Hello!
My name is Kenna.
I'm Koelle.
And welcome back to another episode of Diagnosing a Killer.
Diagnosing a killer.
Is there an echo in here?
Did that sound the same?
Yeah, I did.
Woo!
I'm... God man.
This has been a process.
Strap on your boots.
Strap up your other things like suspenders or something.
Yeah.
Get ready for this one.
I have spent the better part of like three weeks researching this.
And it's so much.
I was literally typing up until like 30 minutes ago.
And now I'm completely... I don't even think I'm done.
I left out a lot of stuff too.
How long are we gonna be sitting here?
This is gonna be probably our first two hour episode.
We don't have another two hour episode?
It's like an hour 45 I think when we did BTK.
An hour 58.
Yeah.
But you guys have been asking for super long episodes so that you can get all of the content.
So we are going to yet again sit here until our butts fall asleep.
And we're going to give you all the content in one episode.
Do you want to know who I'm talking about?
Yes.
Get ready for one of the most infamous and prolific serial killer stories.
Everyone knows who he is.
I felt it was fitting because he had a feature at the end of the new Dahmer series.
So we're going to be talking about...
Stop.
John Wayne Gacy, a.k.a. the Killa Clown.
Stop.
Yeah.
Pogo the Clown.
He is a lot.
Oh my gosh.
He is a lot.
A lot.
Alright, we're going to get right on into it because this is going to be a long episode.
I do just want to put a big blanket statement over this entire thing.
I'm sure a lot of people listening know that John Wayne Gacy had over 30 victims.
So there is a lot of back to back to back victims.
Of course, we don't go into the super graphic detail on the podcast, but there will be a
lot of talk about that.
And there is a lot of names that I'm going to mention.
So I'm doing my best to repeat the names when they come back into the story, but a lot of
people are involved in this.
So just let everyone know.
And lastly, there is victims as young as 14 and as old as 21.
So these are all very young men that we're going to be talking about just a content warning.
John Wayne Gacy was born on March 17, 1942 in Chicago, Illinois to John Stanley Gacy and
Marion Elaine Robinson.
Did you say the 17th?
17th.
Oh, that's St. Patrick's Day.
Oh, it is.
We're like St. cursed baby day.
Yeah.
He was named after the Hollywood icon John Wayne, according to his father.
He was the second of three children, the eldest being Joanne Gacy and the youngest being Karen
Gacy.
So he had two sisters.
And he was the middle?
Yes.
Middle child center.
Yep.
Already.
So I'm going to be referring to the father as John Stanley and of course the child
as John Wayne.
Just to let everyone know.
John Stanley was an auto repair mechanic and World War II veteran while mom Marion was
a homemaker.
John Stanley was of Polish and Danish ancestry and grew up in a strictly Catholic family.
So of course he led that on to his adult life with his kids.
Contrary to his religious beliefs, however, John Stanley was a less than caring father
to all three of the children growing up and to his wife alike.
Probably one of those like you serve me because God sub so kind of men.
Yeah, and also like I got this growing up so my kids can take it because I took it when
I was growing up instead of like trying to be better.
Just like whatever.
Like John Stanley would often become verbally and physically abusive and belittle John Wayne
calling him dumb and stupid and often comparing him to his sisters stating that he was inferior
to them.
John Wayne was also a quite overweight child, unathletic and introverted the exact opposite
of what his father wanted for his only son.
Yeah, did you think like his dad was all like who raw military like he wanted John Wayne
to be this man?
Yeah, I think so.
Manly figure that could go into the military and follow in his father's footsteps kind
of thing.
Yeah, I think so, especially because of what happens like a little bit later, which of
course we'll get into.
John Stanley would turn around and verbally and physically abuse the sisters as well.
His favorite method of violence being a razor strap.
I didn't know what that was, but it's a small piece of leather that I had to look up.
It has like a metal ring on the end for listeners that don't know what that is.
So he would like hit them with the end of it with the metal ring.
So it would be painful.
Yeah, so that I mean everybody's, well, I wouldn't say everybody's seen Sweeney Todd,
but yeah, that's what that is.
It's to like wipe off the single blade.
And then the hook is to hook on your belt loop.
John Wayne would frequently try to help his father in the basement while working on various
projects.
But when he would be like the least bit clumsy, his father would berate him and call him stupid
for not knowing how to like do.
How to walk?
Yeah.
Because of this constant abuse, John Wayne would frequently look to his mother for comfort
while Marion also tried to shield John from the abuse.
But this led to the father accusing John Wayne of being a quote sissy and a quote mama's
boy who would probably grow up queer.
That's a quote.
He literally said that to John.
I mean, Marion's like trying to quote unquote protect her children when she could just leave
his ass.
Yeah.
I mean, I guess it is like the fifties at this point.
Yeah.
But still, still.
Gacy would later say that he still loved his father despite all of his shortcomings,
but he felt as though he was quote, never good enough in his father's eyes.
He was also noted as saying quote, my dad was domineering.
He had a different set of values, but also a very stern individual.
My dad drank a lot and when he drank a lot, he was abusive to my mother and to me.
But I never swung at my dad because I loved him for what he stood for.
Not exactly sure what that means.
You haven't either.
Stood for what?
Yeah.
Abusing children?
Yeah.
Who's the pussy now, dad?
Literally.
Criminologist Christopher Berry D stated that he did not believe Gacy's upbringing had
anything to do with the crimes he later committed.
What?
He was noted as saying- Sorry, what was this guy's name?
I'm sorry.
What was his name?
He is a hyphenated last name.
Idiot.
He was noted as saying quote, millions of kids get beaten from time to time, but that
doesn't make them serial killers.
You have three children who suffered the same abuse, but only one turned out to be the rotten
apple, which is kind of true.
I mean, sure, not every child that gets abused is going to kill people, but most of the time,
most children that have been physically abused and beaten as children go on to beat their
own wives and their own children.
So yeah, they might not kill them.
They didn't get that far.
Yeah.
But, you know, it's the cycle of abuse.
It doesn't mean that it didn't- While John Wayne denied suffering any sexual abuse at
the hands of his father, his childhood was not without this horrific crime.
When John Wayne was five years old, he went with his mother to visit a friend of hers
at their home.
Also at the home, this friend's 15-year-old daughter, who allegedly brought John Wayne upstairs
to her bedroom and sexually touched him and tickled him.
The woman found the kids in her bedroom, and John Wayne remembers the mother of the 15-year-old
girl hit her several times in front of him as punishment for doing this to him.
Now the 15-year-old girl was developmentally disabled, but of course I'm not excusing
this behavior, but the mother should have kept it better right on the two of them, you
know, especially him being five and her being 15, you know.
Definitely shouldn't have been up her bedroom alone, in my opinion.
I mean, also at that age though, you don't think that a 15-year-old and a five-year-old
are just- Yeah, that's true.
You know what I mean?
But I do see what you're saying though, it's like, I don't know.
When John Wayne was seven years old, allegedly his father found out that him and another young
boy were caught sexually fondling a young girl, and he was beaten by his father for
it.
When John Wayne was eight years old in 1950, a man in his mid-thirties began working on
the home next door to them and became friends with John Stanley.
After getting to know the family, the contractor would eventually take a liking to John Wayne
and lure him into his truck with the promise of them going to get ice cream together.
Allegedly, his mother knew that this was happening, but she was like, oh yeah, go ahead and go,
like she trusted the guy.
I don't know why.
But she's down to protect her children.
Once alone in the truck, the contractor would perform what Gacy later called, quote, wrestling
moves and sexually abused him as well.
He reportedly told John Wayne to quote, bend down and put my head under his leg, which
he did for several minutes.
This incident occurred at least two more times, and the contractor would quote, reward John
Wayne with ice cream afterwards.
Just so awful.
That's disgusting.
During one of these attacks, John Wayne got the courage to run away from the contractor
and tell his father what happened and that he did not want to be alone with him again.
John Stanley responded to this by approaching the contractor and threatening to call the
police if he ever got near his child again.
Down to protect the children.
Not like I'm calling the police because you touched my child.
It's just like, don't do that again and I won't call the police.
They're just doing the Lord's work, y'all.
I mean, come on.
Throughout his childhood and into his teen years, John Wayne was always the odd one out
of his peers.
Due to a heart condition, he was told to avoid all sports growing up, and during the fourth
grade he began to experience blackouts and was hospitalized due to it.
Yeah.
In 1957, he was also hospitalized for a burst appendix and later stated that during the
ages of 14 to 18, he had spent almost a year in the hospital for various reasons and attributed
the decline of his grades to missing so much school because of it.
I'm not trying to say there's a link here, but I feel like we come across an unusual
amount of cases where there's heart conditions.
Yeah.
Have you noticed that too?
Well, it's hospitalization and then there's the blackouts.
It's a big red flag for me because that's the same thing as seizures.
That can hurt your brain development.
Yeah.
It was gasey.
I think Andre Ciccattillo as well had some kind of a heart issue.
Yeah.
Robert Burdella had, like, had a big issue.
And had a big issue.
Like, I was just a weasel.
John Wayne's father, however, did not believe that he was actually experiencing medical
issues and instead was fishing for attention while in his hospital bed.
Thank you.
He's just fishing for attention.
He's just fainting for attention.
He's just blacking out on purpose.
He's just, okay, I'm going to black out now.
Yeah.
So John Wayne was actually never officially diagnosed with anything medically concrete,
but his mother's sisters and a few close friends never doubted his illness.
During his teenage years, John Wayne's situation at home stayed the same with his abusive
father and isolation.
One of his high school friends recalled several instances where John Stanley ridiculed or
beat John Wayne for seemingly no reason and without provocation.
On one occasion in 1957, this friend witnessed John Wayne's father emerging drunk from the
basement to begin belittling and then hitting his son for no apparent reason.
John Wayne's mother attempted to intervene as her son simply, quote, put his hands up
to defend himself.
According to the friend, John Wayne never struck his father back during these altercations.
That's so sad.
Which is like, it is.
Like, he just kind of stood there and took it almost, you know, didn't fight back.
And then John Stanley still took advantage of him like that.
What a piece of shit.
Is this guy dead yet?
Oh, John Stanley?
Yeah.
Oh, I'm sure he is.
Well, I'm sure he's dead now, but when does he die?
Oh, he's still well alive in this shit.
I thought we were going to get lucky.
Right.
It was also around this same time, so high school, that John Wayne's personal life began
to change.
It was at this point that he began to question his sexuality.
And as he was starting to realize that he was, quote, not particularly attracted to
girls and would sometimes have quotes, thoughts of embracing his friends.
It was at this point in his life that he even considered entering the priesthood because
he thought it would help alleviate these feelings.
Wow.
He ultimately did not, but he did accept his sexuality eventually, although he went through
major emotional turmoil with these feelings for a while.
Of course, with his dad being so like, you're going to grow up like this.
And then he's probably like, oh shit, like he's right, you know?
Shit, he's right.
Like, I mean, that's got to be hard, especially in the late fifties.
Right.
And to be terrified of that, because that would apparently, that would seemingly be
his father's worst fear.
Yeah, exactly.
In 1960, at age 18, Gacy became heavily involved in politics, which we've also seen before
with many, many serial killers.
And eventually in 1970, he began working as an assistant precinct captain for a Democratic
party candidate in his neighborhood.
This led to more criticism from his father, who was a diehard Republican, and John Stanley
used this knowledge to continue berating John Wayne and calling him a quote, patsy.
A patsy.
I think that's a funny word.
A patsy.
Like, okay, cool.
I thought a patsy was like a driver.
I think a patsy is like a pansy.
I think it's like a pansy.
A person who is easily taken advantage of, especially by being cheated or blamed for
something.
Oh, okay.
John Wayne actually was very politically involved for a number of years, and at one
point in the mid-1970s, due to his connections, he actually met First Lady Rosalind Carter
while President Carter was in office and took photos with her.
The infamous photo can be found online, which Rosalind had actually signed and given to
Gacy stating quote, to John Gacy, best wishes, Rosalind Carter.
That's nuts.
Right?
I've seen it.
It's wild.
I've seen it.
John Wayne was at the Democratic Party at this time that Gacy was involved in, and he
even acted as a marshal in a Polish parade at one point.
So we're going to back up to 1960.
I just wanted to pepper that in there because that was when he got involved in politics.
So back to 1960, the same year that John Wayne began his heavy political involvement,
his father bought him a car.
John Stanley actually kept the vehicle's title in his own name until John Wayne could
finish paying for it.
John Wayne.
John Wayne was working at a fast food restaurant to keep up with the payments, but the monthly
payment on the vehicle still took him several years to complete.
And the whole time he was making these payments, John Stanley would frequently take the keys
from him if he acted any way other than exactly how his father wanted.
So he's just like using it.
Yeah.
It's like dangled a little above his head.
In April of 1962, John Wayne actually purchased a second set of keys after his father compensated
the original set, seemingly for good.
Oh no.
In response to John Wayne getting a second set of keys.
He got a third set of keys?
No, actually.
No, he's buying like extra sets of keys.
Oh yeah?
Well, just by the fourth.
Yeah.
And the fifth.
One more of the names.
20 days later.
John Stanley actually removed the distributor cap out of the engine and kept the part for
three days as punishment.
Well, your car can't start without that.
Oh my.
It wasn't working.
What is wrong with this guy?
I don't know.
He's a maniac.
So, Gacy later recalled that he felt quote, totally sick and quote, drained after this
incident.
He also later stated about this quote, I had to pay him $100 a month as part of the money
he put up so that I could get a car.
And by March, I had fallen one payment behind.
By April, he was threatening to take away the car.
So on the sixth or ninth of April, I decided to run away.
Now keep in mind, he's 20 years old at this point.
He doesn't need to run away.
No, he's in the top.
But he was only one car payment behind or I guess reimbursing him.
Yeah.
Probably not even because the dad probably either paid it off or is already making the
payment.
Yeah.
Just $100.
Yeah.
I mean, it's 1950s, I get it.
Shit, if mom and dad took away my car after missing one payment, I would have not had
a car.
You would have just not got a car.
Same.
Thanks, mom.
Thanks, dad.
All right.
So just hours after John Stanley replaced the distributor cap, John Wayne left home
and took off to Las Vegas, Nevada.
Oh, so he replaced it and then he took off in the car?
So John Stanley was like, okay, I guess he had made the payment.
So he was like, okay, now you get the distributor cap back.
Just hours after he gave him the cap back, John Wayne was like, I'm the fuck out of here.
And he took the car though.
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
Badass.
He found work in Las Vegas within the ambulance service and eventually was transferred to
work as an attendant at Palm Mortuary.
Hmm.
As a mortuary attendant, John Wayne actually spent his nights on a cot behind the embalming
room for three months that he worked there because he couldn't afford rent.
I bet it smelled so bad.
Also during this time, he would frequently observe embalming sessions by the morticians,
of course, and occasionally served as a pallbearer for funerals.
I'm sorry, just the thought of embalming fluids.
Oh, I know.
The smell alone is like-
Like formaldehyde?
Yeah.
This next part's kind of content warning.
One night, Gacy found himself alone at the mortuary business and decided to do something
unheard of up until this point in his life.
Gacy snuck into the room that was holding a deceased teenage male in a coffin awaiting
the upcoming funeral service.
He climbed into the coffin with the young boy and embraced and caressed the body for
a few moments until he reportedly experienced a sense of shock and climbed back out collecting
himself.
Okay, Dahmer.
Yeah.
Like, isn't that- I didn't even know he did that.
He apparently was so uneasy about his own actions that he immediately called his mother
to ask if she thought John Stanley would allow him to move back in with them.
He's like, I've moved out of the house, I'm going crazy now because I'm caressing
dead- dead boys?
Yeah.
Ooh.
His father agreed and John Wayne left Las Vegas and drove back to Chicago within a few
hours of this incident.
Once returning home, Gacy decided that he wanted to further his education and he enrolled
at Northwestern Business College despite having failed out of high school previously.
This time around, he was much more studious and he ended up getting his bachelor's degree
in 1963 and shortly afterward, he took a management trainee position with the Nunn-Bush
Shoe Company.
A year later in 1964, the same shoe company transferred Gacy to Springfield, Illinois,
where he was given the promotion to manager of his department.
It was while working at this new position in Springfield that he had met a woman named
Marilyn Myers, a beautiful brunette who caught his eye and worked in the same department
store as him.
At this point, Gacy was 22 years old.
I couldn't find out how old Marilyn was, but she was seemingly around the same age.
The two became friendly and began to date and eventually ended up marrying only nine
months after becoming serious.
That's also a theme that we see, right?
Yeah, it's a very good thing.
Getting into a relationship, especially guys that are on the questionable end of their
sexuality that are like, okay, I have to marry a woman.
It's a beard, totally.
Gacy then got back into politics heavily and joined a branch of the United States Junior
Council by the name of the Waterloo JCs.
The purpose of this organization was to offer the best opportunities for business development
and career advancement for both men and women between 21 to 40 years of age.
However, it came out later that this particular organization was not as proper as they were
making themselves out to be.
He was known in the group as working tirelessly for them and was actually named Key Man at
one point in his involvement.
During his time with the JCs, John Wayne also had his second homosexual experience, the
first one being at the orchard.
Laying down with a deceased boy, okay.
One of his colleagues in the JCs provided multiple drinks for the two of them, and once
Gacy was very intoxicated, the friend offered for him to just crash on his couch to avoid
a driving home.
Sure.
Avoid a driving home.
Avoid big hubs.
Gacy agreed, and allegedly the colleague performed oral sex on him while he was very drunk.
Gacy tried to either forget or ignore what happened, and he eventually rose to the position
of vice president of the Waterloo JCs in 1965.
That's another theme that we see, right?
Pretty hardworking individuals for the most part.
Positions of power are really wanted, yeah.
Like Kristen Gilbert.
Yeah.
Later that year, he was named the third of most outstanding member of the JCs in the
state of Illinois, which is like a high honor, but I bet he was pissed that he wasn't the
first.
He was like the fifth.
Must be the first.
Yeah.
So like I said, John Wayne and Marilyn began to date, and within nine months of meeting,
they tied the knot, and together decided to move to Waterloo, Illinois after Marilyn's
father offered Gacy a job and gave the two of them the family home for themselves.
Wow.
He had a lot of money.
After moving into Marilyn's parents' old home in Waterloo, Gacy got lucky with the
job being handed to him by Marilyn's father, which was managing three different KFC locations
that Mr. Meyers owned.
You know what's so funny is that as you're describing certain things that he's done,
I imagine John Wayne Gacy and these like outfits.
And each one is like, I do remember seeing a photo of that.
I do remember seeing a photo of that.
I do remember seeing, you know what I mean?
You know what, you reminded me just now when he said that, reminded me of the chicken man
from Toy Story 2.
That's probably what he looked like.
The chicken man, he did.
He did look like that, minus the glasses.
Now, of course, it's become clear that Marilyn's family came from money, especially with her
father being able to purchase three KFC franchises.
But on top of this, Gacy was getting paid an enormous amount by her father to manage
them.
He was making $15,000 a year, and don't worry, I did the conversion rate, $134, $550
a year today.
Wow.
That's pretty good money.
Plus, a share of the restaurant's profits.
That's a lot of money.
Could you imagine being like, yeah, I make $15,000 a year, and people will be like, holy
shit.
Yeah, exactly.
I'd be like...
$15,000.
On top of this, Gacy did not have any prior experience with management of restaurants
or really management at all.
So the only thing we're close to is...
That's so true.
It's just like, here are these fucking restaurants.
It's great.
Do what you will.
I don't know what the fuck to do with restaurants.
So, the only thing required of him to be given this job was a completion of a management
course.
And he was like, all right, here you go.
Take it around.
Is it a front?
No.
It's not like a...
He was just rich, and I guess the dad really liked him, and he was like, here you go.
And he needed the help, so he's like, here you go.
Help with what though?
Because it seems like the father just bought him KFC, or did he own the multiple, and he
let Gacy manage three of them.
I see.
Okay.
I was like, what the fuck?
So, he's like, computer sciences or computer networking, and then he's just like, here's
the three KFC restaurants, and Gacy's like, great, thanks.
On top of the things that were required of Gacy, he also decided to take on some extra,
you know, curricular stuff of his own, and he opened up a sort of club in like the family's
home's basement where all of his employees could hang out while they were at work.
What?
They would like play pool and drink and just like be dumb.
But he called it something?
No, but he's also managing a KFC.
Who works at KFCs?
Teenagers.
Teenagers, yeah.
Little kids.
He quickly became the cool manager, but also super creepy.
He was hanging out with a bunch of teenagers like quite often.
I think I've been in that situation before.
I'm sure you have too, where you've worked at a place and you're like, well, so-and-so
was kind of creepy, but like, he's gonna buy us all beer.
Oh yeah.
You know?
For sure.
Which like, could think of our life.
Oh, for sure.
I was like, who is that like older person, like 45, 50, and they're like the only one
in the room, and they're the ones that are supplying the booze and the cigarettes and
the weed.
You don't think it's weird when you were like-
I think it's weird.
I'm like, what is it about you that you don't have friends you're on age?
Yeah, that's true.
You know?
It's weird.
Among the employees frequenting the basement club were teens of both sexes, but Gacy was
known as only conversing with the young men when these gatherings happened.
Sure.
Of course.
Also adding to his laundry list of activities, Gacy joined the Waterloo Jaysies chapter, so
he just- it's the same club, but he's in a different city, right?
So similar to what he was doing back in Chicago.
Although he was already working 12 to 14 hours at KFC Daily and frequently hosting these
ragers in his basement, he decided to devote extended hours to the Jaysies as well.
At meetings, Gacy often provided fried chicken from his local restaurant and even insisted
on being called the Colonel.
Shut up.
Oh, God.
Just call me the Colonel.
He was like, you need to call me the Colonel.
Like, that's what I'm talking about.
You need to call me the Colonel.
Sheesh.
Hey, guys, we're going over to the Colonel's house.
Everyone, Colonel's house after work.
The beer is on Colonel.
Who's that creepy guy in the corner?
Oh, you mean the Colonel?
Oh, that's the Colonel.
God, what an embarrassment.
Also going on in this Waterloo chapter of the Jaysies, Gacy and other men engaging in
wife-swapping, prostitution, pornography, and drug use-
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
...escalates quickly.
Whoa, where am I?
Did I zone out for 20 minutes?
What happened?
Yeah.
What?
It just like came out of nowhere, right?
Around...
Oh, that's...
I know.
I mean, it had to happen at some point.
Sure.
Around the same time all of this was going on, Marilyn found herself pregnant.
And in February of 1966, she gave birth to her and John Wayne's first child, Michael
Gacy.
So he had to move the ragers to another location?
Oh, no.
Of course not.
Was this like a five-story house?
I don't know, actually.
I didn't look...
The family was seemingly perfect and happy, and John Wayne continued his antics in the
background of everything.
Did she participate in the wife-swapping?
That was a good question, because I didn't think that she did, but it comes out later
that she might have.
Oh, no.
I don't want to say yes or no.
Okay.
I definitely don't want to put a cloud over her head.
I'm not...
I cannot confirm nor do I.
Yeah.
I mean, technically that's their own personal business.
Yeah, of course.
But...
Yeah.
So just for the sake of the continuity, I just wanted to ask that question.
Yeah.
So this went on for about another year, until Marilyn became pregnant once again and had
her and John's second child in March of 1967, a girl named Christine Gacy.
As far as the Jaysies go, Gacy was considered ambitious and a braggart, but other than that,
the Jaysies actually held him in high regard for his fundraising work, and in 1967 he was
named Outstanding Vice President of the Waterloo Jaysies.
Wow.
The same year, he was also given a place and served on the board of directors.
Yeah.
So they seemed to have everything they could want, of course, money, you know, a boy and
a girl, perfect little family, a beautiful home.
However, Gacy was not fully satisfied with his life as he was continuing to struggle
with his sexual identity and was constantly having sexual feelings towards these young
men that he was spending so much time with.
On top of all of the men in the Jaysies being close to Gacy, many of these young men had
teenage sons that they would also introduce to the lifestyle, so Gacy was frequently engaging
in conversations with them as well.
Hmm.
Now, in August of 1967, so just a few months after his daughter was born, Gacy lured a Jaysies
15-year-old son by the name of Donald Voorhees to his home upon the premise of showing him
heterosexual stag films that they regularly played at these events.
At first, at his home, just two straight dudes in a basement watching some good old-fashioned
hetero porn.
Yeah, exactly.
Now, once at his home, Gacy provided a copious amount of alcohol to Donald, allowing him
to watch the movie, and then persuaded him in mutual oral sex, stating, quote, you have
to have sex with a man before you start having sex with women.
That's like a read-a-passage.
Who made that rule?
Who made that?
Gacy.
I want that printed on a T-shirt.
Gacy.
J-W-G.
So no one knows who's who.
Exactly.
Over the following months, Gacy did the same thing numerous times with multiple different
teens, including one that he persuaded to have sex with his own wife, Marilyn.
So maybe she was involved in it.
Maybe she was.
After the boy engaged in sexual activity with her, Gacy blackmailed him, threatening
to get the boy in trouble for what he had done unless he engaged in similar acts with
Gacy himself.
What?
Yeah, that's gross, right?
Wow.
During the duration of these assaults, Gacy allegedly told the boys that he was commissioned
to conduct homosexual experiments in the interest of science, and he gave each boy
$50 for their cooperation.
It's for science.
Yeah, they're like, oh, okay.
The following March in 1968, the first of these victims, remember Donald Voorhees we
just talked about, was 15, by the way, reported this to his father that Gacy had sexually
assaulted him.
The boy's father immediately called police, who then arrested Gacy and subsequently charged
him with performing oral sodomy on Voorhees, as well as the attempted assault of 16-year-old
Edward Lynch, another boy.
Gacy denied the charges and demanded to take a polygraph to prove his innocence.
Dumbass.
Like, dummy.
He knows he did it.
Polygraph me.
What do people do that?
Especially all the time on, like, I don't know, like, Mari or whatever.
It's like, you know you're gonna get caught.
Well, they're so freaking narcissistic.
They think they can fool anyone.
So, of course, they can pass a polygraph test.
I'm no one's better than me, right?
It's just a dumb machine.
Exactly.
So, I'm sure it's obvious the results indicated that Gacy was in fact nervous when he denied
any wrongdoing as it pertained to these charges and assaults of both young men.
Earlier in the last year, Voorhees Sr. had allegedly opposed the nomination of Gacy for
the president position of the JCs.
So Gacy used this info to publicly announce his innocence, stating that the accusation
was politically motivated.
Heard.
So stupid.
I could see that, though.
That's kind of a little...
Yeah, it is.
You know, he's just saying that because he doesn't like me, just in general.
In Gacy's favor, many of the other JCs stood behind the idea that his story was credible
and that he was innocent.
Wow.
They rallied to his support, stating that he would not be capable of the crimes he was
charged with.
However...
Never.
Even with this background support, on May 10th, 1968, John Wayne Gacy was indicted on
the sodomy charge and awaited trial for these charges on the streets.
Wow.
Okay.
On August 30th, 1968...
So career over now.
Oh no, he's caught.
Like, that's it.
Yeah, he's caught.
I don't have 30 more pages of research.
On August 30th, 1968, Gacy persuaded an 18-year-old employee by the name of Russell Schroeder
to physically assault Voorhees in an effort to discourage the boy from testifying against
him.
Wait, what?
He hired another boy to assault the victim so that he couldn't testify against him when
he were to go to trial, like later.
Oh my god.
Gacy promised Russell $300 in exchange for this act.
Russell agreed, and in early September, he lured Voorhees to an isolated county park,
sprayed mace in his eyes, and then began beating him ruthlessly.
Oh my god.
Gacy's managed to escape and reported the assault to police.
Bet us.
Being able to actually identify Russell as his attacker.
Hell yeah.
Russell was arrested the next day.
Of course, he initially denied any involvement, but quickly changed his statement and confessed
to his crime, indicating he had done so at Gacy's request.
Police arrest Gacy yet again, and laid an additional charge of hiring Russell to assault
and intimidate Voorhees against him.
A scandal.
So why was he fucking out while he was awaiting trial and he did this?
Well, because it was only his first offense.
Yeah, or sometimes you pay your bond or whatever you get out.
Yeah, that's true.
He did have money.
That's true.
On September 12, 1968, Gacy was court ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation at the
psychiatric hospital of the University of Iowa.
Is that where that dummy was like, oh no, definitely not.
He couldn't possibly sexually assault people because he was never sexually assaulted when
he was a kid.
Yeah, that was way later on.
Oh, okay.
Don't worry.
I was like, is this the idiot?
Two doctors examined him over a period of 17 days and concluded that he had antisocial
personality disorder.
There's the diagnosis.
On top of this diagnosis, they also determined that he would be unlikely to benefit from
any therapy or medical treatment and that his behavior pattern was likely to bring him
into repeated conflict with society.
Barry the boy.
Just Barry and so.
Why isn't the episode done?
Bye-bye.
Then he's done, right?
Then he's done.
He's done it.
We're getting out because he did these heinous crimes and in fact hired somebody to beat
the shit out of a victim of his already.
And clearly cannot be...
He's clearly unfit for society.
Yeah.
He can't be rehabilitated.
Clearly.
Just put him away.
Bye.
That's it.
Okay.
Bye.
Have a great day.
Love you, bye.
No.
In fact, all I wanted to say is like, is this where he becomes the clown?
Oh my God.
Is this the part where he becomes the clown?
He's just clowning around.
During this evaluation, the doctors also concluded that he was indeed mentally competent to withstand
trial.
Boom.
Okay, let's remember that for the future, okay?
Yes.
We talked to him for 17 days.
He is not insane.
On November 7th, 1968, Gacy pleaded guilty to one count of sodomy in relation to Voorhees,
but not guilty to the charges related to his other assault victims.
During the trial, Gacy was allowed to speak on his behalf.
Can't wait to hear what he has to say.
And he claimed that Voorhees had offered himself to Gacy and he had acted so out of curiosity.
He's 15.
Yeah.
He can't consent.
So what the fuck?
The jury did not believe the story Gacy told.
Fair.
And he was convicted of sodomy on December 3rd, 1968 and sentenced to 10 years in prison,
which would be served at the Anamosa State Penitentiary.
10 years?
How much did he serve?
I'll tell you.
The next day, Gacy walks out of the jail.
Skips along.
The same day he was sentenced, his wife Marilyn petitioned for divorce, requesting that she
be awarded the family home and property, sole custody of their two children and alimony.
Good.
The court ruled in her favor and the divorce was finalized on September 18th, 1969.
After this was finalized, Gacy never saw Marilyn or his children again.
You go girl.
During his incarceration, Gacy quickly acquired a reputation as a model prisoner.
Within months of his arrival, he had risen to head cook in the kitchen and also joined-
Stop giving this guy like head of everything.
Also joined the JC chapter in prison.
After he joined, he quickly became a leader and increased the chapter in size from 50 inmates
to 650 inmates in just 18 months.
This guy, I-
He thinks he's God.
Like he's the complex.
You know he thinks he's like macho, like I'm the best person in the world.
I have powers.
Gacy also became very friendly with the guards and was able to secure an increase in the
inmates' daily pay in the prison mess hall and also supervised several projects to improve
conditions for inmates.
But like that's not the guy's problem.
The guy's problem is that he assaults young men.
That's his problem.
His problem isn't that he's participating in society.
Clearly he does that.
Yeah.
He's trying to say like, oh look how great I'll be if I get out.
Exactly.
Like what I'll do for people.
But that people think that that equates to rehabilitation.
Yeah, exactly.
You know.
By the summer of 1969, Gacy had even overseen the installation of a mini golf course in
the prison wreck yard.
I couldn't even say that.
Is this a Tim Burton movie?
This is a movie.
This is a Tim Burton movie.
In June of 1969, Gacy was denied parole.
After his parole was denied, he began to prepare for the next one by completing numerous high
school courses, 16 to be exact.
He obtained his diploma in November of 1969 and his next parole hearing was scheduled
for May of 1970.
I thought he already graduated.
He had dropped out of high school and then he went to college.
But he never had a GED or a diploma.
Oh.
I think he might have had a GED but he didn't have a diploma.
So he went back to complete.
Okay.
On Christmas Day, 1969, Gacy's father died from cirrhosis of the liver and when Gacy
was informed of this, he collapsed to the floor sobbing.
Wow.
I'm surprised.
Yeah, same.
He requested to have supervised, compassionate release following this but his request was
denied.
So your father was a piece of shit?
No you cannot go so early.
Yeah.
What the hell?
What the hell is he anyway?
So awful.
Oh dad, where's the body?
Where's the body?
Gacy eventually had his next parole hearing in June of 1970 after the date was pushed
back.
It seems as though his nice guy act and high school courses paid off and Gacy was granted
12 months probation on June 18th, 1970 only having served 18 months of his 10 year sentence.
Oh my god, that's why.
When he was, was it supposed to be at least 10 years served or was it like a 10 year minimum?
Maximum, 10 year total was what he was sentenced to and he got out in 18 months.
Months.
Conditions of his probation included that Gacy relocated to Chicago to live with his mother
and that he must observe a 10 p.m. curfew.
That doesn't sound like a, I don't know, because probation you think like you're not allowed
to leave that state.
So it's kind of funny that they're like, go to another state.
Oh that's true, yeah you're right.
Upon his release, Gacy had told a friend and fellow J.C. Clarence Lane who picked him up
from the prison and also remained loyal to the idea that Gacy was innocent, that he would
quote, never go back to jail and that he intended to reestablish himself in Waterloo eventually.
Within 24 hours of being released, Gacy was relocated to Chicago by bus on June 19th and
shortly after began working as a short order cook in a restaurant.
Seemingly laying low for a while, Gacy obeyed the rules of a per-
Buh Turtle as a slapped
June 18.
So he couldn't just wait the, what, four months?
Three months?
Yeah.
The court dismissed the charges when the boy failed to appear in court.
I wonder who he hired to intimidate him.
On June 22nd, so this would have been about four days after his original probation was
up, but it got extended because of this past charge.
So on June 22nd, Gacy was arrested again and charged with aggravated sexual battery and
reckless conduct.
The arrest was in response to a complaint filed by a youth who claimed that Gacy had
flashed him a sheriff's badge, lured him into his car, and forced him to perform oral
sex.
The charges were dropped after the boy attempted to blackmail Gacy.
Somehow, because police departments do not communicate, the Iowa Board of Parole did
not learn about these arrests, and Gacy's parole ended in October 1971.
But they didn't, okay, so the thing is like even the case of like clearly that boy pressed
charges or whatever, and then it was gonna go to court, but the boy didn't show up.
Well, clearly someone in that court system or whatever knows that he was, he's a parolee.
Yeah, no, they have to.
You know what I mean?
So why would it even be up to like the kid showing up?
It's just stupid.
Well, I think it got extended and then it ended up ending anyway, even though he wasn't
like officially charged.
But still, you would think like clearly you were charged with this before you were, you
know, maxed for ten years.
You would think that they'd be like, oh well, clearly repeat offender.
Like it would be up to the state to charge is what I'm saying.
No, for sure.
Because it would be a second offense.
That's so weird.
The following month, the records of Gacy's previous criminal convictions were sealed
for unknown reasons.
So now they can't even look into that if they want.
With financial help from his mom, Gacy purchased a ranch house near the village of Norwich
in Norwood Park Township, the outskirts of Cook County in Chicago, like little tiny
suburb.
Okay.
Him and his mother would live at this home together and him for the rest of his free life.
During the time he lived there, Gacy was known for being very active in the community and
helpful towards his neighbors.
He would willingly loan construction tools to neighbors and offered to plow snow from
their sidewalks free of charge.
He's such a nice guy.
He even hosted annual summer parties that were devoted to a different theme and had nearly
400 people in attendance each year, including politicians.
You're so right.
He's just such a narcissist.
He's so egotistical that he's just, he's terrible.
That's what he thrives on is being the good guy to as many people as possible.
Gacy began dating a woman he had attended high school with and briefly dated in high
school by the name of Carol Hoff and the two got engaged shortly after reconnecting.
Sure.
Carol and her two young daughters from a previous marriage moved in with Gacy shortly after
they announced their engagement and Gacy's mother moved out around the same time.
Carol was noted saying about Gacy, quote, he slept me off my feet.
I don't think I loved him, but I was still mixed up about my first marriage and he treated
me well.
In the same year, 1971, Gacy established a part-time construction business.
He named this business PDM for painting, decorating and maintenance.
Gacy worked evenings on his construction contracts while working as a cook during the day.
Initially, he overtook minor repair work like signwriting, pouring concrete and redecorating,
but he later moved up to take over interior design, remodeling, installation, assembly
and landscaping.
Do you think his new wife knows about his past?
I don't think so.
Yeah.
I don't think so.
Well, because it makes sense he would start his own business if he couldn't get a job.
Yeah, that's true.
You know?
Yeah.
And then just a cook.
But I would be wondering, you know, you have all this, you have like, you know, this
degree and like all these really amazing things that you've done, like, why are you a cook?
Yeah, no, for sure.
Kind of thing, you know, especially if politicians know him.
Yeah.
So, Gacy quickly reverted to his old ways and would often proposition his employees for
sex or insist on sexual favors for acts such as lending them vehicles, financial assistance
or promotions.
I don't think I've ever been in a situation as a friend where I'm like, hey, can I get
a ride?
Yeah, sure.
Handy?
Yeah, literally.
I've never been in a situation like that.
You got gas handy?
Yeah.
Is it a gas money?
I did have a former friend that flashed somebody from mushrooms once though.
Oh my gosh, that's funny.
Gacy would also talk about the fact that he owned guns and one time told an employee,
quote, do you know how easy it would be to get one of my guns and kill you and how easy
it would be to get rid of the body?
Like that's a fucking red flag.
I've never heard one.
It's a red flag because it's a lie.
He would keep it and snuggle it.
It's a lie.
So this is the part, content warning, that we're going to get into his first murder and
it's going to be a lot from there on.
So just to let everyone know.
In the early morning hours of January 3rd, 1972, Gacy was nearby the Greyhound bus stop
where he came upon 16 year old Timothy Jack McCoy and lured him into his car.
Timothy was returning from a Christmas vacation in Michigan to his father's home in Omaha,
Nebraska.
Since he was not from town, Gacy told him he would take him on a sightseeing tour around
Chicago and then drive him to his home with the promise that he would bring him back to
the bus station the following morning.
McCoy agreed and the two took off from the bus station.
The next morning, Gacy claimed to have awoken to Timothy standing in his bedroom doorway
with a kitchen knife in his hand.
Gacy jumped from his bed and Timothy raised his hands up in a gesture of surrender and
accidentally cut Gacy's forearm with the knife in the process when he lifted his hands up.
Gacy responded to this by twisting the knife from Timothy's wrist, banged his head against
the bedroom wall and kicked him against the dresser and walked towards him.
Timothy then kicked Gacy in the stomach, doubling him over.
Gacy grabbed Timothy shouting, quote, motherfucker, I'll kill you.
He then wrestled Timothy to the floor and straddled him and proceeded to stab him multiple times
in the chest.
As Timothy lay dying, Gacy washed the knife off in his bathroom, then went to his kitchen
and saw an opened carton of eggs and a slab of unsliced bacon on the kitchen table.
Somebody is preparing breakfast?
Timothy had set the table for two.
He had walked into Gacy's room to wake him while absentmindedly carrying the knife in
his hand.
Aw.
And this is Gacy's story too, right?
Yeah.
So you don't know how true it is or how not true it is.
Well, you think he romanticized it?
No, I think that Gacy was trying to say, like, I thought he was coming to attack me because
he had a knife.
But it was all.
So I just immediately, of course, self-defense.
And then I realized afterwards that he was just preparing breakfast and he was just trying
to wake me up.
So we have talked about that before on another episode about how some people, they, it's
like they, they want to like blame the victim, but they feel badly, like they feel guilty
of what they did.
Even if it's like, these are my just, oh, it was Diane Stouty, which is like, these are
my justifications for what I did.
But it, you know, but it wasn't their fault or, you know, and then she was like, well,
Sean was the one that was poisoning people, but it wasn't his fault or whatever.
So that's really interesting that he would choose to light it like that.
Yeah, no, definitely.
Well, I did do this crime, although it was in self-defense, but he technically didn't
do anything wrong because he would feel bad about blaming the victim.
Yeah, no, I agree.
That's definitely an interesting way to think about it.
I didn't think about it like that.
This next part is a content warning.
Gacy said that immediately after killing Timothy, he felt quote, totally drained, yet noted
that as he stabbed Timothy and listened to the quote, gurgulations and gasping for air
that he experienced a mind numbing orgasm.
Okay, Karla Faituckers.
I was just thinking that.
I didn't want to say it, but she's a fucking million orgasm.
I had 57, 35,000 orgasms.
Jesus.
Gacy also added, quote, that's when I realized that death was the ultimate thrill.
Oh, like, how cliche.
Yeah, like how, like, how deep of you.
He hid Timothy's body in a crawl space underneath his house.
I know we've heard that before.
That is his MO.
Yes.
In June of 1972, Gacy and Carol tied the knot and the construction business was booming.
In 1973, Gacy and a teenage employee traveled to Florida to view a property Gacy had purchased.
On their first night in Florida, Gacy raped the employee in their hotel room.
After returning to Chicago, the employee drove to Gacy's house and beat him in his
front yard.
Wow.
When asked what happened by his wife, Gacy said that he had been attacked for refusing
to pay the employee for a poor quality paint job.
Sure, that's what it was.
That's exactly what happened, right?
Yeah, totally.
That's what a normal person does when they don't get paid by their boss is beat the shit
out of them.
So the first victim, Timothy, he's buried in the crawl space in the family home?
Yes.
Oh.
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's much more disturbing.
Yeah.
In January, 1974, Gacy murdered again, this time an unidentified boy.
Gacy strangled him and then placed his body in the closet before burying him underneath
his house.
He later stated that bodily fluids leaked from the victim's mouth and nose staining
his carpet.
As a result, Gacy regularly stuffed cloth rags, the victim's underwear or a sock into
the mouths of his other victims to prevent this from happening.
But okay, so he didn't like give a description of like how he found this boy or anything?
He's unidentified to this day.
So it's just when they found him and he's like, oh shit, I don't remember.
It was around this time, I think.
Yeah.
Pretty much.
What a piece of shit.
Almost a year later or over a year later in May, 1975, Gacy hired 15 year old Anthony
Etanucci at PDM.
Etanucci.
Two months into working there, Anthony had an accident resulting in his foot being injured.
Gacy went to his home to check in on him supposedly.
Oh, and he just brought some wine along with him.
You know, just in case.
Mix it with that Vicodin baby.
Yeah.
The two drank a bottle of wine and watched a heterosexual stag film before Gacy wrestled
him to the ground and cuffed his hands behind his back.
Gacy left the room for a second and while he was gone, Anthony noticed that one of the
cuffs was loose and he was able to get his hand free.
When Gacy returned, Anthony pounced on him using his knowledge of wrestling to help him
gain the upper hand.
But that's Gacy's like.
That's his thing.
Yeah, that's like Superman and the Sun.
He wrestled Gacy to the floor, obtained possession of the handcuff key and handcuffed Gacy's hands
behind his back.
Damn.
Bad ass bitch alert.
At first, Gacy threatened Anthony, but then he calmed down and promised to leave if he
would remove the handcuffs.
Anthony agreed and uncuffed Gacy, who took off.
Oh, he left.
He left.
Okay.
Anthony later recalled that Gacy told him, quote, not only are you the only one who got
out of the cuffs, you got them on me.
That means he's always done that before.
The same month on Mother's Day, Gacy and his wife were getting intimate when Gacy stated
to her that this would be, quote, the last time they would ever have sex.
She said that?
He said that to her on Mother's Day.
On Mother's Day.
No babies for you.
He admitted to his wife that he was bisexual and he began spending most evenings away from
home only to return in the early hours of the morning with the excuse that he had been
working late.
No, he was out with men.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
He agreed Gacy bringing teenage boys into the garage in the early hours and also found
homosexual pornography and men's wallets and IDs in the home.
What?
Oh, that's a red flag right there, Karen.
You call the cops.
Carol.
Whatever.
When she confronted Gacy about these items being in the home, he got mad and told her
it was none of her business.
Is that in your business, Karen?
Yeah.
Mind your business, Karen.
Carol.
On July 31st, 1975, 18-year-old John Bukovic, a PDM employee from Lombard, disappeared.
John's car was found parked near the corner of Sheridan and Lawrence and his jacket and
wallet inside with the keys still in the ignition.
The day before his disappearance, John had confronted Gacy over two weeks of back pay
he owed him.
What?
That sucks.
Yeah, I'd be pissed too.
Mr. Bukovic called Gacy, who claimed he was happy to help in the search for his son but
was sorry that he had, quote, run away.
That the son had run away?
Yeah, like no one said he ran away.
And you're the one.
Oh yeah, sorry about that.
He ran away.
Oh, he ran away.
Yeah, how do you know?
Did he tell you something?
Did he leave a note?
When questioned by the police, Gacy said that John and two friends had arrived at his home
demanding the overdue pay but they had reached a compromise and all three teens had left.
Over the following three years, John's parents called police more than 100 times urging them
to investigate Gacy further.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean as a parent I'd be pissed, like can't find my fucking kid.
Yeah.
And nobody seems to be taking it seriously.
You just take one's random person's word for it.
Yeah, exactly.
That was the last person to see him alive pretty much.
Gacy later admitted to encountering John exiting his car at the corner of West Lawrence, waving
to get his attention.
According to Gacy, John approached his car stating, quote, I want to talk to you.
Gacy invited John into his car, then invited him back to his house, seemingly to settle
the money issue.
With the keys in the ignition?
Yeah, that's like, oh, let me just hop out of my car real quick.
And then just go with you in your car when my car is right there.
This is all true.
This next part.
At his home, Gacy offered John a drink, then condom into allowing his wrist to be tied
behind his back.
Gacy later confessed to having, quote, sat on the kid's chest for a while before he
strangled him.
He put John's body in the garage, intending to bury him later in the crawl space.
When Carol and the kids returned to the home earlier than expected, Gacy buried John's
body under the concrete floor in the garage.
How?
Like, I guess you would, I don't know.
Like that's loud as fuck.
Unless it's one of those garages that has like, like there's a concrete slab, but there's
like grass all around.
Yeah, that's what it seems like.
So like he could maybe bury it under.
Yeah, because otherwise what?
Like you would have to get like a sledgehammer, one of those jackhammers or something to do
that.
Among the many things that Gacy was involved in, in 1975, he also got back into politics
and entered the local Democratic Party.
He initially offered his employees as volunteers to clean party headquarters at no charge.
Like, he like, voluntold his employees to go do this.
Voluntold, I hate that.
Voluntold.
He was rewarded for his community service with an appointment to serve on the Norwood
Park Township Street Lighting Committee and earned the title of precinct captain.
This is also the time where he met Russell and Carter.
So this is coming back to that, what we talked about earlier.
Okay, I just don't understand why this guy has a record of like, sodomizing children
or something.
And then he's like able to.
He's able to just manipulate people still and be politically involved.
Remember, his record is sealed though, somehow.
That's right.
I forgot about that.
The event that he met Russell and Carter later became an embarrassment to the United States
Secret Service because in the photo, Gacy is seen wearing a pen with the letter S on
it, indicating a person given special clearance.
So they were like, we're embarrassed that we didn't know this fucking guy was like actively
killing people and we like gave him like special privileges for the fucking government.
But they're like looking at my search history and they're like, oh, bitch did it.
Yeah, exactly.
She researches true crime.
Around October of 1975, Gacy and Carol got into an argument after she balanced a checkbook
incorrectly.
And all of the pent up anger from both of them came out.
Carol asked Gacy for a divorce and he agreed to the request, although by mutual consent.
She continued to live at the home with the children until February of 1976.
So after they moved out, Carol and her daughters moved into an apartment.
And one month later on March 2nd, 1976, the divorce was granted, decreed on the false
grounds of Gacy's infidelity with women.
Now if Gacy wasn't already involved in literally everything in late 1975, he heard about a
Jolly Joker clown club that members regularly performed at fundraising events and for hospitalized
children.
So he decides to take on yet another opportunity.
And of course this is where we get into the infamous, you know, killer clown kind of thing.
Gacy decided that he wanted to join the club and created his own characters, pogo the clown
and patches the clown.
Yeah, I didn't hear about patches.
I know about pogo though.
He described pogo as a quote, happy clown, whereas patches was a more serious character.
That's kind of scary.
Which one kills people?
Yeah.
Both.
Gacy rarely earned money for his performances and later stated that acting as a clown allowed
him to quote, regress into childhood.
That's terrifying.
That's disgusting.
Okay, Michael Jackson.
He performed as both pogo and patches at numerous local parties, political functions, charitable
events and children hospitals.
All those pictures of him, they look like you ever see those really creepy Halloween costumes
from like 1920 and 30s and stuff like that.
Yes, terrifying.
Sometimes Gacy would remain in his clown costumes after a performance and go have a drink at
a local bar before returning home.
I would be like, get the fuck out of here.
Leave.
Who are you?
His public service as a clown throughout the years of his murders led him to being known
as the Killer Clown.
Of course.
After Gacy was a bachelor again, neighbors frequently noticed him having company of many
different teenage boys and a lot of strange behavior from Gacy himself, although nothing
suspicious enough to call in about.
One month after his divorce was finalized, Gacy abducted 18 year old Daryl Samson.
He was last seen in Chicago on April 6, 1976.
Gacy murdered the boy and buried him under the dining room with a section of cloth lodged
in his throat.
Five weeks later, on the afternoon of May 14th, 15 year old Randall Reffett disappeared
shortly after returning to his home from a dental appointment.
He was last seen by his grandmother later that afternoon, a victim of Gacy's.
By the way, we're going to go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom right now just to let everyone
know.
Just hours after Randall was last seen, 14 year old Samuel Stapleton vanished as he walked
home from his sister's apartment.
In the same day?
He and Randall were close friends, and Gacy buried both of the boys together in the crawl
space, investigators believing that both boys were killed on the same evening.
On June 3rd, Gacy killed a 17 year old Lake View Teen named Michael Bonin.
He disappeared while traveling from Chicago to Waukegan.
Gacy strangled Michael with a ligature and buried him under the spare bedroom.
10 days later, Gacy murdered 16 year old William Carroll and buried him in a common grave in
the crawl space.
William was the first of four victims known to have been murdered between June 13th and
August 6th, 1976.
Three were between 16 and 17 years old, and one unidentified victim was an adult.
On July 26th, 1976, Gacy picked up 18 year old David Cram as he was hitchhiking on Elston
Avenue.
Gacy offered him a job with PDM, and he began working that same evening.
On August 5th, a 16 year old Minnesota teen named James Hackison is last known to have
phoned his family, possibly from Gacy's home.
James died of suffocation at the hands of Gacy, and his body was buried in the crawl
space beneath the body of a 17 year old Benzville teen named Rick Johnston, who was last seen
on August 6th as well.
It's like so much to even like think about.
On August 21st, David Cram, the guy who had previously gotten the job, moved into the
Gacy home after working at PDM for a month and needing a place to stay.
What?
How bad does that place smell?
Literally.
We say that all the time.
I know.
Like we watch Dommer, you're like, how bad does that apartment smell?
The next day, David and Gacy shared several drinks to celebrate David's 19th birthday,
and Gacy dressed as Pogo the Clown.
Like I would be like, please, this is the last thing I want.
Is this the nightmare?
Now Gacy had a specific MO to get his victims to agree to be handcuffed, because we've talked
about this previously, how he somehow convinces these guys to become handcuffed.
He would quote, show them a magic trick and handcuff himself, the key hidden in his hand
as he did it.
He would then unlock the handcuffs seemingly without the key, and the boys were always intrigued
as to how he was able to get out of them.
He would then convince the boys to become handcuffed and try to get out of them, and
they would agree.
Interesting.
When they could not get out of the cuffs, they would become nervous, and Gacy would
say quote, the trick is you have to have the key.
Imagine like that fear setting in like when you know that you're fucking trapped.
Terrifying.
And it's a clown telling you that.
Oh my God.
I would freak out.
I would just start crying.
Now back to the night with David.
Gacy convinced him to become handcuffed in front of his body rather than behind.
He swung David around while holding the chain linking the cuffs, and he said he intended
to rape him.
David kicked Gacy in the face, LOL, and managed to free himself from the handcuffs.
Despite this strange encounter, David continued to live in the home and work at PDM.
What?
And Gacy was like, oh, I was just drunk, bro.
Like everything's fine.
Yeah.
Like, no, nothing.
No, no, don't worry about it.
Don't worry about it.
Oh, that smell in the basement.
I don't know.
Some old meat, my parents sent me.
It's just some old meat my parents sent me in the freezer.
The freezer.
He's so Midwestern.
So bad.
Gacy is...
Love Evan Peters, though.
He did a good job of him.
Gacy is thought to have murdered two further unidentified males between August and October
1976, seemingly while David was still living in the home.
A month after the attempted attack on David in September 1976, Gacy appeared at David's
door intending to rape him, saying, quote, Dave, you really don't know who I am.
Maybe it would be good if you give me what I want.
I'm just drunk.
Like fuck you.
David resisted and somehow got Gacy to leave the bedroom, saying, quote, you ain't no fun.
Like fuck you.
Gacy said you ain't no fun.
You ain't no fun.
Fuck you.
Yeah, I'm not fine because I don't want to be raped.
Hold it right there.
Hold it there.
Stay.
After this incident happened, David moved out of the home on October 5, 1976 and resigned
from PDM.
Good.
He did periodically work for Gacy over the next two years.
That's creepy though.
I don't think, I don't know.
I just, like, how do you remain friends with somebody like that?
That's so weird.
Shortly after David moved out of the home, another boy, 18-year-old Michael Rossi, moved
in.
Michael had worked for PDM since May of 1976 and he lived with Gacy until April of 1977.
Michael sometimes assisted Gacy in clowning at grand openings of business, businesses.
Gacy as Pogo and Michael as Patches.
Oh, okay.
On October 24, 1976, Gacy abducted and killed teenage friends Kenneth Parker and Michael
Marino.
The two were last seen outside a restaurant on Clark Street in Chicago.
Two days later, 19-year-old construction worker William Bundy disappeared after informing
his family that he was going to attend a party.
William died of suffocation at the hands of Gacy and he buried the body beneath the master
bedroom.
It's interesting too, it's like, where does he, like, what's the methodology of choosing
where the victims are going to be buried?
Like, is it someone that you want closer to you, so you put them under the master bedroom
rather than, like, in the living room?
I don't know.
You know, I was thinking about that too, like when you said under the dining room.
Like, it's very specific.
So, clearly it's been reiterated from him, like, and then I put him under the dining
room, then I put him under the dining room.
I mean, of course, it's where they were found eventually.
That's true.
And that's probably why.
It could be, like, one of those interview things where it's like, well, the police might
know the layout of the house, it was easier to describe.
That's true.
You know, under the bedroom, under the dining room, so that they know.
That's true.
William Bundy had allegedly worked at PDM for Gacy as well.
Between November and December 1976, Gacy murdered 21-year-old Francis Alexander.
His last contact with his family was a phone call to his mother, made sometime in November.
Alexander was buried in the crawl space directly beneath the room Gacy used as his office.
Mind you, another one of his PDM employees, Michael Rossi, is still living with him at
this point.
It's kind of weird, like, again, this is the second time that he's had an employee work
with him, or, sorry, live with him.
But I don't know, it's kind of weird that he would try to, like, mess with that other
guy too, David, because it's like kind of shitting where you don't shit where you eat
kind of a thing.
Well, also, like, this guy, Michael's not noticing that all of his employees are, like,
quitting unexpectedly.
Right.
Or, like, not showing up to him.
Michael's worked for him for, like, a hot minute, right?
And so, but it's just weird, I don't know.
Because he's probably gonna assault this kid too, right?
Well, we'll see.
In December 1976, another PDM employee, 17-year-old Gregory Godsick, disappeared.
This is what I mean, like, why is he killing off his employees?
I don't know.
Because he's just gonna hire more, I guess.
Yeah, there's new 16-year-olds every day, so.
His girlfriend, lost, saw him outside her house after he dropped her off at home following
a date the two of them had shared.
Gregory had worked for PDM less than three weeks before he disappeared.
Oh, that's wise, because he thinks somebody's gonna know.
Because he's like, oh, just didn't work out for him, he just quit.
Yeah.
Before going missing, he had informed his family that Gacy had hired him to do some outside
work, quote, digging trenches for some kind of drain tiles in his crawl space.
So he literally dug his own grave with that luggage.
Oh, my God.
It's awful.
Oh, that's...
Yeah.
After the car was found later abandoned in Niles, Gregory's parents and older sister,
Eugenia, contacted Gacy about his disappearance.
Gacy claimed that he had run away from home and that Gregory had confided in him about
wanting to do so.
Gacy also claimed to have received a message on his answering machine from Gregory shortly
after he supposedly ran away.
When asked by Gregory's family if Gacy could play the message back to them, he said he
had deleted it.
I just deleted it.
It was a point of vital information, but I just deleted it.
I'm deleting this like...
It's evidence that I deleted it.
Yeah, like purely fucking like...
It's the one thing that could absolve me from a crime that I deleted it.
On January 20th, 1977, Gacy lured 19-year-old John Scheitz into his house with the promise
that he would buy John's Plymouth satellite from him.
Gacy later confessed to strangling...
What's a Plymouth...
Oh, it's a car.
Sorry, my bad.
...to strangling John in his spare bedroom, claiming Michael was asleep in the house
at the time.
Gacy later sold the car to Michael for $300.
Sure.
Okay, Michael, I see you, Michael.
It's a little sus.
It's a little fishy.
Like, someone gets strangled in the room next to you and you don't hear anything.
And you just got like this brand new car for $300?
Yeah.
Interesting.
Two months later, on March 15th, a 20-year-old Michigan native, John Prestige, disappeared.
John was last seen leaving a restaurant, and Gacy abducted and strangled him to death.
He was buried in the crawl space above the body of Francis Alexander.
Shortly before he disappeared, John mentioned that he had obtained work with a local contractor.
Gacy murdered one additional teen and buried him in the crawl space in the spring or early
summer of 1977.
The exact time of this murder is unknown and the youth has remained unidentified.
I'm so sad.
Isn't it interesting how many Johns he murdered?
There's a lot of Johns.
There's four or five already.
On July 5th, Gacy killed a 19-year-old from Crystal Lake, Matthew Bowman.
Matthew's mother was the last one to see him at a train station where he had intended
to travel to another city to take care of a parking ticket.
The following month, Michael Rossi, he's actually since moved out of Gacy's house,
but the one that was living with him, was arrested for stealing gasoline while driving
John Scheitz's car.
The gas station attendant noted the license plate and police traced the car to Gacy's
house.
I guess they followed the car.
Now again, Michael was no longer living with Gacy, but police arrived at his home to question
him.
Gacy informed police that John Scheitz had sold the car to him the previous February,
saying he needed money to leave town.
A check of the VIN number confirmed the car had indeed belonged to John.
Following their meeting with Gacy, the police did nothing to pursue the matter further,
although they did inform John's mother that he had sold his car.
Like that's gonna fucking help.
Great, okay, who has it?
The man who murdered him.
Great, there it is, solved.
The police come up- okay, so is this the second or third time they've come up to the house?
Second?
Maybe the first?
Yeah, I think it's the first.
Can't smell that shit through that fucking door?
Oh no, it gets worse.
For fuck's sake.
By the end of 1977, it is known that Gacy had murdered six more young men between the
ages of 16 and 21.
The first of these victims was 18-year-old Robert Gilroy, the son of a Chicago police
sergeant, last seen alive on September 15th.
What?
Robert lived just four blocks away from Gacy, and his body was buried in the crawl space
with the others.
Like what?
On September 12th, Gacy had flown to Pittsburgh to supervise a remodeling project and did not
return to Chicago until September 16th.
Because Gacy is known to have been in another state at the time Robert was last seen, police
think he may have had one or more accomplices in several of his homicides.
We'll come back to that.
Ten days after Robert was last seen, 19-year-old former US Marine John Mowry disappeared after
leaving his mother's house to walk to his apartment.
Gacy strangled John and buried his body beneath the master bedroom, another John.
On October 17th, 21-year-old Minnesota native Russell Nelson disappeared.
He was last seen outside of a Chicago bar and he came to Illinois looking for contracting
work.
Gacy lured him over, most likely on the premise of offering him work and murdered him.
He buried the body underneath the guest bedroom.
Again, this is what I mean by all the names.
There's a lot of names.
Yeah, a lot of names.
And we're going to keep going.
Less than four weeks later, Gacy murdered a 16-year-old Kalamazoo teenager named Robert
Wench and buried him in the crawl space.
On November 18th, 20-year-old single father Tommy Boiling disappeared after leaving a
Chicago bar.
Three weeks after this murder of Tommy, on December 9th, a 19-year-old Marine named David
Talsma disappeared after informing his mother he was going to a rock concert in Hammond,
Indiana.
Gacy seemingly picked him up at a bus station and strangled him with a ligature and buried
him in the crawl space.
I'm so sad.
Like, you didn't even make it out of the city.
Like, that's so sad.
On December 30th, Gacy abducted 19-year-old Robert Donnelly from a Chicago bus station
at gunpoint.
Again, ballsy.
Gacy drove him to his home where he raped, tortured, and repeatedly dunked Robert's head
into a bathtub full of water until he passed out.
Oh my god.
Gacy teased and taunted him with statements like, quote, aren't we playing fun games
tonight?
Like, literally get fucked.
I can't stand that shit.
Like, you are the worst.
Yeah, he honks his clown nose.
God.
This part's kind of bad.
At one point Robert was so exhausted and desperate and in so much pain that he asked Gacy to
just kill him so that he didn't have to suffer anymore.
Gacy responded with, quote, I'm getting around to it.
God, isn't that so awful?
Hebe.
Hebe hebe's.
After several hours of this, Gacy actually did something completely out of the norm and
he drove Robert to his workplace and released him, warning him that if he complained to
the police, they would not believe him.
So he is having fun, but he's not having so much fun that he's like, now he's like,
okay, well, I'm going to release a few of these assholes so that then people know that
I exist.
Yeah.
Because that's the whole thing, right?
The egotism and narcissism.
Yeah, no, he wants, yeah.
He wants to be known now.
It's not just fun that these are secrets because he's gotten away with it for so long.
He wants people to know now.
So of course we had direct quotes from that attack.
Robert later testified against Gacy in court and that's where this came from.
Robert reported the assault immediately after and police questioned Gacy on January 6th,
1978.
Hey, did you do this?
No.
All right, have a nice day.
Yeah, pretty much.
Gacy admitted to having a, quote, sex slave relationship with Robert, but insisted that
everything was consensual, adding that he, quote, didn't pay the kid the money he had
promised him.
He said, oh, I forgot to pay him.
Can you go grab him actually and bring him back over here so I can pay him his money?
In fact, can you just relinquish him to me?
I'll take care of him.
That's okay.
It's just like boyfriend.
Yeah.
It's like a dommer.
Yeah.
So the kid that was on drug debt, oh, it's just like boyfriend, he's just too drunk.
Oh, he wasn't drugged up.
He was lobotomized.
Oh, you're right.
So after, you know, Gacy insisted this was consensual, the police believed him and nobody
filed any charges for the police.
I'm sorry, I didn't realize we were in LA.
I didn't realize these were LAPD officers in Chicago.
The following month, Gacy killed 19 year old William Kindred, who disappeared February
16th after telling his fiance who knew Gacy that he was going to the bar for the evening.
William was the last victim that Gacy would bury in the crawl space.
On March 21st, Gacy lured 26 year old Jeffrey Rignal into his car and shortly after he
entered the car, Gacy chloroformed him and drove him to his house.
Once at the house, Gacy restrained the man's head and arms in a device that was attached
to the ceiling and locked his feet into another device.
What?
Gacy explained to Jeffrey that he had complete control over him and that he intended to do
whatever he wanted to him, when he wanted and how he wanted.
He then proceeded to rape and torture Jeffrey with various instruments, including lit candles
and whips, and repeatedly chloroformed him into unconsciousness.
Gacy then drove Jeffrey to Chicago's Lincoln Park where he was dumped, unconscious, but
alive.
Wow.
Bad bitch alert.
Wail, wail, wail.
Jeffrey awoke at some point after this and was somehow able to stagger to his girlfriend's
apartment.
Police were quickly informed of this assault, but did not investigate Gacy as Jeffrey did
not know who he was.
Oh, I see, okay.
Jeffrey was able to recall, however, through the haze of the night, that the perpetrator
who dumped him in the park was driving an old mobile.
And dressed as a clown.
Yeah, literally.
And that he was at the corner of the Kennedy Expressway and another side street.
So police couldn't really do much besides just like put in the corner that he looked
at he drives an old mobile.
Yeah, not canvas area, looking for the car or anything.
I guess they weren't going to.
Jeffrey took it upon himself with the help of two friends to stake out the particular
exit of the highway that he remembered, and in April, they spotted the same old mobile,
which he and his friends then followed to 8213 West Somerdale, Gacy's address.
Police obtained an arrest warrant and arrested Gacy on July 15, 1978.
However, they didn't have a warrant to search the house.
So they didn't search the house.
Jesus.
The smell would be probable cause.
Gacy was taken in and face trial for battery against Jeffrey by mid 1978.
Just battery.
I'm sorry.
Not so any or sexual assault.
Oh, yeah.
By mid 1978, the crawl space had no more room for any new bodies.
Gacy later confessed to police that during this time he attempted to hide bodies in the
attic, but had been worried about complications arising from decomposition and quote leakage.
Yeah, leakage and bloating and like when your stomach like explodes with all the bacteria
and then you have a leaky ceiling.
How was he not sick?
Because they're in the basement probably.
So because of all this, he needed another way to dispose of the bodies.
He decided that instead of like, you know, just stopping killing people altogether,
he just had to like plan another way.
Yeah, that's not the problem.
Yeah, no problem.
It's not lying with like how many people he's killed.
It's how he disposes of them.
Totally.
He decided he would continue to kill and dump his victims off of the I-55 bridge into the
Des Plaines River.
That's not going to work.
He wants them to stay with him.
The reason he's burying them in the basement is because he wants to keep them.
Yeah.
I mean, that's why he was getting all snuggly in a casket, right?
So just, I don't think that's going to work out in my opinion.
Gacy had stated that he threw a total of five bodies off of the bridge, one of which he
believed landed on a passing barge.
Imagine that.
You're like, good to f- or something.
And you're like, what the fuck was that?
I don't know.
I'm sure we're fine.
And then you show up somewhere like your destination.
And you have a dead body.
I wonder if they thought that he didn't just jump or something.
They might have.
The first known victim thrown from the bridge was 20-year-old Timothy O'Rourke.
He was murdered in mid-June after leaving his apartment to buy some cigarettes.
Shortly before he disappeared, Timothy had told his roommate that a contractor on the
northwest side had offered him a job.
On November 4th, Gacy killed 19-year-old Frank Landigan.
His nude body was found close to an inlet of the river by two duck hunters on November
12th.
On November 24th, a 20-year-old Elmwood Park resident, James Mazra, disappeared after
having Thanksgiving dinner with his family.
James had informed his sister the day before that he had gotten a job working in the construction
industry and, quote, doing all right.
He was propositioned by a clown to do some yard work.
He was last seen walking in the direction of the Bughouse Square carrying a suitcase.
On the afternoon of December 11th, 1978, Gacy visited the Nissan Pharmacy in Des Plaines
to discuss a potential remodeling deal with the store owner, Phil Torf.
While he was with an earshot of 15-year-old part-time employee Robert Pist, Gacy mentioned
that his firm often hired teenage boys at $5 an hour starting, almost double the amount
that Robert was making at the pharmacy.
Hey, yeah, I got this great business over here and I'm really looking forward to, you
know, hiring a young kid for, like, a billion dollars an hour.
Shortly after Gacy left, Robert's mother arrived at the store to drive her son home
so the family could celebrate her birthday together.
Robert asked his mother to wait, adding that, quote, some contractor wants to talk to me
about a job.
He left the store at 9 p.m., promising to return shortly.
Robert was murdered shortly after 10 p.m. at Gacy's home.
Can you imagine that his mom's literally waiting for him to come back and he never comes back?
Gacy later stated that at his house, he asked Robert whether there was anything he, quote,
wouldn't do for the right price, to which Robert responded that he did not mind working
hard.
Fucking innocent boy.
Gacy then used his magic trick to get Robert's hand cuff behind his back.
Gacy told the boy, quote, I'm going to rape you and you can't do anything about it.
Robert began to cry, obviously terrified, and Gacy tied a rope around his neck and strangled
him.
As the boy was suffocating on his bedroom floor, Gacy stated that he took a work phone
call from a business acquaintance.
What the fuck?
As he's dying in, like, the other room.
That's some morbid shit.
That's terrifying.
When Robert failed to return back to his mother, his family filed a missing persons report with
the Des Plaines Police.
Phil Torf named Gacy as the contractor Robert had most likely left the store with to talk
about a job.
Lieutenant Joseph Kozensak, whose son was actually a classmate of Robert's, chose to
investigate Gacy further.
Finally, we get an actual police name, meaning that everybody else that's been involved
so far is all liable for not doing shit.
Oh yeah.
That's what I hear.
I hear an actual police officer's name.
I know that they're actually going to be proactive, so I appreciate that.
Hopefully.
He spoke with Robert's mother on the morning of December 12th, the day after he went missing,
and Kozensak became convinced that Robert had indeed not run away from home.
What a guy.
A routine background check on Gacy showed his previous prison sentence for sodomy of
a 15-year-old boy and his current outstanding battery charge against him in Chicago.
Wow.
I thought just a quick Google search, not Google, but yeah.
Anybody could have just looked into him a little bit more.
Yeah, just your job.
Just believing it was consensual.
Due diligence.
These are children we're talking about.
Kozensak and two Des Plaines police officers visited Gacy at his home the following evening.
Gacy had stated that he had seen two young boys working at the pharmacy, and that he
had asked one of them, who he assumed to be Robert, whether there was any remodeling
materials behind the store.
He was adamant, however, that he had not offered Robert a job and had only returned to the
pharmacy after 8pm as he had left his appointment book at the store.
He's making it so much more complicated than it needs to be.
He's like, no, I don't know who the fuck you're talking about.
He's overlying.
Yeah, it's true.
He could just be like, maybe there's a kid that works there.
I don't know.
Yeah, he's probably Robert.
He probably overheard me talking about my contacting job, but I never offered him one.
But not, oh, I remember promptly at 8.50.
I had to go get my pocket book.
My appointment book, because I had to know who was coming to stroll tomorrow.
Gacy promised that he would go to the station later that evening to make a formal statement
confirming this, but he could not do so right at this moment, as his uncle had just suddenly
died.
Oh, wait, I just got word in my mind.
My uncle died.
I gotta go.
He like, can't do it right now.
Sorry.
And the cops were like, okay, gotta go snuggle my dead uncle.
Jesus.
It's never going to be old.
When questioned on how soon he could make it to the station for this report, Gacy responded,
quote, you guys are very rude.
Don't you have any respect for the dead?
I'm fucking sorry.
I just screamed in the microphone.
I'm fucking sorry.
Why would he get this?
It gets, he's, he's bumbling.
It gets worse.
Oh, at 3.20 AM, Gacy arrived at the police station.
Covered in mud, claiming that he was involved in a car accident.
On the way to go see my dad, uncle, I got into a car accident.
I'm covered in mud because I had to like.
I'm covered in mud.
Yeah.
That's not what happens in a car accident.
I'm covered in mud.
He's like clearly bearing a body.
Yeah.
Exactly.
He is a fucking shovel with him.
Really bearing a body.
God.
Oh my God.
He's got blood and mud all over himself.
I know.
Sorry, I'm late.
I just had to kill someone real quick, literally.
Gacy denied any involvement in the disappearance of Robert and repeated that he did not offer
him a job.
When he asked, when asked why he returned to the pharmacy, he stated he had done so in
response to a phone call from Phil Torf informing Gacy that he had left his appointment book
there.
Detectives had already spoken with Phil, who denied that he called Gacy at all.
At the request of detectives, Gacy prepared a written statement detailing what he claimed
to have done on December 11th.
Assume that Gacy may be holding Robert captive at his home, they put in a request for a search
warrant of Gacy's home on December 13th.
But why, if they thought that maybe this guy had him captive there, then why wouldn't
they just go inside the house?
Yeah, or why would they be like, okay, yeah, well, go ahead and let you leave, but make
sure to come to the station later if they think he might be in their home.
Exactly.
Yeah.
He just gave him time to kill him in Barriam, apparently.
The search warrant was accepted, which is awesome.
So the search of Gacy's home revealed several suspicious items, including several police
badges, a six millimeter starter pistol inside a drawer, as well as a syringe and hypodermic
needles inside a cabinet in the bathroom.
Investigators also found handcuffs and several books on homosexuality and petristy, which
is, of course, children, like porn.
Also in the home, seven porn, seven, seven pornographic novels.
Several pornographic films, capsules of amyl nitrate in an 18 inch dildo, a two by four
with holes drilled into each end, bottles of valium and atropine, and several driver's
licenses.
The driver's licenses should be like the fucking straw that we're capable of.
It's just a list.
Yeah, it's essentially a list of his victims.
A blue hooded parka was found on top of a toolbox inside the laundry room, and underwear
too small to fit Gacy's fat ass were located in the bathroom closet.
That's not a direct quote.
No, it's not, but I loved it.
Lastly, in the Northwest bedroom, investigators found a class of 1975, Maine West High School
ring engraved with the initials JAS, which is not done by Gacy, as well as a Nissan
pharmacy photo receipt showing the purchase of a trash can and nylon rope from the pharmacy.
The Des Plaines police confiscated Gacy's old automobile and all of his work vehicles
in order to prevent him from fleeing easily, at least.
Police also assigned two two man surveillance teams to monitor Gacy on rotational 12 hour
basis as they continued their investigation into his background.
Where's he staying?
Like a hotel or something?
No, he's well, the search already was over and he's back at home after they returned
him to his home.
They have people on 12 hour rotational surveillance because they can't arrest him for anything
just yet.
Everything's circumstantial.
Okay, if you think that a person is missing, wouldn't you check a fucking basement or an
attic?
Yeah.
Why?
So they're still looking into his background and while they're doing so, they have him
on surveillance to make sure he's not doing anything sus, right?
Well, part of these surveillance teams, officers Mike Albrecht and David Hackmeister and Ronald
Robison and Robert Schultz.
So those are the two sets of people.
Dummy's that haven't checked the basement.
Well, they're not the ones that are supposed to be the they were the ones that are just
surveillance.
They haven't been.
I don't think they were involved in the search at all.
Okay.
Well, who was the other guy that you said earlier?
He needed to check just to wait.
I'm getting indignant.
I'm pissed.
The following day after their investigation began, Michael Rossi phone police.
So the old guy, the second guy that lived with him just for the listeners, if you forgot
because his long names Michael Rossi phone police and informed them of Gregory God 6 disappearance
and the fact that another PDM employee Charles Hattula had been found drowned in an Illinois
River earlier that year.
Kind of like hinting that there's something going on with the employees of the police.
Right.
Yeah.
Check and look into the employees and see how many people have done this.
On December 15th, Des Plaines investigators obtained further details of Gacy's battery
charge.
They learned that Jeffrey Rignol, the complainant, had reported that Gacy had lured him into
his car, then chloroformed, raped and tortured him before dumping him with severe chest and
facial burns and rectal bleeding.
In an interview with Gacy's former wife Carol the same day, they learned of the disappearance
of John Butkovich.
Along with these shocking discoveries, police also traced the Maine West High School ring
to John Allen Schites.
An interview with John's mother revealed that several items were actually missing from
her son's apartment, including a Motorola TV set.
By December 16th, Gacy realized that he needed to do something to win over the police.
So, he began being really friendly with the surveillance detectives that were tasked with
watching him.
Bringing him donuts and coffee and stuff.
He would invite them in for meals, or not in his house, but he would invite them to
go with him to a restaurant and go eat meals.
Occasionally for drinks at the bar, they can't fucking drink, you dumbass.
He would repeatedly deny any involvement in Robert's disappearance while he had the company
of the officers.
He actually accused the officers of harassing him because of his political connections or
because of his occasional recreational drug use.
He's like shooting stuff in the foot.
Sometimes I enjoy a little bit of LSD.
And you're just harassing me because of that.
You're just harassing God.
Knowing the officers would be unlikely to arrest him for anything petty, he would also frequently
evade police by breaking like minor traffic laws, and was actually successful like multiple
times.
I mean, I don't want to arrest him for a traffic law, and then he gets released.
They want to wait till they have something that they can really book him and nab him
in and then have something solid.
On the afternoon of December 16th, David Cram, we all remember him.
He was the first young man that was staying with Gacy.
He consented to be interviewed by detectives regarding Gacy.
He described Gacy's hardworking lifestyle and open-minded attitude about sex with men.
David also revealed that because he had a problem with time management, Gacy gifted
him a watch, saying that he got it from, quote, a dead person.
Fucking excuse me?
Yeah.
Fucking what?
Whose watch is that?
Investigators conducted a formal interview with Michael Rossi on December 17th when he
informed them that Gacy had sold John Scheitz's vehicle to him, explaining that he bought
the car because John was moving to California.
Gacy's car was also searched at this time, and investigators discovered a small cluster
of fibers in the trunk of his car that they suspected to be human hair.
Furthermore, police had three German shepherd dogs assist in a search to determine whether
or not Robert Peist had been in or around Gacy's personal car.
Use the dogs in the fucking house.
What is going on here?
Why?
So the search of the house has already been completed.
No.
They're not going back just yet.
No.
There's bodies there.
Why is that?
I don't understand.
One dog approached the old automobile and laid on the passenger seat in what the handler's
informed investigators was a quote, death reaction, indicating that Robert's deceased
body had been present in the vehicle.
Take the dog to the house.
Why?
I'm pissed.
That evening, Gacy invited detectives Albrecht and Hackmeister to a restaurant for a meal,
and in the early hours of December 18th, he invited them to a different restaurant for
breakfast.
During the second meal, the three discussed Gacy's business, his marriages, and his activities
as a registered clown.
At one point during the conversation, Gacy said to detectives, quote, you know, clowns
can get away with murder.
Fucking dumbass.
What is wrong with-?
At this point, Gacy was beginning to noticeably display signs of strain from the constant
surveillance.
He was unshaven, looking tired, appeared anxious, and he was heavily drinking.
Wow.
Because he was nervous, he was going to get cut.
It's just like not a matter of like if, it's a matter of when.
Yeah, pretty much.
Because I'm sure like at a certain point he was like, oh, it's going to be like a few
days and then just like not going to give a shit anymore.
But now it's like, oh wait, they're not going away until they get stuff, you know?
Yeah, for sure.
Until they get, until they get a reason.
They have something that they are looking for.
That same afternoon, December 18th, he went to his lawyer's office to prepare a $750,000
civil suit against the Des Plaines Police Department, demanding that they stop all
surveillance.
During the time he was gone, police had matched the serial number of the Nissen Pharmacy photo
receipt found in his kitchen to 17-year-old Kimberly Byers, a colleague of Robert Pice.
Police went to interview Kimberly the following day, who stated that she was wearing a jacket
borrowed from Robert the day he went missing, and placed the receipt in the pocket of it
just before handing it back to him, who needed it because a contractor had wanted to speak
with him.
This statement had contradicted Gacy's that he did not have any contact with Robert on
December 11th.
The same evening, December 19th, investigators interviewed Michael Rossi a second time, and
this time he was much more cooperative.
He told detectives that in the summer of 1977, at Gacy's request, he had spread 10 bags
of lime in the crawl space of Gacy's house.
Hearing this, investigators immediately went to file for a second search warrant of Gacy's
home.
They're like, oh, you have a basement?
Yeah, I didn't think about that one.
Did they check?
Just wait.
Ironically, at around the same time, Gacy's lawyers filed the civil suit against the Des
Plaines Police, in which the hearing was scheduled for December 22nd, so they only
had like three days before they had to stop surveillance.
So investigators showed up at Gacy's house with their second warrant search.
Gacy invited them in, and Officer Robinson distracted him with conversation while Officer
Schultz walked into Gacy's bedroom and attempted to write down the Motorola TV serial number
they suspected had belonged to John Sheets.
Okay.
I didn't know that Motorola made TVs.
Yeah, I think so.
I think they used to.
They do phones.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
For unknown reasons, he was unable to find the serial number either.
He couldn't like find it in time, like he got interrupted or he couldn't find it at
all on the TV, so he didn't get to write it down.
While in the bathroom, Schultz flushed the toilet and noticed a smell that was eerily
similar to that of a rotting corpse coming from a heating duct.
The officers who had conducted the first search of Gacy's home failed to notice the smell
as the house had been very cold at the time of their search.
Officers interviewed both David Cram and Michael Rossi again on December 20th.
When questioned by Officer Kozensak as to where he believed Gacy had concealed Robert
Pice's body, Michael replied that Gacy may have placed his body in the crawl space underneath
his home, and also added that he thought John Sheets' car was stolen.
Michael agreed to take a polygraph test, and he denied any involvement or knowledge about
the disappearance of Robert.
Michael was clearly nervous, as had this been the third time he was being interviewed about
Gacy, and he obviously knew more than he told them originally.
This being the case, the polygraph results were inconclusive to whether or not he was
lying or telling the truth, and the whole thing ended up being scrapped.
Although they could not use any of this, Michael did not end the interview without first discussing
the trench digging he did in the crawl space for Gacy, and he also noted that he did not
dig anywhere he wasn't instructed to do so, as Gacy made sure of the guidelines.
David was also present for this interview, and he decided to inform police of everything
he knew as well.
He started with the fact that Gacy attempted to rape him in 1976.
He also stated that after he and Gacy had returned to his home after the December 13th
search of the property, Gacy had turned pale white when he saw mud on his carpet, which
he suspected came from the crawl space.
David went on to say that Gacy grabbed a flashlight and immediately entered the crawl space to
look for evidence of digging.
When asked whether or not David had been down there, he stated that Gacy had once asked
him to spread lime down there and also dig trenches, which Gacy explained were for drainage
pipes.
The damning thing about these trenches, however, David explained, they were two feet wide and
six feet long.
The exact size of a grave.
On the evening of December 20th, Gacy went to his lawyer, Sam Emerante's office in
Park Ridge to attend a scheduled meeting about the progress of his lawsuit.
Upon his arrival, Gacy appeared disheveled and immediately asked for a drink to which
the lawyer grabbed a bottle of whiskey from his car for him.
Upon his return, Sam asked Gacy what he needed to discuss.
Gacy picked up a copy of the Daily Herald from Sam's desk, pointed to a front page
article covering the disappearance of Robert Pist and said, quote, this boy is dead.
He's dead.
He's in a river.
To his lawyer?
Oh God.
That's you, Q-Ball.
His lawyer?
I know this is wild.
Gacy proceeded to spill his guts in a rambling confession that lasted well into the next
morning.
How long was it?
I mean, I can't tell exactly when he went over there and when he left, but it was like
clearly long enough.
It was like all night.
Yeah.
He told his lawyer and another witness that he had, quote, been the judge, jury, and executioner
of many, many people and that he now wanted to be the same thing for himself.
He went on to say that he murdered, quote, at least 30 people, most of whom he had buried
in his crawl space under the home and five others he had disposed of in the Des Plaines
River.
During his confession, Gacy referred to his victims as, quote, male prostitutes, hustlers
and liars, to whom he gave, quote, the rope trick and adding that he would sometimes wake
up to find, quote, dead, strangled kids on his floor with their hands cuffed behind their
backs.
What?
I would just wake up to find people murdered in my house.
Yeah.
Like I'm blacked out.
That's normal.
Yeah, shit.
That's normal.
He had buried the victims in the crawl space as he believed that since they died in his
home that they were his property.
So you were really on point earlier when you said that.
All the while during his confession, Gacy was drinking heavily and about halfway through
his speech, he ended up falling asleep.
Did they supply him with, I mean they would had to have supplied him with alcohol at that
point.
Yeah, that was the whiskey that the lawyer brought in.
Yeah.
But I guess it was a full bottle.
But he was able to fucking pass out.
Insane.
While Gacy was asleep, his lawyers, Sam Amarante, had arranged for a psychiatric appointment
for Gacy at 9 AM, a few hours from the time that he had passed out.
When he was wasted.
Yeah.
Cute.
Gacy woke up several hours later and his lawyer informed him of the alarming confession
he spoke of while intoxicated, hoping that he would recant his words or say he was just
playing around.
When Gacy heard this, he shook his head and stated, quote, well I can't think about this
right now, I've got things to do.
Gotta go.
I have to run some errands.
I'll be back.
Amarante told Gacy that he booked him an appointment with a psychiatrist, but Gacy declined to go
and instead went to go tend to his business.
I have a business to run.
I gotta go.
Literally.
I'm talking out of here.
Five o'clock shadow, greasy hair.
I got a business to run.
Full of mud.
After leaving the lawyer's office, Gacy drove to a gas station where he walked into the
store and handed the cashier a small bag of marijuana, stating to him, quote, the end
is coming for me.
These guys are going to kill me.
Gacy then drove to a friend's house by the name of Ronald Road.
Surveillance officers watched as Gacy hugged his friend and burst into tears.
What officers could not hear was Gacy stating to his friend, quote, I've been a bad boy.
I killed 30 people.
Give or take a few.
Gacy then left Ronald's home and drove to David Cram's house to meet with him and Michael
Rossi.
As he drove along the highway, officers noticed that he was holding a rosary to his chin,
praying while he drove, because of course they're still surveilling him.
After a long talk with David and Michael, Gacy had David drive him to a scheduled meeting
with lawyer Leroy Stevens, and as he had this meeting with him, David informed the surveillance
officers that Gacy confessed to killing over 30 young men to his lawyers the previous evening.
So Gacy had gone and then told Michael, that's the man, Sam, Michael and David the same thing.
After his meeting with this lawyer, Gacy had David drive him to Mary Hill Cemetery where
his father was buried, seemingly to say goodbye.
Gacy continued to go to multiple places that morning while police outlined the formal draft
of their second warrant search in which they were specifically going to search for Robert
Pice's body.
So another search for the house.
Well, okay, so that makes a little bit more sense that if they were to get a search warrant,
that they could only search like the common areas instead.
And now they're like, okay, well, this specific warrant states that we are trying to locate
this person.
Due to Gacy going to many places and saying goodbye, they feared that he may be going to
commit suicide and they informed the department.
Officers decided to arrest him on a charge of possession and distribution of cannabis
from the gas station in order to hold him in custody while they finalized their warrants
and their records.
After police informed Gacy of their intentions to search his crawl space for the body of
Robert, Gacy denied that the teen was buried there, but confessed to having killed in self-defense
a young man whose body was buried under his garage.
So I guess he was trying to be like, okay, well, he's not there, but if you just find
this one body, then like, that's fine.
The Maldives, yeah.
Armed with yet another search warrant, this time for the crawl space, police and evidence
texts drove back to Gacy's home.
Upon their arrival, officers noted that Gacy had unplugged his sump pump, which flooded
the crawl space with water.
Because of this, officers had to replace the plug and wait for it to drain, but obviously
this tainted some of the evidence.
After it was cleared, evidence technician Daniel Gentry entered the crawl space and began
digging, uncovering putrified flesh and a human arm bone within minutes.
Well, I'm sure with the flooding and stuff, some things are gonna float.
Daniel immediately shouted to investigators that they should charge Gacy with murder,
adding, quote, I think this place is full of kids.
Isn't that awful?
Oh my gosh, that quote.
More people joined in the digging and shortly uncovered a patella and two lower leg bones.
However, they quickly knew these could not have been Roberts as their remains were too
decomposed.
As one body discovered in the northeast corner was unearthed, another tech discovered the
skull of a second victim alongside it.
When later excavations of this body were performed, as they were revealing the feet, they noticed
a third skull beneath it.
After this, a fourth body discovered, and police very quickly realized this was going
to be a theme.
Every single body being discovered is laid out online, but it was way too much to put
in here, so that's why I just cut it right there.
Gacy was informed by police that they had found human remains in his crawl space and
he was now going to be charged with murder.
Responding to this, Gacy told officers that he wanted to, quote, clear the air, adding
that he knew his arrest was inevitable since he confessed the previous evening to his lawyer.
So it's like his choice now.
I confess.
You're not arresting me.
Like you didn't catch me.
I confessed.
On the early morning of December 22nd and in the presence of his lawyers, Gacy provided
a formal statement in which he confessed to murdering approximately 30 young males, all
of whom he claimed entered his house willingly.
So annoying.
Although some of his victims were referred to by name, Gacy could not recall every name
of his victims.
He claimed all were teenage male runaways or male prostitutes, the majority of whom he
had buried in his crawl space.
That's just like, ugh, like, if you're gonna kill people, like at least have the decency.
Yeah.
To like, tell the truth.
Well, to know their name.
You know what I mean?
Not that he's owed anything or whatever.
It's like, you know, I don't know.
I just always thought that way about serial killers.
It's like, oh, it's just like a no name.
And it's like, you didn't even care to ask the dude's name.
Yeah.
Like, come on.
Because they don't think of them as people.
They don't.
He also added that he himself had only dug five graves but had multiple employees of
his, including Gregory Godsick, dig the others so that he would quote, have graves available.
Just in case.
Just on a whim.
Just in case.
Yeah.
You know.
Gacy finished this confession stating that he had planned to conceal the corpses even
further in the following January, 1979, by covering the crawl space with concrete.
Oh, he did.
So if they, no, he was planning on it.
Oh, he was planning on it.
So if they had gone to him after that, they might not have been able to.
They wouldn't even have known.
In questions specifically about Robert Pist, Gacy confessed to luring him to his house and
strangling him on December 11th.
He also admitted that after he killed Robert, he slept next to his body before disposing
of him into the Des Plaines River in the early hours of December 13th.
Accompanied by police, his lawyers and his older sister actually, Gacy was driven to the
I-55 bridge on December 23rd to show them the precise spot where he threw Robert's
body and four others into the river.
He was then taken to his house and instructed to mark his garage floor with spray paint
to show where he had buried the individual he claimed to have killed himself to fence.
This is John Budkovich.
To assist officers in their search for the victims buried underneath his house, Gacy
drew a rough diagram of his basement layout and where the bodies were buried.
26 bodies were unearthed from the crawl space over the next week, and three others were
also unearthed from other locations on the property.
I think if I recall correctly, I'm pretty sure when he drew those out, he knew a
few exactly who was on top of who or how many were on, because there was some that
were like double stacked or triple stacked, and he knew like in this slot there's three,
in this slot there's one, in this slot there's two and so on and so forth.
Like couldn't use that knowledge and that like like...
He tried, it wasn't satisfying enough.
Thank you for good.
For him.
Cook County Medical Examiner Robert Stein supervised the exhumations in which each victim
was placed in a body bag and at the front door awaiting transportation to the mortuary.
Each body was numbered depending on sections of the crawl space they were found in, and
again you can find the entire list of numbered bodies online, but for time's sake, I'm not
going to name them all here.
The search for victims was postponed temporarily over Christmas, and on December 26th they
resumed the exhumations.
On December 27th, eight more bodies were discovered, bringing the number up to 19.
By December 29th, the number grew again to 26 bodies found, each of the victims being
different in some way, MO, position, what was done, etc.
Shortly after his arrest, Gacy informed investigators that after he had assaulted and then released
Jeffrey Rignal in March 1978, he began to throw his victims into the Des Plaines River.
He confessed to having disposed of five bodies in this manner, but only four were found.
When asked if there was more victims, Gacy responded, quote, that's for you guys to
find out.
No, there wasn't.
He's just a pussy.
No, there was not.
Okay.
Around the beginning of the year, Chicago faced a history-making blizzard causing the
investigators to halt their search.
Gacy was insisting that all victims had been found, but in March of 1979, investigators
returned to the Gacy home to continue looking.
On March 9th, body 28 was found, and on March 16th, body 29 was discovered.
Of all the victims found at 82-13 West Somerdale, they were in an advanced state of decomposition,
but dental records and X-ray charts helped Stein identify the remains.
23 victims were identified via dental records, with two further victims identified via skeletal
trauma.
These identifications were also supported with personal items in Gacy's home.
After police were sure that the search was over, they concluded, and the Gacy house was
demolished in April 1979.
A victim found six miles downstream from the I-55 bridge in January 1979 was not initially
connected to Gacy, but later was making this victim number 31.
On December 28th, one further body linked to Gacy was found a mile from the bridge,
that's James Mazura.
On April 9th, 1979, a man walking along a Grundy County towpath discovered a decomposed
body entangled in exposed roots on the edge of the river and called police.
The body was identified via dental records at the Robert Pist the same evening, bringing
Gacy's count to 33 victims.
Gacy was brought to trial on February 6th, 1980, being charged with 33 murders.
He was tried in Cook County, Illinois before Judge Louis Garrippo, but the jury was selected
from Rockford because of the extensive press coverage in Cook County.
At the request of his defense counsel, Gacy spent over 300 hours with doctors at the Menard
Correctional Center in Chester the year before his trial.
He underwent a variety of psychological tests before a panel of psychiatrists to determine
whether he was mentally competent to stand trial.
Gacy attempted to convince the doctors that he had multiple personality disorder, which
we now know is DID.
He claimed to have four different personalities, the hardworking, civic-minded contractor, the
clown, the active politician, and a policeman called Jack Hanley, whom he referred to as
quote, bad Jack.
When Gacy had confessed to police, he claimed to be relaying the crimes of Jack, who detested
homosexuality and who viewed male prostitutes as weak, stupid, and degraded scum.
That was a quote.
The thing is, when he was trying to convince his professionals that he was suffering from
DID, he would pretend to be Jack and then come back as John and then recall things that
happened when Jack was around, which we now know would not actually happen if you had
DID.
If you haven't listened to the DID episode, go listen, because that's not how that works.
Gacy's lawyers opted to have him plead not guilty by reason of insanity to the charges
against him.
Presenting him as a Jekyll and Hyde character, the defense produced several psychiatric experts
who had examined Gacy.
Three psychiatric experts at Gacy's trial testified that they found him to be a paranoid
schizophrenic with multiple personalities.
Three experts are trying to say that he has that, even though they know it's a farce.
And just because they're part of the defense.
The prosecution presented the case that Gacy was indeed sane and in full control of his
actions and produced several witnesses themselves to testify that Gacy worked with premeditation
and made efforts to escape detection, showing that he was sane.
The prosecution's doctors also refuted the defense's doctor's claims of multiple personalities
and insanity.
David and Michael also testified that Gacy had made them dig trenches and spread bags
of lime in the crawl space, and they both stated separately that Gacy had looked periodically
into the crawl space to ensure that them and other employees were only digging in the spots
he wanted them to.
On February 18th, Robert Stein testified that all of the bodies recovered from the property
were quote, markedly decomposed and putrefied, skeletalized remains.
In that out of all the autopsies he's performed, 13 victims have died of strangulation.
Six of ligature strangulation, one of multiple stab wounds and 10 in undetermined ways.
When Gacy's defense team suggested that all 33 deaths were caused by accidental erotic
asphyxia, Stein called this highly improbable.
Yeah, it's a- yeah, no, no, no.
Sorry, are you kidding me?
All 33 times you'd made the mistake 30 times?
All 30.
Number one's calling an ambulance.
Yeah.
Number one's calling, like.
That was stupid.
Jeffrey Rignal testified on behalf of the prosecution on February 21st.
He repeatedly wept as he recounted the torture that he faced at the hands of Gacy in March
of 68.
When asked whether Gacy appreciated the criminality of his actions, Jeffrey said that he believed
that Gacy was unable to abide by the law because of the quote, quote, beastly and animalistic
ways he attacked me.
During this time on the stand in cross-examination about the torture specifically, Jeffrey vomited
and was excused from further testimony.
Oh my God.
He got so ill.
On February 29th, Donald Voorhees, the first boy that Gacy assaulted in 67, testified about
his encounter with Gacy as well as his attempt to silence him in previous court hearings
by having the other boy threaten him.
Shortly into the testimony, Donald felt unable to testify and was asked to step down.
Robert Donnelly testified the week after Donald Voorhees and recounted his attack from Gacy
in 77.
While testifying, Robert was visibly distressed as he walked the court through the abuse he
endured and he actually had to stop several times as he was close to breaking down.
So who was out of these men, who were the ones that were, one was beaten, right?
That's where he's-
And then one was paid off essentially or threatened in some way, right?
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
The whole time Robert was testifying, Gacy notably laughed several times, but Robert was somehow
able to maintain his composure and finish the testimony, despite Gacy's lawyers also
trying to discredit his story during cross-examination.
I can't imagine how difficult that would be, honestly.
During the fifth week of the trial, Gacy wrote a letter to Judge Garrippo requesting a mistrial
for multiple reasons.
He did not agree with his lawyers' insanity plea.
His lawyers did not allow him to take the witness stand as he had requested.
They did not call enough medical witnesses on his behalf and the police were lying with
statements used against him.
Those are all fucking stupid reasons.
Judge Garrippo addressed the letter by informing Gacy that both councils had not been denied
the opportunity or funds to summon expert witnesses to testify and that under the law
he had the choice whether he wished to testify and was free to tell the judge at any point
if he wanted to do so.
Yeah.
Just go ahead.
You can just let me know.
That's fine.
Maybe you should just let me know.
Just let me know.
On March 11th, final arguments by both the prosecution and defense teams began and they
concluded the following day.
Juditing attorney Terry Sullivan spoke first, reminding the jury about Gacy's history of
abusing youths, the testimonies of his efforts to avoid detection and describing his surviving
victims, for he's indonally as the quote living dead.
Referring to Gacy as the quote worst of all murderers, Sullivan stated quote, John Gacy
has accounted for more human devastation than many earthly catastrophes, but one must tremble.
I tremble when thinking about just how close he came to getting away with it all.
After the state's four hour closing, counsel Sam Amarante spoke for the defense.
He argued against the testimony delivered by the doctors who had testified for the prosecution,
repeatedly citing the testimony of four psychiatrists and psychologists who had testified on behalf
of the defense.
Amarante also accused Sullivan of scarcely referring to the evidence presented throughout
the trial in his own closing argument and accused him of arousing hatred against his
client.
Um, the lawyer didn't have anything to do with that.
His fucking actions had everything to do with the hatred that was aroused for him.
Fucker.
I can't believe we're having a discussion about this.
Like I really honestly can't believe we're having a trial and discussion about this.
Like there is no discussion.
Put the man away.
The defense lawyer attempted to portray Gacy as a quote man driven by compulsions he was
unable to control.
Oh, what a baby.
Suggested that the state had not met their goal of proving Gacy was sane beyond a reasonable
doubt.
In support of these arguments, the defense referred to the testimony of the doctors
who had appeared for them in addition to witnesses such as Jeffrey Rignal and a former
business associate of Gacy's named Mike Nicol Reed, both of whom had testified that their
belief that Gacy had been unable to control his actions.
That might be so that it doesn't mean he's fucking insane.
Yeah.
Amarante then urged the jury to put aside any prejudice they held against Gacy and asked
they deliver a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, adding that Gacy was a danger
to both himself and to others and that studying his psychology and behavior would be of benefit
to science.
So not only is he not a criminal because he was incapable of controlling his impulses,
we should reward him by putting him in a lab where people can study him.
He's an anomaly.
He's precious.
Yeah.
He is one of the...
He's rare.
Literally.
That's so fucking gross.
Okay, Dr. Frankenstein.
On the morning of March 12th, William Kunkel continued to argue for the prosecution.
He referred to the defense's contention of insanity as quote a sham, arguing that the
facts of the case demonstrated Gacy's ability to think logically and control his actions.
Kunkel also referred to the testimony of one of the doctors who had examined Gacy in 68
and had concluded he had antisocial personality disorder and was capable of committing crimes
without remorse and unlikely the benefit from social or psychiatric treatment.
Like fucking 15, 20 years ago.
Yeah.
Remember when they did that?
Referring to this diagnosis, Kunkel stated that had the recommendations of this doctor
been taken seriously, Gacy would not have been freed from custody or psychiatric treatment
in the past.
At the end of this argument, Kunkel removed photos of Gacy's 22 identified victims from
a display board and asked the jury not to show sympathy but to quote, show justice.
Hell yeah.
He followed with quote, show the same sympathy this man showed when he took these lives and
put them there before throwing the stack of photos into the opening of the trap door from
Gacy's crawl space which had been introduced as evidence it was on display in the courtroom.
He threw them into the door.
The picture is like.
Kunkel's stance was the last and the jury immediately left to consider their verdict.
The jury deliberated for less than two hours and when they returned they found Gacy guilty
of 33 charges of murder as well as sexual assault and taking indecent liberties with
the child both convictions and reference to Robert Peist.
His 33 convictions made him the deadliest murder in US history to date.
In the sentencing phase of the trial, the jury deliberated for more than two hours before
sentencing Gacy to death for each murder committed after the Illinois statute on capital punishment
came into effect in June 1977 and they placed an execution date for June 2, 1980 just a
few months later.
Like that severe.
So thankfully he had committed crimes after June 77 and then the death penalty went into
place so anything he committed after that they were like sentenced to death and this
was in like May or March and they were like okay we're gonna be dead in like three months
or whatever.
After Gacy was sentenced he was immediately transferred to Minnard Correctional Center
where he remained incarcerated on death row for 14 years.
It kept getting pushed back.
Before his trial, Gacy initiated contact with WLS TV journalist Russ Ewing to whom he granted
numerous interviews between 1979 and 1981.
The information Gacy divulged to Ewing would later prove to be substantial in identifying
his first victim.
On February 15th 1983, a fellow inmate known as the I-57 killer, Henry Bribson stabbed
Gacy in the upper arm with a sharpened wire as Gacy was participating in a voluntary work
program.
Such a green guy.
A second death row inmate was also injured in the attack, William Jones receiving a superficial
stab wound in the head.
Both Gacy and Jones received treatment for their wounds.
Once in prison, Gacy found himself particularly bored and decided to take on some new challenges
and read numerous law books in an attempt to educate himself in the case of an appeal.
Gacy filed multiple motions and appeals although he did not have success with any of them.
He submitted these appeals on the grounds that Des Plaines police did not have a valid warrant
the first time they came to his house and he also objected to his lawyer's insanity
plea defense at his trial.
Gacy also claimed that although he had quote, some knowledge of the five murders of McCoy,
Butkovich, Godzik, Seitz and Pies, the other 28 murders had been committed by his employees
who had keys to his house while he was away on business trips.
Oh, those darned kids, you know, how they throw house parties, have a murder, you know,
Stacked them in my crawl space.
And I just never called the cops on them.
Just kids being kids.
In mid-1984, the Supreme Court of Illinois upheld Gacy's conviction and ordered his
execution by lethal injection on November 14th.
Gacy filed an appeal against this decision which was denied by the Supreme Court of
the United States on March 4th, 1985.
The following year, Gacy filed a further post-conviction petition seeking a new trial.
This new defense lawyer, Richard King, argued that Gacy had been provided with ineffective
legal counsel at his 1980 trial.
This post-conviction petition was dismissed on September 11th, 1986.
Gacy appealed the decision that he was to be executed.
The Illinois Supreme Court upheld his conviction on September 29th, 1988, setting a new execution
date of January 11th, 1989.
After the U.S. Supreme Court denied Gacy's final appeal on October 1993, the Illinois
Supreme Court formally set an execution date for May 10th, 1994.
Oh my God.
I know, it just keeps getting pushed back.
On the morning of May 9th, 1994, Gacy was transferred from the Menard Correctional Center
to Stateville Correctional Center in Cresthill to be executed.
That afternoon, he was allowed a private picnic on the prison grounds with his family.
For his last meal, Gacy ordered a bucket of KFC, a dozen fried shrimp, french fries, fresh
strawberries, and a diet coke.
He's watching the old waistline.
That evening, he observed a prayer with a Catholic priest before being escorted to the
Stateville execution chamber to receive a lethal injection.
In the hours leading up to his execution, a crowd estimated at over 1,000 gathered outside
the Correctional Center, consisting of a majority in favor of execution, but a small number
were anti-death penalty protesters.
Among the people that were in favor, many were wearing t-shirts with the quote, no tears
for the clown on them.
The anti-death penalty protesters also observed a candlelight vigil.
Before the execution began, the chemicals used in the IV solidified unexpectedly, clogging
the IV tube used to administer the chemicals into his arm and complicating the procedure.
Blinds covering the window through which witnesses observed the execution were drawn closed while
the team replaced the tube, and after 10 minutes, the blinds were back open and the execution
resumed.
The entire procedure took 18 minutes.
Could you imagine sitting there for 18 minutes watching somebody wait to die?
Anesthesiologists blamed the problem on the prison officials' inexperience at conducting
an execution, saying that had correct execution procedures been followed, the complications
would have never occurred.
This error apparently led to Illinois adopting an alternative method of lethal injection.
On this subject, William Kunkel said, quote, he got a much easier death than any of his
victims.
Gacy was a diagnosed psychopath who did not express any remorse for his crimes, and he
was noted as telling his lawyer in his final moments that killing him would not compensate
for the loss of others and that the state was murdering him.
When asked if he had any final words, he simply stated, quote, kiss my ass.
John Wayne Gacy was confirmed to be dead at 12.58 am on May 10, 1994.
Helen Morrison, a witness for the defense at Gacy's trial, had interviewed Gacy and several
serial killers in an attempt to isolate common personality traits of violent sociopaths.
Upon his death, Gacy's brain was removed and given to Helen to study it.
The remainder of Gacy's body was cremated.
Only 28 of Gacy's victims have been conclusively identified, the youngest being Samuel Stapleton
and Mitchell Moreno, both 14.
The eldest were Frances Alexander and Russell Nelson, both 21.
Five victims have never been identified.
In October 2011, Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart announced that investigators, having
obtained full DNA profiles from each of the unidentified victims, were wanting to renew
efforts to identify the remaining victims.
In order to get the word out of their plans, Sheriff Dart stated investigators are actively
seeking out DNA samples from individuals across the US related to any male missing between
1970 and 1979.
Results of these tests concluded thus far have confirmed the identity of three additional
victims of Gacy's confirmed, and solved four unrelated cold cases between 1972 and 1979.
To this day, five victims still remain unidentified, four of whom have been buried beneath Gacy's
crawl space and one buried about 15 feet from the barbecued pit in his backyard.
That being said, they're still taking those DNA samples if anybody knows anyone that had
maybe a grandfather or someone that was missing around that time.
In that area probably, because it seems like his amoe is pretty around the area.
That one victim was a few houses down.
In the fall of 1979, forensic expert Betty Pat Gatliff used the skulls of the remaining
unidentified victims to create facial reconstructions.
Based on Gacy's confessions, the location of the victims buried in the crawl space and
forensic analysis, the police determined the most likely dates for when his unidentified
victims were killed.
January 3, 1972 to July 31, 1975, male aged 14 to 18.
June 13 to August 5, 1976, male aged 23 to 30.
August 6 through October 5, 1976, male aged 17 to 22.
August 6 through October 24, 1976, male aged 15 to 24.
And March 15 to July 5, 1977, male aged 17 to 21.
So those are like the dates narrowed down of when they were gone.
At the time of his arrest, Gacy claimed to both Des Plaines and Chicago police that
the total number of victims he had could be as high as 45 while only 33 were linked to
him.
Like, fuck off.
Like he knows.
Yeah.
Like 35.
Retired Chicago police officer Bill Dorsch stated that he had reason to believe there
might be more victims buried in the grounds of the apartment building located at the 6100
block of West Miami Avenue in Chicago, a property where Gacy had been the caretaker for several
years before his arrest.
What about the Florida house?
Remember you had the Florida house?
No, he just bought that property.
It wasn't a house.
So a property?
It was like a business property, that's true.
In 1975, when Bill was still a police officer, he observed Gacy, whom he knew on a casual
basis, holding a shovel in the early hours of the morning.
When Bill confronted him, Gacy said he was doing work that he was just too busy to do
during the day.
Bill had also stated that several other residents of the apartment complex had also seen Gacy
with a shovel, digging trenches in the grounds of the property in the early to mid-70s.
In March 2012, Cook County Sheriff's officials submitted a request to excavate the grounds
of the property.
The state attorney denied the request, citing a lack of probability caused as the reason,
including the results of a 98 search of the property.
I'm sorry, if somebody was like, oh, Jack the Ripper was probably just bearing shit
out here.
Oh, but you know what?
No, it's probably not linked, so we're just not even going to check it.
Yeah.
Like who does that?
Exactly.
He's been convicted of killing 33 people.
It's likely that there's more.
There's likely that there's more and you're telling me that he lived on this property
and there's eyewitness testimonies saying they saw these things.
I think that any county would be like, let's check it out.
Why not?
It's something to do.
Of course.
However, the Sheriff's office noted that in 1988, a radar survey suggested 14 areas
of interest within the property grounds, yet only of the two of the 14 had been excavated.
Of the 12 remaining areas, four were described as being quote, staggeringly suggestive of
human skeletons.
Staggeringly suggestive.
Furthermore, A.K.A. they are, Bill Doris had provided police with a letter from the
radar company which confirmed the 1998 search of the grounds was incomplete.
A second request to excavate the grounds was submitted by Tom Dart in October 2012 and
this request was granted in January of 2013, giving way for a search of the property to
be done in the spring.
Both FBI sniffer dogs and ground penetrating radar equipment were used in the second search,
however, no human remains were discovered.
One of the first things Gacy told investigators after his arrest was that he had not acted
alone in several of the murders.
He asked whether, quote, my associates had been arrested.
When asked if this potential accomplice had been directly or indirectly involved in the
murders, he responded, quote, directly.
He would later claim that David Cram and Michael Rossi were involved in several of the murders
and in fact, some criminal defense attorneys and investigators reached the possibility
that Gacy had indeed not acted alone in several of the murders and have said there is, quote,
overwhelming evidence Gacy worked with an accomplice.
In the 1980s, Gacy informed FBI profiler Robert Restler that, quote, two or three PDM employees
had assisted in several murders.
While Restler believed that there was unexplained avenues to the case that Gacy had killed more
than 33 victims in several different states, he was pretty much saying, like, it's kind
of hard for one person to do.
Yeah.
Gacy neither confirmed nor denied Restler's claims, however, Jeffrey Rignal, the one who
had been assaulted and tortured in 1978, was adamant that at one point during his abuse
and torture, a young man with brown hair had knelt before him and watched his abuse.
Jeffrey also stated that he saw a light come on at another part of the house at times,
suggesting someone else was in the home.
On one occasion, three days before his arrest, Gacy was followed by two officers while surveilling
him, and he walked into a bar where he met two employees, Michael Rossi and Ed Hefner.
Gacy walked out of earshot of the detectives and was reportedly whispering to the boys.
He was reported as saying, quote, you better not let me down, you fuckers, you owe it to
me.
The officers also overheard a conversation with Gacy and Michael in which he said, quote,
and what, buried like the other five.
In his interviews while on death row, Gacy said that at the time of his arrest, three
PDM employees were also considered suspects in the murders, all of whom had possession
of the keys for his home.
In addition to David and Michael, Gacy also named his former employee, Philip Pasky, who
was a close associate of many in Gacy's circle.
In the late 1970s, John Norman, another associate of Gacy's, operated a nationwide sex trafficking
ring based in Chicago known as the Delta Project.
Huh.
At least two victims believed to have been murdered by Gacy were last seen alive close
to where John Norman lived.
This led to the theory that Gacy was also involved in this sex trafficking ring.
Gacy claimed that he was not in Chicago when 16 of the identified victims had disappeared.
In 2012, two Chicago lawyers said that travel records showed that he had indeed been in
another state, but only at the time of three of the murders, implying that he was assisted
by one or more accomplices.
Hmm.
In 1984, Sam Emerante authored procedures that were incorporated by the Illinois General
Assembly into the Missing Child Recovery Act of 1984.
Emerante had since said the primary inspiration for this was at the time of the Gacy murders,
the Illinois police had to wait 72 hours before initiating a search for a missing child or
adolescent.
The Illinois Missing Recovery Act of 1984 removed the 72 hour waiting period and other
states across America quickly adopted similar procedures.
Like they have to be missing for three days before you can do anything.
But like even a baby, like a child child?
Children and adolescents.
So like even like four year olds.
Three year olds.
As a result, a national network aimed at locating missing children was gradually formed and
this has since developed into the child abduction emergency, more commonly known as the Amber
Alert.
I'm sure he's all like rolling in his grave.
Like he's like, I did that.
Yeah, literally.
Probably so.
Isolated in his prison cell, Gacy began to paint frequently.
He drew inspiration from a wide range of sources for his artwork with his paintings depicting
subjects such as diverse as Christ, birds, skulls, his own home and John Dillinger.
Many paintings were also of clowns, specifically himself as Pogo or Patches.
Although Gacy was permitted to earn money from the sale of his paintings until 1985, he
claimed his artwork was intended, quote, to bring joy into people's lives.
That's because that's what he does.
He just brings joy into people's lives.
Many of Gacy's paintings have been displayed at exhibitions and others have been sold at
various auctions with individual prices ranging from $200 to $20,000.
Still?
That was before.
Yeah, I'm not sure today.
Following Gacy's execution, family members of his victims publicly burned several of
his paintings.
Of course, there have been many film adaptations and documentaries about him as he's one of
the most prolific serial killers of all time.
Richard Rappaport, the chief psychiatrist for Gacy's defense, believed that Gacy's
childhood, particularly his relationship with his father, has played a pivotal role in his
treatment of his victims, stating, quote, the relationship that went on between John
Ryan Gacy and his father was the forerunner of the relationship he had to his victims.
He also noted, however, that Gacy's childhood was not solely to blame for his actions later
in life, stating something similar that, you know, you have three children that suffered
the same abuse, but only one turned out to be the rotten apple.
Rappaport was also noted as saying about Gacy's actions, quote, he was putting on a scenario
that reenacted the way he felt as a child.
He was essentially getting them to play his role of being helpless while he played the
role of the father, and he'd punished them for begging him and for looking like cowards,
whatever he felt about his own inadequacies he put on them.
So remember the McDonald triad that we talked about before?
The warning signs of a violent serial offender usually exhibited in childhood, bedwetting
past a certain age, fire setting, and the torture of small animals.
Well, according to Rappaport, who studied Gacy for nearly 65 hours in total, he actually
exhibited none of those behaviors as a child.
He stated, quote, I spent a full year before evaluating him, studying the literature, trying
to understand how a guy who seemed so normal could be so abnormal in this one respect.
So due to his childhood actions being seemingly normal, it kind of makes me believe that his
abuse was the really big thing that caused the horrendous future.
Some experts also believe that because of his abuse, he was hit in the head very hard
as a child, causing his brain to become underdeveloped and aggravating those awful feelings as an
adult.
But nonetheless, sorry, anti-social personality disorder, absolutely.
He definitely seems like he's the person that's definitely being controlled by the
id, you know, and that it's all impulse.
Like, again, it's like, if I get that urge to be in politics, I'm gonna do that.
Or if I get that urge to pursue this type of career, I'm gonna do that.
If I feel like killing someone, I'm gonna do that.
If I feel like burying them, I'm gonna do that.
And it is, it's even, you know, not just modus operandi, but it's methodical, it's
done essentially kind of the same way.
But it didn't ever really seem like, like you said, it just seems like I said, he's
controlled by the id, he's controlled by the impulse.
Yeah, no, definitely.
And that's all I have on my research that is this story.
Oh my goodness.
No, that was a very long episode.
My ass and my legs fell asleep.
I am so hungry.
Me too.
But thanks for hanging out with us for this super long episode.
I hope you guys like these.
If you like these really long ones, like of course, why not this long?
Because this guy was just such an anomaly.
We had so much research.
So glad that I'm over researching him.
But if you guys like these longer episodes, let us know.
I know that we've done a couple lately and we'll just continue to pump out content.
Thanks for being patient with us.
I enjoy it.
I think it's fun.
But that's all I have.
I think we went off, we talked about his diagnosis, we talked about his shitty life, and we don't
have to talk about him ever again.
It's true.
Is that anything else you got?
No.
Okay.
I think it's pretty cut and dry.
I liked it though.
Thank you for presenting.
Absolutely.
We will see you guys next time.
We can follow us on Instagram at DiagnosingAKiller, Twitter at KillerDiagnosis.
You can send us an email at diagnosingakiller at gmail.com.
We also have patreon.com slash diagnosingakiller and follow us on TikTok at diagnosingakiller.
Thank you guys so much for everything you do for us and we will talk to you later.
Love you.
Bye.