John Wayne Gacy (35 page)

The State was building up to the testimony that they intended to offer from both Mike Rossi and David Cram. These two individuals were considered key to the State’s case. Both of these men had worked for Mr. Gacy for years. They had each lived with John at one time or another, and they were his trusted friends and confidants. Prior to that testimony, the State quickly called two young men who said that Gacy had propositioned them in a sexual way. The first, Robert Zimmerman, was an employee at Gacy’s favorite Shell gas station. The second was Anthony Antonucci. He testified that Gacy had used handcuffs to restrain him while he made unwanted sexual advances toward him. Antonucci was successful in resisting John’s advances, which John then dismissed as just a joke, just horsing around.

The testimonies of Cram and Rossi were revealing. These were the two individuals that had spent the most time with Gacy over the years previous to his arrest.

When Cram was called to the stand, we objected strenuously. Every effort that we had made, either personally or through our investigators, to interview Cram before trial had been unsuccessful. He was dodging us. We argued that the State had not allowed us proper preparation for this witness. Garippo overruled the objection. However, he recessed the court and allowed Motta and me to conduct an impromptu grilling of Cram prior to his testimony in a small adjacent room.

With David Cram on the witness stand, the jury learned how a chance meeting where Gacy picked up the young Mr. Cram while he was hitchhiking down Elston Avenue in the city of Chicago turned into an extended working relationship and friendship that
blossomed during the following years. For a period of time, Cram lived with Gacy at the Summerdale address. David was on the stand for hours as Sullivan skillfully directed him through the areas that the prosecution team wanted covered.

During his testimony, Cram described events that had an eerie similarity to other events that the jury had heard about from the stand regarding Rob Piest.

Sullivan asked Cram about his birthday in 1976.

“Calling your attention to your birthday, 1976, were you at Mr. Gacy’s house on the evening of your birthday?”

 “Yes, I was.”

 “At that time, had you been drinking at his house?”

 “Well …”

 “Yes or no?”

 “Yes.”

“During this time that you were drinking, was Mr. Gacy drinking with you?”

 “Yes, he had a couple with me.” “Did anything unusual occur that evening?” “Yes. When I came in, it was my birthday, I believe, and I came into the house, and he had a clown suit on. He said that he was preparing for the next day. He had some kind of benefit charity to do with some kids with the clowning, and he thought it would be rather cute if, you know, seeing it was my birthday, that he leave the uniform on, and he was showing me some of his puppets and so on and so forth. Then he came up with a handcuff trick and?? ?What do you mean a handcuff trick?”

“Well, how you can escape from handcuffs.”

 “Did he in fact demonstrate how he—”

“He demonstrated them, and he took them off. I was so plowed, I didn’t … you know, really pay attention to it.”

 “Did he ask if he could perform the trick on you?”

 “Yes, he said to me, maybe sometime I’ll need it.”

“Were you sitting down at the time?”

 “Yes, I was.”

 “In the family room?”

“Yes.”

 “Did he, in fact, put the handcuffs on you?”

 “Yes, he did.”

“Were they in front of you or in back of you?”

 “In front of me.”

 “Were you able to escape from the handcuffs?”

 “No, the trick was, you needed the key.”

“At the time you were handcuffed, did Mr. Gacy say anything to you or do anything to you?”

 “Well, I held the handcuffs up and I told him, you know, get them off, and he grabbed me between, by the chain, and swung me around the room a couple times, you know, I just, you know, said get these off me, you know.”

 “Did he say anything to you at that time?”

 “Yes, he said, ‘I’m going to rape you,’ and I kind of freaked out, straightened up a little bit.”

 “Did you do anything at that time?”

“Yes, I ended up kicking him in the head.”

“You what?”

 “Ended up kicking him in the head.”

 “Did Mr. Gacy then take the cuffs off?”

 “I did.”

 “How did you get them off?”

“With a key.”

 “Where did you get the key?”

 “Out of his pocket, because they were lying on the counter, or one of the two.”

“You needed a key to get out, is that correct?”

“Oh, for sure.”

No one in the courtroom could escape the skin-crawling feeling that they had heard a story that was creepily similar to that one before. We could not avoid the sting that was left in the air. Some jurors looked down their noses at Gacy.

They hated him. I had to remind the jury that my client was crazy, that he was insane. I had my opportunity on cross-examination of Mr. Rossi later that day.

____________________

R
OSSI'S TESTIMONY WAS
limited because he had retained counsel. He was being represented by Edward V. Hanrahan. Mr. Hanrahan had served as the elected state’s attorney of Cook County prior to being defeated by the now-sitting state’s attorney, Bernard Carey. He was a good lawyer and had already demanded immunity for his client.

The State was just plain stingy with offers of immunity because they had been burned while doing this in the past. When, on cross-examination, a jury finds out that a witness is testifying pursuant to an agreement to grant immunity from prosecution, they tend not to believe the testimony of that witness. They think they are just testifying in exchange for the deal and will say anything. Therefore, the State would not agree to a deal for Mr. Rossi.

As such, Mr. Rossi was more or less uncooperative, and the State did not use his testimony as extensively as they might have, had he been more cooperative. However, I was able to use some of Mr. Rossi’s extensive knowledge of Mr. Gacy to show the jury how truly insane my client was.

Rossi had been at John’s house when Lieutenant Kozenczak and Officer Pickell went out to confront Mr. Gacy for the very first time.

I had to remind the jury that my client was crazy, that he was insane. This was my chance.

On the night of December 12, Kozenczak and Pickell had been out to interview Gacy regarding the Piest disappearance. After they
had gone, Mike Rossi came in screaming about the police. I directed his attention to that night.

“After they left, you went into the house, is that right?”

“I was in the house.”

“And, Mr. Gacy went up into the attic?”

 “Yes, sir.”

 “Where were you when he did that?”

 “In the hallway.” “In the hallway below the attic?”

“Yes, sir.”

 “What was Mr. Gacy wearing?”

 “I believe he was wearing blue pants and a leisure shirt.”

“And when he went up in that attic, he went up there to get Christmas tree ornaments?”

“Yes, sir.”

 “How did he appear to you?”

“Did he appear to be normal at that time, anything unusual?”

 “Well, there had been a death in the family, but outside of that, he was OK.”

 “He was upset? Who died?”

“An uncle or something.”

 “He was upset about that?”

“Slightly.”

 “But, that seemed to be all that bothered him, right? Did he seem bothered when he went up into the attic, or was he his old self bringing the ornaments down?”

“Normal.”

 I looked at the jury for a long minute or two. I couldn’t say it out loud, that would be testifying, but I wanted to psychically transmit to them the memory of the other testimony that they had heard about that night. If John Wayne Gacy was retrieving Christmas ornaments from the attic in his house on the night of December 12, he had to reach over the naked, dead body of Rob Piest to do it. Michael
Rossi was standing at the bottom of the ladder while Gacy nonchalantly got the ornaments, probably humming Christmas carols as he reached for the box. No one except a person that was filled with madness, that was clinically and permanently insane, could perform such a task and arrive back at the bottom of that ladder looking … normal.

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D
AY AFTER DAY
, Saturdays included, the story of John Wayne Gacy unfolded. Slowly, carefully the State filled in the details. Officer David Hachmeister and assistant state’s attorney Lawrence Finder both testified to the continued impromptu confessions by Mr. Gacy, including the hair-raising tale about his demonstration of the rope trick on Larry’s arm.

The jury heard from Dan Gentry, the evidence technician that unearthed the very first bone of the very first body and uttered the now-somewhat-famous declaration, “Charge him!”

In a trial, you cannot simply point to a picture and say, “That’s victim number 1, Butkovitch. He was strangled by the defendant.” A painstaking and elaborate process is necessary to establish the identification of bodies and the cause and manner of death. Forensic dentists and forensic doctors must be called to the stand to offer grotesque and mind-numbing testimony as to each and every little aspect of the process. When doctors testify, the room usually goes to sleep quickly, not always figuratively.

Dr. Robert Stein, the Cook County medical examiner, was one of the doctors called to testify regarding cause and manner of death. We had been concerned about his testimony from the very beginning because he had been the doctor that was interviewed on NBC, when Bob first became involved with the case. He gave the hypothetical opinion that a man who killed thirty-three kids could be sane. We had to ensure that he stayed far away from any kind of testimony like that on the stand. Although he was a doctor, he
really wasn’t qualified to make that assertion. But because he was a doctor, if he made such an assertion, the jury might believe it.

The lawyers and the judge wrangled over this in chambers and outside the purview of the jury.

 Stein primarily testified that the victims were strangled. Many were found with ropes still around their necks when they were removed from the crawl space. Many had some kind of cloth stuffed into their throats. The testimony was gruesome and graphic. However, he stayed away from giving his opinion as to the sanity of Mr. Gacy.

The State filled in whatever holes they believed were left to fill with their remaining witnesses.

The issue of sanity was for us to raise in our case. Once raised as an issue, the burden of proof shifted to the State to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was sane at the time of the offense, or in this case, offenses. Therefore, the prosecution would not call any doctors to testify as to Mr. Gacy’s sanity until their rebuttal case. Everybody in all of Chicagoland and the world knew that there would be doctors called to argue over John Wayne Gacy’s sanity, but that is just the procedure, that is how it is done. So with no further witnesses to testify regarding this phase of the case, after three and a half weeks of testimony designed to prove that John Wayne Gacy was a murderer, the State of Illinois rested its case.

The lawyers retired to their corners to lick their wounds and prepare for round 2 of the battle.

31

O
N
T
HURSDAY
, F
EBRUARY
21, 1980, Bob and I presented our first witness on behalf of the defense of our client, John Wayne Gacy.

I never knew what to believe regarding most of Jeffrey Rignall’s tale of woe regarding the night that he and Gacy met. The story from my client and the story from Mr. Rignall diverged on many points. However, that is often the case when a lawyer puts a witness on the stand to testify. We, as lawyers, were not there at the time of the occurrence. We only know what we are told by our witnesses. Many times, memories fade, and agendas fill in the blanks. We have to trust that when a witness is sworn before God to tell the truth, he or she takes it seriously.

In Jeffrey Rignall’s case, he had already published a book regarding his expected testimony and appeared on several talk shows and radio broadcasts to tell his sad story. John Wayne Gacy had made him famous.

Bob and I both felt that to call on one of Gacy’s most vociferous accusers was a risk, but we felt it would show that we were not afraid of the horror that this story would unfold. There was no question that our client was seen as a monster by most of the country and the world. We had to show that in spite of the horrific nature of the crimes committed, our client was unable to control his actions.

Jeffrey Rignall dutifully related his now-famous nightmare, exactly as he had described in his book, with all the gory details about chloroform and a bleeding rectum. Either he was a very good actor, or he was still quite shaken by the experience that he had endured nearly two years earlier, because he broke into tears at one point and suddenly vomited.

The judge recessed court.

When all was returned to normal, after the cleaning crew had gone, Jeffrey returned to the stand. The following very important testimony was elicited:

“Sir, you are Mr. Jeffrey Rignall?”

“Correct.”

“You are the same Mr. Rignall who testified earlier in this trial, right?”

“Correct.”

“And you realize you are still under oath, correct?”

“Yes.”

“OK, now, Mr. Rignall, I want to once again ask you if you recall the early morning hours of March 22, 1978.”

 “Yes.”

“And that is the morning to which you testified earlier, is that correct?”

“Correct.”

“OK, based on your own personal observations, all the surrounding circumstances involving those personal observations, do you have an opinion as to whether John Gacy, at that time, during those attacks, could conform his conduct to the requirements of the law?”

Kunkle: “Objection.”

Court: “Overruled.”

“Do you have an opinion?” I asked, disregarding Kunkle and his objection.

“Yes.”

“What is that opinion?”