No one was closer to the nation's last execution by firing squad than Gary Gilmore's uncle, Vern Damico.
The retired shoemaker visited Gilmore nearly every day while the killer was incarcerated at the Utah State Prison. Damico was the last person Gilmore asked to speak with as he sat strapped in the executioner's chair. Gilmore wanted one more arm wrestle with his thick-handed uncle."I could pull you right out of that chair," Damico said to Gilmore.
"Would you?" Gilmore replied.
And then Damico watched Gilmore die at sunrise Jan. 17, 1977.
"I didn't want to come, but Gary said, `I want you there for a special reason,' " he said.
Damico called Gilmore a coward once after his nephew blind-sided a man during a fight behind his Provo shoe repair shop. Gilmore never forgot it.
"He wanted me to see he wasn't a coward, and believe me he wasn't a coward when he sat down in that chair. He really wanted to atone for what he did," Damico said.
The nation's second execution by firing squad since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 is scheduled for Thursday at midnight at the Utah State Prison. Under Utah law, child killer John Albert Taylor could choose the firing squad or lethal injection. Like Gilmore, he has asked an uncle to be there as witness.
The scene was horrific for Damico. He and the other witnesses gathered in a half circle not far from Gilmore and the riflemen who were hidden behind a dark panel with small, rectangular openings. Powerful floodlights shone down on Gilmore in his sleeveless navy blue sweat shirt and white pants.
"Boy, that's something you never want to see, especially when it's a relative," he said.
The rifle blasts came suddenly.
"The thunderous noise in that building was something else," he said.
Damico removed the cotton from his ears just prior to the shots. He didn't take his eyes off his nephew.
"When he was shot, his hands went up against the straps and his head went back a little," he said.
Damico froze.
"I just stared at him for quite some time in shock. I think I was in shock," he said.
A couple of prison lieutenants asked Damico if he was OK.
"I didn't answer. They grabbed both my arms and helped me out. I don't think I could have made it without them. And I was a strong man," he said.
Watching his nephew 19 years ago has not changed Damico's attitude about the death penalty or firing squads.
"I don't see anything in the world wrong with it," he said, adding that he'd choose lethal injection if he were condemned to die.
The bullet-ridden shirt Gilmore wore has four holes on the left breast. They were not as close together as one might expect. "When they say you can cover the spot with a silver dollar, uh-uh. You're not that calm shooting a rifle at a human being. I don't care who you are," he said.
Damico sold the shirt and Gilmore's pants, briefs and shoes last year for $500 to a German woman, Dagmar Ortler, whom he says is obsessed with Gary Mark Gilmore. The woman wrote Damico letters and visited him to learn more about the killer. He also sold her for $1,200 one of Gilmore's last oil paintings titled, "Polish Farmers."
Damico said he really didn't want the clothing in the first place. And after 19 years, he said, he has no use for it.