On January 2, 1972, Gacy picked up a 15-year-old named Timothy Jack McCoy at the Chicago Greyhound Bus Terminal. young people. Gacy took the boy, who was traveling from Michigan to Omaha, on a sightseeing tour of Chicago. Gacy took McCoy home that night and promised the boy that he would take him to the station in time to catch the bus the next day. Gacy woke up the next morning to find McCoy standing next to his bed with a kitchen knife in his hand. Gacy jumped out of bed and McCoy accidentally cut Gacy's forearm. Gacy grabbed the kitchen knife from McCoy and banged his head against the bedroom wall several times. Finally, Gacy kicked McCoy away. McCoy fought back, and Gacy grabbed him and stabbed him several times with a kitchen knife until McCoy died. Gacy said he later walked to the kitchen and discovered that McCoy had made breakfast and accidentally went to his bedroom with a kitchen knife to wake him up. Gacy buried McCoy's body under the floorboards and reinforced it with a layer of cement.
In an interview with him in the 1990s, Gacy said he felt "exhausted" after killing McCoy, but also said he was "exhausted" when he killed McCoy. I felt myself reaching the peak of excitement. He said: "That's when I realized that death can bring me the greatest pleasure."
Gacy's second murder occurred in January 1974. The victim is an unidentified teenager with brown skin and curly hair, approximately 15 to 17 years old. He was strangled to death by Gacy. Before the body was buried, Gacy placed it in a closet. Gacy later claimed that fluid from the mouth and nose stained his carpet while the body was hidden in the closet. So in future crimes, he would usually stuff strips of cloth or the victim's underwear into their mouths to avoid the same thing happening. The unknown victim was buried approximately 15 feet from the barbecue grill in Gacy's backyard.
By 1975, Gacy's career had greatly developed. He began working 12 and even 16 hours a day to complete the contract he signed. Most of his employees are middle school students or young men. One of them is 15-year-old Tony Antonucci. He became Gacy's employee in May 1975. In July of that year, Gacy came to the boy's home. Antonucci injured his foot at work the day before and was recuperating at home alone. Gacy drank heavily from the boy, knocked him to the ground and cuffed the boy's hands behind his back. The handcuffs on Antonucci's right wrist were somewhat loose, and the boy removed them after Gacy left the room. When Gacy returned, Antonucci punched him in the face, threw him to the ground and handcuffed him. Gacy yelled curses at the boy and uttered threats, but then calmed down and promised to leave Antonucci's house immediately if Antonucci removed the handcuffs. The boy agreed, and Gacy left.
One week after this incident, on July 29, 1975, another Gacy employee, 17-year-old John Butkovitch, disappeared mysteriously. The day before his disappearance, Butkovitch threatened Gacy over two weeks of unpaid wages. Gacy later admitted that he lured Butkovitch to his home and strangled him in exchange for a paycheck. Gacy's wife and stepdaughter were away from home at the time; they were visiting his sister in Arkansas. Gacy hid the body in the concrete basement of his garage.
Butkovitch's car was later abandoned in a parking lot. Butkovitch's father called Gacy, who said he was happy to help but was sorry Butkovitch "ran away from home." Regarding Butkovitch's disappearance, the police also questioned Gacy. Gacy said that Butkovitch and two of his friends had been to his house because of salary issues, but they had left after resolving the salary issue. Since then, Butkovitch's parents have called the police no less than 100 times, hoping that the police will continue to investigate Gacy in depth.
Eight months later, Gacy and his second wife divorced. Because he owned the house alone after the divorce, he started killing people. From May to August 1976, Gacy killed at least eight young men, two of whom could not yet be identified. Seven were buried under the floorboards. Four of them were buried under the laundry room (which also contained a teenager Gacy later killed). One is buried under Gacy's dining room floor. Six of the eight young people killed during this period have been identified and were all between the ages of 14 and 18. The other two teenagers, whose identities cannot be identified, are between 15 and 19 years old and 22 and 30 years old respectively.
On July 26, 1976, Gacy hired 18-year-old David Cram. On August 21 of the same year, Cram moved in with Gacy. The next day, when Cram was drunk, Gacy tricked Cram into handcuffing him and then told Cram that he was going to rape him. Cram, who had spent a year in the Army, kicked Gacy to the ground. A month later, Gacy showed up in Cram's bedroom, still trying to rape Cram. Gacy said, "David, you don't know who I am. You better give me what I want.
Cram rejected Gacy, and Gacy left his bedroom. Cram later moved out of Gacy's home and quit his job at Gacy's company. On December 11, 1978, Gacy came to Des Plaines Pharmacy to discuss matters with the store owner, Phil Torf. While the store owners were discussing a potential deal, a 15-year-old employee, Robert Jerome Piest, overheard their conversation and learned that Gacy's company employed teenagers.
After Gacy left, Piest told his mother that "there was a contractor who wanted to discuss a job with me." Piest left home and said he would be back soon. But then he disappeared. Piest's parents reported their son's disappearance to the local police station. The owner of the pharmacy mentioned that Gacy was the contractor, and that Piest was most likely the one who discussed the work with him.
When the police investigated Gacy, Gacy refused to admit that he had spoken to Piest, and he lied that because his uncle had passed away, he had to go to the police station later to prove his innocence. At 3:30 a.m. the next morning, Gacy came to the police station covered in mud and claimed that he had been in a car accident. That day, he refused to admit that he was involved in Piest's disappearance or that he would be offered a job.
But Des Plaines police are convinced that Gacy and Piest's disappearance must be related. An investigation of his record revealed that he had a criminal record in Chicago and had been sentenced to prison in Iowa for raping a teenager. After applying for a search warrant, police searched the house and found a number of suspect items: a middle school student's ring from 1975 engraved with JAS, different driver's licenses, handcuffs, books about gay men, too many for Gacy. Small clothes and receipts from the pharmacy where Piest works. The police decided to confiscate Gacy's Oldsmobile and motor vehicles from other companies, and at the same time dispatched two two-person investigation teams to track Gacy.
The next day, investigators received a call from Michael Rossi, who learned that the bodies of Gregory Godzik and Charles Hattula (another Gacy employee) had been found in a Chicago river the previous year. was discovered.
On December 15, 1978, Des Plaine conducted a more in-depth investigation into Gacy's criminal record and learned that Jeffrey Rignall had reported that Gacy had lured him into his car and suffered abuse from him. and rape; during a conversation with Gacy's ex-wife, police learned of John Butkovich's disappearance. At the same time, the ring found in Gacy's house was also proven to be the ring of missing male student John A. Szyc. Investigators also noticed that one of Gacy's employees was driving a car similar to Szyc's. An investigation into the car proved it had previously belonged to Szyc.
On December 17, 1978, police held a formal interview with Michael Rossi and learned that Gacy sold Szyc's car to him because Gacy said Szyc needed money to move to California. At the same time, during the investigation of Gacy's Oldsmobile, police found a small amount of fibrous tissue that may be human hair. The fibers were sent for inspection. That night, police used three trained police dogs to investigate whether Piest had been in Gacy's car. One of the police dogs lay on the passenger seat of Gacy's Oldsmobile, suggesting to police that Piest's body was there.
On December 20, 1978, Gacy drove to see his lawyer, Amirante. Once he arrived at his destination, he asked for a bottle of wine. On the way back, Amirante asked him how his talk with investigators was going, and he pointed to a copy of the Daily Herald and told his lawyer, "The boy is dead, he's in the river." Among the last few freedmen As a child, Gacy, already aware that his arrest was inevitable, tried to visit his friends and say goodbye to them. After leaving the attorney's office, he drove to a gas station, where he filled up his rental car and handed the gas attendant, Lance Jacobson, a bag of marijuana. Jacobson handed the marijuana to police and told police Gacy told him "my end is coming and these people are going to kill me." Gacy then drove to the home of one of his colleagues, Ronald Rhode. There, he embraced his friend and burst into tears: "I killed thirty people." Then he drove to find Michael Rossi and David Cram. As he drove, police noticed he was holding a rosary and praying as he drove.
The next day, police obtained a second search warrant. Considering Gacy's previous abnormal behavior, the police were worried that Gacy would commit suicide, so they arrested him on charges of illegal possession and distribution of marijuana.
The police found a large number of dead bodies in Gacy's home. On December 22, 1978, Gacy admitted to the police that since 1972, he had killed approximately 25 teenagers, male runaways, and male prostitutes. Most of them he lured or kidnapped from Chicago bus stations or the streets with jobs, financial inducements, or violence.
After being told that police had found a body in his underground duct space and that he would face murder charges, Gacy told police that he wanted to "clean the air" and said that after spending a night on the couch in his lawyer's office, he understood that he had been raped. Capture is inevitable.
In the early morning of November 22, 1978, Gacy surrendered to the police. He admitted to killing approximately 25-30 people until 1972. Most of these people were runaways or male prostitutes, whom Gacy found in Chicago train stations or on the streets and lured them to his home. He either promised these people jobs and pay, or simply kidnapped them with violence.
Once back at Gacy's home, the victim would be handcuffed or otherwise bound and gagged with a rope while being sexually assaulted. Gacy would often put cloth in the mouths of his victims to stop them from screaming, and many of his victims were strangled with tourniquets, which Gacy called the "rope trick." Sometimes the victim would convulse for an hour or two after being strangled with the rope. After the police found two bodies that Gacy had tied up, they asked Gacy why he did it. He said it was inspired by him after reading about the Houston Massacre. Victims were usually lured to his home alone, but there were three instances of what Gacy called "double arrests," in which two victims were killed simultaneously in one night.
Most of the victims were dumped in the underground space of Gacy's home. He would regularly pour quicklime in to promote the decomposition of the body. Gacy said he no longer knew how many victims were buried there, and that the last five victims he killed in 1978 were thrown into the Des Plaines River from the I-55 bridge because his underpass space was full. body. When questioned by Robert Pister, Gacy confessed to strangling the youth, adding that he was interrupted by a phone call from a co-worker at the time. He also admitted to dumping Pieste's body in the Des Plaines River and said that as he was rushing to make an appointment with Des Plaines officials after disposing of the body, a minor traffic accident occurred and he was arrested at 12 In the early morning of March 13th, I arrived at the local police station with disheveled hair. He also confessed that he buried John Butkovic's body in his garage. Gacy drew a diagram of the basement to help police search for buried bodies. On December 22, 1978, accompanied by police, Gacy returned to his house and showed police where Butkovic's body was hidden in the garage. Police then drove to the I-55 bridge, where Gacy dumped Pieste and four other victims. From December 22 to December 29, 1978, 27 bodies were recovered from Gacy’s house. Twenty-six of them were found in underground tunnels, and the body of John Butkovic was found buried under the concrete floor of a garage. Excavations were temporarily delayed in January 1979 due to severe winter snowfall in Chicago and resumed in March, despite Gacy's insistence that all remains of the victims buried in the house had been recovered.
On March 9, 1978, the body of the 28th victim was found in a pit near a backyard barbecue grill, contained in several plastic bags. He has a ring on his left ring finger, indicating that he may be married. A week later, on March 16, the remains of another victim were found buried under the dining room floor, bringing the total number of remains in Gacy's house to 29. A month later, Gacy's house was demolished.
Another three bodies were discovered in the Des Plaines River between June and December 1978, and were also confirmed to be Gacy's victims.
Some bodies were found with the ropes that had strangled them still tied around their necks. In other cases, cloth was gagged from the mouth to the back of the victim's throat, and investigations revealed that some victims died not from strangulation but from asphyxiation. In some cases, items such as prescription pill bottles were found in the victim's pelvic area, suggesting they were inserted through the anus. Some of the victims were linked to Gacy through the PDM Manufacturing Company, while others were identified due to the discovery of personal belongings at 8213 Summerdale. Seventeen-year-old Michael Bonin, who disappeared while driving from Chicago to Waukee on June 3, 1976, was identified as a victim when his fishing license was found in Gacy's home; another youth, Tim Rourke, who had been offered a job by a contractor before he disappeared. The youngest of Gacy's victims were Samuel Stapleton and Michael Marino, both 14 years old. The oldest are Russell Nelson and James Marsala, both 21 years old. Seven of the victims have yet to be identified.
On April 9, 1979, Robert Pister's body was found on the banks of the Des Plaines River. The autopsy report showed that his throat had been filled with paper materials before his death. On February 6, 1980, Gacy was brought to trial and charged with 33 murders.
A year before the trial, at the request of his defense attorney, Gacy spent more than 300 hours at the Menard Correctional Center undergoing various psychological tests to determine whether he was mentally ill. Able to stand trial. Gacy tried to convince doctors that he had multiple personality disorder. His lawyers tried to prove his innocence on the grounds of insanity and brought in psychiatrists who had studied Gacy to testify.
Three psychiatrists appeared at the trial and testified that Gacy suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder.
The prosecution believed that Gacy was sane and in full control of his actions. The prosecution invited several witnesses to testify that Gacy had a predetermined plan and behavior to evade detection, and even hired a doctor to defend him, saying that he had multiple personalities and was insane. Two witnesses, both PDM employees, said Gacy forced them to dig tunnels in their underground tunnels. One of those employees, Michael Rossi, testified that in August 1977, Gacy marked a location in the underpass space with a stick and told him to dig a drainage ditch.
A diagram of Gacy's house was shown in court when asked about his excavation of the underground tunnel space. The image shows bodies found in subterranean spaces and elsewhere in the house, and indicates the location of an unidentified victim known as "Body No. 13." Rossi said he did not dig additional trenches but, at Gacy's request, supervised other PDM employees who continued to dig deeper into the underground tunnel space.
Rossi also testified that Gacy would regularly inspect the underground tunnels to ensure that employees were digging within the locations he had marked. After his arrest, Gacy said that he only dug the graves of five victims and later asked employees (including Gregory Gorczyk) to continue digging so that he "had enough graves."
In the third week of the trial, Gacy's defense team raised the possibility that all 33 murders were accidental suffocation resulting from pornographic acts. The Cook County coroner countered that there was evidence that suggested that was impossible.
On February 29, 1980, Donald Voorhees, a young man who had been sexually assaulted by Gacy in 1967, testified that he had been brutally treated by Gacy and later raped. A youth hired by West was attacked with spray and mace to prevent him from testifying. The young man tried hard to explain the issue briefly, but failed to testify until he was removed from the witness stand.
Robert Donnelly testified a week after Voorhees appeared in court that he was also abused by Gacy in December 1977. Donnelly became visibly agitated as he recalled Gacy's atrocities and nearly collapsed several times. During his testimony, Gacy repeatedly mocked Donnelly for the price he had paid, but the youth completed his testimony. Robert Motta, one of Gacy's defense attorneys, grilled Donnelly during his deposition in an attempt to discredit his testimony, but Donnelly was not swayed at all.
During the fifth week of the trial, Gacy wrote a personal letter to Judge Gallipo, requesting that the trial be declared a mistrial and citing several reasons, including that he did not agree with the attorney's spirit. The insanity plea, his attorneys not allowing him to take a witness stand, his defense not having enough witnesses, the police serving themselves by lying about statements he made to detectives after his arrest, and so on. Judge Gallipo replied that according to the law, Gacy had the right to testify after expressing his wishes to the judge.
On March 11, 1980, the final arguments between the prosecution and defense lawyers began. Prosecutor Terry Sullivan first asked for an overview of Gacy's history of abusing teenagers and his efforts to avoid detection and label his surviving victims - Voorhees and Donnelly - the "living dead."
After a four-hour briefing, attorneys Sam Amirante and Robert Motta began defending Gacy. Motta and Amirante objected to medical testimony provided by the prosecution in an attempt to portray Gacy as "a man driven by uncontrollable impulses." To support this argument, defense attorneys repeatedly cited the testimony of defense doctors and said the psychological motivations for Gacy's behavior should be studied.
Following the defense of Amirante and Motta, William Cuenco again testified for the prosecution. Quinco called the defense's claim of insanity "false," and presented facts that demonstrated Gacy's ability to think logically and control his behavior. Quinco also pointed to the testimony of a doctor who examined Gacy in 1968, who diagnosed Gacy as a sociopath capable of committing crimes without any remorse. Cuenco said if the doctor's advice had been taken seriously, Gacy would not have been released. At the end of his statement, Quinco showed photos of the 22 victims and asked the jury not to sympathize with Gacy but to "stand firm for justice." Quinco then asked the jury, "As much as Gacy 'sympathized' with these lost lives, you should have 'sympathized' with him," and then threw the photo on the underground trap door that was used as evidence at the trial site. After Kunco completed his testimony, the jury retired to consider the verdict.
The jury deliberated for more than an hour and found Gacy guilty of 33 murders, as well as sexual assault and child molestation. The next day, both the prosecution and the defense made verdict recommendations to the jury: the prosecution requested the death penalty, based on the Illinois statute that stipulated that every murder charge must be punished with life, which took effect in June 1977; while the defense requested the death penalty. Life imprisonment.
After deliberating for more than two hours, the jury sentenced Gacy to death. On the morning of May 9, 1994, Gacy was transferred from Menard Correctional Center to Stateville Correctional Center for execution. That afternoon, he was allowed to have a picnic with his family in prison. That night, he witnessed a Catholic priest praying before being escorted to the Stateville execution chamber for a lethal injection.
Before the execution began, the injection chemicals unexpectedly solidified and blocked the needle, making the procedure quite troublesome. After closing the blinds to avoid onlookers, the enforcement team replaced the clogged needle. Ten minutes later, the shutters were reopened and the execution was completed, a process that took 18 minutes. The performing physician attributed this to the inexperience of prison officials, pointing out that the trouble would not have occurred if the execution procedures had been correct. Apparently, this mistake led Illinois to later search for alternatives to poison injections. On this issue, one of Gacy's monitors, William Quinco, said: "He still got an easier death than any of his victims. In my opinion, he should have died a little more painfully, but more The important thing is that he paid the price for his crime with his life."
According to published reports, Gacy has been diagnosed as a mental patient and he has not expressed any remorse for his crimes. His final statement was that sentencing him to death would not compensate for the loss of others, and believed that the sentence was actually for his murder. According to reports, his last words were "Kiss my ass."
A crowd of over 1,000 people estimated to have gathered around the correctional center for the execution. Most of them claimed to be in favor of the death penalty, although anti-death penalty demonstrators were also present. Some supporters of the death penalty wore T-shirts depicting the image of a clown Gacy used in community services, with the slogan "Don't cry for clowns," while anti-death penalty protesters held a silent candlelight vigil. At 12:58 a.m. on May 10, 1994, after Gacy was confirmed dead, his brain was removed. This was the suggestion of Dr. Helen Morrison, who had interviewed Gacy and other serial killers in the hope of discovering the unique traits of violent sociopaths. After Gacy was executed, brain examinations found no abnormalities.