The Man Who Killed Boys (27 page)

Township workers drove stakes and strung cord around Gacy's property and the property of his two immediate neighbors to keep the crowd away. The street was barricaded and additional sawhorses were loaned to other residents on the block to put across their driveways, but still the throng came, drawn by a mixture of horror and macabre curiosity.

Scores of people crowded in front of the house, staring at television camera crews and watching for signs of new activity. A solidly built woman wearing a bowling shirt with "The Maulers" emblazoned across her ample chest watched with a friend as four officers lugged a body bag to a waiting police van. The house and property should be exorcised, she muttered. "You gotta throw some salt on it and say some words to get the spirits out. My grandmother used to do that in Europe."

Her companion touched a crucifix held by a tiny gold chain around her neck and crossed herself, whispering a silent prayer.

"If Satan's among us," said an old man shaking a cane at the house, "that's where he lived."

One day a group of people climbed over ropes and stood in the Grexa yard cursing and screaming out their hate. "You live next door," one of them yelled. "You had to know what was going on."

A few days later, Gacy was indicted on seven counts by a Cook County Grand Jury in the suspected kidnapping, sexual molestation, and death of Robert Piest. The indictment charged Gacy with murdering the boy while committing the additional felonies of aggravated kidnap, deviate sexual assault, and taking indecent liberties with a child.

Curiously, with six bodies of those recovered already identified, Gacy had been charged in the death of a boy whose body had not been found.

Despite the pathetic proof of so many of Gacy's statements, weary law enforcement officers were beginning to have doubts about the credibility of his claims that he dropped Robert's body into the river.

Dragging, diving, and visual surface searches of miles of the Des Plaines River near Morris by boat and by helicopter had failed to turn up any trace of the boy's body, and suspicions were growing that he might have been buried. How else could police explain the mud that caked Gacy's clothes when he first walked into the Des Plaines Police Headquarters for questioning? A large amount of mud was also later found on his car. Yet, when lawmen checked the snowbank his car was pulled from there was no mud visible.

The nearly five hours between the time he was first interviewed in his home and the time he finally reported for questioning was much more time than he would have needed to drive to the bridge. It would have been time enough to go to a forest preserve, dig a hole, and bury the body.

Lawmen were also aware that stopping a car on a narrow, heavily traveled bridge is difficult, especially when there has been a heavy snow. And the high safety guardrails would pose additional problems in lifting a body to roll it over the side and into the river.

The river search continued but the probe also moved to open spots and areas in the forest preserves surrounding Chicago. Forest sites close to parking areas with the type of mud that had soiled Gacy's clothing and car drew special attention. Some officers made nocturnal visits to areas of the forest that were popular as lovers' lanes, seeking someone who might have seen a body being removed from a car or buried.

The Piests had asked a New Jersey psychic for help in locating the body of their son. Dorothy Allison, who works with psychometry—touching people's belongings to tune in on their vibrations—was recommended to the family by a Des Plaines policeman because she had been helpful in other police cases. She worked nearly two weeks but was unable to pinpoint the location of the boy's body. After handling his jacket, she developed hives and had to return home.

A Kenosha woman told her local newspaper of having met Gacy with Robert the previous summer when she was working as a waitress in a Des Plaines snack shop. But others discounted her story, insisting that Robert had never met Gacy prior to the day of his disappearance.

Chicago police, meanwhile, were interviewing associates and friends of Gacy's and visiting north-side Chicago bars frequented by homosexuals to put together a file on his life and activities in preparation for his anticipated trial. A list of some twenty straight and homosexual bars was found in his house. Two agents with the Illinois Department of Law Enforcement traveled to Waterloo to compile additional behavioral information.

Other officers put together a list of names of missing Chicago area youths to assist in the investigation. The names of Gregory Godzik and John Szyc were prominent on the list.

On New Year's Day, the Medical Examiner's office confirmed that positive identification had been made on the remains of Godzik, Szyc, and Rick Johnston.

One other name had been added, James "Mojo" Mazzara. On December 28, the nude body of another young man had been pulled from the Des Plaines River near the spot where Landingin was found a month earlier. Like Landingin, the victim's underwear was jammed into his throat. He was identified two days later by his fingerprints, and Assistant State's Attorney Sullivan said it was believed the death could be "definitely" linked to Gacy. Gacy had told lawmen that one of the bodies he disposed of in the river was that of a youth nicknamed "Mojo." The recovery of Mazzara's body and his identification brought the number of known victims of the murder orgy to twenty-nine, not counting the presumed death of Robert Piest. Will County Coroner Robert Tezak determined that the slight young man had died of suffocation.

With the identification of Butkovich, Godzik, Szyc, and Johnston, Stein had amazingly exhausted all the available medical and dental charts he had on missing boys.

Even though most of the remains were no more than bones, Stein and members of his staff had rapidly determined that none of the victims were females. And apparently none of them were Negroes. Gacy apparently liked slender young boys with light hair. In determining the race of the victims, pathologists paid close attention to the mouth structure. The roof of the mouth in Caucasians is more angular than that of Negroes, who have more of a horseshoe configuration and lower jaws that protrude more. The orbit of the eyes also differs according to race, with a squarish orbit for Caucasians, oval for Negroes, and circular for Orientals. There are other differences, too, such as the nose cavity in the skulls, which is wider for blacks than for whites.

The femurs, or thigh bones, were measured to determine the height of the victims, and the approximate ages were worked out by measuring the fusion plates of the long bones. The fusion plates are the site of rapid growth in the body. Stein had perfect skeletons to work with. There were no dismemberments or damage to the skulls. A few of the bodies were found with bits of clothing or cloth, some with a shoe or other item which could also possibly help in identification.

Yet, from the beginning, Stein made no promises that all the victims would be identified. Most of the bodies he had to work with were skeletons or bones only, so there could be no tattoos, scars, or fingerprints to aid his efforts. Most juveniles do not have their fingerprints on file anyway. And, of course, there was the additional problem of too few dental charts. It was conceded that the task of identification could take years.

Five years after the discovery of the horror in Houston, only twenty-one of the twenty-seven victims there had been identified. But Dr. Joseph Jachimczyk, the Medical Examiner who headed the forensic team, told newsmen that he believed the identification of all the bodies would eventually be achieved.

On January 4, some three hundred residents of the neighborhood, relatives of victims and clergymen, struggled through the snow-clogged streets and bitter cold to attend an interfaith memorial service at the St. Eugene Catholic Church a few blocks from the house where the lives of so many young men had been abruptly and violently snuffed out. People of the neighborhood were stunned by the horror in their midst. They could not understand how one man who had lived among them as a popular and trusted neighbor and friend could have committed crimes so atrocious as those of which he was accused.

Residents had been living like hermits, as if they felt a common shame merely for having shared the same street with the accused killer. Residents of the 1800 block of Summerdale Avenue couldn't even drive on their own street unless they could prove they lived there. Gawkers were parking on their lawns, blocking their driveways and keeping them imprisoned in their own homes. They were hemmed in by the disregard for privacy and property and the ghoulish disrespect of the morbidly curious. The whole affair had turned into a grueling and macabre carnival.

One resident recalled the night when television trucks were outside with floodlights illuminating the area and Sheriff's officers carried a body outside. Someone on one of the television trucks yelled, "Go back. We're not ready yet." The Sheriff's men carried the body back into the house and a few minutes later brought it out again.

The people gathered in the dimly lit church to ask how the horror unfolding before them could have happened to their neighborhood—and to their sons. They met to pray, to ask for healing, and to somehow exorcise the outrage and the shame.

Mrs. Eugenia Godzik was there, as were the Reverend Francis Buck of our Lady of Hope Parish in Rosemont, and Kenneth and Kerry Piest, the pastor, brother, and sister of the boy whose apparent abduction and murder had led to Gacy's arrest. Lillie Grexa was there, also.

Many of those present were parishioners of St. Eugene's and knew its pastor, Father Frank Shaunessy, as a personal friend. Women sobbed and men listened somberly, some allowing tears to trickle down wind-chafed cheeks, as Fathers Shaunessy and Buck and four other clergymen from area churches read prayers and led hymns.

Toward the end of the service Lillie Grexa stood and in a quivering voice, on the point of tears, moaned, "God forgive me. I take back every good thing I ever said about John Gacy. I just feel so bad for the parents of all these children."

In Chicago, spokesmen for the homosexual community were also denouncing Gacy. At a press conference called at a Michigan Avenue hotel, spokesmen for the Illinois Gay Rights Task Force said the homosexual community was outraged by the murders. Concomitantly, they cautioned that there should be no "witch hunts" against homosexuals in the name of crime prevention.

The day before the memorial gathering at St. Eugene's, investigators had their first talk in more than a week with the man blamed for the mass murders. In two separate sessions at the Cook County Jail's Cermak Memorial Hospital, Gacy assured lawmen that the twenty-seven bodies already unearthed from his property were all there were. He also identified a seventh victim by picking the boy's picture from a
Gay Life
magazine, but the youth's name was not immediately disclosed by authorities. Prior to talking with police, Gacy huddled in a lengthy private conference with his lawyer and was advised of his right to remain silent. But he chose to talk, and Amirante was present during the questioning.

Investigators conceded that they were "fairly well convinced" that Gacy was telling the truth, but determined to continue the search as a precautionary measure.

A couple of days later, it was disclosed that four more victims had been identified, bringing the number of dead whose names were known to ten. At the Fishbein Institute, thirty-one sets of dental records supplied by families of missing young men and boys had been compared with teeth.

The newly identified victims were named as Robert Gilroy, Jon Prestidge, Michael Bonnin, and Russell Nelson. Nelson and Prestidge were the first to come from outside the Chicago area.

On January 8, the Cook County Grand Jury returned the second set of indictments against Gacy, accusing him of murdering seven young men. State's Attorney Carey announced, incidentally, that he would seek the death penalty when the suspect came to trial. He added that he would oppose any effort by defense attorneys to move the proceedings elsewhere because he was sure that Gacy could receive a fair trial in Cook County despite the widespread publicity the case had attracted.

The indictments charged Gacy with two counts of murder in each of the deaths of Butkovich, Godzik, Szyc, Johnston, Landingin and Mazzara. The indictments contended that Gacy acted intentionally and was aware that his acts could result in murder. The remaining indictments accused him of the same two counts of murder in the slaying of Piest, as well as the additional charges of murder in the commission of a felony previously cited.

According to Illinois law, murder during the commission of another felony is a capital offense. Thus conviction on any one of the murder charges relating to Piest that were connected with second felonies, such as deviate sexual assault, could merit the death penalty.

Illinois statutes additionally provide death by electrocution for conviction of multiple murders occurring after February 1, 1978, when Governor James Thompson signed legislation creating a new capital-punishment law. Landingin, Mazzara, and Piest all vanished months after the law was signed.

According to the law, however, even after a murder conviction, the death penalty cannot be invoked until another trial is held to determine if the statute has been satisfied. Either the original jury or a new one can sit during the proceeding.

It was disclosed for the first time that three sheets of paper on which Gacy apparently wrote the first names of victims were being held as key bits of evidence. Gacy was reportedly given writing paper while he was in his cell and among the things he wrote were several first names of males followed by the names of various cities and towns. The information was considered useful both in developing the criminal case against Gacy and in learning additional identities of victims.

Another piece of written material provided by Gacy that had already been useful and was being looked on as valuable evidence was the diagram he drew to pinpoint the locations of bodies on his property.

Severely cold weather and back-to-back blizzards that struck the Midwest, one dumping more than twenty inches of snow on the Chicago area, had hampered digging and caused equipment breakdowns. As investigators became increasingly convinced that all the bodies had been recovered from the crawl space, the work also became less tedious.