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Show Oldster recalls execution he was involved with Even in a case as bizzare as the Gary Gilmore-executian-suicide-fast story, emotions are involved. in-volved. Sometimes the emotions of the victims and their family are sometimes ignored, granted. Others are involved too. The following is a story that appeared in the November 19 Tooele Transcript which describes one man's emotions and feelings concerning an execution that took place earlier this century. As the entire nation looks at Utah and waits apprehensively to see how court and political officials will handle Gary Mark Gilmore, the man who asked to be executed, one Tooele man reads the news accounts with understanding. Almost 40 years ago he conducted con-ducted the execution of John W. Deering, a man whose experience ex-perience on death row was very similar .to Gilmore's. (With the exception of the recent suicide According to Jackson, Deering showed no real fear of death, and like Gilmore, seemed aaxious to die himself. The night before the scheduled execution, Deering told him -"I'm tired" and slept l,ike a baby. "I've never seen a man with such an ironess about him," Jackson says, shaking his head slowly. The morning of the execution, Jackson accompanied the inmate in-mate to the execution area. I had to run to keep up with him he was so anxious to get it over with," Jackson recalls. Jackson fastened Deering into a wooden chair with leather straps around his wrists and neck with some reluctance. "I took a liking to that guy," Jackson explains today. He talked common sense and was a smart boy. . . I never was nervous ner-vous being with him at all." At one point, Deering turned to Jackson in his cell and said to him, "Jackson, you're the only real friend I've ever had in my life." But the deputy ' remembered his duty and the law as he buckled the straps that held Deering in his execution chair. Six riflemen stood thirteen paces from Deering, who, by this time, had been blindfolded. Some 100 spectators gathered, looking in on the execution scene, waiting for the sheriff to tip his hat, hitch his pants or rub his chin, discretely signaling to the ! firing squad that the time had come, "It seemed like such a long time, everybody was getting mighty nervous," remembers Jackson. Then, after Deering had uttered what were to be his last words, "Jackson, I'll be seeing you," they fired. Deering was dead. And deputy Jackson was left contemplating the loss of a man, murderer though he was, that he had learned to care for. attempt by Gilmore and his girlfriend. ) One day in October, 1938 Mr. Merrin of Merrideth Truck Company in Salt Lake City stepped from the doorway of his apartment on the corner of Fifth East and Sixth South. As he fished in his pocket for his keys, standing near his car, an unexpected shot rang out. Merrin fell to the ground dead. That shot was fired by Deering. There was no clear motive. He just killed the man. And after he was found guilty and sentenced to be executed by a jury, Deering told the Salt Lake County Sheriff's deputy assigned to watch over him, "I've lived by the gun, and I want to die by the gun." That deputy was R. C. "Keyhole" Jackson, a retired Tooele resident who worked many years as Chief Security Administrator for' the Tooele Army Depot. "I spent a lot of time in the cell with Deering," Jackson explains in his Tooele apartment strewn with momentos including a certificate from the FBI. (He passed their test but then found he was past the age limit to be hired by the federal law enforcement en-forcement organization.) He had a craving for Martha Washington chocolates and liked to read the Reader's Digest, and I often brought him those things," Jackson says. |
