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 "In all that I have done, I hope I have done as men would have me do. I know that I am right with God, and that is the all important thing," Chester Gillette wrote in his diary's penultimate entry.
The boyish Gillette was accused of murdering his pregnant lover on an Adirondack lake and sentenced to die in the electric chair after a sensational, headline-grabbing trial. His name might not be familiar to most Americans, but many know his story through Theodore Dreiser's classic novel "An American Tragedy" and the 1951 Oscar-winning movie, "A Place in the Sun," both of which were loosely based on Gillette's saga.
With the 100th anniversary of his execution approaching, Hamilton College has published "The Prison Diary and Letters of Chester Gillette," a book that reveals the 25-year-old's private thoughts as he awaited his execution in Auburn State Prison for the murder of Grace Brown.
The diary and letters were donated to the upstate New York college last year by Gillette's grandniece, Marlynn McWade-Murray.
Gillette's writings offer neither an explicit admission of guilt nor any clear assertion of innocence, but they do provide a window to Gillette's character and his metamorphosis in prison from a blithe, gum-chewing youth into an introspective, compassionate, religious adult, said coeditors Jack Sherman and Craig Brandon.
"Both Jack and I were surprised at what a different kind of person we found there: a mature person with a sense of humor, an inquiring mind, a dreamer, someone who thinks deep thoughts," said Brandon, who has researched the case for more than 20 years and previously written "Murder in the Adirondacks: An American Tragedy Revisited" and "Grace Brown's Love Letters."
"It is the transformation of a person," said Sherman, a county judge who has studied and written about the case for more than 30 years. "It is the thoughts of a man on death row as he slowly comes to the realization of his impending execution."
The tragic love story has kept the public spellbound for more than a century.
Brown, a farm girl, met Gillette in a skirt factory owned by his uncle. Gillette was the son of Salvation Army missionaries, but history portrays him as a shiftless, would-be social climber.
After a brief romance, Brown became pregnant. In a series of emotional letters, Brown implored the reluctant Gillette to marry her. His responses were cold and flippant.
In July 1906, the pair took a trip to the Adirondack Mountains - Brown still hoping for a marriage proposal. Instead, Gillette took her on an afternoon boat ride on Big Moose Lake, where prosecutors said he hit her in the head with a tennis racket, causing her to fall into the lake and drown.
There were no eyewitnesses but Gillette was convicted on circumstantial evidence, despite his claim that Brown had drowned accidentally and he had panicked and fled.
The story might have faded from public interest if not for Dreiser's 1925 novel the later movie version which won six Academy Awards. The story also has been retold on TV, in plays, songs, true crime books and in 2006 on stage by the Metropolitan Opera.
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 Gillette entered Auburn State Prison Dec. 12, 1906, but did not begin his diary until Sept. 18, 1907. The last entry came several hours before his execution at 6:14 a.m. on March 30, 1908.
Gillette read extensively in prison and many entries contain brief but incisive book reviews, and there is a section filled with favorite quotations from Socrates, Robert Browning, Richard Hugo and others. He also developed a fondness for travel books, wrote about visiting Egypt and dreamed of riding in a hot air balloon.
"I should like very much to take a trip in a balloon and especially long ones. I did desire that, even when I was a boy, a long time ago, at country fairs or whenever I saw a balloon in ascension. It would be something new
- a new experience - and so just suit me," he wrote on March 24.
The diary was absent any bitterness, or the expected prisoner protests about food, abusive treatment or unsanitary conditions, Sherman said. There is one brief complaint about a guard's foul language.
Nor is there any reference to his own case. There is only one passing mention of Brown, Brandon said. The editors believe Gillette was writing for his family and did not want their last thoughts about him to be about murder
- but also knew prison officials could read it at any time and didn't want to provide any incriminating statements that prosecutors could use against him if he ever got a second trial.
Until his final appeal was denied, Gillette's writings indicated he expected to at least be granted a new trial, Sherman said. After that, he was convinced his family's campaign to win him clemency would prevail.
"It's only in the last two weeks that you see him coming to grips with dying. At least on paper, he's pretty brave about it," Sherman said.
Brandon thinks Gillette's religious conversion was merely for appearances. Sherman, though, sees the religious transformation as genuine.
"What I found most impressive was how he came to finally define his love and appreciation for his family after spending most of his life trying to escape them," Sherman said.
Gillette's final letter to his sister Hazel written on the eve of his execution is powerfully emotive, Sherman said.
"I wish I had been a better brother and all that a brother means," Gillette wrote. "You have been all that a sister could be and much more than I deserve. Tho (sic) I haven't always lived as I should, I shall at least try to die as I should."
[Associated
Press; By WILLIAM KATES]
Copyright 2007 The Associated
Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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