John Wayne Gacy (45 page)

He considered himself his own man, and the deep, stern creases etched by time into his bulbous, ruddy face dared anyone on the planet to say otherwise. A serious man—one only needed to be in his presence for a very short time to learn his personal views on a myriad of subjects, strongly held opinions that he would share without much provocation. He was an imposing figure, not a man who fit the cookie-cutter image of what a prosecutor looks like; nonetheless, it was Kunkle that had been chosen by the other members of the prosecution team to present the final word on behalf of the State of Illinois regarding the matter of
People v. John Wayne Gacy
.

At 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, March 12, 1980, as the players reconvened and the onlookers assembled themselves into the limited seating and the standing-room-only spots, filling every square inch of available space, the cramped courtroom looked noticeably
more cluttered than it usually did because of the addition of the huge, irregular chunk of hardwood flooring, which included the gaping trapdoor that once peered down into the crawl space at John Wayne Gacy’s house. It had been dragged to a point of prominence before the bench and in full view of the jury box, as had the infamous gallery of grief. It too had been hauled to a place where all jurors could clearly see each and every identified victim’s picture.

Kunkle ambled up to the podium like the original John Wayne, the Duke; quietly cleared his throat; and began.

“Judge Garippo, gentlemen,” he said with a nearly imperceptible nod to Bob and me. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. I’ll be the last one to speak to you before you get your instructions on the law from the judge and retire to the jury room to deliberate this case. I’ll make you only two promises about my remarks: The first is I won’t speak as long as Mr. Sullivan—perhaps not as well either. Hopefully, I won’t be as loud as Mr. Amirante.

“Mr. Amirante asked you not to consider sympathy. You should not consider sympathy. Don’t consider sympathy for this defendant either. Some of the psychiatrists talked about having computers instead of jurors. They talked about being dispassionate. They left out something called common sense. A lot of us talked about it at the beginning of trial in the jury selection. You can’t replace people with computers. You can’t do psychiatric diagnosis by computers. We can’t take a Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and get a numerical score and say that a man who has killed thirty-three people isn’t responsible for his actions. People aren’t that simple. Justice isn’t that easy.

“Mr. Amirante told you that John Gacy had an uncontrollable side, that he was ‘encaged in his own flesh.’ So are we all, ladies and gentlemen. Each of us has good, each of us has evil.”

Kunkle eyed each juror to bring home his point.

“And that which separates a social person and a human being with respect for life, with respect for the rights and properties of
   
others, from the animal, from the animals, is the ability to separate those parts yourselves.

“John Gacy separated those parts probably better than anyone I have ever heard of. The defense asked you to excuse John Gacy for the murder of thirty-three citizens of this state because he is so normal. What they are really saying to you is, ‘Here is a normal, everyday guy, and, gee, why, we admit he killed thirty-three people, therefore he has got to be crazy. So they put on witnesses to tell you what a great guy he is, to tell you how normal he is, just as we were putting on witnesses to tell you that—when they observed this man at important times, important dates, days of some of the crimes, even the day before some of the crimes, the day after some of the crimes. Those dates that I asked Mike Rossi about, and other people about—those were specific dates. We wanted to show what John was doing on those days. How did he appear to people? They told you he was normal. They told you he was the same as he always was.”

As I listened to my opponent speak, as I watched him begin to pace and stalk the limited space just in front of the twelve jury members who would soon decide my client’s fate, who would decide ultimately whether he would live or die, I stole a glance at the man sitting next to me—my client, the defendant. It is impossible to describe what I saw. It was as if John Gacy was watching the proceedings as a spectator, like he wasn’t a party to the proceedings, like he was watching a baseball game or a Broadway play. He just didn’t seem to grasp the fact that Kunkle was talking about him. He was fascinated by the drama without knowing that a very slow-moving bullet was heading directly toward his forehead. He didn’t seem to get that this whole scenario was really quite permanent, quite irreversible. Half the time he had the most ridiculous shit-eating grin on his face, like you see on a country kid on his first visit to the big city; the rest of the time he was mugging for the sad and the curious in the gallery.

Finally, at long last, he was truly the center of attention.

“There have been villains throughout history,” Kunkle continued, “dictators of totalitarian countries, and mass murderers—all kinds of evil villains put on this earth. I think they probably all loved their children. I think they probably all formed genuine relationships with their wives.

“During the course of the investigation of this case, many of us that have been associated with it have felt, have experienced very strong emotions. There has been a necessity through the presentation of the evidence in this case, for you to experience some of that emotion. As human beings, you will, I know you will, do the best you can to leave that emotion—leave sympathy and pity out of your consideration of the issues of this case.

“But don’t for a minute feel there is something wrong with you or you are not doing your job as a juror because you have felt these emotions, because we have all felt them. The time it came home to me in this case was very early on in the first week of the excavation on Summerdale. You have already seen this photograph, People’s Exhibit 174 for identification.”

Bill Kunkle held up one of the hundreds of photographs that had been marked as exhibits. He showed it to each member of his captive. audience.

“It’s a photograph of grave no. 8. Above the numeral in the dirt is a blue tennis shoe. On a plastic body bag to the left of the grave on the dirt is the other blue tennis shoe with a leg bone sticking out of that tennis shoe. I was at the house that day, and I saw it when that picture was taken. The thought that came to my mind at that time was of tying my daughter’s shoes that morning before I left. And I thought,
How in God’s name did this man, with this tennis shoe, with those legs, with that boy, in that hole, in his basement tie [his] children’s tennis shoes?

“Psychoanalysts can’t give you an answer to that question. Medical psychiatrists can’t give you an answer to that question. The closest they can come is when Dr. Reifman told you John Gacy has no remorse because John Gacy … has no remorse.

“If you think that you can excuse this man from these crimes because he was normal, then every hit man, every dictator, every organized criminals, every person that has learned to kill and learned to accept killing ought to be excused with him, because they are no different. They are no different. John Gacy learned to kill. And he kept on killing. And he knew he was killing. I don’t doubt that he was able to show genuine love and care for both of his wives; for his original, natural children; or for his stepdaughters later.

“All the doctors explained to you is that a sociopath or a psychopath has certain areas of certain relationships where his affect is shallow; where he doesn’t form a true, loving relationship; where he doesn’t really let himself be relied on by other people—in the true sense of the word, doesn’t really form a lot of true friendships. But he can still, within his own sphere, within those people that are important to his personality, his ego makeup, the way he looks at life—he can form those genuine relationships. And he did. He did. And that doesn’t mean he can’t tell and know that he is killing, and know that what he is doing is wrong. And those are the issues that you are here to decide.

“You are not here to decide why John Gacy killed. You are not here to analyze John Gacy, or write a book on psychotherapy, or plan a treatment plan for John Gacy. You are only here to decide the question of whether or not he was legally responsible for his actions at the time of these crimes—and nothing else.

“If you want to restructure our society based on the psychoanalytical theories of Dr. Morrison, Dr. Brocher, and Dr. Friedman and Dr. Rappaport—you know, the psychoanalysts, number one, very seldom cure anyone. Number two, their statistical percentage of predicting human behavior is less than a random guess. And yet they come here on this witness stand and, based on their own high-blown theories, ask you to excuse this man for murder.

“What would they have us do if we are to run our society the way they ask you to? Are we to seek out and find all the three- to five-year-olds that hide silk panties under the front porch and incarcerate them somewhere?

“Because if we don’t, certainly they are going to become murderers.

“I’m guessing here, but I don’t think there really are a great number of kids that would fit into that group. Maybe it wouldn’t be too much trouble to keep a watchful eye on a kid that masturbates into his mother’s underwear and then buries them under the house. Just sayin’.”

Kunkle continued in a discourse attacking the credibility of the defense’s doctors. To listen to him, there were no insane people—only good people and evil ones. There were no gray areas; no nuances; no broken, damaged, or tragic individuals that were incapable of controlling themselves. Certainly, there were no doctors that were able to determine such a malady.

“The bottom-line problem with psychodynamic or psychoanalytic theories as it relates to the criminal justice system goes right to the core of their theories, and that is the predetermination. Because
when you turn that around, what it really means is that no one is responsible for their actions. That is really what they are saying to you. We can’t run society that way. The laws don’t say that. Common sense doesn’t say that. We must be responsible for our actions.

“We talk about some of them individually: Dr. Eliseo. First, let me say that in no way am I blaming Dr. Eliseo, or inferring anything improper on his part, in terms of the way that he chose to base his testimony solely on psychological testing, not knowing any of the facts of the case. Now he testified based on what was given to him. On one day of testing, January 13, 1980, after the court has ordered that the jury for this trial will be selected in Rockford, Illinois, suddenly, out of the blue, never having appeared before on any discovery materials or any reports tendered or anything else, we suddenly get a report from a Rockford psychologist. But based on his one day of psychological testing, he tells you that he is able to look back in history, in his crystal ball, and tell you that John Gacy was a paranoid schizophrenia continually for at least an eight-year period of time from 1972 through 1980. I suggest to you that that opinion is patently ridiculous.”

It is a wonder why anyone would spend all those years, all that effort and time studying the human mind, pursuing a PhD, when, according to Mr. Kunkle, it was a worthless exercise, it was “patently ridiculous.”

One of the hardest things to do in a courtroom is to sit and keep your mouth shut while the other side attempts to take your case apart. At least in a bar, a tavern, or at the dining room table, you can interrupt the son of a bitch that you are arguing with. You can wave your arms around, show your dismay with poignant, well-placed sighs and grunts. A huge roll of the eyes and a disgusted shake of the head always come in handy. In court, however, these antics are frowned upon. They are a good way to
wind up being held in contempt. Who writes these rules, anyway? Certainly not an Italian?

Mr. Kunkle went on. He was nowhere near done.

He continued to rail against the defense’s expert witnesses and their theories with reference to Mr. Gacy. He was fully convinced that this case was a classic struggle between good and evil. He seemed blinded to the possibility that there are damaged and broken brains in people, which cause them to act in ways contrary to their will. I always believed that this was actually helpful to our case. I believed, and still do, that it is easier for people to accept that an individual is either all bad or all good. The kid that pulls the wings off of butterflies for fun is never the kid that helps little old ladies across the street, and vice versa. However, when someone is capable of great good but still commits unspeakable wrongs, there must be a reason. Something must be broken. Something deep inside that person is not working properly. It was my contention that further study was an absolute imperative if we as a people were ever to understand this dilemma. Evidently, Kunkle disagreed.

“What makes the defendant tick? Let’s study him, let’s find out. Psychiatrists have been at it for ninety years now, since Freud. And man has been at it since the beginning of recorded history. And there have always been murderers. And unfortunately, there will probably always be murderers. Now, I would like to know just how much time Dr. Friedman, in between testimonials, and Dr. Rappaport, from Highland Park, spend down in Stateville interviewing Richard Speck. Or how much time they spend going around the country talking to Charles Manson, or whoever. What kind of nonsense is this? Decide your verdict so we can study the defendant? That’s not an issue in this case. That’s not an issue. It’s a red herring. It’s a phony.”