John Wayne Gacy (30 page)

Too often, when a defense attorney wins a case on constitutional grounds, it is offhandedly described in the press, and sometimes even by our society in general, as a “loophole.” This is always done so in the pejorative sense, as in, “That scumbag lawyer got his terrible criminal client off on a goddamned loophole. It’s a travesty of justice.”

Unfortunately, this statement, this sentiment is completely ass-backward. When a defendant is convicted of a crime in spite of his or her constitutional protections, that is the loophole—that is the true travesty.

Otherwise, why have a Constitution? Why don’t we just revert to mob rule, mob lynchings? Why is it so often accepted practice in the minds of some in this country that the police can break the law in their efforts to get the bad guy, as long as they get the bad guy? How silly is that, the police can break the law in order to arrest a person that broke the law? What?

Every oath that is administered to our leaders invariably includes the sacred phrase “to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Perhaps we as a people should decide if we really mean that, or not.

So when Bob and I argued that the second warrant, the warrant that unearthed the first body, was insufficient at law because it was based on the claimed presence of an odor—an odor that was indistinguishable from many other odors—and a photo receipt that was not listed in the original inventory from the first warrant and was illegally taken during the execution of that first warrant, and the judge ruled against us, we were disappointed, to say the least.

However, we were very pleased when Judge Garippo, with the Wisdom of Solomon, ruled in favor of our motion for change of venue but kept the trial in Cook County.

A motion for change of venue is filed when it is believed that a defendant cannot receive a fair trial in the jurisdiction where the crime was committed due to a predisposition on the part of the entire community, especially the jury pool, which is usually the result of an oversaturation of press coverage in a given area. When that press coverage is particularly biased or the crime is particularly grotesque, or both, the judge must consider whether or not a fair trial is available to that defendant in that jurisdiction. No case has ever stood as a better example of this concept than the
Gacy
case. Judge Garippo knew this, and he was faced with a difficult problem: How would he protect the rights of the defendant to a fair trial without dropping this monumental case in the lap of some poor unsuspecting judge in some other jurisdiction?

The answer was a stroke of genius and surprisingly simple all at once.

The judge granted our motion for change of venue and ordered that the jury would be picked from another county where less press coverage existed, and then the jury would be transported to Cook County and sequestered to protect them from the ongoing press coverage in this county. You didn’t need to transfer the entire case to a different county because the only persons that mattered in the case, the only persons that would actually be judging the case, were the twelve men and women of the jury.

Studies were commissioned by the court to determine a county in the state where press coverage was less pronounced.

Winnebago County was chosen as the county from where we would pick our jury. Rockford, Illinois, its county seat, a bustling city of approximately 150,000 residents, is closer to the Wisconsin border than it is to the city of Chicago. It boasts of its almost-equal proximity to Madison, Wisconsin; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Chicago, Illinois. At about ninety miles away, it was close enough yet far enough away from Cook County. Of course, no jurisdiction on the planet existed that had never heard anything about the
Gacy
case. However, Rockford was a city unto itself with its own radio, TV, and newspaper outlets; and all parties agreed that it would serve well the purpose of a change of venue on the Gacy matter.

As the trial date approached, every person involved in the case temporarily moved their entire operation—lock, stock, and barrel—to the fair city of Rockford, Illinois.

The night before jury selection was to begin, everybody met for drinks at a local watering hole not too far from the Winnebago County Courthouse. I don’t think that this little get-together was planned; it just happened. Rockford is quite cosmopolitan, but it is small compared to Chicago. Therefore, only so many hotels existed that were conveniently situated near the courthouse and could
accommodate the number of lawyers and staff that descended upon that poor unsuspecting town.

The Clock Tower Inn turned out to be the place that everybody involved in the case stayed, so the bar at that fine establishment, with its walls completely covered by vintage clocks of every description, was packed to the rafters with people that were involved in some way with the Gacy matter.

The place was packed, the bar was elbow to elbow and knees to knees, and the tables throughout were full. Everybody was taking a well-deserved and short-lived break from the grind.

It’s funny—most people believe that prosecutors and defense attorneys are mortal enemies. That is just not true … usually. Many people thought that William Kunkle and I actually hated each other. Nothing could have been farther from the truth.

When you work with someone on a case, an occasionally grudging, mutual respect grows, if it is deserved, of course. As a result, often, just the opposite is true. Prosecutors and the defense counsel can be quite close friends; some are even married to each other. The relationship is much more akin to the members on opposing sports teams. Even as kids, it will sometimes happen that your best friend is on an opposing team.

Of course, from time to time, even the closest of friends or colleagues have the occasional minor disagreement. It can happen to anyone, right, in the heat of the battle and all?

I am not a big drinker, never was. I am that guy who is still drinking the first beer that he ordered four hours after arriving at the bar. Only my closest friends know this about me. I party with the best of them, so it is not obvious. I just never liked to drink much, not even in college. Bob, on the other hand, enjoys his beer. Bob never does anything half-assed. If he walks into a bar to have a few, that is just what he does.

On this particular night, however, I don’t know—maybe it was the tension of the moment. Everyone was realizing that we were
all actually, finally, after all those many long months, on the verge of one of the biggest trials of our lives. Once the jury was selected, we were all headed back to Chicago to put on this case. The day of reckoning had arrived.

Whatever the reason … everyone may have had a few more drinks than usual that night. Even I was not immune. Pitchers of beer, shots of booze, mixed drinks of all colors and concoction were being passed around like candy on Halloween. Prosecutors, defense counsel, their staff members who took the trip, investigators, police officers, and, let us not forget, the venerable members of the press—everyone who was involved with this tough, high-profile, high-pressure monster of a case was blowing off a little steam in a very big way. It was fun.

No one really knows, or remembers, just exactly how the brawl began. It’s fuzzy at best, no matter whom you ask. Many of us have tried to reconstruct the events of that night in the days since, but to no avail. All I can say about that particular night is this: As barroom brawls go, this was a doozy!

I have heard errant speculation that my partner and dear friend, Bob Motta, may have had some involvement with the first salvos of the melee; perhaps he and Bob Egan or Jim Varga or one of the others were having words, and maybe that discussion became heated; but no one really has ever confirmed that, at least not in public, or out loud. You see, Bob has always been the type of guy that has never taken a grain of shit from anybody, ever. So it stands to reason that it would be unlikely that anyone would publicly blame him for such a thing, at least not without very clear and convincing evidence, and certainly not to his face.

What does it matter who started it, anyway? By the time it was over, every single person in that bar was involved whether or not they were participants in the case, save two. Glasses flew and smashed against walls, chairs were thrown, tables were tipped over,
things of all shapes and sizes were broken or used as weapons. The place looked like a good old-fashioned Irish wedding, or funeral.

By some miracle, no one was seriously injured.

I said everyone was involved, save two. Who were the two that remained above the fray, you ask? Well, by the time the fight broke out, most of the members of the press had either gone back to their rooms or moved on to another dramshop. One lonely reporter remained. I believe that his name was Galloway; I think he was with the
Chicago Sun-Times
, but don’t quote me on that. Let’s call him Galloway, though, just to give him a name. Let’s say his name was Paul Galloway.

Mr. Galloway was passed out, mouth agape, drool glistening on his chin, head hanging askew over the back of a wooden bar chair, snoring, while chairs and bottles flew over his head. He never moved a muscle during the entire conflagration. He slept like a baby throughout. Therefore, the rare and rather embarrassing departure from professionalism was never reported in the newspapers, thank God.

Number two was even more unusual.

While the gates of hell were opening up all around him, while glass missiles zinged past and various items of furniture and the odd human being flew by his person, Bill Kunkle, who never drank anything stronger than a Diet Coke, sat engrossed in a game of solitaire or some sort of game that he had been playing all night long. He sat in his chair, as if in a bubble, with Armageddon occurring all around him, and never looked up, never threw a punch, never took a scratch.

As for the rest of us, we all did our best to obscure our bumps, bruises, and minor cuts and to caffeine away our hangovers as we dutifully appeared to questioned prospective jurors the following morning.

26

T
HE
R
OCK
R
IVER
lazily snakes its way through downtown Rockford, Illinois, the county seat of Winnebago County. A block away from its banks stands the Winnebago County Courthouse. Life is noticeably slower there than in the chaos and clamor of the sprawling city of Chicago and its environs; however, don’t get me wrong, Rockford is no small town. It is a vital, bustling city with a long proud history and a tough, professional criminal justice presence in an area that is surrounded on three sides by rolling farms and just south of its counterpart city, Beloit, Wisconsin.

The Chrysler Corporation has a huge automotive manufacturing plant in nearby Belvedere, Illinois; and many of Winnebago County’s citizens work at the plant or in Rockford as merchants. The rest of the population is dedicated primarily to farming in the surrounding open miles of the northwestern part of the state of Illinois. This cross section of people provided an eclectic and interesting mix to the members of the jury pool.

Jury selection has gone from the gut-based art form once practiced by country-style lawyers like Lincoln or Darrow to a science, where lawyers are often assisted by elaborate, targeted firms dedicated solely to that purpose. These firms test mock jury after mock jury and meticulously and scientifically study human behavior,
particularly as it pertains to everyone’s “favorite” civic responsibility—jury duty.

We were consulting with a firm from Minnesota. No one from the firm would be there at the defense counsel table with us. However, we would be armed with their reports and recommendations, together with their graphs and charts and professed expertise. Ultimately, it would be up to Bob and me to pick the jury that would sit in judgment of our client, Mr. Gacy. Today was the day, Monday, January 28, 1980.

_______________________

I
CAME TO
from what was for me an uncharacteristic alcohol-induced coma in my room at the Clock Tower Inn and was immediately filled with the memory of the previous night’s antics. Ya know, I’m Italian; and I believe that you can be excommunicated from the Italian American population if you openly disagree with anything that Frank Sinatra has ever said. But just this once, and just between you and me, I have to state categorically that I part ways with one of the long-held and widely quoted positions of Old Blue Eyes, the Chairman of the Board. Sinatra always said that he felt sorry for people who didn’t drink because if you don’t drink “the way you feel when you wake up in the morning is as good as you are going to feel all day.” I have to say, I don’t agree. I rather like waking up in the morning without a hangover, and I swore that I would never pull anything like that again. Sorry, Frank, just this one time, you were wrong.

It’s amazing how healing a long, hot shower and a fresh, crisp suit and tie can be. If that doesn’t do it for you, then you should try walking into a totally packed courtroom where it is your job to pick the jury that will sit in judgment during the trial of the century. That will clear up any lingering cobwebs from your brain right quick.

Every available seat was taken in the smallish courtroom in the Winnebago County Courthouse, and when all of the seats were
occupied, people stood and crammed the aisles, craning their necks to get a glimpse of the proceedings and at the alleged monster from the big city. Extra uniformed bailiffs had been brought in, and they stood at parade rest at the edges of the crowd to ensure order. To many in that room, it was a silly exercise to have moved the jury selection to their county; it was not as if they hadn’t all heard every gory detail that the strange portly little man seated at the defendant’s table was supposed to have committed. It was 1980, not 1880. This was Rockford, not the moon. News traveled fast.

I think, however, that in spite of the smattering of criticism, the general consensus among Rockford residents was that they were excited to be in the bright spotlight, to have us all in their town for a while, and to have the jury that would sit in judgment of this monumental case selected from its citizenry.