Kermit Gosnell, convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison in 2013 for killing live-born babies in his filthy Philadelphia abortion clinic, is convinced he will be released from prison and soon able to compete in triathlons, the Daily Mail reports.

The former late-term abortionist shared these hopes with documentarians and authors Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer. The two are working on a film about Gosnell, but they also recently published a book, “Gosnell: The Untold Story of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer.” The book is out this week.

Gosnell told them: “It helps that I very strongly believe myself to be innocent of the heinous crimes of which I am accused…I continue to feel optimistic of the eventual outcome…the vindication of what I’ve done, why I’ve done it and how [it] will become accepted within my lifetime.”

The two authors interviewing Gosnell also highlighted his prison demeanor.

“When you talk to Gosnell, either by phone or in person, the first thing that strikes you is his calmness,” they told the Daily Mail. “The first time he called, he sounded like a man coming in from playing eighteen holes of golf and ready for the nineteenth-hole cocktail, not someone serving three consecutive life terms who knows he will die in prison.”

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McElhinney and McAleer said Gosnell told them he works to stay in shape because he wants to compete in triathlons when he gets out of prison.

For those less familiar with the Kermit Gosnell case, the Blaze provides a quick synopsis:

A doctor who gave abortions to minorities, immigrants and poor women in a “house of horrors” clinic was charged with eight counts of murder in the deaths of a patient and seven babies who were born alive and then killed with scissors, prosecutors said Wednesday. Dr. Kermit Gosnell…made millions of dollars over 30 years, performing as many illegal, late-term abortions as he could, prosecutors said. State regulators ignored complaints about him and failed to inspect his clinic since 1993, but no charges were warranted against them given time limits and existing law, District Attorney Seth Williams said. Nine of Gosnell’s employees also were charged. Gosnell “induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord,” Williams said.

When the FBI and Pennsylvania Department of Health investigated Gosnell’s facility in 2010, they described their findings this way: “There was blood on the floor. A stench of urine filled the air. A flea-infested cat was wandering through the facility, and there were cat feces on the stairs. Semi-conscious women scheduled for abortions were moaning in the waiting room or the recovery room, where they sat on dirty recliners covered with blood-stained blankets.”

“The walls appeared to be urine-splattered,” the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office stated. “The procedure tables were old and one had a ripped plastic cover. Suction tubing, which was used for abortion procedures – and doubled as the only available suction source for resuscitation – was corroded.”

“Gosnell had a simple solution for the unwanted babies he delivered: he killed them,” according to the Washington Post, even stating that Gosnell routinely killed viable, late-term babies in defiance of Pennsylvania law banning abortions after 24 weeks. “[Only] he didn’t call it that. He called it ‘ensuring fetal demise.’ The way he ensured fetal demise was by sticking scissors into the back of the baby’s neck and cutting the spinal cord.”

Gosnell has maintained his innocence from the beginning, declaring himself a “spiritually innocent” victim of religious zealots.

“In an ideal world we’d have no need for abortion. But bringing a child into the world when it cannot be provided for, that there are not sufficient systems to support, is a greater sin,” Gosnell said. “I considered myself to be in a war against poverty, and I feel comfortable with the things I did and the decisions I made.”

In a clip from the documentary “3801 Lancaster: An American Tragedy,” Gosnell says after reading the Bible since his incarceration, he now feels justified doing abortions: “Until I really completed my first Genesis to Revelation reading of the Bible — which I did since I was incarcerated — I really didn’t feel as comfortable as I am.”

“I think it’s Genesis 2:7, expresses the breath of life as the beginning of life that God breathed breath — breathed life — into Adam. The Bible, to me, is very clear that life does not happen until breath,” he contends.