ARTHUR GARY BISHOP

Defense attorney Jo
Carol Nesset-Sale
(Deseret News)

Bishop's defense team, led by attorney Jo Carol Nesset-Sale, had no realistic hope of winning acquittal for their client. His confession had guaranteed a life behind bars, but the lawyers still tried to mitigate Bishop's offenses, angling for a conviction on manslaughter charges rather than first-degree murder, with arguments that Bishop's emotional and psychological "deficits" drove him to kill. As Nesset-Sale told the court, quoted by Cliff Linedecker in {Thrill Killers}, "Art became, for some reason, stuck or fixated with a sexual attraction to little boys. He never outgrew those erotic feelings. He was a lonely, frightened child."

And one of the culprits, they decided, was pornography. An expert witness on the subject, Dr. Victor Cline, was called by the defense to testify that porn had warped Bishop's mind to the extent that he could not resist his attraction to children or the killing urges that followed. It was a tune familiar from Ted Bundy's eleventh-hour confessions in 1979, trumpeted by conservative Christians in their campaign to "clean up" America. One such group, the American Life League, still maintains quotes from Arthur Bishop on this subject, on theirwebsite.

"During my trial," Bishop recalled in that interview, "Dr. Victor Cline testified about the adverse effects of pornography. As I listened to his explanations, I could discern how my own life desires escalated. These normal feelings [sic] become desensitized, and they tend to act out what they have seen. So it was with me. I am a homosexual pedophile convicted of murder, and pornography was a determining factor in my downfall. Somehow I became sexually attracted to young boys, and I would fantasize about them naked....I would need pictures that were more explicit and shortly the images became commonplace and acceptable. Finding and procuring sexually arousing materials became an obsession. For me, seeing pornography was like lighting a fuse on a stick of dynamite. I became stimulated and had to gratify my urges and explode....If pornographic material would have been unavailable to me in my early stages, it is most probable that my sexual activities would not have escalated to the degree they did."

Attorneys Robert Stott and Tom Vuyk in
court

Perhaps, but it made no difference to the jury of five men and seven women at Bishop's six-week trial in 1984. They convicted him on five counts of capital murder, five counts of aggravated kidnapping, and one count of sexually abusing a minor.

Arthur Gary Bishop
listens to verdict
(file photo)

Only portions of Bishop's taped confession had been played in court during the guilt phase of his trial, but jurors heard it all during the subsequent penalty phase. They listened, stone-faced or weeping, while Bishop giggled, sometimes lapsing into a falsetto voice to mimic a dying boy's plea for mercy. It was no surprise to anyone in court when the panel recommended execution.

Judge Jay Banks

Judge Jay Banks made it official, condemning Bishop from the bench. State law gave Bishop the choice between execution by firing squad or lethal injection.

Without a second thought, he chose the needle.

Troy Ward's mother
listens to verdict
(Deseret News )