True Crime All The Time - John Wayne Gacy Part3
Episode Date: October 14, 2019John Wayne Gacy is one of the most infamous serial killers of all time. In the 1970s, Gacy raped, tortured and killed at least 33 boys and young men in the Chicago area. Gacy was very well-kn...own and liked in his community and he enjoyed dressing up as a clown to entertain the neighborhood kids. He was the perfect example of a monster hiding in plain sight.Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the murderous John Wayne Gacy to mark the 150th episode of the podcast. In this third part on Gacy, we discuss the collapse of his second marriage, his run for elected office and the birth of Pogo the clown. We talk in detail about his known victims up through the end of 1977. We also discuss Gacy's distinctive MO and the boy that escaped Gacy early on that helped shed light on that MO.You can support the show at patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contact, merchandise and donation informationSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
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Hello everyone and welcome to episode 152 of the True Crime All the Time podcast.
I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in True Crime, Mike Gibson.
Gibby, how are you?
I'm good, man.
How about you?
I'm doing great.
Yeah.
I had a good week so far this week.
All right.
Got to ride a bike a couple of times.
Oh, take the bike out, huh?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's actually, uh, it's cooling down on some of the days.
Yeah.
So, you know, can beef up my wardrobe a little bit, which I actually prefer.
Beefing up?
Wearing jeans and, you know, a little heavier coat and leather jacket, stuff like that.
You got all that biker gear.
I do.
But when it's so hot out, man, most time I just wear shorts and a t-shirt because it's freaking hot.
But it is starting to cool down.
I mean, we haven't even had our air on for a couple of days.
Kind of nice weather, actually.
It is.
It is.
All right, man, we have some new Patreon supporters.
So let's give some shoutouts.
We had Alicia Little.
Hey, Little.
And we have to give a special shout out to Alicia's mom, Peggy Ellis. She's a huge fan. Peggy, how are you?
Rachel Malmstadt jumped out at our highest level.
Milton Stark. As did Joy Trinquette. Hey, Trinquet.
Cianthorpe. Hey, Cian. Audrey Lorraine Fountain Lake.
Hey, blah, blah, lake. Four names going on there. Yeah, Fountain Lake.
Kirsten Nors jumped out of our highest level. Hey, Kirsten. Lauren Lopez.
Lauren.
Brittany Just.
What's up?
Brittany Just.
Rachel Anthony.
Hey, Rachel.
Yvette Casey.
Hey, Yvette.
Jim Harrington.
What's going on, Jim?
Tina Wiggle jumped out of our highest level.
Hey, Wagle Wiggle.
So did Ashley Merritt.
Really?
Thanks, Ashley.
So did Lori Eccles.
Oh, the Eccles in the house.
Yeah.
So three people in a row jumped out of our highest level.
We appreciate that.
We had Marion.
Hey, Marion.
Kevin Willett.
What's going on, Kevin?
Vicki S. Gordon.
Hey, it's like a little attorney's name.
Stacey Tice.
Hey, Stacey.
Dominique Balzoma.
Dominique.
And Chris Richardson.
Hey, what's up, Chris?
So appreciate all that new support.
Yeah, we do.
Then we go back into the Vault Gibbs.
All right.
This week, we selected Donna McGrath.
Donna McGrath.
Been with us a very long time.
And she's related to that guy that sings that song.
Whose last name is McGrath?
Yes.
So she's into him or related to him?
Related.
Okay.
Yeah.
but also somehow into him, which makes it wrong.
That really is all wrong.
You see how everything comes full circle.
Yeah.
I seen what you did there, up to what I did there.
Hey, we had some PayPal support as well.
Deborah Gile.
Hey, Deborah.
Alicia, little also.
Oh, Alicia, thank you.
Who was a Patreon support.
Awesome.
Vanessa.
Hey, Vanessa.
And Thurza Morial.
Thursday.
Thursday.
It's like they wanted to be Thursday, but they said,
this has dropped that and just be Thursday.
I don't know.
Thurza.
Oh, Thurza.
You listen to it.
You said it correctly, and then you come back around and totally butcher it.
So just leave it where I had it.
Yeah, probably.
Probably.
So we appreciate the PayPal support as well.
Thank you.
Gives, we got a lot going on.
We do.
We just put out a Patreon-only episode on video and audio as well.
We have another one coming up at the end of this month.
Right now, we have an episode out on True Crime All-Time.
unsolved. Yes. It's another double case. It is. It's the cases of Amy Fleming and Gary Dawson.
Yeah. I'll take place up in Lee County, Illinois. I stopped. I was going to say Illinois.
No, see. I think people will be happy that you're, uh, that you're getting there. Yeah.
So make sure you check that out. Some interesting cases for sure. Absolutely. And we've got some things
planned coming up in the next two or three weeks that I think people are really going to like. Something a little
different for us. Don't forget about the reviews are in podcast. This Tuesday coming out,
we're talking about the classic Ouija board game or Ouija, depending on how you want to say it.
And I didn't say it right either way. I don't think you said either one. We're also talking about
a half keyboard that sells for about $500 and some dollars. And you literally get half a keyboard.
Yep. Yet people are buying it. Yet people are buying it. It's very strange. And get it. And get
giving it some half decent reviews.
Yeah.
So make sure you check that out.
It's a lot of fun.
But Gibbs, I think we have to jump right into Gacy.
We do.
Are you ready for part three of John Wayne Gacy?
Man, I think we all been ready for part three.
So when we left off in part two,
Gacy had just remarried after committing his first murder and bearing his first victim in the
crawl space of his home.
And we talked about it, right?
It seemed as though Gacy really enjoyed.
his first murder. He talked about it as well, and that's unfortunate because he's going to commit
many more murders over the years. Also in the last episode, we asked the question, why would Gacy
get married again? I don't know that I ever understood it. We gave a couple of possible scenarios,
but as you can expect, the marriage is not going to go well. No. For a multitude of reasons,
one thing that probably didn't help was that Gacy's mother-in-law moved into the house for a period of time.
That can't be easy.
Not going to be comfortable for anybody.
No.
Not, you know, I love my mother-in-law.
I really don't want to see her 24-7.
It's funny.
This is the one episode that she said she wanted to listen to.
Hey, she'll listen to it, I'm sure.
She knows that.
I tell her to her face.
She doesn't want you living with her either.
No, exactly.
Everybody needs their space.
But his mother-in-law would be one of the people that would provide perspective later on, right?
So after all of this stuff comes out about Gacy, she did a number of interviews.
Well, she's going to talk about how bad it smelled.
Yeah, that's for sure.
She definitely goes into some detail about the smells and the fact that it was constant.
But she also talked quite a bit about the marriage between Gacy and her daughter.
Number one, she said she was against it from the beginning.
She could probably tell us how strange and weird it was, too, I would think.
Well, yeah, she talked about his personality.
And I think she saw it, right?
When you're with somebody kind of day in, day out,
you see the things that people don't see at work or at a weekly meeting.
You know, she said that one minute he would show his scary.
rage side. Right. And then all of a sudden, almost as if a switch had flipped, he's back to
easy going, everything's okay guy. So she got the behind the scenes, Gacy. She saw the real Gacy come out,
I think in the rage moments. I think we've all experienced that, right? Somebody we've known
where you go, holy. Why are you looking at me? What does happen there? I've never seen that.
of him or her.
Yeah, it takes me a lot to get there, but I have that.
You were there last week.
I was there last week.
I can get there, but it's not in the way that like a John Wayne Gacy would get there, right?
I'm not going to go out and hurt anybody, but just months into the marriage, it seems Gibbs
like the marital bed got a little cold, if you know what I mean.
Well, if Gacy doesn't want to have a little chickabow wow and you just got married,
might be a problem.
Well, and we talked about it in the last episode of why that would be in talking about why would
this guy get married.
He's gay.
Nothing wrong with it.
But he knows he's gay.
Why does he go out and marry a woman?
It's not that strange that probably four, five, six months into the marriage.
But it's not having sex at all.
Yeah, that's pretty much how it's seen.
That's got to throw up some red flags, right?
to a newlywed wife.
Yes.
That your husband doesn't want to be intimate with you.
Well, it's got to, I mean, if you think he doesn't desire you, it can't feel good.
No, no, it wouldn't feel good.
It would raise some red flags.
But the pair would stay married for about five years.
She really hung in there, didn't she?
Yeah, she did.
So Gacy started his contracting business, which he called PDM.
and he ran it out of his house.
I initially thought that the acronym was the same as your business, Gibbs, public displays of machismo.
Machismo?
Which you, you know, you have PDM on the side of your van.
You drive around.
You stop.
You get out.
You demonstrate some machismo.
And then you get back in and you go.
I don't know how you make money.
I don't know how it's a thriving business.
I do it just because.
just because you feel like it.
But that's not what it stands for at all.
It actually stands for painting, decorating, and maintenance, which if you think about it,
is not great.
It's not jumping out of the yellow pages probably at you.
But it is much better than public displays of machismo for a construction company.
Yeah, if you want to try to get a lot more business.
And I think Gacy worked very hard building up this business.
He often worked long hours.
He also began employing young boys, young men to work at the business, which you know was a very
calculated move on his part.
Yeah, absolutely it was.
So he's working very long hours.
Why?
Because he has to or because he doesn't want to go home to his wife.
Well, he don't want to go home to his wife.
Maybe both.
Yeah, it could be a combo.
Maybe a combination of both.
why is he hiring young boys and men?
Well, number one, he's attracted to them.
Yeah.
We know that.
Number two, it's also a cheaper labor force.
You know, you hire a 30 year old guy.
He needs to make X.
Right.
You hire a 17, 18 year old.
They don't need to make as much.
No, it's entry level, man.
And over time, that allowed him to undercut bids of other companies.
Yeah.
And it helped him become more profitable.
But I don't think that was the big part for him.
I think it was the hiring pool.
Yeah.
I think he wanted to be around nothing but young boys and men.
Plain and simple.
We talked about it in part one, right?
The two different sides of Gacy.
We saw it in Waterloo, Iowa.
I think he took it to a new level in this, what I'm calling his second act.
He started holding these big summer parties at his house.
He held block parties.
It was like party central.
And this was also about the same time that he came up with his Pogo, the clown act.
So this is the birth of Pogo.
The birth of Pogo, which is how he gets his nickname the Killer Clown.
So Gacy would put on the Pogo outfit.
He would entertain kids at not only the parties that he held, he would go all
over entertaining is Pogo the clown. And I think a lot of this came out of his desire to be
elected to some type of official office. He was hell bent on holding some type of office. Go back to the
JC. Sure. Right. Like he lived for that. He wanted to be seen as someone of power, someone of authority.
Sure. And that is most likely probably why he married and put that role on of having a perfect family with the wife.
I think you're right. Even though that's not what he really wanted. I think you're absolutely right. I think he thought, yeah, I think he thought that was the way to have everybody look at him and say, wow, this is the all American family guy. Yeah. He gets our vote as opposed to the single bachelor that is known to.
hang out way too much with young boys.
Absolutely.
He started to become pretty well known around the area.
He had some influential friends who were willing to help him.
But I think the key Gibbs in Gasey's mind was to become even more known and really beloved by those in the community.
I don't know if beloved is the right word.
Maybe it's more respected, looked up to whatever the word is.
And I think some of his influential friends told him that.
Hey, you can get into office, whatever office, but you got to get out there, man.
You got to meet everybody.
You got to shake all the hands and kiss all the babies and do all that.
Got to get social.
And he did.
So you have the parties.
You have the dressing up as the clown to make it look like you're this great guy.
And it worked.
He was elected as secretary, treasurer of the Norway.
township street lighting district.
I don't know what that is.
Seems very specific.
Having something to do with street lights,
but it's an elected office.
And that's what he was looking for.
Maybe he controlled all the streetlights in that area.
I think he did.
If you wanted a street light,
you saw John Wayne Gacy.
Or if you crossed John Wayne Gacy,
shut you down.
He'd turn your street light off in front of your house and you'd be in total darkness.
It'd be like Dan Aykroyd in that Christmas movie.
with Tim Allen.
Where they needed to get the lights on,
Dan Aykroyd knew who to call at the power place
to get the power back on.
That's power right there.
What movie's that?
That's got Jamie Lee Curtis in it.
Skipping vacation.
Just say skipping vacation?
I started to.
Skipping Christmas.
And then I thought you were going to say Christmas vacation.
Skipping Christmas or...
Christmas with the cranks?
Christmas with the cranks.
Is that what it is?
Yeah.
Okay.
That's it.
Close.
I actually think I've seen it.
Skipping Christmas, I think, was their first working title.
Maybe that was the name of the book.
You cracked me up.
How would that even make sense?
Skipping Christmas.
I think it's the name of the book.
Skipping Christmas.
I also think that Gacy saw this as a stepping stone, right?
This wasn't his end all be all.
No, but you got to start somewhere.
Right.
So he gets elected to what was probably a little bit lower level office.
No difference.
than you with the furries when you first went in.
You started at that one level, right?
Mm-hmm.
Where you just took the notes and all that,
the secretary of the furries for the local 101.
And now I'm the president of the whole thing.
All thing.
Apparently, Gacy even had cards printed up that said he was like this big wig
within the Democratic Party.
Okay.
There in Chicago.
And he was handing him out.
out to everyone. He wasn't, although I believe later he was elected to some Democratic precinct
captain thing. Yeah, to the ward or something like that. So that's almost like fake it till you make it?
I think so. I think it's just name recognition, right? If people keep associating your name with something
when they come to time to vote, they're probably going to vote for you. That is true. They thought you
were one already. I'll vote for him. I'll vote for him. He even had his photograph taken alongside
side first lady Rosalind Carter, which Gacy was extremely proud of.
He talked about the lot.
He showed it off.
He bragged about it.
Now, you got to think about the first lady later on learning what Gacy did saying,
hey, is there any way we can get all those back?
Yeah, can we get those back?
No, that's out there forever.
And it's online.
You can see him standing next to her.
And that's the thing about Gacy for me.
You know, he was a poser.
And I do think a lot of serial killers are, right?
They want you to see them in a very specific light.
Sure.
Even though it may not be anything like who they really are deep down inside because they don't want you to see that.
I don't know if they strive to be normal or I think some do.
And I think others just like you said, it's a front.
Well, I don't know if you, yeah, when you say strive, I think they strive to appear normal.
Right.
I don't know that any of them are trying to be normal.
If they were, they would stop killing people, disemboweling, eating, doing all the strange things that they do.
Definitely a battle going on.
But I do think they are good at mimicking the behavior around them, what they perceive to be what everybody should be doing.
Sure.
And they're able to mimic that.
I think Gacy was a step ahead.
I think he was even on a higher level as far as being able.
able to really put it out there, put on a show.
It was the entertainer in him.
Yeah, I think he was an entertainer.
He also liked to drive around in an Osmobile 88.
Oh, that's a big car, man.
That's a boat.
But back then, it looked like a cop car.
Oh.
There were some cop cars that were Osmobiles.
Gotcha.
And I think he even had a siren in the car that he could slap onto the roof if needed.
I don't know why he needed to.
He may have even had a scanner.
think at one point.
They made it more realistic.
He was kind of acting the part.
You know, it reminds me of Ed Kemper.
Ed Kemper really wanted to be a police officer.
He was fascinated by it.
But you take all of these things that we've said and underneath it all, right, at the very
core, what is John Wayne Gacy?
He's a pedophile and a murderer.
Absolutely.
Plain and simple.
All the other stuff to me is, it's just window dressing.
It's just a facade, man.
Yeah, no, I agree with you 100%.
But the problem is he has now gotten a taste for murder.
He said it.
He enjoyed it.
And he had to have more of that experience.
As sick as that sounds, that's how it works for these guys.
It's a high, right?
They get whatever they get from it.
And for, I think for different people, it's different, right?
You know, some it's sexual, some it's whatever.
but whatever that high is, you got to get it.
You want it again.
You want it again and again.
And we know that Gacy had a large number of victims.
So it's going to be tough to spend a lot of time on each and every one of them.
We're going to try to give as much info as we can.
There are some that have never been identified.
And there's some where there's just not that much information out there.
Gacy murdered another young male sometime between 72 and 75, but the police have never been able to
identify the body.
And some of Gacy's victims were identified many years after being found.
We'll talk about that as we go through specific victims.
I believe right now the number of his unidentified victims still stands at six.
I still think there's six out there that have yet to be.
identified. Well, hopefully with technology one day we'll get there. Yeah, because, and we'll talk about it,
but there was a victim just identified a year or two ago. But think about that. You and I profile a lot of
murderers. This guy has more unidentified victims than a lot of serial killers. Oh, yeah. It just shows you
how prolific he was and you'll really see it as we start talking about the victims in the timeframes. I mean,
two, three, four a month, five a month, maybe in some cases.
Yeah, I mean, for sure, when you talk about serial killers in the true crime world,
his name is always in that top list.
It is.
One person who later shed light on Gacy was Tony Antonucci.
This was a guy that did some work for Gacy.
And we're going to see that, right?
With a lot of his victims, it's believed that a lot of them worked for Gacy in some capacity.
but back then Tony was a 15-year-old kid who had a very scary encounter with Gacy.
So he found himself alone with John Wayne Gacy.
I think John Wayne Gacy even came over to his house.
Yeah.
Nobody else was home.
Gacy said that he wanted to show Tony a trick.
Now remember, he's a clown, right?
It's not a magician, but he's a clown.
It's got to know some tricks.
Don't clowns do tricks?
Yeah, magicians do tricks, but clowns, I guess so too.
The trick was to get behind Tony, put handcuffs on him, and start to take his clothes off.
It's not much of a trick.
It's not a trick that I would be interested in in any way, shape, or form.
But he told him it was a trick, right?
With these handcuffs, luckily, Gacy didn't tighten the handcuffs, tight enough.
And Tony was able to get them off and get away.
But what we're going to see, Gibbs, is this is how he killed a lot of his victim.
So this Tony kid was unbelievably lucky.
And apparently John told him, you're the first one to get the cuffs off.
So again, how many times had he done this before already?
Right.
And it's something you and I talk about, right?
The number is huge.
Could it, could it be even higher?
Well, I think it definitely could be.
And even if the number of murdered victims is not higher, how many more people did he victimized that, you know, maybe
never came forward. The number could be staggering if you think about it. You know, I think it's not
inconceivable to think that he had additional victims that may have chosen not to come forward with
their stories even after this guy was caught. Well, sure. Just embarrassment alone. Right. Maybe the
circumstances of what happened. They didn't want anybody else to know about. But Gacy had another trick that
Tony Antonucci fortunately never got to see.
His second trick, as he called it, was the rope trick.
So after his victims were handcuffed, they're unable to fight back at that point.
Gacy would produce a rope, put it around their necks and strangle them.
Now, it was normally preceded by a sexual assault.
This really in a nutshell would become Gacy's M.O.
Figure out a way to get you in hand.
handcuffs by most likely telling you it's a trick.
Right.
We're playing around.
Once I got you, I'm behind you already.
Trick number two.
I'm going to sexually assault you.
And then I'm going to strangle you.
And eventually I'm going to bury you in the crawl space of my house.
I don't think he deviated from this a whole lot.
I do think there were some victims that were possibly suffocated.
Yeah.
Rather than being strangled.
But for the most part, the majority of the majority of,
of his victims, I believe, were killed this exact way.
And why would he change?
It worked for him.
It did.
And obviously it gave him that gratification.
Sure.
That he was looking for, which is why he kept doing it over and over again.
I hate to use the word successful, but that's why he was able to be successful because he
followed a pattern that worked.
Well, let's go back to the last episode.
Why did he get caught the first time?
Why did he go to the pen?
Because his victim was able to tell on him.
He's making sure that these boys, I'm going to call him boys.
Right.
There are some maybe 17 and 18 year olds, but either way, I'm just going to call him boys.
He's making sure that's never going to happen again.
No.
So Tony Antunuchy got away, had to think of himself later on as one of the luckiest people ever, right?
after knowing what's going to come out, everything that Gacy would do in the next few years,
even to this day, this guy probably thinks I am a lucky, you know what?
Well, he should have shirts made up.
I survive Gacy.
I don't think that's something you want to advertise because I think there's probably some trauma there that you don't want to relive by putting it on a shirt.
But I get what you're saying.
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But Gibbs, just a week after this incident with Tony, Gacy killed again.
This time it was 18-year-old John Bookovich.
John had worked for Gacy, but he quit and he was hounding Gacy to get some money that he
said Gacy owed him.
So on July 31st, 1975, John left his house for Gacy's saying that he was going to get his money.
And this is where the information from Antenucci really comes in because it's that same trick that Gacy used on John.
But this time, John doesn't get away and Gacy strangles him from behind.
He buried his body under the crawl space.
John's body was actually the first one recovered from the crawl space during the excavation.
But the thing about this murder that really gets me is that John's family knew where he was going.
He told them, I'm going to Gacy's house to pick up my money.
So, you know, after a while, he doesn't come home.
They go to police.
They give police Gacy's name.
They say, hey, our son.
son said this is where he was going. Right. You'd think that would be really important.
You would think. For the police. But nothing ever came out of it. I think they did go talk to
Gacy. But it's Gacy. Yeah. And he's a pillar of the community. And he's halfway decent at talking
his way out of things probably. Absolutely. I think he told them that, ah, John ran away. And the
authorities believe that. But the Bukovic's were furious.
that police essentially wouldn't do anything about their missing son.
They were even more furious to find out years later that it was Gacy that murdered their son.
And this is a sad theme that will play out again and again.
Gacy's name being connected with a number of missing young males.
And when everything comes out, it really makes the authorities look.
look foolish. Well, sure, because they should see the domino effect. Yeah, it was like they were told
by so many people that this guy was connected to their missing loved ones, but they never
put it together, right? The police didn't. Now, was that for a lack of trying? Or was it because
they couldn't prove anything? I don't know the answer to that, but I can tell you that probably
most people think it was because they didn't they didn't look into it enough there was too much
smoke there not to find out where the fire was coming from right in in a lot of people's
eyes i think they took a beating in the press when this was all you know when it all came to
light when john butkovitch was killed gasey's wife carroll and her two stepdaughters
they were away visiting family it's something you have to
factor in. If you're a serial killer and you're planning on killing people at your house,
how are you going to do that with a wife and two stepdaughters? That's not going to be an easy
thing to do. No, I'm sure he was ecstatic when she left town. I'm sure he said at every opportunity.
Hey, why don't you go visit some family? I don't know if he's going to be real happy come October,
though. When she says, hey, I'm done, I'm out. I want a divorce because it's going to hurt his
political career. Yeah, I think you're right. I don't know how much at all he cared about Carol or
his two stepdaughters. I imagine he cared much more about his public image. But we said the marriage
was rocky. And really, if you think about it, it's a wonder they lasted as long as they did.
According to Carol, John began bringing home gay magazines. I think at some point Gibbs it became
almost as if he wasn't even trying to hide it at this point.
And I don't know, maybe he wanted her to leave so that he could proceed with his murders unimpeded.
Yeah, but like you said earlier, he was also working these long hours.
And most likely because he didn't want to get home and be intimate with her.
Now, on top of the magazines, Carol and her mom had begun to hear some rumors about things that
gasey had been doing, especially with some of the young males that worked for him.
I can only imagine what the rumors were.
I think everybody can imagine what they were.
Sure.
They didn't print them in the paper back in the mid-70s.
It couldn't have been good.
But whatever it was, all of this culminated into Carol saying, enough's enough.
The divorce was finalized in early 1976.
But this is what really got me was.
that in several newspapers, it was stated that the divorce was granted on the grounds of mental
cruelty, with Gacy saying that his wife wouldn't make his dinner. So that's mental cruelty because
she's not making my dinner. And Carol saying that he was seeing other women, which is almost
comical, right? Gives, I mean, she had to know this wasn't true. She knew he wasn't sleeping
with other women. My assumption is she figured that this was the best way to get out of this thing,
meaning the marriage, without bringing up some of the even seedier, real reasons for her
wanting to get out. Yeah. Sometimes you just got to get out. You do what you got to. Yeah,
you do what you have to do. I think in her case, if she can do it without divulging the fact that
her husband didn't want her.
Yeah.
Instead, he was attracted to young boys.
I think that's the way she went about doing it.
It's definitely something you don't want to admit that somebody did not desire you.
Yeah.
No, I agree.
But now Gacy's free, right?
He's not encumbered by anything.
He has the house to himself.
He begins to murder at an alarming rate.
So it's going to ramp up.
Oh, my gosh.
an unbelievable degree. He's murdered a number of people already. But when you think about it,
the bulk of his murders occurred between 1976 and 1978 after his divorce from Carol.
There are a lot of young males that are going to die at the hands of John Wayne Gasey in what is
really, if you think about it, a fairly short amount of time for that many murders. On April 6th,
1976, 19-year-old Darrell Samson disappeared. I couldn't find a lot on Samson, but his body was later
recovered from Gacy's crawl space. The next month in May, Gacy killed twice. Samuel Stapleton was only
14 years old when he disappeared on May 13th, 1976, while walking home from his sister's house.
his mom later said that he was at his sister's house having some milk and cookies but after that he decided that he wanted to come home
i think the original thought was that he was going to spend the night with his sister he said you know what now
i want to come home and gacy got him somewhere on the walk home he was one of gacy's youngest victims
His parents reported him missing the next day, but police weren't able to find out anything about his disappearance.
His body was later found in the crawl space along with a bracelet that led his family to believe that it was Samuel.
And his identity wouldn't be confirmed for about seven months after that.
Yeah, and it's a very sad thing that happened to some of the families of Gacy's victims.
And we'll talk about it as we talk about each victim.
You know, once the excavation of the crawl space began,
a lot of families of missing boys began to think that their loved one may be in there,
right?
May have been one of Gacy's victims.
In a number of instances,
there was something that linked the remains to a specific person.
But it took authorities quite a long time to,
to positively identify some of the bodies.
A lot of this came down to whether or not families had dental charts that they could supply
to the authorities, right?
That would make it much easier to positively ID somebody.
You have their teeth.
Now you have their dental records.
Let's match them up.
Well, if you don't have the dental records, we know we don't have DNA at this point in time.
What are we doing?
to match up a set of skeletal remains, right?
It can be very tough.
The Stapletons didn't have dental records.
And this would be agonizing, Gibbs, to sit and wonder for six, seven months a year,
whatever it turns out to be.
Yeah.
If your loved ones remains were actually found in Gacy's crawl space, because you don't know.
I'm sure they had to believe, at least in some small way, that it was actually
Samuel because of the bracelet. But you would hold out hope, right, for as long as you could.
For sure. You know you would. I know in my heart, if it was me, I would never want to think the
worst until it was proven. I mean, literally somebody would have to sit me down and say,
here's how we know. Without a doubt, it's your child. The positive identification was made
after Samuel's mother remembered that there was an x-ray that had been taken of her son's head
years earlier. And it turned out that the x-ray included his teeth and they were able to make the
identification from that. So they didn't have dental records, but they had an x-ray that included
his teeth or at least some of his teeth. Well, thank goodness they had that. Probably half,
depending on how they did the x-ray. Right. And they were able to match it up with,
what they had as far as remains.
But the very next day,
Gacy struck again.
This time,
it was 15-year-old Randall Ruffet.
He disappeared on May 14th.
There's not a lot of details surrounding his disappearance.
What is known is that he was found in Gacy's crawl space.
And he was identified in a very similar way to Samuel Stapleton.
Rapheth had suffered a stab wound.
Prior to his disappearance, he had been x-rayed at the hospital.
Well, the x-ray, it turned out, showed his jaw and some of his teeth.
And from that, they were able to match it with teeth found in the crawl space.
But that didn't happen until April of 1976.
Refet was the seventh body uncovered, but the 16th identified.
You know, four months doesn't seem.
like a long time. But in this, I think it'll be a lifetime, man. If that was your kid, just one day,
you'd be like, are you kidding me? Can we find anything? No, you're absolutely right, because like a lot of
families, they had to have been watching the news, right? We're skipping ahead a little bit when we
talk about this. This is Gacy's been caught. They know there's bodies, a lot of bodies in this
crawl space, but as a family with a missing child, you're watching the news thinking,
one of those bodies in there could be my child.
So to me, yeah, four or five months, however long it was,
that would be an eternity to have to wait to find out.
Gacy's next victim was 17-year-old Michael Bonnet.
He disappeared on June 3rd, 1976.
He was strangled by Gacy and buried in the crawl space.
Bonn's family had no idea what happened to him.
They said he left around 9 a.m. on the,
the third saying that he was going to help paint a friend's house.
He never returned home.
The family searched for him all around the area.
They even searched other states.
They searched in Wisconsin.
They searched in Colorado.
They must have had some information that maybe he could have been there.
The Wisconsin thing makes sense because it was on December 30th, 1978,
when they received a call from the sheriff's office.
And they were told that a Wisconsin fishing license in William's name had been found inside Gacy's home.
They must have already known, right?
Either he made frequent trips to Wisconsin.
He went fishing in Wisconsin.
I don't know.
But obviously there was a reason for them to think we should check in Wisconsin.
I'm not sure why Colorado came up.
Yeah, I mean, just knowing the locality of,
Wisconsin to this area. A lot of people took trips up there all the time. Yeah, not far. Right.
Michael's body was identified on January 6th, 1979. But now Gibbs, we're into the area of
souvenirs, right, with this fishing license. We know why killers keep souvenirs. I think for the most
part, it's to relive their murders and get some type of sick twisted thrill out of handling whatever this
object is, they get to relive the whole thing all over again.
It's kind of a trophy for him.
It is.
But this is what I don't get.
They have to know these killers, right?
That if they're caught with this stuff, they're going to be sunk.
There's no way around it.
Why else would you have these items from these different victims?
So why do they do it?
I really think it comes down to just a couple of theories.
And maybe there's more, but these are the two.
two that kind of pop into my head.
Number one, they think they're too smart to ever be caught.
And I think a lot of serial killers believe that.
I agree.
Or two, and this may be the more likely of the two.
And it could be a combination of both.
But two, the compulsion to relive what they've done is so strong that it far outweighs
any possible consequences.
They don't care.
not that they want to get caught necessarily,
but they're willing to risk it to have this souvenir,
have this trophy,
hold it and get,
again,
whatever gratification they get from reliving all the bad stuff they did.
Yeah,
I think they,
exactly what you said.
They love to go through that experience again in their head.
And I think we've heard from some killers,
right,
whatever the compulsion is, it builds and it builds. And finally, they have to go out and kill.
But when they can't kill, there is maybe not the same level, but there is a way to get some
level of gratification from handling these items. And maybe they do that sometimes in between kills
because of whatever, something comes up. They can't get out to cruise and find victims.
or do whatever it is they do.
16-year-old William Carroll disappeared on June 13th, 1976.
He told his family he would only be gone for an hour.
And he jumped into a car with some of his friends.
He never came home.
William's father described him to news outlets as a handsome athletic youth.
This is a guy that lifted weights.
He boxed.
He was in good shape.
But he did have a habit of getting.
into trouble. He once snatched a woman's purse on the L and made off with three or four hundred
dollars. It's quite a chunk of change in the 70s. Back then, yeah. Especially for a, I think at the time,
he was probably 13, 14 years old. A few years before he disappeared, he was caught with a 38 Smith
and Wesson. And it came out later from some of his friends that William liked to shoot the gun at
people. He wasn't trying to hit them. Oh. But he was trying to scare them so that he could watch them
run away in horror. Just wanted to see the reaction, huh? Yeah. So, you know, not to talk bad about a victim,
but you have to give these details. This guy, he did some things that maybe his father wasn't so
proud of that he was willing to share with news outlets. It's like the Wild Wild West days. When you
shoot people's feet, make them dance.
he didn't deserve what happened to him for sure.
Billy Skeleton was the 11th uncovered.
And he was positively identified through the use of dental records in February of 1979.
So I don't think there's any doubt.
Gibbs,
when you look at this,
when you go through it,
the families that had access to dental records,
they found out about their loved ones much quicker than those that didn't.
But you still have to think,
even though they found out quicker, these boys had been missing for years, years, some, you know, three, four years in some cases before they were found.
An unidentified male was found in the crawl space that authorities believed was murdered by Gase around the same time as William Carroll.
The real big difference here, besides the fact that this body's never been identified, is that he's thought to be older.
Well, I think they're going to try to park him somewhere between 22 and 30 years old.
Yes.
And that seems a little out of the ordinary for Gacy.
There's a couple of other victims that get into a little bit older age ranges like this.
I don't know what that means.
It's a little bit outside of the norm for his victim type, but it's not that far, I guess.
Well, maybe they look younger than they were.
to him and they could have or we don't know the circumstances around every murder and especially
around the ones that are unidentified because we don't know who they are we have no idea what happened
gacy's next victim was 16 year old jimmy hackinson jimmy was from st paul minnesota but apparently
he wasn't happy living at home he had threatened his mother on numerous occasions that he was going to run
away. He was set to make it on his own, and he figured the best place to do that would be Chicago.
That makes total sense. I'm 16 years old. I'm going to Chicago to make it on my own.
If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere. Except for New York.
Except for New York. When he got there, he called his mom. This was August 5th,
1976, to tell her where he was. That was the last conversation that she ever had with her son.
Because somewhere along the way, he met John Wayne Gacy.
He met the nightmare is what I call it.
The nightmare, the monster.
The thought is that Gacy lured him back to his house, most likely with the promise of work.
And I think that's going to be true in a lot of these cases, handcuffed him, sexually assaulted him, and then strangled him.
Jimmy's remains were found in the crawl space, but police had no idea who he was.
And they had no way to identify him.
So for a very long period of time,
he was simply known as victim number 24.
Wow, man.
I'm just thinking about that.
Victim number 24.
It's very impersonal.
But I guess they could have called him John Doe.
They just had no way to know who he was.
And it wasn't until 2017 that relative step forward
to offer up their DNA.
right in the hopes that some of this new DNA technology could help confirm that victim 24 was in fact
Jimmy Hackinson and that's exactly what happened but imagine that over 40 years of not knowing
for sure what happened to your loved one it's unimaginable 40 years man I mean my gosh I cannot
imagine gacy is believed to have killed three other individuals
around the same time that he murdered Jimmy Hackinson.
Two of these victims have never been identified,
but are believed to have been killed sometime around August 6, 1976.
They were both white males.
One is believed to have been between the ages of 17 and 21,
while the other is thought to have been between 21 and 27.
So again, 21 to 27, you're getting a little,
little higher than I think what you typically think about with Gacy's victims. Sure. And then there's
17 year old high school student Rick Johnston. He was dropped off at a concert by his mother on August 6th. He
never made a home. His body was found in Gacy's crawl space and ultimately confirmed through
dental records to be him on January 1st, 1979. So if you think about it, Gibbs,
We just talked about four victims that are all thought to have been killed August 5th or August 6th.
Very short time frame.
That is a lot of murders to commit in what is essentially a day or two.
19 year old William George Bundy had been a star diver, a big time gymnast in high school before dropping out.
After dropping out, he began working construction, which in all likelihood,
probably put him directly in contact with John Wayne Gacy.
In October of 1976, he told his family that he was heading out to a party and never returned.
His remains were later found in the crawl space, but authorities were unable to identify him.
It wasn't until 2011 that through new DNA technology, they were finally able to confirm to his
family that the remains were his. And I want to give some context to this timeline. When Bill went
missing in 1976, his sister was 15 years old. Gibbs, when she spoke at the press conference in
2011, she was 50. Wow. That just gives you a sense of how long it took to identify this 19 year old as being,
one of Gacy's victims. It's 35 years. It's a long time. Bill's parents divorced after his disappearance,
which we've talked about. Happens, I think, in a lot of these cases, hard to keep a marriage together,
but they also both died before ever finding out for sure what happened to their son. That's real.
That's the type of carnage that John Wayne Gacey, the monster, unleashed, not only on his victim,
but on their families as well.
Yeah, this went wide and deep, man.
It did.
Yeah.
I mean, no doubt, he murdered 33 people, but he changed the lives of countless other people.
Hundreds of people, man.
Connected with these victims.
And I don't, I shouldn't even use the word changed because changed could be good.
He didn't change anybody's life for the good.
He devastated the rights.
Yeah, he, that's actually a much better word.
He devastated the lives.
of a large number of people.
Around the same time that Gacy murdered Bundy,
he did something that was a little bit outside his norm.
He picked up two victims and killed them at the same time.
He's getting a little more cockier, I think.
I think that is pretty cocky.
So 16-year-old Kenneth Park and 14-year-old Michael Marino were great friends.
They had this amazing bond, probably very similar to you and I.
but they both disappeared on October 24th, 1976.
They were last seen near a restaurant that they liked to go to that was located at the intersection
of Clark Street and Dversie Parkway.
And this is a spot that investigators would later determine Gacy picked up many of his victims.
The two boys, Kenneth and Michael, were the 14th and 15th bodies to be excavated.
And they were found buried on top of each other in the crawl space.
So I think that furthered the theory that they were killed at the same time.
Later at his trial, Gacy revealed that he had killed two victims at the same time in one other instance.
So it didn't happen a lot, but he did it twice.
Yeah, so clearly he was not afraid of taking risk by killing two victims at once.
And not just one time, but to do it twice.
Yeah, like we said, it is a bigger risk.
Number one, it's much harder to control two people rather than one.
And I think number two, there's a greater chance that you would be seen with two people or that somebody would remember seeing you talking to these two boys maybe rather than just one.
I don't know.
There's probably even more risks than I'm not thinking about.
And I'm assuming maybe he got a bigger rush out of this.
Yeah, I don't know for sure, but I think that's not a bad assumption, right?
Sometimes we talk about killing in the way that we talk about drugs, right?
We make that correlation.
You get high, you get high.
Eventually, the same amount of drugs that got you high, they're no longer getting you high.
So what do you have to do?
You either have to up the amount of drugs that you're taking or,
or you have to take a stronger drug.
And I think with serial killers, sometimes it's the same way.
They have to do something else, something riskier, something more outlandish to get the same
rush maybe that they got before.
Well, I believe that for sure.
Yeah.
17-year-old Greg Gotzick.
He worked for Gasey at the time that he disappeared.
Greg left his house on December 11th,
1976 to go on a date with his girlfriend.
He never showed up for the date and he never returned home.
Well, the family's going to hire a PI to see if they can figure out where he went.
What happened to them?
Yeah, they're distraught.
They were willing to do whatever they had to do.
The problem is the PI couldn't find anything.
Nothing came out of it.
And then Greg's girlfriend, Judy Patterson,
went to Gacy's house to question him.
She had some guts.
That would have taken some guts.
If even in the slightest way, she thought that maybe he had something to do with it,
she later testified that Gacy told her that Greg told him he was going to run away.
So that was his story.
And I think this was another case, Gibbs, where the family hounded the police.
They provided Gacy's name.
as a possible suspect.
But according to the family,
the police didn't do anything with it.
Again.
Again.
Now,
the police later came out and said,
you know what?
At the time,
we were dealing with 23,000 missing persons reports.
That is a staggering number.
And at first,
I actually thought it was a typo.
It's a big city, man.
It is a big city.
23,000 missing persons reports.
It does seem.
stream. It seems like a very large number. Greg's remains were found in the crawl space during the
excavation and identified in January 1979 through dental records. But get this. Gives later at trial,
Gacy stated that while Greg Godsick was doing some work at his house because he did work for him.
Greg unknowingly dug his own grave. So as one of the jobs, he had him go down in the crawl space.
and dig a grave.
Gacy said that he wanted to make sure he had plenty of graves ready.
It's very macabre.
Well, it is because it just shows you what he's planning to do.
He's not thinking about stopping.
He's not thinking about slowing down.
He's thinking about getting ready for a large number of bodies to come.
He's trying to be efficient, which is scary.
It is.
And he's getting somebody else to do his work for him.
Yeah.
which again shows that he's taking more risk by putting those people in that area where he's already
buried people. Yeah, I never actually thought about it that way. Why would you let somebody down
in your crawl space? Maybe it was because he knew he was going to kill Greg. Because I actually
don't know how far in advance he had him dig this grave. Yeah, but it was the night before the day of. I
don't know how far in advance it was, but it did jump out at me that a victim actually dug their
own grave. They didn't know they were doing it, but they did. 19 year old John Sick disappeared on
January 20th, 1977, and he met the same fate as the other Gacy victims. Police later found
his high school ring inside Gacy's home and then eventually later found his body.
in the crawl space, and it was identified using dental records in January 1979.
20-year-old John Prestige was last seen on March 15, 1977.
He was meeting a friend at a restaurant.
John was from Michigan.
He was in Chicago to visit a friend.
But John had told his family back home that he had found some contracting work,
presumably with Gacy.
He never brought up his name, but I think it's pretty safe to make that assumption.
His remains were later found in the crawl space and identified through dental records.
Around this same time, it's thought that Gacy killed again, but the victim has not yet been
identified.
They believe that it was a white male between 17 and 21 years old.
And I said white male.
It's one thing we haven't talked about.
Right.
Every single one of these victims is Caucasian.
I think it's fairly obvious.
Gacy had a pretty specific type.
Absolutely.
Now, he might have, you know, jumped up in age a little bit, but like you said, he
might have thought that some of these older guys looked younger or they just caught his
eye for whatever reason, but he didn't cross racial lines, which we know a lot of serial
killers don't. Right. They have their
M.O. and they stick with it. And he
did. 18 year old
Matthew Bowman was reported
missing by his family on
July 5th, 1979.
His sister was the last
person to see him a lot.
So the day before, they had
a big 4th of July party.
Bowman reportedly
told some friends about
an interview for a construction
job that he had the next day.
Bowman dropped out of high school.
and he was pretty excited about making some good money.
Yeah, he actually told some of his friends that this was going to be a high paying job.
So you're right.
He was excited for this interview.
But when he didn't return home, his family became frantic.
They called the police, but we're told that, hey, this guy's 18 years old.
There's really not much we can do.
Well, especially known that they had 23,000 people on the book's missing.
Well, and it was the 70s. I'm not trying to stick up for the police, but it was the 70s.
You know, a lot of these missing persons reports couldn't even be filed for 24 hours.
They wouldn't even take them. And this guy was 18 years old. But at the same time, you can see
why these families are going to be really ticked off. After everything is said and done,
when they look back and think, man, if you're not, if you're going to be really ticked off, after everything is said and done,
man, if you would have only investigated, how would things have been different?
Maybe not for my son, but maybe for somebody else's.
Yeah.
Matthews remains were later found in the crawl space and identified in January of 1979.
Gibbs will talk about it more in the next episode.
But, you know, like I said, I think this is where people really came down hard on police for what they saw as the police's unwillingness to invest.
investigate. Yes, because at this point they have heard some common themes. So why haven't they
dug a little deeper? Gacy's next victim was 18-year-old Robert Gilroy. Gilroy was the son of a Chicago
police sergeant. He was last seen on September 15th, 1977, headed to a horseback riding lesson.
But his parents later found out through the writing center that he hadn't been to any of his
scheduled writing lessons in weeks.
And Gibbs, this one was a little strange to me because Robert Gilroy wasn't reported
missing by his parents until September 27th.
That's 12 days, almost two weeks since they had last seen him.
It just seems strange that a Chicago police officer wouldn't have reported his son missing
immediately.
It is very strange.
Now, apparently, Robert was scheduled to go to mayor.
Maryland for some type of special horse riding class.
And I'm assuming Gibbs, they thought the kid was in Maryland.
But when they hadn't heard from him in such a long time, and that's where it's really
throwing me.
It was a long time, 12 days, to not hear from your 18 year old son.
That's when they called the place in Maryland and found out that, you know what?
He never made it.
He never got here.
I think that's the difference between then.
And today, right?
If that was one of our kids, cell phone, call me when you get the camp.
Yeah.
I want to know you made it.
Or you'd be tracking them on the iPhone as they went.
But it wasn't 1970 something.
I'm sure they had a phone at the camp.
Sure.
He could have called.
I don't know, Gibbs.
I really struggled with this one.
If I went a couple of days without hearing from my daughter, I'd be calling her just to say,
hey, just checking on you.
how's everything going.
Yeah.
I mean, this is not a 46 year old grown man.
No.
This is an 18 year old living at home.
He never comes back from this writing lesson that is local and somehow is thought to have made it to Maryland without ever coming home.
It just all seemed a little strange.
And then you had on top of that that it was reported that all of the,
all of his writing equipment was still at home.
Did nobody see that?
They walked by it every day out in the garage or wherever it was.
That's why this one to me is a little bit of a head scratcher because we said the guy's dad
was a police sergeant.
It was later uncovered that Robert Gilroy frequented the area of Clark and Diversi where
Gacy trolled for his victims.
So I don't know what the thought is here that he was.
skipping his writing lessons to go and hang out, maybe doing something he wasn't supposed to.
I really don't know.
That is pure speculation.
Or he was just hanging out with friends and he was targeted by John Wayne Gacy.
But I will say this.
We're talking about a lot of victims that were probably lured to Gacy's house based on the
promise of work.
And let's say some high paying work.
work, whether that work was going to be high paying or not, if you're trying to get to somebody's
house, you make the deal too good to be true.
Right.
Can't pass it up.
I've got to talk to you about it.
Yeah.
Because you're telling me I could make X.
Come on over.
Sit down.
Let's say how I'm going to pay you.
Exactly.
I'm not sure how he got some of these other people where it wasn't known that they were offered
construction jobs.
Or maybe he offered them all jobs.
jobs. Maybe that was the way he got everybody back there. I don't know. Because really, we only know
about the ones where people told family, hey, I got an interview or I'm going to see somebody
about a job. We don't know that in every case. Roberts remains were found in the crawl space and
identified in January 1979 through dental records. It does seem Gibbs, right? Like if police had the
dental records, they were able to make the identifications by January.
That's the month after the, all of this came out.
They made them pretty quickly.
But without them, it took much longer for those, even that they've been able to identify.
And we mentioned some, they still haven't.
19 year old John Mowry returned to Chicago in early 1977 after being in the Marines for 18
months. He was living in an apartment and stopped by his family's house in late September for a little
bit, then said he was going out for the night. That was the last time they ever saw him. They reported
him missing on September 25th. His remains were found in the crawl space and identified through
dental records. There just wasn't a lot really about John Maori. But one thing I did find, and it's
totally unrelated, but his sister Judith was stabbed to death in her Chicago apartment in
1972. It's a lot of strategy for one family, man. It is. To lose both of your children,
and maybe they had more, I don't know, but to lose two of your children in the span of,
what, five years? Tragic. 22-year-old Russell Nelson was Gacy's next victim. I mean,
Russell was from Minnesota and had come to Chicago with a friend.
He called his mother to wish her happy birthday on October 17th.
It's a good son.
It is a good son.
The problem is he was never heard from again.
And the Russell Nelson case is very similar to that of John Prestage because just like
Prestage, Nelson had told family back home that he had found some work with.
with a contractor. Now, he never gave a name, but it's presumed to be Gacy. And I don't know how you
can't make that leap because his remains were found in the crawl space and identified later
through dental record. So what would be a hell of a coincidence, Gibbs, if he was set to meet
another guy that owned a construction company? Right. And then was later killed by Gacy.
who was a contractor who owned his own construction company.
As far as coincidences go, that's a pretty big one.
Or would be a pretty big one.
It would be huge.
18 year old Robert Winch was originally from Kalamazoo, Michigan, but had moved to Chicago.
This was another strange one for me.
Robert was the son of a physics professor.
But according to a lot of the papers, he had been in and out of.
the foster care system. I didn't understand that and they didn't provide a lot of the details.
He was last seen on November 11th, 1977 and ultimately ran into John Wayne Gasey.
His remains were found in the crawl space, but he wasn't identified until September of
1979. They didn't have his dental records. They didn't have x-rays of his teeth as they had
had with other victims.
The way that they identified Robert Winch was through some marks on his bones from a healed
break, which I thought was pretty interesting, that they were able to match that up with
probably an x-ray of his arm or, you know, something like that when the break occurred.
But there was a souvenir found in Gacy's home that was linked to Wynch.
And it was described as this very distinctive tiger's eye belt buckle.
I think it was something that if someone in your family took one look at it, they would know without a doubt.
Immediately.
This was yours.
And I think that's what happened.
But again, like with some of the other victims, they had to wait all the way until September.
So basically nine months.
waiting around to get positive confirmation that your son is dead and was a victim of John Wayne
Gacy, even though you probably have a good idea it is.
Him.
I think that's rough to wait that long.
But like he said, I don't know.
If I saw that and I knew that was something that my loved one wore, I think I would go ahead
and prepare myself and start that process.
You would, but I also think in your head you would say, well, it's possible that my loved one dropped it, somebody else picked it up, had it on them when they were killed.
My loved one's still out there somewhere.
Or still has his, maybe.
And this is an identical.
Yeah.
Unless it was like custom made by you, I guess you always hold out for that hope.
I think you would.
About a week later, Gacy murdered 20-year-old Tommy Bowling.
And Tommy was a little bit different than most.
of John Wayne Gacy's victims.
For one thing, he was married, and he had a three-year-old son.
So he lived in an apartment with his wife and his son.
The problem is Tommy's family came out and said that he had been using drugs around the
time of his disappearance.
Ultimately, they used his dental records and his wedding ring to positively ID his
remains that were found in the crawl space. And this brings us to the last murder committed by Gacy in
1977. He killed a 19-year-old Marine named David Tolzma. Very little information out there about
David. There are some reports that he attended a rock concert before disappearing on December 9th,
177. His remains were found in the crawl space, but he was not identified until November 16th,
1979. Wow, that would have been his 21st birthday. Yeah. Isn't that what's the word? Just,
chilling. Kind of gives you chills. Yeah. That they just happened to identify him on what would have
been his 21st birthday. Not the day before, not the week before on the very day.
Right.
He was identified using X-rays that had been previously taken of his left arm.
So Gibbs, this takes us through Gacy's murders to the end of 1977.
We have a few murders left to talk about, but I think we have to cut the episode off here.
So in part four, which will be the last part, we'll cover the remaining murders, as well as some other
interesting events leading up to the entire world, finding out about this monster and the graveyard,
essentially that is hiding underneath his house. Right. But like I said, that'll be the last part of
Gacy. It will take us through his arrest, his trial, his execution. And we'll get to hear some audio.
We haven't played any audio at all. We'll get to hear some audio from Gacy in part four.
I mean, this episode was really unnerving.
Yeah, I get that.
I get that number, yeah, for one thing, there's a lot of victims.
And we, and we couldn't even get through all of them in one episode.
But to think about the fact that most likely these victims were killed in a very similar way and not just killed, right?
Sexually assaulted, handcuffed, strangled.
I think some were suffocated.
but the majority were strangled, it's rough to think about that.
You know, you're alone in the house with this serial killer once those handcuffs click.
That's it.
Yeah.
You're in a position that you cannot get out of.
It's a scary thought.
It's a real scary, man.
You're going to have to uplift my spirits now and switch me from this and go to voicemails.
All right.
We do have some voicemails.
Let's go through some of those.
Hi there, my name is Alyssa from St. Paul, Minnesota.
I was just calling to actually reply to another voicemail that you got at the first episode of the John
Lane Gacy case.
I was from a woman.
She said she was born in March, 1995, and she said she felt like she noticed there was a lot
of either murders or deaths or just trials that happened in March.
I am a huge true crime addicts.
First of all, I love you guys.
probably one of my most favorite podcasts, but I have been thinking the same thing.
My birthday is in April, and I feel like there's so much that always happens right around that
time, right around springtime.
I think my theory is that people go a little stir crazy all winter long, finally spring
breaks through, and maybe they snap a little bit.
Like and Gibby, I love you guys.
Keep your own time ticking, and I can't wait for the last episode of John Wain Gancy.
Thank you.
I think I've kind of heard you say that, you know?
Yeah, I think we talked about it a little bit, especially if you're in one of the northern climate.
Sure.
Does it become harder to be a serial killer in January in Minnesota?
I don't know, maybe.
You had snow to deal with.
You're leaving tracks.
I don't know.
I mean, I'm just throwing stuff out there.
People seem to think that there are more murders in March.
Now, April.
Somebody's going to call and say,
we might even get a February at some point.
It's just going to throw it all off at that point.
But there might be something to it.
Hi, guys.
My name's Sarah, and I'm calling from Tasmania.
I actually recently just started listening to you guys,
and I absolutely love the rapport that you.
I love how you keep swearing out of it.
Fun fact, though, most serial killers,
November, I was born on the 23rd.
So, hey, it might be a serial killer in the making.
I mean, I keep up the good work, guys.
It is amazing.
I love the John Lane Gacy.
It was so,
but it was so in depth,
which I really loved.
Have a fantastic weekend and keep your own time ticking.
God die.
So that is not a fact that I was aware of.
Most serial killers are born in November.
Yeah,
I didn't know that as well.
Or maybe more serial killers were,
are born in November than any other month.
I don't know which one.
Maybe the more well-known are.
Yeah, I don't know.
it's interesting i wonder why that would be i'm trying to think back you know 10 months earlier than
that is what january go go back to our northern climate it's cold out you got nothing you got
nothing else to do conception happens on a cold night things happen but i don't know why that would
turn somebody into a serial i don't either hi mark and gibby we're calling from perth australia
We are calling to request you guys look up the Valangelo State Forest serial killer.
It's a really good story and we think you guys will do an excellent job of covering it.
We love your podcast.
We think you guys are awesome.
We love your balance between TheorioSoft and the banter between you guys.
Yeah.
So we would really, really love to hear your take on the case.
Yeah.
And we are definitely Team Gyby.
I'm going to say I'm Team Mike.
Okay, bye.
So stay safe and keep your...
in time thick and that's really cool that is cool yeah well at first when he was saying we i thought
like uh-oh something who's we who is we because you're the only one talking but when she jumped in
i thought that was pretty cool so i think they're talking about ivan milot sure the backpack killer
right we have had him on our list for a long time we were actually in the process of of writing and
research set to come out with a pretty good size series on him when somebody else released it
and we decided, well, we don't want to step on their toes.
Yeah.
We'll wait.
We actually have a Patreon member, Beck Smith, that actually has been to his house.
She knows exactly where it's at.
She's been like standing in the driveway.
It was kind of interesting to hear that.
About that.
Mm-hmm.
I received an email today or yesterday from Park City, Kansas.
with a picture of where BTK's house was.
It's just a lot now.
Okay.
But somebody sent me a picture.
I thought it was pretty cool.
That's cool.
Yeah.
Hi, Mike and Gibby.
It's Tracy.
I'm 17 years old from Georgia.
And I actually have been listening to your podcast for almost a year now, I think.
And you guys have literally been like just listened to a couple of your episodes a couple of times, like repeatedly.
I love listening to all your stuff, and it's just really interesting.
It makes school a lot easier to get through.
Nagrador while I was kind of nervous to leave a voicemail, but I'm like everything you guys do.
I love the ban on between you guys.
It's really funny, and yeah, I can't wait to watch.
I don't watch, but listen to more.
Thank you for everything.
Keep your own time ticking.
Wow, she did really well.
Well, that's what I was going to say.
Number one, I didn't feel like she was nervous at all.
Number two, she was extremely well-spoken, which I can't say.
I didn't want to pile on by saying much more than you.
I saw the look in your eye.
She seemed like she has it going on.
She's very smart, very articulate, and we appreciate it.
Absolutely, we do.
So, Gibbs, we got mailbag.
Somebody sent in a big print for you that says Dahmer's diner.
Yeah.
It's from a company in San Francisco.
the problem is I couldn't find a card.
So I actually don't know who it's problem.
Yeah, and unfortunately, she reached out to me and told me it was coming, but I cannot find
the message to give the thank you.
So message me when you hear this, so I can give that thank you.
Yeah, we will.
And then Maggie Tidwell sent us each a very cool shot glass.
Yeah.
And some Harley chips from El Paso.
That was cool.
I bet they were probably made in New York.
City. New York City. I always said that. New York City. Yeah. So we appreciate that. But that is it. That's it for
part three of Gacy. And that's it for another episode of True Crime All the Time. So for Mike and Gabby,
stay safe and keep your own time ticking.
