Morbid - John Wayne Gacy Part 2: The Murders

Episode Date: May 4, 2020

Tonight we continue our deep dive into the damp, smelly and super greasy world of John Wayne Gacy. Tonight's episode focuses on the abductions, the assaults and the murders that took place over a 6 year period in the mid to late 70s. This pig took the lives of 33 young, teenage boys and he did it in some of the most disturbing ways imaginable. Fair warning, there are some descriptions and mentioning of sexual assault and rape. Books mentioned/used in this episode: John Wayne Gacy: Defending a Monster by Sam Amirante The Man Who Killed Boys: The John Wayne Gacy Story by Clifford L. Linedecker Buried Dreams: Inside the Mind of John Wayne Gacy by Tim Cahill Killer Clown by Terry Sullivan This episode sponsored by: Purple Mattress Experience the next evolution of sleep. Go to Purple.com/morbid, and use promo code morbid. For a limited time you’ll get $150 off any Purple mattress order of $1500 or more! Terms apply. Athena Club Stop using razors that underdeliver and switch to Athena Club! Sign up today and you’ll get 15% off your first order! Just go to AthenaClub.com and use promo code morbid. Cowritten by Alaina Urquhart, Ash Kelley & Dave White (Since 10/2022)Produced & Edited by Mikie Sirois (Since 2023)Research by Dave White (Since 10/2022), Alaina Urquhart & Ash KelleyListener Correspondence & Collaboration by Debra LallyListener Tale Video Edited by Aidan McElman (Since 6/2025) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, weirdos, I'm Elena. I'm Ash. And this is a full ass morbid. John Wayne Gacy series. Yeah, we are still hanging out with this big, ugly bastard. Gross. And I thought we were going to be able to do it in two, but it's definitely going to be a three-parter, everybody. Whoop-ditty-whoop.

We love a three-parter around to you. John Wayne Gacy, I mean, he killed 33 people, so it's a lot. It's a lot to talk about. And I don't want to just like gloss over certain things. So, you know, one of the big parts of his case is how he got caught, the surveillance that the police did, his interviews after he got caught. So it's, I want that to be its own episode. And I didn't want to just be like fluff over it. No, that definitely should be its own episode. I totally agree with that. Yeah. So today is going to be a whole ass discussion about all of his murders. So it's going to be a. real rough episode, but we're going to get through it together. We'll do our best. We will. We'll do our damn best. But first, we have a couple business orders to take care of. So as always, I will start by

reading the shows off. So June 2nd at the Good Night's Comedy Club in Raleigh, North Carolina, which I think might be happening. Either way, it's going to happen at some point. So Raleigh. And I got the pants for it. She's got pants. June 3rd at the Comedy Zone in Charlotte, North Carolina. Come to Charlotte. We're coming for you. October 11th, two shows at Talia Hall in Chicago. If you're confused about what showtime is for you, just ask your ticket person, who you got tickets from. Your ticket person, you know that person. The ticket people. You know them. And it's spooky season and it's spooky theater, and we have a really fun case for you. Y'all. July 8th at the Comedy Works South in Greenwood Village, Colorado. Colorado. I think we will definitely see you in July.

July 11th at the Wilba Theater in Boston. Come on, Wilba Theater. And make sure you're buying tickets to that show, guys, because regardless of when it happens, it's going to happen. Yes, the Patronus Eye that are able to use the Discord chat room, or chat thing, have started a Boston chat group, and it's amazing. Yay! Love that.

And all the other, there's chat groups for all these tours, and it's really exciting. So fun, join the Patreon. Exactly. August 11th at the Punchline Comedy Club in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia. I'm really excited to see you. September 16th at the D.C. improv in Washington, D.C.

All the monuments. September 23rd, Nashville, Tennessee at Zanis. Zanis. We've heard good things about you. Hey-yo. And then last but not least, September 24th, Huntsville, Alabama, go roll tide, go. a war eagle still don't remember that thing the person said but I'm going to look into it at stand-up life all of those things it's really bothering me because I read it and I was like oh that's a really good idea and then I was like shit I can't I lost it I think I read the same one and I also forgot so

we'll find it we'll find it and we'll there's many sources of contact for everybody there is we'll figure it out guys we're working on it um other than that I think we are going to shout out some Patronuses. So for Patronuses, we have Alexis No Pellel. No Pellello. Alexis No Pellello. Hello. Yes. Hello. Alice Parker. Alice Parker, we love you. Alice with Y. I love that. Oh, love that. Fancy. And then we have C. Brendler. Thank you for being a Patronus. Candice Arnette. Candice Arnett. You bet. I like that. Two Erika's. We have an Erica Dirst and in Erica Goudron, I'm going to say. Erica Durst and Erica Gudron, you make Erica sound good.

You do. We have Madison F. Lewis. Madison F. Lewis, thank you so much. Corinne Hannah. Corinna. Two first names. I dig it. We love it.

Lizzie Keenan. Lizzie Keenan. You have a famous murderer's name. Heyo. I've said heyo probably 45 times this episode. And last but not least, our patron. in 99 shadows. Thank you. 99 shadows. Thank you. And we've realized, well, I've realized, you probably have to, the best way to request no shout out, because I am seeing some people that

don't want a shout out, if you could put that in your name somehow on Patreon, that would be a lot easier and there will be no accidental shoutouts if you don't want one. Yeah, because sometimes it's hard to keep track of all the various no shoutouts and all that. So if you just put it right there we'll see it and we won't have to worry about it yeah because i don't want to uh disrespect anybody that doesn't want their name to be shouted out i don't want to shout your ass out if you don't want to do that can't be calling people out can't be calling people out my new year's resolution was called them out 20 20 but not if they don't want to be called out no we don't want to do that i'm kidding so i think we can just jump right into the case now um but before we begin

I did get, we got an email that I just wanted to read part of really quick because it kind of gives a little more insight into one part of last, last week's episode that like we were both a little confused on. I don't know if I saw this email. Maybe not. I don't know. But this is from Lindsay. And Lindsay is a, she works for her sheriff's office as the sex and violent offender registrar. and her husband is a probation and parole officer for like 17 years now. What a fucking duo.

Right? So she was saying that last week we were questioning, you know, he kept getting these assault charges and he was on probation. Why was he not getting, why was this not getting back to his probation officer? And she was like, let me clear that up for you because she was like, it absolutely should go back to the probation officer, but it doesn't a lot of times. Oh, wow. And she was explaining why. just thought it was good to kind of read some of this so people could see. She said in the John Wayne Gacy part one episode, you guys were discussing the sexual assault

charge that Gacy picked up right after being released from prison. And you both seem surprised by the fact that this information didn't make it back to his probation officer. The fact of the matter is that sometimes it simply isn't reported to them. If it didn't happen in the same area or jurisdiction that probation and parole officer is supervising, that would present a problem. It would be difficult to know that Gacy picked the... up a new charge if he didn't sit in jail long and the law enforcement entity or DA's office

who was bringing the charges didn't inform the probation or parole officer. It would be wonderful if there was some kind of universal system that would report all that directly to them, but the reality is we just aren't there yet. The probation officers have to spend a ton of time looking up things on their own, and they're responsible for so many probationers at a time. It's an enormous amount of information to keep up with, and therefore they depend on those other agencies to report to them if they have contact with any of their probationers. And Ash is right. It is most certainly a violation.

It is a violation of the rules of probation for the state to pick up a new charge. However, it is just a rule violation, not a law violation. So let's say that it's reported to his probation officer that he had picked up a new charge. The probation officer then writes a violation report, sends it to the DA, who convicted Gacy of the original crime, that sent him to prison, informing the DA of the rule violation. It is then up to the DA to issue an arrest warrant for the motion to revoke prison time that is now on paper. Based on that rule violation, and then they would have a bunch of hearings to decide if they want to revoke his probation and send him back to prison. Damn.

Yeah. This end resulting in prison time rarely happens here, unfortunately. Our prisons are overcrowded, and the judges and district attorneys are under a lot of pressure from legislators to not send people back to prison unless it's a last resort. So she was just kind of telling us like this is the reality of the situation which I appreciated. So I like message her back and was like, thank you so. I like hearing from people who have like firsthand experience with this stuff to be like here's how it works. Let me tell you. So Lindsay, thank you and your husband for doing awesome stuff.

And thank you for letting me know that. Such a cool email. That was it was cool to hear how that works. Yeah. Because it just kind of cleared it up. Because I remember both of us were like, why the hell wouldn't. that kept back to his probation officer. Yeah. Like I was even questioning, I'm like,

I saw this in several sources, but like, is it real? Is it like, or is this just like bullshit that I'm... It was like, yo, let me tell you. Yeah, it makes sense. So when we last left off, he had already killed, he had already done his first kill. And

this is in 1972 when another serial killer, who we will cover in a future episode, he's a doozy, named Dean Coral was discovered. Gacy was actually inspired by him to use his rack board that he made. Gross. Because Dean Coral loved a wooden plank. Oh, that's, I just, oh. So, I know. I just broke. So, so when we talked about it last time, we were saying how, you know, John Wayne Gacy loved, he was a

great neighbor. People liked him. He was very jovial, very, he, you know, very talkative. People thought he was funny. He seemingly was a family man. but on the on the on the end side he was not at all but he he gave a good facade to everybody around him when he was like super involved in politics and had like a ton of people in a circle too yeah and he loved to do you know those block parties that we talked about like he would throw theme parties uh like the country western theme and all that um so i found this quick quote of his that kind of explains the parties that he used to throw that he used to throw I was going to correct you and then I was like I'm a let it slide it's been a long day I work today so I'm like

he said quote they were huge parties that politicians and everyone would come to we would have hundreds of people sometimes like 400 people 400 people and I had my self-made family I called it self-made family I had two beautiful little daughters Tammy and April they were Carol's kids you know but I loved them too they were like my kids too in 1974 we had a luau party a part a party with a luo theme grass skirts and shit like that hawaiian you know people dressed up Hawaiian people dressed up Hawaiian wow john way he talks is just like you know fucking luau luau theme you know a luau theme you know a luau theme dressed up as Hawaiian people dressing up as fucking Hawaiians they're Hawaiian everything was Hawaiian like he just keeps repeating shit and you're like are

okay sir he's like lays flowers every interview I've seen of him you're like you are a lot like he like re-s says things. Yeah, and he's, and he's just like a goof. So you can understand how if you didn't know what a fucking evil pig monster he was, that you would just be like, this goofy bastard. Like, just be like, all right. Well, it's like what we were talking about in the mini series, a mini episode, how like people that knew Anders. Yeah. Is it Anders or Anders? I'm sorry. Anders. Onders. People that knew Anders were like, holy shit, like he did that. I'm sure the same thing with John Wayne Gacey. Exactly. Serial killers and killers in general always have like two sides, it seems. Yeah. And I think with John Wayne Gacy, it seemed like people definitely liked him.

They thought he was a good neighbor. They kind of had this view of him. But then when he got caught, I think a lot of them were kind of like, yeah, okay. Really? Yeah, it's like this weird. Because they knew he liked younger boys. He was always surrounded with younger boys. He had already been arrested for assault before.

So I think they were just kind of like, yeah, we didn't see it coming. But like, we kind of saw it coming now that it's happened. Do you know, like, kind sight? He turned a blind eye because the parties were good. We love that luow. Yeah. Like his, so his home was at 8213 West Somerdale Avenue. And neighbors of that home did say later, they were like, yeah, we'd see him come in at like all hours a night and leave at all hours a night.

And like, sometimes he had teen boys with him. But like, he had them work with him a lot, so we didn't know. And then they'd say, yeah, in the middle of the night, we would sometimes hear like screaming and crying over there. but like, you know, nothing crazy. Like people were just kind of like, you know, nothing crazy. Just some screaming and crying. Yeah, I'm like, that's not normal. So last time we talked about that kid Donald, who he was arrested for sexually assaulting,

Donald's father was in the JCs with John Wayne Gasey. So Edward Lynch was the 16-year-old that also went to the police with Donald's and said he had also been sexually assaulted by, Gacy. He knew Gacy because he worked with him in one of the KFC restaurants. Okay. One night, he said Gacy did the classic Gacy move of inviting him over, asking him if you wanted to watch some porn because obviously. What a casual fucking invite. So casual. So casual. It's all about just... Come to my porn party. You want to have a drink and watch some porn, bro. And it's like, is this normal?

He says it like, it's watching like a football game. Yeah. I'm like, maybe I'm just like a sheltered person. I don't know. I just never had a friend of mine be like, so do you want to have like a glass of wine and like sit down and watch some porn? Like it's never been a thing. I'm glad it's never been a thing though. Yeah. I mean, not complaining. Strange to me. So during this, his wife was in the hospital after giving birth to their second child, by the way.

Oh, awesome. Yeah. That was like his first wife. Gacy played a game where they play pool. And if the kid won, he would give him a blowjob. oh yeah you know just normal fun like strip pool yeah the kid won so edward won but he said no thanks creep like i don't want that yeah like we can just play regular well him refusing this uh reward for winning pissed gacy off so he ended up grabbing a knife and cornered this kid in his bedroom they wrestled and gacy

cut the kid's arm and when he saw the blood he suddenly started profusely apologizing and bandaged his arm for him. Oh, that's weird. Yeah. So they went back down to the basement and the kid was like, I want to leave. Like, I'm done. I'm good. And he tried to calm him down with some porn, you know. Okay. And afterwards, he brought out a chain and padlock. And he then chained to the kid's arms behind his back and asked him, can you get out of them? Like, it's a trick. I use it as a clown. And he was like, nope, can't do it. So he pushed him into a chair, straddled him and started trying to lost him. Oh. So this kid kicks Gacy to the floor. Good. And so this, so Gacy got angry, brought out a cot and shoved the kid down on it. He chained his feet and then choked him.

Lynch pretended a blackout because he was like, I didn't know what else to do. And Gacy got concerned and kept asking if he was all right suddenly. And then he just drove him home. Oh my God. That's horrific. Yeah. Like he is so imbalanced. It's unreal. Just the back and forth of doing something so evil and then seeing the blood and being like, oh, let me help you. And then like starting it all again and then being like, oh, let me help you again. That's the thing.

It's like, he's such an evil monster. Like when you see how like predatory he is and that he goes out and looks for younger boys to like do this too. Like he picks them off the street. And then like he gets in these weird situations where all of a sudden he's feeling like, like fatherly or something. I don't even know. So when he was arrested the couple of times that he was, at one point he was evaluated for his mental state by Dr. Eugene F. Goren. And Dr. Goren said, quote, the most striking aspect of the test results is the patient's total denial of responsibility for anything that has happened for him.

He can produce a, quote, alibi for everything. He alternately blames the environment while presenting him. as a victim of circumstance and blames other people while presenting himself as the victim of others who are just out to get him. Although this could be construed as paranoid, I do not regard it that way. Rather, the patient attempts to assure a sympathetic response by depicting himself as being at the mercy of a hostile environment. To his way of thinking, a major objective is to outwith the other fellow and take advantage of him before being taken advantage of himself. He does things without thinking through the consequences and exercises poor judgment. He does not seem to have remorse over the admitted deeds,

which are part of his present difficulty. So he's basically like he's remorseless and he doesn't take responsibility for anything. Okay. Which we'll see later, probably in part three mostly, that he's totally like, no, I didn't do that. And then he'll alternately give you details about each murder and then be like, oh, no, I didn't do that. I had help and somebody else did it. Oh, he says that? didn't know that. Yeah, he likes to claim that he had, uh, he had, like, people help him accomplices.

Oh, that's interesting. So, a 20-year-old man named Michael Reed met Gacy while Gacy was what he called cruising in Chicago. And cruising to him was going out and basically what, like, BTC like to do the hunt kind of thing. Yeah. Right. Um, like, oh, BTC called it trolling. Trolling. BTC was a fucking troll. Because of course Dennis called it trolling. Because he had code names for everything. He is a troll. So he was out cruising in Chicago and Gacy offered him work and also offered him to perform oral sex on him. Because why not offer one without the other?

He agreed and Reed ended up starting a business with Gacy at one point doing maintenance work around the neighborhood. Oh, wow. So they like started off fine. Reed moved into the home that Gacy and his mother bought together and he slept in Gacy's room. One afternoon, Gacy asked Reed to get a fuse that had fallen under the workbench in the garage. And as he was stooping down to look under there, he all of a sudden got slammed on the back of his head with something. All of a sudden, he sees blood like dripping down his face. And he's like, what the fuck?

He turns and sees that Gacy's holding a hammer that he has just whacked him in the head with. That happens. They recreated that in the Gacy movie. Oh, yeah, I remember that. So Reed grabs Gacy and is like, why the fuck did you just hit me in the head with a hammer? Like, what the hell's going on? I was trying to help you out, dude. Yeah, like, what?

And Gacy was basically like, I don't really know, but I suddenly wanted to kill you. He said that to it? Yeah, like, he was like, I had a sudden urge to kill you. I don't know. What? It's like a tick or something. Yeah. But in the next day, Reed moved out, but nothing came of it.

Like, he didn't go to the police. police. He's probably too scared to because these people do go to the police, but nothing happens. Exactly. So he and Gacy and Carol, who was his second wife, we talked about in the first part, they had a strained relationship from the start. It wasn't blissful at all. They wouldn't speak.

Because Gacy was out at all hours of the night and she probably heard screaming and crying. Oh, yeah. And they wouldn't speak for weeks at a time because Gacy was like having orgies and hotels and shit and spending all his time with young boys. Right. And Carol was constantly, she started to constantly become suspicious of one, what he was doing in that garage that he wouldn't allow her to come out to. He would not allow her or the kids in the garage.

Which is bizarre. It's like his dad with the basement. Exactly. It definitely goes right back to it. And she was really getting suspicious of the horrific smell that was starting to emanate from the crawl space. there were also bugs that were suddenly coming into the main parts of the home and coupled with the smell she was like what is going on like you need to fix this

he spread quick lime to try to stop the smell and eventually gasey told her he poured some concrete to stop the smell which he was saying was caused by water runoff from a broken sewer pipe and that doesn't smell that bad yeah like he was literally like okay so it's just everything's wet down there so it's just smelling she's like it doesn't smell like molds though yeah and it's like and eventually that it was like basically unlivable at one point because there were like gnats and black bugs all over the house like and they were like concentrated in one hallway in this one bathroom i guess which was right over the crawl space right that's so horrific and the fact that kids were there living through that yeah that's awful and this is really the beginning

of like him picking up boys and it seems like he was almost like testing his limits. Right. So he picks up a kid named David Edgecombe. He had worked for Gacy several months before kind of quitting suddenly like a lot of teenagers do. And he quit suddenly to go on a trip with his friends. So he just was like, bye. Late one night, Gacy knocked on his fucking bedroom window at his mom's house. What?

In Park Ridge. asked if he wanted to, quote, go party. No, thank you. Like what? So David took his husky dog with him and he agreed because he figured it was kind of a way to smooth over him like bailing on the job so quick. He was like, I didn't want him to be mad at me. So I was just like, you know what, I'll just do this.

So Gacy brought him to the Democratic Precinct headquarters and offered him cash to drink a half pint of rum. What? David ended up passing out and woke up in Gacy's, garage handcuffed. That's so terrifying. When he woke up, Gacy was straddling him and choking him while saying, quote, you son of a bitch, you'll never quit on me again.

Jesus Christ. Yeah. So David, of course, is like fighting him back, but he's handcuffed. And he's screaming as loud as he can. Well, he had his husky dog with him who followed them to Gacy's house. So his dog tries to get through the door and is like flipping out. because he can hear him. So Gacy just stopped and brought him home, like a psycho. I'm so glad nothing happened to the dog.

I thought you were going to tell me something happened. No, he just stopped and brought both of them home. Like, nothing happened. And it's like... You imagine that ride home? Like, does he just like hang out with you and like, like, shoot the shit? Like, what? Well, and how much, like, ego and, like, just feeling of, like, invincibility you have?

Like, the assurance you have in yourself. No. He's not going to tell anyone, and if he does, nothing's going to happen to me. Because it happened to him before. Yeah. It's crazy. He thinks he's invincible. Yeah.

So Gacy started, this is when he started having a long string of sexual assaults on young boys. And he started using that handcuff trick over and over again. He also had the rope trick, which was similar. It's like, that sounds horrific. He uses rope. He tells you to try to get out of it. You can't get out of it. He tightens it.

And you're at his mercy. When it almost starts like, like in a like, sexual way. Oh, it definitely does. And it starts as him saying, you know, I'm a clown, you know, I'm a registered clown, right? And then he'll show them the handcuffs. And I'm sure he had a pair of like clown

handcuffs that probably have like a little button that he could do a handcuff trick and like press the button and they'd open and that's it. And he probably gives the kids these other handcuffs and it's like, you can't get out of there now. Because what he would do was he would give them to them and be like, can you get out

of them? And they'd be like, no, how do you do? it and he'd be like you want to know the trick and they'd say yeah and he'd go you need the keys oh that's so great and then they'd just be like what and he was like yeah now you're mine like you can't like hate it hate it like he had all these moments of just being like he has these fucked up statements he says to these kids that i say a couple of them here but you're just like he's a scary motherfucker like sadistic monster like these poor kids the fear that must have flashed through them like dealing with this fucking monster and he's also just like just huge disgusting pig of a man.

That's the other thing that's so scary about him is he's so big and these are teen boys. Like you're not usually as big as like however old John Wayne Gacy is man. You know what I mean? And he's stout too. So he's short. Right. But he's like big. Yeah.

Like he's thick. He is thick. He is thick. And so that's a lot of power and like squatted power coming at you. Well, a lot of the times like you're saying now he is sitting on you. So yeah. Anytime anybody sits on you, it's hard to... Yeah, it's like dead weight, so it's really scary.

It's really stressing me out. He would also use chloroform to incapacate his victim, so he would just use the chloroform rag over your face, like boom you're out. I want to know where these people just find, like, readily available chloroform. Like, why isn't always available? You can always find anything you need. But one of these boys that he was part of this whole string of sexual assaults that ended up living through the experience, unfortunately still very much victims. One of these boys was 16-year-old Tony Antonucci.

He was tall. He was athletic. He was also a wrestler. Okay. Now, remember that. So he was volunteering cleaning up the Democratic precinct headquarters, and he was kind of working under Gacy. This was in 1975. Gacy made a pass at him while they were cleaning up one night. And he was like, no, no, I'm good. and Gacy would not take no for an answer.

So finally Tony picked up a chair and threatened him with it. It was like, I will fucking beat you with this chair if you don't go get away from me. And so, of course, Gacy, when he starts doing that case, he's like, dude, I'm just joking. Like, why are you being so? And like, he loved to use the F word to, because he, because John Wayne Gacy Gacy finally admits to himself that he is bisexual. And he will say that out loud. I am bisexual.

I do like to have sex with boys. But to him, he will not see that as like, that's not gay. That's not gay at all. And it's like, and to him, it's bad if it's gay. Like he is, he was raised to believe you are a man. That's not what men do. So like his father drilled that into him. So he's constantly being like, if he gets shut down by a guy, he's like, well, fuck you, you F word.

You know what I mean? Like he's like, he starts calling him things and being like, what do you think of that? You know, like, he's such, he's so, like, he hates himself so much. It's very self-loathing. It is. It's very self-loat. And he just, and that's part of his aggression, I think, is just he hates himself so much. And he can only, I mean, I'm surprised he even came out to say that he's bisexual.

I think that took him a long time to do. But he will, he just can't accept what his true desires are. but he's also not only he's not gay he's a pedophile right and it's like he can't admit that to himself and get help for anything like those are two very different things sir exactly that's it's like you are not just bisexual you are a pedophile like that is not you don't just like other men that's fine you cannot like children sir right like that's that's not a lot yeah that's not no no no uh-uh no way um so yeah so he made it so gasey's making it seem like he was joking i was just joking with you why you getting so upset why you're threatening me with a chair um so he's like

whatever so it just went away well a month later gasey just shows up at tony's parents place while they're out and is like hey tony and he told mr gacy he was like hey tony i have some wine and some porn do you want a party no i love that he's like you want a party you want a party you want a party shut the fuck up and if you look at a photo of john way and gacy like his mugshot photo when he just looks like this like greasy bag of just like leftover fry juice. Sweaty meat. The bottom of a fast food restaurant toilet or something. Like it's just he is so greasy.

He is bacon grease. Yucky. And he's got these beady eyes. And he's just like, and you can just picture him being like, want to party. And you're like, ugh. I picture him with like a weirdly high voice. I don't know why. He kind of does.

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, he does kind of have like a. A little party. Yeah, it's not like a like, woo. It's like the voice that you gave David Berkowitz. Yeah, that's what I picture. Yeah. But he's just so gross. But, uh, but yeah.

So he was like, do you want to party with this wine and porn? And he was like, all right, cool. So he was like, sure, why not? Like, let's just have some wine and watch some porn. I don't get it. It's like, whatever. And this is when Gacy. So he got in there.

Um, so, or he brought, you know, he brought the kid to his place. And he was like, okay, can I show you a trick? No, of course. And so he said he had a pair of trick handcuffs that he used as a clown. And then he was like, you know, can you get out of it? He challenged him to figure it out. And Tony is like an athlete. He's competitive.

So he was like, fuck you. I'm going to get out of these. So Tony agrees to do this. But Tony's also clever because he doesn't snap one of the cuffs all the way. So he was like, all right, I'll try to get out of this. And he hides this from Gacy. So when Gacy thought he was fully cuffed, he starts aggressively trying to undress him.

But Tony's like, oh, no, no, sir. So he suddenly flips Gacy off of him and onto the floor because he had like straddled him. And so he like pushes him onto the floor, snapped the free cuff on his wrist. And then he used a wrestling move to flip him on his belly and held a knee to the back of his head. That's incredible.

Isn't that incredible? I was like, I love that. This is why we should all take karate or like some form of self-defense. Right? Because he just was like, fuck you, sir. I'm just going to use a wrestling move. So he's holding his knee to the back of his head. And he flipped the other cuff on him.

So he had him handcuffed on his belly in his own fucking house. And he, so Gacy's flipping out. He's screaming. He's yelling. He's like cursing. And Tony's like, no, I'm not letting you free until you calm the fuck down. Right. And so Gasey's flipping out.

Casey was basically like, well, shit, you're the first one to get out, to like get to best me to figure this trick. And he was like, okay. And he let him free. And he just let him go. And it was never spoken of again. What the fuck? Now, Gacy had told his wife and kids, like I said, not to go into the garage because it was his workspace. He had also openly begun to bring home magazines filled with photos of naked men, like porn magazines.

He just like left them about. Just leaving them about willy-nilly. You know, like, that's whatever, if that's what you're into. But, like, when there's kids around, like, maybe let's not do that. And it's like, and your wife. I don't know. Maybe don't, like, flaunt that right in front of her face. That, like, you know.

I'm saying, like, if you and your wife have an agreement, that's one thing. Yeah, like, if you guys have, your children don't. Yeah, like, if you guys have discussed it, cool, but it doesn't sound like Carol had been, no, you know, informed of this. And Carol also found some photos of naked men like Polaroids, one of which appeared to have blood on him. So she, so she freaked out. She confronted Gacy and she was like, what the fuck is this? He told her he was not going to, he was like, you know what? I think we should just like make this a thing now that we don't have sex with each other anymore. At that point, I'm dipping. Like,

well, and this was on Mother's Day. That's so sad. But honestly, the best Mother's Day gift he could have given her. I mean, truly. I'd say like that's sad if it's like who you're married to. because one part of her must have found him attractive. Of course. That's a great Mother's Day gift to John Wayne Gacy gives it to you. But they agreed together that they were not going to have sex with each other. And that was that. And she later said, like when people talk to her, that she was like, he was never around.

Like, he just, he was working all the time. And when he wasn't working, he was being really secretive. And he only slept for like two hours at a time. That's terrifying. And rarely in bed with her. And he would leave at weird hours. come home at weird hours and she just didn't question him anymore. So here's my deal.

Whatever. He's he's never around. You're not like having fun in the sack anymore. Like your house smells bad. There's pictures around that you don't want there. Why are you staying? I think it's probably security. She probably.

Do you feel secure? Well, no. Not emotional security. I mean financial and everything else security. Because you have to remember as shitty as gasey is as a human being. being in every aspect. Dude was bringing in money. And he was, he knew how to make money. And he did financially have stability. And I'm sure that was probably part of she had two kids. She was just divorced. That is true. She's probably hanging on because she's like, well, you know, like I got to do

what I got to do, which sucks. That is really sad. Yeah, it really sucks. I would rather work like three jobs than have to deal with any of that. For real. Well, in 1975, Gacy's mother moved out of the home finally. And she moved to Arkansas. And when she moved there, she ended up falling and breaking her hip. And Carol went out there to help Gacy's sister care for her. And well, that was really nice of Carol. Yeah, that was nice of Carol. And you know what? Gacy did not repay her nicely while she was gone. You know, I, you know, I believe that. Yeah. So at this time, once she leaves, he had an 18-year-old kid working for him by the name of John Butkovich. Okay. And he. And he, you know, he was a little bit of, He was always with Gacy.

And actually, everyone started calling them Big John and Little John. Okay. So according to Gacy, he was over his house all the time. Like, Little John was over their house all the time. He had many dinners with his family. Carol liked him. He, Little John played with the girls a lot, like he was a good kid. He was like family.

So Gacy says little John owed him money because he used his PDM contracting. that's in case you forgot from the first one, that's Gacy's contracting business that he has. He used his PDM account to pay for his apartment. Okay. Gacy said he was fine with this, but he expected him to pay him back. So he was like, you can use that account. I just need you to pay me the money back. And, you know, little John was doing that, like slowly.

He got his bill down to like $300, according to Gacy. And then suddenly, July 31st of 9. 1975, he said little John showed up to Gacy's home demanding a paycheck that he said Gacy had not given him. Because after eight months of working for Gacy, little John had quit. So now he's showing up to his house and he's like, you didn't give me my last paycheck. And he's like, well, you owe me money. So this is what Gacy has to say about this whole scenario. Which is probably not the truth.

Yeah. I can assure you that this was. It's weird because he gives like little variations of the, you know there's nuggets of truth in there. Yeah. But you know it's definitely not the whole truth. Right. And this exchange came from a book called John Wayne Gacey Defending a Monster. And it's actually from his defense attorney wrote this book.

Oh, that's interesting. His defense attorney was Sam L. Amaranth. And it's an odd book, but it like gives, there's a lot of conversations with Gacey in it that are really interesting. Yeah, I feel like that'd be a very interesting. interesting read. Yeah. And there's a couple of other books I'll just mention now in case people want to know like where I got all my information because I went through, let's see, four John Wayne Gacy books for the episode. Very casual. The other one that I was looking through is called Killer Clown, like a John Wayne Gacy Murders by Terry Sullivan. The other one is called

The Man Who Killed Boys, the John Wayne Gacy Jr. story by Clifford L. Lundid, I think it is. And then the other one I used was called Buried Dreams Inside the Mind of John Wayne Gacy by Tim Cahill. So those are all good books. We can post all those too. Yeah, I'll post them in the show notes just so you guys know, but I figured I'd shout them out.

Nice. So what John Wayne Gacy had to say about this little John exchange was, but John got it into his head that I owed him a couple of hundred bucks or something. And this was bullshit. I tell you, pure bullshit. But he comes over talking show. shit, brought a couple of buddies with him, yelling and screaming about how I better pay him or there's going to be trouble. Like I'm going to get my ass kicked. I just got everyone high.

We smoked some pot, drank some beers. We calmed to the whole thing right down. No big deal, you know. Next thing I know, he's lying on my floor. Dead. Oh, definitely some missing events there, sir. That escalated quite quickly. He's like, we all got high and then he died. Yeah, we all got high. Everything was real chill and then like there he is. You're just dead on my floor. And you're like, you're missing a large chunk of information. I've never had an experience like that. Nobody's ever gotten high and all died.

No. Thank goodness. So what happened between the time that they got in a fight and he ended up dead on his floor? Well, he said after he got them all high and drunk, he sent them on their way and he went cruising for other boys to have sex with. He was like, I didn't want anything to do with John. Yeah. He was like, no, I'm just going to go find some other boys. So he said he noticed little John in uptown.

And he said little John jumped in front of his car yelling about how we still had to talk to him. He was still mad about the money. So John said he was still pissed. And he was like, you know what? Just get in the car, little John. And he brought him back to his house where remember Carol is not home. She's visiting John's mom. And so he had the whole place to himself.

So he gives little John a ton more alcohol and gets him plastered. Then he says the argument about the money just started up all over again, and they were really heated. So Gacy got nervous, according to him, because he has that heart condition, and he didn't want to continue getting so upset because he was afraid he would pass out. So he lightened the mood with the good old handcuff trick. Little John couldn't get out of it, and Little John got real mad, obviously. How do you just go from arguing to being like, hold up, you know what, let me show you a trick. Like, you know what, I'm a lighten this mood really. quick, let me show you some of my clown tricks. I'd be like, no, sir. I'd be like, I'm

still mad. I'm mad. And I'd be like, actually, I'm now even more mad. Because you have just trivialized my argument. Right. So Gacy told him he wouldn't let him out. So he did the handcuff trick. He couldn't get out and he was like, yeah, you need the keys, fucker. And then he was like, you know what, I'm not going to let you out of those handcuffs until you sober up and you stop screaming. So how Gacy told his defense attorney was, quote, now this is where it gets little foggy. I'm not exactly sure how this all happened, but I must have strangled him, you know, with this rope. Must have. You know. And then he said, quote, yeah, he was lying on the floor when I woke up. He was blue in the face, you know, like they say, and he had a rope around

his neck and the handcuffs. He still had the handcuffs on. I don't remember everything, but I think I tricked him, you know, because that's what I did with a lot of the others. I would use a rope, the rope trick, and I used it kind of like a tourniquet around their necks. That's how I would do it. I can't imagine just speaking so callously like that about murdering people. He is just like, and for him to just be like, yeah, I guess I must have just fucking murdered him and left him on my floor. I guess.

Like, I guess. Well, after killing little John, he wrapped him in a tarp to deposit him into the crawl space, but Carol arrived home. Oh, no. So he was forced to bury him in the garage, which a couple of them were buried under the garage. And what does John have to say about his like lack of, you know, memory when it comes to murdering kids? He said, quote, sometimes I wake up in the morning and find strangled kids in my house, dead strangled kids. And I have no idea how they got there. No fucking idea what happened.

Do you believe that? No. Do I believe that there's times when he blacks out? Yeah, I mean, that's what I mean. I do believe that. He treats it like, yeah, I just, I'm, I'm, not part of this. Like, it just happens. I just wake up and there's dead kids in my no, I don't believe that. I don't believe that. I don't believe that. I don't believe that. I mean, do you believe that he blacked out is what I should have said. I think he blacks out every, I don't think his whole, I think he blacks out far less than what he's claiming he's blacking out. It's just convenient to be like, oh, I don't remember. Well, and finally now Carol is still smelling the smells. She's seeing the bugs. She's seeing his odd-ass behavior. And even though they're not having

sex anymore and they're pretty much like Dunsky. She's like, roommates. I need to know what's going on here. So Carol said she took a peek in his garage one night when he had left. She was like, I have to look in there. I have to know what's going on. She must have been so terrified. Well, she said,

she was like, you know what? I knew he was having sex with teenage boys. Like, I knew that. I could see that happening because he was bringing them in all the time, bringing them out. There was a magazine. Like, I could tell that's what, and he had basically admitted to me that he liked to have sex with boys. But she's like, I had to see what was going on in the garage.

So she sees mattresses all over the floor. Red lights. All red light bulbs. That's terrible. Anything that's red lit is terrible. Yeah. And there was mirrors on the walls and ceilings. Ew, that's so fucking, it's like a weird porn room.

It's like a dungeon. Yeah, like this weird porn dungeon. So, and she said she could smell the scent of decay so strongly there because he had just recently buried someone under there. And so in October 1975, Carol filed for divorce. Thank God. Yeah. This was after Gasey

finally was like, yes, I like to have sex with young boys. And she was like peace. So her divorce was final March 1976. And now this is when he really goes fucking nuts. Well, because there's nobody home. It's so much

easier for him. And he's pissed that somebody left him again. He's got the house all to himself. Oh no, he's not even pissed that Carol left him. Didn't bother him at all. No. Not at all. No, he's psyched. Are you kidding me? He's got his whole, he's got a sex house now that he can literally do whatever the fuck he wants. It's like, why did you even bother marrying this woman in the first place? Because he wanted to impress his dad. Yeah, for appearances. And I think it's because he wanted to keep up appearances. That's all it was. Right. Right. But now he's like, it's on. So within a month of his divorce, April 6, 1976.

He killed an 18-year-old named Darrell Samson. There's not a lot of information on this or his abduction, but he was found in the crawl space. Oh, no. Weeks later, he killed Randall Reffat, a 15-year-old, only 15.

That's really sad. Who had disappeared May 14th, 1976. His body was later found by police in the crawl space under the front door of Gacy's house. Oh, my God. Yeah. He was found on December 25th, 1978. That's really haunting that.

It's like every time you open the front door, you're walking over someone who's dead body. He was identified by X-rays on April 11th, 1979, and they were able to determine that his cause of death was asphyxiation. Within hours of killing Randall, hours. Not days, hours. He killed a 14-year-old named Samuel Stapleton. So this is, I think, the first time, no, it's not the first. Yeah, this is the first time that he's killed two in one day. Right.

So Samuel disappeared while he was walking home from his sister's house on May 14th, 1976. He was immediately reported missing by his parents and he was later discovered in the crawl space. One distinctive clue that the family kind of hung on to to be like, that's definitely him, was that there was a bracelet found on his body and that was. was his bracelet. And that was confirmed on November 14th, 1979. And they had to use x-rays of his head and teeth to identify him.

That's always, I think I've said it like so many times, but that's always the saddest thing. It is. It's so sad. You can't even recognize them by their face. Oh, and some of these people, some of these kids weren't identified until like 2017. Like so long. So in June, 1976, 17-year-old Michael Bowman disappeared while waiting to catch a train to visit his stepfathers, his stepfather's brother.

He never made it to his location and police would later find the teen's fishing license in Gacy's home. Oh. And then later they found his body in the crawl space, which had to be identified by dental records. The ligature that was used to strangle him was still around his neck. Oh, my God. The next one was William Billy Carroll.

He disappeared shortly after, he disappeared shortly after. Michael Bowman on June 13th, 1976. Billy had kind of like a tough life. He was a tough kid. He got in a lot of trouble. He had been in juvie a couple times for things like stealing a purse and like possessing a gun. He was only 16, though. By 16, he was still living that kind of lifestyle and was actually making extra money by

kind of running like a teenage boy escort service. Damn. Where he would basically put together meetings with older men and teenage boys and get paid for it. So he was running with some scary people. And he knew John Wayne Gacy, probably because he was dealing with such shady shit.

He was probably involved in the shady shit. Yeah. And on June 13th, he just disappeared. And he was later found in the crawl space. July, 1976, he employed 18-year-old David Cram to help him around the house in the contracting business. David Cram

has one of the scariest stories. Oh, no. He's survived, but holy hell. He actually had this kid move in with him for a time, which he did often. He would have these boys move in. Can you imagine surviving that experience and living to tell the tale of living with John Wayne Gacy? No. I cannot. That's a whole different fucking kind of thing. It really is. He moved in in August and shortly after he moved in, he came home one day to find John Wayne Gacy sitting on the couch dressed in complete Pogo the clown get up. Nope.

Sorry. Make up and everything. Nope. No. Just drinking and he's like drunk off his ass just sitting there as Pogo the clown when he walks in. That's horrific. That's absolutely horrific. And he's like, hey, David, you want to do this cool handcuff trick that I have?

No, I do not, sir. And so he did, David unfortunately fell for it and was like, sure because he was like you're weird and I'm just going to go with this. And he got locked in the cuffs. And once he was in them, Gacy attacked him telling him, in saying this to him, I want to rape you. Like, I'm going to rape you. David fought him and actually got away to his room and somehow got out of the cuffs.

He stayed in the house after this. I'm assuming. He must just not have had anywhere to go. I think he had nowhere to go. And I think he's a young kid. So he's probably attributing it to like, that dude's drunk. Right. That was probably just a crazy.

So one month later, Gacy shows up at his bedroom door and is like, and basically just says to him that he wants to rape him and then says, quote, Dave, you really don't know who I am. Maybe it would be good if he just give me what I want. What? And obviously David was like, no, and resisted him and fought him off. And after fighting him for a minute, Gacy just got up and left the bedroom and said, you ain't no fun and just walked away. And then David packed all his things and left. Well, so this is when David left and stopped working for PDM. But he did help Gacey out some more for objobs later.

Like, he did come back. So he must have needed money. I was going to say, some young kid that needs money. That's really sad. It really is. John Wayne Gacey takes such advantage of, like, people's situations like that. He very carefully picks his. victims. Right. It's it's that old adage that we've talked about a lot of times that he picks less

dead people because he's picking young boys, sure, but he's picking a lot of runaways, a lot of kids who, you know, don't have relationships with their families. And actually, when he gets caught at the end of this, it is because he picks a kid who is very close to their family and is not a runaway. And that's his downfall. So that was his like big fuck up. Yeah, that's his big downfall. So the next one to go missing and to be murdered is James Hackinson. This was on August 5, 1976. James was 16 years old. He was known as Jimmy.

He had run away from his home in St. Paul, Minnesota, but he had called his parents on April 5th to let them know he was in Chicago. It was the last they ever heard from him. That's really sad. He was in the crawl space as well, and he wasn't identified until July. 2017. Wow. And they used DNA evidence to identify him. The next one was August 6th.

So this was a day later. August 6th, 1976, it was Rick Johnston. He was 17 years old. He was last seen going to a rock concert at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. After the concert, he was supposed to call his mom for a ride home,

but she never got the call. His body was found in the crawl space stacked on top of Hackinson and an unidentified victim. The fact that he got to the point of stacking people, like that is horrific. In fact, this is when he starts stacking people because he's running out of room. As you'll see, he runs out of room eventually. So the next ones that they could find were October 25, 1976. It was Kenneth Parker and Michael Marino.

They were friends. They were, Parker was 16. Marino was 14. They were hanging out together when they were last seen, and they were reported missing by their parents immediately when they didn't show back up home. Both of them were strangled and raped by Gacy and buried together. Ugh. The next one is a day after that, October 26, 1976, 1976, 19-year-old William Bundy. He had occasionally worked for PDM, and he went missing one night after telling his family that he was just going to be going out to a party.

Um, he was another one that wasn't identified until 2011. And the way he wasn't, uh, identified is kind of what's happening now with like catching serial killers and shit. His siblings provided DNA. And he was able to be told from that. I think it's so cool that we can do that. Yeah. And like we said at the beginning, like it's so important to do that.

Yeah. Because it's, you know, like that's how they're catching people now. Yeah. It's true. I mean, I know a lot of people will not agree that they don't want to give their DNA. But like, yeah. It's good. I mean, like, remember in this case how we started and you said, like, if you did know anybody that one was saying, like, provide your DNA. That's what I meant by that. Oh, for sure. Yeah, for sure. And then December 12th, 1976, 17-year-old Gregory Godzick disappeared. He had gone out on a date with his girlfriend. He had dropped her off at her house. And then she said she watched him drive away, like to go home. He had been working for PDM and doing odd jobs for Gacy. The day after he dropped his date off at our house, he still had not returned home.

So his parents were like, where the fuck did he go? Police eventually found his car, which was in 1966 Pontiac. His wallet was found during a search later of Gacy's home. And it was later confirmed that he was one of the bodies in the crawl space. Oh, man. So these are the ones that, like, you don't know what happened. You just know the name. You know Gacy did it because they're in his crawl space.

Right. And they can tell, like, a lot of them, they could tell a lot of them were strangled or asphyxiated. A few of them were stabbed, mostly strangled and asphyxiated. January 1977, 19-year-old John Seizek went, or no, Sizzik. I think it's S-Z-C. I was like, that's Annie's last name. Yeah, no, it's S-Z-Y-C. 19-year-old John Sizek.

He was actually friends with Gregory Godzic. which is creepy um and he was last seen in his 1971 plymouth satellite and then he just disappeared so the story with that one is that and gasey was free to tell this one he said that um cizick was going to be selling his car to gasey but he was like yeah he came over and you know he was going to sell his car to me so we were talking price and we went over the whole thing i was looking at it then i just brought him inside and bob bab do bob I use the roke the roke the roke the roose rope trick on him and there he is. So then you would think that they're like this missing kids car is in John Wayne Gasey's

possession. Like it makes you wonder why that didn't happen. Oh, don't worry. That did happen. Oh, okay. Because I was like, what? Like how does that work? So like you were just saying, police are now on the lookout for this car because they're like, okay, well, we got to find that car if we want to, because at this point, they don't know that he's dead. Because all these, all these he's later found in the crawl space speak happens way later. After John Wayne and Gasey is, At this point, all these boys are just missing. They're all just disappeared. So police are on the lookout for this car, and they suddenly spot it at a gas station.

So they spot it, and a teenager named Michael Rossi is driving it. And he's trying to leave the gas station without paying for the gas he just pumped. Oh, that happened in the movie, too, in the Gacy movie. So when they approached him, he was like, yeah, I work for a guy named John, and John can explain this all to you. So the police are like, what the fuck? And they talk to Gacy. And he's like, oh, yeah, that's John's car. Car, right.

And he sold it to me because he wanted to run away and he needed some cash to do so. So he's like, so I bought his car from him to help him out. And as for why Michael Rossi is driving the car, he said, I gave Michael Rossi the car because he works for me. And I told him that he could work off the debt. Like, he could just work for me and eventually it would pay for the car. Right. So Michael Rossi is the new. teenage boy living in the gasey home so the police are just like okay sounds good like the police at

this point are like just useless like they're like well and you have to think too this guy's like very involved in like the politics and his oh yeah but it's like they're like it's just john gasey you know but it's like you know what that's not okay a little more gum shoes like maybe do 100% detective work here um so michael rossi like i said is living in the house with gasey and David Cram, who was the one who walked in to Gacy, fully dressed as Pogo and tried several times to sexually assault him, David Cram and Michael Rossi were told by Gacy to spread quicklime down in the crawl space as much as they could to stop the smell.

So Gacy would force them down there, like gagging and make them do it. Meanwhile, one of them is probably like, I know exactly what this is because he tried to attack me. Yeah, you know that these. boys are like, I'm just going to do this because I don't want to be down here. Like, I don't want to end up here. It's so sad to have been that close to so many deaths. Oh, it's horrific. Well, the next one to go missing was John Prestige, and that was March 15th, 1977.

He was a 20-year-old from Michigan. He was visiting friends in Chicago at the time. He was later found in the crawl space. Nobody really knows what the abduction was. The next one was Robert Kemp. Gilroy. That was September 15th, 1977. He was 18 years

old and he was actually the son of a sergeant on the Chicago Police Department. Oh. So is that when this gets fucked up? No. No, shit. It's not. You would think that, wouldn't you? Yeah. But, and they lived four blocks away

from Gacy when he disappeared. Wow. Yeah. You would really think that that's what the fuck up would have been. And that's how like, Beyond reproach he was. Like he just was able to do this shit. The next one was September 25th, 1977 John Mowry. He was a 19-year-old U.S. Marine.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Somehow he got involved with Gacy. He ended up doing a little work for him. He disappeared. The next one is Russell Nelson. This was on October 17th, 1977. He was a 22-year-old University of Minnesota architecture student.

Oh, wow. He had traveled to Chicago with his friends. He had gone to a dance club, and he went missing that night. He was later found in the crawl space. The next one is November 10th, 1977, Robert Winch. He was only 16 years old. He was found in the crawl space. Not a lot is known about his death.

November 18th, and again, these are only like days apart. November 18, 1977, Tommy Bowling, a 20-year-old with one day. childs. Oh, that's so sad. He was found in the crawl space. He was killed with a ligature that was still around his neck. December 9th, 1977, another 19-year-old U.S. Marine named David Talzma. He was found in the crawl space as well. So this is, 1977 has been a busy year for him. Yeah. He also briefly got engaged to someone. I never knew that, which I'm like, what the fuck? Exactly. How? How do we he, where do you fit all this into your fucking day-to-day schedule? Like, holy shit, that engagement ended really quick because he's John Wing-Gacy.

Yeah. That year he was also found to be, to be syphilitic. So he had, which is not shocking, considering his leisure activities. Right. Now, he starts doing a couple of weird things. And I think the reason that he probably started doing this is because, he didn't have any more room to throw bodies in his crawl space. Is this when he starts using the Des Plains River? Not yet. Or is that a link? No.

Well, we're not there yet. But, okay. You're like, slow down. He starts releasing people. Like, he starts doing his thing and then just releasing them. Oh. So now he's very brazen. Yeah, now it's very brazen because he's not covering his face.

because he's just not scared. Like, why are you not afraid, dude? No. And in January of 1978, a 19-year-old named Robert Donnelly contacted police and said, I have a fucking story to tell you. So he said he was walking after midnight, and he said, Gacy had pulled up next to him in a car,

he had pulled a gun on him, and threatened him saying he was a police officer. So he told him, you're being detained, he didn't tell him why, he handcuffed him and threw him in his car. He then brought him back to his home and raped him. So during this whole thing, he's choking the boy into unconsciousness several times and then waking him up. He also held his head underwater in a bathtub. Oh.

And at one point, this kid begged Gacy to kill him because he said it was just too much. It's so torturous. And Gacy responded, I'm getting around to it. That was his response to that. That must have been the most night. Because you, that's not what you expect. when you say that? Yeah, for hours.

And he said this went on and on. The torture went on and on. And then he just drove the boy to work the next morning. To work? Yep. Just dropped him off at work. And one of the really fucked up things he did while he was assaulting this kid was that he would hold a gun to his face the whole time.

Like he would like while he was doing terrible things to him. And he would spin the what is it called? The chamber of the gun. And like in Russia. roulette. He would like spin it and then he would pull the trigger a bunch of times. So he was literally playing Russian roulette. And eventually a blank cartridge fired. That just actually gave me of like a bodily reaction. Right. So the whole time he had a blank in there and he's fucking with this kid and eventually shoots and the sound comes and it's a blank.

And this, a lot of times people say when they get shot, they like don't even feel it because they're so scared. He probably was like, like, was I just shot? Right. And so this is so this happened and again this boy went to the police and was like this is what happened and this is who did it that just made my heartbeat faster i'm not even joking it's no joke the assistant state's attorney decided that when it came down to court gasey would appear more believable so they dropped the charges what yep so they were basically like yeah i don't think anyone's going to believe you so sorry like can we just can we give it a shot at least like no apparently not so this one is crazy.

This one is a guy named Jeffrey Rignall. He was the second, you know, one that was released without being killed. But wow, did he go through some shit? Trigger warning, this one's a tough one. This one? Yeah. Jeffrey was 26 years old, so he was one of the older ones. He was walking to a bar in Rosemont, Illinois on May 22nd, 1978.

Gacy had rolled up next to him, offered him a ride and a joint. And Jeffrey was like cool, because it's the 70s. He just got in. And when he got in, Gacy suddenly put a chloroform soaked rag over his face and he passed right out. Oh, God. Throughout the ride back to Gacy's home, Jeffrey would wake up and Gacy would just chloroform him again. So he kept doing it over and over and over. Later, Jeffrey had like severe liver damage from the...

I was going to say, that would really fucking affect you. So when he woke up for the final time, he was in Gacy's den of torture. He was locked in the rack, which was the wooden board suspended by chains to the ceiling and it has holes for your head and your hands. He looked up and Gacy was standing there naked in front of him. Gross. He gestured to the ground and showed him that he had an array of dildos ranging from sizes, you know, different sizes, different everything. and he just told him in graphic detail how he was going to use them and how long he would use them and where he would use them. Jeffrey was then brutally assaulted, raped, beaten, drugged, tortured, I mean beyond anything we can consider.

Gacy would put items of various items into various orifices. Oh, God. Other than dildos, he would use like, I read something that said that he did, he did, he, used pill bottles. Ow. He would use candle wax and pliers. He was a fucking monster. And he also, so this guy also claimed later that he thought there might have been another

person in the room while this was going on. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. And we'll explore that in part three, that idea that he might have had an accomplice. He was in and out of consciousness this whole time, like while everything's going on, Because from sheer terror, pain, I mean, drugs, everything. And when he woke up after hours, he was sitting fully dressed under a statue in Lincoln Park in Chicago. So he just woke up completely in another place.

And he woke up and he was very severely injured. I mean, of course. Obviously, he was literally like bleeding from his rectum. Like he was in a lot of, like, severe internal damage. So he was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital and he had to stay there for six days. I believe it. I'm surprised he didn't even have to stay there longer. Yeah.

And in the hospital, he told the entire experience to police. He was like, I can tell you everything I can. But they were skeptical of his story, which it's like, you can't do that. Who the fuck would make that up? And it's like he has the injuries to prove it. Like, what do you do it? How else do you think that fucking happened to him? And also, I don't care if you're skeptical or not.

you still have to investigate it. That's literally what your job is. This is one of those, it's the 70s in Chicago, and it's like, police are sitting there going, this is just a bunch of gay shit. I was going to say that's the issue. I was just going to say that. These are just two gays that are having a quarrel and we're not going to get into it because that's gay stuff and we don't understand it.

Like, that's literally what they are still alive and that they have to sit with the fact that they didn't do their job. For real. Well, later, Jeffrey, like, literally would. would wait on freeways and overpasses just waiting to spot the vehicle because he knew the vehicle in his head and he was like, I'm going to find this vehicle again and I'm going to get his license plate. Good for him to have gone through that much trauma and to still be willing to fight. Sorry. Oh, no, don't worry. He eventually spotted Gacy and he wrote down the license plate.

Good. And he followed Gacey to his house to make sure that it was the house. That's so brave. So he gave the police the address and the license plate and they did. And they did. did nothing with it. Oh, my God. So later, when finally Gacy was caught, and it was shown that, yes, he did do this, Rignal testified against Gacy, in the people versus Gacy. And he said, he said that he was hoping that Gacy was insane and not sane during that attack. You would hope that. Because he said, quote, the beastly and animalistic ways he attacked me. Just it had to have been insanity. Because you would assume that somebody would have to be out of their fucking mind to do that. Well, and you want to know how bad it was, when describing what happened to him on the stand,

he threw up. No, he threw up on the stand. That's how badly he was like scarred. And this was years later. I believe it. That's, that's unimaginable torture. So the next one now, and remember, that's like he, when he was caught later. But Jeffrey Rignall at this point was just released and nothing. nothing was done and he had to just live with this. I can't imagine, like, looking at the police and having them tell you, like, sorry, it's yeah, just be like, yeah, no, sorry. And you're just living your life now being like, cool, so he's just walking around. Because at that moment, you're like, oh, cool, like, I'm never safe.

Yeah, exactly. You have to look behind your, over your shoulder forever. So next on February 16th, 1978, 19-year-old William Kindred was another one that disappeared and was later found in the crawl space. June 1978, 20-year-old Timothy O'Rourke. He went missing. He was actually the first of Gacy's murder victims to be dumped into the Desplanes River. Okay.

So this is when, like I said before, I think those other two that he let go was literally because he didn't have any more room. And I think he realized. And he hadn't come up with that yet. Yeah. And I think he realized through those two that by releasing. them. He wasn't getting the full experience he wanted because remember he said before, death is the greatest, the most erotic thing to him. And he was like, I need this person to die for me to jack off. Like, ew. So now he's like, oh, wait, I can just throw them in the river.

And I can still get my, what I need to get. So, um, so Timothy Orrck was the, the first one that was thrown into the Des Plains River. Um, the next one was November 4th, 1978. It was 19-year-old Frank Landegren. He was found later in the Desplains River. A pair of underwear had been stuffed down his throat. Oh, God. They said he died of strangulation. The next one was November 24th, 1978.

20-year-old James Mazara. He went missing on Thanksgiving Day, and he was found in the Desplains River. On Thanksgiving Day. That's horrific. Now, those are four victims that they found in the Desplains River. but Gacy claims he threw five over the bridge into the Dead's Plains River. So he says, according to him, he said one time I threw one over and I didn't hear a splash. So I assume it hit a barge.

Oh. And that's his claim. But, you know, who knows? Maybe he's just like fucking with people because he's an asshole. Exactly. So I think earlier I'd said that the way that he finally got caught was his last victim. He decided to choose someone who had strong. family ties. Bad idea.

Right. I mean, that's, I just, why would you do that? Yeah. It's just, well, because he can't control it. It's just, when he sees something, he wants it and he doesn't care. And this was Robert Peist. This was December 11th, 1978. He was 15 years old. Oh my God. Which is a baby. That is a baby. He was seen, so he worked at a pharmacy. And Gacy approached him and was like, like hey you know what you look like you're a really good worker I've been watching you and like you look like you're in your strong and you know like I could really use someone like you working at my contracting business do you want a summer job and he was like yeah I don't know and he was like I you know

already have a job but like right and he was like but you know what you could earn a lot of extra money and he was like okay so gacy was like you just have to come back to my place and like sign some tax stuff and all that stuff and we'll get you rolling so Robert it's mother's birthday was that night. His mother's birthday. So he was like, he was a little hesitant, and he was like, I want to make sure I get home for my mom's birthday. And he had mentioned that he was saving for a Jeep.

Right. And so Gacy was like, oh, you know what? Like, I will give, you know, I'm going to pay you pretty good. You're going to be able to get your Jeep. Like, this is, you know, this is a really good opportunity. And like, I'm sure your mom will just be psyched that you got a new job. like happy birthday to her fucking douchebag

yeah so so Robert's like all right so he calls his mom and says quote some contractor wants to talk to me about a job and then he says he'll be home soon okay he was not so when he got him back to his home he offered him a drink he did the rope trick and Robert was strangled

that's so sad thank God he called his mom and was like this is where I'm going yeah and what's awful is like can you imagine his poor mother forever on her birthday. Like your child was brutally murdered on your birthday. That's the, that's the most horrific thing I can ever imagine.

No, I can't even. Well, and Gacy himself said he told Robert, quote, I'm going to rape you and you can't do anything about it. Jesus Christ. And this is when he had him in the rope, like for the rope trick. And he said Robert started to cry. Oh. And he said he put the garot around his neck and he said that he was, quote,

crying scared. And then he said after he killed him and he was lying on the floor dead, he took a business call real quick while he's standing over his dead body. So the next day, Robert was reported missing immediately because he didn't come home that night. That poor family, all these poor families. Yeah. And he was obviously the last one that was thrown in the river. And he was pulled from the river on April 9, 1979. This is where I'm going to stop for part two.

Okay. Because this was the turning point. This is when the police do get involved. This is when Gacy becomes public enemy number one and he is being tailed 24-7. But this is not his last victim, right? This is his last victim. Oh, okay. But we definitely need to go into like the surveillance and how brazen and

cocky he was and then yeah so in part three we'll go through that we'll go through his arrest his court appearances his interviews and his prison sentence because he was executed and his last words are notable yeah so she uh so yeah so that is part two we got through all the murders and the horrific god i'm glad we are done with that part yeah so now we can get into the uh cops and robbers part of it. Everybody always gets mad at me for being like, oh my God, oh my God. Or like, I'm glad we're done with that. But I'm like, why are you getting mad at me for that? It's horrible. It's horrible. But the episodes where we go through like the science behind it and the, yeah, I love all, I love doing this podcast and all the episodes, but I think part three is going to be really cool

to talk about. Yeah, part three gets away from like the really like dark shit and gets more into like, you know, the aftermath, which is interesting. And the, The surveillance part is really interesting because, I mean, it's just how brazen he is with the police is pretty insane. That's like my favorite part of true crime is just like the trials and stuff like that. And when you find out like what makes people do certain things, that's what I, that's my favorite part of true crime. Oh, yeah. Definitely. And talking about his interviews and stuff, he's a, he's quite a dude.

Yeah. For sure. Well, if you want to follow us on Instagram before you listen to Part 2, you. you can go ahead and do that at Morbid Podcast. You can follow us on Twitter. A Morbid Podcast. Hit us up on the Gmail. Morbid Podcast at gmail.com.

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Just follow us and listen to us and have yourself a grand old time. Do it. Spotify's rad. We hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. But not so weird that you're a giant fucking asshole. Yeah. Not to where that you're a gross clown that sits on your couch and just offers drinks and porn to little boys and then murders everybody. Don't ever keep it that weird.

If I find out you keep it that weird, I'm going to be real fucking mad at you. Yeah, just don't do it. Bye. Bye.