All language subtitles for Very Scary People s01e01

To me, clowning was a way
of relaxation for me.

You regressed into childhood.
You were able to relax.

And you could be goofy if you wanted to.

And still, you had the facade
of your face being covered.

Welcome to "very scary people."

I'm Donnie wahlberg.

It was the mid 1970s,
years before the phrase

"serial killer" had even been coined.

So no one in Chicago could have imagined

there was one living among them.

And that's just how
John Wayne Gacy wanted it.

By day, he was a beloved
community volunteer,

a friendly neighbor,
and a successful businessman,

even a professional clown
who made kids laugh.

But by night, John Wayne Gacy
became the stuff of nightmares,

cruising the streets of Chicago
looking for prey.

The things Gacy did to
his victims were unspeakable.

What made this seemingly normal guy

into such a depraved monster?

And how would police ultimately
discover his evil secret?

I remember being in bed.

My mother came into my room and said,

"do you know where
your brother is?"

I said, "no."

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

It just wasn't something we were used to.

And immediately, she called the police,

and they said to my mother,

"well, what do you want us
to do about it?

17-year-olds are goofy.

They all run away.

But they'll be back."

That was the mantra.

"He'll be back.
Don't worry about it."

The '70s was a different time.

Kids were running away all the time.

In Chicago, thousands upon
thousands of young men

and women go missing.

James Byron haakenson disappeared

shortly after moving to Chicago.

John butkovich, an
18-year-old north side youth,

who disappeared on July 31st, 1975.

Missing persons.
Polito. Can I help you?

The police departments were understaffed

when it came to the juvenile divisions.

And it was very difficult
to try to track runaways.

Typical in this case, and in many cases,

families go to the police department,

or they call and they say,
"my son's missing,"

and they say, "well, wait 12 hours.

Well, you know, he may come home.

Just let us know."

My mother kept saying,
"there's something wrong.

There's something wrong."

There's no way that
my brother would have left.

My brother at that time thought
he was on cloud nine

because he had a girlfriend.

He got a car that he always wanted.

He got a job making $5 an hour.

He'd been working for this
contractor for about a week.

We were contacting anybody
that would have

a connection with my brother.

My mother went over
to the contractor's house.

And she knocked on the door.

And she said, "my son has been missing."

Have you any idea
where he could have gone?

The contractor said,
"you know, it's really odd

that he left a message
on my answering machine,"

and my mother said,
"well, let me hear it."

He goes, "I erased it already."

And he said, just like the police said,

"you know, kids at 17...
They run away all the time.

You just got to give it time.

They'll be back."

But the next day,

when my mother was driving
around in the neighborhood,

she found his car parked

in a parking lot
two miles from our house.

The car was unlocked,

and inside the car was his wallet.

There's no way that my brother
would have left

without taking his car,
his driver's license.

She knew that there was something wrong

because this was his pride and joy...

This car that he just got.

This is so out of character.

This is not your brother.

What no one knew at the time

was that a lot of these kids
were not runaways.

They'd been abducted,
and all by the same man.

He was on the prowl
to find people to have sex with.

He liked young men 14 to 20,

short, fit, but not muscular.

And he'd find himself
cruising the streets

where the young hustlers were.

And he'd pick them up.

Pull to the corner, roll down
the window, and just say,

"hey, kid, you want to go get a drink?

Want to get a beer?
Want some work?"

You know, "come on. Get in.
Let's go for a ride."

And he'd find a vulnerable child

who would be susceptible
to this kind of sympathy.

After taking the kid to his home,

he would subdue them with a trick.

He would trick his victims
into handcuffs.

He would show them a magic trick,

and he would put handcuffs on himself.

And then he'd go around, turn around,

and take the handcuffs off.

Presto-change-o.

He would be spinning the handcuffs

around on his fingertip.

Now the victim is fascinated.

"How did you do that?"

And he goes, "I'll show you.

Put your hands out."

So, in other words, his victims
allowed him to put handcuffs on.

And once you're in handcuffs,
you can't fight back.

Then he says,
"I can't get out of these things.

What's the trick?"

And he pulls out a key...
A handcuff key...

And he says, "the trick is
you got to have the key."

He had a second manner,

which I would guess he employed
when he was growing frustrated

and he couldn't find a kid
who was vulnerable,

which is that he would pretend
to be a cop.

His big, black oldsmobile
that he tricked out

to make it look like a police car.

He'd wear a leather jacket,
a leather bomber-type jacket.

So he could look as if
he was an undercover cop.

And he'd say,
"I'm a cop. Get in the car."

And he'd put handcuffs on
the kid, or something like that.

Sort of scare them,
but then say, "don't worry.

Everything's gonna be okay."

And I think he was getting very confident

that he could do whatever he wanted to do

and was gonna get away with it.

Once he had them handcuffed,

he would do painful sexual things to...

To them through...

...awful tortures.

He would drown them
in the bathtub, pull them out.

He would burn them with his cigarillos.

He would show them tricks...
Clown tricks,

magic tricks, things he had learned.

Only they turned out to be deadly things

that ended their lives.

Shortly after I got in the car with him,

he placed a rag over my face.

He floats in and out of consciousness,

and finally begins to plead to be killed

because what he's going through
is so awful.

He had it down to a science.

1970s Chicago...

...young men were going missing.

And for the most part, they've run away.

And you're a police officer...

You don't really
look into that too deeply.

The Chicago police department
was inundated.

People knew in Chicago

that boys were disappearing.

But of course, if you have
one boy disappear

and a week goes by
and another disappears,

it takes a long time
before a pattern emerges.

But nobody in Chicago knows
that the explanation

for the disappearance of all these boys

is that a serial killer
is operating in these haunts.

This guy...
His name was Jeff rignall.

Walking outside a bar one night...

...when a guy in a black
oldsmobile picked him up,

asked if he wanted to share a joint.

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...

...and proceeded
to have a lengthy drive.

Every time I would come to,

the rag would go back over my face.

And I remember him carrying me
into his house.

The boy wakes up in a man's house.

Of course, he must not have had
any idea where he was.

But he's being tortured by this man

who's just doing
unspeakable things to him.

He did express he appeared
to become almost a monster.

His face changed.
His eyes changed.

And he became a completely
unrecognizable being.

He floats in and out of consciousness

and finally begins to plead to be killed

because what he's going through
is so awful.

And then for some
bizarre reason... who knows?

The man put him back in the car

and drove him to a park,

did not kill him, dumped him off.

That's the last thing I remember
until I was... found myself,

about 5:00, 5:30 in the morning
on the steps

right by Lincoln park,

half dressed, my face completely burned.

He's bleeding from his backside,

and he's got burns on his face
from the chloroform.

The guy gets to his girlfriend's house.

She takes him to a hospital.

He goes to the cops,
and the cops don't believe him.

So now he's determined to find
this man that did this to him.

What I did, since
the police took the matter

very, very lightly...

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

approximately,
waiting for his car to come by,

waiting for a very distinct car...

A black four-door sedan
with the license plates pdm42.

So I just... took me about
a week for that car to pass.

And I just followed it to the house.

It was just a regular,
old, ranch-style house,

a very nondescript kind of house.

Jeff rignall reported
the address to the police.

He then goes to the police and says,

"this is the man who assaulted me,"

but the police don't bring
charges because they think

we have a somewhat established
citizen in our community.

The story just doesn't seem
to square with the image

that we have in our community
of this man.

Here was a guy who was respected
in his neighborhood.

Everybody knew John Wayne Gacy.

He was in politics.

He was involved in bowling leagues,

neighborhood parties
for the 4th of July...

Themed parties...
Hawaiian, Italian festival,

sometimes 400 people at the parties...

Important people.

He had a contracting
company called p.D.M...

Painting, decorating, and maintenance.

If John was walking down lasalle street

and the mayor was walking the other way,

the mayor would say hi to John.

He had his fingers in everything.

And everyone thought he was great.

And he did a lot of functions for charity

that involved
him dressing up as the clown.

He loved doing that.

He was actually a real clown...

...who did tricks
for little kids.

And he was in a union and all that.

He got kids laughing.
He had little hand puppets.

He had a squeaky voice
that would talk to the children,

and they would talk back.

Pogo the clown
was the clowning that I did

for charity hospital work
for the Democratic party.

"Pogo" comes from being Polish
and on the go all the time.

So it's po-go.

He got pleasure
out of performing for people,

particularly little kids, in hospitals.

He'd see this kid who's got leukemia

and is, you know, diagnosed incurable.

He'd do his clown act
and cry on their behalf.

He became the director
of the Polish day parade.

That, in Chicago, is a big deal.

On one of them, he met rosalynn Carter,

the wife of the president
of the United States.

So it's really no wonder
with a reputation like that,

that after this guy Jeff rignall
went to the police,

that even though they did charge Gacy,

the charge went nowhere.

Jeff rignall reported this

to the Chicago police department,

and Jeff really didn't have
that much information.

So they couldn't do too much with it.

He turned out to be an individual

that the police didn't believe.

But what no one knew at the time,

and would never have guessed,
is that Jeff rignall

was really the luckiest
of all of Gacy's victims

because Gacy never showed him
his scariest trick.

The final trick was the rope trick.

The rope trick
was a thing that he developed.

Put the rope around the kid's neck,

and he would use, like,
the handle for a hammer

or any kind of strong piece
of wood that he had handy...

...and then twist it,
twist it, twist it.

He had arranged it in such a way

it was lodged against the kid's back.

The more he struggled,
the tighter it got.

And he got so good at this rope trick.

At every half turn,

the body would start reacting
a little bit differently,

and he knew exactly
what he could do or not do

with the body at that point.

So he had it down to a science.

Pretty eerie and pretty creepy.

We got a report of a missing person.

There was something apparently evil

that had happened.

I think everybody kind of agreed that

there was more to this than a runaway,

and it just started building up.

Nobody knew that Gacy found a niche

in which he was operating.

I was assigned to the detective unit.

We got a report of a missing person...

Robert piest.

Rob piest was a 15-year-old kid
that was active in high school,

a good kid with a loving family.

He was working at a pharmacy
called the nisson pharmacy

in des plaines.

He worked part-time as a stock boy,

and his one desire was to buy a car

when he was 16 and able to drive.

The night that Rob piest went missing,

his mom had come to pick him up
at the end of his shift.

It was his mom's birthday
that particular day.

They were gonna go home
and celebrate her birthday.

She was waiting outside
in the parking lot.

Rob went out there and said,
"I'll be back in a few minutes.

I just want to talk to this guy
about a job."

She said, "no problem.
See you in a few."

There was a contractor in the store.

He was there doing an estimate
for the owners of the pharmacy.

This contractor
had been hiring young people,

and he paid them pretty well.

When he heard that he could
maybe make $5 an hour,

to basically double what he was making,

he was excited and wanted
to approach him for a job.

And that's the last
anyone saw of Rob piest.

He was not the kind of young man

that one would expect
to run away or just go missing.

So there was something apparently evil

that had happened.

The owner of the pharmacy
had identified that contractor

as John Wayne Gacy.

The detectives went out to
his home that following morning

and spoke to Gacy,

in hopes that he had seen the young boy.

He denied any involvement
or any contact with Rob piest.

We really had nothing big to go on.

All we had as far as evidence
was Rob piest going out

to talk to John Gacy

and never being seen again.

Sometime after that,

a check was made on Gacy.

There was no Internet at the time,

so it took a little while
to get court records

and to dispatch leads
to local police departments

to find out more about him.

John Gacy was married
to a very pretty young lady.

He had two children with her,
a boy and a girl.

He said that he liked playing

kind of a fatherly role.

And he insisted that he was
a very warm and loving father.

Were you strict with them?

No, I don't believe in hitting children.

I don't believe in
spoiling a child, either.

He was extremely successful.

His wife, marlynn's, father

had three Kentucky fried chicken stands,

and John was hired on
to manage all three stands.

In Waterloo, John joined
the junior chamber of commerce.

He did a lot of work for the jcs.

He was the chaplain for a while.

If you serve other people,

it'll come back to serve you, you know?

I've always believed that way
with generosity.

There was some evidence
during those years

that John was gonna be
a normal suburban guy.

Investigators in Chicago
discovered that John Wayne Gacy

had charges in Iowa from 10 years ago

stemming from his first marriage.

John Wayne Gacy had
a fairly extensive record...

Minor types of things, basically...

You know, battery, disorderly conduct.

But one conviction was for sodomy,

and it was learned that it was
performed against a young boy.

On the day he was convicted,

his wife filed for divorce,
left him, took his two kids.

He never saw any of them again.

That ended his wonderful life
he was having in Waterloo, Iowa,

because he wound up in a penitentiary.

After serving more than a year in prison,

John Wayne Gacy moves to Chicago
to start an entirely new life,

and no one knows anything
about his checkered past.

He lives under the radar for years

until Rob piest goes missing.

And then the des plaines police
finally have a suspect.

I think everybody kind of agreed

that there was more to this
than a runaway.

And it just started building up.

It was shortly after that
we got the first search warrant

looking for Rob piest.

We really had the confidence
that we had the right guy,

but to put it together

to where we had
some sort of criminal case,

we had nothing.

The investigators did not know

what they were about to get into.

The hairs on the back
of my head just went up.

Welcome back to
"very scary people."

After Rob piest disappeared
from his job at nisson pharmacy,

detectives learn that John Wayne Gacy

was the last known person to see him.

They also learned that Gacy
had a criminal record

for sexually assaulting
another 15-year-old.

Now they were pretty sure
they had their man,

but they still had to find a clue

that tied Gacy
to the boy's disappearance.

And as the investigation continued,

they realized they were dealing
with something, and someone,

far more sinister than
any of them had ever imagined.

The des plaines police did get
a search warrant early on

to search John Wayne Gacy's house.

It was determined that, in fact,
he was restraining,

kidnapping Rob piest,

and that kid possibly was
still being held in his house.

During that search warrant,
a variety of items

were found in his house...
Some pornography, some sex toys,

and they recovered some
driver's licenses of young boys

and some jewelry.

While much evidence was taken
from that residence,

Rob piest was not found.

Of the items that were taken,
and there were many,

two stand out in my mind.

Maine west class ring.

Rob piest had gone to Maine west.

So we felt that, "oh, man,
is it even a possibility

that there are two or three
or four other victims?"

So that was just unimaginable in itself.

There was another thing there
that the police came back with,

and that was a partial receipt
found in Gacy's garbage.

It was a pickup slip for a roll of film

that was being developed
at the nisson pharmacy.

And that was the pharmacy where
Rob piest disappeared from.

A day or so after
the first search warrant,

I asked the police department
if they would put

a 24-hour surveillance on Gacy
with the hopes that, in fact,

he would go back to wherever Rob was now.

Two 12-hour shifts, two guys...

They watched him around the clock.

My partner and I...

Really, we had no exact direction

where to go with this case,

other than the fact
that we were not to lose him.

I decided pretty much
that the first night that we were out,

that if Gacy went into a public place,

Dave and I would go in and follow him.

We didn't want to
leave him alone for one minute.

Whatever it took,
we were to stay with him.

The second night that Mike and I
were on the surveillance,

Gacy was out late at night.

He goes over to a restaurant.
He sits at a table.

He's all by himself.

And we sit at a table
a couple tables away from him.

And pretty soon, he says, "hey, guys,

as long as you're gonna follow me,

why don't you just join me?"

So Mike and I joined him.

And we developed a bit of a relationship.

But life is a series of curve balls,

and this was a huge curve that came at me

for my first time at bat.

I had planned to be this wealthy,

successful personal-injury lawyer.

I'm sitting in my new office
that I had just opened up,

trying to figure out
what I was gonna put on my wall.

And the phone rings.

"Hey, Sam, how you doing?"
I said, "how you doing, John?"

He was the kind of guy...
"Oh, yeah, John Gacy?

I know John Gacy."

So it was like that.

A neighbor, a good brother,
a good cousin,

somebody who's helpful all the time...

I mean, that's the reputation he had.

He said,
"can you do me a favor?"

"Sure, John. No problem.
What do you need?"

He said, "could you please find out

why the des plaines police
are tailing me?

They're all over me.
They're ruining my business."

I was shocked at that and very curious

as to know why they were tailing him.

I said, "John, I know
those police officers.

I know the chief over there.
I'll ask him.

I'll find out what's going on."

Gacy was not a scary person.

There was no reason to believe

he would have done
anything criminal or wrong.

And I was just gonna help him out.

He needed a favor,
and that's what I was gonna do.

It turned out to be

my first case in private practice.

Gacy walked into the room,

people just gravitated towards him.

I mean, he was very popular,
very well-liked,

and very well-respected.

Everyone that they talked to

just swore up and down that Gacy was,

like, the best guy that they ever knew.

He was, like, the best neighbor,
the best coworker,

just a great guy.

And that's the way he came
across to myself and my partner.

He was a lot of fun to be with.

His conversations were funny
and fun and carefree.

We had to, on many occasions,
remind each other,

if one was getting
a little too comfortable,

you know, the other would remind him,

"hey, it's looking like
maybe this guy's involved

with maybe a homicide here or a couple.

So let's try to stay sharp.

Let's not fall into
any bad habits here."

This one particular time,
we followed him around,

and he goes into the all-night
restaurant for breakfast.

So we're all sitting around
a table just discussing

all kinds of different things...
Vacations and you name it.

And he starts bringing up
his being a registered clown.

And he said, "I got to tell you, Dave",

this registered-clown thing
is pretty cool.

As a matter of fact,
I can go on a parade route

and I'd be in my clown outfit,
and if I see a nice-looking gal,

I can go up right alongside
of her, sit down,

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

He says, "that's what clowns
can get away with.

In fact, clowns can get away
with murder."

And he just stared me in the eye
and said that to me.

I tried to remain cool.

You know, I tried to just let it
go over my head,

but, man, the hairs on the back
of my head just went up.

Police were tailing him,

and they certainly knew a lot
more than I knew about it.

I came in totally cold.

And they sincerely believed that
he had kidnapped Robbie piest.

And I said, "oh, come on.
He didn't do that."

But, of course, they had already
investigated his background.

They knew about the sodomy conviction.

We were on top of something
that just was too much

to even believe by ourselves.

John and I continued to meet,

and I would ask him over
and over again what happened.

"Did you do this?
Did this happen?"

Vehemently, unequivocally denied.

We decided to file a lawsuit

against the des plaines police department

in the federal court
to stop them, restrain them

from violating our client's civil rights

by tailing him for no reason at all.

We were concerned that if
there was a federal lawsuit

and an order against us,
that our case would be over.

Our investigation
could really go nowhere else.

He had ended up coming back
and telling us,

"man, I smell
dead bodies in there."

And I said, "boys, we might be dealing

with a lot more than we think."

Following the
execution of that search warrant,

police reviewed everything
that they recovered.

Now we had so much
literal junk from Gacy's house.

Junk turned out to be evidence
that we had to go through.

Things didn't move as fast back
then to try to identify jewelry

or a license
or any of those kind of things.

We had in there, among other things,

a class ring that had initials on it.

The class ring that did
not bear Gacy's initials

said "js."

So, what was Gacy doing with that?

They ran that ring down,

and they found out
that that ring came back

to a young boy by the name of John szyc.

John szyc had been reported missing,

and he was an ex-employee of Gacy's.

They determined that some of
these driver's licenses

that were found in Gacy's house
were from young boys

that had been reported missing.

There was way too much that came back

on the first search warrant

for us to think that we were
just looking for Rob piest.

And I said, "boys, we might be dealing

with a lot more than we think."

And we had no idea
where it was gonna end.

Quite naturally, some of
the first paths that we took

were to try to interview some of
the people that worked for Gacy.

And one of the key things
that they found out

was that he had instructed
these employees

to go into his crawl space
and dig trenches.

And he claimed it was because
they had a sewage issue

and that he was trying
to resolve that problem.

And occasionally,
the smell would come back up,

so he'd instruct them
to go in there with lime

and spread lime down there,

which would cover up
that smell for a while.

They certainly were helpful in telling us

that we really probably wanted
to get down to the crawl space.

Then, one really cold Chicago night,

Gacy actually invited the
surveillance team into his home.

Gacy was trying to make it seem

as if he was friends with the police

and that there was no reason

that they should be surveilling him.

They went to Gacy's house.

Gacy invited them in,
offered them a drink.

Of course, the police
officers were delighted

not only to go into a warmer place,

but to go into the house
where Gacy lived.

They talked with him.

John would talk.
John will talk your ear off.

And one officer said he wanted
to go off to the bathroom.

He excused himself to go to the bathroom,

which is in the older part of the house.

When he was in the bathroom,
the heat kicked on,

and this odor came up
from the heat vents.

And he equated it to the smell

that he would smell at the morgue.

If you've ever been
to a morgue, around a dead body,

it's an odor that you will never forget.

He had ended up
coming back and telling us,

"man, I smelled
dead bodies in there."

We now were coming to
the absolute conclusion

that this guy had to be stopped.

We needed to get a second search warrant

to get back into Gacy's house.

You can't just start ripping apart

someone's crawl space
because of a bad odor.

You need judicial approval,
so you have to get a warrant.

The problem with getting
a warrant is you have to connect

John Wayne Gacy to Rob piest
on the night he disappeared.

He called me and said,
"it's very, very important

I talk to you."

And I didn't know what to think.

I had a zillion things
going through my head, like,

"oh, my god.
What am I gonna do?"

Nobody could have predicted this.

This is more than people would
have ever believed possible.

As the evidence was
building up against Gacy,

it became clear that he was
starting to feel the heat.

We really started to
see his demeanor change quite a bit,

say, five or six days
into the investigation.

Typically, early on,
he would come out of his house,

and he'd say, "hey, I'm going to
check on a job, this and this,"

and he'd take off, and we'd follow him.

But now he seems to
not be telling us that,

and on the way to job sites,
actually trying to lose us,

driving like a mad man through the city.

He was driving 75, 80 miles an
hour through a residential area.

Many times, we had to cut him off

and pull him out of the car

and shake him around
a little bit and say,

"Gacy, you know,
you're gonna hurt somebody.

You're driving like a mad man.
You got to slow it down.

You know, we don't want to
arrest you on this."

Gacy called me and
said, "it's very, very important

I talk to you.

I have to tell you something."

I'm like, "okay, John.
It better be important."

It better be new
because you're telling me

the same old crap all the time.

I don't want to hear it."
"No, it's something new.

It's something important
I have to talk to you about."

He comes into the office,
and I'm getting pissed

because he's telling me
the same old stuff

he had been telling me.

I lost it.
I lost it.

And I start pounding my hand
on the table,

pounding it really hard.

I said, "John, tell me the truth.

It's bull.

I don't want to hear it
anymore."

He goes, "okay, do you have
anything to drink around here?"

One of my investigators
in the public defender's office

happened to give me
a bottle of v.0.

That day as a Christmas gift.

And I had it in my car.

I ran out to the car,
and I go in with the bottle.

Gacy says, "fill it up."

We all toasted.

Gacy... glug, glug, glug,
glug... drank it.

"Fill it up again."

Poured another little thing.

We each had a shot.
Glug, glug, glug, glug.

And he looks at me, and he says,

"I'm gonna tell you the whole
story from the beginning.

I've been a judge, jury, and executioner

of many, many people.

Now I want to be my own judge,
jury, and executioner."

My heart started pounding,

like, ba-bum, ba-bum.

"What are you talking about,
John?"

And he goes, "I don't want you
to interfere.

I just want you to listen
to what I have to say."

Meanwhile, across town,
cops had a big breakthrough.

They finally figured out that
that photo receipt

they found in Gacy's garbage

belonged to a woman named Kim byers,

and she happened to be
a coworker of Rob piest

at nisson pharmacy.

And the story behind that was Kim byers

was gonna go out and take a break,

and she asked Rob
if she could borrow his coat.

And just before she did that,

she processed a roll of film
and took the film receipt

and put it in the jacket
of Rob piest's coat.

Rob eventually borrowed his coat back.

How would that photo receipt

that was in Rob piest's jacket pocket

have ended up in Gacy's house,

unless the two of them
crossed paths that night?

So now police have the proof
and the evidence they need

to get that search warrant
to go back into Gacy's house

to examine that crawl space.

So maybe six hours,
he talked continuously,

describing every murder.

He remembered every single detail

about every single murder.

It was getting daylight.

He finished his talking.

His head just dropped.

He started snoring.

So now I'm sitting there
watching Gacy sleep.

All of a sudden, he sat up
perfectly straight

and looked at me, but, like,

looked right through me,
like I wasn't even there.

And I'm going, "John? John?
John, you awake?"

He stands up,

and he starts walking toward me.

I always have a baseball bat around.

I went over, and I picked up this bat.

And I'm walking backwards.

And he sat down,
and he started snoring again.

And I didn't know what to think.

I had a zillion things
going through my head,

like, "oh, my god.
What am I gonna do?"

It was frightening.

This guy just told us
he killed all these people.

He's crazy.

He's crazy, and the police are out there.

What are we gonna do now?

And I was in a panic.

I believe I... I did kill him.

I had never seen
anything like this before.

I had never heard anything
like this before.

I had never experienced
anything like this before.

On our job, we see
a variety of horrific things,

but this was out of the norm.

Identities unknown,

victims of a man who probably
did not know their names.

You see bodies in your sleep.

You see him in your sleep.

It's just too much.

It was very eerie

'cause you know exactly
what was happening.

Nobody can explain what he did.

Who can explain that?

John Wayne Gacy's detailed confession

to a gruesome seven-year killing spree

was almost impossible to believe.

But within 24 hours,

police would learn the truth
for themselves.

The questions on everyone's minds were,

"how did Gacy become so evil?

And how did he get away with killing

so many people for so long?"

The shocking conclusion.

"Evil secret" next.

I'm Donnie wahlberg.

Thanks for watching.