The Man Who Killed Boys (21 page)

"John, it's sure a nice kitchen," she said, "but that odor that used to be in the front room seems like it's coming right from the sink now."

"I know," Gacy said, "I have to check on the sewer pipes. I must have put them in wrong."
¹⁷

Footnotes

¹¹
Kalamazoo Gazette
, January 13, 1979.

¹²
Kalamazoo Gazette
, January 11, 1979.

¹³
The 1970 U. S. Census listed a Chicago population of 3,369,357. A later estimate by the Census Bureau in 1975 reported the population had dropped to 3,099,391.

¹⁴
Chicago Sun-Times
, January 16, 1979.

¹⁵
Ibid
.

¹⁶
Time
magazine, January 8, 1979.

¹⁷
Chicago Sun-Times
, January 8, 1979.

7...
The Rack

Jeffrey Rignall shivered as he stepped away from the apartment building into the post-midnight chill. He liked Chicago. It was nice to be home, and the stay in Florida during the winter had provided an opportunity to return to the city with an unseasonable tan that gave his slender face a healthy beachboy look under his curly mop of sandy hair.

But New Town wasn't Florida. It was late night on March 21 and it was cold. The crisp, dark sky was punctuated with the merest flecks of clouds and a brisk breeze off the lake whispered through the streets, scattering discarded papers onto lawns and ruffling his hair like a capricious hand. Even though the temperature had inched a couple of degrees above freezing, Rignall's sinewy frame shook in the frigid air.

He first noticed the sleek, black late-model Oldsmobile with spotlights on the side after it had slid quietly in front of him, blocking his path. Rignall began to step around the car when a heavyset man with genial features and a Santa Claus smile leaned out the rolled-down window and complimented him on his tan.

New Town is a friendly neighborhood where people often talk to strangers. The hum of activity and the music and laughter drifting from discos and taverns can provide a false sense of security and trust, and many meetings are by chance. Rignall replied goodnaturedly that he had picked up the tan in Florida.

When the stranger invited him to share a joint and take a ride, the twenty-seven-year-old bachelor didn't give it a second thought before popping inside the car. He was thankful to get out of the cold, and looked forward to loosening up with some marijuana. The decision was instantaneous—and fateful.

Rignall began to relax as he pulled the soothing smoke into his lungs and leaned back into the comfort of his seat. The cigarette was passed a couple of times. He was contented and off guard when the big man suddenly whirled and shoved a rag over his face. Rignall tensed, flailing his arms and legs in alarm and drawing in his breath. Then he passed out. The rag was soaked with chloroform.

There were moments of fuzzy semiconsciousness during which he remembered opening his eyes and being dully aware of brief chimeric visions of street signs and a familiar expressway exit before the rag was once more pressed against his face and he lapsed again into total darkness.

Sometime later he experienced a dreamlike feeling of being carried in powerful arms into a house, through another doorway and down into a lowered room. As the veiled darkness began to clear from his mind and his eyes focused on the confusing miasma of shapes swimming in front of him, he realized he was lying on a couch, fully dressed. The rag was pressed to his face again. The next time he regained consciousness he was naked. His wrists and neck were locked in a pillorylike rack. The man who had chloroformed him was standing in front of him, also naked, his huge, hairy belly bulging obscenely. Several whips, chains, and dildos were lined up on the floor.

Rignall was groggy, but his eyes widened in alarm as the stranger told him in cool, even tones exactly how each of the implements was going to be used. The words rolled off his tongue like an incantation. Then the torture began.

Rignall was in the power of a sadist who used one instrument after another, waiting before each new assault until he saw the young man's face bleach gray in fear and pain, then smiling and applying the chloroform again. As soon as Rignall regained consciousness, the torture resumed.

Between the sessions of physical abuse and unconsciousness, the big man bragged that he was a policeman. He once said that he would just as soon shoot his pain-wracked victim as look at him. The abuses being performed on Rignall were so horrible and excruciatingly painful that there were times when he didn't care if he died. But at other times he pleaded for his life and babbled to his tormenter in mindbending terror that he was from Florida and would return there if he was freed.

Once as he was being tortured during a period of groggy semiconsciousness, Rignall was aware of a light being turned on in the kitchen area. He vaguely wondered who was there, allowing the idea to crouch on the edge of his consciousness until the pain and the chloroform caused the blackness to close around him again. He didn't expect to live through the night. Finally, after the darkness had enveloped him for the last time, he forced his eyes open and realized that he was sprawled under a statue in Lincoln Park near the lake. He was fully clothed but dishevelled, and his body was trembling from the shock of the ordeal he had just undergone, as well as from the chill of the early morning air. He had his billfold and his money, but, oddly, his driver's license was missing. It was just after five o'clock, and although it was still dark, birds were already beginning to stir and fill the crisp air with their cries.

Rignall stumbled a few blocks to his girl friends' apartment and collapsed on the bed. Several hours later he reported to police that he had been kidnapped, tortured, and raped. Policemen took him to a hospital for treatment. He was there six days. The chloroform had permanently damaged his liver, he had facial burns from the chemical, and was bleeding from the rectum.

Police told him that they were pessimistic about finding his attacker, because of the scarcity of information. Rignall had no name for the man, no license number, and no address.

He wasn't willing to permit the matter to drop, however. He had been kidnapped and his body outraged and permanently damaged by the unnatural trauma of the assault. It took courage to report the rape in the first place. It is estimated that as few as one heterosexual rape in ten is reported, and only one homosexual rape in one hundred, primarily because of embarrassment. Rape can also be one of the most difficult offenses to prove. But Rignall was hurt, and he was angry. He decided to do his own detective work.

He remembered the vague images he had become aware of while being driven along the Kennedy Expressway, of the road signs that teased his consciousness with foggy visions of Bryn Mawr and Cumberland Avenues. Other images were even more clear, those of the hulking sadist who had abused him, and of the black Oldsmobile with the spotlights.

Rignall rented a car and drove to the expressway exit he remembered from the night of his abduction and rape. He spent four to fifteen hours a day for about two weeks searching streets in the area for the car or sitting by the exit, sometimes accompanied by friends, waiting for it to drive by. His patience finally paid off when the black Oldsmobile turned off the expressway one day and passed him. He jotted down the license number and followed the Oldsmobile. The car turned into a driveway at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue in unincorporated Norwood Park township, a few blocks from the expressway.

The amateur sleuth's next steps were to check the license number and real-estate records. Rignall was familiar with real-estate records because he had managed real-estate properties and did other work in the field for a law firm.

The records turned up the name of John Wayne Gacy, Jr. Rignall took his information to Chicago police.

Police subsequently informed him that Gacy had a criminal record from Iowa, where he was convicted for sodomy. It would take about three weeks, they said, to obtain a photograph of Gacy. When the photograph was available, Rignall picked it out from among a thick book of pictures they showed to him. He swore out a warrant for Gacy's arrest, but police took their time acting on it.

It appeared that Gacy was developing a pattern of getting off easy after young men had accused him of kidnapping, physical abuse, and rape.

In December 1977, approximately four months before the assault on Rignall, an agitated nineteen-year-old told police that Gacy had kidnapped him from the north side at gunpoint and forced him to engage in unnatural sexual acts.

In a news article by John Gorman in the
Chicago Tribune
, the boy was quoted as saying that police treated him as they would someone who was high on drugs when he complained about Gacy.
¹⁸
He believed they were influenced against him because he had been arrested three months earlier for possession of marijuana when police found three joints in his pockets.

Police reported that Gacy was taken into custody and admitted to the sexual encounter, including the brutality, but insisted that both he and the teenager were willing participants. He claimed the boy tried to blackmail him and was angry because the attempt failed.

Officers later pointed out that they were faced with two people telling conflicting stories, and there were no other witnesses. Authorities refused to file charges because of lack of evidence. Off the record, investigators noted that current permissive attitudes toward sexual conduct have also made it difficult to prosecute sex offenses.

Gacy's associates never saw him with a gun. But he talked about guns a few times. He told Czarna that he had sealed a handgun he claimed belonged to his former motherin-law in the concrete stoop at the back entrance to his house. He didn't explain why.

And Art Peterson said that Gacy once made a veiled threat about a gun in an attempt to frighten him. Peterson was a strong and supple twenty-five-year-old when he knocked at Gacy's door late in 1977 and asked for a job. The contractor invited him in for a beer.

Recalling the incident, Peterson said that one of the first things Gacy did after handing him a beer was to announce that he was a bisexual. Then Gacy suggested that since the young job seeker hadn't immediately punched him, that he (Peterson) might also be interested in men.

They debated bisexuality over their beers for about fifteen minutes before Gacy tried to molest him. When Peterson pulled away, Gacy became angry and said he had a gun collection. It would be an easy feat to kill someone, roll the body in a carpet, and dispose of it in a trash dumpster, Gacy warned. The contractor added that he had in fact already killed people. Peterson didn't believe him.

Gacy eventually calmed down, and Peterson worked for him for a few days. During that time Gacy offered him three hundred to four hundred dollars to engage in sexual relations, and also offered him nine or ten dollars an hour to be his traveling companion on business trips, Peterson said. He wasn't interested in the extra-curricular activities and quit his job after a few days because he was dissatisfied with the pay. Before he quit, however, Peterson asked where all the bottles of pills and capsules came from. Gacy replied that he got them from pharmacists.

Both Peterson and Dominique Josczinski, who worked for Gacy for about two years, said many of the employees were propositioned and that they regularly joked about their boss's sexual peccadillos. Josczinski said that Gacy had made sexual advances to him, but he rejected them. Gacy didn't try again.

On June 30, 1978, the nude body of a young man washed ashore in the Illinois River near the Dresden Locks in Grundy County. The name "Tim Lee," tattooed on his upper left arm, was the only identifying mark on the body
.

Jeff Rignall, meanwhile, was becoming impatient waiting for police to act on the warrant for Gacy's arrest. In early July the plucky young man drove to the house in Norwood Park and knocked on the door. An elderly woman answered the door and said she was John Gacy's mother, and that her son was away but would be back soon. She inquired if Rignall was planning to come to her son's Italian theme party. It was going to be a big one with hundreds of guests.

Rignall said he wasn't interested in the party, but would return later. He walked to his car and parked it nearby, to wait for Gacy's arrival so that he could telephone Chicago police and ask them to serve the warrant. The police arrived before Gacy showed up, but when they got there they realized they could not make the arrest. The house was outside the city limits, and thus outside their jurisdiction.

While the men were standing outside their cars talking, Rignall was approached by a soft-spoken man about his own age who had driven up in a late-model red Chevrolet with a white vinyl top. The newcomer, who was neatly dressed in clean working clothes, asked Rignall not to mention the rape complaint to Gacy's mother. The problem could be handled without bringing the woman into it and needlessly upsetting her. The stranger didn't mention his name, and identified himself only as a friend of Gacy's.

Rignall saw the man once again a couple of months later when he showed up at a scheduled court hearing. The mystery man said that he worked for Gacy and his boss needed a continuance because he was out of town. He left without his name being entered in the court records. Rignall and Fred Richman, Rignall's attorney, followed to obtain his license number, but he drove away in a van owned by PDM Contractors, Inc. Rignall was intrigued by the possibility that the man might be the individual who had been in Gacy's home the night of the assault, and talked to police about his suspicions.