All language subtitles for The.Clown.and.the.Candyman.S01E01.Two.Monsters.2020.720p.WEBRip.x264-KOMPOST

Derrick: I haven't been here at
the Harris county cemetery in years,

but I sure remember the day
in 2009 that we buried him.

[ Owl hooting ]

We buried him in Babyland, in
the children's part of the cemetery.

He was in this beautiful
white casket,

that was a child-size casket
because he was skeletal.

We know how he died
and it wasn't an easy death.

I've spent 14 years trying
to figure out who this boy is.

Narrator: He's the last unidentified
boy who died at the hands

of one of America’s worst
serial killers: Dean Allen Corll,

otherwise known
as the candy man.

Hollandsworth: This is a
story without any redemption.

There is nothing but terror and
madness and grief in this story.

The news tonight
begins with murder.

Man on TV: So far, 17 bodies
have been found in the boathouse.

Police expect to find more when
they resume digging later today.

Narrator: The candy man's reign of
terror was almost immediately overtaken

by another killer
preying on young men.

John Wayne Gacy, otherwise
known as the killer clown.

Together over eight years,
they killed more than 60 boys.

Man 1: They were
like kids in a candy shop.

They just saw opportunity
everywhere they looked.

Woman: He came home and said,
"oh, we were digging around his house,"

and it ended up they were
digging their own graves.

These kids were crying
for their moms.

James: They would tie them on
the torture board and molest them.

Narrator: Many thought that
John Wayne Gacy

and Dean Corll
were lone psychopaths,

but this series investigates
evidence they were linked

to a secret,
nation-wide network.

Man on TV: Police in Dallas think
they've uncovered a nation-wide

procurement ring
for homosexuals.

Man 2: I'd call it
a pedophile cell,

and I think it could be
compared to a terrorist cell.

Man 1: I was sexually exploited by a
pedophile ring from age five to age 12.

It's like psychological
and emotional quicksand.

Narrator: It was
a massive network

and one of its masterminds,
a shadowy figure.

Man 3: It's a snake of snakes.

His name is John David Norman.

He's a pedophile,
and he ran a ring.

Man 4: He sent boys to service
clients throughout the states.

They came from
all walks of life.

Doctors, lawyers,
all the way down.

Man 3: And, yes, they were in
communication with one another.

They knew exactly
what was going on.

Narrator: This series
uncovers a hidden conspiracy

of pedophiles and child-killers

and in never-before-heard
conversations,

a glimpse into the twisted
world of the killer clown.

Phone operator: You have
a collect call from...

Gacy: John Gacy.

Hollandsworth: There's an
entire industry

devoted to serial killers
in America.

Even with all the technology that
we now have to catch killers like this,

it's bewildering that no-one saw
it happening back in 1970 to 1973.

Well, I'm a true crime writer
at Texas monthly,

and I thought I knew
all the major crime stories.

This old retired
radio reporter I met

told me that the most
devastating story

he had ever worked on
in his entire career

was the story of what Dean
Corll did to those boys in Houston.

And I said, "who's Dean Corll?"

Narrator: The answer begins
with a phone call to the police

on a hot summer morning in 1973,

and a dark secret world
starts to unravel.

Outside 2020 Lamar,

the police find
three shaken teens.

Seventeen-year-old
Elmer Wayne Henley,

nineteen-year-old Tim Kerley,

and fifteen-year-old
Rhonda Williams

and a .22 caliber gun
on the ground.

Smith: They were all
sitting on a curb,

and immediately when Henley
made a statement

that he'd shot Dean Corll and
that his body was inside the house.

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

Narrator: In the hallway
is a man's naked body.

He's been shot six times.

A search of the house shows
this is anything but routine.

Smith: In one bedroom,
there were polyethylene.

Plastic was rolled out
on the floor,

and a board with holes in it,

handcuffs and ropes attached
to various sexual devices.

A lot of, ah, acrylic
spray cans, marijuana.

Narrator: Thirty-three-year-old Dean
Corll seemed an unlikely murder victim.

A lineman at the Houston
lighting & power company,

he was a familiar face
in the heights.

His mother had owned
the candy store and factory

in the neighborhood.

Milligan: I was
in the fifth grade,

and we were on the playground

and someone yelled,
"the candy man."

And these little kids
were running like mad

to the fence to get candy,

and I turned to a friend
of mine and I said,

"who's the candy man?"

He goes, "ah, his family runs a
candy store about four blocks over."

Hollandsworth: Dean Corll was his
big, broad-shouldered young man,

thick black hair, big black
sideburns, and friendly.

He was always good with the
kids who came by the candy factory.

He would give them free candy
that his mom had made,

pralines or Turkish delights
or pecan logs.

He set up a pool table in the back
room, he let the kids play there.

He would sometimes give them
rides on his motorcycle.

He was sort of like
a good boy scout leader.

He wasn't someone
that people were scared of.

Narrator: Why, then, would a
17-year-old kid from the neighborhood

claimed he had to kill
the candy man in self-defense?

The story Henley
tells the police

paints a very different picture

of the friendly guy
in the neighborhood.

Smith: They were
having a party there.

They were, uh, what we called
in those days, bagging,

they're sniffing the acrylic
spray out of a bag to get high.

They got so high
they passed out,

and when they woke up,

uh, they were all tied up
or handcuffed,

all three of 'em,
including Wayne Henley.

Narrator: Henley tells the police that
the candy man had a secret obsession.

He liked underage boys.

Corll had no affinity
for women whatsoever.

He was angry with Henley because
Henley had brought the girl there.

Corll wanted Henley
to have sex with the girl

while he had sex with the
other young boy that was there,

and Henley had refused.

Narrator: Henley says Corll
threatened him with a gun,

so he agreed to do
whatever Corll wanted.

Henley talked him into letting
him out of the hand cuffs,

and when he did that, he immediately
grabbed the pistol and shot him.

[ Gunshots ]

Narrator: It seemed
an unbelievable story,

and might have ended there:

A drug-fueled sex orgy
that got out of hand,

until Henley tells them
an insane story.

Smith: That's when he told
the story about Corll telling him

about murdering, torturing,

sexually assaulting young boys

and burying them in a boatshed.

[ Typewriter keys clicking ]

And he even had names
of some of the boys

that he said Corll killed.

I didn't believe him.

It just seemed
such a bizarre story,

and I've heard
many bizarre stories before

that didn't turn out to be true.

We started checking out these names
to see if they were missing persons

or runaway juveniles,
and that's when we learned

that some of them have been
listed as missing or runaways.

Narrator: Missing boys,
bodies in a boatshed.

Henley says
he can take them there.

Henley was, I would say,
matter-of-fact.

He was a very smart,
streetwise kid.

He showed no emotion about it.

Narrator: That afternoon, Henley
leads the police on the 30-minute drive

to 4500 silver bell street.

Smith: We found the boatshed
but it was locked.

I got a tire tool out of the car

and I broke the hinges
off of a galvanized door.

And immediately,
when we open the door,

it smelled really bad.

At that point,
I thought Henley's right.

I believed him.

Smith: I knew for a fact that something
was dead inside that boatshed.

I mean, I'd smelled that before.

Looking around the ground,
I saw a position

on the left side of the boatshed

where the ground
was cracked and raised up.

That's where I grabbed a shovel.

I had some trustees there.

And we started digging, and about
six or eight inches under the ground,

we found the first body.

Nude, wrapped in plastic.

It had begun decomposition,

but, uh, it hadn't
been there that long.

James: You could smell it
when you got out of the car,

it was black gumbo

in a, you know,
15 by 25-foot boat stall.

It had the most horrible smell
you could ever imagine.

Of course, it was new to me.

I'd only been in homicide for
about a month when that took place.

[ Digging ]

Smith: We just kept digging
and kept finding more.

They were layered
on top of one another.

Some had been buried
for a long time,

some of them were nothing
but skeletons.

James: You'd hit lime first,

and when you hit
a section of lime,

you knew that there was
a body underneath it.

We didn't even have gloves.

All we had, we had body bags.

You know, there wasn't
much talking

until you stuck a shovel in

and pulled out some white lime.

You said,
"well, here's another one."

Narrator: Body after body,
hour after hour.

The more they dug,
the more they found.

Smith: It was chaos.

We tried to keep
the media at bay,

but they would, uh,
get closer all the time.

I had to tell some
of them to get out

because they were walking
into the boatshed.

After an hour of moving the
shell and soft Sandy Clay around,

the skeletal remains of body number
nine is found under a layer of lime.

Smith: Henley, he was
standing outside the boatshed.

He was still handcuffed

but he asked me
if he could call his mother.

One of the members
of the media had a car phone.

[ Henley speaking ]

[ Mary Henley speaking ]

The only emotion I ever saw from
him is when he was on the phone

with his mother that night
at the boatshed.

Other than that,
he was just matter-of-fact.

James: Henley thought that
since he had killed Corll, it was over.

It was just beginning.

Narrator: The gory details
swept through Houston.

Local TV stations
cut into regular programming.

Police in Houston, Texas,
tonight are unraveling

the grisly details
of a mass murder.

Twelve bodies have been found.

It's feared there may be more.

Henley said the murders took place
at a torture chamber in this house,

and he killed Corll yesterday
afternoon in self-defense

after a paint-sniffing
sex party.

While hiding his face in
the backseat of a police car.

Henley talked to KHOU
newsman Judd McIlvain.

[ Mcllvain speaking ]

[ Henley speaking ]

Milligan: When the story
broke about the killings,

and all of us knew someone,

multiple people who were
touched by this.

Furstenfeld: Oh, it was huge news,
especially to those of us in the heights,

that thought of the heights
as a safety ground.

Narrator: It was a typical
working-class neighborhood,

like so many others
across America.

The next morning, another teen
from the heights turns himself in,

and things go from bad to worse.

David Brooks went into the Houston
police department with his father.

Narrator: The eighteen-year-old
says Henley isn't telling the whole story.

He says Corll didn't act alone.

Henley wasn't
an innocent bystander,

he was a willing participant.

Smith: That's when Henley
decided to tell the truth.

Male reporter: Late today, police said
Henley, who's already been implicated

in the 12 murders,
has confessed to involvement

in a total of 25 to 30 murders.

And tonight, police are going
to another site

at lake Sam Rayburn,

about 100 miles away,
to look for more bodies.

[ Digging ]

Narrator: That evening
at the lake,

in the woods near a cottage
owned by Corll's parents,

the police dig up
four more graves.

There seemed to be
no end in sight.

[ Helicopter hovering ]

Hollandsworth: Henley said,
"well, there's some more bodies,"

and they're over at high island.

And so they did this kind of
en masse trip to high island,

and Brooks and Henley
sat on a sand dune.

Reporters went up to 'em and asked
them questions, took their photos,

and they watched and pointed
to where they saw,

they remembered
the bodies being buried.

There were young
families out there,

and kids with pails and
shovels digging in the sand.

It was the weirdest surreal
scene you could imagine.

James: I was out there
more or less,

I guess, babysitting
Henley and Brooks,

while other detectives and other
agencies were looking for bodies.

David Owen Brooks
was very quiet.

He was just like he was kind
of staring off into space.

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

And I tried a couple of times.
Since he didn't reply,

I just gave up on it.

I did speak at length
with Elmer Wayne Henley Jr.

He was very talkative.

He was just talking
like a magpie, you know.

And he was telling me

how they would go out and
find boys walking the street.

They'd say, "hey, you want to go to
a party? We're going to have a party."

And they would either
offer 'em money,

uh, booze, or there'd
be girls there.

Narrator: Henley explains
that once inside,

the party turned
into something different.

James: Henley told me that
he had a torture board there.

He said they would tie them on
the torture board and molest them.

They would let the boys go and they
would come back on more than one occasion.

Then he said when they got
tired of 'em, they would kill 'em.

And Henley said, I didn't know
how hard it was to strangle someone.

I was just floored by that.

He said that they would
load the bodies in the Van.

That's how they removed them
from the house,

and they would either Bury 'em
or put 'em in the boat stall.

Then they started going to lake
Sam Rayburn and high island.

Smith: They all went together,

and usually Brooks drove
Dean Corll's white Van,

that had the body box inside,
what they called the body box.

Henley sure wasn't
upset about it.

He never shed a tear.

He just didn't.

It was just another date
for him, I guess.

Hollandsworth: Henley and Brooks

didn't just talk teenagers
into getting into the Van.

Once they got to the apartment,

they helped get them strapped
to the torture board,

they gagged their mouths,
they bound their hands.

They put them in position so that
Dean could have sex with them.

It was just as vicious
as what Dean was doing.

Narrator: It was a brutal,
calculated killing machine.

How did Corll buy their silence?

And how did no-one in the
heights notice what was happening?

[ Police siren blaring ]

Hollandsworth: I'm still the same
staff writer I was 30 years ago.

This is a story
without any redemption.

There is nothing but terror and
madness and grief in this story.

Before a few days ago, the public
had never heard of Dean Allan Corll.

Now he's laid to rest as the state's
most publicized murder suspect.

Narrator: Six days after
Wayne Henley killed Dean Corll,

the police unearthed
the bodies of 27 boys,

seventeen from the boatshed,

six from the beach, and
four from lake Sam Rayburn.

This orgy of murder was
the worst in American history.

James: I've thought about it
every night for a long time.

You still think about it,
even today,

and whether or not
we got all the bodies.

Narrator: Desperate and angry
parents of boys who had disappeared

flooded the police
department with calls.

When we went back to pull reports
with kids who were still missing,

there was maybe 40
to 50 of those.

We contacted parents,
asked for dental records.

Hollandsworth: They were
identified through belts,

the tennis shoes they wore.

You know there's no DNA
going on back then.

Narrator: At the morgue,

the medical examiner's office
worked around the clock.

Families just waited
for the knock on the door.

Massey: I personally
had to go to the morgue daily.

That was just
a horrific experience,

because as soon as you
got off the elevator,

the smell of decomposing
bodies was just overwhelming.

I don't know how the medical
examiners worked in that environment.

When you go back
to the family and say,

"your child has been
identified, and was a victim,"

and it was really,
really heartbreaking.

Man on TV: One of the first victims
identified was 13-year-old David Hilligiest,

who has been missing
for more than two years.

The Hilligiests' had spent
thousands of dollars

for private detectives
and in advertisements

in underground newspapers
in search of their son

and a neighbor
who disappeared with him.

I feared from the very beginning

that something
had happened to them.

But naturally,
along with our fears,

we held our hopes that
some day they would come back.

Narrator: David and his
16-year-old friend Malley

disappeared in broad daylight.

Winkle: Malley and David
were going swimming,

swimming at the local pool.

The pools open
in August, September.

Let's have some fun,
let's get with it,

let's do whatever.

And then they were gone.

Narrator: Both boys were
barefoot, wearing their swimsuits

and last seen getting
into a white Van.

Henley got so involved in this

that he brought his own friends

to meet Corll
and later be killed.

David Hilligiest,

who lived just down the block
from Henley's home.

Mark Scott, who invited him late

to one of his birthday parties.

Homer Garcia, who was
in Henley's driver's ed class.

All of them were murdered.

All of them disappeared.

All of them had parents
who drove the streets at night

looking for them.

Winkle: Wayne Henley even
put up posters

that they just made
for David and Malley.

Uh, he put them up
around the neighborhood

and he was responsible for
abducting him in the first place.

Malley may have worked
for Dean Corll

at the candy shop
for a little period of time.

It turns the pit of my stomach.

It is so very scary and painful

that he was that close
to that man.

Narrator: Questions swirled.

How could this happen
right under their noses?

And of all people,

the guy everyone called
the perfect gentleman,

the candy man.

Hollandsworth: Dean Corll grew
up in Indiana and Tennessee

his dad was an electrician.

They came to Texas in 1962.

They opened a candy shop.

Dean went to high school.

He played trombone in the band.

He was well-liked,
he made decent grades.

He had girls that liked him.

He went to the us army.

He became an expert
in radio operations.

He came back to Houston,
worked for his mom,

became the neighborhood
candy man.

His mom gets divorced,
she marries a merchant marine.

And he says to her,

"you know, I think there's
something wrong with Dean.

I think he's got some
homosexual tendencies.

He sure does like
being around other boys."

His mother was so upset

that she divorced
the merchant marine

and she closed the candy
factory and moved to Colorado.

Now she might have
assumed that Dean,

who was so close to her,
would come with her.

But he said,
I'm staying in Houston,

and I'm gonna work at the
Houston power and light company

as a lineman,

and for the first time
he was alone,

he had an apartment,

and that's when something
came unleashed in him.

Narrator: Corll felt free
to act on his dark desires

and lured two teens
from the neighborhood

to be part
of his killing machine.

As Brooks and Henley
got involved,

the candy turned
to sex parties and weed.

Brooks was a boy of about 12

who started coming over
to the candy factory,

and so had known the Corlls
for a long time,

and would hang out there

because he had no father
to watch over him,

and his mother sort of was happy
that he had some place to go.

Brooks' father said,

"Dean's the first
grown man I know

that hasn't made fun of you."

Corll had an apartment
at the Yorktown apartments,

which was a place where
a lot of young singles

were starting to make their
first marks in business

and economy, and in Houston.

And it was there that
he brought David Brooks,

who is this aesthetic-looking,
pimply-faced young man

who a lot of kids made fun of
because of the way he looked.

He had long blonde hair.
He wore thick aviator glasses.

Dean had given him money
and he'd bought him a car.

He had taken care of him

in a way that
his own father had not.

And Brooks sort of
saw Dean as a father figure.

When Dean asked Brooks
to pull down his pants

so he could give him what
Texas law at the time

described as oral sodomy,

David did it.

It wasn't that David was gay.

David felt like that's
what he had to do

to continue to keep
his father figure's affection.

A few weeks after that happened,

David goes up to the apartment

and just assumed
he could walk in,

and he saw Dean having anal sex

with two terrified
teenage boys on the bed.

And Dean said,
"get out of here."

Later, Dean told David

that he shot both of those boys

and buried them in a boat shed.

So he initially went to David
and said,

"this is what I'm doing.

If you will bring me boys,

I will pay you $ 200 per boy."

And he began to lure boys
into the Van,

saying, "hey, we've got
some marijuana,

we have some beer."

And then one of the boys
he lured into the Van

was Elmer Wayne Henley,

who came from a broken home
as did David.

And Elmer got involved,

and he began to help recruit
other boys

and brought them
into the Van or the car

and took them to one
of Dean's apartments.

Dean was so well-liked
by these kids,

parents who got to know him,
that they invited him over.

Henley's mom invited
Dean over for dinner,

and Dean took the time
to fix her car.

So she was very aware
that her son, Wayne,

was hanging out with Dean Corll,

and it didn't bother
her whatsoever.

In a way, you can understand
every 15 or 16 year old boy

who's lonely,
who feels like an outcast,

who's embraced by
this other kind of person.

You can understand it,

but you just never expect it
to go as far as it did.

Narrator: Dean Corll has
been dead for almost 50 years.

But what he did
to 16-year-old Malley winkle

still haunts his brother, Ben.

I mean, he was a good kid.
He was a good brother.

I always wanted
to hang out with Malley.

I always wanted to be with him.

We'd just run around,
do things that kids did.

We slept in the same room
together, so, and...

He took care of me
as best he could.

Right? He tried to make sure
I didn't get in any trouble

and stuff like that.

Kid: What's your name?

- Malley winkle.
- Malley winkle?

Uh, what's your city?

Houston.

Narrator: But, like many
of the other murdered boys,

Ben's family was broken.

Winkle: When I was eight,

my mom,
she actually lost everything.

She was a single mom
working two of our ships.

A lot of the time
we were there by ourselves.

That was a big deal.
My mom would say,

"Malley, take Ben with you
and take care of him."

His dating.

He was trying to date.
I always remember...

The concept of
him trying to date,

you know, 15, 16-year-old kid.

I always wanted to be with him.

And as an eight-year
older brother,

he never wanted me
to be with him.

My mom, when she wasn't home,

I wasn't home either.

And she just couldn't
control me.

She had placed me
into a boy's home

called boy's harbor
in la Porte, Texas.

And she tried to get Malley
into the harbor as well.

And he didn't get in.

I don't know if it was
his age or what,

uh, but he wasn't allowed in.

He had come out on one
of the visiting Sundays,

and that's when
that picture was taken.

And in the following year,
he was abducted.

He was found in the boat shed.

Obviously, later in life,
I learned the truth

and, uh, it has been
very painful since then.

Narrator: Back in '73
when Henley shot Corll

and the story
hit the newspapers,

20-year old Bernie Milligan
could think of only one name.

Milligan: Frank Aguirre was
one of the missing kids,

and he and I had attended
Hamilton junior high together.

We had a lot of mutual friends.

I had no idea who
the perpetrators were

until I opened that newspaper
and saw their faces.

Narrator: One of those faces
was Dean Corll.

He and I had an encounter.

Narrator: Three years earlier,

Corll tried to lure Bernie
into his car.

Milligan: As I was walking,
Corll approached me

on the side with his lights off.

He kept trying
to offer me a ride.

"Hey, man, I'll drive you
wherever you want to go",

and I'm trying to be very clear,

I'm not gonna take a ride
in anyone's car.

And he finally said,
"hey, be a guy."

That was the first strange
thing I heard out of him.

And he got
a little more insistent,

and I took off.

[ Running footsteps ]

Thank goodness I was an athlete,

because I was
making tracks, running.

I would stop
and stand in an alley

'cause I could hear him with
those lights on, driving around.

And, uh, finally, I lost him.

I told my mother about it.

We didn't call the police

'cause I didn't have
a description of the car.

I focused on him.

Narrator: Bernie has
a second encounter with Corll.

This time,
Corll brings his friends.

Milligan: I turned around
and there was a car.

There sat David Brooks

and Elmer Wayne Henley
was in the back seat.

And there was a driver,

but I couldn't see the driver
from where I was.

David Brooks goes, "hey,
we're heading up to Sam Rayburn.

Would you like to go fishing?"

And I noticed the driver
looked through,

turned his head to the side,

and uh, he recognized me.

I didn't know Dean Corll's name.

I only recognized him as the guy

in September of 1969.

And all he said was,
"we have to go right now,"

and threw the car into drive.

Narrator: Once again,
Bernie escaped Carl's grasp.

One month later, Corll was dead,

shot by his buddy Wayne Henley.

A few weeks after
the news broke,

there were whispers
around the heights

that both Henley and Brooks

were trying to break free
from Corll.

Milligan: Brooks was
terrified for his life.

He had just got married
and he had a child.

He was going to have
to break away

from what was going on.

The story I received

is David would take
a couch or chair,

and move it in front of
the door every night

and sit with a shotgun...

Thinking that Henley and Dean Corll
were gonna break through the door

and kill him
and Bridget and the baby.

He had apparently confessed
to his father.

His father had informed David
that the supreme court

was working on outlawing
the death penalty.

Keep your mouth shut.

This is what I was told.

I did not hear it
from David Brooks

or even Bridget myself.

Narrator: Henley also
feared for his life.

Dean told him he belonged to
an organization out of Dallas

that bought and sold boys.

Henley said,

"Dean told me his
organization would get me

if I ever did anything to him.

He said he tried
to tell his mother,

but she just wouldn't
believe me."

Hollandsworth: The truth is
that Mrs. Henley needed money.

She was divorced,

and her husband wasn't
giving her much child support.

And so Wayne getting $200

is a huge deal,

even if it required him
to turn a boy in to be killed.

If Henley had not mentioned
the boat shed to the police,

how are the police
gonna know about it?

It just could have been
this one sort of crazed night

of paint huffing
in a house in Pasadena

with Dean Corll
and three teenagers.

And no one would have
made the connection

to the other disappearing boys.

No one had made
that connection yet.

Why would they start now?

I don't mean this
to sound crass.

I mean, there's pedophilia,

and then there's this stuff
that Dean Corll did.

He would do this game with them

where he would put handcuffs
on them and say,

"let's see how quickly you can
get your handcuffs off."

He would do
the handcuff game first,

then he would give the
handcuffs to the other boy.

That boy could not get
the handcuffs off,

and that's when it began.

It's so hard to talk about,

and I've covered
a lot of crimes.

When I realized that
this was going on

in what is now this beautiful
yuppie neighborhood,

that back then,
the kind of depravity

that just
does not seem possible...

It's still hard
for me to imagine.

Of these 28 eight boys
who were killed

in the most gruesome of fashion,

at least 22 of them had grown up

in a neighborhood
called the heights.

11 of those boys went to
the same junior high school.

Newsreader: The Houston
police department says

it gets more than 5,000 reports

of runaway children each year,

and there is no way
to check them out thoroughly.

They say there aren't
enough policemen.

Narrator: Between 1971 and 1973,

more than 400 kids were
reported missing in the heights,

an area two miles wide
and three miles deep.

Smith: It was a different time.

Kids hitchhiked all over.

Some of these victims
were hitchhikers.

You know, it was the age of
drugs, sex and rock and roll.

Hollandsworth: It was
a strange time in America

because there were a lot
of boys who did disappear.

And there were, in truth,
some boys who ran away

and some boys
who wanted to go see

what the other part
of the world was like.

Narrator: Back then, being
a runaway wasn't a crime

nor a priority for the police.

Runaways or missing persons
who were juveniles

was handled by a division
called the juvenile division,

which was separate
from homicide.

They were on the fourth floor,

we were on the third floor.

Smith: Offense reports
by patrol officers

were frequently hand-written.

In fact, the juvenile division,
the way it was set up,

we did all of our reporting
on manual typewriters.

There was probably only two
or three electric typewriters

in the whole division
for a hundred people.

Narrator: 14-year-old Jimmy
glass, one of the first victims,

disappeared in December of 1970.

He was last seen
leaving a church service.

Hollandsworth: Jimmy glass
had run away from home before

for a very brief amount of time.

But when the juvenile officer
for the Houston police department

was assigned that case
and learned this,

he shut the file, figuring
he'd just run away again.

It happened over
and over and over.

It was totally mishandled.

And as that grief
began to pour out,

there was a lot of anger
at the cops.

We have
the statistical data on it,

exactly how many
were reported missing,

and we see nothing
over that period of time

that indicated a pattern at all.

As a matter of fact,
we had a lot heavier incidents

in some of the other districts.

Hollandsworth:
Herman short said,

"the problem here
is the parents.

The parents need to keep
more control over their boys,

otherwise these boys
would not have any problems."

Some of these parents
are not exactly

uh, discharging their
own responsibility

so far as these runaways
are concerned,

so far is raising and
disciplining their children.

Hollandsworth: These parents would
come to the Houston police and say,

"my boy just doesn't
run away from home.

He was packed and ready to go
on a family vacation the next day.

He's disappeared.

Something horrible
has happened to him."

And the Houston police said,

"ma'am, there's just a lot of
runaways in America at this time."

This is the hippie era.

They get disgruntled

and they're told to run away
by their friends,

and that's what they do.

Narrator: Ben knows
his brother was no runaway.

Winkle: Malley and David,

they were just going
down there to go swimming.

Do you run away
in your swimsuit?

I mean, that doesn't
make any sense.

Newsreader: Under Texas law,

Elmer Wayne Henry
faced a maximum sentence

of life imprisonment
for each of the six murders.

After less than
an hour's deliberation,

they returned
the maximum penalty:

Six separate 99-year sentences.

Narrator: Nine months later,
David Owen Brooks

was convicted of one murder:

The strangulation of
15-year-old Billy ray Lawrence,

and received a life sentence.

With Corll dead and his
two accomplices behind bars,

the Houston mass murders
faded from the headlines.

America's fascination
with serial killers

was still years in the future,

but for many of the families,
the grief lasts a lifetime.

Winkle: My mom,
it destroyed her.

His murder overshadowed
most everything else.

She made the ultimate sacrifice.

She gave up one son

by putting me in the harbor,
boy's harbor,

and then she lost her other son.

He was very innocent.
He was just an innocent kid.

He never really had a chance.

Narrator: Unluckier still are
the families of Corll's victims

whose bodies
were never identified.

Dr. Sharon Derrick
started a new job

at the Harris county medical
examiner's office in Houston.

As she looked around
her new workplace,

something old suddenly
became new again.

Dr. Derrick:
I saw these three boxes

and each of them said
"Houston mass murders" on them.

And I immediately clicked back
to when I was in high school.

And I thought, "oh, my gosh,

they have some of
the remains from that

and they're not identified?"

I was kind of star struck
at the three boxes,

to tell you the truth.

And so I asked the deputy chief

may I be assigned these cases,

and he said yes.

Narrator: It wasn't
going to be easy.

Those boxes contain
the forgotten bones and bits

of the last nameless victims
of the candy man.

It became a lot more than just

putting the bones on the table
and sorting them out.

You had to look back
into all of the old files

that are still present.

There aren't very many.

Narrator: Since 2006,
with the help of DNA,

she's identified
five of those boys.

One last boy remains.

We need family who think
they might have had a victim

of this terrible crime
submit DNA.

Narrator: If the last nameless
boy wasn't from the heights,

where did he come from?

Boys were disappearing
across America,

and a thousand miles away,

a similar monster had just
begun operating in plain sight.

He just hadn't been caught yet.

When John Wayne Gacy the clown

began his rampage in Chicago,

and when it was
finally discovered

that he had numerous boys
in the basement of his home,

you had to wonder

if Gacy was nothing more
than a copycat of Dean Corll.

Most of the the boys that Gacy
killed were street kids,

runaways, people who have been
involved with the law.

Gacy's problem came when
he picked a good kid to take.

Narrator: It's two weeks
before Christmas.

The parents of 15-year-old
Robert Piest

come into the
Des Plaines police station

to report their son's
disappearance.

It's only been a few hours,
but they're worried.

The hippie era was ending.

I mean, it was not uncommon
for kids to run away.

Tovar: Maybe they're
out drinking.

Maybe that young man got lucky

with a young lady somewhere,
you know.

It started off just as a simple
missing person's, you know?

It wasn't a big deal
at the time.

Narrator: Rob Piest worked
part-time as a stock boy

at Nisson pharmacy
in Des Plaines.

He worked the day shift and was
wrapping up for the evening.

His mom had come to pick him up.

Albrecht: Actually, that was
his mother's birthday,

and they're gonna do
their birthday celebration.

Sullivan: At closing time,
he just told her,

"mom, I'm gonna talk
to this guy about a job."

He'd be right back.

And he never came back.

Narrator:
The Piest family is adamant

Rob wouldn't leave
his mom waiting,

especially on her birthday.

Sullivan: They knew
that there was a man

by the name of John Gacy
who Rob had talked to,

but they couldn't find him

or couldn't find
anything about him.

Albrecht: And the officer
that handled it,

he took the report
and made a point

of talking
to the juvenile division.

And a lot of times
what happened, these kids

weren't entered into the
computer as missings right away.

But he felt there was something
different about this case.

Narrator: Still, the Piests
are told nothing can be done

until the morning.

A missing-person report normally
carries a 24-hour waiting period

before the police investigate.

The parents were out all night
looking for anything

that they possibly could,

all the way from the priest
at the Greek church

to Christmas-tree lots

to everything to try to find
anybody who knew about it.

Narrator: The next morning,

Rob's parents are back
at the police station

looking for an update...
Anything.

Here's a young man
who all of a sudden disappears,

and it's his mother's birthday.

He was not a problem in school,
a good student.

Tovar: You know, in my job,

I've seen many, many
dysfunctional families.

This was not one of them.
This was a good family.

All seemed to care
about each other.

It just didn't fit.

I did a criminal-history check
on all the people

that were listed in the report.

A man called John Wayne Gacy
had been in the drugstore

that night before.

We learned that he was
a contractor.

He was doing some estimating
or talking to the owner.

He was an ex-con out of Iowa,
and he had a criminal history

which involved
sodomy of a child.

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

Sullivan: Gacy was convicted of
having two boys in his house.

Handcuffed them to one of
the big legs of the pool table,

and that's where
he sodomized them.

Narrator: Gacy received
a 10-year sentence,

but served only 18 months.

There was no sex registry
in 1970,

so the conviction didn't
follow him to Chicago.

Kozenczak:
And when we heard that,

the hair literally stood up
on the back of our necks.

This must be something
a little more serious

than what we're
thinking about here.

And that's what prompted us
to go to Gacy's house

and confront him one-on-one.

So he opened the door.
He was not very clean.

He wasn't a clean person.
He was unshaven.

His clothes were dirty.

He started to tell me that
his mother had just called him.

His uncle had died,

and he was helping his mother
with funeral arrangements.

Once he found out we did not
have a search warrant,

he got real belligerent.

So when we walked outside,
we all agreed that this guy

knew more than
what he was telling us.

Narrator: Gacy's behavior,

coupled with his
sodomy conviction in Iowa,

strikes an ominous note,

and it's enough
to convince a judge

to agree to a search warrant
for Gacy's house.

Sullivan: I wanted to see if the
police officers could find

anything that would show
that there was a body there,

to show that there was
a live body, hopefully,

and someone who was
being held against his will.

Tovar: From the time we went in,
we could tell that

he was marching
to a different drummer

because the paint job,
for example.

The hall was painted brown
and then had, like,

zigzag gold lines
going up and down through it.

I mean, it was really weird.

Clown pictures were everywhere.
He had one right over his bed.

♪♪

And then he had junk
stacked everywhere.

Narrator: They searched the
house top to bottom.

Tovar: We found sex books,
sex toys.

We found a board.

It's a 2x4 with holes
at the end of it,

which could be used
like old-fashioned stocks

where they used to butcher.

So it was some strange stuff.

Narrator: In a closet
off the front room,

they found a trap door
leading to a crawl space.

The place was
a dirty, stinky place.

The water tank was very high
in that neighborhood there,

so the sump pump was constantly
going and the earth was muddy.

So we were looking
for a mound of dirt, maybe,

if he had buried
someone down there.

Narrator: But they find nothing.

However, other items scattered
around the house raise questions

about the suburban contractor...

A photo receipt
from Nisson pharmacy,

handcuffs,

various sets of car keys,

and a lot of police badges.

Kozenczak: And we found various
jewelry and ID cards

and driver's licenses
that didn't belong to Gacy.

Narrator: The Rob Piest case
was taking a bigger

and disturbing turn.

That was the start of realizing
that we were on to something,

a heck of a lot more than
the disappearance of one kid.

♪♪

[ Crow caws ]

Narrator: Jewelry,
high-school rings, ID bracelets,

driver's licenses,
and dozens of police badges,

all found in contractor
John Gacy's home,

none of it belonging to him,

and no sign of the
missing teen Rob Piest.

Sullivan: We truly had hoped
that he was alive

and that we might find him
bound up in Gacy's house.

Narrator:
Detectives widen their search.

They start by going back

and talking to everyone
in the pharmacy

the night Rob disappeared.

We knew from talking to people
that he had gone out

with John Wayne Gacy
to get an application for a job.

John Wayne Gacy had been
in the modeling company

called P.D.M. Painting,
decorating, and maintenance.

Albrecht: He was offering him
a summer job for $7.50 an hour.

So a 15-year-old kid,

and he was all anxious about
turning 16 and buying a car.

Tovar: This young girl Kim,

she was working the counter
up near the front door.

She was cold, and she borrowed
Robert's jacket.

It was a nice, blue,
down jacket.

Sullivan: When he was
going out to see Gacy,

he said, "Kim,
let me get my jacket back."

Tovar: He told her,
"I'm going with this guy

to fill out an application."

A lot of these people
actually didn't notice

anything suspicious.

Sullivan: There was
absolutely no reason

to think that he
wouldn't have come home.

[ Siren wailing ]

♪♪

Narrator: Despite Gacy's
sodomy conviction in Iowa,

the 36-year-old
suburban contractor

appears to be a likable,
hardworking businessman.

The neighbors loved him.
His associates loved him.

Albrecht:
Gacy would have parties

around July 4th every year,
and people that attended them

was the who's who
of Chicago politics.

Narrator:
He was a parade organizer

for the mayor of Chicago

and a Democratic
precinct captain.

He seemed a model citizen.

He was very active in business

and very active with politics.

Sullivan:
At one particular time,

there's a Polish day parade.

The first lady of the
United States, Rosalynn Carter,

was in for the parade,

and he actually got up
on the stage with her

and even had his picture
taken with her.

♪♪

He was a certified clown

that would volunteer his time

to go to hospitals
and entertain children.

Narrator: He calls himself
pogo the clown,

and he took it seriously.

However, a dig into Gacy's past
paints a different picture

than the model citizen
in Chicago.

Tovar: Well, we interviewed
people in Springfield, Iowa,

also, where he had lived.

He did not graduate
from high school.

He went out to Las Vegas
to work,

and while he was there, he
worked for an ambulance company.

His job was picking up
deceased remains

and delivering them to either

funeral homes of choice
or whatever.

Well, they started finding
some disturbing things

as that he was messing
with the bodies.

He was necrophiliac, and he was
having sex with the bodies

at night in the funeral home.

They discovered that because
they found the clothing

on the bodies messed up and they
approached him about it,

and I guess he confessed to it,
so they fired him.

Narrator: Gacy was married twice
and divorced twice.

He has two kids from
the first marriage in Iowa

and lives alone.

Back at the
Des Plaines police station,

detectives sift through the
items taken from Gacy's house.

A high-school ring with
three initials, j.A.S.,

gets their attention.

We were working on the
Rob Piest disappearance.

And then all of a sudden,
as you can imagine,

finding something like
a class ring

that had initials on it.

Tovar: We learned that
ultimately turned out

to belong to John Szyc.

Narrator: 19-year-old John Szyc
was from Des Plaines

but was living in Chicago

when he went missing a year
earlier in January 1977.

Tovar: We spoke to his mother,
and she told us

he had been missing

and that his car was missing
as well as a television.

We had seen a television
that kind of, maybe matched

in the house.

We started digging
for information

on other missing kids.

We found a list of employees,
and we started checking on them,

started finding out that a lot
of those were also missing.

Sullivan: How many other kids
had he offered the same deal

as he was doing with Piest?

In other words, "come with me

and I'll double whatever
you're making right now."

Narrator: Gacy's name comes up
more than half a dozen times

in Chicago police reports,

ranging from kidnapping
to rape and assault.

Chicago police did investigate,

but nothing came
of any one of them.

Hachmeister: It was at
that point, really,

turned everything upside down.

He was no longer, in my opinion,
a person of interest.

He was definitely a suspect.

Rob Piest has been missing
for four days,

and all eyes are on Gacy,

but the police need
more evidence.

They put him on
round-the-clock surveillance.

I was hoping that if, in fact,

he had done something
with Rob Piest,

that he would lead us there.

This is the four of us that were
on the surveillance.

Bob and Ron
had the noon to midnight,

and Dave I had
the midnight to noon.

Hachmeister: Our goal as a
surveillance unit was to,

no matter what, keep him in view

so that if there's any evidence
to be out there through Gacy,

he would not be able to destroy
any of the evidence.

Surveillance work can be boring
at certain times,

although I kind of
had the personality for it.

I could sit and, you know,
I had a lot of Patience

for something like that
for one reason or another.

That first night, I sat
by myself for quite a while.

This was an extremely cold day.
We're in December.

It was so cold that I had to
keep my car running.

When he came home, he could see
the exhaust from my car

billowing up from the car,

so as he drove by, he knew
that we had interest in him.

He spotted the car,
and the first thing he did

was wave to me as he drove by.

So he knew right away
that we were following him,

and we just had to
make the best of it.

You'd think this guy
is like a bad guy,

he's really gonna be
a tough guy to deal with,

but he was just the opposite.

I mean, he welcomed us
when we followed him into bars.

He would buy us beers.

Afterwards, we would go
to restaurants,

he would invite us to his table.

We'd have breakfast with him.

He seemed like a great guy.

He seemed to be very
concerned about Rob Piest,

saying he would do anything
to help us out.

Lie-detector tests, do anything.
He was very, very concerned.

And, matter of fact,
my partner and I

would have to occasionally
remind each other,

"hey, we've got to be
really on our toes here."

♪♪

There was one time
that we were following Gacy,

about 2:00 or 3:00
in the morning,

he was checking on a job site.

On his way home, he was going
through gay neighborhood,

and he happened to spot some guy
walking down the street.

He just about turned his head
totally around

looking at this young man.

You could tell that he was
really wanting to do something,

but he couldn't do anything
because we were so close to him.

He never talked to us
about being gay.

I mean, he would always actually
kind of go overboard

about saying,
"wow, did you see that woman?

What a good-looking woman,"
you know,

and he would kind of
go out of his way to mention

to us to make us think that he
was straight as an arrow.

Narrator: His bluster extends

to the perks
of working as pogo the clown.

Albrecht: Gacy, the cocky
bragger that he was,

he looked at us and said,
"you know what?"

You could sit on
a woman's lap, you know,

and you could sit there and talk
to them and feel them up

or whatever you want to do,

"and clowns do
get away with that."

And he said, you know...
He looked at us

and he said,
"you know, clowns...

Clowns can
get away with murder."

♪♪

Narrator: It's been five days
since Rob Piest disappeared

and Des Plaines detectives
lean on Gacy's employees,

hoping they'll provide some clue
about the teen's whereabouts.

Hachmeister: He had two
really loyal followers

who worked for him,
Michael Rossi and David cram.

Narrator: The young men had been
working for Gacy for two years.

Sullivan: One was more
cooperative than the other.

I wouldn't say that either
of them were real cooperative.

Kozenczak: I think he saw Gacy
was in trouble,

and he didn't want to be brought
into it any more than he had to.

And he started giving us
information about employees

who come to work one day

and then the next day
they were just gone.

Narrator: Rossi mentions
one kid in particular

who worked for Gacy
two years earlier,

who never showed up
for work one day

and never picked up
his last paycheck.

Gregory Godzik was 17

when he took a part-time job
at P.D.M. Construction in 1976.

I remember the day when he
came home and he said to my mom,

"you know, I met this man,
and he's offering me a new job."

And my mother said,
"oh, my god, what kind of job?"

Finish school
so you can go to college.

And at the time, he was making
$2.25 an hour, and he said,

"mom, this man's offering me
$5 an hour."

And my mother said,
"I don't want you to do that."

Of course, every 17-year-old,

you know, they're gonna do
what they're gonna do.

And I remember
a couple days later he said,

"mom, I got this job from that
man I was telling you about."

Narrator: Three weeks later,
Gregory disappeared.

[ Dog barking ]

Godzik: He was going out on a
date with a new girlfriend

or somebody.

The next morning,
my mother said,

"did you see your brother?"
And I said, "no, why?"

Because every time my brother
would come home,

he'd always, "mom, I'm home,"
or give her a kiss.

And she said,
"he didn't come in."

And I said, "that's odd."

And then it was like
two days after that,

they found my brother's car in a
parking lot, and in the car,

there was his driver's license
and his wallet and...

And even my mother said,
you know,

"why would he leave his car?
It was a prized possession."

My mother went
to Gacy's house that week.

She said, "well, he should know

if he was
supposed to be working."

And he said, "oh, yeah,
I saw him a while ago,

but, oh, yeah, he left a message
on my machine."

My mother said, "oh, well,
let's hear the machine."

He goes, "oh, I erased that."

And he said, "oh, 17-year-olds",

"they run away, but they'll
be back," you know.

My mother said,
"nope, that's not my son.

My son would never do
anything like that."

But you have your hands tied.

What are you gonna do?
You only can do so much.

You hire a private investigator,
you go to the police.

They don't... you know,
"we have other things."

You know, "we're doing
the best we can."

And you just live with it.

Narrator: Three teens...
Rob Piest, Gregory Godzik,

and the owner of the ring
found in Gacy's house,

17-year-old John Szyc...

All missing,
all tied to John Gacy.

Then an item, a slip of paper
found in Gacy's trash,

becomes a turning point
in the search for Rob Piest.

Hachmeister: We recovered a
photo receipt

from Nisson pharmacy,
and it only had numbers on it,

so you didn't know
who it was issued to.

This receipt,
and the film finally came back,

and the numbers corresponded
to Kim Byers,

who was an employee with
Rob Piest at Nisson pharmacy.

Sullivan: She put that receipt
in Rob's pocket,

and then Rob came
and got the check.

Narrator: That's when Rob
left the pharmacy

to talk to Gacy about a job.

Proof Rob's jacket
was in Gacy's house.

So where is the teen?

Investigators keep the pressure
on Gacy's two closest employees.

Both Mike Rossi and David cram

had lived in Gacy's house
for a time.

Hachmeister: The investigators,
they were nonstop.

They'd follow these
individuals everywhere,

interview them at work, at home.

And they were starting to get
tired of seeing the police.

Narrator: One of the employees
agrees to come to the station

and answer more questions.

Gacy had had these kids

digging in his crawl space
in the basement.

They were digging where Gacy
would be able to put some lime,

which would absorb odors.

This was kind of odd to us,
you know.

Why would you do
something like that?

But they explained it away,

that Gacy said
that there was a sewage issue

and that it was drainage
for that sewage issue.

Kozenczak:
And then I finally said,

"could you just tell me, please,

if I was gonna look for Robert,
where should I look for him?"

And he put his head down
and he said,

"in John's crawl space."

So we knew at that point that
we had to get another warrant

and go back into Gacy's house,

into his crawl space
and start looking again

because apparently, we missed
something the first time around.

Narrator: The surveillance team
has been tailing Gacy

for more than a week.

Hachmeister: At this point, he
hadn't shaved for a couple days.

He's slouching.
His whole demeanor is different.

He was doing some uppers
and downers.

It had to be killing him
on the inside,

knowing that we were not gonna
let up on this investigation.

At this point,
we were like dogs with a bone.

Narrator: On the morning
of December 21st,

they follow Gacy
to his local gas station,

where they witness him handing
over drugs to the attendant.

Hachmeister: When he left
the gas station...

[ Tires squeal ]
...He took off like a wild man.

So when we pulled him
out of the car,

I kind of pushed him around
a little bit and said,

"John, you're under arrest

for possession of
and delivery of marijuana."

He didn't really say anything.

He just seemed to be
staring into space.

Narrator: That same day, the
second search warrant arrives.

Sullivan: We had to get down
to the crawl space

because that's where
the two kids

who worked for him said
they were digging trenches.

[ Camera shutter clicking ]

Tovar: I think it was
Phil Bettiker

who started digging.

And he found a left femur.

So he kept digging,
found a second left femur.

Kept digging, found a third one.

Sullivan: That's when I said,
"stop there."

And we called in
the medical examiner,

and he identified that
as a human bone.

♪♪

Narrator:
Four days before Christmas,

and John Wayne Gacy sits in
the Des Plaines police station.

Seven miles away, police
uncover bones in his basement,

bones belonging
to more than one body.

[ Truck beeping ]

These bodies were decayed
for the most part.

Robert Piest had only been
missing for 10 days.

So we knew for a fact
that this was not Robert Piest.

It was somebody else.

Hachmeister: I get a phone call.

They said, "we have dead bodies
in a crawl space."

I turned to Gacy, and I said,

"John, you're under arrest
for murder."

I was elated. I had to try
to be calm and cool.

But it was like
the most unbelievable thing

that ever happened to me...
Undescribable.

Tovar: He knew at this point

that we were gonna find
all the bodies.

And we told him
we'd already started digging.

Albrecht: Gacy looks at me,
and he says,

"were you guys
in a crawl space?"

I says, "yeah, John. Why?"

He says, "well, that's what
the lime was for."

I said, "well, what do you mean?
What do you mean the lime was?"

"To cover the smell."

And he said something
really ridiculous.

He said, "well, I don't want
you guys messing my carpets up,

so I'll draw you a map
of where everything is."

This drawing is a photocopy of

Gacy's crawl space,
that he made this drawing,

and you can see
in one spot here,

there's a rectangle
with an "x" on it.

That's where the first
body was buried.

Narrator:
Over the next few hours,

Gacy confesses to killing
dozens of boys and young men

and burying their bodies
under his house.

In chilling detail,

he tells them the murders
started in 1972.

The first one was self-defense.

This kid tried to come after him
with a knife in the morning

after they had spent the night
together having sex.

He knifed him.

Narrator: What Gacy describes
goes beyond self-defense.

Albrecht: At that time,
he was married, still.

His wife was still there.

He mentioned... it was either
mother's day or Easter

that he told his wife,
"this is the last day

that we're ever gonna have
any type of sexual contact."

Narrator: It was the start
of a three-year killing spree,

picking up most of his
victims at night,

cruising around Chicago's
gay area, Bughouse square.

He had this car
that he outfitted

to make it look like
it was a police car.

And he was able to stop kids
and tell them to get in the car.

Narrator: This ruse was part of
his well-honed routine.

♪♪

Once he had them in the car,
he drove to his house.

There, he plied the kids
with alcohol and drugs

and entertained them
with his handcuff trick,

the same trick used by
Dean Allen Corll, the Candyman,

on his 29 victims in Houston
just a few years earlier.

Unwittingly, these young men
would handcuff themselves,

and once they were
incapacitated like that,

he would do the rope trick.

Tovar: When he would
turn them around,

he'd take a piece of rope
with the loops on the end,

loop them together,

put a piece of wood
through it as a tourniquet,

and start tightening it
around their neck.

Hachmeister: He had it down
to such a science

that he could get it to where
he could rest the stick

on the individual's back
and it wouldn't unwind,

and then he could go around and
do different things in the house

and go back and torture
the young man and kill him.

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

We tried to remain as calm
as we could listening to this

and how he tortured
these young men.

It actually made the hair on
the back of your head stand up.

It was unbelievable.

Narrator: Gacy admits
to raping and killing

more than 30 young men
in his home from 1972 to 1978.

He was flippant about it.
To him, it was a game.

♪♪

By now, word spread
around Chicago...

Bodies in a basement
on Summerdale Avenue.

The police had information
where the bodies were

and were going to
bring them out.

I, like all the other
reporters in town,

rushed to the scene
and watched it happen.

Tovar: The medical examiner
said he wanted us to dig

in a archeological-type
situation

so we could verify
where everybody was taken.

So each one of us got
a section of the house to dig.

Mine was the kitchen.

Eventually, the whole floor
was completely taken up

so that the investigators
had enough room

in a narrow crawl space
to be able to dig.

Tovar: Whoever was in the hole
digging up the body

would put the pieces
of flesh and bones

into a body bag
down in the hole,

and then you'd give them
to someone who was above you

on the floor level.

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

We took extreme care to honor
and respect the remains.

Jacobson: The story was huge
from the minute

we first saw
or heard of the first body

and then subsequently,
everyone thereafter,

the story just got bigger.

Police digging under a house
in Des Plaines, Illinois,

found four more bodies today.

That brings the total to nine.

Man: They found two more
bodies today,

long dead and decomposed,

man #2: Six bodies bring the
total found to 15.

Narrator: Each day,
the crowds grew.

Hundreds stood outside,
reporters and onlookers

all waiting
for the nightly body count.

Human nature loves
bad crime stories.

This couldn't have
been any worse.

So everybody was interested.

[ Indistinct chatter ]

You have to realize, you know,
there were a few TV stations

and everybody
carried the same thing,

and when it came on,
I do remember my mother said,

"your brother's one of them."

Narrator: By December 28,
21 bodies were removed

from the house
on Summerdale Avenue.

Gacy's map was proving accurate.

Still, there was the question
of Rob Piest,

the young man whose
disappearance 10 days earlier

led to all of this.

He never seemed to be rattled
about anything.

The only time I saw him
get irritated

was when detective Adams
asked him about Robert Piest,

whether he had suffered.

Narrator: In chilling detail,
Gacy tells them what happened

that night
at the Nisson pharmacy.

Rob Piest's death
was like so many others.

Gacy's pattern
remained the same.

Tovar:
I-55 is a major interstate

going south from here,

and it crosses
the Des Plaines river.

And what Gacy did
to Robert Piest

and three other victims

is he'd pull up
to the side of the bridge

and turn on that red light
he had.

So people driving by assumed
there was a police officer,

and they just wouldn't
pay any attention.

And he'd open the trunk,
take the body,

and just throw it
over the side into the river.

♪♪

Narrator: 29 on his property,
four in the river,

all young men,
all raped and strangled.

John Wayne Gacy
was now "the killer clown"

and America’s
most prolific killer.

By new year's day,
dental records helped

police identify six victims,
including 19-year-old John Szyc,

who disappeared
two years earlier.

His high-school ring
was found in Gacy's house.

Gregory Godzik's family
also got the knock on the door.

I remember they come in,
they make you sit down.

And they said,
"Mr. Godzik and Mrs. Godzik,

I would like to tell you
your son

is one of the official victims
of John Wayne Gacy."

And they turn around
and they walk out.

And that's when I said
to my mother,

"I told you he'd come home.

I just didn't think
it would be this way."

Narrator: It was the early
spring before Rob Piest's body

was recovered from
the Des Plaines river.

By then, Gacy is charged
with 33 counts of murder.

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

He pleads not guilty
by reason of insanity,

now claiming it
was his alter ego,

Jack, who did the murders,
not him.

By making a statement
to us about a split personality,

he really cemented himself in
with that defense

by the time it came to trial.

It didn't work.

Narrator:
The trial lasts five weeks.

Woman: It took the jury of
seven men and five women

less than two hours to find

John Wayne Gacy guilty
of murdering 33 young men.

Gacy was convicted
of murdering more people

than anyone else
in U.S. history.

I feel that the jury certainly
sent a loud message to him

and others who might want to
do it in that manner by the fact

that they only deliberated
for an hour and 45 minutes.

Woman: It was an emotional time
for relatives of the victims,

and many, like Ken Piest,
whose brother was killed,

want revenge.

There's only one solution now.

What is that?

I want to see him go
to the chair.

I hope he does get
the electric chair.

Then it'll make
everybody feel better.

I'm sure it'll make the
other mothers feel better, too.

Narrator: Gacy is sentenced
to death.

Revenge... that he killed my son
and that we're gonna kill him.

And, you know,
it's a life for a life,

is what it boils down to.

Tovar: We started out
with a missing

15-year-old boy
in a suburban town.

And then it just grew
to what it grew.

♪♪

Albrecht:
They were just young kids,

15 to 17 years old,

and got taken advantage of
by a vicious, evil man.

♪♪

Sullivan: Not only did he
have his victims,

but he affected
so many, so many people.

A mom and a dad,

maybe a brother and a sister,
maybe more than that.

Friends.

Now take that and multiply that
by 33 that we know of.

♪♪

♪♪

Tovar: Had he not taken
Robert Piest,

who knows how long
he could have kept going on?

♪♪

Godzik: My father was
very religious.

He was very catholic
with the rosaries,

and he said, "god would never
do this to me, but he did."

And from that point on,

my father never went back
to church again after that.

Never.

♪♪

We were lucky enough
that in two years,

we found closure in our family,

but other people could be
wondering, "where are they?"

Who are they?"
That's the sad part.

♪♪

Moran: I grew up in Chicago.

There wasn't really a person
in the Chicago area

that did not know
of the Gacy killings.

Narrator: Lieutenant Jason Moran
was a kid in 1978

when Chicago's most notorious
murder spree unraveled.

He never dreamed,
when he became head

of Cook County's cold case unit,

that the killer clown's case
would be one of them.

Lieutenant Moran came to me
and said,

"hey, you know, the largest
cold case is the Gacy case."

He was convicted
of all those cases,

but there was eight boys who
were never identified.

Narrator: In 2011,
armed with DNA technology,

lieutenant Moran set out

to identify
those last eight young men.

Moran: As soon as we announced
the reopening of the case,

I mean, it was absolutely
overwhelming, you know,

because there could
only be eight.

There was only eight
unidentified victims,

so there could only be
eight families

looking for
their missing loved one.

Within a couple of days,
we received over 100 calls

from family members of missing
persons all over the country,

and I was becoming
a national repository

for missing kids from the '70s.

Narrator: The killer clown

and mass murderer
Dean Allen Corll,

the Candyman in Houston,

awakened America to a nightmare
hidden in its own backyard.

Moran: When you do
criminal investigations

for any amount of time,

you know that there's always
more to a case

than you hear in court
or that you hear in the media.

Narrator:
And there was a lot more.

Gacy and Corll were two piranhas
in a much larger pond,

a hidden network,
a web stretching across America.

This was a guy
that just could not stop.

Woman: The raid last night
netted police

box after box of pictures
of young males available

to older men
for homosexual activities.

This was a pond of perversity.

Narrator: Next time on
"the clown & the Candyman"...

And this John David Norman was
absolutely a traveling criminal.

Man: He sent boys to service
clients throughout the states.

They came from
all walks of life.

Man #2: They would
infiltrate organizations

like the boy scouts,
like big brothers,

police departments.

Man #3: This was
a national scheme.

They were supplying boys
all over the country.

It's a very good cover for these
individuals because

they look like
"philanthropists,"

that they're helping young boys.

Grooming is like psychological
and emotional quicksand.

When you realize
what's happening,

you're already neck deep
and you can't get out of it.

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