01x03 - Sane Enough

[bunniefuu]

[tense music plays]

[reporter 1] The curious line the ropes

around John Gacy's home,

drawn to the scene by reports of bodies

being dug out of the crawl space.

[reporter 2] News of the multiple murders

has brought scores of people to the scene,

some interested

in finding missing loved ones.

My wife's brother's been missing

for a couple years.

He went to a concert a couple years ago.

And, uh, well,

when she saw this on television,

she, uh, wanted to come here

and talk to the police

because there's a possibility

that, you know, he may show up.

[Amirante] It's the case

that changed my entire life

and a lot of people's lives.

Divorce has happened. Families broke up.

Uh, people were, uh, destroyed,

their whole family, the victims' families.

People don't see the fallout

from a case like that.

[Vasquez] I think

that my dad beat himself up

because I think any parent feels

when something this horrifying happens,

they need to have some answers.

He would say things like, you know,

"Why did Mike have to die?

"How come guys like me get to live?"

It was a very heavy weight on him.

And I also think it made him

try to figure out his place in the world,

which carried over for me.

[Bedoe] Harold Piest, Rob Piest's father,

one day, I brought him in the office

because I had some questions for him.

I told Harold, "Look," I says,

"you've been asking yourself,

'Why Rob? Why? Why? Why?

Why him? Why my son?'"

And I had been thinking the same thing.

And… and I thought about it a lot,

and… and, uh…

'Cause it bothered me, you know?

I had a little boy of my own at the time.

Gacy never laid eyes on Rob Piest

until that day.

There was no rhyme or reason.

I told Harold, "The best thing you can do

is think of it

as if Rob had been struck by lightning,"

because nothing else made any sense.

I mean, that… that's the kind of stuff

that nightmares are made of.

But that's how John Gacy was.

He decided that's gonna be

his next victim,

and it was.

And I wanted to do anything I could

to find Robert Piest.

[theme music plays]

[reporter 3] Investigators today

unearthed six more bodies

at his home in a Chicago suburb.

Twenty-one bodies

now have been found in Gacy's home.

[Bedoe] It was December of 1978.

They're still excavating bodies

from the house.

[man 1] You're right.

It's about 10 feet, 20 feet.

Body 27 was the worst thing

I've ever had to do in my whole life.

-[man 1] Let me just zoom into it.

-[man 2] Take a stick, you know.

We couldn't break him loose from the mud.

[indistinct chatter]

I'm kneeling right over him like this

and started working my hands

under his back.

I finally reached out to the point

where I had no more leverage.

So I thought,

"My God, what am I gonna do?"

So I took my fingers and shoved them

right up into the rib cage,

through the flesh, and pulled…

And we got him loose.

We were just all sweating, exhausted.

I'll never forget that feeling.

And, uh, that was the end of Friday

after Christmas.

[camera shutter clicks]

[Bedoe] And as the bodies were discovered,

it was becoming more and more obvious

that it was gonna be a monumental job

to identify who these people were

that were in the crawl space.

[reporter 4] Process

of identification is slow.

It's similar to an archaeological dig,

where bones are tagged and cataloged.

The police asked relatives of missing

teenagers to send dental records

because, in most cases, those will be

the only way to identify the dead.

DNA was not used in criminal work

until 1986.

In 1978, one of the few ways

that you could identify a person,

if there were no fingerprints available,

would be through the teeth.

[man 3] How are we doing

on teeth up there?

-[man 4] Fine.

-[man 5] Good.

[man 4] These are good condition.

-[man 3] You've got a whole set, right?

-[man 4] Yeah.

[reporter 4] They assumed

they'd be deluged with calls,

but it hasn't happened.

Well, I think originally the case

had, uh, a lot of sexual overtones.

And I think some people have shied away

from thinking their children

might be involved in this.

To be g*y in the… in the 1970s,

it was a different world.

[reporter 5] What is a h*m*?

Is he or she a person who has

simply chosen an alternate sexual life?

Or a mentally sick person

who, like any other,

should be treated by whatever resources

the psychiatric profession has?

That question, that debate

has generated a small civil w*r

in the psychiatric establishment.

The early '70s and late '70s,

they didn't have the respect.

Nobody really had anybody

advocating for 'em.

And, uh, I think it reflected

in how the police treated them.

[reporter 4] A careful examination

of police and other official documents

by Eyewitness News reveals John Gacy

came into contact with authorities

more than half a dozen times,

allegedly involved in crimes ranging

from kidnapping to r*pe and as*ault.

[Fourt] I think the lack of trust between

the g*y community and the police…

it probably made it even less likely

that crimes against young people

would be reported,

or believed if they were reported.

[eerie music plays]

[Tovar] Jeffrey Rignall

was a g*y young man,

was picked up by Gacy.

He offered him some marijuana.

Gacy took a rag

that he had, uh, chloroform on it

and put it on Jeffrey Rignall's face

and made him pass out.

Gacy had him at the house.

He put him in this two-by-four,

it had holes in it,

interlaced a chain through it

where he kept his ankles

and his wrists together, basically,

bent him over and violated him

with a very large sex toy

and, uh, kept him there

for a period of time.

Found myself about 5:00,

5:30 in the morning

on the steps right by Lincoln Park

half-dressed, my face completely burned.

[Tovar] You see a lot of burns on his face

from the chloroform that he put on it.

Jeffrey Rignall told the police

that… that he had been r*ped,

and that's the way

it should have been treated.

However, it was treated more like

one g*y guy on another g*y guy,

and there wasn't much urgency to it.

The police took the matter

very, very lightly,

and I felt that, you know,

it wasn't a light matter.

I think it's quite likely

that police and other authorities

had a hard time understanding

that r*pe can occur between men.

The notion of a man being the victim,

I think it was hard culturally

to understand.

[Tovar] He did give them

a brief description of Gacy,

but with very little to go on,

and, you know, frankly,

I'm ashamed to say this

about fellow police officers,

but they dropped the ball on that.

And so, Rignall took it upon himself

to try to find John Wayne Gacy.

When Gacy was driving Jeffrey Rignall

to his house,

his exit to get off the expressway,

to get to his house was Cumberland Avenue.

And that's the sign

that Jeffrey Rignall saw

during one of the brief times he woke up

before he was knocked out again.

So he rented a car and went out there

and parked at that exit of the expressway.

Ultimately, he did see Gacy's car,

got the license plate number, the address,

went back to the police,

gave them the information,

and Gacy was arrested.

As a matter of fact,

Gacy was out on bond on that charge

when we arrested him for the homicides.

I'm just thankful

that I woke up in the park

instead of underneath his, uh, foundation.

It's very disturbing

how many murders happened

before Gacy was caught.

That's… It's one

of the most horrifying aspects

of his crimes.

And one has to wonder

whether he could have been caught sooner.

You know, that…

that's a haunting, haunting question.

[haunting music plays]

-[camera shutters clicking]

-[indistinct chatter]

[Finder] A few days

after the digging started,

when Gacy was at the police department,

Mike was the first one,

I think, that said,

"Tell us where these people are buried."

And Gacy started to say, "Well,

in the north part--" and I stopped him.

I said, "Look, I… I don't have

a good sense of direction."

[ominous music plays]

Gacy said, "Just give me a piece of paper.

I'll… I'll show you where they're at."

[Finder] So he drew a perimeter.

He drew an N on the top.

And he said, "That's north."

He would show us

where the concrete supports were,

and the heater,

and then he said, "Well, you know, here…"

"These are graves that, uh…

uh, I buried, uh, some people in."

And it was a bunch of rectangles

and numbers and hash marks,

things like that.

Then he would proceed to go all the way

around the crawl space area.

[Finder] After Gacy finished the diagram,

he handed it back,

and there were, uh,

20-plus bodies, high 20s.

And then he told us that somewhere

in the spring to early summer of 1978,

he was all out of real estate

in the crawl space.

And that's why he had to use the river.

When I was talking with Gacy

after the arrest,

we wanted to find

where the body of Robert Piest was.

[Genty] Back at the house,

we were all racking our brains.

"What has gone on here?

Where is Robert Piest?"

That was the big issue.

[Amirante] Robbie Piest was different.

Robbie sort of broke the mold,

was something a little different,

uh, than he had done before that.

[Sullivan] The fact that

he abducted Rob Piest with witnesses there

certainly led directly to him.

[Gacy] g*dd*mn, stop and think

how stupid that was.

Everybody'd seen me in the store

and knew the kid was in the store.

I leave the store. The kid disappears.

What else can you assume?

There's no doubt he was getting sloppy

toward the end,

but, um, he sure didn't want to be caught.

[Albrecht] Back in December 1978,

we ask him about Rob Piest,

about this kid from Des Plaines.

"Who's that?" Like he didn't know

who we were talking about.

But Gacy eventually told us what happened.

He was very descriptive

on what he did with Rob Piest.

[ominous music plays]

[Gacy] When I was driving away,

this kid came running up to me.

Asked if he could talk to me about a job.

I told him I didn't have time.

He said, well, he would ride with me.

He was off of work. So I got in the truck,

went back to my house.

[metal clanging]

[Finder] He assaulted him.

Rob became upset.

I mean, he's crying. I mean, he just…

He's a 15-year-old boy.

-[investigator] Was he handcuffed?

-[Gacy] Yep.

I put the rope around his neck,

and I said, "See, it's loose, right?"

He said, "Yep." And I took the…

uh, the stick, put it in there,

and then put the other knot in it,

I believe.

Then the phone rang.

[phone rings]

[Albrecht] Gacy said

he went to answer the phone,

and when he got off the phone,

Rob Piest was on the floor, dead.

A terrible death that kid went through,

and it didn't bother Gacy in the least.

[Gacy] I took him off my bed,

carried him up into the attic,

and got him out of the way

so I could go to bed.

It's like when you clear the bed off

to go to bed,

a whole bunch of stuff just laying there.

[Albrecht] The next day,

the police came to the door

to try to get Gacy

to come into the police station,

and Piest's body was still in the house,

but, of course,

they didn't know that then.

Gacy came back with the answer

that he couldn't go to the police station

because his uncle died

and he had to make some family calls

and attend to his family.

[Gacy] I thought,

"That f*ck's up in the attic."

Jesus Christ,

I could have got my a*s in a jam.

If they would've searched the house then,

they would have found him in the house.

[Albrecht] He took the body of Rob Piest,

put it in his trunk,

drove down I-55 to the Des Plaines River…

And threw the body into the river

where he had thrown other bodies.

Turned around to come back.

He lost control of the car.

Ran off the tollway

and got stuck in the mud.

[indicator light blinking]

Finally, a State Trooper came by,

and called a tow truck to get him out.

When they got him out,

he showed up at the police department,

just covered with blood.

[reporter 6] Out in Des Plaines, 27 bodies

have been found under John Gacy's house.

Sheriff's deputies hope that's the end

of the gruesome discoveries,

but they're not sure.

Gacy claims more bodies

were thrown into the river.

[Albrecht] The search

for Robert Piest was negative.

Nothing, no information, no evidence

of anything that brought Piest

was in the Des Plaines River.

[Gacy] So there's still one missing

from the river,

and that being Robert Piest.

And it could be

they're looking in the wrong river.

You know? It could have been

in the lake. I don't know.

[Genty] I think

it was right around January 1st.

We had a big snowstorm, about ten inches.

Got bitterly cold.

[reporter 7] Like it or not,

we are two hours away

from putting a new weather record

in the books.

We are living and shivering

in what history will call

the Deep Freeze of '79.

[Genty] The blizzard was just terrible.

You couldn't move at all.

I mean, ten inches, and it didn't melt

because it was so cold.

Then we got another huge snowstorm.

We couldn't move.

[tense music plays]

-[strong wind blows]

-[eerie music plays]

[Bedoe] Robert Piest's body

wasn't discovered until April.

It took that long for his body to surface.

When a body goes

in ice cold water, it sinks

and stays down

until the water begins to warm up

and the body produces gas, internal gas.

And the gas is what floats the body

to the surface, so…

That's why it took until April

to find his body.

[official] Dental experts

from Cook and Will County

have identified the male white body

recovered from the Illinois River

this afternoon

as that of missing Des Plaines youth,

15-year-old Robert Piest.

[somber music plays]

[Byers-Lund] What I remember

from Rob's funeral,

there was hundreds of people there

because, by then,

it was a community that really had a loss.

And this is early days when media

was present and getting in people's faces.

And to have them come to the funeral was,

I thought, in my eyes, as a teenager,

how rude.

All you want to do

is digest the loss of your son,

and seemed to me at that time,

all the focus was on the criminal,

not the loss of the victim.

[reporter 8] As the roof

and walls shattered,

reporters and neighbors became witness

to a stark frame covering to a mass grave.

At first, the demolition

of John Gacy's home had gone slowly,

as evidence men searched in vain,

it appeared, for additional clues.

Then the order came, "Get it down

as quickly and neatly as possible."

[Genty] We wound up

excavating the whole property.

And once it was all done

and flat and nice,

and we were absolutely sure

there was nothing there,

we looked at this guy's house,

what we had done to it.

And the idea was, we were supposed

to return it to its normal state.

Well, we had people

from the county come in,

uh, buildings and zoning

and all this sort of thing,

and they said there's no way.

It'd be better just to build him

a new house if we had to.

[Tovar] Twenty-six bodies were recovered

from the crawl space.

One body was recovered

from under the addition,

another body was recovered

along the driveway,

and the final body was recovered

from the concrete floor

of the addition to the garage

that he had added.

So it was 29 in total from that location.

[reporter 9] No one has identified

nine of the teenagers.

Chicago-area funeral directors

are furnishing caskets and burial services

for the unidentified nine

so that they won't be interred as paupers.

[Kunkle] I was appointed by the elected

State's Attorney Bernard Carey

to be the first chair,

or the chief prosecutor,

of the John Gacy case.

Bill Kunkle, he put together a trial team

that I thought was magnificent.

He brought in Bob Egan,

and he brought in Terry Sullivan.

It took a little over a year

to get ready for trial.

[unsettling music plays]

The Chicago community,

along with the entire world, hated me

because I was John Gacy's defense lawyer.

[announcer] Today on Noonbreak

with Lee Phillip,

Sam Amirante talks about the role

of the defense lawyer.

[interviewer] Do you believe

that Gacy was insane

at the time he committed the murders?

[Amirante] Yes, I do.

I really believe that.

[interviewer] Mr. Amirante,

has your life ever been threatened

for defending John Gacy?

[Amirante] Yes, it was, and my family.

The health and welfare of my family, uh,

was threatened a lot

at the beginning of the case.

I'm sorry, no comment. Not right now.

Not right now.

[Amirante] The, uh, coverage

in that case was pervasive,

and there were cameras

and microphones in my face,

but it lasted that way

throughout the whole 15 months

that the case was pending.

This was very difficult on my family

and my sons, my marriage.

But you know what? Every person

in the… who steps foot

in this country, on American soil,

is protected by the Constitution.

Even the John Gacys of the world

have a right to counsel,

have a right to be presumed innocent.

But I certainly felt anger and frustration

to know that here's my client,

he's been doing nothing but lying.

Lying to me about everything

and trying to manipulate me.

[Amirante] Think hard.

You told me you k*lled a lot.

[Gacy] Oh sh*t, yes.

And I don't know why I told you.

I don't even know if I k*lled 'em.

I don't even think I k*lled any of 'em.

And I'm not denying it.

I'm in a… in a hell of a mess as it is.

Whether I deny it or not,

it don't make no difference.

-Don't you understand that?

-[Amirante] No.

I really needed help desperately

in this case. I was all alone.

I knew Bob Motta

from the Public Defender's Office.

Bob was a very good trial lawyer.

I called him,

and he was Johnny-on-the-spot.

He came out, and, uh,

we worked on the entire case together.

[man 6] I didn't feel that John Gacy,

the first time I met him,

would be crawling up the walls

or drooling and… like a savage

because he had a successful business.

I thought he was cunning,

manipulative,

a clever liar.

[Kunkle] Right from the beginning,

once the bodies

were recovered from his house,

you know, it's patently obvious

that, uh, he's factually guilty, A.

And B, he's gonna be convicted

of factual guilt

if he tries any defense known

other than insanity.

And so, it's an insanity case.

[journalist] Mr. President!

[g*nf*re]

[Amirante] The classic insanity defense

would be the John Hinckley defense.

[camera shutter clicks]

[Amirante] He shot President Reagan.

He had this neurotic compulsion,

which is a… a mental disease.

He was in front of the world. He'd do what

he was gonna do regardless of anything.

That truly showed that he was insane.

Gacy did not fit

into that classic insanity defense.

And he hid the victims of his crime.

But that was our only defense. We had

no other no other defense for the case.

Our only defense was insanity.

So, our theory for the case,

he was mentally ill,

and he did not belong in the death penalty

nor in a… in prison.

He belonged in a mental health facility

where he could get treatment

for the rest of his life.

We didn't think he should ever be released

because he would k*ll again.

He couldn't control it.

[Finder] To the best of my recollection,

a book was found in his attic,

and that book was

a criminal law and procedure book.

And, uh, it was bookmarked

to the chapter on insanity defenses.

So Gacy was clever.

I think he was planning it.

[Kunkle] So our job was to show

that he was so meticulous

and so prepared,

so knowing and so cunning, so purposeful,

uh, that he did know exactly

what he was doing,

that he was not suffering from a…

the kind of mental illness

that will get you an insanity defense

or even one that would qualify

as extreme emotional distress.

[Sullivan] There were a lot of people

who said at the time,

"Wow, this is a slam-dunk case, isn't it?

An easy case."

But I was scared stiff.

Because some of my friends are saying,

"Terry, he's got to be nuts, right?"

And I'm like, "Oh my God."

"If they're thinking that,

what's a jury gonna think?"

[reporter 10] Judge John White

would grant motions

filed by Gacy's defense attorney

that would allow private as well as

clinical psychiatric examination of Gacy.

We had some very respected physicians,

psychiatrists,

including a local doctor,

Richard Rappaport.

I was appointed, uh, as the, uh,

primary, uh, expert witness

for the defense.

My job was to evaluate John Wayne Gacy

to determine

if he had any psychiatric illnesses.

And my usual way was to take a history

from the day the person's born.

[hauntingly lilting instrumental plays]

[investigator] All right, let's go back,

all the way back, John,

to when you were younger.

What's John Gacy the kid like?

[Gacy] I was always building,

always wanting to do

something constructive,

nothing destructive.

You know, like… like a lot of kids

would like to throw stones

or break windows and… and sh*t like that.

No, I was more interested

in how the flowers grew.

I'd rather sit and listen

to The Nutcracker Suite or Beethoven's 5th

or Tchaikovsky's music.

You know, some of the greats.

When Gacy was growing up,

he questioned his… his, uh, masculinity

because he was… he was short and fat

and he didn't think he was very athletic.

He seemed to have some sort of illness

with almost every system of his body.

[kids playing, chattering happily]

[Gacy] I wasn't a normal,

run-of-the-mill kid. So, consequently…

I guess I didn't have the macho image.

[sniffles] You know,

the sickly little, uh, bookworm.

He was a, uh, hypochondriac.

He also believed

he had an upside-down heart.

He called it a bottle heart.

He said the doctors told him that

when he was a kid. He believed this stuff.

[Gacy] My dad's attitude was

that I was dumb and stupid

and I would never amount to anything.

I just could never please him.

His father was the aggressor.

He would do something to help his father

with good intentions,

but he would always be criticized

no matter what he did.

If the paint ran down the side of the can,

his father would criticize him for that.

[Gacy] My dad was also Jekyll and Hyde.

When he was sober, he was, you know,

the nicest person you'd want to be around.

My dad would drink, and when he drank,

he was belligerent and stubborn.

And if us kids did something wrong,

you got the back of the hand.

You didn't just get no lecture from him.

[Amirante] John's dad spent a lot of time

in his basement.

He would go down there

and work, and drink, and yell.

[Gacy] To my dad,

the basement was a sacred place.

It was a hiding place for him.

He had locks on every g*dd*mn thing.

He even had a sign,

"Keep your g*dd*mn hands off this,"

or, "Keep the f*ck out of the basement."

[Rappaport] He liked his mother's softness

and genteel attitude

compared to the father,

and her underwear was…

was symbolic of that.

He, uh, had his conflicts

about his sexuality,

which led him to try her underwear.

He was attracted to that.

[investigator] How did your mother react

when she found

you had taken her underwear?

[Gacy] She made me wear it,

and she punished me with it.

She said

if I ever get caught with it again,

she'd make me go down the street

with it on.

It was punishment.

His father is giving his mother attention,

and sexual attention,

and he wasn't getting it.

[Gacy] You can't say you're sick

'cause you've got a physical problem

or a mental problem.

You got to look at it,

was I doing some of it

deliberately or intentionally

to draw sympathy?

Or understanding or recognition

that I'm existing?

Even though I wasn't healthy as a kid,

I was still there, and I wanted attention.

The psychiatric and psychological reports,

in my opinion,

demonstrated that Gacy,

he was a neurotic psychopath.

Had obsessive-compulsive behavior

where he buried the bodies.

In Rockford, Illinois today,

jury selection begins

for a mass m*rder trial that will

actually be conducted in Chicago.

The hope is that this,

along with sequestering the jury,

will assure Gacy a fair trial.

[man 7] I had been living in Rockford

most of my life.

I got out of the Marine Corps.

We came back, made a life for ourselves.

Got married, that kind of thing.

And then, uh,

next thing I know, I get jury duty.

[Amirante] You wanna try to get jurors

that are gonna lean toward your end.

With Gacy, we were looking for people

who were gonna be, uh, compassionate,

of course not be willing to pull the plug.

[Beaver] I think one

of the major questions

that I remember was asked,

"Would you have difficulty

giving the death penalty?"

And for me, I just…

I didn't really have an issue with that.

-[investigator] Are you getting scared?

-[Gacy] No, I'm not scared.

[investigator]

Because that's perfectly normal.

[Gacy] But I'm not scared.

I just feel

that I'm being cheated again in my life.

If you commit a crime,

you should know you did it

before you go on trial for it.

But if I don't even know,

and you're gonna go into court

and argue a case

that we're not even sure I committed,

then it's heavier for me to handle.

[investigator] Yeah.

Before trial, I would have

the same nightmare every night.

The nightmare was I would leave

the criminal courthouse after work…

walk up into the parking garage,

the second level,

where I always parked my car.

And Gacy would be standing

next to my car with his arms folded,

leaning against the front fender.

And I would wake up totally drenched.

And I had that dream

over and over and over again.

[Gacy] You know, the other night,

I had a dream, which was crazy.

[hesitates]

The Essex hotel

where the jury is had a fire.

And five people died.

Five from 16 leaves only 11,

which means it would have been no jury.

[investigator] They say if you think

about your dreams, you can figure 'em out.

[Gacy] Well, is it…

am I trying to tell myself

that I don't want the end to come?

[investigator] That's a possibility.

[Gacy] You certainly wouldn't let 11

make a decision, would you?

That's the first time

I've ever had any dream like that

or anything about the case,

about any of the victims

or about anything in the past.

[suspenseful music plays]

[indistinct chattering]

[reporter 11] The m*rder trial

of John Gacy did indeed get underway today

with opening statements

from the prosecution and the defense.

[reporter 12] Prosecutor Robert Egan

described the gruesome deaths of 33 men,

all of them young, slight, blondish.

The jury sat in stunned silence,

barely moving.

"Gacy," he told them, "is a thoughtful,

rational, premeditated, evil man."

Adding, "If there's another

as evil among us, God help us all."

[Gacy] I can handle Egan,

and I can… I can stomach Sullivan.

Kunkle, I can't stand.

Just an egotistical b*stard.

And Kunkle is bisexual, the prosecutor.

Leather and a motorbike. [chuckles]

[investigator] How did you know?

[Gacy] Because I have seen him at the bar

down at Illinois and Clark Street.

[investigator] Did he see you?

[Gacy] How the f*ck would he see me?

He wouldn't know who I was.

I didn't know who he was either.

You put the g*dd*mn leather jacket on him,

the leather pants on him,

and you know who the hell it is exactly.

The one f*cking time I was in court,

I was pissed enough to tell him,

"Get that bisexual

off the goddamned case."

What was it? A…

flaming sissy, biker, leather,

something or other.

I do… I have a motorcycle or two,

but, uh, other than that,

not a… not an apt description.

He was afraid of… I'd trip him up.

And he was right to be afraid.

[investigator] What is the major thing

that… that's upsetting you so much?

[Gacy] Because I don't know what the f*ck

I'm supposed to be doing

in that courtroom.

And they haven't told me.

Do I stand up and fight

when I think I'm right,

or do I just keep my f*ck' mouth shut

all the time?

[reporter 13] Gacy stared straight ahead

and showed no emotion

as parents

of the m*rder victims testified.

[Beaver] Probably the hardest part

was listening to parents, family members.

And just almost feeling the way they felt.

There is a, uh…

atmosphere created just by their presence,

and it overwhelms you at times.

I'd just like to see him, you know,

suffer him like he suffered, um, my son.

We were very concerned

about personalizing each victim

and who they were

and where they came from,

the circumstances

of how they got into this situation.

Certain families

were more involved generally,

and you would… you would see them.

There were some

that would be there every day.

There were some that wanted

to talk to the media all the time,

and others that would have nothing

whatsoever to do with the media.

What does a mother go through

to have the boys, bring them up right,

and then somebody comes along,

snuffs their lives out.

[Amirante] I was walking

out of court one day,

and Mr. Piest came walking right to me.

And I'm like, "Oh… Oh no."

And he… he said, "Mr. Amirante,

I just want to tell you

that I hold no malice toward you,

and I respect the fact

that you're doing your job."

I'll always remember that.

It was one of the classiest things

that's ever happened to me

since I started practicing law

almost 50 years ago now.

[tense music plays]

[Sullivan] I remember being there

when Gacy's mom testified.

She was elderly at the time,

and she was put up there to try to show

that Gacy had been beaten as a child

downstairs where his dad

would go down and drink.

And I felt so sorry for her up there

because she gets up on the stand

and she just looks around and she says,

"Oh, there's Johnny!"

You know, she pointed at… at… at her son,

who is sitting at the defense table.

I thought that could have been

anybody's mother who was up there.

-[Gacy] Mother was a good witness.

-[investigator] Yeah, she was good.

-She acted right from the heart.

-[Gacy] Mm-hmm.

-[investigator] A very good witness.

-[Gacy] Yeah.

-[investigator] So tomorrow's doctor day?

-[Gacy] Yes, tomorrow's a doctor day.

[investigator] That's with all the doctors

that have been working with you.

[Gacy] Yeah.

[Amirante] Trial was a very simple issue.

Was he insane or was he evil?

[Motta] Dr. Rappaport, in court,

he put up a billboard

and he had an onion drawn on it.

And he said, "Gacy is like an onion."

"You have to peel back layers

to get to the core of this… this man."

They asked me, did I think he was insane?

And I said I did.

He had brief psychotic episodes.

That's the state he was in

when he was doing the murders.

He went into episodes of insanity

when it was with a situation

that depicted the relationship

he had with his father,

and he was sane enough

in between these episodes

to cover his… his behavior up.

The father essentially victimized him

in the basement of his own home

as he was growing up.

Gacy tried to re… reproduce that behavior

with his victims.

And so all these dead bodies

he put in the basement

was like himself

being buried by his father.

[Amirante] He's the one

that was dumb and stupid.

He was projecting it,

dumb and stupid, on his victims.

He figured if he k*lled them,

he was basically k*lling himself

over and over and over again.

[Kunkle] Once the defense

raises any evidence

of insanity at the time of the crime,

the burden falls on the State

to prove sanity at the time of the crime.

We're presenting experts

that are saying, in their opinion,

everything he did was premeditated.

Therefore, Gacy was not mentally ill.

Jim Cavanaugh was a state psychiatrist.

One time,

in a very crucial part of the trial,

he said Gacy would probably be released

from a mental institution

if he was found not guilty

by reason of insanity.

He just kind of blurted it out.

It was too much and totally irrelevant

to the facts of the case.

Would that have happened

in the John Gacy case? Absolutely not.

That'd be like letting, uh, Speck out

on parole, or… or, uh, Manson.

So I don't think it's a practical matter

Gacy would have ever gotten out.

The jury should not have heard that.

[Gacy] Judge told the jury

to disregard the remarks

made by the witness and the attorneys,

but what the f*ck have you done?

He planted that one seed

that you didn't want planted.

And that is, if you find him not guilty

by reason of insanity,

that he will go free.

[Vasquez] I was only maybe 10, 11

when the trial was happening.

I remember thinking

the focus was always on Gacy.

The trial of John Gacy.

John Gacy would face arraignment.

[reporter 14] The testimony about Gacy

had been horrifying and…

[Vasquez] I remember

we would watch national news

more than we would local news

at that time.

I remember the images of him.

I have, like, flashes of that.

And there was no getting away from it.

[Gacy] Sitting there every day,

I've enjoyed it.

I've been in the limelight.

I like being the center of attraction,

but I think I earned it too.

[investigator] How?

[Gacy] Nobody had the guts to pull off

what I pulled off and got away with it.

If… if I… if I won the case,

I could sit there and laugh…

[laughs] …for a f*cking hour.

"You stupid son of a b*tch."

[laughs] "I outsmarted you again."

[unsettling music plays]

[Motta] We're all the way

through closing arguments.

We thought we had a shot.

Small shot.

[Amirante] What I try to do with Gacy,

I try to convince the jury to find him

not guilty by reason of insanity,

to study him so we could stop this

from happening in the future.

I thought my argument was pretty decent,

and Kunkle got to get up.

I had them put the crawl space opening

right in front of the jury box.

[tense music plays]

[Kunkle] When I go to the victim board,

I take each photo out, rip it out,

actually tore a couple out,

so there's a big snap.

I said, "You want to show mercy

to this k*ller,

you show the same mercy that he's shown

when he took these lives off

the face of the Earth and put them here."

And I threw 'em

in the crawl space opening,

let 'em bounce off the front wall

of the jury and all over the tiled floor.

And… and there was the big exhale,

and then total silence.

[Amirante] When he threw those pictures

in the crawl space,

if it wasn't over before that,

it was over then.

Very, very, very emotional,

very, very theatrical,

and very good.

Very, very good.

[Kunkle] We went to Gene's,

the local watering hole

near… near the courthouse.

We expected to be there a while.

[Amirante] We got in there,

just ordered the first round of drinks,

and the phone rang.

[phone rings]

The jury was back.

I'm like, "Oh man, they're back already?"

[Beaver] By the time

we got into that room,

uh, where we were finally

going to make some decisions,

there was nobody in the room

that says, uh,

"I wanna talk about this insanity thing."

John Wayne Gacy made his own choices.

And so, that makes him completely sane,

in my point of view.

[reporter 15] It took the jury

of seven men and five women

less than two hours

to find John Wayne Gacy guilty

of murdering 33 young men.

Gacy was convicted

of murdering more people

than anyone else in US history.

[Beaver] When the verdict was read

and John Wayne Gacy was in there,

my eyes went to him.

I did not see emotion.

I did not see anything.

I… I almost felt like he expected it.

[reporter 15] What went through your mind

when you heard that verdict?

Oh, I was just delighted.

I was just delighted.

We knew all along that…

that he was guilty, and that…

but we were… there's an area of doubt.

You have to hang back

until the verdict comes in.

And it's just a relief to all of us

that this is the verdict.

I think I had just a sense of,

you know, "It… It's over."

"And we're glad it's over,

and you thought you were

gonna get away with it, and you didn't."

All because of that little piece of paper

that they had found in Gacy's house.

I hope he does get the electric chair.

Then that'll make everybody feel better.

I'm sure it'll make

the other mothers feel better too.

John Wayne Gacy

will be back in court later today,

so will the jury,

to start considering

the penalty for his crimes.

And that's when

it was very, very difficult.

Because, ultimately, you have to realize

that this is about somebody dying.

I was definitely fearful

that the judicial system

would have allowed him

to get out at any time,

and I just couldn't tolerate that.

John Wayne Gacy was convicted

of 33 murders and sentenced to die.

[Kunkle] It felt great

when the jury sentenced Gacy to death.

It's what he deserved.

Very pleased.

Very happy for the people of Illinois.

[Kunkle] The only way

there'll ever be justice

and a balancing of the scales of justice

in this case

is when he dies, period.

[reporter 16] Gacy's chief counsel

rushed by, refusing comment.

[Amirante] Boy oh boy, that was…

It was devastating for… for me and Motta.

You wouldn't think it would be,

but it was devastating.

All the arguing we did,

all the research we did,

all the blood, sweat, and tears.

We broke down.

Um… it was very emotional.

And, uh… And Gacy was, like, consoling us.

[Gacy] I said, "Sam."

I said, "You got to understand one thing."

I said, "You guys

went up against a brick wall."

"You weren't fighting my case."

"You were fighting society,

the entire State of Illinois."

[Amirante] And then,

when Gacy got taken back to the bullpen,

he, uh…

he wanted to talk to Bill Kunkle.

[Kunkle] So I go in the back.

No one's around. It's just the two of us.

And he said, "I think the jury

did the right thing finding me guilty,

but I don't think they should've

given me the death penalty."

I said, "Really? Why not?"

And he said, uh,

"Well, they didn't hear the whole story."

I said, "Well, I'll tell you what, John."

"I've given myself

the next three weeks off."

"I got nothing to do."

"We can sit down.

You can tell me anything you want."

He started to laugh. Then I laughed.

I said, "That's what I thought, as*h*le.

I'll see you at the execution."

[ominous music plays]

[investigator] Do you feel any relief

now that it's over with, John?

[Gacy] How can you feel relief

for something you still don't understand?

You know, everybody seems to think that…

I haven't got the proper affect for it.

Well, maybe I don't.

-[investigator] How should you feel?

-[Gacy] You know, was I…

Because they say I'm guilty,

I'm supposed to feel guilty now?

I don't. I have no remorse.

After a while,

after he starts sitting in prison,

he starts going to the law library.

He attacked, you know,

the effectiveness of his representation,

that he didn't k*ll all these people.

[Gacy] If you want

to charge me with anything,

charge me with complicity

in two of the murders.

[reporter 17] Just two?

That's all I know about.

[reporter 17] That's his story,

that he didn't k*ll anyone.

Just an accomplice, he says,

and that he helped dispose of two.

One of them, Robert Piest,

who was 15 years old

when he went to the house on Summerdale.

Eventually, he got to the point

where he said he didn't k*ll any of 'em.

[Gacy] Mark my words, I'm gonna get out,

and when I get out,

I'm gonna settle the score.

-[investigator] You're gonna get out?

-[Gacy] I am going to get out.

[tense music plays]

[reporter 18] For 14 years,

serial k*ller John Wayne Gacy

has been living on appeals.

It was like reading a book,

and you couldn't get to that last chapter

because we weren't in charge

of finishing the book.

So we waited and waited and waited

for that death sentence

to really become a death.

A mass k*ller who has been in jail

for 15 years faces execution next May.

The US Supreme Court rejected

what is seen as the last viable appeal

last October.

[Keenan] In a Chicago parade today,

the call was "Death to Gacy."

[man 8] He's gonna get what he deserves.

[Keenan] For condemned serial k*ller

John Wayne Gacy, it is almost time.

I say go ahead and pull the chain.

[Keenan] And after 14 years, long overdue.

The day after, should've ex*cuted him.

The rest of the world

thought he was a monster,

but he was my client

and he was a human being,

and I lost the case,

and I didn't want to see him ex*cuted.

Bob Egan and Greg Bedoe and I

were three official state witnesses.

[indistinct shouting, clamoring]

Justice at last!

[cheering]

[reporter 19] Officials

at the Illinois State Penitentiary

held a lottery of sorts,

throwing the names

of 95 news media outlets into a hat.

Walter Jacobson will watch.

I received a notice that my name was drawn

and that I would be a witness

to the execution.

It was at the state prison in Joliet.

[Bedoe] The penitentiary sent a bus

to take us to the building

where the execution was gonna take place.

[Jacobson] The yard was echoing

with… with prisoners' voices

saying, "Goodbye, John. Goodbye, John."

"You're okay, John. Don't worry about it."

When I got to the,

um, little execution chamber,

it smelled dank.

[Bedoe] I was hoping that Gacy

would be completely unglued,

screaming, and hollering, and crying.

I wanted him to be afraid.

I wanted him to suffer

like all his victims did and all

his victims' families. I mean, come on.

[Gacy] Hey, I got news for you.

I k*lled 33 times.

You're only gonna k*ll me once. [chuckles]

Gacy outsmarted 'em again.

[hacking laughter]

[Bedoe] We were told

that his last words were,

"Kiss my a*s."

I think they… they brought that up

for the media's benefit.

I didn't hear it, personally.

He took one deep breath.

That was the end of it.

Closed his eyes, and he was gone.

[investigator] If you had your life

to do over again,

is there anything you'd want to change?

[Gacy] I would think if it was explained

the way I wanna explain it…

[recorder clicks off]

[indistinct yelling]

I had no sympathy for him.

I had nothing for him.

Just nothing.

[Beaver] I felt relief.

The relief came simply knowing

that there would be no other children

that John Wayne Gacy would k*ll.

[Cornell] I think it's critical for us

to not only unravel what,

but to unravel why.

Because the bottom line is,

for all we know,

there's another person out there

doing the same thing right now.

[Finder] I never stop thinking

the average guy in the street

could be a serial m*rder*r.

That's the only reason

I'm talking to you today.

People need to be aware,

and they need to be a little more careful.

[man 9] While Gacy

has been arrested, charged, convicted

and ex*cuted for his crimes,

that's only one part of the justice.

Other part is returning a little dignity,

and part of dignity is having a name.

In about 2010,

as I was going through some of the files,

I noticed eight of Gacy's 33 victims

were never identified.

We thought about

how could we use DNA technology

to resolve those.

And, uh, that's sort of what started off

us reopening the Gacy case.

[reporter 20] The police dug up

the eight sets of remains

and sent them to this lab

at the University of North Texas

for DNA analysis.

We could not think

of another set of victims

that deserved a second chance

at identification than these boys.

Because of all of this work,

uh, victim number 19 is never

gonna be known by a number anymore.

Uh, victim 19 was William George Bundy.

[Moran] Bill Bundy

just had turned 19 years old,

lived on the north side of the city.

Said he was going to a party,

and he never…

never was heard from or… or seen again.

2017, another family came forward.

Jimmy Haakenson, young man from Minnesota,

told his mother that he was gonna go

to Chicago and have some fun.

The Haakenson family

was always left wondering,

"Is he alive?"

We collected the DNA.

That allowed us to identify

Jimmy Haakenson as victim number 24.

There are six remaining

unidentified victims of John Gacy,

and I'm hopeful

that other victims will be identified.

And other families won't have to live

in that… that cruel limbo any longer.

[Fourt] They all were human beings

who deserved to live,

and to be respected,

and that somebody loved.

And none of them deserved

what happened to them.

[Sullivan] With all of his victims,

you've got a mother or father,

or you got a brother and a sister.

And all of those people

that are never gonna see their son again.

And then to think of all the people

that they played baseball with,

all of his best friends…

how it's affected their life

all the way till today.

[Byers-Lund] The ripple effect

of that crime never goes away.

I think that's why 40 years later,

we're still talking about it

because the huge

and the vastness of its effect.

[indistinct chattering]

[Vasquez] But there's also, you know,

the decades of those moments

that we didn't get to have.

I've become friends

with some of Mike's friends.

They've shared stories with me.

And they still miss him.

They still get together.

They still toast him.

I've always wanted to be able to say,

"Hey, Mike was here."

I think that's…

that's probably what I would want

for people to know about all these boys…

[voice catches] Sorry.

…um, is that they were here.

Otherwise, they're just a number,

another victim.

And that's what I'd want people to know.

It is a gift

to get to know how loved he was.

We all should be remembered by the lives

that we lived and not how we died.

[haunting music plays]

[somber music plays]

[unsettling music plays]