1 00:00:08,487 --> 00:00:10,031 Now, when the search warrants were effected in your case, 2 00:00:10,072 --> 00:00:12,783 they did find an awful lot in the crawl space of your home. 3 00:00:12,825 --> 00:00:14,285 Did they not? 4 00:00:14,326 --> 00:00:15,911 Well, yeah. I had offered to sell them the house 5 00:00:15,953 --> 00:00:17,580 because I thought there was nothing down in the crawl space. 6 00:00:17,621 --> 00:00:18,748 Yeah. 7 00:00:18,789 --> 00:00:20,541 I had never had any qualms about them 8 00:00:20,583 --> 00:00:22,460 going down in the crawl space. They were going to go ... 9 00:00:22,501 --> 00:00:24,086 Well, how many bodies were actually located 10 00:00:24,128 --> 00:00:25,796 on the property and where? 11 00:00:25,838 --> 00:00:30,301 To my understanding, there was a total of 29 bodies 12 00:00:30,342 --> 00:00:33,429 or 28 bodies were found on the property, 13 00:00:33,471 --> 00:00:35,806 26, 27 of them under the house. 14 00:00:35,848 --> 00:00:38,142 And the rest? One was under the driveway. 15 00:00:38,184 --> 00:00:41,687 One was under the garage. So that makes a total of 29. 16 00:00:41,729 --> 00:00:44,440 Okay. Now, from the standpoint of the arrest, 17 00:00:44,482 --> 00:00:47,276 when you were arrested in this matter, this was ... 18 00:00:47,318 --> 00:00:50,029 It snowballed. It snowballed, okay. 19 00:00:50,071 --> 00:00:52,948 What was the date of that arrest, do you recall? 20 00:00:52,990 --> 00:00:55,785 December 22nd, 1978 is when I was arrested. 21 00:01:43,249 --> 00:01:45,418 I was driving home from college 22 00:01:45,459 --> 00:01:47,962 for Christmas break, 23 00:01:48,003 --> 00:01:51,173 and I just kept hearing about all this on the news. 24 00:01:51,215 --> 00:01:53,884 I never ever thought of my brother. 25 00:01:54,552 --> 00:01:57,179 They found two more bodies today in Des Plaines, 26 00:01:57,221 --> 00:01:59,807 Illinois in the house of a 36-year-old 27 00:01:59,849 --> 00:02:01,350 convicted sex offender, 28 00:02:01,892 --> 00:02:04,311 and this miserable search will go on. 29 00:02:05,855 --> 00:02:07,606 It never even came into my head 30 00:02:07,648 --> 00:02:09,775 that my brother would be a part of that. 31 00:02:10,860 --> 00:02:16,323 When I got home, and I walked in the door, my mom says, 32 00:02:16,365 --> 00:02:18,701 "I have something to tell you," and then I knew. 33 00:02:18,743 --> 00:02:21,829 That’s all she had to say. I knew that she was 34 00:02:21,871 --> 00:02:25,791 going to tell me he is somehow connected to this. 35 00:02:34,508 --> 00:02:41,348 We grew up in Chicago. We moved in 1973 to Des Plaines. 36 00:02:43,726 --> 00:02:47,271 I was the fourth child out of five of us. 37 00:02:47,313 --> 00:02:49,023 I had all brothers. 38 00:02:49,940 --> 00:02:52,735 My brother John was 3 years older than me. 39 00:02:54,070 --> 00:02:55,488 To me, he was adventurous. 40 00:02:55,529 --> 00:03:00,534 He was older and driving, and I was a young kid. 41 00:03:01,535 --> 00:03:03,412 He was 19 years old. 42 00:03:04,997 --> 00:03:09,668 What I remember about his disappearance is, 43 00:03:09,710 --> 00:03:12,963 he didn’t show up for work on Friday, and it was payday. 44 00:03:13,464 --> 00:03:15,883 The people he worked with got concerned. 45 00:03:15,925 --> 00:03:18,260 So they went over to his apartment 46 00:03:19,011 --> 00:03:22,515 and had to call the police in order to let them in, 47 00:03:23,641 --> 00:03:25,726 at which time they called my mom. 48 00:03:26,644 --> 00:03:29,522 His place was not ransacked or anything. 49 00:03:29,563 --> 00:03:33,317 And it was like, "Oh, well, he’s not here." 50 00:03:35,319 --> 00:03:41,325 I remember them basically saying that he left town. 51 00:03:42,618 --> 00:03:46,205 When my brother disappeared, his car disappeared. 52 00:03:46,914 --> 00:03:49,375 The police convinced my mom that, 53 00:03:49,417 --> 00:03:51,752 "Oh, he just went away for the weekend. 54 00:03:51,794 --> 00:03:55,339 He’s 19 years old. You got to let your child go." 55 00:03:57,675 --> 00:04:01,637 As time went on, you pray that he’s still alive 56 00:04:01,679 --> 00:04:04,014 and he’s happy somewhere. 57 00:04:05,850 --> 00:04:10,187 It was the September after he had first disappeared. 58 00:04:10,980 --> 00:04:14,191 My brother’s 1971 Plymouth Satellite 59 00:04:14,233 --> 00:04:18,696 was seen stealing gas. It had my brother’s plates. 60 00:04:19,530 --> 00:04:23,826 It gave you hope again that, "Oh, well, 61 00:04:23,868 --> 00:04:27,371 maybe he is out there," that he is alive. 62 00:04:30,041 --> 00:04:33,002 My mom knew enough about the Chicago police 63 00:04:33,044 --> 00:04:34,336 and how they worked. 64 00:04:34,378 --> 00:04:36,464 She would call them all the time, 65 00:04:36,505 --> 00:04:40,134 but it just was a kid that disappeared, 66 00:04:41,135 --> 00:04:44,805 and that was the attitude of the police. 67 00:04:47,767 --> 00:04:51,395 What made this whole case blow up 68 00:04:51,896 --> 00:04:54,940 is Rob Piest disappeared from Des Plaines. 69 00:04:58,027 --> 00:05:00,196 Friends and relatives of missing teenage boys 70 00:05:00,237 --> 00:05:02,031 have been calling from all over the country 71 00:05:02,073 --> 00:05:04,408 to learn more about this bizarre crime. 72 00:05:05,076 --> 00:05:08,079 It was Robert Piest’s disappearance on December 11th 73 00:05:08,120 --> 00:05:11,165 that led police to the home of the suburban contractor. 74 00:05:12,333 --> 00:05:16,921 At that point, the only name we knew was Rob Piest. 75 00:05:17,838 --> 00:05:21,300 We only had one name, but I also had information 76 00:05:21,342 --> 00:05:25,429 that this was just the latest of many, many victims. 77 00:05:27,014 --> 00:05:30,893 Officially, the word came out that night 78 00:05:30,935 --> 00:05:33,437 that there was one body buried in the basement. 79 00:05:34,313 --> 00:05:36,941 Days later, the number grew and grew and grew. 80 00:05:38,109 --> 00:05:41,153 The key was, where’s the suspect? 81 00:05:45,449 --> 00:05:47,159 Once we found the bones, 82 00:05:47,660 --> 00:05:50,037 Gacy was charged with one homicide, 83 00:05:50,079 --> 00:05:51,872 one count of homicide. 84 00:05:51,914 --> 00:05:53,624 He’s actually smiling in his mugshot. 85 00:05:53,666 --> 00:05:56,293 That was strange to me. 86 00:05:57,002 --> 00:05:59,046 And so he was detained from then on. 87 00:06:00,673 --> 00:06:04,218 We bring Gacy into the interview room. 88 00:06:04,677 --> 00:06:07,138 Gacy says, "I’m going to give it all up. 89 00:06:07,805 --> 00:06:10,474 I’m ready to give you a detailed confession." 90 00:06:13,561 --> 00:06:15,312 I had read him his Miranda Rights, 91 00:06:15,813 --> 00:06:18,774 and I started asking Gacy some questions then, 92 00:06:19,316 --> 00:06:21,777 and I got into more of a monologue by Gacy. 93 00:06:21,819 --> 00:06:24,572 It wasn’t a interrogation so much. 94 00:06:25,364 --> 00:06:29,326 He just started telling us things and rambling on about it. 95 00:06:30,453 --> 00:06:34,915 He told us that he had buried 27 young men in his crawl space. 96 00:06:34,957 --> 00:06:37,752 He did bury a couple of the kids in his backyard, 97 00:06:38,335 --> 00:06:41,172 and then he threw the remaining in the Des Plaines River. 98 00:06:45,676 --> 00:06:48,012 It was just a tough thing to listen to, 99 00:06:48,888 --> 00:06:51,640 the way he talked about how he killed everybody. 100 00:06:56,353 --> 00:06:59,273 He started out with Rob Piest, what happened with Rob, 101 00:07:00,524 --> 00:07:04,153 and he said he was just getting ready to leave the pharmacy 102 00:07:04,195 --> 00:07:06,989 when Rob Piest came out to his car and said, 103 00:07:07,031 --> 00:07:10,368 "Hey, I understand that you might be looking for some help," 104 00:07:11,202 --> 00:07:14,455 and Gacy says, "Yeah, actually, why don’t you hop in 105 00:07:14,497 --> 00:07:16,082 and fill out a quick application? 106 00:07:16,123 --> 00:07:19,585 And I’ll give you a call." So he jumps in the car with Gacy 107 00:07:19,627 --> 00:07:21,712 while his mom is out front waiting for him, 108 00:07:21,754 --> 00:07:24,757 and Gacy fumbles around with the paperwork, and he says, 109 00:07:24,799 --> 00:07:27,718 "Jeez, doggone it, I must’ve left the stuff at home." 110 00:07:27,760 --> 00:07:29,929 He says, "I just live down the block here. 111 00:07:29,970 --> 00:07:31,597 If you want, come on with me," 112 00:07:31,639 --> 00:07:33,724 and Piest says, "Well, my ma is out front." 113 00:07:33,766 --> 00:07:35,601 He says, "I’ll get you back right away. 114 00:07:35,643 --> 00:07:37,019 Don’t worry about it." 115 00:07:37,061 --> 00:07:38,729 So kind of reluctantly, Piest says, 116 00:07:38,771 --> 00:07:41,357 "Okay, let’s go do a quick application." 117 00:07:42,066 --> 00:07:45,111 So Gacy drives from Nisson Pharmacy with Rob Piest, 118 00:07:45,152 --> 00:07:50,324 willingly, to his house and go in his house, 119 00:07:50,366 --> 00:07:54,954 and Gacy starts talking to him about entertaining kids 120 00:07:54,995 --> 00:07:56,330 as a clown and stuff like that. 121 00:07:56,372 --> 00:07:57,998 He says, "Yeah, I got all these cool tricks." 122 00:07:58,040 --> 00:07:59,709 He says, "I’ll show you," 123 00:08:00,292 --> 00:08:03,504 and he puts a pair of handcuffs on himself, Gacy does, 124 00:08:04,046 --> 00:08:06,882 and struggles with the handcuffs a little bit, 125 00:08:06,924 --> 00:08:08,801 and then he turns around, 126 00:08:08,843 --> 00:08:10,678 and he’s got the handcuffs dangling, 127 00:08:11,429 --> 00:08:13,347 and Piest says, "Wow. That’s cool. How’d you do that?" 128 00:08:13,389 --> 00:08:17,560 And he says, "Easy. Put them on. I’ll show you how to do it." 129 00:08:17,601 --> 00:08:19,895 So Piest actually handcuffed himself, 130 00:08:21,439 --> 00:08:24,191 so Piest struggles and struggles and struggles, 131 00:08:24,233 --> 00:08:27,403 and he says, "I don’t know how to get out of these things. 132 00:08:27,445 --> 00:08:28,904 What’s the trick?" 133 00:08:28,946 --> 00:08:30,364 And he says, "I reached in my pocket, 134 00:08:30,406 --> 00:08:32,825 and I pulled out the key," and I said, 135 00:08:32,867 --> 00:08:34,910 ’The trick is, you got to have the key,’" 136 00:08:34,952 --> 00:08:38,247 and he says, "Once I got Piest shackled, 137 00:08:38,873 --> 00:08:41,042 he was pretty much mine at that point." 138 00:08:43,335 --> 00:08:46,881 Gacy just talked so matter-of-factly 139 00:08:46,922 --> 00:08:48,591 about what he did to Rob Piest, 140 00:08:49,341 --> 00:08:53,971 got into great graphic detail of the handcuff trick 141 00:08:54,597 --> 00:09:00,311 and a rope trick, disrobing him and performing oral sex on him. 142 00:09:03,981 --> 00:09:05,608 He was pretty proud of that rope trick. 143 00:09:05,649 --> 00:09:08,652 He thought it was kind of ingenious. 144 00:09:09,320 --> 00:09:11,280 He’d put a rope around their neck, 145 00:09:11,989 --> 00:09:13,532 tie a little knot right at the neck, 146 00:09:13,574 --> 00:09:16,452 and then a little bit later, he would put another knot, 147 00:09:16,494 --> 00:09:19,622 and he’d have a stick, maybe 8, 10 inches long, 148 00:09:20,456 --> 00:09:23,834 and he would wedge the stick between the front shoulder 149 00:09:24,335 --> 00:09:27,129 and the back of the head, and he would start twisting it, 150 00:09:27,171 --> 00:09:31,133 and, of course, twisting, and it would just get tight 151 00:09:31,175 --> 00:09:33,844 and eventually strangle them. 152 00:09:34,512 --> 00:09:35,805 The rope trick is ... 153 00:09:35,846 --> 00:09:37,473 The way I describe the rope trick is, 154 00:09:37,515 --> 00:09:39,100 it’s nothing more than a tourniquet. 155 00:09:39,141 --> 00:09:40,101 Mm-hmm. 156 00:09:40,142 --> 00:09:41,644 And I had explained it to them. 157 00:09:41,685 --> 00:09:44,355 I even demonstrated it to them. It would cut off the air. 158 00:09:45,106 --> 00:09:46,565 So if you’re going to kill somebody, 159 00:09:46,607 --> 00:09:48,984 you just put it on their neck and twist it three times 160 00:09:49,026 --> 00:09:52,113 or four times or whatever until the person stopped moving. 161 00:09:53,322 --> 00:09:55,825 So he was doing this to Rob Piest 162 00:09:55,866 --> 00:09:57,702 and twisting and twisting it, 163 00:09:58,369 --> 00:10:00,246 and he did it maybe three or four times, 164 00:10:00,287 --> 00:10:01,914 and he got a phone call. 165 00:10:01,956 --> 00:10:03,874 And he went to answer the phone, and when he came back, 166 00:10:03,916 --> 00:10:07,878 Rob Piest was dead, fallen onto the ground. 167 00:10:11,215 --> 00:10:12,967 The family was driving around the neighborhoods 168 00:10:13,008 --> 00:10:14,635 and so forth that evening after 169 00:10:14,677 --> 00:10:17,138 when his mother came and couldn’t find him, 170 00:10:17,179 --> 00:10:22,309 and I think Rob was already done by that time. 171 00:10:22,351 --> 00:10:24,019 He was already dead. 172 00:10:26,522 --> 00:10:27,773 Throughout the confession, 173 00:10:27,815 --> 00:10:31,402 Gacy pretty much showed no emotion at all. 174 00:10:32,403 --> 00:10:33,904 At the conclusion of the interview, 175 00:10:33,946 --> 00:10:36,907 we stepped out and his attorney, 176 00:10:36,949 --> 00:10:39,076 Sam Amirante was waiting in the lobby. 177 00:10:40,244 --> 00:10:42,747 So we briefed him on the confession 178 00:10:43,456 --> 00:10:48,586 and both Gacy and his attorneys agreed to have Gacy 179 00:10:49,253 --> 00:10:52,048 do a second confession with the state’s attorneys 180 00:10:52,089 --> 00:10:55,426 there, the police officers and his attorneys. 181 00:10:56,343 --> 00:10:58,679 Well, there had to be 15 people crammed 182 00:10:58,721 --> 00:11:00,639 into a little interview room, 183 00:11:00,681 --> 00:11:04,518 so I’m just watching everyone else with their jaws open. 184 00:11:06,479 --> 00:11:08,856 He had all of us on the edge of our seats, 185 00:11:09,315 --> 00:11:13,319 and John knew it, and this was going to be his last hurrah. 186 00:11:13,361 --> 00:11:16,530 We’re his last audience. He’s lost everyone else, 187 00:11:16,572 --> 00:11:20,284 so he’s going to try to impress us with his horrific acts. 188 00:11:28,459 --> 00:11:32,171 It was a nightmare. 189 00:11:33,047 --> 00:11:36,092 Sam Amirante, his criminal attorney, 190 00:11:36,884 --> 00:11:40,221 called me, and he told me 191 00:11:40,262 --> 00:11:45,309 that John had been arrested for suspicion of murder. 192 00:11:47,186 --> 00:11:49,522 Of course, 2 o’clock in the morning, 193 00:11:49,563 --> 00:11:52,775 you’re not even awake, and you’re hearing this, 194 00:11:53,401 --> 00:11:57,613 and I said to Sam, I said, "Can I talk to him?" 195 00:11:57,655 --> 00:12:01,242 He said, "For just a minute," and so he put him on the phone. 196 00:12:01,283 --> 00:12:03,619 I said, "John, did you kill somebody?" 197 00:12:04,412 --> 00:12:09,166 And he uttered, "Uh-huh." He didn’t say, "Yes," 198 00:12:09,208 --> 00:12:11,752 but that’s exactly how he uttered it. 199 00:12:12,795 --> 00:12:17,216 And, of course, at this point, we thought it was a person. 200 00:12:18,884 --> 00:12:20,886 We didn’t learn until everybody else 201 00:12:20,928 --> 00:12:25,099 did about the numerous amounts of bodies 202 00:12:25,141 --> 00:12:27,101 that were under the house. 203 00:12:27,143 --> 00:12:30,396 When I watched the news, I just cried. 204 00:12:30,938 --> 00:12:32,481 This afternoon, Gacy was charged 205 00:12:32,523 --> 00:12:35,109 with murdering Robert Piest. At the hearing, police said 206 00:12:35,151 --> 00:12:37,278 Gacy has confessed to the Piest murder. 207 00:12:37,820 --> 00:12:39,572 Meanwhile, investigators have started 208 00:12:39,613 --> 00:12:41,115 to dismantle Gacy’s house 209 00:12:41,157 --> 00:12:43,909 and garage as they continue to search for other bodies 210 00:12:43,951 --> 00:12:45,995 in this quiet suburban neighborhood. 211 00:12:47,163 --> 00:12:50,041 By the next day, the 22nd of December, 212 00:12:50,833 --> 00:12:52,334 it was a feeding frenzy. 213 00:12:52,835 --> 00:12:57,298 Reporters every step of the way, cameras all over the street, 214 00:12:57,339 --> 00:13:00,051 authorities going in and out of the house. 215 00:13:00,509 --> 00:13:02,011 It was a mob scene. 216 00:13:02,636 --> 00:13:05,848 It was one of the biggest stories Chicago had ever seen. 217 00:13:07,266 --> 00:13:10,019 People were glued to their screens watching our coverage. 218 00:13:10,061 --> 00:13:12,980 Here’s what it looked like last night when we were here 219 00:13:13,022 --> 00:13:16,359 starting at about 11 o’clock as the search was beginning. 220 00:13:16,400 --> 00:13:18,319 Why were you here? No comment. 221 00:13:18,361 --> 00:13:19,820 We can’t say anything. 222 00:13:19,862 --> 00:13:21,405 You can’t say anything about why you were here 223 00:13:21,447 --> 00:13:23,324 for a couple hours tonight? No, we can’t. 224 00:13:23,366 --> 00:13:24,950 State’s attorney’s office advised us not to say anything. 225 00:13:24,992 --> 00:13:26,994 State attorney’s office advised you not to say anything. 226 00:13:27,036 --> 00:13:28,287 You’ve been here for a couple hours, 227 00:13:28,329 --> 00:13:29,747 and they say you can’t say anything? 228 00:13:29,789 --> 00:13:32,666 I got to go now. We blocked off the street 229 00:13:33,167 --> 00:13:35,044 around the sides of the house, 230 00:13:35,086 --> 00:13:37,129 and there was people there every morning. 231 00:13:37,671 --> 00:13:40,341 It was cold, and there was people just standing around, 232 00:13:40,383 --> 00:13:43,302 three, four, five deep, couple hundred people 233 00:13:43,344 --> 00:13:45,304 that were just watching the house. 234 00:13:46,514 --> 00:13:49,433 I pretty much stayed at the house over there digging. 235 00:13:52,228 --> 00:13:53,896 It was my job to do so. 236 00:13:54,355 --> 00:13:57,483 You just go on, and you keep digging, keep going. 237 00:14:00,528 --> 00:14:03,072 Those poor guys down there, are using, literally, 238 00:14:03,114 --> 00:14:06,617 their 10 fingers, literally, using their 10 fingers, 239 00:14:06,659 --> 00:14:09,662 and trying to exhume the body because there’s always 240 00:14:09,704 --> 00:14:12,581 a possibility of loss of trace evidence. 241 00:14:12,623 --> 00:14:15,418 So you can’t use a shovel or something like that. 242 00:14:15,876 --> 00:14:18,045 And with that, the medical examiner disappeared 243 00:14:18,087 --> 00:14:20,673 into what he called the incredible maze 244 00:14:20,715 --> 00:14:23,300 that was a crawl space and, more recently, 245 00:14:23,342 --> 00:14:26,178 has been a mass grave under John Gacy’s home. 246 00:15:10,681 --> 00:15:13,225 Every day, we’d probably come up with a couple, 247 00:15:13,267 --> 00:15:14,435 two or three bodies, 248 00:15:14,477 --> 00:15:16,479 and then on a good day maybe four. 249 00:15:17,146 --> 00:15:19,940 Once you got your body completely dug out, 250 00:15:19,982 --> 00:15:21,609 we’d video-tape it. 251 00:15:21,650 --> 00:15:24,445 Recording at the north wall at the front door, upper level, 252 00:15:25,821 --> 00:15:28,491 the remains of body number five are found. 253 00:15:29,742 --> 00:15:31,660 Say this was body such and such, 254 00:15:31,702 --> 00:15:33,412 dug up by such and such, 255 00:15:33,454 --> 00:15:35,790 and then he’d be put in a body bag and taken out, 256 00:15:35,831 --> 00:15:38,376 and then you’d keep going for your next one. 257 00:15:39,668 --> 00:15:42,254 We’d go in there do the same thing every day. 258 00:15:43,047 --> 00:15:44,340 About 4:30 in the afternoon 259 00:15:44,382 --> 00:15:47,468 when we started bringing the body bags out, 260 00:15:47,510 --> 00:15:49,553 the cameras would roll at that point, 261 00:15:49,595 --> 00:15:51,722 and that’s when the local news went on, 262 00:15:52,640 --> 00:15:54,558 and they could lead the story with it. 263 00:15:54,600 --> 00:15:57,186 Everybody got their shots? Everything got quiet, 264 00:15:57,812 --> 00:16:01,315 and you could hear people say, "Okay, today, three more. 265 00:16:01,357 --> 00:16:03,359 That’s" ... They were counting them. 266 00:16:04,944 --> 00:16:06,696 People were out there in the snow, 267 00:16:07,196 --> 00:16:08,823 chanting like at a football game, 268 00:16:08,864 --> 00:16:12,827 the number of body bags being carried into a squad roller 269 00:16:12,868 --> 00:16:14,537 to be driven to the morgue, 270 00:16:15,246 --> 00:16:17,707 like they were counting points in the end zone. 271 00:16:20,418 --> 00:16:22,211 It had turned into a circus, 272 00:16:22,253 --> 00:16:24,547 an amazing spectacle to this reporter, 273 00:16:24,588 --> 00:16:27,007 people bringing brown bag lunches, 274 00:16:27,049 --> 00:16:28,801 mothers lifting up small children, 275 00:16:28,843 --> 00:16:30,678 so they could see the sheriff’s officers 276 00:16:30,720 --> 00:16:33,347 dumping loads of mud on the driveway, 277 00:16:33,389 --> 00:16:35,349 mud that had been part of a grave, 278 00:16:36,100 --> 00:16:38,519 and when the people got tired of looking at the house 279 00:16:38,561 --> 00:16:40,354 they could take pictures of each other. 280 00:16:40,396 --> 00:16:43,482 "See? I was there, where they found the bodies." 281 00:16:45,526 --> 00:16:48,571 During the time that we’re recovering bodies, 282 00:16:49,155 --> 00:16:50,823 we don’t find Rob Piest there. 283 00:16:51,449 --> 00:16:54,577 So his parents, his sister and brother, 284 00:16:55,077 --> 00:16:56,787 they still didn’t have his body. 285 00:16:58,456 --> 00:17:02,418 Since Robert Piest’s only been gone for 10 days, 286 00:17:03,127 --> 00:17:05,921 this can’t be him because these are bones already. 287 00:17:06,380 --> 00:17:10,801 And so at that particular point, go back to Gacy. 288 00:17:13,929 --> 00:17:17,224 I certainly never handled anybody else like John Gacy 289 00:17:17,266 --> 00:17:18,809 or that magnitude of a case, 290 00:17:18,851 --> 00:17:21,854 but I went back to the conversation of Rob Piest, 291 00:17:21,896 --> 00:17:25,483 and we didn’t have a body, and it was around Christmas, 292 00:17:26,067 --> 00:17:28,194 and we had been told Gacy was in an Iowa prison 293 00:17:28,235 --> 00:17:30,613 when his father died. That upset him a lot. 294 00:17:31,447 --> 00:17:33,199 So I brought that up to Gacy. 295 00:17:33,240 --> 00:17:34,742 I said, "Remember when your father died? 296 00:17:34,784 --> 00:17:36,452 Well, we’ve got a family now in Des Plaines 297 00:17:36,494 --> 00:17:38,746 who would like to be able to spend 298 00:17:38,788 --> 00:17:41,916 Christmas having closure on where their boy is 299 00:17:41,957 --> 00:17:43,667 and where the body is." 300 00:17:44,251 --> 00:17:46,504 And he kind of hemmed a little bit, and I said, 301 00:17:46,545 --> 00:17:49,632 "Well, is he aboveground? Where’s he at?" 302 00:17:50,508 --> 00:17:52,343 He said, "Well, it’s neither." 303 00:17:52,385 --> 00:17:56,263 And you took him where? Out on the I-55 bridge. 304 00:17:56,305 --> 00:17:59,433 And that’s where ... How was he then taken 305 00:17:59,475 --> 00:18:02,061 from the car and placed into the river? 306 00:18:03,104 --> 00:18:05,648 Just opened up the trunk and dumped him in 307 00:18:05,690 --> 00:18:06,816 Uh-huh. 308 00:18:06,857 --> 00:18:08,192 There was no big special deal out of it. 309 00:18:08,234 --> 00:18:10,152 Okay. Yeah. 310 00:18:10,194 --> 00:18:13,781 We asked John, "Why? Why the river? 311 00:18:13,823 --> 00:18:15,700 You had a perfect thing going on here." 312 00:18:15,741 --> 00:18:19,245 He said, "Well, there was no room left in the crawl space," 313 00:18:19,286 --> 00:18:21,205 so he drove to the river. 314 00:18:22,748 --> 00:18:25,459 The bridge from which he threw the body 315 00:18:25,501 --> 00:18:30,256 was pretty high, and the current got pretty fast. 316 00:18:30,297 --> 00:18:32,591 It just kept moving and moving and moving. 317 00:18:32,633 --> 00:18:35,136 And so I didn’t really have great confidence 318 00:18:35,177 --> 00:18:38,180 that we would be able to find Rob Piest’s body. 319 00:18:38,848 --> 00:18:40,474 Thirty-six-year-old John Gacy, 320 00:18:40,516 --> 00:18:43,227 a convicted sex offender, has already been charged 321 00:18:43,269 --> 00:18:45,521 with the murder of 15-year-old Robert Piest. 322 00:18:46,022 --> 00:18:48,524 Police are searching a river for his body. 323 00:18:49,650 --> 00:18:53,654 By that point, we now know that Gacy was talking, 324 00:18:53,696 --> 00:18:57,199 and he’s laying out exactly where those bodies were buried. 325 00:18:58,617 --> 00:19:01,579 Gacy, for some reason, took a liking to me. 326 00:19:02,038 --> 00:19:04,832 I had blond hair at the time and certainly a lot younger, 327 00:19:04,874 --> 00:19:08,794 but we had a good relationship. And they got a hold of us 328 00:19:08,836 --> 00:19:11,589 and said that Gacy wanted to talk to Larry and I. 329 00:19:12,506 --> 00:19:15,551 So Albrecht and I walked back into the cell block 330 00:19:15,593 --> 00:19:17,344 and try and get more information. 331 00:19:17,970 --> 00:19:21,474 Gacy called the crawl space, "the burial grounds," 332 00:19:21,932 --> 00:19:25,978 and I said, "I haven’t been in your crawl space. 333 00:19:26,020 --> 00:19:28,314 Can you kind of tell me where things are?" 334 00:19:28,981 --> 00:19:31,484 He said "Well, give me a piece of paper," 335 00:19:32,109 --> 00:19:33,527 and the only thing we had 336 00:19:33,569 --> 00:19:37,073 was a pink copy of his prisoner property receipt, 337 00:19:37,114 --> 00:19:42,912 and he drew a diagram a rectangular shape of the house, 338 00:19:43,454 --> 00:19:46,040 which was the crawl space, and inside it, 339 00:19:46,082 --> 00:19:49,877 he put another rectangle and with an X on it, 340 00:19:49,919 --> 00:19:52,880 and he said, "That’s where the first one was buried." 341 00:19:54,173 --> 00:19:55,716 Then he put an N on top. 342 00:19:55,758 --> 00:19:58,010 And I said, "What’s that?" He said, "That’s north." 343 00:19:58,052 --> 00:20:02,556 And then he started to make smaller rectangles. 344 00:20:02,598 --> 00:20:04,266 Some would have numbers in them. 345 00:20:04,725 --> 00:20:07,478 These numbers denoted how many people were buried 346 00:20:07,520 --> 00:20:10,106 in a particular grave or trench. 347 00:20:10,981 --> 00:20:12,983 He went all the way around the perimeter of the house 348 00:20:13,025 --> 00:20:16,112 making these various notations where bodies were buried, 349 00:20:16,779 --> 00:20:19,532 and as soon as he got done with it, 350 00:20:19,573 --> 00:20:21,158 I reached in and grabbed it from him 351 00:20:21,200 --> 00:20:24,370 because I wanted to have that as evidence, and it was amazing. 352 00:20:24,787 --> 00:20:26,497 His recollection of where those bodies were 353 00:20:26,539 --> 00:20:27,832 and where they actually 354 00:20:27,873 --> 00:20:30,376 did find the bodies was right on the money. 355 00:20:38,551 --> 00:20:41,429 Police investigators using sledgehammers, axes and chain 356 00:20:41,470 --> 00:20:45,266 saws gutted John Gacy’s suburban Chicago home today. 357 00:20:45,307 --> 00:20:48,018 They have found bodies every place Gacy told them to look. 358 00:20:48,060 --> 00:20:50,521 The murder suspect has allegedly told police 359 00:20:50,563 --> 00:20:54,066 they will find the remains of 20 more young men and boys here. 360 00:20:56,861 --> 00:20:59,363 I think everybody was numb at that time. 361 00:21:00,156 --> 00:21:02,950 It wasn’t that we didn’t expect to find bones. 362 00:21:03,784 --> 00:21:07,455 It was just in the number of bones. 363 00:21:08,080 --> 00:21:11,917 There were 29 bodies that were at the house, 364 00:21:12,501 --> 00:21:17,548 27 in the crawl space and one under the barbecue pit 365 00:21:17,590 --> 00:21:21,218 and one under the walkway to the garage. 366 00:21:29,727 --> 00:21:34,065 I can’t tell you how I acted when I saw 367 00:21:34,106 --> 00:21:37,902 that they were under that house. I stood there, like, frozen. 368 00:21:39,570 --> 00:21:44,200 I was always on him about the smell in the house. 369 00:21:44,241 --> 00:21:48,579 I couldn’t stand it. It smelled like dead rats. 370 00:21:50,498 --> 00:21:52,249 And I used to tell him, I said, 371 00:21:52,291 --> 00:21:55,878 "You really got to get somebody or do something. 372 00:21:55,920 --> 00:21:59,673 There must be something dead under the house." 373 00:22:00,549 --> 00:22:03,886 He said there, "There isn’t anything dead under the" ... 374 00:22:03,928 --> 00:22:06,138 I said, “Yes, there is. 375 00:22:06,180 --> 00:22:08,682 I can smell it, and I know the smell. 376 00:22:09,183 --> 00:22:11,727 That’s something dead under there." 377 00:22:13,938 --> 00:22:16,691 I’m like, "I was right, there were dead things 378 00:22:16,732 --> 00:22:20,611 under that house." That just freaked me out. 379 00:22:20,653 --> 00:22:25,074 And the youngest girl had her bedroom 380 00:22:25,116 --> 00:22:27,702 right there where that crawl space was. 381 00:22:32,123 --> 00:22:34,083 I couldn’t get down in the crawl space that easy, 382 00:22:34,125 --> 00:22:35,918 and then I had a bum back to begin with. 383 00:22:35,960 --> 00:22:37,753 You got to crawl on your belly to move around 384 00:22:37,795 --> 00:22:40,047 in the crawl space. There is no way 385 00:22:40,089 --> 00:22:43,092 that I could have done any of the digging down there. 386 00:22:43,134 --> 00:22:45,761 I had enough trouble just getting down there. 387 00:22:47,555 --> 00:22:50,808 Gacy asked us about whether two kids that worked for him, 388 00:22:50,850 --> 00:22:53,310 Mike Rossi and David Cram, were at the station, 389 00:22:53,978 --> 00:22:55,396 and we said, "No." 390 00:22:55,438 --> 00:22:57,940 And he said, "Well, because they were involved," 391 00:22:58,482 --> 00:23:00,359 and we said, "Well, what do you mean they were involved? 392 00:23:00,401 --> 00:23:02,737 They were involved with the killings?" 393 00:23:02,778 --> 00:23:04,363 And he says, 394 00:23:04,405 --> 00:23:07,324 "No, but they dug the trenches in the crawl space for me," 395 00:23:08,492 --> 00:23:11,454 and, "Well, did they know what the trenches were for?" 396 00:23:11,495 --> 00:23:13,956 And his answer was, "They never said anything, 397 00:23:13,998 --> 00:23:15,624 but if they didn’t know what was down there, 398 00:23:15,666 --> 00:23:17,376 they were ... stupid." 399 00:23:20,004 --> 00:23:25,051 Gacy told the boys to go down and dig some shallow trenches 400 00:23:25,092 --> 00:23:27,470 so that he could take care of some of the plumbing problems 401 00:23:27,511 --> 00:23:28,971 that were down there. 402 00:23:29,013 --> 00:23:32,600 Later on, he would have them spread the lime 403 00:23:33,017 --> 00:23:35,227 to get rid of any of the smell, 404 00:23:35,269 --> 00:23:39,065 and that’s really why they claim that they were digging. 405 00:23:40,232 --> 00:23:44,362 He was paying them enough money that, in fact, 406 00:23:44,945 --> 00:23:48,532 he was, shall I say, attractive to them. 407 00:23:48,574 --> 00:23:50,910 That’s kind of why they stuck with him. 408 00:23:52,453 --> 00:23:56,165 His two loyal workers, Cram and Rossi, 409 00:23:56,207 --> 00:23:59,168 they were tough guys, you know, street smart, 410 00:23:59,210 --> 00:24:02,755 and they were getting property from young kids 411 00:24:02,797 --> 00:24:04,673 who never-appeared again, 412 00:24:04,715 --> 00:24:07,343 property that these young victims 413 00:24:07,385 --> 00:24:09,720 had that Gacy was giving to them. 414 00:24:11,597 --> 00:24:12,890 When we were on the scene, 415 00:24:12,932 --> 00:24:16,519 we saw Officer Rafael Tovar taking Rossi 416 00:24:16,560 --> 00:24:18,312 in and out of the house. 417 00:24:18,771 --> 00:24:20,898 I asked my cameraman to get a shot of him 418 00:24:20,940 --> 00:24:23,651 because I was curious. "Who is this kid?" 419 00:24:24,193 --> 00:24:26,320 As the investigation wore on, 420 00:24:26,821 --> 00:24:31,158 the name Rossi went from Gacy confidante, 421 00:24:31,200 --> 00:24:36,497 friend, lover to informant by police. 422 00:24:37,748 --> 00:24:41,877 We went to Mike Rossi’s house 423 00:24:41,919 --> 00:24:44,380 because we wanted to interview him some more, 424 00:24:44,422 --> 00:24:45,464 and we got there. 425 00:24:45,506 --> 00:24:48,259 His wife told us he was still at work, 426 00:24:49,093 --> 00:24:52,138 and she invited us to wait for him, and I asked her, 427 00:24:52,179 --> 00:24:54,890 "What kind of car does he drive? I’ll look out the window", 428 00:24:54,932 --> 00:24:57,852 and she told us it’s a white Plymouth. 429 00:24:57,893 --> 00:25:00,688 I says, "Okay, fine." And a little bit later 430 00:25:00,730 --> 00:25:03,357 while looking through some of the missing persons reports, 431 00:25:03,399 --> 00:25:08,446 I noticed that John Szyc’s car was a white Plymouth Satellite. 432 00:25:08,487 --> 00:25:12,324 It was one of the lights in the cartoons that go on, 433 00:25:12,366 --> 00:25:14,785 I said, "Darn, that was the same color." 434 00:25:15,494 --> 00:25:17,163 Then talking to Mike Rossi, 435 00:25:17,204 --> 00:25:20,166 we found out that he’d gotten the car from John Gacy, 436 00:25:20,207 --> 00:25:26,005 so we were able to tie John Szyc to Gacy in that manner. 437 00:25:28,466 --> 00:25:31,510 John Szyc was not a runaway. He was a working kid 438 00:25:31,552 --> 00:25:35,431 and somehow or other wound up on the bad side of Gacy. 439 00:25:36,640 --> 00:25:39,810 I spoke to members of John Szyc’s family. 440 00:25:40,352 --> 00:25:42,438 They’d been pleading with Chicago Police 441 00:25:42,480 --> 00:25:44,774 to help them find their missing son. 442 00:25:45,483 --> 00:25:47,360 Police had come back to the family and said, 443 00:25:47,401 --> 00:25:49,737 "We have evidence that he’s alive 444 00:25:49,779 --> 00:25:51,238 and just simply gone." 445 00:25:51,822 --> 00:25:55,368 So for 2 years, that’s all the family had to go on. 446 00:25:59,330 --> 00:26:00,998 They worked the John Szyc case, 447 00:26:01,040 --> 00:26:04,168 but they took an easy way out in closing the case. 448 00:26:04,210 --> 00:26:07,171 Mike Rossi apparently went up to get gas one day 449 00:26:07,213 --> 00:26:11,300 and did the fill-and-run, took off without paying. 450 00:26:11,342 --> 00:26:12,760 They had the license plate number, 451 00:26:12,802 --> 00:26:14,470 so when the report was written, 452 00:26:14,929 --> 00:26:18,015 it got channeled over to the investigator 453 00:26:18,057 --> 00:26:20,851 that was doing the John Szyc missing persons report. 454 00:26:21,644 --> 00:26:23,604 Authorities started to question that. 455 00:26:23,646 --> 00:26:25,648 Gacy assured them, "Oh, no, no, no, no. 456 00:26:25,690 --> 00:26:29,985 Szyc needed money. I had the car because he sold it to me, 457 00:26:30,027 --> 00:26:32,154 so he could get money to leave town." 458 00:26:33,531 --> 00:26:37,368 Gacy tells them, "John’s not around here. 459 00:26:37,410 --> 00:26:41,288 I haven’t seen him in months. He ran away." 460 00:26:42,081 --> 00:26:45,167 The police believed Gacy’s story. 461 00:26:45,209 --> 00:26:49,046 In fact, John Gacy himself was the one who determined 462 00:26:49,088 --> 00:26:51,215 that John Szyc was a runaway. 463 00:26:52,591 --> 00:26:55,720 The Szyc family provided me with a letter 464 00:26:55,761 --> 00:26:57,680 from the Chicago police department 465 00:26:58,055 --> 00:27:00,224 which I quoted in one of my stories. 466 00:27:00,266 --> 00:27:04,186 "Dear Mr. and Mrs. Szyc, I was unable to locate your son, 467 00:27:04,228 --> 00:27:07,898 but I did learn that he sold his auto in February of 1977 468 00:27:07,940 --> 00:27:11,318 and told the buyer that he needed the money to leave town." 469 00:27:15,031 --> 00:27:18,075 The investigator told the Szyc family, 470 00:27:18,117 --> 00:27:19,577 "Well, he must be alive. 471 00:27:19,618 --> 00:27:22,872 Maybe he’s just mad at you or whatever." 472 00:27:22,913 --> 00:27:25,041 So that was how he closed the case. 473 00:27:30,254 --> 00:27:33,215 I used to have dreams that I would see him, 474 00:27:34,341 --> 00:27:37,511 and either he would run the opposite way 475 00:27:37,553 --> 00:27:41,223 or would just ignore me. 476 00:27:42,475 --> 00:27:46,520 So in your head, you’re thinking that he disappeared because, 477 00:27:47,188 --> 00:27:50,941 for whatever reason, he didn’t want to be a part of the family. 478 00:27:54,862 --> 00:28:00,701 I didn’t see my brother’s car again until on the news 479 00:28:00,743 --> 00:28:03,079 when they were at Gacy’s house. 480 00:28:05,373 --> 00:28:10,294 At that point, we’re watching the news every day. 481 00:28:11,128 --> 00:28:12,463 You see the car, 482 00:28:12,505 --> 00:28:14,965 and then you notice they mentioned a ring. 483 00:28:15,966 --> 00:28:18,094 With the initials that were in it, 484 00:28:18,135 --> 00:28:21,180 I already knew that it was his. 485 00:28:21,222 --> 00:28:23,641 So it all started to add up a little bit. 486 00:28:24,433 --> 00:28:28,688 There were just things that definitely put him there. 487 00:28:28,729 --> 00:28:30,481 It was just a matter of time. 488 00:28:39,323 --> 00:28:42,868 When the police officer ... Sorry. 489 00:28:43,577 --> 00:28:46,539 When the police officers come to tell you 490 00:28:46,580 --> 00:28:50,209 that he was positively identified, 491 00:28:50,251 --> 00:28:55,798 it sort of, you know, changes everything in your life 492 00:28:55,840 --> 00:28:58,968 because then you know he’s not coming home. 493 00:28:59,009 --> 00:29:03,472 You get closure by knowing it had nothing to do with us. 494 00:29:03,514 --> 00:29:06,726 He got in with the wrong guy at the wrong time, 495 00:29:06,767 --> 00:29:09,145 and this is what happened. 496 00:29:13,899 --> 00:29:19,488 You never become numb to the scene of a stretcher carried 497 00:29:19,530 --> 00:29:23,451 by four men with a white shrouded body 498 00:29:23,492 --> 00:29:29,165 lying on top of it. I think the one common thread 499 00:29:29,206 --> 00:29:31,584 that runs through all the interviews 500 00:29:31,625 --> 00:29:34,003 with the families of the victims is, 501 00:29:34,045 --> 00:29:35,880 "We tried to tell the police. 502 00:29:35,921 --> 00:29:39,300 We tried to tell them, but they weren’t listening." 503 00:29:52,521 --> 00:29:57,151 As I continue my research, I’m getting angrier and angrier 504 00:29:57,193 --> 00:30:00,446 as to why somebody didn’t stop this man 505 00:30:00,488 --> 00:30:04,492 before he started killing young men and boys in Chicago. 506 00:30:07,161 --> 00:30:08,496 Gacy’s name came up 507 00:30:08,537 --> 00:30:11,499 in some missing person reports in Chicago, 508 00:30:11,540 --> 00:30:15,628 and Gacy had some kind of contact with the victims, 509 00:30:15,669 --> 00:30:17,380 whether they were working for him, 510 00:30:17,421 --> 00:30:19,006 or they went to talk to him about a job 511 00:30:19,048 --> 00:30:20,549 or whatever it may be. 512 00:30:20,591 --> 00:30:25,638 Gregory Godzik, let’s see, number four. 513 00:30:28,682 --> 00:30:34,605 Gregory Godzik had come to work for me in, 514 00:30:36,982 --> 00:30:38,567 according to this, 1976. 515 00:30:39,068 --> 00:30:42,196 He came to us through Taft High School through a program. 516 00:30:42,238 --> 00:30:43,948 He had worked for Republic Lumber Company, 517 00:30:43,989 --> 00:30:45,658 and then he came to work for us. 518 00:30:47,410 --> 00:30:51,789 My brother Gregory was 17 in 1976, 519 00:30:52,248 --> 00:30:54,625 and he was a senior at Taft High School. 520 00:30:55,251 --> 00:30:57,378 We had a very simple family. 521 00:30:57,420 --> 00:30:59,380 We had dinner together every night. 522 00:30:59,922 --> 00:31:03,342 Those times were very simple, very simple life. 523 00:31:05,761 --> 00:31:12,435 Senior year, you had an option to have a part-time job 524 00:31:13,018 --> 00:31:14,729 but still getting school credit, 525 00:31:14,770 --> 00:31:20,067 and he decided to get a job at this Republic Lumber making, 526 00:31:20,443 --> 00:31:26,240 I think, $2.25 an hour. I remember him coming home, 527 00:31:26,282 --> 00:31:28,325 and he said there was a man that came in. 528 00:31:28,367 --> 00:31:31,620 "His name was Gacy, and he wants to give me a job," 529 00:31:31,662 --> 00:31:33,581 making $5 an hour. 530 00:31:34,290 --> 00:31:39,754 If somebody’s dangling $5 an hour cash versus $2.25, 531 00:31:40,463 --> 00:31:42,089 a kid at 17 is going to say, 532 00:31:42,131 --> 00:31:45,009 "Well, I’m going to go this route versus that route." 533 00:31:45,926 --> 00:31:49,638 He thought Gacy offered him a future. 534 00:31:54,310 --> 00:31:58,773 It was December 11th, a Saturday night. 535 00:31:59,357 --> 00:32:05,613 He was supposed to go to Gacy’s house to pick up a paycheck. 536 00:32:10,368 --> 00:32:13,287 The next morning, my mother woke up and said, 537 00:32:13,329 --> 00:32:15,456 "Do you know where your brother is?" 538 00:32:15,498 --> 00:32:18,334 When he’d come home, he’d give my mother a kiss. 539 00:32:18,793 --> 00:32:23,672 And that night when he did not come home, 540 00:32:23,714 --> 00:32:25,966 my mother knew there was something wrong. 541 00:32:26,509 --> 00:32:29,804 My mother felt immediately, "This isn’t normal. 542 00:32:29,845 --> 00:32:33,432 Your brother’s missing." She called the Chicago Police. 543 00:32:35,351 --> 00:32:37,937 My mom talked to a couple of police officers, 544 00:32:37,978 --> 00:32:39,689 and they all said, 545 00:32:39,730 --> 00:32:41,482 "Well, there’s really nothing we can do. 546 00:32:41,524 --> 00:32:44,151 He has to be gone at least 72 hours, 547 00:32:44,193 --> 00:32:46,195 but we’ll take the information." 548 00:32:48,447 --> 00:32:52,576 Sunday, they found the car in a parking lot. 549 00:32:53,661 --> 00:32:57,623 That was his pride and joy, his car, 550 00:32:57,665 --> 00:33:02,211 and to find it unlocked, it was so out of character. 551 00:33:03,462 --> 00:33:06,590 My mom told them where he was working, 552 00:33:06,632 --> 00:33:10,386 but nothing was ever followed,that we know of. 553 00:33:11,637 --> 00:33:14,306 Gregory Godzik, who worked for Gacy, 554 00:33:14,974 --> 00:33:17,893 disappeared in December of 1976, 555 00:33:18,436 --> 00:33:22,148 2 years before bodies were discovered under Gacy’s home. 556 00:33:22,773 --> 00:33:25,234 I talked to Greg Godzik’s mother, Eugenia, 557 00:33:25,276 --> 00:33:29,363 and she told me she had gone and confronted Gacy directly. 558 00:33:29,405 --> 00:33:30,865 I talked to him. 559 00:33:30,906 --> 00:33:33,284 I called him up to find out if my Gregory called, 560 00:33:33,826 --> 00:33:37,872 and he said he did and that he was going to come to work, 561 00:33:38,372 --> 00:33:39,832 and I says, "Well, did he ever come?" 562 00:33:39,874 --> 00:33:41,333 and he says, "No." 563 00:33:41,375 --> 00:33:43,377 And I says, "How do you know it was Gregory?" 564 00:33:43,419 --> 00:33:46,672 And he says because he had him on his tape, 565 00:33:47,757 --> 00:33:51,135 and I asked him if he could play it back. 566 00:33:51,177 --> 00:33:52,845 He said, no, he erased it. 567 00:33:53,387 --> 00:33:56,724 My mother had my brother’s time card. 568 00:33:56,766 --> 00:33:59,226 He says, "Can I have that time card?" 569 00:33:59,268 --> 00:34:02,271 And my mother said, "No, I’m going to hold on to this." 570 00:34:03,105 --> 00:34:07,234 I do remember her saying, "He’s kind of an odd man." 571 00:34:07,276 --> 00:34:11,572 She felt that he probably could have gave more information 572 00:34:11,614 --> 00:34:13,282 but was too elusive. 573 00:34:13,908 --> 00:34:17,495 He kind of brushed her off. She felt odd. 574 00:34:18,287 --> 00:34:22,124 Eugenia Godzik told me that she both confronted Gacy 575 00:34:22,166 --> 00:34:23,417 and went to the police. 576 00:34:23,459 --> 00:34:24,627 Did you ever tell the police 577 00:34:24,668 --> 00:34:26,670 about your conversation with John Gacy? 578 00:34:26,712 --> 00:34:28,381 Yes, I’m sure I did. 579 00:34:28,964 --> 00:34:31,801 And that was the last she heard from Gacy, 580 00:34:31,842 --> 00:34:34,011 and she got nowhere with police either. 581 00:34:36,722 --> 00:34:39,183 Mrs. Godzick was very convincing 582 00:34:39,225 --> 00:34:40,893 that her son was not a runaway. 583 00:34:41,977 --> 00:34:44,897 But once again, Gacy was able to convince the police 584 00:34:44,939 --> 00:34:48,442 that he didn’t really have any further involvement with Godzik. 585 00:34:50,820 --> 00:34:56,158 My father, his mode was: stay at home, say the rosary, 586 00:34:56,200 --> 00:34:59,245 and my mother kept saying, "Oh, the hell with that. 587 00:34:59,286 --> 00:35:00,996 I’m going to go do the footwork." 588 00:35:02,289 --> 00:35:04,709 In the meantime, I did have at least 589 00:35:04,750 --> 00:35:07,461 two of my girlfriends’ dads looking into it. 590 00:35:07,878 --> 00:35:10,214 The one that I called right away, 591 00:35:10,256 --> 00:35:12,508 he was a homicide police officer. 592 00:35:13,092 --> 00:35:15,761 I remember talking to my girlfriend, and she said, 593 00:35:15,803 --> 00:35:21,100 "Oh, my dad is always saying it’s tops on his list." 594 00:35:31,027 --> 00:35:36,490 When the Robert Piest story broke out 2 years 595 00:35:36,532 --> 00:35:38,701 after my brother had disappeared, 596 00:35:39,452 --> 00:35:41,078 my mother said, "Oh, my god. 597 00:35:41,871 --> 00:35:45,416 Gacy, that’s the man that your brother worked for. 598 00:35:45,833 --> 00:35:51,172 This could be it." Shortly after that, 599 00:35:51,213 --> 00:35:53,924 we got a phone call from my girlfriend’s dad, 600 00:35:53,966 --> 00:35:56,802 He said, "There’s a case breaking. 601 00:35:57,386 --> 00:35:59,889 It’s bigger than you can ever imagine, 602 00:35:59,930 --> 00:36:05,352 and there’s many, many bodies. Be prepared." 603 00:36:06,020 --> 00:36:09,732 Gregory was 17 years old when he disappeared 2 years ago. 604 00:36:10,232 --> 00:36:11,817 He had worked part-time for Gacy 605 00:36:11,859 --> 00:36:14,904 and was allegedly last seen with Gacy the night he disappeared. 606 00:36:14,945 --> 00:36:17,907 Nevertheless, Gregory’s mother still hopes he’s alive. 607 00:36:18,491 --> 00:36:20,409 I really do want to believe that. 608 00:36:26,999 --> 00:36:30,336 Gregory said that he was working around Gacy’s house 609 00:36:30,753 --> 00:36:34,632 digging trenches around his home, 610 00:36:35,257 --> 00:36:36,842 and eventually it ended up 611 00:36:36,884 --> 00:36:39,095 that they were digging their own graves. 612 00:36:41,764 --> 00:36:45,726 The 2 years that it took, there were so many opportunities 613 00:36:45,768 --> 00:36:50,189 for this to end up better than what it was. 614 00:36:50,231 --> 00:36:52,149 Yes, my brother would’ve been a victim, 615 00:36:52,191 --> 00:36:55,611 but there would’ve been so many more young men saved. 616 00:36:55,653 --> 00:36:57,071 I feel sorry for those other families 617 00:36:57,113 --> 00:36:59,198 that had to go through the same thing. 618 00:37:00,116 --> 00:37:05,162 Ever family I spoke to said they were reassured by police 619 00:37:05,204 --> 00:37:06,997 that they were working on it, 620 00:37:07,039 --> 00:37:11,627 but in none of the cases did the police come up with any answers, 621 00:37:11,669 --> 00:37:14,004 explanations or evidence. 622 00:37:14,588 --> 00:37:17,508 In Chicago, clout was everything, 623 00:37:18,175 --> 00:37:24,140 and the victims were voiceless and faceless and cloutless, 624 00:37:24,682 --> 00:37:30,438 young boys and men, hitchhiking, looking for work, 625 00:37:30,855 --> 00:37:33,941 looking for fun, being approached 626 00:37:33,983 --> 00:37:39,780 by this roly-poly man who would promise them money, 627 00:37:39,822 --> 00:37:43,617 promise them jobs and give them something else. 628 00:37:53,169 --> 00:37:58,090 Gacy never once showed any type of remorse or regret 629 00:37:58,132 --> 00:38:01,343 in what he did. He always blamed the kids. 630 00:38:01,385 --> 00:38:02,928 "They did this for money." 631 00:38:02,970 --> 00:38:04,930 Whether it was for a job or for sex, 632 00:38:04,972 --> 00:38:07,933 whatever, it was never his fault at all. 633 00:38:07,975 --> 00:38:11,270 I am not the monster image that’s been portrayed of me, 634 00:38:11,312 --> 00:38:12,938 and the only way you can make a monster image 635 00:38:12,980 --> 00:38:15,399 is to make it look like I stalked the streets 636 00:38:15,441 --> 00:38:17,443 and picked up altar boys off the street. 637 00:38:17,902 --> 00:38:20,029 They want to make them look like innocent babes in the woods, 638 00:38:20,071 --> 00:38:22,073 and I was swatting them like flies. 639 00:38:22,114 --> 00:38:23,783 Gacy would tell us that he had other kids 640 00:38:23,824 --> 00:38:25,451 that he had picked up 641 00:38:25,493 --> 00:38:27,828 and had sexual relations with but didn’t kill them all. 642 00:38:28,287 --> 00:38:31,123 He had this dark Oldsmobile with a spotlight on it, 643 00:38:31,165 --> 00:38:33,834 and a lot of people thought it was a squad car. 644 00:38:34,460 --> 00:38:36,379 A young kid 16, 17, 645 00:38:36,420 --> 00:38:40,132 18 years old some guy pulls next to him with a squad car, 646 00:38:40,174 --> 00:38:41,550 it looks like, 647 00:38:41,592 --> 00:38:43,803 they’re going to do what this guy tells him to do. 648 00:38:43,844 --> 00:38:45,888 Once he got in the car back to his house, 649 00:38:46,514 --> 00:38:49,642 Gacy determined whether they’re going to live or die. 650 00:38:49,683 --> 00:38:51,477 My encounters were always by happenchance. 651 00:38:51,519 --> 00:38:53,020 If you pull up to a stoplight, 652 00:38:53,062 --> 00:38:54,855 and there’s somebody standing there waiting for a bus, 653 00:38:54,897 --> 00:38:57,692 if you give them a ride, and you ask them whether, 654 00:38:58,693 --> 00:38:59,985 "You get into anything, 655 00:39:00,027 --> 00:39:02,738 or you want drugs or something like that?" 656 00:39:03,322 --> 00:39:06,784 that’s how it happened, always happenchance encounters. 657 00:39:10,204 --> 00:39:12,248 I talked to a number of young men 658 00:39:12,289 --> 00:39:15,751 who had been approached and propositioned by Gacy. 659 00:39:15,793 --> 00:39:20,506 I talked to some young men who’d escaped, barely, 660 00:39:20,548 --> 00:39:22,925 the fate of most of his other victims. 661 00:39:24,218 --> 00:39:27,847 One violent attack took place just 9 months before bodies 662 00:39:27,888 --> 00:39:30,224 were discovered in his crawl space. 663 00:39:30,891 --> 00:39:33,018 At the time Robert Piest went missing, 664 00:39:33,060 --> 00:39:38,065 Gacy was actually out on bond on a charge of battery. 665 00:39:39,025 --> 00:39:42,862 The victim was Jeffrey Rignall. He came forth. 666 00:39:43,404 --> 00:39:46,824 We got the information from Rignall himself. 667 00:39:49,201 --> 00:39:51,829 Jeffrey Rignall was the love of my life. 668 00:39:52,663 --> 00:39:55,332 Jeff and I were together for 27 years. 669 00:39:56,250 --> 00:39:58,085 It’s very hard to find somebody special. 670 00:39:58,127 --> 00:40:00,171 You’ll know when you find one. 671 00:40:00,212 --> 00:40:04,592 And that’s exactly what Jeff was, a special person. 672 00:40:05,468 --> 00:40:11,140 All the problems started when he got abducted by John Wayne Gacy. 673 00:40:13,100 --> 00:40:19,398 In 1978, right around the 20th of March, I got a phone call. 674 00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:25,154 Jeff told me that he was abducted and almost killed. 675 00:40:27,531 --> 00:40:32,161 Jeff said, "The guy rolled down the window and said, 676 00:40:32,203 --> 00:40:35,539 ’You want to smoke a joint?’" So Jeff got in the car. 677 00:40:36,290 --> 00:40:38,626 The guy lit the joint up and passed it to him. 678 00:40:38,667 --> 00:40:42,963 He was a clean-cut looking man, 679 00:40:43,005 --> 00:40:48,052 and I got in the car with him, 680 00:40:48,094 --> 00:40:50,346 and shortly after I got in the car with him, 681 00:40:50,388 --> 00:40:52,264 he placed a rag over my face, 682 00:40:52,848 --> 00:40:55,309 of which turned out to be chloroform. 683 00:40:55,893 --> 00:40:57,812 He was unconscious. 684 00:40:58,646 --> 00:41:03,442 Jeff would wake up every now, and then he would see something, 685 00:41:03,484 --> 00:41:06,153 but he would only be there for a split second, 686 00:41:06,195 --> 00:41:08,572 and then the rag would come over his face. 687 00:41:08,614 --> 00:41:14,745 The next thing he knew, he was strapped down in a torture wood. 688 00:41:15,788 --> 00:41:19,583 There were chains he said that were suspended from the ceiling 689 00:41:19,625 --> 00:41:21,669 that held him up in the air. 690 00:41:22,878 --> 00:41:30,010 So he was there being beaten, being raped, being chloroformed, 691 00:41:31,512 --> 00:41:35,808 drugged, beaten again constantly. 692 00:41:36,350 --> 00:41:42,148 After the attack, the abductor drove him back down to the area 693 00:41:42,189 --> 00:41:46,360 that he was picked up at and left him there half-clothed, 694 00:41:47,069 --> 00:41:49,739 only his pants on and nothing else. 695 00:41:53,284 --> 00:41:57,872 When I first saw Jeff, he was distraught. 696 00:41:58,414 --> 00:42:02,668 He was beat up, and he had burns from chloroform, 697 00:42:02,710 --> 00:42:04,128 had a rope burn. 698 00:42:04,170 --> 00:42:06,630 He was still bleeding from the backside. 699 00:42:07,173 --> 00:42:09,258 Everything that could go wrong with your body 700 00:42:09,300 --> 00:42:12,511 seemed to go wrong with him at this moment. 701 00:42:13,846 --> 00:42:17,349 The police come to the hospital to interview Rignall, 702 00:42:18,684 --> 00:42:21,771 and his story is very vague, 703 00:42:22,396 --> 00:42:25,107 and he did not know where the house was 704 00:42:25,149 --> 00:42:26,942 or what it looked like or anything, 705 00:42:27,485 --> 00:42:30,446 and so it was a very minimalist police report, 706 00:42:30,488 --> 00:42:32,031 and nothing transpired. 707 00:42:32,573 --> 00:42:38,579 The police assumed that Jeff’s encounter with Gacy 708 00:42:39,080 --> 00:42:41,332 was a consensual arrangement. 709 00:42:41,374 --> 00:42:46,879 They had no clue of how to treat a gay rape of any sort 710 00:42:47,588 --> 00:42:49,715 and did not even think that would be possible, 711 00:42:49,757 --> 00:42:52,593 because they would figure that all sexual arrangements 712 00:42:52,635 --> 00:42:54,428 between gay people were consensual, 713 00:42:54,929 --> 00:42:56,639 which is definitely not the case. 714 00:42:57,431 --> 00:42:59,308 Jeffrey Rignall filed a report, 715 00:42:59,350 --> 00:43:03,479 but much to the shame of the police at that time, 716 00:43:03,521 --> 00:43:04,730 they pretty much figured, 717 00:43:04,772 --> 00:43:06,691 "Oh, it was one gay guy on another one," 718 00:43:06,732 --> 00:43:08,234 they didn’t really care 719 00:43:08,275 --> 00:43:11,320 because they didn’t do very much of an investigation, 720 00:43:12,113 --> 00:43:15,449 so Jeffrey decided he’d do his own investigation. 721 00:43:16,325 --> 00:43:19,870 Jeff thought that that man could kill somebody. 722 00:43:19,912 --> 00:43:22,206 He figured whatever he did to him, 723 00:43:22,248 --> 00:43:24,625 he was going to do it to other people. 724 00:43:25,084 --> 00:43:27,044 That’s why he wanted to catch him. 725 00:43:36,095 --> 00:43:38,222 As soon as Jeff got out of the hospital, 726 00:43:38,264 --> 00:43:41,434 we started looking for the car that picked Jeff up. 727 00:43:42,309 --> 00:43:46,230 He noticed the license plate because he had to walk around it 728 00:43:46,272 --> 00:43:50,067 in order to get to the car, and he could hear planes. 729 00:43:50,735 --> 00:43:56,323 So he knew he was out somewhere in the vicinity of the airport. 730 00:43:57,074 --> 00:43:59,952 Since the police took the matter very, very lightly, 731 00:44:00,411 --> 00:44:03,789 and I felt that you know it wasn’t a light matter, 732 00:44:03,831 --> 00:44:10,046 I rented a car and sat where I thought I was approximately, 733 00:44:10,087 --> 00:44:12,173 waiting for his car to come by. 734 00:44:15,301 --> 00:44:20,931 We went out every day we could, and then ... 735 00:44:21,390 --> 00:44:24,435 This had been probably 3, 4 weeks? 736 00:44:25,478 --> 00:44:28,481 Jeff looked up and he said, "That’s it! That’s the car!" 737 00:44:30,483 --> 00:44:34,820 We saw the car go by, pulled in right in behind him, 738 00:44:35,529 --> 00:44:37,907 kept a couple car lengths away from him. 739 00:44:37,948 --> 00:44:39,825 You could see the license plate. 740 00:44:41,285 --> 00:44:43,162 We took the license plate number, 741 00:44:43,204 --> 00:44:46,499 identified the name and went back to the police. 742 00:44:46,540 --> 00:44:49,502 They got his picture and did a photo array, 743 00:44:49,543 --> 00:44:52,505 and he identified Gacy as the one that done it to him. 744 00:44:55,508 --> 00:44:58,469 They called Jeff and told him that he was arrested. 745 00:44:59,220 --> 00:45:01,305 And he said, "Good, where is he? Is he in jail?" 746 00:45:01,347 --> 00:45:02,848 Says, "He’s out on bond." 747 00:45:02,890 --> 00:45:06,477 He was released right away after posting a minor bond. 748 00:45:07,686 --> 00:45:12,650 Now he’s out probably doing the same thing that he did to Jeff. 749 00:45:13,401 --> 00:45:18,280 So we tried to get the charges on Gacy bumped up. 750 00:45:19,824 --> 00:45:23,577 And the State’s Attorney said, "You can’t bump them up." 751 00:45:24,328 --> 00:45:26,455 After all, it’s just another butt-fuck." 752 00:45:30,793 --> 00:45:32,837 This grim investigation at John Gacy’s house 753 00:45:32,878 --> 00:45:36,215 is expected to last for weeks, and when they finish here, 754 00:45:36,257 --> 00:45:38,759 police plan to search other sites and drag a river 755 00:45:38,801 --> 00:45:42,346 where Gacy allegedly told them he disposed of other bodies. 756 00:45:42,388 --> 00:45:44,390 When we all saw the bodies coming out there, 757 00:45:44,432 --> 00:45:50,021 Jeff just totally freaked out. He was manic, crazy, 758 00:45:50,062 --> 00:45:52,940 yelling, screaming, throwing things around. 759 00:45:53,399 --> 00:45:56,694 "See, I told you. I told you. They never believed me. 760 00:45:56,736 --> 00:45:58,946 I told you. Why didn’t they believe me?" 761 00:45:58,988 --> 00:46:00,614 He was totally upset. 762 00:46:00,656 --> 00:46:03,659 I thought he was going to just have a total nervous breakdown 763 00:46:03,701 --> 00:46:08,664 and be done, and eventually, he did calm down, 764 00:46:09,248 --> 00:46:13,252 and then the next news had more bodies coming out. 765 00:46:16,756 --> 00:46:19,258 And it just continued that way. 766 00:46:24,221 --> 00:46:25,723 There were all kinds of victims, 767 00:46:25,765 --> 00:46:27,224 and there was a good percentage 768 00:46:27,266 --> 00:46:32,521 that were absolutely straight, suburban kids, 769 00:46:33,439 --> 00:46:36,233 and there was certainly a good percentage 770 00:46:36,275 --> 00:46:41,489 that were either homosexuals or even homosexual prostitutes. 771 00:46:43,074 --> 00:46:46,494 Gacy told us that most of his victims, 772 00:46:46,535 --> 00:46:48,371 as long as they didn’t pose a threat to him, 773 00:46:48,412 --> 00:46:51,957 the vast majority of these people left, and left unharmed. 774 00:46:53,626 --> 00:46:57,004 The victims who he perceived to be a threat, 775 00:46:58,339 --> 00:47:01,884 either because of remorse that they showed 776 00:47:01,926 --> 00:47:04,095 or trying to extort more money 777 00:47:04,470 --> 00:47:06,472 or the threat of telling neighbors, 778 00:47:07,431 --> 00:47:10,643 he said he would deal with them usually with the rope trick. 779 00:47:14,480 --> 00:47:17,566 The fact that it appeared that many of the victims 780 00:47:17,608 --> 00:47:21,487 were gay young men I think created a stigma. 781 00:47:22,655 --> 00:47:26,200 Gay men in Chicago back in the ’70s 782 00:47:26,992 --> 00:47:28,994 were still kind of an underclass, 783 00:47:29,954 --> 00:47:32,623 and I think this might have been part of the reason 784 00:47:32,665 --> 00:47:35,334 why Gacy was able to get away with what he did. 785 00:47:36,836 --> 00:47:42,174 I think it affected the way it was reported 786 00:47:42,216 --> 00:47:45,010 and the way it was treated by law enforcement. 787 00:47:46,679 --> 00:47:50,057 It was a very difficult thing to report because I didn’t know 788 00:47:50,099 --> 00:47:54,186 what the parents and family members of these young men knew. 789 00:47:54,562 --> 00:47:56,522 Investigators tonight believe that many 790 00:47:56,564 --> 00:47:58,649 if not most of his alleged victims 791 00:47:58,691 --> 00:48:01,861 were either male prostitutes or other homosexuals. 792 00:48:01,902 --> 00:48:05,156 They came to him either paid or looking for a good time 793 00:48:05,197 --> 00:48:07,366 and got more than they bargained for. 794 00:48:09,785 --> 00:48:14,582 The characterization of the victims was horrible. 795 00:48:15,332 --> 00:48:16,834 They’re young people who were entitled 796 00:48:16,876 --> 00:48:18,252 to the rest of their lives 797 00:48:18,294 --> 00:48:20,171 to have something that they could live for, 798 00:48:20,713 --> 00:48:25,426 and Gacy snuffed that out completely. 799 00:48:26,052 --> 00:48:28,304 They shouldn’t have been portrayed like that 800 00:48:28,345 --> 00:48:30,056 because there was no proof. 801 00:48:30,848 --> 00:48:35,227 Robert Piest was a healthy, athletic young man 802 00:48:35,269 --> 00:48:36,687 who never left home. 803 00:48:36,729 --> 00:48:39,523 His mom was waiting for him around the corner. 804 00:48:40,566 --> 00:48:44,070 The police went by what they were being told by Gacy. 805 00:48:44,653 --> 00:48:47,031 They didn’t know who these people even were. 806 00:48:47,907 --> 00:48:53,412 They had no idea if it was the senator’s kid or a runaway kid. 807 00:48:53,454 --> 00:48:55,623 The reporters are doing the same thing. 808 00:48:55,664 --> 00:48:59,335 The police told the reporters, "Nobody cares about them." 809 00:49:00,169 --> 00:49:03,422 Whether it’s runaways, whether it’s drug ... 810 00:49:03,464 --> 00:49:05,633 Who cares? They are still people. 811 00:49:06,050 --> 00:49:10,721 And the Chicago police, who on many occasions could have 812 00:49:10,763 --> 00:49:15,226 prevented the futures from happening, did nothing. 813 00:49:16,602 --> 00:49:19,021 I recall reporting at the time 814 00:49:19,063 --> 00:49:23,192 all of Gacy’s contacts with the Chicago Police Department. 815 00:49:23,234 --> 00:49:25,069 John Gacy came into contact with authorities 816 00:49:25,111 --> 00:49:28,614 more than half a dozen times, allegedly involved in crimes 817 00:49:28,656 --> 00:49:31,033 ranging from kidnapping to rape and assault. 818 00:49:31,450 --> 00:49:33,953 His name came up in connection with missing persons. 819 00:49:33,994 --> 00:49:35,538 He was even linked to a theft 820 00:49:35,579 --> 00:49:37,873 committed with the car of one of his victims. 821 00:49:37,915 --> 00:49:41,127 I remember talking to the police superintendent at the time, 822 00:49:41,168 --> 00:49:44,463 James O’Grady, and asking him, "What was going on here? 823 00:49:44,505 --> 00:49:46,090 Why didn’t you see these signs? Why? 824 00:49:46,132 --> 00:49:49,844 Why did you just kind of dismiss it and release him every time?" 825 00:49:50,344 --> 00:49:52,471 and he was angry. 826 00:49:53,180 --> 00:49:56,392 He thought that the detectives did not do their work. 827 00:49:57,435 --> 00:49:59,854 He wouldn’t appear on camera to talk about it, 828 00:49:59,895 --> 00:50:02,231 but the police superintendent of the time 829 00:50:02,273 --> 00:50:05,818 was furious with the work of the detectives 830 00:50:05,860 --> 00:50:09,321 who released Gacy time after time after time. 831 00:50:10,448 --> 00:50:12,950 That’s where he’s the scariest. 832 00:50:12,992 --> 00:50:16,829 He’s a person who got involved with charities, 833 00:50:16,871 --> 00:50:19,040 got involved with politics, 834 00:50:19,081 --> 00:50:22,293 did things that made him believable. 835 00:50:22,334 --> 00:50:26,297 What’s scary about that is, someone in your neighborhood, 836 00:50:26,714 --> 00:50:28,466 who you think is a good person, 837 00:50:29,008 --> 00:50:31,343 they might just be another John Wayne Gacy. 838 00:50:31,927 --> 00:50:35,473 John Wayne Gacy was a master manipulator. 839 00:50:35,514 --> 00:50:39,435 He manipulated his victims. He manipulated authorities. 840 00:50:39,477 --> 00:50:43,773 He lived to deceive. And after his arrest, 841 00:50:43,814 --> 00:50:47,276 a whole new chapter of Gacy’s deception began. 842 00:50:48,069 --> 00:50:51,447 The day that we arrested him, Gacy was already thinking 843 00:50:51,489 --> 00:50:53,157 what his defense was going to be. 844 00:50:53,199 --> 00:50:55,618 He looked up at me, and he said, "It’s never going to happen." 845 00:50:55,659 --> 00:50:57,328 I says, "Well, what do you mean?" 846 00:50:57,370 --> 00:51:00,498 And he says, "I’m never gonna spend a day in jail for this."