The Entire Story of the Utah State Prison — The Firing Squad That Held Gary Gilmore and Ted Bundy

In 1855, Utah opened a mud-brick territorial penitentiary on the edge of Salt Lake City. In 1951, it moved every inmate twenty miles south to a brand-new prison at the Point of the Mountain, promised to the public as a place of rehabilitation. Instead, the Utah State Prison became the most famous firing-squad death house in America, the place where a condemned man could choose between the rope and the rifles, and where the modern American death penalty began. Over the next century and a half, it held labor songwriter Joe Hill, who was said to have shouted the order to fire himself. Gary Gilmore, who fought the courts for the right to die and ended a decade without executions with three words: "Let's do it." Ted Bundy, caught hiding an escape kit in the prison print shop. The Hi-Fi killers. Mark Hofmann, the master forger who turned to pipe bombs. And Ronnie Lee Gardner, the courthouse killer who chose the firing squad in 2010. In this video, we tell the complete story of the Utah State Prison, from the Sugar House penitentiary to the Draper prison's closure in 2022 and the billion-dollar replacement that followed. The 1951 riot that plunged the new prison into darkness. James Rodgers and his "bulletproof vest." The 1977 execution in a disused cannery that restarted American executions. The firing squad Utah abolished in 2004 and brought back in 2015. And the strange pattern that saw Utah build the same prison, with the same promises, three times. 🔔 Subscribe for more deep dives into the forgotten institutions of America's carceral past. New videos every week. #UtahStatePrison #FiringSquad #GaryGilmore