True Crime All The Time - John Wayne Gacy Part4

Episode Date: October 21, 2019

John 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-known 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 fourth, and final, part on Gacy, we discuss additional crimes and murders Gacy committed in 1978 leading up to his arrest. We talk about his confession and the massive amount of work it took to recover all the bodies Gacy had buried at his property. We delve into Gacy's trial, his time on death row, his execution and the aftermath that his actions left behind.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.

everyone and welcome to episode 153 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, brother? I'm good, man. How about you? I'm doing great. Yeah. I like it when I'm doing great. I like it when you're doing great. It's just good to be doing great. So the word of the day is great. Great. If we were on Sesame Street or the electric company, which was one of my favorites with Morgan Freeman in the early days. Are those TV shows? Yes. Okay. Yeah. And we know you didn't watch them because that's how most people learned. They're phonics. You really learned a lot of stuff in the early years. There's a show that taught you that kind of stuff. Yeah, watching Sesame Street and the electric company, stuff like that.

I just listened to the people that lived outside of my home, you know? Oh, yeah, that's probably bad idea. Yeah. Didn't work out as well as you'd hoped or your parents had hoped. I think so. Yeah. But you're doing good now. Hey, can't come. complain. Other people do, but no, I get it. You cannot complain. Now, we're all doing good. You know, this Gacy thing, man, been living with Gacy for an entire month. Yeah, it's like he's in your cellar. He's a cellar. Yeah, well, he's crawled up into my head. He's, he's taken up root in there. It's not something you want in your head too long. But this is it, right? This is part for the finale. Or is it? Of Gacy. It is. Believe me. Believe me. So we had some.

new Patreon supporters. So let's give some shoutouts. We had the Becky Linky Madsen. Really? Linky Madison. Yeah. Richard Smith. Hey, Richard. Michael Beiro. Hey, Biro. Holly McCone. Hey, Holly. Nicole, don't be a minor, be a high as low. Hey, Nicole, don't be a minor, be a major. Megan T. Hey, Megan. Sandy Glenn jumped out of our highest level. Hey, Sandy. Janice Hubbard. Hobbard. Kate Mock. Hey, Kate, ooh, that's close to Kate Moss. Oh, very, very close. same. Steph Crawford. Hey, Steph.

Kathy Stalter jumped out of our highest level. Stalter? Yep. All right. Maggie Tidwell. Hey, Maggie. Yeah, Maggie. He sends us some stuff.

Who sent us the stuff in the mailbag last week. Yeah. Monica Stennerz. Hey, Monica. Cynthia McPhee. What's up? McPhee. Leah Higgins jumped out of our highest level.

Thanks, Leah. Lindsay Grace. Hey, Lindsay. Alicia Chambers. Hey, Leach. Lauren Feyman. Feynman? It says Feyman.

Feynman. No, I'm not putting an end because I don't have an in there. Oh, Feynman? To put in there. Just Feynman? Yeah. That's what I have. Ariel Cuomo. It's like a New York name or something. Because of all the Cuomo's in New York. Yeah. Yeah. I get that. Sasha Alamano. Hey, Sasha. Sarah Ramirez. Hey, Sarah Ramirez. Hey, Sarah. Matilda. Matilda. Matilda. Sarah Pooley. Hey, Sarah. Eleanor Lam jumped out at our highest level. And Robin Pizzela. Ooh, Pazella. Yeah, very Italian. Very much. And then if we go back into the Vault, Gibbs, this week we selected Cynthia Holmes.

Hey, Cynthia. So love all the new support, the continued support on Patreon. Cynthia's been with us a long time. Appreciate that. Had some great PayPal support as well. Jake Arlo. Hey, Jake. Susan Williams.

Susan. Erica Johnson. Thanks, Erica. Donna Weaver. Hey, Donna. And Heather Moss. Oh, awesome. All right, Gibbs.

We got a pretty heavy episode. coming up to wrap up Gacy. But we also have a new true crime all time unsolved out. We do. Right now that we want to make sure people check out. We're discussing two separate cases from Allegheny, New York. Yeah, it's going to be good. It is.

Fascinating. You know, kind of close to Buffalo, New York, you know, just a little south of that. But we got the Wing Hollow Ski Resort where two workers there were murdered. and some theft occurred, and then the investigation goes from there, and it's got some twists and turns and arresting. And then we jump over to a murder happened a few years prior to that with Carol Ann Fitzmaurice, and she was a nurse that just happened to be home one day out in her rural farmhouse, and unfortunately, somebody stabbed her to death, and we don't know who. But we're talk about it. No, if we did, we would round them up and solve this case. Absolutely. So maybe

we can get that going. Don't forget to check out the reviews are in, our new podcast, every Tuesday. All right, Gibbs. Are you ready, man? I'm ready. To finish up this John Wayne Gasey story. I'm excited to hear how it ends. So as we wrapped up part three, we said that we had talked about Gacy's murder victims through the end of 1977. But there was a victim that didn't end up in the crawl space at the end of 1977. His name is Robert Donnelly. And he was a Gacy victim, but he lived.

And ultimately testified against Gacy at his 1980 trial. He was 21 years old when he testified. So that would have put his age at a. about 18, 19 years old. I'm sorry. When he encountered Gacy in the early morning hours of December 31st, 1977. And this is a story that really comes from Donnelly's courtroom testimony. He said that Gacy forced him into his car at gunpoint after pretending to be a police officer.

And that's something that we've talked about, right? the kind of car that Gacy drove. A lot of people said that he had a siren. Some people have said that he had one of those big searchlights, right, that the police have on the side of their cars, along with the handcuffs, which were part of a lot of the murders. The theory is he was posing as a police officer, at least in some of these instances. So Gacy handcuffed Robert Donnelly, made him get down.

under the dashboard in the front seat of Gacy's car down on the floorboard. Yeah. Gacy took him back to his house, pumped him full of alcohol. And it really sounded like, you know, Robert didn't want to drink this. Gacy literally opened up his mouth and poured the alcohol in and made him drink it. Gacy ultimately pushed Donnelly face down on the couch, pulled his pants down, and raped him. And Gibbs, this was just the beginning of a night of torture for Robert Donnelly.

Gacy went about as far as you can go without killing someone with this guy. He strangled him. He held his head underwater numerous times in the bathtub. Well, he probably passed out. He passed out. He would come to. I think Gacy would hold his head under the water again. He would pass out.

One time when he came to, he said that Gacy was standing over him, peeing on him. A little golden shower action, huh? Exactly. Later on in the encounter, because this is a thing that lasted hours and it was torturous. It was brutal. Gacy played Russian roulette multiple times with this guy, this kid, I should say. He was 17, 18 years old. Spun the chamber and pull the truth.

on his head. It kind of made me think back to Deer Hunter. Yeah. Have you ever seen that movie? Oh, absolutely. It's a very powerful movie. Yeah. Hard movie to kind of get through at a certain age.

You know, if I watched that when I was 20, I would have said, I don't like that. But now at my age, I appreciate it. I'd like it, you know, more. But that was a rough scene. It's a rough scene when you're forced to play Russian roulette. I think the difference there is in the deer hunter, they were holding the gun themselves. Right. Being forced to. I think this was more gasey sitting across from this guy, rolling the chamber, like you said, right. Spending the chamber, cocking it, putting it very close to his head and pulling the trigger. Now, at one point, the gun went off. Very loud bang. We've talked about this before. If a gun goes off and you don't have any hearing protection and it goes off, let's say, in a bedroom. Right.

That is loud as shit. You're going to get a little ringing. Fortunately for this Robert Donnelly, it was a blank. So it was probably scared at him. It was loud, but it didn't hurt him. But like I said, this went on for hours and hours. And after the Russian roulette, Gacy sexually violated Donnelly again after choking him unconscious. So brutal.

No doubt. Then, unexpectedly, Gacy put Donnelly in the car, drove him to a location and released him. Which is really strange. It is. And we're going to talk about it. It's going to happen more than once. As you can imagine, this guy, you know, he went to police the very same day and said, okay, this guy did some really horrible things to me. Gacy was questioned. And the way that I. took it was Gacy admitted to the sexual acts. He even admitted to the brutality of some of the sexual acts, but he said that they were all consensual. You know, he made it seem as though this was rough sex between two men, but two men that had signed on for this, not rough sex and very brutal sex between, and I shouldn't even call it sex, between somebody that is victimizing

another person, which is what happened. Right. He was arrested, but it didn't lead anywhere. Authorities decided not to prosecute. Now, later on, they came out and they said that this was a case of Donnelly's word against Gacy's. And Gacy was, quote, a solid citizen. Well, sure.

because he's built that reputation up all these years. And it's why we spent so much time talking about, you know, everything that he had done, he had built the facade, the effort that he had put in to look a certain way. Well, it sure worked out in this situation. But think about that.

Very tough. You know, you have Gacy's word that's coming from, like you said, you know, respected businessman. Right. Against the word of a.

teenager that I think probably had some, if I remember, some little scrapes. He had some marijuana possession, things like that. Well, who are they going to believe? The guy that has his own business seems like he's the pillar of the community or a 17, 18 year old kid who smokes dope. That might have a beef because he didn't get us. Right. Then talk about, you know, tough situations. this guy years later has to get up on the stand and tell the horrible events that were perpetrated against him by Gacy. That takes a lot of courage. Man, it would.

Because here's the thing. You're not just telling the people in the courtroom, right? That's who's hearing it immediately. Right. But it's going to hit all the papers. Yeah. Anybody that knows you is going to know what occurred that night. And a bunch of people that don't know you, but you may run into at some point.

Yeah. May remember you as a person that was victimized by John Wayne Gacy. And the details were brutal. And he really laid them out. I mean, I don't think he spared any of the details for the jury. And thankfully, he didn't. Gacy committed five more murders in 1978. The police are aware of.

before he was caught. And I think that's a big thing. We'll talk about it probably towards the end of the episode. 19 year old William Kindred went missing on February 16th, 1978. He was last known to be headed to his fiance's house, but he never made it. Obviously, she was worried, started calling around, eventually called the police. Mary Jo Paulus was her name. This was Billy's fiance, she later testified at Gacy's trial because she had met Gacy on more than one occasion. And he had invited her to a party that was supposed to be held on the day that he got arrested. I mean, these, you know, these coincidences, these circumstances, all kind of melding together. Police eventually received some information that Gacy picked up Billy Kindred somewhere.

around the Diversi Parkway area. And that was big. We've talked about it in multiple episodes. This is an area that Gacy was known to have cruised looking for his victims. Billy's body was later found in the crawl space and his identity was confirmed through dental records in May of 1979. But Billy Kindred was the last of just. John's victims to be buried in the crawl space. Gacy struck again on March 21st, 1978. He picked up 26-year-old Jeffrey Rignoll in the Newtown area of Chicago. Again, this is an individual that survived Gacy and later testified at his trial. So according to Rignall's testimony, Gacy offered him a ride. Then when he got in the car, he, he was, he was a car, he was. He said, he,

offered him some marijuana, but it wasn't too long after he got into Gacy's car that Gacy chlorformed him. And I'm using that as a verb. I'm taking it to mean. He put a rag soaked in chlorform over his nose and mouth and knocked him out. Do you buy that shit today? What? Chlorform? I don't know. Be fun to imagine. What do you use it for in a legal application? I don't know. It'd be fun to have it to try it out. Just walk up to... I think that would be illegal. I think that would put you in trouble with the po-po.

I think just to have it to walk in here and like sneak up behind you and knock you out, you know? Then what are you going to do? You're going to sit down and do the whole podcast? Well, yeah. And what are you going to jump back and forth between the mics and pretend like you're me and then jump to your side and say, oh, I'm doing good, thanks. And then jump back real quick. It's not like I haven't done it before.

That people know of. Episode 44. Go back and listen. Tell me if you can't tell the difference. After Rignell was chloroformed, Gacy drove him to his Somerdale Avenue home. It's unknown exactly everything that happened to this guy because he doesn't know everything. He was definitely raped, sexually assaulted and tortured for a long period of time. But later on, Jeffrey Rignall woke up half naked in Lincoln Park.

It's so strange, right? These two cases of Donnelly and Rignaw with everything that we've talked about concerning John Wayne Gacy. I mean, not the abductions, not the rapes, not the torture. That's pure Gacy. But why in the world, Gibbs, did he make the decision to let these individuals go after he had already killed so many people? I mean, Gacy had something that worked.

I hate saying that, but he had pretty much a system. I think he's just overconfident of his, of what he's doing, right? He's just confident. They're not going, he's not going to lose. They could go to the cops and he's going to win out. Because of this persona that he's built up maybe, I don't know, I go back to Waterloo, Iowa. Yeah. What put him in prison was the fact that his victim was able to tell police what he did.

Because the thing is, Rignall did go to police. He was able to figure out where Gacy lived and give the authorities that information. Gacy was charged with battery, but would never go to trial on it because he's going to have much bigger problems than battery. He did reportedly settle a civil suit with Rignal for $3,000. $3,000. Yes. Doesn't seem like much. It doesn't, man.

what was essentially a night of terror. Yeah, for the abuse that that guy had to endure to be like, well, here's $3,000. I hope it pays for some of the medical and... The ongoing mental anguish and therapists that you may have to see and all that. Now, Jeffrey later wrote a book called 29 Below about what he endured at the hands of Gacey. Gacy's next victim was 20-year-old Timothy O'Rourke, who disappeared on June 30th, 1978. Friends of O'Rourke later said that he was known to frequent some of the gay bars in the areas

where Gacy was known to cruise for his victims. But unlike the other murder victims, Gacy would not bury O'Rourke in the crawl space or in any other area around his home. Timothy O'Rourke's body was found in the Displains River. His body was identified through fingerprints and a very specific tattoo on his left arm that read Tim Lee. 19-year-old Frank Landingen disappeared on November 4th, 1978. His naked body was found in the Displains River on November 12th.

He was identified through fingerprints and by his family, it was really, reported Gibbs that his cause of death was exphyxia and his body was found with what was described as a pair of bikini briefs stuffed down his throat. So the thought is he choked on this pair of underwear. Not a pleasant way to go. No. And it's not going to be the last time that Gacy kills by shoving something down somebody's throat. Police later, figured out that Landon Jen was a Gacy murder victim when they found some personal items belonging to him inside Gacy's house on December 26th, 1978. 20-year-old James Mazera, who went by the nickname Mojo, disappeared on November 23rd, 1978. His body was also found in the Displains River

on December 28, 1978. So I think we have to talk about this, Gibbs. Why the sudden change in M.O. Or at least as it pertains to disposing or, you know, dumping, getting rid of the bodies. Why did Gacy all of a sudden start dumping bodies into the river? Was it because that he had killed so many people that he was running out of room in the crawl space? Yeah, maybe it was. Maybe at this point, he just didn't have the space, you know, bodies concrete on top of it, just nowhere to go. Yeah, the house was only so big. Right. Right. There is only so much space, even though there were bodies buried on top of each other. But if you look at a diagram, and we'll talk about the diagram later on, but if you look at diagrams of the crawl space and where these bodies were located, you know, we're talking about.

about 29 bodies. Yeah, it's a lot. It looks like a game of battleship where there's nothing but ships. There's no open space. It's eerie. Yeah, I can't imagine that first person that had to go down into that area for the authorities to see. And you know they didn't see everything, but they probably could see what was there. And then as they discovered more, I just could not imagine. Yeah, get into the details of that, you know, later on. But I think that's the reason. I think it's pretty well known or at least speculated that he was just out of room. Yeah, ran out of real estate and thought, okay, this is the next best thing I can think of. It's easier, I think. But of course, you know, he risk that the bodies would be found sooner. Well, you say it's easier, but now you're

transporting bodies. That does add an element to it. Think about mind hunter. Think about Wayne Williams. Sure. You are putting a body, let's say, in a trunk. You're driving to a bridge. Right. Most likely in the very early morning hours, but still, somebody could drive along. A cop could happen to see you. There are some drawbacks for sure. I think Gacy told authorities at one point. that he thought about beginning to store bodies in his attic. But he said he was worried about leakage. It's a legitimate concern. Well, I definitely think it is.

You know, bodies break down and things start to happen. You don't want that coming through your ceiling. It's going to be a mess. Yeah. Now, I do believe that Gacy kept some of his victims in the attic. at least for a period of time. It's also been reported that he kept some under his bed before disposing of them. Yeah, man, that's freaky to me, right?

I think it's all freaky. It is. But to actually keep the dead body like underneath your bed, like right there. Boy, and you're going to lay down at night. Yeah. Get, you know, a restful eight hours while your victim, a dead body now is underneath your bed. decaying. Yeah, that's beyond strange. All right, Gibbs, let's take a quick sponsor break. Let's talk about three-day blinds. Folks, there's a better way to buy blinds and window treatments,

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ZipRecruiter.com slash T-Cat. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash T-Cat. ZipRecruiter. The smartest way to hire. Now we get to 15-year-old Robert Pist. And Robert was Gacy's last known victim. Robert was a sophomore at Maine Township West High School. And Gibbs, this kid was like a gymnastic star. he got good grades he was a boy scout leader you know he was just a really good kid yeah and i'm not saying the other kids weren't but there was a lot written about robert pieced and you know just what type of guy he was there wasn't as much information on some of the other victims just kind of like the all-American boy that's the way that he was described in a lot of papers really had never been in any real kind of trouble. But this is the murder that caused the ultimate arrest of John Wayne Gacy.

So Robert disappeared on December 11th, 1978. After working his part-time shift at Nissen drugstore and pharmacy, his mother came to pick him up. So she got there, you know, a few minutes before 9 p.m. When his shift ended, eventually Robert came out, talk with his mother and he asked her to wait just a little bit. He needed to go talk to a guy about a contracting job that he said was going to pay him twice what he was making at the drugstore. I think he was making like $250 at the drugstore. He was set to make $5 at this construction job.

Yeah, it's a good deal. It's true, right? It's twice. Yeah. If I said, I'll pay you twice what you make now. Yeah. You jump all over that. No, because it'd be zero is times two, is zero. That is true. So I'm just saying, remember, Mensa. But you'd have twice the satisfaction. Again, no. But here's the thing about that night.

It was his mother's 46th birthday. So she was really anxious to get home. I think they were having a party for her. But she waited and she waited for Robert to return. turn, but he never came back. What ultimately happened was that Gacy took him back to his Somerdale Avenue home and killed him that night. Robert's nude body was later discovered from the Displains River and positively identified on April 9th, 1979. So it was a while before they found his body. Yeah, it's like four months. And way after Gacy was arrested, the autopsy later said that Robert died from suffocation caused by something being shoved down his throat. They thought it was something paper-based, like paper towels and napkins, some type of paper-based product.

Right. You know, I feel bad for all the victims and victims' families, but can you imagine this kid's mom every birthday? And that's why I made mention of it, right? it was her 46th birthday when her 15-year-old son died. You're never going to celebrate a birthday again. Maybe in some small way. It's never going to be the same.

Never. But Robert's family went to police later that night. They didn't waste any time. Police began searching for Robert. They brought in the dogs. They went all out. At the same time, they're investigating his disappearance. And they learned that it was John Wayne Gasey.

that Robert Peace was set to talk to about a job. Gacy had recently done some remodeling work on the Nissan drugstore, and this is where he met Robert. So police wanted Gacy to come in for questioning on December 12th. Apparently, he called it like 11 p.m. that night and asked someone, hey, you know, do you still want to talk to me? You want me to come in? Yeah, we wanted you to come in X amount of hours ago.

Yeah. We asked you to come in. Why are you calling at 11 o'clock at night? Yeah, we've been waiting to ask if we still want to talk to you. So he says, okay, I'll be right there. He never shows. Police later learned that he spent that night taking Robert Peace body out of the attic where he had it and moving it to the river. He does finally come in and talk to police on the 13th.

And I guess Gibbs, he was covered in mud. He looked like shit. They would later figure out that his car got stuck in a snowbank, not far from probably the place where he dumped the body. There was a record of a tow truck that had to go out and pull him out of the snowbank. But, you know, they're talking to him. Of course he's going to say, right? I don't know anything about what you're talking about.

I don't know Robert Pist. I don't know anything about his disappearance. Later that same day, they were able to search Gacy's home. And while they're there, they discovered a receipt for the development of a role of film. How many of us even remember what that's like? I don't know. It's been a long time. It has been a long time.

Since any of us have had to probably develop a role of film. Good old days. But this receipt for this role of film is huge because they can tell right off the bat. It doesn't belong to Gacy. And they showed it to Robert's family later that night and they knew exactly what it was. They said it belonged to a girl that Robert knows. He had offered to get the film developed for her. So police know something is going on.

Something's not right. They decided to put surveillance. on John Wayne Gacy, they started questioning his friends, his colleagues, all of his contacts. Anybody that they could find that knew something about him didn't take long. December 19th, Gacy's attorney filed a $750,000 lawsuit claiming that the police were harassing his client. They were ruining his reputation. He can't be going around asking questions about John.

On Wayne Gacy, he's a pillar of the community. Yeah. Don't you dare. This is also the very same day that Gacy reportedly invited two police officers into his house. And he asked them, he said, hey, do you want some breakfast? They said no. But both of these officers said that the stench of death inside his house was unmistakable. They knew it right away.

So how interesting is that? Because you know when this all comes to ahead that these officers are going to be like, man, we were in that house and we knew it smelled bad and now we know why it smelled bad, you know? Well, and they probably smelled it too. Well, maybe. Maybe they did it both. Maybe they did it both. But you're right. I think they knew something wasn't right when they were in the house.

But obviously later on, they're going to learn how. how very wrong it is, and they're going to say, this guy's offer, he offered his breakfast. We were in that house. Yeah. I mean, that's a story that you're probably going to tell for years and years and years. Yeah, I think there's going to be a few people that this will ring true when they see the headlines in the paper, you know, some neighbors, some, maybe some delivery people, whoever that went up to that house and said, hmm, wonder what that is.

Yeah. That's a, that's a very odd. smell. And then the very next day, police learned about Gacy's sodomy conviction in Iowa. Uh-oh, Gibbs, now we may have a problem here, right? This might be a really bad guy that we're looking at. Yeah. I mean, let's not forget, a bunch of people have been trying to tell the police that, but I think they're finally realizing it because it's on December 21st that Gacy was arrested, but it's kind of it for a strange reason. They're surveilling him. He goes to like a gas station and he hands the clerk an envelope. Well, it later turned out to be full of weed. I mean, at that point, are you just trying to get

caught? Yeah. You have police coming to question you. You know they're talking to all your friends. You also know you've killed Robert Peast and that's who they're searching for. Maybe just lay low for a little bit. don't go around, I don't know if he was selling marijuana. I don't know what this transaction was, but they arrested him. In the same day, they got another search warrant for Gacy's house. They began pressuring him. They began accusing him of doing something to Robert Pist. They also threatened to tear the house apart, threatened to look underneath in the crawl space. So you got to figure what's going to? through Gacy's mind.

How am I going to get out of this one? Well, he'll come up with something. Oh, you know, he will. He's talked his way out of things before. Again, he does think he's probably the smartest guy in the room. He can finagle his way out of most things. So what he comes up with is this story about having killed a man in self-defense that he said he later buried under his garage.

I guess because he was fearful, the cops wouldn't believe him. I don't know how intricate the story got. Right. But he had to try to sell it to him. So I'm sure he made it interesting. He knows that there are a bunch of bodies buried underneath his house. Some in the crawl space. There's one underneath the garage.

I think there was one maybe in a different place out in the yard. So if they start to find bodies or at least find one body, well, now I've got an explanation for this one. Right. And he didn't stop there. He took a can of spray paint and marked the spot where they could find the body. And the way I heard it described Gibbs was that he just didn't, you know, make a star or make an X. He drew a stick figure of a person.

And it turned out to be exactly the way that this body was positioned under. this garage. So he perfectly nailed it on top by using a stick figure. He knew. He knew exactly how he had laid that body in there. I mean, it's a bold move. It is, but I think he's, he's throwing a Hail Mary at this point. It's definitely calculated. Yeah, I think it's calculated, but calculated in a last ditch effort type of way. Because what else does he have? It's not like he has eight options to choose from and he's calculating which are the best he's calculating on what can I throw out there that could possibly save my ass. I also think he underestimates the legal system to think that if they find a body, they're going to be like, okay guys, we're done. We're out of here.

Again, that's why I think it's a hell merry. Because you're right. It's not like them finding that body is going to make them think all of a sudden, okay, well, he obviously, he obviously, didn't murder Robert Pist because he killed this guy in self-defense. Yeah. The two have nothing to, there's no correlation there at all. So at this point, they had the search warrant for the whole house anyway, so they would utilize that. Yeah, like I said, I do think he thought he was being smart.

The garage was separate from the house, kind of. You know, it wasn't like what I have. It wasn't a two-car attached garage. So I think he was throwing them off saying, okay, there is. a body buried underneath this garage. Knowing full well, over here underneath the house is where all, almost all the other bodies are buried. Right. But like you said, they're not going to just take that and run with it, not even close. They eventually find the door to his crawl space and even in a cursory search. And I think you touched on this already. They find body parts. And things start to move very

quickly. You know, it's the next day. December 22nd. I don't think it takes a whole lot to break John Wayne Gasey. He spills everything about the murders. But his confession was said to have been this rambling kind of messy type of thing. I guess he talked about himself in the third person, which to me Gibbs is creepy whenever someone does that. So Gibbs says that, um, He thinks it's creepy too. Yeah, that was creepy. You know what else is creepy? Me saying Gibbs.

Fergie thinks it's a good idea to put your phone away. It just has a creepy sound to it. It is creepy. Really, there's nobody that should be talking about themselves in the third person. There's no reason for it. Except for Jimmy and Seinfeld. Well, that was just funny. That was a different type.

That was a creepy funny. Yeah. Do you remember a guy named Ricky Henderson? he used to play for the Oakland A's. He was a baseball player. Yeah. Very fast. Held a bunch of records for stolen bases.

But whenever he would do an interview after the game, he would do the whole thing in third person. Really? Be like, yeah, that's just Ricky being Ricky. Ricky steals bases. Well, you're Ricky. Yeah. Just say, this is what I do. I steal bases.

But no, he would always talk in the third person that weirded me out. The other thing that was strange, besides from this third person talk, was that Gacy got the number of victims wrong in his confession. He admitted initially to 32 murders when it was actually 33. He said that 27 were buried at his house when it was actually 29. He says he dumped five bodies in the river and it was four. Did this guy murder so many people? that he simply lost track of the numbers? Or was he playing some type of game? He does give police a hand-drawn diagram showing where the bodies are buried. You can go out and look at it. There's pictures of it out there on the internet.

It's a big deal, right? Confessing to the murders, drawing the spot where they are later going to dig up a body under the garage, drawing out a diagram that says, okay, here's where all the bodies are buried. This is the way they're facing. Again, it looks like Tetris pieces. Right.

Except they're all the long ones, but there's, you know, some going this way, some going that way. So that's where I think that he was playing the police a little bit by throwing the number count off. Because if he can remember in detail how the bodies were laying and where they were laying at, he probably knew exactly how many are in the cross base and how many are in the river. Well, especially the bodies that were dumped in the river. Those were the most recent. Those all happened earlier that year. You would think at the very least he would know that number.

But who knows, it's a lot of victims. It is a lot of victims. Over a number of years, not that many years, but a number of years. John Wayne Gacy was arrested for the murder of Robert Peace. They dug up the spot that Gacy marked in the last. the garage and they recovered the body of John Bukovic. And we talked about him in an earlier episode at the time that he was arrested. Once they started to really get a full sense of how many victims there were, Gacy was the most prolific serial killer in American history. Now, he's since

been passed, but Gibbs, you got to think about what huge, you know, news that was back then. And essentially, they've captured a real life monster. Yeah. This is the boogeyman. I can't even imagine the shock that went through America, you know, to hear this kind of stuff. No, it was shocking, no doubt. So over the next few weeks, they began tearing apart Gacy's house. They found all kinds of things that were tied to his victims. Some of these we've already discussed, right? as we were talking about specific victims. One that we didn't mention yet was the coat of Robert Peast, which was found in early January. So they get into the crawl space.

They're pulling out bodies. One of the investigators that was involved in the digging later told the Chicago Tribune that they went to the local McDonald's to get fry baskets to help them sift through the soil. How bizarre, man. The McDonald's is just giving up their fry baskets. Well, they probably got them back later. And used them. They've washed them, I'm sure.

But at one point, I guess they had been digging for something like 12 hours. And they found a case of Gacy's beer, opened it up, and helped themselves to it. Well, you know, after that type of labor, working all day, you want a nice beer. And apparently they said, okay, Gacy's got some beer, we're going to drink it. I personally would have stayed away from it because I don't know what that's made out of. But you know, it's a story again later in life that they can say. I drank John Wayne Gasey's beer. Yeah.

At that house. They ended up leveling Gacy's house in April of 1979. This was a pretty big project, right, to try to recover all these bodies. So they're in the crawl space. They're digging. They find bodies. little by little they started tearing the house apart until eventually they just decided we're going to knock the whole thing down and then they dug what was essentially a big six foot deep

hole almost like you were digging to pour a basement right to help them uncover all these bodies they did take a break for the holidays but one thing that was really talked about in the papers was the amount of people gathered in front of this house to watch all of this happening. I mean, not only did you have a large number of news outlets and reporters, you're always going to have that, but you've got Johnny Q public and Jane Q public who decide, you know what, I want to go see what's going on at the Gacy House. We're going to stand on the sidewalk and watch as they pull out bodies. It's going to be intriguing.

So, I mean, it's not something you're going to see every day. So I can imagine people doing that. I think there was a lot of people that wanted to see for themselves what was going on. Gacy was initially charged with seven murders. But by the end of April 1979, they had found all the bodies. So he was indicted for the rest, bringing the total to 33. In addition to the murder charges, he was charged with multiple counts of deviant sexual assault, as well as taking in decent liberties with a child.

But I mentioned it, right? It had never happened before in the history of the United States where one person was charged with this many murders. It's never seen that type of volume. It was huge. I mean, it was the front page on every paper, newscasts, right? They were leading that as their top story. It was unbelievably big news.

news. So as we get into it, Gacy's defense team filed a motion to move the trial, saying that no way could Gacy get a fair trial in Cook County. The judge denied it. They did file and win a motion to combine all 33 of the murder indictments into one trial. And again, the trial is going to be huge news as well. But can you imagine 33 separate murder trials involving John Wingasey. No. Could not imagine that. That sounds like it was a possibility at one point until they said, hey, let's combine them all.

And think about the cost involved in that for the county. Well, the cost, but also aren't you going to have to have the same people testify at every trial? Right. So witnesses for the prosecution, psychologists, all the people that were getting ready to talk about having to do it not just one time, 30. different times and essentially they're going to say the same thing. So it does seem kind of like a no brainer to put them all together. 33 victims, which means 33 families of these victims. Marco Bukovic, the father of John, sued Gacy, sued his business PDM for $6 million. And basically, this lawsuit was in large part about the fact that.

that they, everybody thought Gacy was about ready to make a boatload of money off of selling his life story. But Illinois had recently passed the, what they called the son of Sam Bill, which prohibited criminals from profiting from their crimes. So Gacy wasn't going to get the money. And it was interesting because they rushed this through. They passed it. I believe in the fall 78 because they knew.

Gacy was most likely going to do something. So I think they got it through pretty quickly and passed it specifically because of John Wayne Gacy. Now, obviously, the son of Sam Bill is in reference to David Berkowitz. Right. But Illinois passed their own one. They still called it the son of Samville. In November of 1979, the mother of Michael Bonnan filed a $50 million civil suit against

John Wayne Gacy. Robert Peace family up that with an $85 million lawsuit against Gacy. But they also brought in various government agencies. They even brought in the drugstore where Robert worked. And it was all around, at least for the government agencies, you didn't do what you were supposed to do. Right. And if you had done what you were supposed to do, you'd be here today. Most likely my son would be here today.

You and I are going to talk about that a little bit towards the end of the episode. episode. So Gacy's trial began on February 6th, 1980 in Cook County, and it lasted five weeks. About a month before the trial, Judge Lewis Garipo, he changed his mind about Gacy getting a fair trial in Cook County. So he compromised. He kept the trial in Cook County, but he had the jury selected from Rockford, Illinois, about 90 miles away, and had the jury members bust in to Chicago. But I think, you know, probably the biggest thing as the trial gets started is the fact that Gacy recanted his confession and pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. He never took to stand at his trial. And the prosecution set out to prove that Gacy was saying. And they did

that by pointing out the methodical tactics he used. He told the jury about how he cruised for his victims, you know, the fact that he offered many of his victims jobs or money as a way to lure them to his home. And they pointed out the similarities in how he carried out his murders and how he disposed of the bodies. I mean, he had a very systematic process. He did. And he really didn't deviate much from it aside from letting a few victims go and then at the end changing it up to begin dumping bodies in the river. Other than that, I think he was very methodical. And the prosecution is saying this proves, right, that this is a very sane man. He knew exactly what he was doing and he kept doing it time and time again. Let's not forget that little fact of the,

confession, as well as the fact that he drew a diagram of where the bodies were located, and then the police finding all of those souvenirs in his house. I think the evidence against him was overwhelming. I think if you confess, draw a diagram with everything is at, and then later say, I didn't confess, that's not me. I didn't do that. I think it's hard to argue that, you know, in front of any jury. I think it is too.

I think it really comes down to was this guy legally responsible for the murders? I don't think there's any doubt he committed the murders. There was enough evidence to prove that because Gacy's defense team argued that he was insane. He had no idea what he was talking about when he gave his confession. His attorney later called him a collector of bodies, but said that it was only due to,

to his uncontrollable mental illness. He had a disease of the mind and therefore was not responsible for his acts. Both sides presented their own psychologist who, and you know, this often happens, had opposing views on John Wayne Gacy. The psychologist for the prosecution said, yeah, he knew exactly what he was doing at the time of the murders. And he knew the acts he. was committing were wrong. The defense had their own psychologists. One said that Gacy suffered from

paranoid schizophrenia. And at the time of the murders, he could not understand the criminality of his acts and was incapable of conforming his conduct to the law. But under cross-examination later, this same psychologist said, quote, it's a guess. All of us are guessing. No, one really knows. I'm sure the defense team Gibbs was happy to hear him make that statement. Oh, for sure. You know, your, your paranoid schizophrenic diagnosis kind of loses a lot of its weight when you admit that you're basically guessing. Not a real strong witness at that point. Yeah, you're not really selling it. Well, you sold it to me, but before handing the item over, you tore it in half and said, here you. You're not. You're not really selling it. You sold it to me. Well, you sold it to me. You sold it. You

you go. Yeah. I've got your money. Here's your item. But it's not the item I thought it was going to be. Yeah, it kind of got discounted on the way. Exactly. We talked about Gacy victims Donnelly and Rignall, testifying against him at trial. But the prosecution also called to the stand a young man named Michael Reed. Michael Reed claimed that he lived with Gacy back in 1971. Reed said on the stand that he performed sexual acts for money with Gacy while he lived with him. The prosecution also called some of Gacy's former employees who testified that they had dug trenches in Gacy's crawl space at his request. Now, of course, Gibbs, they didn't know they were digging what would later turn out to be

graves. They believed they were digging some type of drainage trends. for his water problem. Yeah, that was causing the odor. Yeah, you know, that big water problem that's causing the dead smell, the smell of death. But this is all very powerful testimony. Bessie Stapleton, the mother of Samuel Stapleton, she took the stand at trial to identify the bracelet her son was wearing when he disappeared. We talked about it. It was found in the crawl space. But as the prosecutor pulled the bracelet out of an envelope and handed it to her, he asked her if she recognized it. She was able to answer that it was Sam's bracelet. And then she

completely fell apart. She began shaking. And one point fell out of her chair. I mean, she was almost incapacitated. The way it was written about was that people had to help her out of the courtroom and she collapsed on the way out. And I think the reason why it's important to talk about is it gives you just a little glimpse of what type of strain these family members were under. So you had the point in time where their family members were missing. Right. Horrible. You have the point in time where they find out that they were murdered by John Wayne Gasey. Now you have this different point in time where you have to attend a five-week trial of the man that you know killed your loved one, your son, your brother, and in a lot of cases, have to stand up and testify

about particular pieces of jewelry, clothing, all these different things they found either in the crawl space or in Gacy's home. Just to continually be reminded and relive all that, you know? Yeah, we talk about a lot of things in these podcasts. I think what gets lost sometimes is the victim's families. And just what an unbelievable amount of grief they go through, hardship. It changes their lives. There's no doubt about it. Yeah, because when the headlines are done, right? And the reporters go on to the next story. Yeah, this still continues for the families. Oh, for the rest of their lives. Yeah. Yeah, Walter Cronkide is going to talk about it for X amount of time. You and I are going to do a podcast on it for however many episodes it takes.

But then like Walter Cronkite, and I'm not comparing us to Walter Cronkite, but we are going to move on to the next story. These people can never really move on. Now, they have to move on in life to some degree, but very, very difficult. The jury found John Wayne Gacy, guilty. on March 12th of the murders of his 33 victims. He also found him guilty of those other charges as well. It took them just under two hours of deliberation to reach their verdict.

Gibbs, they rejected Gacy's defense's argument that he was insane and therefore not responsible for his actions. It was reported that many of the victims family members wept openly, sobbing, after the verdict was read. And I think it's important to point out, at the time Gacy was convicted, 11 of his victims were still unidentified. That number stands at six today. And I think we said that in a previous episode.

Right. But this was at the time of his conviction. There were still 11 victims unidentified. Five, they identified sometime after that. And maybe for those families, as tragic as that is. is, you know, by the time they did find out, they didn't have to endure that trial. Yeah, I think you, you might have something there. You might have something there. Obviously, when it came out, that would be horrible. It might have also been horrible, though, to sit through

the trial thinking that that could be my son. One of those 11 could be my loved one. I think that would be pretty rough as well. Yeah, I wonder if they're ever fine who the other six. are what's possible i think the way that they've identified some of the ones recently and we may have touched on it but it's going to take a family member to step up and provide their DNA right and i did read in some of the articles that there's a belief that some families either never came forward or don't want to come forward because they just don't want to believe that their son or loved one is a victim of John Wayne Gacy. Yeah, I get that, you know. And also, I think it could be that some of these young men were runaways. Yeah, maybe they didn't have family. Right.

Nobody was looking for them. Nobody's looking for them now. That is a definite possibility. Sad. Yeah, very tragic. The very next day, Judge Garipo sentenced Gacy to die. And he set an execution date for just a few months down the road, June 2nd, 1980. I always find that strange. Now, we know executions never happened that quickly. There's automatic appeals. There's other type of appeals that happen. But can you imagine if they did? I think in this country, there would have been a lot of people put to death over the last however many years that were later found to be innocent. Now, we know John Wayne Gasey's not going to be found innocent later on. We know it's not going to happen. All of his appeals will be

denied. It was reported, though, Gibbs that people in the courtroom were standing up and applauding when the judge read the sentence. I wonder if it was one of those 1980 applausees like you see in the movies where it starts off real slow. And builds and builds. Yeah. Well, you have to think about this. John Wayne Gacy was one of the most hated men. in America, if not the world. And certainly in that part. And definitely in Cook County, for sure. And that's why I didn't mention it at the time,

but that's why I kind of think, okay, going 90 miles away to get your jury pool, what difference is that going to make? Are you telling me 90 miles away? They don't know everything there is to know about John Wayne Gasey. Everybody in the country knows what this guy's accused of. Yeah, I find it really hard to believe that people in

Rockford were like, gacy, never heard of the young man. Yeah, I think it's more for maybe appeals. Yeah. And the fact that you're at least making it look like you are trying to give him a fair trial. He made a conscious effort to. Yes. Yeah. It's not, you know, at first he said, no, not going to do anything about it.

And then he said, you know what? I'd hate for something to get overturned on appeal. Keep in mind, they tried all these at the same time. I think maybe there was something to that looking. forward to the appeal process. Gacy spent his time in prison at the Menard Correctional Center up until the time that he was transferred for his execution. He had some interesting years on death row. We won't spend a lot of time. We could probably do a whole episode on Gacy's death row, but he found some different ways to make money. He began painting and some of his painting

sold for quite a bit of money. I saw 20,000. plus on some of them. So maybe some of that stuff I have in my garage that I whipped up. You should not get rid of. Hold on to it. I mean, just the fact that I can paint with a K bar. It's pretty special in its own right.

Hey, the lines in those pictures are pretty sharp. Now, years later, some fancy rich guy starts buying up all the paintings. Yeah. And he burns them all in like some big symbolic gesture. Well,

I like that. Yeah. It's kind of cool. It's like, screw you, buddy, you know. But at the time, Gacy made money, which we don't like to think about, right? Because the law in the books prevented him from profiting from his crimes. But it didn't prevent him from profiting from something unrelated to his crimes. But really, I mean, if you look at it, the reason he profited the way he did was because people wanted to own something from at that time,

the most. Exactly. Yeah. The most infamous person. And that's why I think they later changed it. I don't, I can't remember exactly what you're sometime in the 80s when they, when they changed it. But for a number of years, he was able to, you know, sell paintings, autographs, basically anything like that. I'm sure his canteen was pretty full. He probably had all the zingers and the ramen noodles and the, that he wanted. All the good stuff. bastard. He's got zingers and ramen noodles. You and I got Jack Squat. There's no zingers here. You have not once ever offered me a zinger. My wife won't buy any of that junk food. She's like, want some more broccoli? Yeah. And I'm like, no. No. Every now and then she'll melt some cheese on it, though. Yes, you'll try that. But it's still broccoli. It's still broccoli.

But it's one of those things where when they passed a law, they didn't think about that, right? They didn't anticipate a guy like John Wayne Gacy cashing in on his notoriety in a way that wasn't selling a book or writing a book. It wasn't directly related to the murders. He could have painted the shittiest paintings that anybody's ever seen. Somebody was going to spend a boatload of money to get a John Wayne Gacy. But I also think they probably underestimated the public, right? They probably thought that is true too. Who in the right mind would want.

want to do that? Why would someone want to? They definitely probably couldn't have imagined that years later there would be whole internet sites set up for murder beaulia and all of that. True. So I talked about the fact that we wanted to hear from Gacy a little bit. So I do want to play a little audio from him. It's from an interview that he did with Walter Jacobson while on death row.

So let's listen to it. We'll talk about it. When they paint the image that I was this monster who picked up like these altar boys along the street and swatted them like flies, I said, this is ludicrous. I've taken three and a half hours of truth syrup. And under sodium amethol, the maximum month that I could have, it shows that I have no knowledge of the crime whatsoever. Never have had. Robert Peaks was killed by another individual in my home. How did he get to your home?

He was transported to the house by another. How did the other Whoever he was killed? I believe he was traggled. You were there, right? Not during the crime

but I was there afterwards and I watched the removal of the body. And what happened to the body afterwards? That body was put into the river and dumped the river. Did you help through that?

Yes, I'm in complicity with that. I've always consented. Don't look at me as an innocent babe of the woods in regards to going out into the garage. Yes, I know I went to the house I said, yes, I know I walked in the garage, and they asked me where the last section of concrete was bored.

Okay. I said, there's the last section where the last section of concrete was board. Okay, they are the ones that took the orange can of paint and said, here, put a mark there, so I put an X there. So the paint was not to identify the place of Bairdale. No. No, never was. Okay. I had a rosary.

Which I carried in my pocket. I've always heard a rosary. It was my communion rosary. They said, well, what kind of a knot do you use? I said, what do you mean? When I tie things up, I says, depending on what I'm using it for, I said, the only thing I ever learned from Boy's house is a tourniquet knot. He said, well, show us what that is.

So I took, at that time, and again, it's together, but in order to demonstrate it here, I took the rosary, and I said, well, here, you put it around. This is hard trying to do this. Why don't you put your hand out? Okay, here. What I told him, I said, here, all you do is you put it. You wrap it around. You put one knot in it.

And I said, then you put a second knot in it. Okay. I said, then you take a stick and stick it in here and you just turn this. And I says, it causes it an turnit kid. I said, that's the only not I ever learned. All right. So cobbled together, right? From this interview that he did.

Sure. It was very long. I know we didn't have time to play much of it. So I was trying to get some pieces that we could talk about. Don't think of me as a babe in the woods. Who in the hell is? thinking of John Wayne Gacy as a babe in the woods. This guy's a monster. Yeah, not one person. Not one person. He's, you know, you can really hear the con man. The, you know, I'm trying to talk around these facts that are

very well known. I'm trying to explain to you what they really mean. He's the wolf. He's also a wolf, but yeah, I get it. He's, he's a wolf in sheep's clothing for sure. You know, he's trying to explain away the fact that police say he marked the body. He's saying the police marked it. So they happened to know where the body was. But he tried to explain it as, no, they didn't ask me about a body. They asked me where the last piece of concrete was poured. I told them they marked it.

It just happened that there was a body under that spot. Right under that spot. X marks the spot. And then you get into the Robert Peace murder. And really it's one of the most. most important murders because it's what put police onto John Wayne Gacy. You know, that's the first murder that he was charged with. That's the radar. Everything else kind of dovetailed from there after they started finding these other bodies. He can't admit that he murdered

Robert Peace, let alone any of these other people. His, whatever you want to call it, ego or it just won't let him do it. He's still looking Gibbs for a way to get out of this thing, even though by this point, I believe all his appeals have been denied. Yeah. He's sitting on death row. What's he maybe thinking, okay, I could get a last minute reprieve. Who in the world's going to give John Wayne Gasey a reprieve from his death sentence? But either way, I'm not taking that chance. I'm going to try to talk my way out of it. And then when you really get into him talking about these knots, you know, okay, the only knot he ever learned was a tourniquet knot. Well, it just happens to be the knot that was found on these pieces of rope that came from the crawl space. You almost hear him describe how he murdered his victims.

Sure. I tied this rope in this knot. You tie it around a stick. and you twist the stick. You can almost picture John Wayne Gacy murdering his victims from behind in this very same fashion. Yeah, and you said it.

It just listens to that audio to me. It's just like classic bullshit artists. You know, telling his story, trying to, he's thinking about what they're trying to lead him to and he's trying to turn it a different direction because he's just like he's a classic bull. Well, it's a chess match, right? He's anticipating what's coming.

He's anticipating what he's going to say to counteract that move. And kind of trying to take control of the story, but he doesn't do a good job at it. But what would be a multi-parter on Gacy if we didn't at least get to hear from him a little bit? Yeah. But it gives you a great sense of who this guy was. He was a BS or he was a con artist. obviously he was a sadistic serial rapist and murderer pedophile. He had a lot of different things that you could call him.

So let's talk about Gacy's last meal. You and I haven't talked about a last meal in some time. A long time. Fried chicken, butterfly shrimp. So like breaded butterfly shrimp. Yeah. French fries, Coke, strawberry shortcake. Not too elaborate.

No. Pretty subdued. Man, that guy must have really loved. I loved fried chicken though. He did, man. You would have thought he would have gotten his fill after grabbing all those drumsticks, you know, those years managing the KFCs in Iowa, but I guess he didn't. I wonder if he requested the colonels or Lee's.

Or whatever they fried up in the prison. So then you get to his execution. Gacy was executed just after midnight on May 10th, 1994. by lethal injection. He was 52 years old. So what you're saying is I outlived Gacy. So far, yeah. But I guess if you've done it by now, yes, you outlived Gacy.

There you go. But what it does tell you is, you know, he was only like 30, what, 35, 36, 37 years old when he was caught, when he was committing the bulk of his crimes. So this lethal injection didn't quite go his plan. They started the chemicals into his system, but it took 18 minutes before he was legally pronounced that. So there's three chemicals, right? One's like an anesthetic. One, I think, slows your breathing. And then one stops your heart.

Yeah, I think that's if I remember. It's some, you know, and they do it like in combination. Should take four, five, six minutes somewhere in that neighborhood. But apparently there was some type of clog in one of the tubes leading. into his arm. So one of the chemicals got clogged up and they had to go in and put in a new line, unclog it. I mean, it was a mess. It was like 42 people sitting in this viewing room set to watch John Wayne Gacy die. That one guy there, Johnny, you had one job. Make sure the lines were clean. Exactly. You had to take your break at that time, did you? It was reported that Gacy grunted one time

during the process. But that was it. Now, there are people that say, okay, he must have been in an excruciating pain. I've read reports where the first one to go in, there was so much in there. There's no way he could have felt anything. I mean, it depends on where you fall sometimes in the death penalty debate. Yeah. But obviously, 18 minutes is a long time.

You know what? I bet some of his victims took about that amount of time. when he killed them from behind, strangling. Well, I don't think you're going to get any argument from any of the victim's families saying, oh, poor John Wing-Ga-Saint. Right. No way. Whether it took four minutes, 18 minutes, or two hours.

I don't think they cared. No. And I imagine Gibbs, there are some that were just fine if he suffered. Sure. A little bit more than what is supposed to happen during an execution. So we have to talk about Gacy's last words. I've always heard that Gacy's last words were kiss my ass. Yeah.

It's kind of like a famous last words of a infamous killer. Right. But there does seem to be some debate about it. There were many papers from, you know, back during that time frame that reported that, okay, he said that on the way to a prison guard. he said that those were going to be his last words, but they said that what he ultimately said was taking his life would not compensate for the loss of others. And this was the state murdering him.

I had a hard time figuring out what is what. Almost everywhere when you read about John Wayne Gacy, it says, final words, kiss my ass. Exactly. And you think, okay, that seems like how he would go out. But then you get some. very reptile news articles. Yeah, we're not talking about the podunk times. I mean, we're talking about the Associated Press and other very well-respected,

you know, news organizations that reported it this way. I don't know. I like to think it was Kiss My Ass. So, no, I thought that was interesting because for years and years, I've just assumed it was Kiss My Assess. And it still may very well be maybe the timing of when, in which part, which thing was said is in doubt. I don't know, right. But I did want to offer that. It's easy just to say his last words or kiss my ass, but when I find conflicting information from a very

reputable source, like the Associated Press, I got to put it in there. Now, as always happens, there were people on both sides of the death penalty debate outside of the Stateville Correctional Center during his execution. A lot of people were cheering. A lot of people were cheering. A lot of people were wearing shirts that said no tears for the clown. Some people were wearing shirts that said, my parents saw John Wing-Gacy die. I mean, there was all kinds of shirts. Wow. They were cheering. There was maybe thousands of people that were happy to see John Wing-Gacy die. He was a horrible individual. Sure was. But at the same time, there were people there against the death penalty and doing their protests, as they always do at executions.

Yeah, they're not clowning around. No, they were not. So you look at everything that happened in the case of John Wayne Gacy. There were a number of times throughout the years where police could have potentially put a stop to him. Oh, for sure. At least I think a half dozen times. Well, you know, there was Rignell and Donnelly who went to police after experiencing what you can only describe as sadistic. torture and sexual assault.

But there were other times before this that Gacy was on police radar. I guess in 1975, police got a tip about a man named John who cruised the area around Diversi Parkway and picked up boys. Police even figured out that the John they were talking about was John Wayne Gacy. This is 1975. Yeah. They put a surveillance team on him. but they never caught him picking anyone up.

So eventually they kind of dropped it. They also surveilled his house and they saw a lot of younger males coming in and out of his house. They stopped and talked to them. They were questioning these young kids, these young men, not a single one. Now, this is according to police. And you know, maybe they have to cover their tracks a little bit. Yeah.

Because they did look pretty bad. But not a single person they talked to. ever said anything bad about Gacy. And it could be because at that point, they didn't know anything bad about Gacy. No, they're probably just happy because they're making a little bit more money than they were at their previous job.

Or maybe they had just come from talking about potentially getting a job. Right. So in 1976, police investigated Gacy regarding the disappearance of a nine-year-old boy named John Farris. They staked out his home again.

But nothing came out of it. The one thing, that police never did during all of this was check Gacy's record. And I think that's one thing that a lot of people have trouble with, right? Thinking that, you know, if you had just taken that one extra step, the sodomy conviction in Iowa comes up. Maybe that makes people think, we should look at this guy a little bit more. Sure. He has a history of doing some really bad things. And like I said, police took a lot of heat regarding this case. And obviously, I mean, you can't put all of the blame on them. In the end, it was John Wayne Gacy who chose to murder

33 boys and young men. But you also can't help wonder how many victims could have been saved potentially if police maybe would have dug in just a little bit deeper into Gacy. Oh, absolutely. Now, there are some things. things to consider. We're talking about a pretty big police force, right? Communication couldn't have been great in the 1970s. Plus, we know that they had all those missing persons. They did. Had a lot of missing persons reports to work. But I think the big thing is not everybody would have been on the same page about Gacy. Some group may have been looking at him for this. Another group may have been thinking he might have done something else. They may have. They may have.

not have ever talked to each other about it. To add on to this, a lot of the victims were from different areas of the city, which would have made it harder as well. I mean, you're not always talking about downtown Chicago police. Right. You're talking about some suburbs. Yeah, villages, towns, things like that. The thing that always has puzzled me about Gacy is that he confessed to a large number of murders in the Chicago area. But this guy traveled a lot during the 1970s for work. I just find it very hard to believe that a man like Gacy, knowing how prolific he was during a certain number of years, never committed murders outside of Chicago. Let's say, while he was traveling. It's something you and I wonder about a lot. Yeah, you wonder what he, what he or how

handled his urges. And if he was away and was able to lure, you know, a victim to where he wanted them, who's to say that he didn't murder X amount of more people that today are still listed as missing persons. And getting back to, you know, just how bad the police looked after all of this came out, you know, a lot of people have referred to John Wayne Gacy. And, one of those kind of pivotal things that help change how police departments operate. I'm not sure what time frame we're covering here, but it obviously had some deep impacts on police around the country. What it also did, along with some other high profile cases in the 70s and 80s, is spark a lot of new laws. When you talk about sex offender registries that started to pop up on the

books, right? Early 80s when we get stranger danger. Yeah. You can't tell me that Gacy didn't have something to do with stranger danger. I think he probably did. I'm not saying it was all about Gacy, but no doubt he was the boogeyman too many parents, not only in Chicago, but across the nation and lawmakers as well. I think they were sitting around thinking, hey, what do we need to do to try to ensure that we don't have another Gacy. Yeah, I mean, those definitely were some scary years if you think about it with Gacy and around that time, you know, the Oakland County and saw. Late 70s, yeah.

Yeah. No doubt. So before we wrap up, we have to talk about Somerdale Avenue. Yeah. Right. Gacy's house, the place where he buried most of his victims, I said they demolished it. Well, somebody bought it. You know, at some point later on, they built a new house on the site, which I think is somewhat

strange. It's not a decision that I think I would be able to make knowing what happened, knowing that 29 bodies were buried in the soil. I'm thinking about poltergeist. Yeah. I'm out. Yeah. So they built this new house.

They changed the address from 8213 to 8215. Not that people probably couldn't figure it out. They still had gockers, I'm sure. But what was so strange is, you know, in the process of writing this four-part series on Gacy, and it was just like less than a week ago that an article came up that the house is on the market. So it's this three-bedroom, two-bath house. It's listed at $459,000. It's a bargain.

It was built in 1986. That seems like a, Now, it's in a pretty good area, I think. Northwest Chicago, not far from the airport, but it's $459,000 for a house that you know carries a lot of, I don't even know what the word is, Gibbs. A lot of baggage. Yeah, that's what I was looking for. There's a lot of baggage that goes with this house. And I hate to say the word baggage, but I think that's the right word to use because obviously we're talking about victims.

Right. I just don't think I could do it. There's no way. I mean, you could give it to me. I don't really think I want to live there. Unless it was a really good investment, maybe I'd buy it and then turn around and flip it. I wouldn't reside in it.

No, that's what I'm saying. To live there knowing what happened. I wouldn't even want to live next door to it. No. I would have sold it immediately. But that's it. That is the case of John Wayne Gacy. Took us four parts,

but it had to be to tell the full story. And, you know, for Mike and Gibby, was a lot of work to do this four-part podcast. I know. You were over at the house every night. We had all of our research spread out. You really pulled your weight on this one. Ghibi was really tired after a lot of these.

But Ghibi is happy now that we are complete. Yep. And Fergie is happy that Ghibi is happy. See how creepy that sounds? The whole thing is just creepy. Hey, man, we got some voicemails. You want to hear those. Let's hear him.

Hi, T.Cat. I just want to say that I really love your podcast. I have only been listening for about six months now, and I just started on true crime all the time. I listen to you when I'm out work, which I'm not really supposed to, but I can't go my day without listening to you guys. I was just wondering if you can do a not-well-known crime in Yuma, Arizona, called La Mesa Street Murders. It was my first best friend, and I don't know all the details because I was really young when they happened. It happened in 2005, I believe, so my mother didn't really live. me follow the crime. So if you can look that up and maybe do an episode on that, thank you. I just

want to say I am either team givey or team fergy. I love you both and keep your head on a civil and goodbye. And we love you too. Yeah. So I did look that up after I heard the the voicemail. It looks like a very interesting case. I just don't know if there's enough out there. I got to do some more research to see if it's one of those where you can pull off of a full episode. Right. Thanks for the voicemail. Yeah, definitely. And for being a rebel and listening to us at work when you're really not allowed to. Yeah, don't get fired. Hi, this is this is Melrose from Mecca, Alaska again. I'm pretty much just finishing the Netflix limited series, unbelievable. Scratch the recommendations that I made before or like just added to the second movie on the list

because this one's so crazy good. And Netflix did such a good job. The actor's amazing. And I just, um, it's so perfect. And I think I should totally do a podcast on a lot because some people don't have Netflix. And I just think everyone should know about this because it's insane. So who can look that up? Okay, now, bye for you. Okay, Gibbs. So I don't know if you've seen unbelievable on Netflix.

No, what's unbelievable is how much coffee did she have? She's a fast talker, like in Seinfeld. She's a fast talker. Very, very fast. Have you seen it? I have not. Okay. It's very good.

I watched it with my wife and daughter. It's five, six, seven episodes. It's not real long. It's a limited series. What's it about? It's about a woman who is raped and they don't believe her. Okay. So I did see that then, but I didn't, I just saw like the first 20 minutes and it was

hard for me to watch. So it is, it is a little hard to watch. Yeah. So I turned it off. It really gets going as the episodes go along. I think it is a true story. So, I mean, I do think we could do an episode on it. I believe it said that in the beginning.

But, you know, sometimes when they say that, it's not always true. I haven't looked it up. Some parts of it's true. Yeah, and they embellished parts probably. But I actually thought it was pretty well done. And the fact that they had two female detectives who are kind of the leads, you never got to that part. And I'm not giving anything away. I really found that refreshing, right?

It's normally, okay, you got the gruff detectives and F bombs and this and this. These are two women who have the same issue. They're juggling family and trying to catch this person. I really liked it. Good actors. Yeah, there's a lot of really good actors. Hi, Mike and Gibby. My name is Amy Phil, and I first discovered your podcast about a year ago and actually made a Patreon support.

You guys probably don't remember because it was a long time ago. But you said my name and there was some confusion on whether I'm one or two people. but my name is actually Amy Bill. Bill is our last name. I just finished episode 99, and I'm really excited to listen to the two-part Ed Kemper episode on our moving trip tomorrow. We're moving from Illinois up to Wisconsin,

so I'll have plenty of time to listen to both of them back to back, and I'm excited about it. So I just wanted to tell you guys that I love the show. I think you guys do a great job, and I really appreciate how you give so much respect to the victims. And I just think it's really great to hear so much of the details. So I just think you guys do a great job and keep up the work and keep your own time ticking. Thanks.

Bye-bye. Yeah, so what you don't know is in episode 102 when you get there, we resay your name the correct way. Yeah. Now, that's pretty much a staple of Gibbs. If you have a name that sounds like two first names, he thinks you're two different people, just from Jump Street. Sometimes they are. Sometimes they are, but most of the time, they are not. What's up, Mike and Givie?

This is Chris from Denver giving you guys a shout again. I had to call. Tell you how excited I am that I saw you guys are doing Gacy this week. I just listened to the episode. I can't tell you, man, as soon as I saw that alert pop up on my phone for the new podcast, that it was John Wayne Gacy, Part one. I was so excited I think I dropped my phone. And my cat jumped off me. It was great.

But I just wanted to give you guys a shout. Really excited to listen. I'm excited to hear these next couple episodes if you guys jump in. Weather's turning out here in Colorado. So I'm excited to, you know, have some cold days where I get to sit inside and just binge watch or binge listen to all the old episodes again. So I'm really looking forward to that. So keep doing what you guys is doing. Stay safe and keep your own time ticket.

Later. All right. Love it. Appreciate the voicemail. Yeah. That's great, man. So Gibbs we had mailbag. Yeah.

Kyla Acker. Okay. And I've been saying her name apparently wrong for a very long time because she's a Patreon supporter. She sent us some breakfast jerky, which is amazing. Is it amazing? It is. I ate it all.

She sent you two big things of Twizzlers. Yeah. I know the breakfast stuff was amazing because you told me how amazing it was. How good it was. And that I ate at all. But yeah, thank you. And then our good friend Lottie, she sent us some Halloween gummies. So we got some snakes, we got some spiders.

Do we know? She says in the note, she's not sure if it's sugar-free or not. So take your chances. I've took my chance before, and you can go ahead and eat them. Well, the problem is it's not in English, so I can't tell if it's sugar-free or not. Yeah, well, I'll tell you what. Go ahead and eat like 10 of them. And then we'll find that.

And then we're no. We figured out who sent the poster. Oh, yeah. That's right. The Dominer poster. Kate Pricer. Yeah, thanks, Kate. So thank you so much for that.

We didn't know last week and Gibbs finally figured it out. Yeah, it's my bad. You know, he was supposed to bring it when he came last week. Yeah. No, anyway. All right, man, we got to get out. I mean, these last two gasey ones probably went a little long. But the information is the information.

Yeah. You know, you can't just say, I'm tired. I don't want to make this one the full thing because then you're leaving out good information. But that's it. That's it for the case of Gacy. 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.