Western NC doctor pardoned 2 years ago for father's murder; now finally leaving prison

A Buncombe County doctor pardoned two years ago for the murder of his father because of the dogged − and now widely known − work of another doctor to reveal his mental illness is finally getting out of prison.

Despite the 2022 pardon of his life sentence by outgoing Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, Dr. Vince Gilmer, 61, who founded the Family Health Center at Cane Creek in 2001, has remained imprisoned. That is because the governor said Gilmer could only be released if he could be placed in a long-term psychiatric facility that can meet his unique medical needs.

That will finally happen on May 23, according to a state legislator who pushed to find a hospital and who said she was inspired by Dr. Benjamin Gilmer, an unrelated physician with, oddly, the same last name who worked at Vince Gilmer's former practice starting in 2009. Benjamin Gilmer, now 54, heard tales of his predecessor's kindness that didn't fit the other doctor's conviction for strangling his father with a rope, sawing off his fingers and leaving his body near a lake in southwest Virginia in 2004 after checking him out of a psychiatric hospital. Benjamin Gilmer eventually diagnosed the elder Gilmer with Huntington's Disease.

The genetic and degenerative brain disorder along with post-traumatic stress from his father's alleged routine and severe sexual abuse of him as a child, would explain Vince Gilmer's extremely violent act, the younger doctor said. His diagnosis and advocacy for Vince Gilmer's release was featured by public radio's This American Life in 2013 and later covered by the Citizen Times and in a CNN documentary.

“I was torn with this dissonance between seeing him as a brutal murderer and then recognizing that his patients loved him,” Benjamin Gilmer told the Citizen Times in 2021. “I traversed a threshold of deciding that I could not continue living and working here if I didn’t know what happened to him.”

The Citizen Times reached out to Benjamin Gilmer May 22, a day before the elder Gilmer's release.

When the pardon was announced in 2022, Benjamin Gilmer told the Citizen Times he thought it would take few months to find a hospital. But it turned out to be more difficult, Julie Mayfield, a member of the North Carolina Senate, told the Citizen Times May 22.

Mayfield, who represents Asheville and most of Buncombe, said one problem was the requirements for release from Virginia's Marion Correctional Treatment Center "kept changing."

"By the time I got involved about a year ago, the main holdup was identifying a facility here in N.C. that would accept him," she said.

That's where Mayfield applied herself, working to find a hospital and finally getting all permissions this spring. She declined to name the facility but said it is in WNC. A spokesperson for the Virginia Corrections Department confirmed May 22 they were preparing for the release of Vince Gilmer, who in recent years was described by Benjamin Gilmer and attorneys helping with his case as suffering from advanced conditions of Huntington's, including loss of many cognitive abilities.

Before getting involved, Mayfield said she listened to the This American Life podcast, read Benjamin Gilmer's 2022 book, "The Other Dr. Gilmer" and heard him speak at the General Assembly.

An attorney who formerly did work in criminal justice, Mayfield said she was struck by how vulnerable people often have a "narrative" assigned in the criminal justice system that hurts their ability to show lack of culpability.

"This case is just just another example of the system adopting a narrative about a person that they then cannot come off of, even in the face of overwhelming evidence," she said.

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Joel Burgess has lived in WNC for more than 20 years, covering politics, government and other news. He's written award-winning stories on topics ranging from gerrymandering to police use of force. Got a tip? Contact Burgess at jburgess@citizentimes.com, 828-713-1095 or on Twitter @AVLreporter. Please help support this type of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Western NC doctor pardon 2 yrs ago for murder; finally leaving prison