by Ian Brady
Like practically every serial killer, as his number of victims grew, so did his overconfidence, and he began leaving obvious clues and making serious errors of judgment. Not least of which was his burying of so many victims under his house that he ran out of burial sites and eventually created an odious sanitary problem in the immediate neighbourhood.
At the time of his crimes, the 1970s, Gacy was a successful building contractor in Chicago.
A large, powerfully built man with an affable extrovert air, he took an active part in local Democratic politics, raised funds for charity, and dressed himself as Pogo the Clown to entertain children in hospitals.
There is no reason to suppose that his charitable activities were not genuinely altruistic. Crime is no more a full-time profession than any other, and serial killers are no exception to the rule. I will raise this point again in future pages re: another prolific serial killer, Dean Corll, to further illustrate that criminals do have a spectrum of other natural talents and genuine interests outside of their lawbreaking activities. The sensationalist media and law enforcement agencies, for political and social manipulation, would have the public believe otherwise, usually inferring that the innocent enthusiasms of the criminal were in fact spurious in some way.
Gacy was a model citizen in every visible respect. But, as the tens of bodies of young men and boys buried under the crawlspace of his house oozed the sickly sweet smell of putrefaction into the sleepy suburban air, his respectable neighbours politely began to complain. In response, Gacy graciously shared their concern and distaste, blaming the drains and promising to have the matter rectified by his construction team.
It is hard to understand why an intelligent man of such resource did not foresee this logistical problem long before it became critical, and modify his homicidal methodology accordingly.
Obviously his sexual appetites had gradually overridden the instinct for self-survival. This is a common phenomenon in both the human and animal species, particularly when in the throes of immediate sexual ecstasy, or, in Gacy’s case, in the coils of sexual obsession or fantasy.
The pathological depth of Gacy’s addiction is evidenced by his practise of often keeping victims alive for several days in his house, needlessly increasing the risk of deduced or accidental discovery, whilst repeatedly beating and sodomising them.
One young man was fortunate enough to escape after twenty-four hours and reported Gacy to the police. Amazingly, the police simply asked Gacy a few cursory questions, as the escaped victim was a known prostitute; being a respected member of the community, Gacy’s denials were readily accepted. Such is the illusionary power of good and bad reputation. The case against him was automatically dismissed. Gacy continued to torture and kill regularly and methodically.
Victims, picked up amiably by Gacy in bars or other public places, were cajoled by financial and other inducements into accompanying him home. As soon as he had them safely behind locked doors, the mask dropped and Gacy became threatening and violent. The victim was then forcibly led up to the attic where, using a plank of wood, four feet long with steel handcuffs at each end, Gacy would manacle the ankles of his victims apart. Sometimes he manacled their wrists to this plank and hung them from the roof rafters. The attic was also equipped with a bloodstained mattress.
When eventually tiring of them as sex objects, Gacy would strangle his victims by tying a rope round their neck and inserting an iron rod to tighten the noose like a tourniquet. Often he made their death more lingering by repeatedly loosening the noose and reviving the victim to further sexual abuse and torture. Perhaps this prolongation practice was stimulated by the fact that strangulation usually produces an involuntary erection in the male victim.
The trees were festooned with Christmas lights and snow was in the air the evening that police were finally led to Gacy.
They were searching for a high school youth who had mysteriously disappeared the previous evening, and it was reported that Gacy had been heard offering him a job earlier the same night.
It is almost certain, from the hasty change of method Gacy eventually used to dispose of the body, that the youth, dead or alive, was still in Gacy’s attic when the detectives called to question him.
Gacy put on a bold front and even invited the detectives in for a drink, cleverly reinforcing his highly respectable image by drawing their attention to plaques awarded to him for charity work, and to photographs of himself in the company of police chiefs, and another of him shaking hands with Rosalynn Carter, the wife of President Jimmy Carter. The ploy worked. The police eventually left without searching the house.
Gacy obviously had to work fast and disposed of the youth’s body in an icy river some miles away. It would remain there undiscovered until the next spring thaw.
But one Des Plaines detective was suspicious of Gacy and ran a routine check through Chicago police headquarters. It showed Gacy had been charged twice with aggravated assault, and there was mention concerning the male prostitute he had allegedly held prisoner. The detectives immediately obtained a warrant to search Gacy’s house.
Gacy greeted the detectives with an air of amused surprise, but his mood changed to one of arrogant truculence once their suspicions and intentions became apparent.
The detectives discovered and examined the ‘torture board’ still lying in the attic. In a downstairs bedroom they also found a drawer full of men’s watches and rings — one of which bore the initials of another missing youth.
Whatever the local vagaries of the law in Chicago, it appears astonishing that these finds were not deemed sufficient evidence on which to arrest and hold Gacy on suspicion.
Charitably, one could interpret the apparent generosity of the police as a tactical expedient, to pressure Gacy into making a false move that would produce more evidence. For they put him under overt constant surveillance.
Gacy at first treated this ostentatious tailing with open scorn. However, as the days passed, and considering the amount of bodies he was living on top of and now had no opportunity to move or destroy, inner tension began to mount.
His behaviour became increasingly ferocious and reckless, like a tiger trying to escape the encircling beaters. He resentfully attempted to provoke the tailing detectives into arresting him — by driving his car at breakneck speeds, then openly smoking dope and blowing it in their faces.
Had the tactical provocation been successful, it would have enabled Gacy’s excellent lawyers to file charges of police harassment, forcing them to ease the pressure a little. Shrewdly, the police refused the bait.
Questioning one of Gacy’s employees, the detectives discovered that Gacy had sold him a car, which belonged to another missing youth. This was the extra evidence they had been waiting for to close in. Gacy got wind of what was happening and attempted to escape the net.
After a high-speed car chase in which Gacy was making straight for the airport, his vehicle was forcibly brought to a halt by the police and he was arrested on the technical holding charge of possessing amphetamines and other controlled drugs.
Detectives now had the opportunity to conduct a more thorough search of his house.
In a cupboard they discovered a trapdoor leading to the crawlspace below the house, where the perfume of putrefaction was so intense and overpowering that the detectives temporarily retreated.
Floorboards were eventually ripped up and windows opened to allow more air to the toiling diggers. The stench of death wafted out to the growing number of curious sightseers congregating beyond the barrier of police cars around the floodlit house.
As excavations by the police team progressed, the body count mounted, and so did the army of newspaper reporters and TV crews, stamping their feet against the hard frost.
A final total of twenty-eight bodies of young men and boys was uncovered. Later police investigations ascertained that a further five bodies had been concealed elsewhere, including the youth in the frozen river.
After being sentenced to death at his
trial, Gacy, against all apparent reason, but in reality to keep the executioner at bay, continued to plead innocence and successfully fought legal battles from his prison cell for well over a decade.
In captivity his civilised veneer vanished and revealed the aura of a large trapped predator waiting to pounce. Most other prisoners gave him a wide berth. But some young prisoner thrill-seekers were attracted to him like moths to a flame.
That was not surprising, as Gacy was very interesting to talk to when beyond the hearing range of prison guards. He was particularly fond of discussing politics and analysing the ulterior motives of various prominent politicians. He also enjoyed outside visits from many youths and good-looking young men who were obviously enamoured by his notoriety, and liked sexually teasing Gacy from behind the safety of a steel grill.
Gacy was intelligent enough to handle this without rancour, deriving a degree of visual stimulation from participating in the flirting, deliberately fuelling their seductive fantasies to complement his sadistically homicidal ones.
Despite being safely beyond his grasp, some youthful visitors could not quite conceal occasional flickers of masochistic dread in their wide eyes, which Gacy liked to stare into as he talked, feeding on the fear and nostalgically remembering times past.
Gacy was born in Iowa in 1932. Apparently his father was not cruel but was a strict disciplinarian — which probably planted the first seed of sadomasochism in Gacy’s subconscious, where it would lie dormant for almost three decades, waiting for the necessary catalyst to come along.
I believe the psychological trigger eventually arrived when Gacy, in the early 1970s, read and watched the media saturation coverage given to a homosexual killer in Houston, Dean Corll, who raped, tortured and murdered at least thirty boys and young men and then buried the bodies.
Corll, whose case is dealt with in a future chapter, invented a ‘torture board,’ a seven-foot square plywood board with handcuffs and ropes attached to each of its four corners. It is surely more than mere coincidence that when Gacy began his murderous career, he too constructed a torture board for his young male victims.
This serves as a perfect example of the amoral attitude/influence of the media in publishing every sordid detail of a case, including the methodology of the killer, simply to boost circulation and ratings, whilst ignoring the dangerous possibility that another killer might emulate the methods described.
Then, having been the first to publish such facts, the same newspapers do not hesitate to piously attack (yet again to boost circulation) any book which simply repeats those published details.
Gacy’s mother had an entirely different personality to that of his father. She was loving and protective, and her son reciprocated in kind.
He was an apt student at school, and there was nothing remarkable in his childhood to presage what he was to become. Some pedants portentously pronounced that he lied and pilfered when young.
Has there ever been a child born who has not done both?
The media find it obligatory to please their public by always finding, or inventing, something discreditable, no matter what, in a criminal’s childhood.
If the journalists I have met and studied are anything to go by, they themselves mastered little other than the art of moral prostitution and mendacity for financial gain. Most lack the intellect, insight and integrity to stray far from the mainstream and mediocre, purveying middle-class platitudes.
An editor should have a pimp for a brother, so he’d have someone to look up to.
— Gene Fowler
It was also reported that Gacy had suffered a severe blow to the head as a child. His trial lawyers naturally tried to make forensic use of this. But a brain scan conducted by prison psychiatrists showed no sign of organic damage, and further tests discovered no affective maladjustment that could be related to the head injury from that period.
That is not to say that such findings are infallible, of course, but merely that primary tests specifically designed to detect organic/causal relationship produced no positive evidence of same. One must also take into account that most of the tests conducted by prison psychiatrists expediently lean towards the requirements of the prosecution.
The human brain will always be more than we know, staying far beyond man’s technological comprehension. The neurophysiological correlates of criminal behaviour obtained through the electroencephalogram (EEG), which measures or replicates electrical activity of the cortex, are not as reliable as correctional facility doctors would have the public accept.
If the EEG does discern ‘abnormal’ patterns of electrical activity or some apparent neurological dysfunction, there are schools of thought which argue that such findings do not necessarily correlate affective criminal behaviour, past or future.
Interpretation of abnormal patterns of electrical activity are based on comparing the brain patterns of known criminals with those of supposedly normal people, purely theoretical noncriminals. I maintain that any person without latent criminal tendencies is by definition abnormal or subnormal.
In short, some doctors argue that, as a certain person is a criminal, his brain patterns must therefore be abnormal; this is another way of saying that the crime dictates interpretation of the criminal pattern. It also implies, to the uninformed, that brain patterns are as distinctive as fingerprints in detecting the criminal. That is not the case.
It is a theory which, to me, is reminiscent of George Orwell’s ‘thought police.’ I would like to see judges, psychiatrists, generals, financiers, psychologists, corporate lawyers, bishops, police, reporters, politicians and doctors subjected to EEG tests if, as is suggested, it is such a reliable method of detecting the criminals of society.
To my knowledge no such comprehensive testing of the shapers of society has ever been conducted, and I believe it would be safe to assume there would be very few who would volunteer to be tested against such criteria.
Gacy had been married and divorced twice. Both ex-wives had nothing sensational to say about him. However, the two confirmed that Gacy’s drift from the norm was gradual.
His first wife revealed that he started bringing youths home with him occasionally. There was, in the early stages, no sexually overt change in Gacy, other than that implied by his odd choice of companions.
But finally he was arrested for beating up a youth and given a short term in prison. This led to his first divorce.
He married again and moved to Des Plaines, on the outskirts of Chicago, and set up his very successful business. However, he also slowly regained the habit of bringing homosexuals home with him.
Incongruously, the final break with his second wife took place after sexual intercourse with her one night, in 1975, when he informed her it would be for the last time.
The pathological traits in Gacy became more pronounced; he was now regularly picking up male prostitutes, first sodomising and then beating them up.
This transference of aggression onto the object of desire is common in latent or secretly active homosexuals; personal shame/guilt transmutes into violence. But in Gacy, I believe the main element was that of deriving sadomasochistic satisfaction. He had begun by beating and torturing his willing sex partners and ended by torturing unwilling ones. But why did he start killing them?
Again you have the example of gradual evolution from the relatively mild to the fatal. No dramatic overnight transformation.
Perhaps, it could be argued, not even a conscious or willed escalation. More an instinctive drive, an irresistible urge towards ever stronger sensual satisfaction, ever increasing sadism, only to be frustrated by the concomitant disillusionment decreed by human limitations. A syndrome that could be expected to drive him, and probably most normal people, to the edge of insanity.
That is arguably a reasonable and valid interpretation of the facts but, in my opinion, a facile one. Gacy was far more intelligent, complex and dangerous than basic analysis postulated.
As already stated, on occasion he actually all
owed some of the youths he raped and violently tortured to go free, as though he were subconsciously seeking disaster and an end to the addictive treadmill he had created for himself. Again, ‘Those whom the gods wish to destroy . . .’
The burgeoning sadomasochistic psychopathology was predictably demanding fantasy fulfilment of the most extreme nature. An act totally free of all moral restraints, performed in conditions of safety and secrecy.
Twice Gacy had let his victims live, and twice they had informed on him to the police. If he was to continue in his sadomasochistic practices as intended, he could not risk being given away a third time, especially as he had by then built up a successful company and a very respectable image to go with it. Naturally, he found respectability useful financially, but dull as ditch-water — and what was the point in being respectable and rich if he couldn’t continue to do what he desired and enjoyed most, the satisfying of his obsessive sadomasochistic fantasies?
There was only one logical solution: he would never again leave any victim alive to testify against him.
Murder, like anything else repeated often enough times, inevitably loses any mystical, moral or deterrent dimension and simply becomes a practical habit, or an interesting and sometimes dangerous mode of recreation, like hunting.
In normal human psychology it is generally assumed there are few powers greater than that of inflicting death on another. In the psyche it can attain cosmic significance. We are all a world unto ourselves, therefore, by destroying another human being we are destroying a profound microcosmic world. Hence my referring to Gacy, at the beginning, as ‘the perfect psychopath’: intelligent, successful, pragmatic and, eventually, ruthlessly murderous. A practised killer of lesser microcosms.
I base the following psychological and psychiatric analyses of his character not only on the forensic facts of his crimes but also upon confidential information about his covert behaviour in prison for over a decade whilst awaiting the death sentence.