The Last Victim (29 page)

I revealed everything that had occurred during the previous months. I specified the number of people I’d been writing to and
the volume of mail I’d received. I went into considerable detail regarding Gacy, explaining that I’d created two sets of letters
to entice his interest. I also admitted that I was worried he might try to use the fictitious content of the letters to smear
me—and by extension, them.

Mercifully, the family meeting went far better than I imagined. We agreed it would be useful to get some legal help in constructing
an affidavit which stated that the incidents described in the letters were fictitious. As it turned out, my mother refused
to sign the affidavit. She said she wanted me to learn that I couldn’t always rely on
her
to get myself out of trouble.

Well, I suppose she could have refused to talk to me for the rest of my natural life. All in all, the upshot of my full disclosure
seemed remarkably painless.

It really seemed like my long nightmare was finally coming to an end. At least, the waking part. I figured I nearly had Gacy
back in his Pandora’s box, so to speak. I thought I’d confronted, and dealt with, all the aspects of his personality.

I was grossly mistaken.

“J
ason, this is Ken, I’m on a conference call, I’ll talk to you laterBye.”

“Hello. Hello. John, are you there?” I heard Ken say again, making sure Gacy was still on the line.

“Yeah, hello,” Gacy replied. “Was he there?”

“No, I got the recording.”

I’d just run up to my room when I heard the phone ringing. The answering machine picked up on the fourth ring. Apparently,
there was something wrong with the machine because it kept recording the conversation between Ken and Gacy, who thought they
were disconnected from my line.

Throughout the previous week, I’d been able to avoid most of Gacy’s calls. Using caller ID and the answering machine, I’d
set up a pretty effective screen. Gacy’s current ploy, however, was to have Ken call me and try to conference him in.

Due to a technical glitch, my machine was continuing to broadcast this conversation, which focused mostly on legal aspects
of Gacy’s latest appeal. And since I’d set the machine on “unlimited,” it was recording everything.

I sat on the bed amused as I listened in. They were arguing. Ken was upset that Gacy had never given him a copy of the privately
published book Gacy had given me when I left.

“Why don’t you ask Jason to make you a copy?” Gacy said, laughing.

“Because . . . because I didn’t . . . I don’t feel comfortable asking him.” Ken seemed jealous of the attention Gacy had shown
me.

“In any case, if we don’t get back to him . . .”

The next part of the conversation was unintelligible, maybe because Gacy was mumbling to himself rather than actually talking.

“. . . Jason has not come through with what he said, which means he’s violated . . . I don’t have to observe his trust anymore
as long as he’s gonna lie to me.”

“What are we looking for?” Ken asked. “The notice, the confidentiality agreement, and copies of the pictures?”

They were referring to a number of legal documents Gacy routinely asked his visitors to sign. The documents, which had been
drawn up by his attorneys, were his insurance that a visitor wouldn’t repeat any confessions Gacy inadvertently made.

Several times prior to my going to the prison, Gacy had tried to get me to sign the documents, but I always stalled him with
excuses. Now he was asking Ken to find my signed papers so he could ensure my silence. That was going to be difficult because
no such papers existed. Gacy had by now learned from Ken, and also from Koko, that I hadn’t matched up with the person he’d
described to them. Now he was not only suspicious regarding what game I might be playing, he was furious that I was refusing
to speak with him.

He kept ranting about getting even. “I’ll send those letters [the ones that detailed my fictitious incestuous forays] to his
father,” he threatened.

As I watched the little tape in the machine going round and round, I thanked the instincts that had told me a few days before
to go to my parents and tell them what I’d been up to.

“I don’t like people playing games with me,” Gacy continued.

“Hey, believe me, I know that!” said Ken. I knew Ken well enough by now to believe he wished me no ill will; he was just trying
to keep Gacy’s gaskets from blowing.

“I’ve been more than fair and generous with him, and to play this holdout game with the phone . . . Come on . . . I have never
held out on the phone. Tell me when I even didn’t make the phone bill good?”

“Yeah, John, you’re right.”

“He’s had more than enough money to cover the phone bill. I’ve given him over $475 for the phone.”

“Yeah, I know,” Ken said, desperately trying to appease him. “I’ll have to find out what’s going on.”

“You ask him if he’d like it if I turned his letters over to the Las Vegas police. See if he likes that. Make it a point that
he should know not to piss me off.”

I couldn’t believe that this whole blackmail plan was being recorded. What were the odds? I kept expecting the machine to
click off at any time. But it didn’t. It just kept recording and recording.

The conversation had moved back to one of the appeals when Gacy abruptly changed the subject.

“I still think Jason is playing games with me.’Cause I did nothing wrong to him, and here it’s been a month I’ve been denied
talking to him.”

“Yeah.”

“I still miss all the goddamn letters he was sending me. And none of his letters has been written as loose as they were written
before. It’s like he’s on guard.”

“Yeah . . . well . . . maybe he’s afraid.”

Ken’s remark seemed to ignite something in Gacy, because his voice rattled the answering machine speaker: “Yeah, well, I got
news for you,
never
play both ends against the middle with me, because it will backfire.”

“I know,” Ken said, forcing laughter. “I would never even think of that.” More strained laughter followed.

“Well . . . he’ll go down harder than a rock. Same thing with his brother, not answering my letters. ’Cause if he thinks I’m
kidding, I’m not. And once the ball gets rolling, there’ll be no stopping it.”

He then began describing how he was going to contact an old friend in Las Vegas from the time when he lived here. I wasn’t
sure whether he was planning to pay him to hurt me, but I’d had enough. The sight of the incriminating tape sitting there
in my machine gave me the confidence to finally stand up to this monster, to reveal the
real
Jason.

I picked up the phone and said, “Hello, John.”

Complete silence on the other end.

“Oh,” Gacy said softly, “where were you when we called before?”

“I was still at school.” Gosh, I was enjoying this. “I want to talk to you about this call. Ken never clicked over and my
machine recorded the whole thing.”

“What do you mean?” Gacy asked, knowing exactly what I meant.

“You know what I mean. I have it all here on my machine, how you’re going to send the letters to the police. Go right ahead.
I have your whole conversation with Ken on tape.”

The other end of the line was completely still. For a moment, I wondered if they’d hung up, but then I heard Gacy’s characteristic
mouth-breathing.

“Feel free, John, to tell the police. Everyone here knows that I was just studying you for school. I let everyone know about
the content of the letters before I’d even written them. The police already have a copy of them just in case you tried any
bullshit like this.”

Okay, I was stretching things. But I wanted to make sure he knew that any leverage he thought he had had just slipped through
his fingers. I wanted nothing to do with him anymore.

To underscore
my
leverage, I said, “I bet
Hard Copy
or
Inside Edition
would be very interested in hearing about how John Wayne Gacy tried to blackmail two children, how he tried to get them to
have sex together just for his amusement. Don’t forget, I’ve got the whole damn thing on tape.”

“You think so, huh?”

There was no bluster in Gacy’s voice. He sounded tired. Defeated.

Then I heard a click on the phone and the tape stopped circling. That was the last time I spoke to John Wayne Gacy.

I
t wasn’t easy putting back together the pieces of my life. I’d been neglecting my relationship with Jenn and with my friends.
Things were still tense at home, especially after Gacy’s threats of blackmail. My schoolwork had suffered— for the first time
in my life, I wasn’t doing my assignments early. How I’d managed to get As while being caught up in all this still amazes
me.

I felt somewhat depressed as well, because although I was glad to be rid of Gacy and my other pen pals, I’d enjoyed the excitement.
Without their bizarre behavior to examine, my life now seemed fairly boring.

Still, there were compensations: the time away from Jenn seemed to make us both more giving and appreciative. And Jarrod was
ecstatic that he had his brother back—that I wasn’t as distracted as I’d been the previous months.

There was, however, one last piece of unfinished business: Gacy was due to be put to death and I wasn’t sure how I felt about
that.

I still feared him. I continued to have trouble sleeping. At times I hated him more than I’ve ever hated anyone. I prayed
to God that this time he’d finally be executed. Seven times in the past it had been postponed, and there was no reason to
believe it wouldn’t happen again. I knew for sure that Gacy thought he still had a few more tricks up his sleeve.

The media attention surrounding the scheduled execution was enormous. I couldn’t turn on the television or open a newspaper
without seeing Gacy’s smiling face. And each time I glimpsed it, the memories would come flooding back—of his standing over
me, wagging his penis in my face, and me sobbing helplessly. No matter what else I lived through, that image would forever
be burned into my brain.

If there was an upside to all this, it was that I was now a celebrity among my friends. A feature article had appeared in
the local newspaper about my visiting Gacy for a school project, and when I walked around campus, people I hardly knew would
call out, “So they’re gonna smoke your friend, huh?”

Actually, there’d be no smoke involved, since lethal injection was the preferred method of execution in Illinois. I told myself
that I couldn’t wait for the needle to be inserted, that once the deadly liquid ran into his veins he’d be out of my life
forever.

The part I kept buried at the time is that I could never have administered the lethal dose myself. No matter how much I feared
and hated him, I couldn’t wish what was going to happen to him on anyone. I imagined him in his cell with all his bravado,
all his charm, pretending to the world that he was fearless. I knew how terrified he really was.

This might sound ridiculous, but I began wondering if Gacy had a soul. I wondered if someone who was that evil, who’d destroyed
so many lives, who was so willing to be deceptive and manipulative, could possibly have anything resembling a spiritual side
to him. If so, I wondered if he’d haunt me from the grave.

The day of the execution, Jenn joined my family as we sat around the television waiting for the latest report. The media had
been calling me for comments because I was a local connection to a story that, by now, had spilled beyond America’s borders
and gone international. While I answered reporters’ questions, bantered with Jenn and my brother, sparred with my mother,
and talked with my dad, I kept thinking about Gacy. I felt really sad. I thought about how alone and scared he was probably
feeling.

Except for my grandfather, who’d died when I was young, Gacy was the first person I’d known whose life was about to be snuffed
out. As the spectacle unfolded on television, there were shots of protesters outside the prison . . . interviews with relatives
of the victims . . . footage showing where the execution would take place, the gurney he’d lie down on, and the straps that
would hold him in place. The camera lingered on the IV tubes that would deliver first a double dose of sodium pentothal to
sedate him and then a combination of pancuronium bromide to stop his breathing and potassium chloride to stop his heart. The
executioners seemed to have thought of everything.

Normally, this is supposed to be a simple, quick, and relatively painless procedure, but in Gacy’s case, there was a glitch.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the news announcer said, “I’m being told there’s some type of delay. They’ve closed the curtain in
the execution chamber. I don’t have much information right now, but it seems there’s been some type of problem with the administration
of the chemicals. This is all I know at this point in time. I’ll keep you posted as soon as further information becomes available.”

Everyone in my house sat motionless, waiting for a report that would clear up what was going on. “Hey, Jason,” my brother
teased, “looks like he escaped again.” Chuckles filled the room—a few contributed by me, though I had to force them out. Actually,
I’d been apprehensive that something like this would happen, that somehow I’d have to live with the prospect that Gacy would
keep pestering and threatening me. I’d imagined the Supreme Court intervening. Or possibly the governor. But I’d never dreamed
Gacy would be rescued by a faulty catheter.

While Jenn and my family chattered away, eating pizza and chicken fingers my mother had ordered, I silently prayed,
Please, God, let this nightmare be over. Let Gacy finally die.

It took eighteen minutes before Gacy finally stopped breathing and was pronounced dead, double the time that had been allotted.
When they made the announcement, my mother and brother cheered.
“Yessss!”
they whooped, fists held above their outstretched arms.