Bio 

Ernest D. Jamison was born on March 8, 1961. Available accounts describe Jamison as a former Bible college student. Before the killings, he was living in or connected to Memphis, Tennessee. According to later reports, investigators learned that Jamison had talked about robbing and killing people he knew before the crime spree occurred.

Jamison’s later court records show that after his arrest he was diagnosed with major depression and was treated with Sinequan, also known as doxepin. He had become blind after a self-inflicted gunshot wound during his failed suicide attempt at the end of the crime spree. His blindness and mental state became important issues in his Illinois court proceedings, particularly when he attempted to withdraw his guilty plea

Murder Story

On June 19, 1995, Ernest D. Jamison began a three-state crime spree that left three people dead in Tennessee, Missouri, and Illinois. The first victim was Arthur Kirkwood, a 24-year-old friend of Jamison in Memphis, Tennessee. Jamison shot and killed Kirkwood and stole his maroon Oldsmobile Delta 88. After the killing, Jamison fled Tennessee in Kirkwood’s vehicle.

Jamison drove west through the night toward Missouri. In Arnold, Missouri, he stopped at a gas station where 67-year-old attendant James Klug was working. After Klug filled the vehicle with gasoline and approached for payment, Jamison pulled out a 9mm handgun and shot him three times in the chest. Klug died from the shooting. Jamison then fled the area and avoided the immediate police search.

Jamison continued into Illinois. In McLean County, the stolen vehicle broke down near a Quick Pic store in McLean. Jamison abandoned the vehicle and approached the gas pumps, where 52-year-old Susan K. Gilmore had just filled her blue Honda Accord with gasoline. Gilmore, a home-economics teacher from Rockford, Illinois, was traveling to visit family.

Jamison walked close to Gilmore, pulled out a handgun, and shot her in the head. He then pulled her body from the car and drove away in her vehicle. McLean County deputies soon spotted the stolen car and pursued him. During the chase, Jamison’s vehicle swerved into a ditch. As a sheriff’s deputy approached, Jamison attempted suicide by shooting himself in the head. He survived but was left permanently blind.

On July 13, 1995, Jamison was indicted in Illinois on three counts of first-degree murder and one count of aggravated vehicular hijacking in connection with Susan Gilmore’s killing. On September 1, 1995, the State added an armed robbery charge. That same day, Jamison pleaded guilty to intentional first-degree murder and armed robbery.

Jamison was found eligible for the death penalty because the murder occurred during an armed robbery. On February 21, 1996, after a sentencing hearing, he was sentenced to death for the murder of Susan Gilmore and to 30 years in prison for armed robbery.

Jamison appealed, arguing issues connected to his guilty plea, use of psychotropic medication, fitness, and eligibility for the death penalty. In 2001, the Illinois Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and death sentence. The court set an execution date of September 11, 2001.

Jamison was not executed. In January 2003, Illinois Governor George Ryan commuted the sentences of all Illinois death row prisoners as part of a blanket clemency order. Jamison’s sentence was changed to life imprisonment without parole. He was one of the Illinois death row prisoners included in that commutation.

After the Illinois proceedings, Jamison was also prosecuted in Missouri for the murder of James Klug. Prosecutors did not seek a death sentence in that case, and Jamison received a life sentence.

Ernest D. Jamison remains best documented as a spree killer responsible for three confirmed murders committed during one day across three states: Arthur Kirkwood in Tennessee, James Klug in Missouri, and Susan K. Gilmore in Illinois.