For 25 years, convicted killer Donald Ray Wallace Jr. has given life to an urban legend that someone else was responsible for the 1980 murders of Patrick and Theresa Gilligan and the couple''s two young children. Now, with just days left to live, Wallace, 47, has publicly confessed to the crime, saying he alone shot and killed the Gilligan family.
Wallace makes public confession...
By MAUREEN HAYDEN Courier & Press staff
March 2,
For 25 years, convicted killer Donald Ray Wallace Jr. has given life to an urban legend that someone else was responsible for the 1980 murders of Patrick and Theresa Gilligan and the couple's two young children. Now, with just days left to live, Wallace, 47, has publicly confessed to the crime, saying he alone shot and killed the Gilligan family.
But he also says he didn't intend to kill the family and "panicked" after he felt threatened by Patrick Gilligan. In the only media interview granted in the days before his execution, Wallace says he tied up all four family members when they came home while he was burglarizing their house. "What happened that night was a moment of utter madness," Wallace told a reporter with an Indianapolis television station. "It was panic, because my original intention was not to kill anyone, it was to get the situation under control, and Patrick attacked, which I can't blame him for.
I would, too, if I were in his position. Once the shooting started, all hell broke loose."
Wallace's televised confession is similar to a private confession he made 13 years ago to Diana Harrington, sister of Theresa Gilligan, in which he confesses to killing her family.
In prior public statements, and in private statements made to his family members and his attorneys, Wallace said an unnamed accomplice broke into the Gilligan home and shot the family while he was burglarizing a house next door.
He also told his family that he made up the confession he sent to Harrington in 1992. Wallace has told a variety of stories about what happened Jan. 14, 1980. In an exam Wallace took in 1987, he said Theresa and the children were already dead when he walked into their home to check on his accomplice. Wallace said Patrick Gilligan had been shot, but was not dead, so he struck him in the head twice with a set of barbells.
In an interview with the Evansville Courier & Press in 1987, Wallace told a similar story, insisting the unnamed accomplice shot the Gilligans.
Wallace's story began to change in 1992, though, after Harrington wrote him a letter on death row.
Harrington told Wallace she was haunted by thoughts of her sister begging for her children's lives, and had imagined Lisa, 5, and Gregory, 4, had been forced to watch their parents be murdered. "As to how it (the murders) happened has always been a mystery to me," Harrington wrote in her 1992 letter to Wallace. "... I find it hard to piece together, that if he (Patrick) was shot first, why he was hit with barbells afterwards. His death was almost harder than Theresa's and the kids because of the closed casket. I thought for years that since his body was unidentifiable by facial recognition, he would eventually show up. I hoped that it was another person, or that no one was in the casket. ..."
Wallace wrote back, in detail. He told Harrington that he'd tied up each member of the family in an effort to control the situation. "Just as that was completed, Patrick slipped his bonds and attacked," Wallace wrote to Harrington. "I don't know if he was extraordinarily brave, or if he didn't trust that his family wouldn't be hurt, or both. In the struggle over the pistol, Patrick was shot in the head and fell to his hands and knees. Then everything else just went to hell. Everyone was shot within 10 seconds after Patrick ... drugs, panic, insanity ... it all happened too fast to understand."
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