The Riverfront Times, St. Louis, September 12, 1990

Autumn tugs August, the the night air chilling perceptively as Interstate 55 makes its steep descent into the Meramec Valley, the same river basin George Gilmore and his victims called home.

Upstream from here at Glencoe, on the night of Oct. 29, 1980, Gilmore murdered 83-year-old Lottie Williams. She and her husband were among the five elderly persons who died at the hands of the Gilmore gang a decade ago.

I am rolling through the hills of Jefferson County now, headed for the maximum security prison at Potosi, speedometer broken, wrist watch misplaced, sans car phone or radio. The tape deck, however, works.

As I crest the hill overlooking Pevely, Jackson Browne’s warped mantra sends a rush up my spine via the rear speakers: “Time running out, without a shadow of a doubt, time running out. …”

There is something more than a little macabre about racing to a man’s execution. Life may have the pretense of an itinerary, but death is, after all, assumed to be unscheduled.

“It’s just so different from the ordinary … when you call a hearse after someone has died,” said Sister Jackie Toben, as she walked from downtown’s Christ Church Cathedral earlier that evening in a candlelight procession. Toben, a member of the Eastern Missouri Coalition Against the Death Penalty, recalled her first vigil two years ago at the old Missouri Penitentiary in Jefferson City. That night she stood in a cold rain and watched the funeral procession roll through the prison gates prior to the inmate’s death. Now she is marching with 17 other opponents of capital punishment in a public demonstration in front of the Civil Courts building on Market Street.

At the preceding prayer service, the group sang hymns, and after a sermon two members of the clergy conducted “pre-mordem” eulogies for Gilmore. He was described as a borderline retarded, alcoholic, drug-dependent, abused child who suffered from head injuries.

The Rev. Ted Schroeder, 53, told of a prison visit in which Gimore had peeled off his prison jumpsuit to reveal scars on his back that he says were inflicted by his alcoholic mother with the aid of a hot frying pan.

Brother Peter Engel, a Franciscan monk, remembered meeting Gilmore in the prison yard this summer. The inmate gave Engel a tour of the surrounding countryside from inside the fences, pointing out good hunting and fishing spots within sight. The Gilmore family lived in Mineral Point, the closest town to the new prison.

Engels, 24, surmised it was a small consolation that Gilmore would die close to home.

A half-dozen barefoot, denim-clad youth awaited the marchers on the steps of the Civil Courts. As this ad hoc bonding coalesced, a few more candles were lit.

Two girls among the reincarnated hippie contingent raised a large banner with a one-word message sandwiched between two peace symbols — “Life.”

Passersby shouted at the group from autos. “That’s real cool,” said one woman derisively.

Two hours later, near Potosi, Ann Ford voiced a similar opinion. “Someone I love was murdered. We’re here on behalf of the victims,” said Ford. Her placard read: “An eye for an eye.”

Ford stood with her surviving daughter, LaVonka, and the mother of another murder victim, Meta Weber. The trio’s backs were to the prison. Ford and Weber’s children were 19 and 20 years old when murdered, probably about the same age of the young women holding the banner in St. Louis earlier that evening.

State troopers and other law enforcement authorities loitered on the edges of darkness. A harsh light from a fire truck parked at the vigil site cast long shadows. The hum of its emergency generator muffled the sounds of hymns being sung by nearby opponents of the death penalty.

In the distance over the prison, a wispy cloud — unnoticed previously — hung low in an otherwise clear sky. As I walked to my car, I asked a late-arriving television cameraman for the time.

“Oh-six by my count,” he said.

In the morning newspaper, I read Gilmore had been administered his lethal injection at 12:05 a.m. George Gilmore was pronounced dead at 12:10, Aug. 31, 1990.

This story was edited by the late J.A. Lobbia, Riverfront Times, managing editor.