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The Playboy Interview Interviewer: Barry Farrell
INTERVIEWER: As far as we can tell from your prison record, you’ve been locked up almost continuously since you entered reform school, and that was twenty-two years ago. It’s as if you never saw any choice but to live out a criminal destiny. GILMORE: Yea, that’s kind of a way of putting it. In fact, that’s very nicely put. INTERVIEWER: What got you started thinking like a criminal? GILMORE: Probably going to reform school. INTERVIEWER: But you must have done things to get yourself sent there. GILMORE: Yea, I was about fourteen when I went to reform school and, ah, thirteen when I started getting locked up. INTERVIEWER: What had you done to get locked up at thirteen? GILMORE: Well, I started out stealing cars… but, ah, I guess my first felonies were probably burglaries, house burglaries. I used to burglarize houses on my paper route. INTERVIEWER: Why? What were you after? GILMORE: Why? Well, I wanted guns, mainly. A lot of people keep guns in their homes and, well… that’s what I was primarily looking for. INTERVIEWER: How old were you then? Eleven? Twelve? Why did you want guns? GILMORE: Well, see, in Portland, at that time, there was a gang. I don’t know if you ever heard of it - probably not. But, man, I figured that, well, I would like to be in the Broadway gang. And I figured the best way to get in was to go down and hang around Broadway and sell ‘em guns. I knew they wanted guns. I mean, I - I don’t even know if the gang existed… it may have been a myth. But I heard about ‘em, you know? So I thought, I wanted to be part of an outfit like that… the Broadway boys. INTERVIEWER: But instead you got caught and sent to reform school? GILMORE: Yeah, the MacLaren School for Boys, in Woodburn, Oregon. INTERVIEWER: Was that the point at which you just told yourself, from here on, I’m in for trouble? GILMORE: (laughs) I always felt like I was in for trouble. I seemed to have a talent, or rather a knack, for making adults look at me a little different, different from the way they looked at other kids, like maybe bewildered, or maybe repelled. INTERVIEWER: Repelled? GILMORE: Just a different look, like adults aren’t supposed to look at kids. INTERVIEWER: With hate in their eyes? GILMORE: Beyond hate. Loathing, I’d say. I can remember one lady in Flagstaff, Arizona, a neighbor of my folks when I was three or four. She became so frustrated with rage at whatever shit I was doing that she attacked me physically with full intent of hurting me. My dad had to jump up and restrain her. INTERVIEWER: What could you have been doing to get her so mad? GILMORE: Just the way I was talking to her and the way I was acting. I was never quite… a boy. One evening in Portland, when I was about eight, we all went over to these people’s house, and there were two or three adults there. I don’t remember just what I did, giving everybody a lot of lip, fucking with everything in the house - I don’t remember what all - but anyhow, this one lady finally flipped completely out. Screamed. Ranted. Raved. Threw me out of the house. And the other adults there supported her and all felt the feelings she felt. Apparently, shit like that didn’t have much effect on me. I can remember just walking home, about three miles, whistling and singing to myself. INTERVIEWER: It sounds as though you were on the course you’ve always followed well before you went to reform school. GILMORE: Well, I always knew the law was silly as hell. But as far as courses go, you react in a certain way because your life is influenced by all the varieties of your experience. Does that make any sense? INTERVIEWER: It’s hard to say. Give us an example. GILMORE: Well, this is kind of a personal thing. It’ll sound like a strange incident to you, but it had a lasting effect on me. I was about eleven years old and I was coming home from school, and I thought I’d take a short cut. I climbed down this hill, a drop of about fifty feet, and I got tangled in these briar bushes, and blackberry, and thornberry. Some of these bushes were fifty feet high, I guess, down in this wild, overgrown area in southeast Portland. I thought it would be a short cut, but there was no pass through there. Nobody had gone through there before. At one point, I could have turned around and gone back, but I chose to just go on, and it took me about three hours to pick my way. All during that time, I never stopped for a rest and just kept going. I knew if I just kept going I’d get out, but I was also aware that I could get hopelessly stuck in there. I was a block or so from any houses, and if I screamed… well I could have died in there. My screams would have gone unheard. So I just kept going. It was kind of a personal thing. I finally got home about three hours late and my mom said, well, you’re late, and I said, yeah, I took a short cut. (laughs) It made me feel a little different about a lot of things. INTERVIEWER: What things? GILMORE: Just being aware that I never did get afraid. I knew that if I just kept going, I’d get out. It left me with a distinct feeling, like a kind of overcoming of myself. INTERVIEWER: Well, why then did you say it was going to reform school that got you started? GILMORE: Look, reform schools disseminate certain esoteric knowledge. They sophisticate. A kid comes out of reform school and he’s learned a few things he otherwise would have missed. And he identifies, usually, with the people who share the same esoteric knowledge, the criminal element, or whatever you want to call it. So going to Woodburn was not a small thing in my life. INTERVIEWER: Was it bad at Woodburn? How did you fit in there? GILMORE: Man, that place made me think that was the only way to live. The guys in there I looked up to, they were tough, they were hipsters - this was the Fifties - and they seemed to run everything there. The staff were local beer-drinking guys that put in their hours, and they didn’t care if you did this or did that. They had a few psych doctors there, too. Psychoanalysis was a big then then. They would come in and they would show you their ink-blot tests and they would ask you all kinds of questions, mostly related to sex. And look at ya funny and… things like that. INTERVIEWER: How long were you there? GILMORE: Fifteen months. I escaped four times, and after that, I finally got hip that the way to really get out of that place was to show ‘em that I was rehabilitated. And after four months of not getting into any trouble, they released me. That taught me that people like that are easily fooled. INTERVIEWER: Did the other inmates ever try to make you their punk? GILMORE: No… nobody ever… I’ve never had any trouble like that. No, never once. If it had happened I would have handled it in a decisive violent manner. I would have killed somebody - or beat them with something, you know, if they were too big. I would’ve took some weapon to ‘em. But that never did happen to me. INTERVIEWER: How did you feel when you were released from Woodburn? GILMORE: I came out looking for trouble. Thought that’s what you’re supposed to do. I felt slightly superior to everybody else ‘cause I’d been in reform school. I had a tough-guy complex, that sort of smart-aleck juvenile-delinquent attitude. Juvenile delinquent - remember that phrase? Sure dates me, doesn’t it? Nobody could tell me anything. I had a ducktail haircut, I smoked, drank, shot heroin, smoked weed, took speed, got into fights, chased and caught pretty little broads. The Fifties were a hell of a time to be a juvenile delinquent. I stole and robbed and gambled and went to Fats Domino and Gene Vincent dances at the local halls. INTERVIEWER: What did you want to make of your life at that point? GILMORE: I wanted to be a mobster. INTERVIEWER: Didn’t you think you had any other talents? GILMORE: Well, yeah, I had talents. I’ve always been good at drawing. I’ve drawn since I was a child, and I remember a teacher in about the second grade telling my mom, “Your son’s an artist,” in a way that showed she really meant it. INTERVIEWER: Did you ever have a time when you had second thoughts about that criminal destiny, where you thought you might change? GILMORE: Well, I figured if I could get something going as an artist - but it’s so damned hard, you know. I wanted to be successful on a large scale - a fine artist - not a commercial artist. After a while I figured I’d probably just spend the rest of my life in jail or commit suicide, or be killed uh, by the police or something like that. A violent death of some sort, but there was a time as a kid when I thought seriously about it, you know being a painter. INTERVIEWER: How long was it before you were locked up again? GILMORE: Four months. INTERVIEWER: Four months! We thought you said that reform schools educate. Couldn’t you have used your esoteric knowledge to stay out of jail? GILMORE: It was just the pattern of my life. Some guys are lucky all their lives. No matter what kind of trouble they get into, pretty soon they’re back on the bricks. But some guys are unlucky. They fuck up once on the outside and it’s the pattern of their lives to be drawn back and do a lot of time. INTERVIEWER: And you’re one of the lucky ones? GILMORE: Yeah, “the eternal recidivist”. We’re creatures of habit, man. INTERVIEWER: What’s the longest stretch of time you’ve been free since you first went to reform school? GILMORE: Eight months was about the longest. INTERVIEWER: Your I.Q.’s supposedly about 130, and yet you’ve spent almost nineteen of the past twenty-two years behind bars. Why were you never able to get away with anything? GILMORE: I got away with a couple of things. I ain’t a great thief. I’m impulsive. Don’t plan, don’t think. You don’t have to be a superintelligent to get away with shit, you just have to think. But I don’t. I’m impatient. Not greedy enough. I could have gotten away with lots of things that I got caught for. I don’t, ah, really understand it. Maybe I quit caring a long time ago.
Gilmore discussing the murders of Max Jensen and Bennie Bushnell: GILMORE: April got in the truck and, man, she turned the radio on real loud and moved right over beside me and told me she didn’t want to go home, and I told her, Well, look, I’ll keep you out all night. So I drove down to the place where I’d bought my truck and talked to those guys about the financial arrangements. I give ‘em my Mustang as the down payment and we drank some booze and just kind of made a loose arrangement about the truck, they were more or less just holding my guns for me, and, uh, I kept one pistol with me, the loaded one, and I signed the papers and took ownership of the truck and left my Mustang there, and then I was driving around with April and we got out to Orem and I pulled around the corner to this service station and it looked fairly deserted. That’s what I guess drew my attention to it. I just drove around the corner and parked and told April to stay in the truck. I’d be back in a moment. And I went over to the gas station and told Jensen to give me the money, and he did, and I told him, well, come on in the bathroom and get down on the floor, and it was pretty quick. I didn’t let him know it was coming or anything. It was just a .22, so I shot him twice in rapid succession, to make sure that he was not in any pain or that he wasn’t left half alive or anything. And, and, I left there and I drove to, uh. I don’t know just where that Sinclair station was, but I drove back to the main drag. State Street, I guess it is, and I went into Albertson’s and bought some potato chips and different things to take to a movie and half a case of beer and some things that April wanted to eat.. INTERVIEWER: Now, one thing. When you stopped at the gas station, did you have any intention of either robbing Jensen or killing him? GILMORE: I had the intention of killing him. INTERVIEWER: When did that concept form in your mind? To kill somebody - GILMORE: I can’t say. It had been building all week. That night I knew I had to open a valve and let something out and I didn’t know exactly what it would be and I wasn’t thinking I’ll do this or I’ll do that, or that’ll make me feel better. I just knew something was happening in me and that I’d let some of the steam off and, uh, I guess this sounds pretty vicious. INTERVIEWER: No. No. Did Jensen say anything to annoy you? GILMORE: No, not at all. INTERVIEWER: What prompted you to leave the truck and go into the office where Jensen was? GILMORE: I don’t really know. INTERVIEWER: What do you mean by that? GILMORE: I mean, I don’t really know. I said the place looked deserted. It just seemed appropriate. INTERVIEWER: Apparently, killing Jensen didn’t do anything to take the pressure off. Why did you go out the next night and kill Bushnell? GILMORE: I don’t know, man. I’m impulsive. I don’t think. INTERVIEWER: You killed him the same way you’d killed Jensen the night before - ordering him to lie down on the floor, then firing point-blank into his head. Did you think killing Bushnell would give you some kind of relief you didn’t get with Jensen? GILMORE: I told you. I wasn’t thinking. What I do remember is an absence of thought. Just movements, actions. I shot Bushnell, and then the gun jammed - them fucking Automatics! And I thought, man, this guy’s not dead. I wanted to shoot him a second time, because I didn’t want him to lie there half dead. I didn’t want him in pain. I tried to jack the mechanism and get the gun working again, and shoot him again, but it was jammed, and I had to get my ass out of there. I jacked the gun into shape again but too late to do anything for Mr. Bushnell. I’m afraid he didn’t die immediately. When I ordered him to lie down, I wanted it to be quick for him. There was no chance, no choice for him. That sounds cold. But you asked. INTERVIEWER: Was there any difference in the way you approached the two killings? GILMORE: No, not really. You could say it was a little more certain that Mr. Bushnell was going to die. INTERVIEWER: Why? GILMORE: Because it was already a fact that Mr. Jensen had died, and so the next one was more certain. INTERVIEWER: Was the second killing easier than the first? GILMORE: Neither one of ‘em were hard or easy. INTERVIEWER: Had you ever had any dealings of any kind with either of those men? GILMORE: No. INTERVIEWER: Well, what led you to the City Center Motel, where Bushnell worked? We’re just trying to understand the quality of this rage you speak of. It wasn’t a rage that might have been vented in sex? GILMORE: I don’t want to mess with questions that pertain to sex. I think they’re cheap. INTERVIEWER: But if, on the night you killed Bushnell, you had wound up with a friendly girl who could offer you beer and company and a relaxing time, wouldn’t that have helped you feel better? GILMORE: I don’t want to answer that question. INTERVIEWER: You seem to find it easier talking about murder than sex. GILMORE: That’s your judgment.
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