A media monitor witnesses a serial killer’s execution

First of all, I had never seen an execution before, so I did not know what “Media Monitor” meant.

I thought it meant the same as “media witness,” of which there were five, for Carlton Gary’s execution: me, Robbie Watson of WLTZ, Sharifa Jackson of WTVM, Kate Brumback of the Associated Press, and Rhonda Cook of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Only the latter two had witnessed executions. Gary’s would be the 19th for Kate, and the 27th for Rhonda. We Columbus reporters were all first-timers.

As a first-timer, I did not know “Media Monitor” meant something else, until Kate told me, after the prison sent a van to get us from the media staging area out front of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, and from there take us to the employee cafeteria, where we were left with a pizza, sandwiches, chips, brownies and soft drinks. And a TV tuned to the Fox station in Macon.

Gary was to die at 7 p.m. Thursday, but the veterans told us that wasn’t likely, and they were right.

We started out watching “Family Feud” with Steve Harvey, then saw back-to-back episodes of “The Big Bang Theory,” then a full hour of “Gotham,” and then “Showtime at The Apollo” with Steve Harvey.

I’m pretty sure “The Big Bang Theory” was on when Kate asked me if I knew what to look for, as the Media Monitor. And I said no, I’d never seen an execution.

That’s when she told me the Media Monitor goes first, before the other witnesses, to see the condemned prisoner hooked to the lethal IV.

Oh, OK, I said…. Wait, what?

You go first to see them put the IV in, she said.

I did not know that. The Department of Corrections sent me an email saying I was the Media Monitor, but I was busy and didn’t read it closely.

The execution was surreal in other ways we’ll get to. Right now imagine how much more surreal it would have been had Kate not told me that, and during “Showtime at The Apollo” with Steve Harvey, prison officials came in and told us it’s time, then turned to me, the only man in the room, and said, “They stay here. You go with us.”

Getting back to surreal, let’s switch to present tense:

About midway through “Showtime at the Apollo,” they tell us to get ready. Alabama had an execution ahead of us, before the U.S. Supreme Court, and Justice Clarence Thomas – who decides death-row appeals from our region – just gave it the green light, and we are next. So, if we need to use the restroom, do it now.

I go to the men’s room, and a man in a suit follows me in.

Having never been the Media Monitor, I do not know why. I want to see if I need a stall. I invite him to go first. No, he says: He’ll wait on me.

OK, well, that’s kind of weird, I think, as I urinate quickly and leave, and he follows me out.

When it comes time for me to go, to the death chamber, I learn he is my Media Monitor, my personal execution escort. He has to make sure I don’t do anything sneaky in the men’s room before I go to the death house.

He and the prison legal counsel escort me to a van, and across the prison grounds we go, to the death house – a low, white cinderblock building surrounded by high fences topped with razor wire and lit by bright white lights.

I notice that from 6 p.m., when we came in, to 9:45, as we head to the execution, the atmosphere has changed in ways beyond daylight:

When we were escorted to the cafeteria, everyone was cordial. Even the officers armed with shotguns, geared up in helmets and flak jackets, smiled and nodded, their face shields up.

The ride to the death house is like a scene from an apocalyptic movie, from “The Hunger Games” or “Escape From New York”: The guards have their dark shields down, and rigidly face assigned directions, as the van passes between them.

The only noise is the engine, and the guards at the death house gate shouting orders, as they scan the van for contraband.

At the death house, I and a set of prison officials are escorted in, and I sit on the front row of the church-pew wooden benches where witnesses watch the execution through four glass windows.

The death chamber walls are white. Through the window to my right is a yellow door from which six guards in blue uniforms bring Gary in, his eyes closed and head back.

He’s upright, but it looks like they carry him to the gurney, where they lay him on his back, pin his arms and legs, and strap him in.

They act according to a protocol. They look only down at the body part they are to pin, not up or aside, until that part is secure. Then they stand back at attention, before they turn and march out the yellow door.

To my left, opposite the yellow door, is a white curtain. From behind the white curtain come white nurses in white coats and blue scrubs.

One is an older, bald, bespectacled man with a goatee, and two are slim brunettes who each go to one of Gary’s arms. The one on Gary’s right finds a vein on the inside of his elbow. The one on his left thumps that vein and instead turns his left hand over and sticks the needle into a vein atop it.

Gary does not flinch. Only his left foot shakes.

Satisfied with their insertions, the female nurses go back behind the curtain, and the male one remains. My escort moves me from the front row to the third, and then the other witnesses file in, eight representatives of “Stocking Strangler” victims’ families taking the front row.

The warden comes through the yellow door, reads the death warrant, and asks Gary if he has anything to say. Gary just lies there with his eyes closed, and remains silent when the warden asks whether he wants a prayer.

Then the warden leaves, through the yellow door, and the lethal flow of Pentobarbital through tubes extending from the white wall behind Gary begins, and in a few minutes his chest pumps rapidly, his lips flutter, he yawns, and his chin drifts down to his left, like he falls asleep.

And still the minutes tick by, interminable.

The veteran reporters warned me about this: It would seem like a long time – not because it was a long time, but because when you sit in silence, without a watch or cell phone or other timekeeping device you can’t take to an execution, it seems like a long time.

Finally two doctors and the warden come through the yellow door, and the doctors pronounce Gary dead, and the warden announces the time of death as 10:33 p.m.

Then another surreal Media Monitor moment occurs: I’m told to leave first. My escort motions to me only, and I look at Kate, who’s sitting next to me, and she nods.

So I’m escorted back to the van, and the driver who followed me into the restroom heads back to the high death house gate, where guards with selfie-stick mirrors make sure no one’s hiding under the van like Robert De Niro in “Cape Fear.”

As we drive on past the rigid guards facing other directions, I ask, “Where do we go from here?”

The driver understands this is not a philosophical question. “I drop them off,” he says of our backseat passengers, who go back to the building I watched “Gotham” in, “and I take you to the media staging area.”

Back at the media staging area, everyone is waiting for the Media Monitor.

I get out of the van, and all the reporters I was hanging out with before I was taken to watch “Family Feud” with the other media witnesses run up and want to know what happened. And my colleague Chuck Williams needs to go Facebook Live on his phone, so I have to wait until he’s ready.

That gives me a moment now to explain something:

This will sound trivial, under the circumstances, but I was exhausted. I had two flat tires trying to get to Gary’s parole board hearing Wednesday in Atlanta, and I wound up leaving my car at the I-185 Smith Road exit. By Thursday night, I’d had only a few hours’ sleep.

That is why I was so calm, and did not snap at Chuck that I was not just going to stand there like a deer in the TV lights, so he’d better get his FBing iPhone in gear.

I don’t recall what I said. I know I was asked how watching a man die affected me.

As a copbeat reporter, I watched a man stabbed in the chest with a steak knife die in the parking lot of the Booker T. Washington Apartments, his eyes bulging and chest pumping as medics tried to stop the bleeding and steady his pulse.

Watching a man convicted of raping and strangling grandmothers die asleep in a bed was not traumatic. Asked how it felt, I thought back to those silent minutes ticking by, and almost said, “Like it took too long.”

I understand some people think Gary was innocent. I thought outlining the defense evidence and argument was crucial when he could have won on appeal, but he did not.

In epilogue, or on a more positive note, I end with this:

I still ask the professionals who deal with the most gruesome murders how they handle it, personally, and they give me these answers to where you go from here:

Go home to the people you love. A detective once told me he got home late from concurrent child murders, and the first thing he did was go open the door to his children’s bedroom, just to watch them sleep, safe at home.

Go do something normal: Go to a movie, go to a ball game, go walk the dog.

Go find some meaning: Go to church if you want, but you don’t have to. Just find a purpose amid the mayhem. Go be an existentialist, if you’re not already.

On Saturday, St. Patrick’s Day, I chose to go to a Wynnton liquor store to get some Irish whiskey.

“Are you having a good day?” the manager asked.

No, I said: I’m exhausted.

“Me too,” she replied. “At least you’re not on your last breath.”

This story was originally published March 18, 2018 at 6:00 PM with the headline "A media monitor witnesses a serial killer’s execution."