Killer Clown: John Wayne Gacy (Part II)

Des Plaines River: the final murders

Gacy later confessed to police that he had initially considered stowing bodies in his attic, but had been worried about complications arising from "excessive leakage".  Therefore, he chose to dispose of his victims off the I-55 Bridge into the Des Plaines River. Gacy stated he had thrown five bodies off the I-55 bridge into the Des Plaines River in 1978, one of which he believed had landed upon a passing barge,  although only four of these five bodies were ever found.

The first known victim was thrown from the I-55 bridge into the Des Plaines River, 20-year-old Timothy O'Rourke was killed in mid-June after leaving his Dover Street apartment, having informed his roommate of his intention to purchase cigarettes; his body was found 6 miles (10 km) downstream on June 30. On November 4, Gacy killed a 19-year-old named Frank Landingin. His body was found in the Des Plaines River on November 12. Less than three weeks later, on November 24, a 20-year-old Elmwood Park a youth named James Mazzara disappeared after sharing Thanksgiving dinner with his family; his body was found on December 28. The cause of death in the case of Landingin was certified as suffocation through the youth's own underwear being lodged down his throat, plugging his airway and effectively causing him to drown in his own vomit.  Mazzara had been strangled with a ligature.

Investigation

On the afternoon of December 11, 1978, Gacy visited a Des Plaines pharmacy to discuss a potential remodeling deal with the owner of the store, Phil Torf. While Gacy was within earshot of a 15-year-old part-time employee named Robert Jerome Piest, he mentioned that his firm hired teenage boys at a starting wage of $5 per hour—almost double the pay Piest earned at the pharmacy.

After Gacy left the store, Piest told his mother that "some contractor wants to talk to me about a job". Piest left the store, promising to return shortly.  When Piest failed to return, his family filed a missing person report on their son with the Des Plaines police. The owner of the pharmacy named Gacy as the contractor Piest had most likely left the store to talk with about a job.

Gacy denied talking to Piest when Des Plaines police visited his home the following evening, indicating he had seen two youths working at the pharmacy and that he had asked one of them—whom he believed to be Piest—whether any remodeling materials were present in the rear of the store. He was adamant, however, that he had not offered Piest a job and promised to come to the station later that evening to make a statement confirming this, indicating he was unable to do so at that moment as his uncle had just died. At 3:20 a.m., Gacy, covered in mud, arrived at the police station, claiming he had been involved in a car accident.

Upon returning to the police station later that day, Gacy denied any involvement in the disappearance of Robert Piest and repeated that he had not offered the youth a job. When asked why he had returned to the pharmacy at 8 p.m. on December 11, Gacy claimed he had done so in response to a phone call from Phil Torf informing him he had left his appointment book at the store. Detectives had already spoken with Torf, who had stated he had placed no such call to Gacy.  At the request of detectives, Gacy prepared a written statement detailing his movements on December 11.

Des Plaines police were convinced Gacy was behind Piest's disappearance and checked Gacy's record, discovering that he had an outstanding battery charge against him in Chicago and had served a prison sentence in Iowa for the sodomy of a 15-year-old boy.  A search of Gacy's house on December 13 was ordered by a judge at the request of detectives and turned up several suspicious items: a 1975 Maine West High School class ring engraved with the initials J.A.S., various driver's licenses, handcuffs, a two-by-four with holes drilled in the ends, books on homosexuality and pederasty, a syringe, male clothing too small for Gacy, a 6mm Brevettata starter pistol and a photo receipt from the pharmacy where Robert Piest worked. Police decided to confiscate Gacy's Oldsmobile, along with other PDM vehicles, and assigned two two-man surveillance teams to follow Gacy, while they continued their investigation of Gacy regarding Piest's disappearance.

The following day, investigators received a phone call from Michael Rossi, who informed the investigators both of Gregory Godzik's the disappearance and the fact that another PDM employee, Charles Hattula, had been found drowned in an Illinois river the previous year.

On December 15, Des Plaines investigators obtained further details upon Gacy's battery charge, learning the complainant, Jeffrey Rignall had reported that Gacy had lured him into his car, chloroformed him raped him and dumped him, with severe chest and facial burns and rectal bleeding, in Lincoln Park the following morning. In an interview with Gacy's former wife the same day, they learned of the disappearance of John Butkovich.  The same day, the Maine West High School ring was traced to a John Alan Szyc.  In an interview with Szyc's mother the same day, she informed officers of the January 1977 disappearance of her son and that several items from his apartment were also missing, including a Motorola TV set. She added that investigators had informed her the month following his disappearance that her son had apparently sold his Plymouth Satellite to a John Gacy. Investigators noted that one of Gacy's employees, Michael Rossi, drove a similar car to Szyc's: A check of the VIN confirmed the car driven by Rossi had belonged to Szyc.

By December 16, Gacy was becoming affable with the surveillance detectives, regularly inviting them to join him for meals in various restaurants and occasionally for drinks in bars or within his home. He repeatedly denied that he had anything to do with Piest's disappearance and accused the officers of harassing him because of his political connections or because of his use of recreational drugs. Knowing these officers were unlikely to arrest him on anything trivial, he openly taunted them by flouting traffic laws and succeeded in losing his pursuers on more than one occasion.

On December 17, investigators conducted a formal interview of Michael Rossi, who informed them Gacy had sold Szyc's vehicle to him with the explanation that he had bought the car from Szyc because the youth needed money to move to California. A further examination of Gacy's Oldsmobile was conducted on this date. In the course of examining the trunk of the car, the investigators discovered a small cluster of fibers that may have been human hair. These fibers were sent for further analysis. That evening, officers conducted a test using three trained German shepherd search dogs to determine whether Piest had been present in any of Gacy's vehicles.  The dogs were allowed to examine each of Gacy's vehicles, whereupon one dog approached Gacy's Oldsmobile and lay upon the passenger seat in what the dog's handler informed investigators was a "death reaction", indicating the body of Robert Piest had been present in this vehicle.

That evening, Gacy invited two of the surveillance detectives to a restaurant for a meal. In the early hours of December 18, he invited the same officers into another restaurant where, over breakfast, he talked of his business, his marriages and his activities as a registered clown. At one point during this conversation, Gacy remarked to one of the two surveillance detectives: "You know… clowns can get away with murder."

Civil suit

By December 18, Gacy was beginning to show visible signs of strain as a result of the constant surveillance: he was unshaven, looked tired, appeared anxious and was drinking heavily. That afternoon, he drove to his lawyers' office to prepare a $750,000 civil suit against the Des Plaines police, demanding that they cease their surveillance. The same day, the serial number of the Nisson Pharmacy photo receipt found in Gacy's kitchen was traced to 17-year-old Kim Byers, a colleague of Piest at Nisson Pharmacy, who admitted when contacted in person the following day that she had worn the jacket and had placed the receipt in the parka pocket just before she gave the parka to Piest as he left the store to talk with a contractor.  This revelation contradicted Gacy's previous statements that he had had no contact with Robert Piest on the evening of December 11: the presence of the receipt indicated that Gacy must have been in contact with Robert Piest after the youth had left the Nisson Pharmacy on December 11.

The same evening, Michael Rossi was interviewed a second time: on this occasion, Rossi was more cooperative, informing detectives that in the summer of 1977, Gacy had had him spread ten bags of lime in the crawl space of the house.

On December 19, investigators began compiling evidence for a second search warrant of Gacy's house. The same day, Gacy's lawyers filed the civil suit against the Des Plaines police. The hearing of the suit was scheduled for December 22. That afternoon, Gacy invited two of the surveillance detectives inside his house. On this occasion, as one officer distracted Gacy with a conversation, another officer walked into Gacy's bedroom in an unsuccessful attempt to write down the serial number of the Motorola TV set they suspected belonged to John Szyc. While flushing Gacy's toilet, this officer noticed a smell he suspected could be that of rotting corpses emanating from a heating duct; the officers who previously searched Gacy's house had failed to notice this, as on that occasion the house had been cold.

Both David Cram and Michael Rossi was interviewed by investigators on December 20. Rossi had agreed to be interviewed in relation to his possible links with John Szyc as well as the disappearance of Robert Piest. When questioned by Detective Joseph R. Kozenczak as to where he believed Gacy had placed Piest's body, Rossi replied: "In the crawl space; he could have put him in the crawl space."  A polygraph test conducted upon the youth showed his responses to questions to be inconclusive; however, upon his agreeing to a subsequent visual test in which a map of Cook County was divided into 12 grid sections numbered 1 to 12, with Gacy's home marked in the fourth grid section, Kozenczak noted an extreme response in Rossi's blood pressure when asked: "Is the body of Robert Piest buried in grid number 4?"  Upon hearing this question, Rossi refused to continue the polygraph questioning, although he did discuss further his digging trenches in the crawl space and remarked upon Gacy's insistence that he not deviate from where he was instructed to dig.

Cram himself informed investigators of Gacy's attempts to rape him in 1976 and stated that after he and Gacy had returned to his home after the December 13 search of his property, Gacy had turned pale upon noting a clot of mud on his carpet which he suspected had come from his crawl space. Cram then stated Gacy had grabbed a flashlight and immediately entered the crawl space to look for evidence of digging. When asked whether he had been to the crawl space, Cram replied he had been asked by Gacy to spread lime down there and also dug trenches upon Gacy's behest with the explanation they were for plumbing.  Cram stated these trenches were 2 feet (0.61 m) wide, 6 feet (1.8 m) long and 2 feet (0.61 m) deep—the size of graves.

Verbal confession

On the evening of December 20, Gacy drove to his lawyers' office in Park Ridge to attend a pre-scheduled meeting he had arranged with them, ostensibly to discuss the progress of his civil suit. Upon his arrival, Gacy appeared disheveled and immediately asked for an alcoholic drink, whereupon Sam Amirante fetched a bottle of whiskey from his car. Upon his return, Amirante asked Gacy what he had to discuss with them. Gacy picked up a copy of the Daily Herald from Amirante's desk; he pointed to a front-page article covering the disappearance of Robert Piest and informed his lawyers: "This boy is dead. He's in a river."

Over the following hours, Gacy gave a rambling confession that ran into the early hours of the following morning. He began by informing Amirante and Stevens he had "been the judge ... jury and executioner of many, many people", most of whom he stated was buried in his crawl space and others in the Des Plaines River. Some victims he referred to by name; most he dismissed as "male prostitutes", "hustlers" and "liars" to whom he gave "the rope trick". On other occasions, he stated he woke up to find "dead, strangled kids" on his floor, with their hands cuffed behind their back.  In reference to Robert Piest, Gacy stated that as he placed the tourniquet around his neck that Piest was "crying, scared".

As a result of the alcohol he had consumed, Gacy fell asleep midway through his confession and Amirante immediately arranged a psychiatric appointment for Gacy at 9 a.m. that morning. Upon awakening several hours later, Gacy simply shook his head when informed by Amirante he had earlier confessed to killing approximately 30 people, stating: "Well, I can't think about this right now. I've got things to do."  Ignoring his lawyers' advice regarding his scheduled appointment, Gacy left their office to attend to the needs of his business.

Gacy later recollected his memories of his final day of freedom as being "hazy", adding that he knew his arrest was inevitable and that, in his final hours of freedom, he intended to visit his friends and say his final farewells.  Upon leaving his lawyers' office, Gacy drove to a Shell gas station where in the course of filling his rental car, he handed a small bag of cannabis to the attendant, a youth named Lance Jacobson. Jacobson immediately handed the bag to the surveillance officers, adding that Gacy had told him: "The end is coming (for me). These guys are going to kill me." Gacy then drove to the home of a fellow contractor, Ronald Rhode. Inside Rhode's living room, Gacy hugged Rhode before bursting into tears and saying: "I killed thirty people, give or take a few." Gacy then left Rhode's home to meet with Michael Rossi and David Cram. As he drove along the expressway, the surveillance officers noted he was holding a rosary to his chin as he prayed while driving.

After talking with Cram and Rossi at Cram's home, Gacy had Cram drive him to a scheduled meeting with Leroy Stevens. As he spoke with his lawyer, Cram informed the officers that Gacy had earlier divulged to both himself and Rossi that the previous evening, he had confessed to his lawyers his guilt in over thirty murders. Upon concluding his meeting with his lawyer, Gacy had Cram drive him to Maryhill Cemetery, where his father was buried.

As Gacy drove to various locations that morning, police outlined their formal draft of their second search warrant. The purpose of the warrant was specifically to search for the body of Robert Piest in the crawl space. Upon hearing radioed reports from the surveillance detectives that, in light of his erratic behavior, Gacy might be about to commit suicide, police decided to arrest him upon a charge of possession and distribution of marijuana in order to hold him in custody as the formal request for a second search warrant was presented. At 4:30 on the afternoon of December 21, the eve of the hearing of Gacy's civil suit, the request for a second search warrant was granted by Judge Marvin J. Peters.

Armed with the signed search warrant, police and evidence technicians quickly drove to Gacy's home. Upon their arrival, officers found that Gacy had unplugged his sump pump and that the crawl space was flooded with water; to clear the water they simply replaced the plug and waited for the water to drain. After it had done so, an evidence technician named Daniel Genty entered the 28-by-38-foot (8.5 m × 11.6 m) crawl space crawled to the southwest area and began digging. Within minutes, he had uncovered putrefied flesh and a human arm bone. Genty immediately shouted to the investigators that they could charge Gacy with murder.  Genty added the remark: "I think this place is full of kids."

Arrest and confession

After being informed that the police had found human remains in his crawl space and that he would now face murder charges, Gacy told officers he wanted to "clear the air", adding that he knew his arrest was inevitable since he had spent the previous evening on the couch in his lawyers' office.

In the early hours of December 22, 1978, Gacy confessed to police that since 1972, he had committed 25 to 30 murders, all of whom he falsely claimed were of teenage male runaways or male prostitutes, whom he typically abducted from Chicago's Greyhound Bus station, from Bughouse Square or simply off the streets. The victims were often grabbed by force or conned into believing Gacy—often carrying a sheriff's badge and placing spotlights on his black Oldsmobile—was a policeman.  Others were lured to his house with either the promise of a job with his construction company or an offer of money for sex.

Inside Gacy's house, the victims would be handcuffed or otherwise bound, then sexually assaulted and tortured. To muffle his victims' screams, Gacy often stuck cloth rags or items of the victim's own clothing in their mouths. Some victims had been partly drowned in his bathtub before they had been revived, enabling Gacy to continue his prolonged assault.  Many of his victims had been strangled with a tourniquet, which Gacy referred to as his "rope trick"; occasionally, the victim had convulsed for an "hour or two" after the rope trick before dying. With only two exceptions, all his victims had died between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m.  When asked where he drew the inspiration for the two-by-four found at his house in which he had manacled many of his victims, Gacy stated he had been inspired to construct the device from reading about the Houston Mass Murders.

The victims were usually lured alone to his house, although on approximately three occasions, Gacy had what he called "doubles"—occasions wherein he killed two victims on the same evening. After death, the victims' bodies were would typically be stored beneath his bed for up to 24 hours before burial in the crawl space, although the bodies of some victims had been taken to his garage and embalmed prior to their burial.

Most victims were buried in Gacy's crawl space, where he periodically poured quicklime to hasten the decomposition of the bodies.  In January 1979, he had planned to further conceal the corpses by covering the entire crawl space with concrete.  Gacy stated he had lost count of the number of victims buried in his crawl space and had initially considered stowing bodies in his attic before opting to dispose of his victims off the I-55 bridge into the Des Plaines River.  Thus the final five victims—all killed in 1978—were disposed of in this manner, because his crawl space was full.

When specifically questioned about Robert Piest, Gacy confessed to strangling the youth at his house on the evening of December 11 after luring him there, adding that he had been interrupted by a phone call from a business colleague while doing so; he also admitted to having slept alongside the youth's body that evening, before disposing of the corpse in the Des Plaines River the following evening. The reason he had arrived at the Des Plaines police station in a dirty and the disheveled manner in the early hours of December 13 was that he had been in a minor traffic accident after disposing of Piest's body, en route to his appointment with Des Plaines officers. In this accident, his vehicle had slid off an ice-covered road, and he had unsuccessfully attempted to free the vehicle himself before the vehicle had to be towed from its location.  He also confessed to police he had buried the body of John Butkovich in his garage.  To assist officers in their search for the victims buried in his house, Gacy drew a rough diagram of his basement upon a phone message sheet to show where the bodies were buried.

Search for victims

Accompanied by police, Gacy returned to his house on December 22 and showed police the location in his garage where he had buried Butkovich's body. The police then drove to the spot on the I-55 Bridge from which he had thrown the body of Piest and four other victims. Only four of the five victims Gacy claimed to have disposed of in this way were recovered from the Des Plaines River.

Between December 22 and 29, 1978, 27 bodies were recovered from Gacy's property, 26 of which were found buried in his crawl space, with one additional victim, John Butkovich, being found buried beneath the concrete floor of his garage precisely where Gacy had marked the youth's grave with a can of spray paint.  Following a temporary postponement of the excavations imposed in January 1979 because of a severe winter snowfall in Chicago, excavations of the property resumed in March—despite Gacy's insistence to investigators that all the victims' bodies buried upon his property had been found.

On March 9, the body of a 28th victim was found buried in a pit close to a barbecue grill in the backyard of the property: the victim was found wrapped within several plastic bags and wore a silver ring on the fourth finger of his left hand, indicating the possibility he had been married.  One week later, on March 16, the skeletal remains of another victim were found buried beneath the joists of the dining room floor,  bringing the total number of bodies exhumed at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue to 29.  In April 1979, Gacy's vacant house was demolished.

Three additional bodies, which had been found in the nearby Des Plaines River between June and December 1978, were also confirmed to have been victims of Gacy.

Several bodies unearthed at Gacy's property were found with plastic bags over their heads or upper torsos.  In addition, several of the bodies were found with the ligature used to strangle them still knotted around their necks. In other instances, cloth gags were found lodged deep down the victims' throats, leading the Cook County medical examiner to conclude that 12 victims buried beneath Gacy's property died not of strangulation, but of asphyxiation.  In some cases, bodies were found with foreign objects such as prescription bottles lodged into their pelvic region, the position of which indicated the items had been thrust into the victims' anus.  All the victims discovered at 8213 Summerdale was in an advanced state of decomposition, and the medical examiner chiefly relied upon dental records to facilitate the identification of the remains.

Two victims were identified because of their known connection to Gacy through PDM Contractors; most identifications were facilitated with the assistance of X-ray charts.  These identifications were also supported via personal artifacts being found at 8213 Summerdale: one victim, 19-year-old David Talsma, was identified via comparison of radiology records of a healed fracture of the left scapula matching distress evident upon the 17th skeleton recovered from Gacy's property; another youth, Timothy O'Rourke, was last heard mentioning that a contractor had offered him a job.  Of Gacy's identified victims, the youngest was Samuel Dodd Stapleton and Michael Marino, both 14 years old; the oldest was Russell Nelson, who was 21 years old. Six of the victims have never been identified.

On April 9, 1979, a decomposed body was discovered entangled in exposed roots on the edge of the Des Plaines River in Grundy County. The body was identified via dental records as being that of Robert Piest. A subsequent autopsy revealed that three wads of "paper-like material" had been shoved down his throat while he was alive, causing him to die of suffocation.

Trial

Gacy was brought to trial on February 6, 1980, charged with 33 murders.  He was tried in Cook County, Illinois, before Judge Louis Garippo; the jury was selected from Rockford because of significant press coverage in Cook County.

At the request of his defense counsel, Gacy spent over three hundred hours in the year before his trial with the doctors at the Menard Correctional Center. He underwent a variety of psychological tests before a panel of psychiatrists to determine whether he was mentally competent to stand trial.

Gacy had attempted to convince the doctors that he suffered from a multiple personality disorder.  His lawyers opted to have Gacy plead not guilty by reason of insanity to the charges against him, and produced several psychiatric experts who had examined Gacy the previous year to testify to their findings.  Three psychiatric experts appearing for the defense at Gacy's trial testified they found Gacy to be a paranoid schizophrenic with a multiple personality disorder.

The prosecutors presented a case that indicated Gacy was sane and fully in control of his actions.  To support this contention, they produced several witnesses to testify to the premeditation of Gacy's actions and the efforts he went to in order to escape detection. Those doctors refuted the defense doctors' claims of multiple personality and insanity. Two witnesses who testified were PDM employees, who confessed Gacy had made them dig trenches in his crawl space. One of these employees, David Cram, testified that in August 1977, Gacy had marked a location in the crawl space with sticks and told him to dig a drainage trench.

Immediately after Cram had completed his testimony, Michael Rossi himself testified for the state. When asked where he had dug in the crawl space, Rossi turned to a diagram of Gacy's home on display in the courtroom. This diagram showed where the bodies were found in the crawl space and elsewhere on the property. Rossi pointed to the location of the remains of an unidentified victim known as "Body 13".  Rossi stated he had not dug any other trenches, but—at Gacy's request—had supervised other PDM employees digging trenches in the crawl space.

Both Rossi and Cram also testified that Gacy periodically looked into the crawl space to ensure they and other employees ordered to dig trenches in the crawl space did not deviate from the precise locations he had marked.  Gacy had testified after his arrest that he had only dug five of the victims' graves in his crawl space and had his employees (including Gregory Godzik) dig the remaining trenches so that he would "have graves available".

On February 18, Dr. Robert Stein, the Cook County medical examiner appointed to supervise the exhumation of the victims' bodies from Gacy's home, testified as to how he and his colleagues had conducted the recovery of the remains. Stein testified that the excavation was conducted in an "archeological fashion", adding that all the bodies recovered were "markedly decomposed, putrefied, skeletalized remains".  In relation to the cause of death of each victim upon which he had later performed an autopsy, Stein stated he had concluded that thirteen victims had died of asphyxiation; six had died of ligature strangulation and one victim of multiple stab wounds to the chest.  Stein testified that the cause of death in ten cases could not be determined, although all were ruled as homicides.

Upon cross-examination, Gacy's defense team attempted to raise the possibility that all 33 murders were accidental erotic asphyxia deaths: Dr. Stein countered this assertion by stating that this claim was highly improbable.

Three days after the testimony of Dr. Robert Stein, Jeffrey Rignall testified on behalf of the prosecution, recounting the abuse and torture he had endured at Gacy's hands in March 1978. Rignall repeatedly wept as he recounted his ordeal. In response to questioning relating to whether Gacy appreciated the criminality of his actions, Rignall stated his belief that Gacy was unable to conform his actions to the conduct of law because of the "beastly and animalistic ways he attacked me".  Upon specific cross-examination relating to the torture he had endured, Rignall vomited before he was excused from further testimony.

On February 29, one of the youths Gacy had sexually assaulted in 1967, Donald Voorhees, testified to his ordeal at Gacy's hands, and that Gacy had subsequently paid another youth to beat him and spray Mace in his face so he would not testify against him.  The youth felt unable to testify, but did briefly attempt to do so, before being asked to step down.

Robert Donnelly testified the week after Voorhees, recounting his ordeal at Gacy's hands in December 1977. Donnelly was visibly distressed as he recollected the abuse he endured at Gacy's hands and came close to breaking down on several occasions. As Donnelly testified, Gacy repeatedly laughed at him, but Donnelly finished his testimony. One of Gacy's defense attorneys, Robert Motta, during Donnelly's cross-examination, attempted to discredit his testimony, but Donnelly did not waver from his testimony of what had occurred.

During the fifth week of the trial, Gacy wrote a personal letter to Judge Garippo requesting a mistrial on a number of bases, including that he did not approve his lawyers' insanity plea approach; that his lawyers had not allowed him to take the witness stand (as he had desired to do); that his defense had not called enough witnesses, and that the police were lying about statements he had purportedly made to detectives after his arrest and that, in any event, the statements were "self-serving" for use by the prosecution.  Judge Garippo addressed Gacy's letter by informing him that under the law he had the choice as to whether he wished to testify, and he was free to indicate as much to the judge, if he wished to do so.