John Wayne Gacy (24 page)

19

G
ACY WAS TRANSFERRED
to Cermak Hospital at the Cook County Jail. Naturally, I was disappointed that we did not win the argument at the bond hearing. Nobody likes to lose. However, there was something to be said for being able to actually have a night’s sleep. I thought that with Gacy cooling his heels in county, a full night’s sleep might possibly be in my future. That’s when the death threats to me and, believe it or not, to my family started at all hours. Apparently, death threats have more gravitas at two in the morning than they do in the daytime. Who knew? Those threats, together with endless calls from members of the press, made sleep fleeting. I was young. What did I know?

Welcome to the private practice of law, Sam.

Never would I have believed how crazy people could get. These were people, I might add, who had absolutely no connection to the case at all.

My dad drove a truck for the
Chicago Tribune
. He delivered newspapers to the people that delivered and sold the newspapers to the public in one of the big box trucks with the logo of the paper plastered on the side, one of the trucks you see in movies when the director wants to tell the audience that the story is spreading far and wide.

He worked hard every day, supported his family, saved his money, you know the type—the salt of the earth, never intentionally hurting another living soul. After I graduated from college, my dad saved his money all over again; and slowly, with sacrifice, he finally had enough money saved to go out and buy his dream car: a brand-new Lincoln Continental. It was his pride and joy. He babied that car.

This is hard to believe, but some asshole, some coward felt that the appropriate way to express his anger toward me because I had the audacity to represent one John Wayne Gacy was to vandalize my father’s car. The logic escapes me.

On his beautiful car was scratched “Your son must be a fag. No one but a fag would represent a fag like Gacy.”

The person or persons that perpetrated the vandalism were not simply misguided idiots with a screwdriver—they were homophobic misguided idiots with a screwdriver. This sad and cowardly act was reported in the paper, in Irv Kupcinet’s column, because everything Gacy was reported in the paper.

On Sunday, Christmas Eve 1978, my wife and I had my parents over to the house, as usual, and we were all celebrating the holidays with the kids. Sammy had finally been released from the hospital with a clean bill of health, so this was a special Christmas. I had spent a great deal of time profusely apologizing to my dad for what had happened to his car, as if it was my fault. He knew that I had no power to stop crazy people from acting crazy, but he
did use this opportunity to remind me that he had advised me to become a doctor. Parents—ya gotta love ’em.

We were having a traditional Italian Christmas dinner—lots of pasta and fish—and the mood was festive when the telephone rang. It was John Gacy.

“Sam,” he said, “I want you to tell your father how sorry I am that his car was vandalized just because you are representing me, because you are my lawyer. I feel kinda responsible, you know? It ain’t right.”

“John, how did you know about that?” I asked.

“I read about it in the paper. That ain’t right, Sam.”

“Well, John, I don’t have to tell him that you are sorry. I’ll let you tell him yourself. He’s right here. Hold on.”

I tapped my dad on the shoulder. He was playing with one of the kids, not really paying attention to what I was doing. The Christmas tree glowed; the decorations twinkled, presents all over the place.

“Dad,” I said, “someone wants to talk to you.”

My dad looked at me, a bit surprised. We were at my house, after all. Who would be calling him there? “Who is it?” he asked.

“It’s Gacy,” I said. “He wants to apologize to you for what happened to your car. He wants to tell you he is sorry.”

My dad’s eyes became saucers. Then he had on a determined look that I had seen all my life. My dad and I are carbon copies of each other, with twenty-odd years of aging the only difference. His shoulders and back came up, and he scowled.

“No. I don’t want to talk to that guy,” he growled.

“Come on, Dad.” I covered the mouthpiece on the phone. “He wants to tell you how sorry he is.” I was loving this, laughing inside. My eyes were twinkling.

“I don’t want to talk to him!” My dad’s head had sunk between his shoulders. He no longer had a neck. Tiny beads of perspiration popped out on his forehead. He was seething. I was smiling, which, of course, made him even madder.

I shoved the phone at him. “Take the phone!” I said, laughing under my breath. Now my mother and my wife were also goading him.

My dad took the phone. Here’s what we all heard … in my dad’s gruff growl.

“Humm, yeah!”

Silence.

“All right.”

Silence.

“OK, OK, yeah … yeah. Tanks. Tanks.” (Chicago style for
thanks
.)

 Silence, as my father’s neck fully disappeared and larger beads of sweat popped out.

“OK, OK. Fine, fine. Tanks. That’s OK … tanks.”

He hung up the phone and looked at all of us. “Do you know what that asshole said to me?” he asked, incredulous.

“What?” we all asked, filled with mirth.

“He said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Amirante, that some jerks vandalized your car just because your son is my lawyer, but … ya know,
there are a lotta nuts out there
.’”

We all broke into laughter. John Wayne Gacy—the man that was sitting in Cook County Jail on Christmas Eve, charged with the murder of a young boy, suspected of the murder of many, many more—had been dead serious. He did not even see the irony. He was telling my dad that there were a lot of nuts out there. Perhaps he should have looked in the mirror—if they would let him have one.

What was wrong with that guy?

____________________

C
HRISTMAS
1978
WAS
pretty much a nonevent for me, just another day. I was consumed by this case, and as hard as I tried to take a break from all the mad activity that surrounded it, I just couldn’t. I was already planning strategies and seeing scenarios concerning how this was all going to play out.

Gacy had limited his options with reference to his defense by talking to any and all Des Plaines coppers that tapped him on the shoulder and asked him what happened. This had become a bit of a pastime around the station. It actually went beyond what would normally be considered questioning or interviewing of a suspect in a professional manner. That is not to say that the members of the investigation team were unprofessional when they questioned Gacy. They weren’t. They would always remind him of his constitutional right to remain silent, and they were all actually trying to develop their case. But they were not bringing Gacy into a room and conducting a formal investigation session either.

Everyone has seen a dramatic depiction of an interview session on TV or in the movies. One would think that the questions would be asked in an interview room, complete with one-way mirrors, tape recorders, and a cadre of high-ranking officers looking on from behind the glass.

While Gacy was in custody in Des Plaines, officers and others would simply stop by his cell to shoot the shit whenever they were bored. On one such occasion, Mike Albrecht and assistant state’s attorney Larry Finder were talking with Gacy. He was in his cell, and the others were standing outside. The police officer and the prosecutor were curious to find out just how Gacy accomplished his gruesome deeds. After all, Gacy was pretty much a fat wimp. He had always been a sickly, overweight loser, an outcast from the cool kids, with a heart condition and a fear of confrontation; and he was exactly the same as an adult.

“I used the rope trick,” Gacy said, rather nonchalantly, considering the subject matter.

“What’s the rope trick?” Larry asked.

“Well, do you guys have a rope?” Gacy inquired, looking at Albrecht as if they were all sitting around at the barbershop or the gas station just jawing.

“I’m not about to give you a rope, John,” Albrecht said, looking at Gacy as if he might be out of his mind.

“What? I’m not going to kill you, Mike.”

Then Gacy shook his head, disgusted, laughing under his breath. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the rosary that he always carried. He asked for a pen.

“Larry, stick your arm through the bars and make a fist. Pretend that your wrist is a neck and your fist is a head.”

Within seconds, Gacy had tied a couple knots into the rosary beads, stuck the pen through some loops, and demonstrated the way the rope trick worked like a tourniquet.

“How would you get the rope over their heads, you know, didn’t they put up a fight? Didn’t they resist?” The officer and the prosecutor were both intrigued. They couldn’t believe what they were hearing.

“Many times they would put it over their heads themselves,” Gacy said without skipping a beat. “It was a trick, like a clown trick. They were waiting for the trick.”

For me, when I heard this story, I just thought that it was insane on so many levels. Which was crazier, the fact that Gacy always carried a blessed rosary around in his pocket, the holy symbol of the Virgin Mary in the Catholic Church, when he committed his heinous crimes against young boys, or that he used that holy symbol to demonstrate how he killed those young boys? Or was it crazier still to picture a group of grown men sitting around a jail cell—a prosecutor, a cop, and a killer—offhandedly discussing the whole matter as though they were a bunch of asshole buddies in a locker room sharing secrets about a cheerleader?

But that was the dichotomy that was John Wayne Gacy. It was as if Gacy was so happy to be included, to be “just one of the guys,” that he would say anything that kept the others listening to him. For once, Gacy was actually the center of attention, and it really didn’t matter to him why. If a couple of regular guys, men he respected,
guys he thought were cool, were interested enough in his stories to stay and listen to him tell them, he would continue jabbering, without regard to how detrimental the telling would someday prove to be.

Gacy really had only two friends—his employees Mike Rossi and David Cram, two kids barely out of their teens. And they would have had nothing to do with him if he weren’t their employer, holding a paycheck every Friday, and a guy that always had drugs and beer and a place to consume them. This was Gacy reaching out, looking for friendship. I’m sorry, but John Wayne Gacy was the epitome of Winston Churchill’s famous quote—a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. Gacy was a psychiatrist’s wet dream.

What was wrong with this guy?

I had been asking that question quite a lot lately. It was a fair question too, let’s face it. The more you got to know Mr. Gacy, the more confused you became. I think that people like to put individuals like him neatly into a box so as to categorize and understand them. The easy thing to do with a person like Gacy would be simply to put him into the Evil, Crazed Killer box and be done with it. That is what most of society does—and did—with John Gacy. And believe me, John Gacy fit in that box quite well.

The only problem with that, however, is that when we do this, we don’t learn anything further about the guy. We don’t look any deeper. And when we fail to look deeper, we might miss some of the important reasons, the lessons about how an individual like John Gacy becomes a John Gacy. I’m no shrink, but I would like the people that study this sort of thing to learn as much about a guy like Gacy as possible, only because it might help society to recognize the symptoms or characteristics of a person like him in the future, maybe even before the next Gacy goes on a killing spree like the last one did. I could be wrong, but I think that would be a good thing.

One thing was sure about Gacy. He fit into many more boxes than just one, you know, the Evil, Crazed Killer box. This was a guy that carried a rosary with him at all times, then used it to demonstrate how he killed teenagers; who became a clown so that he could cheer up sick little kids; who had a family that loved him and stood by his side in times of unimaginable strife. When you put a squad of hard-bitten, seasoned, professional cops on his tail, they all became some sort of half-assed, convoluted version of buddies that ate and drank with him, swapping stories like they were bunkmates in the army. One minute this guy is pictured with his arm around the First Lady of the United States of America, Rosalynn Carter, while she was serving as the First Lady; and the next minute he is pictured as the most prolific serial killer of all time. He is standing at your door, grinning ear to ear, asking for your vote as your precinct captain by day; and he is cruising Bughouse Square in his shiny new Olds 98 by night. When he is caught and accused of crimes too numerous and incomprehensible to possibly understand, he sits around and chats about those very crimes like he is telling stories from his days at camp.

Historians chronicle the lives of our greatest leaders; biographies abound about people like Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy. We even write books about our movie stars, rock stars, and sports stars. Every aspect of the lives of those that excel in life are studied and set to print or celluloid so that we might know how they did it, what made them tick, all in an effort to produce more like them, all in an effort to allow some child to learn, to be inspired, to join the ranks of those we honor and call great.