The Man Who Killed Boys (13 page)

"No, I don't want any money," he said. "I over-ordered again. I always want to have more than enough food on hand for the parties."

While John and Carole were building their reputation as party hosts, their marriage was deteriorating beyond salvage. He became brusque and domineering, locking the telephone so that his wife could not make outgoing calls. He locked his office and restricted her and her daughters to the kitchen and bedroom area.

The long anticipated divorce action was finally filed. She accused him of seeing other women. He accused her of not preparing his meals. Carole and the girls continued to live in the house with him until the divorce became final on March 2, 1976. Despite all their differences, she never felt that either of them had been abusive to the other, and the breakup was more amicable than might have been expected. When she left the house he moved her furniture and personal belongings as well as buying new carpeting for her apartment. In return, she allowed him to keep the icebox and stove.

Carole's mother, who works in a beauty parlor, hadn't been pleased with her son-in-law from the beginning of the marriage. She became disenchanted with him as rumors of his sexual involvement with young men inevitably surfaced. She once overheard a quarrel he had with one of the boys. There was a shoving match over money that Gacy allegedly owed him. During the exchange the angry youngster screamed that Gacy had tried to rape him.

Carole and John continued to see each other after the divorce and in some ways their relationship was better than it had been during the marriage. It was more relaxed. Carole was concerned about her former husband's welfare and helplessly agonized with him when he talked to her for long hours about his bisexuality. She had never known a homosexual before, and she had no idea what she could do to help the troubled man she had once been married to.

To others, he maintained the front of self-confident efficiency that he had striven so hard to create for himself: John Gacy, generous neighbor, successful businessman and sound citizen.

He began inviting politically important people to his parties, and if they didn't attend it wasn't because he didn't make the effort. Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley was invited to a theme party and disappointed the exuberant host by not attending. Gacy bragged, however, that some aldermen attended.

Jim Van Vorous, a business associate of Gacy's, co-hosted three of the theme parties. Carole also helped out as hostess at one of the gatherings after their divorce. The 1976 party was logically planned with a Bicentennial theme and hosted on the Fourth of July. Both Gacy and Van Vorous dressed as Colonial gentlemen in outfits complete with knee-length pants, long white sox, and white periwigs to greet their guests. Gacy said he was George Washington, the father of the country.

The Bicentennial fete was followed in 1977 with a Southern Jubilee, when Gacy dressed as a Confederate general, and in 1978 with an Italian festival, when he wore a peasant's costume. Southern fried chicken was served at the jubilee and spaghetti and meatballs at the Italian party.

The median age of Gacy's party guests grew progressively younger each year. It seemed to Lillie Grexa that young men in their late teens and early twenties were all over the place when she and her husband mixed with the group at the Italian event.

At the parties he co-hosted, Van Vorous pitched in to help Gacy with the cooking, and they split the cost of the beer, mixers, and a four- or five-piece band. When Gacy's mother was visiting from her home in Arkansas with her youngest daughter, she stood in her walker and, ignoring the discomfort of arthritis, later aggravated by a broken hip, sang for the guests. The guests also sang and danced. The more fun everyone had, the happier it made their host. Gacy loved being surrounded by friends and he loved to entertain.

The Grexas were intrigued by their somewhat eccentric neighbor and his entertaining. His activities were amusing to watch. You never knew what he was going to do next. Sometimes his shenanigans could be funny, even when they weren't meant to be.

Lillie loves to tell the story about the time that a neighbor from a house down the street asked to borrow Gacy's power saw to cut down a tree. "Yeah," Gacy said. "You can borrow it, but I better go along and show you how to use it." A short time later Gacy, who had told his friends that he was worried about a heart ailment, was twenty feet above the ground sawing off limbs. Afterward, the neighbor received a bill in the mail charging him three hundred dollars for the tree cutting.

Lillie puzzled about her neighbor's weak heart. It was true that he was overweight and had an oxygen tank and mask in his house. But he had cut down three or four trees in his backyard by himself, he thought nothing of operating the business end of a wheelbarrow loaded with cement or dirt six or eight hours a day, and he seemed to be always climbing on ladders. He once tumbled off a ladder after making a misstep and broke a leg. He was back at work a few days later wearing a cast.

Lillie's capricious neighbor seemed to be committed to a regimen of work, punctuated by work, hardly an ideal lifestyle for someone with a weak heart. "John, you better watch out for your heart," she sometimes cautioned. He would smile, reassure her that "It's okay, I'm fine," and return to whatever he was doing.

The divorce didn't appear to have damaged Gacy's zest for living. It was just the opposite. He applied himself to his business with renewed vigor, socializing with his neighbors, and occasionally slipped off for an abbreviated vacation of two or three days, once making the trip to Las Vegas with Carole. The neighbors always knew when he was home. On those days the house hummed with activity as muscular young men in ten-year-old cars pulled in and out of the driveway and trooped into the house or busied themselves working on some project with Gacy in the yard or garage.

The nights were busy, too. One night when Gacy came wheeling home in his Oldsmobile at about 2:30
A.M.
with a gang of boys, they made so much noise that Ed Grexa walked next door to point out the late hour and ask everyone to quiet down.

At other times, long after most of the hard-working people who were his neighbors had clicked off their television sets and gone to bed, Gacy was still up puttering in the backyard or busy in his garage. Sometimes Ed Grexa would tap on the garage door, point to his watch, and ask, "John, don't you know what time it is?"

Gacy usually looked startled, and replied, "No, I didn't know." Then he would apologize and say he was sorry that he had disturbed anyone. If anyone had been watching a few minutes later they would have seen him pull the garage door shut, lock it, and go in the house or drive away in his car. The Grexas wondered about his late hours. It seemed that he was so busy, there just wasn't enough time in the day to get everything done that he had to do.

Not long before Gacy's Western theme party, Grexa spotted him digging a hole in the backyard and walked over to see what was going on. His burly neighbor was almost chest deep in the pit. "What are you doing, John," he kidded, "digging a grave?"

Gacy jammed his shovel into the dirt and looked up. "That's an awful thing to say," he replied, his face contorting into a mirthless smile. A couple of days later he had constructed a permanent barbecue over the pit. It was completed in time to use at the party.

The parties were growing in size as PDM Contractors prospered and he widened his circle of business associates and acquaintances and hired more employees. He had no trouble finding help. There was a limitless reservoir of boys with lean, well-muscled bodies in the city and northwestern suburbs to hire, boys like Gregory Godzik.

Greg was a handsome seventeen-year-old youth with clear gray eyes and stylishly long blond hair that his parents were badgering him to cut. His good looks were enhanced by an effervescent personality that made it easy for him to attract girl friends at Taft High School, where his academic record unfortunately trailed his social accomplishments.

Although he had some academic problems and a reputation for occasionally cutting classes, he was well liked by the school faculty as well as by his classmates. If he wasn't with a girl friend he was likely to be lounging with a couple of buddies or riding somewhere in a car.

Like most boys his age from the northwest side of Chicago, he was anxious to earn his own spending money. When Gacy asked him to go to work for PDM Contractors, Greg eagerly accepted. The job provided all the excuse he needed to invest in an old car, which he tinkered with until it would run. Then he announced that he had transportation to get to and from work.

Although he carried only about 110 pounds on a slight five-foot nine-inch frame, he was sinewy and tough and the cleaning work and other tasks he was given to do for PDM didn't bother him. He loved it, and once confided to his buddy, Tim Best, that it was the best job he had ever had. His parents were pleased when he told them that he had an after-school job. It would keep him off street corners and out of mischief.

Greg appreciated the good things that happened to him, and he had a cheerful and confident outlook on life. Judy Patterson, a fellow student at Taft, wasn't at all surprised when he told her, as 1976 was nearing to a close, that it had been the best year of his life.

Having an optimistic nature, of course, didn't mean that the lighthearted high school senior didn't have an occasional problem. Near the first of December he mixed it up with another boy who was trying to date Judy, and came out of the fight with a small cut above his right eye.

But by December 11 he was sitting down in the family recreation room drowning cookies in a glass of milk, watching television, and talking excitedly to his mother, Mrs. Eugenia Godzik, of the date he had that night with the pretty sophomore he had fought over.

A lunchroom attendant with the Chicago public schools, Mrs. Godzik was on her way to church with her husband, John, and she swelled with pride in her handsome son. He was wearing a new shirt he had just bought, and it was the first time he had dressed up specially for a date.

Greg dropped Judy off at her home after their date, at about 12:30
A.M.
, reminded her that he would telephone later, and drove away in his battered car.

He didn't come home that night, and he didn't telephone his girl friend. It wasn't like him to stay out all night. It was something he never did. He didn't like to be away from home. The few times he was out of town with relatives or with his hockey team, he got homesick and wanted to come home. Anytime he was gone from the house for an unexpectedly long time he telephoned to inform his parents where he was.

The Godziks called Judy and she told them what time he had taken her home and of his promise to telephone. She hadn't heard from him. Although they had quarreled earlier in the week, they had patched up their differences and got along well together on their date. The girl said she was sure that he would have told her if he planned to run away. His buddies were no more successful than his date in trying to shed light on his whereabouts. They hadn't seen him or heard from him.

His parents contacted the police and talked with Police Area Five youth officers. They were told that their son was probably a runaway. It was a supposition that they couldn't accept. Despite their son's sometime lack of attention to academics, and the fact that several of his friends had dropped out of school, he expected to graduate in a few months. He was dating a girl that he cared a lot about. And there was no trouble at home that was more serious than an occasional suggestion that he trim his hair, or gentle grumbling about his habit of using the family recreation room as his bedroom. There was certainly no trouble serious enough to cause him to run away without even talking over his problems with his parents or his friends.

Furthermore, he had a job that he liked and he had just acquired his first car. Police found the car the Sunday afternoon after his date. The 1966 maroon Pontiac was abandoned, unlocked, behind a pet store in Niles, another of the so-called O'Hare Corridor communities that bunched around Chicago's northwest boundary.

The boy's parents couldn't believe that he would have willingly walked away and left his unlocked car in Niles after having lavished so much loving care on it. He was so proud of it that even when it was parked at his home he always double-checked to make sure that it was locked if he had to leave it for a few hours.

Mrs. Godzik remembered once meeting a boy who said he had run away from home, and had been taken in by her son's employer. Greg also had three or four days' pay coming, money he would surely need if he was leaving home. It seemed possible that he could have driven to his boss's house to pick up the money after dropping off his date. Mrs. Godzik telephoned John Gacy.

Gacy had a rule that his young employees should telephone before coming to his house, unless their arrival was expected. He told Mrs. Godzik that her son called a few days after his unexplained disappearance and left a message on the telephone tape machine saying that he would be in to work at noon the next day. He never showed up.

The worried mother asked Gacy to play the tape for her. He said he couldn't—it had already been erased. The next time Mrs. Godzik talked to Chicago police she told them about the conversation with the contractor and suggested that they talk to him about her missing son.

Gacy's name had, of course, come up in the investigation into Butkovich's disappearance. But Butkovich lived in Police Area Six on the north side, whereas Godzik was from Police Area Five on the northwest side. There was apparently no communication between the officers from the two districts and no one recognized the name that was the common link which could have tied the two missing persons reports together. Nor did policemen from either district bother to check Gacy for a prior arrest record, although he was one of the last people known to have seen Butkovich and, according to his own statement, was one of the last to have talked with Greg.

Harold Thomas, commander of the Chicago Youth Division, later defended the seemingly slipshod police work. "There was no reason to check his record," Thomas said of Gacy. "We don't run a check of everyone we talk to in our investigation unless there is some reason. You must realize that you don't treat every missing case as a possible homicide."
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