Snapped: Women Who Murder - BONUS: John Wayne Gacy (Mark of a Serial Killer)

Episode Date: October 14, 2021

We are bringing you a special bonus episode featuring a case from Oxygen's hit series, “Mark of a Serial Killer.” Watch Mark of a Serial Killer on Sundays at 7/6c on Oxygen! A r...ash of young men goes missing around Chicago during the 1970s; when bodies start washing up in the river, a pattern emerges; a small piece of evidence leads police to the home of a model citizen, where his furnace puts the suspect in the hot seat.Season 2, Episode 5Originally aired: May 7, 2020 Watch full episodes of Mark of a Serial Killer live or OnDemand for FREE on the Oxygen app: https://oxygentv.app.link/MOASKPodcast See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of One Piece Podcast American Scandal. Our newest series looks at the story of OxyContin, a popular painkiller that helps spur an epidemic of addiction and drug abuse, in which prompted a broad campaign to hold the pharmaceutical industry accountable. Listen to American Scandal on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi Snap listeners, we're bringing you a special bonus episode today from Oxygen's hit series, Mark of a Serial Killer. We're turning this Sunday, October 17th at 7-6-Central with all new episodes. You can also watch full episodes live or on demand on the free Oxygen app by clicking the link in our description. Enjoy!
Starting point is 00:00:40 We had a homicide. When you have somebody in the water, that crime scene is limited to the body. There was underwear that had been stuffed in the body's throat. Why is someone putting it there? It could be, I'll shut you up. They're finding more bodies in the river. Hey, we got a problem. 30-something young men had gone missing is one person responsible for the disappearances
Starting point is 00:01:12 of these young men. Rob told me he was going to talk to that contractor. He never came back. They needed to find out more about that contractor. We started on a surveillance. You're hoping somehow you're going to find out more about that contractor. We started on a surveillance. You're hoping somehow you're gonna find this kid alive. Out of all the people I've known in this world, I would have never thought that my friend
Starting point is 00:01:37 would turn out to be the worst serial killer of all time. Bye. It's the summer of 1978, and Chicago is mired in poverty and crime. Chicago had the crime you'd expect in a big city in the mid-70s. Lots of it, and with all varieties. As Chicago Street gangs are battling it out for territory, organized crime controls the city, all this while police have to contend with a rash of missing and runaway teenagers. The police force was highly taxed at this time in terms of not having all the resources available.
Starting point is 00:02:33 They were spread quite then. It's a quiet evening along the banks of the Illinois River, an hour southwest of Chicago. This is basically a rural area where the Illinois River and the Kankakee kind of come together. A lot of barge traffic that comes down there and a barge captain who's sitting there waiting for the gates to open looks out and discovered a body floating in the river. And he called our department and we went there, get that body out of the water. There was some decomposition, but it looked like it was a young individual. When you have somebody in the water,
Starting point is 00:03:29 the one thing you know is that that crime scene is limited to the body because the crime is never committed right there. The body is the crime scene. The remains are taken to the coroner's lab to begin the investigation. It's not uncommon for police to find bodies in the river. To be honest with you, in those times, just another body.
Starting point is 00:03:53 It's like, okay, do we have a homicide victim? This is going to be one of my usual, where it's an organized crime figure or somebody like that or a drowning victim. The first thing I asked the pathologist was initially, do you have a closet death? And at that time, they didn't. The victim was decomposed. It was very difficult to tell how they had died. However, the medical examiner recognizes this person
Starting point is 00:04:24 has something lodged in his throat. There was underwear of some sort in this kid's mouth and down into his throat. It looks like it was forcibly pushed down into the throat area. At that point, my career and I never saw anything quite like that. At that time we knew that we had a homicide. Immediately, ruling out suicide, detectives have to identify the victim, but that proves difficult.
Starting point is 00:05:02 At that time in the year, during the summer months, decomposition really takes place and it's really tough to identify the body. At that point, they weren't able to garner fingerprints from the body. It was too advanced in decomposition because they have been in the river much too long. The corner does find one identifying mark. The coroner does find one identifying mark. He did have a tattoo of the name Tim Lee.
Starting point is 00:05:30 Investigators check the missing person's reports, and no one by that name has been reported missing. They turn to the press in hopes of helping them identify their John Doe, and almost immediately police get a call. Someone a friend came forward in Chicago simply by recognizing the tattoo and said that this young man was actually Timothy Orrork. Timothy or Rorke. He was a huge fan of martial artists Bruce Lee.
Starting point is 00:06:16 He got the tattoo and honor of him. Some of his friends saw him a few weeks before we found the body. Timothy was a gay young man. He was just 20 years old, and he would frequent Mars downtown in Chicago. So investigators went to Newtown, which is a gay district within Chicago, to find out more information about Timothy or Rourke. We went to Mars restaurants and stuff like that.
Starting point is 00:06:49 No one really knew him that well. In the past three years, there have been several dozen young men who have gone missing from the streets in the area. Many of the missing identified as gay. Timothy or Rourke seems to fit this same profile. We're talking a time when homosexuality wasn't talked about at all. Usually, the family's back in those days had nothing to do with homosexuals, especially young kids.
Starting point is 00:07:24 They were out on their own. They were vulnerable. Around 30 young men had gone missing in that area. Kids were running away at an unbelievable pace in the 70s. It wasn't so unusual to have a missing person. Investigators interviewed Timothy O'Rourke's friends to see who might have wanted to hurt him, but come up empty. When you had an unsolved missing persons, there were no computers.
Starting point is 00:07:58 There were no eight or 12 page forms to fill out, to send a quadricle to be published nationally with earmarks that it could be criminally involved. Those kinds of things just didn't exist. So police investigators really worked hard. They were pretty diligent. However, they did run out of leads, the case wrangled. The case wrangled. Then, five months later, just three miles up river from where the body of Timothy O'Rourke was found.
Starting point is 00:08:35 There's a lot of hunting at that time of the year. Some duck hunters that were hunting out there ran across the body. I met a couple other detectives on the scene. We were able to determine that we had a young male that was nude. Relative for these kind of bodies, it was in pretty good shape. A lot of times they're tore up from a barge traffic that's on that river.
Starting point is 00:09:01 Again, when you have somebody in the water, this body is the crime scene. There is nothing around there that's going to help us out. So whatever is on that body is extremely important. So at that time, you want to get that body over to the pathologist. When the body arrives at the coroner. Investigators discover something eerily familiar. There was the pair of bikini underwear that had been stuffed in the body's throat. One of the detectives that was with me,
Starting point is 00:09:38 we both looked at each other and said, hey, we got a problem. His last words to me were, I'll be right back. He just vanished. The person that Rob Piespon out to talk to, you're hoping that, all right, maybe he's got Rob Piespon in his house. When he showed up, he was dirty. He was awful of a mother.
Starting point is 00:09:57 We knew right away. He was hiding something. In the river south of Chicago, homicide detectives have just discovered a second body, again with the same strange mark. Fabric stuffed down the victim's throat. Whether the underwear was stuffed, post mortem, or was it prior, we did not know that. There wasn't anything at that time that we were able to determine cause of death. They were sure that there was two bodies and that they had this material lodged in their throat and they had never seen anything like it before.
Starting point is 00:10:43 So they were able to identify his fingerprints. The victim is 19-year-old Frank Landigan. Frank Landigan was a petty crook. He was involved in the drug scene. He was living on the streets. Was known to be by some people as a street hustler. No other evidence is discovered on the body. So detectives interview Frank's friends and family trying to establish a timeline of his last hours. Most of the people that we talked to were super cooperative.
Starting point is 00:11:18 At that time they were just happy somebody cared about the victim. Because apparently they felt that nobody cared about any of these people, and we did care. Detectives learned that Frank was last seen on the street the night of November 4th, eight days before his body is discovered. But no one knows what he was doing the night he went missing. But no one knows what he was doing the night he went missing. Good downtown. And I was talking to so many kids that hung around down there. A lot of them were prostitutes. When you have somebody that's working the corners of the street,
Starting point is 00:11:55 you have no missing persons on them. It's tough. And we were never really able to nail down a crime scene, nor any suspects. The detectives turned to the mark. The underwear deliberately shoved down the victim's throat that they've now seen for a second time. We got something highly unusual and we got two cases of it.
Starting point is 00:12:21 Investigators were concerned because so many young men were missing in the area. What they did know is that they had those two young men that had been found with material savagely lodged down their throats. Is one person responsible? We thought, hey, maybe somebody out there was killing street kids. We just didn't know who he was. The question is, why, why is that? The foreign material in the throat.
Starting point is 00:12:59 Why is someone putting it there? That's a very unusual activity. It could be, I'll shut you up. Or you're never going to see anything again, or I've got control about what you can say and what you can say. Then, one month later, in the quiet Chicago suburb of Desplanes, Illinois, local couple Harold and Elizabeth Piste arrived at the police station. They say their son Robert has gone missing.
Starting point is 00:13:37 Robert Piste is a store clerk at a localor pharmacy. He was only 15 years old, he couldn't drive. So his mother went there to pick him up after work. She's waiting to take him home at the end of his shift, so they could have a family birthday celebration for her at home. I mean, the cake was there, the candles were ready to light. And he runs out. The cake was there, the candles were ready to light. And he runs out. Rob tells his mother that a contractor,
Starting point is 00:14:09 building some shelves at the store, had offered him a job. And he was going back inside for a minute to talk it over with him. And his mother was waiting it for a long time. And he never came back. Mrs. Peace was alarmed. He just vanished.
Starting point is 00:14:39 In the late 70s, it's not unheard of for a teenager to run off. But the Peace family tells police that Rob just wasn't that kind of teenager. Rob was a good kid, and that's someone that anyone would expect to run away or just disappear. We know something's not right with this. It's an all-American kid doing well in school, athletic, a good job, good family life,
Starting point is 00:15:05 girlfriend, the whole bit, and he's after the type that you would take it around a way. I was good friends with Rob Peast. Rob was a couple years younger than me, and he came to work at the pharmacy after I had worked there for a while. And I'd worked the cast register at the pharmacy. That night, Rob told me he was going to talk to that contractor.
Starting point is 00:15:30 He said he was going outside to talk to him about some work over the holidays. He took his coat. And his last words to me before he left to talk to that contractor were, I'll be right back. I had worried that night subconsciously, because I had a bad dream about him that night. And, you know, I might cry,
Starting point is 00:16:04 you might say, it's that. So I had a really bad dream about him that he was stuck to trunk. I got this diary out and I wrote notes that next day. So sorry. The police now need to locate the contractor who may have been the last person to see Robert Peace to live. The contractor was a middle-aged man, not very attractive, not very fit, but was muddling around just kind of doing his measuring without interacting or an awareness of anybody else. Police ask the owner of the pharmacy if he knows the contractor's name. They talk to one of the owners of the pharmacy
Starting point is 00:16:57 and we're able to put a name on that contractor. Hey, listener. It is Jason Bateman. We've been fortunate to attract so many a list guests to our SmartList podcast, but we've never put together a lineup quite like this. I'm talking about Will Ferrell, Conan O'Brien, Kevin Hart, Mark Cuban, Jimmy Kimmel, Matt Damon, and more available four weeks early
Starting point is 00:17:19 and ad-free on Wondery Plus. If you've seen our docu series, SmartList on the road, you know we had an incredible time on our tour where we recorded 10 amazing interviews, Sean. This is Sean Heist, not only are these some of the best episodes that we've ever recorded, but the atmosphere with the live crowd is unlike anything we've released before. It was incredible to engage with an audience of thousands of our biggest fans
Starting point is 00:17:42 as we traveled all over the country from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. You can listen to these episodes four weeks early and add free with 1-3-plus, find 1-3-plus in the Wendry app or on Apple Podcasts. And this is Will Arnett. I'm telling you, you really should listen. Do it, do it, do it. As Grundy and Wil County authorities investigate, two young men found in the river, with clothing stuffed down their throats.
Starting point is 00:18:15 50 miles north, display police looking into the disappearance of 15-year-old Rob Piste have a name for the last person to see him alive. The person that Rob Piste went out to talk to was John Wayne Gacy. So investigators went to the home of the contractor. They wanted to learn what this gentleman might know of the disappearance of Robert Peast. He blew him off of this ant bag, and he couldn't talk to him.
Starting point is 00:18:52 So they said, well, come to the station today when you're done with your arrangements for the funeral. Didn't they go left? While detectives wait to talk to Gacy, they take a routine look at his background. They learned that he was an outstanding member of the community. He threw these big summer parties for the neighborhood, it all came to his house, backyard parties, barbecues, and everybody liked them. Johnny always wanted to be in the limelight.
Starting point is 00:19:28 Johnny was a politician. Johnny was a big shot. Johnny held the St. Patrick's parade. He was very well liked, very successful in the business, very active politically. That he had a picture taken with Rosalind Carter. He was a precinct commitment for the Democrat Party. He was a nice guy, the kind of guy you would probably
Starting point is 00:19:50 want to have a beer with. He would dress up in a clown costume. He would do charity events as Pogo of the Clown. A couple of people told us that he had these clown outfits and he would go entertain the kids at the hospital because he enjoyed entertaining the kids. Later that night, John Gacy finally shows up for his interview.
Starting point is 00:20:11 When he showed up, it was like three o'clock in the morning. We asked him specifically about our piece. He didn't remember talking to the kid. He didn't remember seeing the kid. Nothing. He had nothing to do with it. But we knew right away, he was something wrong. He was hiding something.
Starting point is 00:20:29 He was dirty. He was all full of mud, his pants and shoes. And he was all full of mud. He said, he got stuck somewhere in his car. So I asked the word, you get stuck. He said, near his house, realized right off the bat he was lying. I didn't believe him.
Starting point is 00:20:48 I just did not believe him. But then we had to let him go. You couldn't all of it. We had nothing. So we let him go. And I thought about him where he said he got stuck. And I went there the next day. There was no mark on he said he got stuck. And I went there the next day. There was no mark on any of the, it stuck.
Starting point is 00:21:09 We knew he lied about that. Police decide to dig deeper into Gacy's background. It turns out this pillar of the local community has a rap sheet. John Gacy had a satamy conviction in Iowa a few years back and was sent to prison for sexual relations with a juvenile boy. And so that peaked our interest. I mean so many young men were missing in the area. And two were about dead in the river.
Starting point is 00:21:52 Now, you have this man, Gacy, who had actually been in prison for having sexually assaulted a teenage boy who was last seen with Rob Pease. So to investigators, it seemed as if the pieces of the puzzle were actually coming together. Police immediately put John Wayne Gacy under 24-hour surveillance. You're hoping that, all right, maybe he's got Rob Pease
Starting point is 00:22:20 in his house kidnapping or holding without letting them go. You're hoping that somehow you're going to find this kid alive. It soon becomes clear this will be no ordinary surveillance operation. We're obviously in playing cars, but he knows who we are. So during the surveillance, many nights, we would get up at a restaurant and John sat at one table.
Starting point is 00:22:50 And this is the case. Come on, I'd sit with me. We'll talk. And so we moved over and talked to him. We had very good conversations with him. Hours had ended, middle of the night. He was likable. I didn't hate him and I felt very bad about him.
Starting point is 00:23:08 You could see how he made friends and influence people. The investigation continued on with the interviews of associates and background. As part of their background check, detectives cross-reference Gacy's name with reports in other precincts. And come across a bomb shell clue. Gacy's name was mentioned in a few Chicago police reports. The police discovered that two young men who were employed by John Wayne Gacy had gone missing as well. Two teenagers, John Buckovich and Gregory Gatzig had gone missing as well. Two teenagers, John Buckovich and Gregory Godzig have been on the list of missing boys for two years.
Starting point is 00:23:52 They come from different suburbs of Chicago, but have one significant connection. John Wayne Gacy. Investigators discovered up to young men work for them. And they just vanished. He recognized the smell of decomposition of human blood. I knew we had to get going at house. My feelings were almost numb.
Starting point is 00:24:20 It was just beyond anything I could have ever comprehend it up until that point. Police have been conducting surveillance on a contractor, named John Gacy, in connection with the disappearance of 15-year-old Robert Peast. We couldn't charge him with that. We had nobody. We had nothing. Authorities have just discovered a link between John Gacy and two other missing boys. Gacy's name was mentioned in a few Chicago police reports of missing kids that had never
Starting point is 00:25:00 been found. At the time, the police didn't make a connection between what Convention God said well the reason is they were from different police areas and there was no way of communication. With Gasey now connected to the disappearance of these two boys police wonder whether he might also be a suspect in the long list of missing Chicago area teenagers. Casey is involved in politics very well-liked, very well respected in the community. People will speak up for him.
Starting point is 00:25:35 People that we interviewed, that he had connections with, other contractors and so on, that everybody liked them. All his neighbors liked them, all the people that he associated with liked them. It was real hard, you know what I was saying? To talk to these people and get them to give us information when they thought he was a great guy. But they didn't know what we knew. Detectives continue to follow Gacy full time
Starting point is 00:25:57 as they look into his background hoping he'll slip up. And then one day, Gacy hands the investigators the break they've been waiting for. Gacy was arrogant. He'd see the policeman sitting in front of his house. He'd invite him in to use the restroom. So one of the officers goes in the bathroom. When the heat kicked on while he was in there, the air coming out of that vent practically hit him in the face. And he recognized the smell of decomposition of human flesh. He'd been to the morgue before.
Starting point is 00:26:43 He knew what it was. I go. Could it be? You start, is it possible that there's a body buried there? That's a lot. I think you guys may now have probable cause. So we drafted a search warrant for his whole house. So they execute the search warrant for his whole house.
Starting point is 00:27:07 So they execute the search warrant. Displays Police Department performed a search warrant and the Gacy Home. During their search, they found a bond slip. Now, bond slipped states you're going to show up for a court date. The investigators realized that they had a bond slip from Frank Lannigan. Frank Lannigan, who had been found in the River South of Chicago and had material stuff down his throat.
Starting point is 00:27:44 Investigators realized, aha, we've got a link. Well, bingo. The Bond slip definitively connects victim Frank Landigan to John Wayne Gacy. Confirming to investigators, they are onto something beyond a single disappearance. The smell, it was coming up through the vent. One of the investigators questioned where was the heating unit
Starting point is 00:28:11 who was down in the crawl space, under his house. We went down into the crawl space, lined, had been spread around, everything looked like it had been hadn't been touched in months. But it raised the last suspicion about what was down there. It was earthen uneven, it had some uneven mounds. An ed area is a very lot of groundwater, it's very damp. There was some indentations in the crawl space. Sheriff's people go in opposite corners
Starting point is 00:28:49 in the crawl space and start digging with trowels and search light and so forth. And they looked at it and immediately found bones. And knew they were human bones. Well, stop everything. My phone rings. And it was another assistant state's attorney. And he said, find her. Get your ass over to the police station.
Starting point is 00:29:20 We found some human bones. I said, oh my god get your ass over to the police station. We found some human bones. I said, oh my god. More than one body, he said, not sure. Authorities begin excavating Gacy's house. They didn't have to go down, but a few inches. And they're discovering bones in opposite locations.
Starting point is 00:29:47 It's a graveyard. Over the course of the next week, more and more bodies are unearthed from under Gacy's home. The vologists begin looking at the remains for any forensic evidence, and they see a familiar mark over and over again. There were underwears, sacks, rags, t-shirts, pieces of cloth in their mouths.
Starting point is 00:30:14 And as they were tearing out the interior walls, they would want to be hauled. They found Robbie P., Blue Down jacket. It was stuffed in the rafters in the crawl space. That was the strongest link that put Pease in Gacy's house. Investigators found pieces of key evidence, linking not only Gacy to someone who has disappeared, but also someone that was found dead. And it was clear that there is increasingly
Starting point is 00:30:51 more bodies that they might find. Now the question is how many? 29 bodies were covered from the property. 26 from the crawl space, one from underneath the dining room floor, which didn't have crawl space under it. One from the backyard, and one in the addition buried under the concrete. My feelings were almost numb. I had never seen anything like this. It was just beyond anything I could have ever comprehended up until that point. After discovering 29 bodies buried on his property and two bodies in the river, authorities immediately arrest 36-year-old John Wayne Gacy for murder. brought Casey back into the station. Then he asked me, he said,
Starting point is 00:32:05 Mike, were you guys in a crawl space? And he says, yeah, John, why do you ask that? And he said, well, that's what the line was for. What do you mean? He said, the line was to cover the smell, to cover the smell in a crawl space. After meticulously removing each bottle, to cover the smell in the crawl space. After meticulously removing each body over the course of nearly two weeks,
Starting point is 00:32:31 authorities must identify all the decomposed bodies. We just didn't know who they were and where they were in such bad shape. It was really making it hard to identify. As authorities struggle to identify remains, they continue to find what appears to be Gacy's mark. The existence of those materials that was stuffed in the orifices in both the river bodies and the other bodies were covered from the home tied it absolutely to him.
Starting point is 00:33:07 That was a nail in the coffin. As detectives are painstakingly removing remains from John Wayne Gacy's crawl space, a tugboat captain on the desk playing's river calls police. A body was found, was highly decomposed, was nude, and it was later determined that it was probably strangled. But he did have underwear type of material that was in his throat.
Starting point is 00:33:40 If it's the KCMO to a T, we're all anticipating it was Robert Peast. We went and took a look at him. We realized he was far too short to be Robert Peast. The victim is identified through fingerprints as 20-year-old James Mazzara, who has been missing for a month. Another street kid, Mojo, was a nickname that they had for him. And he was from Elwood Park and living on the streets
Starting point is 00:34:12 of the city of Chicago, so... How many more are we gonna have pop up here? And how many did he do? My goodness. Thank God that somebody stopped this game. The public is notified that this revered community figure is the serial killer that has been kidnapping and killing boys for years. I do believe if evil had not come and acted his door and he had opened it up, Johnny would have been the governor of the state of Illinois. Investigators delved into Gacy's history
Starting point is 00:34:53 to learn what might have led him to kill at least 32 people with his sadistic mark. Gacy had an alcoholic father who was physically and verbally abusive to his mother. He was also abusive to Gacy. Johnny used to get hit all the time. Every time Mr. Gacy either came from the basement drunk or sober, Mr. Gacy would walk him
Starting point is 00:35:20 with a fist in the face. He would make homosexual references stating that Gacy was a pansy gay. And of course, this didn't lend itself to Gacy having a very high self esteem as a youth. All through his life, he begged for his father to accept him. Gacy aspired to be something that his father would be proud of. Clearly, his father would not have been proud of his son who's having sex with other men.
Starting point is 00:35:59 He tried to elevate what he thought was sort of the good gacy, which was the community leader, the heterosexual male. Everybody liked him. He had his, you know, alter ego, pogo the clown. But there was that part of gacy that was always there. The part that enjoyed the killing and the torture and having sex with young boys. The question is, why is that clothing then throat? Why is Gacy putting it there? There's probably some ritualized aspect that he enjoyed doing it. The community reeled and disbelief.
Starting point is 00:36:53 They gathered around the house, you know, anxiously awaiting to hear if any more bodies had been identified by the medical examiner. We made it public that we were looking for dental records and other materials that might identify missing young men and boys during the relevant years. Authorities have found 29 gasey victims on his property, and three more victims in the river, a total of 32 bodies.
Starting point is 00:37:29 We never had seen that degree of evil, and it was unsettling and made people feel unsafe, but at the same time, I thought maybe we would have some peace and find a rock. We're quite sure that Rob Peast was not under the cross-space. Because there are skeletal remains, and Rob Peast has only been missing for not even two weeks. As authorities struggle to identify the victims
Starting point is 00:38:03 and locate Robert Peast and any other unknown victims, they decide to approach Casey directly to see if he'll help the investigation. He has a lawyer and I figured in a way that they're going to get a confession. I said to him, John, do you have any remorse for what happened to Rob or any other young man? And it's like the temperature in that room dropped 20 degrees. His hope or son-of-chance, he just looked at me and he says, what do you mean, remorse? In January of 1979, authorities attempt to get the suspected serial killer, John Wayne
Starting point is 00:38:56 Gacy, to confess to his crimes and help find Robert Peast. And I knew that was a trouble, and I thought he'd clam up. And I said, well, do you have any remorse? He said, oh, you mean that I got caught? I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. He said, oh, sure. From that point, Gacy was very forthcoming. He didn't listen to his lawyers.
Starting point is 00:39:21 You out of head and gave these oral statements. Casey's own words were that he was running on a room in the cross space and therefore decided to start throwing victims in the river. You find young men that would put his house drinks, have drugs, maybe sex, or just a job. He always blamed his victims for what happened to him. For being killed even.
Starting point is 00:39:51 It was their fault, not his. He didn't change his emotion at all, and he was telling me, well, what he did to these kids. He would tell the kids, OK, I'm going to put the handcuffs on you. And he would tell them I'm going to show you the rope trick. He would put a rope around their neck, put a very loose knot, that a stick about 10 to 12 inches. Then another loose knot. And he would start twisting it, bracing it
Starting point is 00:40:20 between the shoulder and the back of the head. And he would twist it and twist it. Investigators believe that his mark evolved from this brutality. He was torturing these kids. And to keep him from screaming, he gagged them. So kids started screaming in the bedroom or whatever. The neighbors are going to hear it. Now, did he admit it? No, he would never admit that.
Starting point is 00:40:45 He thought he was gonna get away with it forever. That's the way his life was. Gasey is formally charged with 33 counts of murder. 32 bodies have been located, and Robert Pist has not been found. While Gasey is still awaiting trial, another body is spotted by a hiker on the riverbank. The body was found near a dam. The body was not that well preserved. We found paper towels stuffing the throat, which we know is the Markov-John Wayne Gacy.
Starting point is 00:41:25 With Robert P. Stilby missing, I thought that might beat him. Investigators immediately bring the body to the coroner's office to attempt identification. Then within four or five days, a positive identification has been made on on Rob pieced by dental records. When Rob's body was recovered, I felt very bad that the family knew that this was final for the son. There was no chance that he had run away or said, was still alive.
Starting point is 00:42:07 When they found the body, my whole world stopped at that time. Robbusted. Part of myself felt guilty in the early days. Sorry. I think to Rob I was just saying, I'm sorry. Sorry I didn't run out. Sorry I didn't stop. It... Gacy stands trial for 33 counts of murder. The victims, some of whom have not been identified,
Starting point is 00:42:55 are all young men and boys, ranging in age from 14 to 21. At trial, he was Mr. Businessman. Set there like he was running a committee meeting. Mr. Affable. It took a long time for the jury to come back. But they didn't come back with 33 guiltys, 12 of which he qualified for death penalty. Finally, Judge Garretport starts reading,
Starting point is 00:43:31 for the murder of so-and-so, and so-and-so, I send this to you to death. For the murder of so-and-so, and so-and-so, I send this to you to death, 12 times. And Gacy, we could see his face. I can't imagine standing there in him with somebody that's 12 times. We're looking at him in the eye.
Starting point is 00:43:49 He didn't blink. He didn't even bat an eye. You talk about a scary guy. That's a scary guy. Out of all the people I've known in this world, in my wildest dreams, my wildest dreams, no, I would have never thought that my friend that I grew up with would turn out to be the worst I remember the day when he finally got his lethal injection. I just remember just being so relieved that finally it's over.
Starting point is 00:44:52 To date, six of John Wayne Gacy's victims remain unidentified.

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