Original subtitles

[haunting music]

[typewriter keys clacking]

- I was working at the station that morning,

and our receptionist out front brought his letter

back to the newsroom, gave it to me.

The letter says, and this is a quote,

"How many more people do I have to kill

before I get my name in the paper?"

That's a quote that you don't forget.

[dramatic music]

[ominous music]

- Five of the most prolific serial killers

in American history were all operating at the same time.

- [Reporter] John Wayne Gacy's criminal...

- [Reporter 2] Ted Bundy is still alive...

- [Reporter 3] BTK might - [Reporter 4] Jeffrey Dahmer.

- [Reporter 5] The so-called Green River Killer

- [Detective] This was the golden age of serial killers.

[ominous music]

- What sets this group of men apart is

that they come across as being fairly normal.

- [Detective] John Wayne Gacy would hire young men

from the Chicago community.

He's searching for victims.

- My brother says, "Me and this boy are working together,

and we're digging around Gacy's house."

Well, it ended up, they were digging their own graves.

[dark music]

- [Woman] Police were unable to connect Gacy

to these crimes.

[dramatic music]

- [Detective] Rader had left a book

in the library, and inside that book was a letter.

- He wants to give himself a brand,

and he says, my name is BTK

for bind, torture, and kill.

- And now he just needs to take it up a notch

and make it an even riskier behavior.

[dramatic music]

- [Newsman] Convicted Utah kidnapper

Theodore Bundy has escaped.

- [Woman] It made the county look really dumb

that he could jump out of a window and escape.

- With guys like Bundy, you have a success

and then another, and then another.

And pretty soon, you start to believe you're invincible.

[tense music]

- Serial killers like Bundy, Gacy, and Rader

would get this additional thrill

from this cat-and-mouse game

that they're playing with law enforcement.

So they're committing murder.

They're committing rape,

these vicious crimes that have this power dynamic.

And then they're getting an extra boost of power dynamic

by being able to

mess with the minds of law enforcement.

- [Reporter] Streets of Aspen are safe again.

Suspected multiple murderer Theodore Bundy is

back in custody after an absence of nearly seven days.

[tense music]

- After his first escape in Aspen,

I visited him in the jail in Glenwood.

And that's a more modern jail.

And supposedly a more secure jail.

I noticed when I was visiting him there

that Ted, who was never heavy,

had lost a lot of weight, lots.

- He was not eating much, working out,

and working on losing weight.

- He found out that the ventilation system

in his jail cell was just a 12-inch grate.

- That opening led into the second floor,

where the jailer lived.

His plan was that when he was certain the jailer was out,

he would climb up that opening in the ceiling,

get into the jailer's apartment and then escape,

which is exactly what he did.

- [Reporter] Clever convict crawled

through the ceiling of his cell and escaped again.

- [Newscaster] Bordered on a Houdini escapade.

Ground units, helicopters and dogs

have been searching for Bundy.

- The search reaches all over the West right now.

It's gonna be a long time

before Theodore Bundy is behind bars again.

- I helped send him health food.

I helped get him a telephone in his cell.

If I hadn't have helped him get skinny,

unbeknownst to me, well, he probably wouldn't have fit

through that 12-inch square.

I've always felt bad about some of the things I did.

But as a defense lawyer, I did what I'm supposed to do.

So Ted's in Ann Arbor, Michigan,

before they announce he's escaped.

[TV sportscaster talking]

He was in the bar watching the Rose Bowl

when the ticker thing came across the thing.

It said Ted Bundy just escaped.

[somber music]

- Back in the 1970s, you did not have to show ID

when you bought a ticket.

You didn't have to go through any kind

of security checks at the airports.

You could get on trains and planes and buses.

And he immediately went to places

where the publicity about him wasn't as pervasive.

We knew there would be a bad ending,

and we did everything we could to help law enforcement

throughout the country know

that there was a killer on the loose.

But it doesn't get to everybody.

And it doesn't really get to Florida, where he ends up.

- When crime started to stretch across state lines,

law enforcement was at a real disadvantage

'cause we just didn't have that ability

to communicate with anything other than actually

having to make a phone call or with the teletype system.

So it's really an antiquated way of communicating.

- The only news you got back

in that day was at six o'clock.

So nobody on the East Coast knew who Bundy was.

As far as what was going on on the West Coast,

back in the 70s, they might as well have been

on another planet as far as I was concerned.

[dark music]

- I was home and sleeping with my family.

My phone rang.

They said, "Sheriff, we've got murders and injuries

at the Chi Omega house at the Florida State campus."

I said, "I'll be there."

[siren whaling]

When we arrived at the scene,

one of the women was being rolled out on a stretcher.

As I stood there, I said a prayer for her.

I didn't know if she was alive

or seriously injured at the time.

- [Reporter] Police say he simply walked in

through an unlocked door.

They say he was armed with a heavy oak log.

[suspenseful music]

- He went from one room, beat, badly, one victim,

crushing the skull, dislocating the teeth,

breaking the jaw.

He left that room and went to another room.

The same thing occurred.

And then the third room,

where there were two young ladies.

He was beating on one

as the other one was waking up from the noise,

turned to her and then was beating on her.

[suspenseful music]

And when he knew he needed to get out,

he went down the stairway.

But little did he know,

one young lady was coming in that night.

She saw a side view of him.

[dramatic music]

- [Reporter] He clubbed and then strangled to death

20-year-old Lisa Levy and 21-year-old Margaret Bowman.

At least one of them was raped.

Then he brutally beat Karen Chandler and Kathy Kleiner.

- I got a radio call while at the scene

of the Chi Omega house saying,

"Sheriff there's noises coming from a duplex,"

which was only about six blocks away.

He couldn't leave it at what he had done.

He was in a frenzy.

And that's why he had to go to another location.

He was not satisfied.

He was like a shark, just eating.

[tense music]

The law enforcement presence in the area,

the patrol cars, the lights,

and yet we had this going on down the street.

When the deputy walked in,

there was the young lady in a pool of blood on the floor.

We were not sure of the makeup

of a person that would do that.

Could the same person go no further

than six blocks and not be able

to contain themselves enough?

- The cases in Florida were somewhat different

from the cases in Seattle.

In Chi Omega in Florida,

you had hugely compulsive, repeated murders

at the same time.

The cases in Florida evidenced for us

that the killer was really on a rampage,

that there was something in him

at this point that was causing him

to commit these acts in a crazed state.

- He was really out of control by now.

To attack five women in one night?

That was something he'd never done.

[dark music]

- I remember distinctly, as I'm driving,

I got a phone call.

There were only two telephones in cars at that time.

I had a telephone in my car

and Governor Graham, governor of the state of Florida.

And it was from Colorado,

investigators there saying there had been an escape.

They heard about our murders,

and they said, "This man murders women about that age."

And I asked for a name.

And they said, "His name is Ted Bundy."

- The killer came in from the night

and then returned to it

with an ease that has so far baffled police.

[tense music]

- The whole world was upset about the Chi Omega case.

The most tremendous manhunt

that you ever saw was instituted.

Officers everywhere all night long, surveillance.

- The Tallahassee police tell us

they don't have much to go on right now.

No hard leads, no suspects.

They suspect the killer is a student at the school.

- When we heard about the cases in Chi Omega,

we immediately thought it was Ted.

He could have varied from his MO

of killing one person at a time to killing many.

Murderers don't always do the exact same thing

over, over again, and because of this compulsion

and the fact that he had been locked up

for so long and now was on the run,

he was going to keep killing until he got caught.

- The first name within the first few hours

associated with this crime was Ted Bundy.

But it wasn't really taken seriously

because he chose a different M.O.

than what we thought he would have.

And that's where he confused me.

So we were looking for leads.

We were asking people if they saw anybody that night

at about that time.

[somber music]

- Bundy was still trying to operate

in Tallahassee, the flame was just too hot.

And he finally decided it was time for him to go.

And he stole a van

and came west on US 90 looking for a victim.

- When we look at the five serial killers,

the fact that they're all psychopaths

tells you that they're egocentrically driven.

They think that they are in control,

that everything about them is important.

- Theodore Bundy is suspected of killing

three dozen women throughout the West.

- But Rader was unique in the sense that he was like,

I see what's going on with Bundy.

He's got a lot of press.

He's becoming quite infamous.

- [Patrick] Before trial, he escaped, was captured,

then last month, escaped again.

And he's still free.

- [Mark] I'm jealous of him.

I want that same kind of notoriety.

[dramatic music]

- Dennis Rader apparently wants

more attention or just as much attention as Ted Bundy.

After seven killings,

he wasn't getting any publicity still.

No one had connected the murders.

So two months after Nancy Fox is murdered,

Channel 10 Kake-TV gets a letter.

- I was working at the station that morning,

and our receptionist out front brought his letter

back to the newsroom and said,

"I think we have a letter from BTK."

In it was a poem.

And I say, "You know, we've gotta tell the police about it."

[dark music]

- Well, that was it.

Police had to go public with the fact

they had a serial killer on their hands.

The police chief back then, Richard LaMunyon,

immediately called a news conference.

And for the first time, told Wichita,

"We have a serial killer on the loose,

and he is claiming responsibility

for, Oteros, Nancy Fox, and Shirley Vian.

- This morning, KAKE-TV was contacted

by the person who police say they believe

murdered four members of the Joseph Otero family

in January of 1974.

- It was signed with the initials BTK.

He provided a list of his victims,

with many details known only to the police.

BTK began today's letter with a question,

"How many do I have to kill

before I get a name in the paper

or some national attention?"

[dark music]

- "How many people do I have to kill

before I get my name in the paper?"

- That's a quote that you don't forget.

I remember that my entire life now.

- After reviewing the contents of the letter,

there's absolutely no question

that the only person who would have the type

of information that was included in the letter,

would have to be the killer himself.

- That was the moment that BTK became a household name.

He lived to get his name in the paper.

- There's this cat-and-mouse nature to the relationship

between the serial killer and police.

That might also enhance the thrill,

this idea that I don't want to get caught,

but it could happen at any minute.

So he risks at all by reaching out to the media,

reaching out to law enforcement,

to maintain that thrill.

- Do you know what the initials BTK stand for?

- Yes, it's our feeling that the initials

that were placed there stand for bind, torture and kill.

[somber music]

- Once the police department announced

that there was a guy called BTK,

and he was now a serial killer,

Wichita grew up a little bit.

We were not the innocent little Midwestern city anymore.

All of a sudden, we had a monster in our midst.

- You're not dealing with a quote normal criminal.

You're dealing with a person who is perverted,

a person that is sick.

- After that, it was never the same.

Every woman and man started locking their doors,

watching if there's anyone behind them.

Wichita was scared.

- This individual is responsible

for seven murders in our city.

And with all probability,

that person is gonna kill again.

- Viewers were asked to call

the major case squad at 268-4156.

- Call us.

We need all the citizens' help

and all the input we can get.

[tense music]

- The media from the very beginning

have been wrapped up in the case.

Law enforcement did seek out the help

of the media in the investigation.

- It was thought by psychologists

who were working with the Wichita Police Department,

that perhaps a subliminal message might work.

[suspenseful music]

- In one of the communications that he sent,

he sent a drawing.

And the drawing was a pair of glasses

that he took off one of the victims.

That stuck out to the investigators.

They thought that the glasses meant something to him.

[suspenseful music]

- We made this slide that said call the chief.

And it was spliced in for an instant.

And when you were watching television,

it just look like a blip going across the screen.

- [Richard] That's the Kathryn Bright murder

that occurred in April of 74.

- The plan was, from the psychologist,

that he would see this and he would call the chief,

and they could talk.

They were trying everything to catch this guy.

[dramatic music]

[pulsing music]

- Through one of the chief's messages,

there was a subliminal message.

- That's the Kathryn Bright murder

that occurred in April of 74.

- Chief LaMunyon was more forward looking

as far as technology.

Back then, if you could think of it,

the chief probably made it happen.

It was tried.

- I think it was a cutting-edge thinking

that this would really work.

They were in a position where they would take

any measure to try to solve these homicides.

[tense music]

- It was back in the day in which they thought

a subliminal message might be the answer to their problem.

It wasn't.

It didn't work.

And it almost sounds laughable today.

And it probably is.

- That just shows you what they were willing to try

at that time, the open mindedness to try new techniques

when you're taking on a killer

that you've never had to take on before.

- [Interviewer] There've been a lot of crimes in society

that have never been solved.

Is this gonna be one of 'em?

- I think we'll solve the crime.

The question is, when will we solve the crime?

- When you think about serial killers,

they're very proud of what they've done.

[threatening music]

They've enjoyed it.

They monitor and watch other serial killers.

And it's a really exciting period of their life.

- Well, they're still looking for a murder suspect

Theodore Bundy, who is celebrating...

- There were several serial killers

watching Bundy, and Gary Ridgway was one of them.

He's in the same area.

He's in Seattle, watching the news about Bundy.

And at the same time, he is cultivating his own fantasies.

And so the foundations of his future acts are being set.

- A serial killer may have already thought through

in great detail about the behaviors

he wishes to engage in,

and all he needs is the right moment.

In just four years, Ridgway will pick up Bundy's torch

and continue terrorizing the Washington state area.

[dramatic music]

[tense music]

- [Ken] The investigation into the Chi Omega murders

was vigorous and extensive.

- [Policeman] The suspect should be considered

armed and dangerous.

- I obviously didn't think somebody escaping

in Colorado would be the one that committed these crimes.

[tense music]

We were doing everything to isolate

anybody that may have seen someone unusual

or different in the area,

but we really had little more to go on than that

until an orange Volkswagen is puttering

along in Pensacola.

- And he is skulking around late at night

in a kind of an industrial area

when he is seen by Pensacola Police Officer David Lee.

- [David] It was a suspicious vehicle behind a building.

And as a matter of routine,

I was running a check on the tag

when it did come back as a stolen vehicle.

- [Bob] He proceeds to make a traffic stop on Bundy.

- And at that time, Ted Bundy tried to get away from him.

- He grabbed my wrist,

and we had a struggle for control of my revolver.

Of course, after several minutes of fighting,

I did manage to subdue him by striking him with my revolver

and completing the arrest by placing the cuff

on his other hand and taking him back to the patrol car.

- On the way to jail, Bundy says,

"I wish you'd killed me."

But Bundy doesn't say who he is at the time.

- [Reporter] Police arrested this 31-year-old man

after a high-speed chase Wednesday morning

in Pensacola, Florida.

He claimed to be a Florida State University law student.

- Driver's licenses then were mere pieces of paper,

and they didn't have photographs on them.

At that time, he gave a name

of one of FSU's athletes, Ken Meisner.

Except Ken Meisner calls and says,

"I'm not in Pensacola.

I'm in Tallahassee,

and by the way, my wallet was stolen."

So now we don't know who this person is.

And he finally said,

"You don't know who you have in custody.

I want to see investigators from the city of Tallahassee."

And they called me and told me.

And I said, "Could it be?"

[dramatic music]

- I got a call from Mr. Rosebud.

He was very interested in "Citizen Kane."

So I knew that it was Ted.

I figured if they don't figure out he's Ted Bundy,

they're gonna release him.

I knew that if he was released that he would kill again.

But as an attorney, I couldn't turn him in.

That was the worst night of my life as a lawyer.

[dark music]

- Finally, after they allow him a call to a lawyer,

and he says, "Okay, I'll tell you who I am.

I'm Ted Bundy."

Norman Chapman, who's the investigator out there

says, "Okay, how do you spell that?"

Which was a tremendous letdown for Ted Bundy

'cause he thought he was world famous.

And nobody in Florida ever heard of him before.

- [Reporter] He has been positively identified

as prison escapee Theodore Bundy,

a suspect in the rape-murder cases

of at least 36 young women.

[somber music]

- We were so happy that somebody connected the dots

that he was in custody, that maybe they could just

end this horror nightmare that was going on for so long.

- All of law enforcement started putting things together,

and it wasn't long before Ted was tied

to the cases in Chi Omega

but also the murder of a very young girl named

Kimberly Leach, who was abducted just the week before.

- [Ken] We transported him from Pensacola to Tallahassee.

I met him at the jail.

- [Dan] Leon County Sheriff Ken Katsaris invited

reporters for a reading of the indictment

to the defendant in front of the press.

Something rarely done in criminal cases.

- Mr. Bundy? - You told me that

you told 'em that you were gonna get me.

He said he was gonna get me, okay?

You've got the indictment.

It's all you're gonna get.

- He was now in a new mode.

He knew he was in trouble.

He was going to try to befriend, joke,

act like he couldn't possibly be the monster that he was.

[tense music]

- [Narrator] As Bundy's killings come to an end,

Jeffrey Dahmer is just getting started.

[dramatic music]

- Steven Hicks was 17.

He was a good kid and was hitchhiking.

And that was his big mistake.

[ominous music]

Jeffrey Dahmer's killing started

right after he graduated from high school.

- Dahmer picks up this young boy.

He brings him back to his place.

They engage in some sexual activity.

There's some drinking going on.

Steven Hicks decides I've had enough of this.

It's time for me to leave,

but Dahmer doesn't want him to leave.

[dramatic music]

And the only way that he could figure out

how to do this was to basically kill him.

And he did it with massive blunt force trauma.

- He dismembers Steven Hicks's body

and places the parts in garbage bags.

He throws them in the back of his car.

And eventually he's pulled over by the police

while he has these bags of body parts in the back seat.

[suspenseful music]

- An officer saw him, stopped him,

said he was going over the midline, questioned him,

"What's going on here?"

He was cool.

Not a mad man, not a man out of his mind.

Very cool, persuaded the officer.

Gotta throw it, get rid of the garbage.

Even under the stress, imagine,

of having a dead body that you've killed

in the backseat, and you're engaging an officer

in a relaxed way.

- Dahmer was only 18 years old at this time,

and, actually, of our five serial killers,

he is the youngest in terms of first kill.

[chilling music]

- We don't typically see serial killers

starting out in their late teens.

It's typically more into the mid to late 20s

to early 30s, because it takes time

to develop your fantasies,

to be comfortable with who you are

before you start acting out.

[dramatic music]

[light music]

- Jeffrey Dahmer was isolated psychologically

and physically from a very, very young age.

- His mother was on many prescription drugs.

She had some mental issues she was dealing with.

- It's been said that she had

sort of a phobia related to germs.

She didn't allow other people to touch young Jeffrey,

and that might have sort of precluded him

from normal social development.

What he underwent as a child

with a mother who was doped up on drugs

and a father who was very aloof,

we could say that he suffered a form of neglect.

And so while Jeffrey Dahmer was not physically abused

or psychologically abused, per se,

I do believe that that neglect would have been

equally as impactful.

[dark music]

- When he had time,

he would find roadkill and dissect animals.

He was fascinated by the inner workings of these animals.

- He found a dead dog in the woods,

and he disemboweled the dog

and cut its head off and mounted it

on a stick in his yard.

And I think that was almost like a training camp

of how to do the horrific crimes

that he ended up doing in later years.

[dangerous music]

- He had desires to find a human,

knock him out, and cut 'em open to see what they were like.

- Dahmer himself recounted in an interview

these fantasies began in his early teenage years.

- That was the beginning stages of what resulted

finally in Dahmer's first victim, and 17 deaths.

That was the incipient start of it, that fantasy.

[dramatic music]

[dark music]

- By the end of 1978, John Wayne Gacy

has reached this height of arrogance.

He believes that he is unstoppable.

- Since killing Gregory Godzik in 1976,

Gacy has killed 14 more young men.

He gets away with it.

He gets more confidence,

more sort of self-assured,

lets the fantasies out a little bit more.

Does it again and again and again.

And in this way,

getting away with it actually might be

further fueling the behavior.

- If you kill 30-some people and you never got caught,

you begin to think you're never gonna get caught.

But biggest mistake he made was Robert Piest.

That was, that was the beginning of the end.

[dramatic music]

- Robert Piest was a student

at Main Township West High School.

[haunting music]

He was working at the Nisson Pharmacy in Park Ridge.

- He was gonna get off at nine o'clock.

His mother drove up there to pick him up

to take him home

to cut the birthday cake for her birthday.

He said to her before he went outside,

"Mom, I'll be right back.

I'm gonna go talk to this contractor about a job."

- That was the last time he's seen alive.

[dramatic music]

- [Greg] The parents went directly to the police station,

and because it was late at night,

the detectives said,

"Well, just come back tomorrow morning."

- Police departments in those days had a 72-hour rule

that in terms of a personal disappearance,

the person is just assumed a runaway,

and he'll probably come back.

And we'll talk to you three days from now.

- Runaway culture was rampant.

In 1977 in Chicago alone,

almost 20,000 people are reported missing.

[suspenseful music]

- But with Robert Piest, we all knew

that he did not just run away.

It was his mother's birthday.

She came up there to pick him up.

That doesn't spell runaway.

That spells something's amiss here.

Something stinks.

- [William] So they began their investigation that night.

[tense music]

- I remember the piece on the news.

They showed pictures of Mrs. Piest

waiting for her son at this drug store.

- [Reporter] 15-year-old Robert Piest vanished

from his Des Plaines, Illinois, neighborhood

after telling his mother that he was going

to see a contractor about a summer job

that paid $5 an hour.

- My brother's been gone like two years.

My parents did everything that they possibly

could think of and had nothing but dead ends.

I remember my mother saying to me,

she says, "Oh my God, I sure hope that lady

doesn't have to go through what I went through.

I don't want her to have to experience having

no Christmas with their son."

- The Des Plaines police called the owners of the store.

They said, "Well, the only guy that was there

that night was our contractor, John Gacy."

[ominous music]

- The Des Plaines Police Department

looked into Gacy's history.

- He had been arrested in Iowa 10 years earlier

for sodomy involving a young teenage boy.

All roads led to Gacy.

It was no question that he was somehow involved.

It's just a question of how much.

Everybody looked at each other

and said well, get a search warrant.

Maybe the kid's being held in the house.

[dark music]

- So they go in the house.

Everything looked fine initially.

But when they went in the attic,

they found a variety of sex toys, shackles,

a couple of driver's licenses from young boys,

and a Main West class ring.

[ominous music]

- Had we been seasoned serial killer investigators,

we would have realized that this was

part of what a serial killer does.

They keep souvenirs.

- Because so much of their life is devoted to fantasy,

what we see is offenders taking souvenirs or trophies.

- Rader did it.

Bundy did it.

Dahmer did it.

The purpose of these trophies is

to relive the experience of the killing

after the murders.

- They can take this piece out, look at it, touch it.

It's intoxicating.

It's powerful.

- At that point, the lieutenant from Des Plaines

asked me, he says, "Do you think we can charge him?"

And I says, "Well, what are you gonna charge him with?

You don't have the body."

[dark music]

My mind went, he hid the body someplace.

We said, "Well, let's get the tail on him."

Two at a time, 24 hours a day, 12-hour shifts.

- Back in 1978, I was

with the Des Plaines Police Department.

I had been assigned to the plainclothes tactical unit.

Bob Schultz and Ron Robinson worked noon to midnight.

And then Mike Albrecht and I worked

from midnight till noon.

Almost right from the get-go,

Gacy knew that he was being tailed.

[dark music]

- We were in the Golden Bear restaurant one morning,

and we sit a few tables away.

And he looks at us and he says,

"Guys, why don't we just stop playing games?

Why don't you come on over here,

and we'll have breakfast together?"

So that's what we do.

And he's trying to get information from us.

We're trying to get information from him.

At one point, he was talking about volunteering himself

as a clown, and he looks at me and he says,

"I gotta tell you, Dave,

this clown thing is AOK.

I can dress up as a clown,

and if I see a good looking girl,

I can put my arm around her and get a little feel."

He looks at me right in the face,

and he says, "You know, Dave,

clowns can get away with murder."

[ominous music]

And the hair on the back of my head stood up.

But he obviously said it intentionally.

That's how cocky he was at the time.

[suspenseful music]

- All the while we were hauling these kids

in left and right that worked for him,

ex-wife, neighbors, anybody that knew him,

we were interviewing them all.

- During their investigation, they find out that two

of Gacy's employees went missing:

John Butkovich and Godzik.

But the problem is that both of those victims lived

in different police districts.

There was no communication back and forth

between any of these districts.

- We had connected him to a lot of kids that were missing,

but we had no body.

Without a body, you don't have a murder.

[dark music]

- Throughout the investigation,

we were trying to outmaneuver Gacy,

and Gacy was trying to outmaneuver us.

But we were in unchartered waters.

We really didn't know how far we could go.

Mike and I kind of made a pact.

We're gonna go into restaurants with him.

We're gonna go into bars with him.

We'll go into job sites with him.

But we're not goin' in his house.

On the other hand, Schultz and Robinson thought it was okay.

[dramatic music]

- It was cold, naturally, it was December,

right before Christmas.

And Gacy being Gacy,

being a big shot that he was,

invites the cops to come on in

for a cup of coffee, get warm.

Well, [chuckles] get warm.

- Schultz and Robinson go inside.

They have some small talk.

Eventually, Schultz says, "Hey, I gotta use the john.

Where's it at?"

And he says, "Oh, go down the hallway.

And it's just on your right-hand side.

You can't miss it."

[suspenseful music]

While in the washroom, all of a sudden,

the heat kicks on.

- The vent was right next to the toilet.

And it was connected directly

with the main heating system in the crawlspace.

When the heat turned on,

you got this tremendous immediate burst up

that particular vent,

and he smelled a smell that he associated with death.

- If you've ever smelled a decomposing body,

it's an odor that you never forget.

Believe me, ask any cop.

[dramatic music]

[tense music]

- The surveillance guys smelled an odor

coming out of the crawlspace.

It was the same odor that you smell

when you go down to the county morgue.

Can you arrest them for that?

No.

[dramatic music]

I thought I was gonna rip the steering wheel off

the car in the morning going to work.

I was like, we gotta get this guy.

He's thumbing his nose at us.

It was like catch me if you can.

He felt he was invincible.

I called one of his employees.

I finally, I said, "Did you ever see him get really mad?"

Gacy, did he lose his temper?

And he said, "Yeah, I was digging.

He had me down in the crawlspace, digging a trench."

Gacy came down, checking on his work,

and he said he saw where he was digging

and he lost his mind.

He was screaming and hollering and swearing.

"No, no, no, I told you don't dig there."

Well now, wait a minute.

What was so important about the crawlspace?

[suspenseful music]

And why have we not found any of these other kids?

We gotta get back in there.

We gotta get another search warrant,

which we did.

[haunting music]

We all converged on the house,

and it was like, okay, the crawlspace.

That's the first thing.

First thing they looked at,

and Dan jumped down there.

And he wasn't down there, [scoffs]

he wasn't down there very long,

and he yelled up, "I've got bones."

[dramatic music]

- I formally advised Gacy that he was under arrest

for the charge of murder.

He was transported back to Des Plaines PD.

And shortly after we get back there,

he says, "Hey guys, I just want to clear the air.

I think he knew, hey, it's over for me,

but I still can get a little bit of attention here.

[dramatic music]

Once we got in the interview room,

he was loving it.

He was in control.

He was matter of fact about how he killed these kids,

to the point of actually bragging.

- [Reporter] Officers armed with warrants

began searching the premises

for the bodies of young men

believed to have been killed and buried there.

- [Newscaster] And the house is giving up

its terrible secrets one by one.

- [Man] They found two bodies, apparently of young boys.

- [Reporter] It may be days or weeks

before police can tell how many murders

were committed in this quiet, residential community.

- Then it became a circus after that.

I've never seen anything like it.

The whole world was showing up, presswise.

- Today, they found the bodies

of at least three young boys.

- Four more bodies.

[dramatic music]

- Six more bodies.

- [Reporter] Bringing the total so far to 15.

- [Newscaster] News of the multiple murders

has brought scores of people to the scene.

- There are news crews,

news vehicles with cameras propped up on top of them.

It was a circus atmosphere.

- [Reporter] Gacy's home has become a tourist attraction.

Outsiders came here to see bodies brought out

of Gacy's house.

[dramatic music]

- [Newscaster] Investigators today

unearthed six more bodies.

- At last count, 27 bodies buried

under his house and garage.

And two more in a nearby river.

- You might be witnessing one of the most

horrible crimes perhaps in a century.

[reporters shouting questions]

- How is that possible,

that you could kill 33 people

and bury them under your house?

And the media just ate that up.

Nobody had had anywhere close to that number of victims.

I mean, Gacy at the time was probably

the most prominent serial killer in the world.

[dramatic music]

- The legal preliminaries are underway in Florida,

where Theodore Bundy is charged with murder.

- Ted played to the cameras.

Here he was, representing himself,

being a TV-star lawyer, a big deal to Ted.

- If you're gonna have capital punishment

in Illinois, John Gacy deserves it.

- When I enlisted, my roommate was

Private First Class Jeffrey Dahmer.

- I remember those eyes, those beady little eyes.

I am the only survivor of the Green River Killer.