The Man Who Killed Boys (11 page)

The only child of a newspaper truck driver and his wife, Amirante grew up in the adjoining town of Norridge and was president of his junior and senior classes in high school. Although he is only five-foot two-inches tall as an adult, he lettered in track and made the varsity of his high school baseball team as a second baseman and center fielder.

The competition in sports was stiffer at Loyola and he did not play varsity baseball, but the feisty student continued to shine socially and academically. He was once again elected as senior-class president. He served as administrative assistant to the vice-president in law school, and after obtaining his degree and passing the bar examination took his first job as an attorney with the Cook County Public Defender's Office. He was working there, developing and sharpening his courtroom skills, when he met Gacy.

Amirante was still an undergraduate at Loyola and haunting the courtrooms of the Criminal Courts Building on Chicago's south side when he watched F. Lee Bailey, the most famous and flamboyant criminal attorney in the country, argue a case.

The Boston lawyer and ex-Marine fighter pilot was defending millionaire horseman Silas Jayne, who was charged with conspiracy to murder in the slaying of his younger brother, George, in one of Chicago's most celebrated criminal trials. The law student sat in the courtroom of Judge Richard J. Fitzgerald for days, watching Bailey, whose brilliant courtroom work has made him a folk hero to some young lawyers. Amirante was mentally logging every detail, every maneuver, and every action of the defense.
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One of the most conspicuous aspects of Bailey's approach to a case, aside from his courtroom theatrics, is the obvious meticulousness of his preparation. As a practicing lawyer, Amirante too would be carefully prepared for his cases or jobs, regardless of whether, as a public defender, he was representing a penniless street-gang member charged with a mugging or solving a question of construction contracts for the Norwood Park Township Lighting Commission.

Amirante was the kind of knowledgeable and devoted worker that Gacy could relate to. Though the two men didn't become fast friends, it appeared that a feeling of mutual respect developed for the way that each handled his official obligations.

Gacy began passing out business cards prematurely, identifying himself as a precinct captain shortly after he became involved with township Democrats. Martwick overlooked the minor breach of conduct because of Gacy's record of laboring so diligently for the party and the community. While Gacy was building his reputation as an assiduously dedicated Democrat and minor township official, he was also cementing an even closer relationship with another acquaintance in the construction business.

Donald Czarna was a cement contractor. The men met one day while Czarna was pouring sidewalks for the town of Norridge, and Gacy interrupted him to ask if he would pour a couple of porch steps at his house. Czarna and Gacy had much in common. Both were in the construction business, and both swaggered and boasted. Czarna was a rugged man with a cowhide complexion rubbed leathery red by the Chicago sun and wind, who talked out of the corner of his mouth, filling his conversation with blustering threats and stories about people he had beaten up or laid low with a single punch. Gacy's face was darkened by a metallic-blue Richard Nixon beard that showed dark even after the closest shave, and he was also known to use bluster and threats to intimidate people he had disagreements with. The physical builds of the two contractors were as similar as Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and more than once they were mistaken for brothers.

After Czarna poured the steps the men didn't see each other again for about three months. Then Gacy contacted Czarna and asked him to do the cement work on a remodeling job he had contracted. There were a couple more jobs, and Gacy invited Czarna and his wife, Lydia, to one of his parties. They visited frequently after that and became such close friends that they took some holidays and vacations together. A few times the Czarnas loaned their cabin in Wisconsin to their friend during short breaks in his work schedule.

Although the Czarnas never saw Gacy perform in his clown costume, he was proud of his routine and liked to show off the collection of clown art and equipment he used in his act. There was a collar and stiff leash for an invisible dog, a rubber plucked chicken, and once he showed off what he said were toy handcuffs.

Gacy climbed into his clown outfit to entertain at a children's party for friends of the Czarnas, and soon moved into their social crowd, joining in more card games and other activities. Gacy and his friend worked hard, and during the slow season for construction, when the winds whipped snow and sleet through the streets and the temperatures dipped below freezing, they played hard. Las Vegas was one of their favorite play spots.

Gacy was no more compulsive about gambling than he was about drinking. Although he liked to shock his friends by telling them he had won or lost thousands at the casinos, he actually preferred spending a few leisurely hours at the black jack tables and sitting down to a fine meal with a group of companions. He was at his best and most ebullient at those times.

He and Czarna were once playing blackjack when the dealer withdrew an old deck of cards and replaced it with a new one. "I'm from Chicago and I do tricks in a clown suit for kids," Gacy told the dealer. "I go through a lot of cards and could use a few of your old decks if you don't need them." The dealer gave him a handful of cards.

"No, I mean lots of cards," Gacy said, shaking his head. "I need lots of cards."

The dealer called the pit boss, who went into a back room and returned a few minutes later. He handed the gambler from Illinois a cardboard carton full of playing cards.

Czarna was impressed. Gacy liked that. He felt good when he was able to impress his friends with his importance. He enjoyed it so much that he got carried away one time after winning a few dollars at the tables, and he invited his group, three or four couples including some bowling friends, to be his guests at an elegant restaurant in one of the casinos. Gacy was an entertaining host and talked loudly and constantly during the meal about his business successes, his luck at the tables and his plans for the future. He continued talking when the check came, seemingly unaware of its presence. The dessert had been finished, coffee and cocktails drunk, and still he kept talking, making no move for the check. Grumbling, Czarna snatched it from the table and paid for the meal.

Gacy could have afforded to pay the bill. His business was growing, and he had almost more work than he could handle building or remodeling drug stores, hamburger and hotdog shops, and ice-cream parlors. Often after doing the contracting on the ice-cream shops—he did several for the same franchise chain—he appeared at grand openings and promotions in his clown suit and gave away balloons and other favors.

There was time also to do an occasional small job in his neighborhood, and he built a recreation room in one of the houses across the street from his home. Even though he had been building things and tinkering with tools since he was a child, he wasn't a skilled craftsman. But he knew how to use others who could do professional work, and he made liberal use of subcontractors.

Czarna was one of his closest friends, but he was also observant enough to admit that, as a carpenter, Gacy was a wood butcher. It didn't take long before Czarna learned that his friend was no better qualified to handle heavy construction equipment.

Gacy was working on a repaving project in which it was necessary to remove a few inches of blacktopping along a curb to facilitate proper water flow. He asked to use Czarna's compressor, then fumbled for almost ten minutes unsuccessfully trying to get it started. Grinning at his friend's confusion as he pushed and poked at the instrument panel and steering wheel, Czarna finally shouldered him aside, turned a key and pressed the starter button. The compressor sputtered to life.

Although Gacy may not have understood how to operate some of the machinery needed on the jobs, he knew how to build his business and make money. He was a good organizer and he began to branch out, first picking up a few jobs in the neighboring state of Wisconsin and then expanding to locations even farther from his home base. At first he drove, and then he began flying to other cities to bid on jobs and bring in work for PDM.

Czarna was pleased at his friend's success, even though he himself subcontracted only an occasional job with the company. The only thing that bothered him about the way Gacy was operating PDM Contractors was his hiring of teenage boys.

"John, I just can't understand why in the hell you hire all these kids," he groused. "They don't have any experience. They don't know what they're doing. I own a construction company, and I know that if I took a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old kid out there with me and had him pouring concrete I'd have to pick up his ass and put him in the truck if he lasted the day."

Gacy was unperturbed. The boys were good workers and they followed directions well, he told his friend. He didn't mention another positive aspect of hiring the boys, although Czarna knew about it. They worked for low wages. But there were still other motives that Czarna didn't know about. There were certain benefits, which only Gacy understood, for maintaining close personal contact with a steady stream of firm-bodied adolescent boys.

Footnotes

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Chicago Tribune
, December 23, 1978.

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Chicago Tribune
, December 27, 1978.

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Jayne was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, and not guilty of murder. Bailey described the verdict as an "acquittal," pointing out that conspiracy is a less serious offense than murder. Nevertheless, Jayne, then sixty-five, was given the maximum sentence of from six to twenty years in prison.

4...
Disappearances

John Butkovich was working in a hardware store when he met John Gacy. An amiable, likable boy, he was an eager worker and it didn't matter whether he was asked to stock shelves, shovel snow, or scrub floors—he stuck persistently to his chores until they were completed.

A willingness to work hard was a quality he had inherited from his father, Marko Butkovich. The older Butkovich immigrated to the United States from Yugoslavia and with his wife, Terezia, raised a family of six boys and girls, at first on the money he made as a janitor and later with additional income from several rental properties he bought and fixed up. In the late 1970s the family was living in suburban Lombard.

Johnny was good with his hands, and one of his favorite avocations was tinkering with his 1968 Dodge. But racing the souped-up vehicle was expensive. He blew out three engines and when it was time to pay for them, he was prepared to earn his own money. His parents didn't raise any spoiled or lazy children.

Most of the money Johnny made at the hardware store was spent on the car or for clothes and other expenses germane to the needs of a seventeen-year-old boy. It was difficult to make the money stretch, and he welcomed the opportunity to earn a raise and learn new skills when a remodeling contractor who occasionally bought building supplies at the store offered him a job in construction.

Johnny went to work for John Gacy. He liked the job. He was sensitive and creative, often playing a guitar he had taught himself to strum in his spare time. Decorating and remodeling provided an outlet for his creativity as well as a good paycheck for a teenager who hadn't finished high school. Like his boss, he sometimes worked long hours and there were nights when he slept over at the Gacy house. The man and the boy who shared the same first name appeared to get along well, and there was no bitterness when a bid that Gacy submitted to remodel one of the elder Butkovich's apartment houses was rejected.

Other boys near Johnny's age also took jobs with Gacy, and Carole got used to them traipsing into the house and reaching into the icebox to help themselves to a soft drink or a beer after working hard all day with her husband.

She complained once when she saw a couple of the boys passing around a marijuana cigarette in the house. She confronted her husband and told him that she didn't ever want to see anyone smoking marijuana there again. She didn't want any trouble with police.

He was understanding and agreeable. It was the last time she ever knew marijuana to be smoked in the house, although she was aware that joints were shared a few times in the backyard or on the patio. The patio was protected from the street by the house; it was hidden from the alley by the outbuildings and shrubbery blocked most of the view from neighboring homes. It was convenient to smoke there—and to do other secret things without being spied on by outsiders.

Despite the many hours Gacy spent working around the house and in the yard or outbuildings, he constantly neglected to trim the bushes along the boundary lines of his lot. They were permitted to grow nine or ten feet high, effectively closing off any view neighbors might have of the backyard.

That didn't bother the Grexas. They were a close family, involved in activities of their own, and they had enough to do without overly concerning themselves with whatever their friend might be up to in his backyard. But they did stew a bit when his bushes were permitted to spread three or four feet across their driveway. The branches were always threatening to scratch their car, and in the winter they hogged space needed to pile snow.

When the bushes got completely out of control, Ed and Lillie Grexa would finally bellow at their neighbor, "For God's sake, John, get over and take care of those bushes or we're gonna put rock salt on them."

He would smile goodnaturedly, and later that day he or one of the boys would trim the bushes. The branches that strayed over the Grexa's drive or spread over his own lawn were cut, but he never trimmed the tops to less than six to ten feet. He liked the bushes high. After trimming they were permitted to grow again until his neighbors reminded him that they were once more in need of cutting.