01x01 - The Life of the Party

[bunniefuu]

[somber music plays]

[woman] This is my diary.

I'm reading you the excerpt

from December 12, 1978.

So, it says,

"Today was an absolute miserable day."

"Rob never came home last night."

"He never got back to the store,

and he never went home."

[tense music plays]

[woman] When I was about 15,

I started working at Nisson Pharmacy.

I was a clerk. I was the person

at the front and ran the cash register.

I met Rob Piest

when he came to work at the pharmacy.

He was the new stock boy.

He did sports.

He was a gymnast.

And he had outdoor interests,

um, in hiking,

and he was a photographer.

He was actually working there

to save money for a camera and a car.

He was very close with his family.

He loved his family

and he talked about 'em a lot.

I remember when I came to work

on December 11.

In December in Chicago, it is freezing.

[strong wind blowing]

And the cash register

was right at the front of the door,

and people were in and out a lot,

and I would get cold.

And so, Rob had

a very nice, uh, blue down jacket.

So I asked him if I could borrow it

and wear it at the front

while I was working the cash register.

There was a man, a middle-aged man

in, you know, a flannel shirt

walking around the store.

I asked the pharmacist

and he said, oh, he was a contractor

who was there because they were thinking

about doing some remodeling in the store.

As the night was winding down,

Rob came back to the front of the counter

and said,

"Hey, can I have my jacket back?"

"I'm gonna go outside

and talk to that contractor about a job."

And then he put his jacket on

and he went outside.

[Byers-Lund] And then, you know,

the store stayed busy.

So I kind of lost track of time

and the fact that,

you know, we were getting ready to close.

And his mom came in

and wanted to know where he was.

And I asked her, I said, "He's outside

talking to some contractor about a job."

And she said,

no, he… she didn't see him out there.

So she said, "Tell him just call me

when he gets back,

and I will come over and pick him up."

And so,

when the final closing was at 10:00,

um, his mom had called and said,

"Is he back yet?"

And I said, "No. He's not here at all."

I knew that

that night was Rob's mom's birthday.

That's why she waited for a while,

'cause they had a birthday celebration

planned for that night.

Rob would never have missed

his mom's birthday.

He was missing.

[theme music plays]

[garbled speech]

[tape recorder clicks]

[Gacy] First of all,

drop that "Mr. Gacy" thing.

[investigator] Okay, John.

That was technical.

[Gacy] I don't know who the hell

you're talking to. Just John.

[investigator] Okay, John. Go ahead.

[Gacy] John, or JW,

or whatever the hell else they call me,

or whatever else comes to your mind

if I get you mad.

[chuckles]

[hauntingly tense music plays]

[Gacy] Nobody wants to accept

what the hell I say.

Because what I tell you

is… is what I know as fact.

I have nothing to gain.

I have nothing to lose by telling you

something that's not the truth.

But I'm getting to the point

that I keep going over and over and over

every f*cking thing.

But I'm at the breaking point with it.

I don't… I don't know

how much more of this sh*t I can take.

-[investigator] What do you think happen--

-[Gacy] I don't know. I… I don't.

[man] 1978. I had just left

the Public Defender's Office.

I decided to go into private practice.

Sitting in my new office

and, uh, I get a telephone call.

[phone rings]

[Amirante] I said, "Law office."

He said, "Hi, Sam. This is John Gacy."

I said, "Hi, John, how are you?"

He said, "Can you do me a favor?"

I said, "Sure. What do you need?"

"Find out why I'm being tailed

by the Des Plaines police." "No problem."

[lilting instrumental music plays]

[Sam] I had been Chief Public Defender

in Des Plaines, where this was going on.

I knew all those guys over there.

I know the chief, I know the mayor.

I'll… I'll find out.

I'll ask some questions, I'll ask around.

And so, my first client

in my private practice was John Gacy.

You know, everybody from the neighborhood,

from the northwest suburbs of Chicago

knew John Gacy.

He had a construction business called

Painting, Decorating and Maintenance.

He was also a Democratic Precinct Captain

in the Cook County

Democratic Organization.

Precinct Captains take care of the people

in the neighborhood.

So if somebody needed a garbage can,

or somebody needed a bulb changed,

or somebody needed

their driveway shoveled, or something,

the Precinct Captain

would be there to help them.

Gacy was the best Precinct Captain

in the Norwood Park

Democratic Organization.

Everybody knew him.

I got active in the Democratic Party

because I wanted

to get into politics someday.

And so, I knew him through doing that.

He called me

because he thought I had influence.

Not because he thought I was

a great lawyer. He thought I had clout.

So the first thing I did

was go to the police.

"Hey, John Gacy's a good guy.

What are you guys following him for?"

They'd say, "There's a missing kid.

We think he has something to do with it."

I'd be like, "You're crazy, a missing kid.

You obviously have the wrong guy."

[man 1] I was assigned to the Piest case

the day after he disappeared.

Rob Piest had a part-time job

at Nisson Drugs.

It was on Touhy Avenue in Des Plaines.

A missing persons report

was filed by the Piest family.

They were in shock, I believe,

because this is just so unlike

the young man to disappear.

When Mr. and Mrs. Piest

came into the office,

uh, they were… uh, distraught, completely.

They had been out all night

searching for Rob.

We talked, and they convinced me

in about a minute,

that, in fact, uh, we had something more

than a runaway on our hands.

And that's really what led our office,

that is the prosecutor's office,

uh, to become involved in the case.

[man 2] Rob Piest was a great

all-American kid, 15 years old.

Come from a very stable family,

well-liked by everybody,

didn't have any girlfriend problems

or any other issues.

And he had a… a brother and a sister.

Uh, he was the youngest.

And everybody got along well

with that family.

[Tovar] The officer that filed

the missing persons report

went back to the drug store

and asked who had been there that night

and incorporated all those names

of the people that had been there.

Among them was John Wayne Gacy's name.

He was there to, uh, get an estimate

for a job he wanted

to do there at the drugstore.

One of the first things we always do,

we see who we're dealing with.

So we started running the names,

checking them for criminal histories.

I think the next-to-last name

I checked was Gacy's name.

And we immediately got a hit on him,

that he had done time in Iowa for sodomy.

So immediately,

that put him at the head of the line

as far as possible persons of interest.

John Wayne Gacy lived

in Norwood Park Township.

It's a Chicago address,

but it's an unincorporated area

of Cook County.

[Albrecht] Joseph Kozenczak

was Head of Investigations

of the Des Plaines Police Department.

He went out to talk to John Gacy.

[Gacy] Lieutenant Kozenczak, the as*h*le

from Des Plaines Police Department,

talked to me

about the Piest boy disappearance,

asked me if I'd come down

and give a witness statement.

I told him I didn't have time,

that I'd just had a death in the family,

that I'm waiting for a call

from my mother in Arkansas.

So he told Kozenczak

he had to take care of his family things,

and Kozenczak told him

it would just be a while, just come out.

He got very aggravated about that.

He said, "You know,

Kozenczak has no respect for the dead."

[Gacy] I said, "You're very rude

at the time of death."

And I just told him, you know,

"When I got time, I'd get down there."

I said, "I'll come down later."

"How much later?"

"I don't know. When I get down there,

I'll be down there."

[Tovar] One detective was assigned

to watch the house.

They had seen Gacy arrive in his van.

Well, when the van left,

they followed the van,

thinking that Gacy was in it,

when, in fact, it was one of his workers

that took the van.

When they finally caught up to it,

they realized it wasn't Gacy.

By that time, Gacy was gone.

[horn honking]

[man 3] When Gacy did come

into the police station,

he comes in at 3:00 in the morning,

everybody's gone.

He's covered with mud.

His pants are full of mud.

His, you know,

his shoes are all full of mud.

His car with the back bumper

was packed with mud.

There was mud up to the axles.

He had mud all over the floorboard.

Uh, and there was nobody there

to talk to him. So he left.

[Gacy] I drove over

to the Des Plaines police station

because I knew they were waiting for me.

[investigator] Who'd you see?

[Gacy] I said,

"I'm here to see Lt. Kozenczak."

He says, "Oh, he left hours ago."

I says, "Well, okay,

tell him I'll be back in the morning."

[Bedoe] But what happened?

Why did he get covered with mud?

How'd he get mud in the car?

[tense music plays]

[Gacy] I went down to the police station

around ten, eleven o'clock in the morning.

They said,

"Mr. Kozenczak wants to talk to you."

I said, "All right,

I'll wait a few minutes."

11:00 came, 12:00 came,

I says, "Look," I says, "I've got to go

'cause I've got things to do."

I don't know what they were waiting for.

[Tovar] They told me

to entertain him for a while.

He was not under arrest,

we couldn't detain him.

So I had to use, you know, my imagination

on how to keep him there.

I've been a pretty good

judge of character,

and I quickly determined

this guy had a big ego,

so I just kinda fed on that a little bit.

And a lot of times he

was just full of crap, you know.

He was exaggerating his importance,

you know, but I didn't care.

All I cared was he was staying there

without me having to force him

to stay there.

[Sullivan] So I go over

to the little room, introduce myself.

And I said, uh,

"Do you want to give us permission

to… to go take a look in your house?"

"Since you're telling us

you've got nothing to hide."

He said, "No.

I'm not gonna give you permission."

I already suspected the guy.

Now the question is,

what does he have to hide?

If we're gonna get a search warrant,

we'd better get it soon

so that he doesn't destroy

anything that might be there.

[Gacy] Then around 3:30 or 4:30,

or I don't know what the hell time it was,

they wanted the keys

for my house and that.

"What do you want the keys for my house?"

"We've got a search warrant

for your house,

so you either give us the keys

or we're gonna kick the door down."

I said, "I don't have

to give you nothing." You know?

But they… they took the keys from me.

[indistinct chatter over radio]

[Bedoe] The investigators

from Des Plaines,

when they ex*cuted the search warrant,

they were looking for Robert Piest.

We were optimistic

that maybe he was being held c*ptive.

[unsettling music plays]

[Tovar] Gacy's house

was decorated very eclectic.

He had a tiki bar there and a pool table.

In the bedrooms,

he had pictures of clowns.

They were a little weird.

I think they were

more evil than… [chuckles]

…than nice clowns, you know, but…

to each his own.

[camera shutter clicking]

[Tovar] He had an office

where he had all sorts of things

on his, uh, bulletin board.

But the hallway

going from the front from the kitchen

to the back bedrooms was really bizarre.

It was dark brown,

and then it had zigzag lines

of yellow paint going to the back.

Found books that… talking about…

"g*y Boys Must Die,"

I think, was one of the titles.

We found some sex toys, some t*rture toys.

We found chains, handcuffs.

We got to the trash, and in the trash,

we found a photo receipt.

Most people nowadays

don't know about this,

but in the old days, you took your film

to a drugstore to get it printed.

And, uh, they would give you

a tab off an envelope.

And, uh, we didn't know

what it could possibly be,

but we were just hoping

we'd find some connection.

Also a high school class ring

from Maine West High School.

Maine West is located in Des Plaines.

It had, uh, initials JAS on them.

[Bedoe] Temporary driver's licenses,

other pieces of identification

belonging to other people.

What's he doing with all this?

One of the things that we discovered

was a crawl space,

and access into it

was via a trapdoor in the front closet.

The water table is pretty high there,

so the sump pump was constantly going.

I suffer a little bit of claustrophobia,

so it affected me going down there,

but I put that aside.

And what I could see down there

was muck, basically.

Just in case it was a freshly dug grave,

we're looking for some…

a mound of dirt, but there was no mound.

[Bedoe] Nothing was disturbed down there.

No body was laying around. No clothing.

You don't have a body,

you don't have a crime.

All you have is a missing 15-year-old.

So we couldn't charge him,

but I said, "We can at least talk to him."

[Gacy] I told him

that I had left Nisson's,

and I never seen the boy,

and left it at that.

I never talked to him.

[Bedoe] Gacy was arrogant.

Real dismissive.

He was insulted that we were even

asking him stuff like this.

Gacy was, excuse my language,

full of crap.

I mean, he was always boasting himself,

how good he was, how rich he was,

just every context he had.

[Gacy] They just kept

f*cking me around there,

playing back and forth, back and forth.

You know? I had given them the statement.

What else did they want from me?

I says, "You either charge me

with something or," I says, "leave me go."

And then that was like, okay,

charge him or… or… we le… we let him go.

We couldn't hold him. We didn't know

what happened to Robert Piest.

But we suspected

Gacy had something to do with it.

And with the criminal

sexual conviction in Iowa,

it made us even more suspicious.

Definitely was worth looking into.

[tense music plays]

[lilting instrumental music plays]

[man 4] Waterloo was a great place.

Kids rode their bikes.

They were out, they moved around,

and there was not a lot of crime.

You felt safe in the community.

I came to Waterloo in 1963

right out of law school

from University of Iowa,

and I was, uh, hired into a bank

as a trust officer.

And very soon became involved

in the Waterloo Jaycees.

And within two years, I ran for president.

And, uh, it was during that time

that John Gacy came to Waterloo.

[Gacy] Moved to Waterloo, Iowa.

I was getting into the Jaycees.

I was active in the Jaycees.

[Burger] The Jaycees, during the '60s

and '70s and even into the '80s,

was basically an organization

of young men 18 to 35.

We did some charitable drives.

[applause]

[Burger] And it was just a way

for somebody that was young

to get involved in the community.

[laughter]

[Burger] I was first approached

by John Gacy in 1966.

And he just came in

to say he was interested

in becoming a part of the organization.

I knew he was married.

[Gacy] Marlynn, we got engaged

March 13th of 1964.

We didn't get married until September.

You know, I enjoyed

the first two years of my married life.

I was really wrapped into it.

[sniffles]

I just had such a nice, warm feeling,

and I was so happy with her,

and the two kids, Michael and Christine.

It was like being in church all the time.

When we moved up to Iowa,

it wasn't that

my marriage was falling apart.

It was after a year or so with her father,

I couldn't handle her father.

[Burger] When John Gacy came to Waterloo,

it was, uh, to manage

these Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises

that, uh, his father-in-law owned.

[Gacy] I could never please

my father-in-law.

My father-in-law comes out

in the same image as my dad.

I could never do enough

for my dad's acceptance.

My father-in-law came out the same way.

[sniffles]

My dad and I never really got along well

while I lived in the house

'cause I never, I don't know… I guess

I… I never lived up to his standards.

[tense music plays]

[Burger] John was always viewed as pushy.

I… I think that's a fair statement.

And there were some who didn't like that.

There were some who didn't care.

One particular trait always stood out was

he drove fast everywhere he went.

And nobody liked to ride with him.

I mean, it was like he was headed

to a fire every time he got in the car.

I don't know where he was headed

and I don't even know

if he knew where he was headed,

but it was…

He obviously had some drive.

[man 5] I was 18 years old in 1967.

I was a student

at Ellsworth Community College

in Iowa Falls, Iowa.

I rode to school with two other guys

that lived in Waterloo.

One particular night in January of 1967,

uh, I got picked up at my home.

And one of those, uh, boys

that I went back to school with

worked at one of the local

Kentucky Fried Chicken places.

And he had said he had to stop

by the Kentucky Fried Chicken

and pick up his check

prior to us driving back to Iowa Falls.

That's when I first met John Gacy.

He seemed very personable, very friendly.

Um, but nothing remarkable

to describe him at the time.

While we're there,

John Gacy was telling these two guys that,

"Hey, you should come to my house."

He said, "My wife and my son

are out of town. They're in Chicago."

He says, "Why don't you come over

to my house and we can play some pool

and… and do some drinking and stuff."

John Gacy's house was just a normal house

in a, you know,

middle-class suburb of Waterloo.

He had a basement that was, uh, fixed up.

It had a… a bar,

a built-in bar down there.

It had a nice pool table.

We started playing pool, and I was,

at the time, a very good pool player,

and I was beating him every game.

[ba*ls clinking]

[Nemmers] And at one point,

he asked if I wanted to play for money,

and I said, "Certainly."

And so we started playing pool

for a dollar a game.

He also mentioned to me

that he was originally

from the Chicago area

and that he had

lots of connections in Chicago.

He told me that he was, uh,

personal friends with the mayor of Chicago

and also

with the chief of police in Chicago.

All along the walls,

there were these certificates

framed and hanging on the walls.

One particular, um, certificate

was from the Illinois Governor's Board

of Sex and Health.

And he told me that he was on a… a board

that studied h*m*.

[Gacy] There's three types of sexes.

There's heterosexual,

there is h*m*,

and there's bisexual.

You know, you can't take

the clinical definition and apply it to me

because I don't think that way.

A heterosexual is one

who's in love with the opposite sex.

A h*m* is one

who's in love with his own sex.

Now a bisexual has sex

just for having sex.

To me, it's like a form of masturbation.

He'll have sex with either one

with no feeling involved.

So I honestly can say that I've never had

a h*m* relationship

because all I've ever, you know,

either oral or a**l intercourse

with no lovemaking.

There was no feeling there.

There was no love.

[Nemmers] The two guys

that I was there with

who were getting inebriated

started talking about a party

that they were gonna have,

and they wanted John Gacy to come.

So my two friends

said that, "Well, Nemmers,

maybe you should stay the night with Gacy,

and then, tomorrow morning,

you can drive up to Iowa Falls

and show him where everything's at."

I did not want to spend the night

at John Gacy's house.

I didn't know this man.

But I thought it would be safer

to stay at John Gacy's house

than the drive back on winter roads

with a drunk driver.

They left Gacy's house,

and we continued to play pool.

John Gacy changed the whole conversation

and looked at me

and said, "I have an idea."

"Why don't we play one game

for really big stakes?"

"If I win,

you have to commit a sex act on me."

"If you win,

I have to commit a sex act on you."

[Gacy] My approach to it was

I would mention it to somebody,

and if somebody wanted to get into it,

then they would pursue the conversation.

Because you just can't go along the street

and walk up and say to somebody,

"You want to get into sex with a guy?"

without getting decked

or something like that.

You drop hints or drop seeds and let them

come back with the feedback on it.

And I told him, "No way."

"I'm not gonna have you

do a sex act on me,

and I'm certainly not

gonna do a sex act on you."

And then he started laughing.

And then he asked me had…

if I had ever seen any…

At those da… Those…

In those days, we called p*rn*graphy,

we called them "stag films."

He said,

"Would you like to see a stag film?"

So he got the projector out

and set it all up on a table.

He even set up a big, uh… a screen.

Pulled up the screen.

[clears throat]

He turned on the projector and, uh, left.

And it wasn't… [sighs]

…five minutes, probably,

and all of a sudden,

I… the lights went on,

and at the same time,

I heard a click behind me.

[click]

And I turned around…

to see a g*n pointed right at my head.

I could see the cylinders.

It was a revolver,

and I could see b*ll*ts in the cylinders.

So I knew this was a real g*n,

and he had it pointed at my head.

And then he told me

that he wanted me to take my pants down

and that he was going

to commit a sex act on me.

[projector whirring]

[Nemmers] And I was crying.

I was crying,

and I was begging him not to do this.

And after a minute of sheer… fright,

he laughed and said, "Walk…

Get over to the… Go on over to the…"

"Pull your pants up

and go back… go on over to the bar."

And he continued to laugh

and talk about

this particular obsession he has

with putting a lot

of psychological pressure on people

and seeing what their reactions would be.

And he was telling me, he analyzed…

he alw… was analyzing me the whole time.

My guard went entirely down.

I… I thought I was safe.

You know, this guy,

although he may be an oddball or weird,

I… I f… I felt safe.

And then he said,

"Well, want to go to bed?"

"Let's… let's go to bed, and we'll get up

first thing in the morning."

"We'll have breakfast

and we'll hit the road to Iowa Falls."

I was having a hard time falling asleep.

Next thing I know is,

I felt a hand on my thigh.

[inhales deeply]

And I opened up my eyes, and there was

John Gacy sitting at the side of the bed.

And, uh… [voice catches]

…through the light of the window,

I could see his face.

Well, that's a sight I'll… uh,

that actually still haunts me to this day.

[emotionally] And, uh…

the face that I saw that night was, um…

I don't know how to explain it.

It was just frightful.

He had a knife that was right

in the little hole in your throat here.

He was pushing that knife right there.

[inhales shakily]

And rubbing my leg at the same time.

And he told me that we're going to finish

what we started in the basement

and we're going to commit sex acts

on each… on each other.

[ominous music plays]

So I just started bawling again

and just crying

and begging him not to do this.

And pretty soon,

he let the pressure off the knife,

and he started laughing again

and explained to me

that he was frustrated with himself

that he was not able to break me

in the basement

when he was doing

these psychological tests on me,

and that he is frustrated

and he wanted to give it one more try.

I wasn't buying it.

Then he left, went in his bedroom,

and I got up instantly and got dressed

and sat on that bed until 6:30.

In the morning, I banged on his door

and I said, "I'm ready to go."

It's about an hour and a half drive

to Iowa Falls.

And he said, "Now, Steve,

I know that you're upset with me,

but I want you to understand,

if I find out

you mentioned this to anybody,

all I have to do is pick up the phone

and make one phone call to Chicago,

and there will be a man in Iowa Falls

the next day to k*ll you."

I didn't report it to the Waterloo police

because I didn't want to discuss it.

I was a young 18-year-old kid and…

and I have a grown man

making me pull my pants down,

and a grown man putting a knife

to my throat and rubbing my… my thigh.

That's… It's not something

a young boy wants to talk about.

[exhales shakily]

[somber music plays]

[Burger] I think I always felt,

uh, John was, uh, aggressive

and wanted to advance within the Jaycees.

He was ultimately appointed

by one of my successors

to be the chaplain

for the Waterloo Jaycees,

which primarily was

to give a blessing at when we had meals.

And it was after that that his aspirations

to become the president emerged.

I guess this was

when the rumors started coming out

that John Gacy was not

all what he appeared to be.

[Gacy] Long about '67

when I was running for Jaycee President,

I asked Donald Voorhees Sr.

to become my campaign manager.

[Burger] Don Voorhees Sr.

was a member of the Jaycees.

He then ran for the state legislature

and was elected as a member

of the Iowa State Legislature.

[Gacy] In the incident

with this Donald Voorhees Jr.,

he was 15 years old.

I think it was in '67,

the summer of '67,

or August of '67, or September of '67,

somewhere in there.

Donald Voorhees,

I was driving from one store to the other,

which was my daily routine.

Donald Voorhees was hitchhiking.

I picked him up.

He was asking me about the stag films.

[projector whirring]

[Gacy] So me, like… like an as*h*le,

I… I took him over to my house

and I showed him the films.

Of course, I got horny by watching 'em.

And anyhow, you know,

to cut the conversation short,

what… what happened

is that he ended up blowing me,

and I believe I went down on him.

I had a wife. I had two children.

I… I had business. I had wealth.

Why in the f*ck did I go out

and get myself involved with a kid?

He told his dad.

Well, his dad turned around

and got ahold of the state's attorney,

and then I was, uh, charged with it.

[camera shutter clicks]

[Burger] Once John was arrested

for the as*ault on Donald Jr.,

it became much more

of a topic of conversation in town.

[Gacy] So then I was subsequently

indicted for sodomy.

[tense music plays]

When I went through

the psychiatric evaluation at Iowa City,

I was told

I had an anti-social personality,

that it was deemed

as an experimental-type thing and that

they felt that it would be

not a reoccurring thing, and…

that it was-- The whole thing was stupid.

That it should've never happened.

That's why I keep saying

instead of being the perpetrator,

I was the victim. I was used.

I was thinking of the kids,

and I was thinking of Marlynn,

and I'd never got in trouble before.

And when the pre-sentence report come back

that they recommended that…

I should be given, uh, probation.

And we changed our plea

from "not guilty" to "guilty,"

and they set sentencing.

Sentenced me to 10 years,

and I nearly dropped.

I could not believe it.

The day after I was sentenced, I was

served with divorce papers from Marlynn

on grounds of conviction.

She came there to see me

for the last time.

She came to me, and she told me

that she had to get a divorce.

That if she didn't get a divorce, her dad

was gonna take the kids away from her.

[investigator] Now these were

your natural children, right?

[Gacy] Right.

[clears throat] Right.

That's how young they were.

1968, last time I ever seen 'em.

[Sullivan] Gacy was, uh, sentenced

to the penitentiary

for misusing a young boy.

Wow, did that open our eyes

at that particular time.

Now, what do we do with that?

How do we go and keep an eye on Gacy?

Where might he lead us?

[Albrecht] Lieutenant Joe Kozenczak,

who was the head of the investigations,

plotted a surveillance on Gacy 24 hours.

So Bob Schultz and Ron Robinson

started the noon to midnight.

And Dave Hachmeister

was at midnight to noon.

I became his partner, and we were on Gacy

from midnight to, uh, to noon,

wherever he went.

[Sullivan] The police were supposed

to be undercover,

but it didn't take him but a day

to realize that we were following him.

At that stage, then we have to try

to change our tactics.

[man 6] And we decided that it would put

a lot more psychological pressure on Gacy

if we did an overt type of surveillance.

And an overt surveillance is where

you knock on the individual's door,

introduce yourself

and tell him that you're the police

and that you're gonna be following him

24 hours a day, seven days a week,

every place that they go.

[Albrecht] The first public place

he went into

was the Moose Lodge in Des Plaines.

And when Gacy walked in,

people just… "John's here!"

They gravitated towards him.

"How you doing, John? Great to see you!"

Kind of the life of the party.

That happened quite frequently.

[tense music plays]

[Amirante] He seemed

to welcome the investigation.

He welcomed the… the jousting,

the back and forth with the police.

[Gacy] Constantly,

I was under surveillance.

I could have ditched 'em any one

of a number of times and gotten away,

but I was constantly stopping

and trying to help them, you know?

They were slowing me down.

He said, "Well, g*dd*mn, you never stop."

I said, "Well, I got things to do."

I said, "I got a job going

in Aurora, Illinois."

"I've got one in Waukegan, Illinois.

I've got three in Chicago."

And I says, "It takes time,

and I've got to move around all of them."

[Amirante] He was playing

a… a cat and mouse game

with the police department,

trying to outfox them,

trying to manipulate what they were doing,

trying to show

that he was in control of this situation.

[Robinson] One way that John could

kinda get even with us for following him

was driving like a maniac.

John would test

our driving abilities every day

going up and down side streets.

He would be doing 40, 50 miles an hour

on these side streets.

And when we would get on, like,

the Kennedy Expressway,

there were many times where,

in trying to keep up with John,

we would have to ride

on the shoulder of the road,

either on the inside of the Kennedy

or the outside of the Kennedy,

just trying to keep up with him.

We're gonna stay with you all the time.

If he went into a coffee shop for coffee,

we went in with John

and sat with him and had coffee.

If he went into a bar,

we went into the bar with him.

[bell pings]

[Albrecht] During these stops

at restaurants,

we had quite long conversations with Gacy.

People started seeing us there

all the time with Gacy,

and so Gacy would, uh, describe us

as the FBI trying to get

some kind of drug case on him.

A couple places he went,

he described us as his bodyguards.

But he also told us

that he had hired people to follow us

to watch us,

and if he gave the sign,

they were gonna take us out.

So, uh, we were aware

that Gacy was full of himself.

One time, he told us that he had heard

that Rob Piest was found

up in, uh, Wisconsin

and he was all right.

[Byers-Lund] Rob would never run away.

There was something wrong.

The police came to visit me at school

with the Piest family

to see, you know, what did Rob say

and, um, where was he going.

And I explained that Rob said

he was going outside

to talk to the contractor about a job.

They told me later

that the contractor denied all that,

that I was lying, and he never talked

to that boy about getting a job.

I was so angry 'cause I never lie.

[tense music plays]

[Bedoe] I was working

with the Des Plaines police,

but I wasn't a member.

I was the investigator

with the Cook County Sheriff's Dept.

assigned to the State's Attorney's office.

I was like an in-between guy.

Fortunately, I could do

whatever I wanted to, uh, most of the time

because of my position.

If something needed

to be investigated, I did it.

I didn't have to get permission

from anybody. I just went out and did it.

We looked at his rap sheet.

He had other arrests.

But they didn't jump off the rap sheet

as being sexually related.

A lot of times, they were, like,

disorderly conduct or battery or whatever.

You know,

they didn't really go into the detail

of he was soliciting a kid for sex.

You know, those details weren't there.

[Amirante] Gacy was part

of that powerful Democratic Party.

You don't think a phone call could have

been made to the local police department,

saying, "Leave this guy alone.

He's, uh, a decent… He's a good guy."

"He's a good guy." And that's how

Cook County used to work back then.

And, you know, people were looking down

at… at g*y kids at the time,

g*y young men.

You think the police were about to listen

to the g*y guy that came in

and… and beefed about Gacy,

who everybody knew,

and, you know, he was…

he was friends with everybody?

[saw buzzing]

[Tovar] Gacy's choice for workers

was always young men,

small in stature,

usually light-colored hair.

[Amirante] The two main guys

that we encountered was Mike Rossi

and David Cram.

Michael Rossi and David Cram

were Gacy's assistants

at PDM Contractors

who worked very closely with him

in everything he did.

But they were basically his little…

They were gofers, and they would

help him running the business,

they'd help him run his business.

[Sullivan] As we're going

through the investigation

and we talk to people and find out that,

"Yeah, there's a kid

by the name of such-and-such."

"He worked for Gacy at a time.

I haven't seen him in a while."

And then we got, uh… people started

coming… coming forward, saying,

you know, "I know this guy.

He worked there. He's missing too."

Gregory Godzik was a Chicago boy.

He had worked for Gacy,

and, uh, he turned up missing.

[Bedoe] And then, we… we find out

that another kid

that used to work for Gacy,

he's up and disappeared.

John Butkovich one day didn't show up

for work. Nobody ever saw him again.

The police came by asking questions.

You know, nothing.

Gacy denied knowing anything

about the kid's disappearance.

[Tovar] The class ring

that had the initials JS

that we found in Gacy's house

during the search warrant

turned out to belong

to a young man named John Szyc.

And had lived in Des Plaines,

but, uh, had moved into the city.

Uh, we contacted his parents,

and his mother told us

that he had been missing for a while.

[Bedoe] John Szyc's car

was never recovered when he disappeared.

And then,

during the course of the investigation,

when I got the information from Szyc's

parents what car he'd been driving,

one of the guys, might've been Tovar said,

"That's the same kind of car

that Mike Rossi's driving."

The VIN number was altered.

And then Gacy sold it to Rossi

for, you know, pennies on the dollar.

[Robinson] That put John in contact,

or knowing, four or five different people

who had come up missing

that had never been located.

This is highly unusual.

I mean, most people

don't know any missing peop… person,

let alone coming to know four or five.

[Sullivan] All of these things

were going on at the same time.

We were suspecting a bad outcome.

But we also knew

that we didn't have any bodies.

[Bedoe] Why are these people vanishing,

never to be found or seen again?

Bodies never discovered.

You're scratching your head, you're going,

"What happened? They just vanished."

"Never turned up. Where did they go?"

[Sullivan] You know, "When does this end?

What have we got here?"

'Cause truly, we didn't know.

[Bedoe] The scary part was

that his attorneys

had run down to the federal court

and applied for a federal injunction

against the State's Attorney's office

and the Des Plaines Police Department.

[Amirante] Leroy Stevens,

who was his civil lawyer

for his company at the time, and I

were in the midst

of preparing a federal lawsuit

against the Des Plaines Police Department

um, to enjoin them

from, uh, harassing Gacy.

And really ruining his business

because they were following him

so closely and violating his civil rights.

Terry Sullivan, who was the prosecutor,

was playing it close to the vest.

The police department was playing it close

to the vest. We couldn't get information.

The only way we'd get to the bottom of it

was file the lawsuit.

[Bedoe] If he gets

that injunction approved,

that's the end of it.

We'd have to back off altogether.

Can't interview him,

his employees, nothing.

So yeah, time was of the essence.

There's no question about it.

[Amirante] You have to understand

that, at the time,

Leroy and I really truly believed

Gacy was innocent.

Terry Sullivan eventually told me

about the case that John had in Iowa,

which was a sodomy case, which,

you know, I was shocked that he had that

'cause no… who expected Gacy,

this guy who was the precinct captain,

to have been convicted of sodomy?

Nobody knew that.

[Gacy] I was sentenced

to Fort Madison, Iowa,

which was a penitentiary,

but then they revised it and said

that since I was a first offender

and I was still under 26,

that I should be sent

to the men's reformatory at Anamosa.

I was sent there. I was scared to death.

Again, never being arrested before,

never being in jail before,

didn't know what the hell…

I thought I was gonna get k*lled in there.

[male choir sings]

O come let us adore him ♪

O come let us adore him ♪

O come let us adore him ♪

Christ the Lord… ♪

[Gacy] It turned out… [chuckles]

…I got into it and organized myself.

I went in there with a positive attitude.

And, uh, I became not only popular,

but powerful.

Hello, I'm John Gacy.

I'm from Waterloo, Iowa.

[man 7] And you're a man

of some authority here. What's your title?

Well, I'm first cook in the kitchen,

and I run the, uh, the morning meal

and the afternoon meal in the kitchen.

Food was a… was an avenue of power

is… is I guess

that's how I would describe it,

would be an avenue of power.

And John used it relentlessly.

Screw with John Gacy

and you better start

taking your meals somewhere else

because you had to assume

that you're gonna get something like,

for lack of a better description,

mouse turds in your… in your food

the next time you come through

because you didn't do what he said.

[Gacy] Without force,

I controlled the kitchen,

and there was some 55 inmates

in the kitchen.

But I never yield to anybody.

[Cornell] The other thing,

of course, was the… the Jaycees,

and that's how I met him.

I'm sitting there reading or something,

and he said, "Hi, I'm John Gacy,

and, uh, I'm recruiting for the Jaycees."

I didn't even know what the hell

the Jaycees was at that point.

By halfway through the time

that we were there,

say toward the end of 1969,

that was one of the largest

Jaycee chapters

in the entire state of Iowa,

largely due to the recruiting efforts

of John Gacy.

[Gacy] I was honored

as Man of the Year… [chuckles]

…at the Anamosa Men's Reformatory.

I built the first miniature golf course

inside the walls of a reformatory.

[Cornell] This is an example

of the man's abilities and talent.

I think you could make a case

that there was a good John and a bad John.

I knew the good John.

I had glimpses of other things.

[Gacy] The weak do not survive in prison.

You either come under, uh,

the ruling of… of some g*ng

or… or some other forceful inmate.

You do what he says, otherwise

you get the sh*t kicked out of you.

Well, I would not bow to any of that sh*t

because nobody will ever lead me.

He was walking on the range

that he lived in, over in the south house,

and he saw one inmate performing fellatio

on another inmate in a cell,

and just simply walked over,

and kicked the guy in the face four times,

and basically broke his jaw.

[cell door closing]

[cell door locking]

He's struggling with his sexual urges

toward h*m*.

That came out in his, in my opinion…

That came out in his personality

as anger, as rage.

[man 7] How long have you been here?

I've been here now a year

and about two weeks.

[man 7] You mind my asking how long

do you plan to take up residence here?

Well, I hope to be getting out

sometime in May.

[man 7] Well, good. Yes.

You gonna continue as a cook,

use that as a profession, do you think?

Right. This is my profession

before I came in.

-[man 7] All right.

-Food service.

[Cornell] It was Christmastime.

We were deeply involved

in the Toys for Tots project.

We were deeply involved

with the Christmas banquet

for the Jaycees.

A lot was going on.

But then, John's… [clears throat]

…John's father died.

[Gacy] December 18th, my dad went

in the hospital in Chicago

and I was never told of it.

My dad died December 25th, Christmas Day.

They didn't tell me

until after my dad was buried

that he died.

Even after going to the joint for…

for this sodomy conviction and all that,

his father was still alive.

John had the option at some point in time

of trying to mend that fence.

But not after that.

It was over. It was done.

I don't recall ever hearing him laugh

very much after that.

[Gacy] What I'm doing is just telling

what my dad always told me, is I'm weak.

Just a dumb, stupid kid. Can't do nothing.

Yeah, he was right about a lot of things.

I let him down when he died.

[Cornell] Most of the people

who were serving ten-year sentences

would serve around two years.

But because of who we were

and what we did inside,

John and I got out in 18 months.

So he and I basically left,

uh, that, uh, second week in July,

and, uh, we shook hands and walked away.

[tense music plays]

[Robinson] By being with John

everywhere all the time,

we were trying to break him down.

I mean, I think that you can be the most

law-abiding citizen in the entire world

and you still would not want the police

to be following you

24 hours a day, seven days a week.

[Albrecht] As it went along

and the investigators were interviewing

Gacy contacts, Gacy's friends,

I think some friends started realizing

there's something more to this.

I feel we were all

that Gacy had left to talk to.

Nobody else wanted much to do with him.

[Robinson] In some ways,

I think John began to think

that we were his best friends.

We weren't giving him a hard time,

only following him.

[indistinct chatter over police radio]

[Robinson] Many times, he invited us in,

trying to show what a nice guy he was

and how amiable he was with us,

and it got us into the house.

We had gotten a request

from Lieutenant Kozenczak.

There were a missing TV

and a missing radio from a missing person.

[Tovar] John Szyc's mother told us

that a little TV

that he had in his bedroom

was missing from his house.

She described it as a Motorola type TV,

and we recalled

having seen a TV similar to that

when we went into Gacy's house

during the search warrant.

So Bob Schultz said

he had to use the restroom,

which would get him

into the other part of the house

where he could search.

My job became then

to keep John entertained

so he didn't go looking for Bob.

Bob looked around, couldn't find the TV.

So he's in the bathroom,

flushin' the toilet

like a good guy should. [laughs]

But then, the heat kicked on.

And that made all the difference

in the world

because Bob was right there

by the heating duct, and this came up,

and he got a whiff of that

like you wouldn't believe.

And right away,

he thought, "A putrid odor?"

Yes, it was.

We've been on the job for too long,

we've handled too many dead bodies.

If he says that's what it was,

you can take it to the bank.

Schultz recognized an odor

that he knew was decomposing flesh.

A body, a dead body.

Anyway, he comes back at the end

of his shift and tells me about the smell.

Well at the same time,

I was hell-bent on trying to find a way

to get underneath Gacy's skin

to… to make him lose his temper

and slip up and make a mistake.

Say something, you know,

that would be incriminating.

David Cram worked for him,

for his company PDM.

I said, "Let's get Cram back in here

for an interview."

"Drag him back.

Let's talk to him some more."

So, I'm talking to Cram,

and I said to him,

"Did you ever see Gacy

completely lose his temper?"

He says, "Yeah."

I say, "What… what was the circumstance?"

He says, "Well, Gacy had me digging

in the crawl space."

And he says, "I changed directions."

"Instead of going on a straight line,

I went on a diagonal."

"Gacy came down to check

on what I was doing, how I was digging."

"He saw a diagonal instead of a straight

line, he completely lost his temper."

Swearing, jumping up and down,

hollering, screaming,

"g*dd*mn it, I told you.

I want you to dig here, not here."

And that's what got me thinking,

the whole time we were doing this,

we're trying to figure out

where these people went.

Where are they?

And, you know, in my wildest dreams,

I say, "It can't possibly be,"

but then you hear a story,

and then you go, "Is it possible

that there's somebody down there?"

So I, that… with that, I had, um…

my mission was… [laughs]

…was to get Terry Sullivan

to give us a second search warrant,

which is not usual.

Two search warrants on the same property.

That was crazy. Come on.

We gotta get this second search warrant.

"We need the second search warrant!"

Terry says, "You can't."

I said, "We gotta…

Figure it out! You're the lawyer!"

[Sullivan] What we needed

during those days was evidence.

We needed to hook the evidence

onto Gacy so it wouldn't fall off.

[phone rings]

[Byers-Lund] "I came home after school

to get something to eat

before I went shopping."

"The phone rang, they asked me questions

about the film slip."

The night that Rob went missing,

I was, um, handing in some film

to be processed at the pharmacy.

And I filled out my envelope,

and I put it in the pack

that was to be picked up.

And I tore off the receipt,

and then I put the receipt

in the little trash box

that was near the side

of the cash register.

And then, um, I just kind of stopped.

And then, I stared at that receipt,

and it stared back at me.

And for an unknown reason,

I grabbed the receipt

and I stuck it in Rob's jacket pocket.

[Sullivan] Thank God

Kim Byers had put that little receipt

into her pocket,

which turns out to be Rob's coat.

[Byers-Lund] Those are those hunches,

or intuitions,

whatever you wanna call them.

They drive us to do things

that we're not sure why we do.

I call them "God whispers,"

where someone guides you to do something.

[Tovar] That receipt wound up in the trash

at John Wayne Gacy's house.

And that was our first connection

putting Robert in that house.

[Sullivan] We had it sent out

to the crime lab

to see if they could match it up

to the envelope of developed film.

And, in fact, there was a match,

exactly how it was torn off

and the different little pieces and angles

that were still in there.

Wow, it perfectly matched.

We were, of course, very happy

'cause that looks really good in court.

[Bedoe] The receipt for the film

from Kim Byers, plus the smell,

that was enough for Terry to say okay,

and he drew up a second warrant.

[tense music plays]

[Robinson] We had a lot of heat

on him at this time,

and we could tell from John's deportment

that he could feel the pressure too.

[Amirante] The net was

kind of closing in on him.

The web was closing in on him at the time.

His cat and mouse game

was coming to an end.

[Tovar] I think we started noticing

that something was happening to him,

which eventually did.

He finally just kinda

went off the rails a little bit.

[tires screeching]

[phone rings]

[Amirante] John Gacy called me,

wanted to get together

because he told me

that he had something new

to tell me and Leroy Stevens.

And I told him,

"John, if it's something new, fine."

"Otherwise, I don't wanna hear

the same old bullshit from you."

[Gacy] Rationally and understandably,

I went over to talk to Sam

about the harassment,

not of me,

but why they were harassing my employees.

Why was I defending them?

Was I afraid they were gonna say

something about what I was doing?

He came and told me the same old story,

vehemently denying

anything to do with this kid.

I… I didn't believe him anymore.

I really did not believe him.

I had a picture of Robbie Piest

that was on the front page

of the Daily Herald,

the suburban news daily out there.

I started pounding on the table. I said…

I said, "Look at this, Gacy!

Look at this, John!"

"This kid is missing!

They think you did it!"

"Stop lying to me!"

I yelled at him like that.

I pounded the thing.

And he got very sheepish, and he said,

"Do you have anything to drink here?"

I poured a little vino for me,

a little bit for Gacy,

little bit for Stevens.

We each drank a shot of it.

And Gacy said, "Fill up my cup."

And I filled his cup up,

and he just chugged it down,

chugged it down.

He looks at the picture of Robbie Piest,

he goes, um… [clicks tongue]

"This boy is dead." Just like that.

My heart…

My heart start…

boom-boom… started pounding.

It was just…

I'm like, "What?

What am I getting into here?"

Then he says… And Leroy and I are just

sitting here watching him, and he goes,

"I've been a judge, jury, and executioner

of many, many people."

Now I wanna be

my own judge, jury, and executioner."

"I wanna tell you

everything that happened."

[ominous music plays]

[choir sings]

[ominous music intensifies]

[Amirante] I aged many, many years

during that night, uh,

both as a lawyer, uh, and as a person.

It was one of the scariest nights

of my life.

My heart was pounding out of my chest

the rest of the night,

s-smoking one cigarette after another one.

Leroy was smoking. He turned…

He… he lit his cigarettes backwards.

The filter was on the wrong end.

And after he told us all this…

he, um… he fell asleep.

[Gacy] I don't remember

exactly what happened.

I can remember I went to Sam's office,

but I did not go to Sam's office

to tell him all that sh*t.

Evidently, when I got there…

something else took over

and some other conversation come up.

It was a horrible, professional,

ethical spot for me as a young lawyer.

I was 30 years old.

And, uh, Leroy,

you know, we had to figure…

The best thing to do is get him

to a psychiatrist, have him committed,

and then figure out

what to do with this guy.

So we set up an appointment

for, like, eight o'cl…

eight, nine o'clock in the morning

with the psychiatrist we found

during the night.

[Albrecht] My partner

and I started that night

at Gacy's attorney, Sam Amirante's, office

in Park Ridge, downtown Park Ridge.

So just as I got to the building,

Sam Amirante

and his other attorney, Leroy Stevens,

were coming out of his office

and into the vestibule,

the whole building there,

and they invited us in.

And they couldn't be

nice enough to us. They cou…

"You want a bottle of booze?

Want anything to eat?" Um…

"Whatever you want, we'll get for you.

You can't let Gacy go."

"If he tries to leave,

you gotta sh**t his tires out,

and don't let him leave."

"You can't let him leave."

Finally, we said, "Sam, we're not

gonna sh**t somebody's tires out."

"Unless, why? Why should we be taking

this kind of activity?"

"Just do what you can."

"I can't tell you now,

but you… you can't let him go."

[Amirante] About six in the morning,

it started to get light.

Gacy starts waking up.

He goes, "What am I doing here?" You know…

"What… I got things to do. I got places

to go today. I'm… I'm really busy."

I said, "John, you told me everything.

You were here all night."

"Leroy and I, you talked to us,

you told us the whole thing."

"Well, I can't talk about that.

I got places to go, things to do."

"I'm outta here." Pew…

Takes off.

[unsettling music plays]