He previously plotted to escape prison in a ‘coffin’ to evade his life-without-parole sentence for slaying his parents 30 years ago.
Now double-killer Gordon ‘Woody’ Mower is attempting another way out – a last-ditch legal route in his first public appearance since being sentenced for the horror at his family’s isolated farm in upstate New York.
The 48-year-old murderer and ‘escape artist’ is scheduled to be in Otsego County Court in scenic Cooperstown heavily restrained and surrounded by a phalanx of law enforcement Wednesday.
And as he enters the courtroom, true crime author Susan Ashline can be excused for feeling a chill as she sits just feet away.
The last time the writer came face-to-face with the hulking killer was alone across a table at maximum-security Shawangunk Correctional Facility, New York, amid research for her book on Mower, out in February.
‘Meeting him was absolutely terrifying,’ Ashline told the Daily Mail. ‘This man came out and he was big.
‘He didn’t look angry, but he just looked miserable like I’d pulled him out of the lunch line or something and that he was hungry. I was terrified.
‘He had this blank look, and I didn’t know if he was going to punch me. I couldn’t read him; he had no expression whatsoever.’
Mower Killed Parents at 18 and Accepted Plea Deal to Avoid Death Penalty
Mower was 18 when he slaughtered his father Gordon Sr, 52, and his mother Susan, 50, with a .22 rifle after a family argument.
He fled with his 14-year-old girlfriend. But the pair were snared three weeks later in a suburb of Dallas, Texas, moments after Mower was featured on TV show America’s Most Wanted.
Even then, he laid the foundation for his escape-bid reputation. While handcuffed, he smashed one of the cops holding him to the ground and took off before being quickly recaptured.
Mower accepted a guilty deal to avoid the possibility of the death penalty. And his legal team convinced him that his life sentence would be reduced when New York’s capital punishment law was declared unconstitutional.
But he will now claim at the Otsego court that his attorneys mishandled his case, his rights were violated and that his sentence should be vacated.
One allegation is that the state-appointed lawyers urged him to accept $10,000 from his parents’ estates for the plea and told him to keep quiet about it when he was sentenced for first degree murder.
True Crime Author Details Escape History and Courtroom Security Expectations
‘Here’s a guy who has spent his whole prison life trying to escape. Now he stands a solid chance of actually getting out, period,’ said former TV reporter Ashline, 59. ‘He has attempted to escape from just about every facility that has housed him.
‘His allegation is that he was offered a $10,000 bribe to plead guilty and in exchange waive all his rights to any inheritance from his parents.’
Ashline said authorities are so anxious about security for the planned two-day hearing that Mower will be ferried to the court from his prison and back each day, a round trip of some 260 miles.
‘There’s no question, security will be heavy. They won’t even allow him to stay overnight anywhere because they can’t take that risk,’ she said. ‘And I’m expecting him to be heavily, heavily restrained in the courtroom.
‘I’m not sure what my reaction will be when I see him there. I don’t think I’m going to have that terrified feeling I had in the visiting room. But it will definitely be a chill.
‘I’ve got to know him better as we’ve subsequently talked. But there’s something about his presence.’
The author said she became involved in the case in 2019 after Mower ‘had some someone reach out’ to write his story and help ‘get the attention of an attorney’.
Ashline Describes Prison Meeting With Mower
Ashline initially worked from recorded interviews for the book, titled Ungrateful [Expletive]: The Shocking Journey of a Killer and Escape Artist, which is scheduled to be published on February 5 by Bloomsbury.
‘I continued to research over the years and then the year before last I did go to meet him in prison,’ she said. ‘It was unannounced. And it was a hell of an experience.
‘I’m seated at the table alone in what looked like a school cafeteria. I’m five foot two, very petite. And he’s very big. And you hear a big clang, and they release him into the room alone.
‘They don’t walk him to the table. They don’t even stay in the room. They just literally unlock the door; it shuts behind him and then it locks. He’s wearing his prison issued green uniform and without any restraints.’
Ashline continued: ‘And I thought, if this guy jumped the table and strangled me, they wouldn’t even make it in time.
‘The reason I had that fear is because in our initial letters and phone calls, Mower kept saying he was going to lure his former defense attorney to a visit, jump the visiting room table and beat him to death on the visiting room floor.
Mower Stayed Expressionless Before Laughing at Book Title, Ashline Says
At that point, Ashline directly confronted the tense atmosphere, asking Mower: ‘Are you mad that I’m here?
‘And he says, ‘no, do I look mad?’ I said, ‘yes, you do.’ Then I told him I’d come up with a great title for the book. And he doesn’t say anything.
‘Excitedly I said, Ungrateful [Expletive]. Nothing, no response. And now I’m sweating, thinking I’ve really offended him.
‘He says ‘that’s the nickname my mother gave me’. And he’s still not changing his expression. There’s this dead silence. I’m sweating bullets now.
‘And all of a sudden, he throws his head back, laughs. and says, ‘That’s a really great title’.’
The atmosphere softened and ‘he was at the time very, very respectful to me and he remains respectful. We have respect for each other.’
Mower will be represented by high-profile defense attorney Melissa Swartz, who overturned the manslaughter conviction of Kaitlyn Conley, 31 in 2025. She was convicted of fatally poisoning the mother of former boyfriend Adam Yoder in Whitesboro, New York.
Inside Mower’s 2015 Coffin Escape Plot
The double-killer’s most audacious escape bid was in 2015 and involved a coffin-like box he managed to build while in Auburn another maximum security New York prison.
His plan was to secrete himself in the box, which would end up buried under tons of sawdust regularly hauled away in a local farmer’s trailer from the prison workshop. But the bid was thwarted after an inmate’s tip off.
That didn’t stop Mower bragging to local media that he and another prisoner had practiced the plan roughly 50 times.
Three weeks before the bid was rumbled, one guard saw Mower walking around with sawdust on him, according to prison records. He was given 564 days in solitary confinement for the plot.
Bearded Mower was sentenced in October 1996. He described his mother as dominating and manipulative in a statement to the court. He added he had been drinking and injecting steroids.
He had planned to run away with girlfriend Melanie Bray on the night of the slayings in March that year. He put a packed suitcase in his Jeep before going to see the movie Broken Arrow, starring John Travolta.
Former AG Called Mower a ‘Remorseless Killer’
But his parents were by his car when he came out. He said they screamed at him while his father hit him in the face and head – and said he couldn’t leave.
Once they got back to the farmhouse, his mother continued yelling at him, he said. It was then that he took his .22 rifle out of his bedroom.
‘I know I was out of my mind when this happened. I went into the bedroom and shot my father. Then I came back out and shot my mother,’ he chillingly added.
The couple’s bodies were discovered by a horrified nephew who had arrived at 7am to help milk the cows. Mower had already fled.
Dennis Vacco, state Attorney General at the time, said: ‘Woody Mower is a remorseless killer who brutally murdered the two people who loved him most.’
Mower appeared for sentencing in black jeans and a green plaid shirt. But his statement had to be read out by deputy capital defender Randel Scharf because he froze and was unable to lift his head or move out of his chair.
This happened after his aunt Marcia Gigliotti talked emotionally of losing her brother. ‘I will never be able to forgive you for taking Gordon away from me and my family,’ she told him.
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