The Other Dr. Gilmer: Two Men, a Murder, and an Unlikely Fight for Justice

A powerful true story about a shocking crime and a mysterious illness that will forever change your notions of how we punish and how we heal--an expansion on one of the most popular This American Life episodes of all time

"A remarkable medical detective story-cum-memoir, grippingly told . . . I was drawn in by every part of it."--Atul Gawande, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Being Mortal

Fresh out of medical residency, Dr. Benjamin Gilmer joined a rural North Carolina clinic only to find that its previous doctor shared his last name. Dr. Vince Gilmer was loved and respected by the community--right up until he strangled his ailing father and then returned to the clinic for a regular week of work. Vince's eventual arrest for murder shocked his patients. How could their beloved doctor be capable of such violence? The deeper Benjamin looked into Vince's case, the more he became obsessed with discovering what pushed a good man toward darkness.

When Benjamin visited Vince in prison, he met a man who appeared to be fighting his own mind, constantly twitching and veering into nonsensical tangents. Sentenced to life in prison, Vince had been branded a cold-blooded killer and a "malingerer"--a person who fakes an illness. But it was obvious to Benjamin that Vince needed help. Alongside This American Life journalist Sarah Koenig, Benjamin resolved to understand what had happened to his predecessor. Time and again, the pair came up against a prison system that cared little about the mental health of its inmates--despite more than a third of them suffering from mental illness.

The Other Dr. Gilmer takes readers on a riveting and heart-wrenching journey through our shared human fallibility, made worse by a prison system that is failing our most vulnerable citizens. With deep compassion and an even deeper sense of justice, Dr. Benjamin Gilmer delves into the mystery of what could make a caring doctor commit a brutal murder. And in the process, his powerful story asks us to answer a profound question: In a country with the highest incarceration rates in the world, what would it look like if we prioritized healing rather than punishment?

Author: Benjamin Gilmer
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 03/01/2022
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 9.29h x 6.14w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9780593355169

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 10/01/2021 pg. 24
Publishers Weekly 01/24/2022
Booklist 02/15/2022 pg. 6
Library Journal 02/11/2022 pg. 1

About the Author
Dr. Benjamin Gilmer is a family medicine physician in Fletcher, North Carolina. A former Albert Schweitzer fellow, he is an associate professor in the department of family medicine at the UNC School of Medicine at Chapel Hill and at the Mountain Area Health Education Center. A former neurobiologist turned rural family practitioner, Dr. Gilmer has lectured across the country about medical ethics, bias in medicine, and criminal justice reform. He lives with his wife and two children in Asheville, North Carolina.