Dr. Vince Gilmer in a Virginia jail in 2005 before his sentencing.Photo: Andre Teague/Bristol Herald Courier/AP
In tiny Cane Creek, in the western corner of North Carolina, Dr. Vince Gilmer was the kind of small-town doctor who knew every patient’s name, who cheered on the town’s middle school baseball team even though he didn’t have kids of his own, and who’d come in early or stay late so someone could make an appointment without missing work. So when Gilmer was suddenly arrested in July 2004 for the brutal murder of his father, the town was left reeling.
He wasn’t, but something about that odd coincidence seemed to open a door for the patients, who began to share story after story about how kind-hearted their previous doctor had been. “It was clear what happened was something they didn’t understand,” Benjamin tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue.
The new doctor was just as perplexed — how could this man, nicknamed “Bear” for the giant hugs he gave freely and often, be the same person who strangled his 60-year-old father with a rope, cut off all his fingers with pruning shears and left his body on the side of a road in Virginia one June night in 2004? The question gnawed at Benjamin: “Something wasn’t right. I couldn’t let it go.”
For more than 10 years he searched for an answer, eventually discovering a troubling array of mental health trauma and a surprising medical diagnosis underlaying Vince’s crime. And in January, he helped secure Vince a pardon.
Dr. Benjamin Gilmer who has waged a decade-long fight for justice for Dr. Vince Gilmer.Cappy Phalen
Over the years, the two doctors have also become unlikely friends. “He’s part of our family,” says Benjamin, 51, whose book about the murder, their relationship and his quest for answers,The Other Dr. Gilmer, has just been published. “Vince is such a great and terrible example of the failure of our justice system. He forced me to think about how we need to treat people who are mentally ill rather than imprison them.”
In 2012, as he was still wrestling with the two sides of Vince, Benjamin got a call from Sarah Koenig with the radio programThis American Life,who wanted to work on an episode about the perplexing murder. At first, Benjamin turned her down, not sure how close he wanted to get to the case, but then he realized he couldn’t escape how intertwined his life had become with Vince, the man who shared his name and built the family practice where Benjamin worked.
“I tried to distance myself from it for a while,” Benjamin says. “It was not possible to just let it go if I wanted to build my career and feel some peace there.”
Weeks later, Benjamin received a reply. “It was a madman’s scrawl,” he says. “I didn’t know what to think besides, ‘This man is clearly disturbed.'” The letter ended with two words: “Please help.”
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When the doctor and the journalist visited the prison, they saw a man more tortured than terrifying — “someone you might imagine fromOne Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” In halting speech, Vince told them he’d heard voices the day of the murder, and complained that his “brain was failing him.”
Afterwards, Benjamin pored over the transcript to Vince’s trial, where the doctor represented himself after inexplicably dismissing his lawyers. In the courtroom, Vince described monstrous sexual abuse at the hands of his father when he was a child — and said that the night of the murder, his father had tried to sexually assault him in his truck. He also realized that Vince had never been given a full psychiatric and medical evaluation.
“The prosecutor, the judge, the jury all believed Vince was this manipulative person that committed a premeditated murder,” Benjamin says. “But in my encounter, it was clear either he was sick or sociopathic.”
To help determine which, he called a psychiatrist friend to join him in another prison visit, where the men noticed Vince’s awkward gait. As they were leaving the prison, the friend asked: “Do you think he hasHuntington’s?” Says Benjamin: “A bomb went off in my head.”
A neurodegenerative disease, Huntington’s affects movement as well as frontal lobe function, like impulse control, and can lead to psychosis. Vince’s symptoms ticked every box, but he was receiving no treatment in prison and instead was frequently thrown in solitary confinement “oftentimes from simply not responding appropriately to the correction officers’ demands, which is a part of Huntington’s disease,” Benjamin says. After Benjamin pushed the prison system to get Vince tested, his diagnosis was confirmed.
“Huntington’s disease does not create murderers,” says Dr. Mary Edmondson, a North Carolina MD who foundedHD Reach, an advocacy group, and who has worked with Benjamin on Vince’s case. “The vast majority of violence in the life of somebody with Huntington’s is violence against them because they are a vulnerable population.” But, she says, the disease can cause “irritable aggression” that, when not treated, can lead to a sudden onset of rage. That, combined with Vince’s withdrawal from antidepressants, his history of sexual abuse, the lowered impulse control of Huntington’s and the triggering event of his father’s sexual assault could have created “a perfect storm,” Edmondson explains.
The diagnosis provided answers, but it also meant that Vince faced a foreboding future with a disease for which there is no cure. Most people live only 10 to 25 years after they begin showing signs of deteriorating motor function — involuntary and unpredictable movements — which Vince was exhibiting during his trial.
“We didn’t know what would be worse. Getting the diagnosis of Huntington’s or living your life in prison,” Benjamin says. “They’re both horrific options. But it was a cathartic moment for him realizing there was a unifying diagnosis, and that helped his family, his friends, his mother. It helped everyone to understand why this happened and to give some meaning back to him, because he was at a loss.”
Vince, who has “over and over expressed remorse” for his crime, says Benjamin, began receiving treatment (medications can improve motor function as well as psychiatric and behavioral problems associated with the disease). And understanding his condition helped him to come to a place of forgiveness toward his father, an Army vet who likely also suffered from undiagnosed Huntington’s, a genetic disease that is passed from parent to child. “He’s said, ‘Mom, I hope God can forgive me and I pray I get a chance to tell Dad that I understand his mind was broken,'” says Vince’s mother, Gloria Hitt, who says she suffered abuse at the hands of Vince’s father but did not know that Vince and her sister were also victims.
With the final piece of the puzzle in place, Benjamin began focusing on getting Vince out of prison and into a treatment facility. He and a team of lawyers first petitioned the Virginia governor for clemency in 2016, but they were turned down. They tried again when Ralph Northam, a neurologist, took office. “We figured it was like the stars were aligning for us to have a neurologist governor,” Benjamin says. When their petition was again rejected, “I lost all hope in the humanity of the system,” he says.
Meanwhile, Benjamin and his family grew closer to Vince. “We developed a friendship,” he says. Before Covid prevented their visits, he and his family, including his wife, Deirdre, 52, and their children Kai, now 14, and Luya, now 12, would make the two-hour drive from their Asheville, N.C., home to visit and even spend Thanksgivings with Vince in prison. “They call him Dr. Vince,” he says of the kids, whose drawings have decorated his cell. “They know what he did but they understand he’s mentally ill. They see him as a friend.”
In January, after Benjamin sent the governor’s office a preview copy of his book, Gov. Northam reversed his decision and granted Vince a pardon. Receiving the news, Vince “became like a joyous child. He began to laugh — a laughter he had not experienced for years,” Benjamin says.
Because of Covid restrictions and a lack of beds in a suitable psychiatric institution, Vince, now 59, is still in prison but looks forward to his future: “He wants Mellow Mushroom pizza and to hug everyone he knows,” his mom says. He also wants to share his experience with a disease that’s a mystery to many. “The disease has caused so much pain in our family,” says Hitt. “He wants to get the word out there and let people know about Huntington’s.”
For Benjamin, who’s in the process of becoming Vince’s legal guardian, their long journey together has offered profound lessons: “Vince lost his family, he lost his mind, he lost his ability to be a doctor. I inherited the world that he created. It’s hard not to identify with his loss. He’s given me a deeper understanding of myself and of gratitude.”
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source: people.com
