John Wayne Gacy - Investigation

Investigation

On December 11, 1978, John Gacy visited a Des Plaines pharmacy to discuss a potential remodeling deal with Phil Torf, the owner of the store. While discussing the potential deal with Torf, Gacy was heard mentioning that his firm hired teenage boys while he was within earshot of a 15-year-old employee named Robert Jerome Piest.

After Gacy left the store, Piest told his mother that "some contractor wants to talk to me about a job". Piest left the store, promising to return shortly. When Piest failed to return, his family filed a missing person report on their son with the Des Plaines Police. The owner of the pharmacy named Gacy as the contractor Piest had most likely left the store to talk with.

Gacy denied talking to Piest when Des Plaines police called him the next day, and promised to come to the station later that evening to make a statement confirming this, indicating he was unable to do so at that moment as his uncle had just died. At 3:30 a.m., Gacy, covered in mud, arrived at the police station, claiming he had been involved in a car accident. Upon returning to the station later that day, Gacy flatly denied any involvement in Piest's disappearance, and denied offering him a job.

Des Plaines police were convinced Gacy was behind Piest's disappearance and checked Gacy's record, discovering that he had an outstanding battery charge against him in Chicago and had served a prison sentence in Iowa for sodomy. A search of Gacy's house, ordered by a judge at the request of detectives, on December 13, turned up several suspicious items: a 1975 high school class ring engraved with the initials J.A.S., various driver's licenses, handcuffs, a two-by-four with holes drilled in the ends, books on homosexuality and pederasty, a syringe, clothing too small for Gacy, a 6mm Brevettata starter pistol and a photo receipt from the pharmacy where Robert Piest worked. Police decided to confiscate Gacy's Oldsmobile, along with other PDM vehicles and assign two two-man surveillance teams to follow Gacy, while they continued their investigation of Gacy regarding Piest's disappearance.

The following day, investigators received a phone call from Michael Rossi, who informed the investigators both of Gregory Godzik's disappearance and the fact another PDM employee, Charles Hattula, had been found drowned in an Illinois river the previous year.

On December 15, Des Plaines investigators obtained further details upon Gacy's battery charge, learning the complainant, Jeffrey Rignall, had reported that Gacy had lured him into his car, chloroformed him, raped him and dumped him, suffering severe chest and facial burns and rectal bleeding, in Lincoln Park the following morning. In an interview with Gacy's former wife the same day, they learned of the disappearance of John Butkovich. The same day, the Maine West High School ring was traced to a John A. Szyc. In an interview with Szyc's mother the same day, she informed officers of the January 1977 disappearance of her son and that several items from his apartment were also missing, including a Motorola TV set. She added that investigators had informed her that her son had apparently sold his Plymouth Satellite to a John Gacy the month following his disappearance. Investigators noted that one of Gacy's employees drove a similar car to Szyc's: A check of the VIN confirmed the car had belonged to Szyc.

By December 16, Gacy was becoming affable with the surveillance detectives, regularly inviting them to join him for meals in various restaurants and occasionally for drinks in bars or his home. He repeatedly denied that he had anything to do with Piest's disappearance and accused the officers of harassing him because of his political connections or because of his use of recreational drugs. Knowing these officers were unlikely to arrest him on anything trivial, he openly taunted them by flouting traffic laws and succeeded in losing his pursuers on more than one occasion.

On December 17, investigators conducted a formal interview of Michael Rossi, who informed them Gacy had sold Szyc's vehicle to him with the explanation that he had bought the car from Szyc because the youth needed money to move to California. A further examination of Gacy's Oldsmobile was conducted on this date. In the course of examining the trunk of the car, the investigators discovered a small cluster of fibers which may have been human hair. These fibers were sent for further analysis. That evening, officers conducted a test using three trained German shepherd search dogs to determine whether Piest had been present in any of Gacy's vehicles. The dogs were allowed to examine each of Gacy's vehicles, whereupon one dog approached Gacy's Oldsmobile and lay upon the passenger seat in what the dog's handler informed investigators was a "death reaction", indicating the body of Robert Piest had been present in this vehicle.

That evening, Gacy invited two of the surveillance detectives to a restaurant for a meal. In the early hours of December 18, he invited the same officers into another restaurant where, over breakfast, he talked of his business, his marriages and his activities as a registered clown. At one point during this conversation, Gacy remarked to one of the two surveillance detectives: "You know… clowns can get away with murder."

By December 18, Gacy was beginning to show visible signs of strain as a result of the constant surveillance: looking unshaven, tired, appearing anxious and drinking heavily. That afternoon, he drove to his lawyers' office to prepare a $750,000 civil suit against the Des Plaines police, demanding the police surveillance cease. The same day, the serial number of the Nisson Pharmacy photo receipt found in Gacy's kitchen was traced to a Kim Byers, a colleague of Piest's at Nisson Pharmacy, who admitted when contacted in person the following day that she had worn the jacket and had placed the receipt in his parka pocket just before she gave the parka to Piest as he left the store to talk with a contractor. This revelation contradicted Gacy's previous statements that he had had no contact with Robert Piest on the evening of December 11: the presence of the receipt indicated that Gacy must have been in contact with Robert Piest after the youth had left the Nisson Pharmacy on December 11.

The same evening, Michael Rossi was interviewed a second time: on this occasion, Rossi was more cooperative, informing detectives that in the summer of 1977, Gacy had had him spread ten bags of lime in the crawl space of the house.

On December 19, investigators began compiling evidence for a second search warrant of Gacy's house. The same day, Gacy's lawyers filed the civil suit against the Des Plaines police. The hearing of the suit was scheduled for December 22. That afternoon, Gacy invited two of the surveillance detectives inside his house. On this occasion, as one officer distracted Gacy with conversation, another officer walked into Gacy's bedroom in an unsuccessful attempt to write down the serial number of the Motorola TV set they suspected belonged to John Szyc. While flushing Gacy's toilet, this officer noticed a smell he suspected could be that of rotting corpses emanating from a heating duct; the officers who previously searched Gacy's house failed to notice this as on that occasion the house had been cold.

David Cram was interviewed by investigators on December 20. The youth informed investigators of Gacy's attempts to rape him in 1976 and stated that after he and Gacy had returned to his home after the December 13 search of his property, Gacy had turned pale upon noting a clot of mud on his carpet which he suspected had come from his crawl space. Cram then stated Gacy had grabbed a flashlight and immediately entered the crawl space to look for evidence of digging. When asked whether he had been to the crawl space, Cram replied he had been asked by Gacy to spread lime down there and also dug trenches upon Gacy's behest with the explanation they were for plumbing. Cram stated these trenches were two feet wide, six feet long and two feet deep—the size of graves.

On the evening of December 20, Gacy drove to his lawyers' office in Park Ridge to attend a pre-scheduled meeting he had arranged with them, ostensibly to discuss the progress of his civil suit. Upon his arrival, Gacy appeared disheveled and immediately asked for an alcoholic drink, whereupon Sam Amirante fetched a bottle of whisky from his car. Upon his return, Amirante asked Gacy what he had to discuss with them. Gacy picked up a copy of the Daily Herald from Amirante's desk; he pointed to a front page article covering the disappearance of Robert Piest and informed his lawyers "This boy is dead. He's in a river."

Over the following hours, Gacy gave a rambling confession which ran into the early hours of the following morning. He began by informing Amirante and Stevens he had "been the judge jury and executioner of many, many people", most of whom he stated were buried in his crawl space and others in the Des Plaines River. Some victims he referred to by name; most he dismissed as "male prostitutes", "hustlers" and "liars" whom he would give "the rope trick". On other occasions, he stated he would wake up to find "dead, strangled kids" on his floor. In reference to Robert Piest, Gacy harked that as he placed the tourniquet around his neck, that Piest was "crying, scared". As a result of the alcohol he had consumed, Gacy fell asleep midway through his confession and Amirante immediately arranged a psychiatric appointment for Gacy at 9 a.m. that morning. Upon awaking several hours later, Gacy simply shook his head when informed by Amirante he had earlier confessed to killing approximately 30 people, stating "Well, I can't think about this right now. I've got things to do." Ignoring his lawyers' advice regarding his scheduled appointment, Gacy left their office to attend to the needs of his business.

Gacy later recollected his memories of his final day of freedom as being "hazy," adding that he knew his arrest was inevitable and that, in his final hours of freedom, he intended to visit his friends and say his final farewells. Upon leaving his lawyers' office, Gacy drove to a Shell gas station where, in the course of filling his rental car, he handed a small bag of marijuana to the attendant, a youth named Lance Jacobson. Jacobson immediately handed the bag to the surveillance officers, adding that Gacy had told him "The end is coming (for me). These guys are going to kill me." Gacy then drove to the home of a fellow contractor, Ronald Rhode. Inside Rhode's living room, Gacy hugged Rhode before bursting into tears and saying: "I killed thirty people, give or take a few." Gacy then left Rhode's home to meet with Michael Rossi and David Cram. As he drove along the expressway, the surveillance officers noted he was holding a rosary to his chin as he prayed while driving.

After talking with Cram and Rossi at Cram's home, Gacy had Cram drive him to a scheduled meeting with Leroy Stevens. As he spoke with his lawyer, Cram informed the officers that Gacy had earlier divulged to both himself and Rossi that the previous evening, he had confessed to his lawyers his guilt in over thirty murders. Upon concluding his meeting with his lawyer, Gacy had Cram drive him to Maryhill Cemetery, where his father was buried.

As Gacy drove to various locations that morning, police outlined their formal draft of their second search warrant. The purpose of the warrant was specifically to search for the body of Robert Piest in the crawl space. Upon hearing radioed reports from the surveillance detectives that, in light of his erratic behavior, Gacy may be about to commit suicide, police decided to arrest him upon a charge of possession and distribution of marijuana in order to hold him in custody as the formal request for a second search warrant was presented. At 4:30 on the afternoon of December 21, the eve of the hearing of Gacy's civil suit, the request for a second search warrant was granted by Judge Marvin J. Peters.

Armed with the signed search warrant, police and evidence technicians quickly drove to Gacy's home. Upon their arrival, officers found that Gacy had unplugged his sump pump and that the crawl space was flooded with water; to clear the water they simply replaced the plug and waited for the water to drain. After it had done so, an evidence technician named Daniel Genty entered the crawl space and crawled to the southwest area of the crawl space and began digging. Within minutes, he had uncovered putrefied flesh and a human arm bone. Genty immediately shouted to the investigators that they could charge Gacy with murder.