UTAH STATE PRISON — Gary Hilfiker, who was convicted of two brutal murders in three years, believes he still deserves a chance at parole.
"I've seen men who have come and go (to prison multiple times). I look at myself, and granted, I've done a heinous crime, but I can guarantee you if I'm granted parole, the parole board will only hear my name after they've (granted parole)," Hilfiker said in a recording of a parole hearing held Tuesday.
In 1992, Hilfiker was sentenced to two consecutive five-years-to-life terms in prison for stabbing his live-in girlfriend, 38-year-old Marsha Haverty, 11 times in the head, neck, face and back until she was dead, and then pouring oil on her and lighting her body on fire.
A parole date had already been set for one of those sentences in April of 2022, when Unified police detectives announced in 2014 that they had linked Hilfiker to the cold case murder of Flora Rundle, 71, in 1989.
Hilfiker, who was a cab driver at the time, used to drive Rundle to the grocery store and doctor appointments. One night, he broke into her house with the intent of robbing her. But when she woke up and confronted him, he stabbed her multiple times in the chest and back.
As soon as the second murder charge was announced, the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole rescinded Hilfiker's parole date and scheduled a hearing about it in 2014. But Hilfiker declined to come out of his cell for that hearing.
On Tuesday, he explained that he knew there wasn't anything he could say or do that would change the board's mind not to rescind his parole date, so he chose not to attend.
But Hilfiker did attend Tuesday's parole hearing, conducted by board member Robert Yeates. He told him that when he committed the murders, he was addicted to crack cocaine and drank alcohol. When he consumed both at the same time, Hilfiker said would go into what he called a "drug induced psychosis."
"In my 23 years of incarceration, I've studied myself. Because first and foremost I couldn't understand how I could kill a friend of mine. Secondly, when I was confronted with this recent charge, it sickened me to know I had killed someone else. It's hard to explain. I'm not trying to explain away anything. I'm responsible for my actions," he said.
Five years prior to the first murder, Hilfiker said he "had it all." He was married and had children. But as he became more and more addicted to drugs, "Very slowly, everything just kind of fell away from me."
He admitted Tuesday that he was so drug-induced when he committed the murders that he doesn't "remember everything about either one of them."
In fact, he said he didn't even remember killing Rundle until Unified police questioned him about it two decades later.
Hilfiker says he has been a born-again Christian for the past 14 years.
"The person I was back then is not who I am today by any stretch of the imagination. At that time in my life I was a man who was self-serving. I didn't realize what kind of person I was at that time. I didn't understand the effects that drugs and alcohol had upon my life," he said. "I believe my faith in God and my trust in him is what first and foremost has helped me through my prison experience."
Nevertheless, Yeates asked Hilfiker if he would grant parole to a person like himself if he were sitting on the parole board.
"I would consider parole for pretty much anyone who has shown a significant and a positive change in their behavior," he said. "During my time in prison … I've changed tremendously. I am not that person anymore, the 32-year-old self-centered individual. I'm a person approaching his 58th year of life. … I am a man who wants to serve others now, a man who puts others first. For my crimes, I can never say how sorry I am enough."
The full parole board is expected to make a decision in the coming weeks whether to grant Hilfiker another parole hearing.
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