassembled its gallows years earlier, had no proper facility for firing squad executions needed time to prepare, the execution was delayed. Meanwhile, anti death penalty groups mobilized. The Supreme Court had just reinstated capital punishment in July, with greg versus Georgia, overturning a nineteen seventy two ruling that had declared existing death penalty statutes unconstitutional. Gary Gilmour would be the first person executed under the new laws. If advocates could stop his execution, they might slow the resumption of capital punishment nationwide. The ACLU filed appeals on Gilmore's behalf against his wishes without his consent. Gilmore was furious. He didn't want to be saved.

18:15 He'd accepted the sentence was ready to die, believe death was preferable to spending more decades in prison. November nineteen seventy six Board of Pardons hearing, Gilmore addressed the advocacy groups directly. They always want to get in on the act. I don't think they have ever really done anything effective in their lives. I would like them all, including that group of reverends and rabbis from Salt Lake City, to butt out, this is my life and this is my death. It's been sanctioned. By the courts that I die, and I accept that. He told the board, it seems like the people, especially the people of Utah, want the death penalty and they don't want executions. And when it became a reality that they might have to carry one out, well, they started backing off on it, while I took them literal and serious when they sentenced me to death. Make it make sense. A convicted double murderer wanted to die.

19:10 The state had sentenced him to death, but lawyers who'd never met him kept filing appeals to save his life against his express wishes. Gilmore saw the hypocrisy. Utah wanted the death penalty as an abstraction, as a deterrent on the books. When it came to actually killing someone, suddenly everyone got squeamish. November sixteenth, nineteen seventy six, first stay of execution issued. Gilmore responded by attempting suicide, took an overdose of sleeping pills. He survived, recovered, The execution was rescheduled. Then his girlfriend, Nicole Baker, the same Nicole whose departure triggered his murder spree, joined him in a suicide pact.

19:50 She'd been visiting him in prison they'd exchanged love letters, planned to die together. Both took overdoses. Both survived. Nicole wasdmitted to the state mental hospital. December sixteenth, Gilmore attempted suicide again more pills, survived again. His mother, Bessie, filed an appeal to the US Supreme Court, begging for a stay of execution. Her own son published a letter in the newspaper asking her to stop interfering. December thirteenth, the Supreme Court ruled the execution could proceed. Execution rescheduled for January seventeenth, nineteen seventy seven. National and international media descended on Utah. Protesters held vigils outside the prison. The ACLU made one final attempt to block the execution. That stay was issued just hours before the scheduled time, then overturned at seven thirty am, the execution would proceed. Gary Gilmour ate his last meal the night before, steak, potatoes, milk, and coffee, only consumed the milk and coffee. His uncle, Verne Demko, who attended the gathering, later admitted to smuggling in three small bottles of Jack Daniel's whiskey. Gilmore drank them.

21:03 Then they took him to the converted cannery behind the prison strapped him into a wooden chair, wall of sandbags behind him to catch the bullets. Five riflemen behind a curtain, aiming through small holes. Four live rounds, one blank. The warden asked for last words, Let's do it. The prison physician placed a black hood over Gilmore's head. A doctor pinned a paper target over his heart. Gilmore's final words to the Catholic prison chaplain Dominus vobiscum Latin, the Lord be with you. Eight o seven a m. January seventeenth, nineteen seventy seven. Four bullets struck Gary Gilmore's chest. He slumped forward, pronounced dead within two minutes. The first American executed in almost ten years, the man who demanded his own death, the killer who reopened America's execution chambers. And despite everything, despite his crimes, and his demands and his defiance, you can't help wondering was this justice? Or was this a broken man finally getting what he'd wanted since childhood, an end to the pain, the dysfunction, the violence that had defined his entire existence. Gary Gilmore didn't fear death.

22:15 He feared life, feared another eighteen years in prison, feared existing in a world where he couldn't function, couldn't connect, couldn't be anything other than what his father's abuse had made him. That doesn't excuse the murders. Max Jensen and Benny Bushnell didn't deserve to die because Gary Gilmore was broken. Their families didn't deserve decades of grief because a violent man couldn't process rejection. But it complicates the narrative. Gary Gilmore wasn't a monster born evil. He was made by an abusive father, by a chaotic childhood, by a prison system that warehoused him instead of rehabilitating him, by a society that released him repeatedly without giving him the tools to survive. Your tax dollars at work. Gary Gilmour's death should have been the end of the story. Instead, it was just the beginning. Norman Mahler spent two years researching Gilmore's life, conducted over two hundred interviews, reviewed court transcripts, prison records, personal letters. In nineteen seventy nine, he published The Executioner's Song, over one thousand pages, a non fiction novel reconstructing everything Gilmour's childhood, his crimes, his relationship with Nicole, his trial, his execution. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in nineteen eighty Critics praised its objective, immersive reconstruction,

23:49 no moralizing, just facts presented with devastating clarity. In nineteen eighty two, NBC adapted it into a television movie. Tommy Lee Jones played Gary Gilmour, won an Emmy for his performance. Rosanna Arquette played Nicole Baker. Then came Gary's younger brother, Mikail Gilmour, music journalist writer for Rolling Stone. He spent years researching their family history. Published Shot in the Heart in nineteen ninety four, a memoir tracing the dysfunction back generations, abusive Mormon patriarchs, family secrets, inherited violence. The New York Times called it remarkable, astonishing, like a combination of the Brothers Karamazov and a series of Johnny cash ballads. Won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, made into an HBO film in two thousand and one. A murderer and his family became the subject of two Pulitzer Prize winning or nominated books, multiple films endless analysis, but the strangest legacy came eleven years after the execution Portland, Oregon, Dan Whedon, co founder of the advertising agency Weeden plus Kennedy, was trying to develop a campaign for Nike. The company held just eighteen percent of the US sportswear market. Struggling against Reebok needed something memorable.

25:19 Wheden had created several different commercials, different tones, different approaches. The night before presenting to Nike, he realized they needed a tagline to tie everything together. He stayed up late, wrote four or five ideas, kept coming back to one phrase, and the reason was Gary Gilmore. I was recalling a man in Portland. Wheden later explained. He grew up in Portland and ran around doing criminal acts in the country and was in Utah where he murdered a man and a woman and was put before a firing squad. They asked him if he had any final thoughts, and he said, let's do it. Whedon was struck by the defiance, the confidence, a man facing sir and death, pushing through that uncertainty with three simple words. I didn't like let's do it, Weeden said, so I just changed it to just do it.

26:10 He showed it to colleagues. They said they didn't need it. He presented to Nike co founder Phil Knight, said they didn't need it. Wheden insisted, just trust me on this one. They trusted him. The first Just Do It commercial featured eighty year old runner Walt Stack, who ran seventeen miles every morning. The slogan appeared at the end, simple, memorable, Universal. Within ten years, Nike's market share had grown from eighteen percent to forty three percent. Global sales exceeded nine billion dollars. Just Do It became one of the most recognizable slogans in advertising history. Campaign magazine called it arguably the best tagline of the twentieth century. Said it cut across age and class barriers, linked Nike with success, and made consumers believe they could be successful too, just by wearing its products.

27:07 Three words from a firing squad transformed slightly became a global phenomenon. Here's the dark irony. Gary Gilmore, who spent his life failing at everything, whose greatest achievements were two senseless murders and demanding his own execution, accidentally created more cultural value dead than he ever could have alive. His last words didn't just mark the end of a moratorium. On capital punishment. They launched a billion dollar brand campaign. They've been printed on merchandise, plastered on billboards, tattooed on bodies. They've motivated athletes and entrepreneurs and ordinary people trying to push through their own fears, and almost nobody wearing those words knows where they came from. Let's do it, spoken by a double murderer seconds before bullets ended his life, transformed into just do it, an aspirational mantra for human achievement.

28:04 Make it make sense, That's our Gary Gilmore Special for Saturday, January seventeenth, twenty twenty six. Forty nine years ago today, five riflemen fired four bullets into a convicted killer's chest. Gary Gilmore died at thirty six years old. Half his life spent in prison, Two young men dead because he couldn't handle rejection. Max David Jensen twenty four years old BYU law student, husband to Colleen, father of an infant daughter, shot in the head at a gas station because he lost a coin flip and worked the wrong shift. Benny Bushnell, twenty five years old, BYU student, motel night manager, husband to Debbie. Father of one son with another child on the way. He'd never meet, shot twice in the head because he was working when a violent man walked through the door. Both complied with every demand, Both died anyway.

29:00 Their widows won wrongful death judgments against Gilmore's estate, Colleen Jensen six hundred twenty thousand, seventy two dollars Deborah Bushnell five hundred sixty seven one hundred thirty nine dollars. Neither ever collected. There was no money in the estate. The man who killed their husbands left nothing behind but grief. Gary Gilmore demanded death because he couldn't face another eighteen years in prison, because life had been unbearable since childhood, because his father's abuse had broken something inside him that could never be repaired. None of that excuses the murders. None of that justifies the pain inflicted on the Jensen and Bushnell families. But it forces us to ask uncomfortable questions about how we create people capable of such violence, about what we owe each other, about whether punishment is justice or just revenge. Gary Gilmore's last words became a billion dollar slogan, His story became Pulitzer Prize winning literature.

29:58 His execution became I'm a cultural watershed. But Max Jensen and Benny Bushnell, the men he killed, are footnotes mentioned briefly, then forgotten. While we analyze the killer's psychology and legacy, someone has to say their names. Max Jensen, Benny Bushnell twenty four and twenty five years old, fathers, husbands, students, murdered for no reason by a man who wanted to die. Rest in peace, Max, Rest in peace. Benny, I'm reed, Carter Tomorrow. Albert Fish, the most disturbing killer in American history, executed ninety years ago this week. This is celebrity trials