<P> Ronnie Lee Gardner was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, and was the youngest of Dan and Ruth Gardner's seven children . Dan was a heavy drinker who left the household to start another family while Ronnie was a toddler; Dan and Ruth divorced when Ronnie was 18 months old . Six months later, Ronnie was found malnourished and wandering the streets alone in a diaper . Child welfare workers filed a "failure to care" petition and took him into custody, though they later returned him to his mother . Gardner's relationship with his father was tumultuous; Dan did not believe he was Gardner's biological father and frequently told his son of his belief . According to Gardner, he was raised by an older sister, and was sexually abused by his siblings . Sometimes he and his sister Bonnie would run away and seek refuge in a "hobo camp ." By the age of 10, Gardner was addicted to drugs and permitted access to alcohol . He and his brother Randy were arrested for stealing cowboy boots and taken into juvenile detention . Gardner recalled with distress that his father Dan came to take his brother Randy home and left him behind . </P> <P> Gardner's mother married Bill Lucas, who had been incarcerated in Wyoming in 1968 . The Gardner - Lucas family eventually had nine children . Gardner admired Lucas, who used his stepsons as lookouts while burglarizing homes . By his early teens, Gardner had been held in detention at a series of institutions, including an involuntary commitment at Utah State Hospital in Provo . Gardner was small as a boy, and described that he had to fight to defend himself and earn respect . As Gardner admitted, "I was a nasty little bugger ." </P> <P> While held at Utah State Industrial School in Ogden, Gardner was visited by Jack Statt, a man who was living with his brother Randy . According to Gardner, Statt met Randy at a bus stop and paid him $25 for oral sex . When released from the school in 1975, Gardner stayed with Statt . Although social workers noted the men in the household were dressed like women, Statt officially became a foster parent to Gardner and his brother . Gardner said that Statt performed sex acts on them and explained, "I thought life like that was normal ." Gardner stated in a psychological evaluation that he worked as a prostitute while living with Statt, who psychologists say fit the pedophile profile . Gardner said his time in foster care was the most stable period of his life--"Jack was a good man, and he tried to help us out ." </P> <P> While Gardner intermittently continued to go to the industrial school, he met Debra Bischoff at a Salt Lake City apartment complex where his mother lived . Bischoff described him as: "Very caring . He never put me in the rough situations he was in throughout his life . He sheltered me from that stuff ." Gardner had a daughter in May 1977 and a son in February 1980 with Bischoff, but was convicted of robbery and sent to Utah State Prison in the same month his son was born . Gardner successfully escaped the prison's maximum security unit on April 19, 1981, and was shot in the neck while attempting to kill a man who he believed had raped Bischoff . In February 1983, he was identified as a ringleader in a disturbance in which inmates barricaded a cell block and started fires . </P>

When was the last time utah used the firing squad