All language subtitles for John.Wayne.Gacy.Devil.in.Disguise.S01E04.WEBRip.x264-ION10

A number of ...

What, three
or four psychiatrists

and psychologists
interviewed you?

I had thirteen of them.

There was six for the defense
and seven for the state.

Yeah. What was the ...
The state’s doctor ...

... position of the defense
psychiatrists?

What did they feel
your problem was?

What did they come up with
from the standpoint of ...

Border ...
What the hell is it?

God, I can’t remember offhand.

Borderline personality,
anti-social behavior.

I don’t see how anybody can be
anti-social

when you were involved with
the public as much as I was.

How about the
multiple-personality issue?

Oh, the multiple personality

came out
of Dr. Reifman and Hartman.

These two clowns
from the the Cook County there,

they came to see me
the first time.

I says, "You want to talk to
John Wayne Gacy the politician,

the clown, the family man,
or the businessman?"

The next day
I see it in the newspaper:

"Gacy has four personalities."

Now it was a one-sided
fight.

Man and machine against
the wooden shell

of a 20-year-old bungalow.

As the roof and walls shattered,
reporters and neighbors

became witness to what Sheriff’s
Investigators had been probing

since a few days
before Christmas.

The stark frame covering
to a mass grave.

If you look closely,

you’ll see fluorescent orange
markings on the cement walls

that surround the crawl space,
now open to the rain.

Each marking indicates the spot
where a body was disinterred.

Bulldozers have finished
clearing what was once

the crawl space of the home.
But ironically,

one boy whose body was not found
on the Gacy property

led to the investigation:
young Robert Piest.

We didn’t even
have the body yet.

Robert Piest's body
was still missing.

Even though we thought it was in
the river, it was frozen over.

The undercurrent
was so tough.

There was ice
all over the place.

There was nothing to tell us
where to look in the river,

whether it was near
the bridge still

or whether it was all the way
to the Mississippi.

There was nothing we could do

but wait
until somebody found a body.

There were in total 29 bodies
which came out of that house,

and three more were pulled
from the river,

but 4 months
after his disappearance,

Rob Piest was
still unaccounted for.

Then another body was found
downriver from the I-55 bridge.

The body of the 33rd
suspected victim

of John Wayne Gacy
was taken to the Cook County

morgue.

From what I heard, it was
challenging to identify the body

because of the lapse of time

and the condition of him
being in the water.

A team of dental experts
from Cook and Will County

have identified
the male white body

recovered from
the Illinois River

this afternoon
as that of missing Des Plaines

youth 15-year-old Robert Piest.

We had the last link,
the 33rd body,

but it was also terrible sorrow
because I had become

so close with the family
that it was just heart-wrenching

even to tell them
that the body had been found.

Rob Piest’s family
was a very wonderful family,

and I think everybody who worked
on the stories heart

goes out to them because of what
they went through,

but I think it was his brother
who said,

"Rob wanted to do something big,
and if his disappearance

and the investigation
of his disappearance

led to stopping this mad man
from killing anyone else,

Rob would have accomplished
what he wanted to."

We really feel that what
happened was worthwhile

from the point that it hopefully
put an end to something,

and now we’re gonna

try to continue
what he couldn’t finish,

and hopefully, nothing
will happen like this again.

I think I took it back
to the courthouse

and was just more determined

that this guy was not about
to get off scot-free.

This family was on my list
for whom I had to work for.

In his confession,

Gacy admitted
killing the young men

after having sex with them,
then burying

most of the bodies
under his house.

Gacy told authorities
where these bodies were buried.

Gacy told authorities exactly
who, why, where he found them,

a wealth of information,
in fact most of the information,

since the victims
couldn’t speak for themselves

and their families
really didn’t know

for the most part anything
about John Wayne Gacy.

We had to find out
from Gacy himself.

And it was Gacy’s conversations,

confessions to law-enforcement
authorities

that enabled us to find out
exactly what happened.

Though it was also
very difficult to know

when to believe
anything John Gacy said.

I think one of headlines said

that I was
a homosexual mass murderer,

confessed mass murderer.

There is no confession,
and we offered ...

I offered as much as $10,000
if you can produce a confession

where I confessed to a crime.

The time that I was interrogated
by the police officers,

there was no stenographer.

There was no tape recording.
There was no videotaping.

Nothing was ever taken down.
Yet everywhere you will see,

"There’s five confessions
by John Wayne Gacy."

If I confessed to something,
then why wasn’t it videotaped?

Why wasn’t it recorded?

Why wasn’t a stenographer
brought in,

had it written up
and had me sign it?

There is no confessions
in this case.

First of all, it doesn’t
have to be recorded.

It’s nice if they allow it.
He wouldn’t allow it.

It’s even nicer if they allow it
to be printed and then sign it,

and he wouldn’t do that either.

So what you have is
a pure oral statement

witnessed by a number
of police officers,

having written numerous
and lengthy police reports

with word-for-word documentation
of what he said.

Gacy confessed at least
three times,

but so every time,
it was something different.

He just kept trying
to muddy the water.

Gacy’s confessions were
a result of various meetings.

And Gacy’s story about
what happened would change.

He was like a chameleon.

He would say one thing,
and then the color would change.

He would say something else
at another meeting.

You have to know my brother
as my brother

and not the criminal
to understand

that he was like
two different people.

What sane person goes out
and does something like this

and then talks about it
and confesses to it,

then says he didn’t
confess to it?

There are no clear answers
to anything about this case.

It’s totally mind-boggling.

It’d be kind of like
a Rubik’s Cube,

and you’re trying to get
all the numbers together,

and one just doesn’t want to go.
And that’s how this is.

Some of it just doesn’t
make any sense at all.

I don’t think it was something
he was born with.

I think something happened
to him to have done this.

But I just can’t figure out
how he could be

so smart and intelligent
and then so evil.

The judge did rule today
that Gacy confessed voluntarily

and that Des Plaines police
had sufficient reason

to arrest him
when they picked him up.

Both sides agree that there
could be mountains of paperwork

before the trial begins.

Well, it was a huge case

for the Cook County State’s
Attorney’s Office.

We had the largest mass murderer

in the history
of the United States,

and there was no doubt
that the orders to be

were going to be that the death
penalty should be sought.

Sam Amirante,
Gacy’s attorney,

who took Gacy on right
after entering private practice,

he was a political animal.

And the publicity wasn’t going
to hurt his beginning practice.

It’s a tragic day

in the American criminal
justice system,

in the American system
of justice, period,

when a man cannot be brought
into court to face his charges

because of publicity
or security reasons

or any reason whatsoever.

He was going to find any,

anything that could try
and interfere with the case

or anything that was beneficial
to his client.

Some people would say,
"You got 33 bodies.

There’s no way
you can lose it, is there?"

And there were others
that made me think, not twice,

but 100,000 times about
how we could lose it.

The state’s attorney asked me
to handle the case.

Very early on,

we have to start thinking
about an insanity defense.

The evening that Gacy
was under arrest

and made his oral statements,
his lawyers show up.

Now, he had already
made one statement

without the lawyers
being present.

They, of course, haul him off
and talk to him.

So now he makes

a series of statements
with his attorneys present.

We got into
the Piest discussion.

At this time, then he told us
that he took the body,

slept with the body overnight,
and we asked if ...

"Did you have sex with" ...

He says, "I didn’t,
but Jack might have."

While Gacy was drawing
his diagram,

I kept asking questions,

and I was writing down
everything he was saying.

And when he was finished,
he kind of looked at it

and said, "Jack drew this."

And I said, "Who’s Jack?"
He said, "Jack Hanley."

He starts talking about
the killer being Jack Hanley.

And he would talk about
Jack Hanley killing these kids.

He’s trying to inject
a multiple-personality disorder

into his insanity defense.

Manipulating, conning,
what he always does.

During one of the search
warrants that I wrote,

a book was found
in Gacy’s attic.

It was a book on criminal law
and procedure.

And I was told that the chapter
on insanity defenses

was bookmarked.

So it dawned on me later,
I was probably being exploited

so he could get it
into evidence,

he was perhaps schizophrenic

or had some mental disease
or defect.

And what better way to put
an insanity defense out there

than by making a statement

and having some kid
like me write every word

that he was saying down.
And then I’m going to testify.

And I put his defense
in for him.

Gacy's lawyers claim he is
a hopelessly sick madman

who collected bodies and should
be hospitalized for life.

Prosecutors claim Gacy
is a rational man

who methodically
planned the murders

and should be sentenced
to death.

What I did not know about
the insanity defense

is that in the state
of Illinois,

when you plead not guilty
by reason of insanity,

you’re saying
that you committed the crime

but that you were insane
at the time.

So it’s not a question
of innocence or guilt anymore.

What they’re trying to do is,
your whole trial now

becomes an insanity trial

where you’re to decide whether
a person is sane or insane.

If somebody killed 33 people
and buried 29 of them

under his house,
you have to be crazy.

So that was a given going in.

And our job was going to be
to show them the difference

between crazy
and legally responsible.

When you’re preparing
for a case like this,

you’re there early
in the morning,

and it’s pretty dark
by the time you leave,

no matter what season it is.

But you can look outside,
and the seasons are passing.

But you’ve lost all track
of what season it is

or whether you could be
going to a baseball game

or whether you should be skiing
or anything like that.

It’s a time warp.

John Wayne Gacy went
on trial today in Chicago,

charged with the sex murders
of 33 young men and boys.

Some relatives of the 22
identified victims

were in court
for the opening statement.

My mom and my dad and I,
all three of us went,

and my mother
would go on the news

as often as she could to prove
that these kids

were innocent young kids
that didn’t deserve to die.

If he can kill
all those children,

he should be dead too.

If the childrens’ life
didn’t mean anything to him,

his life shouldn’t mean
anything to this society,

and that’s just
how I feel for everybody.

She believed that she had to
be there

to stand up for my brother

because there were a lot
of parents that didn’t come,

but there were a small group.
We came every day.

At the time of the trial,
I was working at a bank.

And back in those days,

the banks were closed
on Wednesdays.

And so every Wednesday,
I was at the trial.

It was very emotional,
people sobbing,

Most of them were parents,
and here they’re sitting there

listening to testimony
on how their child got killed.

It’s nothing anybody
wants to hear.

One witness fainted on the
stand when the prosecution team

showed her a bracelet belonging
to her son.

You have 2 years
to prepare for this,

but I had no clue

that we had to go
on the stand and identify Gacy.

That was very eerie to me,
and my dad,

the day that he had to get up
on the stand,

my father kept crying.

And my mother kept saying,
"Buck up. You can do this."

And that was the first
or the second day.

My dad never went again
after that.

Early on, we were using
this big exhibit

with three-sided frames

to put all the life
and death photos

in while the victim’s parents
or whatever were testifying.

And after we did five or six
of them, the defense objected.

And the judge said, "All right.
Here’s the rule.

State, if you’re talking about
a particular victim,

and you want to use that board,

you can have that victim’s photo
in the board but none others.

When you get to closing
arguments,

you can do whatever you want."
Fine, Judge.

So when we finished, we now have
a board with 22 empty frames.

It looked to me
like 22 open graves.

There were were some victims
who were still not identified.

We went to trial
on all 33 murders,

22 being identified at the time
that we went to trial.

But some were nameless.

We also had the crawl-space
opening sawed out

so we could use it
as an exhibit in court.

It became one my biggest tools,

having that crawl-space
opening available as an exhibit.

John Gacy sat erect
in his chair today,

showing no apparent emotion
as the prosecution team

continued to call parents
of the alleged victims.

They were naming
all the victims.

Their pictures were there,
and they were going through

and putting a name
to a face for the jury.

And when they got to my brother,

Gacy just kind of smirked
and chuckled.

It’s like,
he was silent the whole time,

but with my brother, he laughed.

It was very difficult
to look at him,

but I remember seeing him
sitting over there,

and I kept thinking,

"Boy, you really fooled
so many people."

I think he thought
he would never be caught.

Police told the court Gacy
became friendly

with a police-surveillance team

that trailed him
as part of the investigation

into the disappearance
of 15-year-old Robert Piest.

Gacy and I had
this relationship

from the surveillance.

When you’re there
and you’re testifying,

you’re impacted
by what you’re saying,

and you’re seeing the reaction
of this jury,

which affects you too

because you’re answering
your questions honestly,

and when you're describing
in detail what John Gacy did,

you can see their reaction.

One by one, the witnesses
described how they found

the remains of the victims,
some buried on top of others,

many with a piece of cloth
in the mouth

and some with ropes
tied around the necks.

We did learn
that at the trial,

Gacy would do different things
to the boys,

and one of the things they said

that he would do this trick
with cuffs.

And I know it came out
that he did something

with my brother’s arms,
put cuffs on him or something,

and then he would put something
on them, so they would pass out.

Gacy could’ve had two
personalities, but I don’t care.

Let’s put it this way.

I believe somebody has to be
insane to do what he did,

but that’s too bad.
You still killed 33 victims.

And I don’t care if you were
insane or not, he was wrong.

He was wrong
to destroy 33 families.

What’s going on?

[ Chatter ]

It was becoming
a media frenzy

for finding anything
relating to it.

The "Chicago Tribune"
was the first to track me down.

And they interviewed me
at the time.

I believe the police read
the the story in the "Tribune"

and brought me in
for questioning.

And at some point, they told me
that they would like me

to testify
as a prosecution witness.

The victims who survived
their encounters with Gacy

became a crucial piece
of the case against him.

And they described
indescribable events.

I came out, sat in,
got sworn in, did what I did.

My testimony was that
one time in 1976,

John came over in the evening.

I was closer to 17
at that point.

He knew my parents weren’t home.

And it was about 10:30 at night.
He said he had some stag films.

That’s what they
called them then.

And it was on a ...

He had a little projector
with him.

He brought that in,
and he set that up.

And then something he did ...

He knew I was a high school
wrestler, so he said,

"Hey,
come on, big wrestler guy."

He started wrestling
around with me.

And at one point he gets
a handcuff on one of my wrists.

I fought valiantly,

but he did get
my other wrist in a handcuff.

And he knocked me
down to the floor.

He unbuttoned my pants and
pulled them down a little bit,

but not my underwear,
and then he left the room.

And because I was fighting

when he was trying
to get that second cuff on me,

I noticed that
it wasn’t very tight.

So I was able to pull my hand,
quite painfully, to get it.

I actually got out of the cuff,

and he came back into the room
a couple minutes later.

And I hit him with a double-leg
takedown, a wrestling move,

and just dropped him
right to the floor.

I kept my weight on his back
to keep him down.

And I reached in his pocket,

and I got the key
to the handcuffs,

and I got his arms behind him,
handcuffed him.

And he’s laying facedown
on the floor,

handcuffed behind his back.

I let him stay there
for a little while

and made sure he calmed down.
And then I unhandcuffed him,

and to be perfectly
honest with you,

I think I freaked him
out a little bit.

And then he said
a very unique thing.

He said, and I’ll quote.
He goes,

"You’re the only one that not
only got out of the handcuffs.

You got them on me."

Maybe part of my calm response
to it was that at that point,

I had a very optimistic
view of humanity.

He could’ve done something
to overpower me

and continue on, but he didn’t.

And I thank God
for that, certainly.

He gets this in his mind
to do this,

and he’s going to rape you
and kill you

and all these kind of things.

And then something happens
that snaps him back

to the more normal personality.

I suppose in retrospect,
getting out of the handcuffs,

the first thing I should’ve done
is just run like hell.

A lot of the early witnesses
had already testified

by the time I got there
on 25th of February,

and I was about to testify
against a guy

who, once upon a time,
was one of my closest friends.

The young man who was scheduled
to testify before me

was a kid from Waterloo
that Gacy had molested.

Donald was in
the same hotel I was.

He was literally right
across the hall from me,

and I saw him sitting out there,
waiting to testify,

and I knew immediately
that he was just blind drunk,

just blind drunk
and on the edge of hysteria.

I knew he had been
drunk the night before

because I found him knocking on
my door at 3:30 in the morning.

He was sitting out there
in the hallway at the hotel,

crying like a baby.
He didn't want to be there.

He didn't want
to talk about this.

The witness appeared
unable to answer

even the simplest questions.

Judge Garippo finally
dismissed the witness

and ordered the jury
to disregard what he had said.

The judge did the right thing
by excusing him

because he was a survivor
but not a complete survivor.

I have a feeling his life
was just ...

It was an ongoing
Gacy nightmare.

After we got out of prison
in the summer of ’70,

I never physically
laid eyes on John again

until I testified
against him in 1980.

They brought me in
to testify for two reasons.

Number one, I knew John Gacy,
and I knew him well.

But, number two, I was already
a recognized expert

in criminal justice by then.

I’d been working
for the state for 8 years,

dealing with prison inmates
every day.

By then, I knew
about those 33 bodies.

For several years,
I had a recurring nightmare

that a knock
would come on my door

in the middle of the night,

and I’d open the door,
and it would be John Gacy,

who’d whip a cord around my neck
and start to strangle me.

I got on the witness stand,
and John is sitting there,

looking at me the whole time.

John’s sitting there,
staring at me.

And I’m looking
right back at him

because that’s how you deal
with that kind of thing.

If you have to face fear,
the best way to deal with fear

is to grab it and hold it until
it’s not scary anymore.

After I got off
the witness stand,

I did what I think
every grown man would like

to be able to do now and then.
I went home to see my mother.

And I vividly remember saying to
her that he looked so ordinary.

And my mother looked me
in the eye and she said,

"Who ever told you
the devil was ugly?"

John, how about Tim McCoy,
the last one of the five

you say
you had personal knowledge of?

Tim McCoy, even though
he’s the last one,

he’s the first one.

He’s the first one actually?
Right.

The first of the 33?

Tim McCoy was the first one,

and Tim McCoy’s name
wasn’t put on him until 1988.

Prior to that, he was known
as unknown number nine.

Uh-huh.

And he was buried by me
in the crawl space.

Uh-huh.

That’s the only knowledge
that I have of it.

What was the circumstances
of that?

He was killed in the house
in self-defense.

And who killed him then?
I stabbed him.

Yeah, and it was ...
Initially, it was self-defense?

Why? Was he in the process
of assaulting you or what?

He was coming at me
with a knife.

Mm-hmm.

I just took the knife away
and twisted it in his hand,

and that is what killed him.
So ...

At that point,

you yourself did bury him
then in the crawl space?

Right, and if you notice,
he’s under concrete.

Did you bury any of
the others in the crawl space?

No. I had nothing ...
I had no knowledge of them.

Well, why is it
that your first one is there

and then twentysome others
are buried down there as well?

Did somebody know that you had
done this with the first one,

giving them the idea?

More than likely
when drinking

and getting high
with the others, yeah.

Admitting it to them.

So you feel others
then followed your suit

in using this
as a burial ground?

Without a doubt.
Yeah.

Since the beginning,
there has been speculation

that Gacy had an accomplice,
and today for the first time,

it was revealed
that Gacy told a psychiatrist

that someone besides himself
knew the dead bodies

were buried under the house.

At the beginning,
authorities were very,

very interested in others
who might have been accomplices,

procurers or enablers
or assistants.

Michael Rossi and David Cram
would dig trenches down

in the crawl space.
And Gacy did say that these boys

should’ve have known
what they were doing.

He told them not to dig
in a certain area.

That certain area was where
Gacy had buried a body,

and Gacy said he became very,
very angry with them

for getting too close
to that area.

John Gacy was a liar,
so anything he said,

you had to take
with a grain of salt.

The investigators' gut
feeling was that

they might’ve been knowing a lot
more than they were letting on,

but they grilled them
constantly.

They corroborated things,
and the bottom line was,

no, they wound up
as state witnesses.

They were the ones
who could put the description

of the crawl space.

They’re the ones who could say,
"Yes, this is what we did,

and we did it
because he paid us to do it.

This is why we dug the trenches.

This is why we put
the lime on there,"

and those are important things
to get before a jury.

And we just thought
it outweighed any doubt

that they may give the jury

that they weren’t telling
the truth about that.

When those two young men,
Michael Rossi and David Cram,

wound up testifying
against Gacy,

Vivian Rosenberg was
our reporter at the trial.

She covered it.

David Cram, 22, today’s star
witness was a favorite

and steady employee of John Gacy
who lived with him for a month.

It was when Cram demonstrated
how he kneeled to dig

two trenches
in Gacy’s crawl space

that some jurors stood up
for a better look.

In the center
of the courtroom floor,

the crawl-space entrance,
taken from Gacy’s home.

Cram spoke of the dirt mounds

sitting nearby as he dug
for 4 or 5 hours.

He thought it was
a plumbing project.

Cram was able to talk about
conversations with Gacy

and that he knew
where he wanted things dug.

All of that goes toward
showing that

somebody was doing something
sane at that time.

In later testimony,
Cram took the Fifth Amendment

several times as both defense
and prosecution asked him

if he ever had sex
with John Gacy.

The defendant kept his eyes on
the youth all the time, smiling.

Witness number two,
Michael Rossi,

was called late
Tuesday afternoon.

He said he moved in
with John Gacy

when David Cram moved out.

He said Gacy ordered him to pour
hundreds of pounds of lime

in the crawl space to get rid of
what Gacy called the foul odor.

Rossi and Gacy seemed to have

kind
of a father-son relationship,

and later I found out
police documented

Rossi admitting to a sexual
relationship with Gacy,

but Rossi then denied it
on the stand.

Rossi denied that he had
any involvement

with the murders.

I didn’t necessarily believe
Rossi from the get-go.

But he lawyered up right away.

He was not cooperative
with us at any time,

to be honest with you.
And it took quite a while

to convince his side
that he should testify.

Rossi's legal representation
alone

was a newsworthy part
of his courtroom appearance.

Rossi was accompanied
into court

by former Cook County State’s
Attorney Ed Hanrahan.

Ed Hanrahan was a former
Cook County State’s Attorney

who was a prominent name
in the Democratic party.

I thought that it was odd.

It would seem like a kid
from the northwest side

to get one of
the most prominent names

in the legal circles in Chicago
as his attorney was unusual.

There wasn’t a whole lot in
the press about Michael Rossi,

other than he was the owner
of my brother’s car.

Then he shows up to court with
the best lawyer money can buy.

Rossi was involved
in a slip-up Gacy made,

taking victim John Szyc’s car

and transferring the title
over to Rossi.

I never heard
the name Mike Rossi.

It wasn’t like he was a friend
of my brother’s or anything,

so it’s like, "Well, why does
this guy have my brother’s car?"

It just didn’t make sense.
If he bought the car from him,

he should have at least
known him a little bit.

The car was supposedly
sold to Gacy.

Gacy then sold the car
to Mike Rossi,

so that would’ve, quote,

explained how Mike Rossi
had no clue who my brother was.

Michael Rossi was driving

the car
of one of Gacy’s victims,

and Gacy said
that he told the young man,

"The last owner
of this car is dead."

I just want to highlight
on John Szyc.

They want to make such an issue
over John Szyc

and his disappearance.

I think he was killed
for his car, personally.

And your personal knowledge
of the Szyc case, then, is ...

My personal knowledge
of the Szyc case

is that I had come home,

and Szyc and Rossi
were at the house.

I had a few drinks.
I went to bed.

Went I woke up the next morning,
Rossi was sleeping on the couch,

and Szyc was dead on the floor.

I went about my own business,
and he was gone later on.

And where did he go?
Where did he end up?

I assume he ended up
in the crawl space.

Did you see him being
transported down there?

No, wasn’t present,
didn’t do the transporting.

But when he was dead,
he was dead on the floor?

He was dead on the floor,
yes, in the hallway.

Did you have a conversation
with anybody about that?

No. In other words,
I just kept my mouth shut

because
I didn’t want to get involved.

Mm-hmm.

My idea was to just
stay out of it.

Mm-hmm.

John Wayne Gacy was
a pathological liar.

If Rossi and Cram
were involved in the murders,

then Gacy would’ve told us
that up front

if he thought it would help him.
Both of them denied

being part of the scheme
to kill or bury bodies.

But I would have to think
that they had reason to suspect

they were
in the presence of evil

and doing something
that they shouldn’t be doing.

I suspect that they knew
more than they were letting on.

I think Gacy killed them.
There’s no doubt there.

I’m not questioning that.

But I think he had assistance
in burying them.

He could barely fit down
there himself.

If he had to have somebody else
dig the hole for him,

how is he burying
the body by himself?

He would have just dug
the hole himself,

and nobody would’ve known.

So the stories
don’t all connect.

The stories don’t all connect.

The state has rested its case
in the trial

of alleged mass murderer
John Wayne Gacy.

John Gacy’s attorneys
began their defense

and their first witness

was an alleged Gacy victim,
Jeff Rignall.

Rignall told the court
that he met John Gacy

March 21st, 1978.

He said that Gacy
offered him marijuana

and then drugged him
by placing a rag over his face.

So Rignall comes in,

and he’s going to be a witness
for the prosecution,

one of our living victims.

I don’t know if
he’d mentioned it

or someone had told me

that there was a book
in the offing.

I said Jeff,

I’m not going to have
the defense cross-examining you

out of something that you said
in your book that’s different

from what you say on the stand,

and regardless of which
is correct,

there’s just no reason for that.

That’s your decision, but I’m
just telling you up front.

If you put a book out,

you’re not going to be
my witness, end of story.

"Oh, yeah. I understand.
I understand."

Of course, he puts the book out.

So I said,
"We’re not putting you on."

Jeff wanted to testify
for the prosecution,

but when he found out that
they weren’t going to call him,

he was very upset.

And when he found out
that the defense would call him,

he decided he would
definitely testify

so he could get the story out.

It was so unbelievable
that I blotted it out

and found it hard to believe
myself that it happened to me,

and that's why I persisted
on my own

in finding the man
who had done this to me,

even though the police
refused to acknowledge

or believe anything
that I told them.

Rignall said that he woke up
in Gacy’s house

with the suburban contractor

standing behind a bar
mixing a drink.

Rignall said that he was
in a semiconscious state,

but he heard John Gacy say,

"I’d just as soon kill you
as look at you."

The defense thought Jeff
was a perfect witness

because all along, he said,
"That man had to be crazy

in order to do
these horrific deeds to people."

Rignall described how Gacy
stretched his arms

across a two-by-four
as he performed

various deviant acts
before chloroforming him

once again
and dumping him in a city park.

When Jeff was testifying,
he could get through part of it,

and he would just nervously
almost collapse.

He started to describe that,
"He handcuffed me,

chloroformed me,
poked me, beat me."

He got so upset describing
things that he threw up

all over the courthouse.
And they had to close

the courthouse
down in order to clean it up.

Rignall collapsed
on the witness stand,

and deputies hurried him
out of the courtroom.

And he was able to proceed
with his testimony after that.

On the stand today, after
Judge Garippo called a recess,

Rignall revealed something that
he did not say in our interview.

He told the court a third person
was in the Gacy house

the night he says he was raped,
and he said it appeared

to be a man with light hair
parted in the middle.

Where Jeff was
being tortured,

there was a doorway behind him.

And it had a glass-type
partition window in it.

He could tell that there was
a light that switched on

because it was darker

and then all of a sudden
a little bit lighter.

Jeff thought, "Maybe there’s
somebody else in here."

And then he got beat up
and chloroformed,

and the light was gone.

Jeff testified that
he thought he came to

while he was being molested

and that there was another
person giving him oral sex,

with kind of a light hair
parted in the center.

By my medical records
and by my doctors.

we feel that I was abused
by more than one person.

I kind of find it hard

to see that Gacy
did all that by himself.

The defense established today

that the man accused of 33
murders had a stormy childhood.

His mother, Mrs. Marion Gacy,
testified on her son’s behalf.

My mom testified first.

She wasn’t a well person, always
had to use a cane or a walker.

She said that John was
a sleepwalker

when he was only 3 years old,

and a grammar school
teacher recommended

that he be transferred
to a special school

for what she called
disabled kids.

She said that he was
hospitalized

3 weeks with a head injury.

He worked at a grocery store.

He fell down
three flights of stairs,

and he had hit his head,

and then he started having
episodes with passing out.

John, let’s step back
to your childhood.

What was your state of health
as a child?

At the age of 10, I was told

I had an enlarged
bottle-neck heart, okay?

And so I had a tendency
to pass out a lot.

How about
childhood illnesses,

did you have any ...
I mean accidents, rather,

any sort of injuries
or accidents?

I was hit with a ...

When I went to
the other vocational school,

when I first went to
the vocational school,

I got hit with a park swing

in the side of the head,
caused a mastoid.

At what age was that,
approximately?

Fourteen, I believe.

Got hit with a swing,
were you out, unconscious?

Yeah.
I was taken to a medical clinic.

Mm-hmm.

That was at the time ...

That’s when they started saying
that I had epilepsy.

Did you have any episodes ...
Seizures?

Seizures, things
of that nature?

Yes. Seizures were,
according to the doctor,

they claimed that when I have
an epileptic seizure,

I had 800 times my own strength,
or 800 pounds of strength.

Gacy’s mother said that Gacy
passed out all of the time

and had to be put
in a straitjacket one day

when he became violent.
Spectators in the courtroom

showed what appeared
to be sympathy for the woman

when told the court that her
husband was a mean, abusive man.

I kind of look back because
we always called

my dad Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

When he’d go downstairs
and drink,

he always came up
as another person.

He would be angry and upset
about something.

And no matter what we said
or did, he would blow up.

Have you ever been
sexually abused by anybody?

At the age of 9, there was
a contractor who was ...

Building contractor?
...

building a house next door,
and he used to pick me up

and take me for rides

and always wanted
to show me wrestling holds,

was always pinning my head
in between his legs.

But at the time,
I did not look at it as sexual.

He was showing me
wrestling holds where my head

was always constantly pinned

between his legs
or under his legs.

The guy was
in our neighborhood

probably for over a year.

And my dad
and him became friends.

And sooner or later
the guy asked

if he could take John
to go to the movies,

and it surprises me
that my dad would have said,

"Yeah, that’s okay."

But I remember my dad
being extremely mad

and talking about his gun.

He had a little pistol, and that
he was going to shoot this guy.

And then as I got older,
I had asked my mom about it.

My mom said,
"Well, when John was younger,

this guy did something to him.

And it made Dad
want to kill the guy."

I began to wonder,
"Was that the start

of something that had happened
to him?

Did he then think
he had to be this person?"

What the defense was trying
to do was to show

that he had been abused

and that that was the cause
of his insanity.

I felt very sorry
for the mother.

Later she broke down
and cried,

saying "I still don’t believe
any of it.

I’d just like
to erase everything."

When she was finished,
I testified.

You walk out there, and you get
in the witness thing,

and after they swear you in,
you sit down,

and some of the questions
and stuff

were really about his childhood,

about, how did I see his
childhood and him growing up?

Asking about
if I had noticed changes.

I still lean toward
something happened,

and somehow,
he had two personalities.

There’s got to be two sides.
But why?

Why all of a sudden such
a big difference in character?

Did the knocks in his head,
falling down the stairs,

was it more than just
a little blood clot?

If you wanted
a character witness,

I guess I was
a character witness.

But you have all these eyes
on you, all these parents,

siblings, looking at you.
All we wanted to do was,

we wanted to apologize
to the families.

We wanted them to know that
their hurt was our hurt too.

The defense has rested
its case in the trial

of accused mass murderer
John Wayne Gacy,

this coming after another day
of psychiatric testimony.

In the end, the trial
was basically

was competing psychiatrist
evaluations of Gacy.

On the one hand, you had those
who said he was absolutely sane

and responsible for his actions.

On the other, they said
that there was no way

someone who was sane
could do what he did.

If you have one,
two or three psychiatrists

that are willing to say that,

"I find that someone had
a disease that made him insane

at a certain time,

but he could in fact act normal
during the other times,"

it’s hard to contradict
that expert.

I was very worried that
we would not meet our burden

of beyond a reasonable doubt,

and he may be found not guilty
or you may get a hung jury.

Let’s not forget serial
killers are pretty smart people.

He was the kind of guy that
would be totally honest with you

if he knew you already knew
or were going to find out.

After he was charged
with murder,

I drove him from the Des Plaines
Police Station

to the Cook County Jail.

On the way there, "John,"
I says,

"How many people
did you really kill?"

He says, "Well, I told
my attorneys 30-some-odd."

He says, "You guys know about,
what, 33?"

I says, "Yeah. Are there more?"
He says, "Well, you know what?"

He says, "Forty-five sounds
like a good number."

I said, "Well, where are they?"

He said, "No. That’s your job.
You got to find out."

We had 33, so that would mean
obviously there’s 12 more

somewhere.