The weight of guilt: Executed killer Ronnie Lee Gardner's remorse

Part 1 of a two-part series about notorious murderer Ronnie Lee Gardner and the gradual change of heart he experienced in the last years of his life as he reached out to Dan Bradshaw, a Salt Lake banker who served as an LDS prison bishop. Bradshaw told his story to Deseret News writer Doug Robinson because he felt that it contained a valuable message about people's ability to examine themselves and make changes in their lives, even a hard case such as Gardner.

SALT LAKE CITY — Dan Bradshaw, who is a Salt Lake banker in his day job, has a story to tell. It's a story about murderer Ronnie Lee Gardner, but it's also a story about discovering a conscience, about wasted life and regret and the weight of guilt, a story about a change of heart, and a story about walking in the grass in bare feet.

It's also a story about an unlikely connection between Gardner and Bradshaw that endured for years until Gardner's execution by firing squad last summer.

One of Bradshaw's friends – a mutual acquaintance – was telling me all of this one day last winter, hoping to arrange a meeting between Bradshaw and me. We were introduced over lunch at the Hotel Monaco a few weeks later. Bradshaw, who is 63, was wearing a white shirt and tie and looked the part of a prosperous banker, although I would learn later that there is much more to him. He has a pleasant face topped by thinning hair and a warm but firm manner that makes it easy to understand how a wary, hard case like Gardner would trust and confide in him. He possesses the hard-won wisdom, common sense and perspective of a man who has spent hundreds of hours listening to criminals bare their souls. For the next hour Bradshaw told me his story as my food grew cold.

From 1994 to 2002 he served as an LDS Church bishop assigned to the Utah State Prison. Bradshaw gradually became acquainted with Gardner, one of Utah's most notorious and hardened criminals. He spent 30 of his 49 years in prison, not counting his many years in the juvenile corrections system. He lived more than half his life – 25 years – on death row for murder. He was angry, violent and remorseless. Then came a remarkable transformation that began in the last years of his life when he reached out to Bradshaw and opened up to him in discussions about religion, life, family, childhood and death. Gardner began to soften and change, and long after Bradshaw was released as bishop, Gardner continued to lean on him right up to the final hours before his execution.