They paint the image that I was this monster.
I don't believe in hitting... Hitting children.
And I don't believe in spoiling a child, either.
I always felt, if you serve other people,
it'll come back to serve you.
I've always believed that way with generosity.
Welcome to "very scary people."
I'm Donnie wahlberg.
For most of the 1970s, John Wayne Gacy
had everyone in Chicago fooled.
He was known as a model citizen and a pillar of his community,
but he was living a double life, a life no one knew about.
John Wayne Gacy had managed to become
the most prolific serial killer of his time,
without anyone noticing.
But at the end of 1978, Gacy's secret life
would be revealed for all the world to see.
Here is part 2 of "evil secret."
It was December 11, 1976.
My brother had planned to go out with his girlfriend,
and he spent part of the evening with her.
And he said to her that he was gonna see her the next morning.
We were worried the next morning because he didn't come in,
knock on our door, and say, "hey, mom, I'm home."
And my mother kept saying, "there's something wrong.
There's something wrong."
So my mother called the police.
This was in the '70s, when a lot of teenage boys ran away.
So police just didn't take their disappearances seriously.
And they said to my mother, "well, what do you want us
to do about it? Kids run away all the time.
You just got to give it time. They'll be back."
That's why John Gacy got away with it for so long...
Nobody was looking for these kids.
But like almost all criminals, he got stupid, got lazy,
got to the point where he was just plain careless.
Robert piest was a great kid.
Everybody had just great things to say about him.
He went missing after his shift at the nisson pharmacy,
and Gacy was the logical suspect
because he was the last one known to have seen Rob piest.
Gacy drove him to his house,
knowing full well the owners of the drugstore
knew that Gacy was the one who was with piest.
That's when everything began to fall apart for John Wayne Gacy.
And he, of course, denied ever having left with Rob.
The police searched Gacy's house
and find possessions of other local boys who had gone missing.
They found some property, some jewelry, driver's licenses,
whatever it may be.
We were pretty well set in our minds that he was guilty.
And he was... at least, he was a person of interest
to take a real good, hard look at.
The scariest thing about John Gacy,
the absolute scariest thing,
is that he was not a scary guy at all.
Everyone that they talked to just swore up
and down that Gacy was, like,
the best guy that they ever knew, just a great guy.
He was gregarious and outgoing.
"He'd give you the shirt off his back" kind of guy.
John was actually rather well-liked by his neighbors.
He was the guy that would be out there
when it snowed, plowing their sidewalks.
This guy was so nice. And he was trusted.
He wanted to make people laugh,
and he particularly wanted to help kids.
And he became a clown.
And he did a lot of functions for charity
that involved him dressing up as the clown.
That was the good side of him.
Then, the other side of the coin was,
"my god, how many disappearances was he involved in?"
Then one day, they got their answer.
After cops searched Gacy's house, he calls his lawyer
and says he wanted to talk about Rob piest.
One day he called me.
He said, "it's very, very important I talk to you.
I have to tell you something."
Gacy sits down, and he tells me the same old...
About Robbie piest, vehemently, unequivocally denied.
I took the newspaper with Robbie piest's picture.
I threw it in front of him, and I said, "look at this kid.
John, look at him. He's a good kid. He's missing."
He looked at the picture.
He said, "you know what? This boy... this boy's dead."
I said, "what do you mean?"
He goes, "I've been a judge, jury",
and executioner of many, many people.
Even now my hair stands up on end
thinking of hearing those words.
He said, "I'm gonna tell you the whole story from the beginning.
It started in 1972.
I was cruising around"...
He's cruising the greyhound bus station,
and he sees a kid that looks kind of on his own.
And he talked to him and said, you know, "you look lost,"
or something like that.
He'd cruise around Chicago,
looking for young men to have sex with.
He had just enough charm to be able to pull up to the curb,
roll the window down, and said, "hey, you looking for a job?"
Or, "you want to take a ride?"
Gacy took that guy to his house. They had sex.
And the boy came into the bedroom
with a knife in his hand.
Gacy went to the kitchen,
and he saw that the table had been set for two
and the boy had been making breakfast for him.
That's why he had the knife in his hand.
But John said, "what are you gonna do
when a guy comes into your bedroom with a knife?"
After the first young man that he killed with a knife,
there was blood all over.
This obviously wasn't an efficient way to do things.
And he said it took so long to clean up the house
after he stabbed him to death.
Gacy described how, from then on,
he would trick his victims into putting on handcuffs.
While they're struggling to get out of handcuffs,
he would put a rope around their neck
and turn it with a hammer handle.
And they would be convulsing on his floor.
Didn't bother him in the least.
Didn't bother him talking him about it.
Six hours went by with Gacy spilling his guts,
going through his victims one by one.
He had such a memory.
He had just an exhaustive memory,
the way he said he handled each victim.
How he killed them, what he did to them.
What was your initial emotional response?
I aged so much that night.
It was the longest night of... Of my life.
Never showed any remorse,
as if they weren't people at all. That's how he felt.
He was just... it was phenomenal.
But the cops would soon discover for themselves
just how deep this went.
They started tearing up the flooring
and working in the crawl space.
This morning, police searched Gacy's home.
They became suspicious when 15-year-old
Robert piest disappeared
after he allegedly was last seen with Gacy.
They started tearing up the flooring
and working that way in the crawl space.
It was probably like a lot of other crawl spaces
that people have.
It was just dirt and Clay.
And the very first dig with the shovel,
they struck a human bone.
So, it was at that time that I arrested John for murder.
Two bodies were removed by police,
who then stopped their search for the day.
But they are emptying this house of its contents this evening
so that the search for more bodies can continue tomorrow.
When I saw on the news that John Gacy
had murdered all those people,
I was so overwhelmed, you couldn't put it in words.
I could not believe that a friend that I grew up with
could end up doing such a terrible, terrible thing.
John and I grew up back in the early '50s,
on the northwest side of Chicago.
We both went to the same school.
When Johnny and I met, we became best friends.
Johnny was the most incredible person you'd ever want to meet.
John's mother was incredible.
Both of his sisters loved Johnny very much.
We had dreams and hopes, like anybody would.
He wanted to be the next governor.
But John had a hard rock to climb.
His father laid on him constantly.
There are a lot of stories about his childhood
that are supposed to somehow explain
how he got to be the way he is.
If anything can be pointed to,
it's the relationship with his father.
Gacy's history as a kid started with his father
looking at his newborn son and naming him John Wayne.
He wanted John Wayne.
And what he got, unfortunately,
was a sickly, overweight, sort of clumsy kid
who didn't have a lot of friends,
played with his sisters primarily, was teased,
and did get beat up a few times.
My dad was domineering, in fact.
He had a different set of values,
but also a very stern individual.
Many occasions I would be present where Mr. Gacy...
"Johnny, you're so damn stupid and dumb."
He'd say, "but, dad, I am smart."
"No, you're not. You got no sawdust up
in that head of yours."
And I think that's probably where you first hear the words
that echo through John's life...
"Dumb and stupid."
At times, he would be very physical with John.
My dad drank a lot, and when he drank a lot,
yeah, he was abusive to my mother and to me.
His father... he would come home from work,
drink in the basement.
And quite often when he emerged, he was drunk.
He would take a razor strop and... and beat him quite often.
'Cause of all the abuse, the name-calling,
Johnny lost himself.
He lost everything that he once believed in as a boy,
and dreams and hopes.
I saw it happen.
That affected Gacy.
His psychological motivation in life
was to try to please his dad.
When Johnny was a little boy,
he had another trauma in his life.
He was molested by a contractor.
John's father knew a contractor.
John was always interested in building.
He'd ask Gacy, "would you want to go out
and look at a couple of work site that I'm working on?
And then I'll take you to get some ice cream."
He would take Gacy out, and he got him to one his sites.
And what he wanted to show him was a wrestling hold.
The hold involved putting Gacy's face down in his crotch
and holding it there.
It happened a few more times.
Each time, the wrestling hold got held a little bit longer
and got a little more emphatic.
He never told his father that the contractor had molested him.
He knew he'd get whipped for it.
One night, Johnny invited me over, and I said, "what is it?"
He said, "I want to show you something."
"Will you go in my closet?" "For what?"
He said, "I want you to pull that shopping bag out."
I pull out the shopping bag,
and there were women's attire sitting in the bag.
He said, "how would I look dressed up as a woman?"
I was astounded.
And we never, never talked about it ever again.
I think it was '64 that he claimed he had
his first homosexual experience.
He was drinking at a friend's house, woke up,
and they "got into it," is the way he put it.
And the man was performing oral sex on him.
And Gacy said, "well, I felt bad to ask him to stop,
and, besides, I liked it.
And when he finished, I did it to him,"
and that was, according to him,
the first time he'd ever been with a man.
But then something happened.
It was, I think, a major psychological blow to him.
I remember driving to his house,
and there were so many cars around
because this had leaked out.
It had turned into a circus, an amazing spectacle.
John Wayne Gacy was also pogo the clown,
who loved to make kids laugh.
His neighbors knew him as "Johnny," the life of the party.
He was a very good neighbor, and we socialized with him.
But John Gacy had been living a lie since childhood.
And he realized he had to hide his feelings from everyone.
John had inclinations that his father found disgusting.
He knew his father hated homosexuals.
His father would have absolutely,
positively killed him.
So John Wayne Gacy did what everyone did back then.
He got married, he had two kids,
and he kept his secret life a secret.
He was living in Iowa, and he was working for kfc.
He had a normal job. He was a member of the jaycees.
He had a wife. He had a normal life.
He wanted to show his dad that he should be proud
of what he's doing in his life.
I think his dad might even have said,
"John, I was wrong about you."
That was a very significant moment for John
because he had sought his father's approval all his life.
There was some evidence during those years
that John was gonna be a normal, suburban guy.
But then after finally winning his father's approval,
something happened.
It turned out that John Gacy's normal,
suburban life wasn't as normal as it seemed.
He was living a secret life no one else knew about,
where he was seeking out young men for sex.
So, he gets involved with a boy in Waterloo,
the son of someone he knows, and he molests him.
And the boy goes to the police.
And Gacy is charged with sodomy.
So what Gacy does is find another kid
and offer to pay off his car loan
if he will bully the other boy out of testifying.
So, Gacy's accomplice takes the other boy
out to a cornfield somewhere and sprays
mace in his face and beats him up
and tells him not to testify and leaves him.
When the boy makes it back to civilization,
he goes to the police and tells them what has happened.
So Gacy is charged with three other felonies
related to beating this kid up,
but these charges are ultimately dropped
when Gacy pleads guilty to sodomy.
He had a 10-year jail sentence for the sodomy conviction.
He did very well in jail. He was a model prisoner.
He helped other prisoners in the jail community.
In 1969, his father passed away of cirrhosis of the liver.
It was, I think, a major psychological blow to him.
His father died believing that his son was a total failure.
He in prison for this horrendous charge.
He was exactly what he had called him all of his life.
This was obviously devastating for Gacy,
but then he caught a break.
They paroled him because of his good behavior.
He was out in 18 months.
He's free to start a new life.
1971, John, bought a house just north of Chicago,
at 8213 west summerdale Avenue.
Gacy lived in a real populated area, single-story homes,
brick homes, you know, older homes.
Working-class, striving for middle-class neighborhood,
hardworking men and women.
He met an old high-school girlfriend that he had dated...
Carole.
She had two children, two little girls of her own.
He and Carole eventually and really very quickly got married.
But it's not long before Gacy
is back to pursuing his secret life,
and Carole starts to suspect something.
I was finding a lot of books in the house of nude men.
He would not have much to do with me.
We hardly had any sex.
And he found it very difficult to have anything to do with me.
He did a lot of masturbating, which I knew about.
And it wasn't long before their marriage falls apart.
After Carole moved out with the girls,
John had the house at 8213 summerdale to himself.
John actually called those years from '76 to '78
his cruising days.
John Wayne Gacy had sex with hundreds at least...
And maybe more... kids.
But he wasn't looking for victims,
he was looking to have sex with someone
that wouldn't tell on him.
Because more than anything else, Gacy did not want people
to find out that he was homosexual, period.
Maybe the kid just offhandedly said,
"you don't want your neighbors to know about this, do you?"
I mean, anything that would give him the idea
that these kids might tell on him
could result in the kid's death, easily.
The kids who died were the ones that made him feel
that he was gonna be found out, for whatever reason.
Police today found six more bodies
under the John Gacy house,
all appearing to have been teenaged boys and young men.
It was two years from when my brother disappeared.
We were sitting in front of the TV,
and they were bringing the bodies out, and my mother said,
"your brother can be one of those guys."
Welcome back to "very scary people."
When police descended on John Wayne Gacy's home
and began searching for the bodies of missing young men,
they were hoping to find the remains of Rob piest,
but instead what they found was a crime scene
beyond anything they had imagined.
And as the public watched the terrifying story
unfold on television,
families of missing young men waited on pins and needles
to find out if their loved ones
were among the victims.
Cook county sheriff's police and des plaines
detectives had this house under surveillance
for about two weeks. Last night about 9:00 pm,
officers armed with warrants entered the house,
arrested its owner, 36-year-old contractor John Gacy.
They suspect there are several more bodies buried here.
It's suspected because of the looks of the area
down in the crawl space.
There are some other mounds and appears to be more there.
I had never seen anything like this before.
I had never heard anything like this before.
I had never experienced anything like this before.
The evidence technicians...
They were digging with spoons to get all the evidence.
And really, that was an archeological dig.
It was a very slow process.
Are you men sifting by hand through the dirt
to catch any kind of a trace of evidence, hair, teeth?
Yes, for the most part, yes.
So you've got about half or three-quarters
of this crawl space yet to go through?
I would say about three-quarters.
What I'll never forget was the stench.
It just overwhelmed a person's olfactory sense.
This was a mass graveyard.
They were slowly but surely pulling out bodies
and transporting them with the paddy wagon
back to the medical examiner's office.
But when the body bags were brought up,
they were almost limp.
Bodies weren't brought up.
Gelatinous material was all that was left.
Sure, the bones, to the extent they existed, teeth,
sometimes skulls.
On our job, we see a variety of horrific things,
but this was out of the norm.
Police today found six more bodies
under the John Gacy house,
all appearing to have been teenaged boys and young men.
We were sitting in front of the TV
and they were bringing the bodies out and my mother said,
"your brother can be one of those guys."
It was two years from when my brother disappeared.
Nine bodies, identities unknown,
victims of a man who probably did not know their names.
Gacy was the headline every day for the next two or three weeks.
How many bodies were taken out of the house that day,
how many the next day, and so forth, on and on.
It was new year's Eve.
Cops ring the doorbell, and they tell you to sit down.
They said, "we just want you to know your brother
is identified with the Gacy case."
My brother was the fourth body
that was recovered from the home.
It is very, very devastating,
but it was a relief to know it's over.
So you have two years of, like, "could it?
Would it? Maybe. Could be. I don't know."
It's finality.
Gacy's home has become a tourist attraction.
Every day for a week, outsiders came here
to see bodies brought out of Gacy's house.
His neighbors will never forget that.
You see bodies in your sleep.
You see him in your sleep.
It's just too much.
And the police have found, at last count,
27 bodies buried under his house and garage.
He actually ran out of room in the crawl space
and he had no more room to put any bodies down there.
I think one was buried under the barbecue grill,
one under the garage floor.
What we didn't know...
And didn't know for some months...
Was where was Rob piest?
Rob piest, Gacy's last victim, wasn't found on Gacy's property.
Gacy told police he disposed of his body elsewhere,
along with many others.
Well, he essentially ran out of room under his house.
And he thought it'd be best to start throwing them
off the bridge into the des plaines river,
a fair distance away from where he lived.
We started at the 55 bridge over the des plaines river.
We worked two boats on the north side of the river,
two boats on the south side of the river. No luck.
The search went on for months, but nothing was found.
And so then the following spring,
the searchers focused on a different area.
It turns out that, within eyeshot of that bridge,
there is a nuclear plant where they had a dam.
And that's where some of the bodies actually got tied up
and were found.
Including the body of Rob piest.
And it wasn't until his body was recovered
in the des plaines river that the mystery was solved.
It was an emotional time for relatives of the victims.
The 36-year-old contractor went to court
in an emotion-packed trial.
Nobody ever thought even in their wildest dreams...
...that this meek person who was
so all involved in his community,
in his work, could have done the crimes that he committed.
People just can't believe
that this is the John Gacy that we knew.
The John Gacy that we knew was just
a warm, wonderful, public-spirited person.
And to see this now, it's just unbelievable.
You didn't expect it from him. I had... he was a nice guy.
Gacy was very charming. He was manipulative.
He was witty, and he was very intelligent.
And you wouldn't know he was a serial killer
unless you knew what he did.
I don't know how he went about it,
to tell you the truth, if he did.
And I would never... this is something
that I would never even think of him doing.
The 36-year-old contractor went to court
in an emotion-packed trial.
My defense was that he was not guilty by reason of insanity
because he was suffering from a severe mental disease.
As a result of that mental disease,
he cannot appreciate the criminality of his act,
nor conform his conduct to the requirements of law.
In order to be found not guilty by reason of insanity,
the defense has to prove that Gacy
doesn't know the difference between right and wrong
at the time that he committed these offenses.
My role in the trial of John Gacy
was to serve as a defense expert in regards to his mental state.
And I was to try to explain, had he been in contact with reality?
Had he not been in contact with reality?
And I tried to explain that this person was not really a person.
That was rebutted by the state
arguing that he was methodical in what he did,
and he wouldn't have buried the bodies if he was truly insane,
and he wouldn't have kept doing it over and over.
And we had parents that had to testify.
It was just heart-wrenching, to say the least.
My parents both had to take the stand.
And the weirdest thing of all is when we had to identify him
and you lean over and you say, "yes, that is him."
That to me was the hardest thing,
knowing that that's the guy that did what he did to my brother.
John Gacy... He sat there calmly.
He looked neat.
He didn't seem to get upset about anything.
During the closing arguments,
the prosecution reminded the jurors of the victims
by tossing their pictures into the crawl space
set up in the courtroom.
And he just continued to do that.
And that was a very, very powerful thing.
It took the jury less than two hours
to reject the defense argument that Gacy was insane
and to find Gacy guilty of murdering 33 young men
during a 7-year killing spree.
Gacy showed absolutely no emotion
as all the murder counts were read,
but he winked before he left the courtroom.
It was an emotional time for relatives of the victims,
and many like Ken piest,
whose brother was killed, want revenge.
- There's only one solution now. - What is that?
I want to see him go to the chair.
And eugenia godzik,
mother of another victim, tearfully agreed.
I hope he does get the electric chair.
Then that'll make everybody feel better.
I'm sure it'll make the other mothers feel better, too.
A jury which found John Gacy guilty of murder
then recommended the death penalty.
I believe the death sentence was the best thing for him.
There's no way that he could have been rehabilitated.
It's like, "you know what? One less for the state. Sorry."
There, at one minute after midnight,
28 witnesses will watch as a lethal injection
cuts off his breathing and stops his heart.
He took our 33 babies over 14 years ago,
and it's time to go.
The one-time clown, party lover, and mass murderer
now sits on death row, waiting.
If you want to know what my life is like,
I log it every day, for the last 12 years.
All you got to do is ask. I can tell you everything.
I can tell you the first meal they served me here
- because I do it daily. - What do you do all day?
Every phone call, everything that I do.
Every time an officer's around me, it's logged.
Every movement that I make is in the book here.
I remember asking him why he kept all that.
"I just want this in case I have to go back to trial,
and I will prove my innocence."
Not long after Gacy confessed to dozens of murders,
he changes his story and says that he's innocent.
Gacy had concocted this elaborate idea
that someone else had committed these murders.
When they paint the image that I was this monster who...
Who picked up, like, these altar boys along the street
and swatted them like flies.
I said, "this is ludicrous."
And I said, "but you confessed."
And he said, "that was meaningless.
I had to confess.
They got me in a place where my lawyer said,
'you better confess, ' so I did."
And Gacy had plenty of theories
as to who committed these murders.
We have always contended there was others involved.
At the time of my arrest, there was three of the suspects,
all employees of p.D.M. Contractors, all with keys
to the house on summerdale.
He said, "12 people had keys to my house."
Any one of them could have been using it as a burial ground.
Because I travel a great deal,
they're coming in when I'm not there,
"and they're burying bodies in my crawl space."
Why would John Wayne Gacy confess and then recant?
That's a question that will puzzle shrinks
and people who have looked into this matter forever.
For over a decade while on death row,
Gacy stays busy and maintains his innocence.
Since he went to jail in 1980,
Gacy's produced hundreds of works.
His style is called "art brut".
Art brut is the art of the criminally insane.
Here is the hi-ho series. And that is self-explanatory.
It's the seven dwarfs. I've done an array of paint...
A different... a variation of paintings,
and I do more or less whatever people want.
Gacy appealed his conviction multiple times
over the course of 14 years,
only to be turned down every time.
If people don't want to know the truth and the honesty of it,
if they want to be convinced they're brainwashed
into what they believe, then fine.
Then go ahead and kill me.
But vengeance is mine, sayeth the lord,
because you will have executed
somebody that didn't commit the crime.
Earlier today, a helicopter transferred Gacy
to stateville prison.
There, at one minute after midnight,
28 witnesses will watch as a lethal injection cuts
off his breathing and stops his heart.
For his last meal, Gacy orders a bucket
of Kentucky fried chicken, which is really fitting,
considering he worked there back in the day.
If we look, well, some good distance now
from the walls of the prison, perhaps we see others gathered.
There you see a candlelight vigil,
those folks holding the candles
those who oppose the death penalty.
But they were far outnumbered, outnumbered by the t-shirts
that read "no tears for the clown."
He took our 33 babies over 14 years ago,
and it's time to go.
Given the hour here, now 12:04 local time,
the execution of John Wayne Gacy should be,
we are told, now underway.
First step, of course is he's strapped to a gurney.
A saline solution iv starts,
and then eventually the three killer drugs.
When Gacy was given a chance to give a final message,
he said these words... "Kiss my ass."
John Wayne Gacy was pronounced dead at 12:58 am.
We're happy to report to the victims' families
and to the hundreds of people that his horror reached out to
and whose lives were affected for all time,
justice has finally been served.
The punishment didn't really fit the crime.
It was too easy for him.
And I know that's terrible,
but I'm really sorry that he really didn't get to suffer.
It took 14 years in the making for this to come to an end.
This should have happened a long time ago.
My mother had passed away by that time.
And her one wish was she wanted to push the button
to have him die.
And I just remember looking at my husband,
saying, "it's finally over. It's over."
I think that was the universal opinion,
that this man got what he deserved.
The memories of those who were there
will soon be all that remains.
John Wayne Gacy's house was long ago torn down.
A new one now stands in its place.
And the address had been burned forever
into Chicago's collective consciousness...
8213 west summerdale.
When all is said and done, Gacy had a broken brain.
I think floating around within him
were all sorts of impersonations...
Pogo the clown, John Wayne Gacy the painting contractor,
John Wayne Gacy the husband,
John Wayne Gacy the pedophile, John Wayne Gacy the killer.
He was an amalgamation of all of these things.
He was probably the best con man this world has ever known.
He was the worst of evil.
If you believe you've lived your life
the right way, then you do not have nothing to fear.
I've had confession. I have communion.
And I am at peace with myself.
In the end, police recovered 33 of John Wayne Gacy's victims.
But back then, investigators weren't able
to identify eight of the bodies.
Then in 2011, more than 30 years after Gacy confessed,
the cook county sheriff's office in Chicago re-opened the case.
Using advances in forensics and DNA technology,
they identified two more of Gacy's victims,
providing at least some closure to those families.
To this day, detectives continue working to identify
the remaining six victims.
I'm Donnie wahlberg.
Thanks for watching.