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Final Meals, Feasts, and Words from History’s Notorious and Victorious

Khalid Elhassan August 12, 2021 36 min

After his final stay was lifted, Gary Gilmore was shot to death while seated on this chair, shown here shortly after the execution. Salt Lake Tribune

28. Gary Gilmore’s Final Meal

Gary Gilmore did not appreciate the efforts of others to prevent his execution. As he stated at a Board of Pardons hearing in November, 1976: “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“. While on death row, he tried to commit suicide twice, once on November 16, 1976, just a day after the first stay of execution, and again on December 16^th.

The final stay of execution occurred a few hours before he was rescheduled to be executed on January 17, 1977. It did not last long, however, and was lifted at 7:30 AM. His final meal before he met end before a firing squad at 8:07 that morning was a hamburger, baked potato, hard-boiled eggs, coffee, and three shots of contraband Jack Daniel’s whiskey. His story became the subject of a novel by Norman Mailer, The Executioner’s Song, which went on to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.