John Wayne Gacy (7 page)

Gacy left the body while he let the dog out into the backyard. He went to his car and popped the trunk. He returned, rolled the body of Rob Piest in the old rug, picked it up with one final colossal grunt, and waddled out to the trunk of his car.

Once the body was safely in the trunk, Gacy relaxed. He let the dog back in and locked up the house. He drove out of his driveway, constantly checking his rearview mirror for sedans without chrome. There were none. He headed south on Interstate 294 to where it connected with Interstate 55 and drove south on 55 toward Joliet.

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The huge suspension bridge that spans the muddy brown Des Plaines River, where it intersects and churns 150 feet below Interstate 55 is bleak, unlit, and foreboding at night, especially when the traffic is light. It looms out of the darkness and suddenly fills the windshield when approached at high speed. The area surrounding the bridge is mostly forested and pitch-black. The only lights in view are a mile away and just to the east, where a huge Exxon oil refinery—with thousands of small twinkling lights on the various, odd-shaped structures and pipelines—glistens like a miniature Emerald City in the distance.

As Gacy approached the bridge, he began to slow well below the minimum speed limit of forty-five on the interstate. A Peterbilt semi, hauling cross-country, grew in his rearview mirror, then thundered by with a windstorm in its wake, shaking the big Oldsmobile like a toy. He was just about to stop on the bridge when he heard a warning of a “smokey” in the vicinity of the bridge over the CB. He immediately hit the gas and sped up. He exited at Arsenal Road a short distance ahead and maneuvered the long dark cloverleaf, crossed over I-55, and returned to the highway in the northbound lanes heading back toward the bridge. He searched ahead. Where was this trooper? Gacy then proceeded past the bridge again to the exit for Bluff Road. He again did a turnaround by crossing over the interstate. While on the Bluff Road bridge, he stopped. He looked both ways, north and south, and saw only the distant taillights of a truck getting smaller as he watched. There was no trooper, no “smokey,” as far as the eye could see in any direction. It was only then that Gacy realized that the “smokey” in question … was him. His car had the spotlights and antenna. His car looked like an unmarked cop car! He had designed it that way.

It was approaching midnight, and it was cold. December was taking hold in a big way, especially out there in the fuckin’ sticks. Cops were waiting for him in the Des Plaines police station. He was late. If he didn’t hurry, they would probably be back at his
door, pestering him. Gacy was annoyed. He was sick of this whole exercise. It was becoming a bother. What a pain in the ass. What was he so worried about? He had done this before. He got into his car and floored it. He screeched around the cloverleaf and entered the southbound lanes again. He shot over the bridge at a dangerous speed and screamed back down to the Arsenal Road exit. He repeated his turnaround maneuver; only this time, he accomplished it in half the time. He wanted to be headed north. He wanted to be headed home.

Gacy screeched to a stop on the big suspension bridge at approximately the midway point. He popped the trunk and got out, grumbling and bitching like this whole matter was an enormous imposition on his time. He wrestled the contents out of his trunk and, with a gross, guttural yell that echoed through the night, flung it over his shoulder. He again waddled under the weight, and when he reached the railing, puffing and gasping, he hoisted his load up onto the top rail.

John Wayne Gacy released the body of Robert Jerome Piest into the blackness below. The only sound was the howling of the December wind through the massive iron girders of the bridge. Then seconds later … a distant splash.

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O
N HIS WAY
back to the city, Gacy rarely let the speedometer dip below 90 mph. The drive back was normally at least an hour without traffic, and he was trying to improve on that time. He wanted this business with the damned Des Plaines police to be over. He would give his goddamned statement and be done with it. He was very late, but Gacy intended to get to the police department come hell or high water.

Interstate 294, also called the Tri-State Tollway, is actually a bypass. It allows truckers and travelers that are passing through Chicago to avoid using I-94, the actual interstate route, which slices
right through the heart of downtown Chicago. The Tri-State skirts around the city to the west through dozens of densely populated suburbs. The area is much too populated to have the common style of rest stops along the roadway, so the State of Illinois has constructed oasis-style rest stops, which are built over the tollway like a bridge but with restaurants and gas stations and public restrooms. As Gacy screamed under the Hinsdale Oasis, pedal to the metal, a truck was exiting the oasis and entering the highway, but had not picked up full speed. Gacy had to change lanes, normally a simple maneuver; however, black ice had formed on the pavement due the midday thaw and the nighttime hard freeze. The big Oldsmobile began to fishtail. Gacy overcompensated. Suddenly, he was in a free skid. The car hit a snowbank, and it exploded all around him. The car continued to slide fully off the road and landed completely askew in snow, ice, and mud, ten feet from the highway.

“What the fuck else is going to happen tonight?” Gacy screamed at the windshield. “What!”

He wasn’t hurt; he was pissed—totally pissed. Here he was, trying to do the right thing, following through on this asshole cop’s requirement that he show up and tell him the same fucking thing that he had already told him. And now this. What next?

He took a deep breath, got out of the car, and surveyed his predicament. As he walked around the car, with each step he took, his shoes poked through the thin layer of ice atop the snow and plunged into the sloppy mud underneath. What a fucking mess. He was stuck, no question about it—good and stuck.

Gacy went into the trunk and hoisted his spare tire out and put it on the ground in front of the rear drive wheel. He was trying to use this little Chicagoland trick to get traction, but it was futile. The clock was ticking, and his opportunity to get to Des Plaines was slipping away when at about 2:00 a.m., a tollway employee, Dennis Johnson, noticed the disabled vehicle. He pulled up and asked Gacy if he needed a tow truck. At first, Gacy resisted this. It
cost big bucks, and he thought he could get the car out eventually. But upon reflection, he finally agreed, and a tow truck was called. It came twenty minutes later, and the car was winched free from the mud, ice, and snow.

A report of the incident was filed with the Illinois Tollway Authority. It stated that at 2:30 a.m. on December 13, 1978, a 1979 Oldsmobile 98, bearing Illinois plate number PDM 42, was tended to and freed from a spinout at mile marker 29 in the northbound lanes of Interstate 294.

At 3:20 a.m., Gacy presented himself, caked in mud and totally disheveled, at the front desk of the Des Plaines police headquarters and asked for Lieutenant Kozenczak. He was told that the lieutenant had waited as long as he thought was reasonable but then had to leave. Mr. Gacy would have to return in the morning.

3

S
O THERE’S NO
question about it. It’s true. Mr. John Wayne Gacy left out a few pieces of pertinent information when he called me the first time. What I didn’t know about my new client vastly outweighed what I did know about him. However, and I haven’t mentioned this yet, John Gacy was my first client. He was, actually, my one and only client. Plus, I was intrigued by the puzzle he presented. Needless to say, I took his call quite seriously.

Don’t get me wrong: he wasn’t the
very
first client that I had ever had in my life. It’s not like I had never seen the inside of a courtroom before. I had. It’s not like I had never represented a person in court before. I had. In fact, I had been living in courtrooms for the past five years. That’s what you do when you work for the Office of the Public Defender of the County of Cook, State of Illinois. You live in courtrooms. You live there, you eat there, and often enough, you sleep there.

Doesn’t that title sound impressive, the Office of the Public Defender? Then you have the really impressive part, the County of Cook, State of Illinois part. Sounds pretty important, huh? What the office is, in reality, is a conglomeration of disparate, harried individuals, most of them very new to the profession, scurrying here and running there like chickens with their heads cut off, overworked
and underpaid, many of whom are asking themselves daily, “Whose friggin’ idea was this?” Men and women of all stripes that had finally come to the conclusion that perhaps they should have listened to that parent, that mom or that dad, who told them time and time again to become a doctor or a stockbroker, maybe a banker, anything but a lawyer. Son (or princess), they would say, the jokes they tell about lawyers are true. Don’t you know that? People don’t make those things up. They are true stories. Sharks? Professional courtesy? You have heard the shark jokes, right? That is exactly what lawyers are—they are sharks. Is that what you want? To be a shark? But of course, we didn’t listen. No one seems to listen to their parents at that age.

And me, I was their boss. Sam L. Amirante, supervisor, Third District Office, the boss of the entire disparate and harried troop. I had already done my years of harried scurrying, and I had been promoted. So I was their boss, at least I was until the day that I submitted my resignation.

I had, in fact, submitted that resignation only a few days before I received the fateful call from Mr. Gacy. I had finally decided it was time to strike out on my own, to hang up the proverbial shingle, to become a private criminal defense attorney. I had done my internship. I had worked in the mill that was the PD’s office. I had been trying cases for five years—lots of misdemeanors, lots of felonies, a couple of murders—and it was time.

So I leased an office in a building in Park Ridge with several other lawyers, friends of mine. I moved in a few sticks of secondhand office furniture that I picked up, including my first desk, which, if you have ever had a first desk, then you know … is a great feeling. I tacked up my diploma, license, and other lawyerly documents and mementos on my freshly painted wall. I put my wife and kid’s pictures on the credenza, and presto, I was a criminal defense attorney for hire.

When John Gacy called me, I was in jeans and a sweatshirt. I didn’t have any clients to see because I didn’t have any clients.
So why get dressed up? I was so new at being a private criminal defense attorney I still had a check or two coming from the PD’s office for vacation that I had never taken. Therefore, when I say that Mr. John Wayne Gacy was my first real client, that would be true.

Mr. Gacy called the right guy, though. I say that without blushing because I was absolutely dedicated to my job, passionate, immersed. In spite of the fact that my dad was one of those parents that wanted me to be a doctor, and that some people look down their noses at lawyers, until they need one, that is. Then everybody loves their lawyer. In spite of the fact that being a lawyer is a 24-7 job that sometimes precludes what most people would call a normal life. I loved being a lawyer, still do. It suits me.

I’m not sure why Gacy called me. There was a lot of wild speculation by others about that. Did I chase the case? Did I steal it from the PD’s office? Who was this young upstart, and why was he representing this guy? Why was he in front of all those cameras?

Well, during my time at the public defender’s office, I had met a lot of people. By coincidence, the Des Plaines police headquarters was in the same building as the Third District Office of the Public Defender, and I’m a likable, amiable sort, I guess. So I kinda knew everyone, and everyone kinda knew me.

That could explain why Gacy chose me to represent him. I was connected. I had clout. People might think that, I suppose. However, I choose to assume that it was because of my stellar reputation as an up-and-coming young trial attorney, together with my rugged, movie star good looks and my winning, ebullient personality. Actually, I’m just over five feet tall and come from a long line of short, stocky proud Italian men with gruff voices and easy smiles. If I shave too early in the morning, by five or six o’clock in the evening, I tend to look a little like Nixon did when he debated Kennedy. I’ve actually been mistaken for the defendant once or twice in the courtroom after a long day, so I don’t know why he picked me. I guess I’ll never know; he never told me, unless, of course, it was
because he knew that I was an authentic true believer, one of the last of the breed, and proud to be.

I was also very active in Cook County politics, so I got to know many of the local politicians through political channels. Gacy was always impressed with that. I knew nearly all of the prosecutors. I had tried cases against most of them; the others I had met at political fund-raisers or bar association meetings. In spite of the huge size of Cook County and the greater Chicagoland area, the legal community is comparatively small and quite tight-knit. Everybody’s reputation precedes them. I had a good reputation, if I do say so myself. Gacy knew that. Maybe that was it. Suffice it to say, he called me. I was now his lawyer.

In keeping with my promise to my new client, I started making some calls. At this point, I was doing him a favor just like he had asked. I had not been officially retained. But I was understandably curious as to why this guy, this pudgy, unassuming, glad-handing, small-time politician was being followed around twenty-four hours a day by the Des Plaines police. This was an unusual amount of attention to pay to anyone, except the most serious of suspects. The more I checked into it with clerks and others, the more curious I became. Nobody, but nobody, was talking. If they knew anything, they were not saying. There was, however, a bit of a buzz about the case. Even the local press had become marginally interested in the missing teen from the northwest suburbs, Rob Piest.