by Tim Cahill
“In another sense, under necrophilia . . . and fetishisms, there’s a need to maintain some association with these representations of a once loving animate object.
“The basement plays a part in this because he’d been able to be like his father in making a basement very important. The father . . . stored his junk down there. John was able to . . . identify with his father in throwing his own junk . . . down in the basement. And that’s where he buried all those bodies representing himself.”
In answer to Amirante’s question, Rappaport said that John Gacy did in fact suffer from a mental disease: “I believe,” the doctor testified, “that he has a personality disorder called a borderline personality organization with a subtype of antisocial or psychopathic personality manifested by episodes of an underlying condition of paranoid schizophrenia.” As a result of that disease, Gacy “did lack substantial capacity to control his behavior at the time of each of those crimes . . . and to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.”
Rappaport thought “the seeds in the source of the borderline condition and the pathological condition . . . started in early childhood. However, typically the borderline doesn’t really exist in its full state until sometime during adolescence. I would imagine at the time that he . . . ran away to Las Vegas, worked in a mortuary, I think about that time he was definitely borderline.” The level of Gacy’s illness was intensified by the crucial happenings of his life, “the loss of his father and loss of his second wife through divorce.”
Kunkle, on cross, tried to make the psychiatric testimony look tortured, too complex to explain something very simple. Burying the bodies—"these former love objects,” as Kunkle kept referring to them—in the crawl space had been, in fact, a very successful means of concealing evidence. It didn’t “require some great psychiatric theory to support it. It would simply be a rational idea.”
“It might be irrational, too,” Rappaport said.
“But it could be?”
“It could be rational, yes.”
Under further questioning, Rappaport admitted that Gacy’s psychosexual disorders—the fetishism, sadism, and necrophilia—exist “separate and apart” from the borderline diagnosis but that “by the time you get to the sadism and necrophilia, it is pretty sure you have a personality disorganization. . . .”
Rappaport, in answer to Kunkle’s intense questioning, said Gacy wasn’t necessarily psychotic every time he engaged in sadism but that he was psychotic when he was killing.
Kunkle asked the doctor to assume “that lots of people have every bit as tortured . . . a childhood as this defendant, would they all become multiple murderers?”
“No,” Rappaport replied.
Kunkle then tried to suggest that Gacy had attempted to fake mental illness, specifically a multiple personality.
“Are you familiar with the police reports . . . wherein the defendant “would inject into the conversation . . . the name of Jack or Jack Hanley? . . . Did that indicate to you a multiple personality?”
“At one point I considered that,” Rappaport said. “However, he told me so many different stories about it that I didn’t believe it existed . . . there was no other evidence that a multiple personality existed.”
Rappaport even consulted Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, an authority in the field of multiple personalities, who confirmed Rappaport’s conclusion.
“Well,” Kunkle demanded, “would the name Jack or Jack Hanley: could that have been inserted into those conversations by the defendant for the purpose of lying to the police officers, just as you felt he might have been lying to you?”
Rappaport didn’t think so. Gacy, he said, used the name to disguise himself, to masquerade as a police officer: “He had many ideas as to what the name meant.”
Yes, Rappaport said in answer to Kunkle’s question, he believed that Gacy was psychotic at the time of each and every one of the thirty-three murders.
“How about specifically Robert Piest?” Kunkle asked.
“Same thing.”
“Psychotic?”
“Yes.”
“Floridly psychotic?”
“Yes.”
“Certainly floridly psychotic when he strangled him to death?”
“Thinking he is the father and Piest the son: it was a psychotic delusion.”
“How about when he laid him down on the floor and went on and answered the phone call? . . .”
“I think he was under the same delusion and was able to handle the phone calls, but he was under the delusion.”
“And what about when he handled the phone call from the hospital about his uncle: still floridly psychotic?”
“Yes.”
“What are the symptoms of psychosis?”
“A person out of touch with reality, a person who has thinking, mood, and behavior disorder. . . .”
“. . . And the defendant was in florid psychosis when he was handling his business on the phone with this Piest body in the other room?”
“Yes.”
John was “on a high” again. Rappaport was the best yet: he talked about the split, talked in terms the jury could understand, and Kunkle couldn’t break him.
The doc even nailed Kunkle: wiped that smug bisexual smile off his face. Reversed the chunky fairy right there on the stand and got everyone—the jury, the judge, even the families—laughing at him. Laughing at Kunkle.
The chief deputy state’s attorney was hammering away at his old theme, the idea that if John were psychotic, it should have shown up sometime in a social situation or something and not just when the crimes were committed.
“Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder, is it not?” Kunkle had demanded. “It is a serious mental illness?"
“Yes,” Rappaport had said.
And then Kunkle fucked up. “Every psychiatrist in this country would probably agree that psychiatry is a very serious mental illness?"
For the first time at the trial, there was laughter. The whole courtroom went up for grabs, and they were laughing at Kunkle. John was careful to keep a straight face—"psychiatry is a very serious mental illness"—but he was cracking up inside.
Rappaport, smiling slightly, said, “That’s called a Freudian slip, and it comes from the unconscious.” The doc was saying that Kunkle had fucked up, from the unconscious. Just like John fucked up, from the unconscious. It could happen to anyone.
Kunkle was rattled. The prosecution didn’t bring him any cigars, and John suddenly knew—it was like a revelation from God—that the jury was going to acquit: not guilty by reason of insanity. The state would have to put John in some institution, okay, but he knew what would happen; he could see it in fantasies bright as sunlight. A mental hospital: you can’t keep someone in a mental hospital if he can prove he’s sane. They gotta review you every ninety days or something.
After listening to the psychologists, John knew he could “control those tests.” In the inkblot, you come up with all kinds of crazy things, not just bees and flowers. You got to say you see at least forty things in there. Include some people in the blots and put a little violence in there, but not too much. The Minnesota multiphasic would be a snap. John took the thing so many times he had a good idea of which questions “I shouldn’t answer true to, even if the answer is true in my own mind.” He would “fuck up some of the pictures instead of putting them in exact order. And on the drawings: draw two full figures, man and woman, whether they look good or not. And slim down the women so they don’t have fat arms. Make sure the women don’t have no apron strings hanging down by the crotch. Draw a full body, always a full body, and give it enough room on the paper. And if I make a mistake, don’t let the doc see it. Don’t change nothing, don’t erase nothing.”
Of course, John wouldn’t depend entirely on the tests. He had committed “the crime of the century” and turned himself into a “multimillion-dollar property.” On the opening day of the trial, he counted over seventy reporters. There’d be books and movies. John would control
the rights, and he’d “manipulate the docs with money, control the Illinois State Board of Health” with the millions his crimes would earn him.
Jesus, he was so high after Rappaport. Really silly with happiness and plans and jokes. Just like if there were books and movies, well, shit, why not patent the handcuff trick? The rope trick. It was an idea that made him laugh aloud. Sell Pogo the clown suits to kids on Halloween. Make an 8213 Summerdale dollhouse for little girls. Comes complete with twenty-nine bodies. Have a full bathtub in there and a plastic boy doll kneeling on the side with its head in the water. Make more money “on optional bodies.”
That was all just joking, but John knew there was money to be made. Joseph Wambaugh could write the book. John respected the guy ‘cause he’d been a cop and he had a sense of humor. The movie should be really classy. John didn’t know who could play him as a youngster, but as an adult, he was leaning toward Rod Steiger. The guy was a powerful actor who had a lot of John’s “colorful charisma,” and, like John, he could be really deep at times.
John could just see Steiger dominating the press conference after the trial. Some reporter would ask him how it feels to win, and Rod Steiger would have this really deep, sad expression on his face and he’d say, “I don’t think anyone wins when thirty-three die.” A great line.
Of course, the end could be Steiger walking out of the mental hospital in ninety days. He’d look into the camera—a real big close-up shot—and say, “Gacy outsmarted you again.” And that would be the end of the movie. Fade to black right there.
Or . . . or maybe the movie should end with a close-up of Steiger looking out at the world in complete triumph, and then, slowly, he’d start to laugh. Not say anything. Just laugh. And it wouldn’t be any crazy, out-of-control laugh, either.
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CHAPTER 28
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THE DEFENSE RESTED after Rappaport, and the first witness to testify for the state in rebuttal was Donald Voorhees, then twenty-seven. John could see that the past dozen years hadn’t been good to the kid “who blackmailed” him and “fucked ever” him, who had “outsmarted” him in Iowa. Voorhees. The kid looked like shit.
He was wearing these little round hippie glasses. Watery yes swimming around behind the glass: eyes that didn’t seem to see what they were looking at. John noticed that the kid was shaking pretty badly. Voorhees. Looking to outsmart him one more time. But—John could see it now—Voorhees was so fucked up to testify. Voorhees: the kid whose blond hair and muscular body and trick innocence were models for each and every one of the thirty-three boys Bad Jack murdered.
The little bastard was so scared he told the defense he felt he was not “competent” to take the stand. He had to be examined outside the presence of the jury.
Judge Garippo asked Voorhees if he had made a statement to the effect “that you felt incompetent to testify.”
There was no response, and Egan for the state asked, “Did you say that, Don?”
A minute dragged by. Voorhees wet his lips and looked about, seeing nothing. “You have to answer the question,” Garippo said finally. “What did you mean by that?”
“Let me think,” Voorhees said, and the words lay dry as sand on his tongue. What do you mean when you say things? “I am totally bent out of shape,” Voorhees said finally. It seemed as if the witness wanted to say more. He mouthed the words once, twice, then whispered brokenly, “You know?”
Motta asked Voorhees if he was seeing a psychiatrist.
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“How long have you been seeing him?”
Voorhees couldn’t answer that and he stared blankly at the walls, the ceiling, looking for help. “For a while?” Motta prompted.
There was no answer to the question anywhere in the courtroom. The witness’s eyes rolled helplessly, pleadingly please stop this.
“All right,” Motta said, “we will . . .”
But Voorhees had finally found the answer—how long had he been seeing a psychiatrist? a psychiatrist? how long—and he said, “Ever since I heard Gacy was out of prison Yes, I have had problems.”
Garippo ruled that Voorhees could testify, and, in the presence of the jury, he fell completely apart. The witness said that he had worked for Gacy for about a month, spreading gravel on the driveway. The man had given him liquor and “he came on to me sexually.” Voorhees couldn’t elaborate, couldn’t say just what it was that Gacy had done to him.
The answers Voorhees gave were lifeless things, dragged painfully up out of some interior depth, some dark and unhealthy place where there was mud and excrement and kind of death before death. The witness took a minute or more to respond to each question, and the state finally mercifully, withdrew him as a witness.
John knew it was important not to show emotion, and so he didn’t smile, didn’t laugh aloud. A credible witness Voorhees? He testifies that he wasn’t on medication but then he drank beer for breakfast. When John took the stand in his own defense, he’d really destroy Voorhees. Tell the jury “Voorhees didn’t want to testify on account of he was involved in blackmail,” See who outsmarts who in the end.
The state continued with all these witnesses who testified about the sodomy conviction in Iowa. The last Iowa witness was Dr. Leonard Heston, a professor of psychiatry who had examined John in 1968. The diagnosis then, Heston said, was “antisocial personality . . . a personality who comes into repeated conflict with society and social norms.” Heston testified that the antisocial person is not considered to have a mental disease or defect but a “defect in personality.” A character flaw.
Heston agreed in part with Rappaport—the antisocial part—but said that he disagreed with the borderline diagnosis because “it virtually precludes a psychotic condition. Once that is achieved, then you are out of the borderline and then into some other diagnosis, usually schizophrenia.”
Right away, John could see how he’d “destroy” Heston on the stand. He’d tell the jury that this was the same “superficial diagnosis” Heston made in Iowa, and if John had gotten the treatment he needed twelve years ago, there wouldn’t have been any bodies down there in the crawl space. The first thing John was going to do when he was acquitted, he was going to sue the state of Iowa for what they had done to him. He’d been made “a victim” in Iowa.
He was still soaring on the Rappaport high, but something about the testimony of Donald Voorhees was weighing him down and he didn’t know why.
John wasn’t sure if he’d done the right thing during Robert Donnelly’s testimony. “Just being cool and laughing”: it might have been a mistake. “The jury looked over at me and I’m smiling and laughing while this guy is talking about how I supposedly fucked him over. Stuff he was saying was just crazy as shit. Totally unbelievable.”
Just like the prosecution tried to make Donnelly look like “another goody-goody”: twenty-one years old, scholarship student in law and gov-ernment at the College of St. Francis. He said John picked him up around midnight on December 10, 1977.
Donnelly had a speech impediment—he stuttered slightly—and words came painfully to him, like razors in his throat. At first John thought he was going to be another Voorhees. The kid could barely look at him long enough to point him out in court.
Donnelly said that Gacy, posing as a police officer, had stopped him on the street, demanded to see some identification, then pulled a gun on him and handcuffed him. Once inside his house, Gacy threw him on a couch. Donnelly testified that Gacy spoke in an authoritative manner, “like a police officer would talk . . . he appeared to be quite sober and in control of all his senses.”
In court, John, listening to this bullshit, snorted audibly, as if smothering a laugh of total disbelief. The kid talked like Elmer Fudd. He was funny. Real dumb and stupid.
Donnelly said Gacy “was talking to me and he was mentioning that he was an important person and still he didn’t get the respect he deserved.”
Donnelly
said that when he refused a drink—he was still handcuffed—Gacy “came out from behind the bar and he picked it up and he walked over to me and he just tossed it on my face.”
John, sitting by his lawyers, shook his head, smiling. Like he’s going to throw a drink on somebody and mess up his couch and rug? John Gacy, Mr. Compulsive Neat, who gets pissed when some doc’s books are out of order? That John Gacy throws a drink? Real believable testimony.
Donnelly refused a second drink and Gacy said, “You’re a guest, you should accept my hospitality.” And then, Donnelly testified, “he reached down and he took my face and he held my mouth open and started pouring the drink.”
The witness testified that Gacy “took my pants and undid them. He started pulling down my pants and my underwear. . . .”
Donnelly was having a hard time talking about this, John could see. The Elmer Fudd voice was cracking, the razor were ripping the flesh in his throat, and there were tears in Donnelly’s eyes “because,” John said later, “he was lying under oath.”
Terry Sullivan asked, “What did he do after he pulled your pants down?”
“He went and he got on top of me and I could tell that he didn’t have any pants on because I could feel his knee and he, he put his knees between my legs and he grabbed onto my shoulders. . . .”
Donnelly couldn’t go on. Judge Garippo said, “Let’s take a recess.” Donnelly, sobbing, said, “This is hell.” He was crying so hard he couldn’t catch his breath. “This is hell,” he said.
John laughed aloud so that everyone would know what a phony-ass actor the kid was. He glanced over at the jury: can you believe this shit?
After the recess, Donnelly said that he had gotten the support he needed from his girlfriend. He was like some football player shaking off an injury, acting brave for the jury. John nodded to him, but he made the gesture real sarcastic. Nice act, asshole, but no one here’s buying it.