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Authors: Judge Sam Amirante

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BOOK: John Wayne Gacy
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He was a middle child; his sisters, Joanne Gacy Casper eighteen months his senior, and Karen Gacy Kuzma eighteen months his junior, were a countervailing force to their father’s scorn and seemingly continuous berating of their brother. Together with their mother, John’s only true source of comfort at home were the female
members of his family. It seemed that John could never do anything well enough to satisfy his overbearing father.

John was a hard worker; he began working at various odd jobs at the age of fourteen. He always was considered the go-getter of the group on any job that he ever had.

When he was eighteen years old, he “ran away from home.” I found it unusual for a grown man to tell me that he ran away from home, considering he was eighteen at the time and of legal age to do as he pleased. I saw this as an insight into his personality, although I didn’t necessarily know what it meant.

It seems that John had saved enough money to buy a car, and he intended to buy a used car on his own. His father convinced him to accept a loan from him to buy a better car. In doing so, John’s father maintained a level of control over his son. When John did something that John Sr. didn’t like, John Sr. would ban John from using “his” car, the car on which a debt still remained in favor of John Sr.

One night, his father was exercising the power that he had over his son, and John decided to leave rather than obey. John drove to Las Vegas, Nevada. He arrived there with $36 in his pocket. He did not like the heat, however, and was already homesick when he had a blackout episode. He passed out in his car on a side street and was taken to Southern Nevada County Hospital as a result. The bill for the ambulance ride was, coincidentally, $36. Gacy went into the ambulance service office to explain why he could not pay the bill, and instead of encountering a dispute, he walked out of the office with a job. John worked for the ambulance company until they found out that he was only eighteen years old, too young to drive an ambulance. That did not deter John. He had met a man, Bud Bishop, at the Palm Mortuary while working at the ambulance company, and he was hired there. In spite of the fact that he was employed and making it in Las Vegas, supporting himself, he missed his mom, his sisters, and even his dad. After three months,
he left Las Vegas and headed home. He was back living under his father’s roof.

As he spoke, I began to realize that he was telling me about a life lived without a connection to anything or anybody. He was recounting a life that he lived without knowledge of how to do so. Like a pinball, he just bounced from setting to setting.

After he returned home, he began his adult career.

His first real job was at the Nunn Bush Shoe Company. He claimed that he tripled the sales of the store in which he first worked. He was promoted to manager and traveled for that company in 1963.

He moved to Springfield, Illinois, in 1964, where he met and married his first wife, Marlynn, in September of that year.

He joined the Junior Chamber of Commerce (Jaycees) in Springfield and rose quickly through the ranks. He ran membership drives, organized parades, basically volunteered for everything. He was chosen Outstanding First-Year Member in his Springfield local, and he was chosen third among all members honored as Most Outstanding First-Year Member of the Jaycees in the entire state of Illinois. It was a happy time for him.

His local Jaycees chapter also honored him as Man of the Year in 1965.

He ran the largest Christmas Parade in Central Illinois that year.

He was riding high, proving to his father once and for all that he was not the failure that his dad had always predicted he would be. Plus, he loved the limelight, the pats on the back, the attaboys. He couldn’t get enough of that stuff.

His father-in-law owned three franchise locations of the Kentucky Fried Chicken food chain in Waterloo, Iowa. The newlyweds decided to move to Waterloo in 1966, and John was trained as a manager there.

Again he joined the Jaycees; again he soared through the ranks of its membership.

John was living the life of a successful young married man on his way up.

He told me that life was not all perfect in Iowa, however. He said that he did not like working for his father-in-law, and he was experiencing sexual confusion. He and his wife practiced wife swapping during this time, but even that did not satiate him. He knew one thing, though—he hated homosexuals, and he was no fruit picker.

Then, in spite of what he had just said about homosexuals, he proceeded to explain that while his wife was in the hospital giving birth to their firstborn, their son Michael John, he had his first sexual experience with a man.

The man, Adam Johnson, was an employee at one of the Roberts’ brothers’ stores, the Nunn Bush franchise where John worked in Springfield. The two decided to celebrate the blessed event, the birth of his son, by going out scouting for chicks—a questionable decision, to begin with. But that aside, after several drinks, Adam suggested that Gacy’s approach to getting laid was all wrong. He said that Gacy had, at best, a fifty-fifty chance of finding a girl and getting laid. But he, Adam, had a 100 percent chance of having sex that night. Gacy certainly did not believe him, and, of course, he asked how that was possible. Adam said that if he struck out finding a woman to have sex with, he simply found himself a man. He punctuated this theory with a statement that a blowjob is a blowjob, doesn’t matter who it comes from, man or woman.

Later that evening, to hear John tell it, he found himself magically transported to Adam’s bedroom, where Adam was putting into practice that very theory of his. John says he has no memory of how he got there—he said something about going for coffee, but it turned into more drinks—but he does admit that he accepted the act of oral sex being offered by Mr. Johnson, adding, “That didn’t make me a fag, that didn’t make me a goddamn fruit picker. I was only bisexual.”

John went on to explain that his second sexual encounter with a man was in 1966 in Waterloo, with Rick, a young employee of the Kentucky Fried Chicken stores that John managed. Of course, he reiterated his abiding hatred for homosexuals after telling me all about Rick.

My client was clearly confused sexually, I thought.

Then he told me about a series of events that helped greatly to explain why the Des Plaines police, Terry Sullivan, the mayor, Herb Volberding, and others were so convinced that Mr. Gacy was involved in the disappearance of Robert Piest.

My client explained that he had done time for the crime of sodomy in the state of Iowa.

At first, Mr. Gacy described the crime as “sodomy of film.” I believe that John was so accustomed to marginalizing this matter over the years to others that he thought he could do the same with me. This was a mistake for two reasons: One, I was a lawyer; and I knew that no such charge exists, in Iowa or anywhere else—at least I’d never heard of such a charge. And two, Mr. Gacy had brought with him a stack of papers. Most of those papers were evidence of his many accolades and awards. However, among those accolades and awards were some of the charging documents and presentence reports that were generated by the State of Iowa regarding that very charge. A perfunctory review of these documents made it clear to me that the charge was simply sodomy, together with a plethora of ancillary charges.

I asked him what “sodomy of film” meant. He seemed to realize that I wasn’t buying that description of the charge, so he launched into his story.

One of the reasons that he was so very successful at attracting new members to the Waterloo chapter of the Jaycees, he explained, was that he made it fun to be a member. He made it a lot of fun.

The parties that he arranged in support of his membership drives included the showing of heterosexual stag films, the presentation
of live girly shows, and, in many instances, the use of prostitutes to convince prospective members that it would be a great idea to join the Jaycees.

This worked, by the way. It worked quite well. After one of these parties, twenty-five new members tripped over themselves to join up in a single night. John had caused the membership of his small chapter to swell to levels never before seen in its history. He was toasted and proclaimed a genius by his peers. Everybody loved John. Apparently, he was not the only man in Waterloo that liked to kiss his wife good-bye as he left for a Jaycees meeting that could have doubled as a Nevada bordello. Once again, John was Man of the Year.

He was planning to run for president of the whole group, and he had the support among most of the membership. He enlisted the help of a local politician and fellow Jaycees member—Donald Voorhees, a businessman and an elected Iowa State senator—to run his campaign. “He wanted to be on the side of a winner, the winning team,” John proclaimed.

That is when John’s super-duper nonstop train to happy town derailed.

Mr. Voorhees had a son, Donald Jr. There was a rumor that the son was a known homosexual and that he was amenable to having sex with men for money. Gacy could not resist. He approached this fifteen-year-old boy and, as he tells it, offered to pay him for sex. The two haggled over the price but eventually agreed on the payment of $5 for oral sex. Gacy reports that he could not reach a climax as a result of this encounter and said that Donald Jr. owed him one, to which the young man agreed. A relationship grew between the two, and they had oral sex on at least two other occasions, according to John. John became a friend to the father and a friend to the son, unbeknownst to either. At some point, young Donald needed money. He wanted to buy an amplifier, and he went to Gacy to borrow money. When Gacy insisted on sex, the young man
threatened to expose their relationship to his father and others. The situation exploded into a scandal—ownership of certain stag films, which were in the possession of the senator, was attributed to John. This resulted in accusations being exchanged between both parties, ultimately resulting in John being charged with several felony counts. John Gacy was sentenced to the maximum sentence of ten years in prison. A presentence report classified him as an “antisocial personality,” but he was still recommended for probation.

Gacy lost his wife, his children, his good standing in the community—he lost everything. Most importantly, while he languished in jail, he lost the man he could never please. His father died on Christmas Day 1969, and in keeping with his prediction, he would always remember his son as a dumb and stupid faggot and a failure.

We then discussed Gacy’s plan to turn his life around after he was paroled. He had started a new business, which was quite successful, and he had reentered society. Once again he was becoming a respected civic and community leader, a precinct captain, the leader of the Polish Constitution Day Parade in Chicago. Hell, he had just recently been rubbing elbows with the president’s wife, Rosalynn Carter, for chrissakes. She was the guest of the city for the parade. They had been pictured together.

John presented himself as a guy with a past who was just trying to put it all behind him and make a new life … and now this. Based on what I knew at that time, I had to believe him. What a sincere face he put on. Poor John.

Before he left my office nearly six hours after he had arrived, John Wayne Gacy wrote me a check in the amount of $3,000. I had been officially retained.

6

A
S TEDIOUS AS
it is to investigate and then draft the documents necessary for a warrant, that is also how much fun it can be to finally execute one, at least sometimes. Come on, imagine being able to invade someone’s home, break the doors down if you have to, and snoop to your heart’s content. For some … that’s heaven.

After having the warrant signed by Judge Marvin Peters at 3:10 p.m., December 13, 1978, a team was dispatched to the Gacy residence armed, with keys to the doors and imbued with a sense of purpose. They were like a pack of dogs on the hunt, sniffing here, poking there, in drawers and under cabinets, searching for something that would tie this creep to their missing boy. Some of the younger guys actually hoped to find Rob Piest tied up and hungry, hoping against hope that he would be found. The more seasoned among them knew better. There was seldom any good news that resulted from situations such as this. They were usually just fact-finding, evidence-gathering missions.

David Cram was at the Gacy house, quite coincidentally, when the search team arrived. He was there in a work capacity, to pick up items that he needed for the job that he was on that day. He was shown a warrant and a badge by one of the officers, and he
explained his presence there. He then beat feet as fast as he could, glad that the officers did not detain him for any reason.

They all knew that the owner of the house would not bother them. Gacy was being allowed to spin his endless stories, tell his tallest tales, and in general go on and on about just how important of a guy he actually was. Eventually, even Gacy got sick of this routine, although he did so long after the poor officers had tired of his spiel.

Finally, Gacy started barking about going to appointments that he had. He had to meet with a funeral director. He had business to attend to. At that point, the officers at the station simply put him in a room, gave him a can of pop, and locked the door. He wasn’t under arrest. He wasn’t in a cell. He was in limbo—a kind of land that time forgot while the team did their job at his house.

Most of the officers who took part in the search of the house noticed a slight odor that was unidentifiable. It was faint, but it was there. It became somewhat stronger when the thermostat turned on the fan for the heating system. Gacy also had a little dog that yapped incessantly during the search, but such were the trials of the job. At least it wasn’t a big one. That could have caused a problem.

When the search was over, the following report was filed, and the items recovered were categorized and logged into evidence:

BOOK: John Wayne Gacy
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