All language subtitles for John.Wayne.Gacy.Devil.in.Disguise.S01E03.WEBRip.x264-ION10

Now, when the search warrants
were effected in your case,

they did find an awful lot
in the crawl space of your home.

Did they not?

Well, yeah. I had offered
to sell them the house

because I thought there was
nothing down in the crawl space.

Yeah.

I had never had any qualms
about them

going down in the crawl space.
They were going to go ...

Well, how many bodies
were actually located

on the property and where?

To my understanding,
there was a total of 29 bodies

or 28 bodies
were found on the property,

26,
27 of them under the house.

And the rest?
One was under the driveway.

One was under the garage.
So that makes a total of 29.

Okay. Now, from
the standpoint of the arrest,

when you were arrested
in this matter, this was ...

It snowballed.
It snowballed, okay.

What was the date
of that arrest, do you recall?

December 22nd, 1978
is when I was arrested.

I was driving home
from college

for Christmas break,

and I just kept hearing
about all this on the news.

I never ever thought
of my brother.

They found two more bodies
today in Des Plaines,

Illinois in the house
of a 36-year-old

convicted sex offender,

and this miserable search
will go on.

It never even came
into my head

that my brother
would be a part of that.

When I got home, and I walked
in the door, my mom says,

"I have something to tell you,"
and then I knew.

That’s all she had to say.
I knew that she was

going to tell me
he is somehow connected to this.

We grew up in Chicago.
We moved in 1973 to Des Plaines.

I was the fourth child
out of five of us.

I had all brothers.

My brother John
was 3 years older than me.

To me, he was adventurous.

He was older and driving,
and I was a young kid.

He was 19 years old.

What I remember
about his disappearance is,

he didn’t show up for work
on Friday, and it was payday.

The people he worked
with got concerned.

So they went over
to his apartment

and had to call the police
in order to let them in,

at which time
they called my mom.

His place was not ransacked
or anything.

And it was like,
"Oh, well, he’s not here."

I remember them basically
saying that he left town.

When my brother disappeared,
his car disappeared.

The police convinced
my mom that,

"Oh, he just went away
for the weekend.

He’s 19 years old.
You got to let your child go."

As time went on,
you pray that he’s still alive

and he’s happy somewhere.

It was the September
after he had first disappeared.

My brother’s 1971
Plymouth Satellite

was seen stealing gas.
It had my brother’s plates.

It gave you hope again that,
"Oh, well,

maybe he is out there,"
that he is alive.

My mom knew enough
about the Chicago police

and how they worked.

She would call them
all the time,

but it just was a kid
that disappeared,

and that was the attitude
of the police.

What made this whole case
blow up

is Rob Piest disappeared
from Des Plaines.

Friends and relatives of
missing teenage boys

have been calling
from all over the country

to learn more
about this bizarre crime.

It was Robert Piest’s
disappearance on December 11th

that led police to the home
of the suburban contractor.

At that point, the only name
we knew was Rob Piest.

We only had one name,
but I also had information

that this was just the latest
of many, many victims.

Officially, the word came out
that night

that there was one body
buried in the basement.

Days later, the number grew
and grew and grew.

The key was,
where’s the suspect?

Once we found the bones,

Gacy was charged
with one homicide,

one count of homicide.

He’s actually smiling
in his mugshot.

That was strange to me.

And so he was detained
from then on.

We bring Gacy
into the interview room.

Gacy says,
"I’m going to give it all up.

I’m ready to give you
a detailed confession."

I had read him
his Miranda Rights,

and I started asking Gacy
some questions then,

and I got into more
of a monologue by Gacy.

It wasn’t a interrogation
so much.

He just started telling us
things and rambling on about it.

He told us that he had buried
27 young men in his crawl space.

He did bury a couple of the kids
in his backyard,

and then he threw the remaining
in the Des Plaines River.

It was just a tough thing
to listen to,

the way he talked about
how he killed everybody.

He started out with Rob Piest,
what happened with Rob,

and he said he was just getting
ready to leave the pharmacy

when Rob Piest
came out to his car and said,

"Hey, I understand that you
might be looking for some help,"

and Gacy says, "Yeah, actually,
why don’t you hop in

and fill out
a quick application?

And I’ll give you a call."
So he jumps in the car with Gacy

while his mom is out front
waiting for him,

and Gacy fumbles around
with the paperwork, and he says,

"Jeez, doggone it, I must’ve
left the stuff at home."

He says, "I just live down
the block here.

If you want, come on with me,"

and Piest says,
"Well, my ma is out front."

He says,
"I’ll get you back right away.

Don’t worry about it."

So kind of reluctantly,
Piest says,

"Okay, let’s go do
a quick application."

So Gacy drives from Nisson
Pharmacy with Rob Piest,

willingly, to his house
and go in his house,

and Gacy starts talking to him
about entertaining kids

as a clown and stuff like that.

He says, "Yeah,
I got all these cool tricks."

He says, "I’ll show you,"

and he puts a pair of handcuffs
on himself, Gacy does,

and struggles with
the handcuffs a little bit,

and then he turns around,

and he’s got
the handcuffs dangling,

and Piest says, "Wow.
That’s cool. How’d you do that?"

And he says, "Easy. Put them on.
I’ll show you how to do it."

So Piest actually
handcuffed himself,

so Piest struggles
and struggles and struggles,

and he says, "I don’t know
how to get out of these things.

What’s the trick?"

And he says,
"I reached in my pocket,

and I pulled out the key,"
and I said,

’The trick is,
you got to have the key,’"

and he says,
"Once I got Piest shackled,

he was pretty much mine
at that point."

Gacy just talked
so matter-of-factly

about what he did to Rob Piest,

got into great graphic detail
of the handcuff trick

and a rope trick, disrobing him
and performing oral sex on him.

He was pretty proud
of that rope trick.

He thought it was
kind of ingenious.

He’d put a rope
around their neck,

tie a little knot
right at the neck,

and then a little bit later,
he would put another knot,

and he’d have a stick,
maybe 8, 10 inches long,

and he would wedge the stick
between the front shoulder

and the back of the head,
and he would start twisting it,

and, of course, twisting,
and it would just get tight

and eventually strangle them.

The rope trick is ...

The way I describe
the rope trick is,

it’s nothing more
than a tourniquet.

Mm-hmm.

And I had explained it
to them.

I even demonstrated it to them.
It would cut off the air.

So if you’re going
to kill somebody,

you just put it on their neck
and twist it three times

or four times or whatever
until the person stopped moving.

So he was doing this
to Rob Piest

and twisting and twisting it,

and he did it maybe three
or four times,

and he got a phone call.

And he went to answer the phone,
and when he came back,

Rob Piest was dead,
fallen onto the ground.

The family was driving
around the neighborhoods

and so forth that evening after

when his mother came
and couldn’t find him,

and I think Rob was already done
by that time.

He was already dead.

Throughout the confession,

Gacy pretty much showed
no emotion at all.

At the conclusion
of the interview,

we stepped out and his attorney,

Sam Amirante was waiting
in the lobby.

So we briefed him
on the confession

and both Gacy and his attorneys
agreed to have Gacy

do a second confession
with the state’s attorneys

there, the police officers
and his attorneys.

Well, there had to be
15 people crammed

into a little interview room,

so I’m just watching everyone
else with their jaws open.

He had all of us
on the edge of our seats,

and John knew it, and this was
going to be his last hurrah.

We’re his last audience.
He’s lost everyone else,

so he’s going to try to impress
us with his horrific acts.

It was a nightmare.

Sam Amirante,
his criminal attorney,

called me,
and he told me

that John had been arrested
for suspicion of murder.

Of course, 2 o’clock
in the morning,

you’re not even awake,
and you’re hearing this,

and I said to Sam, I said,
"Can I talk to him?"

He said, "For just a minute,"
and so he put him on the phone.

I said, "John, did you
kill somebody?"

And he uttered, "Uh-huh."
He didn’t say, "Yes,"

but that’s exactly
how he uttered it.

And, of course, at this point,
we thought it was a person.

We didn’t learn
until everybody else

did about the numerous amounts
of bodies

that were under the house.

When I watched the news,
I just cried.

This afternoon,
Gacy was charged

with murdering Robert Piest.
At the hearing, police said

Gacy has confessed
to the Piest murder.

Meanwhile, investigators
have started

to dismantle Gacy’s house

and garage as they continue
to search for other bodies

in this quiet
suburban neighborhood.

By the next day,
the 22nd of December,

it was a feeding frenzy.

Reporters every step of the way,
cameras all over the street,

authorities going in
and out of the house.

It was a mob scene.

It was one of the biggest
stories Chicago had ever seen.

People were glued to their
screens watching our coverage.

Here’s what it looked like
last night when we were here

starting at about 11 o’clock
as the search was beginning.

Why were you here?
No comment.

We can’t say anything.

You can’t say anything
about why you were here

for a couple hours tonight?
No, we can’t.

State’s attorney’s office
advised us not to say anything.

State attorney’s office
advised you not to say anything.

You’ve been here
for a couple hours,

and they say
you can’t say anything?

I got to go now.
We blocked off the street

around the sides of the house,

and there was people
there every morning.

It was cold, and there was
people just standing around,

three, four,
five deep, couple hundred people

that were just
watching the house.

I pretty much stayed
at the house over there digging.

It was my job to do so.

You just go on, and you
keep digging, keep going.

Those poor guys down there,
are using, literally,

their 10 fingers, literally,
using their 10 fingers,

and trying to exhume the body
because there’s always

a possibility of loss
of trace evidence.

So you can’t use a shovel
or something like that.

And with that, the medical
examiner disappeared

into what he called
the incredible maze

that was a crawl space
and, more recently,

has been a mass grave
under John Gacy’s home.

Every day, we’d probably
come up with a couple,

two or three bodies,

and then on a good day
maybe four.

Once you got your body
completely dug out,

we’d video-tape it.

Recording at the north wall
at the front door, upper level,

the remains
of body number five are found.

Say this was body such
and such,

dug up by such and such,

and then he’d be put in
a body bag and taken out,

and then you’d keep going
for your next one.

We’d go in there
do the same thing every day.

About 4:30 in the afternoon

when we started
bringing the body bags out,

the cameras would roll
at that point,

and that’s when
the local news went on,

and they could lead
the story with it.

Everybody got their shots?
Everything got quiet,

and you could hear people say,
"Okay, today, three more.

That’s" ...
They were counting them.

People were out there
in the snow,

chanting like
at a football game,

the number of body bags being
carried into a squad roller

to be driven to the morgue,

like they were counting points
in the end zone.

It had turned into a circus,

an amazing spectacle
to this reporter,

people bringing brown
bag lunches,

mothers lifting up
small children,

so they could see
the sheriff’s officers

dumping loads of mud
on the driveway,

mud that had been
part of a grave,

and when the people got tired
of looking at the house

they could take pictures
of each other.

"See? I was there,
where they found the bodies."

During the time that we’re
recovering bodies,

we don’t find Rob Piest there.

So his parents,
his sister and brother,

they still didn’t have his body.

Since Robert Piest’s
only been gone for 10 days,

this can’t be him
because these are bones already.

And so at that particular point,
go back to Gacy.

I certainly never handled
anybody else like John Gacy

or that magnitude of a case,

but I went back to
the conversation of Rob Piest,

and we didn’t have a body,
and it was around Christmas,

and we had been told Gacy
was in an Iowa prison

when his father died.
That upset him a lot.

So I brought that up to Gacy.

I said, "Remember
when your father died?

Well, we’ve got a family
now in Des Plaines

who would like to be
able to spend

Christmas having closure
on where their boy is

and where the body is."

And he kind of hemmed
a little bit, and I said,

"Well, is he aboveground?
Where’s he at?"

He said, "Well, it’s neither."

And you took him where?
Out on the I-55 bridge.

And that’s where ...
How was he then taken

from the car
and placed into the river?

Just opened up the trunk
and dumped him in

Uh-huh.

There was no big special deal
out of it.

Okay. Yeah.

We asked John, "Why?
Why the river?

You had a perfect thing
going on here."

He said, "Well, there was no
room left in the crawl space,"

so he drove to the river.

The bridge from which
he threw the body

was pretty high,
and the current got pretty fast.

It just kept moving
and moving and moving.

And so I didn’t really have
great confidence

that we would be able
to find Rob Piest’s body.

Thirty-six-year-old John Gacy,

a convicted sex offender,
has already been charged

with the murder
of 15-year-old Robert Piest.

Police are searching a river
for his body.

By that point, we now know
that Gacy was talking,

and he’s laying out exactly
where those bodies were buried.

Gacy, for some reason,
took a liking to me.

I had blond hair at the time
and certainly a lot younger,

but we had a good relationship.
And they got a hold of us

and said that Gacy wanted
to talk to Larry and I.

So Albrecht and I walked back
into the cell block

and try
and get more information.

Gacy called the crawl space,
"the burial grounds,"

and I said, "I haven’t been
in your crawl space.

Can you kind of tell me
where things are?"

He said "Well, give me
a piece of paper,"

and the only thing we had

was a pink copy of
his prisoner property receipt,

and he drew a diagram a
rectangular shape of the house,

which was the crawl space,
and inside it,

he put another rectangle
and with an X on it,

and he said, "That’s where
the first one was buried."

Then he put an N on top.

And I said, "What’s that?"
He said, "That’s north."

And then he started
to make smaller rectangles.

Some would have numbers in them.

These numbers denoted
how many people were buried

in a particular grave or trench.

He went all the way around
the perimeter of the house

making these various notations
where bodies were buried,

and as soon as he
got done with it,

I reached in
and grabbed it from him

because I wanted to have that
as evidence, and it was amazing.

His recollection
of where those bodies were

and where they actually

did find the bodies
was right on the money.

Police investigators using
sledgehammers, axes and chain

saws gutted John Gacy’s
suburban Chicago home today.

They have found bodies every
place Gacy told them to look.

The murder suspect
has allegedly told police

they will find the remains of 20
more young men and boys here.

I think everybody was numb
at that time.

It wasn’t that we didn’t expect
to find bones.

It was just in
the number of bones.

There were 29 bodies
that were at the house,

27 in the crawl space
and one under the barbecue pit

and one under the walkway
to the garage.

I can’t tell you how I acted
when I saw

that they were under that house.
I stood there, like, frozen.

I was always on him
about the smell in the house.

I couldn’t stand it.
It smelled like dead rats.

And I used to tell him, I said,

"You really got to get somebody
or do something.

There must be something dead
under the house."

He said there, "There isn’t
anything dead under the" ...

I said, “Yes, there is.

I can smell it,
and I know the smell.

That’s something dead
under there."

I’m like, "I was right,
there were dead things

under that house."
That just freaked me out.

And the youngest girl
had her bedroom

right there
where that crawl space was.

I couldn’t get down in the
crawl space that easy,

and then I had a bum back
to begin with.

You got to crawl on your belly
to move around

in the crawl space.
There is no way

that I could have done
any of the digging down there.

I had enough trouble
just getting down there.

Gacy asked us about whether
two kids that worked for him,

Mike Rossi and David Cram,
were at the station,

and we said, "No."

And he said, "Well, because
they were involved,"

and we said, "Well, what do you
mean they were involved?

They were involved
with the killings?"

And he says,

"No, but they dug the trenches
in the crawl space for me,"

and, "Well, did they know
what the trenches were for?"

And his answer was,
"They never said anything,

but if they didn’t know
what was down there,

they were ... stupid."

Gacy told the boys to go down
and dig some shallow trenches

so that he could take care
of some of the plumbing problems

that were down there.

Later on, he would have them
spread the lime

to get rid of any of the smell,

and that’s really why they claim
that they were digging.

He was paying them enough money
that, in fact,

he was,
shall I say, attractive to them.

That’s kind of why
they stuck with him.

His two loyal workers,
Cram and Rossi,

they were tough guys,
you know, street smart,

and they were getting property
from young kids

who never-appeared again,

property that these
young victims

had that Gacy
was giving to them.

When we were on the scene,

we saw Officer Rafael Tovar
taking Rossi

in and out of the house.

I asked my cameraman
to get a shot of him

because I was curious.
"Who is this kid?"

As the investigation wore on,

the name Rossi went
from Gacy confidante,

friend,
lover to informant by police.

We went to Mike Rossi’s house

because we wanted
to interview him some more,

and we got there.

His wife told us
he was still at work,

and she invited us to wait
for him, and I asked her,

"What kind of car does he drive?
I’ll look out the window",

and she told us
it’s a white Plymouth.

I says, "Okay, fine."
And a little bit later

while looking through some of
the missing persons reports,

I noticed that John Szyc’s car
was a white Plymouth Satellite.

It was one of the lights
in the cartoons that go on,

I said,
"Darn, that was the same color."

Then talking to Mike Rossi,

we found out that he’d gotten
the car from John Gacy,

so we were able to tie John Szyc
to Gacy in that manner.

John Szyc was not a runaway.
He was a working kid

and somehow or other wound
up on the bad side of Gacy.

I spoke to members
of John Szyc’s family.

They’d been pleading
with Chicago Police

to help them
find their missing son.

Police had come back
to the family and said,

"We have evidence
that he’s alive

and just simply gone."

So for 2 years, that’s all
the family had to go on.

They worked
the John Szyc case,

but they took an easy way out
in closing the case.

Mike Rossi apparently went up
to get gas one day

and did the fill-and-run,
took off without paying.

They had the license
plate number,

so when the report was written,

it got channeled over
to the investigator

that was doing the John Szyc
missing persons report.

Authorities started
to question that.

Gacy assured them,
"Oh, no, no, no, no.

Szyc needed money. I had the car
because he sold it to me,

so he could get money
to leave town."

Gacy tells them,
"John’s not around here.

I haven’t seen him in months.
He ran away."

The police believed
Gacy’s story.

In fact, John Gacy himself
was the one who determined

that John Szyc was a runaway.

The Szyc family provided me
with a letter

from the Chicago
police department

which I quoted
in one of my stories.

"Dear Mr. and Mrs. Szyc,
I was unable to locate your son,

but I did learn that he sold
his auto in February of 1977

and told the buyer that he
needed the money to leave town."

The investigator told
the Szyc family,

"Well, he must be alive.

Maybe he’s just mad at you
or whatever."

So that was how
he closed the case.

I used to have dreams
that I would see him,

and either he would run
the opposite way

or would just ignore me.

So in your head, you’re thinking
that he disappeared because,

for whatever reason, he didn’t
want to be a part of the family.

I didn’t see my brother’s car
again until on the news

when they were at Gacy’s house.

At that point, we’re watching
the news every day.

You see the car,

and then you notice
they mentioned a ring.

With the initials
that were in it,

I already knew that it was his.

So it all started to add up
a little bit.

There were just things
that definitely put him there.

It was just a matter of time.

When the police officer ...
Sorry.

When the police officers
come to tell you

that he was
positively identified,

it sort of, you know,
changes everything in your life

because then you know
he’s not coming home.

You get closure by knowing
it had nothing to do with us.

He got in with the wrong guy
at the wrong time,

and this is what happened.

You never become numb to
the scene of a stretcher carried

by four men
with a white shrouded body

lying on top of it.
I think the one common thread

that runs through
all the interviews

with the families
of the victims is,

"We tried to tell the police.

We tried to tell them,
but they weren’t listening."

As I continue my research,
I’m getting angrier and angrier

as to why somebody
didn’t stop this man

before he started killing
young men and boys in Chicago.

Gacy’s name came up

in some missing person
reports in Chicago,

and Gacy had some kind of
contact with the victims,

whether they were
working for him,

or they went to talk to him
about a job

or whatever it may be.

Gregory Godzik, let’s see,
number four.

Gregory Godzik had come
to work for me in,

according to this, 1976.

He came to us through Taft
High School through a program.

He had worked
for Republic Lumber Company,

and then he came to work for us.

My brother Gregory
was 17 in 1976,

and he was a senior
at Taft High School.

We had a very simple family.

We had dinner together
every night.

Those times were very simple,
very simple life.

Senior year, you had an option
to have a part-time job

but still getting school credit,

and he decided to get a job
at this Republic Lumber making,

I think, $2.25 an hour.
I remember him coming home,

and he said
there was a man that came in.

"His name was Gacy,
and he wants to give me a job,"

making $5 an hour.

If somebody’s dangling $5
an hour cash versus $2.25,

a kid at 17 is going to say,

"Well, I’m going to go
this route versus that route."

He thought Gacy
offered him a future.

It was December 11th,
a Saturday night.

He was supposed to go to Gacy’s
house to pick up a paycheck.

The next morning,
my mother woke up and said,

"Do you know
where your brother is?"

When he’d come home,
he’d give my mother a kiss.

And that night when he did not
come home,

my mother knew
there was something wrong.

My mother felt immediately,
"This isn’t normal.

Your brother’s missing."
She called the Chicago Police.

My mom talked to a couple
of police officers,

and they all said,

"Well, there’s really nothing
we can do.

He has to be gone
at least 72 hours,

but we’ll take the information."

Sunday, they found the car
in a parking lot.

That was his pride
and joy, his car,

and to find it unlocked,
it was so out of character.

My mom told them
where he was working,

but nothing was ever
followed,that we know of.

Gregory Godzik,
who worked for Gacy,

disappeared in December of 1976,

2 years before bodies were
discovered under Gacy’s home.

I talked to Greg Godzik’s
mother, Eugenia,

and she told me she had gone
and confronted Gacy directly.

I talked to him.

I called him up to find out
if my Gregory called,

and he said he did and that
he was going to come to work,

and I says,
"Well, did he ever come?"

and he says, "No."

And I says, "How do you know
it was Gregory?"

And he says because
he had him on his tape,

and I asked him
if he could play it back.

He said, no, he erased it.

My mother had
my brother’s time card.

He says, "Can I have
that time card?"

And my mother said, "No,
I’m going to hold on to this."

I do remember her saying,
"He’s kind of an odd man."

She felt that he probably
could have gave more information

but was too elusive.

He kind of brushed her off.
She felt odd.

Eugenia Godzik told me
that she both confronted Gacy

and went to the police.

Did you ever tell the police

about your conversation
with John Gacy?

Yes, I’m sure I did.

And that was the last
she heard from Gacy,

and she got nowhere
with police either.

Mrs. Godzick was
very convincing

that her son was not a runaway.

But once again, Gacy was able
to convince the police

that he didn’t really have any
further involvement with Godzik.

My father, his mode was:
stay at home, say the rosary,

and my mother kept saying,
"Oh, the hell with that.

I’m going to go
do the footwork."

In the meantime,
I did have at least

two of my girlfriends’ dads
looking into it.

The one that I called
right away,

he was a homicide
police officer.

I remember talking
to my girlfriend, and she said,

"Oh, my dad is always saying
it’s tops on his list."

When the Robert Piest story
broke out 2 years

after my brother
had disappeared,

my mother said, "Oh, my god.

Gacy, that’s the man
that your brother worked for.

This could be it."
Shortly after that,

we got a phone call
from my girlfriend’s dad,

He said,
"There’s a case breaking.

It’s bigger than
you can ever imagine,

and there’s many, many bodies.
Be prepared."

Gregory was 17 years old
when he disappeared 2 years ago.

He had worked part-time for Gacy

and was allegedly last seen with
Gacy the night he disappeared.

Nevertheless, Gregory’s mother
still hopes he’s alive.

I really do want
to believe that.

Gregory said that he was
working around Gacy’s house

digging trenches
around his home,

and eventually it ended up

that they were digging
their own graves.

The 2 years that it took,
there were so many opportunities

for this to end up better
than what it was.

Yes, my brother would’ve
been a victim,

but there would’ve been
so many more young men saved.

I feel sorry for those
other families

that had to go
through the same thing.

Ever family I spoke to said
they were reassured by police

that they were working on it,

but in none of the cases did the
police come up with any answers,

explanations or evidence.

In Chicago,
clout was everything,

and the victims were voiceless
and faceless and cloutless,

young boys and men, hitchhiking,
looking for work,

looking for fun,
being approached

by this roly-poly man
who would promise them money,

promise them jobs
and give them something else.

Gacy never once showed
any type of remorse or regret

in what he did.
He always blamed the kids.

"They did this for money."

Whether it was for a job
or for sex,

whatever,
it was never his fault at all.

I am not the monster image
that’s been portrayed of me,

and the only way you can make
a monster image

is to make it look
like I stalked the streets

and picked up altar boys
off the street.

They want to make them look like
innocent babes in the woods,

and I was swatting them
like flies.

Gacy would tell us
that he had other kids

that he had picked up

and had sexual relations with
but didn’t kill them all.

He had this dark Oldsmobile
with a spotlight on it,

and a lot of people
thought it was a squad car.

A young kid 16, 17,

18 years old some guy pulls
next to him with a squad car,

it looks like,

they’re going to do
what this guy tells him to do.

Once he got in the car
back to his house,

Gacy determined whether
they’re going to live or die.

My encounters were always
by happenchance.

If you pull up to a stoplight,

and there’s somebody standing
there waiting for a bus,

if you give them a ride,
and you ask them whether,

"You get into anything,

or you want drugs
or something like that?"

that’s how it happened,
always happenchance encounters.

I talked to a number
of young men

who had been approached
and propositioned by Gacy.

I talked to some young men
who’d escaped, barely,

the fate of most
of his other victims.

One violent attack took place
just 9 months before bodies

were discovered
in his crawl space.

At the time Robert Piest
went missing,

Gacy was actually out on bond
on a charge of battery.

The victim was Jeffrey Rignall.
He came forth.

We got the information
from Rignall himself.

Jeffrey Rignall
was the love of my life.

Jeff and I were together
for 27 years.

It’s very hard
to find somebody special.

You’ll know when you find one.

And that’s exactly
what Jeff was, a special person.

All the problems started when he
got abducted by John Wayne Gacy.

In 1978, right around the 20th
of March, I got a phone call.

Jeff told me that he was
abducted and almost killed.

Jeff said, "The guy rolled down
the window and said,

’You want to smoke a joint?’"
So Jeff got in the car.

The guy lit the joint up
and passed it to him.

He was a clean-cut
looking man,

and I got in the car with him,

and shortly after
I got in the car with him,

he placed a rag over my face,

of which turned out
to be chloroform.

He was unconscious.

Jeff would wake up every now,
and then he would see something,

but he would only be there
for a split second,

and then the rag
would come over his face.

The next thing he knew, he was
strapped down in a torture wood.

There were chains he said that
were suspended from the ceiling

that held him up in the air.

So he was there being beaten,
being raped, being chloroformed,

drugged,
beaten again constantly.

After the attack, the abductor
drove him back down to the area

that he was picked up at
and left him there half-clothed,

only his pants on
and nothing else.

When I first saw Jeff,
he was distraught.

He was beat up, and he had burns
from chloroform,

had a rope burn.

He was still bleeding
from the backside.

Everything that could go wrong
with your body

seemed to go wrong with him
at this moment.

The police come to the
hospital to interview Rignall,

and his story is very vague,

and he did not know
where the house was

or what it looked like
or anything,

and so it was a very minimalist
police report,

and nothing transpired.

The police assumed that
Jeff’s encounter with Gacy

was a consensual arrangement.

They had no clue of how to treat
a gay rape of any sort

and did not even think
that would be possible,

because they would figure
that all sexual arrangements

between gay people
were consensual,

which is definitely
not the case.

Jeffrey Rignall filed
a report,

but much to the shame
of the police at that time,

they pretty much figured,

"Oh, it was one gay guy
on another one,"

they didn’t really care

because they didn’t do very much
of an investigation,

so Jeffrey decided
he’d do his own investigation.

Jeff thought that that man
could kill somebody.

He figured whatever
he did to him,

he was going to do it
to other people.

That’s why he wanted
to catch him.

As soon as Jeff
got out of the hospital,

we started looking for the car
that picked Jeff up.

He noticed the license plate
because he had to walk around it

in order to get to the car,
and he could hear planes.

So he knew he was out somewhere
in the vicinity of the airport.

Since the police took
the matter very, very lightly,

and I felt that you know
it wasn’t a light matter,

I rented a car and sat where
I thought I was approximately,

waiting for his car to come by.

We went out every day
we could, and then ...

This had been
probably 3, 4 weeks?

Jeff looked up and he said,
"That’s it! That’s the car!"

We saw the car go by,
pulled in right in behind him,

kept a couple car lengths
away from him.

You could see the license plate.

We took the license
plate number,

identified the name
and went back to the police.

They got his picture
and did a photo array,

and he identified Gacy
as the one that done it to him.

They called Jeff and told him
that he was arrested.

And he said, "Good, where is he?
Is he in jail?"

Says, "He’s out on bond."

He was released right away
after posting a minor bond.

Now he’s out probably doing the
same thing that he did to Jeff.

So we tried to get the charges
on Gacy bumped up.

And the State’s Attorney said,
"You can’t bump them up."

After all, it’s just
another butt-fuck."

This grim investigation
at John Gacy’s house

is expected to last for weeks,
and when they finish here,

police plan to search
other sites and drag a river

where Gacy allegedly told them
he disposed of other bodies.

When we all saw the bodies
coming out there,

Jeff just totally freaked out.
He was manic, crazy,

yelling, screaming,
throwing things around.

"See, I told you. I told you.
They never believed me.

I told you.
Why didn’t they believe me?"

He was totally upset.

I thought he was going to just
have a total nervous breakdown

and be done, and eventually,
he did calm down,

and then the next news
had more bodies coming out.

And it just continued that way.

There were all kinds
of victims,

and there was a good percentage

that were absolutely straight,
suburban kids,

and there was certainly
a good percentage

that were either homosexuals
or even homosexual prostitutes.

Gacy told us that
most of his victims,

as long as they didn’t pose
a threat to him,

the vast majority of these
people left, and left unharmed.

The victims who he perceived
to be a threat,

either because of remorse
that they showed

or trying to extort more money

or the threat
of telling neighbors,

he said he would deal with them
usually with the rope trick.

The fact that it appeared
that many of the victims

were gay young men
I think created a stigma.

Gay men in Chicago
back in the ’70s

were still
kind of an underclass,

and I think this might have been
part of the reason

why Gacy was able
to get away with what he did.

I think it affected the way
it was reported

and the way it was treated
by law enforcement.

It was a very difficult thing
to report because I didn’t know

what the parents and family
members of these young men knew.

Investigators tonight believe
that many

if not most
of his alleged victims

were either male prostitutes
or other homosexuals.

They came to him either paid
or looking for a good time

and got more
than they bargained for.

The characterization
of the victims was horrible.

They’re young people
who were entitled

to the rest of their lives

to have something
that they could live for,

and Gacy snuffed
that out completely.

They shouldn’t have been
portrayed like that

because there was no proof.

Robert Piest was a healthy,
athletic young man

who never left home.

His mom was waiting for him
around the corner.

The police went by what they
were being told by Gacy.

They didn’t know
who these people even were.

They had no idea if it was the
senator’s kid or a runaway kid.

The reporters are doing
the same thing.

The police told the reporters,
"Nobody cares about them."

Whether it’s runaways,
whether it’s drug ...

Who cares?
They are still people.

And the Chicago police,
who on many occasions could have

prevented the futures
from happening, did nothing.

I recall reporting
at the time

all of Gacy’s contacts with
the Chicago Police Department.

John Gacy came into contact
with authorities

more than half a dozen times,
allegedly involved in crimes

ranging from kidnapping
to rape and assault.

His name came up in connection
with missing persons.

He was even linked to a theft

committed with the car
of one of his victims.

I remember talking to the police
superintendent at the time,

James O’Grady, and asking him,
"What was going on here?

Why didn’t you see these signs?
Why?

Why did you just kind of dismiss
it and release him every time?"

and he was angry.

He thought that the detectives
did not do their work.

He wouldn’t appear on camera
to talk about it,

but the police superintendent
of the time

was furious with the work
of the detectives

who released Gacy time
after time after time.

That’s where
he’s the scariest.

He’s a person who got involved
with charities,

got involved with politics,

did things that
made him believable.

What’s scary about that is,
someone in your neighborhood,

who you think is a good person,

they might just be another
John Wayne Gacy.

John Wayne Gacy was a master
manipulator.

He manipulated his victims.
He manipulated authorities.

He lived to deceive.
And after his arrest,

a whole new chapter
of Gacy’s deception began.

The day that we arrested him,
Gacy was already thinking

what his defense
was going to be.

He looked up at me, and he said,
"It’s never going to happen."

I says,
"Well, what do you mean?"

And he says, "I’m never gonna
spend a day in jail for this."